This didn't surprise Blade. On all his trips into Dimension X he'd always found at least one people who were unmistakably human, whomever and whatever else he might find besides. Sooner or later he suspected he was going to wind up in a Dimension where the only intelligent race looked like birds or snakes or eight-foot turnips. He was perfectly happy to see that day postponed as long as possible.

There were a dozen or so complete human skeletons, the remains of several animals, plus assorted odd bones. The animal skeletons showed high arched backs, long necks, enormously long legs, and large splayed hooves for traveling across sand. Blade suspected the live animals would look remarkably like camels.

Blade knelt and examined the clothing of the dead men. It made him think of old pictures he had seen of Bedouin tribesmen. The basic garments were long flowing robes. Once they had been a dazzling white. Now they were faded and frayed, slashed and stained with their late wearers' blood.

Under the robes the riders had worn light tunics and trousers, and on their feet soft boots, now dried until they were cracked, hard as wood, and quite unwearable. Blade wrapped his feet in rags instead. But he was able to find a wearable tunic, trousers, and a robe. In these salvaged clothes he would look like something risen from the grave, but he would at least have a layer of cloth between his skin and the sun and sand.

Blade next spent a long time searching for possible weapons, without any luck. He shook out every garment, picked up every bone, and nearly looked under every grain of sand in the area. Whatever weapons the dead riders had carried were long gone.

From the way the bodies of the men and their mounts lay, it was not hard to figure out what had happened. They had been moving fast, probably fleeing, certainly not watching where they were going. They had ridden into the little valley and had found that their mounts could not climb the slopes all around them.