"She guided me into the palace," whispered the Earthman. "A dozen times her intuition warned me to hide. She showed me the way to Verel--or to _that_--" His breath caught sharply, and he jerked his head at the robot that had worn the guise of womanhood. "She warned me that she couldn't reach its mind--I should have suspected! But we found it. And we were challenged. There was fighting. I fired the tapestries with my disruptor, to make a diversion. And must have burned down a dozen of the guards. And Setsi fought--you wouldn't believe it! Rolled up like an arrow of glass, she can drive a neat round hole in a skull! I picked up Verel, and she tried to guard the retreat. There was a cathode beam from a robot cop. I looked back, and she had fallen. And we had just time to beat the flames to the window. We got there. By the Stone--to think that Setsi died for that!" With a glazed stricken look in his eyes, the Earthman was staring at the thing he had brought from the palace--as weird a sight as I had ever seen. Its stripped white body had all the loveliness of a slender girl's. Crimson drips still fell, even, from where arm and thigh and firm round breast had been injured in the struggle. But its head was a monstrous thing. The metal of it glinted red in the torchlight of the palace. Its eyes shone cold green, watchfully. And it was grotesquely small, for it had been covered with the mask of Kel Aran's beloved, that now lay collapsed beside it on the ground. Its crystal eyes had glittered malignly as the soldiers took our disruptors, and still it was laughing. Insanely--if a machine can be insane! A smooth girl's arm, dripping red droplets, pointed at Kel Aran. A slot snapped open in that glittering metal mockery of a head. And a voice--a woman's soft voice--said mockingly: "So you are the Falcon of Earth, snared at last! Against the Master, you might have called yourself--Sparrow! But you are the last of your poor kind that he feared. Now that you are taken, the rest will die with you." * * * * * Kel Aran turned shakily away from this thing that was half the girl he loved, half fantastic mechanism. Fetters jingled as he clutched my hand. "It's too much for me, Barihorn," he whispered. "There's nothing left." "Perhaps Verel is safe," I tried to encourage him. "With the Stone." His bowed yellow head shook again, hopelessly. "No, Malgarth has her," he whispered. "For this--" he choked. "This is a perfect copy. This is the figure and the manner and the voice of Verel." He shuddered. "Even her laughter." The guards then began to move us back from the pool, for the bomb was ready to set off. Kel Aran swayed drunkenly in his fetters, and one of the men stabbed him with a thin torturing flicker of his ray, and laughed as his muscles leapt and writhed in agonized response. The robot strode free-limbed beside him.