"We have heard of you, Ho Dyak," the blind girl said, "and we welcome you to the poor sanctuary of our caves." She poled the raft nearer. "I am Sarn Vod, daughter of Dra Vod."
"Dra Vod is your father!" cried Ho Dyak. "I have heard of him. He built a machine powered by the sap of pressed agan for his boat!"
"Aye," agreed the girl, "and his reward was blindness. Of the three hundred Outcasts in our rocky caves a hundred are sightless."
"You can see!" Ho Dyak burst out. He was looking into the beautiful slim face of the girl. She was more beautiful than Mian Ith had ever been. From that moment Ho Dyak forgot the faithless One Orst's daughter....
"Of course," agreed the girl, laughing. "I was born after my father was taken into the hidden village of the Outcasts."
They sat close together, then, in the raft, and Ho Dyak opened his mind to the mind of the girl. She in turn opened her mind to him. It was not long that they sat thus but when Sarn Vod took up the pole of bone again they had found that they loved one another.
Never before had Ho Dyak allowed another to probe into the remoter recesses of his brain. But he knew that she could be trusted. Her childlike acceptance of him even before he opened his thoughts to her convinced him of that.
"I will go with you to the camp of the Earthman," she told Ho Dyak softly, as they neared the upreared hillock of soft gray rock from which their two cave homes had been laboriously scraped.
"It is good," agreed Ho Dyak, "and later, when we have found a secure place, I will come back for your people. The Outcasts will be the first to share with us the wisdom of the Ancients."
Sarn Vod flashed him a quick mental caress as the raft grounded in the shelter of an overhanging ledge. He stepped to take her in his arms, and halted as a giant of a man groped toward them. Where his eyes had been there were now but empty sockets.