The swordsman nodded. He lifted the sword, held it over Hendriks' head, and looked up at the grand dais. Hendriks looked up as well.
The thumbs were down. Emphatically so.
The sword began to descend—
"THE FOURTH ILLUSION," said the voice.
He was racing madly down the Indianapolis Speedway, bobbing along at nearly 150 miles an hour in a flimsy-looking little racing auto. Blurs whizzed by on all sides.
Ahead of him he saw a car suddenly swerve into the embankment and burst into a mass of flames. With desperate urgency he yanked on the wheel, tried to avoid the pileup—
And failed. He felt his car going end over end into the air, and shut his eyes, waiting for the explosion that would follow.
"THE FIFTH ILLUSION," the voice said.
He was in a prehistoric jungle; strange stumpy trees were all around, lush vegetation. A slow-moving beast of immense size was thundering away from him, its tiny head close to the ground snapping up vegetation without cease. Overhead a leather-winged flying reptile moved through the air in jerky swoops.