coming to the end of this particular planting.

With the flier hovering, Wentworth used a high-power telescope to search below. He hunted for long, long minutes, examining minutely every square foot of half a dozen between-clump aisles without result. There was no sign of the passage of any creature, much less of the apparition he would much rather not believe in.

"I think I'm going to have to go down and hunt on foot," he said reluctantly. "Maybe there wasn't anything. Maybe I'm crazy."

Haynes spoke in mild tones.

"Speaking of craziness, is or isn't that city yonder a delusion?" he asked.

He pointed, and Wentworth jerked about. Many, many miles away, something reared upward beyond the horizon. It was indubitably a city, and they had searched nine planets over without finding a single scrap of chipped stone to prove the reality of the skit-tree planters.

Wentworth could see separate pinnacles and what looked like skyways connecting them far above-ground. He snapped his camera to his binoculars and focussed them, and of course, the camera with them. He saw architectural details of bewildering complexity. He snapped the shutter of his camera.

"That gets top priority," said Wentworth. "There's no doubt about this!"

The thing he had seen before sunrise was so completely incredible that it was easier to question his vision than to believe in it. He flung over the jet-controls so that the drive-jets took the fuel from the supporting ones. The flier went roaring toward the far-away city.

Wentworth sent the scout flier zooming in the direction of the mysterious city.

"Take over," he told Haynes. "I'm going to call McRae back. He'll break down and cry with joy."

He pushed the call-button. Seconds later a voice came out of the communicator, muffled and made indistinct by the roar of the jets. Wentworth reported. He turned a tiny television scanner on the huge, lacy construction rising from a site still beyond the horizon. McRae's shout of satisfaction was louder than the jets. He bellowed and cut off instantly.

"The Galloping Cow is shoving off," said Wentworth. "McRae's giving this position and telling all mapping-parties to make for it. And he'll climb out of atmosphere to get here fast. He wants to see 

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