Chapter VII

Jon Saxon was the first man out of the helicopter. He stood stock-still while the others climbed out, his scalp tingling, his eyes sweeping the magnificent panorama. The faces of buildings like the sheer fracture of tinted ice walled in the square, with here and there a canyon street slicing off from it.

Ileth scrambled out last, asked, "Jon, what's wrong? You're pale as a ghost."

"I don't know." The tingling in his hair roots was becoming less pronounced as his extra-human sixth sense adjusted. He was still aware of the aliens but not uncomfortably so.

"You--you don't feel anything?"

He started. "How did you know I could feel things?"

"I didn't!" Ileth's hazel-green eyes were enormous. "Good Lord, Jon, I only thought you could sense their thoughts, maybe, if anything was around. I didn't.... Can you feel things? You can, can't you? I should have guessed it."

Saxon's expression had grown grimmer with each word. When Ileth asked, "What are you?" in a hushed voice, he snapped,

"Homo Superior!"

"Homo Superior?" She looked startled, then raised her eyebrows. "You don't fancy yourself much, do you?"

They had drawn gradually away from the others. He looked back. Basil, the geographer, and his helper had set up their instruments. They were taking readings, making swift notations. They had the three-dimensional camera recording impressions, and the automatic mapper was beginning to scratch a few tentative lines on its plastic rolls.

"I think we ought to stick together," Saxon volunteered. "I know it'll be impossible to keep the geographers by us, but the rest had better hang together."

Ileth shivered and asked, "Then there is something here?"

The silence was absolute. Not a breath of air stirred anywhere. Saxon hesitated, said at last, "Yes, I think so."

"What?"

"I don't know."

Clo-Javel, approached them, straightening her short kilt-like skirts. The archaeologist's costume was brief and practical, but of more importance to Clo-Javel's way of thinking, the red skirt disclosed a goodly length of her really remarkable legs. Clo-Javel was even more proud of her legs than of her reconstruction of the New York skyscrapers. She said, "Did you ever see such buildings? What makes them look so weird?"

Saxon wrinkled his brow, his eyes returning to the glittering facade of cliff-like structures as they waited for the rest of their party to come up.

"I think," he said hesitantly, "it's because, it's because everything looks so new. As if the city was only finished yesterday and had never been used."

"That's it," Ileth burst out.

Mercedes joined them. She too, was wearing kilts, but hers were longer than Clo-Javel's and gray and her jacket was a commodious affair with many pockets. "What's that?" she asked catching the tail end of the conversation.

"The city looks as if it has never been lived in," Ileth explained.

Mercedes lit a cigarette, said, "Nonsense, whoever heard of building a city and then not using it."

"No." Clo-Javel agreed with the gray-haired Mercedes. "It's not that altogether. Possibly it's built of some material impervious to decay. Saxon's a physicist." She gave him a brilliant smile. "He would know more about that than I do."

Clo-Javel pursed red lips. "It--it looks familiar."

There was a silence, then Mercedes said, "So it does. Though I can't put my finger on it. But that shouldn't be so strange. The creatures who built it might have been very similar to us. If I could lay my hands on some of their bones...." She laughed good humoredly. "I could tell you in a minute what they were like."

"Were?" Saxon thought, but he didn't express it aloud. He was conscious all the time of the presence of the aliens. It was like being in the midst of a crowded city street.

The semantics expert, the psycho-historian, and the ethnologist joined them in a body. They headed for the nearest building, a towering windowless structure of yellow crystal.

Saxon glanced back uneasily.

The helicopter stood silent and deserted in the center of the square. The geographer and his helper were disappearing down one of the canyon-like streets with their equipment.

"Look!" commanded Ileth pointing toward the face of the yellow structure. "Letters of some sort! There on the building. Maybe it's a sign."

They quickened their pace until they could describe the letters clearly.

Ileth gasped, "Oh!" and stopped uncertainly.

The rest of them came to a confused halt beside her, staring up at the sign in utter bewilderment. Saxon felt a chill creep up his spine. The sign read:

TIMES SQUARE

* * * * *

For as long as it takes to draw a startled breath there was silence; then they all began to babble at once. Clo-Javel made herself heard suddenly above the others. "I recognize it!" she cried in her ringing husky voice.

"What?"

"It's an exact reproduction of New York II! I knew the city looked familiar! I knew it!"

"New York II?" Saxon echoed. He was not strong in history and had only a faint recollection of a city by that name having once occupied the great Manhattan waste lands.

"Yes," Clo-Javel repeated. "It was the world capitol before Adirondaka was built. I had to study it when I was doing the reconstruction of New York I. There's a scale model of it in the Institute's museum. Isn't that right, Rufus?"

The psycho-historian nodded in a bemused fashion.

"Yes," he agreed. "New York II was built over the ruins of New York I which had been destroyed by the first atomic war. The second atomic war completely annihilated New York II as well as all the other big cities on Earth. Cities weren't built after that for almost five hundred years. Not until the Empire, in fact." He paused uncertainly. "I don't understand this."

Ileth asked, "You mean that this city is an exact reproduction of New York II, Clo?"

The woman nodded, her black eyes curiously frightened. "This is the amusement center. The yellow building housed the Tri-World Theatre."

"But I don't understand...." Ileth gazed helplessly at Saxon. "What is a reproduction of New York II doing here on a planet in the Alpha Centaurian system? We're over four light years from Sol. No one's ever been here before."

Saxon was conscious of bewilderment and fear muddling the girl's thoughts. His own mind couldn't quite grasp the fact that here was an exact replica of a Terran city. It was inexplicable. It didn't make sense. And, more than that, it was impossible!

He could read the same thoughts struggling against the fact in the minds of the others. He said, "Let's see what the buildings are like inside."

"Yes," agreed Ileth. She had edged close to Saxon. "Maybe we can find the answer inside."

They started for the impressive entrance of the Tri-World Theatre, halted again in near-panic as the doors swung wide.

Ileth gasped, clutched at Saxon's arm, hanging onto it in desperation.

Before any of them could say anything, a voice blared forth. "... a thousand Ganymedian natives in the primitive ritualistic orgy of that Weird little satellite. Hamura in the mating dance of the Ganymedians. Seats: three hundred and seventy-five dollars."

Clo-Javel's voice had lost its rich huskiness. It was a frightened quaver when she said, "It's a working model. Automatic, don't you see?" She giggled nervously, and paused.

"But the voice?" protested Ileth.

"Advertising," explained the archaeologist. "It's a mechanical voice, like the doors."

"Well, I'm not sure how much a dollar was," said Mercedes, "but three hundred and seventy-five for a seat seems rather exorbitant."

Rufus, the psycho-historian, was pale as a corpse. He swallowed, managed to splutter, "Inflation that followed the first atomic war. Inflation...." His voice trailed off as he stared beyond the gaping doors into the foyer of the empty theatre.

"Well, I'm not going in that place!" said the ethnologist suddenly. He was a goat-bearded little dandy. It was his first speech in some time.

Rufus, the psycho-historian, said, "I don't think I care to either."

"Nonsense!" exploded Mercedes. "There isn't anything in there. You can see for yourself. I'm going in."

"I think we should explore the city a bit further," Rufus protested. He glanced uneasily toward the helicopter. Basil and his helper were nowhere in sight.

Mercedes said, "Humph," gave her plump shoulders a shake, disappeared with short sturdy steps through the door.

"She shouldn't go in there alone," said Saxon starting after her. Ileth clung to his arm. "I'm coming along." They left the others standing huddled outside, watching them nervously.

* * * * *

The foyer was carpeted ankle deep in mauve. Life-like, three-dimensional photographs of actors and actresses in every conceivable costume from none at all to the cumbersome furs of Titan lined the walls.

The magnificent foyer gave the startling impression that just the moment before, crowds of theatre goers had been surging across it. Saxon could feel the hair lift on the back of his neck.

"Where's Mercedes?" asked Ileth in a small voice.

Saxon glanced around, realized that the anthropologist wasn't in the foyer. "She must have gone into the theatre." He lifted his voice, called, "Mercedes. Mercedes!"

His voice echoed hollowly. There was no answer. Saxon and Ileth exchanged worried glances.

"Our voices probably don't carry beyond the foyer," Saxon reassured the girl. "The ancients were clever with sound."

They crossed the floor, their steps cushioned noiselessly in the thick mauve carpet. They went through the doors, past the automatic ticket taker and paused.

A vast amphitheatre with curving rows of empty seats fell away below them like the terribly ancient Roman theatre at Pompeii. The walls by some trick of construction trapped the light, shedding it softly over the seats, concentrating it in a glowing pillar of illumination on the stage.

Suddenly, Ileth brought her hand to her mouth, a look of horror springing into her features. "Oh, my Lord!" she whispered. "Look!" and pointed at the floor at their feet. Saxon glanced down, caught his breath.

A puddle of clothes lay on the floor as if the middle-aged, gray-haired anthropologist had just stepped out of them.

Saxon dropped to his knees beside the garments, turned them over. Sturdy leather walking shoes and heavy gray socks. Gray skirt and jacket. A stout brassiere and practical mannish shorts. They were so typically Mercedes, that Saxon felt a lump in his throat.

The socks were still in the shoes, brassiere inside the jacket. He stood up, feeling his palms begin to sweat. It was as if Mercedes had been suddenly dissipated into thin air, her clothes falling in on themselves.

He heard Ileth give a dry sob, realized suddenly that he felt no alien presence. He and the girl were alone in the theatre, alone as they'd been in the street that night in Adirondaka.

Saxon clenched his fist. "Let's get out of here. Quick!"

"But Mercedes?"

"She's gone! We can't help Mercedes now. The others! Hurry!"

They ran through the doorway back across the carpeted foyer, halting at the street.

Four little mounds of clothes met their eyes.

Saxon could feel his stomach knot inside himself. He felt the clothes. They were still warm from contact with the men's bodies. He stirred the brief red kilt that Clo-Javel had been wearing, saw with a macabre flash of humor that where Mercedes' underthings had been eminently practical, Clo-Javel didn't wear any at all.

Ileth suppressed a scream. "The helicopter! Look! It's gone, too!" Saxon glanced up in consternation.

The square was empty. The twin suns riding high in the sky beat down on bare plastic blocks where the helicopter had stood.

"We're hiking back to the ship--_now_," Saxon said to the frightened girl.

"But it's twenty-five kilometers."

"So it's twenty-five kilometers. We can average four an hour or better. That's six hours. How many more hours of daylight have we?"

Ileth bit her lip, studied her chronometer. "The days are short. The planet rotates in a little over fourteen hours. Alpha Centauri A sets first, in about an hour, I think. Then Alpha Centauri B about three hours later. Proxima rises about ten minutes after that but it doesn't cast much light."

"Never mind," he said almost roughly. "Come on. We'd better find the geographers quick."

* * * * *

They did, a few minutes later, in one of the side canyons. That is, they found implements and two small piles of clothes. "I was afraid of this," said Saxon, his heart lowly sinking into his boots.

Ileth began to cry half in fright, half hysterically.

"None of that!" He shook her shoulders, until she stopped with a hiccup. Turning her loose, he bent over the instruments, secured a compass.

"We're northeast of the ship," he said, "that means if we travel in a southwesterly direction, we should hit it square on the nose. Let's hike!"

But they found it impossible to keep a true southwesterly course through the city. They walked along the deserted, resounding streets, their eyes filled with the fantastically lovely architecture of New York II, the flowing lines and gleaming planes of apartment houses built of a thousand substances from crystal to somber-veined black marble.

"To think," said Saxon, "that a people, any people, could have found it in their hearts to destroy a work like this."

"I'm glad I've seen it," Ileth replied queerly, "even if I did have to come to Alpha Centauri. It's lovely." She shivered.

Saxon said in perplexity, "Why did they let us escape? I don't understand it."

"We were in the foyer, alone, when it must have happened," she suggested. "Maybe they overlooked us."

"Maybe," agreed Saxon doubtfully and paused.

They had come to the end of the city which stopped abruptly as if it had been set down in the middle of the green rolling prairie. Beyond the last building, a herd of cannibal plants rolled by, browsing as they went.

"It's going to be damned tricky keeping a straight course across this," he said. "There doesn't seem to be a tree on the planet." He sighted the compass, picked out a round hill like the dome of a building, to the southwest. "We'll keep a little to the left of that hill."

* * * * *

Alpha Centauri A was setting. By the time they had advanced a kilometer across the prairie it was gone. The orange light of Alpha Centauri B lent a queer unearthly complexion to the scene. It became perceptibly cooler, and a breeze sprang up from the east, bringing the faint scent of bitter almonds.

Saxon lengthened his stride. "We're not keeping to schedule," he said; then, "Look at that!"

A fawn colored creature like a large cat but with four pairs of legs, broke from a draw and went undulating across the grass.

"I'm getting tired," said Ileth in a small voice.

He took his eyes from the strange animal, studied the girl. The emotional turmoil which they'd been through had drained her of strength. Her features were white, drawn, her lids drooping over her hazel-green eyes. Her lashes, he thought, were the thickest curliest lashes he'd ever seen and black as her lustrous hair. He felt a tenderness well up inside him and banished it.

"We've got to make the ship. Walk until you drop. Then I'll carry you. But we have to get back as soon as possible."

Her features stiffened at the harshness of his words. He caught a weary flash of anger in her thoughts, then she turned and began to plod again toward the southwest.

"Faster," said Saxon.

Alpha Centauri B was setting when they reached the domed hill which Saxon had lined up with the compass. He left Ileth stretched exhausted at the base and climbed to the summit. His eyes swept the horizons with the last orange rays of the sun, but the _Shooting Star_ was still not in sight.

By the time he rejoined Ileth, it was dark. "Did you see it?" the girl asked in a sleepy voice.

"No. We haven't come far enough, I suppose. We'll have to wait until Proxima rises before we can go on. That'll give us a chance to rest. How long before Proxima comes up?"

"Ten or fifteen minutes." She hesitated. "I'm cold."

Saxon put his arms around the shivering girl, pulled her against him. She gave a little sigh, laid her head on his shoulder. He caught her sleepy thoughts, "_Two times two is four. Three times two is six_," and chuckled to himself.

The darkness was not dispelled very much when Proxima rose above the hills like a sullen red hot drop of metal. The light was red and wavering like the shimmering heat waves above a brush fire. Saxon could not see very well or very far. Nevertheless he wakened Ileth.

She rubbed her eyes, glanced about her in consternation. The change in light had brought about a startling change in the scenery. It looked as if it were bathed in blood.

She said, "Oh, Jon, I wish we were home. I wish we'd never come on this horrible expedition."

He didn't look up from his compass. "The ship can't be much further." He spotted the black gash of a gully a hundred yards ahead. "We'll walk to the gully, then pick out another object."

"I'm still tired. I don't feel as if I'd slept at all."

"You didn't--much. Only about ten minutes. Come on."

They reached the gully and Saxon found a cone-shaped hill looming up redly almost a quarter of a mile further on. They set out for it, Ileth holding his hand.

Their progress was necessarily slower because Saxon had to stop often and consult the compass. Even so, he began to be afraid that they had overshot the ship in the dark.

Slowly Proxima Centauri blazed its blood red path across the night sky.

Not far from Proxima a star twinkled faintly, steadily. It was about in the position that Sol should be. He wondered if it was.

"It's growing lighter," said Ileth.

Saxon glanced toward the east, recognized the graying darkness that heralded the dawn. He said, "Alpha Centauri A's rising. Maybe we can see where we are."

The light was quickening fast with dawn. Saxon climbed to the crest of a ridge, stared off into the southwest.

All at once his heart stood still. He called, "Ileth! Ileth! Come up here!"

The girl ran up the ridge, the urgency in his voice dispelling her weariness. "What is it, Jon?"

He pointed ahead. "Aren't those the hills south of the ship?"

She narrowed her eyes, studying the blue outlines in the dawn light. "Yes. But, Jon, where is the ship?"

He pointed at a blackened circle in the grass not an eighth of a kilometer distant. The circle was almost a thousand yards in diameter.

"That's where our jets burned the grass when we landed. That's where the _Shooting Star_ was yesterday!"

In ten minutes they were tramping back and forth across the blackened circle of grass, kicking up little puffs of ashes. The mark of the jets were there, pressed deep in the soft soil. But those and the charred vegetation were the only signs that a ship had ever rested there.

Ileth flung herself dejectedly to the grass at the edge of the circle. "I'm so hungry and bone weary and thirsty and disappointed, I could cry."

Saxon sat down beside her. "I don't understand it," he said for the hundredth time. "I don't understand any of it."

All at once, his scalp began to prickle its warning and Saxon recognized the alien feel. At the same instant Ileth screamed, leaping to her feet. Saxon felt his mouth go dry, his stomach contract as he stumbled erect beside her.

Not ten yards distant, in the path of the rising sun, a naked man was materializing before their eyes. Saxon could see the grass and the hills and a segment of Alpha Centauri A through the man's body.

A thought struck into Saxon's mind. "_So there you are._" It emanated from the Alien. "_We were afraid you might have gotten clean away._"

Saxon realized the man was quite solid now, standing with bare feet planted in the pale green grass. There was an instrument like a watch strapped to his wrist. He was holding a small shiny cylinder.

Saxon caught an echo of Ileth's thought. "_Oh Lord, he's naked as a grape!_"

The man leveled the cylinder. There was a brief flash.

Saxon felt an instant's giddiness, a rapid dissolution, then nothing.