ver the planet. He can work the controls
with his mind. Psychokinetics--I can do it a little, but I never
dared--oh, hang on _tight_!"

Then began one of the most amazing duels ever fought. Miellyn would make
some tiny movement, and we would be falling, blind and dizzy, through
blackness. Halfway through the giddiness, a new direction would wrench
us and we would be thrust elsewhere, and look out into a new street.

One instant I smelled hot coffee from the spaceport cafe near the
Kharsa. An instant later it was blinding noon, with crimson fronds
waving above us and a dazzle of water. We flicked in and out of the
salty air of Shainsa, glimpsed flowers on a Daillon street, moonlight,
noon, red twilight flickered and went, shot through with the terrible
giddiness of hyperspace.

Then suddenly I caught a second glimpse of the bridge and the pylon; a
moment's oversight had landed us for an instant in Charin. The blackness
started to reel down, but my reflexes are fast and I made one swift,
scrabbling step forward. We lurched, sprawled, locked together, on the
stones of the Bridge of Summer Snows. Battered, and bruised, and
bloody, we were still alive, and where we wanted to be.

I lifted Miellyn to her feet. Her eyes were dazed with pain. The ground
swayed and rocked under our feet as we fled along the bridge. At the far
end, I looked up at the pylon. Judging from its angle, we couldn't be
more than a hundred feet from the window through which I'd seen that
landmark in the scanner. In this street there was a wineshop, a silk
market, and a small private house. I walked up and banged on the door.

Silence. I knocked again and had time to wonder if we'd find ourselves
explaining things to some uninvolved stranger. Then I heard a child's
high voice, and a deep familiar voice hushing it. The door opened, just
a crack, to reveal part of a scarred face.

It drew into a hideous grin, then relaxed.

"I thought it might be you, Cargill. You've taken at least three days
longer than I figured, getting here. Come on in," said Rakhal Sensar.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

He hadn't changed much in six years. His face _was_ worse than mine; he
hadn't had the plastic surgeons of Terran Intelligence doing their best
for him. His mouth, I thought fleetingly, must hurt like hell when he
drew it up into the kind of grin he was grinning now. His eyebrows,
thick and fierce with gray in them, went up as he saw Miellyn; but he
backed away to