so even the Change Winds can't get
through--cut the Place loose from the cosmos altogether.

I'd never talked with anyone from a Place that had been Introverted.

* * * * *

Mark dumped Phryne off his lap and ran after Maud. The Greek Ghostgirl,
quite solid now, looked around with sleepy fear and fumbled her
apple-green chiton together at the throat. She wrenched my attention
away from everyone else for a moment, and I couldn't help wondering
whether the person or Zombie back in the cosmos, from whose lifeline the
Ghost has been taken, doesn't at least have strange dreams or thoughts
when something like this happens.

Sid stopped Beau, though he almost got bowled over doing it, and he held
the gambler away from the Maintainer in a bear hug and bellowed over his
shoulders, "Masters, are you mad? Have you lost your wits? Maud! Mark!
Marcus! Magdalene! On your lives, unhand that casket!"

Maud had swept the clothes and bows and quivers and stuff off it and was
dragging it out from the bar toward the Door sector, so as to dump it
through fast when we got one, I guess, while Mark acted as if he were
trying to help her and wrestle it away from her at the same time.

They kept on as if they hadn't heard a word Sid said, with Mark yelling,
"Let go, _meretrix_! This holds Rome's answer to Parthia on the Nile."

Kaby watched them as if she wanted to help Mark but scorned to scuffle
with a mere--well, Mark had said it in Latin, I guess--call girl.

Then, on the top of the bronze chest, I saw those seven lousy skulls
starting at the lock as plain as if they'd been under a magnifying
glass, though ordinarily they'd have been a vague circle to my eyes at
the distance, and I lost my mind and started to run in the opposite
direction, but Illy whipped three tentacles around me, gentle-like, and
squeaked, "Easy now, Greta girl, don't you be doing it, too. Hold still
or Papa spank. My, my, but you two-leggers can whirl about when you have
a mind to."

My stampede had carried his featherweight body a couple of yards, but it
stopped me and I got my mind back, partly.

"Unhand it, I say!" Sid repeated without accomplishing anything, and he
released Beau, though he kept a hand near the gambler's shoulder.

Then my fat friend from Lynn Regis looked real distraught at the Void
and blustered at no one in particular, "'Sdeath, think you I'd mutiny
against my masters, desert the Spiders, go to ground like