your life, there will be quite a period of—shall we say—probation. When I was assigned to you, your reading habits suggested an amusing series of variations. You cannot know how dull it is to keep frustrating the same old dreams!"

"Amusing?" repeated Charlie, beyond caring about the whimper in his tone.

The mob was dissolving into thin smoke, and the horizon was shrinking.

Kbo himself was altering into something redder of skin but equipped with a normal number of limbs, discounting the barbed tail. The constant heat of the "desert" began, at last, to seem explicable.

"For me a great amusement," grinned Kho, displaying hideous tusks. "Next time, I'll be a Venusian. You will lose again. Then we can visit other planets, and stars ... oh, we shall see a lot of each other!"

He cheerfully polished one horn with a clawed finger.

"You won't enjoy it!" he promised.