“Not much reason for that,” Ashe replied calmly enough. “We’ll take a look outside—in daytime. Not that I believe there is much to see.”
The sun-repelling helmets on, they opened the outer hatch. They surveyed the expanse where the winds might have whittled new patterns among the dunes, but where they could see no change since their last visit. The enigmatic sealed buildings still squatted beyond, with no sign of life about.
“What did they do here?” Ross’s hands moved restlessly along the frame of the exit port. “There was some reason for this stop—there had to be. And why were those same things-people, animals, whatever they are—or were—on the other world, in the funnel-topped building?”
“Which are the exiles?” Ashe asked. “Is this their home world, while those others exist across the void and have for generations because they were not recalled in time? Or are these the exiles and the others are at home? We may never know the reason or answer to any questions about them.” He studied the squat building among the creeping dunes. “They must live underground, with that building covering the entrance. Perhaps they live underground on the other planet also. Once they must have been here to service ships—to maintain some necessary outpost.”
“And then,” Travis said slowly, “the ships didn’t come any more.”
“Yes. There were no more ships. Perhaps a whole generation waited—hoping for ships—for recall. Then they either sank into apathy and stagnation, to slide down the hill of evolution, or they more consciously adapted to their surroundings.”
“In the end, the result was the same,” Ross observed. “I don’t think those here are any different from the ones in the funnel building. And there they had a better world to adapt to.”
“Wait!” Travis had been studying that sand-enclosed block with interest. Now he thought that his memory of the place as it had been weeks earlier did not match what he saw now. “Was that elevation on the left there before?”
Ross and Ashe leaned forward, their attention settling on the end of the structure he indicated.
“You’re right, that’s hew!” Ross’s affirmation came first. “And I don’t think that projection is made of stone like the rest, either.”
The block which had so oddly appeared on the corner of that distant roof did not give out a metallic answer to the sun’s rays. But neither was it dull-coated. There was a sleek sheen to it, such as might be displayed by opaque glass or obsidian. The hump had no openings that they could see, and what its purpose might be remained as much of a mystery as the rest of this age-old puzzle.
It remained so for a very few moments. Then there was action of a sort the watchers in the ship did not expect. They had seen the rays which protected the roof of the building against assault or investigation. Now they witnessed the use of what must have been one of the aggressive weapons of the men who had first erected that block.
What was it which lashed out, cracked a whip’s thong about the skin of the ship? A beam of fire? A bolt of energy? A force which the Terrans could neither imagine nor name?
Travis only knew that the energy wash of that blow crushed him back into the globe, hurled him into the inner door of the lock with Ross and Ashe thrust tight against him. Their bodies were flattened on the metal wall of the ship until the breath was forced from their lungs and the world went black about them.
Travis was on the floor, fighting for the air his body had to have, pain in bands about his chest. And before his blurred eyes was the open door of the port. In that moment all that mattered was that oblong of empty space—that, and beneath the torture of his body, the sense that that space must be shut out—that what lay beyond it meant final extinction.
He clawed at the body across his knees, turned over somehow and inched painfully from under its weight, moving in a worm’s progress toward the outer port. There was a singing in his ears, filling his head, adding to bis daze. Then he was staring out into the glare of sun and sand.
At first he thought he was lightheaded—that what he was seeing could not be true. For there was no wind, yet from the hidden floor of the landing space sand was rising in thin, unwavering sheets, walling in the globe. And those curtains of grit arose vertically, unmoved by any breeze! It was incredible—it could not happen—yet before his eyes it did.
He lunged to his knees, thrust against the door, shut out the curtains of sand, the harsh light of the sun, the thing which could not be true. And as his hands fumbled to shoot home I he alien bolts, the pain lessened. He could breathe again without the constriction which had held his lungs imprisoned. He turned to the other two.
The congested blueness of their faces startled him into quick action. He jerked both men up into a sitting position against the wall. Ashe’s blue eyes opened.
“What—?” He only got out that one faint word as Travis turned his attention to Ross.
There was a thin thread of blood trickling from the corner of the younger scout’s slack mouth. He moaned as Travis shook him gendy. Ashe moved and winced, his hands going to his chest.
“What happened?” He was able to get out the whole demand this time.
“The space—marines—landed.” Ross’s lips shaped the words one at a time. There was a shadow of a grin about them. ”—On me, I think.”
“Hullloooo down therer The call was disembodied over the ship’s com, but it was imperative. “What’s going on?”
Although the hull could cut out sun, sound, the world without, they could now feel movement through its layers of protection. It was as if the ship were being buffeted by some force. Those walls of sand? Travis hauled himself to the ladder wall and began to climb, seeking the vision plate by the controls which was now their only link with outside.
He discovered Renfry standing before that link, his disbelieving eyes on thick curdles of sand, sand rising from the ground, drawing in with steady purpose to engulf the ship. They were on the point of being buried in a sea of grit, and there was no reason to believe that that was not directed, consciously, by very active animosity and intelligence.
“Can we get out?” Travis dragged himself to the nearest seat. “Any way to up ship?”
If the tape governed their departure according to the earlier schedule, they were stuck here for another night, another day. By that time the globe could be so deeply buried that there would be no hope of blasting free from the tons of sand. They would be sealed into a living tomb.
Renfry’s hands went out to the keyboard of the controls, hesitated there. His lips tightened. “It’s a big risk but I could try.”
“It’ll probably be a bigger risk to stay.” Travis remembered the two he had left at the lock. They must be brought out of danger before the shock of blast-off. “Give me five minutes,” he said. “Then blow—if you canl”
He found Ashe on his feet, dragging Ross out into the corridor. Travis hurried to help.
“Renfry is going to try to blast off,” he reported. “We’re being buried in sand.”
They got Ross to a bunk. Ashe flopped into the adjoining one, and Travis barely made it to the next cabin and the waiting cushion there, when the warning shrilled through the com. There was the vibration of laboring engines. But it went on far longer than before. Travis lay tense, willing the wrench of blast-free to come, counting off seconds….
The vibration was building up—higher than he had ever known it to go before. And the ship rocked on its base, movement and sound becoming one, a sickening mixture which churned the stomach, deadened thought but not fear.
The break came in an instant of prolonged red agony. Afterward came blackness—nothing at all….