Next to it there had been a structure containing an ore-crusher.  The massive machinery could still be seen, but the structure was in fragments.  Next to that, again, had been the shaft-head shelters of the mine.  They also were shattered practically to matchsticks.

The look of the ground about the building sites was simply and purely impossible.  It was a mass of hoofprints.  Cattle by thousands and tens of thousands had trampled everything.  Cattle had burst in the wooden sides of the buildings.  Cattle had piled themselves up against the beams upholding roofs until the buildings collapsed.

Then cattle had gone plunging over the wrecked buildings until there was nothing left but indescribable chaos.  Many, many cattle had died in the crush.  There were heaps of dead beasts about the metal girders which were the foundation of the landing-grid.  The air was tainted by the smell of carrion.

The settlement had been destroyed, positively by stampeded cattle in tens or hundreds of thousands charging blindly through and over and upon it.  Senselessly, they’d trampled each other to horrible shapelessness.  The mine shaft was not choked, because enormously strong timbers had fallen across and blocked it.  But everything else was pure destruction.

Calhoun said evenly, “Clever!  Very clever!  You can’t blame men when beasts stampede.  We should accept the evidence that some monstrous herd, making its way through a mountain pass, somehow went crazy and bolted for the plains.  This settlement got in the way and it was too bad for the settlement!  Everything’s explained, except the ship that went to Weald.

“A cattle stampede, yes.  Anybody can believe that!  But there was a man stampede.  Men stampeded into the ship as blindly as the cattle trampled down this little town.  The ship stampeded off into space as insanely as the cattle.  But a stampede of men and cattle, in the same place?  That’s a little too much!”

“But what—­”

“How,” asked Calhoun directly, “do you intend to get in touch with your friends here?”

“I—­I don’t know,” she said, distressed.  “But if the ship stays here, they’re bound to come and see why.  Won’t they?  Or will they?”

“If they’re sane, they won’t,” said Calhoun.  “The one undesirable thing, here, would be human footprints on top of cattle tracks.  If your friends are a meat-getting party from Dara, as I believe, they should cover up their tracks, get off-planet as fast as possible, and pray that no signs of their former presence are ever discovered.  That would be their best first move, certainly!”

“What should I do?” she asked helplessly.

“I’m far from sure.  At a guess, and for the moment, probably nothing.  I’ll work something out.  I’ve got the devil of a job before me, though.  I can’t spend but so much time here.”

“You can leave me here....”

He grunted and turned away.  It was naturally unthinkable that he should leave another human being on a supposedly uninhabited planet, with the knowledge that it might actually be uninhabited, and the future knowledge that any visitors would have the strongest of possible reasons to hide themselves away.