precious time

Even stranger sounds surged continually from one particular place. Here laythe most impressive of those edifices, which a vanished race had raised toward theheavens. It was a temple, a roughly pyramidal structure so colossal that it seemedimpossible it could have been built without the aid of modern gravitonic constructiontechniques. 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 asoffworld travel was concerned, they had produced several discoveries which in certainways surpassed similar Imperial accomplishments—one of which involved a stillunexplained method of cutting and transporting gargantuan blocks of stone from thecrust of the moon. From these monstrous blocks of solid rock, the massive temple had beenconstructed. The jungle had scaled even its soaring crest, clothing it in rich greenand brown. Only near its base, in the temple front, did the jungle slide awaycompletely, to reveal a long, dark entrance cut by its builders and enlarged to suit theneeds of the structure's present occupants. A tiny machine, its smooth metal sides and silvery hue incongruous amidst theall-pervasive green, appeared in the forest. It hummed like a fat, swollen beetle as itconveyed its cluster of passengers toward the open temple base. Crossing aconsiderable clearing, it was soon swallowed up by the dark maw in the front of themassive structure, leaving the jungle once more in the paws and claws of invisiblesquallers 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 chamberdivision in place of wood. Nor would they have been able to see the buried layersexcavated into the rock below, layers which contained hangar upon hanger linked bypowerful elevators.