Bryan felt a brief pain, a sensation as though electricity had surged through him. Then a complete terrible numbness gripped his body. He could not move. He could still see, could still think, but his muscles were fettered by an overwhelming paralysis. He could still think--but it was difficult. His mind seemed detached and vague, and somehow touched by a pulse of thought not his own. Alien rhythms beat in it, formless, confused. And then-- "Leeta! This one resisted! He did not fear us as did the others." Child-like, piping, filled with excitement. And yet through the thought ran an undercurrent of wistful yearning, of trembling hope. Then another thought: "Take him, Leeta! He is brave." "Patience, little ones." Strangely soft and clear, this thought, ringing like delicate silver chimes. At the edge of his field of vision, through eyes he could no longer control, Bryan saw movement--the sweep and flutter of great wings. Then a slim figure moved into his sight, a figure in a simple draped garment, walking as lightly and gracefully as though on air. [Illustration: There was danger in the presence of this girl--and yet somehow, Terry Bryan knew he must reach her....] Leeta, he knew. Wonder rose in him--and sudden fascination. Spectre? Witch? He could not decide. His eyes told him that she was woman--a woman like few he had seen, slender yet softly rounded, dainty yet with a suggestion of strength. Her small features held an odd startling loveliness, elfin, somehow ... _other-race_. Her eyes were tilted and strangely large, the nostrils of her tiny nose deeply indented and flaring, her chin pointed. Her gleaming black hair was long, thick, gently curling, a contrasting frame for flawless white skin. She glowed luminously. And--he could see through her. Like the mosquito-men, like the giant bird, she was mistily transparent, inexplicably unsubstantial. * * * * * She stood before him, then. Her great liquid eyes gazed at him in wonder, with a searching curiosity. There was a tenseness and urgency about her, as though she were driven by some desperate all-important purpose. And there was an air of tragedy about her, a despair, a quality of wistful yearning like that Bryan had sensed in the child-like piping thoughts. The mystery of this woman caught at him, drew him. Witch? Again he wondered. He could find nothing evil in her face, nothing of cruelty or guile. Behind the compelling anxiety in her eyes, the sadness that touched her full lips, was ... innocence. The curiosity faded from her face. The tenseness and urgency that had been lurking in her abruptly became dominant. Her hands lifted. Bryan saw now that she held an object in them, a globe of cloudy gray crystal, within which seemed to lay a core of pale rose light. And the light, he noticed, waxed and waned in a slow pulsing.