"I don't know," Thompson answered. A tinge of gruffness crept into his voice as he forced out of his mind the memories of what they had seen in this building they had entered and had climbed. This had once been an office building, a place where the unknown people who had worked here had handled their business transactions and had kept their records. They had seen no bookkeeping machines, none of the elaborate mechanical devices used in Sol Cluster to record the pulse of commerce. This race had not progressed that far. But they had left behind them books written in an unintelligible script, orders for merchandise still neatly pigeonholed, all in good order with no sign of disturbance. The workers might have left these offices yesterday, except for the carpets of dust that covered everything. "There isn't even any animal life left," Kurkil spoke. "I know." "But what happened? A race that has progressed to the city-building stage doesn't just get wiped out without leaving some indication of what happened to them." "Apparently they did just that." "But it's not possible." "It happened." "But--" "There's Neff," Thompson spoke. Far down the avenue below them, three figures had appeared, Neff, Fortune, and Ross. Neff tall and slender, Fortune round like a ball, and Ross built square like a block of concrete. Neff saw them on top of the building and beckoned to them. There was urgency in the gesture. "They've found something," Thompson said. With Kurkil following him he went hastily out of the building. "What is it?" "Come and see," Neff answered. Neff's face was gray. Fortune and Ross were silent. The building in front of which they were standing had been a house once. The architecture resembled nothing they had ever seen on Earth but the purpose of the structure was obvious. Here somebody had lived. Thompson tried to imagine people living here, the husband coming home in the evening to the dinner prepared by the wife, kids running to meet him. His imagination failed. "Back here," Neff said. They went around what had been a house into what had been a garden of some kind, a quiet nook where a family might sprawl in peace. "There," Neff said pointing. The three skeletons were huddled together in an alcove in front of what had once been a shrine. They lay facing the shrine as if they had died praying. Above them in a niche in a wall was-- "An idol," Kurkil whispered. "They died praying to their god," Thompson said. He was not aware that he had spoken. Three skeletons.... The bones indicated a creature very similar to the human in structure. A large, a middle-sized, and a small skeleton. "We think the small one is that of a child," Ross spoke. "We think this was a family." "I see," Thompson said. "Did you find other skeletons?" "Many others. We found them almost everywhere but usually tucked away in corners, as if the people had tried to hide from something." His voice went suddenly into uneasy silence.