"Damn!" I thought incredulously. I'd shorted the dynamo again. The radio stopped as if the whole orchestra had dropped dead; every light in the cabin winked swiftly out, but my hand on the switch crackled with a phosphorescent glow as the entire house current poured into my body. I tingled with weird shock; I heard my own teeth chattering.

And something snapped wide open in my brain. I heard, suddenly, an excited voice, shouting.

"Rhys! Rhys! That is the man!"


[CHAPTER TWO]
Rainbow City

"You are mad," said the man with the tired voice.

I was drifting. I was swaying, bodiless, over a huge abyss of caverned space; chasmed, immense, limitless. Vaguely, through a sleeping distance, I heard two voices. This one was old and very tired.

"You are mad. They will know. Narayan will know."

"Narayan is a fool," said the second voice.

"Narayan is the Dreamer," the tired voice said. "He is the Dreamer, and where the Dreamer walks he will know. But have it your way. I am very old and it does not matter. I give you this power, freely—to spare you. But Gamine—"