The Burnt Planet

The city crouched grimly about them. Even though they had neither seen nor heard any life in these streets save a few small animals who had fled their coming, they gripped their projectors at the ready.

Almost every structure had been damaged. Many were mere twisted heaps of debris, timbers and girders thrusting insanely at a sky that today was blue and benign. The taller, sturdier buildings still stood, but their walls were cracked and their windows gaping hollow eyes in the blank faces. Rubble clogged the streets, and grass had split the pavements. Here and there among the ruins a sapling stood bravely, its roots grasping in the shattered masonry.

In the streets, rusting and ancient, were objects which they surmised must have been vehicles. In some of them they found fragments of bone and shreds of clothing. They had seen other bones; in doorways, on the ground floors of the few buildings they had penetrated.

"Whatever it was," the second-in-command said, "it struck them swiftly."

"Some sickness, a virus, perhaps?" the astrogator suggested.

The commander shook his head. "War," he said. "Only war could do this to a city."

The lieutenant said admiringly, "Whoever they were, they certainly developed some pretty terrific weapons."

The commander had smiled, and patted his projector. "No more terrific than these," he said. "Our own people developed weapons, too. Thank the stars that we have learned not to use them on each other."

The scholar looked up from the inscription he had found on the side of a building.

"And thank the stars," he said, "that we learned in time. The people of this world apparently did not."

It was then, while they spoke, that from somewhere in the ruins there was a sharp crack, and one of the crew spun around and fell in the street. In the shattered silence of the city the sound echoed crazily.

"Take cover!" the captain shouted, and he plunged into a huge doorway, peering around the protecting portal. There was another crack, and something whined by him.

"Projectile weapon!" whispered the lieutenant behind him. He was prone, sighting his projector at a half-ruined four-story house at the corner. He pressed the control switch, once, and a section of the second floor seemed to explode into hurtling gray dust and shrieking steel.

Other projectors were spitting from doorways and from behind piles of brick and debris in the streets. The captain, watching the building from which the answering fire seemed to come, thought he saw movement behind one of the blank windows. Before he could take aim, there was a ripping series of shots and the masonry of the portal flew into dust. He heard the low flat whine of ricochets, and he withdrew deeper into the dimness of the great entranceway. Up the street he heard a crew member cry out in pain.

"The second floor!" he cried, and a hurricane of electron bolts ripped into the building at the corner. The building seemed to rip apart under the impact and there was the roar of falling bricks and timber as a floor gave way with a crash. They dashed out of cover, crouching, firing as they went.

They found three bodies in the ruins. Bipeds. Pale pasty flesh, faces half-hidden by tangled hair. The bodies were only partially clad in faded tattered clothes, and the feet were encased in what appeared to be the tanned hide of an animal. The flesh and the clothing were filthy, and they stank. The bodies were huddled around their weapon, a metallic-looking projectile-thrower mounted on three legs. Its barrel was still hot.

A little later they flushed another of the creatures in a narrow street. It howled gibberish at them and fled, but they cornered the thing against a heap of rubble. It mouthed things at them, and hurled bits of brick. Its eyes were wild and staring, and spittle trickled down the face into the sodden filthy rags it wore. They had to kill it, finally.

The commander turned the dead thing over with his projector stock, and stared at it.

"Mad," he said. "There are only a few of them, and they are mad."

The scholar nodded. He had found many of the writings, and they were stuffed in his pack and in his pockets, and he held one while he talked.

"They are mad," he said, "and there cannot be many of them. Certainly not enough to halt the advance of civilization."

It was as if he saw, already, the soaring towers of the cities they would build here over the pitiful ruins, as though the busy highways already spanned this rich new world.

"We have won our bridgehead here," he said. "Soon we will have won the world. The world," he looked down at the carcass at his feet, "that these poor fools threw away."