A short uncomfortable silence greeted her statement; then Mercedes, the
gray-haired anthropologist asked, "What do you mean, child?"
"I don't know how to define it. Wait until you see it."
But Saxon had intercepted an image in Ileth's mind--a distorted glimpse
of a vast beautiful city stretching for kilometer after kilometer
without a soul anywhere. A sobering chill prickled up his spine. He
said, "I, for my part, am willing to call a truce, Ileth."
The girl glanced at him gratefully. Saxon became aware of a passionate
thought: "_Oh, the darling stiffnecked bear!_" The girl's color
heightened suddenly. She began to think furiously: "_Two times two is
four; three times two is six; four times two is eight_...."
Saxon grinned at her knowingly, to her added confusion.
"_I hate you!_" she thought.
Villainowski jumped to his feet, saying, "Of course we accept. We all
accept. But let me warn you, young woman, aliens or no aliens, I don't
care if we spend the rest of our lives in the Centaurian system, I'm
not going to explain my stellar drive to your scoundrels!"
Ileth turned to him almost gratefully. "Oh, that doesn't matter. Our
engineers are examining it. They've assured me that they can take us
back to Earth."
Villainowski looked crestfallen.
"Tomorrow," said Ileth in a firm voice, "we're starting to investigate
the city. Mercedes is the anthropologist. I particularly wanted her and
Saxon along."
"What about the rest of us?" Brand the bio-chemist, asked.
Ileth ticked them off on her fingers. "Dr. Villainowski is an
astro-physicist, I believe. We have the telescope mounted. He and our
men are to locate any other planets in the system. You, Dr. Brand, are
to go with Loar, the Martian, on an expedition into the hills to the
south. Mr. Murdock will be stationed temporarily with the emergency
crew aboard the _Shooting Star_."
Saxon realized that she had cleverly separated them. At the same moment
he recognized that leap of fear in Ileth whenever she thought about
outside. It was pathologic.
"My Lord!" he thought, "was their fear of deep space driving them
insane?"
Ileth was saying, "You can have your old cabins back. I won't see you
again until tomorrow. We--we're still on Earth time because of the
peculiar daylight hours. Until tomorrow."
She turned, head bent and hurried abruptly through the door.
The prisoners looked at each other in vague alarm, unconsciously
drawing closer together. In each of their minds, Saxon read the same
thing--the blind unspoken terror of deep space!
* * * * *
The helicopter whispered scarcely a hundred feet above the rolling
plain, while Saxon stared hungrily out of the windows, unable to
satisfy his eyes.
Alpha Centauri A, a scintillating yellow orb like Sol, stood in
mid-sky. The orange disc that was Alpha Centauri B, the second half of
the binary, was just rising. Proxima was not in sight.
Directly below he could see a flock of plants that looked like tumble
weeds except that they were a weirdly mottled yellow and green. They
rolled along in a herd pausing to nibble at new shoots of the pale
green grass. "Cannibal Plants," their botanist had named them because
of their feeding habits.
Herbivorous plants!
Their botanist, Saxon thought, was going quietly insane trying to
classify the staggering complexity of utterly alien forms of plant
growth.
"Weird, isn't it?" A woman's rich husky voice addressed Saxon. "It
sends goose flesh up my spine." Saxon tore his eyes away from the
window.
The person sitting beside him was Clo-Javel, a black-eyed woman with
cadmium-yellow hair. There was a sleek disturbing fullness to her
breasts and hips that was echoed in her red lips and magnificent eyes.
She must be thirty-five but no one except possibly the T.I.S. knew her
exact age.
Clo-Javel's first passion was archaeology, Saxon knew. Her second was
men. He asked, "How many pieces of silver did General Atomic give you?"
Clo-Javel regarded him with an amused tolerant smile. "Don't be rude,
Jon."
Saxon, looking into the woman's mind, realized that his thrust hadn't
disturbed her in the least. Clo-Javel apparently had no more honor than
morals.
There was no question, though, about her archaeological ability. Her
reconstruction of the New York skyscrapers, which had perished early in
the Atom Age, were famous.
Saxon was appalled. He had expected to uncover a sense of shame among
the crew and staff for their treachery. But, if they felt any remorse,
they never let it rise into the realms of conscious thought. He had
probed their minds one after another, his hope of persuading some of
them to return to the Government fold diminished with each one.
At one stroke they had received wealth and better positions with
General Atomic's research bureau. They were determined not to lose
them. Furthermore, to a man they were convinced that General Atomic
would be the next government.
He glanced about the cabin. There were nine of them accompanying Ileth
to the deserted city. He allowed their thoughts to wash across his
mind, eager, excited, fearful thoughts like half spoken words.
"Look!" Ileth cried suddenly and pointed ahead. She was piloting the
helicopter and spoke over her shoulder. "Look! There's the city!"
Saxon saw a maze of towers scintillating like jewels in the combined
light of the twin suns. He saw endless avenues and squares and parks.
It was all bright and raw like a city seen in a shimmering mirage.
He swallowed a lump in his throat. He felt.... Why, damn it, he felt as
if he were coming home after a long time.
Home?
He thought suddenly of his extra-human senses. Maybe this _was_ home!
Could it be that he was not of Earth at all? Not a mutant of whom his
parents had been ashamed and who had deserted him at the Institute, as
he had always believed?
Then Ileth was dropping the helicopter safely into a beautiful square
ringed with vari-colored translucent buildings.
Nothing moved. Not the faintest echo of a sound reached Saxon's ears.
He found himself holding his breath as the 'copter landed with a faint
jar.
Saxon's scalp began to prickle warningly, and such a feel of alienism
swept over him, exciting his extra-human sixth sense that he felt giddy.
The city wasn't deserted. It was densely populated.
All around him, everywhere, were aliens. He could sense their movements
along the streets, inside the buildings. Hundreds of them.
He heard Ileth's strangely chastened voice. "It's so uncannily
deserted. No one. Absolutely no one. What do you suppose happened to
the--the things who built this city?"
Saxon had to clench his jaw to keep from shouting, "They're here! You
fools, let's get away while we've still got a chance! They're all
around us!"
Instead, he kept silent, little beads of perspiration breaking through
his prickling skin.