Two thousand pounds of muscle exploded from the mud. The man from the disc had time to whisper, “But you’re just a—“

The disc spat out a man. Not a reed-man or a mud-man. This one wore a smooth, white skin over his body and a clear shell over his face. He carried a stick that sparked.

The fog reached K’tharr’s tail. A cold, wrong feeling shot up his spine. It wasn't pain. It was erasure. He felt his memories—the taste of a wildebeest calf, the heat of a sun from a thousand summers—flicker and die.

Hunger. That was all that was left. The oldest, stupidest, strongest thing in his brain.

The answer lay in the Nile, sleeping in the sun, with a taste of chrome on his tongue and all the time in the world.