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planetologists, to dispatch his entire material to the main laboratory. By ten o’clock Rohan felt so hungry—he had not yet had breakfast—that he took the elevator down to the mess hall for the radar observers. He was just drinking his coffee when Erett stormed in, rushing straight to Rohan’s table.
    “Did you find the Condor?” Rohan asked when he saw the cartographer’s excited face.
    “No, but we’ve detected something much bigger. Come along right away, please. The astrogator is waiting for you.”
    It seemed as if the glassed-in cylinder literally inched its way up the elevator shaft. Nobody spoke to them when they arrived at the quiet darkened cabin. The humming of the relays could be heard and the automatic developer spat out shiny moist photos; but no one paid any attention. Two technicians were just pulling a projector out from behind a hinged door in the wall. Just before the technician switched off the light, Rohan managed to locate the white-haired cranium of the astrogator amid all the other heads. The next moment a silvery shimmering screen descended from the ceiling. Tense breathing was the only audible sound. Rohan got as close to the screen as possible. The rather fuzzy image (unfortunately only a black-and-white photo) showed a bare high plateau, surrounded by an irregular ring of small craters, jutting out from the landscape. On one side this tableland fell away steeply, as if sliced off by a giant knife. That was the shoreline, for the rest of the picture was filled by the even black expanse of the ocean. At some distance from this precipice Rohan noticed a mosaic of indistinct shapes that lay partially obscured under some low clouds and their shadows. No doubt about it, this peculiar structure with its blurry outlines could not be mistaken for any geological formation.
    It’s a city, thought Rohan with excitement. The room was silent as the technician tried in vain to get the picture into a sharper focus.
    “Were there any disturbances during transmission?” the astrogator’s calm voice broke through.
    “No,” replied Ballmin out of the dark. “We had good transmission, but this shot was one of the last of the third group of satellites. Eight minutes after it had been launched, it no longer reacted to our signals. This photo was probably taken after the objectives had already been damaged by the rapidly rising temperature.”
    “The camera was at a distance of roughly forty miles from the center of this structure,” interjected another voice, that Rohan recognized. It was Malte, one of the most talented planetologists.
    “I’d be inclined to put the distance rather at some thirty to thirty-five miles. Will you look at this, please?” The astrogator’s body obscured part of the screen. He took a transparent stencil with many circles and placed it over the various craters in the visible part of the screen.
    “These are definitely larger than those of the earlier shots. But it doesn’t matter, either way you look at it…” he added without completing his sentence.
    They all knew what he had meant to say: soon they would be able to judge for themselves whether the satellite cameras had been properly focused. For a few moments they regarded the image on the screen. Rohan was no longer certain whether this was a city or the ruins of one. That these geometrically regular structures must have been abandoned for quite some time could be concluded from the pencil-thin wavy shadows of the dunes which encircled them. Some of these constructions had been almost totally covered by the sand. The geometrical order of the ruins was divided into two uneven parts by a zigzag line which grew wider as it stretched further inland. This tectonic fissure cut several of the large “buildings” in half. One of these had toppled over and formed a bridge across the chasm.
    “Lights, please,” sounded the astrogator’s voice. As bright lamps illuminated the cabin he glanced over to the clock on the