hind it
and came out into rainbowed sunlight again.

Here either provident nature or ancient art had hollowed a pocket in the
stone which was filled with water. They drank. Then Travis filled his
canteen while Kaydessa washed her face, holding the cold freshness of
the moisture to her cheeks with both palms.

She spoke, but he could not hear her through the roar. She leaned closer
and raised her voice to a half shout:

"This is a place of spirits! Do you not also feel their power, Fox?"

Perhaps for a space out of time he did feel something. This was a
watering place, perhaps a never-ceasing watering place--and to his
desert-born-and-bred race all water was a spirit gift never to be taken
for granted. The rainbow--the Spirit People's sacred sign--old beliefs
stirred in Travis, moving him. "I feel," he said, nodding in emphasis to
his agreement.

They followed the ledge road to a section where a landslide of an
earlier season had choked it. Travis worked a careful way across the
debris, Kaydessa obeying his guidance in turn. Then they were on a
sloping downward way which led to a staircase--the treads weather-worn
and crumbling, the angle so steep Travis wondered if it had ever been
intended for beings with a physique approximating the Terrans'.

They came to a cleft where an arch of stone was chiseled out as a
roofing. Travis thought he could make out a trace of carving on the
capstone, so worn by years and weather that it was now only a faint
shadow of design.

The cleft was a door into another valley. Here, too, golden mist swirled
in tendrils to disguise and cloak what stood there. Travis had found his
ruins. Only the structures were intact, not breached by time.

Mist flowed in lapping tongues back and forth, confusing outlines, now
shuttering, now baring oval windows which were spaced in diamonds of
four on round tower surfaces. There were no visible cracks, no cloaking
of climbing vegetation, nothing to suggest age and long roots in the
valley. Nor did the architecture he could view match any he had seen on
those other worlds.

Travis strode away from the cleft doorway. Under his moccasins was a
block pavement, yellow and green stone set in a simple pattern of
checks. This, too, was level, unchipped and undisturbed, save for a
drift or two of soil driven in by the wind. And nowhere could he see any
vegetation.

The towers were of the same green stone as half the pavement blocks, a
glassy green which m