The Army officer considered. After a moment he said with some grimness, "I hope it's indifference. I wouldn't mind not getting to know them better. But contempt—"
"I don't think it's contempt," protested Lucy. "They went to a lot of trouble to do us good, to give us things we need and haven't had. They've given us— Why, they've been incredibly generous to us! They wouldn't have done that—"
"Maybe," said Clark blandly, "they felt an obligation to act as technological missionaries to a backward race. They could meet that obligation and still feel bored."
"I don't think that's it," said Lucy again.
She looked very much better now that the Greks were gone. From the instant of the first broadcast call for Hackett and herself to come forward and be rewarded, she'd been uneasy. She couldn't explain the feeling, but it was there. Now the Greks had left and a vast relief filled her. It was as if she'd had an intuition of danger which now was ended.
The slow attempt at exodus from the scene of the ship's departure continued. The morning television news had reported 980 traffic deaths the day before, mostly attributable to the jamming of cars heading for the lift-off. It was feared that the toll would be higher today. Cars moving toward increasing congestion would be slowed as the congestion increased. But cars leaving a crowded area would make higher and higher speeds as they dispersed. The cars in the miles of parking space here, though, moved at the slowest of crawls. It would be hours before any significant clearing-up of this organized disorganization was achieved.
Hackett and the others went back to the tarpaper shed. The atomic bombs under the earth cradle wouldn't be lifted, with hundreds of thousands of people nearby. But the Army officer was greeted by a message from a high echelon of the military. While the Grek ship was aground, tests of the bombs' firing mechanisms had reported that they were dead; that they could not be exploded. But now, since the Greks were gone, the same mechanisms reported go.They could explode now!
Some unguessable principle or device had detected them underground, and some other unguessable device had inactivated them. The Greks had known about them. They'd ignored them—which could be indifference, but could also mean contempt. The point of the message to the Army officer, though, was that there was to be no effort to remove the bombs until the entire area was cleared of people, and volunteer bomb-disposal units could take care of the situation.
Clark frowned. "Ask if we can dig up the garbage pit now. It's nowhere near the bombs, and if we don't dig it out first we—hm—may not have the chance."
The Army man went away. Presently he came back. There was to be no digging within 200 feet of a bomb, but the bulldozers not otherwise being used could strip off the dirt cover of the garbage pit.
Clark was delighted. Two huge bulldozers roared and boomed as they came out of their shed. They went a long way around, and climbed over the excavated dirt that had supported the bottom tiers of seats. The big machine went wallowing into the great scooped-out cradle recently occupied by the ship from space.
Surveyors appeared. They marked off circles that must not be entered—four of them. The bulldozers grumbled and boomed and, under Clark's direction, began to dig out a trench a full bulldozer blade in width. It went down two feet on the first pass, more on the second. Like great, rumbling beasts of metal the bulldozers growled back and forth, and back and forth, while beyond the grandstands people were as fretfully anxious to get away from this now meaningless place as yesterday and this morning they'd been eager to get to it.
A hole appeared at one side of the trench. It was the garbage pit. The bulldozers attacked the side wall of the trench they'd dug. They nibbled delicately here— pushing away cubic yards of earth—and nibbled there to expose the pit.
As soon as the bulldozers were finished Clark and his three graduate student archaeological team moved into action. Carefully and even deftly they removed loosened earth, shovelful by shovelful. The garbage pit was a good twenty feet across. They couldn't guess yet how deep it was. At the top there were masses of wilted, still green vegetation, flung away as useless.
Clark conferred briskly with the Army officer. This green stuff was unfamiliar. It could be the prunings of tank-grown plants used in the air-purifying system of the ship. But it could also be terrestrial, if the Greks had been able to make air voyages of exploration without detection. In any case, it might not be dead. Conceivably it could be rooted and grown for study. Botanists were called for. The Army officer went to ask for them.
Then one of the graduate students turned up something. He had lifted shovelfuls of the wilted vegetation aside. He said in a choked voice, "L-look here!"
Hackett stiffened. Lucy looked, and put her hand to her mouth. There was silence. A shovel had uncovered a furry object, dumped in the refuse of the Grek ship. The furry object was the dead body of an Aldarian. Something unguessable had exploded a hole through his body. He'd been murdered and a shameful disposition made of his corpse.
Hackett felt a sense of shock. His throat went dry. He watched as Clark, very pale, took over the task his helper had begun. People liked Aldarians.
Clark found another furry corpse. And another. And another. They had all been killed with the same weapon. Then Lucy, choking, pointed. There were more bodies still. The supposed student-spacemen had been killed deliberately and partly buried in the ship's waste matter, flung there and remaining there in limp positions as if they'd been dumped out before rigor mortiscould set in—provided they would develop it. They had been lately and violently murdered. Some unknown weapon had exploded or vaporized holes through their bodies. It became evident that they'd suffered other hurts before being killed.
Hackett said in an unnaturally calm voice, "This settles the question of how the Greks felt about the Aldarians. They despised them. They killed them and threw them out in the garbage. I doubt that they re-pect us very much more."
Lucy wrung her hands. She was now a doctor, and during her year as an interne she'd seen much that was unpleasant. But now she said brokenly, "Jim, that's the one we pulled out of the car wreck! See? We took him to the hospital and sent word to the Greks. And a Grek came in a helicopter and brought him here to the ship —and they killed him. Because he was hurt! Like we— might treat an animal that was hurt and—we couldn't cure. . . ."
Hackett said coldly, "No, Lucy. They hurt him some more after they got him back. And the others too. It looks like torture. And they tried very earnestly to get us to come forward and be rewarded for saving his life—they said!"
The sandy-haired Clark got out of the pit, looking very white. His three helpers seemed dazed. They'd spoken irreverently of the Greks, the night before, and they'd been zestful at the idea of learning secrets the Greks hadn't been inclined to tell. But however youthfully disrespectful they'd been, they'd revered the gray-skinned aliens. They'd envied them their intellect and their achievements—the idea of journeying from star to star was glamorous—and though they'd never have said so, they'd believed in the Greks' good-will. There was no other explanation for the benefits they'd conveyed to humanity. The three younger archaeologists, in fact, had idealized the visitors from space.
Now they looked as if they wanted to be ill. Hackett took a deep breath. He said urgently to Clark, "Go find Captain whats-his-name. Have him report this business and get this place guarded so nobody else can see what we've found. We're going to need more than archaeologists to go through this stuff! The Greks have lied to us, and if they were only indifferent they wouldn't have bothered. If anything on Earth ever had to be kept top secret to prevent panic, this is it!"