The alien ship's presence was, of course, the key.
Obviously, that ship had brought the biggest part of so-called Minoan culture with it. That was why Cretan civilization had flowered so incredibly fast. Perhaps even the Minoans themselves had arrived on Earth aboard the craft, as dry-land slaves in the service of masters better adapted to a liquid environment.
Why had the aliens come? That was a question harder to answer. But whether because of external foes or internal problems, the creatures had been looking for a new world to colonize. And since the Mediterranean teemed with octopi, Cephalopoda, no doubt Crete had offered advantages. Maybe there'd been experiments—attempts to cross-breed the superior, telepathic aliens with the less-highly-developed native octopi. Or perhaps the intruders had merely sought to adapt themselves to life in water, rather than the smelly stuff in the Labyrinth tank.
In any case, they'd held Crete for a long, long time—the way they'd buried their ship in the heart of Mount Lasithi proved that.
Minos, in turn, had played the role of a Quisling, power-hungry intermediary between his own race and the aliens. To hold his kingship, he'd had Daedalus build the Labyrinth, to serve as quarters for the alien overseer who, in the guise of oracle, held final power in Knossos. And when a human host for this octopodal commandant had been demanded—a man to serve as transportation for the creature—Minos had blackened his wife's name and dedicated his imbecile son to the duty.
Or perhaps he hadn't. Perhaps he'd done the things he'd done reluctantly, and only in order to save his people from alien wrath such as had struck tonight.
In any case, the death of the alien in the Labyrinth had served as trigger for the disaster. One of their number slain, the extraterrestrials no doubt had concluded Earth unsafe, and so had fled back to the outer space from which they'd come.
Which meant that the alien's slayer was also responsible for Knossos' fall ... the death that had struck down all the hundreds trapped in the now-blighted palace area tonight.
Burke shivered.
Only there was another side to that, too.