I followed as she emerged from the long tunnel into the blaze of sunlight. She stood for a moment letting her eyes adjust to the glare. I stumbled to her side, half-blinded, stood looking down at the scene which seemed to engross her. Gradually it came clear, like a television screen coming into perfect tune--the immense inner valley that the mountain of cloud-like snow enclosed. In the center of the encircled valley a lake shimmered blue as the sky, and about that lake was a city. My eyes refused, at first, to accept what they were seeing. My mind rebelled, but after a minute of staring and making sure--I gasped. Alien to this earth it was, but beautiful! Towers, and round-based dwellings braced together in one single unit of structural strength, a designed whole such as our architects dream of and never achieve. Walled with white marble, the city was a fortress, but a lovely fortress. Yet there was a coldness, an angularity, that told me these Zervs, as Nokomee had called her race, lacked true sympathy for life forms, lacked emotion as we know it in art. Yet it was beautiful, if repellent because so alien, so pure in design, so lacking in the sympathetic understanding of man's nature. This was a city no earthman could ever call home. It lacked something. There were no dogs, no strolling women or running children, it lay silent and waiting--for what? Nokomee waved a hand. "Titanis, our first earth colony. But it is no longer ours. The Schrees have taken it from us. That is why it is silent." I did not understand. There were plodding lines of people, disciplined, carrying burdens, no bigger than ants at this distance. There was an ominous horror about the quiet beauty of the place. It was somehow like a beautiful woman lying just slain. Yet I could see no wounds of war, no reason for the feeling that I had, like the sudden shrinking one might have at sight of the stump of a man's arm just amputated. I looked into Nokomee's face, and there were tears in her eyes. My heart sank. I felt a vast sympathy for her sorrow, though I could not understand. "We planned so much with our new freedom here in your wilderness. Then came the raiders, to freeze our Queen in her sleep, to drive us into your forests, to make of us that remained mindless slaves and maimed horrors. I cannot bear it, stranger. I cannot...." She turned and wept, her head on my chest. I patted her head, feeling entirely incompetent to console her for what injuries I could not imagine. "What raiders, Nokomee? Tell me. Perhaps there is a way I can help. Who knows?" "We are so few now, who were so many and so strong--and every day fewer. There is no hope. Do not try to wake it in me. It would be madness." "Tell me. Perhaps that alone would help you."