Martt said, "Zee, he's trying to talk to you. Bend closer--he's talking." Zee knelt at his head. He was panting, struggling breathlessly with each word. "Rokk--was going to take your sister Leela to the--City of Ice. Now that the red things are loose--I think you will find--him and her--there." His breath ended with a long sigh. But he began again. "Eeff will lead you. Tell Eeff--to take you through the--tunnel into the--stone tower. And--hurry!" His eyes closed. Then they opened very wide. They tried to focus on Zee's face. She bent lower to hear his faint whisper. "Hurry! You understand--about Leela, there with Rokk. He means, for her, a thing very terrible. You must--hurry." He added, with a breath so faint she barely heard his words, "You are--so very beautiful, little Zee. I never saw--any woman so beautiful. But I am not Rokk--I could not have harmed you." He stiffened just a trifle; then went limp, his head with staring eyes dangling backward over Martt's arm. Martt laid him gently on the ground. Eeff went and sat by him, crying softly. III It was red day when they approached the City of Ice. Eeff had led them, as Degg suggested. They saw the city from far off, with a red glow staining its white glitter. Then Eeff plunged them into a black tunnel. It seemed miles. Then it ascended, and they emerged into a wave of heat, with a yellow-red glare beside them. They were at the bottom of a tall stone tower; a doorway was near at hand. Martt gazed up the tower's side. A man was up there, behind a parapet, gazing out at the city: a man's head and shoulders, queerly foreshortened. But Martt recognized him. Rokk! Martt pushed Zee and Frannie hastily into the tower. He commanded, "You two stay here, with Eeff. I'm going up. You stay here." Again Martt thought of the drug cylinders he was carrying. He drew them from his pockets, handed them swiftly to Zee. "Keep these. Whatever happens--if I don't come back--use them. Eeff will lead you home. To Reaf. Ask it if it can lead you." Zee said, in her own language, "Eeff, come here. Can you lead me back--down there where we met Degg in that place called Reaf? You remember? Where the water was?" The headless thing turned its eye upon her. It chattered, "Yes, I remember. I can go there--but I want Degg. I want to go back to Degg." Martt, alone, mounted the circular incline softly, and as swiftly as he dared. Had Rokk seen him? He did not think so. Was Leela up there? . . . If he could get behind Rokk unobserved. . . . Half-way up there was an oval window in the tower through which Martt caught his first view of the interior of the city. The sun was sinking at the horizon. The end of the blood-red day! A silence had fallen with the falling sun. A crimson city, strewn with what had once been living, human flesh and blood--dismembered now . . . strewn . . . unnamable. . . . And climbing the walls, red monsters slithering away--seeking other horrors.