tfully.

"No door--ah--here--" Lur unsheathed formidable fighting claws to their
full length for perhaps the first time in his temple-sheltered life, and
endeavored to work them into a small crevice. The muscles of his
forelegs and quarters stood out in sharp relief under his scales, his
fangs were bare as his lips snapped back with effort.

Something gave, a thin black line appeared to mark the edges of a door.
Then time, or Lur's strength, broke the ancient locking mechanism. The
door gave so suddenly that they were both sent hurtling backward and
Lur's breath burst from him in a huge bubble.

The sealed compartment was hardly more than a cupboard but it was full.
Spread-eagled against the wall was a four-limbed creature whose form was
so smothered in a bulky suit that Varta could only guess that it was
akin in shape to her own. Hoops of metal locked it firmly to the wall,
but the head had fallen forward so that the face plate in the helmet was
hidden.

Slowly the girl breasted the water which filled the cabin and reached
her hands toward the bowed helmet of the prisoner. Gingerly, her blunted
talons scraping across metal, she pulled it up to her eye-level.

The eyes of that which stood within the suit were closed, as if in
sleep, but there was a warm, healthy tint to the bronze skin, so
different in shade to her own pallid coloring. For the rest, the
prisoner had the two eyes, the centered nose, the properly shaped mouth
which were common to the men of Erb. Hair grew on his head, black and
thick and there was a faint shadow of beard on his jaw line.

"This is a man--" her thought reached Lur.

"Why not? Did you expect a serpent? It is a pity he is dead--"

Varta felt a rich warm tide rising in her throat to answer that teasing
half question. There were times when Lur's thought reading was annoying,
He had risen to his hind legs so that he too could look into the shell
which held their find.

"Yes, a pity," he repeated. "But--"

A vision of the turbi flowers swept through her mind. Had Lur suggested
it, or had that wild thought been hers alone? Only this ship was so
old--so very old!

Lur's red tongue flicked. "It can do no harm to try--" he suggested
slyly and set his claws into the hoop holding the captive's right wrist,
testing its strength.

"But the metal on the shore, it crumpled into powder at my touch--" she
protested. "What if we carry him out only to have--to have--" Her mind
shuddered away fr