the row of tombs, endless.

"Never found you. Never found you. Never found....." And with a
sudden fearful burst like the realization of death, he remembered.
Remembered where he was, and understood. Dear God, he understood.

She slipped back out of his grasp as darkness poured into the room.
Like reverse action she was back upon the wall, the iron hoops
replacing themselves. The mask was up and she was crying. Her blood
flowed gently down the spikes.

"NO!"

But the room began to spin, to break into fragments, and she was gone.
He floated again in the cold wet nothing, the world without order or
hope. He shrank into a weeping ball and clutched his head with his
hands, lost as he had never been lost.

But then to his bewilderment, he began to feel a weight of substance
around him, a materializing structure: his ship was coming back. A
floor, walls, then the hull returned, and he knelt in the familiar
control room, looking up at the monitor. The inky black was patching,
broke, and he could see the outline of a vast web. This time he did
not fight as the ship drew closer, and closer still. A great silver
shaft was above him. . .and he emerged once more into the present,
living, and unchangeable world.

*

At a distance of two hundred miles he turned his ship around, back to
face the Guardians. There the vessel stood still in Space, as a single
globe approached him from out of the glowing network. It came very
close, filling all the screen, but was silent. Thinking it a
messenger, he addressed it with words.

"All right," he said, broken at the last. "All right, you helped me
find her. The one miracle of my life. I am grateful." The white
sphere did not react. "But if you have that power, then you could have
saved her life..... No. I left her." The realization staggered him.
"I..... But now I have learned. I respect you. Bring her back.
Please. . .bring her back." He began to sob without tears.

"PLEASE."

At that moment the sphere glowed with a blinding light. It might have
been an unreadable message. It might have been a warning, or a gesture
of peace. But whatever it was or was not, it remained beyond human
understanding. It could not change the past or help him now.

As the globe receded he turned the ship again, bewildered, and flew
toward unfamiliar stars.

The End

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Christopher Leadem was born in Arlington, Vi