It took him a long time, hunting blindly in the heated water all around him. He went deep, trundling across the jagged ocean bottom. The oxygenerators were laboring when he found the great dark orifice looming ahead in his sea-lights. It was close work, maneuvering the glober through the sea-tunnel. All around was the muted booming of volcanic fires sending up hot jets of molten lava, flame and ashes. Water swirled, black and thickish, past the rounded hull. When the water lightened, he knew they were out of the tunnel. Angus sent the glober rocketing upward. It burst through the water into clear air. The Flaming Lands lay behind. Ahead, across the bluish expanse that was the inland sea, lay a vast stretch of sand and rock. Angus anchored the globe-ship. He dove overboard and swam to the whitish sands. The sun was warm above and the hot sand bit through his leather boots. Angus threw a big canteen across his shoulder and fastened a small packet of food tablets around his waist. He walked for two days and a night before he found the half-sunken road that arched across the desert. The road ended four days later, in the barrens. His water was gone and the leathern pocket that had held food tablets was empty. "I can't turn back," he thought. "I've been gone a whole week from the inland sea." Angus turned and stumbled on. The sun beat down on his naked shoulders, on the remnants of the sun-worn rags about his middle. With each puff of sand his feet kicked up, something went out of his spirit. Angus saw a brown rock uplifting its jagged tip from the sand. He ran awkwardly toward it, hoping that from its top he might see the spires of a distant, nebulous city. But there was only sand and more twisted, curving dunes, and the faint azure tint of the horizon. He stood on the naked finger of rock and swore. He invoked the olden gods--the fecund Ashtal, goddess of love and sex; Grom who fought with warriors; Jethad who loved the wise. He called on them for their attention and he cursed them, upwards and down, forward and back. In his rage he took the empty canteen and hurled it. Choking, he broke off in mid-curse. _The canteen had disappeared in midair!_ * * * * * The Hierarch made fists out of his taloned hands. The cowled man, bent before his carven chair, trembled. The Hierarch whispered, "Are you sure?" "We followed his spectragraph in the screen, Excellency. We followed it until it disappeared!" The black orbs in the thin white face of the chief scientist burned with fanatical ardor. Through thin lips he rasped, "He tricked me. He had those pirates of his pick him up when he was safely out of my hands." "He went through the Flaming Lands," quavered the cowled man. "We saw him do that. Would he go to all that trouble to be picked up in the desert? He could have escaped from the Car Carolan Sea." "Evidence of his cunning. He wanted to make sure he was a good distance away from the power of the Diktor."