As Santee swept the light across that control board Dard saw an object lying on the table. He picked up his find just as the big man started up the stairs to the outer and fresher air.
What he held was four sheets of a crystalline substance, fastened together at the upper left-hand corner. Running through each sheet, as if they had been embedded when the stuff was made, were lines of shaded colors in combinations not unlike those he had seen about the city door. Instruction book? Orders? Did Those Others express their thoughts in color patterns? He thrust the find into his safest pocket, determined to compare it with the microfilm of the doorway.
The next morning they followed Santee’s plan. The pilot, handicapped by a stiff shoulder, went in the sled along with Cully who was able to take the controls. Their supplies pared to the minimum were shared between the sled and two packs for Dard and Santee.
When the sled took off, due south, it cruised just above tree-top level. It would fly at lowest speed on that same course until noon when its crew would camp, waiting for the two on foot to join them.
Dard shouldered his pack, setting it into place with a wriggle, and picked up their compass. Santee followed with pack and rifle, and they went forward at a ground-eating pace Dard had learned in the woods of Terra, as the sled vanished over the rise.
For the most part they found the going through this rolling country easy. There were no wooded stretches to form impassable barriers, and they soon struck an old road running in the right direction to provide footing good enough to allow a faster pace. Insects spun out of the tall grass to blunder past them and hoppers spied them constantly.
Shortly before noon the road made a sharp curve west toward the distant sea, and the Terrans had to strike away across fields again. They had the good luck to stumble on a farm where not only one but two of the golden apple trees bent under the weight of ripe fruit. Pushing through the mob of semidrunk birds, insects, and hoppers, including a new and larger variety of the latter, they secured fruit which was not only food but drink, filling an improvised bag for the sake of the sled riders.
Santee bit into the fragrant pulp with a sigh of pleasure.
“D’yuh know—I wonder a lot-where did all the people go? They had a bad war—sure. But there must have been some survivors. Everybody couldn’t have been killed!”
“What if they used gas, or a germ-certain kinds of infective radiation?” questioned Dard. “There are no traces of any survivors, in the city ruins, around farms.”