wn into the empty void. He crashed with ever-increasing momentum
toward the valley below. I screeched, flung myself down on the ground,
and shut my eyes.

"Often have I wondered which of my ill-considered, juvenile remarks it
was that caused this sudden resolution on his part to commit suicide.
Whichever it might be, since then I have made it a rigid law never to
speak for my own pleasure, but only to help others.

"I came eventually to the Marest. I threaded its mazes in terror for
four days. I was frightened of death, but still more terrified at the
possibility of losing my sacred attitude toward life. When I was nearly
through, and was beginning to congratulate myself, I stumbled across the
third extraordinary personage of my experience--the grim Muremaker. It
was under horrible circumstances. On an afternoon, cloudy and stormy, I
saw, suspended in the air without visible support, a living man. He was
hanging in an upright position in front of a cliff--a yawning gulf, a
thousand feet deep, lay beneath his feet. I climbed as near as I could,
and looked on. He saw me, and made a wry grimace, like one who wishes to
turn his humiliation into humour. The spectacle so astounded me that I
could not even grasp what had happened.

"'I am Muremaker,' he cried in a scraping voice which shocked my ears.
'All my life I have sorbed others--now I am sorbed. Nuclamp and I fell
out over a woman. Now Nuclamp holds me up like this. While the strength
of his will lasts I shall remain suspended; but when he gets tired--and
it can't be long now--I drop into those depths.'

"Had it been another man, I would have tried to save him, but this
ogre-like being was too well known to me as one who passed his whole
existence in tormenting, murdering, and absorbing others, for the sake
of his own delight. I hurried away, and did not pause again that day.

"In Poolingdred I met Joiwind. We walked and talked together for a
month, and by that time we found that we loved each other too well to
part."

Panawe stopped speaking.

"That is a fascinating story," remarked Maskull. "Now I begin to know my
way around better. But one thing puzzles me."

"What's that?"

"How it happens that men here are ignorant of tools and arts, and have
no civilisation, and yet contrive to be social in their habits and wise
in their thoughts."

"Do you imagine, then, that love and wisdom spring from tools? But I see
how it arises. In your world you have fewer sens