o the woods of the lake.

"Tell me what happened again."

Vye's head came around. Hume had pulled himself up so that his
shoulders rested against the rock wall. His plasta-hand was out-flung,
slipping up and down what seemed empty air, but which was the barrier
against freedom. And now his eyes seemed entirely sane.

Slowly, hesitating between words, Vye went over the full account of
his visit to the lake, his retreat before the beasts, his fortunate
stumble through the gap.

"But you came back."

Vye flushed. He was not going to try to explain that. Instead he said:

"If it went away once, it can again."

Hume did not press the subject of his return. Rather he fastened upon
the end of that action with the wounded beast, made Vye go through it
verbally a third time.

"There is just this," he said when the other was done. "When you fell
you were not thinking of the barrier at all--and your wits were
working again. You had come out of the daze we both had."

Vye tried to remember, decided that the Hunter was correct. He had
been trying to elude the charge of the beast, only, fear and that
desperate desire had occupied his mind at that moment. But what did
that signify?

To test just what he did not know, he crawled now to Hume's side, put
up his own hand to the space where the plasta-flesh palm slid back and
forth on nothingness. But he almost fell on his face, forward into the
gap. Where he had been expecting the resistance of the unseen curtain
there had been nothing at all! He turned to Hume with the expression
of a man who had been stunned by an unexpected blow.

11

"It is open for you!" Hume broke the quiet first. His eyes were very
bleak in his bony face.

Vye stood up, took one step and was on the other side of the curtain
where Hume's hand still found substance. He came back with the same
lack of hindrance. Yes, to him there was no longer a barrier. But
why--why him when Hume was still a prisoner?

The Hunter raised his head so his eyes could meet Vye's with the
authority of an order. "Go, get away while you can!"

Instead Vye dropped down beside the other. "Why?" he asked baldly. And
then the most obvious of all answers came.

He glanced at Hume. The Hunter's head lolled back against the rock
which supported him, his eyes were closed now, and he had the look of
a man who had been driven to the edge of endurance and was now willing
to relinquish his grip and let go.

Deliberately Vy