IX

It was oddly still. Charis sat up on the cot, pulled her coverall into place. Coverall? Something buried deep inside her questioned, and a seed of doubt plagued her. Yes, the post was very still. She went to the door, set her hands on either side of the sealed slit. Was she locked in? But when she applied pressure, the portal opened and she was able to look out into the corridor.

The doors along it gaped open as she slipped into freedom. Listening brought no trace of sound, no murmur of voices or the heavy breathing of a sleeper. She went on down the hall, the floor chill to her bare feet.

But this—all of this, whispered that rebellious voice deep within her, she had done before. Yet on the surface, this was the here and now. The rooms were empty; she paused at each to make sure of that. Then the fourth room: a com screen against its wall, chairs and piles of record tapes. The com—she could use its sweep, try to pick up the government base. But first she must make sure she was safely alone.

A hurried search of the post, room by room. Time—it was a matter of time. Then she was back in the com room, leaning over the key board, picking out the proper combination to trigger a sweep ray.

A wait, and then a signal to the northeast. The visa-plate clouded and then cleared. Charis dodged from her position before it. A man was standing out of the mist, a man wearing a dingy uniform of a trader. Charis studied him, but he was unknown to her. Only the illegal blaster holstered at his belt made him different from any other fringe crewman. Charis’s hand swept out to break contact.

She activated the sweep once again, tried south, and picked a signal—the insignia of Survey with a seal of Embassy. Slowly then she began to click out a message for the tape.

She was on a hillside. It was cold, dark, and she was running, running until her breath made a sharp stab beneath her ribs. The hunt would be up soon. Or would Tolskegg be willing to let her go, to die alone in the heights of exhaustion, starvation, or at the claws of some beast? He had Demeter and the settlement below now within his hold.

Demeter! The part of her which had been denying that this was the here and now struggled. Charis shook with more than cold. She was climbing to the heights above the settlement, yet the belief that this was all false grew stronger and stronger.

A dream. And there were those who used dreams and the stuff of dreams as a potter spun clay on his wheel. If she was caught in a dream, then she must wake—wake soon. Not a dream. Yes—a dream. She felt her own exhaustion, the pinch of hunger which was pain, the rough ground over which she stumbled, the bushes she grasped to steady her.

Not real—a dream! The bushes thinned until they were unsubstantial ghosts of themselves. Through their wavering outlines she saw a wall—yes, wall, solid wall. She was not on Demeter—she was—she was . . .

Warlock! As if the recognition of that name were a key, the now shadowy slope of Demeter vanished, driven away like smoke by a rising wind. She lay on a pad of mats. To her right was a window giving on the dark of night with a frosting of stars in the sky. This was Warlock and the Citadel of the Wyverns.

She did not move but lay quietly trying to separate dream from reality. The post—it had been raided. That Survey officer Shann Lantee --  She could see him as plainly now as if he stood before her, the blood-spattered alien spear held between them.

The spear. It had splintered under the action of the Wyvern. The broken bits had moved in that weird dance until they had fallen in a pattern which had awakened such rage in the Warlockians. And that rage . . .

Charis sat bolt upright on the mats. Lantee crumbling under the Power of the Wyverns, herself returned to relive portions of the past—for what purpose she could not divine. Why had that rage been turned on Lantee? In a way, it had been her fault for summoning Gytha. She had been too impulsive.

Her hands went to the pouch at her belt. It was empty of the disk. That had been in her hand when the Power had taken her on the shore. Had she dropped it or had they taken it from her?

That could mean that the Wyverns no longer considered her in the guise of friend or ally. What had the broken spear meant to them? Without the disk Charis was a prisoner here in this room. At least there was no reason why she could not attempt at once to find out what bonds had been set upon her freedom. Would she discover herself as unable to move as she had been on her flight along the shore when it had suited the Wyverns to control her?

“Tsstu?” Charis held that call to hardly above a whisper. She did not know how much of an ally the small curl-cat could be against the Wyverns, but she had come to depend upon her for companionship more heavily than she had guessed.

A drowsy sound came from the shadow directly below the window near which her head had rested. Tsstu lay there, curled in a ball, her eyes closed, her ears folded back tight against her head. Charis stooped and drew her fingers lightly across that head.

“Tsstu,” she whispered coaxingly. Was the curl-cat—she had adopted Lantee’s name for Tsstu’s species since it fitted so well—deep in her own kind of dream, too deep to be aroused now?

The ears twitched and slits of eyes showed between lids. Then Tsstu yawned widely, her yellow tongue curled up and out. She lifted her head to eye Charis.

To communicate more than just vague impressions without the aid of the disk—could she do that? Charis made a sudden swoop to gather up the curl-cat, holding Tsstu aloft so that those narrow felinelike eyes looked straight into hers. Was Tsstu so closely linked to the Wyverns that she would serve them rather than Charis now?

Away, the girl thought, out of here.

“Rrrruuuu.” That was agreement.

Tsstu wriggled vigorously in her grasp, wanting her freedom. Charis obeyed her wish. The curl-cat approached the doorway on pad-feet, elongating and flattening her body so that she had the appearance of a hunter on stalk. She stared into the corridor, her head raised a little, her ears spread to their widest. Charis guessed that every sense the curl-cat had was analyzing, scouting, for them. Tsstu glanced back at the girl, summoned—

This way led to the assembly rooms, to other private chambers such as hers, prepared for dreamers. Whether or not the corridor would eventually take them outside Charis did not know; she could only hope and rely upon Tsstu.

Even without the disk she strove to pick up any mind touch, any intimation that the Wyverns were about. Twice Charis was sure she had brushed beamed thoughts, not enough to read, just enough to be certain that they did exist. Otherwise, as in the trading post, she might be walking through a deserted dwelling.

Tsstu seemed confident of her path, trotting noiselessly along, choosing without hesitation whenever the corridor branched or was crossed by another passage. Charis was already out of the small portion of the maze that she knew. And she was conscious of the fact that the curl-cat had guided her into a section where the light from the walls was dimmer, the walls themselves rougher, narrower. She gained a feeling of age. Then the light was gone from the whole wall surface, lingering only in some places. Charis had to study closely before she saw the purpose of those remaining patches. They made out a design not unlike the whorls and circling on the disks. Here on the walls were some of the same symbols of power which the Wyverns had harnessed to their bidding.

But these patterns were not finished nor as crisp and cleanly cut as those on the disks. Larger, cruder, could they still open doorways for the initiated?

Tsstu continued with confidence. The even temperature of the other corridors failed. Charis put fingers to the nearest spiral and jerked them away as her flesh shrank from the heat there. She coughed, her throat dry. Where or what was this place?

In spite of an inner warning, she could not help but follow some of the designs with her eyes, looking ahead to pick them up, keeping them in sight until they were behind her. They blanketed her general field of vision until all she could see were the designs, and she halted with a cry of fear.

“Tsstu!”

Soft fur against her ankles, a reassurance in her mind. The curl-cat must not be affected by the same illusions as now imprisoned the girl. But to walk through this blackness where only the whorls, circles, lines had any existence for her was more than Charis could bring herself to do. Fear—overwhelming, panic-raising fear—

“Meeeerreee!”

Charis could feel Tsstu, she could hear her, but she could not see the curl-cat. She could see nothing but the patterns.

“Back!” Her word was a hoarse whisper. Only now Charis was not sure where back was. To take a step could plunge her into unknown chaos.

There was one design out of that mass of patterns—somehow she was able to fasten on that. Larger, sprawled out in crude length where she was used to it in a compact, clearly defined circle—this was her own disk pattern. She was certain of that.

“Tsstu!” She caught up the curl-cat by touch. Only those lines of dull silver glowed in the darkness. Concentrate on this design as she had on the disk and so—escape?

Charis hesitated. Escape to where? Return to the raided post? To the moss meadow? She must have a strong visual picture of her goal or the transport would not occur. Post? Meadow? Neither was where she wanted to go now. It was not just escape she wanted, it was knowledge of what was happening and why. But one could not gain that so . . .

Then—she was there. Lines of Wyverns, all seated cross-legged on mats, all intent upon two in the center. Lines of Wyverns, circles of them, for the chamber was a bowl-shaped place made up of climbing ledges, circling a space.

In that space Gysmay and her shadow-patterned companion stood alone. They faced each other, those two, and between them on the dark of the floor were splinters, needlelike pieces of all colors of the rainbow. The two were intent upon those splinters as were all others in that chamber.

Charis’s hair stirred with electricity, her skin prickled. There was such power here, loosed, flowing, that she reacted to it physically. None of those about her had noted her coming; they stared at the splinters, concentrating their power.

The splinters rose upon their points, whirled, danced, spun into the air to form a small cloud which first encircled Gysmay. Three times about her body, beginning at waist height, then at her throat, lastly about her head. Then they spun away to the open between the two Wyverns, came apart in a tinkling rain to form a design on the floor. And from those that watched there came to Charis a ripple of emotion, some decision or demand or bargaining point, she was not sure which, had been stated.

Again the needles rose in their point-dance, leaped into the air to form a cloud which now wreathed the shadowed Wyvern. And Charis thought that they spun more slowly this time and that the cloud did not glint with bright colors but was more subdued. It broke and tinkled down to deliver the answer, counterargument, disagreement—three in one.

And again there was to be sensed a wave of approbation from some of the watchers, but a weaker one. The company was divided upon some issue and their discussion conducted so Charis watched, supposing that Gysmay was about to answer, for the needles were rising again.

But this time their dance was less prolonged and the cloud they formed swayed neither to one of the Wyverns nor to the other. It was a tight saucer-shape rising higher and higher, straight up until it was level with the fourth and top tier of the ledges.

The company watched in shocked surprise. This they had not expected. Gysmay and her companions held their disks. But if they strove to call the needles, those were now out of their control. The cloud swayed back and forth as if it clung to some unseen pendulum. And each swing brought it closer to where Charis stood.

Suddenly it broke from that measured swing to dart at her. She cried out as it whirled about her head, swiftly, almost menacingly. The two nearest Wyverns were on their feet, while all below focused on the girl.

Twice, three times, the cloud wreathed her and then it was gone, out over the open, descending. But Charis could not move; the restraint of the power held her prisoner. The cloud broke, rained its substance down to the floor, but she could see no design, only a meaningless jumble.

At the same time she moved, not of her own volition, but under the will of those about her, descending from tier to tier until she stood in the open, equidistant from the two witches.

“What is read is read. To each dreamer, a dream as is the will of Those Who Have Dreamed Before. It would seem, Dreamer of Other World Dreams, that you, also, have a word in this matter—“

“In what matter?” Charis asked aloud.

“In the matter of life and death, of your blood and our blood, of past and future,” was the evasive answer.

Where she found the words and the courage to say them in an even voice, Charis did not know as she replied: “If that is the answer, I have been granted—“ she nodded at the fallen needles “—then you needs must read it for me, O One of All Wisdom.”

It was the shadow-laced Wyvern who answered: “But this is beyond our reading, though it has meaning since the Power moved its fashioning. We can only believe that its time is not yet. But time itself is an enemy in this matter. When one weaves a dream there must be no breaking of the thread of warp and woof. In our dreams, you and yours are unwelcome—“

“Those of my blood have died on the shore,” Charis retorted. “Yet I cannot believe that it was by your hands and will—“

“No—by their own. For they began an ill dream and twisted the pattern. They have done a thing which is beyond straightening now.” Gysmay was all anger, though that emotion was controlled and perhaps the more deadly because of that control. “They have given those who cannot dream another kind of power to break the long-laid design. Thus they must be hunted! They would overturn all reason and custom, and to that the end is slaying—and the slaying has already begun. We want no more of you. It shall be so.” She clapped her hands and the needles jumped, collecting into a heap.

“Perhaps—“ the shadowed Wyvern spoke.

“Perhaps?” echoed Charis. “Speak plainly to me now, Holder of Old Wisdom. I have seen a dead man of my race lying by a broken dwelling, and with him was a weapon which was not his. Yet among you I have seen no arms save the disks of Power. What evil walks this world? It is not of my making nor of the man Lantee’s.” She did not know why she added that, save that Lantee had had friendly contact with the witches.

“You are of one breed with the makers of this trouble!” Gysmay’s thought was like a sharp hiss.

“The spear,” Charis persisted, “this is of your kind, not mine! And a man died of it.”

“Those who dream not—they hunt, they kill with such. And now they have broken the ancient law and run to do evil in the service of strangers. Those strangers have given them a protection against the Power so that they may not be brought back into order again. Perhaps this was not of your doing, for among us you have dreamed true and know the power in its proper use. And the man Lantee, together with the one other who was with him from the earlier time, he, too, has dreamed—though that was out of all custom. But now come those who do not dream, to uphold the evil of not-dreaming. And our world will fall apart unless we hasten to the mending.”

“But still,” the shadowed Wyvern’s quieter message came, “there is the pattern we cannot read and which we may not push away unheeded, for it was born of what we evoked here to answer us in our need. Therefore, there is a use for you, though we know not yet what it may be, nor do you. This you must learn for yourself and bring to aid the greater design—“

There was no mistaking the warning lying in that. Charis could only guess at the meaning behind the circumlocution of speech. An off-world party—probably the Jacks who had raided the post—had freed some of the males from the control of the Wyvern matriarchs. And these were now fighting for or with the strangers. In return, the Wyverns seemed about to organize some counterblow against all off-worlders.

“This great design—it is being readied against those of my blood?” Charis asked.

“It must be carefully woven, then aimed and dreamed.” Again only half an answer. “But it will break your pattern as you have broken ours.”

“And I have a part in this?”

“You have received an answer which we could not read. Discover its meaning and maybe it will be for us also.”

“She breaks our pattern here,” Gysmay interrupted. “Send her into the Place Without Dreams that she may not continue to disrupt what we do here!”

“Not so! She was answered; she has a right to learn the meaning of that answer. Send her forth from this place, yes—that we shall do. But into the Darkness Which Is Naught? No—that is against her rights. Time grows short, Dreamer. Dream true if you would save the breaking of your pattern. Now—get you hence!”

The tiered chamber, the watching Wyverns, vanished. Night was dark about Charis, but she could hear the murmur of sea waves not too far away. She breathed fresh air and above her were stars. Was she back on shore?

No. As her eyes adjusted to the very dim light, she was able to see that she stood on a high point of rock; around her on all sides was the wash of waves. She must be marooned on a rocky spear in what might be the middle of the ocean.

Afraid to take a step in any direction, Charis dropped down to her knees, hardly believing this could be true. Tsstu stirred, made a small questioning sound, and Charis’s breath caught in a half-sob of incredulous protest.

X

“The dream is yours. Dream true.”

Rock, an islet of bare rock, high above the sea with no path down its steep walls against which waves thundered. Overhead the cries of birds disturbed from their nesting holes by her coming. In the half-light of early morning Charis surveyed her perch. The first bewilderment of her arrival was gone, but her uneasiness now had a base of fear.

There was a series of sharp, shallow ledges leading down from the point of rock where she crouched to a wider open space sheltered on one side by a ridge. Some vegetation, pallid and sickly looking, straggled in that pocket of earth. She rose to look out over the sea, having no idea where she was now in relation to the Citadel or the main continent.

Some distance away there was another blot which must mark a second rock island, but it was too far to make out clearly. The finality which had been in her dismissal from the Wyvern assemblage clung. They had sent her here, and she could only believe that they would do nothing to get her back. Her escape must be of her own devising.

“Meeerrreee?” Tsstu squatted on the rock, her whole stance expressing her dislike of these surroundings.

“Where do we go?” Charis asked. “You know as much as I.”

The curl-cat looked at her through eyes slitted against the force of the rising wind. Charis shivered. There was a promise of rain in the feel of that breeze, she thought. To be caught on this barren rock in a storm . . .

Only that half-pocket below offered any shelter at all; best get into it now. Tsstu was prudently already on the way, though with caution as she clawed along the ledges.

Rain sure enough, great drops slapping down. But rain meant water to drink. Charis welcomed those runnels which spattered into the pockets of rock. With the gift of rain water, this storm could be a blessing for them both.

The birds which had cried overhead were now gone. Tsstu, prowling their scrap of ground, went to work at a matted tangle against the ridge wall. She looked up with a trickle of white coursing over her chin, which she swept away with a swift swipe of tongue.

“—ree—“ She pushed her head back into the tangle and then backed out, coming to Charis carrying something in her mouth with delicate care. When the girl put out her hand, Tsstu dropped into it a ball which could only be an egg.

Hunger fought with distaste and won. Charis broke a small hole in the top of that sphere and sucked its contents, trying not to notice the taste. Eggs and rain water --  How long would they last? How long would the two of them last perched up here, especially if the wind grew strong enough to lick them off?

“The dream is yours. Dream true.” Could this be only one of those very real dreams which the Wyverns were able to evoke? Charis could not remember that in any of those visions she had felt the need to eat or drink. Dream or real? Charis had no evidence either way.

But there had to be some way of escape!

The ridge at her back kept a measure of the rain from them, but the water gathering on the higher level drained down into this slight basin, pooling up about the roots of the few small plants. The earth about them grew slick.

If she only had the disk! But she had not had that back in that passage where the patterns had glowed on the walls. Yet her concentration upon those designs had taken her into the Wyvern assembly.

Suppose she had the same means of leaving here—where would she go? Not back to the Citadel; that was enemy territory now. To the raided post? No, unless she was only seeking a hiding place. But that was not what she wanted.

Wyvern witches against off-worlders. If the natives moved only against the Jacks and their own renegade males, that was none of her battle. But they were seeing all off-worlders as enemies now. If this rock exile was merely a device to keep her out of battle, it was a well-planned one. But she was of one stock; the Wyverns, no matter how much they had been in accord, were alien. And when it came to drawing battle lines, she was on the other side, whether her original sympathies lay there or not.

No, Charis did not care what happened to the scum which had turned Jack here; the quicker they were dealt with the better. But they should be disciplined by their own kind.

Lantee and this Ragnar Thorvald who represented off-world law on Warlock and who now were apparently lumped with those to be finished off, Wyvern-fashion—they must have a say. If they could be warned, then there might still be time to summon the Patrol to handle the Jacks and prove to the Wyverns that all off-worlders were not alike.

A warning. But even with the disk Charis could not reach the government base. You had to have a previous memory of any point, be able to picture it in your mind, in order to use the Power to reach it. And Lantee—what had happened to him at the post? Was he even still alive after that mind blast from the Wyverns?

Could—just possibly—could you use a person as a journey goal? Not to summon him to you as she had so disastrously done with Gytha at the post, but to go to him? It was action she had never tried. But it was a thought.

Only first—the means. With a disk, one focused on the pattern until one’s eyes were set, and one’s concentration reached the necessary pitch to use one’s will as a springboard into Otherwhere, or through it into another place.

Back in the passage, she had involuntarily used the glowing design on the wall to project her into the Wyvern council, though then she had not controlled her place of arrival.

What was important then was not the disk itself but the design it bore. Suppose she could reproduce that pattern here, concentrate upon it. Escape? It might be her one chance. Manifestly she had no means of leaving here otherwise. So why not try the illogical?

Then—go where? The post? The moss meadow? Any point on which she could fix an entrance would bring her no closer to the base of the Survey men. But if she could join Lantee—him she could visualize strongly enough to use. The only other possibility was Jagan and she could not obtain any aid from the trader, even if he were still alive.

To join Lantee who, by his own account, had some experience with Wyvern dreaming and Power—might that not make him more receptive as a focal point? There was so much she had to guess about this, but it was the best chance she could see now. If she could set up the liberating pattern at all.

What were her means? The rock was too rough to serve as a surface on which to scratch lines. The slick clay at the edge of the growing pool caught Charis’s attention. It was a relatively flat stretch and one could make an impression on it with a sharp stone or a branch from one of the bushes. But she had to do it right.

Charis closed her eyes and tried to build within her mind the all-important memory. There was a wavy line which curled back upon its length—so. Then the break which came—thus. Something else—something missing. Her agitation grew as she strove to fit in the part she could not remember. Maybe if she drew it out she would . . .

But the expanse of the clay was now too well covered by the pool water. And the wind was rising. With Tsstu curled close against her, Charis hugged the protecting ridge rock. There was nothing to do until the storm died.

Within a very short time Charis began to fear that they would not survive the fury of the wind, the choking drive of the rain. Only the fact that the ridge wall was there and they were tight against it gave them anchorage. The downpour continued to raise the pool until the water lapped Charis’s cold feet and legs, but then it reached new runnels to feed it to the sea below.

Tsstu was a source of warmth in her arms and the curl-cat’s vague communication was a reassurance, too. A confidence flowed from the animal to the girl, not steadily, but when she needed it most. Charis wondered just how much of what had happened to them Tsstu understood. Their band of mind-touch was so narrow the girl could not judge the intelligence of the Warlockian animal by the forms of comparison she knew. Tsstu might be far more than she seemed or be assessed as less because of the lack of full communication.

There came a time when the wind no longer lashed at their refuge or poked in finger-gusts to try to loosen their hold. The sky lightened and the rain, from a blustering wall of driven water, slackened into a drizzle. Still Charis was not sure of the design. But she watched the shore of the pool avidly, wondering whether she could bare the clay by cupping out water with her hands.

The sky was streaked with gold when she edged forward and twisted a length of water-soaked frond from one of the bushes. To strip away leaves and give herself a writing point was no problem. Impatience possessed her now—she must try this slender hope.

She cupped out some of the pool water by hand, clearing a stretch of smooth blue clay. Now! Charis found her fingers shaking a little; she set her will and muscle power to control that trembling as she put the point of her writing tool in the sticky surface.

Thus—the wavy line which was the base of the design to her thinking. Yes! Now for the sharp counterstroke to bisect it at just the proper angle. There—correct. But the missing part . . .

Charis shut her eyes tightly. Wave, line --  What was the other? Useless. She could not remember.

Bleakly she looked down at the almost complete pattern. But “almost” would not serve; it had to be perfect. Tsstu sat beside her, staring with feline intensity at the marks in the clay. Suddenly she shot out a paw, planted it flat before Charis could interfere. At the girl’s cry, the curl-cat’s ears folded and she growled softly, but she withdrew her forefoot, leaving the impress of three pads set boldly in the mud.

Three indentations! No—two! Charis laughed. Tsstu’s memory was the better. She rubbed the mud clear, began to draw again—this time far more swiftly—with self-confidence. Wavy line, cut, two ovals—not quite where Tsstu had placed them, but here and here.

“Meeerrreee!”

“Yes!” Charis echoed that cry of triumph. “Will it work, little one? Will it work? And where do we go?”

But she knew she had already made up her mind as to that. Not a place but a man was her goal—at least at first try. If she could not join Lantee, they would try for the moss meadow and the chance of working their way south to the base from there. But that meant a waste of time they might not have to spend. No—for what might be the safety of all their kind on this world, Lantee was her first goal.

First she began to build her mental picture of the Survey officer, fitting in every small detail that memory supplied, and she found there were more of those to summon than she had believed. His hair, black, crisply curling like Tsstu’s; his brown face sober and masked until he smiled but then softening about his mouth and eyes; his spare, wiry body in the green-brown uniform, his companion Taggi. Erase the wolverine, a second living thing might confuse the Power.

Charis found that she could not divide the two in her mind-picture. Man and animal, they clung together despite her efforts to forget Taggi and see only Lantee. Once more she built up the picture of Shann Lantee as she had seen him at the post before she had summoned Gytha. Just so he had stood, looked, been. Now!

Tsstu had come back into her arms, her claws caught in Charis’s already slitted tunic. Charis regarded the curl-cat with a smile.

“We had better finish this flitting about soon or you will have me reduced to rags. Shall we try it?”

“—reee—“ Agreement by mind-touch, eager anticipation. Tsstu appeared to have no doubts that they would go somewhere.

Charis stared down at the pattern.

Cold—no light at all—a terrible emptiness. Life was not. She wanted to scream under a torture which was not of body but of mind. Lantee—where was Lantee? Dead? Was this death into which she had followed him?

Cold again—but another kind of cold. Light—light which carried the promise of life she knew and understood. Charis fought down the churning sickness which had come from that terror of the place where life did not exist.

A rank smell, a growling answered by Tsstu’s “rrruuugh” or warning. Charis saw the rocky waste about them and—the brown Taggi. The wolverine lumbered back and forth, pausing now and then to snarl. And Charis caught the feeling of fear and bewilderment which moved him. Always his pacing brought him back to the figure which squatted in a small fissure, huddling there, facing outward.

“Lantee!” Charis’s cry of recognition was almost a paean of thanksgiving. Her gamble had paid off; they had reached the Survey man.

But if he heard her, saw her, he made no response. Only Taggi turned and came to her at an awkward run, his round head up, his harsh cry sounding not in warning-off anger but as a petition for aid. Lantee must be hurt. Charis ran.

“Lantee?” she called again as she went to her knees before the crevice into which he had crawled. Then she saw his face clearly.

At their first meeting his expression had been guarded, remote, but it had been—alive. This man breathed; she could see the rise and fall of his chest. His skin—she reached out her hand, rested finger tips briefly on his wrist, then raised them to his cheek—his skin was neither burning with fever nor unduly chill. Only what had made him truly a man and not a living husk was gone, sucked or driven out of him. By that bolt of the Wyvern’s wrath?

Charis sat back on her heels and looked about. This was not the clearing before the post, so he had not remained where she had seen him fall. She could hear the sea. They were somewhere in the wilds along the coast. How and why he had come here did not matter now.

“Lantee—Shann—“ She made a coaxing sound of his name as one might to attract the attention of a child. There was no flicker of response in his dead eyes, on the husk of a face.

The wolverine pushed against her, his rank odor strong. Taggi’s head moved, his jaws opened and closed on her hand, not in anger but as a bid for attention. Seeing that he had that, Taggi released his hold, swung around facing inland, his growl a plain warning of danger in that direction.

Tsstu’s ears, which had flattened at first sight of the Terran animal, spread again. She clawed at Charis. Something was coming; her own warning was piercingly sharp—they must go.

Charis reached again for Lantee’s wrist, her fingers closed firmly as she pulled him forward. Whether she could get him moving she did not know.

“Come—come, we must go.” Perhaps her words had no meaning, but he was responding to her tug, crawling out of the crevice, rising to his feet as she stood up and drew him with her. He would keep moving as long as she kept hold of his arm, Charis discovered, but if she broke contact, he stopped.

So propelling him, the girl turned south, Tsstu prowling ahead, Taggi forming a rear guard. Who or what could be behind them she did not know; her worst suspicions said Jack. Lantee wore no weapon, not even a stunner. And thrown stones were no protection against blasters. To find a refuge in which to hole up was perhaps their only hope if they were trailed.

Luckily, the terrain before them was not too rough. She could not have hauled Lantee, even docile as he was, up or down climbs. Not too far ahead were signs of broken country, an uneven line of outcrops sharp against the sky. And somewhere among those they might find a temporary sanctuary. Taggi had disappeared. Twice Charis had turned to watch for the wolverine, not daring to call. She remembered the whistle she had heard back in the moss meadow when she had first sighted the Survey officer and his four-footed companion. That summons she could not duplicate.

Now she hurried on. Under her urging, Lantee lengthened his stride, but there was no sign that he was responding to anything but her pull on his arm. He might have been a robot. Any warning she had would mean nothing to him in his present condition, and whether that had been caused only by temporary shock from the encounter with the blast of Wyvern power or something more lasting, she could not tell.

It would not be long until sunset, Charis knew. To reach the broken land before the failing of the light was her purpose. And she made it. Tsstu scouted out what they needed, a ledge forming a good overhang which was half cave. Charis pushed Lantee ahead of her into the growing pool of shadow and pulled him down. He sat there, staring unseeingly out into the twilight.

Emergency rations? His uniform belt had a series of pockets in its broad length and Charis set about searching them. A message or record tape in the first, then a packet of small tools for which she could not imagine any use apart from complicated installation repairs, three credit tokens, a case for identity and permit cards containing four she did not pause to read, another packet of simple first-aid materials—perhaps more to the purpose now than the rest. She worked from right to left, emptying each pocket and then restoring its contents, while Lantee paid no heed to her search. Now—this was what she had hoped for. She had seen just such tubes carried by the ranger on Demeter. Sustain tablets. Not only would they allay hunger, but they added a booster which restored and nourished nervous energy.

Four of them. Two Charis dropped back into the tube which she placed in her own belt pouch. One she mouthed and chewed with vigor. There was no taste at all, but she got it down. The other she held uncertainly. How could she get it into Lantee? She doubted if he would eat in his present condition. She would have to see if a certain amount of absorption would come by the only way left. She gathered two pebbles from the ground and brushed them back and forth on her ragged tunic to clean them from dust as well as she could, next, that identity card case, also dusted for surface dirt. With the rubbing of the tablet between the two pebbles, Charis obtained a powder, caught on the slick surface of the case.

Then, forcing his mouth open, the girl was able to brush that powder into Lantee’s mouth. It was the best she could do. And just maybe the reviving powers of the highly concentrated Sustain might cut down the effects of the shock—or whatever affected him now.

XI

While she still had light, Charis set about making their half-cave into more of a fortress, pushing and carrying loose stones to build up a low wall across its front. If they kept well down behind that, the green of her tunic and the green-brown of Lantee’s uniform would not be too noticeable. She bit at a ragged nail as she crawled back under cover.

The pocket of shadow had deepened and Charis put out a questioning hand to guide her. She touched Lantee’s shoulder and moved, to huddle down close beside him. Tsstu flitted in, “meeerreeed” once, and then left on a hunt of her own. Of Taggi, there had been no sign since they had come into the broken land. Perhaps the wolverine, too, had gone in quest of food.

Charis let her head fall forward to rest on her knees. In this cramped space it was necessary to ball one’s body into the smallest possible compass. She was not really tired; the Sustain tablet was working. But she needed to think. The Wyverns had warned her that time was against her. She had won free from the sea-rock to which they had exiled her, but perhaps she had made the wrong choice of escape. In his present condition, Lantee was no ally but a responsibility. With the coming of light she could redraw the pattern, get as far south as the moss meadow. How much farther beyond that lay the government base she had no idea. But if she kept on following the shore she would eventually reach it.

But—Lantee? She could not take him with her, she was sure of that. And to leave him here in his condition—Charis shied from that solution every time the brutal necessity for action presented it. He was no friend; they had no acquaintance past that one meeting by the post. He had no claim on her at all and the need for action was urgent.

There were times when one human life was expendable for the whole. But, well as she knew the bitter logic of that reasoning, Charis found a barrier in her against her following it as high and firm as the barriers which the Wyverns had used to control her. Well, she could do nothing during the hours of dark. Maybe before morning Lantee would come out of it, out of this state of non-being. It was childish to cling to such hope but she did. Now she tried to will herself to sleep, a sleep past the entry of any dream.

“—ah—ahhhhhhh—“

The plaint was that of pain. Charis strove to deafen herself against it.

“—ah—ahhhhhhh!”

The girl’s head came up. There was a stirring beside her. She could not see Lantee save as a dim bulk in the gloom, but her hand went out to feel the convulsive shudders which tore him. And always came that small thread of a moan which must mark some unendurable agony.

“Lantee!” She shook his arm and he fell over against her, his head now resting on her knee, so that the shivering which rocked him became partly hers. His moaning had stopped, but his breath came and went in great sucking gasps, as if he could not get oxygen enough to satisfy the needs of his trembling body.

“Shann—what is it?” Charis longed for light enough to see his face. When she had nursed those struck down by the white plague on Demeter, she had known this same sick fear, this same courage sapping frustration. What could she do, what could anyone do? She drew him toward her so that his head rested in her lap, tried to hold him still. But just as he had been apathetic and robot-like before, so now he was restless. His head turned back and forth as that horrible gasping racked him.

“Rrrruuuu.” Out of nowhere Tsstu came, a shadow. The curl-cat was on Lantee’s chest, crouched low, clinging with claws when Charis tried to push her away. Then a growl and Taggi burst around the stones Charis had set up, came to nuzzle against Lantee’s twisted body as if, with Tsstu, he strove to hold the sufferer still. Need—it was a cloud about the four of them—the blind call for help which Lantee did not have to put into words for Charis to feel, the concern of the animals, her own helplessness. This was a crisis point, she realized that. The Survey man was fighting a battle, and if he lost -- ?

“What can I do?” she cried aloud. This was not an affair of the body—she had delved deeply enough into the Wyvern Power to know that—but of mind, of—of identity.

Will—that was the springboard of Wyvern power. They willed what they wished, and it was! She was willing now—willing Lantee to . . .

Dark and cold and that which was nothing once again, this was the space into which her desire to help was drawing her, a space which was utterly alien to her kind. Dark—cold. But now --  Two small lights, flickering, then growing stronger, though the dark and cold fought to extinguish them; two lights which drew closer to her and grew and grew. She did not reach out her hands to take up those lights, but they came as if she had called. And then Charis was aware that there was a third light, and she furnished the energy on which it fed.

Three lights joined to speed through that dark in search. No thought, no speech among them; just the compulsion to answer a calling need. For the dark and cold were all-encompassing, a sea of black having no shore, no islands.

Island? Faint, so faint, a glimmer showed on the sea. They spun together, those three lights, and struck down to the small spark gleaming in that encroaching and swallowing dark. Now there was a fourth light like an ash-encrusted coal in a near-dead fire. Together the three aimed at that fire, but there was no touching it: They had not the power to strike through, and the fire was near extinction.

Then the light which was fed by Charis’s energy and will soared, drawing also that which was the animals’. She reached out, not with a physical arm or hand but with an extension of her inner force, and touched one of her companion lights.

It snapped toward her. She was rent, to writhe in pain as emotions which were alien warred against that which was Charis alone—wild, raw emotions which boiled and frothed, which dashed her in and about. But she fought back, strove to master and won to an uneasy stability. And then she reached out again and drew to her the second spark.

Once again she was in tumult, and even greater was the fight she had to wage for supremacy. But the urgency which had drawn all three, the need to go to the dying fire, laid upon them now the need for acting as one. And when Charis called upon that need, they obeyed.

Down to that glimmer which was now far spent sped a bolt of flaming force raised to the highest possible pitch. That broke through, pierced to the heart of the fire.

Turmoil for a space. Then it was as if Charis raced wildly down a corridor into which emptied many doors. From behind each of these came people and things she did not know, who grasped at her, tried to shout messages in her ears, impress upon her their importance, until Charis was deafened, driven close to the edge of sanity. To that corridor she could see no end.

The voices screamed, but through them came other sounds—a growling, a squalling—equal to the voices, demanding attention in their turn. Charis could not run much farther . . .

Silence, abrupt, complete—and in its way terrifying, too. Then—light. And she had a body again. Aware first of that, Charis ran a hand down that body in wonder and thankfulness. She looked about her. Under her sandaled feet was sand, silver sand. But this was not the shore of the sea. In fact, vision in any direction was not clear, for there was a mist which moved in spirals and billows, a mist of green, the same green as the tunic she wore.

The mist curled, writhed, held a darker core. She saw movement in that core, as if an arm had drawn aside a curtain.

“Lantee!”

He stood there, facing her. But it was no longer the shell of a man she saw. There was life and awareness back in his body and mind. He held out his hand to her.

“Dream . . . ?”

Was it all a dream? She had known such clarity of vision before in the dream Otherwhere of the Wyverns.

“I don’t know,” she answered his half-question.

“You came—you!” There was a kind of wondering recognition in his voice which she understood. They had been together in that place where their kind was not. The four fires, joined together, had now broken the bonds which had held him in a place their species should never know.

“Yes.” Lantee nodded even though Charis had put none of that into words. “You and Taggi and Tsstu. Together you came, and together we broke out.”

“But this?” Charis gazed about at the green mist. “Where is this?”

“The Cavern of the Veil—of illusions. But this I believe is a dream. Still they strive to keep us that much in bonds.”

“For dreams there are answers.” Charis went down on her knees and smoothed the sand. With one finger tip she traced her design. It was not clear in the powdery stuff, but there was enough, she hoped, to serve her purpose. Then she looked at Lantee.

“Come.” Charis held out her hand. “Think of a half-cave—“ swiftly she described the place they had been in at night “—and keep hold. We must try to return.”

She felt his grip tense and harden, his stronger fingers cramping hers until her flesh numbed. And then she centered all of her mind on the picture of the ledge cave and the pattern . . .

Charis was stiff and cold, her arm ached, her hand was numb. Behind her was a rock wall, over her head an extension of it, and from before her a breath of sun heat. There was a sigh and she glanced down.

Lantee lay there, curled up awkwardly, his head in her lap, his hand clutching hers in that numbing grip. His face was drawn and haggard, as if he had aged planet years since she had seen him last. But the slack blankness which had been so terrifying was gone. He stirred and opened his eyes, first bewildered, but then knowing, recognizing her.

He raised his head.

“Dream!”

“Maybe. But we are back—here.” Charis freed her hand from his hold and spread her cramped fingers. With her other hand she patted the nearest stone in her improvised wall to assure herself of its reality.

Lantee sat up and rubbed his hand across his eyes. But Charis remembered.

“Tsstu! Taggi!”

There was no sign of either animal. A small nagging fear began to nibble at her mind. They—they were those other lights. And she had lost them; they had not been in the place of green mist. Were they lost forever?

Lantee stirred. “They were with you—there?” It was not a question but a statement. He crawled out from under the ledge, whistled a clear rising note or two. Then he stooped and held out his hand again to draw her up beside him.

“Tsstu!” aloud she called the curl-cat.

Faint—very faint—an answer! Tsstu had not been abandoned in that place. But where was she?

“Taggi is alive!” Lantee’s smile was real. “And he answered me. It was different, that answer, from what it has ever been before, more as if we spoke.”

“To have been there—might not that bring a change in us all?”

For a moment he was silent and then he nodded. “You mean because we were all one for a space? Yes, perhaps that cannot be ever put aside.”

She had a spinning vision of that race down the endless corridor with its opening doors and the shouting figures emerging from them. Had those represented Lantee’s memories, Lantee’s thoughts? Not again did she want to face that!

“No,” he agreed without need of speech from her, “not again. But there was then the need—“

“More than one kind of need.” Charis shied away from any more mention of that mingling. “There’s more trouble than Wyvern dreaming for us to consider now.” She told him of what she had learned.

Lantee’s mouth thinned into a straight line, his jaw thrust forward a little. “Thorvald was with them or at least at the Citadel when we found that spear. They may have put him away as they did me. Now they can move against all off-worlders without interference. We have a com-tech at the base, and a Patrol scout may have set down since I left—one was almost due. If that ship had not come in, Thorvald would have recalled me when he left. Two, maybe three, men were there and none of them armored against Wyvern control. We’ve been very cautious about trying to expand the base because we did want to maintain good relations. These Jacks have blown the whole plan! You say they have some Wyvern warriors helping them? I wonder how they worked that. From all we’ve been able to learn, and that’s very little, the witches have a firm control over their males. That has always been one of the problems; makes it almost impossible for them to conceive of cooperation with us.”

“The Jacks must have something to nullify the Power,” Charis commented.

“That’s all we need,” he said bitterly. “But if they can nullify the Power, then how can the witches go up against them?”

“The Wyverns seem very sure of themselves.” Charis had her own first doubts. With the assembly arrayed against her back at the Citadel, she had accepted their warning; her respect for their Power had not been shaken until this moment. But Lantee was right. If the invaders were able to nullify the Power to the extent of releasing the males who had always been under domination, then could the witches hope to battle the strangers themselves?

“No,” Lantee continued, “they’re very sure of themselves because they’ve never before come up against anything which threatened their hold on their people and their way of life. Perhaps they can’t even conceive of the Power’s being broken. We had hoped to make them understand eventually that there were other kinds of power, but we have not had time. To them this is a threat, right enough, but not the supreme threat I believe it is.”

“Their power has been broken,” Charis said quietly.

“With a nullifier, yes. How soon do you suppose the truth of that will get through to them?”

“But we did not need this machine or whatever the Jacks have. We broke it—the four of us!”

Lantee stared at her. Then he threw back his head and laughed, not loudly but with the ring of real amusement.

“You are right. And what will our witches say to this, I wonder? Or do they already know? Yes, you freed me from whatever prison they consigned me to. And it was a prison!” His smile vanished, the drawn lines in his face sharpened. “So—their power can be broken or circumvented in more ways than one. But I do not think that even that information will deter them from making the first move. And they must be stopped.” He hesitated and then added in a rush of words, “I am not arguing that they should take the interference of the Jacks and not fight back. By their way of thinking their way of life is threatened. But if these witches go ahead as they plan and try to wipe us all off Warlock, supposing they are able to fight the Jack weapon or weapons, then they will have written the end to their own story themselves.

“For if this band of Jacks has come up with a nullifier to defeat the Power, others can, too. It will just be a matter of time until the Wyverns are under off-world control. And that mustn’t happen!”

“You say that?” Charis asked curiously. “You?”

“Does that surprise you? Yes, they have worked on me and this was not the first time. But I, too, have shared their dreaming. And because I did and Thorvald did, we were that much closer to bridging the gap between us. We must be changed in part when we are touched by the Power. But though they may have to bend to weather a new wind—which will be very hard for them—they must not be swept away. Now—“ he looked about him as if he could summon a copter out of the air “—we have to be on the move.”

“I don’t think they will allow us to return to the Citadel,” Charis demurred.

“No, if they are working up to some stroke against off-worlders, they will have all the screens up about their prime base. Our own headquarters is the only place. From there we can signal for help. And if time is good to us, we can handle the Jacks before they do. But where we are now and how far from the base—“ Lantee shook his head.

“Do you have your disk?” he added a moment later.

“No. But I don’t need it.” Just how true that was, Charis could not be sure. She had won off the rock island and out of the place of green mist without it, however. “But I’ve never seen your base.”

“If I described it, as you did this rock hole for me, would that serve?”

“I don’t know. The cavern was a dream, I think.”

“And our bodies remained here as anchors to draw us back? That could well be. But there’s no harm in trying.”

The hour must have been close to midday; the sun was burning hot on the baked section of rock. And, as Lantee had pointed out, they were lost as far as landmarks were concerned. His suggestion was as good as any. Charis looked about for a patch of earth and a stone or stick to scratch with. But there was neither.

“I must have something which will make a mark.”

“A mark?” Lantee echoed as he, too, surveyed their general surroundings. Then he gave an exclamation and snapped open a belt pocket to bring out the small aid kit. From its contents he selected a slender pencil which Charis recognized as sterile paint, made to cleanse and heal small wounds. It was of a greasy consistency. She tried it on the rock. The mark was faint but she could see it.

“Now,” Lantee sat on his heels beside her, “we’ll aim for a place I know about a half mile from the base.”

“Why not the base itself?”

“Because there may be a reception waiting there that we wouldn’t care to meet. I want to do some scouting before I walk into what might be real trouble.”

He was right, of course. Either the Wyverns might already have made their move—for how could Charis guess how much time had actually passed since she had been wafted from the assembly to the island—or the Jacks, learning the undermanned status of the only legal hold on Warlock, had taken it over to save themselves from off-world interference.

“Right here—there’s a lake shaped so.” Lantee had taken the sterile stick from her and was drawing. “Then trees, a line of them standing this way. The rest is meadow land. We should be at this end of the lake.”

It was hard to translate those marks into a real picture and Charis began to shake her head. Suddenly her companion leaned forward and laid his palms flat against her forehead just above her eyes.

XII

What Charis saw was indistinct and fuzzy, not as clean-cut as a picture she recalled from her own memory, but perhaps enough for concentration. Only, with that fogged picture came other things; that corridor with the doors was beginning to take form behind the wood and lake. Charis struck Lantee’s hand away and stared at him, breathing hard, trying to read an answering awareness in his eyes.

“We’ll have to remember the dangers of that.” Lantee spoke first.

“Not again! Never again!” Charis heard her voice grow shrill.

But already he was nodding in reply. “No, not again. But did you see enough of the other?”

“I hope so.” She took the stick from him and chose a flat rock surface on which to sketch the Power design. It was when she was putting in the ovals Tsstu had remembered for her that Charis paused.

“Tsstu! I cannot leave her behind. And Taggi—“

She closed her eyes and sent out that silent call. “Tsstu, come! Come now!”

Touch! There came an overlapping of thought waves as fuzzy as the picture Lantee had beamed to her. And—refusal! Decided refusal—an abrupt breaking of contact. Why?

“There is no use,” she heard Lantee say as she opened her eyes again.

“You reached Taggi.” It was not a question.

“I reached him in a different way than I ever have before. He would not listen. He was occupied—“

“Occupied?” Charis wondered at his word choice. “Hunting?”

“I don’t think so. He was exploring, trying something new which interested him so greatly he would not come.”

“But they are here, back with us, not in Otherwhere?” Her relief was threatened by that recurring fear.

“I don’t know where they are. But Taggi has no fear; he is only curious, very curious. And Tsstu?”

“She broke contact. But—yes—I think she had no fear either.”

“We shall have to leave now!” Lantee continued.

If they could, Charis amended silently. She took his hand once more. “Think of your lake,” she ordered and concentrated on the faint pattern on the rock.

Cool breeze—the murmur of it through leaves. The direct baking of the sun had been modified by a weaving of branches, and just before her was the shimmer of lake surface.

“We made it!” The tight grasp on her hand was gone. Lantee surveyed the site with a wary measuring, his nostrils slightly dilated as if, like Taggi, he could pick up and classify some alien scent.

There was a path along the lake shore, defined well enough to be clearly visible. Otherwise the place was as deserted as if no off-worlder had ever been there before.

“This way!” Lantee motioned her south, away from the thread of path. His voice was close to a whisper, as if he suspected they were scouting enemy-held territory.

“There’s a hill in this direction and from it we can get a good look at the base.”

“But why -- ?” Charis began and was favored with an impatient frown from her companion.

“If there’s any move being made, either by the Jacks or the witches, the first strike will be at the base. With Thorvald and me out of the way, the witches may be able to put Hantin, or any other off-worlder, right under control. And the Jacks could overrun the whole place easily, make a surprise attack and write off the base just as they wrote off the trading post.”

She followed him with no more questions. On Demeter Charis had gone exploring with the ranger; she thought she knew a measure of woodcraft. But Lantee was as much at home in this business as Taggi could be. He slipped soundlessly from one piece of cover to another. However, she noted with some surprise, he did not display any outward signs of impatience when her clumsiness slowed them. And she was even a little resentful of what she came to believe was his forbearance.

Hot and very thirsty, Charis wriggled up a slope Lantee had led them to. She had a swelling bite delivered by the rightful inhabitant of an earthen run she had inadvertently crushed, and her throat ached with desert dryness before they lay side by side behind a screen of brush at the top of that rise.

A cluster of four bubble domes lay below and, farther away, a landing field. There was a light copter standing to one side of that, and on the rocket-blasted middle section stood a small spacer—a Patrol scout, Charis believed.

It was very peaceful there below. No one moved about the buildings, but pale flowers native to Warlock grew in the open space. And some brighter spots in those beds suggested that perhaps some off-world plants had been imported as an experiment.

“It looks all right—“ she began.

“It looks all wrong!” His whisper carried something of the hiss of Wyvern anger.

There were no blast holes in the fabric of the domes as there had been at the raided post, nothing in sight which suggested trouble. But Lantee’s concern was plain to read, and she returned to a second and more searching survey of the scene.

It must be midafternoon and there was a quality of drowsy peace down there. The inhabitants could all be dozing out the hours at their ease. Charis made up her mind not to ask for enlightenment but wait for her companion to volunteer the cause for his suspicion.

He began to talk softly, perhaps more as a listing of his own causes for suspicion aloud rather than as a sharing of information with Charis.

“Com mast down. Hantin’s not out in the garden working on that new crossing bed of his. And Togi—Togi and the cubs—“

“Togi?” Charis dared to ask.

“Taggi’s mate. She has two cubs and they spend every afternoon that’s sunny down among those rocks. They’re very fond of earth-wasp grubs and there’s several colonies of them to be found there. Togi’s been teaching the cubs how to dig them out.”

But how could he be sure that just because a wolverine and her cubs were not at a certain place there was trouble below? Then Charis added that to the two other facts he had noted—the com mast down and that he had not seen one of the base personnel outside. But both of those were such little things—

“Put those three together”—Lantee was either able to read her thoughts in part or was following her own line or reasoning with surprising accuracy—“and you have a wrong answer. On a base you come to follow habit. We have the com mast up always. That’s orders and you don’t change regulations unless there’s an emergency. Hantin is experimenting with the crossing of some of the native plants with off-world varieties. He’s hybrid-mad and he spends all his free time in the garden. And Togi is earth-wasp minded; only caging would keep her away from those rocks. And since we’ve yet to find any cage she can’t break out of—“ He looked glum.

“So—what do we do now?”

“We wait until dark. If the base is deserted and the com not wrecked—both of which are slim chances—there may be an opportunity to get a call off planet. But there’s no use in trying to get down there now. Any approach would have to be made across the open.”

He was right in that. The usual clearing about buildings ordered by custom in a frontier world was not as open here as it had been about Jagan’s post. But there was no brush or trees or other cover growth left within a good distance of any of the four domes or the landing field. To approach those meant advancing in the open.

Lantee rolled over on his back and lay staring up into the bush they were using as a screen with an intentness which suggested that he hoped to read the answer for their problem somewhere within the maze of its drooping branches.

“Togi—“ Charis broke the silence “—is she like Taggi? Could you call her?” What aid the wolverine might be Charis did not know, but to try and reach her was action of some sort, and just now she found inaction more frustrating than she could bear.

Exasperation sharpened Lantee’s reply. “What do you think I’m trying to do? But since she has had cubs she is less receptive to orders. We have let her go her own way while they are small. Whether she will ever obey spoken commands again, I am not sure.”

He closed his eyes, a frown line sharp between his well-marked brows. Charis propped her chin on her hand. As far as she could determine, the base continued to drowse in the sun. Was it really deserted? Through Wyvern Power sending its inhabitants into that strange darkness? Or left so by a Jack raid?

Unlike the rugged setting Jagan had chosen for his post, this more open country was lighter, gave no feeling of somberness darkening into possible menace. Or was she becoming so accustomed to the general Warlockian scenery that it no longer looked the same to her as it had when Jagan had brought her out of the spacer? How long ago? weeks? months? Charis had never been able to reckon how much time she had spent with the Wyverns.

Yes, here Warlock was fair under the amber sky, the golden sun. The amethyst hues of the foliage were sheer splendor. Purple and gold—the ancient colors of royalty in the days when Terra had hailed kings and queens, emperors and empresses. And now Terran blood had spread from star to star, mutated, adapted, even allegiances had changed from world to world as the tides of migration had continued generation after generation. Ander Nordholm had been born on Scandia, but she herself had never seen that planet. Her mother had been from Bran, and she herself could claim Minos for her native soil. Three widely separated and different worlds. And she could not remember Minos at all. Lantee—where had Shann Lantee been born?

Charis turned her head to study him, trying to select some race or planet to fit his name and his general physical appearance. But to her eyes he was not distinctive enough a type to recognize. Survey drew from almost every settled planet of the Confederation. He could even be a native Terran. That he was Survey meant that he had certain basic traits of character, certain very useful skills. And that he was also wearing the gold key of an embassy above his cadet bar meant even more—that he had extra-special attributes into the bargain.

“It’s no use.” He raised his hand to shade his now open eyes. “If she is still down there, I can’t touch her—not mentally anyway.”

“What did you think she might do to help us now?” Charis asked, curious.

“Maybe nothing.” But that seemed an evasive answer to the girl.

“Are you a Beast Master?” she asked.

“No, Survey doesn’t use animals that way—as fighters or sabotage teams. Taggi and Togi are both fighters when they have to be, but they act more as scouts. In lots of ways their senses are more acute than ours; they can learn more in a shorter time about a new stretch of country than any human. But Taggi and Togi were sent here originally as an experiment. We learned after the Throg attack just how much they could help—“

“Listen!” Charis’s hand clamped onto his shoulder. She straightened out, flat to the ground, her head to one side. No, she had not been mistaken. The sound was growing louder.

“Atmosphere flyer!” Lantee’s identification confirmed her own guess. “Back!” He rolled farther under the drooping branches of the bush and tugged at Charis as she wormed in after him.

The flyer was approaching from the north, not coming in over their present perch. As the plane set down on the landing strip, Charis saw that it was larger than the copter already there—probably a six-passenger ship motored for transcontinental service, not for the shorter flights of the copters.

“That’s none of ours!” Lantee whispered.

It came to a halt and two men dropped from it to stride purposefully toward the domes. They went so confidently that the watchers knew they must expect welcome or at least believe that no difficulty awaited them. They were too far from the spy post for their features to be distinguished, but while they wore uniforms of a similar cut to those at the post, Charis had never seen these before. The black and silver of Patrol, the green-brown of Survey, the gray and red of the medical service, the blue of Administration, the plain green of the Rangers, the maroon of Education—she could identify those at a glance. But these were a light yellow.

“Who?” she wondered. When she heard a small grunt from Lantee, she added, “Do you know?”

“Something—somewhere—“ Then he shook his head. “I’ve seen something like that color, but I can’t remember now.”

“Would Jacks wear uniforms? The one I saw with the blaster—he was dressed just like any other Free Trader.”

“No.” Lantee’s frown grew deeper. “It means something—if I only could remember!”

“No government service? Perhaps some planetary organization operating off-world,” Charis suggested.

“I don’t know how that could be. Look!”

A third man had come out of one of the domes. Like the two from the flyer he wore yellow, but sunlight struck glinting sparks from his collar and belt; that could only mark insignia of some type. A uniformed invasion of a government base --  A wild idea suddenly struck Charis.

“Shann—could—could a war have broken out?”

For a moment he did not answer her and, when he did, it was almost as if he were trying to deny that idea to himself as much as to her.

“The only war we’ve waged in centuries has been against the Throgs—and those aren’t Throgs down there! I was here just five days ago, and the messages we were receiving from off-world were all only routine. We had no warning of any trouble.”

“Five days ago?” she challenged him. “How can we be sure of how much time passed while the Wyverns controlled us? It may have been weeks or longer since you were here.”

“I know—I know. But I don’t think war is the answer. I just don’t believe it. But a Company action --  If they thought they could get away with a grab --  If the gain was big enough—“

Charis considered that. Yes, the Companies—they were regulated, curbed, investigated, as well as the Confederation and the Patrol could manage. But they had their own police, their extra-legal methods when they dared flaunt control. Only what would bring any one of the Companies to send a private army to Warlock? What treasure could be scooped up here before a routine Patrol visit would reveal such lawless activity?

“What could they find here to make it worth their while?” she asked. “Rare metals? What?”

“One thing—“ Lantee continued to watch the men below. The two from the flyer were discussing something with the man from the dome. One of them broke away and headed back for the aircraft. “One thing might just be worth it if they could seize it.”

“What?” Charis’s guesses roved wildly. Surely Jagan would have known and mentioned any outstanding native product during his instruction on trading.

“The Power itself! Think what that secret would mean to men who could use it on other worlds!”

He was right. The Power was a treasure great enough to tempt even one of the companies into piracy of a kind. If they mastered its use they could defy even the Patrol. And Lantee’s idea fitted very neatly into place, especially now that she remembered Jagan’s mention of the same quest.

“The nullifier.” She thought aloud. “That’s their answer to the use of the Power against them. But how did they develop something of the sort without knowing more about the Power? Maybe they believe they can use it to control the Wyverns and make them yield their secrets.”

“The nullifier, whatever it is, can be an adaptation of something already well known. As to the rest—yes—they could believe they have the witches finished.”

“But the Jacks? Why?”

Lantee scowled. “Not the first time a Company has shoved some of its hard-fisted boys into plain clothes and tried a Jack cover-screen for a quick steal. If they’re caught, then they’re just Jacks and nothing else. If they succeed, the Company comes in behind their screen and they all fade out as soon as the grab is over. If they believe now that they’ve either wiped out all opposition or have it under wraps, then they’re in the open with another force to consolidate their position and protect any experts and techs they send in for a real study of the Power. It all fits. Don’t you see how it fits?”

“But—if this is a Company at work—“ Charis’s voice trailed off as the full force of what might be arrayed against them struck home.

“You’re beginning to see? Jacks on their own are one thing; a Company pulling a grab is something else.” Lantee’s tone was bleak. “They will have resources to draw on to back their every move. Right now I wouldn’t wager star against comet that they’re not in complete control here.”

“Maybe,” Charis chose to use his gambling symbols, “they may believe that they have every comet on the board blocked, but there are a few wild stars left.”

There was a faint suggestion of a smile about his lips.

“Two wild stars, perhaps?”

“Four. Do not underestimate Tsstu and Taggi.” And she meant that, strange as it sounded.

“Four—you, me, a wolverine, and a curl-cat—against the might of a Company. You fancy high odds, don’t you, Gentle Fem?”

“I fancy any odds we can get while the game is still in play. The counters have not been swept from the board yet.”

“No, nor the game called. And we might just run those odds to a more even balance. I do not think that our friends below have yet met the witches of Warlock. Even we do not know their full resources.”

“I hope they have some good ones left,” was her comment.

Only a short time ago the Wyverns had come out in the open as enemies. Now Charis wished with all her heart for their success. In the lines of battle, if what she and Lantee had come to believe was true, they would be on the side of the witches.

“What can we do?” She was again afire for action.

“We wait and still we wait. When it is dark, I want to see a little more of what is going on down there. Make sure, if we can, just what we are up against.”

He was entirely right, but waiting now was so very hard.

XIII

They lay side by side, watching the base. The flyer had taken off, leaving behind one of its passengers; with the officer, he had returned to the domes. Again the site was seemingly deserted.

“That is a Patrol scout ship down there,” Charis said. “Would any Company dare move outwardly against the Patrol?”

“With a good cover story they could risk it,” Lantee replied. “A scout isn’t on a tight report schedule, remember. They could say that they found this base deserted and blame any trouble on the Wyverns if it became necessary to provide an explanation. What I’d like to know is—if this is a Company grab—how they came to learn of the Power. Jagan ever say anything about it?”

“Yes, he mentioned it once. But he spoke mostly about things such as this cloth.” Charis plucked at the stuff of her tunic which was standing the hard usage better than Lantee’s uniform. “He was gambling to make a high stake, but I thought trade material was mostly fishing on his part.”

“He got in here over Thorvald’s protest,” Lantee commented. “We couldn’t see how he rated a permit in the first place, he was so close to the fringe.”

“Could he have been used as a Company cover? Maybe without his even knowing it?”

Lantee nodded. “Could well be. Send him in as an opening wedge and have his reports to add to their general knowledge since our files are closed—if any files are ever closed when the grab is big enough!” he ended cynically. “Somebody passed over a bag of credits in this deal. I’d swear blood-oath on that.”

“Just what can you do down there?” Charis asked.

“If the com isn’t out and if I can reach it, just one signal set on repeat will bring in such help as’ll make these blaster merchants think someone’s put a couple of earth-wasps under their tunic collars!”

“Several ifs in that.”

Lantee smiled his humorless, lip-stretching smile. “Life is full of ifs, Gentle Fem. I’ve carried a pack of them for years.”

“Where are you from, Shann?”

“Tyr.” The answer was short, bitten off as if meant to be final.

“Tyr,” Charis repeated. The name meant nothing to her, but who could ever catalogue the thousands of worlds where Terran blood had rooted, flowered, branched, and broken free to roam inward.

“Mining world. Right—right about there!” He had lifted his head and now he pointed northward into the sky which was displaying the more brilliant shades of sunset.

“I was born on Minos. But that doesn’t mean much since my father was an Education officer. I’ve lived on—five—six—Demeter was the seventh world.”

“Education officer?” Lantee echoed. “Then how did you get with Jagan? You beamed in a tape asking for aid. What was that all about anyway?”

She cut the story of Demeter and the labor contract to its bare bones as she told it.

“I don’t know whether Jagan could have held you to that contract here on Warlock. On some worlds it’d be legal, but anyway you could have fought him with Thorvald’s backing,” he observed when she was done.

“Doesn’t matter much now. You know—I didn’t like Warlock at first. It—it was almost frightening. But now, even with all this, I want to stay here.” Charis was surprised at her own words. She had said them impulsively but she knew they were true.

“By ordinary standards, this will never be a settlement world under the code.”

“I know—intelligent native life over the fifth degree—so we stay out. How many Wyverns are there anyway?”

He shrugged. “Who knows? They must have more than one settlement among the off-shore islands, but we do not go except to their prime base and then only on permission. You perhaps know more about them than we do.”

“This dreaming,” Charis mused. “Who can be sure of anything with them? But can the Power really be used by males? They are so certain that it can’t. And if they’re right about that, what can the Company do?”

“Follow Jagan’s lead and bring in women,” he retorted. “But we’re not sure that they are right. Maybe their males can’t ‘dream true,’ as they express it, but I dreamed, and Thorvald did, when they put us through their test at first contact. Whether I could use a disk or pattern as you have I don’t know. Their whole setup is so one-sided that contact with another way of life could push it entirely off base. Maybe if they were willing to try—“

“Listen!” Charis caught at his sleeve. Speculation about the future was interesting, but action was needed now. “What if you can use a pattern? You know the whole base; you could get down there and out again if you have to. It would be the perfect way to scout!”

Lantee stared at her. “If it did work -- !” She watched him catch some of her enthusiasm. “If it just would work!”

He studied the base. The shadows cast by the domes were far more pronounced, though the sky was still bright over their heads. “I could try for my own quarters. But how would I get out again? There’s no disk—“

“We’ll have to make one or its equivalent. Let’s see.” Charis wriggled about under their brush cover. The initial pattern to get in by—she could draw that on the ground as she had before. But the other one—to bring Lantee out again—he’d have to carry that with him. How?

“Could you use this?” The Survey man pulled free a wide, dark leaf. Its purple surface was smooth save for a center rib and it was as big as her two hands.

“Try this to mark with.” He had out his case of small tools and handed her a sharply pointed rod.

Carefully Charis traced the design which had unlocked so many strange places since she had first used it. Luckily the marks showed up well. When she had done, she handed the leaf to Lantee.

“It works so. First, you picture in your mind as clearly as you can the place you want to go. Then you concentrate on following this design with your eyes, from right to left—“

He glanced from the leaf to the base. “They can’t be everywhere,” he muttered.

Charis bit back a warning. Lantee knew the terrain better than she. Perhaps he, too, was chafing at inactivity. And, if the leaf pattern worked, he could be in and out of any danger before those who discovered him could move. It would be, or should be, sufficiently disconcerting to have a man materialize out of thin air before one, to give the materializer some seconds of advantage in any surprise confrontation.

Lantee’s expression changed. He had made up his mind. “Now!”

Charis could not bring herself to agree in this final moment. As he had said earlier, there were so many ifs. But neither had she the right to persuade him not to make the try.

He slid down the slope behind them, putting the hill between him and the base before getting to his feet, the leaf in his hands. His jaw set, his whole face became a mask of concentration. Nothing happened. When he looked up at her, his expression was bleak and pinched.

“The witches are right. It won’t work for me!”

“Perhaps—“ Charis had another thought.

“They must be right! It didn’t work.”

“Maybe for another reason. That’s my pattern, the one they gave me in the beginning.”

“You mean the patterns are individual—separate codes?”

“It’s reasonable to believe that. You know how they wear those decorative skin patterns, made up partially of their ancestors’ private designs, in order to increase their own Power. But each of them has her disk with her own design on it. It could be that only that works really.”

“Then I do it the hard way,” he replied. “Go in after dark.”

“Or I could go, if you’d give me a reference point as you did when we came here.”

“No!” There was no arguing against that; she read an adamant refusal in his whole stance.

“Together—as we came here?”

He balanced the leaf in his hand. Charis knew that he longed to be as decisive with another “no,” but there were advantages in her second suggestion which he had to recognize. She pushed that indecision quickly; not that she had any desire to penetrate into the enemy’s camp, but neither did she want to remain here alone and perhaps witness Lantee’s capture. To her mind, with the Power the two of them would have a better chance working together than the Survey man had as a lone scout.

“We can get in—and out—in a hurry. You’ve already agreed that’s true.”

“I don’t like it.”

She laughed. “What can one like about this? It is something we have agreed must be done. Or shall we just take to the countryside and wait out whatever they are planning to do?” Such prodding was not fair of her, but her impatience was rising to a point where it threatened her control.

“All right!” He was angry. “The room is like this.” Down on one knee, he sketched out a plan, explaining curtly. Then, before she could move, those same brown fingers were against her forehead, giving her once more that fuzzy picture. Charis jerked away from that contact.

“I told you—not that! Not again!” The girl had no desire to recall any of the earlier dizzy, frightening time when they joined minds after a fashion, when the strange thoughts strove to storm her own mental passages.

Lantee flushed and drew his hand back. Her uneasiness and faint disgust were at once overlaid by a feeling of guilt. After all, he was doing the best he could to insure the success of their action.

“I have the picture now as clearly as I had this place, and we came here safely,” she said hurriedly. “Let’s go!” For a moment his hand resisted her grasp as she caught it, then his hold tightened on hers.

First the room—then the pattern. It was becoming a familiar exercise, one she had full confidence in. But now—nothing happened.

It was as if she had thrown herself against some immovable and impenetrable wall! The barrier the Wyverns had reared to control her movements earlier? It was not that. She would have known it for what it was. This was different—a new sensation altogether.

She opened her eyes. “Did you feel it?” Lantee might not be able to work the transference on his own; but, linked, they had done it successfully once, so perhaps some part of the present failure had reached him.

“Yes. You know what it means? They do have a nullifier to protect them!”

“And it works!” Charis shivered, her hand creasing the leaf into a pulp.

“We were already sure that it did,” he reminded her. “Now—I shall go by myself.”

She did not want to admit that he was right, but she had to. Lantee knew every inch of the base; she was a stranger there. The invaders might have other safeguards besides the nullifier.

“You don’t even have a stunner  . . . “

“If I can get in down there, that little matter can be corrected. More than a stunner is needed now. This you can do—work your way around to the landing strip. If I succeed, we’ll make use of the copter. You can fly one?”

“Of course! But where will we go?”

“To the Wyverns. They’ll have to be made to understand what they are up against here. I ought to find evidence of one kind or another as to whether this is a Company grab. The witches may be able to blanket you out of their own mode of travel, but I’ll swear they have no way of preventing the copter from reaching their prime base. Let us just get to them and they can pick the truth out of our minds whether they want to or not.”

It sounded simple and as if it might work, Charis had to admit. But there was that tall hedge of ifs in between.

“All right. When do we move?”

Lantee crawled up to their former vantage point and she trailed him. After he surveyed the landscape he spoke, but he did not answer her question.

“You circle around in that direction, giving me a hundred-count start. We haven’t spotted any guards about the strip, but that doesn’t mean that they haven’t plugged it with sniffers, and those may even be paired with anti-persona bombs into the bargain.”

Was he deliberately trying to make her regret any part in this?

“We could certainly use the wolverines now. No sniffer could baffle them,” he continued.

“We could use a detachment of the Patrol, too,” Charis retorted tartly.

Lantee did not rise to that. “I’ll come in from that direction.” He pointed south. “Let’s hope our wild stars have the value we hope they do on this board. Luck!”

Before she could more than blink he had gone, vanished into the brush as if one of the disks had whirled him into Otherwhere. Charis strove to fight down her excitement and began a slow count. For some seconds she heard a subdued rustling which she was sure marked his retreat—then nothing.

No movement about the domes. Lantee was right; they could have used the wolverines and Tsstu to advantage now. Animal senses, so much keener than human, could have scouted for them both. She thought of an anti-persona bomb twinned to a sniffer detector, and her own part in the action had less and less appeal. The copter was far too tempting a bait; those below must have some watch on it! Unless they believed that they had effectively disposed of all resistance.

“—ninety-five—ninety-six—“ Charis counted, hoping she was not speeding up. It was always far easier to be on the move than to lie and wait.

“—ninety-nine—one hundred!” She crept down slope to the east on the first lap of her own journey. The light held enough so that she kept to cover, pausing within each shadowed shelter to study the next few feet or yards of advance. And, to keep in concealment, she pulled her circle arc into a segment of oval. When she knew that she must head in again to meet the landing strip, Charis’s mouth was dry in contrast to her damp palms, while her heart thudded in a heavy beat.

She found a tree limb, old and brittle—dry but long enough for her purpose. A sniffer activated to catch a prowler would be set about so high—knee-high for a walking man—or less. Would they expect someone to crawl in? All right, then, to be on the safe side—calf-high Charis set about stripping small branches for handfuls of leaves. Several tough ground-vines gave her cords to lash the mass of vegetation to the stick.

As a device for triggering a trap, it was very crude, but it lessened the odds against her somewhat. Now her wriggling advance was even slower as she worked the bundle before her, testing each foot of the way.

The pole was hard to hold in her sweating hands, her shoulders ached with the effort necessary to keep it at what she believed to be the right height. And her goal could have been half the continent away since she appeared to draw no closer to it in spite of her continued struggles.

But so far—no sniffer. And there had to be an end sometime. Charis paused for a breather. No sound came from the domes, no indication there were any guards, either human or machine. Were the invaders under the impression they had nothing to fear, no reason to post sentries?

Must not let growing confidence make her careless, Charis told herself. She did not have one hand on the copter door yet. And—why! -- that might be it! The machine itself could be rigged as a trap. And if that were so, could she discover and disarm it?

One thing at a time—just one thing at a time . . .

She had raised her bundle probe, was on the creep again when the twilight breeze brought her a faint scent. Wolverine! When aroused in fear or anger, Charis knew, the animals emitted a rank odor. Was this a mark of the passing of Togi and her cubs?

Could Charis contact the female wolverine who had no knowledge of her as friendly? Lantee had said that afternoon that Togi was less amenable to human contact or control since she had become a mother; the wolverines were noted hunters, accustomed to living off the land. Was Togi now hunting?

Charis sniffed, hoping for some clue as to direction. But the scent was faint, perhaps only a lingering reminder of some earlier passage of an angry wolverine clinging to grass or bush. And there stood the beacon of the Patrol scout not too far to her left. She was close to the fringe of the landing strip. Charis thrust her bundle detector before her and crept on.

A screech—a snarling—a thrashing in the brush to her left. A second cry cut into a horrible bubbling noise.

Charis bit her tongue, painfully muffling a cry of her own. Wide-eyed she watched that wildly waving bush. Another cry—this time not unlike a thin, pulsating whistle. Then suddenly there were figures out in the open, running toward the commotion. As they neared, Charis could see them better.

Not the off-worlders she and Lantee had watched from the hill. Wyverns? No.

For the second time, Charis choked back a cry. For these running figures carried spears, the same type of spear she and Lantee had found at the post. And they were taller than the Wyverns Charis knew, their spiky head and shoulder growths smaller so that they resembled ragged and ugly spines rather than small wings: the Wyvern males Charis had never seen in all her days among the witches!

They cried out shrilly in a way which rasped Charis’s nerves and hurt her ears. Two of them hurled spears into the now quiet bush.

A shout from behind, from the domes; this surely had issued from a human throat. No words Charis could distinguish but it brought confusion to the Wyverns. The two at the rear stopped, looked over their shoulders; then, at a second shout, they turned and ran swiftly in the direction of that call. The foremost attackers had reached the bushes, spears thrust ahead. One of them cried out. Again no words, but Charis judged the tone to be one of disappointment and rage.

They milled around out of her sight and then came back into the open, two of them carrying a limp body between them. One of their own kind killed by some means. Togi’s doing?

But Charis had little time to wonder about that for there was more shouting from the domes, and all but the two Wyverns carrying the body began to run in that direction.

Lantee—had they found Lantee?

XIV

The Wyvern males had left the landing strip. Charis could follow their path through the brush to the open and the waiting copter. Lantee’s plan of heading out to sea in the copter, aiming at the witch Citadel, was practical. Lantee?

Charis rubbed her hands together and tried to think clearly. Something had happened back there at the domes; it was only logical to associate the clamor with Lantee’s attempt to scout the enemy. He could now be a prisoner—or worse.

But if she took the copter now when the attention of any sentries was fixed elsewhere, she had her best chance of escape, though she might well be deserting a man who had aroused the invaders but managed to evade them. To go—to get to the Citadel and warn the witches of the possible danger, leaving Lantee, his fate unknown? Or to stay in hopes of his coming?

There was no real choice; there never had been, Charis knew that deep within her. But now, at the final test, she felt as bruised and beaten as if those spear carriers had taken her in an unequal struggle. Somehow she got to her feet and ran for the copter.

As she wrenched open the cockpit door, Charis paused for any trap to explode in her face. Then she scrambled in behind the controls. So far, all right. Now—where?

The Citadel was to the west, that was her only clue. Only, the sea was wide and she had never made the journey by air, as Lantee had. Maybe her guide could be a negative one, and she tracked her goal by the barrier against the Power or rather her use of it. Such a thin chance—but still a chance.

Charis set the control on full, braced herself for the force of a lift-leap, and pushed the proper button. She was slammed back in the cushioned pilot’s chair. Copters were not designed for such violent maneuvering. But a lift-leap would take her off the strip with speed enough to startle any guard she had not seen.

She gulped and fought the effects of the spurt upon her body, forcing her fingers to modify the climb. The domes were now small silvery circles just visible in the growing dark. She set a course northward, and put the flyer temporarily on auto-pilot while she tried to think out just how she could track that barrier with any accuracy.

How did you track nothingness? Just try to pierce here and there until you found the wall between you and your goal? Her vague direction was that island home of the Wyverns which stood northwest of the government base, southwest from Jagan’s post, and she had not even a com sweep to give her a more definite position.

Below, just visible in the night, was the shore, an irregular division between land and sea. The pattern—she must have the pattern. Charis looked about her a little wildly. There was no leaf to scratch, no earth or rock to draw upon. That wall storage pocket at her left hand? Charis plunged fingers into it and spilled out what it contained.

A packet of Sustain tablets—swiftly she scooped that into her own belt pouch and another first-aid kit, bigger and better fitted than the small one Lantee had carried. Joyfully Charis scrabbled in it for the sterile pencil. It was not here, but there was a large tube of the same substance. Last of all, a flat sheet of plasta-board such as could be used for sketch maps, its surface slighted roughened as if it had been marked and erased many times.

This would serve if she could find something with which to mark. Again Charis pawed into the pocket, and her fingers, scraping the bottom of the holder, closed about a thin cylinder. She brought out a fire tube. No use—or was it?

Frantically she twisted its dial to the smallest ray, and pressed the tip tight to the plasta-board. It was such a chance—the whole thing might go up in a burst of flame. But a map sheet should have been proofed against heat as well as moisture. Only this one had been used in the past, perhaps too often. She drew swiftly, fearful of any mistake. The brown heat-lines bit deeply into the surface and spread a little, but not enough to spoil the design.

Charis clicked off the heat unit and studied what she now held. Blurred, yes, but to her distinctive enough in its familiarity. She had a good substitute for the disk which she had lost.

Now—to put it to use. She closed her eyes. The room in the Citadel—concentrate! -- the barrier! But in which direction? All she knew was that the barrier still existed. Her one idea of a direction-finder seemed a failure. No one gave up at a first try, though.

Room—design—barrier. Charis opened her eyes. Her head was turned slightly to the left. Was that a clue? Could she test it? She snapped the copter off auto-pilot and altered course inland away from the shore. When she had ceased to see the sea with only the dark mass of land now under her, she brought the flyer about and cruised back.

Room—design --  Her head to the left again, but not so much. She had to take that as her lead, slender as it was. Altering the degree of course to that imagined point, she sent the copter on out to sea.

Design—try --  She was looking straight ahead when she met what she could not penetrate. Oh, let this be right. Let it be right.

Charis had no idea how far offshore the Wyvern-held islands were. Any copter had a good ranging allowance, but her goal might still lie hours ahead. She clicked up the speed to full and sat with her hands on the map sheet, waiting.

The stars were low on the horizon. No! Not stars—they were far too low. Lights! Lights at nearly sea level—the Citadel! On impulse Charis tried the Power and it was as if she had thrown her body at full force against an unyielding slab of tri-steel. She gasped at what was translated into physical pain upon that encounter.

But the copter had met with no barrier. It continued on, unerringly bound for the lights ahead.

Charis had no idea what she would do when she reached the Citadel. Only she had her warning, and with the Power the Wyverns would know that she spoke the truth. Even with the warning—what could the witches do in their turn, except avoid outright and quick disaster by delaying whatever attack they had already organized.

The lights picked out the windows in the massive block of the Citadel, some of them almost on a level with the copter. Charis resumed control and circled the buildings in search of a level site on which to land. She had rounded the highest of the blocks when she sighted ground lights marking an open space, almost as if they had prepared for her coming.

As the flyer touched the pavement, she saw a second copter at one side. So—the other Survey man, Thorvald, had not left. An ally for her? Or was he now a prisoner, tucked away in such a pocket of non-being as Lantee had been? Lantee --  Charis tried to push out of her mind any thought of Lantee.

She held the plasta-board. In this well-like space between walls there were no breaks, no doors, and the windows were at least a story above her. The lights which had directed her landing burned in portable standards. So the Wyverns had expected her. Yet no one waited here; she might be standing in a trap.

Charis nodded. This was all a part of what the shadow-patterned Wyvern had promised. She must do it all by her own efforts; the answer had to be hers.

The shadow Wyvern had said it, so to her it must be proven. Charis held the plasta-board in her two hands where she could see its design in the flickering half-light of the lamps. Spike-wing crest, pallid skin with only the faint tracings of faded designs—Charis pulled the Wyvern out of memory and built with care the picture to center upon, until she was sure no detail she could recall was missing. Then—

“So you can dream to a purpose after all.” No amazement, only recognition as a greeting.

The room was dusky. Although two lamps stood on either side of a table, their radiance made only a small pool, and Charis sensed larger space stretching far beyond where she stood. That other—the Wyvern—sat in a chair with a high back, its white substance glowing with runnels of color, which in themselves appeared to crawl with life.

She leaned back at her ease, the alien witch, her hands resting on the arms of her chair as she surveyed Charis appraisingly. Now the off-worlder found words to answer.

“I had dreamed to this much purpose, Wise One, that I stand here now.”

“Agreed. And to what future purpose do you stand here, Dreamer?”

“That a warning may be delivered.”

The vertical pupils in those large yellow eyes narrowed, the snouted head raised a fraction of an inch, and the sense of affront reached Charis clearly.

“You have that which will arm you against us, Dreamer? Then you have made a gain since last we were thus, face to face. What great new power have you discovered to be able to say ‘I warn you’ to us?”

“You mistake my words, Wise One. I do not warn you against myself, but against others.”

“And again you take upon yourself more than you have the right to do, Dreamer. Have you then read your answer from Those Gone Before?”

Charis shook her head. “Not so. But still you mistake me, Reader of Patterns. In what is to come, we dream one dream, not dream against dream.”

Those eyes searched into her, seemed to pick at her mind.

“It is true that you have done more than we believed you could, Dreamer. Yet you are not one with us in any power save that which we have granted you. Why do you presume to say that we are now to dream the same dream?”

“Because if we do not, then may all dreams be broken.”

“And that you truly believe.” Not a question but a statement. However, Charis made a quick answer.

“That I truly believe.”

“Then you have learned more than how to break a restraint dream since last we have stood together. What have you learned?”

“That those from off-world are more powerful than we thought, that they have with them that which renders all dreams as nothing and protects them, that their desire here may be to gather to them the Power that they may use it for their own purposes in other places.”

Again that faint pick, pick to uncover the truth behind her words. Then, “But of these facts you are not wholly sure.”

“Not wholly,” Charis agreed. “Every pattern is made of lines. So, when you have long known a design and see only a portion of it, you can still envision the whole.”

“And this is a pattern you have known before?”

“It is one I have heard of, one Lantee has heard of.”

Had she made a mistake in mentioning the Survey man’s name? That chill which reached from mind to mind suggested that she had.

“What has any man-thing to do with this?” A hissing question hot with rising ire.

Charis’s anger woke in turn. “This much, Wise One. He may be dead now, striving to carry war to the enemy—your enemy!”

“How can that be when he is—“ The thought chain between them broke in mid-sentence. Lids dropped above the yellow eyes. The feeling of withdrawal was so sharp that Charis almost expected the Wyvern to vanish from her chair. Yet her body was still there although her mind was elsewhere.

The minutes were endless, then Charis knew the Wyvern had returned. Fingers had clenched about the chair arms, the yellow eyes were open, fixed upon the girl, though there was no touch of mind.

Charis took a chance. “You did not find him, Wise One, where you had sent him?”

No answer, but Charis was sure the Wyvern understood.

“He is not there,” the girl continued, “nor has he been for some time. As I told you in truth, he has been about your business elsewhere. And perhaps to his hurt.”

“He did not free himself.” The frantic grip of the Wyvern’s hands relaxed. Charis thought that the witch was annoyed because she had betrayed her agitation so much. “He could not. He is a man-thing—“

“But also a dreamer after his own fashion,” Charis struck in. “And though you strove to remove him from this struggle, yet he returned—not to war against you but against those who threaten all dreaming.”

“What dream have you that you can do this thing?”

“Not my dream alone,” Charis retorted. “But his dream also, and other dreams together, as a key to unlock this prison.”

“I must believe that this is so. Yet such an act is beyond all reason.”

“All reason known to you and your sharers of dreams. Look, you.” Charis moved to the table, stretched out hand and arm into the full path of the light. “Am I like unto you in the sight of all? Do I wear any dream patterns set upon my skin? Yet I dream. However, need my dreams be any more like unto yours than my body covering resembles that you wear? Perhaps even the Power when I bend it to my will is not the same.”

“Words—“

“Words with proving action behind them. You sent me hence and bade me dream myself out of your net if I could, and so I did. Then with Shann Lantee I dreamed a way free from a deeper prison. Did you believe I could do these things?”

“Believe? No,” the Wyvern replied. “But there is always a chance of difference, a variable within the Power. And the Talking Rods had an answer for you when we called upon Those Who Once Were. Very well, these are truths accepted. Now say again what you believe to be a truth that had no full proving.”

Charis retold her discoveries at the base, Lantee’s deductions.

“A machine which nullifies the Power.” The Wyvern led her back to that. “Such you believe can exist?”

“Yes. Also—what if such a thing be brought to use against you even in this very stronghold? With your dreams broken, how may you fight against slaying weapons in the hands of those who come?”

“We knew—“ the Wyvern was musing “—that we could not send dreams to trouble these strangers. Or bring back—“ she spoke in anger “—to their proper places those who have broken the law. But that all this is being done so that they may take the Power from us—that we had not thought upon.”

Charis knew a small spark of relief. That last admission had changed her own status. It was as if she were now admitted in a small way into the Wyvern ranks.

“However, they must be ignorant to believe that man-things can use the Power.”

“Lantee does,” Charis reminded her. “And what of the other you have known as a friend here—Thorvald?”

Hesitation, then an unwilling answer. “He, too, in a small way. An ability, you believe, that these others may share because they are not blood, bone, and skin with us?”

“Is that so hard to understand?”

“And what have you to suggest, Dreamer? You speak of battles and warfare. Our only weapons have been our dreams, and now you say they will avail nothing. So—what is your answer?” Hostility again.

And Charis had little with which to meet that. “What these invaders do here is against the law of our kind as much as it is a threat against your people. There are those who will speedily come to our aid.”

“From where? Winging down from other stars? And how will you call them? How long will it take them to arrive?”

“I do not know. But you have the man Thorvald, and he would have answers to these questions.”

“It would seem, Dreamer, that you believe I, Gidaya, can give all orders here, do as I wish. But that is not so. We sit in council. And there are those among us who would not listen to any truth if you spoke it. We have been divided upon this matter from the first, and to talk against attacking now will require much persuasion. Should you stand openly with me, that persuasion would fail.”

“I understand. But also, as you have said to me, Wise One, there is such a thing as a threat by time. Let me speak to Thorvald if you have him here, and learn from him what may be done to gain help from off-world.” Had she gone too far with that plea?

Gidaya did not answer at once. “Thorvald is in safe keeping—“ she paused and then added “—though I wonder now about the safety of any keeping. Very well, you may go to him. It may be that I shall say to those who will object that you are joining him in custody.”

“If you wish.” Charis suspected that Gidaya would offer that as a sop to the anti-off-world party. But she greatly doubted that the Wyvern believed any longer Charis herself could be controlled by the Power.

“Go!”

At least Thorvald had not been consigned to that place of nothingness which had been Lantee’s prison. Charis stood in a very ordinary sleeping room of the Citadel, its only difference from the one she had called her own being that it had no window. On the pile of sleep-mats lay a man, breathing heavily. His head turned and he muttered, but she could not make out his words.

“Thorvald! Ragnar Thorvald!”

The bronze-yellow head did not lift from the mats nor his eyes open. Charis crossed to kneel beside him.

“Thorvald!”

He was muttering again. And his hand balled into a fist and shot out to thud home painfully on her forearm. Dreaming! Naturally? Or in some fantasy induced by the Wyverns? But she must wake him now.

“Thorvald!” Charis called louder and took hold of his shoulder, shaking him vigorously.

He struck out again, sending her rolling back against the wall, then sat up, his eyes open at last, looking about wildly. But as he sighted her he tensed.

“You’re real—I think!” His emphatic assertion slid into a less confident conclusion.

“I’m Charis Nordholm.” She crouched against the wall, rubbing her arm. “And I’m real all right. This is no dream.”

No, no dream but the worst of trouble. And did Thorvald have any of the answers after all? She only hoped that he did.

XV

He was very tall, this officer of Survey, towering over Charis where she sat cross-legged on his mat bed as he strode impatiently back and forth across the chamber, now and then shooting a question at her or making her retell some part of the story again.

“It does look very much like a Company grab.” He gave judgment at last. “Which means they must be very sure of themselves, that they think they have all angles covered.” Now he might be talking to himself rather than to her. “A deal—somehow they’ve made a deal!”

Charis guessed at the meaning of that. “You think they’ve arranged for closed eyes somewhere?”

Thorvald glanced at her sharply, almost in dislike, Charis decided. But he nodded curtly. “Not in our service!” he rapped out.

“But they wouldn’t be able to square the Patrol, would they? Not if you were able to get a message through.”

He smiled grimly. “Hardly. But the only off-world com is at the base, and from your account they hold that now.”

“There’s the Patrol ship down on the field. That should have its own com,” she pointed out.

Thorvald rubbed one hand along the angle of his jaw, his eyes now fixed unseeingly on the blank wall of the chamber.

“Yes, that Patrol ship—“

“They didn’t have any guard on the copter.”

“They weren’t expecting trouble then. They probably thought they had all the base staff accounted for. That wouldn’t be true now.”

She could see the reason in that argument. Yes, when they had taken Lantee, as she was now sure they had, and she had flown the copter out, they had been put on the alert. If the Patrol ship had not been guarded before, Charis did not doubt now that it was under strict surveillance.

“What can we do?”

“We’ll have to count on it that they do have Lantee.”

Or, Charis made herself add silently to Thorvald’s statement, he is dead.

“And they know that he had at least one other with him, since the copter was taken. They may scan him, and he’s not been brain-locked.”

Charis found her hands shaking. There was a cold sickness in her middle, seeping into the rest of her body. Thorvald was only being objective, but she found she could not be the same on this point, not when the man he was discussing was more than a name—a living person who, in a way Charis could hardly describe, had been closer to her than any other being she had known. She was unaware that the Survey officer had paused until he dropped down beside her, his hands covering both of hers.

“We must face the truth,” he said quietly.

Charis nodded, her spine stiffened, and her head came up. “I know. But I went off—off and left him—“

“Which was the only thing you could have done. He knew that. Also, there is this. Those male Wyverns—they were attacked by something in the bush—you think it was Togi?”

“I smelled wolverine just before. And one of the Wyverns was killed, or badly injured.”

“Which may lead them to believe that there were more than two of you out there. And that could force caution on them. The animals work with trainers—that is universally known. And it’s also general knowledge that they are fanatically loyal to their trainers. Lantee has been in charge of the wolverines for two planet years. Those at the base may keep him on ice in order to have control over the animals.”

Did he really believe that? Charis wondered. Or was it a very thin attempt to placate her feelings of guilt?

“This nullifier,” Thorvald was on his feet again, back to that restless pacing. “As long as they have that they might as well be in a land fortress! And how long will they wait before moving out with it? If they had a trace-beam on that copter, they know—“

“Just where to attack!” Charis finished for him, realizing for the first time what might be the folly of her own move.

“You had no choice.” Thorvald caught her up on that quickly. “A warning was important. And with the Wyvern barrier up you had no other way of reaching them.”

“No, but I have a way of getting back there.” Charis had been thinking. It was a crazy, wild plan, but it might work. She had his full attention.

Sheeha! Charis had gone back to her first night on Warlock, to the trader woman who had been shocked into mental unbalance by contact with the witches.

“These invaders know that Jagan brought me here,” Charis began. “Also that I wandered out of the post while under Wyvern control; they can check all that. They might even have the tape recording I made to your base when I appealed for help. But it may be that they do not know that I took the copter. Or, if they do—well, how much do they know of the Power? They know the Wyverns used it to dominate and control their males. So, perhaps they will think I was under Wyvern control while taking the copter.

“Now, suppose I let them think I have escaped and that I have headed back to the base because I think there is safety there. I can act as Sheeha did.”

“And if they put you under a scanner?” Thorvald demanded harshly, “or if they have already learned from Lantee what you can do with the Power?”

“If they have, they won’t want me under a scanner, not right away. They’ll want demonstrations,” Charis countered. “They can’t know too much about it, can they? What have you reported? Those reports must have brought them here.”

“Reports? What have we had to say in those except generalities? We had our instructions to go slow with the witches. After they helped us wipe out a Throg base here—it was entirely their efforts that broke that—they were in no hurry to fraternize. The willingness to communicate had to come from their side, contact was on a delicate basis. I don’t understand about this nullifier. No off-world Company could have learned enough from our reports to build it because we didn’t know enough ourselves. Unless this machine is a modification of something they already had and they brought it with them, simply as an experiment which did pay off—too well!”

“Then,” said Charis, bringing him back to her own suggestion, “they could not know about the Power and how it works?”

“I don’t see how they could. They may have subverted some of the male Wyverns. But those have never been able to dream or use the Power. Company scouts could have some idea of what it does, but they’d only be guessing at how it works.”

“So as an off-worlder who has had some experience with it, I could make statements they would have no way of testing?”

“Unless they use a scanner,” he reminded her.

“But when you’re dealing with a mental problem, you don’t destroy its roots,” Charis countered. “I tell you, if I went to them as a fugitive who had escaped the Wyverns and was willing to cooperate, anyone with any intelligence would not put me under force. He would want me to give freely.”

Thorvald studied her. “There’s more than one kind of force,” he said slowly. “And if they suspected that you were playing a double game, they wouldn’t hesitate to use all and every means to crack you for what they wanted. A Company on a grab is moving against time, and their agents here would be ruthless.”

“All right. Then what’s your answer? It seems that I have the best chance of getting into the base on my own terms. Do you or the witches have any at all? If you’re taken trying to get in—the way Shann was—then you’re expendable too.”

“Yes.”

“Well, I represent something they want—an off-worlder who has had experience with the use of the Power. There is a good chance to get close to the nullifier under those circumstances. And if I could put that out of action, then the witches could do the rest. As it is now, the Wyverns suspect us too, just because we are off-worlders.”

“And how can you convince the Wyverns that you will work against our own species?”

“They read my mind under the Power. There’s no hiding the truth from them. Short of leading in an armed force, which we don’t have, you aren’t going to take back your base. And someone has to make a move before the invaders do.”

“You don’t know how rough a grab force can be—“ Thorvald began.

Charis stood up. “I have been hunted by men before. You can tell me very little about cruelty used as a weapon. But as long as I present a chance of profit to those in command, I shall be guarded. And I think that now I am your only key.”

The girl closed her eyes for a second. This was fear, this sick chill. Yes, she knew what it meant to face hostility; before, she had to run from it. Now she must walk defenseless straight into the worst her imagination could picture for her. But there was a chance. She had known that from the argument she had had with Gidaya. Perhaps the continued use of the Power did implant in one a confidence. Only, once at the base, she would not have the Power to pull on; the nullifier would see to that. She would have only her wits and luck to back her. Or—could she have more? The wolverines, Togi and her cubs, lurked about the base, apparently free of control and able to prey upon the alien guards. Charis had had no contact with Togi, but with Taggi, who had been so strangely one with her in that search for Lantee, and with Tsstu, it might be different. Where were the animals now?

“You have something more in mind?” A change in her expression must have brought that question from him.

“Tsstu and Taggi—“ she began and then explained more fully.

“But I don’t understand. You say that they weren’t with you in the Cavern of the Veil or afterward.”

“No, but they answered when we called. I don’t think they were captive in any dream place. Perhaps they had to be free to go their own way for a space after that. It—it was a frightening experience.” Charis had a flash thought of the corridor, the opening doors in which Lantee’s thoughts had attacked her, and again she shivered. “They may have run from what they remembered.”

“Then—will they return?”

“I think they will have to,” Charis said simply. “We wove a bond then and still it holds us. Maybe we can never loose it. But if I could find them, they would be allies those at the base would not suspect.”

“Suppose the nullifier dampened contact between you?” Thorvald persisted.

“If I reached them before I went in, they would know what they could do in aid.”

“You seem to have all the answers!” He did not appear to relish that admission. “So you’re to walk alone into a trap and spring it—just like that!”

“Maybe I can’t. But I believe there’s no other solution.”

“Again you read the pattern right, Sharer of Dreams!”

They looked around, startled. Gidaya stood there and with her, Gysmay.

Thorvald opened his mouth, then closed it again. There was a set to his jaw that suggested that, while he knew silence was proper, he resented it.

“You are persuaded it must be thus?” Charis asked of the Wyverns.

Gysmay made a movement of the shoulders approximating a human shrug.

“I, who am a Holder of the Upper Disk, will go with the desires of my Sharers of Dreams in this matter. You believe, one who is not quite a stranger, that this is what must be done. And you are willing to take that doing into your own hands. So let it be. Though we cannot give you any aid, since the evil which has been brought to trouble our world holds about its heart a wall we cannot pierce.”

“No, you cannot aid me once I am within that place. But there is that you can do for me before I enter—“

“Such being?” Gidaya asked.

“That Tsstu and Taggi be found and summoned from where they have gone.”

“Tsstu at least has power of a sort, but whether that may be harnessed to your purpose—“ the older Wyvern hesitated. “However, no power, no aid, is to be despised when one walks into a fork-tail’s den without a disk between one’s fingers. Yes, we shall search out the small one and also the other who serves these men. Perchance we can do more, using like tools—“

Gysmay nodded eagerly. “That is a good thought, Reader of the Rods! One can build on it. Perchance we can provide some action for these invaders to think upon so that their minds will be in two ways occupied and not fastened alone upon you and what you would do among them. We cannot walk through their rooms, but we shall see.” She did not elaborate.

Turning to Charis, Thorvald cut in: “I’m going with you—in the copter.”

“You can’t!” Charis protested. “I won’t take the flyer back. I must wander in as if I have been lost—“

“I didn’t say land at the base. But I must be back near the base, near enough to be able to move in when we can.” He said that defiantly, glaring at the Wyverns as if he would compel them to his will.

When we can, Charis thought, more likely—if we can.

“It is well,” Gidaya answered, though there was a small movement from Gysmay as if she were protesting. “Take your machine and fly—to this place—“

Into Charis’s mind came instantly a clear picture of a flat rock expanse squared off to make a natural landing strip.

“About a mile from the base!” Thorvald burst out; he must also have had that mind picture and recognized it. “We shall come in from the south—at night—without landing lights. I can set us down there without trouble.”

“And Tsstu—Taggi?” demanded Charis of the Wyverns.

“They shall join you there for whatever purpose you think they may serve. Now you may go.”

Charis was back in the landing well where the two copters were waiting, but this time Thorvald was with her. As the girl started for the machine which had brought her to the Citadel, the Survey officer caught at her arm.

“Mine—not that one.” He drew her with him toward the other copter. “If it’s sighted after we land, they’ll believe I returned and am hiding out. They won’t connect it with you.”

Charis agreed to the sense of that and watched him settle behind the controls as she took her place on the second seat. They lifted with a leap which signaled his impatience more than his words had done. Then, under the night sky, they drove on, the ocean below them.

“They may have a search beam on,” he said as his fingers played a dot-dash over course buttons. “We’ll take the long way around to make sure we have the best cover we can. North—then west—then up from the south—“

It was a long way around. Charis watched with eyes over which the lids were growing very heavy. The smooth sheen of the night-darkened sea underneath them spread on and on in spite of their speed. To be flying away from their goal instead of toward it was hard to be reconciled to now.

“Settle back,” Thorvald’s voice was low and even; he now had his own impatience under iron control. “Sleep if you can.”

Sleep? How could anyone sleep with such a task before her. Sleep --  that . . .  was . . .  impossible . . .

Dark—thick, negative dark. Negative? What did that mean? Dark, and then, deep in the heart of that blackness, a small fire struggling to beat back the dark. A fire threatened, a fire she must reach and feed. Bring it back to bright blaze again! But when Charis strove to speed to the fire, she could move only with agonizing slowness, so that the weight which dragged at her limbs was a pain in itself. And the fire flickered, reblazed, and then flickered. Charis knew that when it died wholly it might not be relit. But she needed more than herself to feed that fire, and she sent out a frantic, soundless call for aid. There was no answer.

“Wake up!”

Charis’s body swayed in a rough grip, her head jerked back and forth on her shoulders. She looked up, blinking and half-dazed, into eyes which blazed with some of the intensity of the fire of the dark.

“You were dreaming!” It was an accusation. “They have a hold on you. They never meant—“

“No!” Enough understanding had returned to make her shake off Thorvald’s hands. “Not one of their dreams.”

“But you were dreaming!”

“Yes.” She huddled in the copter seat as the machine flew on under auto-pilot. “Shann—“

“What about him?” Thorvald caught her up quickly.

“He’s still alive.” Charis had brought that one small crumb of assurance out of the black with her. “But—“

“But what?”

“He’s just holding on.” That, too, had come to her although it was not so reassuring. What had strained Lantee to the depths she had witnessed? Physical hurt? A scanner attack? He was alive and he was still fighting. That she knew with certainty and now she said so.

“No real contact? He told you nothing?”

“Nothing. But I almost reached him. If I could try again—“

“No!” Thorvald shouted at her. “If he is under a scanner, you don’t know how much they could pick up because of such a contact. You—you’ll have to put him out of your mind.”

Charis only looked at him.

“You’ll have to,” he repeated doggedly. “If they pick you up in any way, you haven’t a chance of going in as you’ve planned. Can’t you see? You are the only chance Lantee has now. But you’ll have to reach him in person in order to help; not this way!”

Thorvald was right. Charis had enough sense left to acknowledge that rightness, though that did not make it any easier when she thought of the small fire flickering close to extinction in a deep and all-abiding darkness.

“Hurry!” She moistened her dry lips with her tongue.

He was resetting their course. “Yes.”

The copter spiraled away to the right, heading toward the shore they could not see and the task she had set herself.

XVI

The stars were no longer sharp points above as the copter set down under Thorvald’s practiced control. An hour close to dawn --  Dawn of what day? Time had either stretched slowly or fled swiftly since Charis had walked out onto the soil of Warlock. She could no longer be sure that it followed any ordered marking of minutes or hours. She stood now on the rock, shivering a little in the chill predawn wind.

“Meeerrrreee!” At the cry of welcome, Charis went down on her knees, holding out her arms to the shadow which sped toward her. The warmth of that small body pressing tight to hers, the loving dabs of tongue-tip against her throat, her chin, brought a measure of comforting confidence. Tsstu was again in the circle of Charis’s arms, avid for contact, excited in her welcome.

Then the rasp of harsher, coarser fur against the girl’s legs signaled Taggi’s arrival. A small grunting growl was his vocal hail as she put one hand to his upthrust head, scratching behind his small ears.

“Taggi?” Thorvald walked from the copter.

The wolverine slipped from under Charis’s hand, went to the Survey officer. He sniffed inquiringly at the other’s field boots, and then reared up against the man, his forepaws scraping Thorvald’s thigh as he gave voice to a sound between a whine and a growl. There was no mistaking the questioning note, nor the demand for enlightenment which came to Charis mentally. Taggi wanted the one he knew better than Thorvald.

Charis sat where she was, cradling the nuzzling Tsstu close to her, but reaching out mentally to capture Taggi’s thought stream, to try and tap that boiling and, to her, alien flow of brain energy. She touched and savored again, forcing herself not to shrink from the raw savagery, the strange stream. Taggi dropped on all fours. He was swaying from foot to foot, his blunt head swinging about so that he could eye her.

Thoughts—impressions like small sparks—whirled through the air above a stirred fire. Charis built up a picture of Shann Lantee within those sparks—Shann as she had seen him last on the hillside above the base.

Taggi came to her. His teeth closed upon the hand she held out in greeting, not with force enough to even pinch the skin but with the same caress of this kind that she had seen him give to Shann. And, too, inquiry—stronger and much more demanding.

Charis thought of the base as she had viewed it from the hill, knew that Taggi caught that. He dropped his hold upon her, turned halfway around to face in a new direction, and with his head up began sniffing the wind audibly.

Charis approached with some trepidation the real message she must pass along to the wolverine. Tsstu was much more in tune with her. How was she to project into that hunter’s brain the sense of danger and an understanding of from whence danger came? By pictures of Shann as a prisoner?

First she thought of Lantee as he stood free by the pool. Then she added imagined bonds, cords about his wrists and ankles, to restrain his freedom. There was a loud snarl of rage from Taggi. She had succeeded so far. But caution! The wolverine must not race recklessly in under that prodding.

“—reeeeuuu—“ Tsstu gave a cry Charis knew meant warning. The wolverine looked back at them.

Inquiry flashed not at her but at the curl-cat. The animals had their own band of communication. Perhaps that was her best answer.

Charis changed the direction of her warning, no longer striving to hold contact with the wild, rich stream of Taggi’s thought, but to meet Tsstu’s. Strike back against the enemy, yes; free Shann, yes. But for now, caution.

The rumbling growl from Taggi grew fainter. He was still shuffling impatiently from foot to foot, his eagerness to be gone plain to read, but Tsstu had impressed him with the need for caution and the old craftiness of his breed was now in command. Wolverines have great curiosity, but they also have a strong instinct for self-preservation; they do not walk easily into what might be a trap, no matter how attractive the bait. And Taggi knew that he faced a trap.

Again Charis centered on Tsstu, thinking out as simply as she could her own plan for entering the base. Suddenly she looked to Thorvald.

“The nullifier—could it stop communication of mind with mind?”

He gave her the truth. “It could well be so.”

The animals must remain outside. Tsstu—the curl-cat was small—she could act as liaison between the wolverine and the base.

“Meeerrreee!” Agreement in that and another swift tongue-tip touch on Charis’s cheek.

The girl rose to her feet. “There’s no sense in delaying any longer. Time to go.” Putting down the curl-cat, she pulled the tie from her hair, shaking the loosened strands about her neck and shoulders. By the time she reached the base, her hair would be sufficiently wild-looking, filled with bits of leaf and twig. She could not tear the Wyvern material of her clothing, but earth stains would adhere to it and the crawling she had already done provided dirty blotches. There were raw and healing scratches on her arms and legs. She would well present the appearance of someone who had been lost in a wilderness for a time. Moreover, the nourishment given by the Sustain tablets had worn off so that she did not have to feign hunger or thirst; she felt them both.

“Take care—“ Thorvald’s hand went out, almost as if he would hold her back on the very edge of action.

The contrast between that simple warning and what might lie ahead of her suddenly seemed to Charis so funny that a small, strangled sound of choked laughter was her first answer. Then she added, “Remember those words yourself. If you’re spotted by some air scout—“

“They might spot the copter, they won’t sight me. I’ll be ready to move in to you when I can.”

That “when I can” rang in Charis’s ears as she walked away. Better make that “if I can.” Now that she was committed to the venture, every possible fear—the product of a vivid imagination—swirled about her. She concentrated instead on her memory picture of Sheeha. She had to be Sheeha now as far as the invaders at the base were concerned—Sheeha, a woman brought in by the traders to contact the Wyverns, one who had broken at that meeting with the alien power. She had to be Sheeha.

Taggi played guide and advance scout, leading her down from the heights where the copter had landed. Here on the lowlands the predawn was still dark and Charis found the going more difficult. Her hair caught in branches; she tore free, adding more scratches to those she already bore. But that was all to the good.

For a while she carried Tsstu, but as they drew near the base, both animals took to cover and Charis kept touch by mind instead of sight or hearing.

Sun made silver droplets of the bubble shelters as Charis lurched into the open ground around the base. There was no need for her to fake her fatigue, for now she moved in a half-fog of exhaustion, her mouth dry, her ribs heaving with every gasping breath she drew. She must indeed look what she claimed to be—a fugitive, half-crazed, struggling out of the wilderness of a hostile world to seek the shelter and comfort of her own kind.

There was an unsealed door in the second of the bubbles. Charis headed for that. Movement there—a man in yellow coming into the open, staring at her. Charis forced a cry which was really a dry croak and slumped forward.

Calls—voices. She did not try to sort them out just yet but concentrated on lying limply where she had fallen, making no answer when she was rolled over, raised, and carried into the dome.

“What’s a woman doing here?” That was one voice.

“She’s been bush-runnin’. Lookit how she’s all scratched up and dirty. And that ain’t no service uniform. She ain’t from here. You tell the captain what just blew in?”

“She dead?” asked a third voice.

“Naw—just out on her feet. But where’n Dis did she spring from? Ain’t no settlement on this planet—“

“In here, captain. She just came runnin’ outta the brush. Then she sees Forg, gives a kinda yip, and falls on her face!”

The click-click of magnetic space-boot plates. A fourth man was coming in to where she lay.

“Off-worlder, all right”—the new voice—“What’s that rig she’s wearing? That’s no uniform, she couldn’t be from here.”

“From the post maybe, captain?”

“From the post? Wait a minute. That’s right. They did bring in a woman to try to contact the snake-hags. But no, we found her when we took over their ship.”

“No, there was two women, captain. First one blew up on ‘em—went clean out of orbit in her head. So they got ‘em another one. And she wasn’t there when we took over. What about the tape you found here—the one askin’ help from the base? She could be the one who sent it. Got outta the post and started runnin’—“

There was a twitch at her tunic as if one of those gathered about her was fingering the material.

“This is the stuff those snake-hags use. She’s been with them.”

“Prisoner, eh, captain?”

“Maybe—or something else. You, Nonnan, get the medic over here. He’ll bring her around and then we’ll have some answers. The rest of you, clear out. She might talk better if she doesn’t come to with all of you looking her over.”

Charis stirred. She did not care for the idea of a Company-squad medic. Such an expert might use the tongue-loosening drugs she had no guard against. It would be well to regain consciousness before his arrival. She opened her eyes.

She did not have to counterfeit her shriek. That came naturally as she faced—not the Company officer she had expected—but a creature seemingly out of a nightmare. Leaning toward her was one of the male Wyverns, his snout mouth slightly open to display the fang-teeth with which he was only too generously armed, his slit-pupiled eyes measuring her with no friendly intent.

Charis screamed a second time and jerked her legs up under as she sat bolt upright, squirming as far from the Wyvern as she could manage to move on the cot where they had laid her. The creature’s taloned paw swept out and down, wicked claws scraping the foam mattress only inches away from her body.

A very human fist connected at the side of that reptilian head, sending the Wyvern off balance, crashing back against the wall, and a human in uniform took his place. Charis screamed again and cowered away from the Wyvern who had righted himself and was now showing a lipless snarl of rage.

“Keep it off! Snake!” she cried, remembering Sheeha’s name for the Wyverns. “Don’t let it get me!”

The officer caught the native by his scaled shoulder and headed him out the door with a rough shove. Charis found herself crying, a reaction she did not attempt to control as she shrank against the wall of the room, drawing herself into as small a space as possible.

“Don’t let it get me!” she begged as she tried to appraise the man who now faced her.

He was very much of a type, a Company officer in the mercenary forces. Charis had seen his like before in space-port cities, and she thought she dared not depend upon his being less shrewd than any space officer. His very employment on a grab action would make him suspicious of her. But he was fairly young and his attack on the Wyvern made her think that he might be a little prejudiced in her favor.

“Who are you?” The demand was rapped out in a tone meant to force a quick and truthful answer. And up to a point she could supply the truth.

“Charis—Charis Nordholm. You—you are the Resident?” He would believe that she was ignorant of his uniform, that she thought him a government man.

“You might say so. I’m in charge at this base. So your name is Charis Nordholm? And how did you come here to Warlock, Charis Nordholm?”

Not too much coherence in her answer, Charis decided. She tried hard to remember Sheeha. “That was a snake,” she accused. “You have them here.” She eyed him with what she hoped would register the proper amount of suspicion and fear.

“I tell you the native won’t harm you—not if you’re what you seem,” he added the last with some emphasis.

“What I seem—“ she said. “What I seem—I am Charis Nordholm.” She held her voice to a colorless recitation of facts as if she repeated some hard-learned lesson. “They—they brought me here to—to meet the snakes! I didn’t want to come—they made me!” Her voice lengthened into a wail.

“Who brought you?”

“Captain Jagan, the trader. I was at the trading post—“

“So—you were at the trading post. Then what happened?”

Again she could give him part truth. Charis shook her head. “I don’t know! The snakes—they gave me to the snakes—snakes all around—they got inside my head—in my head.” She set her hands above her ears, rocked back and forth. “In my head—they made me go with them—“

The captain was on to that in a flash. “Where?” His demand was purposely sharp to penetrate the haze that he supposed held her.

“To—to their place—in the sea—their place—“

“If you were with them, how did you get away?” Another man had come into the room and started toward her. The captain caught him back as he waited alertly for her answer. “How did you get away from them?” he repeated again with an emphasis designed to rivet her attention.

“I don’t know—I was there—then I was all alone—all alone in a woods. I ran—it was dark—very dark—“

The captain spoke to the newcomer, “Can you get her to make better sense?”

“How do I know?” the other retorted. “She needs food—water.”

The medic poured from a container and held out the cup. She had to steady it in both shaking hands to get it to her mouth. She let coolness roll over her dry tongue. Then she detected a taste. Some drug? She might already have lost the game because she had no defense against drugs and she had finished the draft. As a cover she kept the cup to her lips as long as possible.

“More—“ she pushed the cup at the medic.

“Not now, later.”

“So—“ the captain was eager to get her back to her story “—you just found yourself in a woods and then? How did you get here?”

“I walked,” Charis replied simply, keeping her eyes on the cup the medic was now holding as if that mattered far more than the officer’s questions. She had never tried to play such a role before and now she hoped that the picture she presented was a reasonably convincing one. “Please—more—“ she appealed to the medic.

He filled the cup about a third and gave it to her. She gulped it down. Drug or not, this was her proper action. Her thirst allayed, her hunger was worse.

“I’m hungry,” she told them. “Please, I’m hungry—“

“I’ll get her something,” the medic volunteered and left.

“You walked,” the captain persisted. “How did you know which way to walk—to come here?”

“Which way?” Charis returned to her trick of repetition. “I did not know the way—but it was easier—not so many bushes—so I went that way where it was open. Then I saw the building and I ran—“

The medic returned, to put into her hand a soft plasta-skin tube. Charis, sucking at its cone end, tasted the rich, satisfying paste it contained. She recognized it as the revive ration of a well-equipped base.

“What do you think?” the captain asked the medic. “Could she just head in the right direction that way? Sounds thin to me.”

The medic was thoughtful. “We don’t know how this Power works. They could have directed her, without her being aware of it.”

“Then she’s meant to be their key in!” The look the captain directed at Charis was now coldly hostile.

“No, any directive such as that would fail once she got within the Alpha-rim. If they gave her some such hypo-order, it won’t work now. You’ve seen how the warriors are freed from control here. If the hags did have some purpose and pointed her at us, it’s finished.”

“You’re sure of that?”

“You’ve seen it happen with the males. The control does not operate within the rim.”

“So—what do we do with her?”

“Maybe we can learn something. She has been with them—that is obvious.”

“Might be more your department than mine,” the captain observed. “You can take her on with the other one. He still out?”

“I told you, Lazgah, he’s not unconscious in the ordinary sense.” The medic was clearly irritated. “I don’t know what he is except still alive. So far he hasn’t responded to any restorative. Such a complete withdrawal—I’ve never seen its like before.”

“Well, at least she isn’t like him. And maybe you can learn from her. Try to, and the sooner the better.”

“Come.” The medic spoke softly. He held out his hand to Charis.

She eyed him over the tube from which she was now sucking the last remnants of paste.

“Where?”

“To a good place, a place where you may rest, where there is more food—water—“

“Out there?” She used the tube to point to the door behind him.

“Yes.”

“No. There are snakes there!”

“One of the warriors was here when she came to,” the captain explained. “Sent her farther off the beam.”

“No, no one will hurt you,” the medic assured her. “I won’t let them.”

Charis allowed herself to be persuaded. That scrap of conversation about the “he” who was being treated—It must be Lantee!

XVII

Four rooms made up a small but very well-equipped medical unit for the base. The worst feature, as far as Charis was concerned, was the single door to the outside, a door by which a blaster-armed guard already sat. To be free one must pass him.

Now the medic shepherded her on, his hand under her arm half-steering, half-supporting her, and she made her survey of the quarters in a series of seemingly aimless stares. They came into the third room and that touch on her arm brought her to a halt. She swayed, put out a hand against the wall to steady herself, hoping that her start could be attributed to her dazed condition.

Lantee lay on his back on a narrow cot. His eyes were wide open, but his face had that same blankness it had worn when she had found him among the rocks. He had returned to the husk of a living being, his true identity missing.

“Do you know this man?”

“Know this man?” Charis repeated. “Who is he? Know him—why should I—“ Her confusion was the best act she could achieve. She knew the medic was studying her closely.

“Come on.” He took her arm again, led her into the next chamber. Two more cots. He pushed her down on the nearest one.

“Stay here.”

He went out, sealing the door behind him. Charis ran her hands through the wild tangle of her hair. They could be watching her even now via some visa system, so take no chances. Anyway, she was in the base, and so far their suspicions of her were only normal. But just in case there was a spy system, she lay back on the cot and closed her eyes.

Outwardly she was composed for slumber; inwardly her thoughts were busy. Lantee—what had happened to Shann? The first time he had been shocked into such a state by a blast of the Wyvern Power. But that was not in effect here, and those few words Charis had heard exchanged between the captain and the medic suggested that their prisoner’s present withdrawal had not come as a result of anything they had done. They were baffled by it.

“Withdrawal” the medic had phrased it—a way of escape. Charis almost sat up, startled by what she thought was the answer. Lantee had chosen this as a way of escape! He had purposely retreated thus before they could use a scanner or a truth drug, fleeing back into the same blackness, really retreating into what might prove death. And the motive for such a choice must have been a very strong one.

The Power would not work inside this Alpha-rim, whatever that was. Charis’s hand moved against her tunic, feeling the slight bulk of the plasta-board which was her key to the place where Lantee had fled, a key which she could not turn. She had found Lantee, or rather the shell which had encased him. She had yet to find the nullifier or work out a plan against it. Her self-confidence was failing fast.

This was always the worst, this striving to cultivate patience with every nerve in her hammering for action. She must first establish her character as a bewildered fugitive. So she forced herself to lie quietly although she longed to be across that small room, trying the door to see if it was lock-sealed.

It had been early morning when she had come here; now the invaders, both off-worlders and Wyvern males, would be astir. Not a good time to go exploring. Exploring! Charis summoned concentration, sent out a creeping thought—not backed by the Power, but on her own—striving to reach Tsstu. If this avenue of communication was also blocked by their Alpha-rim—

A mind touch lapped against her probe as delicately as if the curl-cat was here in the room to give her a tongue-caress. Charis knew a throb of excitement, that road was not closed! She had contact, faulty and wavering as it was, with the animals outside the base.

The Tsstu link was no longer a touch but a firm uniting, and then came the feral urge she associated with Taggi—and another! Lantee? No. This was not the passageway link, but a heightening of the Taggi strain—his mate, the female wolverine! A piece of luck Charis had not counted on.

Tsstu was trying to send a message, drawing upon the united power of the wolverines to give it added impetus. A warning? No, not quite that; rather a suggestion that any action be delayed. Charis caught a very fuzzy picture of a Wyvern witch mixed in that. The female Wyverns must be taking a hand as they had promised. Then just as Charis tried to learn more, the curl-cat broke contact.

The girl began to think about Lantee. It had taken the Power to reach him before—the Power plus her own will and that of the two animals. But there in the copter she alone had found him, and without consciously drawing on the Power. Now, if he remained too long in that black world, would he ever come forth again? A small fire could die to ashes, never to be rekindled.

Charis willed herself to think of a black which was the entire absence of any light, the swallowing dark from which her species had fled since first they had learned the secret of fire as a weapon against that which prowled in the shadows. Cold crept up her body, the dark gathered in—A spark far in the heart of that dark . . .

A wrenching at her, dragging her back. Charis moaned at the pain of that wrenching. She opened her eyes to look up into the slitted ones set in a reptilian face where a cruel satisfaction gleamed.

“Snake!” She screamed.

The Wyvern male grinned, obviously highly amused by her shock and terror. He caught at her tunic, his claws in the fabric drawing her to the edge of the cot. But as he raised a paw for another grip, his scaled palm spread wide and then contracted quickly as if it had touched fire. A thin cry had burst from the alien; he jumped away from her.

“What’s going on here?” a human voice demanded. Hands appeared on the Wyvern’s shoulder as a figure loomed behind the native, dragging him back.

Charis watched the medic pull the Wyvern out of her room. Then she stumbled after—to see the guard come into Lantee’s room and aid the medic in forcing the struggling native on, the warrior all the while uttering sharp, shrill cries. She paused at the foot of Lantee’s cot as they disappeared toward the outer door.

Shann! She did not cry that name aloud, and even as she made a plea of it in her mind, she knew that there would be no answer. But still she longed now for his support.

His eyes were wide open, but behind them was nothingness. She did not have to touch his limp hand to know that it could not grip hers.

The cries of the Wyvern did not grow fainter. Instead they were augmented outside by a growing chorus. There must be more of the natives gathering. Were the Company men in dispute with their allies?

Charis hesitated. She longed to go to the outer door to see what was going on, but that action would not fit her present role. She should be cowering, frightened to death, in some corner. She listened—the clamor was dying --  Better get back to her own room. She scuttled back.

“You—“ Captain Lazgah stood in the doorway, his shoulders blocking the medic, and the tone of his voice was a warning.

Charis sat up on her cot, her hands were in her hair as if she had been pulling at it. “The snake—“ she took the initiative swiftly “—the snake tried to get me!”

“For good reason.” Lazgah’s quick stride brought him to the cot side. His fingers were steel-tight and punishing about her right wrist as he pulled her about to face him squarely. “You’ve been using those hags’ tricks. Snake—you’re a snake yourself! Those bulls out there have good reason to hate such tricks—they’d like to get their claws into you. Gathgar says you’ve been working with the Power.”

“That’s impossible!” the medic cut in. “You’ve had the complete reading from sensatator since she’s been here. There’s no indication that anything registered. Gathgar knows that she’s been with the females and he built up all this on that fact alone.”

“What do we know about this Power anyway?” Lazgah asked. “Sure, there’s only been negative register since she’s been here. But she might have some way of blanketing reception on that. A scanner could give us the truth.”

“You put a scanner on her now and you’ll get nothing but a complete burn-out. She’ll be another like that fellow in there. What good will that do?”

“Turn the bulls loose on her and we could learn something.”

“What can you learn from the dead? They’re worked up now to a killing rage. Don’t hurry and maybe—“

“Don’t hurry!” The captain made a noise not far removed from one of Taggi’s snarls. “We don’t have much time left. This one knows where those hags have their base. I say—get her under questioning and find that out. Then we move and move fast. We have our orders to cut all corners on this deal.”

“Destroy what you want and what good will it do? Sure, you can probably blast your way in and burn out the opposition, but you know what we’ve learned so far. The Power doesn’t work unless you have had the training. It may not operate for males at all. You have a woman here who’s already been sensitized to it. Why not use her just as Jagan intended—to pick up the information you need? You won’t get that by force—either against her or maybe against the Wyvern females.”

Lazgah relaxed his grip on Charis. But he still stood over the girl, staring at her as if he could reach inside her skull by his will and bring her under control.

“I don’t like it,” he stated, but he did not protest further. “All right—but you keep an eye on her.”

The captain tramped out. But the medic did not follow. It was his turn to favor Charis with a measuring survey.

“I wish I knew whether you are playing a game,” he said, surprising Charis with his frankness. “Those hags can’t possibly control you past the Rim. But—“ He shook his head, more at his own thoughts than at her, and did not finish his sentence. Going out abruptly, he closed the seal again.

Charis continued to sit on the cot. The Wyvern male Gathgar had accused her of working with the Power, but she had not. At least not with the aid of the patterns, Wyvern-fashion. Could it be, Charis’s hand went to the plasta-board under her tunic, that she did not need such an aid anymore? Was what she had been doing here—her contact with Tsstu, the reach for Lantee—an easier method of using the same force?

But if that were true, there was a way of using the Power which could not be affected by the nullifier. Charis blinked. That surmise opened up a whole new field of speculations. She could reach Tsstu, and Tsstu could link in turn with the wolverines. Suppose that Tsstu, the wolverines, Charis and Lantee could form a chain to break open the Alpha-rim of the enemy?

Lantee --  Somehow her thoughts always returned to Lantee, as if the pattern which was not a pattern needed the element for which he stood—just like the time she could not remember the right design until Tsstu supplied the indentations in her drawing. Charis could not have explained why she was certain of this, but she was.

She lay back on the cot and closed her eyes. Lantee must be summoned out of hiding, be one with them again. Charis released a questing thought, spun it out and away from her as a fisherman might cast a line or as a com beam might search for another installation to activate. A Wyvern witch working under the Power would have been accurate in such a hunt. She herself, using the pattern, could have centered on Tsstu and been reasonably certain of a quick contact, but this blind seeking was a fumbling process.

Touch! Charis tensed. Tsstu! Now she must hold that contact, signal along it her need for energy reserves for the job to be done. But Tsstu was unwilling. It was as if she was in Charis’s hand and wriggling for her freedom. But Charis kept the line taut, sent her determined demand along it. There—Taggi came in. The girl braced herself against the impact of the far more savage mind of the wolverine. Through to Taggi went her call for strength and a mutual pointing of their combined wills. Lantee—Charis made that call into form—Lantee. Now a fourth will joined—Togi, the female linked with her mate. The thrusting leap of that striking back to Charis was like a blow.

The girl held that linkage intact for a long moment, as a climber might examine knotted ropes to be sure of his support before facing a dangerous mountainside. Now! The wills were a spear which Charis not only aimed for the throwing but followed in flight.

Into the black of the nothing-place, surely the strangest of those Otherwheres into which the Power of the Wyverns led, she was the point of a fiery arrow shooting on and on, seeking the spark of light there. Now it was before her, very low, an ember close to extinction. But the arrow which was Charis, Tsstu, Taggi, and Togi struck into its heart.

Around them whirled a wild dance of figures. From all the doorways they had come into the corridor to crowd about her. She could not flee from them lest the lifeline break. This was worse than the first time she had walked this forbidden way, for the thoughts and memories of Shann Lantee now gathered more substance in their shadows. Charis knew a terror which balanced her on the thin edge of sanity.

However, the chain held true and pulled her back until she lay again on the cot, aware of its support under her. The contacts broke, the wolverines were gone; Tsstu, gone.

“I am here.”

Charis opened her eyes, but no one in a green-brown uniform stood beside her. She turned her head to face the wall which was still between them.

“I am—back.”

Again that assurance, clear-cut as audible words but, in her mind, coming with the same ease as the Wyvern witches communicated.

“Why—“ Her lips shaped that soundlessly to match the inquiry in her mind.

“It was that or face the scanner,” he answered swiftly.

“And now?”

“Who knows? Did they take you too?”

“No.” Charis outlined what had happened.

“Thorvald here?” Lantee’s thoughts dropped away and she did not try to follow deeper. Then he was back to communication level. “The installation we’re after is in the main dome. They have it guarded by Wyvern males who are sensitive to any telepathic waves. And they will fight to the death to keep it in action and themselves free.”

“Can we reach it?” Charis asked.

“Little chance. At least, I’ve seen none so far,” was his disappointing answer.

“You mean it’s impossible for us to do anything?” Charis protested.

“No, but we have to know more. They’ve stopped trying to rouse me. Perhaps that will give me a chance to make some move.”

“The Wyvern male told them I am using the Power. But I haven’t tried it with the pattern and it didn’t register on some machine of theirs, so they didn’t quite believe him.”

“You did this—without a pattern?”

“With Tsstu and the wolverines, yes. Does it mean we don’t really need a pattern? That the Wyverns don’t need them? But why wouldn’t it show up on their machine?”

“May hit another wavelength,” Lantee returned. “But if the Wyvern males pick it up, they may be more sensitive on other bands than their mistresses credit. I wonder if they could have some Power of their own but don’t know how to use it. If they picked you up before—“

“Then this last call for you—they could—“

“Be really alerted now? Yes. Which shaves our time to act. I don’t even know how many there are here at the base.”

“The witches have promised their help.”

“How can they? Any sending of theirs will fail at the Rim.”

“Shann, the Wyverns control their males with the Power. And the male I saw here believes that I can use it here. Suppose we all link again. Could we control them inside the Rim?”

There was a moment of pause in the flow of thought and then he answered.

“How do we know what will work and what won’t until we put it to the test? But I want to be ready to get out of here on my own two feet. And from here I can see a guard with a blaster at the outer door. We might be able to link against the Wyvern males, but I wouldn’t swear we could link to take out an off-worlder who has never been sensitized to mental control.”

“What do we do?”

“Link with the others. See if you can reach Thorvald so—“ he ordered.

This time the first link was not Charis, but Lantee and his will strengthened hers in her search for the curl-cat. Tsstu replied with a kind of fretfulness, but she picked up the wolverines.

A line cast out, spinning . . . then the catch of response.

“Wait!” That caution came back link by link. “The witches are moving. Wait for their signal.” Break off as the animals dropped contact.

“What can they do?” Charis demanded of Lantee.

“Your guess is as good as mine.” He was tense. “The medic’s just come in.”

Silence. How well could he play his role, Charis wondered a little fretfully. But if the medic had given up hope of reviving the Survey man, he might not examine him too closely now. She lay listening for any sound which might come through the walls.

The door of her room opened and the medic came in with a tray on which there was food, real food, not rations. He put it down on a drop-table and turned around to look at her. Charis tried to look like one awakening from a nap. The man’s expression was set and the motion with which he indicated the food was abrupt.

“You’d better eat. You’ll need it!”

She sat up, pushing back her hair, striving to present bewilderment.

“If you’re smart,” he continued, “you’ll tell the captain all about it now. He’s an expert on grab raids. If you don’t know what that means, you’ll soon discover the hard way.”

Charis was afraid to ask what this warning did mean. To cling to her cloak of being a dazed fugitive was her only defense.

“You can’t hide it—not any longer. Not with a complete burn-out of the sensatator this time.”

Charis tensed. The linkage—twice the linkage—had at last registered on whatever safeguard the invaders had mounted.

“So you do understand that?” The medic nodded. “I thought you would. Now, you had better talk and fast! The captain might just turn you over to the bulls.”

“The snakes!” Charis found words at last. “You mean give me to the snakes?” She did not have to counterfeit her repulsion.

“That gets to you, does it? It should; they hate the Power. And they’ll willingly destroy anyone who uses it if they can. So—make your deal with the captain. He’s willing to offer a good one.”

“Simkin!”

There was such urgency in that hail that the medic whirled to the door. There was a growing murmur of sound—some of it sharp, the rest shouting. The medic ran, leaving the door open. Charis was up and into Lantee’s room instantly.

The hissing blatt-blatt of a blaster in action came now. And she had heard that claking before when the birds had hunted her along the Warlockian cliff.

Then, like a swifter beat of her heart, a pulse along all the veins and arteries of her body—

“Now!”

The signal was not spoken but to it all of Charis responded. She saw Lantee slide from the cot in one supple, coordinated movement—as ready as she.

XVIII

Lantee waved Charis back and took the lead as they approached the outer door. The Company guard still stood there, his back blocking their passage, intent upon what was happening outside, his blaster drawn and moving as if he were trying to align its sights on some very elusive mark.

The Survey man crossed the anteroom with the caution of a stalking feline as the din outside covered any sound within. But some instinct must have warned the guard. He turned his head, sighted Lantee and, giving a cry, tried to bring his blaster up and around.

Too late! Just what Lantee did Charis was not sure. The blow he struck was certainly not any conventional one. As the guard crumpled, the blaster fell to the floor and skidded. Charis pounced and closed fingers about the ugly weapon. She tossed it, as she straightened, to Lantee and he caught it easily.

They looked out into a scene of wild confusion, though their view of it was limited to a small segment of the base. Men in yellow uniforms crouched under cover and laced the air with blaster rays, apparently trying to strike back at some menace in the sky. Two of the Wyvern males lay either dead or unconscious by the door of a dome to the right, across from the one in which Shann and Charis had been prisoners. And there were burned and blasted clakers littering the ground in all directions.

“There—“ Lantee gestured to the dome by which the Wyvern bodies sprawled. “It’s in there.”

But to try to reach that would set them up as targets for the marksmen now concentrating on the clakers. The din of the attack cries was lessening; fewer bodies struck the ground. Charis saw Lantee’s lips thin, his face assume a grim cast, and she knew he was tensing for action.

“Run! I’ll cover you.”

She measured the distance by eye. Not far, but at his moment that open space stretched as an endless plain. And the Wyvern males? Those in sight were motionless, but more could be inside that open door.

Charis gave a leap which carried her well into the open. She heard a shout and then the crackle of a blaster beam which was close enough to scorch her upper arm. She cried out, but somehow she kept to her feet and stumbled on into the door, tripping there over the body of a Wyvern. She sprawled forward into the interior, thereby saving her life as one of the murderous, saw-toothed spears flew past her. She rolled, coming up against the wall where she pushed up to look at her assailants.

Wyvern males—three of them, two still holding spears, one of whom raised his weapon with sadistic slowness. The Wyvern was enjoying her fear as well as the fact that he was now in command of the situation.

“Rrrrrrrruuggghhh.”

The Wyvern, his spear almost ready to throw, snapped around to face the door. A snarling ball of fury burst through it to launch at the natives. They howled, thrusting wildly at the wolverine. But the animal, using the advantage of its surprise attack to break past them, disappeared into the next room.

“Charis! You all right?”

Shann dodged in. The fabric of his tunic smoldered at rib level and he beat at it with his left hand.

“Surprisingly bad shots for Company men,” he commented.

“Maybe they’ve orders not to kill.” Charis tried to match his composure. But though she was on her feet now, she kept her back to the wall, facing the Wyverns, amazed that they had not launched a spear as yet. The eruption of the wolverine into their midst had shaken them oddly.

Shann gestured the three aliens back with his ready blaster.

“Move!” he ordered curtly. And the wariness in their yellow eyes told the two off-worlders that the natives were well aware of the potency of that weapon.

They retreated from the small outer room into the main room of the structure. There had been a good-sized com unit in here, but one glance told Charis that it could not serve them, for the installation had been deliberately rayed with blaster fire until it was half-melted in more than one place.

But that was not all that was in the room. On a base improvised from packing boxes was an intricate machine giving off an aura of rippling light. And, standing about that, almost as if they were cold and were warming their chilled bodies, were six male Wyverns. Now spears were leveled—until they sighted the blaster Shann held.

“Kill!” The word was scorching hate in Charis’s mind as it flashed from the warriors.

“And be killed!” Shann returned in the same mental speech.

The snouted, spike-combed heads bobbed. Their surprise, their unease close to the border of fear, played about them much as did the light that rippled from the machine they guarded.

Lantee could do just that—wipe out the Wyverns and the machine they were striving to shield with their bodies. In Charis’s thought, the natives were ready to die in that fashion. But was that the only answer?

“There might be a better one.” Shann’s thought came in reply to hers.

“Kill!” Not from the Wyverns now, but clear and as a feral demand. Taggi emerged from under the wreckage of the com.

“Here!” The small black shadow which had just flitted in sprang at Charis. The girl stooped and gathered up Tsstu. From her arms the curl-cat regarded the Wyverns with an unwinking stare.

“We die—you die!”

Clear-cut that warning. But the Wyvern who had made it did not raise his spear. Instead he placed his four-digited hands on the installation.

“He means it.” This time Lantee used audible speech. “There must be some sort of panic button in that that will blow up the whole thing if necessary. Move away!” He changed to mental order and gestured with the blaster.

Not one of the natives stirred, and their determination not to yield to that command beat back at the off-worlders in a counterblast. How long could such a standoff continue? Charis wondered. Sooner or later the Company men would be in on this.

She put down Tsstu and went back to the anteroom, to discover that while she could close the outer door, there was no way to secure that portal. The palm lock which had once fastened it was now only a blackened hole in the fabric.

“Kill the witch one! With you, we shall bargain.”

The thought was clear speech in her head as she reentered the wrecked com room.

“You are as we. Kill the witch and be free!” The males appealed to Lantee.

Tsstu hissed, her ears flattened against her round skull as she backed to a stand before Charis. Taggi growled from where he accompanied Shann, his small eyes alight with battle anger.

The spokesman for the natives glanced at both animals. Charis caught the quiver of uncertainty in his mind. Shann the Wyvern could understand; Charis he hated since he classed her with his own females who had always held the Power. But this link with animals was new and so to be feared.

“Kill the witch and those who are hers.” He made his decision, lumping the unfamiliar with Charis. “Be free again as now we are.”

“Are you?” From somewhere Charis found the words. “Away from this room or from the base where this off-world machine cannot reach—are you then free?”

Stark, hot hate glowing at her from yellow eyes, a snarl lifting scaled skin away from fangs.

“Are you?” Shann took up, and Charis readily gave way to his leadership. To the Wyvern males, she was a symbol of all they hated most. But Lantee was male and so to them not wholly an enemy.

“Not yet.” The truth was hard to admit. “But when the witch ones die, then we shall be!”

“But there may not be a need for such killing or dying.”

“What are you thinking of?” Charis asked vocally.

Lantee did not look at her. He was studying the Wyvern leader with intensity, as if he would hold the native in check by his will alone.

“A thought,” he said aloud, “just a thought which might resolve the whole problem. Otherwise, this is going to end with a real blood bath. Now that they know what this machine can do for them, do you think the males will ever be anything again but potential murderers of their own kind? And we can destroy this machine—and them, but that will be a failure.”

“Not killing?” The Wyvern’s thoughts cut in. “But if we do not kill them while they may not dream us defenseless, then they will in time break us and once more use the Power against us.”

“Upon me they used the Power and I was in the outer dark where nothing is.”

The astonishment of the Wyverns was a wave spreading out to engulf the off-worlders.

“And how came you again from that place?” That the Wyvern recognized the site of Lantee’s exile was plain.

“She sought me, and these sought me, and they brought me forth.”

“Why?” came flatly.

“Because they were my friends; they wished me well.”

“Between witch and male there can be no friendship! She is mistress—he obeys her commands in all things—or he is naught!”

“I was naught, yet here I am now.” Shann sought Charis. “Link! Prove it to them—link!”

She tossed the mental cord to Tsstu, to Taggi, and then reached for Shann. They were as one, and as one Shann thrust at the Wyvern’s consciousness. Charis saw the spokesman for the natives sway as if buffeted by a storm wind. Then the off-worlders broke apart and were four again.

“Thus it is,” Shann said.

“But you are not as we are. With you, male and female may be different. True?”

“True. But also know this: as one, we four have broken the bonds of the Power. But can you live always with a machine and those who have brought you the machine? Can they be trusted? Have you looked into their minds?”

“They use us for their purposes. But that we accept for our freedom.”

“Turn off the machine,” Shann said abruptly.

“If we do, the witches will come.”

“Not unless we will it.”

Charis was startled. Was Lantee running his claims too high? But she had begun to understand what he was fighting for. As long as the cleft between male and female existed in the Wyvern species, there would be an opening for just such trouble as the Company men had started here. Shann was going to attempt to close that gap. Centuries of tradition, generations of specialized breeding, stood against his will. And all the terrors and fears of inbred prejudice would be fighting against him, but he was going to try it.

He had not even asked for her backing or consent, and she discovered that she did not resent that. It was as if the linkage had erased all desire to counter a decision she realized as right.

“Link!”

A crackling explosion, the stench of burning plasta-fab. The Company soldiers had turned blasters on the dome! What did Lantee propose to do about that? Charis had only time for one fleeting thought before her mind fell into place beside the others.

Again it was Lantee who aimed that shaft of thought, sent it out past the melting wall of the dome, straight at the enemy minds, open and ill-prepared for such attack. Men dropped where they stood. A still-spitting blaster rolled along the ground, spraying its deadly ray in a wave pattern along a wall.

Shann had had the courage to try that first gamble and he had won. Could he do the same again in the greater gamble he proposed?

The Wyvern spokesman made a slight motion with his hand. Those who walled the machine with their bodies stood away.

“That is not the Power as we know it.”

“But it was born of that Power,” Shann caught him up. “Just as other ways of life may issue from those now known to you.”

“But you are not sure.”

“I am not sure. But I know that killing leaves only the dead, and the dead may not be summoned back by any Power ever known to living creatures. You will die and others shall die if you take the vengeance you wish. Then who will profit by your dying—except perhaps off-worlders for whom you do not fight in truth?”

“But you fight for us?”

“Can I hide the truth when we touch minds?”

That curious quiet came down as a curtain between the off-worlders and the Wyverns as the natives conferred among themselves. At last the spokesman returned to contact.

“We know you speak the truth as you see it. No one before has broken the bonds of the Power. That you have done so means that perhaps you can defend us now. We brought our spears for killing. But it is true that the dead remain dead, and if we make the killing we wish, we as a people shall die. So we shall try your path.”

“Link!” Again the command from Lantee. He made a motion with his hand and the Wyvern pressed a lever on the installation.

This time they had not fashioned a spear of the mind-force but a barrier wall, and only just in time. As a wave of determined attack struck against it, Charis swayed and felt the firm brace of Shann’s arm as he stood, his feet a little apart, his chin up—as he might have faced a physical fight, fist against fist.

Three times that wave battered at them, striving, Charis knew, to reach the Wyvern males. And each time the linkage held without yielding. Then they were there in person—Gysmay, her brilliant body-patterns seeming to flame in her terrible anger, Gidaya—and two others Charis did not know.

“What do you?” The question seared.

“What we must.” Shann Lantee made answer.

“Let us have those who are ours!” Gysmay demanded in full cry.

“They are not yours but their own!”

“They are nothing! They do not dream, they have no Power. They are nothing save what we will them to be.”

“They are part of a whole. Without them, you die; without you, they die. Can you still say they are nothing?”

“What say you?” The question Gidaya asked was aimed at Charis, not Shann.

“That he speaks the truth.”

“After the manner of your people, not ours!”

“Did I not have an answer from Those Who Have Gone Before which you could not read, Wise One? Perhaps this is the reading of that answer. Four have become one at will, and each time we so will it, that one made of four is stronger. Could you break the barrier we raised here while we were one, even though you must have sent against us the full Power? You are an old people, Wise One, and with much learning. Can it not be that some time, far and long ago, you took a turning into a road which limited your Power in truth? Peoples are strong and grow when they search for new roads. When they say, ‘There is no road but this one which we know well, and always must we travel in it,’ then they weaken themselves and dim their future.

“Four have made one and yet each one of that four is unlike another. You are all of a kind in your Power. Have you never thought that it takes different threads to weave a real pattern—that you use different shapes to make the design of Power?”

“This is folly! Give us what is ours lest we destroy you.” Gysmay’s head-comb quivered, the very outlines of her body seemed to shimmer with her rage.

“Wait!” Gidaya interrupted. “It is true that this dreamer has had an answer from the Rods, delivered by the will of Those Who Have Dreamed Before. And it was an answer we could not read, but yet it was sent to her and was a true one. Can any of you deny that?”

There was no answer to her demand.

“Also, there have been said here things which have a core of good thought behind them.”

Gysmay stirred, none of her anger abating. But she did not render her protest openly.

“Why do you stand against us now, Dreamer?” Gidaya continued. “You, to whom we have opened many gates, to whom we gave the use of the Power—why should you choose to turn that same gift against us who have never chosen to do you ill?”

“Because here I have seen one true thing: that there is a weakness in your Power, that you have been blind to that which makes evil against you. As long as you are a race divided against itself, with a wall of contempt and hatred keeping you apart, then there is a way of bringing disaster upon your race. It is because you opened doors and made straight a road for me that I will to do the same for you now. This evil came from my people. But we are not all thus. We, too, have our divisions and barriers, our outlaws and criminals.

“But do not, I pray you, Wise Ones,” Charis hastened on, “keep open this rift in your own nation so that outside ill can enter. You have seen that there are two answers to the Power on which you lean. One comes through a machine which can be turned on and off at the will of outsiders. Another is a growth from the very seeds you have sown, and so it is possible for you to nourish it also.

“Without this man I have only the Power you gave to my summoning. With him and the animals, I am so much the greater that I no longer need this.” From her tunic Charis took the map sheet, holding it out so that the Wyverns could see the pattern drawn upon it. She crumpled the sheet and tossed it to the floor.

“This must be thought upon in council.” Gidaya had watched that repudiation of the pattern with narrowed eyes.

“So be it,” Charis affirmed, and they were gone.

“Will it work?” Charis sat in the commander’s quarters of the base. A visa-screen on the wall showed a row of Wyvern warriors squatting on their heels, guards for the still dazed Company men who had been herded into the visitors’ dome in temporary imprisonment, awaiting the arrival of the Patrol forces.

Lantee lounged in an Eazi-rest, far down on his spine, while across his outstretched legs sprawled two wolverine cubs now snorting a little from the depths of slumber.

“Talk out, won’t you?” Thorvald snapped in exasperation as he looked up from the emergency com. “I pick up only a kind of buzzing in the brain when you do that and it’s giving me a headache!”

Shann grinned. “A point to remember, sir. Do I think our argument will convince them? I’m not venturing any guesses. But the witches are smart. And we proved them flat failures, tackling them on their own ground. That rocked them harder than they’ve ever been, I imagine. Warlock’s been theirs to control; with their Power and their dreams, they have thought themselves invincible. Now they know they are not. And they have two answers: to stand still and go under, or to try this new road you’ve talked about. I’ll wager we may have a tentative peace offer first, then some questions.”

“They have their pride,” Charis said softly. “Don’t strip that from them.”

“Why should we wish to?” Thorvald asked. “Remember, we, too, have dreamed. But this is just why you will handle the negotiations.”

She was surprised at the tone of his voice, but he was continuing. “Jagan was right in his approach, a woman must be a liaison. The witches have to admit that Lantee and, to a lesser degree, myself have some small claim on their respect, but they will be happier to have you take the fore now.”

“But I’m not—“

“Empowered to act on a diplomatic level? You are. This mission has wide emergency powers, and you are to represent us. You’re drafted, all of you—Tsstu and Taggi included—to conduct a treaty with the witches.”

“And it will be a real treaty this time!”

Charis did not know how Shann could be so sure of that, but she accepted his confidence.

“Link!”

Automatically now she yielded to that unspoken order. It was a new pattern, flowing, weaving, and she allowed herself to be swept along, sensing there were treasures to be found so: the subtle skill and neat mind that was Tsstu, the controlled savagery and curiosity that was Taggi and sometimes Togi.

Then there was that other—closer in some ways, different in others, and fast becoming an undissolvable part of her—which was strength, companionship. Hand rising to clasp hand, falling away, but always there to reach and hold again when needed. This had she brought with her from the Otherwhere of the Wyverns and this she would need ever hereafter to be complete.