e still safe, Xav?"

"Safe," the mechanical answered tersely. "The natives, too, so far."

"No thanks to _him_," Gibson said. "If you hadn't canceled the blastoff
order he fed into the autopilot...." But after a moment of ragged
silence: "No, that's hardly fair. Those damned moths beat down Lee's
resistance in the few minutes it took us to reach the ship, and nearly
got me as well. Arthur was exposed to their influence from the moment
they started coming out."

Stryker's voice cut in, sounding more shaken than Gibson's. "Stand fast
down there. I'm setting off the first flare now."

* * * * *

A silent explosion of light, searing and unendurable, blasted the night.
Farrell cried out and shielded his eyes with his hands, his ecstasy of
anticipation draining out of him like heady wine from a broken urn. Full
memory returned numbingly.

When he opened his eyes again, the Falakian girl had run away. Under the
merciless glare of light, the valley was as he had first seen it--a
nauseous charnel place of bogs and brambles and mudflats littered with
yellowed bones.

In the near distance, a haggard mob of natives cowered like gaping,
witless caricatures of humanity, faces turned from the descending blaze
of the parachute flare. There was no more music or laughter. The great
moths fluttered in silent frenzy, stunned by the flood of light.

"_So that's it_," Farrell thought dully. "_They come out with the winter
darkness to breed and lay their eggs, and they hold over men the same
sort of compulsion that Terran wasps hold over their host tarantulas.
But they're nocturnal. They lose their control in the light._"

Incredulously, he recalled the expectant euphoria that had blinded him,
and he wondered sickly: "_Is that what the spider feels while it watches
its grave being dug?_"

A second flare bloomed far up in the fog, outlining the criss-cross
network of bridging in stark, alien clarity. A smooth minnow-shape
dipped past and below it, weaving skilfully through the maze. The
mechanical's voice box spoke again.

"Give us a guide beam, Xav. We're bringing the _Marco_ down."

The ship settled a dozen yards away, its port open. Farrell, with Xavier
at his heels, went inside hastily, not looking back.

Gibson crouched motionless over his control panel, too intent on his
readings to look up. Beside him, Stryker said urgently: "Hang on. We've
got to get up and set another flare, quickly."

T