The scene in the scrying mirror was the most desolate and lifeless that Captain Phil Strong had ever seen.

Black lava flows twisted like nests of agonised serpents across the barren plains, the newer ones still smoking from dull red fissures in their surfaces. The range of volcanoes that had vomited them forth glowed like the entrances to Hell on the horizon, all of them smoking. One of them bearing the orange rivulets of a fresh eruption. The volcanic fire lit the undersurface of the dense clouds that blanketed the sky and provided the only illumination for this nightmarish landscape. And it wasn't just this particular spot, Strong knew. The whole planet was like this. Not only lifeless but incapable of sustaining even the hardiest forms of life if it were brought here. Every animal they'd put outside the ship in wire cages had died instantly in pitiful agony. The very air was poison.

"What a waste of a world," he muttered, unable to drag his eyes away from the desolate scene. "Why would the Gods go to the effort of creating a planet that cannot be lived on by their worshippers?"

"A common misconception," replied Father Blandor, the only other man currently on the bridge of the Jules Verne with him. "The Gods did not create the universe. They merely live in it, as we do. Some say that there is a Creator of All who brought all of existence into being, but I don't hold with that view as it leaves us with the question of who created the Creator. No, I believe that the universe is an accident. This planet is an accident. And as for whether we can live on it, there are currently two thousand humans on Kronos, an equally lifeless world, along with ten thousand moon trogs. Who knows what purpose the Gods may find for this apparently wasted world?"

Strong smiled. He enjoyed his conversations with the elderly cleric. He'd only known him for only a couple of months, since leaving Tharia, but he already liked and respected him more than some people he'd known all his life. He was a cleric of Caroli the Healer and had a reputation for wisdom that Strong was beginning to realise was no exaggeration. He dressed only in coarse brown robes, tied around his waist with a simple length of rope, and a pair of sandals on his knobbly feet. He was almost bald, with only a fringe of silver hair around the back of his head. The contrast with the smartly uniformed Beltharan Captain was striking, but in a way the cleric was also wearing a uniform. One that said as much about his loyalties and lifestyle as Strong's said about his.

"It's a world as large as Tharia," the cleric added, one hand fingering the silver Caroli flower hanging on a chain around his neck, the symbol of his faith. "We could spend the rest of our lives here and never be sure we've seen it all. Never rule out the possibility of some small valley filled with life and greenery. Or there might be underground caves, like the Tharian Underworld. We cannot disregard an entire world just because we don't like our first glimpse of it. We cannot know for sure that there isn't a thriving civilisation down there somewhere."

"We're not looking for a ragged tribe of survivors or a race of blind troglodytes," replied Strong, though. "We're looking for a race capable of building the Rossem Ship, or at least evidence that such a civilisation once existed. I've seen none so far and there are too many worlds and moons still to visit for us to linger here. As soon as Winterwell gives his report, we're moving on."

His thoughts went out to the man in charge of the surface expedition. Matthew Winterwell had proven himself a capable and resourceful soldier, the veteran of many a perilous mission in settings far more hazardous and intimidating than this. Even so, though, he was beginning to regret his decision to send him out in one of the scout ships. What could he possibly find that Strong couldn't see in the scrying mirror? Did bare rock look different to the unaided human eye? Sending them out had been an unwarranted risk, he now thought, but he'd been eager to see how the Dragonfly would fare in an otherworldly atmosphere.

Sereena was the first world they'd visited that had enough of an atmosphere to provide wind for a flying sailing ship. The atmosphere of Lamon had been too thin to be of any use, and the tiny, rocky worlds circling close to the yellow sun had had no atmospheres at all. Well, now they knew. The atmosphere of Sereena, twice as dense as the air of Tharia and bitterly cold, served perfectly well as a source of motive force, so long as the sails were kept half furled to spare the masts from suffering undue stress and, now that they knew that, it was time to retrieve his men.

He used a Coronet of Farspeaking to tell Winterwell to prepare to leave, then told the Orbmaster to take them down. He commanded the scrying mirror to show the planet as it would appear through a window and the tortured volcanic landscape vanished to be replaced by a far different sight.

The golden cloudtops formed a gentle arc across the lower part of the mirror, below the unblinking diamond pinpoints of the stars. The golden rings arched like a monochromatic rainbow, casting a narrow shadow on the planet below, and one of the newly discovered moonlets was visible up in the corner. A tiny potato shape that tumbled end over end like a thrown pebble.

"How can it be so beautiful from up here, when it's so ugly down on the surface?" he wondered aloud.

"It is like many men in that respect," observed the cleric. "And yet other men are ugly on the surface and beautiful underneath. We may come upon worlds that are like that. The Gods are warning us not to judge by appearances."

Strong nodded, only half hearing. Sereena was named after the beautiful daughter of an old Garonian King. Beautiful on the surface but scheming and wicked on the inside, using an extensive spy network to gather material with which to blackmail her victims. Only a coincidence, or had the old Garonians known something about the next planet out from the yellow sun? He smiled. No doubt, when word got back to Tharia, there would be half a dozen 'sages' producing 'proof' that the ancient Garonians, the earliest known human civilisation, had attained levels of magic far surpassing anything known today. Every generation threw up a fresh crop of such crackpots, and their so called proofs always turned out to be nothing more than some decrepit piece of costume jewellery containing a magical charge so feeble that there was no way of knowing what it had once done.

When he'd first heard of the Rossem Ship, his first instinct had been to dismiss it as more of the same. Oh no! Another lost civilisation! It had taken some convincing before he finally accepted that this was different, that the Rossem civilisation did, or at least had, actually existed, and that it was far superior to any Tharian civilisation that had ever existed. Superior even to the Agglemonians! That was a truly frightening thought, and that was when he'd applied to become Captain of the Ship of Space.

The image of the planet in the mirror grew larger as the Jules Verne lost height, and a couple of minutes later visibility dropped sharply as they entered the upper cloud deck. The stars were blotted out by wisps of orange haze which darkened as they dropped through it, and the orbmaster slowed their descent while the Captain used a Helm of Farsensing to check for mountain peaks and storm fronts. For several minutes the mirror was dark, the dense clouds blocking all light, but then visibility was momentarily restored as they dropped through a layer of clear air and Father Blandor gasped in appreciation of the scene briefly revealed.

They were in a narrow space between two roiling cloud decks. The upper deck was dimly lit by the few rays of sunlight that managed to filter through from above, while the lower was lit intermittently by violent lightning discharges. In the far distance, almost hidden by the planet's curvature, a thermal updraft, probably caused by a volcano, lifted a tall pillar of cloud up to the upper deck, so that it looked like a pillar holding up the sky, and it was so brilliantly lit by some chemical phosphorescence that it lit up the whole area for miles around.

Strong felt a thrill of fear at the awesome beauty of the scene, unseen by living eyes since the dawn of time. What other marvels were waiting to be discovered out there? Wonders and mysteries that only the Gods Themselves could comprehend? And he would be one of the first people to see them. He felt humbled and awed by the privilege he'd been given, and he prayed to Samnos that he would prove worthy of it.

The scene vanished as the ship dropped into the lower cloud deck, and there was nothing more to be seen until they emerged into the layer of clear air directly above the planet's surface. No sunlight at all penetrated this far. It would have been perfectly black if not for the light shed by the erupting volcano. That was the reason they'd chosen this spot for the scout ship to explore, although Strong had searched far and wide using the scrying mirror, looking for something more promising for life. The ship shuddered as it was caught by gusts of turbulence, and the Orbmaster held them several hundred feet above the ground. High enough to be in no danger of accidentally hitting anything.

"Open the hanger door," ordered Strong. "Inform me the moment they're aboard."

His words were carried to the hanger deck by a Farspeaking spell, and the acknowledgement of the two men on duty there was carried back to him by the same means. Strong imagined them unlocking the clamps holding the door firmly shut, then opening it by turning a large crank handle in the wall. A recently installed magical barrier prevented the air in the hanger deck from mingling with Sereena's poisonous atmosphere, allowing them to stand on the very edge of the deck and look down at the dimly fire-lit landscape of the dead world.

Strong imagined them gasping in wonder at the barren emptiness, the complete absence of life and movement. No man could remain unmoved by it, he knew. A vision so similar to the classical vision of hell that they could almost hear the tortured wailing of damned souls. Almost see the monstrous bat winged shapes of demons capering from rock to rock. "I'll be glad to get out of here," one of them was saying, his voice carried up to Strong by the still active Farspeaking spell. "This place gives me the creeps."