ibson had his
complicated galactic charts and his interminable chess bouts with
Xavier....

Farrell gave it up and limped outside, to stand scowling unhappily at
the dreary expanse of swampland. Far down under the reasoning levels of
his consciousness a primal uneasiness nagged at him, whispering in
wordless warning that there was more to his mounting restlessness than
simple impatience. Something inside him was changing, burgeoning in
strange and disturbing growth.

A pale suggestion of movement, wavering and uncertain in the eddying
fog, caught his eye. A moment of puzzled watching told him that it was
the bedraggled young woman they had seen earlier by the lake, and that
she was approaching the ship timorously and under cover.

"But why?" he wondered aloud, recalling her bovine lack of curiosity.
"What the devil can she want here?"

A shadow fell across the valley. Farrell, startled, looked up sharply to
see the last of the Falakian sun's magenta glare vanishing below the
crater's southern rim. A dusky forerunner of darkness settled like a
tangible cloud, softening the drab outlines of bramble thickets and
slime pools. The change that followed was not seen but felt, a swelling
rush of glad arousal like the joy of a child opening its eyes from
sleep.

To Farrell, the valley seemed to stir, waking in sympathy to his own
restlessness and banishing his unease.

* * * * *

The girl ran to him through the dusk on quick, light feet, timidity
forgotten, and he saw with a pleasant shock of astonishment that she was
no longer the filthy creature he had first seen by the lakeside. She was
pretty and nubile, eyes and soft mouth smiling together in a childlike
eagerness that made her at once infinitely desirable and untouchably
innocent.

"Who are you?" he asked shakily.

[Illustration]

Her hesitant voice was music, rousing in Farrell a warm and expectant
euphoria that glowed like old wine in his veins.

"Koaele," she said. "Look--"

Behind her, the valley lay wrapped like a minor paradise in soft pearly
mists and luminous shadows, murmurous with the far sound of running
water and the faint chiming of voices that drifted up from the little
blue lake to whisper back in cadenced echo from the fairy maze of
bridging overhead. Over it all, like a deep, sustained cello note, rose
the muted humming of great flame-winged moths dipping and swaying over
bright tropical flowers.

"_Moths?_