A plate like that of a visiscreen flashed on. Swiftly, the woman adjusted dials. Blurs on the plate resolved into a horde of rising silver ships. Like screaming meteors, they lanced into the sky. "Sark's ships?" the woman who was a fleshly goddess asked Haral coolly. He nodded. "Yes. Carriers. Light craft, small and slow enough to fight close-in on a world the size of Ulna." "But not all Sark's fleet?" "No. His great raiders would have no room here to maneuver." "Then Sark himself still lingers at the spaceport, waiting to see how I'll meet this latest challenge." "What--?" Xaymar laughed. "He fears me, blue man. I read it in his brain as he sat there in my crypt. And I learned more: this weapon of his you call a cymosynthesizer is useless once he's in the air. So he'll leave it on the ground and then stay with it for the sake of the protection that it offers, instead of risking his own fat neck in one of the ships he sends against me." * * * * * The ships on the screen were looming ever larger now. Streaks of silver light set against dullness, they hurtled closer ... closer.... Forcing casualness into his voice, Haral gestured to them. "And what will you do when at last they reach us?" He touched what appeared to be some sort of triangulation finder. "At the rate they're moving, they should be here within another minute." Turning, not answering, Xaymar stepped to a huge switch-box set in the center of the bubble's floor and threw a lever. An eerie, whining sound rose, and with it a faint smell of ozone. The woman threw a second lever. A third. A fourth. The whining grew louder, the odor stronger. Xaymar moved back to the control board. Almost idly, she said: "They call me queen of storms." Haral stayed silent. But of a sudden his heart was pounding. "Do you know the power of the lightning, blue man? Can you vision the force that lies locked within it?" The whining continued to rise. It was almost a thin scream now. Still Haral waited, wordless. Xaymar twisted dials again. The warrior saw that her knuckles showed white through the skin. Her voice took on new intensity, new vibrance: "You dream of power, blue man--but never can you have imagined power such as this!" She laughed, a little wildly. "I cannot pretend to explain these things so you can understand them. But a thousand years ago I learned how to create what I choose to call an ionic vacuum--an electrolytic vortex that sucks in electrons from the atmosphere's neutral atoms. The very process sets up a storm condition. Wind, rain, turbulence--they all come with it." Like an echo to her words, a shadow fell across the inverted crystal bowl in which they stood. Incredulously, Haral shot a fast glance skyward. An icy knot took form deep in his midriff. Where mere seconds before he had gazed up into the bright, clear yellow of the Ulnese day, now clouds were swirling! Before his very eyes, they grew and darkened.