ribs, seeking any broken bones. Taggi growled a warning
once when that examination brought pain in its wake, but Shann could
detect no real damage. As might a cat, the wolverine must have met the
shock of that whip-tail stroke relaxed enough to escape serious injury.
Taggi had been knocked out, but now he was able to navigate again. He
pulled free from Shann's grip, lumbering across the sand to the kill.

Someone else was crossing that strip of beach. Passing the Wyvern as if
he did not see them, Thorvald came directly to Shann. A few seconds
later he had the torn arm stretched across his own bent knee, examining
the still bleeding hurt.

"That's a nasty one," he commented.

Shann heard the words and they made sense, but the instability of his
surroundings was increasing, while Thorvald's handling sent sharp stabs
of pain up his arm and somehow into his head, where they ended in red
bursts to cloud his sight.

Out of the reddish mist which had fogged most of the landscape there
emerged a single object, a round white disk. And in Shann's clouded mind
a well-rooted apprehension stirred. He struck out with his one hand, and
through luck connected. The disk flew out of sight. His vision cleared
enough so he could sight the Wyvern who had been leaning over Thorvald's
shoulder centering her weird weapon on him. Making a great effort, Shann
got out the words, words which he also shaped in his mind as he said
them aloud: "You're not taking me over--again!"

There was no emotion to be read on that jewel-banded face or in her
unblinking eyes. He caught at Thorvald, determined to get across his
warning.

"Don't let them use those disks on us!"

"I'll do my best."

Only the haze had taken Thorvald again. Did one of the Wyverns have a
disk focused on them? Were they being pulled into one of those blank
periods, to awaken as prisoners once more--say, in the cavern of the
veil? The Terran fought with every ounce of will power to escape
unconsciousness, but he failed.

This time he did not awaken half-drowning in an underground stream or
facing a green mist. And there was an ache in his arm which was somehow
reassuring with the very insistence of pain. Before opening his eyes,
his fingers crossed the smooth slick of a bandage there, went on to
investigate by touch a sleep mat such as he had found in the cavern
structure. Was he back in that web of rooms and corridors?

Shann delayed opening his eyes until a kind of shame d