Travis had to accept the logic of that. Suppose they did come into a port which had ceased to exist, set down on a strange world from which they could not lift again because they had not the skill to pilot the ship. They would be exiles for the rest of their lives in a space uncharted by their kind. “We’re not dead yet,” Travis said.
Ross laughed. “In spite of all our efforts? No—that’s our private battle cry, I think. As long as a man’s alive he’s going to keep kicking. But it would be good to know just how long we’re going to be shut up in this ship.” His usual half flippancy of tone thinned over that last as if his carefully cultivated self-sufficiency was beginning to show the slimmest of cracks.
In the end their experiments with the food were partially successful. The crackers Travis continued to label “com"; the foam and Ross’s cabbag-beans could be digested by the interior apparatus of a human being without difficulty. And they added to that list a sticky paste with the consistency of jam and a flavor approaching bacon, and another cake-like object which, though it had a sour tang that puckered the mouth, was still edible. Greatly daring, Travis tapped the aliens’ water supply and drank. Though the liquid had a metallic aftertaste which the drinker could not relish, it was not harmful.
In addition the younger members of the involuntary crew made themselves useful in the cautious investigations carried on by Ashe and Renfry. The technician was in an almost constant state of frustration during the hours he spent in the control cabin trying to study machines he dared not activate or dismantle for the fuller examination he longed to make. Travis was seated behind him one morning—at least it was ten o’clock by Renfry’s watch, their only method of time-keeping —when there was a change to report, to report and take action on.
A shrill buzz pierced the usual silence, beeping what must be a warning. Renfry grabbed at the small mike of the ship’s com circuit.
“Strap down!” He rasped the order with rising excitement. “There’s an alert sounding here—we may be coming in to land. Strap down!”
Travis grabbed at the protecting bands on his chair. Below they must be scrambling for the bunks. There was vibration again—he was sure he could not mistake that. The ship no longer felt inert and drifting—she was coming alive.
What followed was again beyond his powers of description. The action came in two parts, the first a queasy whirl of sensation not far removed from what they had experienced when the ship had been whirled through the time transfer. Limp from that, Travis lay back, watching the vision plate which had been blank for so long. And when his eyes caught what was not appearing there, he gave a cry of recognition.
“That’s the sun!”
A point of blazing yellow set a beacon in the black of space.
"A sun,” Renfry corrected. “We’ve made the big hop. Now it’s the homestretch—into the system….”
That blaze of yellow-red was already sliding away from the plate. Travis had an impression that the ship must be slowly rotating. Now that the brighter glare of the sun was gone he could pick up a smaller dot, far smaller than the star which nurtured it. That held steady on the. plate.
“Something tells me, boy,” Renfry said in a small and hesitant voice, “that’s where we’re going.”
“Earth?” A warm surge of hope spread through Travis.
“An earth maybe—but not ours.”
9
“We’re down.” Renfry’s voice, thin, harsh, broke the silence of the control cabin. His hands moved to the edge of the panel of levers and buttons before him, fell helplessly on it. Though he had had nothing to do with that landing, he seemed drained by some great effort.
“Home port?” Travis got the words out between dry lips. The descent had not been as nerve- and body-wracking as their take-off from his native world, but it had been bad enough. Either the aliens’ bodies were better atuned to the tempo of their ships, or else one acquired, through painful experience, a conditioning to such wrenching.
“How would I know?” Renfry flared, plainly eaten by his own frustration.
Their window on the outside world, the vision plate, did mirror sky again. But not the normal Terran sky with its blue blaze which Travis knew and longed to see again. This was a blue closer to green, assuming the hue of the turquoise mined in the hills. There was something cold, inimical in that sky.
Cutting up into the open space was a structure which gave off a metallic glint. But the smooth sweep of those dull red surfaces ended in a jagged splinter, raw against the blue-green, plainly marking a ruin.
Travis unfastened his seat straps and stumbled to his feet, his body once more adjusting clumsily to the return of gravity. As much as he had come to dislike the ship, to want his freedom from it, at this moment he had no desire to emerge under that turquoise sky and examine the ruin pictured on the plate. And just because he did have that reluctance, he fought against it by going.
In the end they all gathered at the space lock while Renfry mastered the fastening, then went on to the outer door. The technician glanced back over his shoulder.
“Helmets fastened?” His voice boomed hollowly inside the sphere now resting on Travis’ shoulders and made a part of him by a close-fitting harness. Ashe had discovered those and had tested them, preparing for this time when they had to dare a foray into the unknown. The bubble was equipped with no cumbersome oxygen tanks. It worked on no principle Renfry was able to discover, but the aliens had used these and the Terrans must trust to their efficiency now.
The outer port swung back into the skin of the ship. Renfry kicked out the landing ladder, turned to back down it. But each of them, as he emerged from the globe, glanced quickly around.
What lay below was a wide sweep of hard white surface which must cover miles of territory. This was broken at intervals by a series of structures of the dull red, metallic material set in triangles and squares. In the center of each of those was a space marked with black rings. None of the red structures was whole, and the landing field—if that was what it was—had the sterile atmosphere of a place long abandoned.
“Another ship….” Ashe’s arm swung up, his voice came to Travis through the helmet com.
There was a second of the globes, right enough, reposing in one of the building-cornered squares perhaps a quarter of a mile away. And beyond that Travis spotted a third. But nowhere was there any sign of life. He felt wind, soft, almost caressing, against his bare hands.
They descended the ladder and stood in a group at the foot of their own ship, a little uncertain as to what to do next.
“Wait!” Renfry caught at Ashe. “Something moved—over there!”
They had found weapons in the ship; now they drew those odd guns, twin to the one Ross had had when Travis had first met him. The wind blew, a fragment of long-dread vegetation balled before it, caught against the globe and then was whirled away in a dreary dance.
But out of an opening at the foot of the red tower nearest to them something was issuing. And Travis, watching that coil snapping straight for them, froze. A snake? A snake unwinding to such a length that its reaching head was approaching their stand while the end of its tail still lay within the ruin where it denned?
He took aim at that swaying coil. Then Renfry’s hand struck his wrist pads, knocking up the barrel of the blaster. And in that moment the Apache saw what the other had noticed first, that the snake was not a thing of flesh, skin, supple bones, but of some manufactured material.
More movement was continuing to issue in a mechanical writhing from the door through which that snake had crawled. This newcomer strode forward by jerks, paused, came on, as if compelled to advance against the dictates of ancient fabric and long wear. The thing was vaguely manlike in form, in that it advanced on stilt legs. But it had four upper appendages now folded against its central bulk, and where the head should have been there was a nodding stalk resembling the antennae of a com unit.