sign of life except the hot air rising from the mess kitchen
stovepipes.

Lockley went down into the camp. All was silence. All was lifeless. He
looked unhappily about him. There would be no point, of course, in
looking into the dormitories, but he made his way to the mess shed.
Some heavy earthenware plates and coffee cups, soiled, remained on the
table. There were a few flies. Not many. In the mess kitchen there was
grayish smoke and the reek of scorched and ruined food. The stoves
still burned. Lockley saw the blue flame of bottled gas. He went on.
The door of the commissary was open. Everything men might want to buy
in such a place waited for purchasers, but there was no one to buy or
sell.

The stillness and desolation of the place resulted from less than an
hour's abandonment. But somehow it was impossible to call out loudly
for Jill. Lockley was appalled by the feeling of emptiness in such
bright sunshine. It was shocking. Men hadn't moved out of the camp.
They'd simply left it, with every article of use dropped and
abandoned; nothing at all had been removed. And there was no sign of
Jill. It occurred to Lockley that she'd have waited for Vale at the
camp, because assuredly his first thought should have been for her
safety. Yes. She'd have waited for Vale to rescue her. But Vale was
either dead or a captive of the creatures that had been in the object
from the sky. He wouldn't be looking after Jill.

Lockley found himself straining his eyes at the mountain from whose
flank Vale had been prepared to measure the base line between his post
and Lockley's. That vantage point could not be seen from here, but
Lockley looked for a small figure that might be Jill, climbing