"We are not the first to walk here." Sssuri had given little attention
to what was stacked about him. Instead he bent over the disturbed dust
in one aisle. Dalgard noted as he went to join the merman that there
were gaps on those tables which ran the full length of the room, lines
left in the grimy deposit of years which told of things recently
moved. And then he saw what had interested Sssuri: tracks, some
resembling those which his own bare feet might leave, except that
there were only three toes!

"_They._"

Dalgard who had been a hunter and a tracker before he was an explorer
crouched for a clearer view. Yes, they were recent, yet not made today
or even yesterday; there was a thin film of dust resettled in each.

"Some days ago. They are not in the city now," the merman declared
with certainty. "But they will come again."

"How do you know that?"

Sssuri's hand swept about to include the wealth around them. "They
have taken some, perhaps to them the most needful. But they will not
be able to resist gathering the rest. Surely they will return, perhaps
not once but many times. Until--"

"Until they come to stay." Dalgard was grim as he completed that
sentence for the other.

"That is what they will work for. This land was once under their
mastery. This world was theirs before they threw it away warring among