"Yes, yes-but look! See, Mr Shaw? Atwood! Lord Atwood! Come look!"

Arthur took the rock from Vaz's outstretched hands. It was pinkish, and roughly the size of a house brick.

"See, Shaw?"

"I don't-"

Atwood s.n.a.t.c.hed it away. "Thank you," Atwood said. He was grinning like a madman. "Well done, Mr Vaz. A sharp eye. See, Mr Sun? Mr Shaw?"

Arthur and Sun both peered at the rock.

On one side it was smooth, almost glazed, with jagged flinty edges. It resembled pottery as much as it resembled earthly stone.

Atwood turned it over. On the other side there was a neat right-angled corner.

"A fortunate discovery," Sun said.

"Manufacture," Atwood said. "Clear evidence of manufacture."

"One can't be certain," Arthur said. "It might be a product of natural forces we don't understand."

"Admirable scepticism, Mr Shaw. But you lack vision. Can't you see it, can't you simply see it: the tremendous column of which this was once merely a corner of a plinth, rising steeply into the Martian sky, an ornament to a great Martian temple?"

"Where are they, then? Where are its makers? Where's the rest of the temple?"

"Gone. Dead. As if we walked among the sepulchres of the Valley of Kings. Perhaps even Mars has its Egypt."

Then Atwood handed the rock back to Vaz, and told him to put it on his sled.

Sun bandaged Payne's skinned hands. Payne cursed and grunted, while Sun remained silent. Later Payne grumbled to Arthur that it was like being treated by a veterinarian, as if one were a carthorse.

Arthur and Vaz got the sled righted and loaded again, then they each took a rope over their shoulder and began to pull. Their route took them uphill, and into a zone of sharp little pebbles. No further evidence of architecture appeared.

"Together again, Mr Shaw."

"We are indeed, Mr Vaz."

They went some way in silence. It was an effort to speak.

Arthur quickly began to see why the sled kept tipping over so easily. It was the weird weightlessness. The d.a.m.n thing bounced and wobbled at the slightest disturbance. It was like a child's toy.

They moved on, bringing up the rear. Nothing behind them but the far horizon, the black clouds. Best not to look back at all.

"You know, Mr Vaz-I rather think you might have saved my life, that night in the fire. I always wanted to thank you."

"Think nothing of it, Mr Shaw. Besides-we are in worse danger now."

"Dimmick-might have-if you-if you hadn't ... well."

Arthur's breath ran short. He thought back on the incident at Dr Thorold's house in Bloomsbury. Blood all over the doctor's study, blood on Dimmick's boots. Long ago now, a long-forgotten horror. He'd seen worse since. A certain wolf-like aspect to the black clouds streaming overhead. Getting faster now. He decided it was better not to tell that story. No doubt Mars had nightmares enough of its own; no need to trouble it with London's.

"Misunderstanding," Arthur said. "Won't happen again, I'm sure."

Vaz glanced at Dimmick's back. He did not look entirely convinced.

"Shaw. May I ask a question?"

Arthur nodded.

"Mr Gracewell's Work."

"Yes. We built another one, you know. Another Engine. Near Gravesend. Would have hired you on if I'd known."

"It was for this, the Work?"

Arthur thought about how to explain Gracewell's Engine. He couldn't find the strength. "Yes," he said.

The sled's runners shrieked over stone. Up ahead Payne was grumbling about his feet, and beyond that someone-Dimmick, Arthur thought-was rather improbably whistling a cheerful little tune. Atwood was so far ahead that he could be seen only as a distant shadow, flickering in the haze like a black candle flame. Sun walked along beside him. The two of them were talking. They appeared to be arguing.

"Fog," Arthur said. "d.a.m.n fog. That thing-Milton, isn't it?-darkness visible."

Vaz shuddered.

Ahead of them rose a dune. Atwood struck a heroic figure atop it: a silhouette of black velvet, limned with cold violet light, field-gla.s.ses in hand. Then he was gone again, replaced by Sun, and shortly afterwards by Dimmick. They had a dreadful time getting the sled over the dune, but after that it was downhill, and easier going for a while.

"You are a Christian, I presume?"

"I am, Mr Vaz. A fairly bad one, I suppose. Given all of this, I mean. Atwood and his magic, that is."

"Why did you...?"

"All this? A woman."

"A woman? I would like to see that woman. Does the Bible say anything about Mars? I don't recall. Do you think G.o.d watches Mars? I can't stop myself from thinking these things, Mr Shaw."

"G.o.d? I took you for a Hindu, Mr Vaz."

They'd never discussed religion back in Deptford, but here the subject seemed inescapable.

"A Roman Catholic. Not a very good one."

"Ah. Well, well. I wouldn't know, anyway. Perhaps he does. There's a red star in the book of Revelation, isn't there? I suppose that must be Mars. But other than that, I don't recall. We may be outside G.o.d's bailiwick, one fears."

"Yes. Yes." Vaz nodded. "That is what I fear."

They walked for a while longer.

"Listen, Mr Vaz. I want to ask you a favour."

"Ask."

"I told you when we worked in Mr Gracewell's Engine together that I was engaged to be married."

"Yes. I recall."

"She's-unwell. If we-if you should ever happen to meet her, but I am ... well, if things haven't gone well for me here ... Would you give her a message for me? Tell her that I've made arrangements. If ... when she wakes."

"Of course."

He gave Vaz the name of a lawyer, and the address of his office in Gravesend.

"It's all my fault, you see. All my fault."

Vaz maintained a diplomatic silence.

Up ahead, a cloud formed on the horizon. It resembled the smoke of a great fire.

"Will you do me a favour in response, Mr Shaw?"

"Of course."

"Tell me truthfully: Does Lord Atwood know where he is leading us?"

"I don't know."

They walked for a while in silence.

Vaz grunted. "Which would be worse, I wonder? If he doesn't, or if he does?"

The march stopped at intervals of roughly an hour, so that Dimmick could take out an ice-pick and a hammer and carve a number into a suitable rock: 1, 2, 3, and so forth. This was to ensure that they could retrace their steps, and also to be sure that they weren't going in circles. Roughly once an hour, whatever that meant on Mars. No doubt by the time they got to 9, 10, 11 they were far off from the true hour. They kept going. 12, 13. It was as easy to keep walking as to stop, as easy to stand as to lie down. That must be what it was like to be a ghost, Arthur thought. 14 and then 15. He began to think that they might walk for ever, leaving meaningless signs that would never be read, watched only by the black clouds overhead. 16 ...

Shortly after the sixteenth marking, Payne announced that he'd had enough, and was d.a.m.n well going to sleep. He s.n.a.t.c.hed a blanket from the back of Dimmick's sled, and sat on the ground with it wrapped around his shoulders, shivering.

At first Atwood looked annoyed. Then he smiled and said, "Quite right! A rest. I'll go one further, gentlemen. A feast. We shall have a feast on Mars. A celebration of our triumph."

Frank lit a second lantern. They set up the tents, then shared out cigarettes and cold soup.

"A wondrous thing," Atwood said. "Soup. Every sensation on Mars is to be treasured for what it can teach us."

Payne prayed, but without a great deal of enthusiasm, and n.o.body joined him. One never knew what might be listening, Vaz observed.

At last they all went to sleep-except Sun, whose energies appeared boundless, and who sat down cross-legged beside a lantern, apparently deep in thought.

Sleep on the surface of Mars was not terribly different from waking. In fact, Arthur pa.s.sed from sleep to marching again without quite noticing it. Before he knew it, he was walking along beside Vaz, the sled rattling along behind him, and Dimmick was carving 2-4 into rocks as they went, and then 2-5, and 2-6, and so on.

It was shortly after 2-10-the tenth hour of their second day on Mars-that they sighted the ruin.

At first, in the far distance, it resembled one of the bent tin cans they'd left behind, dented and leaking, hours and miles ago. A tiny black shape on the distant horizon, too oddly shaped to be a rock, b.u.t.te, or mountain. It was not quite in the direction they were travelling, but close enough that when Atwood pretended that it was, no one argued.

A sign of civilization.

Frank started up another song, and this time everyone joined in, even Atwood-everyone but Sun, who continued to march in silence, hands folded behind his back, an odd smile on his face.

Arthur, remembering the Martian in Atwood's library, made sure that the rifles were loaded.

It was clearly a structure, the product of Martian architecture. Any doubt on that score quickly faded as they got closer. Within half an hour it was quite clear that it was a sort of tower. It rose up out of the flat dead plain, tall and slender, in splendid isolation. It had something of the look of a fortification, but there was nothing around worth fortifying for as far as the eye could see.

It was made of red stone, it was circular, and it was unornamented, save for a spiralling set of windows. Beneath each window jutted something a little like a drainpipe. Perches, perhaps, for winged visitors.

It had shattered long ago, like a lightning-blasted tree. It seemed to have broken roughly in half; the upper stories had toppled sideways, leaving a long snaky mound of rubble half-buried by dust. What was left upright was still tremendously tall-more so when seen from its foot, because its thinness played tricks with perspective, so that it seemed almost as if it hung from the sky.

"b.l.o.o.d.y thing's got no doors," Frank said.

"See," Atwood said. "The Martians come and go by the windows."

"It's a ruin," Arthur said. "No one's come or gone from here in years-centuries."

"They fly. Remember the creature in my library? Winged. It was trying to fly."

"Not too well, as I recall."

"Why would they be endowed with wings if not to fly? Perhaps it was too heavy on Earth. Or perhaps it couldn't fly indoors-perhaps it needed wind and air and light. Imagine it. A race of flying men. Their feet might never touch the ground. Imagine what we might learn from such a people, Shaw. Their sciences, their arts, their magic; imagine how they must see the world! This must be a temple. A sacred place. They go down to the surface to pray."

He was practically standing on tiptoes, as if he hoped he might grow wings of his own, by sheer force of will.

Arthur felt a faint hope. Clearly the structure was empty, and abandoned; but if Josephine had been lost on Mars all this time, surely she would have sought out landmarks such as this, and possibly left some sign of her whereabouts.

No doors. The closest window was twelve feet off the ground, too far to jump even in the feeble Martian gravity. Payne had the bright idea of taking the ropes from the two sleds, tying them together, and throwing them up over the perch beneath the lowest window, so that if two men stood on the ground holding one end of the rope, another could climb up to the window.

Sun went first. Then Atwood, then Arthur.

Chapter Thirty-three.

The windows of the tower were tall, but narrow, and they all had a devil of a time squeezing through, even Atwood. Inside it was dark.

Arthur called down to Vaz, who tied one of the lanterns to the end of the rope. He raised it hand-over-hand to the window, where he and Sun and Lord Atwood waited, wary of venturing farther into the dark interior.