It was set beneath a parabola. A line of markings was carved across the rim. It looked old.
Damn. He should have brought the camera. He'd have to go back and get one.
He activated the common channel. 'Frank?'
'Here.' Carson was eating.
'There's something out here that looks like an altar,' said Jake.
'Where?' He caught an edge in Carson's voice.
'Just south of the clearing.' He described what he had seen.
'Damn it. You're supposed to stay with the shuttle.'
'I am with the shuttle. I can see it from here.'
'Listen, Jake. We'll take a look when we get back. Okay? Meantime, you get inside the cockpit, and stay there.'
Jake signed off. 'You're welcome,' he said.
The altar was not designed for anything of human size. When he stood in front of it, the table-piece was above eye level. The workmanship was good: the stone was beveled and precisely cut.
He was enjoying himself thoroughly. He struck a heroic stance, hands on hips. He looked up at the parabola. He touched the symbols on the front of the altar.
/ wonder what it says?
He walked back into the clearing. Maybe he had actually discovered something. Directly ahead, the shuttle gleamed beneath the bright blue sky.
The grass rippled in the wind.
He felt movement atop his right shoe. Reflexively, he shook his foot, and it exploded in pure agony. He screamed and went down. Something sliced into his ribs, slashed at his face. The last thing he knew was the smell of the grass.
The wall came in from their right off the valley. It was wide enough to accommodate eight people walking side by side, so that after it had plunged through heavy shrubbery into the glade, it came to resemble a roadway. At its point of entry, it was about shoulder high to Hutch. But midway across the clearing, it was broken, and the entire left-hand side had sunk or been removed. Or never existed. It was hard to know which, but the structure dropped in a single vertical step to about the level of their knees, and slipped into the hillside.
They inspected the structure, which was concrete reinforced with iron. Hutch climbed atop the upper section, and pushed through the foliage. The forest floor fell away rapidly.
The stairway lay two-thirds of the way out. 'It goes all the way to the bottom,' she said. That was not strictly accurate: a lower flight was missing. It picked up again further down and appeared not to stop at ground level, but rather to sink into the earth. How much lay buried in the forest floor? She called for the scanner. 'There are at least eight stories in the ground,' she said thoughtfully. 'It could be a lot more.' They would need an airborne unit to get decent images.
She returned to the glade. 'Later,' Carson told her, looking at his watch. 'We'll get a better look later.'
Overhead, the swaying, sun-filled branches that blocked off the sky looked as if they had been there forever.
They passed beyond the valley, moving at a leisurely pace, and came to a dome. Janet scanned it and announced that it was a sphere, and that it was probably a storage tank. 'It was painted at one time,' she added. 'God knows what color.'
Carson looked at the sun in the trees. 'Time to start back.'
George opened a channel to call the shuttle. After a moment, he frowned at his commlink. 'I'm not getting an answer,' he said.
Carson switched on his own unit. 'Jake, answer up, please.'
They looked at one another.
'Jake?' George went to status mode. The lamp blinked yellow. 'We're not getting a signal. He's off the air.'
Hutch tried calling the shuttle directly. 'Still nothing,' she said.
'Damn it,' Carson muttered, irritated that his pilot would simply ignore his instructions. He missed his military days, when you could count on people to do what they were told.
'Okay, we'll try again in a few minutes.' The daylight had reddened.
They took a group picture in front of the dome. Then they began to retrace their steps.
'Mechanical problem,' George suggested. But they were uneasy.
Janet moved with her usual strong gait. Alone among her comrades, she was confident everything was okay at the shuttle. Her mind was too crowded with the triumph of the moment to allow any temporary uncertainty to spoil things. She was accustomed to being present at major discoveries (major discoveries were so common during this era), but she knew nevertheless that when she looked back on her career, this would be the defining moment. First-down in the city by the harbor. It was a glorious feeling.
Fifteen minutes later, they had re-entered the valley of the wall, and were headed uphill in single file. Janet had drifted to the rear. She was thinking that she would not live long enough to see this place yield all its secrets, when she noticed movement out of the corner of her eye, just beyond the beaten grass. She looked, saw nothing, and dismissed it.
Her thoughts switched back to the ruin underfoot—
Almost simultaneously, Hutch shouted Look outl and a hot, sharp needle drove into her ankle. She screamed with pain and went down. Something clung to, scratched at, her boot. She thought she glimpsed a spider and rolled over and tried to get at it. The thing was grass-colored and now it looked like a crab. Maggie ran toward her. Pulsers flared. Around her, the rest of the party were struggling. The agony filled the world.
Carson's reflexes were still good. Janet's scream had scarcely begun before he'd sighted and killed one of their attackers: it was a brachyid, a crablike creature not unlike the one they'd seen earlier in the day. But pandemonium was breaking out around him.
Janet was on the ground. Maggie bent over her, hammering at the thick grass with a rock.
Carson's left ankle exploded with pain. He crashed into a tree and went down.
Hutch dropped to a kneeling position beside him, pulser in hand.
Crabs.
He heard shouts and cries for help.
Maggie reached back and called Pulser! and Hutch slapped one into her hand. The brachyid was clamped to Janet's boot. Carson watched it rock madly back and forth in a sawing motion. Blood ran off into the grass. Maggie shoved the weapon against the shell and pulled the trigger. The thing shrieked.
'Stay out of the grass!' cried George. 'They're in the deep grass!'
A black spot appeared on the carapace, and began to smoke. Short legs thrust out from under the shell and scratched furiously against Janet's boot. Then it spasmed, shuddered, and let go. Maggie drew it out.
Hutch spotted another brachyid. It was in front of them, watching with stalked eyes. A thin, curved claw scissored rhythmically. She bathed it in the hot white light from her pulser. Legs and eyes blackened and shriveled, and it wheeled off to one side, and set the grass afire. Hutch, taking no chances, sprayed the entire area, burning trees, rocks, bushes, whatever was nearby.
It occurred to her that they might be venomous.
'More coming,' said George. 'Ahead of us.'
Hutch moved out in front, saw several of them ranged across the path. More moved in the grass to either side. 'Maybe we should go back,' she said.
'No,' said Carson. 'That might be the whole point of the maneuver.'
'Maneuver?' George said anxiously. 'You don't think they're trying to box us in?'
The brachyids charged, churning forward with a frantic sidewise motion that was simultaneously comic and revolting. Their shells reminded Hutch of old-time army helmets. Something like a scalpel flashed and quivered from an organ in the carapace situated near the mouth. Claws twitched as they approached, and the scalpels came erect.
Hutch and Maggie burned them. They hissed, crustacean legs scrabbled wildly, and they turned black and died.
Suddenly they stopped coming and the forest went quiet. They were left with the smell of smoldering meat
