Instead, coldly, he drew his ray-gun from its holster. "Then I have no choice...." "You'll kill me, you mean--?" There was contempt in the girl's voice, the twist of her lips. "So in the end you're not so different from _Gar_ Sark, after all." Haral smiled thinly. "Say rather that I know enough to bow to reality when I face it. If I cannot win this battle, then I must come to terms another way." He let his smile broaden, building up impact for the climax. "But not by killing you, Priestess Kyla. That truly would get me nothing." "Then what--?" Haral shrugged. With careful casualness he said, "Sark still might strike a bargain for you." "_Sark--!_" The shock in the girl's voice stabbed at Haral. Fear was in her eyes now--the bright, shiny fear of those nightmare eternities she stood helpless in Sark's arena. But the blue man held his face immobile. "You leave me no choice," he clipped. "I must either have the lightning-force, the secret of your goddess Xaymar, or I must buy back my life from Sark. Since I lack the stomach to force the secret from you, that leaves only Sark for me to turn to. You surely understand." He watched the sickness come to Kyla's face, then. Her eyes closed. Her tongue flicked at her lips. At long last she looked at him again. Dully, she said, "Put away your weapon, warrior. I am vanquished." Wordless, Haral slipped the ray-gun back into its holster. Kyla said: "I'd hoped this might have another ending, blue man. When you rode out in the face of _Gar_ Sark and all his might to save me, my heart leaped, and strange feelings woke within me, here." She touched her breast. "I saw you as a Galahad of the spaceways, a valiant who fought for right and honor instead of booty. But now I see you true. You're as the rest--greedy, blood-thirsty, driven by hate and a lust for power." A knife seemed to twist deep in Haral's vitals. He did not speak. * * * * * The girl's great, tragic eyes stayed set upon him. "Yet, blue man, you saved my life. There is indeed a debt of gratitude I owe you. I'll pay it now...." She rose; came close to him. Her hand touched the heavy copronium brassart that sheathed his upper arm. "There's a reason our living goddess Xaymar has lain sleeping through all these years of Ulna's sorrow, blue man," she told him tensely. "Did you think my people, my proud, unbending _Shamon_, would have suffered all the insults and degradation you alien raiders brought here with you had it not been so? Can you vision us submitting to your despoilment while we held an invincible weapon in our hands, unless the dangers that lay in unsheathing that weapon were even more dreadful than the worst that you, in your crude butchery, could offer?" Haral shifted. Frowning, he studied the priestess' shadowed eyes and strain-straught face. She breathed deep. Her words rushed forth in a flood, a frantic, half-hysterical jumble: