, smiling a little with a curve of scarlet lips
that revealed white, sharp-looking teeth. Dworn groped for his voice;
but she spoke first.

"Patience, beetle," she said. "I'll attend to you in a moment."

The words had the accent of a strange speech, but they were
intelligible. Dworn stared uncomprehendingly at her, mumbled,
"Who--_what_ are you?"

She moved nearer and stood smiling down at him. "Why, beetle, don't you
know?... I'm the spider who caught you."

"_Spi-der?_" Dworn fumbled with the unfamiliar word. "I don't--"

Her eyes too were black, very black and intense. She said slowly, "You
don't know about spiders, beetle? Strange. It must be that till now
there were none of our kind on this side of the Rim."

* * * * *

Dworn's aching head was not serving him well, but a part of his
intelligence functioned to grapple with the implication of her words.
"The Rim"--that must mean the Barrier, as seen from its eastern side.
Then she, and others like her, must have come from beyond the Barrier. A
walking machine could descend by the broken path of the landslide.

But "spider"--the word rang some bell deep in his mind, some
recollection of childhood's fairytale bogeys perhaps, but he still
hadn't succeeded in grasping the memory.

He growled, "I don't know--but if you'd untie my hands, I'd show you
what a beetle is."

She eyed him thoughtfully. Then she smiled, showing the sharp little
white teeth again. "Presently I'll free you. When it's quite safe. As
soon as--" Her hand dipped to a small black case secured to her belt,
and came up with a diminutive gleaming object--a slender needle
thrusting from a liquid-filled plastic cylinder fitted with a plunger.
"Do you know what _this_ is, beetle?"

Dworn glowered silently.

"When I've injected this fluid into your veins, you will have no will of
your own left. You'll do what I say, and only what I say--for the rest
of your life, beetle!"

Dworn's eyes clung in unwilling fascination to the glittering needle. He
said through stiff lips, "Now I remember. Your kind is a legend among my
people. The evil women who have no men ... who kill their male children
at birth, and trap their mates from among the other races, and kill
them, too, when they no longer want them.... _Spider!_"

His gaze collided squarely with hers, and she needed no skill to read
the loathing in it, rendered more violent by her beauty that he could
not help but s