Arrows fell about me; the pikes were surging forward, stabbing; the halberdiers were hacking and cutting; Holly’s bolts were swathing through the mailed ranks and the Prophet and Bolan and Genal were urging the men on. Even as we smashed solidly into that surging sea of armored men and moved on over them, so the blueness limned everything about me. I felt light. I felt myself being drawn upward.
“No!” I shouted. I lifted the long sword. “No! Not now! Not now — I will not return to Earth! Star Lords! If you can hear me — Savanti — let me stay on this world! I will not return to Earth!”
I thought of my Delia of Delphond, my Delia of the Blue Mountains. I would not be thrust through the interstellar void away from her again! I could not.
I struggled. I do not know how or why or what happened, but as the blueness grew and strengthened I fought back at it. In some way I had failed the Star Lords. Something I was doing was contrary to what they wanted to accomplish. I had vaunted that I would serve them in my own way — and this was my reward.
“Let me stay on Kregen!” I roared it up at that indifferent sky where the suns of Scorpio cast down their mingled light. Now I was scarcely conscious of the fight raging around me. Men were dying, heads and limbs were being lopped, bolts were piercing through mail, blood was being spilled on a prodigious scale. I staggered. I was encompassed and floating in blueness. I gripped my long sword with the clutch of death. I felt myself falling, all lifting and exultation gone, falling and falling. .
“I will not go back to Earth!”
Everything was blue now, roaring and twisting in my head, in my eyes and ears, tumbling me head over heels into a blue nothingness.
“I will stay on Kregen beneath the suns of Scorpio!
I, Dray Prescot of Earth, screamed it out. “I will stay on Kregen!
