tors had taken
him from his saddle and propped him against a mound of rocks, along
with the other prisoners. His muscles were numb and dead, so limp it
was almost impossible for him to turn his head. Faintly the whirring
terror whispered in his mind.

Dirrul's eyes focused slowly on the clearing. One of the prisoners had
been carried there, close to the fire. It was Glenna. Two of her
captors held her while the third bent over her head, probing her ear
with a sharp instrument. His arm moved. Glenna screamed and fainted.
For a moment Dirrul saw the side of her face smeared with a spreading
stain of blood. Then nausea swept over him. When he opened his eyes
again the three men were working over another prisoner at the fire.

Vaguely Dirrul knew he had to escape. He forgot the Movement--he
thought of nothing any loftier than his own personal survival. The
idea was elemental, built upon the simplest sort of observation and
hypothesis.

Yet it came slowly and painfully, as if he had just tried to
understand after one reading the Cranmor-Frasher Theory of Diminishing
Corelatives. As he verbalized the conclusion two things happened--the
drug-like languor in his muscles began to disperse and the shrilling
note of terror burst up loud in his mind once more.

Two of the men brought their last victim back from the fire and laid
his body on the stones close to Dirrul. Dirrul feigned sleep when they
stood over him. One of them prodded him with the tip of a dusty
boot--then they both laughed.

They went back to the fire and talked soundlessly to their companions,
holding up the identification disk which had been ripped from Dirrul's
neck hours before. That amused them briefly, until one of the three
snatched the disk and hurled it toward the mouth of the ravine in
violent anger.

The three men pulled thick white skins together near the fire and
crept into them. Dirrul waited until he was sure they slept. It was
the only chance he would have to escape, but when he tried to creep
away his hands collapsed from sheer terror. The crying fear in his
mind was so loud his head seemed to vibrate physically with the
sound.

Thought was impossible. Judgment and decision were impossible. If he
tried to consider even a problem as simple as the safest means of
passing the dying fire--reason failed him. He could weigh nothing
critically--he could not consider probable courses of rational action.

Nonetheless he inched forward. It took al