"How did you do it?" Meta asked in a hushed voice.
"Hm–m–m, what?" Brucco said, apparently snapping out of a daze. "Oh, touching the thing. Simple, really. I just pretended it was one of the training aids I use, a realistic and harmless duplicate. I kept my mind on that single thought and it worked." He looked down at his hand, then back to the stingwing. His voice quieter now, as if he spoke from a distance. "It’s not a training aid you know. It’s real. Deadly. The off–worlder is right. He’s right about everything he said."
With Brucco’s success as an example, Kerk came close to the animal. He walked stiffly, as if on the way to his execution, and runnels of sweat poured down his rigid face. But he believed and kept his thoughts directed away from the stingwing and he could touch it unharmed.
Meta tried but couldn’t fight down the horror it raised when she came close. "I am trying," she said, "and I do believe you now—but I just can’t do it."
Skop screamed when they all looked at him, shouted it was all a trick, and had to be clubbed unconscious when he attacked the bowmen.
Understanding had come to Pyrrus.
