"I—see. We can't think about us. Not yet."
"Not yet," he agreed heavily. "If we're safe here—and I'm beginning to think we are—I'm going to try to get the Stellaris down. If those splotches are cities the inhabitants may be anything and they may be friendly or not, civilized or not But I'm hoping they're not the people who tried to kill us."
He turned back to the vision-ports. They were over the night-side of the planet and to one side—actually it felt as if the planet were below—there was only the blank black bulk of the unknown world. It was hardly a thousand miles away but the Stellaris could not be checked to land on it without killing all on board by multiple-gravity deceleration.
Then the dark globe lay behind and it was time to change back to tractor-beams to pull back toward it and lessen the ship's headlong speed toward infinity. And then, hours later, the again-remote planet ceased to dwindle and grew large once more and he juggled alternate tractor and pressor-beams to bring the Stellaris close to its day-side, then to match speed with the planet's surface. At long last he dared let the clumsy hulk which was the Earth-ship down into atmosphere.
Bellowing came from below 'No-o-o-o radar!" And then a new voice called "No-o-o-o radio!" Because a civilization which did not have space-ships or even radar could have broadcast-waves in its atmosphere, as Earth had dune for nearly a hundred years before space-travel became possible to its people.
The ship went heavily lower and lower, more and more slowly in relation to the jungle underneath. Where the ship approached there was jungle. There were rivers. Far away there were the slopes of a mountain range and, off to one side the authentic blue of a sea. The ship went soggily down and down, its small and accidental crew gazing at the scene no human eyes had ever before looked at—lower still and individual jungle-growths became visible.
There was a straight streak which looked like a highway of some sort The Stellaris floated onward, rocking a little on the pressor-beams which supported it. Then a city appeared at the horizon. There were towers and pinnacles and a myriad prismatic flashings of reflected sunlight.
But there was no movement, no smoke, no aircraft overhead, no signs of alarm or recognition of the Stellaris' existence. The ship was only two thousand feet up and there were deep depressions in the vegetation below where its pressor-beams touched ground to uphold it.
The city drew near. And it was dead. There was no life anywhere. But it had not been dead long because the jungle had not yet encroached on it. It was simply dead—undevastated untouched, unharmed but dead.
Rod brought the ship to a wallowing stop over the very center of the metropolis. It reached for miles in every direction.
On a basis of human occupancy, it could have housed a population of millions. Yet there was no movement below. Rod began painstakingly to let down for a landing in a central open space.
Kit said in a strained voice; "Rod! Those little things on the highway. Colored things! Brightly-colored!"
"My guess," said Rod briefly, "is that they're the inhabitants. People who could build a city like this would be pretty civilized. No reason why they shouldn't wear brightly-colored clothes."
"But they're not moving!"
"My guess," said Rod again, "is that they're dead." "A plague?"
"No. Our friends," said Rod grimly. "A civilization that could build this city would be close to space-travel. Maybe they sent a ship to that snow-covered planet and found a pyramid there and opened it up to see who among their ancestors had gone there first—and called in our friends to exterminate them."
She stared at him in horror. His face was very white. He nodded toward the very center of the open space into which the Stellaris descended. There was a bright metal pyramid there.
"If, by any chance, there was a space-ship off on a voyage when this world was murdered and it came back after the murderers had left," said Rod harshly, "they'd probably think that some survivors had left word for them in that And they'd open it"
"At a guess that pyramid on Calypso would have killed me too if I'd opened it in the normal way. Very probably that was it. The ones who summoned the murders wouldn't live to know what they'd done or take back any word of what a pyramid implied."
The ship hovered only a hundred feet above the ground. Slowly, slowly, slowly, Rod eased it downward. He expected an impact but the Stellaris touched the strange world's surface with a surprising and quite accidental gentleness.
Without explanation Rod went to the air-lock and closed the inner door. He cracked the outer door and sniffed cautiously. He tried again. He took a deep breath. The air seemed to him to be perfectly adequate.
To make sure, he stepped outside and breathed deeply. He felt a bitter amusement at the difference between this instant of landing on a strange world of another sun, and the way he'd pictured it while the Stellaris was building.
He hadn't thought that the landing would be made from an almost unmanageable hulk, unequipped for landing or navigation or even the testing of air, lost utterly in space, with the despairing knowledge that probably the best that could be hoped was that the dozen or so humans on the ship might manage to find a place of perpetual exile with a murderous alien race for enemies.
The air was good but nothing else was promising.
If the ship that had contacted the Stellaris had reported its encounter a galaxy-wide search for a race attaining space-travel might be already under way. If they found Earth.
For that matter, Earth's cities might already be filled with crumpled figures. Earth's air might already be empty of fliers. Earth's cities might already be as dead as this one. Rod Cantrell looked at tumbled heaps of garments on the pavements about him and cursed thickly.
CHAPTER FIVE
Marks of Murder
IT was one of the girls in charge of the air-purifying plant who solved the food problem for the time being. Her test for toxic substances was simple but absolutely effective. A tiny morsel of vegetation was strapped against a girl's skin near the wrist. A deadly substance would produce immediate reaction. Irritation or pain or loss of sensation would show toxicity without any risk or danger to the girl.
A group of two painters and an arc-welder marched to the edge of the jungle and gathered what fruits they could find. They came back loaded down, reporting apparent cultivation of the ground, only partly overwhelmed with wild growths. Carefully labeled samples decorated the arms of each of the five girls on the ship for the next two hours. Of all the specimens, only one produced a slight rash.
Then it was a question of finding out which of the remaining fruits were most palatable. Tiny samples, chewed and swallowed, answered that. One produced cramps. The rest seemed good. The problem of food, then, became to some extent merely a matter of gathering a sufficient quantity.
While this went on Rod Cantrell and Kit and one of the ship's electricians went exploring among the city's buildings for equally important materials. They wanted metals, tools, weapons. They hadn't much hope of the last in a civilized city.
They found plenty of metal. They found few tools. What they did find in horrible profusion, though, was the pitiful population of the city. Garments lay everywhere, each with a heap of dust within it. What unthinkable weapon had killed them could only be guessed at—though Rod thought he had an idea—but surely it had come upon them without warning.
There were huddled heaps of garments in places that were plainly shops, though the show-cases hung from the ceilings. There were innumerable heaps of clothing on the public ways, and in the queer vehicles the oddly human-like dead race had used.