America 2040 - Golden World Part 4

"Madam Chairwoman," Rodrick said, after the laughter had subsided, "if I may intrude again, strictly unofficially?"

"Of course," Evangeline replied.

"We lost three members of our group at Cygni A," Rodrick said. "The aforementioned Clay Girard, who seems to get around, was reminding me just this afternoon that we should name some significant geographic features after them. "

"Hear, hear," someone said.

"Clay knew Dinah Purdy and Pat Renfro well. He seems to think that Dinah would have been honored by our naming the large inland lake to the northeast after her."

"Let's see a map," someone said, and Evangeline projected a map. The committee was in a decision-making mood, and within five minutes not only the lake but the eastern river that had its source there had names, Lake Dinah and the Dinah River. The coastal, wooded mountains became the Renfro Mountains, and the bay was now officially Stanton Bay.

"And now," Evangeline said, "lets move on. The names we're considering for the planet are New Earth, Earth Two, Hamilton's World, Troy, Elysium, Shaw-in honor of Harry Shaw-and Columbia. Isuggest that we try to narrow the field even more."

It was done. One by one, negative votes eliminated Shaw, Elysium, Troy, and Earth Two, because it could be perverted to Earth Also.

Clive Baxter, the leading proponent for New Earth, had the floor. "I'm not saying that Dexter Hamilton is not a great man, but let's look back into our history. When our ancestors came to America, they began to name places for royalty: North and South Carolina, Virginia, and Georgia, for example. Our government has no royalty, and I see no reason why we must carry on the tradition of naming places and geographic features after our so-called great men. We need a simple name. Whatever we call the planet, sooner or later it's going to become, if not for us, for our children and their children, The World, or The Earth. Might as well call it New Earth from the beginning."

"I agree with Dr. Baxter," said a distinguished geologist. "We're going to avoid the evils of politics here.

Let's not give the name of a politician to our new world. However, we have a chance to right a great historic wrong done centuries ago to a brave and brilliant man. I speak of Christopher Columbus, who braved the Atlantic, quelled a mutiny, and sailed on to discover a continent which, for inexplicable reasons, was named for Amerigo Vespucci, an obscure merchant who didn't even set foot on a s.h.i.+p until five years after Columbus had discovered the New World. I vote strongly that we right that long-past wrong and honor the great explorer, Christopher Columbus, by naming our planet Columbia."

The discussion was long and often heated. Several votes were taken, and the two remaining names in consideration, New Earth and Columbia, were caught in an exact tie.

Evangeline Burr said, "Is there anyone who would like to change his or her vote and break the tie?"

"No," Clive Baxter said, glaring at her. "It's up to you. You have the tie-breaking vote."

Evangeline knew that feelings were running deep. She sighed. "I admit, my friends, that I am a coward. I don't want to alienate any of you. May I put forward a compromise?"

"New Columbia?" Baxter asked.

"No, not that," Evangeline said. "I've been thinking since the reports from the investigative teams began to come in that we are so very, very lucky to have found this planet on our very last chance. We didn.'t have enough rhenium to explore other possibilities. It's such a warm, friendly planet. There are no dangerous wild animals. There are no snakes. There are no stinging scorpions, and most unbelievably, no biting insects have been discovered to date. The weather is beautiful. The land is beautiful. The soil is rich, the water pure and sweet."

"She's going to suggest that we call it Heaven," Clive Baxter said.

"I'm going to suggest that we consider naming our planet Eden."

"Well, it makes sense," someone said.

"Are you going to be Eve, Evangeline?" Baxter asked. "And wear a fig leaf?"

"Not in your presence, Dr. Baxter," Evangeline said, blus.h.i.+ng. "Shall we vote?"

Eden. Duncan Rodrick liked it. He nodded his approval and put in his two cents worth again to say that,in his opinion, Eden was an excellent name.

"Maybe for the country, but not for a planet," Clive Baxter objected, and immediately picked up supporters.

"Just so we can have some progress, then," Evangeline suggested, "do I hear a motion to name our peninsula Eden?" She did. Eden it was, for that area between the high, snowy mountains and the sea.

The battle was joined once more. Another compromise had a majority feeling that Dexter Hamilton should be honored in some way. The town on Stanton Bay became Hamilton City and would, as the days pa.s.sed, become just Hamilton, in Eden, by Stanton Bay.

New Earth or Columbia? The discussion raged on into the night. A name for the planet would be selected before the meeting ended.

News of the stalemate had been spread by the s.h.i.+p's grapevine. All meetings were open meetings, and people gathered in lounges to watch the debate. Pet.i.tions were quickly written and signed, some supporting the New Earth proponents, some the Columbia proponents.

Max Rosen and Grace Monroe had been busy all day. It was Max's responsibility to mothball the s.h.i.+p's power units, rockets, and the Shaw Drive for future use. When colonists, alerted to the great debate, began to call engineering requesting further viewscreen hookups so that they could watch the meeting, Max growled and, at first, complied. After the fourth interruption of his work he looked at Grace and asked, "What the h.e.l.l's going on?"

"I don't know," she said, turning on a screen to hear a learned scientist talking heatedly, his face red and earnest. Max listened for a few minutes. New Earth or Columbia.

"I was named to that committee," he growled. "If we're going to get our work finished, we're going to have to do something about this. You want to go with me?"

Grace smiled. "I wouldn't miss it for the world."

Max stalked into the meeting room, his uniform mussed and oil stained, his hair standing in all directions.

"Evangeline," he growled.

"The chair recognizes Chief Engineer Max Rosen," Evangeline said.

"You monkeys," Max said, "are getting the whole s.h.i.+p upset, forcing people to take sides, and what's worse, you're keeping me from my work. I think both of your names stink. New Earth sounds like something out of a cheap science-fiction story, and if you want to name the continent or an ocean Columbia, do it, but there's only one name for this big ball we're on, because, as you all know, it was our G.o.dd.a.m.ned last chance. If this planet hadn't been livable, we'd all be breathing recycled air right now instead of creating all kinds of hot air about what we're going to call her. She's Omega. The last. Our last chance."

Max turned, grabbed Grace's hand, and led her out. She looked back over her shoulder at Duncan Rodrick and smiled. Evangeline Burr giggled. Other women, and then Rodrick, and then the men joined in the laugh. The motion was pa.s.sed.

At last, the committee members could get to their beds. There was another day of work ahead, to makethe town of Hamilton, on Stanton Bay, habitable, to get everyone off the s.h.i.+p and into land quarters.

Most of them were pleased with the night's work: A lake, a river, a bay, a range of mountains, a town, a country, and a planet had been named, along with a pleasant, clear, rocky little creek. And, by dawn, Jumpers Run was dropping its crystal waters into Stanton Bay near Hamilton City in the country of Eden on the continent of Columbia on the planet Omega-the last chance, and a glorious one, where not even the bees had stingers.

FIVE.

"Well, Clay," Stoner McRae said as the crawler rolled and rocked over uneven ground, "you flew over the area. Which direction shall we take?"

They had traveled seventy miles on a line northeast from Hamilton, and the first low scarp of the highlands was no more than a mile ahead. They'd made fast time across the rolling plains, but now the terrain became drier, more uneven.

Clay had not been able to get out of his mind the conviction that he'd seen something that was too smooth, too regular in its angles to be of natural origin. He had been doing some mental calculations, based on his memory ofDinahmite's navigation instruments. He pointed.

"It looks as if there's a break in the scarp there, Stoner," he said. "And then there's some interesting-looking country almost straight ahead."

After the crawler found a sandy, dry opening in the low cliffs, which led to a very rugged plateau, Clay oriented himself on a distant peak of the big mountains and pointed Stoner in that general direction.

It was slow going, partly because of the broken, barren, rocky terrain, and also because Stoner often stopped the crawler to take volcanic-rock samples, which Betsy, Cindy, and Clay carefully labeled and put into a bag.

Each hour Clay reported their position to the control center on theSpirit of America . Once he spoke to Duncan Rodrick, who asked him how the badlands looked from the ground. Most of the time during the morning he was talking to the scout pilot Renato Cruz, whose radio call, like his scout s.h.i.+p, wasApache Two .

They had lunch in the shade of high cliffs, which marked yet another scarp as the highland rose. They had to detour far to the south to find a break in the line of cliffs, and the going was tough-so tough that the usually silent hydrogen engine of the crawler whined in protest, and the jerks and jars became more severe for the pa.s.sengers. The crawler clawed its way up a scree slope of fifty degrees inclination and burst over the top with a jar that caused both Cindy and Betsy to cry out as the vehicle slammed down.

It was that jar, Clay decided later, that had put the radio out of action. When he tried to call in on the hour, he could not reach the s.h.i.+p, and when he tried to receive, there was nothing-not even static.

"Shouldn't we turn back?" Betsy asked. "Without radio contact, they'll be worried about us."

Clay felt that they were quite near the area where he'd seen the unnatural straight lines. "Stoner," he suggested, "let's look over the next ridge before we turn back." Stoner was a man always willing to see what was over the next hill. They found a dry riverbed and followed it into a deep, narrow canyon, ending in a staircase of jumbled and broken rock, which had once been a waterfall. It was so steep that Stoner made everyone dismount while he backed the crawler away and came at the incline at a higher speed. The big machine slewed and slid on the first try and almost overturned as it slid back toward the foot of the slope, making Betsy catch her breath. Clay saw that Stoner was prepared to leap off the crawler if it started to tip, but its low center of gravity and spinning gyros kept it on its tracks, and the second time, with greater speed, it reached the top of the slope. Then Stoner threw down lines to make the climb easier for Clay, Betsy, and Cindy.

The crawler sat on a barren, smooth, windswept surface of fractured rock. Behind them, they could see all the way to the coastal areas, although details were lost in the haze of distance. Before them was a saucer-shaped valley. The cliffs directly in front of them fell vertically at least two hundred feet and were even higher on the northern side of the valley. It was about three o'clock, Omega time, and long shadows were beginning to form on the western side of the valley. Betsy gasped in surprise, for extending from the shadow of the towering cliffs was a staggered grouping of what could only be buildings-all straight lines and square corners, story piled atop story next to the cliff, their height lessening in steps as they extended toward the dry riverbed. Few details were visible, but it appeared that the buildings were ornamented with carvings, for the walls of the upper stories looked smooth, while below they took on a complexity.

Stoner reached for binoculars. He could distinguish a carved image on the lower wall of one of the buildings near the dry river. "Wow," he said.

"Don't just 'wow' me," Betsy said. "What is it?"

Silently he handed her the gla.s.ses. "Check the lower wall of that building nearest the riverbed," he said.

His face was screwed up in question, because it was. .h.i.tting him now. That was acity down there. That was a city built by someone with intelligence and some sense of beauty. It was obviously a deserted, dead, even ancient city, and that brought up so many interesting questions that he tried to concentrate on the most important: Who, or what, had built that city and then left it? And why had they deserted it?

"It has wings," Betsy said.

"I thought so," Stoner answered.

"It's-it's-quite manlike," Betsy said.

She lowered the gla.s.ses, her face white, and looked up at Stoner. Cindy and Clay tugged on the gla.s.ses, and Clay gave in.

"That's stone construction," Stoner said. "They had to have some kind of metal tools."

Clay had his turn and saw a thin, graceful figure carved into stone, a flying figure with spreading wings.

The legs and head, although possibly stylized, were humanoid.

"The way in must be at the south end, through the canyon." Stoner said.

"Let's not go down there," Betsy said. "Let's go back and get some company."

Stoner turned the crawler around to point toward the south. "There's no danger. It's been deserted for a long time. See the sand heaped up against the walls?" "Stoner, let's not," Betsy begged. "We don't know what's down there."

Clay, of course, was all for going. When, with some difficulty, the crawler reached the dry riverbed, he leaped down and scouted a route; there were four dry falls leading into the valley, each of them a challenge for the crawler. It was after five o'clock when they emerged into the open floor of the valley, scattering a herd of silver-horned antelope. The dead city was directly in front of them, and up close, it was more impressive than they'd imagined. The crawler sped through the gra.s.s, hit a roughly circular area of discolored gra.s.s, and sank quickly down into the sand as if the ground had suddenly collapsed under it, but because of its speed, the crawler was quickly out of the depression, with only the back end of the treads sinking down before gaining solid ground again.

"What happened?" Cindy asked, looking back. There was an oval depression behind them where the ground had caved in.

"Just a sinkhole," Stoner said, his eyes on a grouping of statuary that was half-buried in sand beyond a low, intricately carved fence, which had obviously been built for decorative purposes. He stopped the vehicle at the opening in the low fence directly in front of the statuary, and Betsy forgot her nervousness.

The carving was exquisite, so realistic in tan, marblelike stone; it seemed that the two spaniel-sized carnivores attacking a male silver-horn were alive. Behind the realistic stone group, the buildings rose, and it seemed that even available surface of the first-story walls was carved. "Stoner, we need trained archaeologists here, " Betsy said.

"I know. We won't move anything, but we can look." Clay ran to get a closer look at a carved wall.

Behind hunting scenes featuring the native carnivores and the little silver-horned antelope were tall, thin, manlike beings with large, round eyes and hands that had only three fingers opposing a thumb. "Stoner,"

he said, "it looks like they tamed the cats and used them for hunting."

Stoner had little p.r.i.c.kling feelings running up and down his spine. The impact of the implications of the obviously ancient city was just hitting him. He knew that scouts had flown over every land ma.s.s on Omega and that their sensors had picked up life signals on most land ma.s.ses, but none corresponded to manlike beings with wings. That opened the door to eerie speculation. There was something about the long-dead city that made him apprehensive. He knew that Cindy and Betsy were feeling it, too, because they stayed close to him as they walked over s.h.i.+fting sands to stand before an ornately carved wail. The building material was native stone, a tan, rather attractive sandstone. Being soft, it showed weathering, so that many of the carvings were blurred by erosion. But the bas-reliefs on the smooth, evenly jointed walls gave them a picture of alien life that was fascinating.

The wall had been separated into panels to show different scenes. Some were landscapes, trees of three different types, all done in a simplified, stylized way. One variety-already being called umbrella trees for their perfect symmetry of branches and shape, a semicircle almost straight across the bottom-were of a size, and of a perfect contour.

Silver-horned antelopes and the small cats that preyed upon them were well represented. Smaller, unidentified animals were also pictured. And, in the central panel of the wall, there was a huge thing that caught Stoner's attention; Between two trees, from an opening in the ground itself, there emerged a large, evil-looking head and a powerful, muscular neck. Its mouth was open just enough to expose a huge set of teeth. If the mouth had been closed, the head would have been cone-shaped. On the outside of the cone were row after row of blunt, forward-pointing projections. "I hope," Betsy said, "that thing is either mythical or extinct. "

"Wouldn't want to run into it in a dark alley," Stoner agreed.

Clay had been leading the way. He entered a sand-clogged street and waited. All the first-story walls were decorated with either objects from nature or simple, decorative motifs of stylized flowers, trees, and four-pointed stars. The opening on the upper stories was blank.

"Stoner," Clay said as the others caught up with him, "there aren't any stairs. Do you suppose they flew up to the second story?"

"Good question," Stoner replied.

"We'll let the archaeologists determine that," Betsy said. "Let's go."

"We're going to have to spend the night somewhere," Stoner said. "It's too late to get back to Hamilton.

This is as good a place as any."

"I will not sleep here," Betsy stated firmly.

"Okay," Stoner replied, still teeling uneasy. "We'll set up camp away from the city."

"Let's go do it, " Betsy said.

Stoner agreed. He ran a finger along a joint between two large building blocks, then looked around.

There was a dark opening in the wall near them. "Let's just take a quick look inside."

He led the way. Sufficient light came from the entry-way and some high, square openings, which must have been windows, to light the interior of a large room. The floor was stone, drifted over by the encroaching sand. The walls were nothing more than the inside planes of the building stones. The ceiling of longer and, probably, Stoner thought, thinner slabs of the same stone was supported by regularly placed pillars of stone. At one corner of the large room, which took up the entire ground floor of the building, there was a rectangular hole in the ceiling. Stoner dug in the drifted sand below the opening.

"Look," he said. "This looks like wood residue. I think there was a staircase here. Judging from the holes in the sides of the door opening over there, I'd say that there was once a wooden door. Since there's no sign of metal, they probably used wooden pegs and maybe leather hinges."

They examined the interiors of several more buildings at ground level, finding nothing of interest, before Stoner boosted Clay up through the opening in the ceiling of a large, ground-floor room; then Clay secured a line around a stone pillar so that the others could join him. They had moved closer to the cliff, where the buildings were higher. The dust of centuries lay on everything, so that when they walked, they left tracks.

They climbed to the fourth story. All rooms were empty, the walls unadorned until, at the very top, they entered a section than had been part.i.tioned off with smooth stonework into three oblong rooms. It was in the center that they found the only representations of the former inhabitants of the city other than the one carving of a winged man they'd seen on the wall of the building nearest the dry river.

In the center room, illuminated through an opening at either end, the walls were covered on two sides by similar scenes. In one a group of sticklike humanoids knelt in a circle around a cone-headed beastemerging from the earth. The beast had a silver-horned antelope in its jaws.

"Well, there you are," Stoner said. "That thing is one of their G.o.ds, and probably just as unrealistic as some of the G.o.ds early Earthmen dreamed up."

"Ugh," Cindy said.

"They have offered the silver-horn as sacrifice," Stoner went on.