There was silence except for the normal noises of living wild things. There were fluting sounds, which later Calhoun would be told, from crawling creatures not too much unlike the land-turtles of Earth. There were deep-bass hummings, which came from the throats of miniature creatures which might roughly be described as birds. There were chirpings which were the cries of what might be approximately described as wild pigs—except that they weren't. But the sun Maris sank low toward the nearer hill-crests, and behind them, and there came a strange, expectant hush over all the landscape. At sundown on Maris III there is a singular period when the creatures of the day are silent and those of the night are not yet active. Nothing moved. Nothing stirred. Even the improbable foliage was still.
It was into this stillness and this half-light that small and intermittent rustling sounds entered. Presently there was a faint murmur of speech. A tall, gaunt young man came out of the brushwood, supporting a pathetically feeble old man, barely able to walk. Calhoun made a gesture of warning as the girl Helen opened her lips to speak. The slowly moving pair—the young man moving exhaustedly, the older man staggering with weakness despite his help—came into the glade. The younger helped the older to sit down. He stood panting.
A woman and a man came together, assisting each other. There was barely light enough from the sun's afterglow to show their faces, emaciated and white.
A fifth feeble figure came tottering out of another opening in the brush. He was dark-bearded and broad, and he had been a powerful man. But now the plague lay heavily upon him.
They greeted each other listlessly. They had not yet discovered those of their number who had been murdered.
The gaunt young man summoned his strength and moved toward the shelter where Calhoun had covered an unseemly sight with branches.
Murgatroyd whimpered.
There came another rustling sound. But this had nothing of feebleness in it. Someone pushed branches forthrightly out of his way. He came striding confidently into the small open space. He was well-fleshed, and his color was excellent. Calhoun automatically judged him to be in superlative good health, slightly over-fleshed, and of that physical type which suffers very few psychosomatic troubles because it lives strictly and enjoyably in the present.
Calhoun stood up. He stepped out into the fading light just as the sturdy last-comer grinned at the group of plague-stricken semi-skeletons.