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signify,
it seemed to indicate conclusively that the Stopans were far from surrender,
and that they obviously had a lot more tricks to play. He desperately needed to
know just what. But once he was out of the ship, with one trooper along to
drive the skimmer and act as guard, he pushed the big problem from his mind and
used this chance to observe details.
    At
first, it was no more than reinforcement for what he had already known. The
buildings were widespread, not closely grouped. Thoroughfares and roads were
wide. The buildings themselves were not large; none of them high. Even the
tallest were no more than four floors, if that. And there was a curiously
pervasive subdued quality. Clean lines, simple angles, nothing fancy about the
facades and fronts. Even the colors, such as there were, ranged in the lesser
pastel hues from gray to green.
    He
requested the driver to pull in close to one building and stop. He dismounted
and went close enough to touch the stonework. It was as the men had reported
last night. A chalky, friable stuff, rough-textured, more
like expanded plastic foam than anything else he could think of. Yet it was
stone-dust, which would have been easy to aggregate into something much harder.
So why did they choose to build with this? He stood back and looked up, then
went further back, into the roadway. It wasn't lack of know-how, he decided,
because the road and sidewalks were as solid and durable as anyone could want.
    He turned away, frowning, and was brought up
short by a deep gutter between sidewalk and road. It was about four feet wide
and so deep that the bottom was obscured in shadow. Three steps away to his
left there was a solid stone bridge across, which he used, then scanned as far
as he could see in all directions. The gutters were common everywhere. And the
little bridges. That, he scratched his jaw and thought, seemed to indicate
provision for torrential rains. In the season. He had seen that kind of thing
before. But he would have guessed that one good tropical downpour would just
about wash away the dust-block structure.
    He
climbed back on the skimmer and gave the trooper the go-ahead, his mind full of
bewilderment. In a short while he reasoned out that the buildings must be
supported by steel corner posts, or something similar, with the walls hanging
from them, rather than standing of themselves. It was the only way possible to
erect buildings, using that stuff. But why bother? The ever-growing string of
questions began to irritate him and he left them gladly as they encountered a
quick-marching squad of troopers at a crossroad. He hailed the squad leader and
asked about progress.
    "Not a soul, sir. Not
one man, woman or child. Queerl"
    "Did they take things with them, so far
as you can tell? What I mean, did they just bolt, or was this orderly?"
    "Hard to tell, sir, not knowing what the
interiors looked like before. But every place we've been into, they all looked
neat and tidy. No signs of upset or damage. Looks like they just walked away
and left everything."
    Bragan
dismissed him and ordered the skimmer on, chewing at the puzzle with even
greater irritation now that he could appreciate the impact of its sheer
physical size. By comparison with other cities known to him Stopa was small,
but comparison or not, to evacuate something like half a million people in one
night, in the dark, silently, is a gigantic feat of organization by any
standards. And, over everything else, why?
    The skimmer went on to halt in a large open
square before a massive gray-white building that was in its own way unique in
that it had a flight of solid stone steps leading up to a mighty pair of double
doors, elaborately carved. Outside, the troopers of Squad Two stiffened into
attention as Bragan went on by and in, into a magnificendy proportioned hall.
Eyes alert, he noted the same clean lines and lack of ornament, the restrained
colors. Size and proportion alone made it a place of dignity and importance.
Even the