At first he thought that sleep was impossible. His mind kept repeating that interview with the Commander and his helplessness as a prisoner. But many times before he had carried fears and torments into sleep, and this time it was also in the past. This was as clear as a mind picture and very vivid, so that he saw it all sharply and knew also that this was no dream but a fragment of sleep-unlocked memory of a time which seemed to him utterly far in the past.

He was crouched upon a bundle of dirty carpets watching two men. One of them, wearing a crumpled and much stained s.p.a.cer's coverall, was - Lanti. The other man spoke the name even as it had come to the dreaming Farree's mind and reached across the stained table to catch a fistful of Lanti's shirt at the neck to jerk up the head which rolled loosely on the man's shoulders.

Lanti's mouth was slack with a drool of spittle from one comer, and his eyes turned up in his head. He breathed noisily. The one who held him struck a sharp slap on each side of the face.

You blasted fool-answer me! Where did you planet then?

But the man who was Lanti only puffed his lips and then snored. With a grunt of obscenities, the other let go of him and allowed Lanti's head to fall forward onto the table. He pounded a fist on that dirty board before him and then reached within his own jerkin and pulled out a piece of cloth. From its wrapping he shook out a sc.r.a.p of something which glittered and welcomed the light in the place.

Seeing that, the dream Farree made a small movement forward and the man was instantly alert, turning to look at him. Such was the expression of demand upon his hairy face that the very small Farree gave a tiny whimpering cry and waited helplessly for a blow to follow.

so.

However, he dreamed - not one of those broken and distorted series of pictures that had been his uneasy nightmares The man in one lumbering movement came to stand over him, scowling down at the small figure. He still held that glittering sc.r.a.p between two fingers but Farree did not look at it.

Dung. The big man slapped his face, even as he had done to Lanti, rocking him over so he lay nearly facedown on the filthy carpets. What do you know about this? He has dragged you about with him so you must have some value. Is it that you know?

He could sense the cruelty rising in the other. In one of those huge hands his brittle bones would snap easily; he could be turned into dead rubbish to be flung into the street.

Far - Almost he said the name which he must not. Lanti would beat him again if he did. If this bravo did not slay him first. I - I know nothing, Lord-One. His voice was a harsh croak hardly above a whisper.

The second blow fell, only this bully mistook his strength and sent Farree speedily into unconsciousness. When he awoke once more he was sore, so stiff and sore that the slightest movement was a torment.

There was the gray light of morning around, but Lanti still sprawled across the table, his face turned away. Of the other man there was no sign. For several long moments, while feeling came back to his legs and arms, Farree waited.

Outside this hut he could hear the normal sounds of morning: the groans and oaths of men on their way back to ships, and the rattle of pots and pans in those eating places which sold first meals. But the hut inside was utterly silent.

At last Farree moved, humping himself off the carpets, daring to approach the table. That his first known enemy was unaware was a gift of fortune he would not throw away. He stood as tall as he might to survey Lanti. The bloated face was a grayish color, the pouting lips blue.

Greatly daring, ready to dodge if the man awoke, Farree put forth one hand to touch the other's dangling hand.

Slept? His flesh was cold. With even greater daring Farree tried to sense the other. There was nothing there - none of the faint traces of ident.i.ty which one carried even into the deepest of sleeps. Lanti was - dead!

If he were now found here! Farree scuttled to his noisome carpet nest and brought out a square of cloth he had earlier garnered. He moved around the table, his small hunched form not unlike that of one of the sus-spiders, gathering up a half-gnawed slab of bread, the tail end of a flat eel, not pausing to eat, though his empty stomach yearned to be filled, but ready to take the food with him. A weapon? No - the two sheaths at Lanti's belt were empty. He had already been plundered of both his force knife and his stunner. Farree's only chance would lie in flight and hiding. He did not know why the other man had abandoned him - but perhaps he had discovered Lanti's death and had prudently put a distance between them. All this end of the Limits knew that Farree was Lanti's captive and the hunt might be up for him now.

Clutching to him with one hand the bundle he had made of the food, he slipped in the dawn light out of the hut and sought the shadows, speeding at his best hobbling pace away from the only place he had known on this world.

Before this world, before Lanti, what had there been? He turned to that over and over again. Always to meet with dark as if a part of his mind slept endlessly - or was reft from him by some form of small death. Almost, once, he had remembered - when he had seen that sc.r.a.p of glittering stuff in thebully's hand. But even then there had been a barrier.

He had always guessed that he must have come from off-world, and he could not understand why Lanti had thought to bring such a miserable creature with him. Farree must have had some value beyond his own misshapen body. Some value beyond - Farree awoke. For a moment or two he was disoriented. These chill stone walls about him - they were not of the Limits - then, even as he blinked his eyes, all which had happened came flooding back. The promise which had been made that the Tha.s.sa would help. How much dared he count on that?

He tried to school himself to forget it. Those to whom he was now captive could bring to their aid things he was sure the Tha.s.sa, with all their might of minds, had never thought of. No, he dared not depend on promises.

By the window so far above him, he thought the sky was that of morning. And he was very hungry and athirst. To ask - to beat on that door hoping someone would hear him - No, better to go without than perhaps make them remember that they had him to hand.

He had just made this woeful decision when the door did open and a man in a s.p.a.cer's clothing, but one he had not seen before, came in. In his left hand he carried one of those cans of rations made for emergencies and in his right was a stunner. He said nothing but gestured with the weapon. Farree withdrew to the far wall and watched the other set down his burden and go out again. There was an audible thud which he believed signalled a bar on the other side of the door.

The ration was meant to be both food and drink. It was a tasteless semiliquid, but he knew that it would strengthen and revive him, and he devoured it to the last drop. That done, he turned the container over and over in his hands. Now, were this only some wild tale such as men told in their cups he could put the can to good use as a weapon of sorts and break out of his prison. Only this was no tale, it was the truth, and he thought the only time he would see beyond that door was when the Commander had some use for him. At least they intended to keep him alive; the food proved that.

Bait for a trap?

Slowly, as carefully as if life itself depended upon it (which might indeed be so), Farree sent out a mind touch, not aiming it at anything human but keeping to the lowest level he could reach. Within moments he found another of the wall-living vermin. The creature was sleeping, and it was easy enough to take over.

He slipped in and, the thing awoke, felt the hunger Farree carefully suggested, and whipped into one of the runs in the thick wall. What he received was hazy, very limited impressions of, first, those tunnels familiar to his guide, and then a sudden open s.p.a.ce in which he could distinguish little, just enough for him to identify furniture, some part of a room.

The craving for food was tempered by the animal's native caution. As it made short rushes from one cover to the next, Farree fought the other's alien field of vision for something he could identify. There came a sensation of heat and he believed that his scout was close to a fire, undoubtedly one intended for cooking. Then the hazy glimpses which he could not identify fully steadied and remained the same and he believed that the creature crouched in some sheltered hiding place.

Fear - a vigorous stab of it, filling all that small alien mind - a smaller mind than Toggor's and of a different pattern. Toggor! If he had only been able to bring the smux with him into this captivity! All the mind touch which they had used in the past would have given him a better chance to work with this other-world creature whose very form was unknown to him so that he could not build up a mind picture that might clarify his probing. He wondered where the smux was now. And somehow that loosed his hold on the vermin from the walls and before he knew it he had sent out a thought tendril which he knew would not be taken. Only - It was!

Farree was not able to smother the sudden e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n of astonishment as the familiar pattern of the smux was there. It was very tenuous, to be sure, yet once touched it could not be mistaken.

The Tha.s.sa - or the Lady Maelen or the Lord-One Krip - must be very close for him to have picked up Toggor's send, closer than was safe. As he had done with the bird, he reached forth and strove to use Toggor for a connecting link.

If the Tha.s.sa or his late companions were there he could not make the connection - there was only the smux. Still, Toggor was growing clearer all the time as if he were approaching the ruins where the enemy had set up headquarters.

That the smux had made such a journey on his own Farree could not believe. How ever long that trip in the flitter had been, surely the Tha.s.sa had no comparable form of transportation which would bring Toggor. Still, there was no mistaking the smux's mind and - It was backed - strengthened - carried - not by any one mental thrust but by a uniting. Farree had not the training nor perhaps even the gift to sort out the will and the power that projected the smux's own small range of thought. Nor could he reach behind Toggor as he had with the skydweller. Yet there was a new warmth rising in him. It was plain that Toggor was approaching, and that he would have a better ally here than the native things which he could not picture and so could not actually possess.

Farree closed down his mental link. He could not help but believe it might just be possible that those who held him could somehow sense such communication. Let Toggor get within the right distance, and he could trace Farree by his own gift without revealing his presence to those who held this ruin as their own.

Now it was a matter of waiting. Farree found that impatience was a hard goad to elude. He wanted so much to use Toggor for eyes, to see what the smux would see, to feel - He sat as upright as he could, his back awakening into the same ache as had kept him company for the past few days, as he strove to get to his feet under that window which was too high for him to see from. Toggor - Toggor was suddenly afraid.

He was - he was above ground, with no strong hold on anything - being whirled through the air in a manner over which he had no control - and he was crying out to Farree for help and comfort - to be released.

Had he been picked up by someone of the Guild guard? No, this severe fear came not from being handled but rather from being not handled, swung along in an open s.p.a.ce where there were no good clawholds for safety's sake.

In the air? Had he been tossed? No, Farree could not feel that he was so helpless as he would have been had he been flung, say, over one of the ruinous walls. In the air, yet not thrown.

There was a whirling of hazy sight and then - Above in that single window there was a shadowing. A bird - or at least a flying thing with feathers - had lighted on the stone sill. It carried a squirming object fastened to a cord about its neck and now it dipped its head and that cord slipped off. Farree was beneath the window, his hands upraised, and with a desperate s.n.a.t.c.h he caught the smux as it fell toward him.

There was a net about Toggor which Farree swiftly peeled away. Once free, the smux caught his shirt front and swiftly made his way to his favorite perch, inside the collar, his stalk eyes extended to their farthest level for sight.

Farree tried to reach the smux with thought send but all he received was a breathless, sickening sensation of being swung through the air. Toggor had not yet recovered from his journey. But there must have been some overwhelming reason for the smux to have been sent to this prison, and Farree knew that it might hinge upon a s.p.a.ce of time, something to be done as soon as possible.

There was no way out of here except the window, and the flying creature, having delivered its burden, was gone.

The hunchback squatted down again in the corner of the room from which he had best seen the door, and carefully detached Toggor's hold, lifting the smux on his two palms so that the eyes swung and arose on level with his own. Once more he attempted to establish mind contact.

And this time he achieved a hazy impression of the Lady Maelen. Also something else - that Toggor was rebelling against some task which had been laid upon him. Exploration of this place? Perhaps the rough stone outside the window would provide clawholds either up or down. Farree thought carefully and then pictured the vermin of the walls which he had contacted earlier.

Immediately Toggor's attention was caught and riveted upon that suggestion. As he had routed out his prey back at the inn in the Limits, so was he ready to try the same here. But Farree was loath to let the smux go. Though he had touched minds - or rather scratched minds - with that runner in the wallways, he had no idea of its size or natural armament. It might prove too much for the smux.

It was plain at once that the smux did not agree with him.

A hunter's l.u.s.t for the game welled up to possess most of Toggor's mind.

Once more Farree crawled over to stand beneath the window, but the smux did, not loose his hold on the shirt. It was plain that he had no thought of taking that way again. Then how? There were no cracks in the walls of this tower wide enough to take the smux, and the door fitted tightly to the floor so that every time it was opened it rasped harshly in protest.

Just as Farree thought of that, the portal to his cell did open and once more the guard appeared, but did not venture any farther than the threshold. Toggor moved with the flashing speed he could show upon occasion and was into the shirt, well hidden, before the door was wide open.

Though the man held a stunner he had brought no food, only beckoned to Farree to come to him, and the hunchback obeyed. He foresaw another interview with the Commander and perhaps worse to come. Somewhere along their path to that questioning he must loose the smux. Thus he shambled slowly, his head bent forward as one who had been broken in spirit and planned nothing.

The guard waved him on to descend the crumbling stair, and down this he went. He was only too aware of the scrambling Toggor was doing in the shirt and hoped with all his might that his guard would not see the movement.

Luckily the inside of this place was dusky enough to be I full of shadows, which just now were comforting and promising. He felt the smux thrusting its way into his sleeve and allowed his arm to dangle, refusing to wince as the clawed feet dug into his flesh for the other's descent.

They had reached the ground floor, and the guard said in trader tongue, Wait, you!

As if he were weak and tired, Farree leaned back against the wall, holding the smux-supporting arm straight down. The claws moved from one hold to another. Farree could only hope that there was no trace of venom leakage from any of those sharp tips. Then he felt Toggor loose all contact and felt a soft plop against his leg in the shadows - the smux was on the move.

Farree dare not watch that quick scuttle into the greater dark. His guard was raising his free wrist to his lips and reporting in code into a disc banded there. A moment later he waved the hunchback on again and Farree had to go, leaving Toggor to follow his own desires, not even having any chance to impress on the smux what was necessary. But perhaps those who had sent him had already done that.

Out of the door they went. The sunlight was so great a burst of glare in this parched land that Farree had to shade his eyes after the murk of the tower room.

On with you. Dung. The barrel of the stunner struck the hump hard and Farree had to bite his lips to keep from screaming. The tenderness of the lump which burdened him had been growing more with each day. He wondered if that meant some ill he did not understand. Now he staggered a step or two before he could control the wave of pain and walk as best he might in the direction the guard pointed him.

The tower stood alone, not connected with the other ruins about it. Most of the buildings were roofless, had even lost half a story to time and wind and storm. Only the one he had visited before was intact. There were some men lounging by its door. Five he counted. But there was no way for him to a.s.sess the full number of the enemy sheltering here.

Here comes the luck piece, Jat! Two of the lounging men were playing pitch and toss with black and white counters. He who spoke leaned forward as Farree approached, holding out a stiff finger.

The hunchback longed to dodge that touch now but knew deep within him that it would be best to keep hidden the fact that his back burden was so tender. They might well make a torturous use of such knowledge. So he suffered the slap of those fingers stoically and tried not to show any pain.

Luck for all of us if we need it, one of the onlookers commented. And need it we might. j Your lips are too loose, Deit, commented Farree's guard. Better not let the Veep hear you.

I signed on for service, not sitting around in rock piles - we all did.

We all did, agreed the guard, and you don't go back on a sign-up. Not with him in there - He gestured with an outstretched thumb at the door just behind him.

Get on with you! Once more that punishing jab, but this time high on his arm, and that was as nothing. Farree went inside the building. Again he was surprised at the carpeting, the hangings on the wall, the various bits of a less austere life which the Veep of this company had carried for his own comfort.

For the second time there were the two at the table: the man in uniform and he who was so fat he bulged in sections out of his chair. He was intent upon a small picture corn; the Commander was more at ease, smoking a spice stick, the scented air of which fought with the mustiness of the ancient room.

Neither of the men paid any attention to the entrance of Farree. He and his guard stood together back by the wall until the fat man gave an impatient push to the viewer before him.

There is no silencer according to the reading, but this will not reach into that valley.

Nor will it ever, commented his companion. These Tha.s.sa have their own protections - The fat man pouted petulantly. What kind of learning can defeat a far viewer? He put thumb and forefinger together and clicked them against the silent screen.

An efficient one it would seem. The Commander drew deeply on the spice stick and then expelled a puff of bluish smoke. Is that not so, DUNG! His voice lost all its calm laziness and snapped as a leader might snap an order and expect to be instantly obeyed.

Farree fought to remain steady. He had feared and hated Russtif but that was nothing to the emotion this man raised in him. He could feel the threat behind those words as if a whip had been snapped in his direction and flaked a sc.r.a.p of skin from his cheek.

I do not know what the Tha.s.sa can do. He offered the truth but was afraid that it would not be accepted.

Yet you have traveled with them, you have gone into their forbidden valley. And they do not allow that to any they do not believe is one with them. Or are you so weak and poor a specimen of living thing that they treat you as they would one of their 'little ones' - those beasts they gather about them, changing places with them? Which are you, Dung, man or beast? Perhaps they have already worked their will upon you and in truth you might have claws and fangs. Yet I do not believe that - not yet.

The fat man pushed aside the viewer with one hand and looked also at Farree.

Get to the truth, he said sulkily. Verify him!

Farree knew what he meant, and he had the greatest need of holding on to himself, not to shiver and cry out. They meant to use upon him one of the enforcing machines which s.p.a.cers told so many tales about. Within the influence of that he could hold back nothing that these two wanted. They need only ask their questions, and the machine would at once betray and subvert any desire of his to keep information hidden.

Very well. It will be illuminating at least. Why do the Tha.s.sa want you, Dung? You are a sorry specimen. But perhaps for those who deal intimately with animals your ugliness does not matter. We shall see.

The Veep made a gesture with one hand, and before Farree could move the guard beside him grabbed a handhold on his shirt where it hunched across his tender hump, bringing, in spite of all effort, a murmur at the pain. He was so swung to the right and pushed down on the seat of a chair which another of the s.p.a.cer guards had jerked forward.

One of them held his head cruelly at a backward angle while another one forced a silvery band well down on his forehead and into his tangle of black hair. Wires ran from this up into the s.p.a.ce overhead. He could not tilt his head far enough back to see where they ended. But now he was a prisoner to a power he feared more and more as his helplessness became so clear.

What is your name?

The fat man was the questioner.

Farree.

Farree? There was a slight frown on the Commander's face as if he were trying to capture a small thread of memory.

What are you?

A hunchback. He made a true answer, trying to see if he could so limit their knowledge gained from him.

And what else? The Commander leaned a little forward on the table. He pointed his smoke stick straight at Farree as if he could use it at his wish as a laser to send the other into smoking refuse.

Farree. That was also true. He held to the thought that if he limited any answer to the exact question he might not be so great a traitor after all.

You were born in the Limits?

I do not know. Again the truth, and they could nor reach behind that for something he did not know himself.

A man knows where he is born, unless he is an idiot, puffed the fat man. We do not believe you are an idiot.

Why do you say you do not know? The Commander showed none of the irritation of the other, but he was the more dangerous of the two and Farree had known that from the beginning.

I cannot remember.

You were wiped? The Commander no longer stared at him so intently, but was looking over his head at whatever there betrayed his speech as true or false.

Wiped - a memory erased for some reason. Was that the truth which he had not faced during all the seasons in the Limits?

I do not know.

What do you first remember? The Commander had back his gentle, ruthless voice.

Because he dared not try any tricks with the truth this time, Farree spoke of that which had been in his dream - the death of Lanti and his own escape into the jungle of the Limits.

Lanti. Again the questioner repeated the name. He looked to the fat man who was still running his fingers around the edge of the visa-screen. That other shrugged.