Ala still felt Bee's thoughts. Then they ceased. Will became aware of a confusion; a fluttering; as though now the flight had lost direction. He gazed around intently, searchingly, but the space at that moment was wholly empty. "Where are we?" he asked. Thone and Ala were exchanging thoughts. Thone said: "Where are we? There is no answer, Will. There is nothing here. We are nowhere." A confusion. It seemed that Ala and Thone felt that Brutar's self-created world might be found by approaching the Realm of Disease. Will waited, listening silently while they talked of it.... Abruptly Will saw something. A blur--a vague luminosity beneath them. It was moving. Suddenly he knew it was not large and far-away, but small and very close. It mounted; broke visually apart, resolved itself into two dark blobs. Shapes. The moving shapes of a man and a woman. They came nearer. The woman was Bee! It was Bee and the youthful Eo. He was clinging to her; she seemed helping him struggle upward. They reached Will. Bee gasped, "He--he is hurt! Oh Will--it's you! Help him--his mind struggles to leave us! He is wounded. I think--I think he is going to die!" She seemed crying as she flung herself into Will's arms. "I don't want him to die. He is my friend--so gentle, so lovable--I don't want him to die!" CHAPTER XIV THE REALM OF DEATH I must tell again of that moment when we--Bee and I--were standing beside the lolos field with Brutar and Eo. Brutar had turned away. Eo--prompted, I had no doubt, by Bee--murmured, "This is evil! We will escape--" My arm reached for Bee. I told myself intensely that now we must escape ... now I must fling my thoughts--my mind--out into the void.... And stay with Eo; he would lead us.... I think my groping hand never reached Bee. I felt a swishing sound. A swirl of thoughts struck me--like feathers blown against me in a gale. But they seemed to cling. Invisible, imponderable--barely palpable; dimly I could feel these thoughts like a net entangling me. I was floundering. Surging through blackness. Where was Bee? I thought I saw her and Eo whirling near me. But it was a thought unreal--hallucination; for as I tried to grip it and make them visible, they were gone. My thought of them dissolved into a realization that I did not see them, for they were vanished. But Brutar I saw; a distorted wraith of him ... his grim, menacing face ... grim with combat.... I was rushing through blackness. But as an undertow may suck the strongest swimmer, something was pulling me back ... a hampering net around me ... materializing into greater ponderability ... holding me firmly.... The blackness about me was taking form. I strove to think I saw the Big-City. Told myself that that hovering shape above me was Thone--the friendly Thone; not Brutar.