kind.

He was a magnificent creature, this Tiedor, tall and straight in his
muscular leanness and with wide-set gray eyes in the face of a Greek
god. Olive-skinned like the messenger, he was, and with the high
forehead of an intellectual. He swept the assemblage with a haughty
gaze when he faced the Zara.

* * * * *

"Tiedor," she snarled, "it has come to my ears that a Rulan lad carried
a message to one of my guests from Earth. What means this?"

"I know nothing about it, Your Majesty." Tiedor gazed into the wicked
eyes, unafraid.

"You lie! There is some treasonable scheme in which you had hoped to
enlist their help. You will tell me the entire story, here before the
council."

"There is nothing to tell."

"You will confess or I shall destroy every Rulan in the Tritu Nogaru."
The Zara's words were clipped short with deadly emphasis.

Tiedor paled and his lips tightened in a grim line, but he stood his
ground. "I have nothing to confess," he said.

With a whistling indrawn breath, the leopard woman threw back her head
and motioned to one of the green-bronze giants who guarded the
entrance. There was a nervous stir around the council table.

At her command the guard drew back a heavy drape that hid an embrasure
in the far wall. There, on a stubby pedestal, was revealed a gleaming
sphere of crystal, a huge polished ball that shimmered a ghastly green
against a background of jet.

Slowly in its depths a milky cloud took shape, swirling and pulsating
like a living thing. Then it flashed into dazzling brilliance and the
globe cleared to startling transparency. It was as if it did not exist.
Rather they looked through an opening in the cosmos that carried their
gaze to another and distant point. It was a large open space that was
revealed to their eyes; a sort of public square where many of the
olive-skinned Rulans were coming and going to and from the entrances of
the circular tank-like structures that surrounded the area. They were
greeting one another in solemn fashion as they passed and watching
furtively the green-bronze guards who were everywhere. The sound of
their low voiced conversations came clear and distinct from the depths
of the crystal sphere.

"Your choice, Tiedor," the Zara hissed.

"There is nothing--nothing, I tell you!" The Rulan chief's voice was
panicky now.

* * * * *

Clyone's snarling command was c