He dragged himself weakly from the frozen, broken ice, reeling in dizziness. Blood was spurting from his nostrils, his breath was shot and rasping in the frigid, ozone-tainted atmosphere. Feebly he fumbled for his helmet catch, closing it after an eternity, and collapsed on a nearby hummock, gulping in the oxygen which meant life. He looked at the crumpled, broken ship. Something man had built, gone the way of all his creations. And why? Because of man's savagery, man's impetuosity, man's searching after the vain chimera of glory-- Rising, he stumbled into the north, towards the Rendezvous and, beyond, Calidao, Onupari, and that upon which the future freedom of Earth depended--the _seedrona_ in the vaults of Jethe. At length he dropped in utter exhaustion. The noonday sun shone upon his inert body near the foothills of a low-lying mountain range. Long hours later he awoke, incredibly refreshed, and scrambled upward to the highest summit of the range. A cry of exultation burst from his lips. Before him was a tiny valley on whose farther side clung a huge, rocky pile which only a Martian--or Andres and his kin who had beheld the insane architecture of the hither stars--might call an abode of man. _The Rendezvous--Del Andres' Rendezvous, at last!_ III Within, the monkey-like robot waited, weapons gleaming in its finely fashioned hands. A stranger was approaching--someone who knew the Master--friend or foe, it knew not; yet something purely intuitive spoke inside it, saying "Friend!" Darkly red and ominous, the old pile seemed untenanted when first its bloody portico spread beneath his swiftly questing feet. Fantastic, ponderous arches topping offset, fluted columns; weirdly carven facades. An architect's nightmare; a surrealistic concept of a palace in Hades; but house ne'er seemed so welcoming to a lone man against a world. Silence broken only by the faint, thin whisper of a rising wind sweeping red dust through the trellises about the time-scarred walls, indicative of a simoon in the offing. Advancing to the great door, he rapped sharply, then tried the latch. To his surprise it yielded. Entering the vestibule, he opened his helmet to a revivifying blast of oxygen fresh from the automatic ozone transformers, and called. The echo of his voice alone came back. He found the library dustless and orderly. Trophies hung on the walls: mounted heads and bodies of creatures slain beneath alien suns, ghastly travesties on solarian mammals, creatures envisioned in dreams. Weapons from the far places, taken (as the labels read) at the siege of Kackijakaala in Alpha Centauri, six years distant by the fastest stellatomic.