He felt the transparent stuff over the chest, pushed on it hard, then raised his pick and struck the stuff a heavy blow. It shattered into bright daggers and fell on the guns and on the floor. Picking one of the small things from its place, he examined it closely. "No toy, Lady Nirea," he grunted. "You lied to me." "I didn't! Can _you_ read the writing?" she asked sourly. "No rucker reads, as you know. But this is no toy, and you knew it." He tucked it into the waistband of his trousers, took three more. "You can show me how to use them later." She laughed in his face and was given a rough slap on the cheek. Skin tingling, she said, "Play the squire, miner, you don't have long to do it!" "They won't find this hole." "I left a trail of emotion that a globe could follow after a week!" she told him. * * * * * Slowly his brown face turned pale. Then he struck her again, but very hard, so that she staggered back and fell. Without a word he grasped her wrist and hauled her after him on a swift tour of the cavern. A huge intricate mechanism sat like a grotesque idol on the floor. "What is it?" he said. "Read for me." She looked at the printing on the front. _Dynamo_ she spelt out, and shrugged. "A name I don't know." "If you lie to me again, I'll rip that gown off and strangle you with it." He obviously meant it. She said sullenly, "I'm not lying." "I know you aren't, now. I have an instinct for lies." He dragged her on. "What's this?" The language was very like Orbish, yet subtly different, and the words were mostly strange. She said aloud, in syllables, "_Man of the 21st century: John R. Klapham, atomic physicist and--_" "Never mind." He left the big shining case, which was oblong and featureless and seemed made of metal, to pass to something else. Her gaze caught another line on the card as she was pulled away: _Held in suspended animation._ What could the words mean? They covered the big cave, finding almost nothing they could understand. Here and there were ordinary objects--plates, hides of animals under the near-invisible arches of wondrous material, arrows such as the ruck vagabonds used for shooting birds, candles--but in the main it was a place of mystery. "The people of the Ancient Kingdom," he said, rubbing his square chin, "put these things into the earth for a purpose. I don't know what it could have been, but I want Jerran to look at them. He's got any number of keen brains." "Nobody has more than one brain," she snapped. He grinned. "I have six or eight myself," he said. The creature was totally crazy. He was staring at her again in that lewd way. Now he put a hand on her shoulder. The touch sent hot tingling sensations through her body. The fact that he was of the ruck and no higher than an animal, that he was a god-killer, paled before the desire his great body roused in her. She moved a step toward him, all-but-voluntarily.