Herdsmen were driving their flocks in from distant slopes. Others drove donkeys laden with brush. Verrill was appalled by the ever present evidence that Terrestrian life was a matter of digging, scratching, and enduring the elements. The stark emptiness of the sky worried him; he was accustomed to the perpetual twilight and impenetrable clouds of Venus. Well away from the settlement, and outside the wall, was a small, squatty cube with a small tower at each corner. The structure was backed up against an overhanging cliff, and was unapproachable except from the walled town. The precipitous ending of the shelf guarded the whitewashed cube more surely than if it had been within the town wall. The open doorway was so large in proportion to the structure itself that surmise made Verrill's pulse hammer. That must be the shrine where the Fire of Skanderbek was kept. Toward dusk, drums rumbled and trumpets of ram's horns bawled hoarsely. Men carrying tightly bound bundles of brush marched in procession toward the whitewashed cube, and chanted as they went. When they came to the place, they filed in, each coming out with his faggots ablaze. They returned to their houses. Before long, Verrill's captors brought him a bowl of mutton stew, and leathery cakes of bread. "They couldn't have cooked this stuff so soon," he reasoned. "It must have been cooking all the while, on fires already lighted. That procession was fire worship." He sat there a long time after he had licked the gravy from his fingers. A shocking business: meat so plentiful that it was fed to a prisoner, and yet the barbarians knew nothing at all about cookery. The town swarmed with flies. Vultures perched on the walls and watch-towers, waiting to clean up the garbage and offal flung from the houses. The community well had a nasty taint from surface drainage from the stables. Verrill, after a bad night's sleep, spent the morning deciding that when pestilence did break out, he would need his medical supplies for himself. The women, shapely and graceful, gathered about the well to fill the earthenware jugs they carried balanced on their heads. They chattered mainly about the outsider, giving most emphasis to his looks, though devoting certain speculation to his possible usefulness, and probable destination. "Kwangtan," they all agreed, "wants him killed or sent away." From what he could piece together from the various relays of women he overheard, Verrill concluded that Kwangtan was the keeper of the shrine; and that medical practice was the monopoly of old women, who cooked up herbs. These potions, plus Kwangtan's incantations, kept the community in health. The drowsy silence of midafternoon was broken by an hysterical screeching and screaming. Before Verrill could arouse himself from the stupor of half suffocation, the door was jerked open and several men pounced for him. "You, with the medicine! Work for you. Bring the black box!" * * * * *