against whom he had sworn
vengeance, the flying fiends who had decimated and terrorized the
peoples native to this land....

"All right," he ordered. "Stop here!"

The walking machine crunched to a halt, standing almost over the beetle.
Dworn looked at the spider girl, then, in irresolution.

In the pitiless daylight she was still piquantly beautiful, though her
pale face was still smudged with the remnants of her ceremonial make-up
and her eyes were veiled, withdrawn. Yes, she was even desirable....
Dworn put that thought determinedly out of his head. After all, she was
an alien and an enemy; she had sought to make a doomed slave of him.

But now that her usefulness to him was over, he didn't know just what to
do about her. The sensible thing would be, of course, simply to kill
her. Somehow he felt that he couldn't do that. It was one thing to kill
in the impersonal fury of machine combat, a different matter when the
victim was helpless within your reach.... And he remembered that she
_had_ helped him escape.

He could command her to return to her people, to the tender mercies of
the Spider Mother--who would know by now of Qanya's part in Dworn's
disappearance. Damn it, that would probably be worse than killing her in
cold blood! He was wasting time. Angry at himself for his unbeetlelike
softness, Dworn postponed deciding what to do with her till he should
have inspected his machine and made sure it was in shape to travel.

"Come along," he told the girl gruffly. "Outside."

Once more she obeyed unprotesting. The two clambered out of the belly of
the standing spider--Qanya staring before her with sleepwalking fixity,
Dworn nervously scanning sky and horizon for hostile machines. The
sunlit waste was terrifyingly immense bright, and empty. With a physical
ache of yearning he longed for the cramped security of his own
machine's cabin.

He brushed past the girl and ran toward the upside-down beetle--he could
easily right it with a spare emergency cartridge, and then he would be
on his way in a normal world again--

He stopped short with one hand on the beetle's dull-black steel flank.
The world seemed to rock around him.

* * * * *

The girl watched him without expression as his face went slack with
horror, as he completed his arrested movement and dived into the cabin
to confirm the dreadful discovery that first touch had disclosed to him.

When Dworn climbed out he was white