over Eric's back in a sprawling arc. He fell, teetered for an instant, and then crashed into the delicate heart of the machine below. Glass tinkled, and a flare lit the room. Eric closed his eyes, afraid to look. Garve must have been electrocuted.

Eric opened his eyes to find the room subtly changed. It was roughly the same, but the walls were a rough sandstone, and the glamour was gone. He heard sounds, and saw Garve struggling up from the wreckage below. Both of them knew it was ended. The machine was beyond repair.

Garve paused. He said, "It's over now. I suppose in a year or two I shall forget this. I am going away. Until I can forgive you I shall stay away. God grant you peace, for you have lost more than I." Garve's steps echoed hollowly on the stone corridor and he disappeared in the distance.

Eric stood quietly. There was no happiness in him, only a nameless fear brought on by his brother's words, a fear that he had forgotten something.

Then suddenly he knew what it was. He remembered the ugly city. When he came out of the corridor, out of this building, the city would be a foul sty again. And the people, he had not seen the people, but they would no doubt be horrible. Nolette, his wife—he could not let himself think of how she would look. It seemed Garve was right and the final prediction had come true. All was finished, even the Daughter of the City had been destroyed.

He began to move up out of the subterranean room and back to the city. He reached the outer door, and did not even pause to look for Nolette, but set his teeth, and stepped out into the city.

And there he was surprised. Here was no ugly city, only a very normal, ordinary one, with ordinary persons going about the streets, blinking at the changes. The lines of the city were still there, but the jeweled panes were ordinary glass.

Eric tried to understand. Then suddenly he recalled his hatred of the city when he had been cast out, his subconscious thoughts of it as evil. He had taken off the helmet, and for an instant he had been out of contact with the elders, disoriented. In that instant the city had shown him his concept of ugliness. That ugly city was as unreal as the fantastically beautiful one created by the elders.

Eric turned, and went back into the building, looking for Nolette.

He found her, standing with Kroon in the great room, before a table 

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