"Not like you, Nedra. But they would admire you." "As you admire me?" "Yes." Then, peremptorily, "Admire me, O'Hara, and let us begin to have our babies." The eternal antidote! Wherever women were, they had this cure for restlessness. And there was something to it. He was not going to find, on either side of the Curtain, a life more idyllic than this. They had drawn a screen of skins across the mouth of the cavern and their log fire gave sufficient light and warmth; they had eaten together and now they were lying together on a heavy pad of furs, Nedra luxuriating in the tigrish grace of her naked body. Was there more than this? "Nedra," he said at last, "I've got to know about the torches." "The Elder knows these things. Ask him." "Where does he get the petroleum?" "That is a secret word. I do not know it." "The oil--the stuff that burns in them. The black water." "Why do you need to know about the black water?" "For my--for the flying thing." "That makes it fly?" "Yes, Nedra." "You want to fly away again?" "I want to fly, though perhaps not far away. Perhaps that can't be done--not far." "You wish to fly above the lands of the Degraded?" "Perhaps." "Then I will kill you." "No," he said, "you won't. You must understand this, Nedra. As it is your nature to love, it is my nature to fly." "Then I have not been a strong mate for you. I have been too weak, but I--" "Leave the club where it is," O'Hara laughed. "And I'll talk no more to you of torches." But with the Elder he was finally more successful. It came about through the Elder's reverence for the weapon he called Colt. The mechanics of it had an almost ecstatic fascination for him. He would take hours to explain the workings of each part, diagraming it in the sand before the caves, stopping from time to time to recite some victory he had won with it, a giant bear, a saber-tooth, a monster ground sloth that had come wandering from the lowlands. "And do you know what makes it eternal?" he asked O'Hara. "It is the black water of our torches." "I understand about the black water," said O'Hara instantly, determined now to trade on the Elder's reverence. "For that is what takes my flying thing into the air, like a bird." "The black water does that?" "When certain things have first been done to the black water. Would you like to see it?" The Elder drew himself erect, a gaunt six feet eight, his face turned upward to the sky. "I would like to see the flying thing go up." "Then I must have the black water." "We will go to the place tomorrow." "And we must boil it. We must build a machine, something like the machines you use for smelting copper. Come into the cavern, I will draw the parts for it in secret for you. I will show you on the walls of the cavern how it must be done." "We can make this machine?" "It will take time. But if you can make the cartridges for Colt, you can make this machine. We will do it together."