as hatred, but certainly not
friendly.

She held out her hands and Shann saw now, lying on a slowly closing
palm, a disk such as the one Thorvald had shown him. The Terran had only
one moment of fear and then came blackness, more absolute than the dark
of any night he had ever known.

Light once more, green light with an odd shimmering quality to it. The
skull-lined walls were gone; there were no walls, no building held him.
Shann strode forward, and his boots sank in sand, that smooth, satin
sand which had ringed the island in the cavern. But he was certain he
was no longer on that island, even within that cavern, though far above
him there was still a dome of roof.

The source of the green shimmer lay to his left. Somehow he found
himself reluctant to turn and face it. That would commit him to action.
But Shann turned.

A veil, a veil of rippling green. Material? No, rather mist or light. A
veil depending from some source so far over his head that its origin was
hidden in the upper gloom, a veil which was a barrier he must cross.

With every nerve protesting, Shann walked forward, unable to keep back.
He flung up his arm to protect his face as he marched into that stuff.
It was warm, and the gas--if gas it was--left no slick of moisture on
his skin in spite of its foggy consistency. And it was no veil or
curtain, for although he was already well into the murk, he saw no end
to it. Blindly he trudged on, unable to sight anything but the rolling
billows of green, pausing now and again to go down on one knee and pat
the sand underfoot, reassured at the reality of that footing.

And when he met nothing menacing, Shann began to relax. His heart no
longer labored; he made no move to draw the stunner or knife. Where he
was and for what purpose, he had no idea. But there _was_ a purpose in
this and that the Warlockians were behind it, he did not doubt. The
"initiates' road," the leader had said, and the conviction was steady in
his mind that he faced some test of alien devising.

A cavern with a green veil--his memory awoke. Thorvald's dream! Shann
paused, trying to remember how the other had described this place. So he
was enacting Thorvald's dream! And could the Survey officer now be
caught in Shann's dream in turn, climbing up somewhere into the nose
slit of a skull-shaped mountain?

Green fog without end, and Shann lost in it. How long had he been here?
Shann tried to reckon time, the time since his coming into t