There was shadow at the drawbridge. Ed Spearman flung aside the carcass he had brought. Ann's white face was still, though she clung to him briefly when he kissed her. It had occurred to Paul that Ann's image of love would not be given reality anywhere in the galaxies: she wished moments to be eternities and a human self to be a mirror of desire. _But Dorothy and I--somehow we've learned to let each other live...._ "More news," Spearman said. "I stopped at the village. A spy of Pakriaa's came home last night--must be a sharp article: did the sixty-odd miles up the lake shore in nothing flat, with facts and figures." "Lantis is moving." Wright dropped his hands to his bony knees. "No, Doc, but will in a day or so." Spearman sat down, holding Ann's fingers till she pulled them away. He nodded to Sears and Paul. "Good trip?" He had grown even more rugged in a year of Lucifer. He wore only shorts and Earth-made shoes; months of handling a heavy bow had made his upper arms almost as thick as the narrow part of Mijok's forearm. His face had deepened its lines; he had never smiled easily. "Very good," Sears said. "The island is--" He was silent. Spearman grunted. "You're sold too? Well, here's the news. One: you remember Pakriaa's second challenge, sent by two warriors, correct and formal--trust Pak for that. One of those messengers is returning. The spy ran on ahead--with part of the body of the other ambassador." He studied the sickened faces. "Two: the spy says Lantis plans to send four thousand on the lake boats, another six thousand overland. Pakriaa--who is in a state of mind I don't know how to describe, not jitters exactly--Pakriaa thinks we may feel the lake-boat drums tomorrow. She doesn't know what they are, by the way--invention of Lantis, I guess. From her description they must be drums, maybe hollow logs mounted on boats. She heard them last year in the war we interrupted. You feel them before you hear them, she says: she thinks it was a lake devil consulting with the Queen of the World. Three: the spy wasn't sure, but thinks Lantis has already sent six hundred east of the lake to make a big circle, come down on the settlement from the northeast." "Smart," Paul said. "To drive us into the kaksma hills?" "The kaksma hills." Spearman's gray eyes squinted in a sort of laughter. "They're not so bad. The critters may be all they say, after dark, but--I'd better own up: I've gone that way on my last three solo trips. Safe enough in daylight, when they're half blind. I killed a few today." Sears asked quickly, "Bring back specimens?"