"It happened."
"But—"
"There's Neff," Thompson spoke. Far down the avenue below them, three figures had appeared, Neff, Fortune, and Ross. Neff tall and slender, Fortune round like a ball, and Ross built square like a block of concrete. Neff saw them on top of the building and beckoned to them. There was urgency in the gesture.
"They've found something," Thompson said. With Kurkil following him he went hastily out of the building.
"What is it?"
"Come and see," Neff answered. Neff's face was gray. Fortune and Ross were silent.
The building in front of which they were standing had been a house once. The architecture resembled nothing they had ever seen on Earth but the purpose of the structure was obvious. Here somebody had lived. Thompson tried to imagine people living here, the husband coming home in the evening to the dinner prepared by the wife, kids running to meet him. His imagination failed.
"Back here," Neff said.
They went around what had been a house into what had been a garden of some kind, a quiet nook where a family might sprawl in peace. "There," Neff said pointing.
The three skeletons were huddled together in an alcove in front of what had once been a shrine. They lay facing the shrine as if they had died praying. Above them in a niche in a wall was—