She narrowed her eyes, studying the blue outlines in the dawn light.
"Yes. But, Jon, where is the ship?"
He pointed at a blackened circle in the grass not an eighth of a
kilometer distant. The circle was almost a thousand yards in diameter.
"That's where our jets burned the grass when we landed. That's where
the _Shooting Star_ was yesterday!"
In ten minutes they were tramping back and forth across the blackened
circle of grass, kicking up little puffs of ashes. The mark of the jets
were there, pressed deep in the soft soil. But those and the charred
vegetation were the only signs that a ship had ever rested there.
Ileth flung herself dejectedly to the grass at the edge of the circle.
"I'm so hungry and bone weary and thirsty and disappointed, I could
cry."
Saxon sat down beside her. "I don't understand it," he said for the
hundredth time. "I don't understand any of it."
All at once, his scalp began to prickle its warning and Saxon
recognized the alien feel. At the same instant Ileth screamed, leaping
to her feet. Saxon felt his mouth go dry, his stomach contract as he
stumbled erect beside her.
Not ten yards distant, in the path of the rising sun, a naked man was
materializing before their eyes. Saxon could see the grass and the
hills and a segment of Alpha Centauri A through the man's body.
A thought struck into Saxon's mind. "_So there you are._" It emanated
from the Alien. "_We were afraid you might have gotten clean away._"
Saxon realized the man was quite solid now, standing with bare feet
planted in the pale green grass. There was an instrument like a watch
strapped to his wrist. He was holding a small shiny cylinder.
Saxon caught an echo of Ileth's thought. "_Oh Lord, he's naked as a
grape!_"
The man leveled the cylinder. There was a brief flash.
Saxon felt an instant's giddiness, a rapid dissolution, then nothing.