They came to a heavy door and stopped, and Shairn was standing there. She looked thin, and her eyes were shadowed, and there were lines around her mouth that had not been there before. She was not the old Shairn. She was someone new. There was no joy in that meeting. She looked at Trehearne and said, "Michael, what have you done?" He shook his head and answered, "That's the hell of it. We may not have done anything at all." TWENTY-TWO The voyage was ending. They had known from the long period of deceleration that it was ending, and now the last pressures, and the small, grinding shocks as the cruiser settled into its dock, told them that they were again on Llyrdis. The bells rang, and the throb of the generators gave way to an unfamiliar silence. They waited, then. And nothing happened. The hours went by and nothing happened. Trehearne said finally, "They're not even going to remove us from the cruiser. They'll take us off to wherever we're bound for without even hearing us." Edri shook his head. "No. Vardda law sentences no man without formal trial." They could see nothing, hear nothing. Until, at last, the door was unlocked. There were officers and guards--many guards, all of them armed. Their faces told nothing. "You will come with us," said the young captain of guards soberly. "Where?" demanded Joris. "To Llyrdis prison or--" "All communication with the prisoners forbidden," clipped the young captain. "You will come with us." It seemed strange to Trehearne to walk again on unmoving floors, corridors, decks--on a planet. The tawny glare of Aldebaran was dazzling when they filed out of the cruiser. The air seemed unnaturally damp, heavy with the tang of the sea. He and Joris and Edri, the first to emerge, looked around with a throb of eagerness, of half-hope. They could not see much. The cruiser had landed in a closed-off sector and there were other guards waiting out here beside a number of the sleek cars. But Trehearne could hear. He could hear all the usual hum and din and clangor of the vast spaceport, the grind of cranes and rumble of trams, the scream of a fast planet-flyer coming in. And then the _whoosh_ of a great bulk hurtling upward, a starship outbound for distant suns. And in the distance the shining towers of Llyrdis city still magnificently challenged the heavens. Trehearne felt a sick sense of futility. All this vast ordered turmoil of routine and activity, all the Galaxy-wide trade that centered here, the thousand-year solidity of Vardda commercial monopoly--how could he have dreamed that a pitifully faint and aborted radio call could ever shake it? The faces of his friends showed him how their last hope had begun to wane. "The cars," said the young captain. "You four will go in the first one." Edri found his voice. "What about Arrin?" "I am permitted to tell you that your comrade has been removed to hospital and is in good condition."