«Yes, but how?»
Lee said, «I can take you down to the cave, if we can put the whole clan to sleep for a few hours. Maybe gas.»
«That could work,» Rasmussen agreed.
«A soporific gas?» Pascual’s soft tenor rang incredulously in Lee’s ears. «But we haven’t the faintest idea of how it might affect them.»
«It’s the only way,» Lee said. «You can’t dig your way into the cave. Even if you could, they would hear it, and you’d be discovered.»
«But gas … it could kill them all.»
«They’re all dead right now,» Lee snapped. «Those artifacts are the only possible clue to their early history.»
Rasmussen decided. «We’ll do it.»
Lee slept less than ever the next few nights, and when he did he dreamed, but no longer about the buildings on Titan. Now he dreamed of the ships of an ancient Earth, huge round ships that spat fire on the cities and people of Makta. He dreamed of the Pup exploding and showering the planet with fire, blowing off the atmosphere, boiling the oceans, turning mountains into glass slag, killing every living thing on the surface of the world, leaving the planet bathed in a steam cloud, its ground ruptured with angry new volcanoes.
It was a rainy dark night when you could hardly see ten meters beyond the cave’s mouth that they came. Lee heard their voices in his head as they drove the skimmer up onto the beach and clambered down from it and headed for the caves. Inside the caves, the people were asleep, sprawled innocently on the damp musty ground.
Out of the rain a huge, bulky metal shape materialized, walking with exaggerated caution.
«Hello, Sid,» Jerry Grote’s voice said in his head, and the white metal shape raised a hand in greeting.
The Others, Lee thought as he watched four more powersuited figures appear in the dark rain.
He stepped out of the cave, the rain a cold shock to his bare skin. «Bring the stuff?»
Grote hitched a gauntleted thumb at one of the others. «Pascual’s got it. He’s insisting on administering the gas himself.»
«Okay, but let’s get it done quickly, before somebody wakes up and spots you. Who else is with you?»
«Chien, Tanaka and Stek. Tanaka can help Carlos with the anesthetic. Chien and Stek can look over the artifacts.»
Lee nodded agreement.
Pascual and Tanaka spent more than an hour seeping the mildest soporific they knew of through the sleeping cave. Lee fidgeted outside on the beach, in the rain, waiting for them to finish. When Tanaka finally told them it was safe to go through, he hurried past the sprawled bodies, scarcely seeing Pascual, still inside his cumbersome suit, patiently recording medical analyses of each individual.
Even with the suit lamps to light the corridors, it was hard to retrace his steps down to the lowest level of the ancient shelter. But when he got to the storeroom, Lee heard Stek break into a long string of Polish exultation at the sight of the artifacts.
The three suited figures holographed, x-rayed, took radiation counts, measured, weighed, every piece on the ancient shelves. They touched nothing directly, but lifted each piece with loving tenderness in a portable magnetic grapple.
«This one,» Stek told Lee, holding a hand-size, oddly angular instrument in mid-air with the grapple, «we must take with us.»
«Why?»
«Look at it,» the physicist said. «If it’s not an astronautical sextant or something close to it, I’ll eat Charnovsky’s rocks for a month.»
The instrument didn’t look impressive to Lee. It had a lens at one end, a few dials at the other. Most of it was just an angular metal box, with strange printing on it.
«You want to know where these people originally came from?» Stek asked. «If they came from somewhere other than this planet, the information could be inside this instrument.»
Lee snapped his gaze from the instrument to Stek’s helmeted face.
«If it is a sextant, it must have a reference frame built into it. A tape, perhaps, that lists the stars that these people wanted to go to.»
«Okay,» Lee said. «Take it.»
By the time they got back up to the main sleeping cave and out to the beach again, it was full daylight.
«We’ll have to keep them sleeping until almost dawn tomorrow,» Lee told Pascual. «Otherwise they might suspect that something unusual happened.»
The doctor’s face looked concerned but not worried. «We can do that without harming them, I think. But Sid, they’ll be very hungry when they awake.»
Lee turned to Grote. «How about taking the skimmer out and stunning a couple of big fish and towing them back here to the shallows?»
Grinning, Grote replied, «Hardly fair sport with the equipment I’ve got.» He turned and headed for the car.
«Wait,» Stek called to him. «Give me a chance to get this safely packed in a magnetic casing.» And the physicist took the instrument off toward the skimmer.
«Sid,» Pascual said gently, «I want you to come back with us. You need a thorough medical check.»
«Medical?» Lee flashed. «Or are you fronting for Lehman?»
Pascual’s eyes widened with surprise. «If you had a mirror, you would see why I want to check you. You’re breaking out in skin cancers.»
Instinctively, Lee looked at his hands and forearms. There were a few tiny blisters on them. And more on his belly and legs.
«It’s from overexposure to the ultraviolet. Hatfield’s skin-darkening didn’t fully protect you.»
«Is it serious?»
«I can’t tell without a full examination.»
Just like a doctor. «I can’t leave now,» Lee said. «I’ve got to be here when they wake up and make sure that they don’t suspect they’ve been visited by the … by us.»
«And if they do suspect?»
Lee shrugged. «That’s something we ought to know, even if we can’t do anything about it.»
«Won’t it be dangerous for you?»
«Maybe.»
Pascual shook his head. «You mustn’t stay out in the open any longer. I won’t be responsible for it.»
«Fine. Do you want me to sign a release form?»
Grote brought the skimmer back around sundown, with two good-size fish aboard. The others got aboard around midnight, and with a few final radioed words of parting, they drove off the beach and out to sea.
At dawn the people woke up. They looked and acted completely normally, as far as Lee could tell. It was one of the children who noticed the still sluggish fish that Grote had left in a shallow pool just outside the line of breakers. Every man in the clan splashed out, spear in hand, to get them. They feasted happily that day.
The dream was confusing. Somehow the towers on Titan and the exploding star got mixed together. Lee saw himself driving a bone spear into the sleeping form of one of the natives. The man turned on the ground, with the spear run through his body, and smiled bloodily at him. It was Ardraka.
«Sid!»
He snapped awake. It was dark, and the people were sleeping, full-bellied. He was slouched near one of the entryways to the main sleeping cave, at the mouth of a tunnel leading to the openings in the cliff wall.
«Sid, can you hear me?»
«Yes,» he whispered so low that he could only feel the vibration in his throat.
«I’m up the beach about three kilometers from the relay unit. You’ve got to come back to the ship. Stek thinks he’s figured out the instrument.»
Wordlessly, silently, Lee got up and padded through the tunnel and out onto the beach. The night was clear and bright. Dawn would be coming in another hour, he judged. The sea was calm, the wind a gentle crooning as it swept down from the cliffs.
«Sid, did you hear what I said? Stek thinks he knows what the instrument is for. It’s part of a pointing system for a communications setup.»
«I’m on my way.» He still whispered and turned to see if anyone was following him.