No bugs either. And therere enough of them back in the valley!
No birds, no insects, Kimber said slowly. The place is dead. I dont know how the rest of you feel, but Ive had just about enough.
They did agree with that. The brooding stillness, broken only when debris crashed or rolled, rasped their nerves.
Dard swallowed his last bite of concentrate and turned to the pilot.
Do we have any microfilm we can use?
For what-a lot of broken buildings? Cully wanted to know.
Id like one of those bands of color around that doorway, Dard answered. His idea that the bands had a meaning was perhaps silly but he could not push it away.
All right, kid. Kimber unpacked the small recorder and focused it on a place where the sun was strong. No pattern I can see. But, it just might mean something at that.
That was the only picture they took when on the ground. But once again in the air Cully ran the machine for a birds-eye view of as much of the ruined area as could be recorded.
They were approaching the outer reaches of the city to the east when Santee gave an exclamation and touched Kimbers arm. They were over a street less cumbered with rubble than any they had yet crossed, and there was a flicker of movement there.
As the sled coasted down they disturbed a pack of grayish, four-footed things that streaked away into the ruins leaving their meal behind them on the blood-smeared pavement.
Whew! Cully coughed and Dard gagged at the stench the wind carried in their direction. They left the sled to gather around the tangle of stripped bones and rotting flesh.
That wasnt killed today, Kimber observed unnecessarily.
Dard rounded the stained area. The dead thing had been large, perhaps the size of a Terran draft horse, and the skeleton-tumbled as the bones now were-suggested that it was four-footed and hooved. But that skull, to which ragged and blood-clotted hair still dung, was what he had moved to see. He had been right-two horns sprouted above the eye sockets. This was the horned horse of the game set!
A duocorn? mused the pilot.
A what? Santee wanted to know.
There was a fabled animal mentioned in some of the old books on Terra. Had a single horn in the middle of the forehead, but the rest was all horse. Well, heres a horse with two horns-a duocorn instead of a unicorn. But those things we saw feeding here-they were pretty small to bring down an animal of this size.
Unless they carry a burper, they didnt! Dard, in spite of the odor, leaned down to inspect that stretch of spine beyond the loose skull. A section of vertebra had been smashed just as if a giant vise had been applied to the nape of the duocorns neck!
Crushed! Kimber agreed. But whatever could do that?
Cully studied the body. Mighty big for a horse.
There were breeds on earth which were seventeen to twenty hands high at the shoulder and weighed close to a ton, returned Kimber. This fellow must have been about that size.
And what is big enough to crunch through a spine supporting a ton of meat? Santee wanted to know. He went back to the sled and picked up the rifle.
Dard back-trailed from the evil-smelling bones. Several paces farther on he discovered what he was looking for, marks which proved that the body had been dragged and worried for almost half of a city block. And also, plain to read in a drift of soil across the street, prints. The marks cut deeply by the hooves of the duocorn were half blotted out in places by another spoor-three long-clawed toes, with faint scuffed spaces between, as if they were united by a webbed membrane. Dard went down on one knee and flexed his own hand over the clearest of those prints. With his fingers spread to the fullest extent he could just span it.
Looks like a chicken track. Santee had come up behind him.
More likely a reptile. Ive seen a field lizard leave a spoor such as this-except for the size.
Another dragon-large size? Cully suggested.
Dard shook his head as he got to his feet and started along that back trail. This one runs, not flies. But Im sure its a nasty customer.
There was a scuttling to their left. Santee whirled, rifle ready. A small stone rolled from the top of the nearest pile of rubbish and thudded home against the yellow teeth of the skulclass="underline"
Somebodys getting impatient over an interrupted dinner. Cully ended with a laugh which sounded unnaturally loud in those surroundings.
Kimber went back to the sled. We might as well let him-or her-or it-come back to the table. There are, he glanced around at the ruins, altogether too many good lurking places here. Ill feel safer out in open country where I can see any lizard that big before it sees me!
But when they were air borne Kimber did not turn inland, instead he followed the curve of the bay on to the northwest. The ruins beneath them dwindled to isolated houses-domed or towered-in better repair than those situated in the heart of the city. Beneath them now were brilliant patches of flowers long since returned to the wild. Little streams made graceful curves through what Dard was sure had been pleasure gardens. Fairy towers, which appeared too delicate to withstand the pull of the planets gravity, pointed useless fingers up at the cruising sled.
Once they flew for almost half a mile above a palace. But here again a curdled crystalline blotch cut the building in two. None of what they saw gave them any desire to descend and explore. Here the trees grew too high, there were too many shadows. The tangled pleasure gardens and wild grounds were good lurking places for terror to stalk the unwary.
The broken city faded into the green of the rolling country and the aquamarine of the sea. Fewer and fewer domed houses broke the green-and those were probably farms. Here were birds as if the haunted horror of the city was gone. The seashore curved again but Kimber did not follow it west. He veered to the east, to cross fields of which the old regular patterns were marked by bushy hedgerows. It was in one of these that they sighted the first living duocorns, four adults and two colts, but all four well under the size of the monster whose skeleton had attracted their attention in the city.
These animals were uniform in color, showing none of the variations in marking possessed by Terran horses. Their coats were a slaty blue-gray, their unkempt manes and tails black, and their bellies and the under portions of their legs silver. The horns were silver with the real sheen of the precious metal.
As the sled droned over them, the largest flung up its head to issue a trumpeting scream. Then, herding its companions before it, it settled into a rocking gallop up the sloping field to the hedge at the far side beyond which was a grove of trees. With graceful ease all of the fleeing animals leaped the hedge and disappeared under those trees, nor did they come out on the other side of the grove.
Good runners, Cully gave credit. Do you suppose they were always wild-or the descendants of domestic stock? Bet Harmond like to have a couple of them. He was pretty fed up when he found we couldnt bring those two colts he had picked out.
The big one was a fighter! Dyuh see him shake them horns? demanded Santee. I wouldnt want him to catch me out in the open walkin.
Odd. Dard had been watching the far end of the grove and was now puzzled. Youd think theyd keep on running. But theyre staying in there.
Under cover. Safe from any menace from the air, Kimber said. Which suggests some unpleasant possibilities.
A large flying danger! Dard whistled as he caught Kimbers idea. A thing maybe as big as this sled. But it would be too big to fly on its own power!
Bigger things than this have flown in Terras past, the pilot reminded him. And it may not be a living thing they fear-but a machine. Either way-wed better watch out.
But those flying things were far back in our history, protested the boy. Could such primitive things exist along with man-or whatever built that city?