"I suppose I can," said Cushing. "Let me ask you this—have you ever gone further than your data, your immediate data? You say you are convinced that when technology fails, the race is done, that there is no coming back. But what happens next? What happens after that? If, on this planet, man sinks into insignificance, what takes his place? What comes after man? What supersedes man?"

"This," said #1, in a stricken tone, "we have never thought about. No one has ever raised the question. We have not raised the question. It had not occurred to us."

The two of them rested for a time, no longer talking, but jiggling back and forth, as if in agitation. Finally #2 said,

"We'll have to think about it. We must study your suggestion." With that, they started rolling up the slope, their eyes

skittering all about their surfaces as they rolled, gathering speed as they went up the slope, so that it did not take long before they were out of sight.

Before nightfall, Cushing and the others reached the approach to the City, a huge stone-paved esplanade that fronted on the massive group of gray-stone buildings. They halted to make the evening camp, with an unspoken reluctance to advance into the City itself, preferring to remain on its edge for a time, perhaps to study it from a distance or to become more accustomed to its actuality.

A dozen stone steps went up to the broad expanse of the esplanade, which stretched for a mile or more before the buildings rose into the air. The broad expanse of stone paving was broken by masonry-enclosed flowerbeds that now contained more weeds than flowers, by fountains that now were nonfunctional, by formal pools that now held drifted dust instead of water, by stone benches where one might sit to rest. In one of the nearby flowerbeds a few straggly rosebushes still survived, bearing faded blossoms, with bedraggled rose petals blown by the wind across the stones.

The City, to all appearances, was deserted. There had been, since the evening before, no sign of the tubby gossipers. The Team was not in evidence. There was nothing but a half dozen twittering, discontented birds that flew about from one patch of desiccated shrubs to another desiccated patch.

Above the City stretched the lonely sky, and from where they stood they could see far out into the misty blueness of the plains.

Cushing gathered wood from some of the dead or dying shrubs and built a fire on one of the paving stones. Meg got out the frying pan and sliced steaks off a haunch of venison. Andy, free of his load, clopped up and down the esplanade, like a soldier doing sentry beat, his hoofs making a dull, plopping sound. Ezra sat down beside the stone flower bed that contained the few straggly roses, assuming a listening attitude. Elayne, this time, did not squat down beside him, but walked out several hundred yards across the esplanade and stood there rigidly, facing the City.

"Where is Rollo?" asked Meg. "I haven't seen him all the afternoon."

"Probably out scouting," said Cushing.

"What would he be scouting for? There's nothing to scout."

"He's got a roving foot," said Cushing. "He's scouted every mile since he joined up with us. It's probably just a habit. Don't worry about him. He'll show up.

She put the steaks into the pan. "Laddie boy, this isn't the place we were looking for, is it? It is something else. You have any idea what it is?"

"No idea," said Cushing, shortly.

"And all this time you have had the heart of you so set on finding the Place of Going to the Stars. It's a crying shame, it is. Where did we go wrong?"

"Maybe," said Cushing, "there is no such place as Going to the Stars. It may be just a story. There are so many stories."

"I can't think that," said Meg. "Somehow, laddie buck, I just can't think it. There has to be such a place."

"There should be," Cushing told her. "Fifteen hundred years ago or more, men went to the moon and Mars. They wouldn't have stopped with that. They'd have gone farther out. But this is not the right kind of place. They'd have had to have launching pads, and it's ridiculous to build launching pads up here. Up here, it would be difficult to transport the sort of support such a base would need."

"Maybe they found a different way of going to the stars. This might be the place, after all."

Cushing shook his head. "I don't think so."

"But this place is important. It has to be important. Why else would it be guarded by the Trees? Why were the wardens out there?"

"We'll find out," said Cushing. "We'll try to find out."

Meg shivered. "I have a funny feeling in my bones," she said. "As if we shouldn't be here. As if we're out of place. Jean feel those big buildings looking down at us, wondering who we are and why we're here. When I look at them, I go all over goose pimples."

A voice said, "Here, let me do that."

Meg looked up. Elayne was bending over her, reaching for the pan.

"That's all right," said Meg. "I can manage it."

"You've been doing it all the time," said Elayne. "Doing all the cooking. I haven't done a thing. Let me do my part."

"All right," said Meg. "Thank you, lass. I'm tired."

She rose from her crouch, moved over to a stone bench and sat down. Cushing sat beside her.

"What was that?" he asked. "What is going on? Can she be getting human?"

"I don't know," said Meg. "But whatever the reason, I'm glad. I'm bone tired. It's been a long, hard trip. Although I wouldn't have missed it for the world. I'm glad we're here, uneasy as I may be about it."

"Don't let the uneasiness get you down," he said. "It will seem different in the morning."

When they came in at Elayne's call to supper, Ezra roused himself from his communion with the roses and joined them. He wagged his head in perplexity. "I do not understand at all," he said, "the things the roses tell me. There is about them a sense of ancientness, of far places, of time for which there is no counting. As if they were trying to push me to the edge of the universe, from which I could look out upon eternity and infinity, and then they ask me what I see and I cannot tell them, because there is too much to see. There are powerful forces here and mysteries that no man can fathom

He went on and on, mumbling in a rambling way as he ate the meal. No one interrupted him; no one asked him questions. Cushing found himself not even listening.

Hours later, Cushing woke. The others were asleep. The fire had burned to a few glowing embers. Andy stood a little way off, head hanging, either fast asleep upon his feet or dozing.

Cushing threw aside his blanket and rose to his feet. The night had turned chilly, and overhead the wind made a hollow booming among the brilliant stars. The moon had set, but the buildings were a ghostly white in the feeble starlight.

Moving off, he walked in the direction of the City, stopped to face it, his eyes traveling up the cliff like face of it. I could do without you, he told the City, the words dribbling in his mind. I have no liking for you. I did not set out to find you.

Too big, he thought, too big, wondering if he, in that moment, might be thinking as other men had thought when they struck the blow that had toppled that great, impersonal technology that had engulfed and overwhelmed them.

Striking, they had toppled a way of life that had become abhorrent to them, but instead of replacing it with another way of life, they had left an emptiness, a vacuum in which it was impossible to exist, retreating back to an older existence, back almost to where they'd started, as a man might go back to old roots to seek a new beginning. But they had made no beginning; they had simply stood in place, perhaps content for a while to lick their wounds and rest, to catch their breath again. They had caught their breath and rested and the wounds had healed and they still had stood in place—for centuries they had not moved. Perhaps fearful of moving, fearful that if they moved, they would create another monster that in time to come they'd also have to destroy, asking themselves how many false starts a race might be allowed.