As soon as he was safely out of sight, however, he turned again, and worked his way back past the sentry lines and in among the houses of the village. The small but very bright moon which the Harmonites called The Eye of the Lord, was just rising, and throwing, through the ruined walls, alternate patches of tricky silver and black. Slipping in and out of the black places, he began patiently to search the place, house by house, and building by building.

It was a slow and arduous process, carried out the way he was doing it, in complete silence. And the moon mounted in the sky. It was nearly four hours later that he came upon what he was searching for.

In the moonlit center of a small building’s roofless shell, stood Hugh Killien, looking very tall and efficient in his chameleon battle-dress. And close to him—almost close enough to be in his arms—was Anea, the Select of Kultis. Beyond them both, blurred by action of the polarizer that had undoubtedly been the means of allowing it to carry her invisibly to this spot, was a small flying platform.

“. . . Sweet,” Hugh was saying, his resonant voice pitched so low it barely carried to the ears of Donal, shrouded in shadow outside the broken wall, “Sweet, you must trust me. Together we can stop him; but you must let me handle it. His power is tremendous—”

“I know, I know!” she interrupted, fiercely, all but wringing her hands. “But every day we wait makes it more dangerous for you, Hugh. Poor Hugh—” gently she raised her hand to touch his cheek, “what I’ve dragged you into.”

“Dragged? Me?” Hugh laughed, low and confidently. “I went into this with my eyes open.” He reached out for her. “For you—”

But she slipped away from him.

“Now’s not the time for that,” she said. “Anyway, it’s not me you’re doing this for. It’s Kultis. He’s not going to use me,” she said fiercely, “to get my world under his thumb!”

“Or course, it’s for Kultis,” said Hugh. “But you are Kultis, Anea. You’re everything I love about the Exotics. But don’t you see; all we have to work on are your suspicions. You think he’s planning against the Bond, against Sayona, himself. But that s not enough for us to go to Kultis with.”

“But what can I do?” she cried. “I can’t use his own methods against him. I can’t lie, or cheat, or set agents on him while he still holds my contract. I . . . I just can’t. That’s what being Select means!” She clenched her fists. “I’m trapped by my own mind, my own body.” She turned on him suddenly. “You said when I first spoke to you, two months ago you said you had evidence!”