Angel chuckled ferociously. "You can't get both of us, Pao Chung. If we rush at once, you can kill one, but the other will get to you." "Don't try it," warned Pao Chung, sweating but deadly. "You keep talking of deals," continued Angel evenly. "Better make one with me. For the girl, and a third of the loot, I'll talk business with you." "I want her myself," croaked Pao Chung. "Neither of you will get me alive," said Teucrete. Ferris moved a little, and the gun held steadily on him. He hesitated, glancing curiously at Angel. Light glinted from quivering wings. The gargoyle face grinned hideously. Heavy eyelids blinked in remembered signal. "Now," snapped Ferris. Ferris and Angel leaped, like two moving parts of the same machine. Angel was quicker. His powerful wings wafted him in a long, swift bound. The blaster swerved, flamed, burst in deafening explosion. A reek of charred, disintegrating flesh and singed feathers filled the air. Angel shrieked in torment as his legs vanished in crumbling ashes. Wings flailing, his body a maimed and blasted horror, he crashed down upon Pao Chung. The gun jerked from nerveless fingers and clattered on the floor. Its beam cut a tinkling swathe among the crystal shafts. Real droplets of half-molten crystal struck myriad bell-tones in falling. Writhing and threshing in agony, Angel clung to his desperate purpose. Powerful clawlike hands circled Pao Chung's head and wrenched it off. The head rolled free like a ball as two snarled bodies sagged together in bloody horror. Stricken, Ferris bent over his friend, trying hopelessly to help. The gargoyle lips parted. Dry husks of sound whistled from them. "Go on. Smash the machine! But first, do this job right--for me." Trembling, Ferris recovered the blaster gun, cut down its intensity, then thrust the blunt muzzle deep into the striped fur, where rich crimson now mingled with the other gaudy dyes. Blinking his eyes shut, he pressed the stud. Angel writhed and was gone. Ferris did not look back. Hand in hand with Teucrete he walked slowly toward the forest of crystal shafts. There was much damage, and his heart quailed from the task ahead. "Can you still find the way?" he asked numbly. "I'm not sure," the girl faltered. "I'm not sure we can ever get back. Exact alignment is so terribly important." "We can try," said Ferris grimly. Hand in hand, young men and women, with the dream still fresh within them, will always seek the ultimate answer to the ultimate questions. It may be, of course, that there is no ultimate answer, and that even the quest is a delusion. But Teucrete and Ferris, with the flame of a new love burning fiercely between them, believed that it was important to find and destroy some alien thing that warped men's minds. Others may think only of building a life together, as a pledge to the future, but not Teucrete and Ferris. Time for that later, they hoped.