“If you’ll excuse me for saying so, skipper,” said Vezzarn, “I wasn’t so sure you three hadn’t just gone off and left us for good! Miss do Eldel, she said, ‘No, they’ll be back.’ But I wasn’t so sure.” He shook his grizzled head. “That part was bad!”

The captain explained there’d been no chance to warn them — didn’t add there’d been a rather good chance, in fact, that no one ever would come back to the Venture again.

“Then the strongbox went!” reported Hulik. “I was looking at it, wondering what you had inside — and there was a puff of darkness about it, and that cleared, and the box was gone. Vezzarn hadn’t seen it and didn’t notice it, and I didn’t tell him.”

“If she’d told me, I’d’ve fainted dead!” Vezzarn muttered earnestly.

Then the blackness had come… Blackness about the ship and inside it and around them, lasting for perhaps a minute. When it cleared away suddenly, Goth and the Leewit were standing in the control room with them. Everyone had started looking around for the captain then until Goth suddenly announced his arrival from the control room a couple of minutes later…

“Well, I’m sorry you were put through all that,” the captain told the two. “It couldn’t be helped. But you’ll be safe down on Emris within another two hours… Happen to remember just when it was you heard that strange noise?”

The do Eldel checked her timepiece. “It seems like several lifetimes,” she said. “But as a matter of fact, it was an hour and fifteen minutes ago.”

Which, the captain calculated on the way back to the control section, left about forty minutes as the period within which Moander had been buried under his mighty citadel, the Worm World pitched into chaos, and a giant-vatch taught an overdue and lasting lesson in manners. A rather good job, he couldn’t help feeling, for that short a time!

The escort ships which hailed them something less than an hour later were patrol boats of the Emris navy. The purpose of the escort evidently was to whisk the Venture unchecked through the customary prelanding procedures here and guide her down directly to the private landing field of the governor of Green Galaine, one of the four major administrative provinces of Emris.

The captain wasn’t surprised. From what Goth and the Leewit had told him, the Karres witches were on excellent terms with the authorities of this world; and the governor of Green Galaine was an old friend of their parents. The patrol boats guided them in at a fast clip until they began to hit atmosphere, then braked. A great city, rolling up and down wooded hills, rose below; and he leveled the Venture out behind the naval vessels towards a small port lying within a magnificent cream-and-ivory building complex.

“Know this place?” he asked the Leewit, nodding at the semicircle of beautiful buildings.

“Governor’s palace,” she said. “Where we’ll stay…”

“Oh?” The captain studied the palace again. “Guess he’s got room enough for guests, at that!” he remarked.

“Sure — lots!” said the Leewit.

“The tests,” Threbus said, “show about what we expected. Of course, as I told you, these results reflect only your present extent of klatha control. They don’t indicate in any way what you may be doing six months or a year from now.”

“Yes, I understand that,” the captain said.

“Let me look this over once more, Pausert, to make sure I haven’t missed anything. Then I’ll sum it up for you.”

Threbus began to busy himself again with the notes he’d made on the klatha checks he’d been running the captain through, and the captain watched his great uncle silently. Threbus must be somewhere in his sixties if the captain’s recollection of family records was correct, but he looked like a man of around forty and in fine shape for his age. Klatha presumably had something to do with that. During the captain’s visit at Toll’s house on Karres, he’d encountered Threbus a few times in the area and chatted with him, unaware that this affable witch was the father of Goth and her sisters or his own long-vanished kinsman. At the time Threbus had worn a beard, which he’d since removed. The captain could see that, without the beard and allowing for the difference in age, there was, as Goth had told him, considerable similarity between the two of them.

This was the morning of the third day since the Venture had landed on Emris. The night before, Threbus had suggested that he and the captain go for an off-planet run today to see how the captain would make out on the sort of standard klatha tests given witches at various stages of development. Off-planet, because they already knew he still had a decidedly disturbing effect on the klatha activities of most adult witches, simply by being anywhere near them; and it could be expected the effect would be considerably more pronounced when he was deliberately attempting to manipulate klatha energies.

Threbus folded his notes together, dropped them into the disposal box of the little ship which had brought the two of them out from Emris, and adjusted the automatic controls. He then leaned back in his chair.

“There are several positive indications,” he said. “But they tell us little we didn’t already know. You’re very good on klatha locks. A valuable quality in many circumstances. Theoretically, you should be able to block out any type of mind reader I’ve encountered or heard about, assuming you become aware of his, her, or its intentions. You have very little left to learn in that area. It’s largely a natural talent.

“Then, of course, you’re a vatch-handler. A natural quality again, though a quite unusual one. Under the emergency conditions you encountered, you seem to have developed it close to its possible peak in a remarkably short time. A genuine klatha achievement, my friend, for which we can all be thankful!

“However, vatch-handling remains a talent with limited usefulness, particularly because it’s practiced always at the risk of encountering the occasional vatch which cannot be handled. There is no way of distinguishing such entities from other vatches until the attempt to manipulate them is made — and when the attempt fails, the vatch will almost always destroy the unfortunate handler. So this ability is best kept in reserve, strictly as an emergency measure.”

“Frankly,” remarked the captain, “I’ll be happiest if I never have to have anything to do with another vatch!”

“I can hardly blame you. And the chances are good — under ordinary conditions that it will be a long time before you have more than passing contacts with another one. You’re sensitized now, of course, so you’ll be aware of the occasional presence of a vatch as you couldn’t have been formerly. But they rarely make more than a minor nuisance of themselves.

“Now I noticed various indications here that you tend to be a lucky gambler…”

The captain nodded. “I usually win a bet,” he said. “That comes natural, too, I suppose?”

“Yes, in this case. Quite generally, in fact, you have a good natural predisposition for klatha manipulation. And you are, as we already know, an exceptionally strong conductor of the energies. But aside from the two categories we’ve mentioned, you have as yet no significant conscious control of them. That’s about the size of it at present…”

The captain acknowledged it was also about what he’d expected. He had felt a minor isolated quiver or two of what might have been klatha force during the check run, but that was all.

Threbus nodded, cut out the auto controls, swung the little ship around towards Emris. “We might as well be getting back down,” he said. “I understand from Goth, incidentally, that the two of you haven’t yet made any definite arrangements for the Venture’s next enterprise.”

The captain glanced quickly over at him. This was the first indication either of Goth’s parents had given that they still had no objection to letting her travel about with him.