I ran up the slope--Drake already well in advance. I
paused at the base of the triangles where, were this thing
indeed a footprint, the spreading claws sprang from the
flat of it.

The track was fresh. At its upper edges were clipped
bushes and split trees, the white wood of the latter showing
where they had been sliced as though by the stroke of a
scimitar.

I stepped out upon the mark. It was as level as though
planed; bent down and stared in utter disbelief of what
my own eyes beheld. For stone and earth had been
crushed, compressed, into a smooth, microscopically
grained, adamantine complex, and in this matrix poppies
still bearing traces of their coloring were imbedded like
fossils. A cyclone can and does grip straws and thrust
them unbroken through an inch board--but what force
was there which could take the delicate petals of a flower
and set them like inlay within the surface of a stone?

Into my mind came recollection of the wailings, the
crashings in the night, of the weird glow that had flashed
about us when the mist arose to hide the chained aurora.

"It was what we heard," I said. "The sounds--it was
then that this was made."

"The foot of Shin-je!" Chiu-Ming's voice was tremulous.