He carried such a scrap in his hand and studied it now and again. He saw it to be some sort of tough, light alloy, once he had scraped and rubbed the dirt from it, uncor-rupted after all these years. What were the forces that had formed it? What heats? What pressures? It told him that something peculiar had once existed nearby.

That evening he walked through the still standing shell of a large building. He could not even guess what might once have been transacted within it. But twice he thought that he heard scurrying sounds near at hand as he explored. He decided to camp at some distance from the ruin.

He could not decide whether a fire would attract or repel anything that might dwell nearby. Finally, the lack of sufficient kindling materials to keep a blaze going for very long persuaded him to do entirely without. He ate dry rations and rolled himself into his blanket on a ledge eight feet above the ground. He placed his blade within easy reach.

How long he had slept, he could not say. Several hours, it felt, when he was awakened by a scratching noise. He was alert in an instant, hand moving toward the weapon. He turned his head slightly, muscles tensing, and beheld the thing which moved over the rocks below, coming in his direction.

Its dark, segmented body gleamed in the moonlight as it crept over the rocks on numerous tiny feet, its front end sometimes raised, sometimes lowered. It was three or four times his own size, and it resembled nothing so much as a gigantic, metallic caterpillar moving along the trail he had followed to this place. Mounted near the forward end was something small and twisted and vaguely man-shaped, clutching what appeared to be reins in its left hand and the shaft of a long spear in the other. The beast reared, rising as high as the ledge, swayed, then dropped to the ground once more and proceeded as if sniffing out his path.