He did not move. Nor she. She was warm, her body like sunheat. There was a fresh pine fragrance from her hair. She came not as high as his shoulder. They were short, these Olmen, and she was not quite six foot. Her mouth was beneath his, full and red and hot as blood. He kissed that mouth, tart, delicious as wild strawberries. And her arms went around him in savage response. This was mad! Mad beyond any madness! This was passion beyond legends, forgotten by Numan, tabooed by Olman. Close to his face, hers yearned. Still she drew away slowly, out of the circle of his arms. "This is forbidden!" she whispered. She touched her sweet curved breast, "It hammers like the warning drum of the village: 'Numan and Olman cannot mate. Numen are inhuman. Mating is impossible.'" Her voice broke. Under the agony in her eyes his hands fell to his sides like stones. He did not stop her when she ran from him into the grove of trees. He stood there, shaken by desire and by the ingrained lesson of years--Olmen are beasts. A man does not mate with the beast! * * * * * They were a quiet trio that took up the journey later. If Keeven noticed he was always center man, he made no sign. The woods were dense and Keeven's mighty arm hacked often with the sharp blade to clear their path. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the woods began to change. "We approach the Forbidden Area," Keeven's words were tense. It was very silent. Insect and bird life seemed to have tabooed these habits. The landscape became twisted and strange. Seemingly normal trees sprouted bizarre growths. Giant bushes of a red mold color grew side by side with stunted trees that barely reached their knees, yet seemed fantastically aged. The trio moved closer together, ears strained for normal sounds that did not exist there. The suffering ground was bitter, and erupted into convulsions, as though ejecting the monstrosities it had nurtured. Their feet ached from the humped and hollowed path. There was no whisper of wind. Yet Allyn shivered. A cold, ancestral fear laid lean fingers on his dry throat. Light made their faces wan when they came to the edge of the deformed woods. Ahead was the narrow stretch of barren waste that led to the rotted wood paling. The paling was only token warning now, encircling the shunned and dreaded Forbidden Area. Movement caught their eyes. Instinctively, they fell to earth, hardly breathing, watching. Into their line of vision paced a Gard, flame gun in hand. Even as they watched another Gard paced in from the opposite direction. Allyn's whisper was sick: "They've thrown a cordon around the Forbidden Area!" Keeven caught a gleam on dark metal. "There's a gyro--to the left. Can you fly one?" Allyn nodded. "It's basic training for all Numen. But what good does it do us? There are the Gards." The Olman's smile was grim. "You have a gun," he reminded. Allyn stared. Use his gun? On Numen? Flame his own people!