When Earth's Fourth Expedition touches down on the rust-red sands of Mars, the crew expects danger, struggle, the unknown. Instead they find silence. Empty cities of dream-spun stone. Canals running with wine-dark water. A vanished civilization more graceful than anything Earth has ever built — and not a single Martian left to greet them. As the men celebrate, drink themselves stupid, and prepare to claim the dead world for the taking, archaeologist Jeff Spender wanders the ruins alone, and something inside him changes. Something ancient. Something terrible. Something that may force every man on the expedition to choose between the future of mankind and the memory of a race that died too beautifully to be desecrated. From the pen of Ray Bradbury — a haunted, lyrical descent into the soul of the Red Planet.