call 'Sky Hooks' and maybe they thought the things were
just what they're called. All I know is they kept us working five solid
weeks for nothing. I knew the power was going to fail; they had the
craziest damn generating plant you ever saw, and it couldn't last. The
boilers kept sizzling and popping their safety valves with no fire in
the box! Just some little old man sitting in a corner, practicing the
Masonic grip or something over a smudgepot."

Hanson gestured back to the sheds. "If there's no power, what are those
lights?"

"Witch lights, they told us," the man explained. "Saved a lot of wiring,
or something. They--hey, what's that?"

He was looking up, and Hanson followed his gaze. There was something
whizzing overhead at jet-plane speed. "A piece of the sky falling?" he
said.

The man snorted. "Falling sidewise? Not likely, even here. I tell you,
pal, I don't like this place. Nothing works right. There was no fuel for
the 'copter we finished--the one we called Betsy Ann. But the little
geezer who worked the smudgepot just walked up to it and wiggled his
finger. 'Start your motor going, Betsy Ann,' he ordered with some other
mumbo-jumbo. Then the motor roared and he and the engineer, took off at
double the speed she could make on high-test gas. Hey, there it is
again! Doesn't look like the Betsy Ann coming back, either."

The something whizzed by again, in the other direction, but lower and
slower. It made a gigantic but erratic circle beyond the sheds and
swooped back. It looked nothing like a helicopter. It looked like a
Hallowe'en decoration of a woman on a broomstick. As it came nearer,
Hanson saw that it _was_ a woman on a broomstick, flying erratically.
She straightened out in a flat glide.

She came in for a one-point landing a couple of yards away. The tip of
the broom handle hit the ground, and she went sailing over it, to land
on her hands and knees. She got up, facing the shed.

The woman was Nema. Her face was masklike, her eyes tortured. She was
staring searchingly around her, looking at every man.

"Nema!" Hanson cried.

She spun to face him, and gasped. Her skin seemed to turn gray, and her
eyes opened to double their normal size. She took one tottering step
toward him and halted.

"Illusion!" she whispered hoarsely, and slumped to the ground in a
faint.

She was reviving before he could raise her from the ground. She swayed a
moment, staring at him. "You're not dead!"

"What's so w