"Come on, then. Why are we waiting? Are you afraid of a lot of statues?" Captain Wanderman suited action to his words as he strode forward, stopping directly before the first of the standing figures. He cast his beam over it from head to foot.
Unmistakably, it was a man. Clad in clothes and undeniably human. Its features were perfectly normal, bore the flush of life. The feet and entire body were set in attitude as if in the act of taking a step. But it was motionless.
"Some statue!" breathed Opp. "I would swear it was a real man."
"It is a real man," said Barth, softly. He bent close to the face. "It has the pores and tiny hairs that can only be on a true body."
"Then he must have been alive once," murmured Weber. "What do you suppose happened to him? Is he petrified or only frozen solid?"
"Frozen, I think," said Barth. "Yet, it is very strange. His flesh is still soft and resilient; it is not natural."
"A land of frozen people!" Captain Wanderman's words struck a chilling note in all of them. Quickly they investigated the other figures. Some men, some women, some old, some young. All kinds and types; all apparently had been frozen solid in the middle of their normal activities. None showed any sign of being aware that death had struck. When the terrible freezing occurred it must have happened so swiftly, instantaneously, as to have caught all unaware.
They moved on, saying little. There was that same eerie atmosphere that one finds in a wax museum while passing about among the realistic but silent and motionless figures of apparently ordinary people. Add to that the grim knowledge that the figures they now saw had been alive, that in effect the explorers were in a monstrous, planet-wide graveyard.
They went on, coming to wide roads down which lines of marching men stood silently in attitudes startlingly like some paintings of men marching to war. Undoubtedly they were soldiers. Once or twice along the line, the Earthmen saw huge projector-like instruments mounted on wheels, being taken along with the marchers.
"Say, look at this scene!" called out Rokesmith.