He struggled to reach the valve, in a useless reflex, for there would have been nothing he could have done, no matter how much time remained. Then he fell back, a twisted grin on his face. _I've come a long, long way to trap myself_, he laughed in his drowsing mind, as the ship crashed, and the capsule, torn from _Defiance's_ side, rebounded like a cannon shell from Heaven upon the outraged soil of Venus, and the overhead clouds sprang into flamed reflection from the blast of _Defiance's_ end. In the capsule, the valve controlling the flow from the illogically copious supply of anesthetic snapped off cleanly. David Greaves' lungs jolted to the impact as a century's dosage of the high-pressure gas delivered its one giant hammerblow of sleep.... Of sleep like death.... Of sleep so slow, so majestic, that only the eternally ageless body might testify to life. Of sleep without end, without motion, until.... II The woman--the sensuous ivory-skinned woman with eyes like dark jewels and hair like midnight framing her red-lipped face--kissed him again and then drew back to touch his cheek. "Wake," she whispered softly. "Wake, sleeper." David Greaves looked up at her through slowly dawning eyes. The scent of spices was in his nostrils. As the woman's hair brushed his face again, the fragrance increased. "My name is David Greaves," he said, and looked up at the sky and then around him. There was now no envelope of cloud to hide the face of this planet from the Sun; no such shroud as had concealed the Venus of his day in dazzling white without and muffled it in somber black within. This sky was ruddy, ruddy with the light of the day's last moments, and the clouds through which the sunset burned were only crayon-strokes of ochre across the orange sky. He lay in state, facing that sunset, on some sort of black metal couch which supported him on a multitude of sweeping, back-bent arms. Beneath him, a dozen low broad steps of olive-green polished stone led down to a long forum, flagged with the same gold-veined, masterfully fitted paving. Around the court ran a low wall, again of stone; friezed, and burnished to a dull glow. From the wall, tall slim pillars thrust into the air. And atop each pillar, cast and carved in black metal washed by the lingering light, crouched a monster. No single artist could have created such a bestiary of gargoyles. Some he could trace in their evolution--the vulpine, the crustacean, the insectile. Fangs and pincers slit the cool, invigorating breeze that flowed over the court. Antennae quivered and hummed in the air, and a myriad legs were poised in tension, forever prepared to leap. Others were beyond any creation he knew of--limbs and wings contorted into shapes that had, undoubtedly, been taken by living things ... in lives unimaginable to any man. And all of them, imaginable or not, faced toward him forever.