Chapter II: Part 2

Mulvaney seemed to overcome the shock produced by his first sight of the approaching shapes. He reached swiftly for his gun, raised it in deliberate aim--fired. There was a burst of luminous brightness. One of the two onrushing child-like winged figures was abruptly gone--gone as swiftly and completely as though it had never been visible.

Bryan stumbled in his frantic stride, caught himself, numbed by a sudden dismay. Leeta and her people could be hurt! It was as though the glowing energy of which they seemed composed existed in a state of delicate balance that could be disrupted by the impact of a bullet or its shock-wave.

He reached the pavilion steps, leaped up them toward Mulvaney. He had to keep the man from firing again. Somehow he had to show Leeta that his intentions were friendly, sympathetic. He had to talk to her, make her realize what she had been doing. Perhaps, even, he could help her.

Mulvaney's blue-clad body loomed up before him. He caught desperately at the patrolman's arm.

"Wait!" he gasped. "Don't shoot!"

"Are you out of your mind?" the other cried. "Let go of me!"

They struggled. Bryan's foot slipped on the steps ... he fell.

The mosquito-men seemed disconcerted by the loss of one of their band. They swerved away, as though in sudden terrified realization of danger. But the great bird, with Leeta astride its back, continued toward the ground a short distance from the pavilion, its huge size evidently preventing swift evasive action.

Leeta was almost in point-blank range. And again Mulvaney was lifting his gun.

On hands and knees, Bryan threw himself back at the other. He caught Mulvaney about the legs, pulled. The patrolman went down, his gun blasting harmlessly into the air.

Bryan was climbing back to his feet, when he saw the luminous child-like shape of a mosquito-man darting at him, its needle-snout spearing toward his chest. He sought to twist aside--too late. He felt the brief pain: the electric sensation, and then paralysis held him in its rigid grip.

A second of the mosquito-men dove at Mulvaney as he, too, struggled erect, its needle-snout piercing his back. Mulvaney remained bent-over, frozen, statue-like.

There was an odd hiatus, poignant, holding a realization of hopes lost forever. Then a slim pale figure moved into Bryan's line of sight--Leeta. She approached to stand before him, holding the crystal globe, a vast wonder in her small face. He felt a pulse of thought, soft and clear, holding a ring of silver chimes.

"It is you--he whose will cannot be overcome. Strange that we should meet again ... stranger still that you should save my life. I do not understand ... But I am grateful. And I wish--"

The silver melody broke as though against some cold unyielding wall. Then it came again, sad, despairing.

"But what I wish cannot be, man of the mighty will. For you would not willingly journey through the veil. You are bound to this aspect of existence, as all the others were bound. But somewhere must be one who is not.... And so my quest must go on. Again--farewell...."

* * * * *

Once more she was slipping from him. And once more he could do nothing. Despite his frantic, violent inner struggle, he could make no sound or movement, could give no slightest indication of the purpose that drove him. He was imprisoned within a cage of flesh as unresponsive and immovable as stone.

She turned to Mulvaney ... held the crystal globe to him. Its pulsing quickened, it brightened. And Mulvaney fell, limp--empty.

Watching through his despair, Bryan saw Leeta stand hesitating. Slowly she glanced at him, as if somehow, throughout the weird proceedings, he had been at the back of her mind. Her small face seemed to hold a reluctance, a regret.

Then she turned and moved beyond his sight. And presently he heard the flapping of wings, drawing away, fading. Stillness closed over the park again.

Bryan felt the paralysis draining from him, more swiftly this time. It was as though his body had adjusted to it since the first attack.

He was straightening awkwardly, painfully, when he heard a sudden faint rustling of branches, followed by the sound of light running feet. A figure appeared in the open space before the pavilion, hurrying toward him. The figure of a girl. And then he recognized her. Joyce!

He felt a sharp surprise ... an unease. What was Joyce doing in the park?

"I saw what happened," she gasped breathlessly as he came up. Her face looked pale and strained. "Are you all right?"

He nodded. "Just getting back to normal."

She bent to make a brief, repelled examination of Mulvaney. "Can't something be done for this man?"

"There isn't any hope for him," Bryan returned. "He's in the same condition as the others." He studied Joyce for a moment, realizing that she was oddly changed--somehow deliberate, hostile. "What are you doing here?"

"I wanted to see what your girl-friend looked like, Terry. I sneaked past the police in front of the park." Her voice took on a sudden accusing edge. "I saw what that half-naked witch did to this policeman. And you helped her, Terry. I saw you knock him down so he couldn't shoot her. It was murder, Terry--murder! He isn't dead yet, but you know he's going to be."

"I had to stop him," Bryan protested. "The girl deserved more of a chance than she was getting. I told you she really didn't know she was doing wrong. I thought I could reason with her, keep her from doing any more harm--but things happened too fast."

Joyce shook her head coldly. "It's still murder. And you're in it up to your eyebrows, Terry. If the police find out what happened here, they'll lock you up and throw away the key."

In another moment her features softened, her voice grew pleading. "It isn't too late, Terry. Forget that girl. Tip off the police so they'll be ready for her the next time she shows up. They don't have to know exactly what you saw--or what you did. We'll keep that to ourselves, Terry. We'll start over again ... you and I."

* * * * *

Bryan stared at her, shocked by the bargain she was suggesting. She was asking him to doom Leeta, to sacrifice his pride and his hopes in return for her silence. It was a kind of blackmail, in which she was seeking to use the tragedy of Mulvaney for her own purposes. He found in this a wrong somehow vastly greater than in what Leeta had done--for this was knowing, calculating.

He had always regarded Joyce as a friend, understanding and sympathetic. Now he realized these qualities were only a veneer, and in the stress of what had happened the veneer had been stripped away. An underlying ugliness was revealed--an ugliness that seemed to be the very foundation of a world he had come to despise.

Slowly, grimly, he shook his head. "You're asking too much for what you have to sell, Joyce. If I have to pick between you and Leeta, then...."

She stiffened as though struck. "Leeta!" she spat. "So you know her name, do you? Now I see you must have been cozy with her all along--that's why you helped her commit murder!"

Her voice grew shrill and breathless with fury. "All right, Terry! You're asking for it. I've made a fool of myself in front of everyone, chasing after you, throwing myself at you. This is where I even up the score.... The police might not believe what I just saw, but I'll tell them a story they'll swallow without tasting. They just love people who help kill cops. And they already have a crush on you over the run-around you gave them after the last killing. If you aren't sent to the chair, you're dead certain to get a job cracking shells in a nuthouse. Everybody knows you've been going to pieces, and they won't be surprised to hear you've finally blown your top."

She stood facing him a moment longer, her eyes blazing with deadly promise. Then she whirled and was running swiftly toward one of the paths that led away from the pavilion.

Bryan gazed after her, realizing that he might have made a serious mistake. But he was somehow unable to care. He had an enormous sense of futility, defeat. All his hopes, the very course of his life, had come to center about this evening's meeting with Leeta--and she had slipped from him. There would not be another chance. Joyce had made it clear that the sands of time were running out for him.

He glanced down at the prone figure of Mulvaney, hesitated. It seemed callous to leave the patrolman like this. But there was nothing that could be done for Mulvaney now. Except, perhaps, to answer the questions of the police about what had happened to him. And Bryan didn't feel like answering questions. He'd had little sleep that morning, and exhaustion made his body leaden. And he had the feverish, light-headed feeling again, the aftermath of his paralysis.

He turned aimlessly and walked down one of the paths, until he found himself at the edge of an invitingly dark grassy expanse. He dropped to the ground behind some tall bushes and closed his eyes. He seemed to be floating in a lightless, depthless sea. Soothing waves of sensation washed over him. He drifted away on warm tides that held nothing of sound or feeling.

* * * * *

And then the nothingness was gone. He stood on a flagstone path that ran between a lane of trees. At one end the path led to a curving stairway that wound up a rocky slope to a building of pink stone. Peace and quiet lay over the scene, like a crystal blanket of supernal clarity.

Realization came to him, bringing with it an electrifying amazement. He was back--back in that strange and exotically beautiful other-place which seemed to be Leeta's home!

Leeta! Eagerness and wild joy flamed in him, then. There was still a chance. It was not hopeless after all--not too late....

His senses rushed toward the other end of the path, and now he detected a muted piping, like the shrill whispers of excited children. He sent himself toward it.

The familiar shifting again. He stood at the edge of the broad shallow depression he had seen before, with the pool of inexplicable force at its center. The flowers that crowded here were as incredibly luxuriant and gorgeous as he remembered them, filling the air with their thick perfume. And once more he felt the aura of vital power that radiated from the pool, boundless, awesome, god-like.

And kneeling beside the pool as before was the slender figure he was seeking--Leeta. Only dimly was he aware of the other shapes around her, the giant bird, the mosquito-men. She was holding the mystically shining crystal globe, even now she was bending to lower it to the surface of the pool.

Into his mind flashed the chilling picture of Mulvaney, horribly sprawled, motionless-empty. He knew he had to prevent what was about to take place.

Urgency leaping in him, he sent himself toward the pool. Leeta had to see him this time! He threw all his will into the thought in a mighty burst of effort. She had to see him!

And she saw him.

With the globe extended in her hands, she stiffened. Her tilted liquid eyes flared wide. A stark unbelieving amazement seemed to grip her slim body. And in a fashion that was somehow a normal function of his senses here, he realized that she saw him as he had seen her back at the park, mistily unsubstantial, weirdly glowing.

"You!" she said at last. The silvery chime of her thought held the quality of a gasp.

Her stunned incredulity was echoed by the other presences before the pool.

"He is the strange one--he is here!"

"He of the great will has come!"

Then the silvery chiming again, stronger now. "You followed me here, man of the other aspect? Were you able so easily to penetrate the veil?"

"I don't know just how I got here," Bryan returned. "But I do know that this is where I wanted to be."

She seemed to grasp the implications of the thought, for a sudden delight stirred in her. Yet for the moment her wonder remained dominant. "I do not understand how this can be. The others could not penetrate the veil without the aid of the Vessel. It is as though they were somehow bound to their aspect of existence--bound as you, man of the mighty will, are not.... But why have you come?"

His answer was grave, deliberate. "Partly to ask you to stop the harm you have been causing in my world, Leeta."

"Harm?" A silvery peal of shock burst from her. "I ... I do not understand."

"You took something from those men in my world, Leeta--something they could not live without. And because of this, they died."

"Died! But the pool could not incarnate them into this aspect. The vital force escaped. I thought it returned to its shell in the other aspect."

Bryan clearly understood the meaning behind the terms she used. He shook his head. "The vital force did not return--not once, Leeta. The shells died."

She looked stricken. "I had not thought that happened when the vital force escaped. I had been certain that it returned through the veil, drawn back by its bonds with the shell.... If it did not return, then it must have perished here." The realization was one she found startling, dismaying.

Bryan nodded slowly. "It perished in this aspect, just as the energy projection of one of your winged creatures perished in mine. For I assume that the creature did perish, Leeta."

"Yes," she whispered. "It was a thing I did not understand. But now...." Her thought faded unhappily. Sorrow misted her eyes.

* * * * *

He dropped down beside her at the edge of the pool. For the moment, driven by his intense purpose, he forgot that he was somehow immaterial, a projection. He forgot the strangeness of that bizarre other-world garden and the tensely watching shapes nearby. There was only Leeta and himself. That was all that mattered.

Earnestness heavily underscored his thought. "Leeta, you must stop what you have been doing. You know now it has caused the deaths of those men in my world. And there is another reason, Leeta--danger. My people will be watching for you to appear again. They will try to destroy you."

She shook her head with a mournful determination. "But I cannot stop. I have a duty to fulfill that is greater than any harm I might cause--greater even than my own life."

"What do you mean, Leeta? What is this duty?"

"I shall tell you. But first--you have seen something of this valley? You have seen that it is beautiful?"

"Very beautiful, Leeta."

"But only the valley is like that. All the rest of my world is bathed in a terrible fire that destroys any life it touches."

"I have seen that, too," he said. "Was it always this way?"

"Not always. Once the entire world was like the valley, beautiful, filled with life. There were fully as many people as on your own world. And they had great knowledge--too much knowledge, perhaps. They lived in vast cities and had many wonderful machines to serve them. They could have been happy, could have climbed to even greater heights--but there was war."

The silver chiming was dulled by sadness, and a kind of instinctive horror. "It was a war fought with weapons of frightful, magic power--weapons that used the very secrets of existence itself. Life of all forms was wiped out, except in this valley. For a small group of people had guessed what the war would do and had taken refuge here. The valley, you see, was unique, not only well isolated from any possibility of attack, but shielded on all sides by mountains which contained an element capable of resisting the fire. Thus, while the fire spread like a deadly blight into other refuges, it did not reach here. Not entirely."

Bryan felt an awed wonder at the picture Leeta had drawn. Behind her chiming thought images had moved--images that seemed to hold a tantalizing familiarity. He had been puzzling over the location of Leeta's world, and now he speculated startledly whether it wasn't Earth itself. He recalled that she had spoken of their individual worlds as aspects, as though they were different views of the same place rather than completely different and unrelated places.

The possibility was supported by the fact that Leeta was undeniably human. Further, he knew that the consuming fire she described was radioactivity--and the people of his world were already well along in their knowledge of atomic weapons. His wonder sharpened. Was Leeta's world actually Earth--an Earth of the distant future? Was the veil that separated them time itself?

* * * * *

She appeared not to have noticed his fleeting thoughts. It was as though her awareness was gripped by the tragedy of what she had been describing.

Slowly she went on, "The fire's terrible breath touched the valley, and its effects were felt by the creatures who had sought shelter here--both human and animal. Some died, some ... changed. The winged ones you see around you now are the results of that change. Even the flowers and trees became different. And the pool was created. The fire touched something in this particular spot--and the pool came into being. The process was never understood, but I do know that the pool has strange powers--that somehow it is alive ... intelligent. It is the pool which made possible what I have done, supplying the knowledge, tools and forces that were necessary."

"But how does it happen that you're the only person left in the valley?" Bryan asked.

She moved her slim, gleaming shoulders. "There were not many here even in the beginning, while the fire was still at its height. After its destroying breath left the valley, only a very few were left--those, that is, who were still human. And they somehow did not care to live. My father was the last to die, but before he did he said I must find a way to keep our race from perishing with me. He explained that I was the first human truly adjusted to the changed conditions of the valley, and only in me was there hope.

"That was ... and remains ... my duty--to keep humans alive in this aspect. The answer to my problem lay beyond the veil. Matter was held by the energy field of the aspect in which it was situated, and thus could not be made to cross without the use of enormous power. But the vital force contained in living matter could be made to cross easily enough--with, of course, the means of a tool like the Vessel. And the pool could incarnate the vital force, give it matter in this aspect according to the pattern of the original shell. All I had to do was bring the vital force of a man through the veil--and my race could go on. Still, I have been unsuccessful, for it seems that the vital force is also held to its aspect."

"I think that's because of what might be called psychic bonds," Bryan said slowly. "The men you brought here, Leeta--they did not want to come. And once here they did not want to stay. That, it seems, is why you've failed."

He indicated the globe she was holding. "And that's why you'll fail again. It's wrong to destroy a life uselessly, Leeta. Wrong. Surely you realize that. You must release this man--if it's at all possible."

"It can be done," she said. Then her thought grew protesting, rebellious. "But I cannot release him. I cannot give up my mission so easily. I must keep trying until I succeed. Surely you in turn must realize how great my duty is."

"Will you persist in it even if you know you are doing wrong, bringing pain and grief to people in my aspect? Don't you know what grief is, Leeta? Didn't you feel grief when your father died--when that winged creature of yours died?"

"Yes," she said reluctantly. "Yes."

"And don't you know what love is? Haven't you realized that you were tearing those men away from persons they loved deeply and didn't want to leave? I don't mean the kind of love you felt for your father, Leeta, but the love that exists between a man and a woman who are mated. Don't you know what that kind of love is like?"

* * * * *

She hesitated, startled, wondering. "No," she breathed at last. "Then I'll show you," he said. Though he was somehow unsubstantial, a projection, he knew he could still transmit feeling, just as the mosquito-men had transmitted their paralysis to him. He bent toward her, pressed his lips to hers. He felt her surprise--and then her pleasure, her shy response. There was somehow a sweetness in that kiss, an intensity, that moved him as no kiss had ever done.

Finally he drew away. "That is love, Leeta--something that would bring a man willingly to your aspect."

Her small face was flushed, her liquid eyes shone. Then despair washed over her. "But if you don't--" She gestured helplessly. "Where would I find a man in whom there would be such a love?"

He looked at her intently, searchingly, then gestured at the globe. "Leeta, if I were willing to stay here with you, would you release this man?"

"For you--yes." In her was no guile, only an innocent directness. "I have thought of you from the first moment we met," she admitted. "I found qualities in you that were not present in any of the others--a strength, and yet a gentleness, a sadness. I could not forget ... and I know now that this was love. And if you will truly stay--" She broke off eagerly. "Watch!"

She extended the globe toward the pool. She did not lower it, but held it over the surface. Her slim body grew very still. She seemed to be concentrating ... communing.

And as he watched, Bryan saw the mists from the pool thicken around the globe. The supernal power that radiated from it took on an atmosphere of tension, strain. For an instant, even though he still saw her, he had the uncanny yet definite impression that the globe was--gone.

Abruptly, then, dismayingly, the scene dimmed, began fading, as it had done on his first visit. Panic swept him. He couldn't leave now--he didn't want to leave! He fought to keep the garden around him, summoning all the force of will of which he was capable.

The scene steadied--but remained oddly blurred. He saw now that Leeta had turned from the pool and was holding out the globe to him, smiling. The globe's mystic brightness was gone. Once more it was a cloudy gray, its core a faint rose, slowly pulsing.

"It is done," Leeta said. "He has been returned safely to the other aspect." Then her smile vanished. She stared at Bryan in swift concern. "Why, what is the matter? What has happened to you?"

Her questions seemed to come from a great distance. The scene was dissolving again--and this time he could not hold it together. Something was wrong, he knew, seriously wrong. He tried to send a last message to Leeta ... failed.

Darkness closed around him. And from a distance even greater than before, he sensed an anguished chiming, stunned, broken.

"A trick! It was just a trick!"

* * * * *

Someone was shaking his shoulder roughly and insistently. He strained away in dull protest, groping blindly for the fragile ethereal thread that had slipped from him.

"Come on, snap out of it!" an impatient voice growled.

He forced open his eyes, then squeezed them shut again as the beam of a flashlight struck them. His awareness sharpened. He struggled to sit up, felt grass under his fingers, and realized abruptly that he was back in the park.

Hands that were not gentle caught him under his armpits and helped raise him to his feet. He saw the figures of two men now, one of them in police uniform. This man held a gun, its muzzle pointed in silent threat.

"All right, cop-killer," the man in the suit said. He had a detective's unemotional face and flat hard eyes. Something bright glinted in his hands as he leaned close--and Bryan felt the cold steel of handcuffs close around his wrists.

"Let's go," the detective said, then. "We've got about two-dozen men combing the park for you, friend. They won't like to be kept on the job for nothing. Pete and I were just lucky enough to get to you first."

Rough hands gripped Bryan's arms, pulled him into motion. He walked leadenly, unsteadily, the two men flanking him. His body was clammy with the perspiration that had bathed him in sleep. He felt exhausted, weak, sick, as though from some tremendous labor. The energy of his body, it seemed, had been heavily drawn upon in order to sustain the projection of himself in Leeta's aspect.

Leeta.... He thought of her with a crushing sense of tragedy. He knew he loved her--incredible and weird as that love may have seemed. He remembered the shyness of her kiss, the numbed horror of her belief that she had been betrayed, that he had pretended love only as a ruse to obtain Mulvaney's freedom. If only he were able to reassure her--

But he had the chill certainty that he would never see her again. For she had learned the meaning of pain.

Despair rose in him, a despair that submerged even his concern over the situation in which he now found himself. _Cop-killer_.... The implications brought a kind of remote wonder. Joyce, it appeared, had made her threat good. She had told the police a story that they had swallowed without tasting. It was a story that had resulted in a swift and thorough search of the park, a story that had required handcuffs and drawn guns.

Bryan glanced at the detective beside him. "You boys taking me in because of what happened to Mulvaney?"

"Mostly because of Mulvaney," the other grunted. "We don't know what you did to him, friend--but you're going to tell us about it. In the back room at Headquarters. You're damned well going to tell us all about it."

"Mulvaney isn't dead," Bryan insisted.

"Not yet. But he's going to kick off sooner or later--just like the others. I know about that, friend."

Bryan shook his head. "Mulvaney isn't going to die."

"That so?" The detective's flat gaze studied him without surprise or interest. "But the other guys did--four of them. Don't forget that."

Bryan fell silent. Mulvaney wouldn't die--but he would tell of Bryan knocking him down, of Bryan's co-operation with strange creatures that had taken the lives of four men. Mulvaney, however, wasn't likely to tell exactly what he had seen. His story, too, would be something that could be swallowed without tasting....

Then Bryan saw that he and the others were crossing one edge of an open space. The pavilion rose in the middle of it, a pale ghostly shape against the darkness. It would remain a symbol for him. For within sight of it his life had begun--and ended.

* * * * *

A path swallowed him and his captors. The pavilion faded from view. Ahead was the sprawling bulk of the city, dotted and splashed with light.

It was against this backdrop that the sound came, rising out of inaudibility. The flapping of great wings.

_Wings!_

A vast wind seemed to blow through Bryan. He stopped dead, staring up into the sky.

The detective and his companion seemed to hear the sound also. They, too, peered upward, puzzled.

Bryan thought he knew where to look. And glancing back in the direction of the pavilion, he saw a vague dark shape against the stars. Sudden urgency roared in him like thunder.

The pavilion! He had to go back!

He lifted his imprisoned arms and swung them in a sweeping club-like blow. The policeman dropped before he could move his gun back into line. The detective swore in dismay, sent a hand darting under his coat--but Bryan was already whirling toward him. He kneed the man in the stomach, then felled him with a chopping blow to the back of the head.

Beyond hindrance now, Bryan ran. He ran recklessly, wildly, eagerness driving away his exhaustion, sending an explosive power into his legs.

Behind him voices shouted, a whistle shrilled. Then the sharp blast of a gun split the air.

He left the path and cut across a stretch of grass. A wall of shrubbery rose before him, and he plunged into it without checking speed. Branches lashed at him, tore at him. He fell, heaved himself erect, fought his way clear.

More grass, and then another path, running parallel to the one he had fled. He followed this, and presently the pavilion took form in the gloom. Above it a dark shape circled on huge wings. The giant bird--and it was alone. Bryan could see no other shapes accompanying it.

He was puzzling over the discovery, when a flashlight beam speared at him out of an intersecting path. Shouts followed it, filled with a swift excitement.

"There he is!"

"Stop, you!"

Bryan plunged on. Again a whistle shrilled. Then the running sounds of a group of men came in pursuit.

The pavilion rose before him. He reached the open space around it, halted, swung his bound hands in an urgent gesture at the sky.

"Here I am!" he called, not knowing if his call would be heard. "Here--quick!"

If it did not actually hear him, the giant bird saw him. Swiftly it descended. And as it dropped toward him, he saw it held an object in its beak--the crystal globe. His perplexity mounted. For added to all the other strangeness of this event, he now detected a desperation about the bird, a consuming anxiety.

He sent his thought to meet the pulse that was reaching toward him. "Where is Leeta? Has something happened?"

With a final sweep of its wings, the bird settled to the ground. Its answer came, then, holding an odd deep twittering quality.

"The fire! Leeta is sending herself into the fire! Only you can stop her. She has commanded the winged ones not to interfere--a command we cannot disobey."

"Leeta--planning to destroy herself? But why?"

"It is because of this thing called love that you awoke in her. She felt that without you there was no longer any reason to live." Anxiety sharpened in the twittering thought. "Will you help to save Leeta, man of this aspect? Will you come with me through the veil?"

"Yes," Bryan said. "Yes!" Eagerly he leaned close to the slowly pulsing globe that the bird held out to him in its beak ... felt himself drawn as though by immaterial hands that reached deep within him.

From an increasing distance sounds came to him, the pounding of feet, shouts, the roar of a gun. Something struck his shoulder, but only dimly was he aware of it. The last physical bonds were parting.

And then a pulsing darkness enclosed him.

* * * * *

Through the darkness came light, a flicker of motion and a flash of color, like the beating wings of a butterfly. The light grew, the darkness vanished. He floated in a gorgeous rainbow-hued brilliance that shimmered and swirled with the throb of a supernal laboring. Beyond the brilliance outlines were taking form. He had a sensation of swift movement--and found himself standing at the edge of the pool in that bizarrely beautiful other-world garden he remembered so well.

"Haste! Haste!"

"Leeta is going into the fire!"

All around him the thoughts rose, beating at him. He saw the giant bird, then, and the smaller winged shapes that hovered beyond.

"Haste! Haste!"

The dread anxiety communicated itself to him, kindled a swift purpose. Sensing what was required of him, he hurried toward the waiting bird, leaped to its back. It sprang skyward, its huge wings beating. The garden dropped away, became a mere patch of bright color against the mottled pattern of the valley floor.

"Haste! Haste!"

Swifter and swifter the huge wings beat. Bryan clutched at the feathers under him, rocked by the surges of giant muscles, buffeted by the torrent of air that rushed past.

The valley wall rose ahead, and through a deep cleft in the towering masses of rock he saw a deadly blue shimmer. The bird descended toward the cleft--and abruptly he felt its stunned dismay.

"Leeta has gone through the portal! She has reached the fire!"

Anguish flamed in Bryan. He had done this. If Leeta died, it would be as though he had killed her with his own hands.

"Hurry!" he pleaded. "It may not be too late."

The bird dropped to the rocky ground at the entrance to the cleft. Sliding from its back, Bryan ran through the opening, to the brink of that ghastly desolation he had seen once before. He glanced around in frantic search--and then, below him, he caught sight of a slender white figure moving through the shimmering blue radiance that blanketed the desolate landscape.

Too late! Leeta had entered the fire. For a moment the horrible realization held him rigid, dazed, numbed beyond thought. Then, a bleak purpose filling him, he hurried after her down a twisting rocky descent. He might not be able to save Leeta now--but he could die with her.

The blue radiance rose around him, and he felt its lethal touch. Leeta was some distance ahead of him, mistily unreal behind the shimmering curtain. And even as he found her, he saw her stumble, fall. She did not move again.

With an inner desolation even greater than that of the scene itself, he made his way over to the girl across the charred, tumbled floor. Gently he lifted her, carried her back to the cleft. His steps were leaden, faltering. A burning sensation was spreading through his body. Outlines were blurring before his eyes, darkening. He forced himself on.

It was not until he emerged through the cleft, not until he lowered Leeta to the ground, that he gave his ravaged body the oblivion it had been demanding.

Oblivion--and yet.... In some dim, remote fashion he had a picture of the great bird, hovering over Leeta and himself on beating wings, grasping them carefully in its claws, carrying them through the air over the valley, and then descending with them toward the pool.

Down ... down.... And then a swirling brilliance, a sense of delicious coolness, of returning strength. He found himself floating in the pool. And beside him, her liquid eyes even now widening with returning awareness, was Leeta. He felt the god-like power of the pool throbbing through him, and he knew that he and Leeta had been cleansed of the deadly radiation, that life and not death now lay before them. And the knowledge was a music within him that swelled into a mighty paean of exultation.

Then he stood with Leeta at the edge of the pool, and she was staring at him in wild disbelief. The silvery chiming of her thought held a vast wonder.

"Is it really you? Have you returned--through the veil? Or is this somehow only a dream?"

He shook his head gently, smiling. "Not a dream, Leeta. I've come back--and through the veil. Back to stay."

Joy was a sudden brimming brightness in her eyes. "Then the love of which you told me--it was not just a trick?"

"No--and I'm going to prove it, Leeta." He drew her to him ... and knew, in the answering pressure of her lips, that he had convinced her.

He felt a deep content. Here was the world of his own that he had sought, and life had a meaning, a purpose it had lacked. Together he and Leeta would create a new race, as two others long before them had done, who had come from a place called Eden....