ck down that hideous cross-eyed man, my heart
went out to you in gratitude. Go, while my heart remains soft, it is not
so often that the heart of a _Zerv_ is soft toward any outlander. Go, I
cannot protect you from this place."

"I will stay," I said.

"Stubborn fool!" She stamped her foot prettily, imperiously, vexed at my
refusal to go out of that weird place the way I had entered. "Stay then,
but do not expect me to keep off the slaves of the Goddess. This place
can be most evil to those who do not know what it is, nor why it is
secret."

She turned, walked behind the great dais of the crystal sarcophagus, and
I followed just in time to see her disappear behind a hanging curtain of
leather. I hastened after, my hand on my gun, for I had no wish to be
left alone where I had seen my three companions stricken down with no
enemy in sight.

Behind the curtain a passage led, along the passage were several doors.
She sped past these lightly, almost running. I followed, she must have
heard me, but she did not look back. The doors along the passage were
curtained. Through the gaps of the curtain I could see they were empty
of life. The curtains were rotted as if long unused, dirty and blotched
with mould staining the leather.

Though she had spoken to me in Korean, and I had answered in the same
tongue, I knew she was no native, for she spoke it differently, perhaps
no better than myself. I was no judge; what she used may have been a
dialect different from that I had heard previously.

I followed as she emerged from the long tunnel into the blaze of
sunlight. She stood for a moment letting her eyes adjust to the glare. I
stumbled to her side, half-blinded, stood looking down at the scene
which seemed to engross her.

Gradually it came clear, like a television screen coming into perfect
tune--the immense inner valley that the mountain of cloud-like snow
enclosed. In the center of the encircled valley a lake shimmered blue as
the sky, and about that lake was a city.

My eyes refused, at first, to accept what they were seeing. My mind
rebelled, but after a minute of staring and making sure--I gasped.

Alien to this earth it was, but beautiful! Towers, and round-based
dwellings braced together in one single unit of structural strength, a
designed whole such as our architects dream of and never achieve. Walled
with white marble, the city was a fortress, but a lovely fortress. Yet
there was a coldness, an angularity, t