They started off down the canyon, Syme urging the slighter man to a fast clip, even though his leg was already stiffening. When they finally reached a climbable spot, Syme was limping badly and Tate was obviously exhausted.
They clambered wearily out onto the level sands again just as the small, blazing sun was setting. "Luck," grunted Syme. "Our only chance of getting near the city is at night." He peered around, shading his eyes from the sun's glare with a gauntleted hand. "See that?"
Following his pointing finger, Tate saw a faint, ephemeral arc showing above a line of low hills in the distance. "Kal-Jmar," said Syme.
Tate brightened a little. His body was too filled with fatigue for his mind to do any work on the problem that was baffling him, and so it receded into the back of his mind.
"Kal-Jmar," whispered Syme again.
There was no twilight. The sun dropped abruptly behind the low horizon, and darkness fell, sudden and absolute. Syme picked up the extra oxygen tank and the suitcase, checked his direction by a wrist compass, and started toward the hills. Tate rose wearily to his feet and followed again.
Two hours later, Kal-Jmar stood before them. They had wormed their way past the sentry posts, doing most of the last two hundred meters on all fours. With skill and luck, and with Syme's fierce, burning determination, they had managed to escape detection—and there they were. Journey's end.
Tate stared up at the shining, starlight towers in speechless admiration. If the people who had built this city had been decadent, still their architecture was magnificent. The city was a rhapsody made solid. There was a sense of decay about it, he thought, but it was the decay of supreme beauty, caught at the very verge of dissolution and preserved for all eternity.
"Well?" demanded Syme.
Tate started, shaken out of his dream. He looked down at the black suitcase, a little wonderingly, and then pulled it to him and opened it.