“They sure are,” Dard replied feelingly. “Say, is everybody awake now?”
“Everybody’s that’s goin’ to.” A shadow darkened the boy’s face for a moment. “Six didn’t come through. Dr. Skort-but you knew ‘bout him, and Miz Winson, and Miz Grene, Looie Denton and a coupla men I didn’t know. But the rest, they’re all right. We were awful lucky. Whee—look out!”
Dard overbalanced as he tied to stop in mid-step and landed on the ground beside Lanny who had squatted down to sweep away the grass and display a dome of mud- plastered leaves and grass.
“What in the world?”
Lanny chuckled, “That there’s a hopper house! Dessie, she found one yesterday and showed me where to look, Watch!” He rapped smartly with his knuckles on the top of the dome.
A second later a hopper’s head popped out of the ground level door and the indignant beast let them know very plainly its opinion of such a disturbance of the peace.
“Dessie, she got a hopper to stand still and let her pet him, My sister Marya—now she wants a hopper—says they’re like kittens. But Ma says they steal too much and we ain’t gonna bring any in the cave, I’d like to try to tame one, though.”
They detoured around a field of the blue-pod grain, meeting the harvesters working there. Dard shook hands with strangers, bewildered by all the new faces. As he went on he asked Lanny:
“How many are there of us now?”
Lanny’s lips moved as he counted. “Twenty-five men—counting you explorers—and twenty-three women. Then there’re the girls, my sisters, Marya and Martie, and Dessie and Lara Skort—they’re all little. And Don Winson, he’s just a baby. That’s all. Most of the men are down rippin’ up the ship.”
“Ripping up the ship?” Why did that dismay him so?
“Sure. We ain’t gonna fly again—not enough fuel. And she was made to take apart so we can use parts of her for machine shops and things like that. Well—here we are!”
They came out on what was now a well-defined path running up to the main entrance of the cave. Three men were working on a swinging platform suspended from the top of the cliff, fitting clear glass into a hole ready to receive it as a window:
“Dardie! Dardie! Dardie!”
A whirlwind swept down upon him, wrapping thin arms about his waist, burrowing a face against him. He went down on his knees and took Dessie into a tight hug.
“Dardie,” she was sniffling a little. “They said you would come an’ I’ve been watching all the time! Dardie,” she smiled at him blissfully, “I do like this place! I do! There are lots of animals in the grass and some of them have houses just like us—and they like me! Now that you’ve come home, Dardie, everything is wonderful—truly it is!”
“It sure is, honey.”
“So there you are, son,” Trude Harmon bore down upon him. “Hungry, too, I’ll wager. You come right in and rest and eat. Heard tell that you had yourselves some excitin’ times.”
With Dessie holding his hand tightly and Lanny bringing up the rear still carrying his pack, Dard came into a room where there was a long table flanked by benches. Kimber was already sitting there, empty plates before him, talking to an excited Kordov.
“But where did they go—those city dwellers?” the little biologist sputtered as Dard waded into the food Trude Harmon spread before him. “They could not just vanish—pouff!” He snapped his fingers. “As if they were but puffs of smoke!”
Kimber gave the same answer to that question as Dard had made. “Say an epidemic following war-germ warfare—or radiation sickness—who can tell now? By the weathering of the city they have been gone a long time. We found no traces of anything but animal life. And nothing to fear but the lizards . . .
“A whole world deserted!” Kordov shook his head. “It is enough to frighten one! Those Others took the wrong turning somewhere.”
“It is up to us to see that we don’t follow their example,” Kimber cut in.
That evening the voyagers gathered about a giant campfire in the open space before the cliff house, while Kimber and the others in turn recited the saga of their journey into the interior. The city, the robot-controlled battery, the battle with the lizards, held their listeners enthralled. But when they had done the question came again:
“But where did they go?”
Kordov gave the suggested answers, but then he added:
“It would be better if we asked ourselves now why did they go and be governed by the reply to that. They have left us a deserted land in which to make a new beginning. Though we must not forget that in other continents of this world some remnants of that race may still exist. Wisdom suggests alertness in the future.”
Dessie, sitting in Dard’s lap, leaned her head back against his shoulder and whispered:
“I like hearing about the night monkeys, Dardie. Do you suppose they will ever come here so I can see them too? Knowing them would be fun.”
“Yes, it would,” he whispered back.
Maybe someday when they were sure of safety beyond the cliffs, all the Terrans could venture out and he could show Dessie the night monkeys. But not until the last of that scaled death had been found and exterminated!
Since Kimber could not use his arm until the shoulder wound healed, Dard became hands for the pilot, working with Cully on the damaged sled. Seeing that he could and did follow instructions, Cully went back to his own pet project of dismantling the engine of the carrier they had rescued from the sea tube. He intended some day, he insisted, to hunt out that second car from the lizard valley and compare the two.
Dessie kept near them as they worked. She was Dard’s shadow in the waking hours, as she had always been since taking her first uncertain steps. The other children were objects to be watched with sober interest, but as yet she preferred company she knew. And, since she was perfectly content to sit quietly, absorbed in the antics of the hoppers, insects, and the butterfly-birds; they often forgot she was with them.
“No—“
Dard was startled into turning by her sudden cry. She was having a tug of war with the largest hopper he had yet seen, a grandfather of a clan at least. But Dessie’s strength was superior, and she wrenched away the prize the animal had just stolen from the blouse Dard had discarded in the heat.
“He opened your pocket,” she told the boy indignantly, “and he took this out, just as if it were his own! What is it? Pretty—“ She crooned the word as she fingered the sheets in which colors ran in waving bands.
“Why—I’d forgotten all about that. It’s a book—or I think it is, Dessie. It belonged to Those Others.”
“A what!” Kimber reached for it. “Where did you get it., kid?”
Dard explained how he had found it in the hidden room of the gun emplacement and of his theory that Those Others might have used the bands of color as a means of communication.
“I was going to compare it with those shots you took on microfilm of that doorway in the city. And then so much happened I forgot all about it.”
“You do have a feeling for word patterns—I remember.”
“Dard makes pictures out of words.” Dessie answered for him. “Show how, Dardie.”
Under Kimber’s interested eyes Dard sketched out the pattern of a line of verse. The pilot nodded.
“Patterns for words. And that must be how you understood the importance of this. All right. Remember those rolls of some kind of recording tape we found in the first carrier? Rogan believes that they can be read by the help of our machines. You’re going down to the ship right now and tell him to get out that equipment, We didn’t see any use for it yet and it’s been left down there. But I want to know
Yes, go right now!”
So Dard, with Dessie still in tow, set off down river to the seashore where the remains of the star ship was being dismantled as fast as they could use its materials at the cliffs. The red spider plants were again floating in wide patches on the water, but not cloaking all the river as they had on the day the ship landed.
“I haven’t been down here yet,” Dessie confided. “Mrs. Harmon says that there are bad dragons.”
Dard was quick to underline that warning. Dessie might just try to make friends with one of the things!
“Yes, there are, Dessie. And they are not like the animals at all. Promise me that if you see one you will can me right away!”
She was apparently impressed by his gravity for she agreed at once.