Stark watched them go. He filled his lungs with the cold air, and stretched. Then he roused the beast out of the sand. It had rested, and was willing to carry him again as long as he did not press it. He set off again, across the desert. The ridge grew as he approached it, looming into a low mountain chain much worn by the ages. A pass opened before him, twisting between the hills of barren rock. He traversed it, coming out at the farther end above the basin of a dead sea. The lifeless land stretched away into darkness, a vast waste of desolation more lonely even than the desert. And between the sea bottom and the foothills, Stark saw the lights of Valkis. II There were many lights, far below. Tiny pinpricks of flame where torches burned in the streets beside the Low-Canal--the thread of black water that was all that remained of a forgotten ocean. Stark had never been here before. Now he looked at the city that sprawled down the slope under the low moons, and shivered, the primitive twitching of the nerves that an animal feels in the presence of death. For the streets where the torches flared were only a tiny part of Valkis. The life of the city had flowed downward from the cliff-tops, following the dropping level of the sea. Five cities, the oldest scarcely recognizable as a place of human habitation. Five harbors, the docks and quays still standing, half buried in the dust. Five ages of Martian history, crowned on the topmost level with the ruined palace of the old pirate kings of Valkis. The towers still stood, broken but indomitable, and in the moonlight they had a sleeping look, as though they dreamed of blue water and the sound of waves, and of tall ships coming in heavy with treasure. Stark picked his way slowly down the steep descent. There was something fascinating to him in the stone houses, roofless and silent in the night. The paving blocks still showed the rutting of wheels where carters had driven to the market-place, and princes had gone by in gilded chariots. The quays were scarred where ships had lain against them, rising and falling with the tides. Stark's senses had developed in a strange school, and the thin veneer of civilization he affected had not dulled them. Now it seemed to him that the wind had the echoes of voices in it, and the smell of spices and fresh-spilled blood. He was not surprised when, in the last level above the living town, armed men came out of the shadows and stopped him. They were lean, dark men, very wiry and light of foot, and their faces were the faces of wolves--not primitive wolves at all, but beasts of prey that had been civilized for so many thousands of years that they could afford to forget it. They were most courteous, and Stark would not have cared to disobey their request. He gave his name. "Delgaun sent for me."