oss
shut his eyes, parts of those designs were still visible against his
eyelids.

"We don't know how." He made a last feeble protest on the side of
prudence. "We couldn't move as you did."

"Apart, no--together, yes."

The silvery figures were once more swaying, the mist which was their
hair flowing about them. Karara's hands went out, and the slender
fingers of one of the Foanna lifted, closed about firm, brown Terran
flesh. Ashe was doing the same!

Ross thought he cried out, but he could not be sure, as he watched
Karara's head begin to sway in concert with her Foanna partner, her
black hair springing out from her shoulders to rival the rippling
strands of the alien's. Ashe was consciously matching steps with the
companion who also drew him along a flowing line of fire.

In this last instant Ross realized the time for retreat was past--there
was no place left to go. His hands went out, though he had to force that
invitation because in him there was a shrinking horror of this
surrender. But he could not let the others go without him.

The Foanna's touch was cool, and yet it seemed that flesh met his flesh,
fingers as normal as his met fingers in that grasp. And when that hold
was complete he gave a small gasp. For his horror was wiped away; he
knew in its place a burst of energy which could be disciplined to use as
a weapon or a tool in concentrated and complicated action. His feet so
... and then so.... Did those directions flow without words from the
Foanna's fingers to his and then along his nerves to his brain? He only
knew which was the proper next step, and the next, and the next, as they
wove their way along the pattern lines, with their going adding a
necessary thread to a design.

Forward four steps, backward one--in and out. Did Ross actually hear
that sweet thrumming, akin to the lilting speech of the Foanna, or was
it a throbbing in his blood? In and out.... What had become of the
others he did not know; he was aware only of his own path, of the hand
in his, of the silvery shape at his side to whom he was now tied as if
one of the Rover capture nets enclosed them both.

The fiery lines under his feet were smoking, tendrils rising and
twisting as the hair of the Foanna rippled and twisted. And the smoke
clung, wreathed his body. They moved in a cocoon of smoke, thicker and
thicker, until Ross could not even see the Foanna who accompanied him,
was only assured of her presence by the hand which gra