'Who gave it to you. I see. It's the Roadmap.'
'Maybe.'
'I doubt it,' Roland said, picking it up and holding it close to peer at its featureless surface.
'Why?' John asked.
'Well…'
'That's the blackest… black I've ever seen,' Liam said, after he'd sidled past Sean to get nearer to the table. 'Even the cylinders…'
'Well,' I said, 'you always see those from a distance. Up close like this it's a little disconcerting.'
'It must be a Roadbuilder artifact,' Sean stated. 'They seem to've preferred the color.'
'If it isn't the Roadmap,' John said, 'what could it possibly be?'
'Funny,' Roland said, his right eyeball practically touching the cube, 'you can't actually see the surface. It's… I mean, you can't really?'
'But if it isn't the Roadmap,' John went an, more or less to himself, 'then…' The notion plunged him into deep thought.
Darla got up and came to the table. She put her hand on my shoulder.
Roland set the Cube dawn, and we all looked at it for a longish moment.
'What the hell is that thing?' I said, finally.
Sean said, 'Hmph.'
After another thoughtful interlude, John said, 'We keep straying from the main line of discussion.'
'You're right,' Susan said. 'What are we going to do?'
'I have a suggestion,' Sam broke in over the cabin speakers.
'Shoot,' I Said.
'Send out Carl to scout this world, see if there's anybody around. Then decide what you want to do.'
'Have you picked up anything on the air?'
'Nope, but that doesn't necessarily mean the place is deserted. Granted, it's not promising, but just to be sure, someone should have a look around first.'
'Have you been scanning with the drone?'
'Yeah, but nothing's showed up.'
'I guess it wouldn't hurt to drive around. We have time.'
'Sure, why not? As you said, we should take time to think things through for once. It'd be a nice change of pace. No use going off half-cocked if we can avoid?' He broke off, then said, 'I spoke too soon.'
'Someone shot the portal?'
'No, somebody's walking across the desert toward us. Looks human.'
There was no proverbial sigh of relief.
'Humans here, too,' John muttered. 'We're everywhere.'
'How many?' I asked.
'Just one. Let me train the exciter on him, just to be sure.'
'Doesn't he look friendly?'
'He's carrying something. Can't tell what.'
'Jake? Come in.' Carl's voice came from the cab speakers.
'Patch me through, Sam.'
'You're on.'
'Yeah, Carl?'
'We got company.'
'We know. Sam spotted him. Are you and Lori locked inside the car?'
'You bet.'
'Does he have anything that looks like a weapon?'
'He's too far away to yell. He's wearing a pressure suit, though.'
'Pressure suit?'
'Same kind of protective suit. Armor, maybe? Looks like?Hey! He just took off. '
From out in the desert came the hollow whine-and-wail of jet exhaust. We all got up and filed out to the cab.
'He's got same kind of rocket backpack. Jesus Christ, just lake Commander Cody.'
'Commander who?' I said when I got my headset on. 'Where the hell is he?' I looked out over the desert to the right. A white dot floated against the hazy sky just above a butte about half a kilometer away. A cloud of dust was settling over the area where he had apparently launched himself.
'You see him?'
'Yeah. What did he do before he took off?'
'Nothing much. Looked like he was searching for something out there. Had some kind of weird equipment. Then he spotted us and blasted off. Took a good look at us first.'
The white speck disappeared behind the butte.
'What do we do?' John asked.
'We wait,' I said.
We waited, ten minutes. Then he returned, this time piloting a strange variant of a landjumper. He came across the desert at reckless speed, bouncing over rocks and rises, staying around five or ten meters off the ground. From the sound the craft made, I judged the engines to be of a rather primitive jet turbine design. The craft was big and bulky, but had room for at most two passengers and the driver.
'Have him covered, Sam?'
'I've got everything trained on him but missiles, of which we ain't got any.'
He zoomed in, stopped, and hovered over a hollow between dunes, then set the craft gently down.
Instead of passengers, he was hauling a load of stuff?boxes, sacks, miscellaneous parcels. He picked up a sack and another thing that looked like an animal skin, and came toward us.
It was plain now that our visitor wasn't human. He… it was much too thin and the arms had two elbows. Generally humanoid, but the proportions were all wrong. It wore a white reflective suit with what looked like a backpack respirator. The helmet was covered with the same sort of cloth as the suit. We couldn't see a face behind the darkly tinted viewscreen. It stopped and looked the rig over, checked out the Chevy, then looked at us again. Apparently the rig seemed a bit intimidating. It went over to Carl, stooping to peer into the driver's side window. The creature was man-high, which had led us to mistake it for a human being at a distance.
Surprisingly, it greeted Carl with a raised right hand. I couldn't see if Carl returned the gesture. The creature then reached into one of the sacks and pulled out what looked like a folded piece of paper, which he unfolded and presented to Carl, pointing out various markings and lines.
'Hey, Carl.'
'Yeah.'
'What's he trying to sell you?'
'I think it's a roadmap.'
Chapter 11
The beings who had colonized this maze were known by the general name of Nogon, but we came to know only a very special and unrepresentative group of them.
They lived in caves and called themselves the Ahgirr, a word which, in their liquid, gangly tongue, was roughly equivalent to The Keepers. Both an ethnic group and a quasi-religious sect, the Ahgirr preferred adhering to ancient ways and customs. Most of their race, both here and on their home planet, lived in huge high-tech arcologies, called faln, named after a giant plant that looks like a mushroom but isn't a fungus. The Ahgirr, however, loved their cave-communities, believing that creatures spawned from the earth should keep close to their origins. For all that, they didn't reject science and technology. No Luddites they, the Ahgirr, in their long history, had produced many of their race's most brilliant scientists. Hokar, the individual who picked us up and brought us in,
