He looked again down the avenue. The dying sun threw a ruby light in the natural arch, a dim, mysterious, lumi shy;nescence in which the slowly moving band of pilgrims ap shy;peared to be walking through water, marching into the gate of another world. A concentration of pain and suffering, of desperation and hopefulness. Did the entity within the wrecked vessel live on such Para physical emanations? Did it need the psychic energy of those who came to rest their hands on the mound? Giving, perhaps as a by-product, some shy;thing in return?

"They go," mused the handler. "They crawl and skip and drag themselves down to the Place. And when they come back, those that do, they march like men. They fall into the ship and sleep solid for ten, twelve hours. Sometimes longer. And when they wake you can see paradise in their eyes."

"A good feeling," said Dumarest.

"The best." The handler sucked in his breath as a cone of coruscating brilliance leaped from the surrounding area. "It won't be long now."

His face was livid in the glow. Dumarest turned, looking at the radiance, wondering what it could be. The discharge of natural energies? A waste product of the alien entity? Or was it, perhaps, the visible by-product of a supralight message aimed at some distant galaxy?

"They'll be coming back soon," said the handler. "And we'll take them home."

"And me?" Dumarest looked at the man. "You can give me passage?"

"If you can pay."

"To outside the Web?"

"To Thermyle; you can get an outward-bound ship from there." The handler hesitated. "We won't be going direct and you know the system. But if you're short of money you can ride Low."

"I've got money," said Dumarest.

He had Yalung's pouch of precious gems and they would carry him to where he wanted to go. To a flaring red point on a pictured galaxy or as near as he could get to the sector in which it was held. It would be a long journey and there would be too much time to remember what might have been. Of a girl with lustrous black tresses, the pressure of her arms, the promise of her body, the future they would now never share.

"That's all right then," said the handler. "Just you?"

"Yes."

"Then you're alone?"

"Yes," said Dumarest bleakly. "I'm alone."