"Let's go," Craig said.
Darkness was swiftly falling on the wilderness of heaping ruin. The three made their way toward what Craig at first thought was an unbroken wall of rubble. The near-horizontal rays of the sun tipped the white mass of broken stone with brilliance, and gave the entire scene an unearthly quality. Below the towering rubble mountains, long black shadows were reaching toward what Craig knew to be the living city.
Cocteau took the lead and set a fast pace for a man of his age. He took a highly devious path through the "mountain," or what began to seem to Craig needlessly difficult and that outlined them against the bright western sky. At one point Craig left the invisible path of the older man to avoid an exhaustingly steep rise.
"Follow me exactly," warned Cocteau in a sharp voice. "There is only one relatively safe path through here."
"They'll see us against the sky!"
"It cannot be helped."
But there was no indication that they were followed. They pushed onward, scurrying over heaps of weathered plaster and brick. The old man seemed to avoid with great care places where metal girders were visible.
The exertion together with walking directly into the setting sun made Craig begin to feel the old nausea return. He resisted it for a time, but it would not be repressed, particularly as he strove to maintain his balance on difficult climbs. Once he stumbled on a splintered building stone and fell. It was a long minute before he could regain his feet and mutter a feeble, "Sorry."
"We must push on, Mr. Craig," was Cocteau's only comment.