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Fawkes then said, “No intelligent life whatever, of course.”

Sheffield looked up from the photographs, with instant sharpness. Life and intelligence, after all, were by way of being his province. “How do you know?”

“Look for vourself,” said the botanist. “There are the photos. No highways, no cities, no artificial waterways, no signs of anything man-made.”

“No machine civilization,” said Sheffield. “That’s all.”

“Even ape-men would build shelters and use fire,” said Fawkes, offended.

“The continent is ten times as large as Africa and you’ve been over it for two days. There’s a lot you could miss.”

“Not as much as you’d think,” was the warm response. “I followed every sizable river up and down and looked over both seacoasts. Any settlements are bound to be there.”

“In allowing seventy-two hours for two eight-thousand-mile seacoasts ten thousand miles apart, plus how many thousand miles of river, that had to be a pretty quick lookover.”

Cimon interrupted, “What’s this all about? Homo sapiens is the only intelligence ever discovered in the galaxy through a hundred thousand and more explored planets. The chances of Troas possessing intelligence is virtually nil.”

“Yes?” said Sheffield. “You could use the same argument to prove there’s no intelligence on Earth.”

“Makoyama,” said Cimon, “in his report mentioned no intelligent life.”

“And how much time did he have? It was a case of another quick feel through the haystack with one finger and a report of no needle.”

“What the eternal universe,” said Rodriguez, waspishly. “We argue like madmen. Call the hypothesis of indigenous intelligence unproven and let it go. We are not through investigating yet, I hope.”

Copies of those first pictures of Junior’s surface were added to what might be termed the open files. After a second trip, Fawkes returned in more somber mood and the meeting was correspondingly more subdued.

New photographs went from hand to hand and were then placed by Cimon himself in the special safe that nothing could open short of Cimon’s own hands or an all-destroying nuclear blast.

Fawkes said, “The two largest rivers have a generally north-south course along the eastern edges of the western mountain range. The larger river comes down from the northern ice cap, the smaller up from the southern one. Tributaries come in westward from the eastern range, interlacing the entire central plain. Apparently, the central plain is tipped, the eastern edge being higher. It’s what ought to be expected maybe. The eastern mountain range is the taller, broader and more continuous of the two. I wasn’t able to make actual measurements, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they beat the Himalayas. In fact, they’re a lot like the Wu Ch’ao range on Hesperus. You have to hit the stratosphere to get over them, and rugged—Wow !

“Anyway,” he brought himself back to the immediate subject at hand, with an effort, “the two main rivers join about a hundred miles south of the equator and pour through a gap in the western range. They make it to the ocean after that in just short of eighty miles.

“Where it hits the ocean is a natural spot for the planetary metropolis. The trade routes into the interior of the continent have to converge there so it would be the inevitable emporium for space-trade. Even as far as surface trade is concerned, the continental east coast has to move goods across the ocean. Jumping the eastern range isn’t worth the effort. Then, too, there are the islands we saw when we were landing.

“So right there is where I would have looked for the settlement even if we didn’t have a record of the latitude and longitude. And those settlers had an eye for the future. It’s where they set up shop.”

Novee said in a low voice, “They thought they had an eye for the future, anyway. There isn’t much left of them, is there?”

Fawkes tried to be philosophic about it. “It’s been over a century.

What do you expect? There’s a lot more left of them than I honestly thought there would be. Their buildings were mostly prefab. They’ve tumbled and vegetation has forced its way over and through them. The fact that the climate of Junior is glacial is what’s preserved it. The trees—or the objects that rather look like trees—are small and obviously very slow-growing.

“Even so, the clearing is gone. From the air, the only way you could tell there had once been a settlement in that spot was that the new growth had a slightly different color and… and, well, texture, than the surrounding forests.”

He pointed at a particular photograph. “This is just a slag heap. Maybe it was machinery once. I think those are burial mounds.”

Novee said, “Any actual remains? Bones?”

Fawkes shook his head.

Novee said, “The last survivors didn’t bury themselves, did they?”

Fawkes said, “Animals, I suppose.” He walked away, his back to the group. “It was raining when I poked my way through. It went splat, splat on the flat leaves above me and the ground was soggy and spongy underneath. It was dark, gloomy—There was a cold wind. The pictures I took don’t get it across. I felt as though there were a thousand ghosts, waiting—”

The mood was contagious.

Cimon said, savagely, “Stop that!”

In the background, Mark Annuncio’s pointed nose fairly quivered with the intensity of his curiosity. He turned to Sheffield, who was at his side, and whispered, “Ghosts? No authentic case of seeing—”

Sheffield touched Mark’s thin shoulder lightly. “Only a way of speaking, Mark. But don’t feel badly, that he doesn’t mean it literally. You’re watching the birth of a superstition, and that’s something, isn’t it?”

A semi-sullen Captain Follenbee sought out Cimon the evening after Fawkes’ second return, and said in his harumphy way, “Never do, Dr. Cimon. My men are unsettled. Very unsettled.”

The port-shields were open. La-grange I was six hours gone, and Lagrange II’s ruddy light, deepened to crimson in setting, flushed the captain’s face and tinged his short gray hair with red.

Cimon, whose attitude toward the crew in general and the captain in particular was one of controlled impatience, said, “What is the trouble, captain?”

“Been here two weeks, Earth-time. Still no one leaves without suits. Always irradiate before you come back. Anything wrong with the air?”

“Not as far as we know?”

“Why not breathe it then?”

“Captain, that’s for me to decide.”

The flush on the captain’s face became a real one. He said, “My papers say I don’t have to stay if ship’s safety is endangered. A frightened and mutinous crew is something I don’t want.”

“Can’t you handle your own men?”

“Within reason.”

“Well, what really bothers them? This is a new planet and we’re being cautious. Can’t they understand that?”

“Two weeks and still cautious. They think we’re hiding something. And we are. You know that. Besides, surface leave is necessary. Crew’s got to have it. Even if it’s just on a bare rock a mile across. Gets them out of the ship. Away from the routine. Can’t deny them that.”

“Give me till tomorrow,” said Cimon, contemptuously.

The scientists gathered in the observatory the next day.

Cimon said, “Vernadsky tells me the data on air is still negative, and Rodriguez has discovered no airborne pathogenic organism of any type.”

There was a general air of dubiety over the last statement. Novee said, “The settlement died of disease. I’ll swear to that.”

“Maybe so,” said Rodriguez at once, “but can you explain how? It’s impossible. I tell you that and I tell you. See here. Almost all Earth-type planets give birth to life and that life is always protein in nature and always either cellular or virus in organization. But that’s all. There the resemblance ends.