them, even after the Hymenops pulled out. They couldn't break away until the Marco's Ringwave forced a shutdown of the dome's power plant and deactivated the images. Not that they're any better off now that they're free; they don't know how—"

Farrell never heard the rest of it. Something struck him sharply across the back of the head.

When he regained consciousness, he was naked and weaponless and lost. The rustling of approach, bodiless and dreadful in darkness, panicked him completely and sent him fleeing through a sweating eternity that brought him finally to the dome's lowest level and the Hymenop power plant.

He went hesitantly toward the shadowy bulk of the Ringwave cylinder, drawn as much now by its familiarity as driven by the terror behind him. At the base of the towering machine, he made out a control board totally unrecognizable in design, studded with dials and switches clearly intended for alien handling.

The tinny whispering of Stryker's voice in the vaultlike quiet struck him with the frightening feeling that he had gone mad.

He saw his equipment pack then, lying undamaged at the foot of the control board. Stryker's voice murmured from its audicom unit: "We're in the dome, Arthur. Where are you? What level—"

Farrell caught up the audicom, swept by a sudden wild lift of hope. "I'm at the bottom of the dome, in the Ringwave chamber. They took my gun and torch. For God's sake, hurry!"

The darkness gave up a furtive scuffling of sandaled feet, the tight breathing of many men. Someone made a whimpering sound, doglike and piteous; a Sadrian voice hissed sharply, "Quiet!"

Stryker's metallic whisper said: "We're tracking your carrier, Arthur. Use the tools they left you. They brought you there to repair the Ringwave, to give back the power that kept their images going. Keep busy!"

Farrell, only half understanding, took up his instrument case. His movement triggered a tense rustle in the darkness; the voice whimpered again, a tortured sound that rasped Farrell's nerves like a file on glass.

"Give me back my Voice. I am alone and afraid. I must have Counsel...."

Beneath the crying, Farrell felt the terror, incredibly voiced, that weighted the darkness, the horror implicit in stilled breathing, the swelling sense of outrage.

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