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.Perhaps, a building had stood here at one time.Or it may have been a wall.Or a monument.I started down the mound, choosing a path a short way downstream from where I had crossed the creek, working my way along slowly and carefully, for the slope was steep, using my hands as brakes to keep myself from sliding or from falling.And it was then, hugged close against the slope, that I found the piece of bone.It had weathered out of the ground, perhaps not too long ago, and it lay hidden there among the purple flowers.Under ordinary circumstances, I probably would have missed it.I could not see it well at first, just the dull whiteness of it lying on the ground.I had slid past it before I saw it and crawled back to pick it up.The surface of it powdered slightly at the pressure of my fingers, but it did not break.It was slightly curved and white, a ghostly, chalky white.Turning it over in my hand, I made out that it was a rib bone and the shape and size of it was such that it could be human, although my knowledge was too slight to be absolutely sure.If it were really humanoid, I told myself, then it meant that at one time a thing like man had lived here.And could it mean that something very similar to the human race still resided here?A planet full of flowers—with nothing living on it except the purple flowers, and more lately Tupper Tyler.That was what I’d thought when I had seen the flowers spreading to the far horizons, but it had been supposition only.It was a conclusion I had jumped to without too much evidence.Although it was in part supported by the seeming fact that nothing else existed in this particular place—no birds, no insects or animals, not a thing at all, except perhaps some bacteria and viruses and even these, I thought, might be essential to the well-being of the Flowers.Although the outer surface of the bone had chalked off when I picked it up, it seemed sound in structure.Not too long ago, I knew, it had been a part of a living thing.Its age probably would depend to a large extent upon the composition and the moistness of the soil and probably many other factors.It was a problem for an expert and I was no expert.Now I saw something else, a little spot of whiteness just to the right of me.It could have been a white stone lying on the ground, but even as I looked at it I didn’t think it was.It had that same chalky whiteness of the rib I had picked up.I moved over to it and as I bent above it I could see it was no stone.I let the rib drop from my fingers and began to dig.The soil was loose and sandy and although I had no tools, my fingers served the purpose.As I dug, the bone began to reveal its shape and in a moment I knew it was a skull—and only a little later that it was a human skull.I dug it loose and lifted it and while I might have failed to identify the rib, there was no mistaking this.I hunkered on the slope and felt pity well inside of me, pity for this creature that once had lived and died—and a growing fear, as well.For by the evidence of the skull I held within my hands, I knew for a certainty that this was not the home world of the Flowers.This was—this must be—a world that they had conquered, or at least had taken over.They might, indeed, I thought, be very far in time from that old home where another race (by their description of it, a non-human race) had trained them to intelligence.How far back, I wondered, lay the homeland of the Flowers? How many conquered earths lay between this world and the one where they had risen? How many other earths lay empty, swept clean of any life that might compete with the Flowers?And that other race, the race that had raised and elevated them above their vegetable existence—where was that old race today?I put the skull back into the hole from which I’d taken it.Carefully, I brushed back the sand and dirt until it was covered once again, this time entirely covered, with no part of it showing.I would have liked to take it back to camp with me so I could have a better look at it.But I knew I couldn’t, for Tupper must not know what I had found.His mind was an open book to his friends the Flowers, and I was sure mine wasn’t, for they had had to use the telephone to get in touch with me.So long as I told Tupper nothing, the Flowers would never know that I had found the skull.There was the possibility, of course, that they already knew, that they had the sense of sight, or perhaps some other sense that was as good as sight.But I doubted that they had; there was so far no evidence they had.The best bet was that they were mental symbiots, that they had no awareness beyond the awareness they shared with minds in other kinds of life.I worked my way around and down the mound and along the way I found other blocks of stone.It was becoming evident to me that at some other time a building had stood upon this site.A city, I wondered, or a town? Although whatever form it might have taken, it had been a dwelling place.I reached the creek at the far end of the mound, where it ran close against the cutbank it had chewed out of the mound, and started wading back to the place where I had crossed.The sun had set and with it had gone the diamond sparkle of the water.The creek ran dark and tawny in the shadow of the first twilight.Teeth grinned at me out of the blackness of the bank that rose above the stream, and I stopped dead, staring at that row of snaggled teeth and the whiteness of the bone that arched above them.The water, tugging at my ankles, growled a little at me and I shivered in the chill that swept down from the darkening hills.For, staring at that second skull, grinning at me out of the darkness of the soil that stood poised above the water, I knew that the human race faced the greatest danger it had ever known.Except for man himself, there had been, up to this moment, no threat against the continuity of humanity.But here, finally, that threat lay before my eyes.13I sighted the small glowing of the fire before I reached the camp.When I stumbled down the hillside, I could see that Tupper had finished with his nap and was cooking supper.“Out for a walk?” he asked.“Just a look around,” I said.“There isn’t much to see.”“The Flowers is all,” said Tupper.He wiped his chin and counted the fingers on one hand, then counted them again to be sure he’d made no mistake.“Tupper?”“What is it, Brad?”“Is it all like this? All over this Earth, I mean? Nothing but the Flowers?”“There are others come sometimes.”“Others?”“From other worlds,” he said.“But they go away.”“What kind of others?”“Fun people.Looking for some fun.”“What kind of fun?”“I don’t know,” he said.“Just fun, is all.”He was surly and evasive.“But other than that,” I said, “there’s nothing but the Flowers?”“That’s all,” he said.“But you haven’t seen it all.”“They tell me,” Tupper said.“And they wouldn’t lie.They aren’t like people back in Millville.They don’t need to lie.”He used two sticks to move the earthen pot off the hot part of the fire.“Tomatoes,” he said.“I hope you like tomatoes.”I nodded that I did and he squatted down beside the fire to watch the supper better.“They don’t tell nothing but the truth,” he said, going back to the question I had asked.“They couldn’t tell nothing but the truth.That’s the way they’re made
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