out his thoughts as one might squeeze water from a sponge. There was a laying-bare of dreams dredged from the deep subconscious, a draining off of skills and knowledge. And agony came with it--an agony that rose from soul, not body; a pain that seared beyond all human ken. Through a thousand years it stretched, that pain--a thousand years when seconds lasted eons. Boone writhed and screamed. At least, he thought he did. For never, never, so long as he should live, could he be quite sure. Yet he knew, somehow, that, lacking a universe of discourse, the things the Helgae sought most were still locked in his brain. Like him, they could not bridge the chasm that yawned between such different minds. Then it was over and the glow of purple, too, was fading. The probing minds drew back their tendrils. Boone's sphere dissolved into a place of glorious, delirium-born darkness and he was falling ... falling.... 

CHAPTER IV 

It was a wondrous world. He walked in halls of polished marble and looked out through colonnades across a bright blue sea. Gentle breezes carried flowers' perfumes to him. Wine warmed his throat. Music rippled in faint, nostalgic waves. Yet he knew no joy, for loneliness ached dull underneath his breastbone. First listless, then feverish, he wandered in and out among the columns, ever seeking. Servitors brought rare foods, sun-blushing fruits, to tempt his palate; and there were women who pressed themselves upon him, seducing him with eye and voice and touch. But he brushed by; he would have none of them. He saw the blue sea as a wasteland. The wine turned bitter in his mouth. Then, suddenly, _she_ was there, a fairy figure far off amid the towering pillars. With a glad cry, he ran towards her. But she laughed and flitted away before him. And when he tried to follow, dusk came, casting ebon shadows, and he could not find her, and he threw himself down on the hard bed of the marble, bruised and broken. "Eileen--!" he moaned. "Eileen...." 

As from afar, a voice said, "That's right. Another shot of vorghon."

He turned his head, ever so slowly. He forced his burning, heavy-lidded eyes to open. A man in the white jacket of the medcorps stood beside him, smiling. "Good," the man said. "I knew we'd do it. Vorghon always brings them around." 

"You hit it, all right." It was another medman speaking. "For awhile there, I'd begun to wonder. But that last shot turned the trick." 

Again Boone whispered: "Eileen--where is she?" 

"Eileen, did you say? 

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