As he reached the corner, Kyla came stumbling toward him from the other side of the shaft, scrambling over the ruins, debris, in desperate haste. Two huge beetles, hot for the kill, bore down upon her from behind, closing the gap that separated them from her with every slithering step. Haral drew back and whipped up the light-lance. Running full-tilt, the slim girl burst from the shadows, the coleoptera close at her heels. Haral triggered the light-lance. Its beam slashed through the night. The foremost beetle drew into a writhing ball under its impact, rolling crazily through the rubble. The second fell back, its forelegs half burned off. The blue man pivoted and ran after Kyla. Catching her by the arm, he half-dragged her with him towards the avenue. Ahead, the ground leveled off. The broad expanse that had been the roadway spread before them. Beyond it loomed the pylon. Behind, the rustle of coleopteron wing-sheaths, the furious fluttering of the vestigial wings themselves, came loud as the rasp of branches in a storm-tossed forest, closer and closer. Haral shoved the priestess on towards the roadway. Then, boldly, he turned and brought up the light-lance. The coleoptera broke. Scrambling wildly, they rushed for cover. "What, you _sabars_? You fear to meet my lance?" Haral shouted the words, even though he knew the beetles could not hear nor understand. Laughter boiled up in him--the ringing, defiant laughter that was not so much mirth as lust for battle. But already the insects' Q-ray tubes were blinking. He had no choice but to wheel and again run after Kyla. And as he ran, a new sound slashed through to him: the familiar keening blast of space-ship carrier craft lancing through the night. Haral shot one swift glance upward. He glimpsed slim, silvery streaks ... streaks that were carriers in flight. Sark's carriers--? Haral cursed aloud. Panting, staggering with fatigue and the weight of his heavy copronium armor, he stumbled through the avenue's broken stone. Once he fell. But Kyla's ray-gun blazed above him, holding back the beetles till he could lurch up and wallow onward. Then, at last, there was the pylon ... the yawning entrance at its base. "Hurry!" Kyla cried. "They gain upon us!" A Q-ray sang its shining song of death too near at hand. * * * * * The blue man threw all his strength into one last effort. Together, he and the girl ran through the entry, into the blackness. Haral turned. He laced his back-track with the light-lance's searing beam. The beetles halted. "This way," said Kyla. Her hand gripped Haral's. In silence, he followed her further and further into the pylon's pitchy depths. Now they walked on a strange, entangling surface that crunched brittly beneath their feet. Haral flicked on his lance's illumination cell just long enough to glimpse the scene about them.