Adrian Kosoff stood on the cracked stone floor of the ancient building’s foundation, with Brad and Littlejohn on either side of him. Off in the distance the remotely controlled digging machines were patiently enlarging the excavation, uncovering more and more of the remains of the city.
Kosoff had picked a frosty day for his first visit to Gamma. He had decided to come down and see the evidence of the ancient cataclysm for himself. He wore a fur-trimmed arctic jacket and a fur hat jammed down over his ears. Its brim nearly covered the professor’s bushy eyebrows.
He was peering at the inscription chiseled neatly into the remains of the stone wall.
“It must be writing of some sort,” he said, more to himself than the others. “Has to be.”
Bundled into a thick windbreaker, Brad said, “None of the Gammans understand it. They have no writing of their own.”
Only a handful of the Gammans had worked up the courage to come and look at the city. Even Lnng had shuffled his feet nervously on the few occasions when he’d visited. Superstitious dread was the villagers’ common reaction, together with awe and outright fear of the heavy earth-moving equipment that was methodically uncovering the ancient city.
It didn’t help, Brad thought, that Mnnx dolefully repeated to them every evening that he expected the Sky Masters to reappear and punish them all for surviving the attack of the monsters from Beta.
Raising his voice over the clatter of the digging machines and the keening wind, Brad said, “They smashed this city and everything in it, then diverted the river to bury the remains in silt.”
“They?” Kosoff asked. “You mean these so-called Sky Masters?”
Littlejohn, also swaddled in winter gear, said, “Mythology isn’t merely stories made up out of whole cloth, you know. Most myths are based on a kernel of truth.”
Kosoff nodded curtly. His gaze sweeping the crumbling stones, he muttered, “Pretty big kernel here.”
“So what will your report back to Earth say?” Brad asked.
Putting out a hand to touch the stub of stone standing erect before him, Kosoff said slowly, “Abbott’s astronomers have searched with their best telescopes for a star that might have disrupted this planetary system. There’s nothing in the area that might fit the bill.”
“Then whatever perturbed the orbits of the planets here was not a passing star,” said Littlejohn.
“Whatever smashed this city flat and then buried it was not a natural cataclysm,” Brad added.
Kosoff glowered at them. “There must be a natural explanation for this. There’s got to be! You can’t believe that some interstellar war took place here a hundred thousand years ago. It’s too fantastic.”
“Is it?” Littlejohn asked mildly.
“Perhaps a passing mini black hole disrupted this planetary system,” Kosoff mused.
“And created the cats on Beta?” Brad challenged.
Kosoff had no answer.
“Occam’s Razor, Professor,” said Brad. “Fantastic as it may seem, an interstellar invader fits all the observed facts, including the biology of the cats from Beta.” Before Kosoff could reply, Brad went on, “And it fits the Gammans’ mythology.”
With a single brisk nod, Littlejohn agreed, “Perhaps it isn’t mythology, after all. Perhaps it’s history.”
Kosoff muttered, “Perhaps. Perhaps. I wish we could stay here longer, dig up more evidence.”
“We’ve got about eighteen months before we head back to Earth,” Littlejohn said.
“Too soon,” said Kosoff. “We need more time here.”
“The follow-on mission is already on its way,” said Littlejohn.
“Yes. They’ll get all the glory, after we’ve done the groundbreaking work.”
Brad interrupted Kosoff’s brooding. “In the meantime, we’ve got to decide what we should do about the cats. We can’t let them invade this planet again and slaughter the Gammans.”
“The follow-on mission won’t be here in time to stop that,” said Kosoff.
“We’ve saved the Gammans once, but we won’t be here to save them the next time.”
“That can’t be helped. We don’t have the resources to remain here until the follow-on mission arrives,” Kosoff said. “Even if we did, I doubt that the World Council would approve our staying.”
Brad started, “They don’t understand—”
“No, you don’t understand,” Kosoff interrupted. “We’re under the World Council’s control, whether you like it or not.”
* * *
That night, as he lay in bed with Felicia, Brad blurted, “Fil, I’ve got to stay here.”
He felt her body tense. “What do you mean?”
In the darkened room he couldn’t make out the expression on her face. But he heard the stress in her voice.
“I’ve got to stay here through the winter. I’ve got to help Mnnx and Lnng and the others when the cats from Beta come back.”
She turned toward him. “Brad, you can’t! You can’t stay here alone. How will you survive? You won’t have enough food—”
“I’ve been working through the numbers,” he said, keeping his voice soft, not giving in to his own doubts, his own fears. “There’s enough food in the backup reserves to feed the two of us until the follow-on mission arrives.”
“The two of us?”
“You’ll stay with me, won’t you?”
A long silence. Brad could feel his pulse thudding in his ears.
At last Felicia said, “If I don’t stay, what will you do?”
“You won’t stay?”
“If I don’t, will you stay here or come back home with me?”
“Fil, don’t ask me that. Don’t make me choose.”
“You’ve got to choose, Brad. It’s one or the other.”
“You’d leave me?”
Another long silence. Brad felt as if he were being torn apart.
“You’d leave me,” Felicia said softly, sadly.
“But I have to—”
“You’d be killing both of us,” Felicia said.
“You’d stay?”
“I shouldn’t. I should go back. I should let Kosoff court me all the way home.”
“Don’t joke. This is serious.”
“Brad, I want a normal life. I want to have children, your children.”
“But you’d stay.”
“I don’t want to.”
“But you’d stay. You’d really stay with me.”
In the darkness, she sighed. “There’s got to be some other way. Brad, you’ve got to find another option.”
“There isn’t any other option. Either we stay and help the Gammans protect themselves, or we go back to Earth and leave them to face the cats by themselves. Leave them to be butchered.”
“You’ve got to find another way,” Felicia insisted. “Otherwise you’ll be killing us both.”
Brad didn’t reply. But he felt a wall separating him from his wife now, even though they lay side by side.