The cowled creature came forward. It bent, but Stuart could see nothing in the shadow of the hood. A fold of cloth writhed out and touched Stuart's forehead. Darkness wrapped him like the shroud of the scarlet cloak. IV For a long time he had only his thoughts for company. They were not pleasant. He felt alone, as he had never felt so utterly lonely and deserted before anywhere in the System. Now he realized that even since his landing on Asgard, he had had companionship of a sort--that the twin voices murmuring in his brain had been more real than he had realized. A living warmth, a sense of--of _presence_--had been with him then. But it was gone now. Its absence left a black void within him. He stood alone. And Kari.... If he saw her again when his hands were free, he would kill her. He knew that. But--but her shining smile lightened the darkness that engulfed him now. He had never seen loveliness like Kari's, and he had known so many women, so many, too many.... A man who has fought his way Sunward and back again by way of Pluto's chasmed midnight is not so easily misled by the smile of a pretty woman. Kari was no ordinary woman--God knew she was not! Perhaps not even human, perhaps not even real at all. It might be that very touch of alienage that had stamped her shining image upon his memory, but he could not put the image aside now. He saw her clearly in the darkness of his captivity and the deeper dark of his loneliness, now that the voices were stilled. Lovely, exotic, with the eyes full of longing and terror--what lies they told!--and that lovely, that dazzling smile. Bitterness made a wry taste in his mouth. Either she was one of the Aesir, or she served them. Served them well. A knife in the heart was the only answer he had for her, and he meant to give her that edged answer if he lived. But she was so very lovely.... Slowly the veil of darkness lifted. He saw a face he had seen before--the harsh, seamed features of the burly Earthman in the pit. And beyond him, the slim Martian girl. All motionless, standing like statues beside him ... beside him! For Stuart was one of them now. He was in the pit, with the other captives. Sensation came back slowly. With it came a tingling, a warm vibration along his spine ... about his throat ... inside his brain. He could not move, but at the corner of his range of vision flamed a crimsonness--the cloak. He still wore it. He wondered if the other captives could see him, if their minds were as active as his in their congealed bodies. Or whether the chill of deathlike silence held their brains along with their frozen limbs. A slow, volcanic fury began to glow within him. Kari--traitor and murderess! Was she Aesir? Was she Earth-born? And that black-cloaked, cowled creature ... which was not real. Another projector of the Aesir, as the giants had been? _You were sent by the Protectors._