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.
When he'd finished he was embarrassed.
The others were just as shameless. Nightingale's voice got deeper, MacAllister tried to suck his belly in, Kellie talked as if they didn't have a care in the world. And even Hutchins, their forthright captain, couldn't resist preening. They were for the moment famous, and it was affecting them.
Canyon talked to them individually. As he finished with them they drew around the fire and tried to pretend that nothing unusual had just happened. He was still on the circuit with Kellie, getting what he liked to call context.
Chiang disliked the forest at night. There was no way to maintain security. It would have required three guards to keep the possibility of a surprise attack to a minimum.
This was their eighth night out. He thought the count was right, but everything was beginning to run together and he was no longer sure. To date, no predator had tried a night assault. The probability, therefore, was that, if it were going to happen, it would have already occurred. Nevertheless, Chiang worried and fretted, as was his nature.
He could see Canyon's image seated on a log facing Kellie. He was asking his questions, and she listened attentively, sometimes nodding, sometimes growing thoughtful. "Oh, yes,"she might be saying, "we're confident we can get the lander working once we get there." Or: "No, we really haven't discussed that possibility. We don't expect it to happen that way." Although there was no logical basis for jealousy, Chiang was irritated anyhow. There was something in Canyon's manner that seemed like a clumsy attempt at seduction.
In addition, Canyon couldn't hide the fact that he really had no idea what the people on the ground were feeling. And he also revealed that his primary concern in all this was to ring up high numbers back home, to please his bosses, to move up the food chain. Taking pictures of a collision between two worlds had been precisely the right assignment for him. He could have delivered himself of a few generalities, It looks as if it's going to be an incredible smash-up, call in, say, a couple of the astrophysicists on Wendy for color commentary, and it would all have worked fine.
But he just wasn't the person to talk to people in trouble.