Alayna gave a frantic cry of alarm and Shorty tried to squirm about to see what had happened. Roal explained to them. "And it means there's only one way to go, now—forward. Is there any chance of them cutting us off, Alayna?"
"Plenty. It all depends on how many controls the Thousand Minds may have near the other end. Fortunately, the main controls were there in the lab with my father and you killed many of them. But we'll soon be through. I'll try to go faster."
Roal could have said that she needn't hurry on his account. Already Shorty was a considerable distance ahead of him, and Alayna was probably much farther by the sound of her voice.
They were silent then until Alayna called that she had finally dropped into a chamber opening from the tube. Roal increased his struggles, but Shorty was out long before he was.
When he emerged, a gasp of recognition came to his lips. It was one of the dream rooms of Starhouse.
Alayna nodded as she saw Roal's eyes widen. "This is Starhouse," she said. "Follow me as if you were merely spacemen visiting here for dreams."
She led them into the hall outside. The noise of the tavern increased as they approached the main room. "Wait beside the door," Alayna asked.
Roal opened his mouth to question, but she was gone before he could speak. Spacemen looked up suddenly as she appeared in their midst, and the room became quiet as if Alayna carried an advancing wave of silence with her.
She took up her position on the little dais beside the old piano and nodded to the bleary-eyed player. And then her song began. With it came again that magic spell that Roal could hardly fight off. He wondered if it were entirely the song of Alayna or if the mighty power of the Thousand Minds were seizing the spell of her song, weaving, intensifying it until it called out to him to flee back to Earth and blue skies and green fields—to find someone like Alayna—to take Alayna with him.
And he knew within himself that the Thousand Minds had nothing to do with that dream. It was the dream of all spacemen who spend long years amid the cold and blackness of space and the wasteland of alien planets. Their dreams, concentrated and distilled to their strongest essence, flowed forth upon the low, husky notes from the throat of Alayna.