For Kalquoi crowded the dish-like hollow, hovering like fireflies among the fallen pillars and shrub-masked seats. Hundreds of them; thousands--they pulsed and glowed and changed shape amid the ruins, till the amphitheatre itself was transformed into a fantastic fairyland of energy and light. But his escorts gave him no time for pause or contemplation. Already they were urging him down the nearest aisle to the arena below. Then, at last, there was an end to his scrambling and stumbling through the debris. His guards halted him, close by the base of the Sandoz Shaft. The drive to reach the giant needle boiled in Dane, almost overwhelming. But when he would have tried, a quick flick of light from one of his captors turned him back. He could only stare greedily, drinking the strangeness of the towering monument with his eyes. And it was weird enough to hold any man's attention. Just as Dane remembered from his vision, the needle stood unsupported, a silver lance suspended in mid-air, completely clear of base, socket, bed-plate. Studying it here at close range, Dane could see how delicate was its balance. The point quivered visibly where it hung above the socket, dancing like a plastic ball atop an airstream. Vibrations ran the slim length of the needle, till it seemed to turn into a flickering razor-edge of light. How could it be? A beam of some sort--? * * * * * Something stung Dane's flank, then. The pain stabbed so sharp he whirled by reflex, questions and shaft alike momentarily forgotten. As he did so, a light-beam flicked at his elbow, flame-hot. His guards were urging him to movement again, prodding him diagonally ahead till he stood directly in front of the shaft, but with his back to it. Now he saw that Nelva Guthrie, too, had reached the arena. Surrounded by her captors, she stood to the left of the shining needle, just as a moment before he himself had stood to its right. But the Kalquoi gave him little time for such observation. While he watched, a small group of them moved out into the arena and took places in a semicircle close before him. Dane's guards fell back before the newcomers. In the seating area up along the amphitheatre's sloping sides, the assembled crystalline, light-emitting aliens eddied closer, glowed brighter. A hush seemed to fall over the hollow. Tension climbed like a spaceship at escape velocity. Dane stood very still. There was nothing he could do but wait. Then, suddenly, one of the Kalquoi in the tight arc close before him pulsed vivid scarlet. A familiar impulse leaped into Dane's brain ... a patterned, rhythmic groping: _John Dane ... John Dane ... John Dane...._ Dane sighed; tried to concentrate upon his answer: "Not John Dane. Clark Dane. Clark, not John...." From then on, there was tumult and fumbling and confusion. Wordless and incoherent, alien intelligences probed every fold and convolution of Dane's brain.