James cleared his throat. "Now look at this picture. You can see
that the darkened areas beneath the sand are in the shape of a large
diamond, with a smaller square next to it. Then another diamond,
another square, and a final diamond. They're all connected into one
unit, and just for convenience, until we can think of something more
apt, we'll call it a villa. Okay, Ken?"
Glamis shrugged. "So long as no one gets the idea that calling it a
villa makes it a villa."
"Are you likely to get that idea, Dr. Glamis?" asked Captain Edholm
sharply.
"No."
"Then kindly allow us similar intelligence until and unless you have
evidence to the contrary, sir." Edholm looked again at the pictures. "I
have noticed that the Vaec dwellings are all perfect squares."
Calvin Burleigh pointed to another photograph. "And you can see that
in some places, this pattern of diamond, square, diamond, square,
diamond does pop up. The natives tend to create in terms of Euclidean
geometry. Consider the decorations on their clothing. You see this sort
of pattern there, too.
"Considering the number of dwellings in this area, it would be more
unusual if some such pattern couldn't be found somewhere," Glamis
observed. He glanced at Amelia, and added, "But that doesn't take
anything away from the shape of this area below the sand. It does
suggest artifice."
James smiled. "Thank you, Ken. I know you do not think highly of my
hypothesis that the Vaec we see here are descendants of a stellar
colony. Of course, we cannot call this a theory as yet. But let's keep
the possibility in mind."
"There's little danger of our forgetting it, Howard," Burleigh put in,
and James smiled as chuckles broke out.
"Well, it's agreed that this is the place we start work?"
Everyone nodded, and James started out of the tent. Glamis caught
Amelia's arm and said softly, "You don't have to take it personally."
She didn't answer; she looked at him and her lips parted slightly. Then
the half-sensuous expression left her face, and she shook herself free
from his grasp and walked away. Shirley followed her, looking as if she
considered the two of them beneath contempt.
* * * * *
Shirley Mason painted in the letter _n_ in the legend. It was a red
JAMES EXPEDITION on a white banner, containing a blue Earth.
She wiped the red paint off the brush. Three similar banners were
stretched out on the table in the tent.
* * * * *
Burleigh and Glamis strode along the golden sands, Burleigh carrying a
long, thin metal shaft with one of the banners at its top, and Glamis
holding a small instrument with two light-buttons. A faint buzzing
sound came from it; the sound stopped abruptly, and Glamis said,
"You've deviated, Cal. Step to the right a bit."
Burleigh obeyed, and the buzzing started again. A short time later, the
left-hand light flashed on. Glamis stopped. "Here. Come left a little
more." He waited until the right-hand light also glowed. "Exact spot."
Burleigh pushed the pole down into the sand, and Glamis assisted, after
putting the finder into his pocket. They looked around the expanse of
desert at the other three poles which were the corners of a rectangle
marking the boundaries of the diggings.
Glamis looked up at the banner. "Shirl could have put in a cross behind
the Earth," he said.
Calvin Burleigh's eyes narrowed. "That was supposed to be a humorous
quip, I presume. From someone else, it would have been amusing, but not
from a person who finds everything about religious faith amusing."
"Think I'll be struck down some day in the midst of blasphemy, Cal?"
"If you're looking for a lightning bolt aimed specifically at you, no.
But the mocker usually finds himself mocked one way or another. How old
are you, Glamis?"
"Sixty-eight or thereabouts."
Burleigh nodded. "You started rejuvenation treatments in your thirties,
then. Well, I'm ninety-six. Took the treatments first when I was forty,
so I'm almost forty-six physically, if you hold to the rule of aging
one year in ten after treatment. Doc James is one hundred and twenty,
which would make him relatively forty-eight or maybe fifty. Perhaps if
you live to his age, you'll begin to grow up."
He walked away, his pointed beard outthrust, looking as if he should be
wearing a burnoose and riding a white horse or camel, leading desert
tribes into holy war.
* * * * *
Under the direction of Dr. James, the Vaec set up the excavators. The
bodies of the machines looked like huge sausages from a distance;
sausages with blisters at top center, and air-holes punctured along the
sides.
Burleigh was saying to Amelia, "They're really nothing but glorified
vacuum cleaners. Each one has its own power plant, works on the Bending
convertor principle."
"I'm not a scientist, Calvin. You might as well say it in Old Martian."
"Oh, you've heard of hydrogen fusion, haven't you?"
She nodded. "I've studied history. But isn't that dangerous? I thought
it was always accompanied by tremendous radiation."
"Bending found a way to get around that difficulty. His convertor did
the job without emitting any radiation at all--well, no more than is
normally present in sunlight--and it draws the hydrogen from the air.
Doesn't need too much. Even the moisture-content of desert air like
this will suffice."
The Vaec were bringing long, flexible tubes--light, for all of their
eight-inch diameter--over to the orifices in the excavator and fitting
them in.
"Looks like a many-tentacled monster now, doesn't it," said Burleigh.
"Who's going to run them?"
"Howard demonstrated them to Ekem-ve yesterday," she said. "I mean,
he just showed him a model and took him into the control turret, and
Ekem-ve got the idea at once. He said that any of his people could
handle them after a single bit of instruction."