The elf-like hominoid was clad in a thick cobalt-blue coat embroidered with the most fabulous stipple of jewels that sparkled in the wavering pastels of starlight. His black hat was tall and pointed, with a simple gold ribbon fluttering from the tip. A gloved hand gripped a long phosphorescent spear which he held aloft, as if in salute. It might have been such a gesture, for he was leaning forward in his saddle, half standing on the stirrups. As if his appearance wasn't astonishing enough, she was dumbfounded by his mount. The creature most closely resembled a terrestrial rhinoceros, except it was almost the size of an elephant, and had two flat tails that swept from side to side. Its long shaggy fur was bright scarlet, and the four horns curving from the side of its long head were devilishly sharp and curved. Justine, who had once ridden on the Charlemagnes which the old Narsoomians had produced on Far Away, knew that this fearsome beast was a true warrior-animal.

Her ancient body instinctively produced a flood of worry hormones just at the sight of it.

The Silfen simply shouldn't have been here. She'd never known one of their paths had led to this remote, desolate planet. And he was an oxygen breather; so, she suspected, was his lethally regal mount. This tenuous, radiation-saturated argon atmosphere was deathly to living things. Then she grinned at herself and her silly affront. Who was she to make such a claim, standing exposed to the eerie energy emissions of the Wall stars in nothing more than a disgracefully short cocktail dress?

So it wasn't an absolute impossibility to find a Silfen here. Nor that he was using some technological protection from the environment.

But… 'Why? she whispered.

'The Silfen live to experience, Gore told her, equally absorbed by the alien's presence. 'Face it, my girl, you don't get a much bigger experience than watching the end of the galaxy crashing down around you.