It turned out that it wouldn't have mattered if the _Lotus_ had sent
screaming notifications of its presence throughout all nearby space.
There were detectors out, of course, but they reported absolutely
nothing as the _Lotus_ moved on toward Planet Three. There was static
from storms upon the planet. It grew louder as the survey ship
approached. But there was no sign of anything alive.
The _Lotus_ cruised some two hundred miles above seas and cloud masses
and desert, photographing as she followed a search pattern that covered
all the sunlit hemisphere. There were mountains in the tropics which
by all the rules of meteorology should have had rain forests at their
feet. They didn't. There was a river system which ran like the Nile for
a thousand miles or more, through deserts like those of Egypt. There
should have been at least a ribbon of vegetation along its banks. There
wasn't. Where it reached the sea was an enormous delta.
A drone went down and reported temperatures and humidity and the
composition of the atmosphere, and the radiation background count. One
would have thought the records those of Earth. The background count
was a trifle high--3.9 instead of 3.6--but there was eighteen per cent
of oxygen in the atmosphere. The only oddity, there, was nearly a full
per cent of helium. When the drone came up it brought samples of soil
and sea water. There was no life in either. The soil was mostly mineral
dust, but an electron microscope disclosed abraded fractions of pollen
grains and the like. The sea water sample had evidently been picked up
by the drone's dredge from some shallow. There were tiny, silicious
shells in it. Plankton. They had been alive, but were so no longer.
"I think," said Nolan, "that I make a landing. Right?"
The skipper said crossly, "Yes. You're the best man for it. You notice
things. But I doubt you'll learn very much." He tapped the written
report that the radiation background count was 3.9. "It happened a
long time ago. A long, long time ago!" Then he said with a totally
unsuccessful attempt at humor, "Try and find out that it was bug-eyed
monsters, eh? It looks too much like Earth! I'd rather blame monsters
than men!"
Nolan growled and went to prepare for the landing. Two other men would
go with him, of course. The _Lotus_ wouldn't descend. It cost fuel to
make landings. Unless there was some remarkable specimen that a drone
couldn't handle the ship would stay aloft.
So a drone took three of them down to ground, a second drone following
with equipment. They had weapons, of course. Men never land anywhere
without weapons. They had the material for a foam-house camp. They had
a roller-jeep, running on huge inflated bags. It would run efficiently
on anything from sand to swamp mud, and float itself across bogs or
rivers. They had cameras and communicators. Nolan had picked Crawford
for geology and Kelley for communications. They could get other
specialists from the ship, if desirable.
The ground where they landed was desert: nothing more. There were
enormous dunes like gigantic frozen swells of sand. Sometimes there
were miles between crests. They landed close to the mud banks northern
ice-cap to avoid the deep gorges in which rivers ran farther south. On
the first day they set up their camp.
Mountains reared to the north of them, covered almost to their bases
with ice. These they need not explore. Instruments would do most of
the landing-party work, in any case. But they inflated small balloons
and sent them skyward, to learn about currents of the upper air, and
Crawford took painstaking photographs of dune formations, and they set
up a weather radar. They checked the water recovery from the camp's
air-conditioner. It would supply their needs. When night drew near,
with all instruments recording, they watched the sunset.
* * * * *
It was amazing how splendid and how magnificent a sunset could be. Not
many men see sunsets these days. The three of them, aground at the
ice-cap's edge, saw enormous mile-long dunes reaching away as far as it
was possible to see. They cast black shadows. Then glories of crimson
and gold rose from the western horizon of this dead and empty world.
There was ice and snow upon the mountains, and unbelievable tints and
blends of colors appeared there. After a long, long time the light
faded away. Then there was nothing to see but the stars, and nothing to
listen to at all. This world was dead. They went in their camp-house
and shut out the dark and the silence.
On the second day, Nolan went in search of permafrost. Their
instruments faithfully recorded everything they needed except such
items as this. Nolan found permanent ice in a valley of the northern
mountains. It was perpetually frozen ground which might not have thawed
in a thousand thousand years. He dug down through surface ice to the
permanently frozen soil beneath it. That soil was not desert sand.
And preserved in it Nolan found the blackened roots of plants, and
the blackened blades of something like grass, and even some small,
indefinite objects which had been seeds or fruit.
They hadn't died with the planet. They were far older than that
catastrophe. But they were proof that once this world lived and throve.
During what was left of the day-light, Nolan and Kelley went south to
a river gorge and photographed it for the record. The river had cut a
gorge a full two hundred feet deep in the wind-deposited dust which was
everywhere. There were now-dry gullies which undercut the dune-sides
and at times dumped mud into the slowly flowing liquid of the river.
There were no colorings save dust and mud. The river itself was mud. It
flowed very, very slowly and without elation.
They came back depressed. An airless planet holds no life, but it
defies life to establish itself. A methane-ammonia planet fights the
intrusion of men with monstrous frigid storms. But this world was
designed for life. That it was dead was tragedy. Its rivers flowed
sullen, syrupy mud which moved reluctantly toward the lifeless seas.
Kelley wouldn't look at the sunset this second night. He went into the
camp and turned on music. Crawford watched for a little while only.
There were clouds. There were breezes. One knew that here and there
rain fell in gentle showers which should have nourished grasses and
flowers and filled the air with fragrance. But instead it fell upon
impalpable dust and turned it to mud which flowed slowly into gullies
and into rivers which were also mud and moved onward, until perhaps
after years the soil would become part of a mud-bank in the ocean.
Nolan came into the foam-walled house and said shortly, "We'll finish
up tomorrow and leave."
Kelley said abruptly. "Nobody's made any guess about why everything
died, here. But we all know!"
Crawford said reflectively, "It must've taken a lot of intelligence to
murder this planet. When d'you suppose it happened?"
"Ten thousand--twenty thousand years ago," said Nolan. "The whole place
must have been radioactive, air and all. But if they used cobalt the
background count could be down to 3.9 in ten or twenty thousand years."
"We haven't," said Kelley, "seen any craters. Even the pictures from
out in space didn't show bomb-craters."
"When everything died and turned to dust," said Nolan, "there'd be
dust storms. There still must be. They'd cover anything! There was a
terrific civilization in part of what's now the Sahara, back on Earth.
By pure accident they've found a patch of highway and a post-house.
Everything else is covered up. Cities, highways, dams, canals.... And
that's heavy sand instead of fine dust! The _Lotus_ found some shadows
on a photo. They want us to look and see what cast them. We'll look at
it tomorrow and then leave."
Crawford said deliberately:
"We three have had a preview of what Earth will be like before too
long! I wonder if it would do any good on Earth to show them what we've
found?"
"It's being argued on the ship," said Nolan. "Some say we'd better
suppress the whole business."
Crawford considered.
"The Coms aren't a very believing people," he said slowly. "But our
people are. If we report this, our people will believe it. But the Coms
can tell their people it is lies. Our people will want peace more than
ever if they see what a war will mean. But the big-shot Coms will just
take that as a reason to demand some more concessions, and more, and
more. Like demanding to build a base on the moon...."
"I'm going to bed," said Nolan. He added ironically, "I hope you have
pleasant dreams!"
* * * * *
He did go to bed, but he slept very badly. The others slept no better.
All three of them were up before sunrise. They saw it. And to Nolan
the coming of the light seemed somehow like an eager arrival of the
new day, anxious to see if some tiny thread of green somewhere lifted
proudly from brown earth to greet it. But none ever did. Or would.
"We should be through by noon," said Nolan.
They set out in the jeep. They abandoned the camp. They would abandon
the jeep, too, presently, when they went up the ship that waited in
orbit.
They headed west, and Kelley took over the microwave set that sent a
wide-fanning beacon skyward. The _Lotus_ was in orbit now. Every ninety
minutes she was overhead. She'd completed the mapping of the planet.
Every square foot of its surface had been photographed from aloft.
They drove. The ungainly inflated bags which took the place of wheels
rolled unweariedly, at first over dew-wetted dust and then over the
minor gullies which, so near the ice-cap, were not yet gorges. They
went on for twenty miles, and the abomination of desolation was all
about them.
"We shouldn't tell about this back home," said Kelley abruptly.
"If the Com people saw it, they'd know that no--" his tone was
ironic--"national aspiration justified the risk of this. But they
wouldn't see it. And our people might look at it and decide that
anything was better than this. But it isn't."
Nolan said nothing. He didn't believe that the discovery of this dead
planet could be kept a secret for very long.
The mountains drew back to northward and the desert took their place.
The _Lotus_ went by overhead, unseen. But it gave a message to Kelley.
"We're on course," he reported. "The ship just said so. Ten miles more."
In ten miles they came upon a city, or what had been one. It was
partly buried in the omnipresent dust. That is, they saw part of a
city's remnants showing in the mile wide trough between dunes hundreds
of feet high. There were other remnants between two other dunes,
and still more in yet other troughs beyond. Structures of stone had
existed, and portions of them remained. They had cast shadows the
_Lotus_ had discovered from aloft. The stone remains were abraded by
the dust-carrying winds of a hundred centuries. Their roofs had been
crushed when monster dunes formed over them. They had been reexposed
to the sunshine when winds moved the dunes away. There was no metal
left. No glass. No artifacts. They had been buried tens or hundreds of
times, and uncovered as many. There was nothing left but skeletons of
stone which cast angular shadows, though their fragments were rounded
by centuries of patient wind erosion.
It had been a very great city, but Nolan made the only observation
that could tell anything about its occupants.
"The builders of this city," he said tonelessly, "used doors about the
same size we do."
And that was all they could find out. Presently:
"New York will be like this eventually," said Crawford. "And Chicago.
And everywhere else."
Kelley spoke suddenly into the microwave transmitter. He said sharply
to the ship, invisibly overhead:
"Yes! Send down the drone! We've had it!"
* * * * *
The Council-member from Brazil made an impassioned speech in the
supposedly secret meeting of the Western Defense Alliance. He pointed
out with bitter factuality that no past yielding to Com demands
had gained anything. Further yielding would be suicidal. He made a
fierce demand that the WDA present a united front against this fresh
diplomatic pressure. That it refuse, flatly and firmly and with
finality, to make a single concession on a single point. It was a good
speech. It was an excellent speech. It and others like it should have
been made a long time before. The Coordinator of the Western Defensive
Alliance nodded at its end.
"I agree," he said, "with every word the representative from Brazil has
spoken. I think we all agree. The practical thing to do, of course, is
to send a combined expeditionary force to maintain the independence
of Sierra Leone. This force should be formed of contingents from every
Western Defense Alliance nation, and it should have orders to prevent
the entry of Com troops into Sierra Leone territory. I do not think
that anything less will prevent the extinction of another member nation
of the Western Defense Alliance. Will any Council member propose such
action for a vote?"
There was a pause. Then babblings. It would mean war! It would mean
atomic war! Tens or hundreds of millions of human beings would die over
a matter affecting less than two hundred thousand! It was ridiculous!
Public opinion--
The Council meeting ended with no vote upon the matter. Without even a
proposal on which a vote could be taken.
Two days later, Com troops from one of the African Com nations moved
in and occupied Sierra Leone. A great many of its citizens were shot,
some for opposing the new state of affairs, but some seemingly just on
general principles.