iding from, what we were waiting
for, was going to take my chances with the dangers in that place they
had built and from which they now hid. I had pressed Nokomee for
explanations and promises of future participation in their life and
activities, and I had been refused for the last time! Like a runaway, I
slid down the steep cliff face, putting as much space between the Zervs
and myself as rapidly as I could.

The night was dark as pitch. I had left Nokomee asleep in her chamber. I
had avoided Holaf, who still kept a kind of amused watch over my
activities, and I was free. Free to explore that weird city of plodding
lives, of strange unexplained sounds, of ominously hidden activity!

Scrambling, sliding, worrying in the dimness, I finally reached the less
precipitous slopes of the base of the cliff. As I stopped to get a
bearing on the direction of the city, above me came a slithering, a soft
feminine exclamation, and down upon me came a perfumed weight, knocking
me sprawling in the grass.

My eyes quickly adjusted, I crawled to the dim shape struggling to her
feet. Her face was not Nokomee's, as I had at first thought. Those
enormous shadowed eyes, that thin lovely nose, the flower-fragile lips,
the mysterious allure--were the woman whom Nokomee had described as a
"Zoorph" and whom she had both feared and despised. I spoke sharply in
the tongue of the Zervs. I had learned enough under Nokomee's tutelage
to carry on a conversation.

"Why do you follow me, Zoorph?"

"Because I am weary of being cooped up with those who do not trust me,
just as you. I want to find a new, exciting thing; just as do you. Even
if it is death or worse, I want it. I am alive, as are you."

I put down the dislike and distrust the girl Nokomee had aroused in me
against her. Perhaps she _had_ been merely jealous of her.

"Don't you _know_ what could happen in the city?" To me it was curious
that she should want to go where the others feared to go.

"I know no better than you what awaits there, and I do not believe what
they have told me of the Schrees. They are not wholly human, but neither
are they evil wholly, as the Zervs suppose."

"Why do the Zervs wait, instead of trying to do something for
themselves? They speak of the threat of these raiders, yet they do not
try to help me bring others of my people here to stop the threat they
speak of so fearfully. I do not understand."

"The old ruler thinks the ships will come and drive the