What followed was again beyond his powers of description. It came in two stages, the first a queasy whirl of sensation not far removed from what they had experienced when the ship had been whirled through the time transfer. Limp from that, Travis lay back, watching the screen which had been blank for so long. And when his eyes caught what was now appearing there, he gave a cry of recognition.
“That’s the sun!”
A point of blazing yellow set a beacon in the black of space.
“A sun,” Renfry corrected. “We’ve made the big hop. Now it’s the homestretch—into the system . . .”
That blaze of yellow-red was already sliding away from the screen. Travis had an impression that the ship must be slowly rotating. Now that the brighter glare of the sun was gone he could pick up a smaller dot, far smaller than the sun which nurtured it. That held steady on the screen.
“Something tells me, boy,” Renfry said in a small and hesitant voice, “that’s where we’re going.”
“Earth?” A warm surge of hope spread through Travis.
“An earth maybe—but not ours.”
9
“We’re down.” Renfry’s voice, thin, harsh, broke the silence of the control cabin. His hands moved to the edge of the panel of levers and buttons before him, fell helplessly on it. Though he had had nothing to do with that landing, he seemed drained by some great effort.
“Home port?” Travis got the words out between dry lips. The descent had not been as nerve- and body-wracking as their take-off from his native world, but it had been bad enough. Either the aliens’ bodies were better attuned to the tempo of their ships, or else one acquired, through painful experience, conditioning to such jolts.
“How would I know?” Renfry flared, plainly eaten by his own frustration.
Their window on the outside world, the screen, did mirror sky again. But not the normal Earth sky with its blue blaze which Travis knew and longed to see again. This was a blue closer to the green hue of turquoise mined in his hills. There was something cold and inimical in that sky.
Piercing the open space was a structure which glinted like metal. But the smoothness of those dull red surfaces ended in a jagged splinter, raw against the blue-green, plainly marking a ruin.
Travis unfastened his seat straps and stumbled to his feet, his body once more adjusting clumsily to the return of gravity. As much as he had come to dislike the ship, to want his freedom from it, at this moment he had no desire to emerge under that turquoise sky and examine the ruin pictured on the screen. And just because he felt reluctance, he fought against it by going.
In the end they all gathered at the space lock while Renfry opened the fastening, then went on to the outer door. The technician glanced back over his shoulder.
“Helmets fastened?” His voice boomed hollowly inside the sphere now resting on Travis’ shoulders and secured by a close-fitting harness. Ashe had discovered those and had tested them, preparing for this time when they might dare a foray into the unknown. The bubble was equipped with no cumbersome oxygen tanks. It worked on no principle Renfry was able to discover, but the aliens had used these and the humans must trust to their efficiency now.
The outer port swung back into the skin of the ship. Renfry kicked out the landing ladder and backed down it. But each of them, as he emerged from the globe, glanced quickly around.
What lay below was a wide sweep of hard white surface which must cover miles of territory. This was broken at intervals by a series of structures of the dull red, metallic material set in triangles and squares. In the center of each of those was a space marked with black rings. None of the red structures was whole, and the landing field—if that was what it was—had the sterile look of a place long abandoned.
“Another ship . . .” Ashe’s arm swung up, his voice came to Travis through the helmet com.
There was a second globe, all right, reposing about a quarter of a mile away on one of the squares among the buildings. And beyond that Travis spotted a third. But nowhere was there any sign of life. He felt wind, soft, almost caressing, against his bare hands.
They descended the ladder and stood in a group at the foot of their own ship, a little uncertain as to what to do next.
“Wait!” Renfry caught at Ashe. “Something moved—over there!”
They had found weapons in the ship; now they drew those odd guns, twins to the one Ross had worn when Travis had first met him. The wind blew a fragment of long-dead vegetation before it. It caught against the globe and then was whirled away in a dreary dance.
But out of an opening at the foot of the red tower nearest to them something stirred. And Travis, watching that coil heading straight for them, froze. A snake? A snake unwinding to such a length that its questing head was approaching their stand while the end of its tail still lay within the ruin where it denned?
He took aim at that swaying coil. Then Renfry struck his wrist pads, knocking away the barrel of the weapon. And in that moment the Apache saw what the other had noticed first, that the snake was not a thing of flesh, skin, and supple bones, but of some manufactured material.
Something else moved through the door from which the snake had crawled. This newcomer strode forward by jerks, paused, came on, as if compelled to advance despite the limitations of ancient fabric and long wear. The thing was vaguely manlike in form, in that it advanced on stilt legs. But it had four upper appendages now folded against its central bulk, and where the head should have been there was a nodding stalk resembling the antennae of a com unit.
Its jerky walk with the many pauses conveyed internal discord, rust and wear, and the deterioration of time. How much time? The four humans stepped away from the ship, giving free passage to the strange partners from the tower.
“Robots!” Ross said suddenly. “They’re robots! But what are they going to do?”
“Refuel, I think.” Ashe rather than Renfry answered that.
“You’ve hit it!” The technician pushed forward. “But do they have fuel—now?”
“We’d better hope there is some left.” Ashe sounded bleak. “I’d say we aren’t supposed to stay here—better get back on board.”
The threat of being trapped here, of locked controls raising the ship and leaving them marooned, induced something close to panic in all three hearers. They raced to the ladder and began to climb. But when they reached the air lock, Renfry remained at the open door, relating the movements of the robots.
“I think that animated pipeline’s been connected—underneath. Can’t see what the walker’s doing—maybe he just stands by in case of trouble. And there’s something coming through the hose—you can see it swell! We’re taking on whatever we’re supposed to have!”
“A fueling station.” Ashe looked out over the wide stretch of crumbling towers and checkerboard landing spaces. “But look at the size of this place. It must have been constructed to handle hundreds, even thousands, of ships. And since they couldn’t all be in to refuel at the same time, that presupposes a fleet”—he drew a deep breath of wonder—”a fleet almost beyond comprehension. We were right—this civilization was galaxy-wide. Maybe it spread to the next galaxy.”
But Travis’ eyes rested on the splintered cap of the tower from which the robots had come. “It looks like no one has been here for some time,” he observed.
“Machines,” Renfry answered, “will go on working until they run down. I’d say that walking one down there is close to its final stop. We triggered some impulse when we landed on the right spot. The robots were activated to do their job—maybe their last job. How long since they worked the last time? This may have kept going for a long part of that twelve thousand years you’re always talking about—an empire dying slowly. But I wouldn’t try to measure the time. These aliens knew machinery, and their materials are better than our best.”
“I’d like to see the interior of one of those towers,” Ashe said wistfully. “Maybe they kept records, had something we could understand to explain it all.”
Renfry shook his head. “Wouldn’t dare try it. We might raise before you got inside the door. Ahh—the walker is going back now. I’d say get ready for take-off.”
They snugged the open port and the inner door of the space lock. Renfry, out of habit, went on up to the control cabin. But the other three took to their bunks. There was a waiting period and then once more the blast into space. This time they did not lose consciousness as they endured the stress of reentering space.