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warn off. This is Rerne’s Donerabon.”
    â€œCorrect. Warn off withdrawn,” replied the com.
    Troy longed to ask a question. And then Rerne spoke, not to the mike, but to his seatmate. “To your right—watch now as we make the crossover.”
    The flitter dipped, sideslipped down a long descent. There were no streamers of mist to hide the ground here. No vegetation either. In curdled expanse of rock and sand was a huddle of structures, unmistakably, even from this distance, not the work of nature.
    Troy studied them avidly. “What is that?”
    â€œRuhkarv—the ‘accursed place.’”

SIX
    They did not pass directly over that outcropping of alien handiwork, older than the first human landing on Korwar, but headed north once more. Troy knew from reports that what he saw now as lumpy protuberances aboveground were only a fraction of the ruins themselves, as they extended in corridors and chambers layers deep and perhaps miles wide under the surface, for Ruhkarv had never been fully explored.
    â€œThe treasure—” he murmured.
    Beside him Rerne laughed without any touch of humor. “If that exists outside vivid imaginations, it is never going to be found. Not after the end of the Fauklow expedition.”
    They had already swept past the open land that held the ruins, were faced again by the wealth of vegetation that ringed the barren waste of Ruhkarv. And Troy was struck by that oddity of the land.
    â€œWhy the desert just about the ruins?” he asked, too interested in what he saw to pay the usual deference to the rank of his pilot.
    â€œThat is something for which you will find half-a-dozen explanations,” Rerne returned, “any one of them logical—and probably wrong. Ruhkarv exists as it always has since the First-Ship exploration party charted it two centuries ago. Why it continues to exist is something Fauklow may have discovered—before he and his men went mad and killed themselves or each other.”
    â€œDid their recaller work?”
    Rerne answered obliquely. “The tracer of the rescue party registered some form of wave broadcast—well under the surface—when they came in. They blanketed it at once when they saw what had happened to Fauklow and the others they were able to find. All Ruhkarv is off limits now—under a tonal barrier. No flitter can land within two miles of the only known entrance to the underways. We do pick up some empty-headed treasure hunter now and then, prowling about, hunting a way past the barrier. Usually a trip to our headquarters and enforced inspection of the tri-dees we took of Fauklow’s end instantly cures his desire to go exploring.”
    â€œIf the recaller worked—” Troy speculated as to what might have happened down in those hidden passages. Fauklow had been a noted archaeologist with several outstanding successes at re-creating prehuman civilizations via the recaller, a machine still partially in the experimental stage. Planted anywhere within a structure that had once been inhabited by sentient beings, it could produce—under the right conditions—certain shadowy “pictures” of scenes that had once occurred at the site well back in time. While authorities still argued over dating, over the validity of some of the scenes Fauklow had recorded, yet the most skeptical admitted that he had caught something out of the past. And oftentimes those wispy ghosts appearing on his plates or films were the starting point for new and richly rewarding investigation.
    The riddle of Ruhkarv had drawn him three years earlier. While men had prowled the upper layers of the underground citadel, they had found nothing except bare corridors and chambers. The Council had willingly granted Fauklow permission to try out the recaller, with prudent contracts and precautions about securing to Korwar the possession of any outstanding finds that might result from the use of his