laughed at my expression.

"You are a man, too--like all the men of my world. That is the feeling you
came here to conquer, Alan--so that the women here may all keep their
wings--and be free."

I think I was just a little ashamed of myself for a moment. But I knew my
feeling had been only human. I _did_ want her to fly, to keep those
beautiful wings. And in that moment they came to represent not only her
freedom, but my trust in her, my very love itself.

I stroked their sleek red feathers gently with my hand.

"I shall never feel that way again, Miela," I said earnestly.

She laughed once more and kissed me, and the look in her eyes told me she
understood.

The landscape, from this wider viewpoint, seemed even more bleak and
desolate than before. The valley was perhaps half a mile broad, and wound
away upward into a bald range of mountains in the distance.

The ground under my feet was like a richly metallic ore. In places it was
wholly metal, smooth and shining like burnished copper. Below us the
valley broadened slightly, falling into what I judged must be open country
where lay the city of our destination.

For some minutes I stood appalled at the scene. I had often been in the
deserts of America, but never have I felt so great a sense of desolation.
Always before it had been the lack of water that made the land so arid;
and always the scene seemed to hold promise of latent fertility, as though
only moisture were needed to make it spring into fruition.

Nothing of the kind was evident here. There was, indeed, no lack of water.
I could see a storm cloud gathering in the distance. The air I was
breathing seemed unwarrantably moist; and all about me on the ground
little pools remained from the last rainfall. But here there was no soil,
not so much even as a grain of sand seemed to exist. The air was warm, as
warm as a midsummer's day in my own land, a peculiarly oppressive, moist
heat.

I had been prepared for this by Miela. I was bareheaded, since there never
was to be direct sunlight. My feet were clad in low shoes with rubber
soles. I wore socks. For the rest, I had on simply one of my old pairs of
short, white running pants and a sleeveless running shirt. With the
exception of the shoes it was exactly the costume I had worn in the races
at college.

I had been standing motionless, hardly more than a step from the car in
which we had landed. Suddenly, in the midst of my meditations on the
strange scene