Anguish flamed in Bryan. He had done this. If Leeta died, it would be as though he had killed her with his own hands.
"Hurry!" he pleaded. "It may not be too late."
The bird dropped to the rocky ground at the entrance to the cleft. Sliding from its back, Bryan ran through the opening, to the brink of that ghastly desolation he had seen once before. He glanced around in frantic search—and then, below him, he caught sight of a slender white figure moving through the shimmering blue radiance that blanketed the desolate landscape.
Too late! Leeta had entered the fire. For a moment the horrible realization held him rigid, dazed, numbed beyond thought. Then, a bleak purpose filling him, he hurried after her down a twisting rocky descent. He might not be able to save Leeta now—but he could die with her.
The blue radiance rose around him, and he felt its lethal touch. Leeta was some distance ahead of him, mistily unreal behind the shimmering curtain. And even as he found her, he saw her stumble, fall. She did not move again.
With an inner desolation even greater than that of the scene itself, he made his way over to the girl across the charred, tumbled floor. Gently he lifted her, carried her back to the cleft. His steps were leaden, faltering. A burning sensation was spreading through his body. Outlines were blurring before his eyes, darkening. He forced himself on.
It was not until he emerged through the cleft, not until he lowered Leeta to the ground, that he gave his ravaged body the oblivion it had been demanding.
Oblivion—and yet.... In some dim, remote fashion he had a picture of the great bird, hovering over Leeta and himself on beating wings, grasping them carefully in its claws, carrying them through the air over the valley, and then descending with them toward the pool.
Down ... down.... And then a swirling brilliance, a sense of delicious coolness, of returning strength. He found himself floating in the pool. And beside him, her liquid eyes even now widening with returning awareness, was Leeta. He felt the god-like power of the pool throbbing through him, and he knew that he and Leeta had been cleansed of the deadly radiation, that life and not death now lay before them. And the knowledge was a music within him that swelled into a mighty paean of exultation.
Then he stood with Leeta at the edge of the pool, and she was staring at him in wild disbelief. The silvery chiming of her thought held a vast wonder.