Saxon glanced toward the east, recognized the graying darkness that heralded the dawn. He said, "Alpha Centauri A's rising. Maybe we can see where we are."
The light was quickening fast with dawn. Saxon climbed to the crest of a ridge, stared off into the southwest.
All at once his heart stood still. He called, "Ileth! Ileth! Come up here!"
The girl ran up the ridge, the urgency in his voice dispelling her weariness. "What is it, Jon?"
He pointed ahead. "Aren't those the hills south of the ship?"
She narrowed her eyes, studying the blue outlines in the dawn light. "Yes. But, Jon, where is the ship?"
He pointed at a blackened circle in the grass not an eighth of a kilometer distant. The circle was almost a thousand yards in diameter.
"That's where our jets burned the grass when we landed. That's where the Shooting Star was yesterday!"
In ten minutes they were tramping back and forth across the blackened circle of grass, kicking up little puffs of ashes. The mark of the jets were there, pressed deep in the soft soil. But those and the charred vegetation were the only signs that a ship had ever rested there.
Ileth flung herself dejectedly to the grass at the edge of the circle. "I'm so hungry and bone weary and thirsty and disappointed, I could cry."