PART I

1 The Coming of the Ship A tendril of the strange fragrance spiralled up from the great stone block. Kenton felt it caress his face like a coaxing hand. He had been aware of that fragrance—an alien perfume, subtly troubling, evocative of fleeting unfamiliar images, of thought-wisps that were gone before the mind could grasp them—ever since he had unsheathed from its coverings the thing Forsyth, the old archæologist, had sent him from the sand shrouds of ages-dead Babylon. Once again his eye…