The green glow of the lamps filled the cabin with eerie, sharp shadows. The pigs were squealing, terrified, arching in their restraints. Hork, all his arrogance and cockiness gone, had backed against a wall, his coverall rumpled and stained, his hands fruitlessly seeking a weapon. It was as if the inhabitants of the "Flying Pig," human and animal alike, had radiated away from the heart of the cylindrical craft, like fragments of a slow explosion. Dura blinked, trying to clear her vision. No, not an explosion, she saw; hovering at the geometric center of the cylinder — the focus of all this terror — was another person. A third human, here where it was impossible for any human to be...

Or rather, she realized as she stared more closely, it was — something — with the form of a human. She saw a bulky woman, evidently older than herself, dressed in what might have been a Fisherman's tunic. But the material glowed, softly crimson, and it looked seamless. Hair, deep black, was tied tightly around her scalp. A purple glow shone out of eyecups, nostrils and mouth.

...But there was something in those eyecups, she saw. There was flesh in there, spheres which moved independently of the face, like animals trapped inside the skull.

She felt the leaves rise in her throat; she wanted to scream, scrabble at the walls of the craft to escape this. She held herself as still as she could, forcing herself to study the vision.

"It's like a woman," she whispered to Hork. "A human. But that's impossible. How could a human survive down here? There's no Air to breathe, or..."

Hork sounded impatient, though his breath still rattled with fear. "This isn't a human, obviously. It's... something else, using the form of a human. A human-shaped sac of fire."

"What else? What is it?"

"How am I supposed to know?"

"Do you think it's Xeelee?"

"No human has ever seen a Xeelee. Anyway, the Xeelee are just legend."

Astonishingly, she found anger building inside her. At a time like this, she felt patronized. She glared at him and hissed, "Legends are why you brought me here, remember?"

The Chair of Parz City shot an exasperated glance at her; then he turned to face the woman-thing, and when he spoke Dura found herself admiring the steadiness of his tone. "You," he challenged. "Intruder. What do you want with us?"

The silence, broken by the wheezing of the pigs, seemed to stretch; Dura, staring at the ugly flaps of flesh which covered the woman-thing's ear-cavities, wondered if it could hear Hork, still less answer him.

Then the woman-thing opened its mouth. Light poured out of its straining lips, and a sound emerged — deeper than any voice originating in a human chest — and, at first, formless.

But, Dura realized, wondering, words were beginning to emerge.