"GOOD LORD!”
The tone rather than the words of that horrified exclamation awoke Dard and brought him up on the acceleration pad. Kimber, Rogan, and Cully were crowded together before the visa-screen. The hour might have been in the middle of the night, or late in the morning, for inside the ship day and night had no division. But on the screen it was day.
A gray sky was patched by ragged drifts of cloud. And as Dard leaned over the back of the pilot’s seat, he saw what had so startled the others.
Where the day before there had stretched that smooth sweep of blue sand, forming a carpet clear to the base of the colorful cliffs, there was now only water, a sheet of it. Rogan set the viewer to turning so that they could see the flood completely surrounded the ship. Even the river had been swallowed up without any red stain left to betray its flow.
As the scene reached the seaside Rogan pushed the button which held it there. The beach was gone, it was the sea which had come in to enclose them.
“Surprise, surprise!” that was Rogan. “Do we now swim ashore?”
“I don’t think that it is that deep,” answered Kimber.
“The water may come in this way during every hard storm. Switch over to the cliffs again, Les.”
The picture whizzed with a dizzy speed back to the cliff. Kimber was right, already there was a stretch of sand showing at the base of that rock escarpment. The water was draining away.
They clattered down through the quiet ship, sending out the ramp so that they could venture to the water’s swirl. A weak current swilled around the fins and the bare sand at the cliff grew wider as they watched.
The flood was not clear, and caught around the fins of the ship were huge loops of weed. Some variety of fish had been beached close to the foot of the ramp, and a scaled tail beat waves as the stranded monster fought for life. Other debris showed tantalizingly now and again as the water was sullenly sucked away from the sand.
“What the-I” Cully’s start was near to a jump. Over-over to the right! What is that?”
Something was venturing out on the still-wet sand, following the retreating line of the sea. But, what it was, none of them dared guess. Kimber ran back into the ship while the rest tried vainly to see it better. The color was queer, a pale green, hardly to be distinguished from the sea water as it scurried along on four thin legs. But the outline of its head!
“Here!” Kimber skidded down the ramp, keeping himself out of the sea by a quick grab for the rail. He carried a pair of field glasses. “Is it still there-yes, I see it!” He focused the lenses in the right direction. “Great guns!”
“What is it?” demanded Rogan, plainly doing his best to keep from snatching the glasses away from the pilot.
“Yeah,” Cully, too, was shaken out of his usual calm, “pass those along, fella! We all want a look-see!”
Dard squinted, trying to make natural sight serve as well as the lenses Kimber was now passing to Rogan. At least the thing on the sand did not appear to be alarmed either by the ship or the men watching it. Maybe it would stay in sight until he, as the very junior member of the party, had the right to use the lenses too.
It stayed, digging in the wet sand, until Cully did pass the glasses. Dard adjusted them feverishly. Having met the fungi spiders and a flying dragon, he could hardly be surprised by the weird beast he saw now. Its pale green skin was entirely hairless, nor was that skin scaled-instead it resembled to a marked degree his own smooth flesh. The creature’s head was pear-shaped with ears which were hardly more than holes and large eyes set far apart so that the range of vision was probably wider than that of any Terran animal. But that pear head ended in what could only be described as a broad, duck’s bill or hard blackish substance. And just as Dard trained the glasses upon it, it folded its hind legs neatly under it, to sit up in a doglike stance and gaze mildly across the dwindling tongue of sea straight at the star ship. Sand clung to its bill and it absent-mindedly brushed that off with a foreleg.
“Duck- dog,” Kimber named it. “Doesn’t look dangerous, does it? I’ll be-! Just look at that!”
“ ’That’ was a short procession of more duck-dogs emerging from a dark crevice in the cliff to join the first. One of them, about three-quarters the size of the first, was the same pale green, but the three others were yellow, the exact yellow, Dart noted, of the strata in the diff. In fact, as they marched by a projection of that particular stratum, they faded from sight. Two of the yellow beasts were full grown but the third was very small. And halfway along the path it sat down, refusing to move on until one of the larger animals returned to butt it ahead.
“Family party,” suggested Dard, not daring to hold the glasses away from Kimber’s impatient reach any longer.
“But harmless,” the pilot suggested for the second time.
“Do you suppose they’d let us near them? The water’s gone down a lot.”
“Nothing like trying. Just let Jorge be ready with that ray gun, then if they do turn out to be first-class menaces, we’ll be prepared.” The communications techneer lowered himself cautiously into the flood, which was at knee level.
He detoured to avoid the floating weed and paused when be reached the fish still beating the air with a frenzied tail. Dard caught up with him at that point.
Save for a curiously flattened head and a huge, paunchy middle, the stranded fish was the first living thing they had seen here which did resemble a Terran product. It was a good five feet long and displayed murderous teeth. The powerful tail beat the receding water into froth but it was beyond hope of escape. Dard spoke impulsively:
“Can’t- can’t you shoot it? It won’t be able to get away and I think it knows that.”
“Unhuh.” That was Cully and as usual he wasted no words. He snapped the ray at that writhing head. With a last convulsion the fish flopped completely out of the water, to float with its huge belly up when it fell back.
“Maybe breakfast?” Rogan asked. “Looks a little bit like a tuna-might even taste like one. We’ll let Kordov get it and see if it’s fit for us to bury the teeth in. I could do with a steak-maybe two of them! Hello-the fireworks didn’t send our duck-dogs running. I’d say they were enjoying the show.”
Rogan was right. The duck-dog family party sat in a line along the crest of the fast drying sand ridge, appreciably closer to the ship, their attention all for the men and the now limp fish.
But, as Dard tentatively splashed another step in the direction of that sand bank, the yellow members of the clan retreated, one of them nudging the smallest one in front of it. The green ones continued to stand their ground, the half-grown one running along the water’s edge hissing. Dard stopped, the flood swishing about his legs.
Cully looped a cord about the tail of the dead fish and fastened it to the ramp rail. Perhaps overcome by the sight of so much meat, the smallest duck-dog gave a tiny whimpering cry and ran between the legs of its guardian to the water. Resignedly the larger yellow beast followed the cub, turning over the loose sand with large blunt claws of a forepaw to dig out a squirming red creature which the baby pounced upon to swallow greedily. But the green boss of the party hissed angrily at the hunter and sent both scuttling back.
Then he withdrew also, with his head turned toward the men, facing the danger represented by the Terrans bravely, hissing a stern warning. When the last of the smaller duck-dogs had dodged into the break in the cliff, he disappeared there also leaving only scuffed tracks in the sand to mark their trail. But Dard sighted the tip of a dark hill still protruding from the crack.
“It’s still watching us.”
“Wary,” mused the pilot. “Which suggests that it has enemies-enemies which may look like us. But it’s curious, too. If we ignore it-maybe—”
He was interrupted by a shout from the ship Kordov had come out on the ramp and was waving vigorously to the explorer. As the others sloshed back he pulled on the cord, reeling in the fish.
“What’s your verdict?” Hogan wanted to know when they joined him bending over their capture. “Do we eat that, or don’t we?”
“Give me but a few minutes and some aid in the laboratory and I shall have an answer to that. But this is close to Terran life. So it may be edible. And what were you watching by the cliffs-more dragons?”
“Just passing the time of day with another, breakfasting party,” Hogan told him, and went on to explain about the duck-dogs.
It was worth waiting for Kordov’s verdict, Dard thought later, as he savored the white flakes of meat, grilled under Kordov’s supervision, and portioned out to the hungry and none-too-patient crew.
“At least we can chalk old pot-belly up on our bill of fare,” observed Rogan.
“But finding this one may only be a fluke. It’s a deep-water fish and we won’t have storms to drive such ashore every day,” Kimber pointed out.
He explored his lips with his tongue and then studied the empty plastic plate he held wistfully. “We can, however, look around for another stranded one.
Cully unfolded long legs. “We’ll take out the sled now?”
“The wind has died down-I’d say it was safe. And,” the pilot turned to Kordov, “how about rousing Santee and Harmon-we’re going to need them.”
The First Scientist agreed. “But first Carlee, as a doctor. And then we shall bring out the others. You are leaving soon?”
“We’ll tell you before we go. And we don’t intend to go far. Maybe a turn into that valley up ahead, and then along the shore for a mile or so. We may have landed in a wilderness-indications point to that-but I want to be sure.
Until a sun breaking through the clouds overhead said it was noon they were hard at work. The sled, Dard discovered, was just what its name implied, a flat vehicle possessing two seats each wide enough for two passengers, with a space behind for supplies. He helped to assemble the larger sections while Kimber and Gully sweated and swore over the business of installing the engine.
It was a flying craft Dard realized, but totally unlike a ’copter or rocket, and he did not see what would make it air borne without blades or tubes. When he said as much to Rogan the techneer leaned back against a convenient sand dune to combine rest and explanation.
“I can’t tell you how it works, kid. The principle’s something really new. They whipped that engine together during the last months we were in the Cleft. But it’s some sort of anti-gravity. Takes you up and keeps you there until you shut it off. Broadcasts a beam which sends you along by pushing against the earth. If they had had the time they might have powered the ship with it. But there was only this one experimental sled built and we had to depend upon power we knew more about. How about it, Sim? Getting her together?”
The pilot smiled through a streak of grease which turned his brown skin black.
“Tighten that one bolt, Cully,” he pointed out the necessary adjustment, “and, she’s ready to lift! Or at least she should be. We’ll try her.”
He boarded the shallow craft and settled himself behind the controls, buckling a safety belt around his hips before he triggered the motor. The sled zoomed straight up with a speed which sent the spectators sprawling and tore an exclamation from the pilot. Then, under Kimber’s expert hand, it leveled off and swung in a wide circle about the star ship. Finishing off the test flight with a figure eight, Kimber brought the sled back to a slow and studied landing on the now dry sand at the foot of the ramp.
“Bravo!”
That encouraging cheer came from the open hatch.
Kordov beamed down at them and with him, one hand on the rail, her head lifted so that the sun made a red-glory of the braids wreathing it, was a woman. Dard stared up at her with no thought of rudeness. This was the Carlee who had taken care of Dessie.
But she was younger than he had expected, younger and somehow fragile. There were dark shadows beneath her eyes, and when she smiled at them, it was with a patient acceptance, which hurt. Kimber broke the silence as she joined the party below.
“What do you think, Carlee?” he asked matter-of-factly, as if they had parted only the hour before and no tragedy lay between. “Would you trust yourself to this crazy flyer?”
“With the right pilot at the controls, yes.” And then looking at each one she spoke their names slowly as if reassuring herself that they were really there. “Les Rogan, Jorge Cully and"-She reached Dard, hesitated, before her smile brightened-"why, you must be Dessie’s Dard, Dard Nordis! Oh, this is good-so good—” She looked beyond the men at the cliffs, the sea, the blue-green sky arching over them.
“Now- before you start off, explorers,” Kordov announced, “there is food to be eaten.”
The food was fish again, together with quarter portions of the concentrate cakes and some capsules Kordov insisted they take. When they were finished the First Scientist turned to Kimber.
“Now that you have that sky-buggy of yours put together you will be off?”
“Yes. There are four, maybe five hours of daylight left. I think that a survey from the air would show us more in that length of time than a trip on foot.”
“You say “us.” Whom do you take with you?” asked Carlee.
“Rogan- he’s had experience on Venus. And ”
Dard held his tongue. He could not beg to go; Kimber would choose Cully, of course. The pilot didn’t want a green hand. He was so sure of that choice that he could hardly believe it when he heard Kimber say;
“And the kid-he’s light weight. We don’t want to overload if we haul back game or specimens, too. Cully’s a crack shot and I’ll feel safer to leave him on guard here.”
“Good enough!” Kordov agreed. “Just do not voyage too far, and do not fall off that silly ship of yours-to land on your heads. We have no time to waste patching up explorers who do not know enough to keep themselves right side up!”
Thus Dard found himself sharing the pilot’s seat on the sled with Rogan crawling in behind. Kimber insisted that they buckle their safety belts under his supervision and he tested their fastenings before they took off. The rise of the light craft was not so abrupt as the first time and Kimber did not try to get much above the level of the cliff tops.
They skimmed along only a few feet above the rock as they flashed north, the curving shoreline as their guide.
From this height he had a good view to the west, seeing most of the wide valley through which the red river flowed. The low vegetation they sighted from the ship thickened into clumps of good-sized trees. And among these were flying things which did not appear to be dragons.
Along the edge of the sea the cliff rose in an unbroken, perpendicular wall. Apparently the star ship had earthed in the only opening in it. For from the elevation of the sled they could sight nothing but that barrier of brilliantly hued stone dividing vegetation and low land from the heating sea.
Rogan cried out and a moment later Dard, too, cringed as a ray of light struck painfully into his eyes. It flashed up from sea level, as if a mirror had been used to direct the sunlight straight at them. Kimber brought the sled around and ventured out over the water in a sweep designed to bring them to the source of that light.
There was a scrap of beach, a few feet of sand across which the weed, driven up by the storm, lay. Kimber, with infinite caution, maneuvered to set them down there.
When the sled jolted to earth its occupants stared in open amazement at the source of the mirrored ray.
Protruding from the face of the cliff, as if from a pocket or hollow especially fashioned to contain it, was a cone-shaped section of metal. And not metal in a crude, unworked state, but of a finely fashioned and refined alloy!
Dard split a fingernail on the buckle which fastened his belt in his haste to get to the find. But Kimber was already halfway across the sand before he gained his feet. The three, not quite daring to touch, studied the peculiar object.
Kimber squatted down to peer under it. There was a thin ring of similar metal encircling the widest part of the cone, as if it rested within a tube.
“A bullet in a rifle barrel!” Rogan found a comparison which was none too reassuring. “This a shell?”
“I don’t think so.” Kimber pulled gently at the tip.
“Let’s see if we can work it out.” From the sled he brought an assortment of tools.
“Take it easy,” Rogan eyed these preparations askance.”If it is an explosive, and we do the wrong thing-we’re apt to finish up in pieces.”
“It isn’t a shell,” Kimber repeated stubbornly. “And it’s been here a long time. See that?” He pointed to fresh scars on the cliff face. “That’s a recent break. Maybe the storm tore that down and uncovered this. Now-a little probing.”
They worked gingerly at first, and then, when nothing happened, with more confidence-until they had it out far enough to see that the cone was only the tip of a long cylinder. Finally they hooked a chain to it and used the power of the sled to draw it completely free of the tube.
Six feet long, it lay half in, half out of the water, a sealed opening showing midway in its length. Kimber knelt down before the tube and flashed his hand-light inside. As far as they could see ran a tunnel lined with seamless metal.
“What in the name of Space is it, anyway?” Hogan wondered.
“Some form of transportation, I would say.” Kimber still held the light inside as if by wishing alone he could deduce the destination of their discovery.
Hogan prodded the cylinder with his foot and it rolled slightly. The techneer stooped and tugged at the end in the sand. To his astonishment he was able to lift it several inches above the beach.
“A whole lot lighter than you’d think! I believe we could take it back on the sled!”
“Hmm…” Kimber took Rogan’s place and hoisted.
“We might at that. No harm in trying.”
The three of them manhandled the cylinder on board the sled and lashed it into place-though both ends projected over the sides of the craft.
Kimber was doubly careful in his take-off. He brought them up with much room to spare away from the cliff side and circled back toward the valley.
“This answers one question,” Hogan leaned forward.
“We aren’t the first intelligent life here.”
“Yes.” The pilot added nothing to that bare assent. He was intent on reaching the star ship.
Dard squirmed in his seat. He did not need to turn to see that smooth piece of metal, he could feel its presence and what its presence meant to all of them.
Only intelligence, a high standard of intelligence could have fashioned it. And where was that intelligent life now? Watching and waiting for the Terrans to make the first fatal move?