How useful were they likely to be? He was not optimistic as the pinnace completed its braking phase and floated toward a landing a few kilometers west of one of the settlements. It was easy to be fooled by a planet superficially like Earth, but he might be ten billion light-years away. Every life-form in his native galaxy could be a close cousin compared with this.

He put the lander down on an open field at the edge of one of the deserted “towns.” There was life here, but the forms were small and they scurried away before he could take a good look at them. Drake estimated that the biggest of the leggy red animals that they had observed by the canal was maybe a quarter of his size. He was the planet’s giant.

He stepped down from the lander. A faint breeze on his face carried a scent that made him wrinkle his nose. It reminded him of pickled onions, and that in turn suggested concert recitals in Germany, followed by dark beer and laughter and late-night suppers. How long since anything had summoned up those memories?

He moved onto the road and knelt down to examine the surface.

“Are you getting all this?” Whatever he registered with his senses or his instruments should be automatically sent to the ship, hovering in stationary orbit.

“Everything. Continue.”

“Just testing.”

Drake probed the surface. The road was a fine glasslike gravel set in a tough bituminous matrix. It was tough and durable, but fine threads of bright red vegetation had taken a toehold at the edge. A narrow strip along the middle of the road was brighter than the rest, as though something continuously scoured it clean.

“This hasn’t been used as a road for a long time. I think you may have it exactly right. They’ve advanced to pure electronic form and left material things behind. They didn’t restore the fallen tower, because they no longer need it.” Drake glanced at the sun. It was lower in the sky, and barred clouds were moving in across it. “If there’s any sign of them, it ought to be in the towns.”

“Two hours to sunset.” The ship had noticed and interpreted his action. “The town that you are about to enter did not

show up on our orbital survey as one with nighttime lighting. There are rainclouds approaching from the west. I may lose the ability to monitor your environment visually. If you intend a detailed exploration, you should stay in the lander and wait for morning. ”

“It’s only a few minutes’ walk. I’ll take a quick look, and then come back to the lander for the night.”

The two towers in the middle of the town were no more than a small fraction of the height of their counterparts by the canal, but as the sun went down they cast long shadows in Drake’s direction. They were taller than he had thought, a hundred meters and more. The bigger one was in the exact center of the town. Drake walked toward it across a skeletal pattern of girder shadows on the dark road.

“I’m at the first building. Plants are growing around the walls, but they don’t stop there. I can see vines entering through that break.”

He pointed to a gap in the building wall. The semicircular arch was six feet tall and came down to within a foot or so of ground level. It ended in a flat ledge about four feet wide. He could easily enter if he were willing to step on the vines.

“What are the chances that touching the plants will hurt me?”

“Possible, but unlikely unless they are motion sensitive. They are chemically different enough that they will not respond to you as a living form. Warning: Within the next ten minutes there will be enough cloud cover to inhibit my visual oversight of you.”

Drake poked his head through the opening. It took a few moments for his eyes to adjust to the gloom. He was looking into a small room, with another semicircular aperture at the far side. Dusky pink plant life covered everything like a carpet. Beyond the other opening he could see a downward ramp and, beside it, the faint outline of what looked like a piece of gray machinery.

He lifted his feet to avoid touching the plants and steadied himself with his hand on the side of the opening. A surface layer of wall material, about a quarter of an inch thick, crumbled to white powder at his touch. The dust made him sneeze. The wall behind was revealed as a solid metallic plate.

At the same moment his communications unit produced a staccato rattle. A diminished ship’s voice said urgently but faintly, “Your signal is weakening. ”

Drake pulled back. “Is it active interference?”

“I think not. It is a natural fading. There must be some shield or insulation in the building walls and roof. I am predicting rain where you are located within the next quarter of an hour.”

Drake looked again along the road that led to the tower. Nothing moved. Even the faint breeze, with its odd smell, had died away to nothing. The setting sun was hidden behind a cloud bank.

“I’m going to take a quick look inside. Do you know what the roof is like?”

“It is no longer visible because of the clouds, but our earlier survey showed two large round openings. Nothing could be seen within them. If the room that you looked into is of typical height, the building has three floors above ground level. ”

“The ramp that I saw goes down, not up. I’ll see if there’s any way to reach the upper floors.”

Drake moved forward and stepped high across the ledge. He could not avoid treading on the plants at the other side. They gave beneath his weight, with a squeaking sound of crushed rubbery tendrils.

“Are we still in contact?”

The communications unit remained silent. Drake hurried across the room and into the next one. It contained gray machinery, solid, alien, and uninformative. He saw a tubby upright cylinder about three feet high that could have been anything from a spacewarp to a dishwasher. He ran his hand across the upper surface. His fingers came away covered with grime. Everything was coated with a thick, uniform layer of dust.

The ramp was steep by human standards, tilted at thirty degrees. He moved carefully downward, pushing his way through sheets of sticky material, thin as gossamer, that broke easily under his hands. Suddenly it was much darker. There was no opening to the outside at this level, and the sunlight that bled in from above was less and less. In another five minutes he would have to turn back. He wished that he had brought a light from the pinnace. Any

exploration of lower levels would have to wait until morning.

He had reached the bottom of the ramp. His shoe hit something that rolled away in front of him. He moved toward it and bent low to see what he had kicked.

After one look he froze in his stooped position. He could not see colors in the gloom, but his foot had struck an object of a familiar size and shape. It was like one of the pink snails that crawled around the fence by the canal. This one was dead.

Drake picked it up. It was surprisingly light. The outer surface was smooth and rubbery, which allowed it to retain its original cylindrical shape, but the insides had been scooped out through a long slit at one end. He wondered for a moment if it were some kind of mummified form. His nose told him differently. It had been dead just long enough for the corpse to become putrid.

He could see half a dozen other remains on the floor ahead. One of them was bigger than the rest, a giant white version of the red multilegged creature that he had observed in the canal enclosure. Stretched upright, this one would loom over him. But it would never stretch over anything. It had been cut almost in two at its midsection.

He retreated, heading up the ramp a lot faster than he had descended. Sticky cobwebs clung to him, and he held up his arm to shield his eyes. He did not feel at ease until he had retraced his path, scrambled over the ledge, and was standing in gloomy twilight.