They stood like that for a time that neither could measure, lips on lips, hands everywhere and anywhere on each other's bodies. Blade's hands gripped Sela's firm buttocks, while her hands strayed from the small of his back into his groin. Blade felt a rising heat there and felt dampness in the fine hair between Sela's thighs. That hair seemed to have a life of its own as it curled around Blade's rising erection, enticing, inflaming, maddening.

The madness was more than either could continue to endure where they were. Blade wasn't sure whether they lay down of their own free will or whether their knees simply folded under them. He found himself on his back in the grass, while Sela straddled his thighs and slid down upon him in the same moment that he thrust smoothly up into her. There was a moment's tension, a moment's resistance, then an easy joining. For another moment Blade held himself absolutely still, terribly certain that with Sela's warmth around him he would explode if he made a single movement. Then the matter was out of his control, as Sela began to move upon him.

She moved up and down and from side to side, twisting all of her body from her thighs up to her head. She threw her head forward until her hair flowed down over her breasts, then threw it back until the hair flowed down to the base of her spine. She tossed her arms about, clutching now at Blade, now at the empty air, now burying her fingers in her hair, now stroking her own breasts. She seemed to be turning from a woman into an animal, and then into something that was not even flesh and blood, only passion cleverly disguised.

As she changed, Sela drew Blade steadily after her, until he could not be sure that he was still part of the world around him. All his being was becoming part of the woman above him, as all of her being was becoming part of him.

They merged until it seemed that their bodies must blur, melt, and run together. In that moment they reached their peak, held that peak for another moment, then fell down the other side of it with flame before their eyes and thunder roaring in their ears. They could not have told one moment from another and one sensation from another to save their lives.

Slowly the world around them returned. Blade felt grass prickling against his bare-skin, sweat trickling down it, the breeze on his face, the warmth and softness and weight of Sela sprawled across him. He raised his head enough to see that she was sound asleep, little gasps from her open mouth stirring the hair on his chest. It seemed to Blade that Sela was doing a sensible thing, and he did the same.

Eventually they woke and took the baths that had been so pleasantly delayed. They were hungry after that and emptied the picnic box in record time. Their hands met as they stowed away the plates and bottles, and the meeting of the hands awoke desire again.

They spent all afternoon making love there by the stream. Blade saw how the sunlight creeping through the leaves dappled Sela's body, how her lips danced with exquisite abandon up and down his body, how bits of leaves got caught in her hair as it grew steadily more tangled.

Eventually the afternoon came to an end. Blade had reached his limits, and Sela was getting ravenously hungry. Since the nearest food was more than forty miles away in Mak'loh, there was nothing to do but pack up and go home.

They flew back to the city as the western sky began to glow red. Blade flew in a complete circle around the city before landing. He contemplated the new and marvelous colors the sunset gave to the soaring towers. He also contemplated the best way of using a flyer in his plan to release Mak'loh from its living death.

Sela laid a hand on his arm and smiled. It was a lazy, sensuous, satisfied smile, warm with memory and also with anticipation. It told Blade a great deal. Above all, it told Blade that Sela had no intention of letting another fifty years go by before she joined Physically with a man. In fact, she wasn't going to wait even fifty hours.

He'd brought her to a new awareness of the delights of the Physical, and now she was half in love with him, or at least half addicted to him. So she might take what he was about to do to her city as the grossest treachery, a blow too brutal to endure.

Blade didn't like the thought, but he didn't see that he had any real choice. Mak'loh was too far gone for there to be any safe or easy way to save it.

Chapter 16

Blade waited until Sela was so deeply asleep in the great bed that an earthquake couldn't have awakened her. Then he slipped out of the bed, went out into the corridor, and ran to the room where he'd left his equipment.

He quickly pulled it on. There was a complete combat outfit, from helmet to boots, including a shock rifle, grenade thrower, sack of extra grenades and power cells, and a Watcher control. It was just possible that by morning every man and woman in the city of Mak'loh would be ready to kill him on sight and there would be nothing he could do to change their minds. In that case, staying around would be a singularly pointless form of suicide and a quick retreat over the Wall into the Warlands the only sensible thing to do.

Neither androids nor human beings paid any attention to Blade as he walked down the corridor and rode up the shaft to the roof of the building. Some of the people in the Houses of Peace were vaguely aware that there was a stranger in Mak'loh, a man said to be from another of the Cities of Peace where life was very different from what it was here. More Physical, or so the rumors ran. However, no one had been sufficiently curious about this Physical stranger to speak to him.

That would certainly change tonight. By dawn everyone in Mak'loh would have heard of Richard Blade of England, no matter what they thought of him.

He stepped out on the roof, walked to his flyer, and checked it carefully. He'd loaded it with extra food and water, extra power cells for the fan motors, a tent sewn together out of old robes and blankets, and a sleeping bag. He might be able to fly out of Mak'loh tonight, if he did have to leave. In that case, why not fly out ready to live as comfortably as possible until he returned to Home Dimension? Blade was not a man to run around naked and live on raw meat merely for his own amusement.

He lifted the flyer into the night sky and climbed until it would be impossible to see him and hard to hear him from the ground. Then he set a course for the field-generator building and flew slowly and levelly.

He would have to succeed the first time, or not at all. Even if he personally survived a failure tonight, he would have lost the necessary advantage of surprise. All the vital installations would be heavily defended and the Authority on the alert. The soldier androids might not be very good, but there were far too many of them for one man to face if they had orders to deal with him.

Over the industrial area of the city, Blade dropped to rooftop height and slowed down until he was practically drifting along. At last he saw the six-hundred-foot tower that held the generators for the force fields looming out of the darkness ahead. He climbed slightly, skimmed in over the edge of the roof, and landed. Instantly he was out of the flyer and flattening himself on the rough pebbled surface of the roof. He lay searching the darkness until he was certain that the roof was empty.

Blade had landed on the roof because he expected it to be unguarded, not because it was closest to the control room. That lay five hundred feet down a spiraling ramp. From the control room, another ramp led to the ground level. A dozen androids guarded that ramp. It was assumed that no one could possibly come down from above except other members of the Authority, and they could not possibly be dangerous to anything or anyone in Mak'loh.