Part 2

Craig had observed what details he could. The thing was an inch or a little more in diameter, perhaps ten inches long. All except one tip was dull and apparently knurled to give a good grip. The tip looked like quartz or some crystal, translucent except the end, which was darkly transparent when not emitting the beam. The trigger was apparently a spot of different color on the body, over which the thumb could be pressed.

Craig thought of the energy stored in that slender cylinder, the necessary insulation, the efficiency of whatever system was used to direct and control the beam. He felt a chill shiver of awe. Then another thought struck him and he looked wide-eyed at Brulieres. "A flaming sword!"

Brulieres gave him a quick glance, and nodded. "Primitives might describe it so."

* * * * *

Rabar climbed back into sight at the edge of the plateau, looking pale. A moment later Dientes poked his head into view.

"Where is the general?" Brulieres demanded.

"_Muerto_," said Rabar shakily, "in the tunnel. The creature killed him."

The priest's face twitched. "Who shot at it?"

"The general, Padre. He had the only gun."

Brulieres sighed. "Then that is why he is dead. The creature would not have harmed him."

Craig had the same idea. It had used the weapon more as if in bluff, and had apparently carefully gone beyond the mountain to die. He wondered if the two bullet-holes had killed it.

But how many more of the creatures (or machines) waited in the tunnels?

He looked at Brulieres. "Are we going in?"

"By all means. Unless we are stopped." The priest looked thoughtful. "They may be coming out of hibernation or something like it. Can you tell how old this plateau is?"

"Not without taking samples to a geological laboratory. Perhaps not even then, with accuracy. But I would say, some thousands of years."

Rabar was not happy at re-entering the tunnel, but set his jaw and came. Craig stood aside to let the lieutenant go ahead of him. Rabar hesitated, then stepped by. Dientes, crossing himself and muttering, evidently preferred coming along to being left alone outside. He followed Craig.

Brulieres swept his flashlight along the tunnel walls, revealing a turn ahead. They rounded it. After a little way it seemed to Craig that the flashlight dimmed. Then he realized that there was other light in the tunnel; the arched ceiling was aglow. It got brighter and Brulieres turned off his flashlight.

"Evidently," he said, "we are expected. Have you noticed the air?"

Craig had not, but he did now; it was warm and the pressure was higher than outside. "One moment," he said, puzzled. He went back to the mouth of the tunnel. As he stepped outside, he felt a gentle resistance as if some force were pushing him into the tunnel. He re-entered, and felt warmth radiating from the ceiling. He rejoined the others.

* * * * *

The floor of the tunnel sloped up gently for a while, then leveled, then turned downward. The walls were vertical and perfect, with a smooth glazed look. The ceiling curved from wall to wall in a perfect arc. There was room for two men to walk side by side by crowding. Craig walked a little behind Dientes.

Soon he took off his oxygen mask and breathed normally. He would have liked to remove his jacket, but there were too many things in the pockets to spill out.

He had counted one hundred seven paces when the tunnel turned again. It was just beyond the turn that they found Noriega's body.

The tunnel branched here; or at least, a narrower tunnel angled up and off from each side. These tunnels were dark, and, Craig found, cold and with low air pressure. The same mild resistance guarded their mouths. The General lay sprawled loosely just inside the right-hand branch, his head and torso in shadow. He looked simply and peacefully dead.

"Will you lend me a hand, Lieutenant?" Brulieres said. The two of them dragged Noriega into the light.

Craig could see no burns nor any other kind of wound except an abrasion on one cheek which might have resulted from a fall. He started to ask Rabar exactly what had happened, but checked himself. Better not appear suspicious.

He wondered what had happened to the general's pistol, and began to look around for it. But again Brulieres was ahead of him. The priest was eighteen or twenty yards farther into the tunnel, picking up something. It was the pistol. It went into the cloak as the heat-weapon had.

Craig was watching Rabar and he thought the man looked disconcerted. Craig thought, How's this for a theory: Rabar killed Noriega, took his pistol and started up the tunnel. Maybe he just wanted to learn for himself what was in the mountain, or maybe he planned to murder the rest of the party and make it look like an accident. He met the glowing creature, panicked, put two bullets into it, then dropped the gun and ran.

Craig wondered if the priest shared his doubts about Rabar; but if he did, he didn't show it. The priest was already starting on.

Craig lost count of his steps, but judged they'd gone over a quarter of a mile when the tunnel took a final right-angle turn and opened into a great high-domed chamber.

IV

Immediately all question as to the nature of this place vanished. It could only be a military base.

There's something recognizable about weapons, Craig mused, no matter how unfamiliar. Here were gathered great vehicles of war, bristling with the outsize cousins of the heat-tube Brulieres carried and with a myriad other menacing shapes. Yawning black tunnels led away at angles--probably, Craig thought, to hidden exits. Repair machines, some with their work partly finished, were scattered everywhere, silent and with a long-unused air about them. Nearly all of the aerial dreadnaughts (Craig was sure they were that) showed terrible wounds.

The group stared about the chamber in silent awe.

At one place, beneath a trio of round tunnels that aimed steeply upward, was what Craig took to be the main launching area, with ramps for loading ... what? The litter showed clearly where great ships had rested, and that the departure had been hasty. Craig drew in deep trembling breaths and imagined the vast alien argosies lifting upon their mysterious legs of force.

He could see the avarice in Rabar's eyes, and edged closer to the lieutenant. He wasn't going to let the man overpower Brulieres and take the weapons, nor was he going to let him pick up any that might be lying around. Not that Brulieres was being careless. Craig noticed that he kept his distance from everybody, and did not turn his back for long.

They must have stared at the alien machines for quite a while before the priest's deep voice echoed in the chamber. "Come. Another tunnel beckons."

Craig looked where the priest pointed. He saw a tunnel like the one they'd left, about a quarter of the way around the chamber. It glowed with light. All the rest were dark.

He looked again at Brulieres, and was startled at the man's face. It wore a look of glory. Craig shivered. Why, he thought, the man thinks God arranged this for _him_.

Apparently _someone_ was arranging things, unless the tunnels and the lights were completely robotic. Craig, ignoring the edge of panic that cut at him, followed the priest toward the entrance to the lighted tunnel.

It was short, with two bends in it (probably, Craig thought, to contain possible explosions). It opened into a smaller, lower-ceilinged chamber which had evidently been an assembly hall for troops, or possibly a mess hall. Dark openings led off it which might lead to barracks. In the far end, a single tunnel glowed with light.

They entered that tunnel, which was another short one, and found that they were indeed in the living quarters. These, if the analogies applied, had been the officers'. There was a small assembly hall, and upon one wall of that were the pictures.

* * * * *

The lighting was arranged to fall mostly upon that side of the chamber. The rock had been smoothed to take the murals. The first glimpse shook Craig so that he walked mechanically toward that wall, momentarily forgetting his companions.

A part of his mind admired the basic technique. Outlines in low relief had been cut into the rock, details delicately etched in and colors brought up, apparently, by altering the composition of the rock itself. As for the style it was somewhere between realism and impressionism. Craig was no expert, but he thought the hand was defter, the viewpoint more penetrating, than any he'd ever seen. The slight alien air only increased the charm of the work.

Whatever sort of beings the aliens had been, they hadn't been an unfeeling race. Emotion leaped from every line of the murals.

The first few told concisely of the establishment on Earth of this outpost, of the local defeat and abandonment. There were some heroic scenes there, but Craig hurried through them, drawn to the next series of paintings, yet unwilling to turn his eyes to them.

They were Biblical and as stunningly familiar as if he'd lived with them all his life.

Feeling churned at his insides again.

One of the first immortalized Noah, or whoever had been the actual hero of the first version of the Flood story. The painting of the sea and the dark doomsday clouds over it was so real that Craig took a step backward. Mountainous wave masses were battered white by an incredible rain. Heaved aslant, decks tumbling water, dwarfed by the seas, was the wooden ship. A few half-drowned domestic animals stared in terror, lashed to their pens on deck. The bearded man who stood on wide-planted giant's legs, rope-like fingers gripping a tiller that strained to escape, was bedraggled but staunch and muscled to meet the sea. A woman clung to one arm. She had been painted not delicately, but with a strong beauty that spoke in thunder of the artist's piercing compassion.

There was the crossing of the Red Sea, and the painting showed clearly how some force held aside the water. The artist had evidently been fascinated by the still-puddled seabottom.

There were more, but Craig passed them, drawn like a fish on a line to the painting of the man on the cross. The body, more cruelly punished than the Bible recorded, strained in an agony that communicated itself to Craig's own. The face, twisted with pain, sagging with exhaustion, the tortured soft brown eyes, held no bitterness, no accusation.

The accusation was the painting itself. The bitterness and rage (and remorse?) was the painter's own.

* * * * *

Craig, frightened and miserable, looked at the others. Dientes showed only awe and humility. Rabar was holding himself tautly, but terror showed in his eyes. Brulieres shook with overflowing emotions, his face mirroring worship, glory, worry and doubt. He met Craig's eyes. His voice higher-pitched and cracked with feeling, he said, "Have you noticed--this?"

He was standing before a vertical slab of rough stone which had obviously been used to close up a tunnel. The sealing had been done with melted rock, roughly, leaving a groove around the edge. The job suggested haste. Craig's insides writhed at what might lie behind the slab.

He gripped himself, walked over beside the priest. He could make out only a few of the characters of the inscription burned into the slab. He heard his own voice asking, as if from far away, "Do ... you read Hebrew?"

Brulieres let out a trembling sigh. "With difficulty." He moved slowly closer to the slab, put his fingers to the inscription like a blind man feeling for Braille. Craig saw that his eyes were full of tears. The thin lips mumbled inaudibly.

After a long time Brulieres quit reading and stood there, unmoving. Then he started to speak. His voice was lifeless now, a low uncaring monotone. "Scholars will translate it better, but here is the gist of it."

TO THE DESCENDANTS OF THOSE WITH WHOSE DESTINY I HAVE BRIEFLY MEDDLED: WHEN YOU READ THIS, YOU WILL HAVE ATTAINED A TECHNOLOGY OF YOUR OWN WHICH WILL BE ABLE TO MAKE USE OF THE DEVICES LEFT HERE. ASIDE FROM THEM I LEAVE YOU MY GOOD WISHES, MY APOLOGIES, AND MY LOVE.

WHEN MY RACE ABANDONED THIS PLACE I HID FROM THEM AND STAYED BEHIND BECAUSE I HAD FALLEN IN LOVE WITH YOUR PLANET AND YOUR RACE. I HAVE TRIED TO HELP YOU. I AM NOT SURE I HAVE DONE WELL.

LOOK UPON MY REMAINS IF YOU WILL.

Craig gripped the priest's arm, heard his own words tumbling out: "It proves nothing, Padre! There can still be a God!" He found that he meant it desperately.

The priest turned, stared at him, then looked faintly amused. "Conviction? _Now?_ You are a more fortunate man than I."

"No, Padre! Your work! Religion is deeper than...."

Brulieres' eyes flashed with some of their old vitality. "My work? This is the God in whose name I have schemed and, Heaven help me, killed." Slowly, mechanically, Brulieres drew the heat-weapon from his garments. He aimed it at the groove around the slab and thumbed the trigger. The rock skirled, and ran to solidify in waxlike lumps. The smoke was acrid in Craig's nostrils.

When the slab was mostly cut around, some inner seal gave way and air sucked loudly into the crack. With a wrenching sound, the slab tore loose. It tilted under some power of its own, and lowered itself to the floor.

Lights, harshly angled and dramatic, flashed on in the small room beyond. It was bare except for the stone platform on the floor, and what rested upon it.

Mechanically, Craig stepped in and moved aside to make room for the others. Brulieres went to the opposite side of the platform and Dientes crouched beside him. Rabar stood hesitantly in the doorway.

* * * * *

The creature was larger than a man and like nothing earthly; many-limbed, built as if for a higher gravity. There was no apparent decomposition or dessication. The atmosphere of the chamber had evidently been chosen to preserve.

There was still a pungent, half-unpleasant smell, being rapidly drawn away through ducts in the ceiling. There was a face of a sort, and two closed eyes. The face was recognizably strong. The thing might have been called ugly, but Craig found a handsomeness about it too. He recognized the drama with which the body was arranged and lighted, and somehow for this last small vanity he loved the creature even more.

Dientes clutched at the priest's robe. "It is a lie, Padre!" And, as the priest remained silent, Dientes turned desperate eyes to Craig. "Mother of God! Will no one say it is a lie?"

Craig felt emotionally depleted. Inside him were a sick regret and a hollowness where something had died, but cold reason remained. If there is no God, he thought, we're just intelligent animals, and we're free to live by our wits. If there is no God, then there is no Devil either.

He pondered that ... and decided with grim amusement that there was Devil enough.

And, in any event, there were needs and desires, friends and enemies. He stepped swiftly around the alien and took the heat-weapon from the priest's limp fingers. He turned toward Rabar, who was (beyond any worthwhile doubt) an enemy, and who was standing in the doorway with an annoying mockery in his eyes. Of _course_ he's happy, Craig thought; he's a Bolshevik agent and an atheist. There'll be damned little religion anywhere, now.

He raised the weapon calmly, every nerve and muscle alert, like an animal ready for action. He watched the triumph fade from Rabar's eyes. As his thumb felt unhesitatingly for the trigger, he watched the growth of fear.