There were two—three such stagnated generations. Then, with all those of the first generation gone, their stifling influence removed, again inquiry. Explorers had found a closed compartment in one ship with its learning tapes intact; though those were spotty, sometimes seemingly censored.
After that came rebuilding, rediscovery, the need to know now almost an inborn trait of the following generations. There had been a search lasting close to a hundred years, until at least nearly all the resources of Elhorn had been turned to that quest alone. Not without opposition. There had been those in each generation who had insisted that their ancestors must have had good reason to suppress the past, that to seek the source of their kind was to court new disaster. And those had been gaining followers, too. They might have prevented the present voyage had it not been for the Cloud.
Ayana’s face suddenly mirrored years of parched living when she thought of the Cloud. It had been such a little thing in the beginning. Scientists had wished to get at the rare ores their detectors had located on the impenetrable South Island of Iskar, where volcanic action produced unpredictable out-bursts of lethal gases. From the old records, they had created robos like those the First Ship people had used, and these had been dropped on Iskar to do the mining. But the gases apparently had eaten away the delicate robo “brains,” in spite of all attempts to shield those against infiltration. Then the scientists had turned to chemical countermeasures. To their own undoing. For the equipment the “dying” robos had installed in the mines had malfunctioned. And the result was the birth and continuing growth of the Cloud.
That did not rise far in the air; it crept, horribly, with a slow relentlessness which made it seem a sentient thing and not just a mass of vapor. So it covered Iskar, where there was little to die, but later it had headed out over the sea.
The water itself had been poisoned by the passing touch of that loathsome mist. Sea life died, but died fleeing. And those refugees contaminated others well beyond. Those died also, though more slowly.
At last those who had resisted the hunt for the home world capitulated. With their limited knowledge, lacking as it was in those portions the First Ship people had destroyed, they could not deal with the monster from Iskar. And they must either find a way to strike it a death blow, or else transport all their people elsewhere.
Even as the Pathfinder had lifted, the rest of the labor force (which now meant all the able-bodied dwellers on Elhorn) had been at work rehabilitating the two colony ships. Whether those could ever be put in condition to take to space again no man knew. The Pathfinder had been constructed from a smaller scout which had been in company with the colony ships.
There were only four of them on board the Pathfinder, each a specialist in his or her field, and able to double in another. Ayana was both medic and historian; Tan, a scout and defense man; Jacel, the captain, was their corn expert and navigator; Massa, the pilot and techneer. Four against the whole solar system, from which the First Ships had fled in such fear that they had destroyed all references to their past.
Had there been a Cloud on the ancestral planet, too? Of worse still (if there could be worse), had men hunted other men to the death? For that, too, had happened in the past, the tapes revealed. At least on Elhorn, they had not resorted to arms to settle dif-ferences in belief.
The closer the Pathfinder came to their goal, the more Ayana feared what they might find.
For days of ship’s time their flight within the ancestral solar system continued. By common consent they chose their target—the third planet from the sun. From the computer reports, that seemed to be the planet best suited to support life as they knew it.
All this time Jacel tried to raise some response to their ship’s broadcast, but none came. That silence was sinister. Yet the mere lack of a reply signal could not turn them back now. So they went into a braking orbit about the world.
That it was not bare of life was apparent. Or at least it had not lacked intelligent life at one time. Vast splotches of cities spread far over the land masses. They could be picked up by viewers in day-light, and their glow at night (though sections were ominously dark) provided beacons. Still there was no answer to their signals.
“This I do not understand.” Jacel sat before his instruments, but his voice came to Ayana and Tan through the cabin corn. “There is evidence of a high civilization. Yet not only do they not answer our signals, but there is no communication on the planet either.”
“But those lights—in the night!” Massa half protested.
Ayana wanted to echo her. It was better to see those lights flashing out as day turned to night below, than to remark upon the glow which did not appear—the scars of darkness. Yet one looked more and more for those.
“Have you thought,” Tan asked, “that the lights may be automatic, that they come on because of the dark, and not because anyone presses a button or pulls a switch? And that where they are now dark some installation has failed?”
He put openly what was in all their minds. And that was the best explanation. But Ayana did not like to hear it. If they now raced through the skies above the dead world with only that vast sprawl of structures its abiding monument for a vanished people, then what had killed them, or driven them into space?
And did that menace still lurk below?
Ayana wanted to turn her head, not watch the visa-screen. But that she could not do. It had a horrible fascination which held her in thrall.
“Without a signal we cannot find a landing site—“ Jacel paused. “Wait! I am picking up something—a signal of sorts!”
They were once more in a day zone. Ayana could mark the shape of an ocean below. The land masses on this world was more or less evenly divided, two in each hemisphere. And they were over one such mass as Jacel reported his signal.
“Fading—it is very weak.” His voice sounded exasperated. “I shall try to tune it in again—“
“A message?” Tan asked. “Challenging who we are and what we are doing in their skies?” He spoke as if he expected that hostile reaction. But why? Unless the memory of the fears of the First Ship people touched him, even as it had her, Ayana thought.
But if that were so, if they were to be greeted as enemies—how could they hope to land? Better by far to abort— Though she was sure Tan would never con-sent to that. Jacel, using the ship’s resources, had another answer. The signal, he was certain, was mechanically beamed and carried no message. And as such it could have only one purpose—to guide in some visitor from space.
Hearing that, they made their decision, though not without reservations on Ayana’s part, to use the beacon as a guide. As Massa pointed out, they could not continue in orbit indefinitely and they had no other lead. But they prepared for a rough landing. The computer gave no answers, only continued to gulp in all the information their instruments supplied.
With every protect device alerted, Ayana lay in her bunk. She shut her eyes, and would not look at the screen, glad in a cowardly fashion that it was not her duty to be in the control cabin, where she would have to watch.
The usual discomforts of landing shut out every-thing beyond the range of her own body, and she tensed and then relaxed. She had done this many times in practice, yet the truth differed so much from the simulation. A second or so later she blacked out.
As one waking out of a nightmare she regained consciousness. Then duty made its demands, and she fumbled with the webbing cocooning her body. It was only when she wriggled out of that protection that the silence of the ship impressed itself upon her; all the throbbing life in it was gone. They must be down, for the engines were shut off.
Not only down, but they had made a good landing, for the cabin was level. They must have ridden in the deter rockets well. So Jacel had been right to trust the beam.
Ayana stood up and felt the grip of gravity. She took a step or two, feeling oddly uncertain at first, holding to a bunk support, looking at Tan.
He lay inert, a thin trickle of blood oozing from one corner of his mouth. But even as she raised her hand to him, he opened his eyes, those wide gray eyes, and they focussed on her.