To the southeast of Nicholson Crater, the two big parallel canyons of the Medusae Fossae ran for over three hundred kilometers, into the heart of the southern highlands. Coyote decided to drive up East Medusa, the bigger of the two fractures. “I like to go through canyons when I can, see if the walls have any overhangs or caves. That’s how I’ve found most of my cache sites.”

“What if you run into a transverse scarp that crosses the whole canyon?” Nirgal asked.

“I backtrack. I’ve done an inhuman lot of backtracking, no doubt about that.”

So they drove up the canyon, which proved mostly flat-floored, for the rest of the night. The following night, as they continued south, the floor of the canyon began to rise, in steps that they were always able to negotiate. Then they reached a new and higher level of flat floor, and Nirgal, who was driving, braked the car. “There’s buildings up there!”

They all crowded around to look through the windshield. On the horizon, under the eastern wall of the canyon, a cluster of small white stone buildings stood silently.

After a half hour’s examination with the car’s various imagers and scopes, Coyote shrugged. “No obvious electricity or warmth. Doesn’t look like anyone’s home. Let’s go have a look.”

So they drove toward the structures, and stopped beside a massive chunk of the cliff wall, which had rolled well out on the floor. From this distance they could see that the buildings were freestanding, with no tent around them; they appeared to be solid blocks of whitish rock, like the caliche blanco in the badlands north of Olympus. Small white figures stood motionlessly between these buildings, on white plazas ringed by white trees. It was all made of stone.

“A statue,” Spencer said. “A town of stone!”

“Mud,” Sax croaked, then pounded the dashboard angrily, giving it four sharp slams that startled them all. “Muh!— du!— sa!”

Spencer and Art and Coyote laughed. They clapped Sax on the shoulders as if they were trying to pile-drive him into the floor. Then they all suited up again, and went out to have a closer look.

The white walls of the buildings glowed eerily in the starlight, like giant soap carvings. There were some twenty buildings, and many trees, and a couple of hundred people— and also a few score lions, mixed freely among the people. All carved from white stone, which Spencer identified as alabaster. The central plaza seemed to have been petrified during an active morning; there was a crowded farmers’ market, and a group clustered around two men playing chess, with waist-high pieces on a large board. The black chess pieces and the black squares of the chessboard stood out dramatically in their surroundings— onyx, in an alabaster world.