"Not for the towers. I know this world, from the crypt. I have spent too many years spying on Rudra." Travis rubbed his knuckles thoughtfully. He murmured, "I wanted something to come to grips with. Maybe I can get you into the tower." The tower entrance was like a halved egg, bulging out from the straight wall of the black-and-white structure. There was no visible means of entry. It seemed a sheer rounded oval of stone. Travis stared at it uncertainly, walking past. "Are you sure?" he asked Nuala. "That doesn't look like a door to me!" "What do you know of doors?" she snapped. "It opens to vibratory impulses. Walk close enough and it will open--and a blast of power will turn you into smoke." Travis fingered his jaw. "If I walk toward it and just as the thing opens I dart aside ... it might miss me." "A crude approach," observed Nuala, but her eyes were thoughtful. Stung, Travis snarled, "Sometimes you accomplish more by crudeness. If the other guy isn't expecting it." He would not have done it, if he hadn't felt so helpless and useless beside Nuala. He knew it was foolhardy, even as he ran, right hand going for the _stil_-gun. In a soberer moment he would have waited, have let her figure out the answer, as she had figured out the other answers. His dark hair whipped in the wind that came up the street when he slid to a halt. The egg-shaped adit was lifting, disclosing black depths behind it, glittering metal, a running figure. Nuala screamed, but Travis moved before he heard her. The _stil_-gun belched green mist into the darkness. Travis was sliding, scrambling aside. Light--dazzling, blinding light--shot out of the glittering metal engine just before the green mist touched it. The light was hot. Crouched against the wall, face turned away from its brilliance, Travis felt the heat of it. His brow beaded with sweat. The black hairs on his forearms stank where they crisped. Nuala went by him, crying, "Now! Now!" Staggering, he followed her. She went into the blackness, was a pool of whiteness for an instant. He came low and fast on her heels. The closing doors scraped his leg, it was that close. The engine that spit the light beam was gone. There was just a gaping hole in the metal floor, a bent armature pulled loose from its housing, a glob of red flesh.... Nuala was on the staircase, going up. Travis saw a Kovokodan face leer at her, saw a tube lifted. He showered the face with green mist, watched it explode, blow into powder. Then he was beside her, thrusting her back. "I'll take the lead," he growled. He used the _stil_-gun twice more before they reached the big chamber at the top of the tower. Facing death, taking risks, using the muscles of his space-hardened body, Travis felt the elixir of battle pound in his veins. He was a person again, not just a thing dragged along by the last woman of the Nekkalad.