Dr. Aiken cried, "But, no, Ramey! We need you here with us. Let Sheng-ti go alone—"
"I got us into this mess," gritted Ramey, "and it's up to me to get us out again. There's no use talking, Doc, I've made up my mind. The rest of you stay here and plan a campaign against Lanka. Sheng-ti and I are going to get the Bow—and Sheila!"
Thus it was that before the sultry tropic sun hung high in the heavens, two seeming native coolies shuffled down the road that stretched beside the grey and greasy Siem-Reap to the lake called Tonlé Sap. Scuffed sandals shod their feet, loose hats of woven rush shadowed their faces, and the rudest of garments, tattered and begrimed, hung from their shoulders. Only, hot and heavy next to his skin, concealed by the folds of his coolie wrapper, Ramey Winters felt the reassuring bulk of an Army automatic; sole note, in this strange, forgotten world, of a civilization left behind—a civilization not yet born.
The scenery about him was not unfamiliar. The slow years work few changes in areca and coconut. Great, writhing diptocarpus trees flung air-roots ten feet in diameter across laboring branches; the sluggish river swelled into stagnant pools aflame with hyacinth and lily; from the all-engulfing jungle whispered the furtive sounds of hotland life. Once a mild, incurious water buffalo rose, snorting, from its muddy wallow to watch their passage; once a gaunt crane rose before them, lifting awkwardly on wings that flailed the sodden air as if too weak to bear their burden.
The scenery was not unfamiliar—save in one respect. The road on which they walked. It was not the typical baked-clay road of the Cambodia Ramey Winters had known. It was a broad and well-paved highway, sturdy enough to bear even the transport of a highly mechanized era. Treading its solid surface, Ramey marveled aloud, as oft before, that such a civilization should have been lost to man's very memory in the mists of time.
"I can't understand, Sheng-ti, what can have brought this great Gaanelian culture to an end. These roads ... those mighty temples at Chitrakuta ... the city itself! Why, it is a city of millions!"
The aged bonze said quietly. "The jungle is life-in-death, my friend. It is the mother who destroys her young."
"I know, but—"
"Let Man desert his cities for a decade," said Sheng-ti sombrely, "and the jungles will reclaim her own. The hardy grass will shatter these roads, impervious to wheel and boot. The tendril will bruise the rock, the soft shoot bring ruin to walls which withstand the battering-ram. Thus ever Nature reclaims such little space as Man borrows for his brief moment."