lashing out of the dark from the river bank,
making a pattern of flickers which bore no relation to the infernal
lights at the water's edge.

Hume's ray tube pointed skyward as he answered with a series of short
bursts.

"Take cover!" The call came weirdly out over the water, the tone
dehumanized. Hume cupped his mouth with one hand, shouted back:

"We're on top--no cover."

"Then flatten down--we're blasting!"

They flattened, lay almost in each other's arms, curled on that narrow
space. Even through his closed eyelids Rynch caught the flash of
vivid, man-made lightning crashing first on one side of the islet and
then on the other, and sweeping every crawling horror out of life,
into odorous ash. The backlash of that blast must have caught the
majority of the lights also. For when Rynch and Hume cautiously sat
up, they saw only a handful of widely scattered and dulling globes
below.

They choked, coughed, rubbed watering eyes as the fumes from the
scorched rocks wreathed up about their perch.

"Flitter with life line--above you!"

That voice had come out of what should have been empty air over their
heads. A gangling line trailed across their bodies, a line with a
safety belt locked to it, and a second was uncoiling in a slow loop as
they watched.

In unison they grabbed for those means of escape, buckled the belts
about them.

"Haul away!" Hume called. The lines tightened, their bodies swung up
clear of the blasted river island, as their unseen transport headed
for the eastern shore.

8

A subdued but steady light all around him issued from stark gray
walls. He lay on his back in an empty cell-room. And he'd better be on
the move before Darfu comes to enforce a rising order with a powerful
kick or one of these backhanded blows which the Salarkian used to
reduce most humans to helpless obedience.

Vye blinked again. But this wasn't his cubby hole at the Starfall, his
nose as well as his eyes told him that. There was no hint of
uncleanliness or corruption here. He sat up stiffly, looked down at
his own body in dull wonder. The only covering on his bare, brown self
was a wide, scaled belt and a loin cloth. Clumsy sandals shod his
feet, and his legs, up to thigh level, were striped with healing
scratches and blotched with bruises.

Painfully, with mental processes as stiff as his arms and his legs, he
tried to think back. Sluggishly, memory associated one picture with
another.

Last night--o