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At last he stopped.

“All right, everybody, I’ve been a nice guy so far, but this is as far as I go. If you want the Key, you’ll have to take it off my dead body. I’m not going another meter.”

The silent natives who surrounded him looked to Mohs. The old man nodded. They loosed a flight of arrows that plucked at his clothing, kicked sand up in his face, whistled mere angstrom units over his head. These fellows were impressive markspersons, Lando found himself thinking; I hope none of them gets the hiccups. He stood his ground again until they started shooting between his legs.

It wasn’t worth the risk. He waited until they paused to reload, then began marching again.

What he had thought were crossbows had turned out to be something entirely different, some kind of spring-loaded contraption with hinged arms—which he’d mistaken for the limbs of a bow—that flailed forward, hurling the stubby arrows out through the front of the weapon. They didn’t seem to need reloading every time they were fired. He guessed there were perhaps half a dozen projectiles stashed in a magazine hidden within the mechanism. The weapons weren’t very powerful, as projectile throwers went, but the speed and accuracy with which they could be used made him realize he could die from a thousand pinpricks as easily as from a single blaster shot.

And a great deal more painfully.

They marched.

Another couple of hours went by. Lando wasn’t sure exactly—he didn’t want to look at his watch, because he didn’t want to remind the natives that he had several items concealed beneath his winter clothes, notably his five-shot stingbeam. It would take a lot of figuring to get any good out of it in this Situation, but it was something to fall back on, and it gave him a bit of hope.

Step after endless step. The country didn’t vary much: something between desert and tundra, most of the space taken up with giant Sharu buildings. Sand, sand, and more sand. Occasional weeds. The clear, yet somehow foreboding sky. He worried about Vuffi Raa, hoped that robots die a swift and merciful death.

All during the long, pauseless ordeal, the Toka around him chanted, sometimes slowly, sometimes more rapidly. And to his continuous annoyance, never in rhythm with the marching. This caused him to stumble awkwardly every now and again. He didn’t know how the Toka mind worked, but he knew he didn’t like it. They sang low-pitched Songs, they sang high-pitched Songs. They sang in harmony, disharmony, and counterpoint. They would be great to record—they had an endless repertoire.

At long last, the marching ended at a grove of life-crystal trees.

Mohs approached him.

“Imposter, hear me: we are forbidden to remove the holy Key from the Key bearer, even should the Bearer be a false one. You have somehow guessed this. Nor may we kill him who bears the Key, although we have killed the false Emissary, which makes us glad.”

So that was it! Somehow Lando had gotten the idea that the Key Bearer and the Emissary were the same fellow, namely himself. Had he betrayed that belief to Mohs, setting up the debacle? He tried to recall what he’d said to Mohs on the subject, then realized it didn’t make a bit of difference anyway—and besides, the old man was still talking.

“—let them do it themselves. Come with me!”

Lando followed him to a tree. Several of the other Toka handed their weapons to comrades, joined Mohs and Lando, and, between them, produced a loincloth.

By the time Lando decided to resist, it was too late. They forced him into a sitting position, bound him to the tree trunk by the waist, and used the same length of cloth to tie his hands behind him. They pushed back his hood, unfastened his jacket, and tore it rudely from him.

“Hey! Do you know what my tailor charged me for—now hold on a minute, that’s going too far!”

Mohs had pulled off one of Lando’s boots, bent to seize the other. When this was accomplished, the boots tossed aside near his discarded parka, they tore his tunic off, and the light shirt beneath it.

Then Mohs produced a knife.

“Now wait a blasted