* * * * * The ampule splintered. For an instant light glinted on sparkling, dust-like grains descending, floating out in lazy spirals through the sealed cubicle's still air. But only for an instant. For then, suddenly, the grains were growing, uniting, multiplying, melding. In a finger-snap, grey slime began to form on the unit's glistening, sterile floor. A slime that swirled and crawled and eddied.... The shackled serfman screamed. Not that anyone could hear it. The cubicle was far too skillfully designed for that. With grim satisfaction, cold appraisal, the Lord Zenaor watched the slime-tide rippling higher. Carefully, he noted reaction time ... the victim's grimaces and contortions and frantic terror. So preoccupied was he that he didn't even hear Narla approaching till her voice rang out behind him, raw with sudden shock: "_Ourobos--!_" Zenaor spun by instinct. His daughter's lovely face showed stiff with horror. "Father...." She choked; retched. Cold-eyed he waited till the spasm had passed before he spoke: "So ... you find my secret shocking?" "Shocking--?" The girl's eyes held disbelief. Then: "Father, not even Vydys would do such! To bring those horrors here from Xumar--" She shuddered. "You would not! You dare not--" "I dare not?" Zenaor laughed harshly; gestured to the cubicle, and the dying serfman engulfed in slime. "I have already done it!" "Then--you would destroy our world--the Baemae--?" The girl's voice was queer, choked. "Are there only Baemae, then, on Lysor?" Anger carved Zenaor's jaw-line deeper, sharper. "I am of the Kukzubas, Narla; the barons! My loyalty is to them, for from them I draw my power." "Your power!" Narla came erect at the word. "There is the answer, father! Your loyalty is not to the barons or to Lysor, but to power alone. You live for it. You bow before no other god." "And so?" Zenaor stood inflexible as duroid. The girl gestured helplessly. "What can I say, when not even the fate of our world can touch you?" "Our world--this puny dot that men call Lysor?" Zenaor laughed aloud. "This planet of ours means nothing, Narla! By using the slime-things, the ourobos, I can reach out across the void till even the far Federation's chiefs will tremble! Nothing can stop me! Nothing!" "I see." Narla's face was pale now, and her lips quivered. But she stood proud and erect. "Then I have no choice, father. My loyalty is to Lysor. I shall fulfill it." "Even against me?" "Even against you." "So Vydys was right...." The chief of barons' coal-black eyes gleamed hard and bitter. "Very well, then. As of this moment you shall be treated as a prisoner--" The clang of a com-box bell cut in upon him. Zenaor left his sentence hanging; flicked the switch. "Yes?" "My lord, a starship seeks to land here." "A starship--?" Zenaor stiffened. "Yes, my lord. The message says it bears an envoy from the Federation." "His name?" "Craig Nesom."