An utter dark lay upon the hills outside the palace now, moonless and with clouds drawn heavy all across the Cretan sky. Wind, too, had come with the night, rising till Burke found himself fearing for the shutters. The lamps flared on their stands with each new gust and draft. Light flickered orange and yellow on Ariadne's lovely face, eddying through the shadows so that the tentacles of the frescoed octopi on the walls seemed to writhe and twist and turn.... Burke laughed without mirth. It was

There was a guard in the corridor beyond the Queen's Megaron. Wordless, Burke flicked a glance at Ariadne. Her dark eyes flashed a daredevil acceptance of the challenge. Sliding past him, she swung the heavy door back so it hid him, then leaned against it, body arched in practiced coquetry. The spearman outside straightened just a fraction. His chest swelled and his belly drew in. Slowly, Ariadne's full lips curved in a smile that was all invitation. Her hand came up to smooth her hair as she tu

The feeling, Burke decided, basically was one of frustration—a moiling, roiling, boiling tension that crept higher and higher as his own helplessness became the more apparent. Well, what else could he expect, in a situation sprung from monomania's loins? From the beginning, everything about this business had had the spell of madness on it. Success, when the cards were down, had always been too much to hope for. Now, thinking of it, Burke could only sigh bleakly and shake his head. Only that wasn

Burke heard the voices first—strange voices, speaking in a strange language. The room came clear a moment later, cool and shadowy. Burke recognized it by its shape, and by the distinctive relief in painted stucco on one wall. So his calculations had been correct. He'd landed in the apartment off the Queen's Megaron. Cat-like, he moved towards the room's doorway, the voices. The speakers were man and woman, apparently. And when Burke flicked the switch of the computational translator strapped tig

The place was called the Shrine of Oracles, Burke gathered. It featured distinctively Minoan pillars—of cypress, and so tapered as to be smaller at the base than at the top. Also, it stank with a peculiar, acrid odor. But beyond that, to Burke, it seemed disappointingly ordinary ... hardly colorful enough to rate the trial of a man accused of playing god. That is, so it appeared until his captors dragged him into a central room ... and there, black-browed and haughty, sat bearded Minos on his th

It was a jigsaw puzzle with too many pieces, Burke decided. No matter how he tried to analyze it, he always came out with a vital fragment or two left over. Take the Minotaur. Did such a creature actually exist? Or was the thing simply a figment of imagination? Assuming its existence, what about the strange mental powers with which it had tried to probe his brain? Alien powers. Yet if it were alien, what was King Minos' relation to it? Why would a human join hands with anything that radiated suc

Consciousness returned to Burke with dragging steps. Perhaps that was because the place in which he now lay was so dark. It stayed that way even when his bruised jaw and aching head told him for certain that this was reality, not delusion. No matter how he strained his eyes, he could see absolutely nothing. Not that it mattered. Because he knew where he was, beyond mistaking. His nose told him, picking up the acrid scent that had been so all-pervasive in the Shrine of Oracles. Only here, it was

She wasn't there. Even when he ran back through her rooms, calling her name aloud, she wasn't there. Numbly, Burke stumbled forth again, out onto the long ascending ramp that led to the central court. Over on the far side, at the Shrine of Oracles, orange-yellow flames leaped high into the black night sky. Whipped by the buffeting south wind, they jumped to another building while Burke watched; then on to still another. Silhouetted figures ran this way and that—gesturing, shouting. Once again, B