Two days later, the car emerged from the desert into comparatively fertile country. The four explorers found a broken concrete highway and followed it between rolling, treeless grasslands. Near dusk, they saw smoke on the horizon—and ran into a roadblock. A segment of the highway had been thrown up into a ten-foot wall, barring their progress. Over the edge of the wall, the muzzles of heat-guns pointed at them as they brought the car to a halt some distance away. John got the commander on the car radio.
"We could swing around it, but we don't know whether they have vehicles that could outrun us," he reported. "And my conception of our mission is to establish contact."
"That's right," agreed Tom. "But stay in the car until you get a friendly reaction. Then you're on your own—and I'm afraid you're expendable, John."
John switched on the loudspeaker and made overtures to the roadblock. After a moment, a lone figure stepped around the edge of the mound of earth and concrete and approached the car slowly. The man was dressed in the drab, baggy uniform of a professional soldier.
"If you come in peace, leave your vehicle and identify yourself," called the soldier. "You will not be harmed."
"Take over, Phil," ordered John. He slipped from the driver's seat and climbed through the turret. Jumping to the ground, he approached the soldier, his arms swinging freely at his sides.
"John Gray, executive officer of the starship Discovery, returned from a colonizing mission to Deneb III," said John, holding out his hand.
The soldier ignored the out-stretched hand, saluting formally instead.
"Arrive in peace," he said. "If you will leave your vehicle here, you will be escorted as deevs to Third Sarge Elfor, commander of the town of Pebbro."
John returned to the car and held a brief consultation with his companions. Although he was in command of the exploration party, planetary operations of the starship's personnel were conducted on a somewhat democratic basis. The commander listened in, but left them to their own judgment.
"Communications blackout for a while then, commander," said John. "I see no reason to let them know about the personal radios right now."
The quartet emerged from the car wearing small packs of emergency rations and equipment. Behind the roadblock, the sight that met their eyes was unexpected.
The robot-controlled space relay station, the heavily armed pillboxes at the spaceport and the heat-guns poked across the roadblock at them, all had made it logical to anticipate a powerfully equipped task force. Instead, they found a troop of 19th century cavalrymen, armed for the most part with 13th century weapons. There were no more than a dozen heat-guns in evidence, and their bearers also carried short swords and long-bows with quivers of arrows.
The four from the starship were given mounts and, with no outward indications of hostility, were escorted to the town whose smoke they had seen.
The town was another surprise. They had expected either a fortress or an outpost of brick and log buildings. It was neither. The buildings were tremendous cubes and domes of steel and concrete, sleek and modern, windowed with heavy glass bricks. Skeins of cables, coils and loops of aerials bespoke the power that must be at their command.
But the people walked.
Not a car or a truck was to be seen. Men and women in the gray military uniforms walked or trotted up and down the broad paved streets. Occasionally a horse-drawn wagon passed, hauling a load of vegetables or manure. It was as though a cavalry post of the old West carried on its slow-moving duties in a super-modern setting.