there was no malice there.

Small, delicate, fine-limbed monster from an alien hell. At her command thousands had died horribly during the Red Moon Games. Trampled, drained of blood, shredded by talons, poisoned by fangs, tortured, flayed and inflicted with unspeakable indignities worse than pain. Yet she possessed the sadist's love of beauty, of decadent riches, luxury, sensual surroundings, and love.

He arose with one fluid motion and faced her. His body had been bathed and scented with perfumed oils. His trappings were new, the grey leather of the Anghorians. A long sword swung at his side.

"The Mistmen are yours," he said. "And this has all been a trap to get me here?"

"Yes. You are mine now, as are all the others. We have ways here to control the heart and the mind of those who are not quite willing to accept me. I have employed these methods often."

He inhaled deeply. His chest swelled. And a wave of almost overpowering ecstasy swept him in a surging tide of passion. How many years he had waited for this one supreme, delectable moment of revenge!

And now he was alone with her. And there was nothing to stand in his way. Or was there? She was no fool. She must have protection. He could see nothing.

His eyes clouded as he looked at her. That haughty body would soon writhe and scream under his hands. And before she died she would know the full meaning of torture.

But first he would learn the nature of this mystery. "Where is Mahra?" he said. "And what is the seventh plain?"

"Our scientists call them plains," she ignored the first question. "But they are really worlds coexistent with this one. We have explored six of these worlds. This, Venus, is the sixth. I and my kind came here from the second."

Moljar blinked. His barbarian mind was quick to accept the strange and the marvelous. It was not at all unbelievable that these Anghorians had come not only from another world, but from another dimension of existence. A coexistent world. It was only unexpected.

"All matter and all chronosophy are one and concomitant," she said. She swayed toward him. "Our scientists perfected the Matrix which can synthesize matter to any of these various worlds or plains. It changes the consistency of the atom, much as a lens magnifies objects to fit the perspective of your eye."

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