While we HEAR VOICE OVER we see Spock indicating the tracks to Kirk, and the Captain deploying his men in a search-pattern as they move forward. VOICE OVER CONTINUES as we LAP DISSOLVE TWICE THRU scenes of the patrol moving across the wilderness, being directed by one or another of the patrol members who stay with the tracks. When we first saw them materialize, they were wearing insulation suits and breatherpaks (transparent plastic envelopes over their heads) but now that Kirk has informed us there is air, the plastic envelopes have been thrown back like hoods.

They carry phasers, and one of the crewmen has a small radiation console strapped to his chest. The DISSOLVES are different only in ANGLE and CLOSEUP for the scenery is seemingly changeless.

As we DISSOLVE THRU TO the last of these tracking shots, the crewman with the console advises Kirk that the strange radiation that affected the ship’s clocks is becoming stronger, coming from the direction in which the tracks lead, over the horizon.

They strike out toward the source of radiation and in the far distance see a series of great mountain peaks, rising up like shards of glass from an ocean of silver. They get a distant impression of a great city on the furthest of those peaks, a series of spires that tower into the cadaverous gray sky without warmth or welcome.

They follow the tracks that head straight for the mountains, and the radiation grows more potent. Soon they find themselves on a mountain top near the city. As they top a rise—and the tracks vanish on the harder surface—they are astonished to see a group of men…but such men as the explorers from Earth have never known:

Old they are. Old as the chill and dying sun that casts only shadows on this empty planet. Old as thought, old as time, old as the cinder on which they live. Nine feet tall, and shapeless beneath the long white robes that reach to the mist-laden ground. Even taller if one allows their mitered headpieces. Taller still by the lengths of their snow-beards, the only part of them other than their lined and weary faces that shows from their clothing.

Kirk and Spock register astonishment at finding these ancient creatures, but the old men finally speak, after long beats in which their motionlessness makes us suspect they may be of stone. And this is what they say:

We are the Guardians of Forever. We have been here since before your sun burned hot in space, before your race came into being. We have been here when this area of space was so filled with young suns that it was always high noon from their light.

“But why do you stay here when this world is cold and empty?” Mr. Spock demands.