at a safe distance and kept looking steadily at the
stingwing. It rustled its leathery wings uneasily and hissed. A drop of
poison formed at the tip of each great poison claw on its wings. The
control room was filled with a deadly silence.

Slowly he raised his hand. Carefully putting it out, over the animal.
The hand dropped a little, rubbed the stingwing's head once, then fell
back to his side. The animal did nothing except stir slightly under the
touch.

There was a concerted sigh, as those who had been unknowingly holding
their breath breathed again.

"How did you do it?" Meta asked in a hushed voice.

"Hm-m-m, what?" Brucco said, apparently snapping out of a daze. "Oh,
touching the thing. Simple, really. I just pretended it was one of the
training aids I use, a realistic and harmless duplicate. I kept my mind
on that single thought and it worked." He looked down at his hand, then
back to the stingwing. His voice quieter now, as if he spoke from a
distance. "It's not a training aid you know. It's real. Deadly. The
off-worlder is right. He's right about everything he said."

With Brucco's success as an example, Kerk came close to the animal. He
walked stiffly, as if on the way to his execution, and runnels of sweat
poured down his rigid face. But he believed and kept his thoughts
directed away from the stingwing and he could touch it unharmed.

Meta tried but couldn't fight down the horror it raised when she came
close. "I am trying," she said, "and I do believe you now--but I just
can't do it."

Skop screamed when they all looked at him, shouted it was all a trick,
and had to be clubbed unconscious when he attacked the bowmen.

Understanding had come to Pyrrus.

XXVIII.

"What do we do now?" Meta asked. Her voice was troubled, questioning.
She voiced the thoughts of all the Pyrrans in the room, and the
thousands who watched in their screens.

"What will we do?" They turned to Jason, waiting for an answer. For the
moment their differences were forgotten. The people from the city were
staring expectantly at him, as were the crossbowmen with half-lowered
weapons. This stranger had confused and changed the old world they had
known, and presented them with a newer and stranger one, with alien
problems.

"Hold on," he said, raising his hand. "I'm no doctor of social ills. I'm
not going to try and cure this planet full of muscle-bound
sharpshooters. I've just squeezed through up to now, and by the la