Damon always conversed with his subjects while photographing them--as he wanted to know the personal details of their lives, and something of their soul struggles, that would help him get the best picture, help him seek the unique quality of that person that made the person individual. So he asked the wandering, one-legged rabbit-hunter who was stumping through on the car where Damon was taking pictures, asked him about his rabbit-hunting, which the man was very happy to tell him about. Damon knew he would react this way, as few Nullaboreans would want to tell the secrets of their past, or their former lives before they fled to the wilderness to escape all manner of things.

Giving Damon a conspiratorial wink, he drew him aside to a place between the two cars, where the wind was roaring and the wheels clattering as if they might be coming off, but where there was no chance they would be overheard.

"Oh, it's a bloody life, mate! My peg leg hurts something bloody awful at times, as if I still have a leg there! I can hardly sleep at times, but I can't help having it along, I have to walk on somepin! But the skins are good here--the best on the market in Port Ulu! They pay me well there! I make my trip in every couple months, with all I collect (dried to toast by this bloody sun and wind out here), and get my pay, and head for the bloody Rabbit and Wolf Club in town, and when I wake up a couple days later wherever they happen to throw me--I always search for my secret stash in my wooden leg, and, sure enough, they hadn't thought to look there! I made too many mistakes losing my money to the bouncers at the bloody club--so I learned, and made my secret hideaway, and save what I need to return to the bloody Nullabora and start over!"

"But what are you going to do, when you're too old for roaming around alone?" Damon burst out. "Who's going to take care of you in your old age? What then, mate? Have you got any money saved for that eventuality?"

Ismail grinned, drew a glass flash out of his shirt, and offered Damon a swig. Damon smiled, shaking his head, and the rabbit-hunter uncapped the flask and took a draught, wiped his lips afterwards with his dirty back hand, and put the flask back.

"Oh, that! Hey, luv, I donna worrie 'bout things to come--I just live now, this bloody crook day, not tomorra, mate! I only got todayya!" He laughed, throwing his head back at his own witicism. Damon had to laugh too. The man's merry laugh was infectious. Since that was about as good a explanation as he had heard from others like him, Damon wished him good fortune with the rabbits and their skins and went back to the car, to finish his picture taking. He knew that the rabbit-hunter was just making a brave face for him, as both of them knew his fate: someday, maybe not long from this day they rode the Tea and Sugar together, his bones bleaching out on the endless plains somewhere amidst the salt pans and salt lakes and rocks and lizards, his death unnoticed and his grave unmarked.

The Second Class compartments were jammed, of course, presenting the starkest contrast with the quality folks in the First Class cars. But here was life! Life in all its rawness, desperate need, and primitive, tooth and claw struggle, with survival of the fittest, that is, the most brutal and violent elements--just the thing he wanted for his spread on the Nullabora and its inhabitants, animal, vegetable, and human.

Gazing at the compartments, Damon had to wonder how so many bodies could be crammed into such small spaces, without complaint! But the reason for the uncomplaining masses was clear. All they had to do was glance out the window. If anyone created a nuisance or threatened anyone or robbed someone, out he was thrust by the train's guards, who did not bother with niceties such as court and judge to decide the case. Out he went--which was certain death, in a few wretched hours. Everyone knew that--as signs in the train declared the warning against "Social Evil," with an itemized list of infractions that would be tolerated. Women too, even travelling without menfolks, were protected, as to touch any women in a way to make her protest was to earn swift capital punishment, or, if not the sword at the neck, the same thing: thrown off the train at 50 mph.

Damon took a group picture, wondering how he would engage any of the men and women (he saw few children), as they were all withdrawn into themselves, avoiding conversation with each other while they endured the long, long, monotonous rail trip to the single-gauge transfer depot which served as the entry gate to the Mountains of the Moon (the notorious border country of Ratna and Heruka where people could escape the government authorities indefinitely, if they could find some means of sustenance in the free and lawless mountain towns and villages).

Damon, experienced as he was, and no fool, was always on his guard, however. There was safety on the train--sort of. Robberies and murders still took place, despite the guards and the capital punishment they administered any malefactors in transit. Seldom patrolling the dangerous corridors, their justice was sporadic and quick but little enough administered to strike any real fear into the troublemakers onboard.

Human bones bleaching white along the tracks testified to that fact--and they weren't malefactors thrown out, usually, they were victims of crimes committed on board the speeding train by the thugs who travelled the line purposely as a way to make a living by preying upon the lowest classes of the Herukan-Ratnan Duarchy--as the poor could afford no bodyguards, and the police did not much care what happened to anyone below First Class status. Knowing life was very, very cheap on the Tea and Sugar, Damon took special care as he neared the walkways between the cars, where such crimes were most likely to occur. A quick knife thrust, their valuables seized, and the victim was then pushed from the train, and nobody was the wiser.

Knowing all about this, but reasoning that they, as train personel, were at lowest risk of being made targets, kitchen scullery workers still took their vegetables and fruits and other menu items out to the area between the cars, when they wanted some space to work they couldn't find in the boiling hot kitchen. This was not particularly foolhardy. Normally, during the day there was little danger of being assaulted. But one worker, paring sweet potatoes and yams while he daydreamed about his sweet little bride to be waiting for him at Port Yosef, let down his guard a bit too much, perhaps.

The unfortunate fellow, Daniyel Modesto ibn-Quail, got his throat slit with a razor, and he and his potatoes were thrown overboard, after his engagement ring was taken and his pockets rifled for the petty cash he was carrying.

Ero, however, was better situated to see the skullduggery going on than most everyone else aboard the Tea and Sugar.

The moment the train passed after the body was dumped, he maneuvered his Kater's Compass enough to allow him to land, and he ran to the body and looked for signs of life. Obviously, the fellow was a goner, so he heaped up sand and rocks with his hands, making a makeshift burial for the remains. Then, remounting his spiked transport, he flew off toward the distant train.

Aboard the train, life proceeded as usual even with the absence of one worker in the kitchen. The first class diner head cook was angry, though, to find his special potatoes for dinner had gone vanishing into thin air!

Though he did not hear about the scullery worker's disappearance, already Damon had noticed a considerable thinning out of passengers in some compartments, where he spotted the roughest looking blokes. Why didn't the other passengers report the killers? Of course, there was only one reason: they would be targeted next by the cutthroats aboard. It was best, smartest, to keep silent, and hope to go unnoticed until they reached the transshipment center, Port Yosef.

Passing from one car to another, an elderly padre made his rounds, mainly among Second Class, and he included the fetler's car as well, as he preached to everyone who would hear him the Gospel of Y'shua.

Up from the deep south, some said he was from the Argentine empire, Padre Noaik was a strange sight in his black robe, tattered dust-coat, and clerical collar and big wooden cross at his neck. Year after year he visited the Tea and Sugar, giving out the Gospel invitation, calling all to believe and to be saved from damnation and hell. It was a brave invitation, to be sure, since he was an infidel in these parts, lands which were under the moon and sword of Isma, and had been for many centuries.

But the padre did not seem to mind the stares or the hostility of some toward infidels and foreigners, or even the threats of an occasional iman passing through, for he was an amiable man, grinning ear to ear as he greeted people and tried to get them into conversation on spiritual needs they might have.

Damon met him when the padre came to visit the fetlers, just as he was going to pay them a visit too to get some pictures.

Damon had to ask him how the Gospel was doing lately. "Had any converts, Padre?" he inquired.

"No, not this trip yet, but there are a few onboard I am working on--they'll come bye and bye--if not this trip, then the next. I feel it is just going to happen, I see it in their eyes, mate! They can't hide it from me. They're seeking the truth!"

Damon chuckled. "My, you missionaries don't give up easily, do you! What keeps you going like this, year after year! You might be retired, at your age, sir, and take life's comforts, if you have a wife and home, that is."

The missionary shook his head. "No, our order is completely celibate, we don't marry while we wear the Cloth, and it is a good thing too. You can't do what I do and have a sweet, little wife pining away at home for you, and this keeps me from thinking that way too and wanting to get this business over with as soon as possible so I can scoot back to the lovin' arms of the good wife! No, this is the best way for me! I've lived all my life this way--and the end is soon coming--I can see the Celestial City shining just up the track! Until then, just me and Y'shua and the Word! My job is to meet as many people asd I can, even if only once. That way they can't say to the Lord, 'I didn't have a chance.' I tell the lads that when I go to heaven I'm going to tell Y'shua, 'I have a whole string of lads from along the line, and they want to come in too.' They listen to that. I think rough men can be softer inside than a woman. They know everything is crook, and it shouldn't be that way. I tell them, 'You keep on the rails, and you'll get there.' to me, the line is holy ground."

Damon nodded. "I can see you do find your calling fulfilling. It is written all over you--you're happy. Few men can claim that--happiness and fulfilment!"

Damon's eyes grew more sober and he looked away toward the Nullabora. "I am not certain even I could claim that, and I have everything I want and money can buy!"

Padre Noaik did not miss a beat, the moment Damon admitted he was not as assured of his happiness as his manner would have people believe. He stepped closer to the photographer, helping him as he gathered up his gear. "We should talk, soon as you get your pictures. How about it? I can be of help, if you care to take the time."

Damon shrugged. "I wouldn't want to waste your valuable time, Padre! I have no problems--none that I can't handle. It's just that I feel a kind of empty feeling, no matter what I do, or how many pretty women I take to bed, or how many drinks I put away--that empty feeling nags me each time, and I can't seem to make it go away. Have you got any medicine for that?"

Padre Noaik smiled. "Well, now, I got just the thing for you--no medicine, but it's the real cure for the heart and soul: the Word, Y'shua himself! He only can fill that place in you that is aching and crying out inside you like that. You see, son, there is a God-shaped hole in every human being's heart that only Y'shua can fill. It takes a long time for some to find it out. I am here to tell you how to fill it. So as soon as we can talk, I will give you all the Word you need to know, so you and Y'shua can get together! Okay? You'll never regret it if you do! I can promise you that, lad!"

Damon, stiffening his resolve, once he had all his equipment in hand and was ready to make his invasion of the fetler's quarters, smiled. "Well, maybe! I didn't commit myself, so we'll see how this session goes. If it goes well, then I can spare you five minutes or so. Is that a deal?"

The padre slapped Damon's shoulder. "Fair enough! I'll pray for you, that you have a good session. And a good session, is that you come out of this alive, with your pictures and camera intact!"

Damon laughed. "Thanks, I'll need your prayer then! I hear from everybody this is a pretty rough and nasty bunch! People tell me that when they're not working, all they do is fight, drink, and fight again! Nothing but animals and low life--but ought to give me some interesting pictures, if I can get them to cooperate, that is!"

That said, Damon was about to knock, when the padre caught his hand. "You think you're dealing with gentlemen? You bloody knock like that, and they'll give you a bloody fist in the face when the door opens. That's just for laughs, for openers. No, if you value your life, son, just push right in like your're somebody big and important on the Tea and Sugar line, and then just set up and start taking pictures, and boss them around too some so they respect you. They'll not bother you much then, and think they might get some nice free cold drinks out of you, if they let you do your thing. I know these boys, been working with them for years. I would introduce you to them first, but they won't care a fig about your credentials, son--for if I do that, then you're just a nabob in fine clothes and got a good job and money they don't have, and they'd just laugh in your face, then throw you and your camera out after smashing you up a bit for fun just to teach you not to meddle lightly with fetlers. No, the only way for you is to bluff 'em, push right in like a big boss, and don't let them think twice about you."

Realizing the padre knew the fetlers better than anyone, Damon's jaw tightened, then did as he was advised. The moment he was inside the fetler's car, Damon was distinctly aware he had landed in a no-man's land, in a kind of zoo or even a wild animal's den, where the laws of civilized society, even as relaxed as they were in Second Class, did not apply at all here.

He was on his own! Anything could happen to him! He could fight, yes, but with so many, would he get out alive?

The dim, smoke-clogged air stung his eyes, and then he saw that the room was packed by bodies of young, unwashed, utterly debauched "lads," most of them playing pool or drinking or lying in vomit on the floor, as his nose already told him--too many for that small a space, too, crammed in with too many beer cans and bottles and butt cans and half-eaten meals thrown in a corner, the smell of spilled, stale bread malt beer blending with the reek of an over-flowing toilet and rank human sweat.

Coming in unannounced like that, the padre was right, they paid him no more attention than lounging wild beasts would of the flies buzzing around the garbage and butt cans. As for the butt cans, Damon nearly fainted as he drew his first breaths, as they were putting out a terrific stench in the over-heated room with the tightly closed windows, not so much of cigarette ash, as urine--and just then he did see a fetler grab one, rather than bother to go to the latrine in the car, and pay nature his respects.

Damon was weak in the knees when he at last stood outside the fetler's car, leaning against the next as he thanked his fates for being so kind to him, as to cross paths with a praying missionary! Where was Padre Noaik! He looked around, going into the next car, but the missionary was no where in sight. How disappointing! Damon wanted to tell him how he had gotten some fine pictures of the fetlers, and they would be worth a bundle when he got the negatives back to his studios and then sold them to the Government Tourist Office.

Going to his own room in First Class, he was showering and trying to clean himself of the reek of fetler's den when he felt the train slowing.

"What depot next was it?" he idly wondered. He didn't have his map out--so he wasn't at all sure. How about a repeat of the last stop, a flyspeck of a depot called "Forest"? Whoever named it that was drunk. It wasn't but a few thorny bushes, termite mounds, and salt, aluminate pans glaring in the sun for miles into the distance! Why risk it? Would he bother going out now that he was feeling in urgent need of some relaxation in the diner and the adjacent "refreshment car," as the train's unregistered saloon was called? Why bother getting all his gear together, pulling on his clothes, and going out again--he had done some real slumming to get some good pictures of the fetlers, and could take a nice little breather, couldn't he?

Yet a free lance cannot afford to pass up opportunities, particularly on such a long and monotonous stretch as the Ulu to Port Yosef line! He knew that, so he groaned and quickly rinsed the scented soap off, used plenty of fine, freshly laundered cotton towels, and jumped into his clothes, grabbed his equipment, and got off with the disembarking passengers.

He just caught sight of a tattered dustcoat and white clerical collar as they vanished round a corner of the first of few low-slung bungalows, tin-roofed houses of railway workers that constituted the metropolis of Pimba, population fifteen.

Hurrying to catch up, he wasn't fast enough, he found, for the missionary was no where in sight when he was standing on the depot town's main street. He could take in the entire street with a glance, for the entire road stretched not quite a quarter mile to where a sandy, tire and can-strewn playground was started but not finished, the desolation not quite relieved by a brightly painted red and green striped water tower that supplied the flyspeck town's people and kept alive a few struggling palm trees, vegetable gardens and whatever livestock and chickens were sheltered from the blasting heat and wind of the Nullabora by high walled yards.

Two of the houses caught his attention, however. One was an unregistered watering hole, an illicit tavern, which the authorities winked at for a certain sum, of course. He knew this was the business at hand when the door flew open, and the proprietor in a dirty apron and a upper body showing the hairy pelt of a black bear roared, hustling a no longer solvent and paying patron to the street.

With his hand gripped on the fetler's britches, the tavern keeper gave him a violent heave that send him flying, then bouncing and rolling across the hard ground.

Damon went over to the fetler lying prone and unmoving, and thought he might try to help him. "Hey, you, are you all right, mate?" he asked, touching the fetler's arm. The fetler didn't move, so he asked agin. All of a sudden the fetler came back to life, but Damon's concern wasn't reciprocated with gratitude. All he got was a curse, and some spit, as he bent over the fellow. Leaving him alone to lie in his wretched state, Damon continued on, wiping his face with his clean handkerchief. Why kick a man when he is down? He couldn't do that--he has his own pride to think of!

"Imagine that? Spit on by such low, dirty scum as that fetler!" he thought, as he continued down the only street in town. "What he didn't do for a good picture!"

As Damon left, the fetler, minding his own low reserve of pride, hauled himself up and sat. He then rose to his feet, almost fell over on his head, but caught himself somehow. Brushing some sand off his face, he started hobbling back toward the tavern, then paused. His fists were clenched for action, and he has his knife stuck handily in his ankle sheath, but he decided he might wait on vengeance a bit--until he could walk better, that is.

Instead, he continued on by the tavern and on down the street, his feet stepping where the photographer before him had stepped, more or less. He knew the way by heart, and could find it with his eyes shut. She had always been there waiting, with her delights to be paid for, one by one. Most times she took his whole check, cashed it herself by going to the paymaster, when she took his and a stack of other fetler checks in.

He knew she put out for all the others, just as she did him, but he tried to forget that. But would she remember all the good pay he had showered on her the last two years? Didn't she owe him something for that? Wouldn't she give him a little love on credit? He had had plenty booze. He just needed a little love right now--just a little lovin'.

So Eryk made his way to his trackside lover's domicile. He turned in at the gate, knocked the code that alerted the dragoman a patron of long standing only knew, and the dragoman opened up at once.

The dragoman's glance was not so friendly, however, and Eryk, even in his bedraggled, sodden state, could see that much.

"She home? Well, then, get outa the way! I'm goin' in!" he said, and went forward, or sort of fell forward, then got his balance again somehow, and continued to the door.

Going in, he found his old lover where she was usually to be found. It took a few minutes, but he wasn't getting anywhere fast, when she pushed him away and got up and went to the window, as if to call the dragoman to come and throw him out. "Wad'z the matter, babe?" he said.

"What's the matter?" she echoed him. "What's the matter? You're the matter! You're too drunk to even walk straight! And where's your money? Tell me, did you bring any money, then where is your check? Show it to me first! You get nothing from me without cash or a check!"

The fetler tried to get off the bed, but wasn't making much headway. "Aw, don't you start that, woman! You know me! I pay good money! You know that! Why treat me like a dude? I'm a--"

She turned around, spitting out the words. "You're getting out of here, right now! I can smell it! You're flat out busted, aren't you? What I heard was true then--you're on the Tea and Sugar blacklist! The company will never hire you--you're a dead man! They were tired of paying you for the trouble you caused them all the time. You piece of garbage, you lying little animal--now you come here, after pissing in your pants, and you want something for nothing! You think to use me like a little fool, do you?"

There were other, more choice things she added to her list. But she was interrupted. There was a knock on the door, unlike any heard before in the house. It rang right through from the entrance to the back room. It startled them both. The lady of the house went to the door, opened slowly, and her eyes met with someone she hadn't seen before.

He seemed to be a mighty fine prospect, by the looks of him, and she was interested immediately. There still might be something for her that day that would please her, for all the trouble she had just endured with the "reeking piece of garbage" that was the down and out fetler!

A few minutes before, as the fetler turned in at his lover's door, Damon was about to reach the last residence and turn around, to return to the train, when he took a second look--the particular house he was examining was high walled like the rest.

But Damon's eyes were particularly sharp, and what made this one different, it had a gate guard, of sorts, who was at that moment examining Damon head to foot, through the big door's judas window.

"Well"? Damon asked, a little annoyed by the beady-looking, ratlike eyes. "Do you find me interesting, mate?" he said. "Or don't you have anything better to do than stare at strangers in town?"

The rat eye in the judas did not waver. But a very dirty thumb appeared round the edge of the gate, which was ajar, and with a jerk indicated the direction of the house in a way that told Damon this was the kind of house that offered a certain pleasure to the weary traveler. It was, Damon knew from experience, the sort that any man with sufficient money could buy.

The moment he passed through the gate, it slammed shut with a horrible creaking sound and clatter of chains and locks. The gate man, really a dragoman in striped green and red pantaloon costume and high, badly stained red turban with dirty egret feather, not to mention the long curving sword at his belt, led Damon toward the entrance of the house.

"She's puttin' out royally today, Effendi. Tea and Sugar's here for one hour doing retail and paying out fat checks to the workers--plenty time for what you're be payin' for." As long as you keep payin', she'll give out, and you can stay as long as you like, Effendi!"

Then the dragoman slouched away toward a snarling dog, sore-covered, almost hairless wolfhound which was chained to a tree. "And if you don't leave when your money runs out, Effendi, well, me and this doggie here will see you do right by her! And I got the key to the gate, remember. I'll let the beast gnaw your bones right to the marrow! He's always mighty hungry, that one! Hasn't gnawned a fine gen'lmun like you for quite some time!"

Damon's blood boiled by this time, but he decided it wasn't worth risking damage to his equipment to pound some respect into the insolent dragoman. Besides, he was curious as to the madam of the establishment. Was she young and pretty? Or old and diseased, with half her teeth knocked out and missing? He had to find out. That was the stock in his trade anyway: his innate curiosity, applied with randomness, and the unexpected--sometimes the remarkable--happened, which often gave him him his best shots.

Going forward, he reached the door, and just then it slid partly open, and Damon paused, watching as the woman of the house came into view.

Without a word, after she looked him over from head to foot, she turned and left the door ajar, and that was enough sign, enough invitation, and he followed her in.

She had a plan of her own, and led him right to the back bedroom where an unwelcome guest was waiting impatiently for them, and ready to pick a fight.

The fetler, though he saw immediately that he was facing a much bigger antagonist than he had bargained on, stood his ground, leaning casually against the high bedstand (you might say for support).

But even this fetler knew when his game was up, when he considered what the trackside whore now had in her arsenal (not to mention the dragoman and his dog). He soon quit trying to stare Damon down, and shrugged and made his way to the door, as slowly as he could to save his pride. His former lover wasn't going to let him strut out with his male ego intact, and followed.

Damon waited as he heard them exchange parting obscenities at the door, then it slammed, and the whole house shook, and dust came out of the wall.

He laughed, and settled himself down on the sofa.

Storming to the gate, the fetler grabbed an iron pipe and beat off the lock and half-demolished it, then broke out as the dragoman shouted and tried to get the dog off its chain in time to do him some damage.

But the fetler was quicker, as his rage brought back all his strength.

He was fit to go and do the same to the train what he had just done to the woman's gate. If he had met anyone, just anyone, at that moment, he would have murdered him or her.

Fortunately, the townlet was bare of inhabitants, in the street, and slowly he cooled, as he turned toward the train, and thought better of confronting the guards and all their knives and firepower with his lone knife.

Hopelessness settled back down on him like Kismet--unshakable, unbeatable, ineluctable. A black cloud with vampire like wings, sucking the life out of his very soul!

It was unspeakable wretchedness--that was its essence, and he had drunk the worst effects of it away, as long as he could, but now it had come back with a vengeance to suck out the last shreds of his soul.

He sank down on the sand and gravel, beheath a broomwood tree, and thought of falling next on his knife. Why not? He had nothing to live for.

He drew out his knife from his ankle sheath, and gazed at it. A couple more moments, and he would have done it, but life is never a tidy thing. The padre, making his rounds in the little wannabe railway town without much of any positive response to his preaching, had finished and was about to turn back to the train, when the despairing fetler heard his shuffling footfalls.

The padre was startled when a voice whispered hoarsely to him from the shade of the broomwood tree.

"Padre! I got something to tell you I think you will want to hear!"

"Oh, do you now?" He went over toward the man, a fetler he saw, lying against the grizzled, half-dead broomwood.

"What is it, son?"

The fetler grinned up at the padre. "Some friends are asking for you to stop by right away. They live in that place over there, with the gate and guard, and want you to go right in and tell them all about Y'shua--you know, the one you are always preaching to us fetlers about. Will you do it, padre? They are such thirsty, needy souls! Such sinners! They want to repent of their sins! Go right now, won't you, padre?"

The padre looked doubtfully in the direction the fetler indicated with his knife. Then back to the fetler. "You don't be fooling me, son? I know the type of lady that runs house. Her reputation makes her well-known all along the line from Port Ulu to Port Yosef. She doesn't want my kind around, and she made it very plain a time back, by sending that dog of hers to drive me off. But if you give me your word, I'll go. Do you give me your word as a man?"

The fetler lunged to his feet, and stuck out his hand. "Sure, padre, sure, I give you my solemn word! On my honor, I'm telling you the truth! Now go, father--they're waiting for you, just as I said! Don't disappoint them, go, for they want to know how to be saved, they don't want to be damned and go to hell like me and all my fellow fetlers!"

The padre shook the fetler's hand, grinned, then turned and made a beeline to the establishment that had never once permitted him to give a word there.

He did not have any trouble getting in, as the gate was no longer a barrier. Once inside the compound, the dog with its fangs bared was about to come at him, but the dragoman, seeing the man's holy robes, grabbed the chain in time and held him back.

"God bless you, good man!" the padre said, tipping his hat, and proceeded to the door.

As he knocked, there seemed to be no response. Then the door opened a crack, and that was all the padre needed, "Feliz Navidad!" he declared, with all the love and cheer in him.

For this was Christmas Eve, the night before the Navivity of Y'shua.

The fetler, meanwhile was enjoying his little joke at the padre's expense. What a joke it was, indeed! Imagine, he thought, how they would like it, being interrupted in bed by a preaching padre!

As he sat there, savoring the thought, he grew aware gradually that the night had fallen, as the stars were coming out in the purplish dusk, and a chill wind was beginning to stir the sands, and other signs too--swallows came flying to catch the insects that rose at that evening time.

A star of particular brilliance was shining, its rays reaching all the way down to the huge, wind-blasted, twisted and half dead broomwood tree.

Not aware of the source of the star rays, nor caring even to look up, the fetler was totally unaware that it was Ero, who was glowing with a sort of St. Elmo's Fire, whether by Wally's doing or by chance or even Y'shua's, as this could be the same Nativity Star, by its brilliant appearance, that once shone upon his nativity in Bethlehem long before this time (not not ever entirely forgotten by his followers). The fetler rose, felt stiff in his legs, and wondered what was keeping the padre so long. But just as he was going to head back to the train, he saw someone coming--his long dust coat flapping and giving the padre away.

The sight had an unusual effect on the fetler. He had thought to laugh when the padre came and called him to task for fooling him, and being false to his word like that--but now he was not in the mood for laugh. Instead, He felt very much sorry for how he had pulled the wool over the padre's eyes, and wanted to slink away. But the padre had seen him, and was heading straight for him, so it was too late.

Before the padre could say anything, the fetler hung his head, and said, "I shouldn't have told you a story, padre! It was a low thing to do to you--and you probably caught hell for going in there like that and preaching to them,k when you weren't invited."

Padre Noaik clapped the fetler on the back, and grinned. "No, not at all--they were really pleased, when I told them all about the meaning of Yeshua's birth--in fact, it made quite an impression on them. That is why I took so long. They had a lot of questions. I think I will be seeing her again, but the fella is travelling on, he said, and might not be back for some time. He didn't convert, but he said he would be thinking about what I said. I left after prayers for them, and hurried so I wouldn't miss you and could tell you how well it went. Thanks for carrying their invitation to me! It really made a fine day of it for me!"

The fetler could not believe his ears. "You mean they didn't tell you?"

The padre's grin did not waver. "Tell me what, son?"

The fetler stared at the padre, and he was about to say something, but decided, no, why not let sleeping dogs lie? The padre didn't need to know he had played a joke on him.

Yet he couldn't let the padre go somehow. "Padre, I been meaning to talk to you, to ask you a question. Can you spare a little time. I know the train is going now, in a couple minutes, as the whistle blew twice, and that means they will soon be boarding.

"Walk along with me!" the padre said. "We can talk as we go. Now what is it?"

Somehow his prepared speech seemed so inadequate. He had thought to make an apology, but when we tried to start, it occurred to him that the padre wasn't the one to whom it really needed to go. It was someone far off, very far off.

So he asked a different question, closer to the issue at heart.

"Padre, is it every to late to make up with my papa? I said some wicked things, and stole some money too from my papa, and took off to have my fun with it in the big cities over here, and then took a job on the railroad when the money ran out. Here I am-- all my money gone, no friends who still stand by me anymore, and no job either! I--"

The padre stopped, and touched the fetler's arm. "It's not too late. I am a father myself, of sorts, with many sons like you to look after, both here and in my own country. I know how your papa must be feeling, with you gone, and not knowing if you are dead or alive. He'll be waiting for you, maybe looking out on the road every day, hoping to see you come home. Why not go and make it up with your papa and mama? From what you just told me, you got nothing here to hang on to--why not return home where they love you and want you, son? Do it now. Don't put it off!"

The fetler could not say any more about it--he was so overcome with his feelings, and they could not be expressed. The padre knew when not to press a hurting soul, and with a short prayer, he departed, leaving the fetler to gather his thoughts as to what he should do.

The train whistle tooted a third time, a final long blast, and then began moving slowly off. Seeing this, the fetler suddenly made up his mind. Everything came clear in a flash. Yep, he could do it! He could play the man and go home and ask his papa to forgive him for badmouthing him and stealing his papa's money he had saved up for buying special breeder bulls to build up the herd. He would ask to be taken as a hired man if his papa would have him. That way he wouldn't be starving, and he could work for his living, as he knew the work on a ranch as well as anyone.

But to do that he needed a ride on the Tea and Sugar! Home was a thousand and more miles off--and the train would take more than half the distance. So he ran with all his might, and caught the train just as it was gathering speed and might have been out of reach, if he hadn't sprinted the last fifty yards like he did.

Pulling himself up and onto the side of a car, he clung to it as he got his breath back, then when he saw no one was coming after him, he climbed up and lay down on top, exhausted. He knew he had to be careful to stay out of sight, as the guards would either shoot him, or throw him off head first if they caught him. Fortunately, he knew their movements, and how to elude them.

Port Yosef's walls came in sight finally of the train, but they first had to pass by the garbage dump, where the ruins of Roman antiquity, because they were judged immoral after the conquest by Isma of the entire area, were thrown out. Theodora, a Roman empress famed for her making fortunes with her own perfumery in the palace, fared no better than the emperors' statues. Scavenger cats lounged in her presence, where once only jeweled and perfumed courtiers of the imperial palace, with their ladies, had been allowed.

Once inside the walls of Port Yosef, the double gauge line ended at its terminus, the ornate, Multan kaliphate-era cast iron railway station.

Here another single gauge line and a train, first taking on additional guards to safeguard the mail and the gold shipment from Port Yosef (where several mines operated) to Multan, awaited all passengers and their baggage continuing on into the Mountains of the Moon. Since Ero's Kater's Compass was programmed to follow the train onward, Ero had no choice in his intinerary, except for slight alterations, which could last but a short time before the original flight plan was reinstated.

The Tea and Sugar train's passengers disembarked, and many got on the single gauge passenger and freight train, which was called the Multan Orient Express, but which was hardly an express, for the train's journey was long, torturous in its climb up and over the mountain passes, and involved uncountable stops at villages and towns tucked away in the mountains.

As the train climbed upwards from the plains, Ero had time to drop down to certain vantage places to await it, as it made slow progress on the steeper grades and the numberless switchbacks. He was overwhelmed by the sheer beauty of the Mountains of the Moon, for this was his first exposure to them. White sentinels scratching the sky, the white limestone that composed them had been thrust up from the seabed in a gigantic, violent upheaval when the continent of Atlantis was volcanically reborn.

The Port Ulu to Multan Orient Express climbed laboriously the many thousands of feet to the pass as Ero followed. Beyond the pass, if an avalanche did not carry them away or destroy the track ahead, lay bandit-infested crags, that would have to be passed before they reached civilized, inhabited regions, with villages and towns that clung to the sides of the mountains like the nests of swallows.

The guards get busy, however, trying to run down several stowaways. One is the laid off fetler, Eryk Woodbee from a Brazos ranch in the Pulblicatexa, who has climbed aboard, and spends time either in the unattended baggage car or on top the train, wherever he can elude detection best. As for the fetlers in their private car, he knows they want nothing to do with him--so he doesn't even try to sponge on them, as they would just throw him out if he tried.

Pilfering some food one day from a service tray set for pickup by a diner car attendant in the window of the kitchen, he is spotted and the pursuit is on.

Train guards are called at once, and go to work in their expert way.

It is just a matter of time before they corner Eryk or run him down inside the train or outside. He will be forced to jump sooner or later or be captured, or worse can happen to him--as there will be no mercy, since train hopping without paying fare was regarded as social evil, a big enough crime in that harsh society to warrant summary execution.

Facing a jump off the train and over a cliff, or capture and slow torture and execution in some execrement-oozing pesthole of a country prison, Eryk, sorry only that his papa will never know what happened to him, takes the third option left to him. He keeps standing as the train heads toward the tunnel, which is fitted with very effective "man-guards," which have the same function as cattle guards except that these are fatal iron spikes embedded in the tunnel entrance and ceiling.

The guards, unfortunately, have forgotten this particular approaching, man-killing tunnel. In the excitement of the chase, with the fox so close to their snapping jaws, the hounds find it is too late to drop down for cover between the cars. Forced to fall flat on the roofs of the cars, they have to take their chances with the stabbing man-guards.

The prodigal does not survive, but neither do the foolhardy guards, as not one of them makes it alive through the tunnel.

Helplessly watching all this going on atop the Multan Orient Express, Ero worked at his guidance system with the popup on his compass, but couldn't get it to respond fast enough for him to intercept the guards and rescue the fetler.

Ero, at last getting the Kater's Compass guidance system to obey his instructions on the popup, descends and then pulls the dangling fetler off the spike. That was the least he could do for him, he thought. But what now? Where could he take the body? Where could he give him a decent burial?

He flew up higher with Eryk aboard, and landed temporarily on a cliff edge, while he sought Help on the popup. Prompted for a name, he searched the pockets of the fetler, and found a leather wallet, empty except for some lottery stubs, a couple coupons for government emergency food rations issued at Port Ulu, a few phone numbers, but no address or name. The last thing he almost threw away was only a half torn and rumpled pink slip. Reading it, he found the name and address he needed: Eryk Woodbee, Lazy W Ranchero, Brazos, Publicatexa. It was a Tea and Sugar company notice, firing the fetler, with no option of rehire.

The map provided by Help was all the guidance system needed, and the flying mast pole was soon aloft, bearing Ero and his burden toward the northwest.

Dusk, then nightfall descended, and finally Heruka's coast was reached. But the mast continued on its flight unerringly across the Straits of Floyda, and then toward the even wider gulf that separated the two Turtle Islands. East and West Turtle Islands were now all that was left of North America after it split in two at the north to south Mississipi fault line.

Turning west, no longer travelling north, the mast took them over the water to the Rio Brazos and followed it up to the towering domes of the huge Ceylon Nuclear Station. Beyond the fenced reserve a few miles, nestled among the low, dry, acacia and prickly pear-covered hills and grassed slopes, lay the Lazy W Ranchero. Here Ero set down in the dawning light of a new day, and he carried Eryk's body to an acacia and lay him gently down.

He tried to give the fetler a last bit of dignity, his hands folded properly, and his hair straightened, and his shirt made more neat, the best he could do for him, and just as he did that he heard baying hounds and cattledogs. "You're home, Eryk!" he murmured. "You're home at last! They'll take care of you now. But I'm afraid your papa's heart will be broken. But at least he will know what happened to you."

He turned and saw that some ranch hands, mounted on horses, and a pack of dogs were coming on fast to investigate. That was all he needed--Brazos ranchhands who wouldn't like anything about him, a total stranger, flying in on a wingless plane shaped like a flag pole! But there was no way he could explain himself and his flying machine to them, so he jumped back on the mast, and got away before they could intercept him. A few bullets actually winged his mast, but that was all they could do before he was out of reach, well on his way back to see how the Multan Orient Express was doing.

While Ero was away, the train continues on, with half its security force eliminated, and is now rendered more than vulnerable to the bandits. There was supposed to be double the force granted for the express train from Port Yosef to Simla, but the major general of the city's army garrison, at the behest of the local emir (who had a weakness for luxury and bribes) had overruled the station master and reduced the allotment at the last moment, citing a more dire need of guards on other sections of track.

The feared confrontation comes quite soon after the train clears the tunnel, minus three luckless guards.

The engineers sees a large object on the tracks ahead, and it is a boulder, far too big for the train to push out of the way without derailing the engine itself.

He is forced to halt the train on the tracks, a most dangerous proposition on a stretch where fifty bandits can hide within a few feet of the track and still be completely invisible until they rush out in a surprise ambush.

Stalled, with only half its guards, the train fell easy prey. Twenty some bandits rushed out, with twenty more following them a few minutes later, and began shooting whomever showed the least resistance, while robbing everyone of their valuables, car by car, as they made their sweep along both sides of the train to keep anyone from escaping.

They filled bag after bag with loot, and even though these male low caste passengers were mostly all poor farmers, laborers, and like, the women, many of whom carried the rights of inheritance to property. These womenfolk wore the family's wealth, passed down from one generation to the next, all turned to heavy gold bracelets and necklaces.

Whenever a guard was captured or shot, he was dragged out and dispatched with a curved, hammered steel sword, decapitating him as a warning to guards on the next train following to not put up so much resistance, lest they suffer the same fate.

The heads were thrown alongside the track, while the bodies were pushed over the cliff.

Damon heard enough from the confused passengers to realize that attacking bandits were responsible for the stalled train, as well as the big commotion of screaming and yelling and gunshots at the rear.

He stepped out to take a look, and did not like what he saw. The bandits would soon reach the First Class cars and do the same to them as they had done to the Second Class compartments. It was going to be a bloody massacre, by the sounds of it.

He had to think fast as to his options. At first he thought he might organize the men to resist, then reconsidered. The bandits were organized and trained for this attack, whereas the men on board were civilians and would not fight as an organized unit. They wouldn't follow orders well, and the bandits would not be held back long, if at all.

As for the fetlers, who were all fighters, they didn't fight together either, and were drunk, so they'd be no good either. In fact, those who did come out to look to see what was going on, were so bleary eyed, they just stumbled back into their car to do some more drinking, or pass out again. One even staggered out, stark naked, and wasn't even aware of it, before another fetler pulled him back into the car.

It was hopeless to resist, Damon saw, so he must flee at once. He announced this to the others in First Class, but they wouldn't think of it. The fools were calling for the conductor and the guards to come to deal with the problem, and were assured that would be sufficient protection against a mere band of ruffians.

Damon tried a final time to make them see the grim reality. "But we just lost three guards a bit ago in the tunnel, and now the bandits are killing all the others they can find. We have no real defense left to us. The bandits will be here in a few minutes, when they finish butchering Second Class and raping all the women they think are pretty enough. If you value your lives, you must get out now and climb up into the rocks and hide wherever you can, or they will capture you, and take everything. That is just for starters! Then they either hold you for ransom, or they may just shoot the lot of you for fun, but they will make you all beg for your lives first."

"Remember, he repeated, eying the ladies, "they are raping the women, both young and old."

If Damon thought that reason or even common sense would get some of them to run for it with him, he was mistaken (and even a man of the world, like Damon, could misjudge his fellow humanity's capacity for folly and irrationality). Not a man or woman wanted to risk such a thing. Run into the hills without a shred of dignity like a wild animal? Leave the train? Forsake the only bit of civilization in this barbaric quarter of the mountains? Unthinkable! They thought it best to try to bribe the bandits, and--thinking that their money would satisfy the ruffians enough to persuade them to let them alone--were assured they could deal with the nuisances.

"You might all be sorry you didn't take my advice," Damon said. "But don't say I didn't warn you when they start slitting your throats or shooting you!"

Then, grabbing his camera equipment, film, and leather jacket, he jumped from the compartment and quickly climbed up into the crags. When he was sure he was high enough to elude easy capture, he stopped to catch his breath and to take a look down to see what was going on with the hostages on the train.

There was a deafening sound of an explosion mid-train, and fire and smoke that billowed far up from the blast, and then the yells of the bandits as they ran and ransacked the ruined car.

"That must be the one with the gold shipment," Damon thought.

The bandits, after loading up with as much as they could carry, including the best food and drink on board from the diner, tossed the sacks of the gold they couldn't take along into the ravine next to the train, intending to return for it. Then they struggled off with their treasures, vanishing among the big rocks.

After a wait, seeing no more bandits, Damon climbed down from his perch, and went to see if he could help the people. He badly wanted to find Padre Noaik, but he was no where to be seen, and so he thought the padre must have turned back at Port Yosef. Hadn't he said something about distributing Christmas gifts at Port Ulu to the widows and families of drowned sailors? Well, then, there was no help coming from such a fine man, he thought--no words of comfort from a true man of God--which he couldn't not deny the padre was. As for the imans on board, he knew they were worthless for such a task--being in the business of exacting obedience to religion, not relief of unspeakable human distress.

Just as he expected, Damon found the passengers all in an uproar and in total chaos. The train engineer was shot in the leg, and useless, and the conductor dead, which left the fireman, but he was hiding somewhere. What to do? He knew Simla lay ahead, but it was miles off according to his map. Somehow they had to uncouple the wrecked, blown up car, and all pile into the other half of the cars connected to the engine, and then get it to pull them the rest of the way to civilization and help. There were too many hurt people, many in bad shape. He had to get them in to a hospital to save them. Besides, the food and water on the train would soon run out, and they would starve, since the track had been sabotaged further down, no doubt, to keep any authorities coming with soldiers from Port Yosef to reach them and retrieve the gold shipment.

Seeing he had to try anyway to restore order before he attempted anything more, Damon began shouting orders, and gradually the men began to hear him above the uproar and start to do what he told them.

Taking many hours more than normal, the badly hurting train limped into Simla, the fabled mountain city, set amidst a cluser of dormant volcanoes, which a famed poet, Ibn-Ziz Al-Abdullah, described as the place where all dreams end--but the swan song, his last poem before he was beheaded, cut into pieces and fed to the sultan's songbirds to make them sing sweeter, was more hopeful:

"Simla my beloved city where the End is a New Beginning...

for though dreams die like the swan after many a summer's glide on time's river,

come, look! see the lilies bloom again amidst the tumbled stones of bygone giants!"

Well, the dream of a peaceful trip had definitely ended for all on board, and many feared to board the next train out, if they still had the means to pay the fare. Those who were wealthy could wire for money to be sent, of course. The others had to find relatives or friends, if they could, in the city. There were a few almshouses run by the brethren of the Cross of Yeshua, which the government permitted to operate for the sake of the poor and needy and ill, as the government of H-R did not normally provide such social services, nor could it afford them as well as the support of a bloated government bureaucracy and the sultans and kaliphate in Multan. The caliphate was now suspended by the Leftist governments that gained power over the sultans, but still the expense of the bureaucracy and all its departments and agencies, not to mention the military and the arms race with Publicatexa and the CSA which had gone nuclear, sapped the resources of the dual kingdoms and short-changed the poor where relief was concerned.

Despite the underlaying discontent and poverty of an over-taxed citizenry, Simla clung to its old vestiges of charm and opulence. Once, for centuries, it had been the winter playground of the sultans and their huge entourages filled with hundreds of courtiers, and hundreds of concubines in harems. Scented, jeweled, the city was a shining place in its heydey, and some of that glitter still shone even in the eye of the bedraggled train passengers who climbed down from the train with Damon--some very thankful for all his genius of organizing the train and getting them back to civilization, but most not even looking at him in parting.

Damon, who thought himself Number 1 anyway, didn't mind ingratitude! He did not owe them anything-- and if they didn't acknowledge their debt to him for all he did after the bandits left--well, that was just plain old human nature, as he viewed it. One thing he knew, nothing can change human nature, the one constant in the universe. He knew a pig could be washed, given a pedicure, dressed in nice clothes, scented with the best perfumes, its teeth cleaned, hair groomed, decorated with bows on its tail, etc., and even set at a table with spotless linen and crystal, but the pig was still a swine, and would behave again like one if given the chance. All the costly, nice stuff you did for that guttersnipe was utterly wasted! He wasn't going to change, no matter how much caring and compassion you lavished to pretty up a filthy hog. The moment you let it, it would go and jump right back into the stinking muck and mire of the pigsty--and would be loving it better than anything you had tried to do to improve its life and circumstances!

As Damon made his way through Customs and security posts and then proceeded into the the winter capital of the bygone kaliphs, taking shot after shot of the still impressive marvels, Damon encountered the gazes of the local women, who turned and stared at him, as though they had not seen the like before in those streets. Or maybe they had, and he was familiar somehow? In any case, though his male pride was stroked, it made him a bit uncomfortable, as he seemed to be attracting too much attention. Surely, the authorities, who, like the whole breed in these provincial towns, didn't much like strangers anyway, might pick up on that and want to question him.

Trying to blend in more with the crowd by not taking anymore pictures, he continued on, only to meet some goons in long dark overcoats blocking his way into the main merchantile quarter called the Grand Suk.

They were too many for him, and were all armed to the teeth. Damon saw the wisdom of not fighting so many. They hustle him into a car and take him, hands bound, to a mountain hideaway where he is interrogated in his skivvies by anonymous captors. They seem to think he is Agent X, since he has the exact looks of him!

His inquisitors are disgusted, as they learn nothing, as he keeps insisting he is Damon from Poseidonia, which they evidently don't believe, as they work him for hours on that point, before throwing him into a monk like cell, with a small bared window (no glass in it), and only a metal frame bed with a blanket on it to keep him from freezing.

He realizes what kind of room it is: a cold storage for the old sultan's ski lodge! That is why it had no windows, and was so thickly insulated and had an iron door to it.

He has to find a way out soon, he realizes, as it dawns on him they have left him to freeze to death. They gave him a blanket, obviously, just to prolong his agony, not to keep him alive indefinitely. Notwithstanding, the thing he misses most is his camera and film. Without them, he feels like the whole experience is worthless, and his trip on the Tea and Sugar and all those unforgettable shots...well, he tries not to think about it. A realist, he knows he will only make himself feel worse than he already feels.

All he has is a bucket for a toilet and an old army issue steel bedstead and one blanket. What can he use to get out? In his apprentice days he had done some photography work once in a prison and learned some techniques the prisoners used to attempt escapes. There was a chance he could use their ideas now to make an escape artist out of himself! What did he have to lose?

He set to work. The bed was not so easy to tear apart, however, but he went at his work with a fury that made up partly for his utter lack of wrenches. He grabbed one end and smashed the other against the concrete wall until it began to come apart. He kept at it, and finally the bolts were loosened enough, and he could work one of the bars free from the frame. When he had his bar, he felt he had a chance to survive after all. With it he attacked the vent, for it wasn't really a window. He busted out the frame, after savaging it for some time, and then finally there was an opening he might possibly wedge his body through. But he was 6 ft. 4 inches, and not exactly slender either at the shoulders. What was he to do? He had to try, this was his only way out, unless he cold bust his way through the iron door, which was bolted on the outside.

Pushing out some of the blanket first, he climbed up and began trying one part and another of his anatomy, seeking the best way to begin his exit procedure. It could not be described, the way he wriggled and squeezed and pushed and collapsed back in exhaustion, to try again. He felt like he was scraping off all his skin and trying to make a jelly fish out of a vertebrate, though the blanket saved part of his body from a lot of abrasion as he was squeezing out.

Finally, he hit on a possible way to get one shoulder out, then his head, then slowly, inch by inch, most of the rest of his shoulder, which he kept lying as flat as he could make it lie, and moved his stomach and torso out as well, sideways, a sort of snake like maneuver that eventually got a major portion of himself out, inch by inch, until finally the main part was free, and it was now just a drop to the ground, which was snow-covered, and able to take a twenty foot drop without breaking any bones, though he did not like the snow and ice one bit as he slammed into it.

Escaping from his near freezing confinement in the boarded up ski chalet that once belonged to Prince Yazmir Wallid bin-Alfonzo, a sultan's playboy son, was going to give him a severe test of his survival skills. Getting out of the building was just the appetizer for the main course of the tortures on the menu. Damon's camera and gear, and all his clothes have been taken to keep him from trying to escape (which was thought sufficient to keep him helpless and vulnerable), and so he has only his bed blanket to shield him from the polar temperatures of the wind and snows of the high elevation. He is exhausted and unable to find his way down without using the road his captors are patrolling. Maybe they are not patrolling it, but he cannot take that chance. They'll shoot him on sight, he knows. Sitting down he is trying to conserve his last reserve of body heat and strength, but he is about to give up all hope of getting out of there alive when some musk oxen pass him.

The musk oxen, with their single track minds set on finding pasture, pay him no attention at all. He might be just a rock or clump of ice and snow to them, for they had better things than lone, blue-skinned, shivering humans on their mind obviously, as they continued without pause on their way. Suddenly, Damon recalled something from a stint he had done for a Natural Science magazine, in a piece about musk oxen. They migrated! When crossing from pasture to pasture, they climbed up into the higher elevations, as they knew all the passes, and they did not stay where there was no grass and starve, but continued on until they reached another fresh pasture on the alpine slopes further down. This was his chance! They would lead him down far enough so that he could make it the rest of the way to civilization! He wouldn't freeze to death after all! The musk oxen would lead him, if he could keep up with them!

Damon followed the musk oxen, and, sure enough, they led him to the unfrozen pastures further down where he could survive. It was a long walk, but he made it out of the mountains and into Jaisalimur, a city on the highway leading to Multan.

Panhandling alongside some beggars he found working a busy corner of banks and shops (his size preventing them from running him off), he got himself a meal or two to keep going, and kept looking until he found a Sisters of Mercy almshouse. Imagine, reduced to the level of dirty beggars! It was a terrible blow to his pride, as he had never dreamed of that happening to him. As smart, good looking, and resourceful and strong as he was, he had always been the head, and everyone else the tail! But what other way did he have to get himself some decent clothes? It was no crime to go around naked, with only a dirty blanket to cover himself, for there were plenty beggars that did that--but unless he could prove he was registered for begging, they would arrest and throw him in jail, since vagrancy was a felony, punishable by beatings and months of brutal slavery in a workhouse prison.

But even with all his precautions to keep a low profile, he was being watched, and as soon as he finished cleaning himself up and putting on the old but clean wool suit along with shoes provided by the charitable Sisters, he no more stepped into the street on the alley behind the almshouse then a car started up and moved toward him.

Four men in black jumped out before he could run, and within seconds he was face down on the dirty pavement, cold steel pressing against his neck as his hands were tied behind his back. Hustled into the back seat, two men slammed in beside him, and the sedan roared off. A few blocks further, after some twists and turns and other evasive maneuvers that would keep Damon from ever knowing the location, the car pulled into a warehouse somewhere in the fishmongers' district (by the odor of it), and he was dragged out, taken to a warehouse office reeking with a H-R delicacy, pickled fish guts. Then holding him they started to work on him, pouring hard liquor into him (H-R rotgut, he could tell by the nauseating aftertaste of petrol and crankcase oil). He couldn't drink a drop of it, so they gave it to him like a patient being forcefed in an asylum for violent cases of lunacy, pushing the neck of the bottle far enough down to get the stuff past his gagging throat.

He was drowning, gagging and retching up as much as he swallowed, it seemed, but they eventually stopped to see if he needed a quart or two more. His eyes rolled in their sockets and he nearly passed out right there, and the leader nodded, and he was grabbed and crammed into a small car with a driver alongside, the engine going, and then he was driven out, but once on the street, the driver yanked him over into the driver's seat, clamped his hands on the steering wheel, and the gas pedal was rammed down with a steel weight that kept it floored.

Its engine roaring, the car rocketed off with Damon hanging to the wheel. Speeding down the avenue, he was fortunate it was not one of the busier streets, as it careened up along the curb, knocking over sign poles and scraping the buildings in between before flinging back toward the street, then hitting two more lightpoles in succession before the engine and crankcase split, and the radiator exploded in a geyser of steam and water, mixed with oil from the engine.

The sedan with the dark tinted windows following him turned away and vanished into a sidestreet as a police wagon gave chase to Damon, catching him only as the engine blew with the radiator.

Hauling Damon out, a cop tried to make him give his name, but he couldn't get the syllables out coherently, and he had no idea what had happened, or who had done this to him. The police took him to the station, and he was put in a drunk tank to dry out while they decided what to do with him.

Since he had no identification on him, they had a real problem, and had to give him strong coffee and wait until he was sober before they could learn enough to pass sentence.

When early the next day Damon was recovering enough to give the police an account of his actions, they still could make no sense of it. They came to the conclusion he was a spy, since his telltale Poseidonian accent betrayed him as a foreigner. But, forgetting his pride after his humiliating ordeal the night before, he pleaded with them, that he was being taken for a spy, but he was only a photographer on assignment in H-R who happened to look like someone who might be a spy. Was that his fault if some stranger happened to approximate his looks?

Where are your credentials, your passport, your camera equipment? he was challenged.

He had nothing to prove, therefore, he decided to tell them everything, the whole truth.

Just the same, Damon used all his powers of persuasion, and he was indeed telling the truth, fact by fact, and he thought surely the more experienced among his questioners could tell a story-telling liar who couldn't get his facts straight and consistent from one who was trying earnestly to cooperate. He left in all the things he didn't really know for sure, without trying to clear up any mysteries or fill any gaps--which he knew would give him even more credibility, than if he embroidered his story to make it more believable and the rough edges all polished off.

He was right. His crazy tale that was the whole truth struck just the right chord of believability, since he didn't try to clean it up, or make it believable.

The Jaisalimur police commissioner was such a man to spot the truth when he heard it, an astute judge of human character good or bad, and one look at Damon convinced him this was not a run of the mill criminal, for he knew the hardened, diehard criminal elements of his precinct well enough. There was no such air of sullen defiance to this young man. He had to be an "innocent," not at all a professional law-breaker. But what about his "innocence," was that an extremely sophisticated, professional cover for some other role for which he was in the country? Was he a foreign spy on a mission of espionarge against the H-R? Yet how could a spy make such incredible blunders as this man has just committed? Spies did not usually land in their assigned countries so poorly trained as this one! Perhaps there was some truth to the wild tale he was telling about being taken for a spy by the real spy ring in the area? He knew there was such a ring, specializing in extortion, money laundering, prostitution, and even some political lobbying and bribery to finance their espionage, and had been seeking to track it for years now--but there were just too many highly connected informants, traitors to H-R, giving them tips to keep them out of his reach! But now...perhaps, if turned loose, the spies would get close enough to him, with his own men following, for him to catch the real culprits? It was worth a try, he decided.

He instructed the police station chief to let the man go with a warning. This was welcome news to the chief. Whatever the man really was about, he was proving a big nuisance, to say the least. He wanted nothing to do with a foreigner, who had driven drunk down a street, destroying some property, but killing no one. Could they recover the money for the damages? Obviously, they could not. This man had not a dinar on him! What about a stint in the workhouse? But that didn't earn them anything--it just kept the prison system going, and the police got nothing for their trouble handling him. So they decided to wash their hands of him, with the warning that a second incident would land him in prison, in the chain gangs of the workhouse, indefinitely!

And the police put men out to follow him, with orders to call the Commissioner immediately if contact was made with the spy ring.

After this shakedown, feeling rattled to the bone, Damon needed a comfortable rest and a decent place to clean up, so he went and took a room at a hotel, ran a bath, tried to wash off the whole experience of the day. He nearly fell asleep in the tub, but climbed out, toweled off, then fell into bed and lost consciousness immediately. But he did not sleep very well, and, pulling on a shirt, he rose while the city was still asleep.

He left his lights off in his single room, in case anyone was watching him. Going to the balcony, he looked out carefully, wondering if there were any taxis available. No, it was still too early, and they hadn't even pulled up at the entrance for the first business of the day. He would have to walk, and risk being picked up again! Best wait for a taxi, and then he would have a chance getting out, amidst the thick morning rush of traffic.

To be ready, he completely dressed and went and sat in a chair, dozing from time to time as the time slowly passed.

A few hours later, when the hotel's staff busy was preparing breakfast and putting finishing touches to the buffet and the tables, and the lobby was stirring with guests going down to the dining room, Damon thought it was just right to make his break for freedom, rather than wait any longer. Breakfast, he could catch on the run somewhere.

He had chosen the right time, he saw quickly, as the taxi he climbed into headed off from the curb into the morning traffic. Where just a few hours before there wasn't a single vehicle, the whole square was jammed with all kinds of vehicles, pedestrians, and sheep and other animals on their way to market. It was a pandemonium, so common in those parts, colorful, forever changing, yet always the same swirl of life in a provincial town that was fairly prosperous but had once seen more glorious days, if the huge Roman era ruins that studded the city still had anything to say about it.

The congestion continued even after the cab took him miles down the road from the city. Deciding to make it more difficult for anyone still on his track, Damon spotted a bus at a stop beside a fuel station, and called a halt. Paying the cabbie, Damon ran to the bus and jumped on. Wherever it was going, as long as it wasn't going back to Jaisalimur, was good enough for him.

Arriving at the metropolis and H-R capital city, Multan, Damon needs money fast if he isn't going to be arrested for vagrancy and sent to a prison workhouse. To wire his bank, Damon does the only thing he can do to quickly get the needed dinars, he sells a gold filing to a goldsmith (who extracts it on the spot and weighs it, before paying out the money to Damon.

He wires for funds from his bank, which soon arrive, and then he goes and outfits himself in a fine new suit, silk shirt and silk tie (sewn and tailored on the spot in a mens wear shop). Looking like himself again, he takes care of his other needs at a good hotel, but he doesn't get very far in his quest when he encounters a startlingly exact carbon copy of himself.

So many unbelievable things had already happened, things that made the Tea and Sugar a tea party in comparison, that he was half-prepared for this event. Hmmmm...this should give him some very interesting information, he thinks, as he regains rational thought after his initial novelty wears off a bit. But the man staggers and collapses right in front of Damon. Damon finds the cause, a dagger thrown and sunk into his twin's back, killing the fellow and also any chance Damon could find out from him why he (and no doubt his look-alike too) is being pursued.

Still trying to track down his pursuers as well as the elusive Agent X who is the cause of all his troubles of mis-identity, Damon headed for the train depot, to take an express home to Poseidonia, as direct flights from Heruka-Ratna to his homeland were prohibited for security reasons. Poseidonia had no desire to import H-R's fleeing dissidents--and H-R reciprocated in like manner, so there was left no real escape route for dissidents of any kind or stripe, unless they like to swim for it in shark-infested water. Anyone crossing the borders while eluding the border controls and without proper documents was arrested and sent back--usually to imprisonment and execution. Bandits preyed on these illegals too, letting them go for huge ransoms if they could pay it, and, if not, then they were dumped, hands bound, at the gate of some garrison's camp.

Thus, with such stringent controls in place, Damon would never fly into the Port Andros airport terminal, which handled only H-R traffic, or government-approved international flights from the northern tier of countries. That was probably a wise decision on his part, as air marshalls were ordered to take him into custody on sight--an easy matter in the confined spaces of an aircraft or even in the terminal. But the train station, huge and rambling, crowded with thousands of travellers and railway station and train personnel--he could easily pass through without being apprehended.

It is just as well he didn't fly, for he encounters some First Class distractions in First Class, and a train, not a plane, is the ideal place to deal justice to them, he had found on numerous prior trips. One such distraction even comes to pay him a special visit in his reserved cabin. A wealthy socialite, married to an aged Consul-General in the allied Republic of Baton Roo adjunct to the CSA embassy in Port Andros, has a hunger for young, handsome men and a more than passing interest in the dashing, Rhett Butler-ish Damon, but is she really on his side, or acting as an agent for the same people who are seemingly bent on destroying him? Only time, and events, will tell what this femme fatale is really up to.

Arlena arranged for Damon to be let off the train at a particular spot, which was no where on the map, it was in in agricultural country run by big estates, but she assured him he would meet Agent X there, simply by waiting for him on the road next to the track.

After some other assurances from the very capable, experienced Arlena, that need not be detailed here, Damon left the train when the engineer, in return for a bribe from Arlena, slowed and stopped the train just long enough for him to leap down.

The train pulled away, and Damon found himself the only human being standing on a lonely stretch of uninhabited country, without a single farm building or any sign that humans lived anywhere within less than twenty or thirty miles.

He felt chilled, for some reason, and for the first time after a woman's love soiled and dirty somehow, even with Arlena's expensive perfume still lingering in his nostrils. He had had married women before, preferred them for their knowing how to please a man--so it had never bothered him before. Why now? What did it make if she was someone else's wife--as long as the husband didn't find out about it and come hunting for him with a cocked heater. Funny, Padre Noaik came to mind then and there, but he dismissed the preaching missionary from Argentina, who said to Damon he couldn't run from Yeshua no matter how far he went--Yeshua was still there waiting for him to "climb aboard His Glory Train".

"Nothing doing, Padre!" he had responded at the time. "I'm too young for religion and got my whole life ahead of me, so maybe later, but not now!"

Even though the padre's appeal struck a chord in him, he wasn't about to climb aboard Yeshua's heaven-bound "Glory Train " now, at any rate. He was his own man--had always been. Even if he had lost some control over his life lately, he wasn't about to surrender all of it to anybody, as long as he had anything to say about it!

Growing increasingly edgy, he was there for about twenty minutes when a car appeared a long way off, and he watched it approach like a little black bug growing bigger and bigger, even as his curiosity grew about it, but not so curious that he did not take precaution to leave the train track, cross the road and continue on into the field. When he thought he was far enough away and might escape detection, he crouched down to watch the car as it neared. The sedan with the dark tinted and curtained window in the back stopped, and Damon felt a chill, only he was glad he had taken the precaution, for he had a chance at least of getting away if it was what he suspected it was. But he was mistaken, he saw. A man got out, exchanged places with the driver, drove off, and then the former driver remained standing there, wearing a farmer's work clothes. So he was only a farm worker?

This was strange to Damon. Where was his tools or equipment? Why did he come here to such a isolated spot? But as he waited he heard another car coming, and this it came on much faster than the other, and skidded to a halt. Immediately the man leaped in, the car door slammed, and the it sped off on squealing wheels in the opposite direction!

Damon, without any time to do anything, realized this had been his chance, and he had blown it royally! He ran back to the road, and was gasping for breath, feeling himself the biggest fool in the world for muffing his big chance to end the wretchedness of a cat and mouse chase, when he heard a strange whump-pity-wump, whump-pity-whump sound, growing louder and louder.

Then he realized what he was hearing, before he even saw it. The H-R military, he had read somewhere, had earlier employed as its first line of defense a certain Dutch-invented aircraft, the gyrocopter, as its gunship. The gyro had proved serviceable for many other uses as well in campaigns, but with the advent of jets and rockets, it was instantly obsolete, a museum piece. Selling off the deposed sultan's jewels and other royal state treasures to finance the changeover, Heruka-Ratna was just too poor to junk all its gyroplanes, however, so most of its gyro-fleet was outfitted as cropdusters after the military hardware was janked out.

Gazing in the direction of the sound, Damon was bored before he even saw it, and was wondering what direction he should start walking when he noticed the crop-duster was not doing what crop-dusters ordinarily did--dust the fields with either insecticides or fertilizer. This one was headed straight for him!

Damon did not stop to wonder about it. He started running, away from the road, which was too open, and gave him no protection. He hope to find a gulley or ravine to jump into for cover, but no such luck! The fields were rolling, but not one hole appeared as he ran. The gyro quickly narrowed the gap between them, and Damon turned his head and saw the thing was going to swoop and squash him like a potato bug if he didn't do something.

He narrowly leaped aside just in time as a wheel came down.

Tumbling in the dirt, he lay there a moment, heard the gyrocopter turning and then start its approach to finish the job.

Leaping up, Damon dashed in the opposite direction, trying to zig zag like a game hare chased by trained hounds. Why didn't they just shoot him? he wondered. But no bullet ripped into him, and he realized they were enjoying the chase so much they didn't want to make it too easy for themselves.

He was just about to run out of steam and collapse in exhaustion when he tripped over an iron hoe left lying in the field.

Snatching it up, he started running again, but the gyroplane was going to get him this time, he knew. What could he do? All he had was this old iron hoe!

He stopped, wound up like a discus thrower, and with all his might flung the hoe straight into the approaching whirling screw-blades.

The moment he did that hefell flat to the ground, hugging it for dear life.

The gyroplane passed over him with a deafening roar of wind and screw-blades and motors. Nothing touched him, though about a couple inches of soil was lifted all around Damon's sprawled form and the sweep of the rotary screw-blades was strong enough in suction to tear up the plants in a big swath along the plane's path.

Damon couldn't see a thing in the blinding whirlwind of dust, but he could still hear. The gyroplane was climbing, or wanting to climb, but there was a grinding, snapping sound this time, followed by a much louder smashing of metal blades colliding with each other. The dust had cleared somewhat, and Damon caught a glimpse of the stricken gyro. It was still trying to climb, but the grinding and smashing sounds were worse, joined by a tremendous rattling and drumming and a final ear-splitting screech, as the whole superstructure tore itself apart. The gyro, flinging huge sections of its screw-blades like a disintegrating grass-mower and automated cocktail swizzle, sank toward the ground, and it hit hard, and Damon saw a flash, and before he could duck down and shield his head in his hands, the whole aircraft exploded in a ball of fire and billowing smoke.

Unable to keep from looking, he saw several gyronauts struggle out of the wreckage, all in flames, and run in different directions, then collapse and flop about, still burning.

Horrified, Damon tried to get to one of the fliers, and it was too late anyway, for the man was dead, his eyes burnt to a crisp in their sockets. Smell of charred flesh and uniform was in the air, and wafted over Damon as he approached. Damon pulled his coat up over his face, but still smelled burned human flesh--and he was sick, and upchucked his stomach's contents--and that helped a little.

Nothing nasty or filthy or revolting he had seen so far in his wide travels equalled the stench and horror of this crash scene, the high octane petrol fumes mixing with the odor of fried, boiled, barbecued, filleted, and scrambled humans. Having seen the men actually burn to death, he naturally wanted only to get as far away as he could.

But he was unsure what direction to go? Return to Multan via the train track or the road which more or less followed the railway line's route? He could find a way out from there, no doubt, on either a plane, or train, or bus, even on foot. But would it be safe for him? He doubted that very much, for there were many watching eyes in Multan alerted to his description.

That left the train or taking the roads away from Multan toward his homeland. He suspected the train would not be any safer than Multan, and possibly a greater danger, so he started walking. If anyone came driving his way, he decided to get off and hide and let it go by before continuing. He might even walk at night, and hide by day in whatever shelter he could find.

That seemed a good idea, and he felt he had made the best decision he could. If only he could reach a town or some farmstead where he could hire a driver and car. He had enough money to get home, as long as he wasn't robbed. Dividing up his money, he put some in his shoe and left some in his wallet. He had lost his travel bag somewhere in the field, but had no desire to search for it. His watch too had come off his arm, the band had probably broken in is many falls and tumbles. He would have to have it repaired, first chance he got, so he put it in his pocket until then.

At first it felt rather good to walk off his stiffness and soreness, even the bruises felt a little better.

After an hour he was in the first of the foothills of the mountains, feeling thirsty and hungry, when he heard the sound of a vehicle, from the direction in which the train had gone, headed for the Poseidonian border. It didn't sound like a standard motor, more like the racket of small farm machinery, but he climbed up into the rocks near the road, and was out of sight when it started to come into view. He was right, it wasn't a car or truck but a motorized cycle with a sidecar.

He waited and could see the driver, a man with goggles, wearing a leather cap and body suit also of leather, the type used by hired taxi-cycles in Multan that were thick as the flies there. But the passenger made his heart beat faster. There was something about her--Arlena? She had sunglasses on, and a jacket, but it was her, he could tell, as she wasn't wearing a hat or scarf and her hair was the same color and style, it couldn't be anyone else.

They were about to go by when he stood up, throwing a small rock down across their path. The cycle skidded to a halt, then they were looking up to where he was standing. He climbed down, jumping onto the road, and walked over to them.

Arlena stood up in the sidecar, and tried to get out, and her driver hurried cut the motor on the cycle and hurried round to help her down, but Damon reached her first and she stayed where she was.

"Damon! So glad I found you! Come on with me, I will take you back. That is why I hired this nice man here--I had an idea you might be in trouble of some kind. And I saw the wreckage back there! How terrible? Whatever happened?"

Damon wasn't going to explain anything to her, he was glancing at her driver, and the looks both of them exchanged only increased his suspicion and sense that something was afoot.

He smiled, however, and acted as casually as he could. "What do you mean wreckage? I didn't see it. I've been walking since I left the train, for no one showed up like you said--he must have missed the assigned meeting time, right? I thought you knew what you were talking about--that someone would be sure to be there--but I saw no one!"

Arlena seemed troubled, but quickly smiled. She motioned for him to come close, for a private conversation. When he bent over to her, she continued. "Oh, it was just those men I told you about I overheard talking on the train in the corridor, who must have meant some other place for the meeting, or I got the information wrong. They really did seem up to some mischief, and after what I knew about the Grey Wolves going to stage a coup, it seemed credible enough that the agent you are seeking is the one they want to stop collecting information on them. But, darling, the important thing is you weren't involved in that flier's accident back there?-- how wonderful! It looks like such a dreadful accident! It doesn't seem like there could be any survivors, and the police will be here to look into it, no doubt."

She glanced back up the road toward Multan. Then with a look of anxiety toward Damon. "Get in, darling! We have no time to waste. They will be coming soon, and wanting to know the cause for the crash, since they would naturally think we were witnesses of it, and we need not be questioned for hours if we leave now. Damon, we can talk on the way--but we will go to the next town and get a room there. I think I know of a hotel, and it is clean enough. You can wash up there and--"

She looked more closely at him head to foot.

"My, you have gotten dirty! Your suit! You look like you have been rolling in the fields like a regular farmhand! Whatever have you been doing? Has those men you told me about been after you again?"

She swung the sidecar's door open, and beckoned to him to hop in beside her (as if there was room for more than one passenger in the single passenger cab).

Still Damon hesitated. The driver inspired no confidence in him whatsoever, he looked like an assassin who would just as soon kill him, given enough money to do the job. Besides, Arlena's favorite perfume, jasmine, was washing over him, bringing back memories of her lying beside him, but the horrors of what had happened shortly afterwards were also assailing his senses--it was all so fresh to his mind--he couldn't bring himself to trust her again.

Suddenly, seeing the driver had left the key in the cycle's ignition, he had an idea, that solved his quandary.

"There's time for a cigarette, dear. I must have one first."

Arlena fumbled in her purse, taking out a cigarette case and a lighter. She lit a cigarette and took it from her mouth and handed it to him--just the way she always did it to please a lover.

Damon jerked his head toward the driver who was watching them intently. "How about him? He's seems to be a good fellow, driving you all this way just to pick me up! Give him a little reward for his trouble. I insist on it!"

She handed her cigarette case to Damon, and he let the driver take one, along with the lighter.

"Thank you, Effendi, thank you, M'lady," the driver said, bowing to each while smiling and revealing some gold teeth in front.

Arlena gave him a tiny smile and a little wave of her hand to the driver, which Damon saw, and the driver handed back the cigarettes and jeweled platinum lighter and stepped away a few yards, standing with his back to them as he drew on his cigarette.

Arlena reached out and took Damon's arm, pulling him closer. She looked up into his face. "Darling, it will be nice tonight when we reach the next town. I will make it up to you--your not finding that man you are looking forward. I was so worried it might not work out, so I had to come and find out for sure if you were still here in the area. I couldn't leave you like that--not knowing!"

Damon's eyebrows narrowed, but he was still smiling. "I am so glad you did. You saved me a very long, tiring walk! I might have caught a ride with someone, but there is so little traffic along here, it might have been a long time, even days, before someone would stop for me."

"So you are coming!" she said brightly, moving aside to make room for him.

"Not so fast, darling!" he said. "Let me finish my cigarette. I don't like the ashes blowing back into my face!"

"Of course!" she laughed. "Finish your cigarette then! But we really should be going as soon as you do!"

As Damon was aware now, it was the time to act. And drawing on his cigarette he took a few silent steps around the cycle, paused, smiled back at Arlena, and took a few more steps behind the driver, who was standing enjoying Arlena's expensive, scented cigarette at the edge of the road, his back still turned to them. Without a shoulder, the road dropped off into a small ravine about twenty feet deep at the bottom--a drainage for the fields--with some water and mud in it. Then the driver did something that provided the perfect set-up, he leaned over to pull up his sock or retie his boot lace.

This was too good an opportunity to waste. Damon leaped the rest of the way and the driver a got a kick in the rear that sent him tumbling down the slope. Then Damon ran to the cycle, and hit the starter with his foot, and the engine, after a couple hard hits, ignited and roared to life. Before Arlena could do anything, Damon jammed his foot on the gas and the cycle leaped and bolted off up the road, its tires spinning. A few more moments it was beyond the reach and even the hearing of the driver, who was still struggling to get out of the ravine.

With the roar of the motor and the wind in his ears, Arlena's screams and protests did not bother him in the least, and eventually she remembered her dignity as a Consul-General's wife and stopped. From then on she sat sullenly looking at him as he drove them up and up into the mountains, following the road as it moved more or less toward Poseidonia in the east.

With the Baton Roo Consul-General's wife his captive, Damon drove the cycle's four cylinders as hard as he could, hoping the fuel aboard would be enough to get them to the next town. There was another small tank aboard the sidecar, but was there anything in it? He didn't want to stop to find out. If the motor began sputtering, he would stop to look. Until then, he didn't want to give Arlena a chance to jump out and run away from him. He still had some questions he wanted to ask her, when he got her to a safe enough place where they wouldn't be interrupted.

He was thinking hard as he was driving. What was Arlena's real motive in coming back for him anyway? Was it to find him dead or alive? Just to verify his remains or actually to save him from his pursuers--the hired assassins who were no doubt hot on his trail now, once they heard about the crash or saw the wreckage of the gyroplane. After her bad advice to him nearly cost him his life, he did not have a shred of confidence in a single word of hers--everything she said could be a lie just to set him up for a take-down.

And how had she heard of the crash? If she had searched the field first round the crash scene, she knew that he had escaped somehow, and had gone in search of him back on the road. And it had paid off--she had found him, or rather he had let her find him.

But what then? What was this driver she brought with her going to do once they found him? He was carrying something, by the looks of that bulge under his arm.

Damon glanced back at Arlena, who sat, her head down as far as possible from the now chill, mountain air, her jacket collar up round her neck and part of her clothing pulled up shielding her face to keep warm.

Thinking that a cycle fitted up for passengers might have a luxury or two, he was right. The cycle had a switch for a heater, and he found it and gave her some heat. She looked up surprised, and then snuggled down in the cab, and seemed to be resting as they continued the climb.

Without having to worry about her freezing, he had only himself to be concerned about, as the wind was cold, and his suit was wool but not warm enough.

The grade was increasing, and the climb was slower, but he kept going, with high white peaks rising all around them, and a cliff edge meeting the edge of the road without any guardrails.

He was so surprised, not pleasantly either, when he saw a car headed his way from the heights above. He saw the vehicle rounding the curve above them, so he spun the cycle and cab around, and tried to outrun the car before the killers could see them and begin chase.

What did he have to lose by his maneuver if he was wrong? Nothing! But if he was right? He wasn't going to go meekly to the slaughter this time, if he had anything to do with it!

He glanced back once and saw Arlena's eyes were wide open, and she was looking back, almost as if she meant to climb and jump out, the moment he slowed down.

Giving her no chance, he continued, then saw a road, or what had been a road in centuries past, once level, but now sloping steeply down. It was not much more than a goat track, but there were what looked like ancient stones set up to mark its borders, but which were the remains of pedestals that had held the giant winged raptors that once guarded the processional road to the site. Arlena's face was pale white as she gripped the sides of the cab for dear life as they bounced and bumped down the fragmented roadbed, hitting stray stones which threatened to overturn the cycle and throw them over the side and down the cliffs toward the ground far below.

He had to use the brake most of the way, and then finally he couldn't go any further. The road dead-ended at an enormous stone platform set with the shell of a ruined temple, only columns remaining, atop some huge stone figures he had never known were there. He had seen great stone colossi of the gods of Mizraim, and photographed them for a travel magazine, in the far southwestern part of H-R, but these near the border of H-R and Poseidonia were a mystery to him. It seemed possible to him a recent earthquake had set off a massive landslide that uncovered the ruins--that had happened before in other places--but nothing on this scale had ever been seen in these mountains. If only he had his camera, and he wasn't running for his life! It was a photographer's wildest wish-fantasy--being first on the scene to shoot a world-class ruin, a Wonder of the World from the ancient past, that represented a complete mystery.

The fame of his discovery would spread world-wide in hours--and he could name any price for his pictures!

He cut the motor, and waited, as an ashen-faced Arlena tried to get out of the cab. It had been a horrible, rough, bone-bruising ride down, and she was shaken, and struggled to get the cab open. She was quite a sight, and he felt pity for this woman, so sophisticated, so used to luxury and having things her way, with servants answering her every need. Now she was in the utter wilds, in his control. He went round to her side, and opened it, and then helped her down, trying to be as gentle with her as he could.

"Are you crazy?" she said, her face full of fury, making it even more beautiful somehow. "Where are we? Why did you drag me here to this awful place? You've nearly killed me!"

Damon had to laugh, despite her anger at him. "Sorry! I couldn't waste any time getting here. Your friends--of maybe friends of your friends-- were coming down to get me and finish me off--I saw their car ahead of us back up there. I thought I'd best pull off to this sweet little garden spot and let them drive by, if you don't mind, darling! We can leave in a few minutes, when I see the coast is clear."

Arlena, to her credit he thought, did not show any resentment that he had found her out, that she might not be acting in his best interests.

She flicked open her cigarette case. "Light mine for me, will you?"

He did so. Then he stood watching her. After a few moments, she turned to him. Her voice was different, more resigned and matter-of-fact than before, as if she knew he knew the game was up, so why pretend any longer?

"Well, I can't tell you their identity, or precisely what government they work for, but they caught me with a fellow they planted on me, and they photographed us and then blackmailed me. They threatened to tell my husband, show him all the photographs they had, and so I had to cooperate or be ruined! I had to do whatever they told me to do, only I didn't know I would have this feeling for you when I did what they said, let you in my cabin--I guess I hadn't met someone like you before, and that made me do a stupid thing--I really didn't want you killed by them--no! I knew the man you were being taken for--and I thought--well, it didn't work out. The fates were against it. Damon, you've got to believe me, I am telling truth this time! This is the real woman, the real Arlena, talking to you! Not someone trying to manipulate you! I'm done with that. Believe me, Damon!"

He found her gripping his shirt in front, and he gently but firmly unfastened her hands and pushed her back away a few feet. "You will have to do better than that, sweetheart," he said coldly.

"The story is just too good, too neat. You have much more to tell than that. But I am certain you won't want to tell me the rest--it would be too, ah, damaging?"

Arlena gave him a look that might have killed him, and the marvel to Damon was that she looked all the more alluring and provocative. "All right, have it your way! After what happened to you back there, I suppose you think you have every right to treat me like this, suspect me, even when I am telling you the truth! I admit I have some of it coming! But what would you do, in my place, if you were blackmailed? I had to go along with them if I was to keep from being exposed by the scandal they would create."

She looked at him with narrowed eyes, in her sidelong glancing way. "But, darling, what do you intend to do now? You have no way out of here really? They will watch the road both coming and going. In fact, they may find this place--then what? Where will you run? It is a cul de sac. There are nothing but cliffs all around us, and these old, barbarous statues or gods, or whatever they are, down below us! I am your hostage, is that it? What good will I do for you? You can't demand ransom for me--they will never pay it! I am nothing to them. Let me go! You can just leave me here and escape. Why drag me along?"

Damon had no time to answer her questions or try to reason with her. It was a question of survival now, not a time to talk.

Having ditched the cycle-cab behind a rock to hide it, Damon tries to find another way out of the trap, but there isn't but one way: down!

It seems to Damon that if they can just climb down out of sight, they stand a chance of eluding the goons hunting him. He helps Arlena down the side of the cliff, along the very earthquake fault that has recently opened and shifted. It was, in fact, the same shifting that has only days before uncovered the entire temple, statuary, and archives complex constructed by the Atlanteans before the catastrophe that sank Atlantis to the sea bottom in 10,000 B.C. Once the complex stood in a capital city situated on a plain, with a big river winding through, right in front of the colossi honoring the emperor, but the whole landscape has been terraformed drastically, by a number of factors, into something radically different.

They reach a ledge where Arlena can rest a moment, but she turns to Damon when he wants to continue, pushing his hand away. "I'm not going any further. I can't! Please don't force me, it won't work! You have no chance of getting away, with me along! You know that as well as I--so let's not be stupid. This is where we part. It has to be.

Damon wouldn't hear of it. "No, no, I won't let them find you here, who knows what they will do, if they think you helped me escape?"

Arlena laughed. "It doesn't matter, Damon. They'll catch us both, and we'll die together--is that what you want? No, you have to go on your own, and I won't be the cause for you being caught and killed--that is...unnecessary. I can't think of that!"

Damon peered closely at her, and saw she was resolved, but he wouldn't give up. "We've just begun to try this way--a little more, we can be sure they can't reach us, and then maybe they will grow tired of this and let us go. They might think we fell and killed ourselves, if we just keep out of sight."

Arlena shook her head. "They won't give up that easily. I know them that well. They won't suppose anything, and won't be satisfied. They have to report to their superiors, and so they can't take back stories. They must have us, dead or alive.

Damon sighed, and couldn't think what to say next to dissuade her. But he had to know something. "You know them, you said. Who are they? Why are they hunting me down like this? And I keep running into someone who looks like my twin brother? is that the reason? The last twin I ran into was knifed. But they still kept chasing me. So what is going on?"

Arlena looked into his eyes and did not look at all afraid of her very dim prospects, but smiled. "I have a little theory, that's all. See if it seems to make sense to you. As a complete outsider to espionage, I just suppose they came across your face and pictures in some magazine, and someone decided to copy you, make a clone of sorts with an agent, and maybe more than one. They could use the Damonsth to penetrate the target country's security net, all because you were known to travel widely and your identity was therefore very useful. It would help to cover the agents, who would be penetrating key installations, so if apprehended, they could use your identity, which was a real one, not a counterfeit which the H-R authorities could quickly check out and find were bogus. They didn't care about you. So when you stumbled into the midst of their operations, you had to be eliminated, as you were exposing the whole operation. You may have two more than one country's secret service after you, as you were doing them each more damage than you could imagine!"

Damon was stunned. What other explanation could there be? Arlena had guessed right. He was a pawn for secret services, only a wretched pawn! They had stolen his identity, so now he was a nonentity, actually. His identity was now his death warrant. He would be shot on sight. And he had done nothing--his identity was now made a capital offense, just because he was born who he was. All his life was a zero, far as they were concerned. They didn't care what he had been, or would be, or anything about his dreams and ambitions. He was just a face and identity to them--nothing more--and once no longer an asset, they considered him a bloody nuisance and liability to be liquidated.

Damon felt all his self-assurance crumble, as all his individualism meant nothing as long as he was a target of the secret services of H-R and who knows how many other countries! What could he do now? He couldn't change their view of him, or their objective which was to liquidate him like a bug.

The reality, however, is forcing them to face it, no matter what the complexity of his identity problem. They are on a narrow ledge of a cliff, and this is the last time they will see each other alive. He tries to tell her how sorry he is, but she stops him.

"For once, Damon, I've slowed down enough to have some second thoughts. This is what I have put off until now. I've got to do something to help someone else--even if it doesn't help me. What good is both of us dying? And I really have nothing to return to? Nothing! They've destroyed me already. You might as well try to escape if you can. Don't try to rob me of one good thing I can do with my life, the last bit of it, by staying here. I've been a selfish woman all my life, and only self-gratification mattered--and I used everyone I could to amuse me. But you are different. I see something about you I really liked. But I am not the woman for you. I maybe could be, if I had changed in time, but there is no chance of that now. You must go! So go!"

Leaving Arlena, as she won't have it any other way, Damon makes his way carefully across the cobra headdress of the colossus, fortunate to have cracks made by earthquakes that give him hand grips.

The foreign agents (or are they H-R's secret police?) send the first man down to pick off Damon and rid themselves of a nuisance. As for Arlena, they might find her useful if she comes willingly. If not, she is to be share Damon's fate. Parted, Damon and Arlena present two separate targets, however. But it is Damon they want-- precisely for the reason Arlena has hinted at during their last words together.

Damon decides to lure his tracker to overstepping himself. He feigns a hit, and screams with pain. Hearing him, the hitman makes every effort to finish him off, and he does what Damon is hoping he will do, he takes too much of a risk and slips. The poor man screams all the way down the face of the statue, then there is silence on the far rocks below. One down--how many to go? Damon isn't going to wait to see, and continue across the eye and over to the other side of the cobra headress, hoping this will put out of range, or at least deflect their shots.

He no sooner reaches the right side, when he feels sands and bits of stone raining down, and realizes someone is coming down that way for him.

Time to move? But where? This time he decides to cross over to the monolithic nose, if he can. Maybe he can crawl up inside a nostril? At least he wouldn't be so exposed on the outer surface.

As Damon is descending as fast as he can, Arlena is approached by an agent, who decides to haul her in first before proceeding to deal with her lover boy.

She will be easy, he figures, as he climbs down to where she is sitting and waiting for him, well aware of him, since he is breathing heavily as he makes his careful moves.

Arlena has already decided what would work best, based on her particular talents. "I'll let him dig his own grave," she thought grimly.

"I can see what's on his pea brain!"

It took some time but he finally reached her perch. But first he decided to have a little fun with her if he could. Why not? He worked hard for a living, why not enjoy a little R& R with this classy little tush? It wasn't often that types like her crossed his path. He usually had to resort to back alley sluts he had to shell out a lot of cash for, and they were toothless hags compared to her! Who could blame him? Besides, the boss was up in the car and what he didn't know didn't hurt him!

She looked so frightened of him and where she was, that he saw he wouldn't have to work very hard to convince her, that he was due something for getting her out of such a jam as she was obviously in.

"Your boyfriend left you high and dry, I see!" he called over to her in his friendliest manner. "Some fine gentleman he is! Well, I can fix that! I'll get you outa here safe and sound, just trust me! I'll take care of it just perfect for a lady like you, just you see!"

She didn't say anything, but he could see she wasn't going to resist, so he proceeded to edge her way, talking to her all the while.

"Don't be afraid, missy, you're in mighty good hands now, sweetheart! Just you relax, I know just how to handle a woman of high class like you, so you don't have to worry your pretty little head any--nossir!"

Finally, he reached her, and she seemed so helpless and utterly grateful to him, he put his arms out around her and sort of overplayed his role of knight rescuing a damsel in distress, perhaps. Going for his first kiss, he let down his guard, in any case, and the next thing he knew her knee caught him sharply in the groin, and the steel cleat on her high heeled shoe came crashing down simultaneously on his left temple, just above the eyebrow.

Stunned, he didn't know much else, except that someone gave him a push and then he was falling like a stone down the cliff--which was only a momentary sensation, true, but disturbing, nonetheless, as the rocks gravity rapidly pulled toward him looked most unforgiving and mean and nasty.

The temple at the apex is a cenotaph that once contained the now vanished god-emperor's visera in golden urns, for ceremonial visits by a priesthood perpetually at their duties, but the facility at the bottom of the colossi contains a working archives of items that are splendid, despite the many thousands of years buried beneath the sea, then riding out the millennia encapsulated within the rising mountains of the Atlantis II. With their own power source, they have withstood the crush of sea waters, and the cold of sunlessness without diminishing a degree in lustre and strength, but these crystals--for such they appear--are yet of a sort Damon has never seen before and so could not possibly appreciate.

The moment he enters, however, he discovers he is in a radically different world than the one he had just left.

He had been all over the three inhabited continents--East Turtle Island and West Turtle Island, Ismanliya the White Continent in the middle, and Argentia-Panamania, photographing and exploring all sorts of wonders, natural and man-made, but nothing he had seen, not even among the architectural glories of ruined Mizraim to the southwest that stretched for over a thousand miles along the great river Ioteru, equalled what his eyes beheld. He could not take it in--it was so strange and eerie and yet so living and full of purpose and intelligent design--even in the ruined state he found it. The crystals--for such they seemed--lay tumbled about on the floor, some lit up, others quite dead or asleep. He was intrigued with the repulsive animality of the huge statues inside. Were they ancient gods? Or vanished heroes or great leaders of this long dead culture? They looked Mizraimite, but were they? These were different somehow, and he sensed a far greater age and antiquity about them. These were seemingly for real, they were not merely statuary. He almost expected them to start moving as he gazed upon each one he met. But why so animalistic? Apparently, the ancient culture represented here, whether human or something else, blended with animals, but did not like animals for themselves, no they combined with them to create a new species of some kind--and he sensed a horror in it--his humanness was repelled by it, not drawn to it. These species were devoid of all human feeling--but they were now grown terribly fierce and cold and pitiless--so the mixture, the hybridization, was a horrible thing.

But who created this new monstrous race of giant, immensely powerful beings who could construct such a place as this and stock it with their ingenious, inscrutable treasures? He had to find out somehow, if he could, even while he knew the spies were still out to hunt him down, and there might be more coming than the ones he had already eliminated.

After Ero enters and, his mouth hanging open from amazement, exploring the archives, Ero approaches the monolith-guarded archives, taken there by the guidance system Wally installed in the stripped down, otherwise useless Kater's compass.

But instead of pausing, the masthead-Argo bot that Wally provided him for his travels continues its ascent, shooting up up over the monoliths, just as he sees a woman hanging to a ledge, about to drop off onto the rocks below.

He must do something to help if he can--being Ero, he cannot do otherwise. The Greek he is rises up, his true manhood and its instincts intact, and so he cannot watch a fellow human being destroy herself.

Ero works at the popup feverishly, to direct the mast-head back down. Wally the programmer had provided Zoom In, Zoom Out, and other directional modifiers, but the program was deliberately made difficult, to keep it from being used too much, and Ero was swearing in Greek as he navigated through Wally's "helps" to get the mast where he wanted it to go.

Damon wastes no time, he knows that there may be assassins on his tracks, so he isn't going to stand in one place and provide a convenient target. But the place is vast, and there are so many objects that he cannot take time to examine in detail. He passes through open doorways into one vast hall after another, all filled with things he had never imagined existed.

The three spies detailed to round up Damon and Arlena, dead or alive, were not reporting back to their chief, who sat waiting impatiently in the car.

Pedro Incarceracion Federales, known in his shady vocation as The Shadow because of his ghostly, whispery voice and his cat-like agility as he stalked his prey, kept his window cracked for sounds of what was going on. Starting out as a secret agent for Poseidonia, then capitalizing on that experience and upgrading to counter-agent for H-R, finally entering the rarefied heights of international espionage as a counter-counter-agent (few agents, indeed, lived long enough to attain that level of treachery and double-crossing) for suitable compensation by both the CSA and Publicatexa, Federales had done well for himself. The only hitch, the thing that stuck in his craw, was the poor material he had to work with! The goons he had to do the drudge-work of the business were always messing up! They simply couldn't figure anything out, he had to tell them everything, and then they didn't follow his instructions correctly. It was one thing and another, always having to fix what they bungled!

He sighed! It was just too quiet out there, and something had gone wrong again! When he could hear nothing more for some time, he had to assume things were not going to get any better for his team whom he knew were no better than nincompoops. Even if ugly morons had all been given plastic surgery and made to look like him (he, the Shadow, wasn't going anywhere unless he had several decoys along!), no amount of expert cosmetology could give them a boost in IQ.

Now he would have to check in to it personally. This was a bloody nuisance--he didn't need anyone if they were going to bungle a simple little assignment like this! One dude and a snooty little broad running off together--rounding them up should have been a no-brainer! Why, he should have gone alone and done the job himself, making sure it was done right! Now he would have to clean up the mess they had made of it!

Getting out of the car, he decided to strip down and dress in his working clothes--just in case. In his profession, he knew being prepared was everything. Better fighters than himself, he knew, were dead meat if they came unprepared. He pulled out the trunk in the back, which had his personal gear which he let no one use but himself. Slipping out of his clothes, he pulled on his black body suit, which was a close,seamless fit, with nothing that could be grabbed or catch on something. A cap covered his head. He slipped on special shoes, and threw his alligators in the trunk, along with his fine, tailored, mohair suit, and silk shirt.

His equipment was topped by a customized luger in an underarm holdster and a long, razor-sharp knife in a sheath completed his weapons. Last of all, he pulled on leather gloves, with a spare in a pocket on his left thigh.

Taking a 150-200 coiled length of thin, light, but very strong rope, he headed for the cliff edge. Leaning over, he quickly sized up the best spot for descent.

Heights didn't bother him. He knew that he would be able to deal with anything he found below--he had scaled many tall buildings before with only a rope to get somebody his employers wanted assassinated--but was surprised when he saw the flying mast, with a woman and man aboard! What kind of aircraft was that? It was maybe the latest innovation of the enemy powers he was supposed to be fighting--but whatever it was, it gave him cause to consider what he was dealing with. His men? They were no where in sight--obviously, the chumps had been too footloose to make it down this steep a cliff, and hadn't made it to the target, for he was looking at the target right now, getting away!

Not if he could help it! With a rock, he drove his pronged anchoring nail down in the hard ground, fastened his rope to it, pulled with all his might, and then threw the rest of the rope over the edge. It was more than enough to get him to the bottom, or close enough anyway. He wasted no time. In a flash he was flying down the cliff face.

He came down just a few feet from the mast, and then giving a kick off a statue, he swung right down over the mast, and then dropped the rest of the way down to it.

Damon is amazed at the sight of a king, a giant in size, encapsulated in a crystal, for what specific purposes he could not determine, of course.

In yet another particularly huge rockcut chamber, Damon finds a giant crystal, bigger than any others he had seen. This one is sending out globes or spheres of glowing blue energy, and they are moving one after the other toward a seated figure on a throne on the other side of the hall. The figure seems closer than it is, he will find. The globes do not diminish in size, that is only the effect of the distances.

Watching the spheres or globes passing from the crystal to the throne and its occupant, Damon begins to wonder why it was set up to do that. He left the crystal and went to find out if he could. As he approached the throne, it grew in size, and continued to enlarge, until he found himself reduced to a very small person in comparison with the statue, or whatever it was. Why energize a stone statue? he had to wonder. Seemed like a total waste of energy to him.

Yet as he looked up at the statue, he was astounded at what he saw. It did not look like stone, no more than it looked human. A sort of colossal hawk sat on the golden and jewel-encrusted throne all enclosed in a thin crystal sheath much like a butterfly pupa in a chrysalis. But this was no butterfly in the making. The hawk had legs and arms like a man, only the head was not a man's but a hawk's, with a huge raptor's beak!

Appalled, Damon could not stand to look at it, but he had to. He had to find out what it was, and why it was being fed the globes. Even as he watched, a globe passed to the hawk-giant and dissolved, and the monster shuddered a bit and seemed to glow a little brighter.

Then the beak moved, and the eyelids quivered, as if they were about to open. This was not just horrible, but frightening to watch.

Backing away, Damon turned. His devil-take-the-hindmost-daring, gone. He had never even imagined a monstrosity like this one could ever exist--half-human, half-raptor, and of giant size. What kind of civilization had birthed it, pasting human and animal together liked that to make one monstrous being? The Indian tribes had stories they told and retold, he knew, that spoke of a bygone age when superbeings stalked the earth and ruled it--but those were only myths laughed at by his teachers in school, and he hadn't taken any of them seriously--until now. The Indians also described how the Earth was located in another quarter of the sky, the Indians, and was burning up and dying from too much heat from Brother Sun, and Raven had come to the rescue of people and animals and tied the Earth with strong leather cord to the tip of his arrow, and with his bow shot them all to a new home in the heavens where they could revive their strength and hunt the buffalo again.

The Indian tales gave this and other information he had to think over some other time, if he survived to think about them, that is. Whatever the species was that manufactured such monsters, he wanted nothing to do with it! Where they entirely without sense? For all their marvels, they couldn't have anything the least good to offer humanity--and if they let humans live, he thought, it would be just to grove at their feet and serve them as slaves!

He ran back all the way to the crystal, and crouched down along the side for cover. What if the beast suddenly woke up and stepped out from its chair and saw him! Wouldn't it go after him like a bird of prey would a rabbit? He would be torn to shreds by that beak in a moment or two!

Feeling defenceless and totally exposed, Damon thought hard about what to do. He needed to get clear of the giant raptor, he decided, before it woke up completely, saw him, and tried to run him down. This was, after all, its territory, its palace, not his. He didn't know his way around, as it must know.

Still crouched down, trying to keep out of sight of the thing, Damon was thinking about making a dash back to the entrance when a crazy thought flashed into his mind. No! he thought immediately. He couldn't do such a thing. Why take a chance like that?

But the thought kept coming--"Stop its feeding from the energy prism and starve the dormant White Land king to death!"

Damon almost burst out with a laugh. How? Could he move the giant crystal, the empowering prism that fed the abomination in its chrysalis? The crystal looked like it weighed tons. He only wanted to get out of the place, then report it once he was safe back in civilization. Let the government confiscate the gold and jewels and artifacts--he knew he could live nicely on his fame for discovering the site--without having a lot of wealth to protect and keeping a bodyguard the rest of his life.

The creatures most preferred seemed to be predators, the bigger the better, as Damon viewed a shark looking completely alive though embedded in a giant crystal.

He also sees a lion, though it is much bigger than any he had seen before.

And just beyond the lion is a bull elephant, which looks to him as if it were still alive, its ears flared and ready to step out of the crystal and crush him with one foot or grab him with its trunk.

It was strange how earthquakes and upheavals at various times destroyed some rooms and their menagerie of crystal-preserved monsters, but left others completely intact and everything in them in perfect condition. Water had also run out drains, if any significant amounts had ever gotten in--as the place had evidently been perfectly sealed in its location deep in the bedrock. As for the sealed entrance, that had been swept away only in the latest earthquake, and if not for the quake that sheared off the face of the surrounding rock sufficiently, he could never have found the way in through a secondary, unsealed entrance.

Even being raised thousands of feet by upthrusting volcanism and coming to rest inside a mountain, that did not destroy the facility, it was so well anchored inside the solid rock--with an ingenious system of giant levers that kept most of it both level and free from damaging rocking back and forth.

He came to a hall that contains nothing but hundreds of glowing mirrors, or such they appear. But the mirrors are flickering with scenes, not imaging their surroundings. The largest shows a vast panorama, a riverine plain studded with cities. As he watches, it takes him closer into the scene, descending into one of the cities, and he sees the inhabitants going about their business as usual. The architecture of the structures is strange, mostly geometric, with a great many columns, and squares and avenues set with statuary of immense sizes, but somehow familiar. Where had he...? Yes, of course! The buildings most resembled the pyramids and cones and obelisks of Mizraim, did they not? In addition, strangest of all, there were hundreds of others that looked like immense sundials, or solar panels--though they weren't reflective, and he could not guess at their uses or purpose. Mizraim once had avenues such as these, too, set with giant sphinxes, rams, hawks, lions, bulls, and all sorts of other creatures the Mizraimites worshipped as gods. But most impressive than even the temples and public buildings were schools of wisdom and learning, where the astrologers and wisemen ruled hundreds of neophytes and trained them in the secret lore of the power crystals.

The resemblance in everything he saw, the Mizraimite connection, was almost uncanny, though in the projected scene the buildings were not just massive stone concretions but crystal structures, and so massive that even the smaller ones could comfortably house any number of Mizraim's Houses of Eternity and temple complexes.

As for the inhabitants, they seem to be mostly slaves serving the golden, jeweled nobility and aristocrats, the elite ruling class of masters and mistresses of the super-race who sometimes appear in public, but mostly are hidden deep within the palaces and temples and pleasure pavilions of the city.

Hadn't he also caught glimpses of gangs of slaves, chained together, working the fields outside the city? They all appeared humans, with no superhuman powers, but their masters? Were they human too? Or something else? He could not tell, except that they preferred animals to humans and blended with them in new hybrid beings they themselves created. Whether or not human, the only thing certain was that the governing class was oppressing the human slave class in the most hideous way--making them do all the work of supporting them in the upmost luxury amidst magnificent settings while most of them scarcely had a rag to cover themselves.

Meanwhile, the air was thick with flying globes and disks of all kinds. They mystified him, until he saw one being boarded by the ruling classd. A transporting machine of some kind! he realized. Fashioned of a special material found on asteroids and rarely, only in tiny amounts, on earth, it absorbed its energy at one of the conelike structures, then rose and flew out the top, vanishing into the clouds, flying swiftly and without a sound. What an advance this represented in fuel, technology and aircraft! His world had nothing to compare with it! He watched a number of events being staged, all sorts of nobility present, with the emperors and empresses in attendance at a number of them in special pavilions. In one more private ceremony, a chief astrologer greeted the Queen after performing the secret rite that only her eyes could see that insured the safety of herself while travelling in her newly finished and staffed cosmic chariot to other stars and back. The few human slaves allowed were put to death immediately afterwards, of course.

It surpassed the world's nuclear physics and rocketry. There were even cities set apparently in space on unknown planets in distant star systems he could not identify, all reached by those huge blue hollow disks they used for space travel as well as terrestrial air travel.

Was it a paradise of perpetual peace and happiness? No, he saw that they were well prepared for war, and there were continual revolts and struggles for the throne within and outside the ruling dynasties and royal families. Assassinations, rival claimants fighting it out, it was a cycle that embroiled the country in war after war. One weapon as especially favored, a crystaline obelisk that shot death rays far out and burned and exploded enemy aircraft and flying spheres.

If they were so advanced, it was one thing to fight among themselves, but why did they have to press and crush the whole weight of their civilization down on the backs of their wretched human slaves? Why couldn't they just use their incredible wisdom and crystals to make a paradise for everyone, not just a tiny elite at the top? It certainly appeared they could do it, since they were so adept at creating the most wonderful transporation imaginable as well as beautiful, clean, elegant cities that all looked like jewels to his eyes set amidst perfectly laid out parks and gardens and pools?

Damon wonders why there are so few food transports into the city. What staples do they consume? He sees the endless streams of workers and slaves, in and out each day, for none but the household staffs are allowed to remain in the incredibly glowing, magical-looking metropolis at night. As for the slaves, they are not only transporters of farm and factory goods and all kinds of animals for the zoos and for household pets (snakes of all kinds and crocodiles and sharks seemed to be the most popular of the exotic pets), but vintners, bakers, cleaners, domestic and household servants, gardeners, entertainers, musicians, artisans, construction crews, and... food!

Cobras appear to be most venerated, even sacred, for he sees they are allotted whole temples and the priests serve them.

If this wasn't bad enough, he sees a chained line of boys and young men being taken, bound by the hands, and being made to kneel for their turn at a grisly kind of milking station.

A vein is opened up in the neck or arm, and blood is drained from each one into containers, and taken away to the master and mistress of various households waiting for their favorite power drink.

Damon has the answer ot his question. Blood-sucking Vampires! So that is how they get their primary food source! Fresh fruits brought in each day and the other condiments added to them were nothing but dessert served after the main course: human blood! That proved to him that they could not be human--they treated human beings as nothing but cattle to be disposed of any way they choose.

They were also cruel sadists that enjoyed inflicting pain.

For entertainment at parties and special events drawing thousands of these gilded and jeweled vampires, huge tanks, many of gold-inlaid marble-like stone, were filled with starved sharks or crocodiles and South American piranha, and human slaves--men, women, children, babies (they particularly liked using babies) were thrown in. Thousands were sacrificed in this way, as the lords and ladies were served sherbets and other cool desserts and chilled wines in the viewing stands, oftentimes by relatives, wives, mothers and family of the perishing slaves.

What he was seeing, he would soon find was helping prepare him for more horrors to come. The facility of archives, while under construction, was even pictured, with the slaves being driven down to the excavation by armed guards. The bedrock beneath the soil was the actual site, four or five hundred feet feet down, a place where the archives, once sealed, would forever be secure, no matter what happened to to the surface world.

The slaves, however, had no stake in the imperial dreams of glory preserved forever in such archives. He could tell that they knew they were not going to be leaving the site--that they were digging their own graves, not just working an some imperial underground building project.

Knowing he can't spent all his time there, Damon forces himself away from the viewing crystal, and continues on exploring in the labyrinth of the archives. How far does it extend into the mountain? A half-mile? A mile or more? He has to find out before he leaves, he decides. He found it rough going in a ruined hall, where many of the pillars had fallen and littered the floor with debris. But a big crystal had also been broken, and a chip from it made a very convenient source of light he could transport.

He was soon sorry he continued, rather than turn back. The terminus of the facility was most chilling to see, he was not sure he was able to stand looking at it. But he forced himself, in order to know exactly what he was dealing with. The entrance to the chamber he came to at the end of the series of halls and viewing chambers was a natural, untouched cave. The bricks that had blocked the entrance had fallen down, and he could now go in. Holding the crystal chip to light up the cave, he took a few steps into it, and saw uncountable skulls and bones of what had to be the wretched human slaves used in construction.

To keep the exact location a state secret, they had been shut up in the place and left to die, after their work was done, apparently. No chance was taken that they would report the way in to the facility, despite the fearsome guardians put in as security that should have kept any intruders in check. After a few moments, seeing as far as the light from the crystal he held permitted him to see, he had enough and stumbled back out.

Even after thousands of years, the smell of death and decaying dead men's bones, even a certain sense of the stark horror and fear experienced by the doomed men, sickened and appalled him. He could hardly walk after he left the hellhole.

He was trying to sneak by the raptor when he saw that it was fully aware of his presence this time. Its eyes were following his movements! He tried to hide behind a crystal, but the blood in his veins froze as he saw the monster rising to its feet.

Damon could not stay where he was! He had to try to escape, now or never!

He made a dash out of the chamber, past a very dead giant guardian-cobra (it had not survived the cold in its dormant condition, despite the energizing it received from a crystal), but a guardian raptor (not the king, but full giant raptor), revived enough to detect his alien presence, was swift, too, and as Damon rushed toward the entrance, he could hear the movements of the thing behind him, close on his heels.

He knew better than to pause or turn around to look, he just kept going. At full speed he burst out of the entrance, and kept going, trying to get to the cover of some boulders large enough to hide him.

There was a deafening screech as the raptor reached the open air and the sunlight, which stunned the creature for a few moments, giving Damon the window of time he needed to find a hiding place. There were shadows on the ground, moving right across the ground, that cause him to glance up as he ran for hiding. He saw the flying mast moving first to one side and then another, banging against the cliff, knocking off some of a statue's features, and two men aboard the mast fighting.

Ero had just caught Arlena, as she fell or threw herself from the ledge above, and found she was wasn't even conscious--that the surprise of a black-suited assassin joining them made it impossible to fend him off.

All he had one arm free, as he held to Arlena to keep her from sliding off the mast, and with one hand he had to defend himself and Arlena against a professional killer.

The only thing that helped them was the instability of the mast, which was not programmed for three occupants, with no adjustment being made by the guidance system for the added weight. The mast swung violently to the right and smashed against a giant's nose, chipping it. Then it swung violently in the opposite direction, nearly throwing Ero and Arlena off, and also making it impossible for the assassin, whose knife, meant to finish Ero off, sliced empty air.

Below them, Damon finished his dash to safety, squeezing into a crevice between two boulders, and he looked out and saw the mast overhead swinging and bucking from side to side as though it were a Publicatexan long-horned steer trying to throw its riders. What was this thing? He recognized Arlena, but not the two men with her, though he realized that one--the dark one-- was probably one of the agents aiming to snuff him.

The imperial archives' security raptor was poking with its beak and scratching about the base of the statues for Damon, at the same time, for it had recovered enough sight to ferret him out of his hole.

But the commotion overhead distracted it from Damon, and he was left alone as the monster thought it had sighted its quarry.

It began to beat its humongous wings, though the air pressure now was so low it was not going to fly as easily and swiftly as it had thousands of years earlier in a far different kind of world. Leaping upwards, however, it gained some height as the mast dropped almost within the grasp of its huge, snapping beak. Some flaps of its wings put it even closer to the prey.

What Damon saw next took his breath away, for he was sure the raptor was going to succeed. The mast-bot swung again, to one side and then another, dropping further down, and then gave a violent jerk--at the same moment that Ero gave his assailant a kick right in his sternum--and the spy chief sailed into the air, head over backwards, straight into the open beak of the giant raptor below.

So much for the popup and its half-hearted "weaponry"--"Put in Recycle Bin," "Delete," "Reserve For Other Uses"!--instead of "Kill," "Vaporize," and "Exile to Antarctica".

Yet Ero chalked up his winning score a little too soon. An agent of the Shadow's caliber, who had put hundreds of enemy agents and any number of world leaders six feet under, wasn't going to go whimpering and limp-wristed into final retirement, even when shaken by the beak like a mouse being played with. No, he was going out--if he had to--with his boots on!

Cursing from the pain of the crushing beak, he still managed to free his C.S.A.-made luger and pumped a whole clip of rapid-fire rounds into the monster's head.

As the soft-headed slugs tore through its brainpan, the fowl security dick screeched to high heaven, flapping its wings, without letting go of its prey. Then it closed its beak with a snap like a steel trap, severing the hapless Shadow cleanly in half, who thusly ended his long, nefarious career with his designer boots on, not lying back with an iced absinthe in hand, a chocolate-hued Jamaikan mistress in the other, in a lounge chair beside a posh Jamaikan hotel's pool as he had planned.

The next moment the wounded raptor collapsed, fluttering and throwing itself at the giants' feet, screeching and croaking all the while in its death-agony.

But since immortal monsters of Atlantis I, even with craniums full of lead like this raptor, do not expire so easily, having already lived thousands of years and thousands more in a dormant state, it wasn't a death-agony--not yet anyway. When Ero got control back at the mast, and was trying to fly Arlena anyplace where he could let her down before she awoke and saw him and maybe had a heart attack, the monster revived. He could see it running, flapping its wings frantically, then sail off a cliff, nearly colliding with mountain peaks as if it wanted to get away at any cost from whatever the nasty thing was that had pierced its skull and given it such a splitting headache.

Ero had more things to be concerned about now than a two-winged monster from the prehistoric past flying into a world where it clearly did not belong and could not fit. Arlena, who hung limply in his arms, would soon regain consciousness. What then?

He had to think fast about his next actions. If she should see him, what kind of shock would that be after what she had just been through? How could he explain himself and Wally's impossible flying contraption to her? He was supposed to remain beyond the glass ceiling Wally had set, which, like a one-way window, kept him invisible, but which he could see easily see through without being observed. That worked perfectly well as long as he kept on the other side of the window, but now that he had directly, again, involved himself and was no longer a spectator, he was about to change things dangerously beyond Wally's programming, to the point where anything not very nice could happen. He would be responsible. Was he prepared for that?

He had second thoughts about diving in to her life. Glorious as this woman was in his arm, she was not his. He had absolutely no right to her, he knew. Damon was somewhere below, hidden by the rocks, no doubt watching them, anxious to get to her.

Ero thought then that he could let her down on the ground, but how would she get back up to the road? It would be a dangerous climb for her, perhaps impossible. No, he had to take her back up, even beyond where she had been when he first saw her. He would find a spot where he could leave her, but not so hidden that Damon could not find her easily.

He had to move quickly, he knew, and Wally's trusty popup this time made the necessary adjustments in the guidance system, and in a few moments they arrived at the top of the statues and hovered over various possible landing sites. He scanned the vicinity of the temple ruins, and moving closer saw the agent's car standing empty, a door left open and keys in the ignition, and thought for a moment of putting her in it where she would be comfortable until Damon could reach her. The spies had all been eliminated, so there was no chance they would return and find her there. He was about to set down but then saw something else, a cycle with a sidecar, parked behind a big rock. That was just the place for her. As for agents' vehicle, he knew Damon could drive it back to town, since the keys were in the ignition.

He soon gently laid her in the back of the sidecar. It was hard to leave such a lovely woman, but he knew it was best.