While the attack went on, he lay on a smooth table and disassociated his astral self from his body. In spirit form he roamed the planet, seeking Aava. Deep in the bowels of the black mountain he had finally found him. Thor dared not reveal his presence, or Aava would have lashed out with that titanic power that was destructive even to his projected self. Instead, he went down from the thin crust of rock over Aava, sinking through the golden granules of what had once been a great desert, to the fine crust of jewel-embedded rock that was the roof of Aava's cave. Between jewels, hovering in rock and sand, Thor had looked down on the Green Flame. Aava was verdant brilliance in the red quartz oval, his inner fires moving fluidly, pulsing, beating. He seemed to slumber, thoughts far away. Thor knew where his thoughts were: at the Outlaw settlement. Thor looked around him, studying the thin crust of rock, the jewels, the over-hanging sands. Beneath the rock crust was a lip of stone bridge, five feet down from the rock roof. Thor had grinned, and slid back up through the sand and stone. The rock cut into his feet as he climbed. Up sheer cliffsides, using fingers to clutch at stone projections, digging holes with his toes where no holds ought to be dug, hugging stone with his chest and belly, he went. By inch and by foot he climbed. Night came while he stood on a yard-wide natural path. Thor grunted, eyeing it. Sleep was what he wanted, sleep was what his tired muscles craved. But he went on. Into the darkness, where a misstep would send him plummeting to jagged rocks thousands of feet below, Thor crept. He crawled, vertically. Above him he could see green light, faint tendrils of it. That was the crevice, the entrance to the Cave of Aava. * * * * * And at the Outlaw settlement, Peter Gordon whistled arrows at the heads of the androids surging through the break in the walls that had just been blasted by the urns. But arrows and spears could not stay such as the androids. With sword and axe they hewed their path above the bleeding, dying corpses of the outlaws. Karola shuddered beside him, handing him arrows. "Will Thor find Aava? Will he be in time to help us?" "Jove, I hope so. But it looks bad, Karola. Very bad." The girl grimaced, and closed white fingers on the hilt of a slim dagger. "They'll never take me back. Never!" "Got the bounder!... No, I know. Aava hopes to breed a race of living beings with artificial insemination. But he needs women for that, and so far we've kept him from them--" Below the balcony where they stood, they saw Slag and Yorg lead a charge with club and sword. The red dwarf howled his oaths as he slammed and battered at android skulls. Yorg, grunting and panting, used his blade like a scalpel. "They're holding, Karola. The jolly blighters are driving them back." "No, no. There--another blast by Aava-in-the-urn. Another group!"