Then the high priestess of Sasso changed her tactics, spoke to him soothingly until he stopped trembling in fear. She put her arms around him, pressed her body close against his, and kissed him passionately full on the mouth while Victor glowered. Eldon gave the she-devil her due. She was fiendishly desirable. There was something hypnotic about the insinuating motions of her body, the warmth of her skin, but Eldon's lips remained lax under hers and no light of desire kindled in his eye. She shoved him brusquely away, convinced that he had lost not only his mind but his inborn, basic instincts. "I doubt if we will gain any information from this thing," she said. "Come, Victor." Without warning Victor struck at Eldon's unprotected face, a viciously unprovoked blow that sent him crashing to the floor. It took all his mental control to keep from leaping up and attacking the renegade, but he trembled and lay sobbing until they were gone. The next day Wor and Margaret led him from the room for the first time, took him to an air car waiting on the roof, and flew him to a spot on the brownish desert away from all habitation. The two instructors never dreamed their pupil was already familiar with the blast rod, as for a long while Eldon shivered at the spitting hiss of the discharge and consistently missed the desert shrubs they pointed out as targets. "I'm afraid we'll have to use some other weapon," Margaret said at last. "He'll learn, damn him," Wor growled. "We've been patient long enough." Wor's educational methods consisted of brutal kicks and smashing punches in the ribs. Eldon's progress became almost dangerously phenomenal. He knew he had to improve rapidly, before the plotters changed their plans. For the blast rod was a bound charge weapon, and he suspected that by mental concentration he could change the resonant frequency of the discharge, perhaps modulate it properly. He would need it, and badly. "For a one-eyed cripple without the brains of a crawling _sbedico_ he does well enough," Wor conceded at last. "All he needed was firmness." * * * * * There was more tiresome waiting, nerve-wracking tense days of it. And then one evening as the sun was setting Margaret entered and he knew instantly by her avid, _hungry_ look what was to happen. Conditions of shifting coincidence between Sasso and the world of Varda were now favorable and Sin had commanded an Observance. But Eldon shared a secret with Margaret and the scheming military commander. This was to be more than another Observance. This was to be The Night. A thrill of mingled fear and expectancy ran through him. For an instant his body straightened, but Margaret was too deep in anticipation of unholy ecstasy to notice. "Come," she ordered.