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.
the end
