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danger. Kort did not return, but continued to bark, urging them to join him.
    They came to a second door. This had not been sealed, though it had the same wheel-controlled lock. Rather it stood ajar. Kort appeared there, voicing a series of imperative yaps.
    At first Thora could not believe that such an open chamber as they now entered could have been fashioned by man—even those of the Before Time who had been masters of such arts as only the Mother-Touched could dream existed. This spread out near as large to her sight as a good quarter at least of the Craigmeadows and cultivated fields. There was no open sky overhead as she half expected. That same haze which had blanketed out the far reaches of the hall hung far above—they were still underground.
    The floor under them had the same sleek surface of the walls and pavement of the hall. Pillars so thick in girth that perhaps three men clasping hands could not have encircled them formed aisles cutting the endless stretch before them. Between those were lines of things covered with taut pulled material which veiled the true shape of what it concealed.
    Kort, after he ushered them in, turned to the left, still urging them to follow, trotting along in the open space between the wall and the beginning of those lines of pillars. Finally he guided them into a section where there were no longer any large shrouded objects—rather piles of boxes and containers set up in orderly fashion, leaving a cleared runway between.
    There he halted looking back. Thora dropped her backpack, freeing herself from Malkin's hold on her belt, reaching for her throwing spear. Then she realized that what hunkered there no longer lived.
    The body was propped against some boxes which had been pulled out of line and jammed together to form a barricade. Clothing still gave a semblance of life, until one saw that an outflung hand was merely dried skin over bone. But the clothing itself had not beentouched by time, having indeed some of the same metallic sheen as the floor and walls. Once, she suspected, it had fitted its wearer near as tightly as his own skin. The head was encased in a round ball of the same material and that had fallen forward so that if that covering had any opening they could not see the face beneath.
    There had been little in the past year of her wandering which had left Thora squeamish. She had seen many kills and she had killed in order to live. But there was something alien about this dead one, marking it not of her own world or life. Was this the remains of one of those from the Before Time?
    Fallen from the shrunken hand lay a length of metal which she judged to be some type of weapon. He had died alone perhaps—and no one had come to give him burial honors. Had he been the last of his kin? There was no disarray among the boxes about as there might have been if raiders had pillaged here. Thora glanced around—no more bodies—no evidence that this one, in his dying, had taken any enemy with him.
    She drew on the air the symbol of honor and peace and the words of leave-taking came to her without conscious calling:
    “The One is the beauty of the earth, the green of growing things. SHE is the white moon whose light is full among the stars, soft upon the earth. From HER all things are born,to HER all things, in their season, return. Where there is beauty and strength, there is beauty and rest. Every act of our will, every thought of our minds is returned three-fold to us in this life—that we may be free when our short day is done and the PATH opens before us.
    “Let those who sleep, rest in beauty, to wake in full strength once again—to stride among the stars, spread wings on fresh winds, know and see, where before they abode in ignorance and blindness, being as but children.
    “Long ago did you depart, stranger. May you walk on the PATH with swift, joyful feet, looking back upon this sleep as a dream which no longer concerns the you eternal—”
    Though this one may not