The Mandmooran prince's face was ashen with pain and loss of blood. The chief cradled his head, and mumbled, and chanted. And the blood pumped from the severed arteries. A ring of Mandmooran guards surrounded Jane, Sid Masters and the three soldiers, but when Jane walked through the ring, quite close to two of the spearmen, they did not try to stop her. It was because of the Mandmooran women, she decided: the Mandmooran women were so small and fragile-looking that their men would never take the guarding of a woman seriously. Jane went over to where the chief was kneeling by his stricken son. "Unless you stop the bleeding," she said quietly, "he's going to die. Don't you know that?" "Healer sun stop bleeding. Lord Sun." Jane shook her head. "The sun is a slow healer. The sun can't perform medical miracles. I have no argument with your religion, chief--but we can save your boy's life if you let us." At first Jane thought she had failed. The Chief continued chanting over his son, not looking at the Earthgirl. Then, slowly, he looked up. Not at Jane, not immediately at Jane: he let his gaze come to rest on the Mandmooran sun, faintly bluish and clearly swollen now, egg-shaped almost as its internal forces gathered themselves for the final cataclysmic explosion which, in hours, would all but tear the star apart. Even a fanatic sun-worshipper would know now that something was wrong with their deity. On the other hand, a fanatic sun-worshipper might regard the change, Jane realized, as a manifestation of displeasure. Hadn't all but an infinitesimal fraction of the Mandmoorans deserted their god? Wasn't that reason enough for the wrath of the Lord Sun? But then the chief looked at Jane. His eyes were sad and old and suddenly and unexpectedly very wise. He said, "You can help? You can save his life?" "You're not trying," Jane said. "I can try." Carefully the chief stood up, making a mound of sand and letting his son's head rest there. "Then save him," he said finally. "Save him and you can return to your people." A very old Mandmooran, far older than the chief, a skin-puckered, limping, hunch-backed, rheumy-eyed, gray-skinned Mandmooran, approached the chief and jabbered excitedly in their own language. The chief jabbered back at him and the old man raised his voice. The chief shouted him down. Shrugging but smiling, the old man wandered off to a hillock of sand, threw his arms up at the Lord Sun, and began a weird, wailing chant. "Shaman say," the chief told Jane, "yours is bad medicine." Jane didn't answer. She went down on one knee near the injured prince. It almost made her ill to stare at his torn, mangled arm. She was no nurse. She knew first aid, but that was all. Still, anything was better than the fatalistic Mandmooran attitude. "Shaman say," the chief went on, "we offer sacrifice to wrath of Lord Sun. For long time our people no offer sacrifice in human form. Human sacrifice now, at moment of trial, work. So say shaman."