The Doctor's ship had landed safely on Sekk, the wily scientist preferring the lesser gravity of this fertile world to that of the lifeless Moon in the event that he returned again to Earth, but Dietrich's spacer had crashed. Two words linked Noork with the past, the two words that the Vasads had slurred into his name: New York. And the battered wrist watch, its crystal and hands gone, were all that remained of his Earthly garb. * * * * * Noork paddled the long flat dugout strongly away from the twilight shore toward the shadowy loom of the central island. Though he could not remember ever having held a paddle before he handled the ungainly blade well. After a time the clumsy prow of the craft rammed into a yielding cushion of mud, and Noork pulled the dugout out of the water into the roofing shelter of a clump of drooping trees growing at the water's edge. Sword in hand he pushed inward from the shore and ended with a smothered exclamation against an unseen wall. Trees grew close up to the wall and a moment later he had climbed out along a horizontal branch beyond the wall's top, and was lowering his body with the aid of a braided leather rope to the ground beyond. He was in a cultivated field his feet and hands told him. And perhaps half a mile away, faintly illumined by torches and red clots of bonfires, towered a huge weathered white skull! Secure in the knowledge that he wore the invisible robes of a Misty One he found a solitary tree growing within the wall and climbed to a comfortable crotch. In less than a minute he was asleep. "The new slave," a rough voice cut across his slumber abruptly, "is the daughter of Tholon Dist the merchant." Noork was fully awake now. They were speaking of Sarna. Her father's name was Tholon Dist. It was early morning in the fields of the Misty Ones and he could see the two golden-skinned slaves who talked together beneath his tree. "That matters not to the priests of Uzdon," the slighter of the two slaves, his hair almost white, said. "If she be chosen for the sacrifice to great Uzdon her blood will stain the altar no redder than another's." "But it is always the youngest and most beautiful," complained the younger slave, "that the priests chose. I wish to mate with a beautiful woman. Tholon Sarna is such a one." The old man chuckled dryly. "If your wife be plain," he said, "neither master nor fellow slave will steal her love. A slave should choose a good woman--and ugly, my son." "Some night," snarled the slave, "I'm going over the wall. Even the Misty Ones will not catch me once I have crossed the lake." "Silence," hissed the white-haired man. "Such talk is madness. We are safe here from wild animals. There are no spotted narls on the island of Manak. The priests of most holy Uzdon, and their invisible minions, are not unkind. "Get at your weeding of the field, Rold," he finished, "and I will complete my checking of the gardens."