The ghost demons fighting against his senses were only phantoms of unreality, but he had to fight back their reaching fingers. He closed his eyes against them and told himself that they weren't there. But they were. They took on form and shape and horrid faces. Laughter rang in his ears until he couldn't stand the sound of it. He knew that he had work to do. He must make an examination of the place, find escape from this room somehow and search through the halls and rooms of Starhouse to find out its forbidden mysteries.
He rose from the couch and all the silver demons in the room pounced upon him, beating his skull with tenuous lashes. He made his way to the cupboard despite their onslaught and took out one more of the harmeena spheres and dropped it into the secret pocket in the lining of his jacket.
But more than this, he could not do. The devils beat him back to the couch and pounded his head with psychotic hammers until his senses slowly waned and died.
II
Blazing hot sun out of a Martian noon sky fell upon Roal Hartford when consciousness returned. He was lying face down upon the hot sand and it was in his mouth and eyes and stung his nostrils. It seemed as if he had been groveling in the sand, trying to burrow into it in his unconsciousness.
He struggled up, and the memory of those beating, silvery demons haunted him in the sunlight. But they were not to be seen now. Neither was anything else of the phantom tavern, Starhouse. Not that nor even Heliopolis itself.
He was alone in the barren desert and arid sand dunes stretched as far as he could see. Yet on the horizon was the faint suggestion of the towers that might be Heliopolis beyond the sands. But he knew it was no use trying to find his way there by walking. The mirages of Mars are treacherous beyond reason.
Roal got to his feet and felt at his waist for the tiny SBI transmitter that could place him in communication with the SBI office in Heliopolis. The communication unit seemed not to have been disturbed by those who had dumped him in the desert, probably to die.
On the tiny instrument he dialed the call of Commander Calvin, head of the department on Mars. In a moment, answer came.