This was his landing on Llyrdis, the fruit of his journey across the star-shot universe. This was the end of his dream. He ceased to rage. There came a time when he awoke sharply from uneasy sleep to hear the low click of the lock and a soft slurred step on the floor, coming toward him. He sprang up, and saw that it was Shairn. She cried out, "_Michael!_" and her words came to him with a sound of unreality, like the voices heard through fever. "It's all over, Michael--and you're free!" NINE An hour had gone by and he still could not quite believe it. He had left the cell behind him and the five eternal days of waiting. He stood on a terrace high above the city. It was night, and the burning moons were brilliant in the sky. The wind from the sea had the clean sting of wine, but it was not like the sea winds he remembered, it was new and strange, intensely thrilling. Around him the tall slim towers rose upward toward the moons, and far below the shining web of streets was a pattern of sensual beauty, many-colored, sounding, alive. Shairn said softly, "Look at it, Michael. It's all yours." He looked. His hands were tight on the terrace rail, and there was a fulness in him that made it hard to breathe. "I had something to do with it, Michael. Aren't you going to thank me?" He turned. She had put on a flowing thing of white, cunningly draped and spangled over with a diamond frost, and there were strange jewels caught in the dark masses of her hair. He started to speak and then forgot the words, when sounds from inside the apartment--it was Edri's--announced the arrival of Joris. "Come now and hear how the miracle was done." From the terrace they passed through sliding doors of glass, open now to the warm breeze, into a low, broad, spacious room of the utmost simplicity and comfort. A millionaire's room, Trehearne would have said, and yet Edri was a poor man by Vardda standards, owning no ships and working for those who did. The window walls looked out over the city, a mighty panorama of light and color that was without garishness, and inside there was quiet and homeliness, made personal by the small things Edri had brought home from his voyages. Robots of various sorts did all the cleaning automatically when he was away, and there was no kitchen. Meals arrived by pressure tube, fresh, hot, and to order, from a service center. Remembering his own bachelor quarters on Earth, Trehearne was overcome with envy. Joris came toward him, holding out a huge hard hand. Trehearne shook it, and Joris said, "What were you thinking, those five days in the cell?" Trehearne shook his head. "I won't tell you, since none of it was true."