His face went completely blank, the last thing I’d expected it to do. I went on, tripping a little over my own tongue, ‘‘They said they’d—flay me—if I didn’t, so I did. They must have been determined to finish me off anyway because they came back and pretended it was the wrong one—Then Kaselm helped me escape but he gave the captain of the boat all that money to go to waste, because I had to get off and I swam here—Kaselm is too clever and powerful to suffer for helping me, he rules a whole kingdom underground—but I have brought trouble with me—And I have told the formula—You must know—1 am sorry that I am a coward, and have made it impossible for you to destroy Atlan.” I really was sorry, too. I felt utterly and completely maudlin, as though it wasn’t enough to offer myself for execution in return for rescue from alien torture, I had to be enormously remorsefully overcome by my ruining all the plans I had always hated.

“You have thought, all these months, that you knew the formula? I can understand your believing it in the first shock, which I took advantage of, but that you never realized afterwards—You are really incredibly naive.” As I had just finished thinking that of him I was rather nettled.

He was drawing two fingers across his chin when I looked up at him again. “Wait a moment,” he said. He got up and went out, bare-chested and barefoot. He was away half an hour, as it turned out. I was still awake but very drowsy when he came back. I was lying huddled in the bed, curled as though in a dark, wonderful, safe womb, luxuriating in safety as though I could quench thirst, feed hunger and ease pain with it.

He sat down almost on my feet and I twisted to regard him.

I could feel the clearness of my own eyes. He gazed into them with all the darkness of his.

“Can you sleep?”

“I think I no longer need to. I would sooner you talked, General if you don’t actually despise the idea. I take it I’m no longer facing imminent death?”

“You never faced it from me. Well—not since we reached Southernland.” He said, “Floss-hair.” Then he laughed. To a certain extent, his eyes were glittering and his voice vibrant. He

was near excitement—he was waiting for something I didn’t know about and I was connected with a kind of expectation too. At the same time he was lazily amused about everything —whatever everything was.

He leaned back, stretched, the now dimming flames delirious on his calm, vibrant muscles. He has crazy elbows which go into sort of veined, mild whirlpools when he straightens his arms. His crocodile-strength is apparent in every part of his fabulous, almost mythical body.