l the courage and stamina he
possessed. Gradually a strange and foggy understanding formed in his
brain. The terror seemed to die if he planned nothing, merely
responding without thought to the instinctive urge to escape. Let
instinct do the trick then.

Detached from the control panel of his cerebral cortex his body
mechanism functioned perfectly. It was like a space-ship smoothly
piloted by its automatic navigators. Dirrul gave himself over to his
own built-in stimulus-response relays and the screeching fear
shriveled and died.

Calm and unhurried he walked past the fire and the sleeping men. As
calmly he searched the mouth of the ravine for Sorgel's disk. When he
found it he stuffed it into the pocket of his tunic and strode
confidently along the trail that led down from the hills.

It was dawn. In the pink morning light he could see the Vininese city
at his feet, neat, clean, well-blocked streets and towering buildings
of black stone. On the outskirts were the circular space-fields and
the long low flat-roofed interplanetary freight depots. Farther away,
dotting the countryside at regular intervals, were curious
block-shaped windowless structures surrounded by double walls.

Dirrul had never seen anything like them before but, through a process
of judicial elimination, he decided they must be the Vininese Beam
Transmitters. The defense of Vinin was remarkably thorough, far
surpassing anything of a similar nature on Agron.

It came to him with something of a shock that he was thinking
rationally once more. His mind was completely clear. He felt ashamed
of the foolish, groundless terror that had unnerved him in the ravine.
He tried to understand what had happened to him but it was beyond
analysis. In retrospect he realized that the danger had been less than
what he faced on any normal day in the Air-Command emergency
maintenance service.

The only logical explanation was the food they had given him. It must
have been heavily drugged with a new poison known to the Vininese.
Dirrul was tempted to go back and rescue Glenna, if she were still
alive after the torture to which she had been subjected. But he knew
it was more important for him to contact Vininese Headquarters first.
He had a message to deliver. Glenna herself would have wanted that.

In two hours Dirrul was on the plain again. All the suffering of the
past few hours was gone. The plentiful purple grass had quenched his
thirst and surprisingly eased h