Nuala sniffed and reached for a kit of tools. Travis put out a hand and closed it on her wrist. She looked up at him from under long yellow eyelashes. "How do I know there _is_ a Rudra?" he said harshly. "How do I know you aren't just using me for ... for...." "For what?" she asked serenely, not moving to draw her wrist away. "Where in all your worlds would I want to go? I know everything there is to know about them--and you." "Even--Jonquilon?" She let amusement reach up through the blue of her eyes. She mocked him gravely, "I know about that weekend you spent with her, when you let the museum get scooped on the canal-men bones on Mars." Travis let her hand go. He grumbled, "It was worth it." Her laughter was like silver droplets. She mocked, "What do you know about women? Have you ever seen the water-girls on Tasselas, or the bubble-women that float in the Magellanic cluster? I could show you ways of--" She broke off and shook herself. She said dryly, "I'm letting my emotions run away with me. I can't do that with the werwile. And, speaking of him--you ask proof, do you?" Nuala shrugged. "I really can't prove him to you except by showing him. Trust me for three--four days. Then you will have your proof." The fear was back in her eyes as she whispered, "You will have it then. By Grock, you will have it!" * * * * * They hit the Break a thousand light-years from Van Maanen's star. Travis could see it through the thick, curved window: an oval of darkness somehow shades deeper than the black of space. The pointed prow of the spacer steadied, then sped on. The slit grew larger. "Pray Grock that Rudra is amusing himself with some new form of life," Nuala whispered, white hand gripping the lever of the speed control. "If he suspects we're entering his little world, he'll scatter our remains across the cluster." Travis prowled restlessly around the small room. He felt useless beside Nuala. He glanced at the dials and levers she had improved, at the racked disintegrators that the girl, with a hellish cunning, had out-moded by making them into larger replicas of the pencil-guns. His hard palms slid down his leather jacket, restless, eager to come to grips with something. The Break was on them, and they were in it. Darkness shrouded the ship, but the rockets thundered through the insulation-sheets. Travis upped the lights with a flip of his hand. Even at full brilliance, he saw Nuala through a pale haze. "The Break is a barrier that Rudra threw up around his worlds after he smashed Flormaseron. He has three planets all to himself. One is his laboratory, one his armory, one his palace. We'd have no chance at all by attacking the first two. Only on his palace-planet--where he retires to his kinds of pleasure--can we surprise him."