"I tell you," he chattered, "I've seen it come out of the tower on clear nights when there wasn't a wind stirring across the sand. It just moved around, all white and shining, making the sand lift and whirl, like a storm down off the Barakian hills. It was cold. Terribly cold! The sand was frozen solid where it had been." The McCanahan stared at the tower. It was tall, formed of black basalt, a thick column of rock that was windowless and seemingly doorless. At the base of the column was a long, low building that stretched on either side of the tower for forty feet. Two red pylons, carved and polished, stood like pointing fingers at its ends. The old peddler was wringing his hands. "It wasn't human, that thing. It could kill as easy as a harlot winks! Once I saw a hare run past it. It stretched out a thin wire of that cold white stuff and touched the rabbit, and the rabbit died. I'm afraid!" Kael turned and caught the old peddler, yanking him to him. "You've bleated and brayed ever since we got out of Clonn Fell! Go back if you want!" The old man's eyes glazed in his brown face. A wind stirred the wisps of whitish hair that straggled from under his kufiyah, and the springs of thin beard that fluttered on his chin. He seemed to shake himself, and at an effort, his eyes cleared. "No! No! You saved me from the sfarri. I told you the tower was the only place where the sfarri never came, on all of Senn. But to go to the tower, to meet that thing--" The McCanahan let the old man go, gently. He was ashamed of the burst of rage that had shaken him. He drew in a lungful of the hot desert air. He was alone on Senn. His comrades in the _Eclipse_ had been destroyed. The High Mor was seeking him across a world, and to have this peddler whimpering his fear in his ears was proving too much. He said gently, "Sorry, old one! Sooner or later the sfarri will come here to the tower. After they have searched all Senn. They will find us. Maybe inside that tower--" Lunol shivered. "No man can live inside the tower. No man can approach it. Death strikes down all who try! I've seen too many animals run close to it and--hofff!--they go up in smoke! There's a band of death all around it. If you go too close, you'll be the one to turn into smoke!" Kael McCanahan shrugged. "As well go up in smoke as die under a Thorn blaster held in a sfarran hand!" He went on alone. Flaith whimpered, watching him. She crouched, her long-nailed fingers digging into the soft flesh of a white thigh. Her eyes were wide, frightened. He went twenty feet, then thirty. He grew smaller, walking across the flat stretch of dunes toward the great black tower. As he walked, the McCanahan threw his blaster, fastened on a length of rope, ahead of him. If some electrical force was probing, it would seek out the metal of his addy-gun and shatter it. Nothing happened to the gun. He walked on and on.