g when she set her feet into the patterned stones of
the street-shrine.

"Scared, Miellyn?"

"I know Evarin. You don't. But"--her mouth twitched in a pitiful attempt
at the old mischief--"when I am with a great and valorous Earthman...."

"Cut it out," I growled, and she giggled. "You'll have to stand closer
to me. The transmitters are meant only for one person."

I stooped and put my arms round her. "Like this?"

"Like this," she whispered, pressing herself against me. A staggering
whirl of dizzy darkness swung round my head. The street vanished. After
an instant the floor steadied and we stepped into the terminal room in
the Mastershrine, under a skylight dim with the last red slant of
sunset. Distant hammering noises rang in my ears.

Miellyn whispered, "Evarin's not here, but he might jump through at any
second." I wasn't listening.

"Where is this place, Miellyn? Where on the planet?"

"No one knows but Evarin, I think. There are no doors. Anyone who goes
in or out, jumps through the transmitter." She pointed. "The scanning
device is in there, we'll have to go through the workroom."

She was patting her crushed robes into place, smoothing her hair with
fastidious fingers. "I don't suppose you have a comb? I've no time to go
to my own--"

I'd known she was a vain and pampered brat, but this passed all reason,
and I said so, exploding at her. She looked at me as if I wasn't quite
intelligent. "The Little Ones, my friend, notice things. You are quite
enough of a roughneck, but if I, Nebran's priestess, walk through their
workroom all blown about and looking like the tag end of an orgy in
Ardcarran...."

Abashed, I fished in a pocket and offered her a somewhat battered pocket
comb. She looked at it distastefully but used it to good purpose,
smoothing her hair swiftly, rearranging her loose-pinned robe so that
the worst of the tears and stains were covered, and giving me,
meanwhile, an artless and rather tempting view of some delicious
curvature. She replaced the starred tiara on her ringlets and finally
opened the door of the workroom and we walked through.

Not for years had I known that particular sensation--thousands of eyes,
boring holes in the center of my back somewhere. There _were_ eyes; the
round inhuman orbs of the dwarf _chaks_, the faceted stare of the prism
eyes of the Toys. The workroom wasn't a hundred feet long, but it felt
longer than a good many miles I've walked. Here and there the dwar