There was no sign of life in the thing. He watched grimly for any sign
of returning activity. By noon, though, it could be seen that the
ghastly mass of once-living substance was changing. It was liquefying.
There were rills of an unpleasant fluid forming on its glossy flanks,
to run down and flow and flow away into the desert to be dried up.
"I don't think we'll want to be around for the next few weeks," Borden
said heavily. "We'll go back and fix up the ship."
Then Ellen mentioned Sattell's name for the first time in days.
"How about Sattell?"
"We outran him on the way here," Borden said moodily. "But I think
he'll come on. He'll want to find out if we're dead. Not knowing what
the thing--the white spot--was, I think he'll figure that either we'll
be sent back with help, or killed. If he gets to where he can see the
white spot, and we haven't started back with friends, he'll be sure
we're dead. Then he'll go back and start to fix up the ship himself. I
think we'll meet him on the way."
And they did. The second day out from what was now an oasis instead of
a white spot, they saw Sattell's car headed in their direction as a
moving gleam of golden reflected sunlight.
Jerry ran their car off the road to a hiding place behind a dune. He
and Borden took posts behind the sand dune's tip. Sattell came racing
at a hundred and fifty miles an hour, raising a long plume of sand dust
behind him.
Borden and Jerry fired together--two thin pencil rods of flame from the
golden-metal weapons. Sattell's ground car ran past them, crossing the
highway just a foot from the rock. The treads of the car disintegrated.
The car sped on, slid, and rolled clumsily, three separate times. Then
it stopped.
The oval side window turned and Sattell came crawling out. He had
a golden-metal weapon now. He must have searched feverishly in the
shambles of one of the two forts to find a weapon that still would
operate. He swung it frenziedly in their direction. He ran toward them,
screaming hate. He stumbled.
His weapon was firing, but the fire was short. He fell on it. Into its
flame.
And the ship's log and the star maps were in the ground car Borden and
Jerry had disabled.
* * * * *
It was more than a month later when the _Danaë_, completely overhauled
and refueled, and with the product of Ellen's agriculture stored
carefully away, hovered cautiously over what had been the white spot.
At last they descended into the central square of the city that once
had been the center of a civilization.
The three of them spent a day examining that city. They found things
they could not understand, and things at which they smiled, and things
that were quite marvelous. Every civilization makes some discoveries
that others miss, and misses some that others take for granted. There
would be useful items in this civilization, when humans landed here and
examined the remains.
"I think," Ellen said, to Borden, "that you mean to come back."
Borden nodded, frowning a little.
"No rational natives," he said, "and eighteen thousand square miles of
oasis. It would make a rather wonderful place in which to live--with
that city and that civilization to study. Will you mind?"
Ellen laughed. She held out her hand. There were capsules in it.
"I've been planting more seeds," she said, "so there'll be Earth-type
vegetation here when we get back."
"And Jerry?"
Jerry said bashfully, "There's a girl.... If I can organize a group to
make a settlement here, I think I'll be back."
"Then we'll be back," said Borden. "And next time we'll bring some of
our furry friends down from the ice-cap and really find out what it
means to settle down and live here."
And then the _Danaë_ climbed for the stars and started back home.