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.There was water now, flowing streams of it that ran cold and musically along the pebbled beds.We cached our water tins in one of the stone beehive huts that still sprouted, at intervals, along the trail.Since the badlands none of us carried packs; the packs we had carried were strapped on Roscoe's sturdy back.Feeling a bit sheepish about it, I traveled with the shield slung behind my shoulders and the sword buckled to my waist.It was no kind of fighting equipment for a grown man to carry, but there was in that shield and sword a certain swashbuckling feeling of importance—a throwback to some old ancestor of millennia ago who had taken pride in a warrior's outfit.We marched, it seemed, with more purpose now.While at times I doubted that Roscoe had known what was going on when he had pointed north (and continued to point north each time we asked him) his seeming confidence gave us at least a feeling of assurance that we no longer were fumbling blindly, but had a track to follow.The vegetation increased.There was grass and flowering plants, a vast variety of shrubs, and at times groves of stately trees along some of the water courses.And always of course, the sky-scraping trees that towered far into the distance.The air grew chilly and where there had been no wind, there now was wind, blowing with a knife-edge bite.Rodentlike creatures abounded, sitting up and whistling at us as we passed, and occasionally small herds of herbivores.Sara shot one of these and we butchered it and drew straws to see who would be the guinea pig.The long straw fell to me and I ate a few bites of the steak we fried, then sat back to wait.Nothing happened and all of us ate.We had found a food supply and could hoard the little stock we carried.There was about this high land an ecstatic mysticism and at times I found myself feeling that I was walking through a dream.It was not this high plateau itself, but the total impact of the planet that seemed to come crashing down upon me— the wonder of who had been here before and why they'd left and what might be the purpose of the orchard they had planted and then abandoned, along with the great white city.Huddling close to the campfire, grateful for its warmth against the chill of night, I watched Hoot and wondered at the brotherhood that lay between us, binding us together.He had cleaned my blood of poison and had later asked me for a loan of life and when Tuck had snatched him from me had accepted the loan from Tuck, although I suspected it had been taken as a proxy of my life, for between him and Tuck there was no such thing as brotherhood.Now, more than ever, Tuck walked by himself, no longer even pretending that he was one of us.He almost never spoke except on those occasions when he mumbled to the doll and once the evening meal was done sat by himself away from the fire, apparently unmindful of the cold.His face became thinner and his body seemed to shrink within the muffling folds of his robe, shrinking not into a skeleton, but into tough rawhide.He took on a gray quality, a shadow sense, so that one became unaware of him.There were times when I'd look around and see him and be surprised to find him there and even wonder, momentarily, who he was, and that strange wiping-out-of-memory was, as well, a part of this high blue land through which we walked.Past and present and the thought and hope of future would seem to blend into a terribly logic feel of time that was in itself eternity, a never-beginning never-ending state of being that hung suspended, in duration and yet had about it a continuing and a sparkling sense of wonder.So we moved across that great plateau, Paint rocking along in silence except for the occasional click of a rocker against a stone protruding from the trail; Hoot ranging out ahead, a dot against the distance, still working at his scarcely-needed role of scout; Tuck stumbling along like a dim gray ghost muffled to the throat in brown, and Roscoe stumping sturdily, muttering to himself his endless string of rhyming words, never making sense, a vocal moron who trundled happily through an alien never-never land.And I, stalking along with the shield upon my back and the sword banging at my leg, must have appeared as strange as any of the rest.Sara probably was touched the least of all, but she changed as well, regaining the old flare of adventure which had been sheared from her by the toil and monotony and the tension of crossing the desert with its badlands stretches.I saw in her again the woman who had met me in the hallway of that aristocratic house in the midst of its sweeping lawn and who had walked with me, arm in arm, into that room where it all had started.The mountains loomed higher and lost some of their blueness and we could see now that they were wild and fearsome and breathtaking mountains, with soaring cliffs and mighty canyons, clothed with heavy woods that extended almost to the rocky peaks."I have a feeling," Sara said one night as we sat beside the campfire, "that we are nearly there, that we are getting close."I nodded, for I had the same feeling—that we were getting close, although I could not imagine close to what.Somewhere in those mountains just ahead we would find what we were looking for.I did not think that we would find Lawrence Arlen Knight, for he must long since be dead, but in some strange manner for which I could not account, the conviction had crept into me that we'd find something, that somewhere this trail must end and that at the end of it lay the thing we sought.Although I could not, for the life of me, put into words the sort of thing we sought.I simply did not know.But not knowing did not suppress the excitement and anticipation of what lay just ahead.It was all illogical, of course, an attitude born of the mystic blue through which we journeyed.More than likely the frail would never end, that once it reached the mountains it would continue to go snaking up and around and through that upended country.But logic had no place here.I still continued to believe that the trail would end somewhere just ahead and that at the end of it we'd find something wonderful.Above us lay the glow of the galaxy—the fierce blue-whiteness of the central core, with the filmy mistiness of the arms spiraling out from it."I wonder," Sara said, "if we ever will get back.And if we do get back, what can we tell them, Mike? How is one going to put into words the kind of place this is?""A great white city," I said, "and then the desert and after that the highlands and beyond the highlands mountains.""But that doesn't tell it.That doesn't begin to tell it.The wonder and the mysticism.""There are never words," I told her, "for the wonder and the glory, never words for fear or happiness.""I suppose you're right," she said."But do you suppose we will get back? Have you any idea of how we can get back?"I shook my head.I had one idea, but it might be a very bad one and there was no use in telling it, there was no use in giving rise to hope that had only a fraction of a chance of ever coming true."You know," she said, "I don't really care.It doesn't seem to matter too much.There is something here that I've found nowhere else and I can't tell you what it is.I've thought and thought about it and I still don't know what it is.""Another day or two," I said, "and we may find what it is
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