The Gorean, having little idea of progress in our sense, takes great care in his building and workmanship. What he builds he expects men to use until the storms of time have worn it to dust. Yet this road, for all the loving craft of the Caste of Builders which had been lavished upon it, was only an unpretentious, subsidiary road, hardly wide enough for two carts to pass. Indeed, even the main roads to Ko-ro- ba were a far cry from the great highways that led to and from a metropolis like Ar.

Surprisingly, though the pasang stones told me I was close to Ko-ro-ba, stubborn tufts of grass were growing between the stones, and occasional vines were inching out, tendril by tendril, across the great stone blocks. It was late afternoon and, judging by the pasang stones, I was still some hours from the city. Though it was still bright, many of the colourfully plumed birds had already sought their nests. Here and there swarms of night insects began to stir, lifting themselves under the leaves of bushes by the road. The shadows of the pasang stones had grown long, and, judging by the angle of these shadows (for the stones are set in such a way as to serve also as sundials) it was past the fourteenth Gorean Ahn, or hour. The Gorean day is divided into twenty Ahn, which are numbered consecutively. The tenth Ahn is noon, the twentieth, midnight. Each Ahn consists of forty Ehn, or minutes, and each Ehn of eighty Ihn, or seconds.

I wondered if it would be practical to continue my journey. The sun would soon be down, and the Gorean night is not without its dangers, particularly to a man on foot.

It is at night that the sleen hunts, that six-legged, long- bodied mammalian carnivore, almost as much a snake as an animal. I had never seen one, but had seen the tracks of one seven years before.

Also, at night, crossing the bright disks of Gor" s three moons might occasionally be seen the silent, predatory shadow of the ul, a giant pterodactyl ranging far from its native swamps in the delta of the Vosk.