Tyr swung the solar gun upward, put the cold muzzle to his naked chest, and pulled the trigger. * * * * * Sunlight tinted the bluffs a pale amber, spreading a gossamer gold across the shelving stone ledges. It made dark shadows undulate in rock crevices, and sent tiny cascades of brilliant red and yellow from veins of quartz. The cliffs towered high above a rolling countryside where hummocks of grass grew in clustered greenness. Tyr stood erect on the jagged tongue of rock, staring down at a file of men and women walking across the hills. He was naked but for the white cloth at his middle into which the butt of the solar gun protruded at a rakish angle. Towering huge in the morning sun, he looked the god, by every inch of him, that the Trylla thought him to be. He grinned and patted the walnut handle of the weapon. That blast of power had given him needed energy last night, when the sun was on the other side of the planet. His follicles had drunk it in, and his strange organs filtered it throughout his body. All night long had he run, yet he was fresh and strong. Now he looked across the brown valley, and saw the Trylla walking across it, beginning the long ascent up the other side. Here and there he recognized familiar figures. Fay was at the head of the column, just ahead of young Texel and grim old Gaarn. Tyr scanned the blue sky. No _ardth_-men there! He lowered himself over the jagged edge of the bluff. His canny feet, feeling about like sensitive fingers, found chinks in the weather-worn rock. He went down foot by foot, yet swiftly. When he dropped the last twenty feet to the crumbly valley bottom, the Trylla were only a few miles from him. His straight descent had saved him hours of travel. He could catch them now in a matter of minutes. Fay saw him first, turning her golden head almost as if some telepathic thought commanded her. She cried out, and the slender column wavered and halted. Tyr came up to her with outstretched hands and a smile on his lips, but the smile faded when he saw her eyes. "Why have you returned?" she asked numbly. "You made your bargains with the _ardth_, for the girl named Katha. What else did they give you for Lyallar, besides the girl?" "For Lyallar? Besides the girl? Are you mad, Fay? And you others--do you believe what she says? Fay, what--" Gaarn said sourly, "Deny it, then. Deny that you went alone with this woman Katha to plot our undoing. Deny that Zarman and others who trusted you were flogged." "I plotted no one's undoing. And as for Zarman--" "He was flogged, wasn't he?" howled Texel, his eyes two abysses of anguish. "Flogged before I--" Texel spat at him, and Tyr quivered and his hands came up. Sadly, he let them fall again. Force would accomplish nothing. And a god must be understanding. "I freed Zarman and the others as they were being taken through the streets," he said patiently. "As for Katha, she is a biologist of the _ardth_."