He had seen the stinger turned on unregenerate killers. It softened them in a hurry. His shoulder hit the edge of the table where the High Mor sat. The table upended, and the High Mor fell to the floor with him. Kael put a hand to the throat of the other man and his fingers tightened and squeezed. It was like choking a bar of steel. The High Mor forced a laugh through his lips, and his body twisted like an uncoiling spring and forced the McCanahan from him. "The Doyen warned you. I caught the thought they put in your brain! Well, let them play their game. They can only interfere with me when I use my Doyen powers to destroy you. I have other gifts to use!" A fist dove at his face, but the McCanahan was a master at rough and tumble fighting. He slipped it and bored in. His fists drummed into the High Mor's belly, lifted and threw him back to rebound off the far wall. A dozen weapons came tumbling down on the ruler of Senorech. A cloak swathed his flailing arms. Kael stepped back, waiting. That was where he made his mistake. For the High Mor slid to the floor in a crumpled heap, and the thing that was Noorlythin glowed and pulsed and moved its frosted tendrils, free of its fallen body. As Noorlythin moved its tendrils, the floor fell away beneath the booted heels of the McCanahan. The walls of the guardroom went out of existence, and Kael was falling, falling. _Gird yourself, Terran! You go into subspace where no other living thing can enter! Not even another Doyen to shield you from my wrath! For each Doyen has in him the seeds of material creation, and what one Doyen materializes, no other Doyen can disturb!_ And the high, mocking laughter followed him down and down, into the eternal blackness where he fell. VII A hot sun blanketed his naked body. It blazed from a molten sky and cooked him where he lay on warm red rocks. Kael McCanahan lifted his head and stared at the searing desolation before him. Sand and rock, and the shale of evaporated seas, stretching like the finger of Time to infinity itself, outward to that blazing blue bowl of sky where the golden sun hung high, pouring down its heat. He came to his feet and swayed with the pain that the heat was putting in his muscles. _Come to me! Come! Come!_ He put trembling hands to his head, and again that sweet call sounded, with the siren lure of all the lost treasures of all space. He stumbled forward, hearing the summons in his brain, in every fibre of his being. _Come to my riches! Lift up your hands to the jewel that gives man everything he wants! Touch me! I am yours!_ He was running across the hot sands that bit his naked feet with hot teeth, and over the sharp rocks that cut into his flesh until he bled. Dimly, he knew that nothing could help him now. That here he was cut off from everything that was sane.