arched. Still, he
would rather be out in them, looking, than sitting here, fretting,
almost hating the old race because it had somehow bequeathed him a
heritage of loneliness.

He got up abruptly and went outside to the aircar.

It was a long way to the second range of mountains. He flew there
directly, skimming over the nearer hills, the ones he had spent weeks
exploring. He dropped low over the intervening valley, passing over the
houses and towns, looking down at the gardens. The new race filled all
the valleys.

He came into the foothills and swung the car upward, climbing over the
steep mountainsides. Within a mile from the valley's edge he was in wild
country. He'd thought the other hills were wild, but here the terrain
was jagged and rock-strewn, with boulders flung about as if by some
giant hand. There were a hundred narrow canyons, opening into each
other, steep-sloped, overgrown with brambles and almost impenetrable, a
maze with the hills rising around them and cutting off all view of the
surrounding country.

Eric dropped down into one of the larger canyons. Immediately he
realized how easy it would be to get lost in those hills. There were no
landmarks that were not like a hundred jutting others. Without the
aircar he would be lost in a few minutes. He wondered suddenly if
anyone, old race or new, had ever been here before him.

He set the aircar down on the valley floor and got out and walked away
from it, upstream, following the little creek that tumbled past him over
the rocks. By the time he had gone a hundred paces the car was out of
sight.

It was quiet. Far away birds called to each other, and insects buzzed
around him, but other than these sounds there was nothing but his own
footsteps and the creek rapids. He relaxed, walking more slowly, looking
about him idly, no longer searching for anything.

He rounded another bend, climbed up over a rock that blocked his path
and dropped down on the other side of it. Then he froze, staring.

Not ten feet ahead of him lay the ashes of a campfire, still smoldering,
still sending a thin wisp of smoke up into the air.

He saw no one. Nothing moved. No tracks showed in the rocky ground.
Except for the fire, the gorge looked as uninhabited as any of the
others.

Slowly Eric walked toward the campfire and knelt down and held his hand
over the embers. Heat rose about him. The fire hadn't been out for very
long.

He turned quickly, glancing about him, bu