The vessel's course, by Glawen's best determination, would bring it to the north pass.

Glawen returned at full speed down the lagoon to his sloop.

Under the circumstances, lacking a weapon, he could not risk confrontation, and instant flight might be necessary. Once out to sea he would be safe. Downwind or on a reach the catamaran could catch him in any kind of a wind; in a calm or upwind, his power unit would push him smartly away from the unpowered catamaran.

Climbing aboard the sloop, Glawen slung binoculars over his shoulder and hoisted himself up the mast. Focusing the binoculars on the arriving vessel, he saw it to be a two-masted catamaran sixty or sixty-five feet long large for a Yip fishing boat and to Glawen's great relief, its course would take it to the north pass. He stood in little risk of detection: against a background of thorn bush and semaphore dendron the slender gray mast of the sloop would be indistinguishable.

Glawen watched until the catamaran disappeared around the curve of the island, then lowered himself to the deck. He stood looking indecisively up the lagoon. Prudence urged that he depart Thurben Island instantly. On the other hand, if he walked cautiously up the beach, keeping to the shade of the thorn bush thickets, he might learn the identity of those aboard the catamaran. If he were discovered, he could retreat instantly, take himself aboard the sloop and sail away. So what would it be? Prudent withdrawal or a scouting expedition up the beach? Had he a handgun, the response would have been automatic. Lacking a weapon of any sort, save a knife from the galley, he deliberated ten seconds.

"I

am a Clattuc," Glawen told himself.

"Blood, nature and tradition all indicate the way I must act."

Without further ado he tucked the galley carving knife, with a sharp six-inch blade, into his belt, took himself ashore in the dinghy and jogged up the beach, keeping close under the overhanging thickets of thorn bush

As he progressed he kept a careful eye focused ahead of him, in case someone from aboard the catamaran also should be exploring the beach. But he saw no one, which relieved him of the need to choose between uncomfortable options.

The masts of the catamaran became visible; a few hundred yards farther the dock and the vessel itself came into view.

Glawen scrambled up the slope at the back of the beach, pushed through a gap in the thorn bush and proceeded behind the fringe of thicket, which now provided him cover.

Presently he dropped to his hands and knees and crawled carefully closer, to within fifty yards of the pavilion.

Here he dropped flat and surveyed the scene through his binoculars.

Four golden-skinned Yips moved back and forth between boat and pavilion. Already they had brought ashore cushions, rugs and wicker chairs, and now set up a long table. They wore only short white kinles and seemed very young, although black hoods concealed their heads and faces.

Six other men, of mature years, sat in the wicker chairs.

They wore loose pale gray robes and, like the Yips, black hoods which concealed their identities. They sat composed and silent: men of substance or even importance, to judge by their postures and the poise of their heads. They made no communication among themselves;

each almost pointedly isolating himself from the others.

Glawen was unable to divine their place of origin. None were Yips; none would seem to be Naturalists from Throy and, almost certainly, none derived from Araminta Station.

The air tingled with imminence. The six gray-robed men sat stiff and still, their hoods creating an atmosphere of eerie unreality. Glawen no longer apprehended danger; the four Yips and six hooded men were preoccupied with their own affairs. Glawen watched fascinated, his mind sheering away from speculation.

A bizarre new element augmented the situation. From the boat came a tall heavy-boned woman, broad of shoulder, massive of leg and arm, of a sort totally different from both Yips and hooded men. She wore a black mask rather than a hood, which concealed her nose and eyes, but left her heavy flat cheeks and anvil of a chin bare. The skin of these areas and along her bare arms showed oyster white in color, while a ruff of sandy hair thrust an inch above her broad scalp. The only indications of femininity were two flabby breasts and heavy hips encased in loose short trousers.

The woman strode to the end of the dock, looked around the area. She spoke a few words to the Yips; two of them ran to the boat and returned with wooden crates which they placed on the table. Lifting the lids, they brought out flasks of wine and goblets, which they filled and tendered to the six seated men. The other two brought branches from the thorn bush thicket and kindled a fire.

The woman returned along the dock to the boat. She jumped aboard and disappeared into the cabin. A few moments later, a group of Yip girls emerged, followed by the woman. The girls moved uncertainly down the dock, looking dubiously right and left, and over their shoulders at the grim figure of the woman behind them. There were six, at the flower of their youth, with wide topaz eyes, delicate features and soft honey-colored hair, and now Glawen divined the source of the bones on the bottom of the lagoon, and he thought he could guess what was about to happen.

The six hooded men sat watching silently and motionless. The six girls looked around the area, their expressions limpidly innocent, but with uneasiness starting to form. At a terse word from the woman, they sat down in the sand.

The nature of the occasion was now clear to Glawen. As he watched, frozen in position, the events of the afternoon proceeded, with inexorable ease and finesse.

Glawen at last could remain no longer. In the bleakest of moods and sickness of the spirit he retreated the way he had come and returned to the sloop, bringing with him the shore line which he had untied from the trunk of a thorn bush

Syrene dropped into the west and Glawen sat pondering what he had seen, and calculated what best he should do. Had he a weapon the planning would have been easier.

The sun sank; twilight settled over Thurben Island, and presently darkness. Glawen cranked aboard his anchor and on minimum power eased the sloop northward up the lagoon, guided by the white beach, pale in the starlight. Below darted a cloud of phosphorescent falorials, each like a length of heavy silver wire four inches long, casting a moving glow which illuminated the bottom.

Ahead, along the shore, appeared the flicker of the bonfire.

Glawen carefully lowered his anchor over the side, so that the chain made no sound. He studied the beach through his binoculars. There was still a degree of sluggish activity.

Glawen waited an hour, then stepped down into his dinghy;

with the impeller at a quarter-power and the wake the softest of gurgles, he moved at slow speed toward the dock, keeping well offshore. Below darted ten thousand falorials in a moving bubble of green-yellow glow.

The bonfire had burned low. Glawen turned the dinghy shoreward toward the dock. Foot by foot he moved across the dark lagoon, and at last eased up to the catamaran. The hulls touched; holding to the catamaran's gunwale, Glawen listened. No sound. He made the dinghy fast to a shroud, and in all stealth climbed aboard the catamaran. He stood poised. Still no sound. He went to the aft mooring line, cut it with his knife and threw it aside. Crouching, he stole along the deck to the bow and cut the forward mooring line.

There were no spring lines; the catamaran floated free.

Yeasty exhilaration rose in Glawen's throat; he ran crouching back toward his dinghy.

A thud, a scrape, a massive presence. On the offside hull loomed the woman, who through some sensitivity had discovered that all was not well. By starlight she saw Glawen and took note of the gap between catamaran and dock.

Uttering a choked cry of rage, she sprang across the cabin roof and flung herself on Glawen, arms forward, fingers bent into hooks. Glawen tried to dodge back but was caught up among the shrouds, and the woman was on him. She emitted an inarticulate cry of triumph and seized him around the neck.

Glawen sagged limp-legged, his face crammed into her belly, breathing the reek of her body. Wildly he thought: "This cannot be! This is not my fate!" He straightened his knees and drove his head into her jaw. She grunted; her arms slackened. Glawen struck out wildly, and clawed the domino down so that it covered her eyes. She groped and tore it away. Glawen thrust with his knife and buried the blade in her abdomen. She called out in horror and clutched at the handle. Glawen braced himself with one foot against the cabin roof, pushed with all his strength, to send the woman stumbling backward--against the gunwale and over, flat on her back into the water. Glawen, panting and gasping, looked down. The glow of the falorials illuminated her face; she had grown what appeared to be an instant beard of writhing silver wires. For an instant Glawen looked down into her eyes, which stared up through the water aghast at this terrible thing which was happening to her. Glawen saw her forehead; it was marked with a curious black symbol: a two-pronged fork with a short handle, the prongs turned inward toward each other.

Falorial poison immobilized the woman; silver wires grew from every pan of her body. Air belched from her lungs; she sank slowly to the bottom.

Glawen looked toward the shore. The sounds, muffled by the whisper of the current through the pilings, had troubled no one.

Glawen, still shaken and a trifle dazed, lowered himself carefully into the dinghy. He tied a line to the stem head of the catamaran and made the other end fast to the stern ring of the dinghy. Applying power to the impeller, he towed the catamaran south down the lagoon to where he had anchored the sloop.

He transferred the towline to one of the after mooring cleats on the sloop, hoisted the dinghy aboard and set off to the south, towing the catamaran astern.

Back at the pavilion someone at last had noticed the absence of the catamaran. Glawen heard far shouts of consternation, and smiled to himself.

Attentive to the glimmer of surf on his right hand, where ocean swells broke over the reef, Glawen steered slowly southward. Where the line of white foam ended, Glawen found the pass through the reef. He drifted out the channel and gained the freedom of the open sea:

forever away from accursed Thurben Island.

Glawen continued to tow the catamaran under power for two hours, then hoisted sail and let the wind blow the boats to the south.

Remembering the smell of the woman when she had grappled him, Glawen removed all his clothes and scrubbed himself well. Donning fresh garments, he ate bread and cheese, and drank half a flask of wine. Now, feeling in a most curious mood, he went up on deck to sit for an hour in the cockpit.

At last he stirred, reefed the sail, checked the towline, made all secure, went below to his bunk and presently fell asleep.

In the morning, Glawen boarded the catamaran. He found nothing to indicate identities, either of the woman or of the six masked men.

Glawen transferred the catamaran's complement of navigation instruments to the sloop; no doubt they had been stolen from Araminta Station originally.