d you that there actually was a Place
of the Dead?"

"For the spirits of the departed?" Ylia asked in a very small voice.

"No. Man can't presume to know about that. It's in the realm of the
gods. I mean a place which somehow borders on Tarth and yet ... yet is
beyond the stars. A place which, when wayfarers returned from it
miraculously long and long ago, gave rise to the legends."

"Borders on Tarth ... yet beyond the stars? How can this be?"

"Portox found it and explained it with his science," Bram Forest
insisted. "Earth and Tarth, twin worlds, yet so different, forever
unseen one by the other, on opposite sides of the sun. They're unique in
the solar system, Ylia. Portox thought--if the memory he planted in my
mind is correct--that they're unique in the entire universe. Somehow, a
million million years ago, a world split, becoming two worlds. But
ordinary space ... I don't know, the memory is confused ... could not
hold them. There is a warp of space, a place where space bends. Learn to
master the warp and you go instantly from Tarth to Earth, or back again.
That was the way Portox brought me, as an infant, to Earth." He held
aloft his arm, showing her the steel-silver disc. "With this I can
travel back and forth at will. Without it, either Earth or Tarth would
be my prison...." His voice trailed off.

Then he blurted: "'A prison without bars!'"

"What...."

"The prophetic poem. Part of the poem. Anyway, Ylia, Earth and Tarth
exist at either end of this space warp, connected thus through normal
space where there should be no connection. And someplace along the
warp--where ordinary space-time distances don't matter...."

"I'm sorry, Bram Forest. I don't understand you."

* * * * *

"I'm not sure I understand myself. Tarth is a primitive world. It is
beyond our science. It is even beyond the science of Earth, I believe,
and Earth is a millennium ahead of Tarth in its development. But
Portox knew. Anyhow, someplace along the warp--in ordinary distances
along the space-time continuum perhaps a billion light years distant
from either Earth or Tarth, is a third world. On the warp it is very
close. The River of Ice leads to it. We call it the Place of the
Dead."

"But the Golden Ape--?"

"--inhabits the so-called Place of the Dead. Their world was dying,
but Portox saved them. I think ... the science is beyond me ... the
entropy of their galaxy was running down ... their worl