Perhaps the latter reason, or both, or a combination of causes still unknown had

been responsible for whatever race had once risen from satellite four's jungles, only to

disappear quietly long before the first human explorer set foot on the tiny world.

Little was known of them save that they left a number of impressive monuments, and

that they were one of the many races which had aspired to the stars only to have their

desperate reach fall short.

Now all that remained were the mounds and foliage-clad clumps formed by

jungle-covered buildings. But thought they had sunk back into the dust, their

artifacts and their world continued to serve an important purpose.

Strange cries and barely perceptible moans sounded from every tree and copse;

hoots and growls and strange mutterings issued from creatures content to remain

concealed in the dense undergrowth. Whenever dawn broke over moon the fourth,

heralding one of its long days, an especially feral chorus of shrieks and weirdly

modulated screams would resound through the thick mist.

Even stranger sounds surged continually from one particular place. Here lay

the most impressive of those edifices, which a vanished race had raised toward the

heavens. It was a temple, a roughly pyramidal structure so colossal that it seemed

impossible it could have been built without the aid of modern gravitonic construction

techniques. Yet all evidence pointed only to simple machines, hand technology—

and, perhaps, devices alien and long lost.

While the science of this moon's inhabitants had led them to a dead end as far as

offworld travel was concerned, they had produced several discoveries which in certain

ways surpassed similar Imperial accomplishments—one of which involved a still

unexplained method of cutting and transporting gargantuan blocks of stone from the

crust of the moon.

From these monstrous blocks of solid rock, the massive temple had been

constructed. The jungle had scaled even its soaring crest, clothing it in rich green

and brown. Only near its base, in the temple front, did the jungle slide away

completely, to reveal a long, dark entrance cut by its builders and enlarged to suit the

needs of the structure's present occupants.

A tiny machine, its smooth metal sides and silvery hue incongruous amidst the

all-pervasive green, appeared in the forest. It hummed like a fat, swollen beetle as it

conveyed its cluster of passengers toward the open temple base. Crossing a

considerable clearing, it was soon swallowed up by the dark maw in the front of the

massive structure, leaving the jungle once more in the paws and claws of invisible

squallers and screechers.

The original builders would never have recognized the interior of their temple.

Seamed metal had replaced rock, and poured paneling did service for chamber

division in place of wood. Nor would they have been able to see the buried layers

excavated into the rock below, layers which contained hangar upon hanger linked by

powerful elevators.

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