arrow waist like
clasped hands, and her robe, stark white, bore an ugly embroidery across
the breasts, the flat sprawl of a conventionalized Toad God, Nebran. Her
features were delicate, chiseled, pale; a Dry-town face, all human, all
woman, but set in an alien and unearthly repose. The great eyes gleamed
red. They were fixed, almost unseeing, but the crimson lips were curved
with inhuman malice.

She stood motionless, looking at me as if wondering why I had not run
with the others. In half a second, the smile flickered off and was
replaced by a startled look of--recognition?

Whoever and whatever she was, she had saved me a mauling. I started to
phrase formal thanks, then broke off in astonishment. The cafe had
emptied and we were entirely alone. Even the _chaks_ had leaped through
an open window--I saw the whisk of a disappearing tail.

We stood frozen, looking at one another while the Toad God sprawled
across her breasts rose and fell for half a dozen breaths.

Then I took one step forward, and she took one step backward, at the
same instant. In one swift movement she was outside in the dark street.
It took me only an instant to get into the street after her, but as I
stepped across the door there was a little stirring in the air, like the
rising of heat waves across the salt flats at noon. Then the
street-shrine was empty, and nowhere was there any sign of the girl. She
had vanished. She simply was not there.

I gaped at the empty shrine. She had stepped inside and vanished, like a
wraith of smoke, like--

--Like the little toy-seller they had hunted out of the Kharsa.

There were eyes in the street again and, becoming aware of where I was,
I moved away. The shrines of Nebran are on every corner of Wolf, but
this is one instance when familiarity does not breed contempt. The
street was dark and seemed empty, but it was packed with all the little
noises of living. I was not unobserved. And meddling with a
street-shrine would be just as dangerous as the skeans of my three
loud-mouthed Dry-town roughnecks.

I turned and crossed the square for the last time, turning toward the
loom of the spaceship, filing the girl away as just another riddle of
Wolf I'd never solve.

How wrong I was!

CHAPTER THREE

From the spaceport gates, exchanging brief greetings with the guards, I
took a last look at the Kharsa. For a minute I toyed with the notion of
just disappearing down one of those streets. It's not hard