and viewed it from above. The whole globe was a
carefully chiseled relief map, showing seas, mountains, and continents.

"Arcot--come here a minute," called Morey. Arcot dropped down to where
Morey was looking at the globe. On the edge of one of the continents was
a small raised globe, and around the globe, a circle had been etched.

"I think this is meant to represent this globe," Morey said. "I'm almost
certain it represents this very spot. Now look over here." He pointed to
a spot which, according to the scale of the globe, was about five
thousand miles away. Projecting from the surface of the bronze globe
was a little silver tower.

"They want us to go there," continued Morey. "This was erected only
shortly before the catastrophe; they must have put relics there that
they want us to get. They must have guessed that eventually intelligent
beings would cross space; I imagine they have other maps like this in
every large city.

"I think it's our duty to visit that cairn."

"I quite agree," assented Arcot. "The chance of other men visiting this
world is infinitely small."

"Then let's leave this City of the Dead!" said Wade.

It gave them a sense of depression greater than that inspired by the
vast loneliness of space. One is never so lonely as when he is with the
dead, and the men began to realize that the original _Ancient Mariner_
had been more lonely with strange companions than they had been in the
depths of ten million light years of space.

They went back to the ship, floating through the last remnants of this
world's atmosphere, back through the chill of the frozen gases to the
cheering, warm interior of the ship.

It was a contrast that made each of them appreciate more fully the gift
that a hot, blazing sun really is. Perhaps that was what made Fuller
ask: "If this happened to a star so much like our sun, why couldn't it
happen to Sol?"

"Perhaps it may," said Morey softly. "But the eternal optimism of man
keeps us saying: 'It can't happen here.' And besides--" He put a hand on
the wall of the ship, "--we don't ever have to worry about anything like
that now. Not with ships like this to take us to a new sun--a new
planet."

Arcot lifted the ship and flew over the cold, frozen ground beneath
them, following the route indicated on the great globe in the dead city.
Mile after mile of frozen ice fields flew by as they shot over it at
three miles per second.

Suddenly, the bleak bulk of a huge mounta