The famous deserts of Earth held rich deposits of history, Roy Auckland
was thinking as the crawler, now on treads, its wheels retracted,
headed for the scene of operations. Voices cried out in Earth's
deserts, exhorting men to turn their thoughts to eternal matters;
trumpets blared and men clashed and slew each other for temporary and
elusive advantages, often not their own. And the desert grew slowly,
eating up once-beautiful cities and gardens. Did these golden sands
of Carolus conceal the remains of similar events, and long-forgotten
glory, as Dr. Howard James believed?
A strange question, he thought, remembering the events of his first day
with the expedition, which he had spent examining the records, while
the others went out to the diggings. Just before they left, Dr. Glamis
came back into the office and said, "There's some cans of film we've
taken here in the closet. Doc didn't want to tell you until they were
edited, but you might learn more if you see them as they stand. Don't
let on that I told you."
Auckland lost no time in looking the film up, and running it off.
The three-dimensional effect was as good as he had ever seen, and the
battery of speakers around him brought every sound from its proper
direction, and in correct tonal proportion. After a moment or two, Roy
Auckland wasn't sitting in a darkened room watching a screen; he was
out in the Carolinian desert.
* * * * *
Calvin Burleigh climbed into the small Bronstien Omnicraft, waved to
Dr. James, Kenneth Glamis, and Shirley Mason standing nearby, and
closed the hatch. All wore sun helmets and tinted glasses, except for
Glamis; his entire protective suit was tinted, and the top of his
helmet was white.
An instant later, the Omnicraft rose in a straight vertical line,
until it was some fifty feet above the golden sands, which were nearly
level at this spot, but took on ripples and hills farther out. The
Omnicraft shot off to the west in the cloudless blue of the sky, then
began to make a circle, drifting along.
"More pictures?" asked Shirley. "I thought this area had been mapped."
Howard James unrolled the blown-up print he was carrying. "Those were
just preliminary photos yesterday, taken from half a mile up." He
indicated dark areas in the glittering sands. "See these spots? The
Rouse wave catches anything below the surface, but at that distance
it's more like an old-time dentist X-raying teeth. At fifty feet, we'll
get definite outlines. Saves time to do it this way, because we can see
now just what areas are worth more careful examination."
"We can't tell what's there, Shirl," said Glamis. "It's most likely
rocks, or even beds of minerals. What we're looking for is some outline
which might not be a natural formation by its shape. Buried cities, you
know." He sniffed.
"And why not?" James said stiffly. "The Vaec admit being here for many
centuries. Ekem-ve said that the desert has expanded since his people
first came to Carolus, and that some of them may have lived in this
area when it was still fertile. There are many parts of Earth, now
desert, which were once fertile land; no reason why it couldn't have
happened here."
"The fact that it _could_ have happened is no proof that it did."
James turned away abruptly, and Glamis grinned after him. "The brow
is the brow of Shakespeare, but everything else is ham. He's got it
all figured out; and if we do find anything, he'll fit it into his
neatly-preconceived pattern."
"Why do you hate him so?" Shirley asked.
Glamis shrugged. "I don't hate him; I just find him irritatingly
ridiculous. He's no charlatan, but he's too eager to make a solid
reputation, so he'll believe what he wants to believe and manipulate
the evidence to fit. He wanted me to come along as a balance-wheel, he
said. Which shows he has some idea of his weakness, I suppose."
"The loyal opposition is supposed to be loyal," she murmured. "You're
just opposing."
"I'm trying to keep him sane. He got a rough deal back in the days of
the Marlene scandal. Howard was Jules Marlene's assistant, and while he
wasn't prosecuted, there's still a feeling of guilt in him. Maybe they
think he did help Marlene pull a _piltdown_, or that he should have
known what was up. He's lived just to make some unimpeachable discovery
of his own, but his obsession is driving him to ludicrous tricks."
"Then why aren't you helping him?"
"How can I? He says he wants me to keep him in check, but what he
really wants is to know as many objections to his theories as possible
in advance, so he can work his way around them. Very scientific."
Glamis was looking up at the Omnicraft, and did not see the expression
on Shirley Mason's face.
* * * * *
The six of them--Howard James, Amelia, Glamis, Shirley, Burleigh, and
Edholm--were standing around a table in the big tent, looking at the
photographs that littered it.
"Now here's the pictures of the nearest Vaec village," Dr. James began.
"If you can call it a village," Glamis put in. "The Vaec don't build
their dwelling places close enough together so that the term 'village'
would apply."
"Oh, stop it, Kenneth!" Amelia James said wearily. "If it helps to
think of all their homes in this locale as a village, then let's call
it a village."