I took my binoculars and a rifle, and we left the machine and clambered up a half mile to the top of the ridge. The girl led the way, slipping cautiously through the rocks. At last she threw herself down behind a fringe of the low green plants, and motioned me to crawl up beside her. "Look," she whispered, "and see all that is left of Lothar, the proud kingdom of my fathers, under the curse of the Lord of Flame!" Indeed it was a scene of ruined grandeur that met my eyes. A little valley, perhaps two miles wide, lay beyond the ridge on which we were concealed. On the low hill beyond, standing out against the crimson sky, was a massive ruined wall. Back of it rose the crumbling desolate ruins of great towers and palaces of stone, covered with the moss of centuries of decay--merely the bare bleached skull of a dead civilization! "It was in those fallen palaces of my fathers," Xenora whispered again, "that I found the strange machine that brought me the first dream of you." I put up the glasses and made out the actual city outside the wall. Certainly Lothar had fallen since its days of radio. There was a mere straggling village of rude stone huts spread out on the valley floor, below the colossal ruined metropolis. The few hundred buildings were surrounded by a little cleared space, with the purple forest creeping up to reclaim it forever. I made out a few children playing about the trees, and a dozen ill-clad men working in the clearings. A few wreaths of smoke curled up from the dwellings; the people had not yet lost the art of fire! And hanging silent and menacing in the air above the village was the visible symbol of the alien power that had wrecked that ancient civilization! A great, gleaming silver ball--a ship like the one we had fought--hung motionless above the huts, with a quick purple beam from it flickering frequently over them! For a long time we lay there watching that desolate, pitiful scene, and then Xenora touched my arms, and we slipped back down the ridge. She was silent, with grief and despair in her eyes. "See!" she whispered at last. "See! Lothar is dead! The Lord of Flame has killed it! The men are poor struggling wretches; they could do nothing even if the flame were gone! My father was the last king of Lothar. His was a troubled reign, and he has been dead many hundred sleeps!" "Don't grieve so, my princess," I said. "There are still vast cities above the waters, where men are powerful and wise, and where the sky is blue and a white sun shines, and where there is a domain many times larger than all this abyss!" "Can we go there--ever?" she questioned eagerly. "No. We can never leave this land, even if the Lord of Flame is killed. The machine cannot break through the roof of water from below. And the power of the Lord of Flame is coming to earth. Even now it may be a dead and frozen world."