They drove through thick, loose mud for a long time, then came to the tracks that their own tires had made going the other way, and followed them back to the valley.
Throwing up fountains of mud from beneath its wheels, the jeep picked its way between the clay mounds. A blurred light flared up in the darkness and came toward them, growing larger, until they could distinguish three separate lights. But the Captain maintained speed, knowing it was a reflection. The doubler began to show signs of uneasiness; it moved, it grunted, it even shifted its weight dangerously, making the jeep tilt more to the left. The Doctor tried to calm the creature with his voice, though without much success. Glancing back, he saw that it now resembled a rounded sugarloaf on top—the doubler had pulled in its small torso and appeared to be holding its breath. It was only when the momentary ripple of heat and the disappearance of their reflection announced that they had crossed the mysterious line that the huge passenger relaxed, stopped fidgeting, and even seemed to enjoy the night ride.
The jeep was now climbing a steep slope. It pitched and reeled as its bulging tires lumbered over large rocks. The engine, straining, whined. Once or twice they began rolling backward, the wheels spinning in a spray of loose soil. The Captain turned the steering wheel sharply, and they stopped. Cautiously, he turned the jeep around, and they went back down the slope along a diagonal, into the valley.
"Where are we going?" asked the Chemist nervously. Gusts of night air carried tiny droplets of water, almost like rain.
"We'll try somewhere else," said the Captain.
They halted and looked uphill, using one of the headlights, but there was not much to see, so they tried again at random. The slope soon became as steep as it had been before, but here the ground was dry, and the jeep could proceed. Every time the Captain steered to keep to compass north, however, the jeep fell back on its rear tires, forcing him westward, which meant that they would run into the thicket. As far as he could remember, the thicket covered most of the edge of the plateau toward which they were climbing. But there was nothing to be done. The headlights struck a row of white figures swaying in the gloom—no, it was only mist. Drops of condensation formed and ran down the windshield and the metal tubing of the seat frames. The cold mist thickened, then thinned, and they had no idea where they were going. The Captain tried only to go uphill.
Suddenly the mist dispersed, and the headlights, now bright, revealed the top of the slope. The black sky above was filled with stars. Everyone began to feel better.
"How's our passenger?" asked the Captain, not turning around.
"All right. He appears to be sleeping," said the Doctor.
The slope became steeper, and the jeep's center of gravity, shifting to the rear, made it impossible to steer with the front wheels. They skidded several feet to the side. Then the Doctor suggested, "Maybe I should sit up front, between the headlights, on the bumper."
"Not yet," the Captain said. He released air from the tires, and the jeep, sinking, held the ground better.
They crossed a large loamy area, and the ragged line of scrub above them came closer and closer, like an over-hanging black brush. Going through it was out of the question, but they couldn't turn to look for a better place to enter, so they continued upward—and came to an abrupt halt about forty feet from a wall six feet high. The headlights showed yellow clay filled with threadlike roots.
The Chemist cursed.
The Captain got out, took a shovel, and dug at the clay, which he then put under the jeep's rear tires. Digging, he moved higher. The Chemist hurried after him. The Doctor could hear them working their way into the thicket, could hear the snap and crackle of dry branches. The Captain's flashlight flickered, went out, went on again in another place.
"What awful stuff!" growled the Chemist. "This is risky."
"We are hardly strangers to risk," responded the Captain. Raising his voice, he called to the Doctor, "We're going to start a little landslide. It should clear a path for us. Try to keep our passenger from getting frightened!"
"All right!" the Doctor shouted back. He turned around in his seat to face the doubler, who was curled up and still.
Then came the sound of moving clay, and a stream of clods rolled down the slope. Lumps thudded against the jeep. The landslide stopped, though bits of soil kept trickling from the wall. The Doctor checked the creature; it showed no reaction. In front of the jeep there was now a wide, funnel-shaped breach in the overhanging lip of clay. The Captain was standing in it, working energetically with his shovel.
It was past twelve by the time they took the towline, the reel, and the grappling hook from the luggage carrier, fastened one end of the line to the jeep, and pulled the other through the breach and up into the thicket, where it was anchored. The Doctor and the Chemist got out, and the Captain turned on all the wheel motors and the front winch, which drew the vehicle forward bit by bit. Further widening of the passage was required, but half an hour later the jeep was on the plateau, plowing noisily through the dry and brittle thicket. For another hour their progress was very slow; only when the vegetation came to an end were they able to pick up speed.
"Halfway!" the Chemist shouted to the Doctor after looking over the Captain's shoulder at the odometer. The Captain didn't think that they were halfway, considering the detour they had been forced to take on the slope. He was bent forward, his face close to the windshield, his eyes on the terrain. He was trying to avoid the larger boulders and ruts and take the smaller ones between the wheels. The jeep shook and lunged until the fuel can clattered, and sometimes the jeep even bounced into the air and fell, making the shock absorbers hiss. But the visibility was not bad, and so far there were no surprises. Where the headlight beams ended in a gray haze, something flashed by—a mast, then another, then another, and the men passed through the line of them. Craning his neck, the Doctor tried to see if there were columns of vibrating air at the tops of the masts, but it was too dark. The stars twinkled peacefully. Behind him, the huge creature was still. Only once did it shift slightly, as if, tired of sitting in the same position, it was making itself more comfortable, and this very human movement strangely touched the Doctor.
They were going downhill now, crossing grooves on a plateau with a lengthwise ridge. The Captain slowed when more grooves showed in the headlights, beyond a tongue-like projection of limestone; he heard a whizzing noise to the left that rose terribly to a hollow roar. A mass crossed their path, flashed in their headlights, a glittering colossus, and disappeared. The brakes squealed, and as the men pitched forward, they felt a blast of hot, bitter air on their faces. Another whizzing approached, and the Captain turned off the headlights. In the darkness, several feet ahead of them, phosphorescent gondolas flew by, one after another, enveloped by the blur of its gyrating disk. Each turned, performing the same banking maneuver, and the men began to count them: eight, nine, ten… The fifteenth seemed to be the last, so the men started moving again.
"Well, that we haven't seen before," the Doctor said.
But then came a different noise, much slower and closer to the ground, and the Captain quickly put the jeep in reverse and backed away, the tires crunching the limestone debris, and they waited. A shape passed before them in the darkness, making a deep rumble, and the stars above the trees were blotted out. The ground shook. Another phantom went by like a heavy top, and another. There was no gondola visible, only the silhouette of a thing radial, jagged, glowing red and rotating slowly in the direction opposite to its motion.
Again there was silence, although in the distance they could hear a soft hum.
"Those were huge—did you see them?!" said the Chemist.
The Captain waited a good while longer before he finally turned on the headlights and released the brakes. Going downhill, the jeep picked up speed. It would have been easier to travel along the grooves, since the ground there was more level, but the Captain preferred not to risk it—one of those blurry monsters might overtake them from behind. Steering carefully,
he went in the same direction as the disks they had encountered, eastward, though the disks might well have turned again and changed course. He said nothing, but he was uneasy.
It was after two when a shiny band flashed up ahead. The doubler, who had not moved a muscle during the passage of the disks, had been peering out and examining its surroundings for some time now. But when the jeep reached the mirrorlike strip, the huge creature suddenly started wheezing and groaning, and it worked its way to one side, as though preparing to jump out.
"Stop! Stop!" cried the Doctor. The Captain stopped three feet from the strip.
"What's wrong?"
"He wants to escape!"
"Why?"
"I don't know. Maybe because of that strip. Turn off the headlights!"
The Captain did so. The moment it was dark, the doubler sank back heavily into its seat. They crossed the strip with the lights off, and for a moment the reflection of the stars sparkled in the blackness on both sides of the jeep.
Then they were on the plain, the headlights beating against the night as the jeep sped along, its whole frame vibrating. Small stones and sand kicked up behind them, and the cold wind buffeted their faces, which made the Chemist lower his head behind the windshield. They went faster and faster, expecting the ship to come into view at any moment.
The arrangement was that a blinker would be hung from one of the fins of the ship, so they looked for a blinking light. Minutes passed and there was no light, so they turned and headed northeast, but all around them was darkness. They drove now with only their sidelights on, then the Captain turned off even those, despite the risk of hitting something. At one point they saw a flickering and went toward it as fast as possible, but soon realized that it was just a star.
"Maybe the blinker is broken," ventured the Chemist.
Nobody replied. They covered another three miles and turned again. The Doctor stood up and strained to see into the darkness. The jeep bounced, first in the front, then in the rear: they had crossed a ditch.
"Bear left," said the Doctor.
They crossed a second ditch one and a half feet deep. A faint light appeared and, rising up through it, a long, slanting shadow, the top of which was momentarily surrounded by an aureole. The light disappeared, but the jeep accelerated straight ahead, and when the light came on again, it revealed the ship's stern and three figures. The Captain turned on the headlights, and the figures ran toward them with their arms raised.
The ship was near now. They had approached it at such an angle that the stern had concealed the blinker.
"Is that you?! All of you?!" cried the Engineer. He rushed over to the jeep, but stopped short at the sight of the fourth, headless figure.
The Captain embraced the Engineer with one arm and the Physicist with the other, and stood there for a moment, as if requiring their support. The five men formed a group near one of the sidelights, while the Doctor, not joining them, spoke quietly to the doubler, which had become restless.
"We're all right," said the Chemist. "And you?"
"In one piece," the Cyberneticist replied.
The men looked at one another for quite a while in silence.
"Do we discuss what happened, or do we go to sleep?" asked the Chemist.
"You can sleep? That's great," exclaimed the Physicist. "Sleep! Good God! They were here, did you know that?"
"I thought as much," said the Captain. "Was … was there a fight?"
"No. And for you…?"
"No, we didn't have one, either. I … think the fact that they've discovered the ship may prove to be more important than anything we found."
"Did you capture that?" asked the Engineer.
"Actually … he captured us. That is, he came voluntarily. But it's a long story, and complicated, and one we don't really understand."
"It's the same with us!" said the Cyberneticist. "They showed up about an hour after you left! I thought … well, I thought it was the end."
"You must be starving," said the Engineer.
"I completely forgot about food. Doctor!" called the Captain. "Come here!"
"Are we having a meeting?" The Doctor stepped from the jeep and came over, but he kept his eyes on the doubler, who unexpectedly jumped to the ground with a surprisingly light movement and shuffled over to the crew. At the edge of the ring of light the huge creature became motionless. As they watched silently, its muscles moved and made a gap; in the diffused glow of the lights the men saw part of a head and a blue eye regarding them.
"So they were here?" asked the Doctor, who at that moment was the only one not looking at the doubler.
"Yes. Twenty-five disks, of the kind we rode, and four much larger machines, like blurred tops."
"We saw them too!" said the Chemist.
"When? Where?"
"Maybe an hour ago, on our way back. We very nearly ran into them. What did they do here?"
"Not much," replied the Engineer. "The disks appeared in a row, we don't know from which direction, because when we came up to the surface—we had been in the ship for no more than five minutes—they were already flying around, circling us. They didn't approach. We figured this was a scouting party, a reconnaissance patrol, so we set up the thrower near the ship and waited. But they just kept circling, always at the same distance, not moving away, not coming closer. That went on for about an hour and a half. Then the larger things appeared, the tops—one of them a hundred feet high! They're a lot slower. It seems the tops can travel only along the grooves that the other ones dig. The disks, anyway, made room for them in their circle, so that the larger and smaller machines alternated. While they were whirling around, one or two of them almost collided; their rims touched with an awful crash, but nothing happened, and they went on whirling."
"And what did you do?"
"We were sweating it out by the thrower. It wasn't pleasant."
"I'm sure it wasn't," the Doctor said seriously. "And then what?"
"Well, at first I thought that at any second they would attack. Then that they were only observing us. But their formation was odd, and the fact that they never stopped; we know that the disks can spin in place… Anyway, after seven o'clock I asked the Physicist to get the blinker, because we had to hang it outside for you, except that it wouldn't have been possible for you to get through that flying wall—and then it dawned on me that this was intentional, a blockade! So I thought we had better try to communicate—while we could. Still sitting behind the thrower, we began to flash a signal, two flashes, then three, then four."
"A series?" asked the Doctor, and the Engineer was unable to tell whether he was making fun of him.
"A normal arithmetic progression," he said at last.
"And what did they do?" asked the Chemist, who had been listening carefully.
"Basically, nothing…"
"What do you mean, basically?"
"They did different things the whole time, before, during, and after the flashing, but nothing that resembled an attempt to respond or establish contact."
"What did they do?"
"They spun faster, slower, approached one another, and there was movement in the gondolas."
"Do the tops—the big machines—also have gondolas?"
"Didn't you say you saw them?"
"It was dark."
"They have no gondolas. In their center there's nothing at all. An empty space. But there is a large container of some kind that moves—floats—around the circumference. Convex on the outside, concave on the inside, and it assumes various positions and has a row of horns, conical swellings, which serve no purpose that I can see. The tops also left the circle sometimes and changed places with the disks."
"How often?"
"It varied. In any case, we couldn't make out a pattern in it. Not that we didn't try. I took note of everything, looking for some sort of response from them. They performed complex maneuvers. For example, during the second hour the tops slowed down, and in front of each one a disk positioned itself, then moved
slowly toward us, though no closer than fifty feet, with the top behind it. Then they formed circles again, but now two: an inner circle with four tops and four disks, and an outer circle with the rest of the disks. I was beginning to think that I had better do something, so you could get through, when lo and behold they lined up in single file and left, in a spiral first, then straight south."
"When was this?"
"A few minutes past eleven."
"That means we probably encountered other ones," the Chemist said to the Captain.
"Not necessarily. They might have stopped on the way."
"Now tell us what happened to you," said the Physicist.
"Let's hear from the Doctor," said the Captain.
The Doctor summarized the whole expedition in a few minutes. "It's curious that everything we find here is reminiscent of things we know on Earth," he concluded, "but only partly. There are always pieces that don't fit. These vehicles of theirs, for example, showed up here like war machines. Was it reconnaissance, was it a blockade? But ultimately nothing happened, and we are left in the dark. Those wells in the clay—they were terrible, of course, but what in fact were they? Graves? We don't know. Then that settlement, or whatever it was. An incredible place, like a nightmare. And the skeletons inside the 'clubs'? Were they museums? Slaughterhouses? Chapels? Factories turning out biological specimens? Prisons? Anything is possible, even a concentration camp!
"And no one stopped us or tried to establish contact with us. That's surely the most incomprehensible thing of all. Without question, the planet's civilization is highly developed. The architecture, the construction of domes like the ones we've seen—and yet, nearby, the stone settlement, like a medieval stronghold—an astonishing mixture of levels of civilization! Their signaling system must be sophisticated, since they extinguished the lights of the stronghold less than a minute after our arrival, and we were traveling fast and saw no one along the way. They are undoubtedly intelligent, but the crowd that descended on us behaved like a panic-stricken herd of sheep. It was chaos, totally senseless, mad! And that's how it's been throughout.
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