There was a mysterious golden statue that always pointed one
way--and it led to sudden death in the valley where flying disks
landed.
[Illustration: Like a lodestone drawn to a magnet, the tiny golden
statue leaped from his hand and darted toward its huge counterpart.]
They say cross-eyed men are bad luck. He stood there, in my doorway,
eyeing me up and down with those in-focused black eyes.
His face was hideous even if the eyes had been normal. He was slashed
with a wide cicatrice of livid scar tissue from one cheekbone across his
nose and down to the button of his jaw on the other side.
He was big, and he looked like bad news to me. I inadvertently moved the
door as if to close it, then he spoke:
"You Keele, the mining man?"