He ran his tongue over his lips and tasted salt, and wondered how it got there. Quorn swung the skiff around in a tightening spiral until Edri said, "Now! Let her down." He scrambled forward, thrusting his face against the port, trying to see. Quorn switched on a landing-light. The blue-white blaze lit up a circular area below, the light intensely bright, the shadows intensely black. Its beam went sharply down. They followed it. It was as though the skiff were poised on that pillar of light, sinking downward. They were above a planetary surface racked and tortured by final diastrophism. Towering miles high, loomed a mighty cliff of riven rock. In front of it a chasm yawned, and beyond the chasm a drear and tumbled landscape stretched dim under the great sword of the Galaxy. They started down along the face of the titanic cliff. Looking at the chasm at its base Trehearne began to get uneasy. "There's no ship here," he said. "The counter must have picked up some last radiation from deep down in that chasm." Quorn agreed with him. But Edri said, "No, keep going." Trehearne could feel him tremble. They went on down the face of the giant, looming wall. Trehearne pointed suddenly. "Isn't that a ledge?" The hard bright edge of the beam cut across a shelf of rock that jutted out halfway down the cliff. Quorn swung the skiff in closer. Something on the ledge glistened dully under the light. Quorn let the skiff drop with a sickening rush. Detail sprang clear--shattered rock, ancient magma, puddles of frozen air in the hollows. And among them an ovoid shape, symmetrical, smooth, giving back a metallic glint. Edri said the name of Orthis, as though it were a prayer. TWENTY Quorn had set the skiff down on the ledge. They had scrambled into pressure suits. They had forgotten that they were already three-quarters dead. Awkward in the clumsy armor, stumbling on the jagged rock, slipping on the patches of frozen air, they clawed their way toward the goal they had crossed a Galaxy and gambled their lives to find. Above them the ghastly cliff leaned outward against nothingness, below them the abyss plunged down into the dead heart of a world. Beyond them was a spreading desolation, and in the black sky the awful rim of the Galaxy lay like a blazing sword of light. Trehearne was aware of the silence. He had never been on an airless world before. He felt the impact as his metal boot struck against a shard of rock, but it made no sound. All he could hear was the harsh breathing of Quorn and Edri, transmitted to him by the helmet audio.