Manning had picked up a sheaf of typescript from the table next to him
and was flipping through it, his lips pursed grimly. "This is the report
I got yesterday from Larsborg here--architecture and various other
artifacts. It's very interesting. Herb, throw that first photo onto the
screen."
The lights went off and the screen in the wall beside Manning lit up
with a reproduction of one of the Hirlaji structures out on the Flat. It
stood in the shadow of an overhanging rock-cliff, protected from the
planet's heavy winds on three sides. Larsborg had apparently set up
lights for a clearer picture; the whole building stood out sharply
against the shadows of the background.
"This look familiar to any of you?" Manning said quietly.
For a moment Rynason continued to stare uncomprehending at the picture.
He had seen a lot of the Hirlaji buildings since they'd landed; this one
was better preserved but not essentially different in design. Larsborg
had cleared away most of the dirt and sand which had been packed up
against its sides, exposing the full height of the structure, and he'd
apparently sand-blasted the carved designs over the entrance, but....
Then he realized what he was seeing. The angle of the photo was a bit
different than that from which he'd seen the other structure back on
Tentar XI, but the similarity was unmistakable. This was a reproduction
in stone of that same building, the one they'd reconstructed two years
before.
He heard a wave of voices growing around the room, and Manning's voice
cut-through it with: "That's right, gentlemen: it's an Outsiders
building. It's not in that crazy, damned metal or alloy or whatever it
was that they used, but it's the same design. Take a good long look at
it before we go on to the next photo."
Rynason looked ... closely. Yes, it was the same design a bit cruder,
and the carvings weren't the same, but the lines of the doorway and the
cornice....
The next picture flashed onto the screen. It was a closeup of the
designs over the entrance, shot in sharp relief so that they stood out
starkly. The room was so quiet that Rynason could hear the hum behind
the screen in the wall.
"That's Outsiders stuff too," said Breune. "It's not quite the same,
though ... distorted."
"It's carved in stone, not stamped in metal," Manning said. "It's the
same thing, all right. Anybody disagree?"
No one did.
"All right, then; let's have the lights back up again."
The lights came on and once more there was a murmur of talking around
the room. Rynason shifted his position on the seat and tried to catch
the thought that had slipped through his mind just before the screen had
faded. There was another similarity.... Well, he'd seen a lot of the
Outsider buildings in the past few years; it wasn't necessary to trace
all the evidences right now.
"What I want to know is, why didn't any of the rest of you see this?"
said Manning angrily. "Have you all got plastic for brains? Over a dozen
men spend weeks researching these damn horsefaces, and only one of you
has the sense to see the evidence of his own eyes!"
"Maybe we should turn in our spades," said Stoworth.
Manning glared at him. "Maybe you should, if you think this isn't
serious. Let's get this clear: these old horsefaces that so many of you
think are just as quaint as can be have been building in exactly the
same style as the Outsiders. Quaint, are they? Harmless too, I suppose!"
He stood with his hands on his hips, dropped his head and took a long,
deep breath. When he looked up again his forehead was furrowed into an
intense frown. "Gentlemen ... as I call you from force of habit ...
we've been finding dead cities of the Outsiders for centuries. They were
all over God knows how many galaxies before your ancestors or mine had
stopped playing with their tails; as far as we can tell they had a
civilization as tightly-knit as our own, and probably stronger. And
sometime about forty thousand years ago they started pulling out. They
left absolutely nothing behind but empty buildings and a few crumbling
bits of machinery. And we've been following those remains ever since we
got out of our own star-system.
"Well, we just may have found them at last. Right here, on Hirlaj. Now
what do you think of that?"
No one said anything for a minute. Rynason looked down at Mara, caught
her smile, and stood up.
"I don't think the Hirlaji are the Outsiders," he said calmly.