What could have happened?
He looked to the left and again was shocked—the white tower still stood! The barracks around it lay in disarray instead, with walls torn open and roofs fallen in. Debris from the destruction in the crater spread all the way up the slopes, apparently the cause for the barracks’ collapse. But the light-tower stood flawless and bright, exactly as he had seen it the first time he came.
Then he reasoned—if the Blight created the towers in the first place, the mist might have moved uphill after the hox-car destroyed it and then restored it to what it had been. And though he recalled now that he hadn’t seen the wreckage of the hox-car as he came up the slope, the Alcherans logically would have cleared it away. Both conclusions seemed plausible.
Down in the crater he s
