### 43

The Giak snatches the coins from your hand and grunts his approval. ‘Dez ar ok!’ he says, and leads the way. (Delete from your Action Chart half of the Kika you possess.)

You follow him through a maze of garbage-choked streets, past rusting tenements and squalid huts, to an iron tower at the heart of the city. Unlike all else, this tower appears to have been unaffected by the corrosive atmosphere: its surface is dull yet free from decay. The Giak speaks with another who guards its open entrance and immediately he stands aside, allowing you to enter the tower’s gloomy ground floor.

Turn to 346.