In the minds of the four who looked, however, there was no shred of question that here before them lay the place that had been sought, in a more or less haphazard fashion, for a hundred thousand years. It was a place. One hesitated to call it a city, although it probably was a city. It was a place of living and of learning and of working and it had many buildings, but the buildings had been made a part of the landscape and did not outrage the eye with their grossness or their disregard for the land they stood upon. There was greatness about the place-not the greatness of gigantic stones heaped on one another, nor the greatness of a bold and overwhelming architecture, nor even the greatness of indestructibility. For there was no massiveness of structure and the architecture seemed quite ordinary, and some of the buildings had fallen into disrepair and others were weathered into a mellowness that blended with the trees and grass of the hills on which they stood.
Still, there was a greatness in them, the greatness of humility and purpose and the greatness, too, of well-ordered life. Looking at them, one knew that he had been wrong in thinking this a city-that this was no city, but an extensive village, with all the connotations that were in the word.
But most of all there was humanness, the subtle touch that marked the buildings as those that had been planned by human minds and raised by human hands. You could not put your finger upon any single thing and say, this thing is human, for any one thing you put your finger on might have been built or achieved by another race. But when all those single things were rolled into the whole concept there could be no doubt that it was a human village.
Sentient beings had hunted for this place, had sought the clue that might lead them to the vanished segment of the race, and when they failed, some of.them had doubted there had been such a place, with the records that told of it often in dispute. There were those, too, who had said that it mattered little whether you found the missing fragment or not, since little that was of any value would come from a race so insignificant as the human race. What were the humans? they would ask you and would answer before you had a chance to speak. Gadgeteers, they said, gadgeteers who were singularly unstable. Great on gadgets, they would say, but with very little real intelligence. It was, they would point out, only by the slightest margin of intelligence that they were ever accepted into the galactic brotherhood. And, these detractors would remind you, they had not improved much since. Still marvelous gadgeteers, of course, but strictly third-rate citizens who now quite rightly had been relegated to the backwash of the empire.
The place had been sought, and there had been many failures. It had been sought, but not consistently, for there were matters of much greater import than finding it. It was simply an amusing piece of galactic history, or myth, if you would rather. As a project, its discovery had never rated very high.
But here it was, spread out below the high ridge on which the ship had landed, and if any of them wondered why it had not been found before, there was a simple answer-there were just too many stars; you could not search them all.
"This is it," said the Dog, speaking in his mind, and he looked slantwise at the Human, wondering what the Human might be thinking, for, of all of them, the finding of this place must mean the most to him.
"I am glad we found it," said the Dog, speaking directly to the Human, and the Human caught the nuances of the thought, the closeness of the Dog and his great compassion and his brotherhood.
"Now we shall know," the Spider said, and each of them knew, without actually saying so, that now they'd know if these humans were any different from the other humans, or if they were just the same old humdrum race.
"They were mutants," said the Globe, "or they were supposed to be."
The Human stood there, saying nothing, just looking at the place. "If we'd tried to find it," said the Dog, "we never would have done it."
"We can't spend much time," the Spider told them. "Just a quick survey, then there's this other business."
"The point is," said the Globe, "we know now that it exists and where it is. They will send experts out to investigate."
"We stumbled on it," said the Human, half in wonderment. "We just stumbled on it."
The Spider made a thought that sounded like a chuckle and the Human said no more.
"It's deserted," said the Globe. "They have run away again."
"They may be decadent," said the Spider. "We may find what's left of them huddled in some corner, wondering what it's all about, loaded down with legends and with crazy superstitions."
"I don't think so," said the Dog.
"We can't spend much time," the Spider said again.
"We should spend no time at all," the Globe told them. "We were not sent out to find this place. We have no business letting it delay us."
"Since we've found it," said the Dog, "it would be a shame to go away and leave it, just like that."
"Then let's get at it," said the Spider. "Let's break out the robots and the ground car."
"If you don't mind," the Human said, "I think that I will walk. The rest of you go ahead. I'll just walk down and take a look around." "I'll go with you," said the Dog.
"I thank you," said the Human, "but there really is no need." So they let him go alone.
The three of them stayed on the ridge top and watched him walk down the hill toward the silent buildings.
Then they went to activate the robots.
The sun was setting when they returned, and the Human was waiting for them, squatting on the ridge, staring at the village.
He did not ask them what they had found. It was almost as if he knew, although he could not have found the answer by himself, just walking around.
They told him.
The Dog was kind about it. "It's strange," he said. "There is no evidence of any great development. No hint of anything unusual. In fact, you might guess that they had retrogressed. There are no great engines, no hint of any mechanical ability."
"There are gadgets," said the Human. "Gadgets of comfort and convenience. That is all I saw."
"That is all there is," the Spider said.
"There are no humans," said the Globe. "No life of any kind. No intelligence."
"The experts," said the Dog, "may find something when they come."
"I doubt it," said the Spider.
The Human turned his head away from the village and looked at his three companions. The Dog was sorry, of course, that they had found so little, sorry that the little they had found had been so negative. The Dog was sorry because he still held within himself some measure of racial memory and of loyalty. The old associations with the human race had been wiped away millennia ago, but the heritage still held, the old heritage of sympathy with and for the being that had walked with his ancestors so understandingly.
The Spider was almost pleased about it, pleased that he had found no evidence of greatness, that this last vestige of vanity that might be held by humans now would be dashed forever and the race must now slink back into its corner and stay there, watching with furtive eyes the greatness of the Spiders and the other races.
The Globe didn't care. As he floated there, at head level with the Spider and the Dog, it meant little to him whether humans might be proud or humble. Nothing mattered to the Globe except that certain plans went forward, that certains goals were reached, that progress could be measured. Already the Globe had written off this village, already he had erased the story of the mutant humans as a factor that might affect progress, one way or another.
"I think," the Human said, "that I will stay out here for a while. That is, if you don't mind."
"We don't mind," the Globe told him.
"It will be getting dark," the Spider said.
"There'll be stars," the Human said. "There may even be a moon. Did you notice if there was a moon?"