The shining velvety calyx swayed. "I shall die soon. For a little while I thought that I might manage to survive in this alien world, this alien time. Your blood has helped." The cool tentacle withdrew from my arm. "But I lived in a younger time, where space was filled with--with certain energizing vibratory principles. "They have faded now almost to nothing, to what you call cosmic rays. And these are too weak to maintain my life. No, I must die. And then my poor robot will be alone." I sensed elfin amusement in that last thought. "It seems absurd to you that I should think affectionately of a machine. But in our world there is a rapport--a mental symbiosis--between robot and living beings." There was a silence. After a while I said, "I'd better get out of here. Get help--to end the menace of the other...." What sort of help I did not know. Was the Other vulnerable? Lhar caught my thought. "In its own shape it is vulnerable, but what that shape is I do not know. As for your escaping from this valley--you cannot. The fog will bring you back." "I've got my compass." I glanced at it, saw that the needle was spinning at random. Lhar said: "The Other has many powers. Whenever you go into the fog, you will always return here." "How do you know all this?" I asked. "My robot tells me. A machine can reason logically, better than a colloid brain." I closed my eyes, trying to think. Surely it should not be difficult for me to retrace my steps, to find a path out of this valley. Yet I hesitated, feeling a strange impotence. "Can't your robot guide me?" I persisted. "He will not leave my side. Perhaps--" Lhar turned to the sphere, and the cilia fluttered excitedly. "No," she said, turning back to me. "Built into his mind is one rule--never to leave me. He cannot disobey that." * * * * * I couldn't ask Lhar to go with me. Somehow I sensed that the frigid cold of the surrounding mountains would destroy her swiftly. I said, "It must be possible for me to get out of here. I'm going to try, anyway." "I will be waiting," she said, and did not move as I slipped out between two trunks of the banyan-like tree. It was daylight and the silvery grayness overhead was palely luminous. I headed for the nearest rampart of fog. Lhar was right. Each time I went into that cloudy fog barrier I was blinded. I crept forward step by step, glancing behind me at my footprints in the snow, trying to keep in a straight line. And presently I would find myself back in the valley.... I must have tried a dozen times before giving up. There were no landmarks in that all-concealing grayness, and only by sheerest chance would anyone blunder into this valley--unless hypnotically summoned, like the Indio girls. I realized that I was trapped. Finally I went back to Lhar. She hadn't moved an inch since I had left, nor had the robot, apparently. "Lhar," I said. "Lhar, can't you help me?"