ed was strong, a mighty weight poised aloft to strike them down.

"Come down, awake, stir...." Karara's pleading sank again to a whisper,
her voice sounded hoarse as if her mouth were dry, her words formed by a
shrunken tongue, issued from a parched throat.

Light spreading in channels along the floor, making a fiery
pattern--patterns within patterns, intricate designs within designs.
Ross jerked his eyes away from those patterns. To study them was danger,
he knew without being warned. Karara's nails bit into his flesh and he
welcomed that pain; it kept him alert, conscious of what was Ross
Murdock, holding him safely apart from something greater than he, but
entirely alien.

The designs and patterns were lines on a pavement. And now the three
Foanna, swaying as if yielding to unseen winds, began to follow those
patterns with small dancing steps. But the Terrans remained where they
were, holding to one another for the sustaining strength their contact
offered.

Back, forth, the Foanna danced--and once more their cloaks vanished or
were discarded, so their silver-bright figures advanced, retreated,
weaving a way from one arabesque to another. First about the outer rim
and then in, by spirals and circles. No light except the crimson glowing
rivulets on the floor, the silver bodies of the Foanna moving back and
forth, in and out.

Then, suddenly, the three dancers halted, huddled together in an open
space between the designs. And Ross was startled by the impression of
confusion, doubt, almost despair wafted from them to the Terrans. Back
across the patterned floor they came, their hands clasped even as the
Terrans stood together, and now they fronted the three out of time.

"Too few ... we are too few...." she who was the mid one of the trio
said. "We can not open the Great Door."

"How many do you need?" Karara's voice was no longer parched,
frightened. She might have traveled through fear to a new serenity.

Why did he think that, Ross wondered fleetingly. Was it because he, too,
had had the same release?

The Polynesian girl loosed her grip on her companions' hands, taking a
step closer to the Foanna.

"Three can be four--"

"Or five." Ashe moved up beside her. "If we suit your purpose."

Was Gordon Ashe crazy? Or had he fallen victim to whatever filled this
place? Yet it was Ashe's voice, sane, serene, as Ross had always heard
it. The younger Agent wet his lips; it was his turn to have a dry mouth.
This