"You wished to practice Shanga in its true form, Captain Winters. That is what you have paid for. That is what you will receive. All else is irrelevant."
Winters shrugged sulkily. He sat smoking his sedative tobacco, and he did not speak again.
After a long, long time the seemingly endless desert began to change. Low ridges rose naked from the sand and grew into a mountain range, of which nothing was left now but the barren rock.
Beyond the mountains lay a dead sea bottom. It stretched away under the moonlight, dropping, always dropping, until at last it became only a vast pit of darkness. Ribs of chalk and coral gleamed here and there, pushing through the lichens like bones through the dried skin of a man long dead.
Winters saw that there was a city between the foothills and the sea.
It had followed the receding water down the slopes. From this height, Winters could see the outlines of five harbours, abandoned one by one as the sea drew back, the great stone docks still standing. Houses had been built to fill their emptiness, and then abandoned in their turn for a lower level.
Now the straggling town had coalesced along the bank of the canal that drew what feeble life was left from the buried springs of the bottom. There was something infinitely sad about that thin dark line—all that was left of a blue and rolling ocean.
The flier circled and came down. The Keshi said something rapidly in his own dialect, from which Winters caught the one word, Valkis. Kor Hal answered him. Then he turned to Winters and said,
"We have not far to go. Stay close by me."
The four men left the flier. Winters knew that he was under guard, and felt that it was not entirely for the sake of protecting him.