The Daal glanced at Goth again, speculatively. “Perhaps Your Wisdom understands,” he murmured.

“Uh-huh,” said Goth brightly, in her little-girl voice.

He’d tell Goth if they were alone? The captain considered. There hadn’t been many “Your Wisdoms” coming his way since that business in the Little Court! Possibly Sedmon had done some private reevaluating of the events in Sunnat’s underground dungeon last night. It would take — as, in fact, it had taken — only one genuine witch on the team to account for that.

Not so good, perhaps… He considered again.

“I really think,” he heard himself say pleasantly, “it might be best if you did unburden yourself to us, Sedmon of the Six Lives.”

The Daal’s eyes flickered.

“So!” It was a small hiss. “I suspected… but it was a difficult thing to believe, even of such as you. Well, we all have our secrets, and our reasons for them…” He stood up. “Come with me then — Captain Aron and Dani! You should know better what to make of what I have here than I do.”

The captain hoped they would. He certainly did not know what to make of Sedmon the Sixth, and of the Six Lives, at the moment! But he seemed to have said the right thing at the right time, at that -

Sedmon led them swiftly, the hem of his black gown flapping about his heels, through a series of narrow passages and up stairways into another section of the House of Thunders. They met no one on the way. Three times the Daal stopped to unlock heavy doors with keys produced from a fold in the gown, locked them again behind them. He did not speak at all until they turned at last into a blind passage which showed only one door and that near the far end. There he slowed.

“Half the problem is here,” he said, addressing them equally as they came up to the door. “When you’ve seen it, I’ll tell you what else I know — which is little enough. There’ll be another thing to show you later in another place.”

He unlocked and opened the door. The room beyond was long and low, showed no furnishings. But something like a heavy, slowly rippling iron-gray curtain screened the far end.

“A guard field,” said the Daal sourly. “I’ve done everything possible to keep the matter quiet. In that I think I’ve been successful. It was all I could do until I came in contact with a competent member of your people.” He gave them a sideways glance. “No doubt you have your own problems — but for weeks I’ve been unable to learn where somebody who could act for Karres might be found!”

His manner had taken another turn. He was dropping all formality here, addressing them with some irritability as equals and including Goth as if she were another adult. And he was not concealing the fact that he felt he had reason for complaint — nor that he was a badly worried man. Reaching into his gown, he brought out a small device, glanced at it, pressed down with his thumb.

The guard field faded, and the far end of the room appeared beyond it. A couch stood there. On it, in an odd attitude of abruptly frozen motion, sat a man in spacer coveralls. He was strongly built, might have been ten years older than the captain. Goth’s breath made a sharp sucking sound of surprise.

“You know this fellow?” the Daal asked.

“Yes,” Goth said. “It’s Olimy!”

“He’s of Karres?”

“Yes.”

She started forward, the captain moving with her, while the Daal stayed a few feet behind. Olimy gazed into the room with unblinking black eyes. He sat at the edge of the couch, legs stretched out to the floor, arms half lifted and reaching forwards, fingers curled as if closing on something. His expression was one of alertness and intense concentration. But the expression didn’t change and Olimy didn’t move.

“He was found like this, a month and a half ago, sitting before the controls of his ship,” the Daal said. “Perhaps you understand his condition. I don’t. He can be shifted out of the position you see him in, but when released he gradually returns to it. He can be lifted and carried about but can’t actually be touched. There’s a thin layer of force about him, unlike anything of which I’ve heard. It’s detectable only by the fact that nothing can pass through it. He appears to be alive but—”

“He disminded himself.” Goth’s face and tone were expressionless. She looked up at the captain. “We got to take him to Emris, I guess. They’ll help him there.”

“Uh-huh.” Then she didn’t know either how to contact other witches this side of the Chaladoor at present. “You mentioned his ship,” the captain said to the Daal.

“Yes. It’s three hours’ flight from here, still at the point where it was discovered. He was the only one on board. How it approached Uldune and landed without registering on detection instruments isn’t known.” Sedmon’s mouth grimaced. “He had an object with him which I ordered left on the ship. I won’t try to describe it — you’ll see it for yourselves… Are there any measures you wish taken regarding this man before we go?”

Goth shook her head. The captain said, “There’s nothing we can do for Olimy at the moment. He might as well stay here till we can take him off your hands.”

Olimy’s ship had come down in a nearly uninhabited section of Uldune’s southern continent, and landed near the center of a windy plain, rock-littered and snow-streaked, encircled by misty mountains. It wasn’t visible from the air, but its position was marked by what might have been a patch of gray mist half filling a hollow in the plain — a spy-screen had been set up to enclose the ship. On higher ground a mile away lay a larger bank of mist. The Daal’s big aircar set down there first.

At ground level, the captain, sitting in a rear section of the car with Goth, could make out the vague outlines of four tents through the side of the screen. Two platoons of fur-coated soldiers and their commander had tumbled out and lined up. One of the Daal’s men left the car, went over to the officer, and spoke briefly with him. He came back, nodded to the Daal, climbed in. The aircar lifted, turned and started towards Olimy’s ship, skimming along the sloping ground.

There’d been no opportunity to speak privately with Goth. Perhaps she had an idea of what this affair of a Karres witch who had disminded himself was about, but her expression told nothing. Any question he asked the Daal might happen to be the wrong one, so he hadn’t asked any.

The car settled down some fifty yards from the edge of the screening about Olimy’s ship, and was promptly enveloped itself by a spy-screen somebody cut in. Sedmon, as he’d indicated, evidently took all possible precautions to avoid drawing attention to the area. The captain and Goth put on the warm coats which had been brought along for them and climbed out with the Daal, who had wrapped a long fur robe about himself. The rest of the party remained in the car. They walked over to the screen about the ship, through it, and saw the ship sitting on the ground.

It was a small one with excellent lines, built for speed. The Daal brought an instrument out from under his furs.

“This is the seal to the ship’s lock,” he said. “I’ll leave it with you. The object your associate brought here with him is standing in a plastic wrapping beside the control console. When you’re finished you’ll find me waiting in the car.”

The last was good news. If Sedmon had wanted to come into the ship with them, it might have complicated matters. The captain found the lock mechanism, unsealed it and pulled the OPEN lever. Above them, a lock opened. A narrow ladder ramp slid down.

They paused in the lock, looking back. The Daal already had vanished beyond the screening haze about the ship. “Just to be sure,” the captain said, “better put up our own spy-screen… Got any idea what this is about?”

Goth shook her head. “Olimy’s a hot witch. Haven’t seen him for a year — he goes around on work for Karres. Don’t know what he was doing this trip.”