In the evenings I would beg to be allowed to stay up another

"From a world called Earth.... The blood is clearly unsuitable for this world, Joiwind, but after all, that was only to be expected. I am sorry I let you have your way."

"Oh, don't say that! There was nothing else to be done. We must all help one another. Yet, somehow - forgive me - I feel polluted."

"And well you may, for it's a fearful thing for a girl to accept in her own veins the blood of a strange man from a strange planet. If I had not been so dazed and weak I would never have allowed it."

"But I would have insisted. Are we not all brothers and sisters? Why did you come here, Maskull?"

He was conscious of a slight degree of embarrassment. "Will you think it foolish if I say I hardly know? - I came with those two men. Perhaps I was attracted by curiosity, or perhaps it was the love of adventure."

"Perhaps," said Joiwind. "I wonder .. . These friends of yours must be terrible men. Why did they come?"

"That I can tell you. They came to follow Surtur."

Her face grew troubled. "I don't understand it. One of them at least must be a bad man, and yet if he is following Surtur - or Shaping, as he is called here - he can't be really bad."