Felg hit him and his eyes and nose stung, the hot blood trickling from his nostrils. Then Felg sobbed and did not look at Ranmut again. Sitting on the broken bed, Ranmut watched the big man lumber, sobbing, from the room. Outside, a horn blew. Gawroi was waiting and Ranmut sensed that if Felg were weak, Gawroi was strong. Together they were going to Balata 'kai after Matlin and there was nothing that he, Ranmut, could do to warn his friend that danger and possibly death was approaching across the sun-scorched sands. CHAPTER IX The walls glowed. They had come a long way, Matlin and Haazahri, through tunnels carved in the soft, limey rock under the Balata 'kai ruins. The last signs for tourists had long-since vanished behind them and the way would have been totally dark but for the strangely glowing walls. Matlin went confidently at a dog-trot. Occasionally he stopped while Haazahri rested, and she saw the look on his face and never questioned him. He knew where he was going, without knowing how he knew. But he had been this way before--seeking ... no, hiding. He had found something in the ruins, in an airtight box which had preserved it as if it had been left there yesterday and not five thousand years ago, and he had come this way to hide it, because it needed safe-keeping until he was ready for it.... If he could only find it! For he knew that it held the key to his memory. A blow on the head, the Arcturan physician Quotis had told him once, was not enough to destroy memory. The blow was merely a trigger. Unconsciously, the victim of amnesia wanted his memory destroyed, to forget something intolerable, to hide something.... To hide something. Prison. Dark, wet walls. Torture. Subtle psychological torture. He held out, but couldn't hold out much longer. The fire, the beams falling, the horrible burning. And gladly surrendering memory because, miraculously, he had not died. Surrendering memory to hide--what lay before him in these caverns! One look, he thought as he ran, leaving Haazahri momentarily behind, and it will all come surging back like the sea at ebb tide. One look and I'll know not merely what it was I hid here, but the secrets of myself as well. "Haazahri," he said. Abruptly he stopped. He was here and the walls glowed and he could see but needed no vision for this. "Haazahri," he said again, and she came up to him. "We're here, Haazahri," he said. The passage looked like all the others. He'd led the way to it instinctively and knew that if he lost whatever instinct had guided his feet, they would be lost in this labyrinth forever. But it did not seem very important now. What was important had been hidden here, in this cavern. "Where?" Haazahri asked. "Where is it, whatever you seek?"