"I will tell you when," she whispered. "You trust me completely."
The low-voiced hum of the Gathering of the Faith mounted to a new pitch and a cannibalistic leer spread over the faces of Sasso's devotees. The sacrifices were being brought in. A man in the throng bumped into Eldon. The Earthman allowed himself to be knocked off balance, and as he recovered he was facing the door. Without the bump he could not have turned, for that would have betrayed volition.
Only one guard accompanied the file of naked prisoners. One was enough, for the sacrifices were mindless ones, deadened to unquestioning obedience by drugs and the slave-mark of Sin. Two men, a woman, another man—and then Eldon's breath caught in his throat and the fingernails of his single hand cut into the flesh. For the fifth in line was a red-haired girl whose unclothed body was no longer as slender and lithe as it had once been. Krasna! Krasna and her unborn child—their child—destined victims of the obscene Faith!
There was cruel amusement in the hum of the gathering, amusement and anticipation.
"Two lives at once," Eldon heard a woman remark to her companion. "I wonder what the vitality of the unborn one will be like."
Sin's eyes settled on Krasna and her lips drew into a thin snarl of recognition. This slave would never escape a second time.
In an intuitive flash Eldon knew why he had deliberately ruined his restored body, tortured himself, placed himself in a position of deepest humiliation and direct peril. And it was not for a chance to escape to Earth. He would try to save Krasna—and their child—even if he jeopardized all Varda in the attempt.
But for the moment he could do nothing. The girl who stood so abject and robotlike beside the Vat was not really Krasna, his Krasna. Only during the brief interval before her vital essence was to provide sustenance for Sasso and rejuvenation for the entity's vile followers, only when she had been given the pellet which would restore her numbed mind, only then would he dare strike. And if she were chosen to be lowered into the Vat before Sasso's one vulnerable moment arrived—
Margaret picked up one of the cables that snaked in seeming confusion across the concave floor and eagerly snapped the band around her wrist. Wor picked up another cable end.