Inc., had endowed her was unsullied by either time or the elements, Swenson had been born in space and had spent most of his life in space. He had never been to Earth, and he had never seen an android. Consequently, he mistook Isolde for a real woman—a woman of heroic proportions, perhaps, but a woman radiant with the beauty he had looked for all his life and never found, till now.

Swenson forgot about the diamonds. He forgot about the gold. He stepped forward, touched Isolde's arm. The normal human temperature which her thermostat maintained, felt natural to his fingers. The softness of her synthetic skin made his flesh tingle. "A white goddess," he said. "A genuine honest-to-God white goddess!"

The burst of recitative which his remark provoked, disconcerted him for a moment. He had heard many languages in his day, but he had never heard one with such a violent intonation or such guttural syllables. Isolde, he concluded, must come from a world he had never touched upon in all his travels—a world remote from the ordinary pathways of man. And he was right, too, though in a way he did not dream.

At this point, a dull explosion sounded in the courtyard without, followed by another. Instantly alert, Swenson ran to the entrance—saw the six men who had accompanied him, lying stunned on the flagstones. Even as he looked, a horde of "fireheads" streamed out of the forest, long knives glittering. The quartering was accomplished in a matter of seconds.

Sickened, Swenson ran back into the temple. There was a wide aperture in the rear wall, and the better part of valor, he knew, would be to forget the white goddess, whom the natives would not harm anyway, and gain the forest. The Idwandanans' possession of stun grenades unmistakably indicated that they had taken the Malaita, but perhaps he could eke out an existence till another ship came. In any event, burdening himself with a woman, however robust she might be, would be detrimental to his success.

Thus he reasoned, but thus he did not act. When the first Idwandanans gained the temple, Bruggil's Bride was gone.

The heavy underbrush fought their footsteps, and Swenson had to keep a constant drag on Isolde's arm, else she would not have accompanied him at all. The shouts of their pursuers grew louder by the second. When they came to a river, he plunged into it unhesitatingly, pulling Isolde after him. She could not swim, of course, but he was an expert, and in a matter of minutes they were in midstream. If he had known 

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