ing, with a generous supply of full-bodied
Arrillian wine to wash it down. Fresh clothes were brought to him daily,
the loose-flowing, highly ornamented robe of the Arrillian noble.
Tyndall knew he was no ordinary prisoner, and somehow, this fact made
him doubly uneasy.

And then, tonight, the ship had blasted off without him. Tyndall could
easily reconstruct what had happened when his crewmates had inquired
about him, at the palace and in town. "Tyn-Dall?" Then, a sorrowful
expression, a shrugging of the shoulders, a pointing toward the
death-infested jungle, and a mournful shaking of the head, sign language
which in any tongue meant, "Tyn-Dall wanders too far from your ship. He
becomes lost. Alas, he does not know our jungle and its perils." Those
who spoke a little English would make some expression of sympathy.

Maybe the crew was a little suspicious, maybe they thought there was
something fishy about the thing, and then they thought of the unhappy
results of what was commonly referred to as an "interplanetary
incident." Ever since the people of the second planet of Alpha Centauri,
in the early days of extraterrestrial exploration, had massacred an
entire expedition because the captain had mortally insulted a tribal
leader by refusing a sacred fruit, such incidents had been avoided at
all costs.

And so, they dared not offend the Arrillians by questioning the veracity
of their statements. And the jungle was deadly, so they looked a little
longer, and asked a few more questions. After a little while, the
scientists had completed their work and were anxious to get home, and
so, the ship blasted off, without him.

All this had passed kaleidoscopically in Tyndall's mind as he lay on the
couch in his luxurious prison, too numb to weep or even curse. His
reverie was broken by the clicking of the lock and he raised up to see
the door opening. An Arrillian servant stood there, his silver hair done
up in the complicated style which denoted male house servants. He was
unarmed. The houseman smiled, roared in imitation of a rocket, made a
swooping gesture with one hand to indicate the departing ship, then
pointed at Tyndall and at the open door. The servant bowed and departed,
leaving the door slightly ajar. Now that the ship was gone, he was free
to leave his room.

Tyndall stepped cautiously out of the room and found himself in a long
hall, with many doors opening from it on either side, much like a hotel
corridor. One