Lura looked at the knife still gripped in her fingers, and a flush of color tided upward from her throat when her gaze went to the two guns carried by Trent. Wordlessly, she sheathed the blade. She led the way now, going into the thickest part of the timber, gliding through the most tangled of the thickets with a careless familiar grace. Kimball Trent followed more clumsily, tripping despite his natural skill, scratching himself on sharp brambles. Minutes flicked away, grew into an hour, and he knew that he was approaching the city. They crossed roads now, cement blocks cracked by rain and winter ice, bright flowers and green grasses springing upward through the cracks. Everywhere was bleak desolation. They passed holes in the ground that had once been basements. Walls still stood in other places, and further on, a great stone fence wound gracefully about what had been a private park. Rubble came to the ground, the crushed remains of towering buildings blasted to bits by the Gharrians' concussors. Here and there, shards of indestructible plastic poked toward the sky to mark where vehicles had collapsed and dusted away in the course of centuries. They came at last to a mighty stack of ruptured stone and plastics. Lura picked her way over the rubble, then dropped into a small hole, beckoning for Trent to follow. He came cautiously up the pile of stone, hand close to his gun, feeling his nerves crawl, now that he was close to his destination. This was not the situation he had planned five hundred--he grinned wryly--years ago. Then he sat, dangled his feet into the hole, dropped through. Lura steadied him, and he stood upright, his head almost even with the ceiling of stone blocks. Light came through the interstices, and he could see that the girl was urging him toward a blank wall of grey plastic fifty feet away. He walked slowly, conscious of being watched, eyes tightening when he saw the girl give a tapping signal to the wall. Then a door pivoted open, and three men were covering him with needle-sharp spears. "_Kill him_," Lura cried. "_He's a Gharrian spy!_" III Kimball Trent was already moving, swinging to one side, the flame gun fitting snugly into the palm of his hand. There was no laughter in his eyes now, nor no friendliness in his heart. He felt a sympathy for the girl; but the die had been cast, and he must play out the role. "Don't make me kill you," he said briefly. The leader of the trio laughed aloud, the sound rocking from wall to wall of the weird hole in the fallen masonry. He came lightly forward, blond hair gleaming, great muscles rippling over his superb body. He carried himself with the grace of a dancer, the spear held crosswise in his hands, ready for instant action at any angle. "Ho!" he said. "The traitor is mine."