chunk: Raf and three other men ride the RS 10's flitter south over an abandoned landscape and arrive at a ruined city. Near the center of the city they meet the remnant of a devastated population. The aliens are preparing a final expedition to a faraway city to retrieve knowledge that may help them regain their civilization and the captain of the Terrans accepts their invitation to join it. The expedition takes the aliens, in their globe-ship, and the Terrans, in their flitter, to an abandoned city, where the aliens loot a storehouse.