ock you
have had. I cannot ask you--"

I said, "How much blood do you need?"

At her answer, I said, "All right. You saved my life; I must do the
same for you. I can spare that much blood easily. Go ahead."

She bowed toward me, a fluttering white flame in the dimness of the
tree-room. A tendril flicked out from among her petals, wrapped itself
about my arm. It felt cool, gentle as a woman's hand. I felt no pain.

"You must rest now," Lhar said. "I will go away but I shall not be
long."

The robot clicked and chattered, shifting on its tentacle legs. I
watched it, saying, "Lhar, this can't be true. Why am I--believing
impossible things?"

"I have given you peace," she told me. "Your mind was dangerously
close to madness. I have drugged you a little, physically; so your
emotions will not be strong for a while. It was necessary to save your
sanity."

It was true that my mind felt--was drugged the word? My thoughts were
clear enough, but I felt as if I were submerged in transparent but
dark water. There was an odd sense of existing in a dream. I
remembered Swinburne's lines:

_Here, where the world is quiet,
Here, where all trouble seems
Dead winds' and spent waves' riot
In doubtful dreams of dreams...._

"What is this place?" I asked.

Lhar bent toward me. "I do not know if I can explain. It is not quite
clear to me. The robot knows. He is a reasoning machine. Wait...."
She turned to the sphere. Its cilia fluttered in quick, complicated
signals.

Lhar turned back to me. "Do you know much of the nature of Time? That
it is curved, moves in a spiral...."

She went on to explain, but much of her explanation I did not
understand. Yet I gathered enough to realize that this valley was not
of Earth. Or, rather, it was not of the earth I knew.

"You have geological disturbances, I know. The strata are tumbled
about, mixed one with another--"

I remembered what Fra Rafael had said about an earthquake, three
months before. Lhar nodded toward me.

"But this was a time-slip. The space-time continuum is also subject to
great strains and stresses. It buckled, and strata--Time-sectors--were
thrust up to mingle with others. This valley belongs to another age,
as do I and the machine, and also--the Other."

She told me what had happened.... There had been no warning. One
moment she had been in her own World, her own Time. The next, she was
here, with her robot. And with the Other....

"I do