"Then you'll take him?"

"It appears I have no choice since he loves her."

Unseen in the darkness, Hawkins smirked. He'd known all along that Klyd would accept only someone who had a personal reason to find her, and he'd long suspected Valleroy's interest in her to be more than casual.

Valleroy moved to lean against the rock face. To him, Sime ethics-'' were sometimes more confusing than Sime temperament.

Approaching swiftly through the dark. Klyd spoke rapid words, "Mr. Valleroy, you were attacked by a Sime berserk with need. You drove him off with this." He snatched Hawkins' knife from its sheath and presented it, hilt first. "But you did not succeed before he drew selyn and burned you deeply. Here, take it."

Valleroy plucked the weapon from the Sime's grip and forced himself to breathe.

"Now." Klyd splashed restively back and forth as he spoke, his voice tense but coldly deliberate. "The fluctuating fields attracted my attention as I rode by on my way home. I found you unconscious and brought you in for treatment. When you are fully recovered, I will offer you freedom. If I don't have a good lead on the girl by then, you'll have to refuse to leave. Give me a good reason you wouldn't want to return!"

"Uh... I'm wanted by the law for... say, a murder I didn't commit?"

"Very well, then." The Sime came toward Valleroy with that disturbing swiftness so characteristic of his race. "This is going to hurt. But worse than that, it is going to frighten you senseless. Are you certain you still want to go?"

"Are you certain there's no other way to get there?"

"Yes."

"What are you going to do to him?" asked Hawkins. "Kill him... almost. It is unfortunate you force this task on me tonight of all nights, but that can't be helped. I shall do my best, and you, Mr. Valleroy, must aid me by restraining your fear. You may expect to be unconscious for about three hours, and when you awaken you will not feel well."

Valleroy tried to subdue the wild pounding of his heart. His hand found the starred-cross, the talisman that had protected his mother as she fled Sime Territory. Valleroy was empiricist enough not to doubt its power to protect him against Sime attack. While he had faith in the starred-cross, he couldn't be hurt

Klyd held out one steady hand in a matter-of-fact gesture that lulled Valleroy's distrust. An attacking Sime, hungry for a Gen's selyn-the very biologic energy of life itself-didn't ask consent before moving in for the kill.

For a moment, Valleroy felt a strange confidence in the channel. Before that feeling could fade, the Sime's rain-slicked hands gripped Valleroy's wrists. Then hot tentacles twined around his forearms, pulled him forward until his lips met the hard-set Sime mouth.

Valleroy felt himself being pulled inside out. His every nerve was afire with rushing sparks of pain that left blackness in their wake... as if his soul was being sucked from his body into a vast black void!

He struggled to pull away, to bring up his knife. But any Sime can call up the strength of ten Gens. Valleroy was immobilized. Only his will could resist the forceful stripping of his vitality... surely to death.

He did resist With all that he could summon, he strove to master that frightful outpouring. For an instant, he thought he did breast that current and seize control of it. But then it burst loose once more, sweeping him on rising tide of sparkling terror.

The last thing he remembered was Klyd's voice anxiously calling his name... over... and over... and over...

CHAPTER TWO.

The Arensti Competition

VALLEROY FELT HIMSELF LYING ON SOMETHING FIRM BUT warm and dry.

A pungent sting in his nostrils. Hospital.

Warm light played on his eyelids. Then a voice, low but insistent in a penetrating, almost hypnotic way. A special voice that seemed to soak into his mind carrying with it an undeniable truth. "You can wake up now. You're safe. You're with friends."

Klyd's voice. It was Klyd's voice-but, Valleroy reminded himself fuzzily, mustn't recognize him.

Carefully, he opened his eyes, squinting against the bright sunlight that streamed through an open window and caromed off polished cabinets. Sunlight? He must have been out more than ten hours instead of three!

He thought of trying to get up, but he couldn't move. His whole body was a mass of pain that left him weak. A slim girl moved to close the drapes, plunging the room into bearable dimness.

Now, Valleroy saw there were other Simes among the Gens in the room. It was hard to tell the Simes from the Gens unless their forearms are bare like Klyd's. His eyes fastened on Klyd's arms and hands. He did have to feign his reaction. He'd never actually seen Sime tentacles so close, and the reality sent his skin crawling.

Six tentacles to each forearm, two "dorsal" along the top, two "ventral" along the bottom, and smaller ones, laterals, always sheathed except in selyn transfer, along each side. Retracted, they lay along the forearms from the elbow to wrist like ropes of gnarled muscle. But when extended they were like pearly-gray snakes, supple, muscular, and hypnotically fascinating.

As Valleroy stared, heart pounding faster and faster, Klyd sheathed his tentacles and shifted the glass he held to his fingers. Then he proffered the opalescent liquid. "Drink this. You'll be feeling better soon, though you gave us a hard night"

"Who are you?"

"Sectuib Klyd Farris of Householding Zeor. I found you unconscious in the mud and brought you here hoping we could save you. Please accept my hospitality." He offered the glass again, softening the lines of his face with the barest hint of a smile.

Valleroy hesitated once more before reaching out to take the glass. But even if it killed him, it would be a welcome relief, so he took the glass murmuring an appropriate gratitude in Simelan. This raised eyebrows all around the room, but didn't keep the Sime girl who had closed the drapes from moving to help Valleroy sit up to drink.

While gulping the vile-tasting potion, Valleroy noted how well arranged the scene was. Simes and Gens mixed freely as they went about the chorus of tidying up the treatment room. The message was graphically clear-these Simes didn't kill Gens. There was very little else in the room he could understand. There were workbenches and glass-fronted cabinets filled with strange objects and weirdly shaped containers. He said, "I've heard about places like this, but I never really believed they existed. You people are-channels?"

"Some of us, yes." Klyd gestured, tentacles carefully sheathed. "Drink it all down, Mr... ?"

"Valleroy. Hugh Valleroy."

"May I call you Hugh?" Klyd hooked a knee over the corner of the wheeled table on which Valleroy lay. "You saved my life. Guess that entitles."

"The obligation is mine," Klyd said gravely. "You speak Simelan?"

"Only a little." And that was true enough, thought Valleroy. Except for interrogating prisoners, he hadn't spoken the language socially since his mother's death. And before that, only in secret moments when they were alone.

"Evahnee speaks a little of your language." Klyd gestured to the Sime girl who had closed the draperies. "I will place her in charge of you until you are well enough to leave."

"Sectuib," called one of the Gens approaching. He was a white-haired teddy bear of a man, ageless in the way Valleroy had always pictured his unknown grandfathers.

"What is it, Charnye?"

"Sectuib, you should go now. You should have gone hours ago!"

"So you've been saying. All night. But I'm required here."

"Not any more. Denrau must be worried frantic by now. You're more than nine hours overdue!"

"Ten and a half. But I'm all right." With a short bark of gentle derision, Charnye seized one of Klyd's hands and pointed to the laterals... the tentacles along the sides of your arm. "Just look!" Valleroy could see nothing odd, but apparently the others could for it embarrassed Klyd. The channel repossessed his arm and buried it in the folds of his cloak. "I know, but..."

"Go, Klyd. You had a bad time last month. You owe yourself. Next to me, Denrau is the best Companion in Zeor. You shouldn't make him wait."

"You don't give me orders, Naztehr."

"I do when you're in need! Why are you still here?

You're acting as guilty as if you'd burned him yourself!"