Part of the time consumed by the enforced journey he dozed fitfully, but while he was awake he thought with strange clarity and precision, dreaming of the other greener world he had hoped to see. The boy was almost stifled under the heavy folds of the blanket when, after hours of travel, the Martians removed it.
Free of the torment, he drew a deep breath, blinking his eyes as he looked about him. The first thing he saw were the two Earthmen peering dazedly about them, their eyes not yet accustomed to the sudden change of light.
And when Don looked beyond the outlaws he gasped in stunned astonishment. Fronting them were the ruins of an old city!
That, he thought, must have been why they had been covered with the blankets. The Martians wanted to keep the location of the place a secret.
It seemed to the wondering boy that giants had played here a while. He saw great statues, perhaps of forgotten gods, misshapen things with cruel faces, tumbled over on one side. He saw vast paving-stones, hewn from solid rock, thrust up from their bed of sand, standing at all angles, cracked and split. He saw great buildings, strong as fortresses, fallen into ruins. In one place that must have been a public square a tide of sand broke in still waves about the base of a truncated pyramid.
"Where are we?" choked Pete, the first of the three to recover from the shock. He stared about blankly. "It's like a city of the dead," he whispered hoarsely.
"You're right," Don told him. "It is a city of the dead. An ancient, long deserted city of the Martians, the ancestors of the degenerates who hold us captive. This band uses it as their base from which they launch raiding parties."
Don had no time to say more. The Martians goaded their captives ahead of them down streets that had once echoed to the tread of a thousand feet. The humans picking through squares where multitudes had shouted saw no other living thing but a shimmering green lizard that basked on a fallen god. There was no sound but that of the ever-creeping sands. The old people were gone leaving only ghosts, and the hand of Time in its unhurried way had long since set about the task of wiping out all trace of their existence.
The party turned suddenly around the jutting corner of an immense white stone edifice. Then Don saw something that took his breath away.