There was nothing to bite him now and he climbed through the rectangle. There wasn't any pit. The level of the inside seemed to be a bit higher than the outside ground.
A sudden flurry startled him half out of his wits. But it was just a bird that had a nest in here, and it left through the window with a rustle of wings. Once outside, it found a place to sit and began to scold and scold.
Jonnie fumbled his way through the dimness. There wasn't much there, mainly rust. But there had been things there; he could tell from the rust piles and wall marks.
Walls? Yes, the place had walls. They were of some sort of rough stone or something, very evenly fitted together in big square blocks.
Yes, these were walls. No animal made anything like this.
And no animal made anything like this tray. It must have been part of something else, now turned to reddish powder. At the bottom of the powder were some circular discs about as big as three thumbnails. And at the bottom of the pile of discs was one that was almost bright.
Jonnie picked it up and turned it over. He caught his breath.
He moved over to the window where there was better light. There could be no mistake.
It was the big bird with spread wings and arrows gripped in its claws.
The same sign he had found in the tomb.
He stood in quivering excitement for a bit and then calmed down. He had it now. The mystery was solved. And he went back out the window and showed
Windsplitter.
“God house,” said Jonnie. “This is where they stayed while waiting to take great men up to the tomb. Pretty, isn't it?”
Windsplitter finished chewing a mouthful of grass and gave Jonnie a shove in the chest. It was time they were going.
Jonnie put the disc in his belt pouch.
Well, it was no Great Village, but it proved definitely that there were things to find out here in the plains. Walls, imagine that. Those gods could build walls.
The bird stopped scolding in some relief as Jonnie mounted up and moved away. It looked after the little cavalcade and then, with a couple more criticisms, went back inside the ancient ruin.
Chapter 9
Terl was as happy as a baby Psychlo on a diet of straight kerbango. Although it was late in the day, he was on his way!
He steered the Mark II ground car down the ramp, through the atmosphere port, and into the open air.
There was a warning plaque on the ledge in front of the driver's seat:
BATTLE READINESS MUST BE OBSERVED AT ALL TIMES!
Although this tank is compression contained, personal face masks and independent breathing systems must be kept in place. Personal and unauthorized battle use prohibited. (signed) Political Department, Intergalactic Mining Company, Vice-Director Zzot.
Terl grinned at the sign. In the absence of political officers– on a planet where there was no indigenous politics– and in the absence of a war department– on a planet that had nothing to war against– the chief of security covered both those functions. That this old battle car existed on the planet at all meant that it must be very, very old and in addition must have gotten there as a result of fixed allocations of vehicles to company stations. Clerks in Planet
1, Galaxy 1 offices were not always well advised when they wrote their endless directives and orders to the far-flung outposts of the commercial empire. Terl threw his personal face mask and tank onto the gunner's seat beside him and rubbed a thankful paw over his craggy face.
What a lark! The old car ran like a well-greased digger. Small, not more than thirty feet long and ten feet high, it skimmed above the ground like a low-flying wingless bird. Cunning mathematics had contoured it so that every exterior surface would make a hostile projectile glance off at an angle. Missile-proof glass slots gave a fine view of the terrain. Even the blast muzzles of its artillery were cleverly recessed. The interior upholstery, though worn and cracked in places, was a beautiful soothing shade of purple.
Terl felt good. He had five days of jet fuel and breathe-gas and five days of rations in their ten-pound packs. He had cleaned up every scrap of paper in his baskets and had started no new “emergencies.” He had a “borrowed” shaft analysis picto-recorder that would take great pictures when put to other uses. And he was on his way!
A break in the dull life of a security chief on a planet without insecurities. A planet that wasn't likely to produce many opportunities for an ambitious security chief to get promotion and advancement.
It had been a gut blow when they ordered him to Earth. He wondered at once what he had done, whom he had accidentally insulted, whose bad side he had gotten on, but they assured him that none of these was the case. He was young. A Psychlo had a life span of about 190 years, and Terl had been only 39 when he had been appointed. It was pointed out to him that few ever became security chiefs at such a tender age. It would show in his record that he had been one. And when he came back from the duty tour, they would see. Plums, like planets you could breathe on, went to older Psychlos.
He had not been fooled, really. Nobody in security personnel pool, Planet 1, Galaxy 1 had wanted anything at all to do with this post. He could hear the future assignment interview now. “Last post?”
“Earth.”
“Where?”
“Earth, rim star, third planet, secondary galaxy 16.”
“Oh. What did you accomplish on that post?”
It's all in the record.”
“Yes, but there's nothing in the record.”
“There must be something. Let me see it.”
“No, no. Confidential company record.”
And then the final horror: “Employee Terl, it just happens that we have an opening in another rim star system,
Galaxy 32. It 's a quiet place, no indigenous life and no atmosphere at all....”
Or even worse: “Employee Terl, Intergalactic has been dropping for some time on the exchange and we have orders to economize. I’m afraid your record doesn't recommend continued employment. Don't call us. We'll call you.”
He already had a bit of scribble on the wall. A month ago he'd received word that his tour of duty had been extended and there was no mention of his relief. A little bit of horror had touched him, a vision of a 190-year-old Terl tottering around on this same planet, long forgotten by friends and family, ending his days in a dome-crazy stupor, lowered into a slit-trench grave, and ticked off the roster by a clerk who kept the records neat– but didn't know a single face on them.
Such questionable fates required action– big action.
There were better daydreams: waiting in a big entrance hall, uniformed ushers at attention but one of them whispering to another, “Who's that?” And the other, “Don't you know? That's Terl." And the big doors opening-'The president of the company is waiting to thank you, sir. Please come this way....”
According to the mine surveys there was an ancient highway to the north of here. Terl flipped the ground car onto auto and spread out a big map. There it was, running east and west. And west was where he wanted to go. It would be busted up and overgrown, maybe even hard to spot. But it would have no steep grades and it would run squarely up into the mountains. Terl had drawn a big circle around the target meadow.
There was the “highway” ahead.
He threw the controls to manual and fumbled a bit. He hadn't driven one of these things since security school years ago, and his uncertain control made the car yaw.
He zoomed up the side embankment of the road and yanked back the throttles and pawed the brakes. The car slammed to earth in a geysering puff of dust, square in the center of the highway. It was a pretty jolting stop but not bad, not bad. He'd get better at it.
He picked up his face mask and tank and donned them. Then he hit the decompression button so the tanks would recontain the breathe-gas without waste. There was a momentary vacuum, a trifle uncomfortable on the hearing bones, and then with a sigh, the outside air entered the cab.
Terl swung open the top hatch and
stood up on the seat, the tank creaking and shuddering under his repositioned weight. The wind felt cool outside the borders of his face mask.
He gazed around with some distaste. This sure was wide country. And empty. The only sound was the whisper of wind in the grass. And the sound of silence, vast silence. Even a far-off bird call made the silence heavier.
The earth was tan and brown. The grass and occasional shrubs were green. The sky was an expansive blue, specked with white puffs of clouds. A strange country. People on home planet wouldn't believe it. No purple anywhere.
With a sudden inspiration Terl reached down into the car and grabbed the picto-recorder. He aimed it in a sweeping circle, letting it grind away. He'd send his folks a spool of this.
Then they'd believe him when he said it was one horns-awful of a planet and maybe sympathize with him.
“My daily view,” he said into the recorder as he finished the sweep. The words rumbled through his mask, sounding sad.
There was something purple. Straight west there were some mountains and they looked purple. He put the picto-recorder down and grinned at the mountains so far away. This was better than he thought. No wonder men lived up in the mountains. They were purple. Maybe the men were a bit sentient after all. He hoped so, but not with any great confidence; he was probably optimistic. But it gave some substance to his nebulous plans.
Still looking westward, he suddenly caught sight of a landscape feature between himself and the mountains: a distant skyline silhouetted against the declining sun. He shifted a lever on his face mask glass to get magnification. The skyline leaped closer. Yes, he was right. There was a ruined city. Fuzzy and broken but the buildings still very tall. And quite extensive.
The wind fluttered his mine map as he looked at it. The ancient highway ran straight west into it. Reaching down, he took a massive tome off the pile he had on the rear crew seat and opened it to a marked place. There was an insert drawing on the page– some cultural artist had sketched it a few centuries ago.
The company had used air-breathing Chinkos for cultural posts on planets where there was air. The Chinkos had come from Galaxy 2, beings as tall as Psychlos but thread-thin and delicate. They were an old race, and the Psychlos didn't like to admit they had learned what they knew of cultural arts from them. But they had been easy to transport, despite breathing air and being feather-light. And they were cheap. Alas, they were no more, not even in Galaxy 2, having initiated a strike of all things. Intergalactic had wiped them out. But that was long after the culture and ethnology department had been terminated on Earth. Terl had never seen a Chinko. Remarkable beings, drawing pictures like this. Colorful too. Why would anybody draw something?
He compared the distant skyline to the sketch. Aside from a bit of blunting and crumbling in the ensuing years, they were the same.
The text said, “To eastward of the mountains lies the ruin of a man-city, remarkably well preserved. It was man-called 'Denver.' It is not as aesthetically advanced as those in the middle or eastern part of the continent. The usual miniature doors have little or no ornamentation. The interiors are no more than slightly oversized dollhouses. Utility rather than artistry seems to have been the overall architectural purpose. There are three cathedrals, which were apparently devoted to the worship of different heathen gods, showing that the culture was not monosectarian even though it may have been dominated by priesthoods. One god, 'bank,' seems to have been more general in worship. There was a man-library remarkably well stocked with books. The department sealed some of the library rooms after removing to archives the only important volumes– those on mining. As no ore bodies were evident under the foundations and no valuable ore materials were employed by the indigenous population in its construction, the man-city remains in a remarkable state of preservation, aided in part by the dry climate. The cost of further restoration is being requisitioned.”
Terl laughed to himself. No wonder the culture and ethnology department had been phased out on this planet, if it was applying for credits to reconstruct man-cities! He could hear the counterblast from the directors now. They'd fair put a shaft through the heads of such arty types.
Well, it was data he might use in his plans. Who knew?
He got back to the business at hand.
There was the highway stretching out. He was right in the middle of it. It was a couple of hundred feet wide at this point and it could be clearly discerned. It probably had two or three feet of sand on top of it, but the growing grass was uniform and the shrubs to either side, not being able to put down roots directly on it, defined between their two edge rows a straight course.
Terl took another look around. There were some cattle, a small herd of horses in the distance. Nothing worth shooting– since no Psychlo could eat meat of that metabolism – something dangerous enough to offer sport. It was luxurious to have time to think about hunting and even to be equipped for it– and even more luxurious not to do it! He had a bigger game going anyway.
He dropped down into the driver's seat and punched the buttons to close the top. The unbreathable air exhausted from the cab and was replaced by proper gas. He took off his face mask, contrary to regulations, and dropped it on the gunner's seat. The purple interior was a relief to his nerves.
This confounded planet! It even looked bad through the purple tint of the windscreens.
He glanced again at the map. Now was the time for some luck. He knew he couldn't go up into the mountains themselves due to the uranium the recon drones always indicated in that area. But the recon drones also reported that these man-things sometimes came down to the mountain foothills, which were safe enough.
Terl thought over his plans again. They were beautiful plans. Personal wealth, personal power. The recon drones had told him more than others knew. The scans had pointed out a vein of almost solid gold, uncovered by a landslide after Intergalactic surveys were finalized. A delicious, fabulously rich vein of gold in plain sight, a vein about which the company was ignorant– since the landslide was recent and Terl had destroyed the records. A joke on Zzt to propose no more recon drones over the area!
The uranium count in that area of the mountains was formidable and so no
Psychlo could mine it. Even a few bits of uranium-dust could explode Psychlo breathe-gas.
Terl smiled at his own genius. All he needed was a man-thing and then a few more man-things. They could mine it, and to blast with uranium. Somehow he would get the gold off the planet and home, and he had ideas about how he could do that too. Then wealth and power! And no more of this place!
All the security chief had to do was keep others from suspecting what he was really doing, to advertise quite other reasons. But Terl was an expert at that.
If he were truly lucky he could catch a man-thing this side of the meadow. He did not have too much time to lie in wait. He felt lucky.
The sun was very low, thanks to his late start. He'd lie up in that man-city for the night, sleeping in the car.
He sent the Mark II skimming along the ancient highway.
Chapter 10
A skyline!
Jonnie Goodboy Tyler pulled up with a yank so sudden he startled Windsplitter into a rear.
There it was, straight east. It wasn't hills or mountains. It wasn't some trick of the eye. It was sharp and rectangular.
He had been so unconvinced.
When he had left the ancient ruin, he found a very easy way to travel. It was almost as if the ruin with the window had once had a broad path leading to it.
There were shrubs on the right and shrubs on the left, two rows about two hundred feet apart that dwindled eastward into the distance. Underfoot there was fairly even grass. You had to watch it a bit because there were shallow gullies in places. When you looked down between these little gullies, there was something gray-white. Jonnie had inspected it with care. He had gotten down and dug at the edges of such a crack and it seemed that the gray-white stuff was continuous.
Just like the inner wal
ls of the ruin. Maybe it was a wall of the ancients, fallen over sideways. But no, it would have cracked as it fell.
Outside the courthouse at home, level stones had been laid as pavement. But who wanted a pavement two hundred feet wide? And hours-journey long? For what?
This big path had not been used for a long time. If it was a path. It went between hillocks that had been sliced into and it went across water courses– although it was pretty irregular and broken in these.
He had been excited for a while, but then he got used to it and devoted his attention mainly to keeping Windsplitter from tripping in the little gullies.
When he was a little boy, one of the families had had a wheeled cart they hauled firewood in, and he had been told that once there had been a lot of carts, even one that was pulled by a mare. Well, you could sure roll a cart on this wide turf. And roll it fast and far.
But as to the Great Village, he was coming to believe as the afternoon wore on that somebody had probably seen that god house back there and multiplied it in his imagination.
And then suddenly there it was!
But was it?
He put Windsplitter up to a trot regardless of the little gullies. In the clear air the skyline wasn't coming his way very fast. It even appeared to be receding.
He stopped. Maybe it was a trick of the eye after all. But no, the lines it made were up and down and flat on top and there was an awful lot of it.
It wasn't hills or mountains. Only building sides could be that regular.
He started up again, more sedately, remembering now to be careful. And after a while he could see that he was getting closer.
The sun was coming down and he wasn't there yet. The prospect of entering that place in the dark was definitely not cheering. Who knew what it might be full of? Ghosts?
Gods? People?
Monsters? Ah, no. Not monsters. They were just the stuff mamas frightened their kids to sleep with.
He pulled off the path where it crossed a stream and made camp. He warmed up some of his roasted pork and then cut it with one of the sharp, shiny things he had taken out of the window.
Battlefield Earth Page 4