"The Diktor?" "You fool! I'm going to the Diktor and turn Moana over to his torturers. I'll tell him Angus planned with Moana to kill him. Hai. The torturers will work over her a long time, I think. When Angus hears of that...." The Hierarch brooded. He smiled, "I might even turn that into a trap for him. When he returns, having heard what has happened to Moana, I'll be waiting for him." * * * * * Angus slid down from the rock with his heart in his mouth. _The canteen flew out into the air_, he thought. _It went high, and as it came down it disappeared!_ There was something just ahead of him. Perhaps a force field hidden in the shifting and eddying mists rising from the desert lands. If he could find the canteen and discover what made it invisible.... Angus was weak. His knees crumpled as he tried to take a forward step. He summoned the muscles and the nerves of his big, gaunt body. He went forward one step, then two. At the third step he fell. He put out his hands. They parted the grey mists in front of him but did not break his fall. His naked knees hit rounded stone and then his palms went out and touched the worn pavings of a city street. "Gods!" the pirate whispered, lifting his head, blue eyes burning like coals in his tanned face. The gray mists shifted, fading. From their wisps, as though like the flesh of a naked woman revealed by smoky veils, shone queerly rounded and smoothly curved walls of amaranthine and ocher, red and jonquil yellow. Here and there a dome of pearly champagne stood tipped with a knob of vermilion. The houses on the edge of the city were low, seeming to rise higher and higher toward the center where a tall, slender building reared its spire. Red Angus drew a deep breath, running his hands down the ridged muscles of his thighs. He turned and stared behind him where the hot sands ought to be. He saw only gray mists, shifting and shimmering. Angus went down the street, past empty-windowed buildings, across bare intersections, his foot-falls loud in the stillness of the dead city. He walked until the entrance to the central tower was in front of him. Crested with heraldic devices--Red Angus recognized the flame-eyed Stallion of forgotten Shallar and the rampant Dragon of Domeer--the wide door was a glittering mass of emeralds embedded in carvings so delicate they seemed sheared from paper. The doors opened at a touch, revealing red-and-yellow squares of metal stretching forward beneath a glittering dome of translucent jade. In the center of the hall stood a low metal rim about a bubble of grayish green iridescence. He went toward the rim, bent over and stared down. "One of the black pools!" whispered Angus. Through the luminescent bubble he could see only blackness, a jet nothingness that seemed alive. * * * * * A step sounded on the metal flagging behind him. Angus whirled.