re
in turn leashed close by. Foscar, his best weapons to hand and a red
cloak lapped about him, lay waiting on a bier. Near-by squatted the
tribal wizard, shaking his thunder rattle and chanting in a voice which
approached a shriek. This wild activity might have been a scene lifted
directly from some tape stored at the project base. It was very
difficult for Ross to remember that this was reality, that he was to be
one of the main actors in the coming event, with no timely aid from
Operation Retrograde to snatch him to safety.

Sometime during that nightmare he slept, his weariness of body
overcoming him. He awoke, dazed, to find a hand clutching his mop of
hair, pulling his head up.

"You sleep--you do not fear, Foscar's dog-one?"

Groggily Ross blinked up. Fear? Sure, he was afraid. Fear, he realized
with a clear thrust of consciousness such as he had seldom experienced
before, had always stalked beside him, slept in his bed. But he had
never surrendered to it, and he would not now if he could help it.

"I do not fear!" He threw that creed into Ennar's face in one hot boast.
He _would_ not fear!

"We shall see if you speak so loudly when the fire bites you!" The other
spat, yet in that oath there was a reluctant recognition of Ross's
courage.

"When the fire bites...." That sang in Ross's head. There was something
else--if he could only remember! Up to that moment he had kept a poor
little shadow of hope. It is always impossible--he was conscious again
with that strange clarity of mind--for a man to face his own death
honestly. A man always continues to believe to the last moment of his
life that something will intervene to save him.

The men led the horse to the mound of fagots which was now crowned with
Foscar's bier. The stallion went quietly, until a tall tribesman struck
true with an ax, and the animal fell. The hounds were also killed and
laid at their dead master's feet.

But Ross was not to fare so easily. The wizard danced about him, a
hideous figure in a beast mask, a curled fringe of dried snakeskins
swaying from his belt. Shaking his rattle, he squawked like an angry
cat as they pulled Ross to the stacked wood.

Fire--there was something about fire--if he could only remember! Ross
stumbled and nearly fell across one leg of the dead horse they were
propping into place. Then he remembered that tongue of flame in the
meadow grass which had burned the horse but not the rider. His hands and
his head