If he were truly lucky he could catch a man-thing this side of the meadow. He did not have too much time to lie in wait. He felt lucky.

The sun was very low, thanks to his late start. He'd lie up in that man-city for the night, sleeping in the car.

He sent the Mark II skimming along the ancient highway.

A skyline!

Jonnie Goodboy Tyler pulled up with a yank so sudden he startled Windsplitter into a rear.

There it was, straight east. It wasn't hills or mountains. It wasn't some trick of the eye. It was sharp and rectangular.

He had been so unconvinced.

When he had left the ancient ruin, he found a very easy way to travel. It was almost as if the ruin with the window had once had a broad path leading to it.

There were shrubs on the right and shrubs on the left, two rows about two hundred feet apart that dwindled eastward into the distance. Underfoot there was fairly even grass. You had to watch it a bit because there were shallow gullies in places. When you looked down between these little gullies, there was something gray-white. Jonnie had inspected it with care. He had gotten down and dug at the edges of such a crack and it seemed that the gray-white stuff was continuous.

Just like the inner walls of the ruin. Maybe it was a wall of the ancients, fallen over sideways. But no, it would have cracked as it fell.

Outside the courthouse at home, level stones had been laid as pavement. But who wanted a pavement two hundred feet wide? And hours-journey long? For what?

This big path had not been used for a long time. If it was a path. It went between hillocks that had been sliced into and it went across water courses– although it was pretty irregular and broken in these.

He had been excited for a while, but then he got used to it and devoted his attention mainly to keeping Windsplitter from tripping in the little gullies.

When he was a little boy, one of the families had had a wheeled cart they hauled firewood in, and he had been told that once there had been a lot of carts, even one that was pulled by a mare. Well, you could sure roll a cart on this wide turf. And roll it fast and far.

But as to the Great Village, he was coming to believe as the afternoon wore on that somebody had probably seen that god house back there and multiplied it in his imagination.

And then suddenly there it was!

But was it?

He put Windsplitter up to a trot regardless of the little gullies. In the clear air the skyline wasn't coming his way very fast. It even appeared to be receding.

He stopped. Maybe it was a trick of the eye after all. But no, the lines it made were up and down and flat on top and there was an awful lot of it.

It wasn't hills or mountains. Only building sides could be that regular.

He started up again, more sedately, remembering now to be careful. And after a while he could see that he was getting closer.

The sun was coming down and he wasn't there yet. The prospect of entering that place in the dark was definitely not cheering. Who knew what it might be full of? Ghosts?

Gods? People?

Monsters? Ah, no. Not monsters. They were just the stuff mamas frightened their kids to sleep with.

He pulled off the path where it crossed a stream and made camp. He warmed up some of his roasted pork and then cut it with one of the sharp, shiny things he had taken out of the window.

My, he marveled, imagine anything cutting like that. It would make life a real pleasure. You had to watch it not to cut your own fingers, as he had already done twice, slightly. Maybe you could bed the cutting edge in wood or something for a handle. Then you would really have something.

After supper he built up his fire to keep the wolves off– a couple were sitting over there now, amber-eyed in the reflected firelight and looking hungry.

“Run away,” shouted Jonnie, “or I’ll be wearing your hides.” But the wolves just sat there.

Windsplitter and the lead horse didn't want to go away from the fire. The wolves made them nervous. So Jonnie picked up a couple of rocks, fist-sized, from the nearby stream bed.

He wasn't interested in hunting wolves, but his horses had to find grass.

He threw a pork bone about ten feet beyond the fire and in the direction of the wolves.

Big rangy things they were. One slunk forward, belly low, snarling to reach the pork bone. In a moment the wolf's attention would be fixed on the bone.

Jonnie's arm blurred. The far wolf caught the rock squarely between his eyes.

Jonnie's arm blurred again. The near wolf didn't jump in time and he too was a dead wolf.

Jonnie said to Windsplitter, “I got to do all the work, is that it?” And he walked over to the far wolf and hauled the carcass to the fire. Then he dragged the closer one in. Nope, neither one had a pelt worth taking at this time of the year. And they had ticks too.

“Go on and eat,” he told the horses.

He built up the fire again, just in case the wolves had friends, and rolled up his robes. Tomorrow was going to be the day.

Jonnie approached the Great Village cautiously-

He was up before first light, and the yellow dawn found him in the outskirts of the place, peering, halting, looking closer at the strange sights, nervous.

Sand lay over everything, and grass and even scrub grew in the wide paths between the buildings.

He gave a start every time a rabbit or a rat came tearing out of the ancient structures, disturbed by his footfalls. Even though the hoofs were muffled by the grass and sand, the silence of the place was so intense that any disturbance of it seemed overloud.

He had never heard an echo before to notice it. The return of sound caused him a great deal of worry. For a little while he thought there must be another horse walking in the distance.

But at last he worked it out.

He hit his wrist kill-club against the one in his belt and promptly heard the same sound repeated softly like a mockery. He waited but no further mock occurred. Then he hit the clubs together again and the same sound returned. He decided it didn't happen unless he did it first.

He looked about him. To both his left and his right were the tall remains of buildings, very tall indeed. Pitted by wind erosion, discolored by endless centuries of weather, they still stood, flat and even and imposing. Astonishing. Whoever could build such things? Gods, perhaps?

He eyed the massive size of the building blocks. No man could lift one by himself.

Jonnie sat his horse in the middle of what must have been the main path of the “Great Village.” He frowned, straining to comprehend the building of such a place. Many men? But how could they reach so high?

He concentrated laboriously. Gradually he could conceive that if one built up steps of logs, and if many, many men put ropes around a block, and if they carried it up the steps and then took the steps away, they might have done it. Marvelous, dizzy, and dangerous. But it was possible.

Satisfied that it didn't need gods or monsters to have made this place, and therefore very relieved, he continued his exploration.

He wondered whether some odd kind of tree had grown along this path. He got down and looked at the stump of one. It was hard and jagged. It had been hollow and it was deep in the strange rock. It wasn't wood. It was a reddish metal, and when you scraped away the red powder, underneath was black. He looked up and down both sides of the wide path. The placing of these things was very precise. Although he couldn't figure out what they were for, it was obvious that, like buildings, they were placed objects.

The innumerable windows surrounded him, seeming to stare back at him. The morning sun had come now and it shone into those that faced it. Here and there were vast surfaces of the shiny stuff he had collected from the mound on the plain. It was not clear; it was whitish and bluish like the cataracts on an old man's eyes. But there were whole sheets of it in some places. He began to realize it was some kind of covering, perhaps to keep out the cold and heat and yet let in light. People at home sometimes did that, using the tissue of animal stomachs. But those who had built the Great