The other, cupping his earphones to his head with his hands, nodded.
"Give me a minute or two," he told them, "and I'll have a fix. They're
excited about something--the way this jabber-jabber is coming
through--"
"About us," Raf thought. The ruined tower topped them to the south.
And to the east and west there were buildings as high as the one they
were perched on. But the town he had seen as he maneuvered for a
landing had held no signs of life. Around them were only signs of
decay.
Lablet got out of the flitter and walked to the edge of the roof,
leaning against the parapet to focus his vision glasses on what lay
below. After a moment Raf followed his example.
Silence and desolation, windows like the eye pits in bone-picked
skulls. There were even some small patches of vegetation rooted and
growing in pockets erosion had carved in the walls. To the pilot's
uninformed eyes the city looked wholly dead.
"Got it!" Soriki's exultant cry brought them back to the flitter. As
if his body was the indicator, he had pivoted until his outstretched
hand pointed southwest. "About a quarter of a mile that way."
They shielded their eyes against the westering sun. A block of solid
masonry loomed high in the sky, dwarfing not only the building they
were standing on but all the towers around it. Its imposing lines made
clear its one-time importance.
"Palace," mused Lablet, "or capitol. I'd say it was just about the
heart of the city."
He dropped his glasses to swing on their cord, his eyes glistening as
he spoke directly to Raf.
"Can you set us down on that?"
The pilot measured the curving roof of the structure. A crazy fool
might try to make a landing there. But he was no crazy fool. "Not on
that roof!" he spoke with decision.
To his relief the captain confirmed his verdict with a slow nod.
"Better find out more first." Hobart could be cautious when he wanted
to. "Are they still broadcasting, Soriki?"
The com-tech had stripped the earphones from his head and was rubbing
one ear. "Are they!" he exploded. "I'd think you could hear them clear
over there, sir!"
And they could. The gabble-gabble which bore no resemblance to any
language Terra knew boiled out of the phones.
"Someone's excited," Lablet commented in his usual mild tone.
"Maybe they've discovered us." Hobart's hand went to the weapon at his
belt. "We must make peaceful contact--if we can."
Lablet took off his helmet and ran his fingers through the scrappy
ginger-and-gray fringe receding from his forehead. "Yes--contact will
be necessary--" he said thoughtfully.
Well, he was supposed to be their expert on that. Raf watched the
older man with something akin to amusement. The pilot had a suspicion
that none of the other three, Lablet included, was in any great hurry
to push through contact with unknown aliens. It was a case of dancing
along on shore before having to plunge into the chill of autumn sea
waves. Terrans had explored their own solar system, and they had
speculated learnedly for generations on the problem of intelligent
alien life. There had been all kinds of reports by experts and
would-be experts. But the stark fact remained that heretofore mankind
as born on the third planet of Sol had _not_ encountered intelligent
alien life. And just how far did speculations, reports, and arguments
go when one was faced with the problem to be solved practically--and
speedily?
Raf's own solution would have been to proceed with caution and yet
more caution. Under his technical training he had far more imagination
than any of his officers had ever realized. And now he was certain
that the best course of action was swift retreat until they knew more
about what was to be faced.
But in the end the decision was taken out of their hands. A muffled
exclamation from Lablet brought them all around to see that distant
curving roof crack wide open. From the shadows within, a flyer
spiraled up into the late afternoon sky.
Raf reached the flitter in two leaps. Without orders he had the spray
gun ready for action, on point and aimed at the bobbing machine
heading toward them. From the earphones Soriki had left on the seat
the gabble had risen to a screech and one part of Raf's brain noted
that the sounds were repetitious: was an order to surrender being
broadcast? His thumb was firm on the firing button of the gun and he
was about to send a warning burst to the right of the alien when an
order from Hobart stopped him cold.
"Take it easy, Kurbi."
Soriki said something about a "gun-happy flitter pilot," but, Raf
noted with bleak eyes, the com-tech kept his own hand close to his
belt arm. Only Lablet stood watching the oncoming alien ship with
placidity. But then, as Raf had learned through the long voyage of the
spacer, a period of time which had left few character traits of any of
the crew hidden from their fellows, the xenobiologist was a fatalist
and strictly averse to personal combat.
The pilot did not leave his seat at the gun. But within seconds he
knew that they had lost the initial advantage. As the tongue-shaped
stranger thrust at them and then swept on to glide above their heads
so that the weird shadow of the ship licked them from light to dark
and then to light again, Raf was certain that his superiors had made
the wrong decision. They should have left the city as soon as they
picked up those signals--if they could have gone then. He studied the
other flyer. Its lines suggested speed as well as mobility, and he
began to doubt if they _could_ have escaped with that craft trailing
them.
Well, what would they do now? The alien flyer could not land here, not
without coming down flat upon the flitter. Maybe it would cruise
overhead as a warning threat until the city dwellers were able to
reach the Terrans in some other manner. Tense, the four spacemen stood
watching the graceful movements of the flyer. There were no visible
portholes or openings anywhere along its ovoid sides. It might be a
robot-controlled ship, it might be anything, Raf thought, even a bomb
of sorts. If it was being flown by some human--or nonhuman--flyer, he
was a master pilot.
"I don't understand," Soriki moved impatiently. "They're just
shuttling around up there. What do we do now?"
Lablet turned his head. He was smiling faintly. "We wait," he told the
com-tech. "I should imagine it takes time to climb twenty flights of
stairs--if they have stairs--"
Soriki's attention fell from the flyer hovering over their heads to
the surface of the roof. Raf had already looked that over without
seeing any opening. But he did not doubt the truth of Lablet's
surmise. Sooner or later the aliens were going to reappear. And it did
not greatly matter to the marooned Terrans whether they would drop
from the sky or rise from below.
5