They circled about him, tall and mailed and beautiful in the shadow-light, luring whispering voices, ripple of dark laughter, the hunters playing with their quarry and taming it. Donovan remembered them, remembered the days when he had talked and smiled and drunk and sung with them, the Lucifer-like intoxication of their dancing darting minds, a wildness of magic and mystery and reckless wizard sport, a glory which had taken something from his soul and left an emptiness within him. Morzach, Marovech, Uboda, Zegoian, for a time he had been the consort of the gods. "Basil." Valduma laid sharp-nailed fingers in his hair and pulled his lips to hers. "Basil, I want you back." He held her close, feeling the lithe savage strength of her, recalling the flame-like beauty and the nights of love such as no human could ever give. His whisper was thick: "You got bored last time and sent me back. How long will I last now?" "As long as you wish, Basil. Forever and forever." He knew she lied, and he didn't care. "This is what you must do, Donovan," said Morzach. He listened with half his mind. It was a question of guiding the army into a narrow cul-de-sac where the Arzunians could perform the delicate short-range work of causing chains to bind around them. For the rest, he was thinking. _They hunt. They intrigue, and they whittle down their last few remnants with fighting among themselves, and they prey on the fringe stars, and they capture living humans to hunt down for sport. They haven't done anything new for ten thousand years, creativeness has withered from them, and all they will do if they escape the Nebula is carry ruin between the stars. They're mad._ _Yes--a whole society of psychopaths, gone crazy with the long racial dying. That's the real reason they can't handle machines, that's why they don't think of friendship but only of war, that's why they carry doom within them._ _But I love you, I love you, I love you, O Valduma the fair._ He drew her to him, kissed her with a terrible intensity, and she laughed in the dark. Looking up, he faced the blaze that was Morzach. "All right," he said. "I understand. Tomorrow." "Aye--good, good, well done!" "Oh, Basil, Basil!" whispered Valduma. "Come, come away with me, now." "No. They'd suspect. I have to go down to them or they'll come looking for me." "Good night, Basil, my darling, my vorza. Until tomorrow!" He went slowly down the hillside, drawing his shoulders together against the cold, not looking back. Helena rose when he approached her campfire, and the flimmering light made her seem pale and unreal. "Where have you been, Basil? You look so tired." "Just walking around. I'm all right." He spread his couch of stiff and stinking animal hides. "We'd better turn in, eh?" But he slept little. VI