By ten o'clock the data from the latest reconnaissance had been processed. They revealed extensive cultivation to the east of the river and also showed up a high level of thermal activity, detected by the infrared scan, which could mean one of two things: natural hot springs bubbling up from underground or human habitation.
Yet still, maddeningly, the film and photographs revealed nothing. A few old mine workings and that was all.
Finally, running short of patience and inspiration, the commander made the decision to send in two advance ground units, to approach from north and south respectively. At 1:20 a column of trucks and armored personnel carriers moved along the narrow blacktop of route 38; the southern force comprising 264 officers and men of the Forty-seventh Marine Group. Their orders were to locate the settlement, detain anyone they found there, and radio back the position to headquarters at Caliente.
Fifteen miles from Lund, Maj. Sam Coogan told his driver to stop. Behind them the column crept to a halt. With his second-in-command, Captain Hance, he leaned over a map spread across the wheel cowling of the leading truck.
Major Coogan circled the area with a gloved finger. "It has to be somewhere here. Gotta be. But where?" He shook his head and gazed around at the scrub-dotted hillside. It was cool and the sky was darkening rapidly. Three miles away the peak of Mount Grafton wore a cap of purple thundery-looking clouds.
"Storm coming on, sir," Captain Hance observed. "Damn, if they can't give us a fix from the air how do they expect us to find it?"
Coogan grunted. "You know what concerns me more? They could be waiting for us. That pyro-suicide was on every telecast and radio bulletin--they must know we're coming after them. And with a bunch of religious nuts you can never be sure--"
His attention was caught by a staff sergeant farther down the column who was standing on the lip of the road and pointing down into a gully. The two officers went to look. It was the gutted burned-out wreck of a jeep lying on its side, with twisted and blackened Utah plates.
Coogan raised his eyebrows quizzically and looked at the captain, and together they turned to look at the rutted track on the opposite side of the road that wound jaggedly upward through the foothills toward Mount Grafton.
Inside the mountain Bhumi Bhap sat cross-legged on the sandy floor of his cell. A wick floating in a bowl of oil provided a dim flickering glow, illuminating the crudely carved walls that sloped up to the conical roof.
From outside the cell there came a low muttered chanting. The inner circle of adepts had been summoned; they were now waiting, preparing for Lift-Off.
It would not be long. Soon men with weapons would come to destroy, in the same way they had blindly and foolishly destroyed the earth. So be it, Bhumi Bhap decided. Everything had been prepared, was ready. He would lead the way to destruction.
This world was no longer to be denied the death it craved. Let it perish. Let the species that had defiled and despoiled it drown and choke in its own excreta. Bhumi Bhap rejoiced in the certain knowledge of what was to be. His own mortal body, the self that was "I," meant nothing to him. The uncountable atoms of which he was made would continue to exist, to circulate throughout the universe, and would eventually, inevitably, form part of another consciousness. From somewhere out there, dispersed across a billion light-years of space, he would witness the end of this clod of mud and still be there, eternally cognizant, waiting and watching for the slow cycle of rebirth to begin.
The chanting died away as he appeared in the doorway.
He moved slowly through their ranks with his crippled, lurching walk. In the light of the lamps and candles the pits of his eyes were cavernously hollow and black. His sticklike figure in the sagging robes seemed to lack substance, seemed almost, despite the lurching gait, to drift in dreadful incorporeal silence along the main gallery.
Bhumi Bhap gave no word or sign. They followed after him, twelve of his youngest and most devout disciples, descending to the lowest level where, in these chambers, resided the machines that provided power for the mountain, feeding off the lake of oil beneath their feet.
When they were gathered, silent and kneeling, Bhumi Bhap spoke softly of the Optimum Orbital Trajectory, reminding them that their lives were dedicated to its attainment. Very few were so fortunate in having been given a purpose; fewer still in having the opportunity to fulfill it.
"We do not fear death," he told them, "because for us death has no meaning. It is merely a transition, exchanging one form of existence for another. The stuff of your being cannot be destroyed, only that which is the selfish ego, and which anyway you are taught, as adepts of the Faith, to denounce.
