feet as the others hurtled at him. Giant hands that were smooth-palmed and hairy-backed hasked at his arms and leather space-harness. He slammed fists at the faces revealed by the floating red aura over them. He tried to use footwork, but the space was too narrow. It was kill or be killed, and he just didn't have the strength to stop them.

A palm caught him on the ear and sent his head ringing like a carrillon tower. A fanged mouth fastened on his thigh, biting deep. Another hand raked at his naked arm and gouged out flesh.

Travis leaped for them, hoping to run over their bodies and go back up the tunnel faster than they could follow. But a big arkling rose up from the pack and swung a flat hand. The blow caught him on his chest, sent him reeling and sickened, back and back—

The arklings cried out just as the pink light swept up all around Travis. The menace was unbearable as he fell back and into the pale barrier. It bathed him and whispered to him and threatened him with queer and maddening ways to die. It caught him in its tenuous folds and held him there, cradled, as the voices told him of a water-death that took eleven years, each year more painful than the last; they gloated over a spit and a fire of red coals that cooked a man over a space of months; they whimpered, themselves scarcely daring to think of the barbaric tortures of Rudra the eternal....

A cool something touched his forehead. Travis tried to focus his eyes through the subtle distortions of the pink mists. He saw the twin blue pools at first, and then the yellow shower of hair graced with the triangular headgear blazing with jewels. The blue pool were her eyes, and they were wide and open, and filled with a wisdom that made Travis shudder deep in his guts.

And yet, there was a fear in those blue eyes, too.

She wore a transparent film with a slender golden thong looped at her middle. She murmured, "You are Clark Travis, an Earth-thing. You came to kidnap me. Yes. And the arklings have harmed you."

The woman turned and stared toward the tunnel. A white hand fumbled at her girdle, drew out a pencil-thin rod of metal. She went away from Travis and stepped into the tunnel. Travis tried to watch her, but the pain of his wounds, and the ringing in his temples bothered his eyes. There was a terrific green flare that tinted the pale pink light—

And silence.

Travis knew 

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