From the single window in the wall so far above his head there was framed the sky. What life, other than Guild men in flitters, rode that sky? Awkwardly at first and with little success he thought of sky, and vaguely of a winged creature which rode the winds there. He knew little or nothing of birds. Their like did not abound in the Limits, save a few lice-covered eaters of carrion haunting some of the darker ways.

There was something about the —

A trace of thought! Farree poured all his strength into touching that, wrapping about it, finding its source. This was an air dweller, a flyer – and again it was hunger and the lust for a hunt that moved the unknown. He strove to see, but the difference in their sight organs was too much or —

It was as if someone had pressed a button. He could see: the earth spread below him like a great floor. The buildings on the knoll were a gray-black stain with flickers of light here and there. He could —

"Who?"

The hunger and the desire to hunt had been cut off as sharply as the change in vision had come to him. There was – another!

"Thassa?" He thought that.

"Thassa." There was no mistaking the sharp assent which came to his single-word question. "Who?"

Farree strove to mind picture himself in all his misshapenness. He could not be sure if the other were to follow him as he had followed the trace of the flying thing.

"Here!" That was no bird thought; rather it spoke in his own mind even as he strove to contact it a second time.

"No!" He had respect for the Guild. Mind shielded they might be, but in dealing with the Thassa they might also have alarms that could betray such an entrance as much as if an enemy of his captors rode into the gate.

"Not so." The answer came so firm and loud that Farree uncoiled and looked sharply at the door, almost sure that had been uttered aloud rather than by mind speech. "You are – "

There came no other word for a long breath or two. Then with the same clear sharpness that mind voice said: "We are on a level not well known – not known." There seemed to be almost an aura of surprise in that. "They have their safeguards, but those are for minds such as theirs. They will not know. What has happened?"

"Thassa you are," Parree thought back slowly. There was no mistaking the kinship of this voice to the one which had come to them earlier in the ship. "Why?"

"Why? Because you are open to us and all else is closed save vermin of the walls and that which flies. Who are these and what is their purpose?"

He was sure now that this was one of the four who had stood in judgment over Maelen at the gathering. Perhaps the one who had sealed his ears to that intolerable dirge that the people had sung back in the audience chamber.

Though he would have wished the Lady Maelen that was his own wish – though the Thassa meant hardly more to him than a name, yet what was threatened touched those he knew. He ordered his thoughts quickly and strove to relive in his mind that meeting with the Commander.

"So." The mind voice had but that comment. "And they think to perhaps use you as bait in some trap?"

"Which will not work," he answered quickly. "What am I that any should venture for me here? But they bring other Machines —"

"Machines!" The other voice made that sound like an oath. "Already they have profaned the Old Place with their flyers, and now they would seek to use other things. But have hope yourself, little one. I say this and it is never a thing lightly promised, though you do not know us well enough to understand that. The Song has been sung in your hearing. Now you are under the wands of the Singers and what comes to you also touches us. You are not forgotten. Think you on that and be steady as you have been!"

Abruptly, as with the flying thing, the voice was gone, and he had a strange sensation as if in some manner it had drawn that which was the inner part of him a short way after it. But no, that was no escape. He was still crouched here – Dung of the Limits. He could not see that there was any hope of escape. Were he on his home world, a number of things would come to mind; here was nothing.

He wondered over that promise, if promise it had been. From Maelen, he might have believed in it and taken heart again. But from one he did not know – the many sorrows of the past made him doubt. They might wish to help him, he allowed that. But that they could do anything he did not believe.

Thus it was his own fight. He thought of that creature that had run in the walls – if there were many of them and if they could all be aroused to attack some food supply. What might he gain from such a skirmish? He had no idea but he filed that possibility away. There was at least one flying thing he had touched – though it might be wholly under the control of the Thassa and might not be within reach again. If only he had Bojor!

Though even if he could summon that giant to him he doubted that he would. A laser would bring the bartle quick and painful death and avail him nothing. Once more he rolled himself into a ball and tried to shut out the thoughts from his mind to sleep.

At first he thought that sleep was impossible. His mind kept repeating that interview with the Commander and his helplessness as a prisoner. But many times before he had carried fears and torments into sleep, and this time it was also in the past. This was as clear as a mind picture and very vivid, so that he saw it all sharply and knew also that this was no dream but a fragment of sleep-unlocked memory of a time which seemed to him utterly far in the past.

He was crouched upon a bundle of dirty carpets watching two men. One of them, wearing a crumpled and much stained spacer's coverall, was —

"Lanti." The other man spoke the name even as it had come to the dreaming Farree's mind and reached across the stained table to catch a fistful of Lanti's shirt at the neck to jerk up the head which rolled loosely on the man's shoulders.

Lanti's mouth was slack with a drool of spittle from one comer, and his eyes turned up in his head. He breathed noisily. The one who held him struck a sharp slap on each side of the face.

"You blasted fool—answer me! Where did you planet then?"

But the man who was Lanti only puffed his lips and then snored. With a grunt of obscenities, the other let go of him and allowed Lanti's head to fall forward onto the table. He pounded a fist on that dirty board before him and then reached within his own jerkin and pulled out a piece of cloth. From its wrapping he shook out a scrap of something which glittered and welcomed the light in the place.

Seeing that, the dream Farree made a small movement forward and the man was instantly alert, turning to look at him. Such was the expression of demand upon his hairy face that the very small Farree gave a tiny whimpering cry and waited helplessly for a blow to follow.

However, he dreamed – not one of those broken and distorted series of pictures that had been his uneasy nightmares