Matlin looked at the barkeep, who shrugged and held his silence. The faces of the crowd told him nothing. And Felg's woman? She had no love for Felg: she was Felg's companion for the night, no more. She wore the look of a Sphinx on her beautiful face and when she saw Matlin watching her the smile she turned on him was a smiling of the mouth only. Her eyes were cold and distant, but beautiful. Matlin took one of the maces from the _melgast_. The spikes held blood, and bits of scraped skin and flesh adhered to them. So this was the mace Felg had used, for blood had been drawn from Matlin's ribs. With this mace, Matlin walked to the man he had conquered. Felg had not risen from the floor. He sat there and he looked up at Matlin, who made no move to use the mace, and he said, his voice a tight whisper now, barely audible, "Will you kill me? I can't stand the waiting." "I read somewhere," Matlin heard himself saying, "that at the moment before death life is so precious that a man will crave it even if it is a life of torment on torment, a life of torture, a life of terrible pain. But life, any life, rather than the black sleep of death. Life as a slave, and toil without end, and streaming sweat mixed with blood, but life! This I read, but of course it was not on Kedak, for here on Kedak death means nothing. Well, does it?" "Kill me now," said Felg, uncertainly. Matlin lifted the mace slowly. "Here on Kedak, how can death hold such terrors? Death is not the unknown. Death is not a sleep of forever, a sleep without waking, or the unproven expectation of sharing a dream of immortality with the god. Death here on Kedak is merely a way station in the passage of life, many lives. So why should we fear death? You believe this, do you not? Believe the transcripts from the _Book of the Dead_ as our religious teachers read them?" "I believe," said Felg quickly, without passion, without conviction. The mace was high over Matlin's head now. The crowd came close, watching. Someone touched the single mace remaining on its hook, and the mace swung slowly. The swinging motion caught Felg's eye and he watched, fascinated. But the mace was out of reach and he must have known it. Everything but death was now out of reach, forever out of reach. "That death is not a cold sleep from which there is no awakening?" "Yes, yes!" "That reincarnation will come to you?" Why am I doing this, Matlin wondered. It was to prove a point: but he knew not what point he wished to prove. "Yes, yes...." "That the loss of life is to be suffered before the loss of honor?" "Yes. By the holy pages of _The Book of the Dead_, kill me!" "All this you believe?" Light caught the spikes of the mace. They flashed. Someone had to carry the Polarian tourist to a chair and settle her there. Sweat made her clothing cling to her body, revealing a figure like a sow's. Sweat beaded her face, but her ugly little eyes gazed on Matlin as if he'd made love to her.