e faded now almost to nothing, to what you call cosmic rays.
And these are too weak to maintain my life. No, I must die. And then
my poor robot will be alone." I sensed elfin amusement in that last
thought. "It seems absurd to you that I should think affectionately of
a machine. But in our world there is a rapport--a mental
symbiosis--between robot and living beings."

There was a silence. After a while I said, "I'd better get out of
here. Get help--to end the menace of the other...." What sort of help
I did not know. Was the Other vulnerable?

Lhar caught my thought. "In its own shape it is vulnerable, but what
that shape is I do not know. As for your escaping from this
valley--you cannot. The fog will bring you back."

"I've got my compass." I glanced at it, saw that the needle was
spinning at random.

Lhar said: "The Other has many powers. Whenever you go into the fog,
you will always return here."

"How do you know all this?" I asked.

"My robot tells me. A machine can reason logically, better than a
colloid brain."

I closed my eyes, trying to think. Surely it should not be difficult
for me to retrace my steps, to find a path out of this valley. Yet I
hesitated, feeling a strange impotence.

"Can't your robot guide me?" I persisted.

"He will not leave my side. Perhaps--" Lhar turned to the sphere, and
the cilia fluttered excitedly. "No," she said, turning back to me.
"Built into his mind is one rule--never to leave me. He cannot disobey
that."

* * * * *

I couldn't ask Lhar to go with me. Somehow I sensed that the frigid
cold of the surrounding mountains would destroy her swiftly. I said,
"It must be possible for me to get out of here. I'm going to try,
anyway."

"I will be waiting," she said, and did not move as I slipped out
between two trunks of the banyan-like tree.

It was daylight and the silvery grayness overhead was palely luminous.
I headed for the nearest rampart of fog.

Lhar was right. Each time I went into that cloudy fog barrier I was
blinded. I crept forward step by step, glancing behind me at my
footprints in the snow, trying to keep in a straight line. And
presently I would find myself back in the valley....

I must have tried a dozen times before giving up. There were no
landmarks in that all-concealing grayness, and only by sheerest chance
would anyone blunder into this valley--unless hypnotically summoned,
like the Indio girls.

I realized