“It’s the find of a lifetime,” Littlejohn crowed.
The anthropologist was standing at the edge of the growing pit, staring down into the complex of stone building foundations spreading across the floor of the excavation.
Brad and Mnnx stood alongside him as the digging machines toiled away, carefully removing more of the silt that had accumulated over the city during the past thousand centuries. The caterpillar-tracked bulldozers and backhoes worked almost silently, their electrical motors humming quietly. They were remotely directed by a half-dozen engineers huddled at the lip of the growing excavation. Robots and smaller remotely directed machines carefully removed the last layers of dried mud from the structures.
“The biggest discovery in the history of archeology,” Littlejohn added, smiling delightedly. “A whole alien city.”
Turning to Mnnx, Brad said softly, “Your ancestors built this. You should be very proud.”
But Mnnx replied, “The Sky Masters killed my ancestors. They covered the city so that we could not see it. They will be angry with you.”
Brad had tried to get the Gammans to come and view the excavation. Most of them had refused, although a few—including Lnng, of course—had come and stared uneasily, fearfully. Brad thought that they were awed by the big digging machines.
Brad tried to reassure Mnnx. “There’s nothing to fear. The Sky Masters have gone far from here.” If they ever truly existed, he added silently.
“They see us,” Mnnx replied stubbornly. “They will punish us.”
* * *
“So what do we have?” Kosoff asked.
Brad stood at the head of the table, beside the professor. The display screens on the walls of the conference room showed views of the newly excavated city.
After six weeks of careful digging, a good part of the long-buried city had been cleared, and Kosoff had summoned Brad back to the starship for a meeting of the department heads.
“It’s a city,” Brad said, pointing to an aerial view of the dig. “You can see the foundations of buildings, and the rectilinear outlines of streets.”
Olav Pedersen asked, “Have you recovered any artifacts from the city?”
Brad knew the Scandinavian’s question was strictly pro forma. He had provided that information in the reports he’d submitted.
“Unfortunately, no. All that exists are the remains of the building’s foundations. The buildings themselves were smashed flat.”
“By the annual floods from the rivers that deposited all that silt, I should think,” said Quentin Abbott.
“No,” Brad said. “From the analysis that Emcee’s done, it looks as if the buildings were destroyed before the river’s flooding started burying them.”
“Destroyed by what?”
Brad glanced at Kosoff, who seemed to be holding his breath, waiting for his reply.
“According to the Gammans’ history, they were destroyed by the so-called Sky Masters.”
“That’s poppycock,” said Pedersen. “Pure mythology.”
“Is it?” Brad challenged. “Their mythology showed us where to find the city. And predicted that it would be flattened.” Before anyone could respond, he added, “Incidentally, there are some indications that the course of the river was altered, so that its annual flood would inundate the remains of the city.”
Elizabeth Chang said mildly, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”
Pointing at the displays on the walls, Brad countered, “Isn’t that extraordinary enough for you? The city was destroyed, its inhabitants wiped out, and the nearby river diverted to drown the remains.”
Kosoff said, “You’re asking us to believe the aliens’ tale of the Sky Masters?”
“I’m asking you to accept the evidence that we’ve uncovered. A cataclysm took place here some hundred thousand Earth years ago, maybe a bit more. The entire planetary system was disrupted. A whole civilization on planet Gamma was smashed back to the Stone Age, and beasts from planet Beta were created and given the means to travel to Gamma for the purpose of keeping the Gammans from climbing back to civilization.”
Kosoff asked, “And you believe this destruction was caused by some sort of conflict, a war with another alien race? An interstellar war?” The disbelief in his voice was palpable.
Before Brad could reply, Abbott suggested, “The Sky Masters may be an invention of the Gammans, an explanation they created to make sense of their history.”
Littlejohn spoke up. “Brad, do you actually believe that this planetary system was almost destroyed in an interstellar war?”
“That’s a huge conclusion to swallow,” Kosoff said, shaking his head.
With a touch of his thumb on the projector control unit he held, Brad put up a view of the nanodevices built into the eggshell spacecraft from Beta. “Somebody built those craft. Somebody created those nanomachine controls. Somebody created those six-legged cats and set them on the Gammans every time the two planets approached each other. Somebody with a technology significantly beyond our own.”
Silence along the length of the conference table. Not even Kosoff had anything to say.
“All the available facts point to that conclusion,” Brad insisted. “We’re not dealing with mythology here.”