After some low-level circling and searching Price found the place, a fairly flat stretch of bottomland in a little valley, beside an overhanging wall of granite. Twist's estimate of the room was hardly generous, but he made it, and taxied over bumpy sod as close as he could to the cave-mouth Twist pointed out. Then he sent the others to clear away some rocks and dangling creepers, and with a final heave and roar he managed to lurch into the cave itself. He cut the motor. He had about four hours' flying time left in the tanks.
He got out of the Beechcraft and dragged stones under the wheels to chock it. Then he helped Burr and Twist rearrange the hanging vines over the entrance.
A high shrill screaming in the sky gave them less than ten seconds' warning. They ducked back under the overhanging ledge and peered motionless from under it. And Price saw close above him, skimming the rolling land like an eager hawk, an ovoid craft that was not like any jet he had ever seen, wingless, leaving no trail, but tearing with a mighty shriek of power through the sky.
CHAPTER IV
Trapped in a strange dream, Price looked down from the forested ridge into a shallow green valley. Burr pointed and said,
"There it is. The Capitol of the Missouris."
He said it with pride. He and Twist had talked of this place, in the two days since they had hidden the plane and headed north. And they had talked of it proudly. Their home, the city of their people, the focus of a shadowy government that ruled the forest-lands which once had been two great states.
Price looked at it, and he felt pity. Pity, and a wrenching regret for what the world had once been, and what it had become during the lost years.
In the valley, straddling a clear little river, lay a half-dozen streets of wooden houses and workshops and smithies. The buildings were neat enough, of massive squared timbers. But the streets were unpaved and dusty, and their only traffic was loaded wagons from the surrounding tilled lands, and pack-horse trains from the forest trails, and men, women, children in drab leather and wool. A faint sound of creaking axles drifted up through the drowsy afternoon air.