own one
of the smooth rock avenues, going away from the skiff and the tug which
had just landed.

On either side of the avenue were monoliths, irregularly spaced and of
different sizes and heights but following an apparently orderly plan.
The light of the distant sun lay raw and blinding on them, casting
shadows as black and sharp-edged as though drawn upon the rock with
india ink.

You could see faces in the monoliths. You could see mighty outlines,
singly and in groups, of gods and beasts and men, in combat, in
suppliance, in death and burial. That was why these asteroids were
called Valhallas. Twenty-six of them had been found so far, and studied,
and still no one could say certainly whether or not the hands of any
living beings had fashioned them. They might be actual monuments,
defaced by cosmic dust, by collision with the myriad fragments of the
Belt, by time. They might be one of Nature's casual jokes, created by
the same agencies. No actual tombs had been found, nor tools, nor
definitely identifiable artifacts. But still the feeling persisted, in
the airless silence of the avenues, that some passing race had paused
and wrought for itself a memorial more enduring than its fame, and then
gone on into the great galactic sea, never to return.

* * * * *

Hyrst had never been on a Valhalla before. He understood why Shearing
had not wanted to land and he wished now that they hadn't. There was
something overwhelmingly sad and awesome about these leaning, towering
figures of stone, moving forever in their lonely orbit, going nowhere,
returning to nowhere.

Then he saw the second tug overhead. He forgot his daydreams. "They're
going to act as a spotter," he said. Shearing grunted but did not speak.
His whole mind was concentrated on maintaining the cloak. Hyrst stopped
him still in the pitchy shadow under what might have been a kneeling
woman sixty feet high. He watched the tug. It lazed away, circling
slowly, and he did not think it had seen them. He could not any longer
see the place where they had landed, but he assumed that by now the
yacht had looped back and come in--if not there somewhere close by. They
could figure on nine to eleven men hunting them, depending on whether
they left the ships guarded or not. Either way, it was too many.

"Listen," he said aloud to Shearing. "Listen, I want to ask you. What
you said about latent impressions--you think I might have seen and heard