He followed Chuck’s suggestion, washing the food down with a cup of cold instant coffee. “How about the city you found? Who’s going along?”
Everybody was going, it seemed. Vance motioned Chuck to lead. They came out of the ship into a late Martian morning. Around them, the sand was still as barren as before, and the little cup into which the ship had settled cut them off from the rest of the planet. The sky above was a deep purple, with two thin wisps of cloud in it.
“We can breathe the air,” Steele commented. “That is, we can if well compress it enough and moisten it Right now, it’s so dry it’d suck the liquid out of your bodies in a few hours. The ozone layer they talked about seems to be farther up—and that’s lucky. We’ve got oxygen, nitrogen, and pretty much the same stuff as Earth here-only not enough of it”
He turned around, showing the back of his suit. He’d been the last to leave, so no one had noticed it. But there were no tanks. Instead, a set of batteries and a pump was attached. “One for each suit back in the ship. I’ll couple them on later.”
It was a help. The batteries were lighter and would last longer than the air tanks, and it would save their own oxygen.
They came up to the top of the dune. Chuck caught his breath at the sight below. The plants were an spread out to the sun now, covering almost every square inch. There were no visible flowers, though Sokolsky insisted something similar was at the end of each leaf. But there was a peculiar beauty to the waxy sheen of the green leaves.
Sokolsky went about, turning up the leaves, which promptly rolled into tight balls. He came back shaking his head. “Nothing like bugs. I was hoping I’d find some.”
“Couldn’t this stuff be eaten?” Vance asked.
Sokolsky shook his head. “It’s unlikely. I didn’t have much time but the tests I made indicate poisons in it that we aren’t used to. Anyhow, the leaves are dryer than facial tissues even if they do look succulent”
Rothman pointed toward the north. “I saw a canal up that way about thirty miles. But there was a lot of desert between here and there. Where’s this city, Chuck?”
Seen in the clear light of day, even by the weak and distant sun that could only raise the temperature to about seventy degrees at midday, the city looked less imposing than at night From a few hundred feet, it seemed nothing but a mass of stone.
Chuck led the way into it There were perhaps three hundred buildings, all obviously once single-story, and most of them of only one room. The buildings had been made of dressed stone, fitted without cement, but many of them still stood. One, with a sloping stone roof, was almost intact
The floors were of the greatest interest Many were inlaid in little colored squares, like a mosaic. Some had geometrical designs, and one showed odd animals, something like a cat-headed buffalo. But toward the center of the city, where the house with the roof stood, they stumbled on the prize treasure of them all.
Something that might -have been a tree was worked into the center. They cleaned some of the dirt and rubble away to examine it more closely, and Sokolsky let out a shout
“Humanoid!”
It was true enough. Standing around the tree were about a dozen creatures, each vaguely manlike. They carried themselves upright, with a rounded head, two arms, and two legs. Sokolsky pointed out that the elbow and knee joints were similar to those of men—a remarkable case of parallel evolution. “Probably didn’t look this much like us—all we’re seeing is silhouettes in rather bad art—but they are still more like us than you’d think. Look—is that a spear?”
They studied it while Ginger took endless pictures, but couldn’t make up their minds. Lew drew out a knife from his tool pouch and started to dig out some of the mosaic.
Vance stopped him. “Let it alone. If people have to vandalize this planet so that future generations who know more won’t have any real evidence, we’re not going to be the ones to start it. We can take back pictures, if we get back—but we won’t destroy the evidence.”
There were no idols, or evidence of religion, unless the tree thing was worshiped. It might have been, though Lew thought that it was probably another geometrical design, showing some relationship among peoples or tribes.
Nor was there any evidence of what had happened to the Martians; they might have vanished, or they might simply have moved on to other locations. Steele didn’t believe the last He pointed to the wear on the stones. “It must have been at least ten million years ago when this was built. That’s hard stone, and there’s only the thin wind and sand to wear it away. They must have died off. Maybe that basin over there held some of the last of their water, and when it went from the atmosphere, they couldn’t adapt. ‘Gone with the snows of yesteryear’ would be more truth than poetry in their case.”
Night was falling when they turned back. They knew now as much as they had known before, and no more, except that the original people might have looked vaguely human. But Vance had proved right. The day of rest had been more important than even the pressure of the work.
Ginger broke down enough to tell them where a few precious canned steaks were hidden, and they made a sort of community picnic out of it, broiling them over the little hot plates. The tomatoes and lettuce from the gardens hadn’t been seriously hurt, and the salad was officially tossed by Vance.
Rothman alone seemed to have gained no lift from the day. He moved off, still worrying, toward the control room. Apparently the only trace of a sense of humor in his make-up came out only under extreme danger. Chuck followed. His own family had been on his mind more than he’d cared to let the others see, and the radar set might be repaired more easily than much of the rest of the equipment. After all, it wasn’t really work; electronics had always been a hobby.
He found Rothman fussing over the communications set The man jerked up quickly, his dark face flushing faintly. Chuck looked at what he had been doing, and lifted his eyebrows.
“No test instruments?” he asked.
Rothman shrugged. “I worked my way through college— eight years of it—designing these things for a little electronics firm. You get a sixth sense about the inside of them, even if you can’t make them sit up and purr. You’ve lost one of those tubes—someday they’ll make them out of nothing but crystals—I’d say; what do you think?”
Chuck wondered how many other talents the man held in check, but he simply nodded. “Maybe. Either that, or (here’s real trouble. I’ve been thinking about it. If the spare isn’t ruined, well soon know.”
He located it, and could see no evidence of damage to the case in which it was so carefully packed. At better than $4,000 Earth price for the little thing, it should have been packed well. If it had been solid diamond, it couldn’t have been so precious. Yet in his own rig, he was using something that could be picked up on Earth for a couple of dollars; the chief difference lay in the fact that his tube stood some four inches tall, while this took up less than half a cubic inch. Weight-saving cost money.
He plugged it in with the little tool needed to handle it, and cut on power. The indicator light flashed on, and a hum began to come from the small speaker.
“Eros calling,” he repeated half a dozen times, and switched to receive. It would be several minutes before the message could reach Earth and return, even at the 186,000 miles per second light and radio waves traveled. “Any message to send?”
Rothman nodded. “Just that I’m fine—my wife…”
He saw the surprise in Chuck’s eyes, and nodded again. “I got married three days before take-off; I didn’t lie to the Commission when I said I was single. She insisted on it I suppose it doesn’t matter now who knows.” 91