For an instant he hesitated, then changed his course to meet hers.
She caught his hand. "This way!"
Together, they raced back towards the chief's box at the rim of the pit, and now Shane saw that a trap door in the floor had been lifted.
"Hurry!" cried the Malyalara. "In a moment the warriors will bring in a proton cannon to kill the zanth, and someone will think of you, too. You must be gone before then!"
Shane shot one look at the pitch-black shaft. "Where does it go?"
"To a passage below the arena that leads to the chief's castle and the ramps. We can steal a flyer there. But hurry!"
Shane shot one quick look back.
The zanth still raged and ravened through the crowd, but already the warriors had rallied to hem it in.
Tightly, he said to Talu: "You first, then."
"First?"
"Do you think I'd let you get behind me?" he clipped bitterly. "Fool that I am, I'll go with you, because I have no choice. But my knife will be in your back every step of the way, ready for your next betrayal."
"'Betrayal'?" she repeated, and now the heat of anger was in her voice, her eyes. "Did you say betrayal, Earthman?"
"What would you call it?" He made no effort to keep the fury from his tone. "Who tripped me when I would have stabbed Quos Reggar? Who shot a second dose of theol into my veins?"
She drew away from him, then, and the look she threw stung like a whip. "Come, Sha Shane. If that is your belief, then I must indeed go first." Lithely, she lowered herself over the edge of the shaft and disappeared down a metal ladder set in one wall.
Knife still in hand, Shane followed. The effort made him shake, and under the strain of climbing, the claw-wound in his side began to bleed again.
Then, at last, they were in the murky passageway below, and Talu was leading him swiftly through the darkness. Once Shane staggered and would have fallen, had not the Malyalara caught him; and once he dropped the knife. But she picked it up again, and her groping hand strayed into the blood as she sought to return the weapon. So she made him sit down while she tore up some garment and bandaged his wounds, and her fingers were very gentle.
They went on again, then, for what seemed endless miles, till at last they came to a huge, dim-lighted ramping-spot where dull black Malya flyers stood in ordered rows, their bubbles pointed up into the starlit sky. And finally they even found one with its lower hatches open, and the girl helped Shane to climb aboard. She strapped him in the pilot's seat, and herself in the other seat beside him.
For a long time, it seemed, he worked at the controls with clumsy fingers, till at last, somehow, they were blasting off, roaring up and up and up into the gaudy heavens. And Talu talked to him, and braced him, and helped him hold the jet-globe steady, while seconds, or maybe hours, ticked by.
Only then, suddenly, the sky about them was full of ships, great black-hulled ships that were built for ranging clear across the void. They came in hundreds—thousands, maybe—blazing in thunderous silence through the blackness of spatial night. And one of the ships swerved and came alongside the little Malya flyer, and a great hatch opened in its side and sucked them in.
Then the hatch slid closed again, and the darkness about them was complete. Even their jets were blacked out, killed by the great ship's pickup neutralizers.
And still Shane sat in silence, staring stupidly straight ahead.
But the body of the girl, Talu, came warm against him in the ebon murk, her voice a fierce, husky whisper in his ear: "You must believe me, Shane! I did not betray you—not ever! The things I did, I had to do, in order to live to pay back the blood debt of my people. You could never have killed Quos Reggar with one thrust, no matter where, for he is a cross-bred mongrel, and his body does not work as ours do."
Shane forced out words: "Why tell me now? Why care about it?"
"Why? Why?" The girl's voice held a tremor now, a fear not even the black could hide. "I tell you so that you will know, and not die hating me to your last breath. That I could not stand! For die we will, and soon—because this ship is one of Reggar's slavers!"
CHAPTER X
"Here Is Life!" the vendor cried. "Fresh life from new planets! Young slaves, with the hot blood surging through their veins! And all yours—yours for the asking, going for the price you set yourselves!" He struck a note on a silver gong. "Look at this next wench—a warm and vibrant thing, my friends, throbbing with life and spirit! What am I offered for her?"
The woman on the block was Venusian, a weary, fading creature with the sucking tube and ear-stalks of the Transmi. Her eyes were veined with weeping, her sagging face shadowed with fear and fatigue.
"Come! Make the first bid!" cried the vendor. "Who'll start it? Do I hear five hundred?"
"Fifty," called a voice from the rear of the crowd.
"Fifty! Do you seek to insult me? She's worth five hundred if she is a xi—"
"You mean, you insult us, vendor," the bidder retorted caustically. "A fool can see that the life runs low within her. She would not last the night."
"Fifty!" cried the vendor. "I'm offered fifty, friends. Who'll raise it to sixty?"
No one spoke. After a moment, the vendor struck the silver gong again. "Sold to Callan at fifty!" He pushed the Venusian down the steps. "Get on with you, woman...."
An attendant pushed Shane forward, heavy with irons. "An Earthman, vendor—"
The vendor struck the gong. "An Earthman, my friends; a fighting man—powerful, surging with life in spite of his wounds. Who'll start it—?"
Coldly, Shane swept the auction room with his glance.
Here, in front, on one side, were the slaves—a motley assortment, dragged to this final degradation from a dozen far-flung planets. One by one, they were thrust upon the block, exposed to the ghoulish appraisal of the crowd that filled the room.
The crowd. A crowd of silver men and women, with gleaming hair and violet eyes and pale, translucent skins. A hundred hungry-eyed, avid brothers and sisters of Shi Kyrsis.
Even the room itself was strange. The materials resembled nothing known anywhere in all the void. The lush decor followed an alien theme.
"This man is good for long-time use!" exhorted the vendor. "See the strength of him—the fire and vigor! You cannot pass him by...."
A door to Shane's right opened. A woman came in, a silver woman.
The woman.
Kyrsis.
An old man close to the block called eagerly, "I'll give a hundred, vendor!" in a thin, cracking voice.
"A hundred I'm offered! Now who'll make it a hundred and fifty? No one can afford to let this strong man go at a mere hundred—"
"Hundred and ten!" someone shouted.
Kyrsis turned. For the first time, her eyes met Shane's, and she stopped suddenly, staring as if paralyzed.
"Hundred twenty!"
"Hundred thirty!"
"Do I hear a hundred forty? Surely no fine, strapping fighting man can go for less—"
"Two hundred," Kyrsis said.
"Two hundred! The Lady Kyrsis bids two hundred—"
"Two fifty, vendor!" cried the old man by the block.
"Three hundred," came back Kyrsis.
"Do I hear three fifty—?"
"With his wounds, he is worth no more than three," the old man mumbled.
"Three twenty-five then! Do I hear three twenty-five?"
"Three ten—"
"Three fifty," echoed Kyrsis.
The vendor paused and looked about. "Three fifty is bid...." He struck the gong. "Sold to the Lady Kyrsis for three fifty."
Shane left the block, strode to the silver woman's side; and for a moment they stood there in vibrant silence, alone in the crowd, duelling with their eyes.
Then Kyrsis asked: "What dark fate brought you here, Gar Shane? When I last saw you, you were hewing a path through the Malya horde at the arena...."
"And you were in the prisoners' cage." The Earthman ignored the strange tremor in the silver woman's voice. His words were clipped. "Talu and I escaped and fled Amara in a flyer. But one of Quos Reggar's slavers sucked us in and brought us here."
"The slavers came to rescue Reggar," Kyrsis said. "They swept Amara clean." She looked down, breathing deep as if to still some inner tension. And then: "Talu was with you? They brought her here—?"
"—and put here aside. Her hair was cropped, so they knew she already had a master." Shane laughed harshly. "Me—I'd worn no yoke, so they sent me to the block."
"Then ... let us go. I have already done my other buying." The tremor in Kyrsis' voice was stronger, now—a sort of undercurrent of strange excitement.
"Your 'other buying'—?"
"A few young slaves to ... to train for household use." The silver woman's fingers trembled, cold as ice, upon Shane's arm. "Come! Let us go now—quickly—"
She led Shane out, through other rooms, where other vendors hawked their wares, and other slaves stood shamed or sobbing, bared to the eager, weirdly-lusting eyes of the silver people.
Then they reached a sort of transit station, and an attendant brought a car of a type Shane had never seen before, and they got in.
Three frightened children, a Malya boy of perhaps twelve and two Chonya girls even younger, huddled at the back, their dark eyes big with panic.
"Your slaves, Lady Kyrsis?" Shane asked coldly. The barb in his voice would have slashed through the scales of a zanth.
The silver woman kept her eyes on the controls. The car hurtled off through a tube-like passage. She did not answer.
Then the car halted. They got out—Shane, Kyrsis, children—and entered rooms, rooms luxuriously furnished in the alien style of the silver people.
"And now?" Shane inquired thinly.
Kyrsis' breathing was fast and shallow, her face even more pale than before. She spoke too rapidly, in a ragged, uneven voice. "You are weary, Shane, so weary. You must rest now. Here—let me take off your shackles. There is a room here you will like—a quiet room...."
She unlocked the cuffs on his wrists and tossed them aside, then led him swiftly to an adjoining sleep chamber. Foam-soft cushioning a foot thick blanketed a dais along one wall, big enough for a dozen men. A lingering perfume filled the air. Soft lights cast a silvery glow. From somewhere came faint strains of elfin music.
"Rest here, Earthman," the silver woman said softly. "Rest until I call you...."
For a moment her icy fingers touched his cheek. Then she left the room, closing the door behind her.
Shane stared after her, a frown furrowing his brow. After a moment, he stepped to the door, tried the handle.
It was locked.
Shane's frown deepened. He rubbed a grimy hand across his cheek where the cold of Kyrsis' fingers still lingered; finally turned to a more thorough inspection of his quarters.
As he pivoted, light glinted on the glass-like surface of the wall that flanked the door—caught a vague flicker of movement.
Shane moved on across the chamber with no sign that he had seen it.
An alcove held a radiation bath. The Earthman stepped into the cubicle and flipped the switch, luxuriating under the warm tingle of the molecular bombardment. Slowly, the sweat and dirt and grime faded from his body, the dried blood washed away. The worst of the weariness left his muscles. His bones almost stopped aching.
Refreshed, he snapped off the radiation and, leaving the cubicle, drank greedily from a crystal bubbler set beside it.
Now he went back to the sleeping chamber. His eyes flickered over the spot in the wall beside the door.
The surface showed blank and dead as the rest.
Shane grinned sourly to himself; crossed the room and tried the door once more.
It was still locked.
The Earthman hesitated. Then, grimly, he braced one foot on the casing beside the lock, gripped the handle, and threw his full weight on it.
Inside the lock, something snapped. The handle twisted askew.
Again Shane tugged, his muscles swelling with the strain.
The broken handle pulled from its socket. Inserting a forefinger in the hole, Shane manipulated the lock, pulled back the bolt.
The door swung open.
Shane stepped outside. He glanced at the wall behind the spot where he had seen the movement.
A picture hung there. Lifting aside, he found a small, hinged panel. Opening it, he discovered that a lens set behind the shiny coating of the inner wall enabled him to survey the entire sleep chamber.
Again, the sour grin twisted Shane's lips. Swiftly, he strode through the silence, checking the other rooms. He found them empty, all but one. Its door was locked.
The Earthman drew back a moment.
A picture hung a few feet to one side of the locked door.
Shane stepped over to it and lifted it from the wall.
It concealed another peep hole. Shading his eyes, the Earthman peered through the lens.
Kyrsis was within ... Kyrsis and one of the captive Chonya girls.
The silver woman held the child upon her lap. She was talking to her—smiling, squeezing the chubby hands. Her manner was gentle, tender.
Yet under it all, somehow, hung a weird, unholy note—grotesque, obscene.
Some of the fear had left the child's eyes now. She smiled wanly ... nestled, not quite so tense, in the silver woman's arms.
Kyrsis' eyes closed. Her lips parted, and Shane knew that she was singing as she rocked the child.
The child's lips drooped. Trustingly, the small arms half-embraced the silver woman. The tired head rested on Kyrsis' breast.
The child slept.
Now new emotions came to Kyrsis' lovely face ... strange passion—a horrid anticipatory glow. Her nostrils flared. Her violet eyes grew large, gleamed with fires older than time itself. She cradled the child. Ever so tenderly, yet with a terrible air of strain, her parted lips sought the girl's.
Shane stood frozen, breathing hard, tight in indecision's grip.
The child moved languidly in Kyrsis' arms—restless, not struggling, and for a moment the silver woman straightened, sucked in air. Then, again, she pressed her lips against the girl's.
Shane cursed beneath his breath and turned towards the door.
But even as he did so, Kyrsis rose, the child still in her arms. The silver woman's face was serene now, ethereally beautiful, unmarred by any trace of strain. Gently, she laid down the still form of the child. Then, coming erect again, she moved towards the door.
Shane slid the picture back into place and stepped out of sight in the adjoining room.
The door to the room in which Kyrsis had been, opened and closed. The silver woman passed down the hall, out of sight.
Tense, silent, Shane made for the room from which she'd come.
The door was unlocked now. Swiftly, he slipped inside and stepped to the couch where the Chonya child still lay, so very still. He touched the soft hand. Lifted it with trembling fingers.
Behind him, the door-latch clicked.
Shane turned.
Kyrsis stood watching him. "You come unannounced, Earthman," she murmured coolly.
"I came in as you left," Shane said, and of a sudden his hands, his voice, his whole body, were shaking uncontrollably, gripped in a paroxysm of surging fury. "I saw you here, with the child! Do you hear me? I saw you—!"
"So...?" Kyrsis' face was still calm, the violet eyes unfathomable.
The veins at Shane's temples stood out, throbbing. With a tremendous effort, he brought his voice under a semblance of control.
He said: "This child is dead!"
CHAPTER XI
They stood there thus for a long, taut, echoing moment.
Then Kyrsis said: "You leave me no choice, Earthman. I see I must tell you Gadar's secret."
"Gadar—?"
Her lips twitched. "Yes, Earthman. Gadar, the dark star—the star hurled into your solar system from across the void: cold, bleak, barren, uninhabited Gadar."
"You mean that you—your people—are of Gadar?"
The silver woman nodded. "Yes. When our star cooled, in the course of that endless voyage across the void, we had no choice but to burrow deeper and deeper, like animals—cutting ourselves away from the awful cold of outer space, hunting desperately for the last dim vestiges of warmth at our planet's core. Then, when at last we had come into the family of your sun, we saw no reason to let it be known that we existed. For we knew the thing we had to do if we were still to live, and we knew that if you knew it, Gadar would be doomed."
"Then—this is Gadar? We are inside it now—deep down below the surface?"
"So deep that even the echographs of your Federation's exploration parties did not find us. Here, for a million years, we have built our civilization." A new glint came to the woman's violet eyes, a note of excitement to her voice. "The things we have done, Shane! The incredible things! You will never believe them until you see them. We have conquered time and space and matter—"
"And the child is dead," Shane said.
"The child—" Kyrsis broke off, and a shadow crossed her face. "Yes, the child is dead."
Unspeaking, the Earthman waited. His temple veins no longer throbbed, but his jaw was hewn of granite.
Kyrsis said: "There are so many things your childish science knows that are not true—and one of them is the nature of life."
Shane studied her, narrow-eyed. "So? In what way?"
"You think that life comes into being when certain conditions are correct. But we know otherwise."
"I hear only words, not meaning," Shane clipped coldly.
"Of course. Because the whole pattern of your thinking is based on false assumptions." The silver woman groped for words. "The thing I seek to say, too simply, is that life is not a creature of conditions. It is an entity, a basic element, a product of the whole great cosmic process of creation. Either it exists in a place, or it does not." She shrugged. "Your solar system has it."
"And Gadar—?"
"Gadar had it once, ten million years ago. But life is like any other resource. You use it up. It dissipates and scatters, transmuted into useless forms by a process that not even our science can reverse." Her voice fell. "Then, Shane, your planet dies."
Shane stared at her. "So you bought slaves—"
"Of course we bought slaves!" A note of hysteria crept into the silver woman's laugh. "Power, you talked about. Why would anyone buy slaves in a universe where power is free? What we sought was life—life in a form we could drink up, before our bodies finally died!" She came close to Shane, her pale face smooth and glowing, the violet eyes afire. "Look at me, Earthman! Look closely! How old would you guess me? How many of your Earth years?"
Shane did not speak.
"A hundred years, Earthman? A thousand? Ten thousand? A hundred thousand?" Again she laughed—wildly, up and down the scale. And then, steady once more: "Shane, I first drew breath a million years ago! Our science has kept me as I am—young in body and mind and heart. But without new life—without the living slaves we buy—I would wither and die in months. This child,"—and she gestured to the limp, dead body of the Chonya girl—"what did she know of life? What did she care? I played with her, and comforted her, and she was happy; and then I sucked the life out of her body, and you hate me for it. But was it so wicked, really? Was it not better that I should live, I who have learned to love life through a million endless year, than she, who would have wasted that life and thrown it away in some dull corner of the asteroid belt?"
Shane shifted; stared down at the dead child for a long, long moment, then back at the woman again.
"You are thinking, 'Is there no other way?'" Kyrsis whispered. Her pale hand touched the Earthman's arm. "I tell you, Shane: there is none. How many years have our scientists sought it? How many eons of spatial time? But always, the answer is no. We must have life itself—humanoid life, like that of this girl here. No other can be transmuted to our bodies."
"If life is an element, as you say, a thing that wells up with creation, out of the birth of a planet, then you could have moved to another planet," Shane said in a dull, flat voice. "If life is gone from Gadar, then you could have migrated, picked a new home."
"It sounds so easy, does it not?" the silver woman taunted. "But where life exists, there life forms evolve. We could have taken such a planet only by conquest. Would your worlds have liked that, Shane? Would they have been willing to see us come in and seize their homelands? You fought out of pride, for the belt the Chonya chieftains gave you. Would the worlds of your system do less if we tried to invade them?"
Shane stood mute.
Kyrsis' arm slipped about him. The rich purple lips came close to his. "Come with us, Shane! Join us!" she whispered. "For a million aching years I have sought a man like you. Do not leave me, now that I've found you...."
A weakness crept through Shane's body.
With a tremendous, savage effort, he hurled the silver woman from him.
"You'd steal my life as Quos Reggar stole my belt!" he shouted. Stark murder was in his eyes.
"No, Shane—! No!"
"Words!" the Earthman lashed fiercely. "Words, to lull me as you lulled that Chonya child!" He caught Kyrsis' arm, dragged her up from the place where she had fallen. "You talk of life as if you, your people, were the only ones who knew the way to live it. But life belongs to each man, alone—his precious own, to waste or hoard as he sees fit—"
The woman asked: "And what will you do, now that you have decided?"
"Decided—?"
The look she threw him was a study in contempt. "I can see it in your eyes, Earthman. For a moment you hung, unsure, caught up by the vision of the wealth and power that might be yours; of me at your side, and endless years for us together. But then it dawned upon you of a sudden that I might suck your life out, as we suck those of the other slaves we take, though such was not my plan. The thought brought fear, and in the same instant you became the great Gar Shane, who would strike down Gadar and save your solar system." She laughed, and the sound was chill as outer space. "You are as much a child as that dead lump there beside you. Do you think to pit yourself against my people—scientists who could plot your every thought ten million years before your birth? You are but a fool, and you will die as all the others have died, and Quos Reggar will wear your belt and serve us!"
"There comes a time for every man to die," Shane said. "If this is mine, I'll face it." He picked a heavy, club-like, metal ornament from a table, and his face had the rugged lines of carven stone. "We go now, Kyrsis. And if I can die—remember, so can you!"
"But where—?"
Shane bared his teeth in a death's-head grin. "To your ramps, Shi Kyrsis. Even slavers carry a fleet alarm."
"A fleet alarm—?"
"When a space ship wallows through the void, out of control, a crewman throws the switch on the fleet alarm box. It sends out a distress call on a Federation beam—a call so strong that it can reach to the farthest star."
"And then—?"
"The fleet command sends aid." The Earthman laughed thinly. "They send a patrol most often, or even a single ship. But when they get a call straight out of the core of Gadar, they'll waste no time on mere patrols or squadrons. There'll be a fleet, the whole great Federation fleet, sweeping down upon your planet."
"Indeed?" the woman mocked. "So your Federation's fleet will come. What can they do to us, burrowed here deep within the solid rock of Gadar? And we have weapons, Earthman—weapons the like of which you've never seen."
"Then roll them out," Shane said. "This will be your chance to use them." He pushed her through the doorway; on past the other rooms and out into the car.
She asked, "What can you do if I will not aid you?"
Shane shrugged. "I'd have no choice but to go my way alone, I suppose ..."—and then, sinking in the barb with a savage twist—"after I'd beaten your brains out, killed you so dead that not even your people's science could ever put you back together!"
They traveled through endless miles of tube-like passage, after that, but always climbing ever upward—the silver woman sitting at the controls, Shane watching, hawk-like, alert in every nerve and fiber, the heavy club gripped ready in his hand.
Then, finally, they reached a place where great volcanic pipes led upward, and slaver space ships towered base-down, ramped and ready.
There was a guard, a silver guard, who said, "It is forbidden to go farther."
"Of course," Shane said—and smiled and struck him down.
"Must I go further?" Kyrsis asked. Panic was in her voice.
"Much further," Shane replied. Again he threw her the death's-head grin. "Life is a sacred thing, you've said, and I am a fool—fool enough, at least, to think it should be true for my Chonyas, as well as your people. So drive on—out along the ramp to where Quos Reggar's own great ship is waiting!"
"Not Reggar's own ship—!" The silver woman's lips were trembling. "Earthman, he may be on board now. He brought me back to Gadar with him, and—"
"—and if he's here, so much the better!" The recklessness was back in Shane's stance now. The blue eyes gleamed a chill excitement. "Why do you think I seek his ship, except to find him? He is the key to this bath of blood; were it not for him and his kind, your people might have been hard-put to implement their plans for slaughter. Fool that I am, lacking your skill and science, I've a feeling that if I can cut Quos Reggar's throat, I'll have traveled far towards choking off this madness!" He lifted his club. "Drive on, Shi Kyrsis! Quickly, before the vision of that dead Chonya child again seeps through me!"
Trembling, the silver woman worked at the controls. The car went racing down the ramp to where Quos Reggar's ship stood waiting.
"Inside!" Shane said. "Keep close before me!"
They clambered aboard the slaver, tight with tension. But there was no sign of life. Reggar's own quarters lay deserted.
"The control room, then," the Earthman said tightly.
In silence, they climbed the long steel ladder.
A lone Pervod sat in the control room, rewiring a panel. He looked up, saw Kyrsis already in the doorway. Lust touched his sly reptilian face. "Ho, woman—!"
Shane smashed his skull.
And there was the black metal cube that was the fleet alarm box.
"You spoke of weapons, Kyrsis?" Shane said bleakly. "Now is the time, then. Roll them out!"
He threw the switch.
CHAPTER XII
They were coming now—a horde of great silver ships that lanced through the void like streaks of light, hurtling down on Gadar. The slim, sleek Chonya craft were with them, too ... the dull black Malya flyers; and Shane knew that his other calls had gotten through—that the worlds and the asteroids were uniting against slavery and death and chaos.
A siren blasted shrill alarm. Quos Reggar's renegades swarmed onto the ramp, racing for their ships to take up the challenge.
The light of battle shone in Shane's blue eyes. The reckless laugh rose in his throat. With a jerk, he levered the slaver flagship's great hatches shut. His thumb rammed home the contact button for the interlacing belts of proton cannon that girded the craft.
The exploding flame of pronic blasts erupted across the short-range visiscreen's whole viewer—searing the outlaws from the ramp, smashing the slaver ships off their bases, turning the great volcanic pits to a holocaust of flaming ruin.
And Shane the Earthman, gar of the Chonyas, high lord of the asteroids, laughed his wild, bold, reckless laugh and jammed the contact button home again ... again ... again....
But now a voice came through the amplifier—Quos Reggar's voice, shaking with rage and hate and fury: "Though it costs me my own ship, I'll blast you, chitza! You'll sear as my men have seared—"
Shane flicked the switch. "Blast, then, Reggar! Blast—but you'll blast the Lady Kyrsis with me!"
Beside him, Kyrsis screamed, "No Reggar! Not that—not that! The meteors—"
Shane snapped the switch. "The meteors—?"
The silver woman's poise was gone. She shook her fist, and the glittering metallic hair came tumbling down about her shoulders. "You'll see, Earthman! You'll see! We have weapons such as you've never dreamed of—"
Shane's eyes flicked back to the long-range visiscreen—to the silver fleet that raced towards Gadar. It was closer now ... so close he could see the fore-jets opening for the landing.
Only then, abruptly, the fleet was swerving—swinging wide in wild, irregular maneuver.
And then the meteors came—bright balls of flame in swirling clouds and clusters, with cores of stone and molten iron; flashing across the screen in the path of the Federation fleet ... hurtling through space in a murderous barrage.
And one ship swerved too late, and a great orange-and-purple monster crashed into it with a burst of fire and sparking shards.
"You talk of power, Earthman?" Kyrsis raged shrilly. "You brag of your Federation's broadcast system? Then look at this, and know what power really means! We have tapped a source of energy so great it makes all others puny—a source your science left untouched, though it lies within your solar system! But we have harnessed that force. We have concentrated it into great controlled magnetic fields that we can shift at will, so strong they pull the very meteors from their courses and hurl them to the place that we desire them!"
Shane rocked, and shock was suddenly written on his lean, hard face. Wordless, he stared into the screen.
"And there is more, Gar Shane—much more!" the woman cried. Swiftly, she stepped to the screen and twirled the dials. "There was a plan we drew for such a time as this—a plan to smash barbarian worlds to dust and ashes. We'll hurl the meteor swarms down on their cities, clouds of them so huge they'll cut through any atmospheric layer." She whirled. "Here, see your homeland, Earth! It will be the first to go! Already, the field is concentrating, forming—drawing in the meteor clouds out of the void—"
The viewer on the long-range screen was clearing. And there was Earth, Shane's native planet, a great, green-glowing arc in the lower corner. A lone space ship was rising in the foreground, speeding out into the void. But already, about it, were meteor clusters ... gathering swarms that grew with every passing minute.
"You see, Gar Shane? The people of your Earth are doomed!" the silver woman jeered in paranoiac frenzy. "There is no hope, no way to save them! The other planets, too, will go, till at last there is no one left but we of Gadar. Then we shall migrate out of this dark star, into your worlds, where life is not yet spent and faded. My people's strength will rise anew—"
Bleakly, Shane stared into the screen, through a moment that lasted all eternity.
Then, in one explosive motion, he snatched the space-phones from their rack. His voice crackled out into the void: "Chonyas ... Chonyas ... Shane, your gar, is calling—"
And taut-drawn Chonya words came back: "We stand by for your orders—"
"I want a ship," Shane answered tightly, "a single fast Chonya ship, equipped with Abaquist repellers, to try to break through the meteor swarm and come down to Gadar to me on the fleet alarm beam."
"We come, Gar Shane—"
Even with the words, a slim, sleek craft was breaking from the milling fleet, swerving through the sky in a monstrous arc.
Then it was coming round again—striking its course, plunging down on Gadar. Straight into the blazing meteor swarm it sped, and even on the screen Shane could see it tossing—careening, staggering, lurching with shock.
And then it was through the swarm and out again. Its hull was ripped, its hatches battered, but still it plummeted down towards Gadar.
Kyrsis cried: "Now I know you are truly mad, not just a fool, if you think you can fight both my people and Quos Reggar here on Gadar with the crew of a single ship!"
Shane said: "We're leaving now," and levered back the hatches. Again he fired a burst from the proton cannon to clear the way ... saw the shaft's walls vibrate with its violence.
The Chonya ship hurtled down the huge volcanic pipe like a shooting star. Barely in time, it braked and based upon the ramp.
Before she could read his thoughts, Shane snatched up Kyrsis bodily and raced through the smouldering pronic rubble to the Chonya craft.
"Blast!" he shouted, and swung aboard; and almost before the hatches were shut, the ship was in the air again, lancing up into the sky.
The commander said: "Where now, Gar Shane? What are your orders?"
The Earthman laughed harshly. "Send out the word to break the Federation fleet into squadrons, each to stay far from the others, and all to strike at Gadar. We'll see how many meteor swarms our friends down there can muster!"
"And the rest of us—the Malyas, Chonyas—?"
"You'll follow me," Shane said. He took the jet-globe. "I'll set the course."
Kyrsis' eyes were like great violet flames. "Pay him no heed, Chonya!" she cried hoarsely. "Kill him! Lock him away! He is of Earth, and he has gone mad with fear for his homeland! He takes you there to try to battle another, greater meteor swarm! It will be the death of all of you!"
The Chonya glanced curiously at her in her disarray, then looked into the visiscreen, the jet-globe. "A Chonya holds no fear of death, Silver One," he observed, iron-steady. "Besides, our course is set for Jupiter, not Earth."
"Jupiter—!" the woman cried, and now a new note of panic was in her voice. She clutched Shane's arm. "Why Jupiter, Earthman? Why?"
"Not Jupiter, Kyrsis, but one of Jupiter's moons," Shane answered thinly. "You see? There it lies in the visiscreen."
"Jupiter V—!" the silver woman whispered. "No, Shane! No—!"
"Yes, Kyrsis!" the Earthman came back coldly. "Jupiter V, the place where Reggar held me prisoner. And the satellite closest to the planet, a satellite heaped twelve levels deep with power converters."
"No, no—"
Relentlessly, Shane hammered on: "Who was it wanted all that power? Who built that great Paulsini unit? Not any slaver, surely! No, that took skill and science and years of work. And when it was done, your people had more power than the world had ever known—power drawn from the endless seas of energy of Jupiter's great Red Spot, the heat of oceans of flaming hydrogen, the force that lies congealed in gases held under such pressures that they turn to solids, all turned somehow to your use by those new converters that I saw there."
The silver woman looked at him. A little of the wildness left her eyes, replaced by something that might have been cunning. Her voice came down to its former liquid murmur. "And what will you do when you get to this moon, Earthman? Will it bring back the cities of your native planet?"
"Say what you mean," Shane came back tightly.
"Perhaps Earth could be spared—for your aid against the other worlds of the Federation."
Shane's eyes blazed. "You do think me a fool, Shi Kyrsis! After all that has gone, can you believe I would trust you?"
"It is a chance you must take, if you would save Earth's cities."
Strain showed in Shane's voice, his face. But his jaw stayed hard, his blue eyes steady. "If Earth must go, then go it will, Shi Kyrsis. For all I know, the meteors may this moment be hurtling down. But even if they are, and though it costs me my life and my homeland, I'll still take the chance in order to break your life-sucking people's power."
"But you cannot destroy that power—"
The Chonya commander broke in: "More meteors, Gar! They gather between us and the satellite!"
And Kyrsis jeered. "You see, Earthman? You have lost already!"
Shane said to the Chonya: "We're going through."
"Through the swarm?" The commander's face lost a little of its color, but his voice stayed firm. He picked up his space-phones. "I shall give the order."
"We're going through," Shane repeated grimly, "and some of us—those who have repellers—may get there. There will not be many, but only a handful of workers can be on that moon, with Reggar's crew withdrawn, so even a few ships will be enough."
"Yes, Gar," the Chonya nodded coolly. He spoke into the space-phones, gave the order.
The ship lanced into the swarm.
There was a nightmare quality to those endless moments. Space was suddenly ablaze about them with a thousand screaming lights that slashed at them from all directions. Off to the right, a great ball of fire appeared from nowhere and blotted out a ship. A streak of flame speared through another, and it exploded in mid-flight.
And still they drove on through the tempest, tossed and jostled, beaten, butchered.
An alarm bell clanged fiercely.
"A rip in the hull, upper port," the Chonya reported grimly.
Jupiter V was very large in the screens now. It loomed like a monstrous metal ball, glistening with the hood of structure that encased it.
"The swarm is following us now," the commander said. "It moves with us, traveling even faster than are we." His lips twisted wryly. "Their control is getting better all the time."
Shane stared into the visiscreen. It was as if the satellite were hurtling up to meet them. The exploding speed of it made the screen seem almost to whirl.
And still the meteors swarmed and blazed around them.
"Thirty seconds more," the Chonya said. "We must brake by then, or crash instead of ramp."
Jupiter V now extended past the edges of the screen. They could see but a segment of it—a segment that raced ever upward, ever towards them, dividing into a thousand and finer details every second.
"Twenty seconds," the Chonya reported.
The meteor swarm seemed to close in about them—tighter, tighter.
"Fifteen seconds."
The meteors' light was stunning, blinding.
Shane's teeth were clenched, his lips parted, his eyes glued tight to the viewer of the visiscreen. The muscles stood out along his neck. The tension about him was a living thing.
"Ten seconds."
A sort of paralysis seemed to grip the Earthman. He stood frozen, still staring like one in a trance.
The ribs in the satellite's casing stood out, now—the ports, the vents.
The meteors seemed to have grown to blazing suns.
"Five seconds."
Shane's paralysis broke. He snatched the phones, and of a sudden his eyes were blazing like the nightmare scene beyond their hull. "Veer!" he shouted. "Don't land! Veer—!"
The Chonya commander's hand struck the jet-globe with a crack like a whip. It spun till it sang, racing round and round.
The ship swung out in a wild gyration. Reeling, slashing crazily across the moon's perimeter, it hurtled off through space.
Behind them, the other ships, too, were peeling clear.
But not the meteor swarm. Down it plunged, down, in the course the ships had followed, straight at the hundred-mile ball that was Jupiter V.
"They'll crash—!" the Chonya cried, and jubilation was in his voice. "They did not know we were so close! Now it's too late to turn them!"
The explosive flash of the meteors bursting through the satellite's casing came like an exclamation point. Great cracks appeared—monstrous fissures, spewing flame.
And still more meteors hurtled down—the whole, vast, captive swarm. The planetoid's casing glowed red-hot, then white, till the moon was a fiery, radiant sphere.
Then suddenly, it seemed to shiver. A gigantic explosion ripped one side, sent the planetoid spinning over. A huge, wedge-shaped chunk tore loose and blasted off through space; then another ... another.
Without a word, the commander of the Chonya craft picked up the manual on interspatial navigation, riffled through to the page on Jupiter V. Tore it out, crumpled it, dropped it to the floor.
Shane threw him a grim, tight grin and said: "There's still work, back on Gadar."
The Chonya spun the jet-globe; focussed the visicreen on the dark star.
Even as the image drew sharp and clear, a ship shot out of one of the great volcanic pipes that served as the planet's ramping spots.
Shane's face went dark again. "That's Reggar's ship. Where is he going?"
And then, beside him, Kyrsis said, "Oh, no—!"
Shane turned at the sheer, stark panic in her voice.
Her face showed even more.
The Earthman looked back to the visiscreen again; and this time he, too, rocked under the impact of the thing that was happening.
Gadar was moving from its orbit!
Faster it went, and faster, slashing a course towards outer space. The ships of the Federation fleet raced madly from its path.
"No—!" Shi Kyrsis cried again. "No, they must not leave me!" Her face was working now, contorted. The silvery tones seemed duller, more like lead.
In an awe-struck voice Shane said: "This is the way they must have come! It was no cosmic accident! They hurled their own planet across the void—"
"No, no!" the silver woman shrieked, and the wild hysteria in her tones was giving way to madness. "They can't, they can't! I must go with them—!" Her twitching face was no longer human.
Then, before anyone could stop her, she turned and ran—out of the door, away from the control room.
But outside the room there was no place to run ... only an echoing, well-like shaft that dropped away a hundred feet through the vitals of the ship, its depths linked only by a steel-runged ladder.
Unseeing, unheeding, the silver woman plunged over the brink and plummeted downward. Her scream rose and fell in the banshee wail of a soul in torment.
It ended with a sound like the bursting of an air-filled paper bag a room or two away.
The Chonya sucked in air. He let it out with a sound that might have been pity.
White-lipped, Shane said: "There was a Chonya child, a little girl...." Abruptly, he turned away and spun the jet-globe.
The ship's commander frowned. "I do not understand, Gar Shane."
The Earthman's eyes stayed on the visiscreen. He said: "My road still lies before me. It leads to Quos Reggar, and my great iron belt, and Talu, the Malyalara."
CHAPTER XIII
They picked up the trail in the asteroid belt, in the wreckage of a gutted town. It led to Horla, then, and from there to the burning sands of Mercury's barren wastes, and then back out to the moons of Saturn. But always Reggar was a jump ahead, and always there was blood and death and pillage.
Once, on Juno, Shane thought he had him. But Reggar blasted off as the Earthman ramped in, and they lost the trail in the outer asteroids.
And then, one night, Shane came to Titan.
As always, there was desolation. As always, the great slaveship was gone. And a weeping bartok woman shook her fist at Shane and cried, "So now you come! But they have killed my man. My children starve, and I am left to care for Reggar's cursed, dying Malyalara—"
Shane turned on her, "A Malyalara—? Quos Reggar's Malyalara?"
An emotion that might have been fear flickered in the woman's eyes, and she would have fled had Shane not caught her arm. "Please, Earthman—!" she pleaded piteously. "My man is still warm in his grave. I say strange things—senseless, without meaning. Please let me go—" And when Shane released her, she scurried off through the rubble like a frightened mouse and disappeared in the ruins of a broken building.
But Shane followed her—cautious, cat-footed; through alleys and shadows and tumbled wreckage; till finally she went into one of the ancient, conical, loaf-like hovels in the oldest part of the native city.
For ten long minutes the Earthman watched and waited. Then, half-angrily, he rose from the place where he lay hidden, and slapped the gun slung at his hip, and strode to the door through which the woman had gone. His knock echoed.
After a moment the woman opened the door a crack. When she saw who it was, her eyes went wide, and she tried to force the door back shut.
But Shane put his weight against it and held it open, and said, "I want to see your house, bartok."
"No, no—!" the woman panted.
"I must," Shane said. As gently as he could, he pushed her aside, and stepped into the room.
And there was Quos Reggar.
The giant mongrel stood in the corner, behind the door through which Shane had entered. A light-pistol gleamed in one webbed hand, and the great lobed eyes were hot with hate.
And about the creature's waist still was drawn the iron-linked belt—Shane's Chonya belt, the belt of the asteroids.
"Welcome, Earthman!" the mongrel rasped, just as on the other night that now seemed so far away, so long ago. "Welcome to death!"
Shane froze in his tracks—statue-like, taut-muscled. His eyes alone moved ... gauging Quos Reggar, measuring the distance, weighing the light-gun against his own draw.
And the mongrel saw the things in the cold blue eyes—the death, the decision; and he snapped sharply, "No, chitza! Wait—!"
"Why?" clipped the Earthman. "Why put it off?" And there was recklessness in his voice; a fierce exaltation.
"Because it may be you need not die!" the mongrel came back swiftly. "Because there are things you do not know—things that still may save your life and make it worth living."
Shane still stood taut, motionless, waiting. He did not answer.
"I thought you would come to Talu's name," the hybrid told him, and now the creature's tone held a gloating note. "I planned it well—and you, fool that you are, came to the trap as on wings of fire."
"Get on with it!" Shane slashed harshly. "We both know what is between us. Why waste this time?"
"The time is not wasted," Reggar answered. "Your coming here as you did proves something ... a fine point on which much may hang, for you as well as me."
Shane bared his teeth. His left hand moved in a savage, contemptuous gesture. "Get on with it!" he slashed again. "What is it you seek to say?"
A sly smile of sorts came to Reggar's lips. He called: "Talu—"
"Here, Sha Reggar." She stepped through the doorway, lithely graceful as always, garbed in a ban-dong of scarlet and gold. A gold clip held the midnight hair, and a gleaming fire-ruby of Neptune hung by a golden chain in the hollow of her throat.
Her eyes met the Earthman's, poised and calm. "Sha Shane...."
A touch of color came to Shane's lean face. Quickly, he looked away, back to Quos Reggar.
But a ghoulish grin twisted the mongrel's lips. "Why stare at me, Earthman? Look at her, look at her! Is she not lovely?"
Shane's eyes did not waver. "I'm listening, Reggar," he answered tightly.
The hybrid chuckled. "You came quickly, Earthman ... so quickly, when you heard mention of this woman. You threw caution to the winds and came alone, in spite of all sense and judgment."
"So—?"
"So I knew there is a feeling between you and this Malyalara—a thing without logic, beyond your judgment, perhaps what you humanoids call love."
The color heightened in the Earthman's face. "You're mad as a ban, Reggar!" he challenged angrily.
"I think not," leered the mongrel. "And it is good. Because you shall have the woman—untouched, too, Earthman, for I am not as your race, and she could never catch my fancy, save as a pretty toy."
"And the price, Reggar?" Shane queried tightly. "What must I do to earn such favor?"
The creature before him shrugged. "I need not feign you have not hurt me. For you have. You and your Chonyas have harried me through the void, and up and down among the planets. You've tracked me down as the zanth tracks down its prey. But now, I tire of being hunted. My crew is weary and sick, and the hull of my ship is worn to cracking. So I have stayed behind this time to strike a bargain with you, if I can."
"A bargain?" The Earthman laughed harshly. "When was your word ever worth a xi, that I should take it now?" His eyes narrowed, and he studied the other. "Besides, what bargain could I make? The Federation hunts you also."
"The Federation?" Reggar sneered. "Loot will always buy someone in the Federation. But you—you fight from hate; and that is different."
"Then why haggle with me? Why not kill me now, if indeed you fear me?"
"Why does anyone bargain?" Again the mongrel shrugged. "Because you have something I want and need—something I cannot get without your aid."
"Well? What is it?"
Thoughtfully, the great lobed eyes surveyed the Earthman. The rasping voice sank lower. "It is sanctuary, Gar Shane. That is what I seek ... a place in the asteroids to hide, away from the eyes of the Federation. As for you, you need not even call off your war against me. Not openly; you will merely manage never quite to find me."
The Earthman frowned. He looked away—to Talu, still standing in the open doorway; to the woman who'd lured him here, mousy and frightened in the farthest corner; to the tawdry room and its tawdrier trimmings.
Then, at last, his eyes moved back to Reggar. In a tone of wonderment, he asked, "Did you really think that I might do it?—That I might break the oath I swore; betray the trust the Chonyas gave me with their great iron belt?"
Almost silkily, Reggar murmured: "Before you refuse, there are things you should consider."
The cloak of control fell away from Shane. His blue eyes blazed. His jaw was hard. "I swore my oath on the star-stone of Hiaroloch, Reggar," he slashed harshly. "There's nothing in this world or any other that will make me break it." And then, with savage force: "Get on with your killing, butcher—and make sure your first beam hits me true, for it will be your last!"
The mottlings stood out on Reggar's scaly face. The light-gun thrust forward, and muscles stood out along the webbed hand's bones. "Perhaps there is a thing you have forgotten, chitza!" he snarled. "Perhaps you do not recall—the theol!"
"The theol—?" And though the words came out as a question, already the color was draining from the Earthman's face.
"Yes, the theol, starbo—and you know what I mean, for the fear is crawling through your eyes like the worms of Thora! Two doses you've had. A third will make you my slave forever!"
The muscles in Shane's neck knotted. His head came forward just a fraction. "Wrong, Reggar!" he clipped. "To make me stand and take the theol, the fear of death must be in me even stronger. And that dread I do not have. I'll fight—here, now! So the choice is yours, not mine! You must kill me, or die yourself—"
"Wait, Shane—!" cried the mongrel. "There is more! There is the woman—the Malyalara!"
Shane went rigid.
"I can kill you," rasped Reggar. "Have no doubt about it. My gun is out, and yours is still holstered. But let me tell you this: if I do, Talu is the one who shall suffer! I'll sell her in the brothels of Uranus! The great, hairy beasts there shall have this woman of yours—and she will be a long time dying...."
Shane's lips drained white. His face grew grey. Of a sudden his hands were shaking.
"Is it not a pretty picture, Shane?" the creature before him gloated. "You dead—the Malyalara sold for the sport of the beasts there on Uranus—and all because you would not stretch your oath even a little—?"
"Damn you, Reggar!" the Earthman whispered. "Damn you, damn you, damn you—"
"Then it is agreed?" the mongrel cried, in a voice alive with hideous glee. "You will promise me sanctuary, somewhere in the asteroids? You'll pledge your sworn word to hide me and shield me and give me aid?"
"Reggar—" The veins were throbbing in the Earthman's temples.
Only then Talu cried out, "No, Shane! No—!" She rushed forward, hurled her lithe body straight at Quos Reggar. "I would rather die than see you yield! You know the things this monster has done to the Malyas, the Chonyas! Kill him, kill him—!"
A roar of rage burst from the mongrel. His clubbed light-gun slashed down at the woman's bare breasts, trying to drive her off.
Shane leaped like a tiger. He clawed at the hybrid's pistol; wrenched it back—away from Talu's supple body, hard against his own.
Twisting and snarling, Reggar crushed down the exciter.
A faint, misty spray spurted from the muzzle, straight into Shane's throat.
But now Shane's own gun was out. Purple light slashed like a sword at the mongrel's belly.
Reggar reeled back. He smashed a wild blow to Shane's head, sent the Earthman crashing to the floor. Again Shane fired.
Reggar's mottled face went black under the beam. An awful scream rose in his throat. He tottered ... lurched ... fell.
Talu was with Shane, then—clutching him to her, the dark face all anguish. "Shane, Shane...."
Dazedly, the Earthman muttered, "The light-gun ... what happened to his light-gun? He triggered it straight into my throat—"
With an effort, he rolled to the weapon; broke it open.
The ray mechanism was gone. A hypodermic injector had been inserted in its place.
Shane's hand clutched his throat.
There was still a trace of moisture there ... clear, colorless moisture.
Talu whispered: "Shane, let me hold you—"
Shaking, he forced her away. His voice quaked: "No, Malyalara. No! Get away from me—now, while you have the chance—"
"Shane, what is it—?"
Numbly, he showed her the gun. "An injector—with theol. It makes three doses. In the end, Reggar wins. The madness will come upon me—"
"No, Shane—" She would have embraced him.
"Get away!" he shouted fiercely. "Don't you understand? This was the third dose—the dose that brings madness. And there is no cure—"
His face was a mask—all despair, and all fury.
She laughed, gently, then—warm, comprehending. There was no panic in her face, her voice. "No, Shane," she told him. "There will be no madness."
He stared at her blankly. "It is theol—"
"Yes, it is theol. But not the third dose."
"Not the third—?" His tongue stumbled.
"No, Shane. Because before the third, there must be a second, and I gave you what Reggar thought was the second that night back at Horla. But he left me alone for a moment with the injector, and I replaced the theol with another solution—without color, but harmless."
A choking sound rose in the Earthman's throat. His trembling hands touched her—smoothed her hair, brushed her shoulder.
She came to him—smiling, lips warm with welcome. And suddenly their bodies were together, tight-welded, and he was whispering feverishly, "Talu ... Talu...."
And when at last they parted, she said, "I am yours, Earthman ... yours now and forever. But you still have a role to play, your oath to uphold. You are gar of the Chonyas."
"And you will rule with me!" he answered her fiercely.
"Your belt, Earthman...."
"My belt ... the belt of the asteroids." Bending, he stripped the iron links from the corpse of Quos Reggar and girded it tight about his own waist once more. His eyes met Talu's. "Come, Malyalara...."
Together, they crossed the threshold, into the night and the stars.