ces only the presence of
a handrail, to which they all clung, kept them from losing balance.
Then they gathered in a vaulted room, one of which opened a complete
circle of closed doors.

There was some argument among the aliens, a dispute of sorts over
which of those doors was to be opened first, and the Terrans drew a
little apart, unable to follow the twittering words and
lightning-swift gestures.

Raf tried to work out the patterns of color which swirled and looped
over each door and around the walls, only to discover that too long an
examination of any one band, or an attempt to trace its beginning or
end, awoke a sick sensation which approached inner turmoil the longer
he looked. At last he had to rest his eyes by studying the gray
flooring under his boots.

The aliens finally made up their minds, or else one group was able to
outargue the other, for they converged upon a door directly opposite
the ramp. Once more they went through the process of unsealing the
panels, while the Terrans, drawn by curiosity, were close behind them
as they entered the long room beyond. Here were shelves in solid tiers
along the walls, crowded with such an array of strange objects that
Raf, after one mystified look, thought that it might well take months
to sort them all out.

In addition, long tables divided the chamber into aisles. Halfway down
one of these narrow passageways the aliens had gathered in a group as
silent and intent now as they had been noisy outside. Raf could see
nothing to so rivet their attention but a series of scuffed marks in
the dust which covered the floor. But an alien, whom he recognized as
the officer who had taken him to inspect the globe, moved carefully
along that trail, following it to a second door. And as Raf pushed
down another aisle, paralleling his course, he was conscious of a
sickly sweet, stomach-churning stench. Something was very, very dead
and not too far away.

The officer must have come to the same conclusion, for he hurried to
open the other door. Before them now was a narrow hall broken by slit
windows, near the roof, through which entered sunlight. And one such
beam fully illuminated a carcass as large as that of a small elephant,
or so it seemed to Raf's startled gaze.

It was difficult to make out the true appearance of the creature,
though guessing from the scaled strips of skin it had been reptilian,
for the body had been found by scavengers and feasting had been in
progress