And after that ... Jarl choked on his parched, swelling tongue. After that, there would come other things ... things no alien being had survived, rites so awful as to make this blazing wilderness seem a cool Elysium. What was left, they'd spread out in neat display as their own black warning to other straying strangers. That was his goal: that the primitives should seize him. Yet now, as the moment neared when he would fall to rise no more, he knew of a sudden how mad it was. Not even Ceresta and the raider fleet were worth it; not even freedom. Nothing could be worth it. But now, there was no turning back. He'd come too far; he'd pressed his luck one time too many. Swaying and staggering, he came to another, deeper hollow, where bare rock showed through the dust and sand along the slopes in serrate ledges. At the bottom, the drifting grit lay in smooth-swept whorls like a hill-bounded cove where ripples had somehow been trapped in motion, frozen into the surface of the water. He laughed once, wildly, and lurched ahead; then slipped and pitched forward, tumbling headlong. Rocks gashed at him as he fell--tearing, clutching, as if even they shared the primitives' hatred for all aliens. Stunned, choked, half blinded, he came to rest at last at the edge of the pool of rippled sand. Here, away from the sweep of the wind, the heat bore down like a smothering blanket. Jarl's brain reeled. He could draw no strength from the air that scorched his lungs. He knew instinctively that no being of his race could long survive the drain and pressure. Frantically, he dragged himself up and wallowed forward, out onto the sand. Even as his feet sank into the sifting dust, he knew he should have gone the other way, back up the slope. But by then it was too late. Deeper he sank, and deeper, till the loose sand was thigh-high about his legs. * * * * * Desperately, he threw himself flat, trying to spread the weight of his body. But the grit gave way beneath him, sliding and swirling, hungrily sucking him deeper. Dust clogged his nostrils. When he tried to open his mouth to suck air, sand flooded in. He floundered wildly, and the thought flashed through his mind, _Do I die here--here, in this whirlpool of shifting grit, swallowed up, buried alive, before I even find the primitives...?_ He struggled again to rise, and could not. The choking dust swirled higher. His senses dimmed. The blazing sun began to darken. And then they came. They came with a rush, across the crest, their metal masks blurred to blinding flashes. Out of the clefts of the rocks they came, and up from the sand-pool's edges, howling like the screamings in a nightmare, the wailings of banshees.