He ran behind her, letting her remain far enough in the lead so that she was like an elusive, darting dream inspiring the cursing spacemen who roared out of the tavern room in a surging tide. Most of them were in poor shape as fighting men, Roal knew. Their minds were sodden with drink and some with _harmeena_, perhaps. But each represented a gun that could be turned against the Thousand Minds. The passage turned abruptly at right angles into a darkened corridor. Something was wrong in that corridor, Roal knew instantly. He knew it should not be black. He sensed that the light tubes were still illumined. The farther they went, however, the more dense the blackness became. It was like a living, smothering essence that enveloped them and cloaked their souls. Roal heard sounds of dismay from the spacemen behind. There were murmurings against going further. "Alayna is in there!" Roal shouted. At that moment there came the sound of her voice raised again in the song that she had sung in the tavern. Its dream of life and hope buoyed them on into the blind darkness. What the blackness could be Roal could not guess. It was not merely absence of light. There was light coming from the tubes, but this blackness literally consumed all light before it reached the eyes. That it was a manifestation of the Thousand Minds he did not doubt, but it did not seem to be harmful--at least so far. Then abruptly the blackness exploded into light--searing, livid radiance that stabbed their eyes with even greater blindness. Roal flung an arm before his eyes and halted before that radiance. There was no heat, but the light was the very antithesis of the darkness that had gone before. Yet amid the hoarse exclamations and angry cries of the spacemen the song of Alayna still persisted, urging them forward in the face of that radiant wall. For it was a wall, Roal saw behind the shield of his arm. It was close to them. Alayna was standing before it as he came up to her. "This is the doorway leading into the chamber. Beyond is the assembly of the Thousand Minds. Blast through the door and kill!" Roal found the edge of the door and the handle. He placed the flame lance against it and as he pressed the trigger the door handle suddenly became a living, writhing snake in his grasp. An involuntary exclamation escaped his lips as he dropped the snake and released the trigger of the lance. He tried again and found he had the point of the lance pressed against the back of Alayna as she stood flattened against the door. "Press the trigger, quickly," her voice said. "It's only a trick of the Thousand Minds." His head whirled. There was Alayna standing beside him. "I'm real," she said. She touched his arm to prove it.