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and lower. At last it came to hover above a darkenedwarehouse that clearly had seen better days. The luminous trail led from a dark Packard sedan and into a passageway that led to the rear of the building. From this noisome alley the trail led up a short flight of wooden stair and onto a rickety-looking loading dock. There, at the rolling door, the path disappeared.
    No one thought to watch the sky here at the riverside, but had an observer beenpresent he would have been astonished at what he beheld. A hatch opened in the seeming nothingness above. A figure whose shimmering scarlet garments were barely visible in the Seacoast City night appeared in the opening. The figure—a man—stepped from nowhere into nothingness. As he fell he arched forward, spreading his arms and legs. The thin but incredibly strong cloth of his costume stretchedto form a kind of parachute or glider like that of a flying squirrel.
    A moment later the Wizard landed with a muffled thump on the loading dock. He looked up at his airship and touched a control on the belt of his costume. The door in the side of the airship slid closed.
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remained on station, utterly silent, virtually invisible.
    The Wizard studied the lock on the rolling door. He smiledcontemptuously and extended his hand. Were those tools that flashed almost invisibly at the Wizard’s fingertips, or were his fingers themselves the only tools he needed?
    No matter. In seconds the tumblers of the lock snicked into place. The Crimson Wizard flattened himself on the loading platform. He slid the door upward quietly. He slipped beneath the bottom roller, then lowered the door silentlybehind himself.
    Rising to his feet, the Wizard strained to take in his surroundings. His eyes adjusted, gradually, to the miniscule level of illumination that crept through tiny openings in the structure. Clearly, it had been designed to keep prying eyes out, but by like means it was almostimpossible for anyone in the building to see without the aid of artificial illumination.
    Almost, but notimpossible.
    The Wizard found himself standing in a gloom-shrouded chamber. So huge was the structure that its farther wall disappeared into the shadows. The Wizard reached into his belt and removed a pellet hardly larger than a common BB. For so tiny an object, the pellet was strangely heavy. The Wizard drew back his scarlet-covered arm and hurled the pellet into the air. When it reached theapex of its path it burst into brilliant illumination, its color the Wizard’s trademark shimmering red.
    There was no sign of the thieves who had made off with the Crown Jewels of Lemuria. But there was something else. The Wizard dropped to the concrete floor, sniffing for spoor as would a lion in the African veldt. The thieves had been here, and not long before. But the Wizard had learned morethan that from the thin traces of their presence they had left behind. There was something about these thieves, something abnormal. They were human, after a fashion, but they were not entirely human. There was something wrong here, something inhuman.
    And there was something else. More precisely, there was someone else. There was someone with the thieves but not one of them. And that someone wasa woman.
    The Wizard rose to his feet.
    She was lovely. Her features were regular, her skin a rich olive color, her hair a gleaming jet black. Her costume was minimal, a single white garment that did little to conceal her magnificent figure. A broad belt of gold encrusted with gems glittered in the ruddy illumination of the Wizard’s arcing flare.
    She sat upon a throne, a magnificent tiara ofprecious stones resting upon her brow.
    And surrounding the goddess-like figure, a retinue of half-human servitors. The leader of these beings held before the woman a weirdly carven bowl from which rose thick fumes.
    All of this the Wizard observed in the few seconds that his flare illuminated the great room. The flare dimmed as it arced downward, leaving a