They dragged Haral out of his cell just after noon. Wearily, he raised his eyes from his shackled wrists and, squinting at the sudden glare, looked up into the yellow Ulnese sky. He wondered, bleakly, if he'd ever get another chance to taste its freedom. Then a _Pervod_ took one arm, a _dau_ the other. Roughly, they hurried him into the central park with shoves and buffets. A shout went up from the lusting crowd--a shout for blood, a shout for slaughter. A Martian leaped forward to trip him. A Thorian slapped a tentacle savagely across his face, and he knew from the blinding pain that flesh had torn away under its suction. Then he was stumbling through the blood-soaked sand of the arena to the bank of seats where the raider chieftains waited. And there was Sark, just as before, sprawled out like some great, slimy slug in his ornate Uranian riding-chair. The raider's fat-rimmed eyes gleamed bright with murderous triumph now. He bared his teeth in a sinister smirk, and his whole gross body shook with a cruel laughter. But his hand never left the cymosynthesizer switch. There, too, sat Xaymar: living goddess, queen of storms, the prize that had drawn Sark here to Ulna. Even now, standing there before her, Haral felt the spell of her vibrant, voluptuous loveliness. With wrenching force, it came to him what a fool he'd been to go against her; to toss away her favor and all it stood for in order to take his own mad road. Her ripe lips curved into a smile. He wondered if she were laughing at him behind the jeweled veil that masked her. But if she were, what did it matter? What difference could it make to him, in this last hour of his bitter odyssey? Then, half-unconsciously, he straightened. His thoughts, at least, were still his own. No one need know that regret, despair, welled high within him. He could die as he'd lived, by the warrior's creed, head high and neck unbending. It was as if the very gesture rekindled some near-dead spark within him. A little of his feeling of hopelessness and black dejection seemed to fall away. Coolly, almost, he gazed about him. It dawned on him, now, that the mob gathered here to watch his downfall was not quite the same as the one he'd faced that other day when he'd first blazed his path across Sark's devilish drive for conquest. For now coleoptera were massed along one side of the arena. A rustling, eddying sea of vivid scarlet, they crowded close by the chieftains' stand, as if drawn to the incredible woman who was their ruler by a magnet. Then a new, wild shout roared up from the crowd. Haral shot a quick glance back across his shoulder. The yelling mob was parting. Two more crewmen drove through the throng, dragging along another prisoner. A lovely prisoner. Kyla. Or did her beauty now lie only in his own eyes? * * * * *