His heart was gorged and painful. His clothing was cold on his sweating body. He plunged on and on through black halls and drifting shards of light, with the shadows dancing all around and doors, doors, doors. Paul Avery made a little empty chuckle. "It's laughing," he mumbled and went down on the black floor. The shadows leaped. Sheila's eyes were a staring fire in her starved white face. Her terror shocked against Falken's brain and steadied it. "Take his feet," he said harshly. "Take his feet." They staggered on with their burden. And presently there were no more doors, and no roof overhead. Only the light and the glassy walls, and the dancing shadows. The walls were thin in places. Through them Falken saw the dark colossus with its flaming eyes, straining through the spangled light. After it came the hounds and hunters, not gaining nor falling back, riding in blind absorption. The walls faded, and the shadows. They were alone in the center of the black plain. Falken looked back at the castle. There was nothing but the flat and naked rock. He laid Avery down. He saw Sheila Moore fall beside him. He laughed, one small, mad chuckle. Then he crouched beside the others, his scarred gypsy face a mask of living stone. Whether it was then, or hours later that he heard the voice, Falken never knew. But it spoke loudly in his mind, that voice. It brought him up, his futile blaster raised. "You are humans," said the voice. "How wonderful!" Falken looked upward, sensing a change in the light. Something floated overhead. A ten-foot area of curdled glory, a core of blinding brilliance set in a lacy froth of fire. The beauty of it caught Falken's throat. It shimmered with a sparkling opalescence, infinitely lovely--a living, tender flame floating in the rainbow light. It caught his heart, too, with a deep sadness that drifted in dim, faded colors beneath the brilliant veil. It said, clearly as a spoken voice in his mind: "Yes. I live, and I speak to you." Sheila and Avery had risen. They stared, wide-eyed, and Sheila whispered, "What are you?" The fire-thing coiled within itself. Little snapping flames licked from its edges, and its colors laughed. "A female, isn't it? Splendid! I shall devise something very special." Colors rippled as its thoughts changed. "You amaze me, humans. I cannot read your minds, beyond thoughts telepathetically directed at me, but I can sense their energy output. "I had picked the yellow one for the strongest. He appeared to be so. Yet he failed, and you others fought through." Avery stared at Falken with the dawn of an appalled realization in his amber eyes. Falken asked of the light: "What are you?" The floating fire dipped and swirled. Preening peacock tints rippled through it, to be drowned in fierce, proud scarlet. It said: "I am a child of the Sun." * * * * * It watched them gape in stunned amazement, and laughed with mocking golden notes.