The boulder struck on a lip of stone and went bounding beyond him. Grim drew a breath and climbed faster. He came to a flat section that topped the surrounding bluffs. He scrambled onto it as a blast from Randolph's disintegrator caught the rocklip that he was on and sent it flying. He lay dazed, knowing the pirate was climbing after him, but unable to do anything about it. He opened his mouth and gulped in air, hearing a steady roaring in his ears. He knelt, stood up; and still the roaring swelled and grew. He finally recognized it as a waterfall. Black Randolph swung over the edge of the cliff and came charging across its flat top, head down. His fists were balled into great clubs. Grim shook his head, got to a knee and then to both feet, waiting. The pirate's charge was irresistible. It lifted Grim up and threw him backwards. He pummeled at the pirate, drove hard knuckles into his jaw and chest. But Randolph laughed in his throat and hammered back. For one instant they stood locked, knee to knee. Their fists drove pain and agony into each other's ribs and bellies. Then Grim weakened. The long ride, the space crash, the wild flight took their fee. His legs buckled under the weariness that laid hot bands around them. He toppled, went down-- Black Randolph came for him in a low dive. Grim closed his hand on a solid rock hump and lifted his feet. He threw them up in the manner of the ancient savatte. His foot caught Black Randolph in the chest and lifted him up and flung him high over him. The pirate screamed. Grim turned; knelt on the edge of the cliff wall and saw the pirate falling, turning and twisting, into a deep gorge where a wide river flowed like a blue ribbon between crumpled rocks, fed by a tumbling waterfall. Grim drew a deep breath and got to his feet. Far beneath him, at the end of the narrow crimson road, he could see a great black temple, with a door like a gaping mouth. Tlokine was in that temple, and Althaya--and the thing they both called Kohonnes. Grim began to run. * * * * * _The two women faced each other at the foot of the bulking black machine that was their god._ _"Here now you will die," breathed Althaya._ _"Kohonnes will not let me die. He will save me. It is you--who have been traitress to him--who will pay by going back to the breath...."_ _And above them, above the black hair and the red, the hundred eyes of the machine began to glow, and the muted throbbing went out from its bowels and touched its metal sides; and the god Kohonnes came to life._ * * * * * Grim slipped and staggered the last twenty feet down the side of the sheer grey rock. He landed on the crimson road, fifty feet from the mouthlike entrance to the Temple. He went at a lurching run, forgetting his weariness, thinking only of a lovely girl with white skin and green eyes and hair the color of a raven-wing.