hold him. The thing started to grow brighter. It shone now like a tiny
bit of white-hot metal; but the older man touched it, and it snuggled
down into Dave's chest, dimming its glow and somehow purring. Warmth
seemed to flow from it into Dave. The two men watched for a moment, then
picked up their apparatus and turned to go. The Sather Karf lifted the
fire from the brazier in his bare hand, moved it into the air and said a
soft word. It vanished, and the two men were also gone.

"Magic!" Dave said. He'd seen such illusions created on the stage, but
there was something different here. And there was no fakery about the
warmth from the thing over his chest. Abruptly he remembered that he'd
come across something like it, called a salamander, in fiction once;
the thing was supposed to be a spirit of fire, and dangerously
destructive.

The girl nodded in the soft glow coming from Dave's chest. "Naturally,"
she told him. "How else does one produce and control a salamander,
except by magic? Without, magic, how can we thaw a frozen soul? Or
didn't your world have any sciences, Dave Hanson?"

Either the five months under his uncle had toughened him, or the sight
of the bulldozer falling had knocked him beyond any strong reaction. The
girl had practically told him he wasn't in his own world. He waited for
some emotion, felt none, and shrugged. The action sent pain running
through him, but he stood it somehow. The salamander ceased its purring,
then resumed.

"Where in hell am I?" he asked. "Or when?"

She shook her head. "Hell? No, I don't think so. Some say it's Earth and