The elders came forward to greet them as he stepped onto the hard ground. They bowed low and held their hands out, speaking words in their own language, but then one of the women spoke in the Tharian common tongue.

     "Welcome to our world," she said. "On behalf of all my race I offer my sincere apologies for the actions we ordered against you. I swear to you that we meant only to protect ourselves and meant no harm to any of your race. If you feel the need to exact retribution for our actions, I beg that you punish the three of us, and we alone, for it is we alone who bear the guilt. We place ourselves at your mercy."

     "We haven't come here to seek retribution," said Strong, "but only to establish peaceful, friendly relations with you. On behalf of all the races and peoples involved in building the Ship of Space, I am authorised to accept your apology. Let us put the past behind us and move on. Our two peoples have much to offer each other. Together we can accomplish more and reach further than either of us can alone."

     It was obviously a speech he'd been rehearsing for a long time and Thomas saw the effect it was having on the felisians as the elder translated it for the others. Only now was the full terror they'd been experiencing made evident as it slipped mercifully away, to be replaced by a great sigh of relief. Beaming smiles appeared on many faces.

     "We know well the trials and rigours of space travel," the elder added, "and know how weary you must be after your long journey. We offer you and all your people the hospitality of our city, therefore. The chance to rest and refresh yourselves before we begin the great work you came so far to perform." She indicated the building from which they'd come. "We have food and drink and luxurious apartments that we have tried to adapt in the human way. We have spared no efforts to make you feel welcome among us."

     Thomas studied her carefully, suddenly wary. Were they trying to lure the whole crew away from their ship, into what must be the felisian equivalent of a tavern, where they could be separated and easily captured? No, of course not, he decided a moment later. They wouldn't be mad enough to antagonise them at this delicate stage. Probably it was just a matter of protocol. They felt duty bound to offer hospitality to all their guests, even though they knew there was no way they could accept.

     This theory was confirmed when they showed no surprise at the Captain's carefully worded reply. "We thank you for your kind offer, but we regret regulations forbid more than a certain number of men to leave the ship at any one time. Since we expect to be here for some days, though, perhaps we could take turns to accept your gracious hospitality. I'm sure the men would be glad for a bit of shore leave."

     "We would be overjoyed to entertain your crew," said the elder with pleasure and relief. "Please, come this way and see what we have prepared for you."

     Strong and Thomas followed the elders back to the building, therefore, the wizard trying to control his anxiety. I can teleport out any time I want, he reminded himself, and once we're back aboard, the scout ship can take to the air in seconds. Just as fast as it takes to chop the guy ropes with axes.

     He glanced back at the ship to see Matthew and Lirenna standing at the railing, looking at him anxiously. Poor Matthew, the wizard thought. I keep doing this to him. Making him watch while I go into danger. Still, at least this time he's got Lirenna with him, sharing the decision to let him go. If the worst happens, he doesn't have to worry about how he's going to explain it to her.

     He smiled back at them and raised a hand reassuringly. They waved back at him. Matthew turned to say something to Lirenna, which made her smile gratefully back at him. Then the Flight Leader raised his voice to speak to the crew, loudly enough for Thomas to hear it.

     "Look at the state of this deck!" he said. "It's filthy! Get scrubbing!"

     The men groaned unhappily as they took the mops and buckets out of storage and set to work.

☆☆☆

     It took Saturn only a couple of hours to find the abandoned city that Thomas had spotted in the scout ship's scrying mirror before leaving the Jules Verne. Guided by Karog on the bridge of the Jules Verne, who was watching both city and scoutship in the main scrying mirror, he quickly spotted the tell-tale regularities in the landscape. Features only visible from the air that told of ruins buried deep under the ground. There were straight lines and geometric shapes hundreds of yards across where the trees were smaller, forming indentations in the forest canopy so clear and obvious that it was almost like a road map.

     "There," he said, pointing. "That is our destination."

     "There's nowhere to land," said Borlin, gazing out over the unbroken expanse of trees.

     "Doesn't matter," the wizard replied. "I'll need two men to go with me. I'll take Tayl Makral and Roj Villa."

     "Aye, Sir," the squad leader replied, and he called for the two men to join them on the stern castle.

     "Be alert for hostile wildlife," the wizard warned them when they arrived. "Not all the big cats are felisians. There are plenty of the ordinary variety as well, plus other predators unlike anything you've ever seen. Be on your guard at all times."

     The two men nodded their understanding and Saturn ordered the gate in the railing to be opened. "We're going to step out and float to the ground," he explained. "To gain the benefit of the spell, it's important you step out at the exact same moment I do. Otherwise you'll fall. Understand?"

     The two men glanced at each other, gulped nervously and nodded.

     "Very good." Saturn stepped right up to the edge. "On three. One, two..." He stepped over the side and the two soldiers, closing their eyes in terror but conditioned to obey without question, followed. When several seconds had passed and nothing much had happened they opened their eyes cautiously and looked down. The trees were still far below them, and beside them was the wizard, his robes billowing in the gentle wind. Above them, the Trill-Dal was still fairly close but getting further away at a perceptible rate. The two soldiers relaxed in relief and began enjoying the experience.

     Getting through the canopy was a bit hairy and the three men were whipped by branches as they dropped slowly through it, but then there was open space below them. An expanse of darkness to their daylight-adapted eyes. The two soldiers squinted into the gloom, and they saw that the ground, about fifty feet below them, was littered with dead leaves and fallen branches just waiting to break the ankle of an unwary visitor. They watched where they put their feet as they touched down, therefore, and all three men landed safely within a few feet of each other.

     They waited a few minutes while their eyes adapted to the darkness and examined their surroundings with interest. It appeared to be a perfectly normal forest. They might have been in any forest back on Tharia. Birds chittered and screeched above them, and some kind of spotted antelope looked suspiciously at them before dismissing them from its attention. There was no sign that any thinking creature had ever set foot here.

     "No sign of any city," said Villa. "Are you sure this is the right place?"

     Saturn ignored him but took a wand from his belt. He aimed it at the ground a few feet in front of him, spoke a word and a ray of brilliant light shot out from the end. Where it touched the ground a diffuse purple haze appeared, and a deep pit appeared in the moist, loamy soil. He swept the wand back and forth, widening and deepening the hole, but found nothing but soil and, beneath it, rock. He gave a grunt, spoke another word to deactivate the wand and moved a few yards away to try again.

     "By the Gods!" breathed Tayl Makral in awe as he watched the Wand of Disintegration at work. "What does he want us for? Why does he need us to protect him if he can do that?" Roj Villa could only shrug in agreement.

     Saturn disintegrated two more fruitless holes before hitting paydirt. At the bottom of his fourth hole he found chunks of some strange bluish substance which he clambered down to retrieve. He bounced one of them up and down in his hand, feeling its weight, and scraped some of the dirt off with the metal tip of his wand. The two soldiers waited expectantly for some word of explanation, but the wizard just tossed it over his shoulder and began widening the hole, looking for the structure from which the rubble had come.

     He found it three yards away. There was a whole heap of rubble, all completely buried under thousands of years of accumulated leaf litter, and beside it was the remains of a wall. Saturn recognised it as being made of the same material as the foundations of the building in Place-of-Toil. He smiled in triumph, then carried on disintegrating the soil, following the wall along its length.

     When he'd gone a dozen feet or so he came to a corner, telling him which side of the wall had been the inside of the building and which side the outside. He began clearing the entire area inside the remains of the square building he'd found, until eventually he had excavated a pit twenty feet square and six feet deep, around the edges of which ran the remains of the wall. Other walls ran away in various directions, defining neighbouring rooms, and Saturn uncovered these as well until he'd discovered the full extent of the building. It was in the central room that he found what he'd been looking for all along. A flight of stairs leading down, blocked by solidly packed soil and thick tree roots.

     The two soldiers stared in amazement. "You mean this is one of the upper storeys?" cried Villa in disbelief. "But that means the ground level must have risen by a dozen feet at least! How is that possible?"

     "Thousands of years of falling leaves," muttered Saturn distractedly as he contemplated how he was going to clear the stairway. "The feet and inches pile up faster than you'd believe possible." He gave a word of command to the wand and activated it again. This time it disintegrated only organic matter, reducing the soil to its mineral components; a grey dust that fluffed up in the air in a great cloud before settling again on the stairs and on the wizard, who flapped his robes at the air in irritation.

     He had to go more slowly now, disintegrating a few feet at a time and waiting for the air to clear before continuing. A current of air blew the cloud of mineral dust up and away, leaving the excavation fairly clean, and the fascinated soldiers began to see details on the wall thus revealed. The faded remains of the building's original decoration. It was similar to the ornamentation Saturn had seen in some Haldornian dwellings, and that, along with the basic architecture of the building, spoke of a people very similar to the humans of Tharia. That was good. It meant their culture and civilisation would be understandable by humans, although it might take years of study by sages and anthropologists before the long dead inhabitants gave up their secrets. Saturn didn't have that long, but he only needed to know one thing; whether this was the Shipbuilder civilisation. He ought to be able to discover that while he was here.

     "Do you want us to come down and help you?" called down Tayl Makral from the top of the hole. Saturn didn't answer, so he gave a sigh and looked around at the surrounding forest, noting the absence of predatory monsters and flesh eating plants.

     "Keep an eye out," he warned Villa, and the infantryman nodded, although neither of them could help but glance occasionally down into the hole to see how the wizard was progressing.