"Forest People!" Krasna lifted her voice. "The Earthman is the father of my child--although he himself did not know it until now!" Eldon wanted to shout a denial. But he understood why she had been so unsure of her footing descending the mountains, why she had tired so easily. "This Earthman _could be_ El-ve-don of the prophecy if he would. He will not. But some day--if the Gateway can be held long enough--perhaps our child will accept the burden its father has shirked. The child will inherit characteristics of a Closed World mind. It was all I could do for Varda." Her voice broke in a sob. Eldon read a thought in her mind, a thought intended for him alone. "And besides, I love him." His brain was awhirl. It was all utterly impossible. But his confusion was interrupted by a stir in the back of the hall. Bolan entered, shoved his way to the dais. He spoke to the old leader and there were cries of angry protest from those near enough to hear. "But--" the old man began. "A trick to regain our confidence," someone broke in loudly. "Even Luvans would be sacrificed to defeat us." The old man spoke to Bolan again, and Bolan turned to stare at his sister with disbelief changing to undisguised loathing. "But she is the only one who knows the arrangement of the Fortress," he said aloud. "Kill her and you doom our attack to failure." There was a babble of disagreement. "I say this not as her brother--if she has chosen a mate outside our own People I hereby declare her no longer my sister--but as chosen leader of our attack." Amid the ensuing uproar the old man made a gesture to the guards, and with his newfound telepathic ability Eldon caught the thought-command. "Take them to the side rooms, apart from each other. We must consider this." * * * * * Alone in a tiny cell Eldon tried to bring his whirling thoughts to order. Krasna had lied. She must have lied. Why? But for a moment her mind had been so open to his telepathic sense that lying was improbable. And-- He felt a sudden mental wrench, a dislocation, a twisting--a million ideas spun through his brain--and he _remembered_. Memories of the Thin World--those very memories whose lack had made Krasna cry so bitterly--all at once. They had been there all the time, but buried, and the quick series of emotional shocks had brought them to the surface. Gone was the irksome, nagging feeling that had made him speak so harshly to the poor girl, replaced by a sense of surety and power. Krasna had returned to the Chamber, to their real bodies, while he had remained in the Thin World. It could have--must have--happened that way. He remembered the secret, knowing smile she had worn, and the hints he had detected in her mind. And thought was a powerful force in Varda, controlling material objects. And time in the Thin World was different, variable.