The Aesir's cloak flickered, and a second gush of fiery light fountained toward Stuart. Up surged the tide of power in him again. Blind and dazed with his own tremendous energy, Stuart felt a curve like a dim shield flung up to meet that lance. The Aesir's fire struck-and flashed into blazing fragments on the Protector's shield. Each droplet sang intolerable music as it faded and winked out. And behind the Aesir, more dazzling than any immortal fire had been, Stuart saw Kari's sudden, shining smile.... She would die if the Aesir failed. She must know she would die. But the brilliance of her smile struck him as the Aesir's spear of fire could never strike. He knew, then. He understood.... The Aesir's cloak whirled like a storm-cloud, in dark, deep billows. The Aesir itself grew taller for a moment, as if it drew itself up to a godlike height. And then it did for Derek Stuart what no Aesir had ever done for a mortal man before. No Aesir had ever needed to. It cast off the hampering cloak and stood stripped for battle with this primitive manling whose forebears immemorially long ago had been the Aesir's forebears. There was in that stripping something almost of kinship--an acknowledgment that here at last in the hall of the Aesir stood an equal, sprung of equal stock.... Naked in its terrible power, the Aesir stood up to face the man. Not human. Not ever human, except in the mysterious basics which these people of a thousand millenniums in the future had chosen to retain. The flesh they had cast off, and the flesh the Aesir stood up in to face his forebear was pure, blazing, blinding energy. Twice as tall as a man it stood, shining with supernal brilliance, terrible and magnificent. The great hall rang soundlessly with the power of the Protectors. And then from above a streak of light came flashing, and another, and another. And were engulfed in the one Aesir who stood shining before its adversary, growing ever brighter and more terrible. The rest of the Aesir, coming to the aid of their fellow, forming a single entity to crush the champion of mankind. Stuart braced himself for the incredible torrent of energy that would come blasting through him from the Protectors. And in a split second--it came! Mind and body reeled beneath the impact of that power as force flared through him and struck out at the tower of lightning which was the Aesir. But the force which was trying his human body to its utmost was not force enough to touch that blinding column. Energy lashed out from it, struck him a reeling blow--Stuart dropped to his knees, the hall swimming in fire around him. But what he saw was not the terrible, blazing image of his adversary, but Kari's face beyond. His falling meant her life--but when she saw him go down the brilliance dimmed upon her features. The hope he had seen there went out like a candle-flame and she was once more only a vessel of human flesh which the Aesir had possessed and degraded.