"That's one thing we expected to discover in their ruined city, Pike." The girl's voice took on the patient tone of the expert instructing the amateur. "War with a neighboring tribe, in which they were defeated, might have been the reason. Change in climate might have been a factor. Perhaps there were other reasons too, famine, pestilence. They started up, then went back. This has happened so often that it seems to me that the seeds of decay always sprout at the same time as the seeds of greatness."
"I wish I were an archeologist and a philosopher, and understood all those things," McLean said, longingly.
"You are a man, which is more important."
"Do you mean male?"
"No. Man. M-a-n." She spelled the word for him. "Man. The highest level reached by the life force on Earth, to date. Or in the Solar System, as we know it."
"Oh, you mean the top of the heap," McLean said. "Sure, we know that. But the little foxes hiding in their nice little holes don't know it. They don't think that being a man is so much." A thin sparkle of light flickered through the air above his head as he spoke. He had the impression that a crackling sound went with the death beam, like the rustle of static in space. "See! That's what they think of us! Targets!"
The girl dodged downward. McLean advised her not to be a sissie and turned his attention to the sight of the Rangeley. Nothing was in sight. This did not surprise him. He had not expected to see anything except sand. "I betcha I'm looking right at two or three of those devils and not seeing them," he grumbled.
"They are adept at protective coloration," the girl said. "Let me look."
She applied her eye to the scope of the Rangeley, moving it on its mounting so that it swept across the sand. "There's one!" she said, sudden excitement in her voice.