"Then I was put on a tender ship of the Space Police. I saw no more human beings, Kel. But only whirring, clicking, clattering robots, staring at me with cold blue lenses that had no feeling." She shuddered on the bunk. "A world of machines, without any voices, any laughter, any emotion you could understand. It was dreadful, Kel. Horrible!" * * * * * He caught her trembling hand again, waited. "The robot police took me to some agency of the Corporation," her dry weary whisper resumed. "There they put me on a larger ship, that was laden with the loot of planets that the robots had vanquished. That carried me to some other world. The robot nurses drugged me as we landed. When I came to, we were on another ship, out in space again. "That ship took me to Mystoon!" She lay motionless for a long time, then, with her eyes closed again. Her breath was a faint dry sobbing sound. Softly, the Earthman brushed the glistening tangle of yellow hair back from her forehead. "Mystoon?" he asked at last. "What's it like, Verel?" The blue eyes opened, somber pools of dread. "Don't ask me, Kel," she whispered. "I can't endure to talk of Black Mystoon. Not now. No more than I must--Malgarth's there. It has been his hidden fortress for half a million years. It's guarded well. I think I'm the first human being to escape it--if any had been taken there before me. I did it only because I had to find you, Kel. _Had_ to!" She clutched his hand again, and sighed. "But still Malgarth has the Stone, on Mystoon. He has preserved it, trying to find in it the secret of his own mortality. I saw it once, while they were making that--that copy of me." She shuddered again. "The Stone?" Urgency tensed the Earthman's voice. "Still it has the power to destroy Malgarth?" The golden head nodded, on the bunk. "Still it holds the ancient secret, that Barihorn entrusted to it. And now at last it is willing to strike--for clearly no other recourse is left. The Shadow of the Stone came to me before I escaped, and begged for aid to strike. It begged me to send you, Kel, and Barihorn--Barihorn, who it told me had returned to crush his old creation! It foretold that I should find you on Meldoon. And it aided me to plan the escape." Dark with wonder, her blue eyes came briefly to my face. "And you are Barihorn," she breathed. "Maker of Malgarth! Well, it's time you returned! Still the Shadow waits, within the Stone. But it won't endure for long, after Malgarth's science has got its secret." Kel Aran was asking: "You escaped from Mystoon? How?" The girl's eyes went back to him.