'Want to go down and take a closer look?' asked Jake, their pilot.
'No,' Carson said. Hutch could see that he wanted to do precisely that, but Truscott had given them thirty- six hours. 'Mark the place so we can find it again.'
The prairie rolled on. They listened to the rush of air against the shuttle, watched the golden grass ripple in the wind.
'Something ahead,' said Maggie.
It was little more than a twisted pile of corroded metal. Carson thought it might once have been a vehicle, or a machine. Impossible to tell from the air.
They left the river and flew over a patch of desert, passing over walls, and occasional storage tanks sinking into the dunes like abandoned ships.
Prairie came again, the land rose and narrowed, and ocean closed in on both sides. In this area, rock walls were everywhere, like pieces of an enormous jigsaw puzzle.
They picked up another river, and followed it south into forest. Mountains framed the land, and the river disappeared occasionally underground, surfacing again to roll through picturesque valleys.
Carson had a map on his display. 'Seems to me,' he said, 'that the towns are located in the wrong places.'
'What do you mean?' asked Hutch.
'Look at this one.' He tapped the screen. A set of ruins were well out on the plain, several kilometers from the ocean, and fifteen from a river junction. 'It should be here, at the confluence.'
'Probably was, at one time,' said Maggie. 'But rivers move. In fact, if we can figure out when the city was on the confluence, we might get a date for all this.'
'They shared the human taste for living by water,' said Hutch.
Carson nodded. 'Or they relied heavily on water transportation.' He shook his head. 'Not very rational, for a civilization that had anti-gravity thousands of years ago. What happened? Did they have it, and then lose it?'
'Why don't we go down and look?' suggested Janet.
Ahead, the river drained into a bay. 'Up there,' Carson said. 'Looks like a city. And a natural harbor. We'll land there.'
The forest took on a jumbled, confused appearance. Mounds and towers and walls broke through the foliage. It was possible, with a little imagination, to make out the shape of streets and thoroughfares.
Was the entire continent like this? One vast wreck?
Jake touched his earphones. 'Ops says the Ashley Tee has arrived. Rendezvous in about forty hours.'
'Marvelous!' said Maggie. Maybe they would be able to stay now, and inspect this world of the Monument- Makers at their leisure.
Jake congratulated them, but Hutch saw that he was not pleased. When she asked, he said that he did not want to get pulled out now.
The forest overflowed a wide, sun-dappled harbor. Great broad-leafed trees crowded the shoreline. The shuttle sailed out over the open sea, and curved back. A narrow, grassy island divided the harbor mouth into twin channels. Both were partially blocked by a collapsed bridge.
Hutch saw truncated squares in the water, massive concrete foundations (she thought), and piles of rubble.
'There used to be big buildings down there,' said Janet. 'Maybe something on the order of skyscrapers.'
'There are more in the woods,' said George.
'Anybody got a suggestion,' asked Carson, 'where we should set down?'
'Don't get too close to the shoreline,' advised Hutch. 'If there are predators, that's where they're most likely to be.'
They picked out a clearing about a half-kilometer from the harbor. Jake took them down and they landed among wet leaves and bright green thickets.
Hutch heard the cockpit hatch open. 'Hold it a minute,' said Carson. 'We need to talk a little before we go out there.' Good, she thought. For all their experience on the Quraqua mission, these were not people who necessarily understood the potential for danger on a new world. The old fear of contamination by extraterrestrial disease had been discarded: microorganisms tended not to attack creatures evolved from alien biosystems. But that didn't mean they might not attract local predators. Hutch had gotten an object lesson on that subject.
Carson assumed his best military tone. 'We don't really know anything about this place, so we'll stay together. Everybody take a pulser. But please make sure you've got a clear field of fire if you feel you have to use it.'
They would not need energy shields here; but they would wear heavy clothing and thick boots to afford some protection against bristles, poison plants, stinging insects, and whatever other surprises the forest might have for them. 'Which way do we go?' asked Maggie, zipping her jacket.
Carson looked around. 'There are heavy ruins to the north. Let's try that way first.' He turned to Jake. 'We'll be back before sundown.'
'Okay,' said the pilot.
'Stay inside, okay? Let's play it safe.'
'Sure,' he said. 'I'm not interested in going anywhere.'
The air was cool and sweet and smelled of mint. They gathered at the foot of the ladder and looked around in silent appreciation. Bushes swayed in a light breeze off the sea; insects burbled and birds fluttered overhead. To Hutch, it felt like the lost Pennsylvania, the one you read about in old books.
The grass was high. It came almost to her knees. They got out, checked their weapons, and picked out an opening in the trees. Carson moved into the lead, and George drifted to the rear. They crossed the clearing and plunged into the woods.
They immediately faced an uphill climb. The vegetation was thick. They picked their way between trees and spiked bushes, and occasionally used the pulsers to clear obstacles.
They topped a ridge and paused. Tall shrubbery blocked their view. Janet was trying to look back the way they'd come. 'I think it's a mound,' she said. 'There's something buried here.' She tried using her scanner, but she was too close, literally on top of the hill, to make out anything. «Something» she said again. 'Part of a structure. It goes deep.'
George produced a lightpad, and started a map.
They worked their way down the other side, past an array of thick walls. They ranged in height up to treetop level, and were often broken, or leveled. 'This is not high-tech stuff,' said George. 'They've used some plastics, and some stuff I don't recognize, but most of this is just concrete and steel. That fits with the space station, but not with the telescope.'
'It doesn't follow,' said Janet. 'The more advanced stuff should be on the surface. A low-tech city should be long-buried.'
Animals chittered and leaped through the foliage. Insects sang, and green light filtered through the overhead canopy. The trees were predominantly gnarled hardwoods, with branches concentrated at the top. Lower trunks were bare. They were quite tall, topping out at about five stories. The effect was to create a vast leafy cathedral.
They forded a brook, walked beside a buckled stone wall, and started up another mound. The area was thick with flowering bushes. 'Thorns,' warned Maggie. 'The same defenses evolve everywhere.'
The similarity of life forms on various worlds had been one of the great discoveries that followed the development of FTL. There were exotic creatures, to be sure; but it was now clear, if there had ever been much doubt, that nature takes the simplest way. The wing, the thorn, and the fin could be found wherever there were living creatures.
They explored without real purpose or direction, following whims. They poked into a concrete cylinder that might once have been a storage bin or an elevator shaft. And paused before a complex of plastic beams, too light to have supported anything. 'Sculpture,' suggested Maggie.
Carson asked Janet whether she would be able to date the city.
'If we still had Wink,' she said.
'Okay. Good.' He was thinking that they could send the Ashley Tee to find the ship, and recover what she
