Tlokine didn't understand him, but she came closer and watched as his agile fingers toyed with the thin wires. He smiled, "This globe is tuned to the master vibrator. It picks up the waves and amplifies them. I want it to do that--but to change the wave-pulse to a different rhythm!" Grim worked blindly, guessing. He knew his only chance for a real test would come when the Change swept across the world. He couldn't wait for that. Althaya and Black Randolph would have hunted them down by that time. Setting the globe across the pommel of his saddle, Grim held it carefully as he thumped his heels into the horse's side. They rode swiftly out across the plain. And then, as Tlokine turned in her saddle, she saw them. * * * * * Althaya and Black Randolph rode before a dozen men, stooped low over the necks of their straining mounts. They could hear the pirate's bellowing, triumphant laughter. "No use," whimpered Tlokine. "They'll catch us now." But Grim saw Althaya point toward a needle-towered island, heard her call out imperiously. The Viking jabbed his heels into the chestnut. He yelled, "The Change! She senses that it's coming!" "We're too far from the islands! It will catch us--kill the horses, then us!" Grim fiddled desperately with the wiring of the ribboned globe. He whispered prayers as he recircuited. It was no use. The pain came and crumpled him up and toppled him from the saddle. He struck the ground and rolled, but his hands held to the globe. Lying flat on his belly, teeth drawing blood from his lips with the pain that wracked him, he drove his fingers into the meshed wires and tugged and rearranged them. A hump of ground rose between his hands; flung the ribboned globe from him, sent it rolling like a rubber ball on the trough of sea-waves. Whimpering, Grim went after it, dragging himself along. He caught it, held it close to his chest. His hand grabbed a wire-- The pain was gone. Grim lay panting, grinning. Tlokine knelt, staring, whispering, "The Change--it's all around us--but where we are, there isn't any Change!" There was a radius of thirty feet where the ground lay frozen in its strange formations, an island in the midst of the hub that was the globe. Grim got to his feet. He held the globe in hands that shook weakly with the reaction. Tlokine went to the horses, soothed and stroked them. After a while the horses got to their legs. They mounted. From the distant island where they watched, Althaya and Black Randolph screamed their rage. But Grim only laughed and waved an arm. With the globe in his hands, he rode the chestnut over the motionless ground, while all around him the earth rocked and bubbled and thrust itself upward into terrible contortions. "It's like a magic symbol," whispered Tlokine, staring at the ribboned globe.