his vest. "Certainly, Mr. Thacher. I'll be glad to
spin you a story. And I'm sure it will be interesting enough to keep you
awake."

* * * * *

They ran through the groves of dead trees, leaping across the sun-baked
Martian soil, running silently together. They went up a little rise,
across a narrow ridge. Suddenly Erick stopped, throwing himself down
flat on the ground. The others did the same, pressing themselves against
the soil, gasping for breath.

"Be silent," Erick muttered. He raised himself a little. "No noise.
There'll be Leiters nearby, from now on. We don't dare take any
chances."

Between the three people lying in the grove of dead trees and the City
was a barren, level waste of desert, over a mile of blasted sand. No
trees or bushes marred the smooth, parched surface. Only an occasional
wind, a dry wind eddying and twisting, blew the sand up into little
rills. A faint odor came to them, a bitter smell of heat and sand,
carried by the wind.

Erick pointed. "Look. The City-- There it is."

They stared, still breathing deeply from their race through the trees.
The City was close, closer than they had ever seen it before. Never had
they gotten so close to it in times past. Terrans were never allowed
near the great Martian cities, the centers of Martian life. Even in
ordinary times, when there was no threat of approaching war, the
Martians shrewdly kept all Terrans away from their citadels, partly from
fear, partly from a deep, innate sense of hostility toward the
white-skinned visitors whose commercial ventures had earned them the
respect, and the dislike, of the whole system.

"How does it look to you?" Erick said.

The City was huge, much larger than they had imagined from the drawings
and models they had studied so carefully back in New York, in the War
Ministry Office. Huge it was, huge and stark, black towers rising up
against the sky, incredibly thin columns of ancient metal, columns that
had stood wind and sun for centuries. Around the City was a wall of
stone, red stone, immense bricks that had been lugged there and fitted
into place by slaves of the early Martian dynasties, under the whiplash
of the first great Kings of Mars.

An ancient, sun-baked City, a City set in the middle of a wasted plain,
beyond groves of dead trees, a City seldom seen by Terrans--but a City
studied on maps and charts in every War Office on Terra. A City that
contained, for all its a