Anyone who spoke of the supernatural within Spence's hearing he summarily lumped into the same cast as the ignorant and superstitious Byzantine sailor. Regarding religion, Spence had slightly more respect, but only a shade more. He considered it in its milder expressions a form of harmless do-goodism, the refuge of weaker minds perplexed and frightened by the world they saw and their own inability to change it. It was a psychological holdover from a time long past when men, yearning for order but not knowing how to create it, conjured up a Supreme Being who was not affected by the daily ebb and flow of change, who was not part of the confusion because he stood outside it. And if he did not help resolve the chaos of the world, he at least did not add to it and so was conceived to be benevolent in his dealings with his creatures.

He allowed that faith in this God-Being was a minor virtue of sorts, in the same way kindness to dumb animals or small children was a virtue. He did not mock it as a rule-such virtues had a place in the world-but he did not find anything in it to recommend it for himself.

And yet, he had prayed-if one could call it a prayer-to this same Supreme Being in his own moment of doubt and pain. This, he concluded, had been the act of a drowning man, one who might not have believed in life jackets, but who was nevertheless willing to try one as a last resort before the waters closed over his head forever.

He had done it out of weakness, and understandably so.

But the voice-that was something different. He had heard it.

He could not argue it away; its presence still lingered in his mind.

Spence settled down in the room with the growing-machine to brood and wait for any new developments. He would sleep and wait; if nothing more seemed forthcoming he would take his water and retrace his route back through the tunnels, or try to find another way back to the surface. The latter plan seemed to offer more promise since he doubted he would be able to climb back up along those tunnels with any success: the walls were too smooth and slippery and steep.

… THE TUNNEL, GLOWING GENTLY with a subtle blue green shimmer, wound up and out of the planet's interior. Spence, clinging with fingers and toes to the slippery surface had, by sheer strength of nerve and will, dragged himself up to the very entrance of the underground shaft. Before him, glimmering coolly, stood two doors.

As he approached the doors he understood that one door led out onto the surface of the Red Planet and the other contained the answer to his dreams. With this realization came a moment of dizzying indecision. His heart began to race. Sweat beaded on his face and neck.

Which one should he open? Which freedom did he desire more?

He raised himself and placed his hand on the knob of the door nearest him and stepped into an empty room. At once his heart sank-he had been tricked. There was nothing here to help him.

But as he stood blinking into the room's dim interior, a mist gathered, boiling out of the floor in front of him, rising in a dense cloud.

The vapors churned and he saw red sparks like lightning darting in thin streaks, and he could see a shape dimly emerging as if it were being knit together out of the vapors. He watched as the shape took on a vaguely human form.

The cloud receded, falling away in curling tendrils to reveal a creature remarkably manlike but fashioned out of different stuff entirely.

The thing, motionless, towered over him, its smooth, hairless skin gleaming golden and wet with beads of moisture. He felt a tremor pass through him as the man-being drew its first breath.

He felt the urge to turn away, to run and hide himself from its presence, but he could not move; he was held by an inescapable force. He buried his face in his hands and peered through trembling fingers at the stern, spare features. The eyelids flickered and raised slowly, and two great yellow eyes, like those of a cat, glared down on him. He shrank away from their sight.

But the monster saw him and saw through him, piercing him to the innermost recesses of his heart. It raised one lanky arm and opened its mouth to speak.

He fell to his knees as if to beg for mercy from the creature, but it stepped forward with surprising quickness for something so tall. it scooped him up in strong arms and carried him into the darkened corner of the room, which suddenly changed into a wide, brightly lit corridor with an arched ceiling, joined by other corridors which led away from it at regular intersections along the way.

The golden being carried Spence effortlessly with long, sure strides and at last came to a great domed room which was filled with exotic-looking machines and strange instruments. He placed Spence in a kind of bowl-shaped chair and put a thin transparent shell of a helmet on his head. The creature bent over a low bank of spheres mounted atop one another and Spence felt a warm sensation sweep over him.

The creature looked at him and asked, "Who are you? Why have you come'?" …

THE PAIN WAS A laserknife that sliced through his brain, carving it neatly in half in one effortless stroke. One moment Spence had been standing atop one of the taller domed hives searching the underground cavescape for anything resembling an entrance or exit. The next thing he knew he was lying on his side with the pain bursting in fireballs inside his head.

He had plunged through the thin shell of the structure when the portion he was standing on collapsed with a brittle crack under his weight. He landed on his side and when he made an attempt to move, the pain had exploded in dazzling colors.

He lay back panting for a long time until the pain subsided enough for him to roll over and put his hands on the floor to push himself up. The effort left him head down, retching with dry heaves. He fell into a fit of coughing and tasted blood in his mouth when he was finished. He looked down and saw flecks of blood in the thick dust. With a stab of horror he realized that he had broken one or more ribs and that at least one of the broken ribs had punctured his lung. He fell back and a long sobbing wail burst from his throat; tears rolled down his cheeks as he rocked back and forth in the debris around him, howling in despair and agony.

Sometime later, whimpering with pain at every step, he dragged himself back to the first hive and lay down near the water sphere. The hours blurred and ran. The fire in his side increased unbelievably. Spence teetered on the brink of consciousness, often tipping over the edge. Fever raged as he coughed and the lung filled with fluid, threatening to suffocate him. Any but the smallest movement brought crescendos of pain booming through his body. His chest felt as if it were clamped between white-hot pincers.

Spence lay in a dream world, half awake, half swooning in his own sweat. He roused himself periodically to sip water from the sphere and then fell back weakly following each exertion.

Time passed; he had no idea how much time. The already confused hours merged together and he could not easily tell his waking moments from dreaming ones-they all fused and mingled like beads of wax on a heated plate.

It was during one of his rarer waking moments that he heard the pulsing hum of the machine next to him; actually, it occurred to him that he had been hearing it for some time. He turned his head and shifted his body slightly to get a better view.

The gray translucent sides of the coffinlike box had grown murky, as if clouds of vapor swirled within. As he watched he saw tiny flashes, like red lightning arcing from point to point within the plated box, illuminating the interior.

Stirred by this sight he inched himself closer and slowly, painfully edged high enough to press his face against one of the lower plates to peer inside.