Miles reeled behind them. The utter desolation of the landscape below got on Winters' nerves. The silence in the flier became unendurable. There was something menacing about it. Kor Hal and the big Keshi and the slim young man seemed to be nursing some common inner thought that gave them a peculiarly vicious pleasure. Its shadow showed on their faces. Winters spoke finally. "Are your headquarters out here?" No answer. Winters said rather petulantly, "There's no need to be so secretive. After all, I'm one of you now." The slim young man said sharply, "Do the beasts lie down with the masters?" Winters started to bristle, and the barbarian put his hand on the wicked little sap he carried at his belt. Then Kor Hal spoke coolly. "You wished to practice Shanga in its true form, Captain Winters. That is what you have paid for. That is what you will receive. All else is irrelevant." Winters shrugged sulkily. He sat smoking his sedative tobacco, and he did not speak again. After a long, long time the seemingly endless desert began to change. Low ridges rose naked from the sand and grew into a mountain range, of which nothing was left now but the barren rock. Beyond the mountains lay a dead sea bottom. It stretched away under the moonlight, dropping, always dropping, until at last it became only a vast pit of darkness. Ribs of chalk and coral gleamed here and there, pushing through the lichens like bones through the dried skin of a man long dead. Winters saw that there was a city between the foothills and the sea. It had followed the receding water down the slopes. From this height, Winters could see the outlines of five harbours, abandoned one by one as the sea drew back, the great stone docks still standing. Houses had been built to fill their emptiness, and then abandoned in their turn for a lower level. Now the straggling town had coalesced along the bank of the canal that drew what feeble life was left from the buried springs of the bottom. There was something infinitely sad about that thin dark line--all that was left of a blue and rolling ocean. The flier circled and came down. The Keshi said something rapidly in his own dialect, from which Winters caught the one word, _Valkis_. Kor Hal answered him. Then he turned to Winters and said, "We have not far to go. Stay close by me." The four men left the flier. Winters knew that he was under guard, and felt that it was not entirely for the sake of protecting him. * * * * * The wind blew thin and dry. Dust rose in clouds around their feet. Valkis lay ahead, a stony darkness sprawling upward toward the cliffs, cold in the eerie light of the twin moons. Winters saw, high up on the crest, the broken towers of a palace.