Before him was a great towering structure, a temple judging by the cryptic signs that adorned its face. Before the temple was a sunken triangular amphitheater of shining yellow stuff. A glance told Don that the great pit was made of shining bars and heavy slabs of hand-hammered and hand-polished metal.
Don wondered why the outlaws were eying the sunken pit so intently. Since he had been raised on Mars, Don had never heard of gold.
But it was the birds perched on the top ledge of the amphitheater that caught Donald's attention as he neared the temple.
There were hundreds of them—Wirlers with plump bodies and pinkish eyes, iridescent Zloth poking busily with their long, sharp beaks, spotted Cotasi standing in somber dignity, and everywhere huge black Sominas. Don paused. These birds made him cold in his stomach.
"What are those?" asked Pete, his smooth face uneasy.
"Birds native to Mars," said the boy. "But I've never seen them in such numbers." The Martians and their prisoners halted before a small, square stone building.
Pete was singled out by one of the gangling creatures, and yanked inside the little structure. The other outlaw was forced in after him. Don watched with a strange feeling of detachment as the two vanished into the building. It was the heat, the withering heat, that caused that. It sapped all the strength from one's body and left him feeling slow and dim-witted.
As he stood there he noticed belatedly something he had been looking at all the while but had not really noticed. It was a small clump of stunted trees, growing a few paces back from the edge of the amphitheater. Their crooked branches were overladen with the globes of some bright red fruit.
A sudden impulse came on him. He could just touch one of the limbs. A moment later one of the red fruit was in his pocket. He forgot about the thing as soon as he saw Pete and his guards emerge from the building. "What happened?" the boy asked.
The outlaw coughed dryly. "They showed me some kind of machine—motor—something. I don't know what they wanted." He grinned feebly. A moment later the man backed away in alarm as one of their captors approached him. Deliberately the Martians flung the contents of a clay gourd into the outlaw's face. The Martian laughed, a hollow, croaking boom that sounded like sacrilege in that city of the dead. He gave some order in his gobbling tongue, and two Martians unceremoniously shoved the weakly struggling Earthman into the deep pit of the amphitheater.