But Julian didn't give him that chance he needed, his onslaught drove forward with appalling speed, slashing, parrying, probing like a living thing, until the Arch-Mutant's face went gray, shadowed by the first fear he had known in his extraordinary life. Craftily, the scarlet-robed Arch-dynast feinted to the left, in the secret Ganymedean lure, and to his vast astonishment saw the lure engaged, _and then_, a searing flash that coruscated before his dazzled eyes left him only the neutralized hilt of his rapier in his hand! Fermin had a confused picture of molten drops spilling from the weightless hilt and of golden motes dancing before his eyes, when the paralysis beam convulsed him in a frozen shudder and he tumbled slowly to the rug--graceful even in unconsciousness. Julian did not waste a single precious second. Both Fermin and his _alter ego_ would be out for at least two or three hours, he knew. But his presence might be discovered there any moment. He search the jewelled cabinets that lined one wall. Feverishly he scanned the photo-plastic record on the stand, and even read the flowing hieroglyphics of Ganymede, so much like the written Arabic of forgotten antiquity, which he found in a special compartment over the hearth, and found ... nothing! Nothing but a single word, frozen and faded in a now neutralized telesolidograph screen that flanked the white splendor of the Jadite chair. The word was "_Paradisiac_." And that was the name of perhaps the most glamorous, and the most dangerous pleasure den in their known universe. At last in desperation, he searched the fallen body unceremoniously. The jewelled garments of the Arch-Mutant yielded no records, no secret notes, only a tiny vial fashioned of a single blood-red _Panagran_, which contained a colorless liquid. This, Julian thrust into a pocket. Then like a wraith he melted into the aquamarine penumbra of the titanic columns and disappeared as soundlessly as he had come. Once out in the diluted scarlet of Ganymede's morning, he saw that the temple was ringed with guards. Most of them lounged in the careless sense of security that comes with routine. Julian, the pupils of his eyes dilating, slid along the side of one wall, there was only one guard there--beyond was a wide avenue somewhere along which the Paradisiac was located. He moved as quietly as a _Felirene_, as implacable as death. The guard never even felt the blow that felled him. Then Julian was sprinting madly as shouts rose behind him in the roseate gloom. "Damn this pink fog!" he exclaimed through clenched teeth. Behind him the muffled stamp of scurrying feet and the metallic scraping of power-rapiers became distinct; oaths and imprecations in various dialects grew loud. * * * * *