Eldon's thought-body drew hers close as they floated side by side in limbo, drew her to him comfortingly and protectingly to thrust those memories aside. He thought she should be soft and warm to touch--and she was. She pulled away--after a time that could have been either a moment or an age--with a tinkling laugh and a change of mood. "Time here is _different_ and it will seem long before we can return," her mind said. "Let us build a world to our own hearts' desires and live there until--until you can destroy Sasso and the Faith." "But--" She ignored his protest. "I will go back to the Chamber occasionally--it will be necessary--but if you with your tenacious Earth mind went it would be disastrous." "Understand this once and for all," he warned her. "If ever I can return to my own Earth I shall do so. I am not your marvelous El-ve-don, and I have no intention of fighting this thing you call Sasso. Those Luvans were bad enough." Krasna frowned. Then her look of disappointment gave place to a knowing smile. There was a hint of a surprising idea. Just the faintest sort of hint--and then she closed her mind, half laughingly and half in seriousness. But tightly. "Let's build our world," she said. * * * * * It was a Godlike sensation to _think_ a world. It changed with their thoughts, part Earth, part Varda, and part the solidification of the non-existent lands of dreams. There were groves, streams, mountains, plains. There were towns too, but these could be seen only dimly, indistinct in the distance, the men and women in them tiny figures without individuality. Neither Krasna nor Eldon had formulated their ideas for an inhabited utopia concretely enough to fill in the details. Krasna created for herself a wardrobe of wonderful gowns every fold of which draped in a perfection of beauty, and jewels of kaleidoscopic inner fires that shifted with her mood. After her hunted forest life in Varda she indulged her fancies to the fullest. Eldon built a laboratory. He lavished concentrated attention upon it--and then it failed to give him the satisfaction he had expected. For he did not have to work to find solutions. He _knew_. Even the mysterious bound charges yielded up their secrets in minutest detail, and when he discovered his Earth theorizing about the close connection between interacting bound charges and life itself had been on the right track he felt no surprise. The experimental equipment he designed was worse than useless, answering so perfectly to his thoughts that he could make the needles of his meters swing by merely _willing_ it. He gathered almost limitless knowledge.