n it, ore from the mines was concentrated and
the useless tailings carried away by a conveyor-belt to make a monstrous
pile of broken stone. But there was no longer a building. Next to it
there had been a structure containing an ore-crusher. The massive
machinery could still be seen, but the structure was fragments. Next to
that, again, had been the shaft-head shelters of the mine. They also
were shattered practically to match-sticks.

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 shapelessnesses.
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
and 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 at one time!"

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

"I--I don't know," she said distressedly. "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-