guns! No one had ever seen a gun under four feet long. She looked for the ramrods, but there were none on the chest. Possibly they were cached inside it.

Over the chest in an arch that covered the entire top was a sheet of almost invisible stuff that she touched fearfully. She had never seen anything like it—like frozen water! Hard and cold ... She thought of the oiled paper in her father's windows. A sheet of this substance in a window would be a magnificent possession, the envy of every squire in Dolfya. Oiled paper was semi-transparent, while this stuff was like a piece of air.

There was a white square lying beside the tiny guns, with black printing on it. She was deciphering it, painfully, for not only did she read very slowly, even in the priceless old books of her father's library, but this print was in a language slightly different from Orbish, when she felt two hard hands on her waist.

"Get your stinking paws off me," she said, without moving.

She was picked up and set down gently on one side. Revel bent over the chest.

"What are they?"

She thought fast. She had deciphered enough of the card to know they were guns: American handguns of 1940-1975 period, it said. She couldn't let him know it. The rucker must not get hold of a gun, or he'd attack the gentry themselves, for hadn't he slain innumerable gods already?

"They are children's toys," she said. "I don't know what sort of children would be interested in such weird-looking things."

"Did you ever hear of the Ancient Kingdom?"

She shook her head; the term was new to her.

"The ruck knows of it; the ballad-singers have many sagas of the Ancient Kingdom, but I imagine the gentry have forgotten. It was the world and people of a long time ago. I think these things were walled up here then." His face, really a handsome face if you forgot he was a rucker, screwed up in thought. Then he started to chant something.

He stared at the weapons. She thought fast. "These are toy guns, yes. The writing says they are guns for children."

"Maybe the toys of those children worked," he said looking at her.

"You talk nonsense."

He felt the transparent stuff over the chest, pushed on it hard, then raised his pick and struck the stuff a heavy blow. It shattered into bright daggers and fell on the guns and on the floor. Picking one of the small things from its place, he examined it closely.

"No toy, Lady Nirea," he grunted. "You lied to me."

"I didn't! Can you read the writing?" she asked sourly.

"No rucker reads, as you know. But this is no toy, and you knew it." He tucked it into the waistband of his trousers, took three more. "You can show me how to use them later."

She laughed in his face and was given a rough slap on the cheek. Skin tingling, she said, "Play the squire, miner, you don't have long to do it!"

"They won't find this hole."

"I left a trail of emotion that a globe could follow after a week!" she told him.

Slowly his brown face turned pale. Then he struck her again, but very hard, so that she staggered back and fell. Without a word he grasped her wrist and hauled her after him on a swift tour of the cavern.

A huge intricate mechanism sat like a grotesque idol on the floor. "What is it?" he said. "Read for me."

She looked at the printing on the front. Dynamo she spelt out, and shrugged. "A name I don't know."

"If you lie to me again, I'll rip that gown off and strangle you with it." He obviously meant it. She said sullenly, "I'm not lying."

"I know you aren't, now. I have an instinct for lies." He dragged her on. "What's this?"

The language was very like Orbish, yet subtly different, and the words were mostly strange. She said aloud, in syllables, "Man of the 21st century: John R. Klapham, atomic physicist and—"

"Never mind." He left the big shining case, which was oblong and featureless and seemed made of metal, to pass to something else. Her gaze caught another line on the card as she was pulled away: Held in suspended animation. What could the words mean?

They covered the big cave, finding almost nothing they could understand. Here and there were ordinary objects—plates, hides of animals under the near-invisible arches of wondrous material, arrows such as the ruck vagabonds used for shooting birds, candles—but in the main it was a place of mystery.

"The people of the Ancient Kingdom," he said, rubbing his square chin, "put these things into the earth for a purpose. I don't know what it could have been, but I want Jerran to look at them. He's got any number of keen brains."

"Nobody has more than one brain," she snapped.

He grinned. "I have six or eight myself," he said. The creature was totally crazy. He was staring at her again in that lewd way. Now he put a hand on her shoulder. The touch sent hot tingling sensations through her body. The fact that he was of the ruck and no higher than an animal, that he was a god-killer, paled before the desire his great body roused in her. She moved a step toward him, all-but-voluntarily.

His brown eyes lit up. His arm was around her waist, and his lips came near her own. Deep-bred habit made her draw back, but she could not fight the instinct that racked her.

It's a strange place for passion, she thought dazedly; an unknown cavern, full of antique wonders never heard of on earth, filled with a blue haze, and only she and the tall fierce rucker....

CHAPTER IV

Revel was sitting beside the hole in the wall, now filled with rocks, of course; he had replaced the four small guns in his belt and found, by breaking open the chest they'd lain on, a number of boxes of ammunition, with which he'd stuffed his pockets. Experiment had shown him how to load, and tradition of the ruck told him that to shoot, one pointed the end at something (or someone, he told himself grimly) and pulled the small curved projection. The woman should have helped him, but she was sulking in a corner, weeping. She had not wept an hour before!

He wondered if he were the first rucker to hold a gun. Surely the first to have four such tiny weapons, at least.

He heard voices from beyond the wall, filtering in, oddly distorted, through the air spaces between rocks. That was Jerran.

"Yes, he came down here, and threatened me with his pick all dripping yellow, said he'd killed a lot of gods. Crazy, that's what he was!" Jerran's voice broke, a neat bit of acting. "Sure there's an emotion trail! You think I wasn't scared of that maniac? Wasn't he excited? He stayed here a minute and then left again."

That was clever. Jerran had explained away the psychic scent left by the Lady Nirea. He must be talking to a god. But another voice spoke now, and Revel sat up, thinking, The gods don't make sounds!

"Was there a girl with him, a girl of the gentry in a silver gown?"

"No, Lord Ewyo—" it was her father, then!—"he was alone."