d that the man in the supply room had said he was waiting
for an auto-pickup; he was on his way back to Earth. Mryna had taken his
ship instead of her own. In panic she tried to open the door again, but
she found no way to do it. Machinery beneath her feet began to hum. She
felt a slight lurch as the pickup left the hub of the Guardian Wheel.

It swung in a wide arc. Through the viewplate she saw the enormous Wheel
growing small behind her, silhouetted against the mist of Rythar.
Suddenly the wheel glowed red with a soundless explosion. Its flaming
fragments died in the void.

Mryna dropped weakly on the lounge. Nausea spun through her mind. The
man had said they would destroy themselves. Because Mryna had come
aboard? But why were they afraid of her? What possible harm could she do
them? Mryna had left Rythar to discover the truth, and the truth was
insanity. Was truth always like this--a bitter disillusionment, an empty
horror?

She had something else to say to the people of Rythar now: not that the
gods were men, but that men were mad. Believe in the taboos; send up the
sacrificial ores. It was a small price to pay to keep that madness away
from Rythar.

And Mryna knew she could not go back. With the Wheel gone, she could
never return to Rythar; the auto-pickup was carrying her inexorably
toward Earth. The scream of the machinery slowly turned shrill,
hammering against her eardrums. The stars visible in the viewplate
blurred and winked out. Mryna felt a twist of vertigo as the shuttle
shifted from conventional speed into a time warp. And then the sound
was gone. The ship was floating in an impenetrable blackness.

Mryna had no idea how much time passed subjectively. When she became
hungry, she took food from the cabinet. She slept when she was tired. To
pass the time, she turned the reading films through the projector.

Most of the film stored in the shuttle covered material Mryna already
knew. The Earthmen, clearly, had not denied any information to Rythar.
Only one thing had been restricted--astronomy. And that would have made
no difference, if Mryna had not found the text in the ruins of the Old
Village. The people on Rythar never saw the stars; they had no way of
knowing--or caring--what lay above the rain mist.

Mryna was more interested in the history of Earth, which she had never
known before. She studied the pictures of the great industrial centers
and the crowded countryside. She was awed by the mobs