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conducted in the lengthening shadows. Not only boys and young women but even some of the older women were staked out on the ground for the leering lines of riders.
    Sunset found Reave walking slowly down the main street, trying to ignore as much of what was going on as possible. He had had enough. There was no doubt in his mind that he had to find a way out quickly. As he drew near the ziggurat and Baptiste's tent, he wondered how the Torch would react if he once again climbed the steps and took a second, longer, and more searching look at what was inside the stone structure. Such a move might well push their leader over the edge, and Reave could well imagine that he could find himself a candidate for the gallows. On the other hand, there was a streak of curiosity in his personality that would dearly love to go inside the ziggurat and see what Anaheim had been up to. While he was standing and debating with himself, he heard Baptiste's raised voice from inside the tent.
    'That's it! That's what I want, and that's what will be done. Tomorrow we look for the generator and take it down.'
    That was too much for Reave. He might have become inured to the death and the violence, but this was something else. The idea of taking down the stasis generator and letting the whole valley revert to nonmatter was close to blasphemy. The world had lost enough to the nothings, and if the stories about the disrupters were to be believed, more was lost every day. For a human being to wantonly revert stabilized matter had to be a betrayal of the whole physical universe. Something crystallized within Reave. Not only was he going to get away from Vlad Baptiste and his madness, somewhere along the line he was going to do his best to see that it was stopped forever. He wondered what would happen if he simply pulled out a pistol and shot Baptiste on the spot. It was a dashing, romantic idea, but he was well aware that there was still enough blind loyalty among the men for him never to walk out of there alive. He could not even make a run for it without a stasis generator of his own.
    Reave had noticed before that when a resolve really crystallized the way his had, a means of making it happen often was not slow in presenting itself. And, indeed, he had to wait only a couple of hours. The pseudosun had gone down behind the mountains, and the still-smoldering ruins of the stasis town had become a scene from hell. Although he had kept out of the murder and torture, Reave had not refrained from making a fair start on getting as drunk as he could. It was one way to put a certain distance between himself, the gruesome images on every side of him, and the unrelenting throb of the victory drums. He was looking for a second bottle of the fiery malt when he spotted one of the scouts riding in, coming through the blackened and blasted stone wall where the first clash with the militia had taken place. The man had a stasis generator, and his female mount also had one on its chest, held in place with a martingale strap. Reave knew that his chance had come. He had only to unseat the man, take his lizard and SG, and hightail it for the nothings before a pursuit could be organized. He estimated that the nothings were no more than seven or eight minutes away at a flat-out gallop, and once he was in the nothings, they would never be able to find him.
    The scout was riding slowly, and Reave changed direction so that their paths would intersect. It did not require any acting skill on Reave's part to appear a fraction drunker than he really was. As the scout approached, Reave stumbled and swayed and brandished his almost empty bottle.
    'Hey, buddy, y' wanna drink?'
    The scout shook his head. 'I gotta report to the chief first. He'll have my head if he smells booze on my breath.'
    Reave had come right up beside the lizard and its rider. At the last minute he lurched and pretended to fall against the side of the beast. The scout, already in an evil temper from having been