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it, placing his suit of lights in the closet in its place, where it hung invisibly supported with the rest of his
clothes.
The closet closed, and Jim was just turning away from it when a visitor materialized in the center of his
room. But it was not Ro. Instead, it was one of the male High-born a man with onyx-white skin, at
least seven feet tall.
"There you are, Wolfling," the High-born said. "Come along. Mekon wants to see you."
They were suddenly in a room which Jim had not been in before. It was rectangular and long, and they
stood in about the middle of it. There were no other humans in the room. But at the far end, on a sort of
pillow-strewn dais, there lay curled a feline similar in every respect to the one among Ro's pets. It lifted
its horse's head at the sight of them in the room, and its eyes fastened upon Jim.
"Wait here," said the High-born who had brought him. "Mekon will be with you in just a moment."
The tall man vanished. Jim found himself left alone with the feline beast, which was now lazily rising to its
feet, staring down the room at him.
Jim stood still, staring back.
The animal made a curious, whining sound a sound almost ridiculously small to come from something
obviously so physically powerful. Its short stub of a tufted tail began to jerk vertically up and down,
stiffly. Its heavy head lowered until its lower jaw almost touched the floor of the dias, and its mouth
gradually opened to reveal heavy, carnivorous teeth.
Still whining, it began slowly to move. Softly, almost delicately, it put one front paw down from the dais;
and then the other. Slowly it began to move toward him, crouching and whining as it did. Its teeth were
fully visible now, and as it approached, its whine grew in volume, until it was a sort of singing threat.
Jim waited, moving neither backward nor forward.
The animal came on. About a dozen yards from him it stopped and gradually crouched. Its tail was
jerking like a metronome now, and the singing whine that came from its throat was filling the whole room.
For what seemed a long time, it crouched there, jaw hung open, whining. Then, without warning, the
whining stopped, and it launched itself through the air at Jim's throat.
Chapter 3
The feline creature flashed forward and upward into Jim's face and vanished.
Jim had not moved. For a moment he was alone in the long, rectangular room; and then suddenly there
were three of the High-born males around him, one of them with the dragonlike insignia upon his shirt, or
tunic, front. That one had brought Jim here. Of the other two, one was almost short by High-born
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standards barely three inches taller than Jim. The third was the tallest of the three a slim, rather
graceful-looking man with the first expression resembling a smile Jim had ever seen on purely
onyx-colored features; and this last of the three High-born wore a red insignia which looked somewhat
like the horns and head of a stag.
"I told you they were brave, these Wolflings," drawled this last member of the group. "Your trick didn't
work, Mekon."
"Courage!"said the one addressed as Mekon angrily. "That was too good to be true. He didn't even
move a muscle! You'd think he'd been " Mekon bit off the words abruptly, glancing hastily at the tall
Slothiel, who stiffened.
"Go on. Go on, Mekon," drawled the tall High-born, but there was an edge to his drawl now. "You
were going to say something like . . . 'warned'?"
"Of course Mekon didn't mean to say anything like that." It was Trahey, almost literally pushing himself
between the other two men, whose eyes were now fixedly fastened on each other.
"I'd like to hear Mekon tell me that," murmured Slothiel.
Mekon's eyes dropped. "I of course, I didn't mean anything of the sort. I don't remember what I was
going to say," he said.
"Then I take it," said Slothiel, "that I've won. One Lifetime Point, to me?"
"One " The admission clearly stuck in Mekon's throat. His face had darkened with a rush of blood
similar to the flush that Jim had noticed come too easily to the face of Ro. "One Lifetime Point to you."
Slothiel laughed. "Don't take it so hard, man," he said. "You can have a chance to win it back anytime
you've got a decent wager to propose."
But Mekon's temper had flared again. "All right," he snapped, and swung to face Jim. "I've given up the
point but I'd still like to know why this Wolfling didn't even twitch when the beast went for him. There's
something unnatural here."
"Why don't you ask him?" drawled Slothiel.
"Iam asking him!" said Mekon, his eyes burning upon Jim. "Speak up, Wolfling. Why didn't you show
any sign of a reaction?"
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