htless. The pieces
of sacrifice ore were floating in the darkness just as she was. The
motors cut out and the lock door swung open.

Mryna saw a circular room, brightly lighted with a glaring, blue light.
The nature of her fear changed. This was the house of the Earth-god, but
she could not let him find her naked.

She tried to run into the circular room. She found that the slightest
exertion of her muscles sent her spinning through the air. She could not
get her feet on the floor. There was no down and no up in that room. She
collided painfully with the metal wall and she snatched at a light
bracket to keep herself from bouncing free in the empty air again.

The god-car had landed against what was either the ceiling or the floor
of the circular room. Mryna had no way of making a differentiation.
Eight brightly lighted corridors opened into the side walls. Mryna heard
footsteps moving toward her down one of the corridors; she pulled
herself blindly into another. As she went farther from the circular
room, a vague sense of gravity returned. At the end of the corridor she
was able to stand on her feet again, although she still had to walk very
carefully. Any sudden movement sent her soaring in a graceful leap that
banged her head against the ceiling.

Cautiously she opened a thick, metal door into another hall--and she
stood transfixed, looking through a mica wall at the emptiness of space
pinpointed with its billions of stars. This was the reality of the
charts she had seen in the astronomy text: that knowledge alone saved
her sanity. She had believed it when the proof lay hidden above the rain
mist; she must believe it now.

From where she stood, she was able to see the place where the god-car
had brought her--like a vast cartwheel spinning in the void. The god-car
was clamped against the hub, from which eight corridors radiated outward
like wheel spokes toward the rim. Far below the gigantic wheel Mryna saw
the sphere of Rythar, invisible behind its shroud of glowing mist.

She moved along the rim corridor, past the mica wall, until she came to
a door that stood open. The room beyond was a sleeping compartment and
it was empty. She searched it for clothing, and found nothing. She went
through four more dormitory rooms before she came upon anything she
could use--brief shorts, clearly made for a man, and a loose, white
tunic. It wasn't suitable; it wasn't the way she wanted to be dressed
when she faced him. But