Two days later, with Doc's whole scant outfit stored in the truck he'd managed to purchase, we were grinding out through squalid towns of ancient, one-story huts toward the salt swamp of Kavir and the lonely stretch of mountains to the north. "Notice the way the dew lies there on the grass?" he said to me one morning, just as the sun was rising and we were breaking camp. "We slept right over the foundation walls of what was once part of an ancient city." I squinted at where he was pointing, and, sure enough, I could see the grass was all marked out in big squares--showing up only in the way the dew sparkled, or didn't sparkle, in the slanting sunlight. "Difference in heat and moisture conductivity," explained Doc. "Those walls are probably only a little way beneath the surface." "You want to dig here?" I asked him. He shook his head. Since that time when he told me about the Ice Stone, he'd never mentioned it again. But I had noticed him squinting at all the mountains we passed, and sometimes I'd see a queer expression on his face, like a man who catches himself doing something that hasn't got good sense back of it. In fact, by the end of the week, I had about decided that he didn't have any better idea as to why we'd come out here than I did. I think it was on the seventh day that we came upon a queer-looking country--isolated masses of rock, like big blocks, sticking up out of the ground. Beyond these was a range of low mountains, or big hills, whichever way you look at it. "We'll camp here for a day," said Doc. "How's the water?" "About gone," I told him. "Good," he nodded. "We'll run the truck up to the foot of those big hills and find some." I headed that old bus for a sort of fold in the hills ahead, and when the ground began to get pretty rough we stopped and went on afoot, each carrying a couple of empty water buckets. It wasn't long before we found a shallow stream. "There may be a spring farther up," said Doc. He started splashing along the creek bed, for it was bordered by dense thickets of "jangal"--birch and box--through which you could scarcely squeeze. I followed him. Pretty soon I smelled smoke. "Hey, Doc!" I called, "something's burning." He stopped and turned around. There was a queer look in his eyes, almost like he wasn't all there--dopey. "Yes," he said, not seeming surprised at all. Then he pointed ahead. "Smoke--I saw it some time back." He started on again. The whole thing wasn't natural. For almost a week we had seen no living human being. And now, smoke--a wood fire, as I could tell by the scent--seemed to mean that we were getting near where someone lived. And yet, Doc hadn't thought it worth mentioning! Well, I followed him on for a hundred yards. Then we turned a bend in the creek. The jangal opened up, and there, under the spread of a huge plane-tree, was the fire. It was a small fire. Over it, roasting to a turn, were three dangling fowls; and near by stood a strange human figure--a man.