The Mammoth Book of Apocalyptic SF - Mike Ashley [229]
"We come from the Moon." Arne pushed ahead of us to meet the vehicle, bawling through his hailer. "We come in peace. We come with gifts."
The vehicle had no windows, no operator we could see. Spaceman ran barking to meet it. Arne dropped the bullhorn and stood in front of it, waving his arms. Hooting louder, it almost ran over us before it swerved and rolled on around us to butt against the plane. Heavy metal arms reached out to grab and tip it. Pepe scrambled out as it was lifted off the ground. The hooting stopped, and the machine hauled it away, while Spaceman whimpered and huddled against my feet.
"Robotic, I guess." Pepe stared after it, scratching his head. "Sent out to salvage the wreck."
Baffled and anxious, we stood there sweating. Flying insects buzzed around us. Some of them stung. Tanya had me get a closeup of one on my arm. A hot wind blew out of the desert west, sharp with a scent like burned toast. We started walking toward the tower.
"We're idiots," Arne muttered at Tanya. "We should have stayed in orbit."
She made no answer.
We plodded on, battling the gravity and swatting at insects, till we came over a rocky rise and saw the wide white runways spread out ahead, the tower at the hub was still miles away. Parked aircraft scattered the broad triangles between the flight strips. A few stood upright for vertical landing and ascent, like our own craft, but most had wings and landing gear like those I knew from pictures of the past.
We dropped flat when a huge machine with silver wings came roaring overhead, stopped again when a silent vehicle came racing to meet us. Arne lifted his bullhorn and lowered it when Tanya frowned. Brave again, Spaceman growled and bristled till it stopped. Three men in white got out, speaking together and staring at him. He stood barking at them till one of them pointed something like an ancient flashlight at him. He whined and crumpled down. They gathered him up and took him away in the van.
"Why the dog?" Arne scowled in bafflement. "With no attention to us?"
"Dogs are extinct," Tanya said.
"Hey!" A startled cry from Pepe. "We're moving!"
The parked aircraft beside the strip were gliding away from us. Flowing without ripples, without a sound, with no mechanism visible, the slick white pavement was carrying us toward the terminal building. Pepe bent to feel it with his fingers, dropped to put his ear against it.
"A thousand years of progress since we came to fight the bugs!" He stood up and shrugged at Tanya. "Old DeFalco would be happy."
Scores of people were leaving the parked aircraft to ride the crawling pavement. Men in pants and skirt-like kilts. Women in shorts and trailing gowns. Children in rainbow colors as if on holiday. Although I saw nothing much like our orange-yellow jumpsuits, nobody seemed to notice. People streamed out of the terminal ahead. Most of them, I saw, wore bright little silver balls on bracelets or necklaces.
"Sir?" Arne called to a man near us.
"Can you tell us-"
With a hiss as if for silence, the man frowned and turned away. They all stood very quietly, alone or in couples or little family groups, gazing solemnly ahead.
Pepe jogged my arm as we came around the building and into a magnificent avenue that led toward the heart of the city. I caught my breath and stood gawking at a row of immense statues spaced down the middle of the parkway.
"Look at that!" Arne raised his arm to point ahead. "I think they do remember us."
A woman in a long white gown gestured sternly to hush him, and the pavement bore us on toward a tall needle that stabbed into the sky at the end of the avenue. A thin crescent at its point shone like a bright new Moon.
Statues, needle, crescent, they were all bright silver. A bell began