The McCanahan turned away to stare upward at the great metal machine that bulked monstrous in the dim light. It was formed of black steel and silvery chrome. Its tubes and power relays were inset under thin glass globules so that it resembled a gigantic, transparent-backed spider. High above its arching shell, reaching upward into the dimness of the tower itself, were half a hundred floating, glowing balls that danced and spun in the wind eddies. Stretching on either side of the central hall were wide corridors, their walls lined by glass bubbles that projected outward like bulging eyes. The McCanahan moved toward the near corridor, his eyes caught by a scene within one of the glassine bubbles. Flaith followed him, afraid to be alone. They halted before a curving prism, discovering it to be a dioramic window that seemed to peer into the heart of a distant planet. Flaith whispered, "It's the planet Sfar! I'd know those cold-faced men anywhere!" Frozen, tiny faces stared back at them from a great, white city, set like a jewel on the shore of a wide, blue sea. The little figures were caught in a locked moment of time, attending to their duties. Some moved with weapons, some drove sleek monocars. "There's something about them," Kael muttered, scowling. "They're so perfect! They make every move count as if it would be their last. Each of them is long and lean, with bright, keen eyes that never miss a thing!" Flaith put a hand on the glassine bubble, leaning closer, staring down at the magnified scene. "It's funny, but--" Her slant eyes slid sideways at the McCanahan, amusement swimming in them. "I've noticed something that I thought _you'd_ see, Kael McCanahan!" His eyes studied the girl in front of him as she cocked her head at him. Even in her tattered garments, through which the McCanahan caught disturbing glimpse of white, rounded flesh, the redhaired Flaith was a tantalizing morsel of womanhood. He put out a long arm and drew her in against him. "Och, now what would I have been missing that you, with your cat's eyes, have seen?" She shrugged elaborately. "If you haven't missed them, I won't tell--" "Shades of Bridget na Gablach! Their women!" "They have no women! No man of Senorech has ever seen a sfarran girl. Rumor says that they shelter them because of their loveliness. But if this a diorama of the sfarran planet, and there are no women, then--" Kael grunted. "You and your crazy theories! Look, woman! See for yourself. There are women there. There must be women!" But though they hunted along all that corridor, staring at the sfarran world and its divers shapes and colors, its desert storms and wind-tossed seas, its magnificent white cities that looked like milky jewels, they found no woman.