nds and shouted loudly.

"I'm coming up. Your radio doesn't work any more. I'm bringing the
message from Nyjord that you have been waiting to hear." This was
a slight bending of the truth without fracturing it. There was no
answer--just the hiss of wind-blown sand against the rock and the
mutter of the car in the background. He started to climb.

The rock underfoot was crumbling and he had to watch where he put
his feet. At the same time he fought a constant impulse to look up,
watching for anything falling from above. Nothing happened. When he
reached the top of the wall he was breathing hard; sweat moistened
his body. There was still no one in sight. He stood on an unevenly
shaped wall that appeared to circle the building. Instead of having
a courtyard inside it, the wall was the outer face of the structure,
the domed roof rising from it. At varying intervals dark openings
gave access to the interior. When Brion looked down, the sand car
was just a dun-colored bump in the desert, already far behind him.

Stooping, he went through the nearest door. There was still no one
in sight. The room inside was something out of a madman's funhouse.
It was higher than it was wide, irregular in shape, and more like a
hallway than a room. At one end it merged into an incline that
became a stairwell. At the other it ended in a hole that vanished
in darkness below. Light of sorts filtered in through slots and
holes drilled into the thick stone wall. Everything was built of the
same crumble-textured but strong rock. Brion took the stairs. After
a number of blind passages and wrong turns he saw a stronger light
ahead, and went on. There was food, metal, even artifacts of the
unusual Disan design in the different rooms he passed through. Yet
no people. The light ahead grew stronger, and the last passageway
opened and swelled out until it led into the large central chamber.

This was the heart of the strange structure. All the rooms,
passageways and halls existed just to give form to this gigantic
chamber. The walls rose sharply, the room being circular in cross
section and growing narrower towards the top. It was a truncated
cone, since there was no ceiling; a hot blue disk of sky cast light
on the floor below.

On the floor stood a knot of men who stared at Brion.

Out of the corner of his eyes, and with the very periphery of his
consciousness, he was aware of the rest of the room--barrels,
stores, machinery, a radio transceiver,