he appealed for reassurance. And then was aware
that there was no familiar motor hum, none of that pressure of rushing
air to which he had been so long accustomed that he missed it only
now.

"You are safe--" Again that would-be comfort. But Raf tried to move
his arms, twist his body, be sure that he rested in the flitter. Then
another thought, only vaguely alarming at first, but which grew
swiftly to panic proportions--He was in the alien globe--He was a
prisoner!

"You are safe!" the words beat in his mind.

"But where--where?" he felt as if he were screaming that at the full
power of his lungs. He must get out of this dark envelope, be free.
Free! Free Men--He was Raf Kurbi of the Federation of Free Men, member
of the crew of the Spacer _RS 10_. But there had been something else
about free men--

Painfully he pulled fragments of pictures out of the past, assembled a
jigsaw of wild action. And all of it ended in a blinding flash,
blinding!

Raf cowered mentally if not physically, as his mind seized upon that
last word. The blinding flash, then this depth of darkness. Had he
been--?

"You are safe."

Maybe he was safe, he thought, with an anger born of honest fear, but
was he--blind? And where was he? What had happened to him since that
moment when the blast bomb had exploded?

"I am blind," he spat out, wanting to be told that his fears were only
fears and not the truth.

"Your eyes are covered," the answer came quickly enough, and for a
short space he was comforted until he realized that the reply was not
a flat denial of his statement.

"Soriki?" he tried again. "Captain? Lablet?"

"Your companions"--there was a moment of hesitation, and then came
what he was sure was the truth--"have escaped. Their ship took to the
air when the Center was invaded."

So, he wasn't on the flitter. That was Raf's first reaction. Then, he
must still be with the mermen, with the young stranger who claimed to
be one of a lost Terran colony. But they couldn't leave him behind!
Raf struggled against the power which held him motionless.

"Be quiet!" That was not soothing; it had the snap of a command, so
sharp and with such authority in it that he obeyed. "You have been
hurt; the gel must do its work. Sleep now. It is good to sleep--"

Dalgard walked by the hammock, using all the quieting power he
possessed to ease the stranger, who now bore little resemblance to the
lithe, swiftly moving, other-worldly figure of the da