"... The gods erred in dumping their wastes. But you are to blame. For existing. This corner of the universe is polluted! From the stuff of divine garbage the disease of life was bred ... There is your sacredness! Quarantined between darkness and darkness, allowed to run its course. And everything that lives is disease to something other! We feed upon ourselves, are gone! Soon now, soon ... I--

"I-- Brothers! Envy the stone! It suffers not! Rejoice in untainted water and air and rock! Envy the crystal. Soon we shall be like them, perfect, still .

"Do not ask forgiveness, but slowness in the disposition that is to come--that you may savor the return to delicious peace! I-- I-- I--

"Pray, weep, burn ... That is all. I-- Go ... Go!"

Then he set it to replay and resumed his attitude. It was a troublesome emotion that he felt, not unlike the effects of Wagner, whom he kept to a minimum. But one more time ...

"How does this help us ... ?" he began, and then he smiled.

It did not really help. But it made him feel better.

A moment's respite, then.

Heidel von Hymack moved along the trail that wound its way up and over the shoulder of a rocky prominence. Pausing near its highest point, he looked back and down, across the fog-shrouded distance he had come. He blinked his eyes and rubbed his beard. His vague feelings of uneasiness had intensified. Something was wrong. He leaned back against the glass-slick rock and rested his hands on his staff. Yes, it was difficult to identify, but something had been altered in the world about him. It was more than a pre-storm tension. It was almost as if he were being sought, by someone he was not yet ready to meet.

Is she trying to tell me something? he wondered. Maybe I should hole up and find out. But that would take time, and I feel this need to keep moving. Ought to get out of here before the storm hits. Why do I keep looking back? I--

He ran his fingers through his hair and raked his teeth across his lower lip. A bit of sunlight leaked through a rift in the clouds and caused the mist about him to sparkle with momentary, dancing prisms. Eyes darting, forehead furrowed, he watched them for perhaps ten seconds, then turned away.

"Damn you!" he said. "Whoever you are ..."

He banged his staff against a rock, crossed over the ridge, sought a downward track.

He sat upon a stone and hunted. After a time, he rose and moved on, tramping among the hills and over the trackless, rock-strewn plains, there in the region of mists. As he walked, birds dipped and darted about him, appearing out of and vanishing back into the shifting curtain of fog.

Hunting, he climbed partway up the face of a steep stone hill, seated himself on a narrow ledge, withdrew a cigar, bit off its end, lit it. As he stared across the plain, a wind washed over it, and for a while it lay bare and bleak beneath his gaze. A spined lizard whose skin reproduced the shifting color display of a soap bubble's surface descended from a rock and came to share the ledge with him, fork-tongue darting heartred, yellow eyes fixed unblinking upon his face. It brushed against his hand and he stroked it.

"What do you think?" he said, after several minutes. "I can't spot a warm-blooded body or mind in the area."

He continued to smoke, and the mists crept back to cover the plain. Finally, he sighed, thumped his heels against the rock and rose. Turning, he lowered himself and began the downward climb. The lizard moved to the edge and regarded his descent.

Pacing another half mile, he acquired the company of a pair of weasel-like predators who frolicked about his feet, tongues lolling, as though greatly amused by the progress of his boots, tiny hisses and barking noises occasionally escaping their throats. They ignored the circling birds and the big-throated wadloper who emerged from his mudhole to follow after, until his awkward, shambling gait left him far behind--at which time he croaked twice and crept back to his wallow.

When, beside a rust-streaked boulder, he paused to hunt with his mind, the animals grew still. An icy stream trickled nearby, dark, diamond-leafed plants swaying in clumps on its banks, the mists skating over its surface. He stared, unseeing, at the flow, chewing his cigar, searching.

Then, "No," he said, and, "Why don't you go home?" to the animals.

They drew back and watched him, and when he departed they made no move to follow.

Crossing the stream, he continued on his way, without map or compass. bearing toward the west, after detecting a party of unsuccessful searchers in the direction he had intended taking, eastward.

And as he walked, he cursed. Between damns, he threw away his cigar. Turning then to the east, he stared for perhaps half a minute.

A roll of thunder sounded in the distance. Moments later, it was followed by another. More occurred then, merging into a steady growling note that vibrated within the ground as well as the air. A wind arose in the west and rushed to investigate the storm.

He moved on, turning farther southward now, paralleling the storm for a time, then leaving it behind him. Half an afternoon later, there came a glimmer of something that drew him farther to the west.

"Who, I wonder?" he said to the shadow that sighed along the ground beside his feet. "Somehow familiar, but still too far ... I had better be very careful."

Probing gingerly, he advanced, and the fogs rushed to conceal him and to muffle the sounds of his passage.

Hunched within his poncho, Morwin splashed forward, the center of a fifty-foot circle of visibility. Protected from the moisture without, he was nevertheless damp with perspiration, and the palm of his hand felt clammy whenever he touched it against the butt of his pistol. He thought of Malacar and Jackara, moving along a drier course from the cave where _The Perseus_ lay hidden. He thought of the landslide they had brought down to cover the cave mouth, and he tried not to think of the difficulties they might encounter in blasting their way out again.

_Anything, Shind?_ he inquired.

_If I locate anyone, you will be the first to know_.

_What of Jackara--and Malacar?_

_They are just emerging from the storm into an area of greater visibility. They continue to monitor the radio communications among the native searchers, as well as their conversations with Dr. Pels. It appears that these searchers have found nothing but bad weather, so far. Worse than here, actually. At least, they keep complaining about it_.

_The search parties are near enough for you to read?_

_No. I am obtaining this information only from Malacar's mind. It seems that the searchers are about four miles north of us, and farther to the east_.

_This Pels you mentioned-- He is the same one--the Dr. Pels?_"

_It seems so. I gather that he is in orbit directly overhead at this moment_.

_To what end?_

_He appears to be in charge of things_.

_I assume he wants H also_.

_Most likely_.

_I don't like this, Shind--their being aware one man is causing it, and hunting for him at the same time, in the same place. And Pels being in on it. If I decide to do as you suggested, there may be more trouble than we anticipated_.

_I have been thinking about this also. It has occurred to me that it might be safest to see whether there is a way to assure his being turned over to Pels' searchers. If they take him into custody, our problem is solved_.

_How do you propose achieving this?_

_Overpower him, bind him. Bring him to their attention. Failing that, kill him and claim self-defense. They seem to think he is unbalanced, so it would sound plausible_.

_Supposing Malacar finds him first?_

_Then we will have to think of something else. An accident, I suppose_.