“How bad?” asked Kimber. There was more color in his dark face and be levered himself up on an elbow.
“Not the worst—but about as near to that as we can get.” Cully was interrupted by a shout from the trees where Santee had disappeared.
The big man returned walking in the open, his rifle cradled in the crook of his arm—as if they had nothing to fear.
“Fellas, this here’s plain crazy! There’s a nest of guns down there all hidden away. Little stuff—light field pieces. But there’s not a livin’ critter in the place. Them there guns fired at us their ownselves!”
“A robot control triggered when we flew over a certain point!” exploded Cully. “Some kind of radar, I’ll bet. Rogan ought to be here.”
“First,” Kimber reminded him grimly, “we’ve got to get back to tell him about them.”
A broken sled with which to cross several hundred miles of unknown country. They were going to have quite a hike, thought Dard. But he did not comment upon that aloud.
7: RETURN JOURNEY
“WONDER HOW MANY more booby traps such as that are hidden around?” Cully glanced down the valley with open suspicion.
“Not many, I’d say,” Kimber answered weakly. “It must have been only a fluke that those guns were still able to fire—“
His voice was swallowed by an explosion severe enough to rock the ground under them. Dard saw earth, trees and debris rise into the air far down the valley as an acrid white-yellow smoke fouled the air in drifting wisps.
“That,” Kimber said into the ensuing silence, “was probably the end of the guns. They’ve blown themselves up.”
“Shoulda done that sooner!” growled Santee. “A lot sooner! How about us gettin’ away from here?” He turned to Cully who had been blasted loose from his work on the sled.
“That’s going to be a problem. She’ll get into the air again, yes. But not with a full load. Stripped down she may be able to carry two—flying with a list.”
Santee grinned at his fellow castaways. “All fight. Two of us’ll hike and pack some stuff. The other two’ll ride.”
Kimber frowned as he agreed reluctantly: “I suppose well have to do that. Those in the sled can make a camp a half day’s march ahead and wait for the others to catch up. We mustn’t lose contact. Do you think you can raise Rogan in the valley?”
Cully brought out the small vedio. And Kimber, using his left hand awkwardly, made the proper adjustment. But there was no answering spark. The engineer raised the box and shook it gently. They all heard that faint answering rattle which put an end to their hopes of a message to those they had left by the sea.
Camp was made that night just where the fortunes of that long ago war had marooned them. Santee and Dard undertook another visit to the hidden emplacement. Two of the strange guns were tilted at a crazy angle, their loading mechanism ripped wide open, behind them a pit, newly hollowed and still cloudy with fumes.
Keeping away from that the two Terrans prowled about the installation. If man or any other intelligent life had been there before them, it had been many years in the past.
But Dard, knowing very little of mechanics, believed that it had been robot controlled. Perhaps lack of man-power had made the last war a purely push-button affair.
“Now here’s somethin’!”
Santee’s shout brought him to an opening in the ground. The cover had been wrenched loose by the explosion and its clever camouflage no longer hid the steps leading down into the dark. Santee flashed a beam ahead and started to descend. The steps were very narrow and shallow as if those who had used them had had feet not quite the same shape or size of a Terran’s. But once down, the explorers found themselves in a square box of a metal-walled chamber. Along one entire wall was a control panel and facing it a small table and a single backless bench. Otherwise the room was empty.
“Musta jus’ set them robots goin’ and left. This metal ain’t rusted none. But it was left a long time ago ….
As Santee swept the light across that control board Dard saw an object lying on the table. He picked up his find just as the big man started up the stairs to the outer and fresher air.
What he held was four sheets of a crystalline substance, fastened together at the upper left-hand corner. Running through each sheet, as if they had been embedded when the stuff was made, were lines of shaded colors in combinations not unlike those he had seen about the city door. Instruction book? Orders? Did Those Others express their thoughts in color patterns? He thrust the find into his safest pocket, determined to compare it with the microfilm of the doorway.
The next morning they followed Santee’s plan. The pilot, handicapped by a stiff shoulder, went in the sled along with Cully who was able to take the controls. Their supplies pared to the minimum were shared between the sled and two packs for Dard and Santee.
When the sled took off, due south, it cruised just above tree-top level. It would fly at lowest speed on that same course until noon when its crew would camp, waiting for the two on foot to join them.
Dard shouldered his pack, setting it into place with a wriggle, and picked up their compass. Santee followed with pack and rifle, and they went forward at a ground-eating pace Dard had learned in the woods of Terra, as the sled vanished over the rise.
For the most part they found the going through this rolling country easy. There were no wooded stretches to form impassable barriers, and they soon struck an old road running in the right direction to provide footing good enough to allow a faster pace. Insects spun out of the tall grass to blunder past them and hoppers spied them constantly.
Shortly before noon the road made a sharp curve west toward the distant sea, and the Terrans had to strike away across fields again. They had the good luck to stumble on a farm where not only one but two of the golden apple trees bent under the weight of ripe fruit. Pushing through the mob of semidrunk birds, insects, and hoppers, including a new and larger variety of the latter, they secured fruit which was not only food but drink, filling an improvised bag for the sake of the sled riders.
Santee bit into the fragrant pulp with a sigh of pleasure.
“D’yuh know—I wonder a lot—where did all the people go? They had a bad war—sure. But there must have been some survivors. Everybody couldn’t have been killed!”
“What if they used gas, or a germ—certain kinds of infective radiation?” questioned Dard. “There are no traces of any survivors, in the city ruins, around farms.”
“It looks to me jus’ as if”—the big rifleman licked his fingers carefully—“they all packed up and got out together, the way we left the Cleft.”
When they left the farm the character of the country began to change. Here the soil was spotted with patches of sandy gravel which grew larger. The clumps of trees dwindled to thickets of wiry thorn bushes, and there were outcroppings of the same shiny black rock which had nursed the killing vines by the river. Santee shot a long survey about as they halted on the top of a steep hill.
“This’s kinda like a desert. Glad we brought them apples—we might not hit water here.”
It was hot, hotter than it had seemed back when they were in the blue-green fields, for this sun-baked red-brown earth and blue sand reflected the heat. Dard’s skin, chafed by the pack straps, smarted when moisture trickled down between his shoulder blades. He licked his lips and tasted salt. Santee’s comment concerning lack of water had aroused his thirst.
Below them was a gorge. Dard blinked and rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand. No, that was no trick of shimmering heat—there was a bright gleaming line straight across the floor of the valley. He called it to Santee’s attention and the other focused the field glasses on it.
“A rail! But why only one?”
“We can get down over there,” Dard pointed. “Let’s see what it is.”
They made the hard climb down to verify the fact that a single metal rail did reach from one tunnel hole in the gorge wall to another tunnel directly across. Unable to discover anything else, they pulled themselves up the opposite cliff to continue the southward march.
It was midafternoon when they saw, rising into a cloudless sky, the smoke signal of the sled. And their strides became a trot until they panted up the side of a small mesa- plateau to the camp.