t walk through it to
alter the pattern, even to save a life."

Shann grinned crookedly, without humor. "It seems that I'm elected," he
said as much to himself as to Thorvald. "But what do I do with this
other dreamer?"

"What your pattern moves you to do. Save that you do not slay him----"

"Throg!" Thorvald started forward. "You can't just walk in on a Throg
barehanded and be bound by orders such as that!"

The Wyvern must have caught the sense of that vocal protest, for her
communication touched them both. "We cannot deal with that one as his
mind is closed to us. Yet he is an elder among his kind and his people
have been searching land and sea for him since his air rider broke upon
the rocks and he entered into hiding over there. Make your peace with
him if you can, and also take him hence, for his dreams are not ours,
and he brings confusion to the Reachers when they retire to run the
Trails of Seeking."

"Must be an important Throg," Shann deduced. "They could have an officer
of the beetle-heads under wraps over there. Could we use him to bargain
with the rest?"

Thorvald's frown did not lighten. "We've never been able to establish
any form of contact in the past, though our best qualified minds,
reinforced by training, have tried...."

Shann did not take fire at that rather delicate estimate of his own lack
of preparation for the carrying out of diplomatic negotiations with the
enemy; he knew it was true. But there was one thing he could try--if the
Wyverns permitted.

"Will you give a disk of power to this star man?" He pointed to
Thorvald. "For he is my Elder One and a Reacher for Knowledge. With such
a focus his dream could march with mine when I go to the Throg, and
perhaps that can aid in my doing what I could not accomplish alone. For
that is the secret of _my_ people, Elder One. We link our powers
together to make a shield against our enemies, a common tool for the
work we must do."

"And so it is with us also, star voyager. We are not so unlike as the
foolish might think. We learned much of you while you both wandered in
the Place of False Dreams. But our power disks are our own and can not
be given to a stranger while their owners live. However...." She turned
again with an abruptness foreign to the usual Wyvern manner and faced
the older Terran.

The officer might have been obeying an unvoiced order as he put out his
hands and laid them palm to palm on those she held up to him, bending
his