CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Outside in the streets it was full day, and the color and life of Charin had subsided into listlessness again, a dim morning dullness and silence. Only a few men lounged wearily in the streets, as if the sun had sapped their energy. And always the pale fleecy-haired children, human and furred nonhuman, played their mysterious games on the curbs and gutters and staring at us with neither curiosity nor malice.
Miellyn was shaking when she set her feet into the patterned stones of the street-shrine.
"Scared, Miellyn?"
"I know Evarin. You don't. But"—her mouth twitched in a pitiful attempt at the old mischief—"when I am with a great and valorous Earthman...."
"Cut it out," I growled, and she giggled. "You'll have to stand closer to me. The transmitters are meant only for one person."
I stooped and put my arms round her. "Like this?"
"Like this," she whispered, pressing herself against me. A staggering whirl of dizzy darkness swung round my head. The street vanished. After an instant the floor steadied and we stepped into the terminal room in the Mastershrine, under a skylight dim with the last red slant of sunset. Distant hammering noises rang in my ears.
Miellyn whispered, "Evarin's not here, but he might jump through at any second." I wasn't listening.
"Where is this place, Miellyn? Where on the planet?"