One by one, like living shells exploded out of a circus cannon, they projectiled over their intended prey. By the thousands they meteored over him, eyeballs matching the glare of the lava below, swords automatically slashing out even as they spun and turned over and over, and splashed into the liquid rock. Whish! Brrr! Whoosh! Splash! Suddenly--silence. Slowly, Revanche rose. He could not believe it. He looked over the ledge. Only the bare and boiling sea. He turned and glanced up the tube. Silence and shadows, and the gleaming greasy symbol for zero. Understanding melted the glacier on his brain. He broke into a wild dance, wept tears for gladness, whistled three times, and shouted, "I've won! Revanche has won! And I've beat them!" _Clippety-clop! Clippety-clop!_ The unbelievable ring of iron horseshoes jumped out of the tube's mouth. Revanche froze in a pirouette, stood poised, then seemed to collapse into a strange loose creature that shambled over to the funnel and leaned backward to look up, like a dazed and stiffnecked Neanderthal. The liquid film of joy glazed over his mind again, grew white and cold and lumpy. A mount and its rider were coming out of the darkness and into the brimstone glare. The horse was a nightmare black, its eyeballs burning tiger-yellow bright. It stretched back cruel and foaming lips, and revealed teeth sharp enough to rend him. A ghost horse, it cried for blood while its magnetic shoes clung briefly to the metal floor before lifting again. _Clippety-clop_ rang its hooves. Then it stopped and hung its head down over the tube's lip and fixed Revanche with one demon's eye while its rider dismounted. It remained in that attitude, and did not move even when its master dropped gently onto the ledge to face Revanche. The financier felt his bulging eyes threaten to leave his head, like balloons tugging at their moorings. His eyes understood before his brain did. They took in a face that was a compound of two persons, a masterly paradox of features and traits: compassionate and merciless, sensitive and coarse, loving and hating. It was a hybrid of X, and of _himself_. It was not that contradictory face that told him so much, that explained why his interferer had failed to work, even why he had been "herded," and was now facing this fantastic and vengeful creation. It was something else that told him that not only Dafess City but he, Revanche, had been the victim of a Caligulan sense of humor, the butt of the most colossal practical joke the Messinan had ever played. That something else he had been too shocked to think about. Why had the Bioids, who carried full-power anti-gravs within their bodies, fallen over the ledge? It was because Da Vincelleo had deliberately destroyed them to raise his hopes. And then had brought out this--this thing--this _joke_! Not satisfied to make Revanche squirm, he had wanted him to sweat blood.