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then the scarlet and gold bird shifted and changed and flowed and the blueness of the Scorpion enfolded me.
    Falling . . . Falling . . . Dropping down and down . . .
    I felt the dusty earth at my back. I heard the shrieks and cries of battle and I knew that this battle was not the one into which I wished to plunge but that other, strange, uninteresting, unwanted battle on the island of Vilasca.
    I sprang up.
    Then, instantly, I realized this great gift of the Star Lords.
    For the very first time on Kregen I had been transported and had not arrived naked. I wore all my battle gear, the trappings in which I had flown off to fight the shanks.
    "I curse you, Star Lords! This small thing is no great gift to me! I defy you! I defy you!" Without a thought, without a prayer, I sprang into the second voller. She went up at full lever, and I did not even bother to look back.
    Again I set her toward the east and south and this time I did pray, pray that I could arrive in time to see my Delia and Drak alive, to hold my dear Delia in my arms once more.
    A ripping sound brought me around, the rapier instantly in my fist. The long barbed serrated head of an arrow thrust up through the floor of the voller. I cursed the thing and thrust the rapier back. Bending to pick up the arrow, dragging it through, I thought to assuage the pangs of agony tearing at my mind by learning what I might of the shtarkins.
    The hateful voice croaked by my ear as I straightened up.
    "The Star Lords are most wroth. You have sinned mightily." The Gdoinye perched on the rim of the voller. His feathers glittered in the light of the suns, glittering golden and scarlet in that streaming opaline radiance.
    I said nothing. I whipped the longsword from my back, hefted it in that cunning Krozair grip, swung it full-force horizontally.
    Had the Gdoinye been a mortal bird he would have been sheared in two. He skipped lightly away and the great blade hissed through thin air.
    "You have made a mistake, Dray Prescot, and now you must pay. No man defies the Everoinye!"
    "I do! I, Dray Prescot, onker of onkers, defy any man who seeks to destroy my Delia!"
    "Then are you a doomed man!"
    The Gdoinye vanished. The blueness swelled. The enormous form of the Scorpion swooped upon me, radiant blueness washed all around me, washed me away, washed my senses away so that as I fell I fell soundlessly and hopelessly, for the very last words of that inhuman bird were: "Back to Earth, Dray Prescot, get-onker of onkers, back to Earth — to stay!"
Chapter Four
    Soldiering, science and secrets
    Back to Earth — to stay!
    What a fool! What a fool!
    Yet I could not have done other than I had.
    I should have helped those poor devils of Vilasca. The island owed allegiance to Trylon Werfed, a man I knew only moderately well, a man against whom I had heard no whispers of plots against the Emperor. I should have jumped in and helped them beat off those damned Leem Lovers and then I could have taken voller for Delia.
    But I am me, Dray Prescot, as thick-skulled a man as ever lived on two worlds. As I made my way back to civilization I reflected that I could not have done other than I had, and to pretend otherwise was folly. Dangerous folly. I admitted that I must have grown mighty proud and aloof in all these ridiculous titles and ranks I had amassed through no fault of my own. Well, leave out that I had deliberately made myself King of Djanduin. That is true. But the reasons for that decision were rooted in Khokkak the Meddler at first, and then in a sober understanding of a duty laid upon me. No, I had grown fat and comfortable and supine, and now I must pay the price of arrogance and pride. But to stay on Earth — to stay!
    I reflected on that. The Star Lords had dumped me down all naked and miserable in Morocco, which was in a fine old state of unrest. The locals were standing up for their rights, and the French from Algeria, which they had taken in the 1830’s, were trying to take over there. By