Angle left.
No. Not around the hill. Go over it.
Then, without warning, Marcel had a mission for them: "There's something up ahead. It's not at all out of your way, and we'd like you to take a quick look."
"What is it?"
"We don't know. A structure."
Hutch begrudged every minute spent off-trail. She glanced at the others, soliciting opinions. They were willing to indulge a minute. But only a minute. Nightingale thought it was a good idea. So long as it was indeed nearby. "Okay," she said. "We'll take a peek, let you know what it is. But then we're moving on."
It was on the shore of a lake, tangled deep in old-growth trees and shrubbery. They could see only a few glints of metal, and were unsure it was a structure at all, so completely had the forest embraced it.
They cut down some bushes, and Hutch's first impression was that they'd found a storage dome. Until they uncovered a line of windows. Most were still intact. Kellie walked around to the rear. "It's got a tail," she reported..
"A tail?"
"Twin tails, in fact. It's an aircraft."
It had a flared bottom. Symbols were stenciled on one side, so faint as to be barely noticeable. There was a windscreen up front. The vehicle was about the size of a commuter airbus. But it had no wings. Ground transportation, decided Hutch, despite the tail. Unless they had antigravity.
Judging by the trees that had engulfed it, it had been there for centuries. Hutch paced it off, and they relayed visuals back to Wendy. Thirty-eight meters along its length, probably six in diameter. Crumpled severely to starboard, somewhat less on the port side.
Chiang climbed a tree, produced a lamp, and tried to look inside. "Nothing," he said. "Get me a wet cloth."
Kellie broke off a few flat-bladed leaves, soaked them cautiously at the edge of the lake, and handed them up. Chiang wiped the glass.
"You know," said Kellie, "wings or not, this thing does have an aerodynamic design. Look at it."
She was right. It had flowing lines and was tapered front and rear.
"What's happening?" asked Canyon. They knew he habitually listened in on the allcom, and on conversations between the ground party and the orbiting ships.
Hutch brought him up to date. "I'll give you the rest when we know what it is," she said. "If it's anything."
Chiang had his lamp pressed against the glass. "There are rows of seats inside. Little ones. They look a bit thrown about."
"Little seats?" asked MacAllister. "Same gauge as back at the tower?"
"Yes. Looks like."
"Now that's really odd."
"Why?" asked Hutch.
"Look at the door." It was hard to see behind the tangle of growth, but it was there. Hutch saw what was odd: the door was about the right size for her.
It was almost at ground level, and it even had a handle, but when MacAllister tried to open it the handle broke off. So they cut a hole through it.
The interior was dark. Hutch turned on her lamp and looked at roughly thirty rows of the small seats divided by a center aisle, five on either side. Some had been torn up and lay scattered around the cabin. She saw no sign of organic remains.
The floor creaked. It was covered by a black fabric that was still reasonably intact.
The bulkheads were slightly curved. They were water-stained and, toward the front, broken open. There were scorch marks.
The cockpit supported two seats. But unlike those in the body of the craft, they were full-size, large enough to accommodate her. One was broken, twisted off its mount. There was also some damage to the frame that supported the windscreen. She looked down at what had once been an instrument panel.
"Crashed and abandoned," said Kellie, behind her.
"I think so."
"What's with the big seats?" asked MacAllister. "Who sat in them?"
Nightingale swept his light from front to rear. "It's pretty clear we have two separate species here," he said.
"Hawks and crickets?" suggested Hutch. "They're both real?"
"Is that possible? On the same world?"
"We have more than one intelligent species on our world. What I wouldn't expect to see is two technological species. But who knows?"
They examined a lower compartment that must have been used for cargo, but it was empty. And the power plant. It had employed liquid fuel to power a jet thrust. Air intakes. Plastic skirts around the base. Hutch got Beekman back on the circuit. "Are we sure," she asked, "the locals never went high-tech?"
"That's what the Academy says."
"Okay. When you talk to the Academy again, you can tell them there's a hovercraft down here."
"Let's go," said MacAllister. "No more time to dawdle."
Hutch stripped off a piece of a seat and put it into a sample bag.
They removed a few gauges from the instrument panel and bagged those as well. None had legible symbols, but it should be possible eventually to enhance them.
Chiang took Hutch aside. "There's something else for you to look at. Over here." In the woods.
He'd found a black stone wall.
It was about six meters long. And engraved. It had several rows of symbols, and a likeness of the hovercraft.
Hutch could assume that the rock had once been polished, that its edges had been sharp, that the inscription had been crisp and clear. But the weather had worn it down. And the inscription ran into the ground.
She checked the time.
"It'll only take a minute," said Chiang.
She nodded, and they dug it out while MacAllister urged them to move on. Two deeply etched parallel lines of symbols were engraved across the top, over the likeness of the wrecked vehicle. But this one was lean and powerful, undamaged, and she knew that the sculptor intended that it be perceived as hurtling through the sunlight.
Below the image of the hovercraft, two groups of characters, side by side, had been carved using block bold symbols. And beneath those two, another series, much more numerous, smaller, ten lines deep. Four across except the last line, which had only three. These might in fact have been using a different alphabet altogether. It was impossible to know because they were not block letters. Rather they had a delicate, complex character.
"What do you think?" Hutch asked. "What's it say?"
" 'Ajax Hovercraft, " said MacAllister, who was fidgeting off to one side. "The two groups near the top constitute regional distribution centers, and these"-the smaller groups-"are local offices."
"Anybody else want to try?" asked Kellie.
"We really should get moving," said MacAllister.
Nightingale joined them. "Its proximity to the wreck," he said, "suggests it's a memorial." He stared thoughtfully at it. "These"-the lines at the top-"are the names of the pilots. And the others are those of the passengers."
"What about the top line?" asked Kellie.
"If it's a memorial," said MacAllister, "then it's a salutary phrase, Stranger, Tell the Spartans, something on that order."
"So what was going on here?" asked Chiang.
"Pretty obviously a traffic accident," said Nightingale. "A wreck."
"Of course. But where were they going?"
"Maybe," said MacAllister, "they were migrant workers of some sort. Farmhands. Indentured labor."
"Slaves?" suggested Chiang.
Nightingale nodded. "Maybe."
"Do you put the names of slaves on a memorial?" Hutch shook her head. "That doesn't sound right."
"In human history," said MacAllister, "people sometimes had great affection for their slaves." He shrugged. "Who knows what an alien culture might be up to?"
They pressed forward late into the evening. When at last they'd made camp for the night, they did more interviews with Canyon. Chiang enjoyed the opportunity to perform on an international stage, to look heroic, to say the things that were expected of him. We'll get home. Smile into the scanner. There are a lot of people rooting for us. But every time he glanced over at Kellie he thought he detected a trace of mockery in her smile.