"Ah,” said Harlow. “And then-?"
"My men, my ship, were waiting,” Dundonald answered. “Taggart took them by surprise, easily. In the fight, three of my men were killed. He has the others locked up."
Harlow, in the anger he felt, almost forgot he was not talking to Dundonald in the flesh. He said, between his teeth, “He's very good at trick surprises, is Taggart."
"He learned,” said Dundonald, “that I was — on the other side. He has armed men watching the Converter. If I try to come back through, he'll have me."
"But what's he doing — just sitting there?” demanded Harlow.
"He's waiting, Harlow. He sent out communic messages, to someone named Frayne. Frayne, I gathered, commands another of the secret ships that the Cartel sent to find me and the Vorn. Taggart messaged him to come to the world of the Vorn, to help him take the Converter away."
The appalling picture began to come clear to Harlow. If the Cartel ships got this Converter away, the ultimate freedom of the universe would be in the hands of a group of greedy men who could exploit the greatest of all discoveries for their own power and profit.
"Oh, no,” said Harlow. “We've got to stop that. Can we reach that world before this other ship — Frayne's ship — does?"
"I don't know,” said Dundonald. “Frayne can't be too far away or he'd be out of range of communic. That's why you've got to hurry, to get there first. Yet you can't land right where Taggart is, his ship radar will spot you coming and his missiles will get you before you're even close. The only way you can get to him is through that."
And the patch of radiance became a round ball and moved to the visiscreen, touching the black outward bulge of a looming cloudcliff.
"I can guide you through it, Harlow. But you'll have to come down beyond the curve of the planet and walk the rest of the way to Lurluun — that's that old Vorn city where the Converter is. After that—"
"After that,” Harlow said, “we'll hit Taggart with everything we've got."
"Which isn't much,” Dundonald said, “if all you have are the popguns prescribed by Regulation Six. Well, they'll have to do. Change your course now, and make it fast."
Harlow, as he moved, glimpsed the strained face of Yrra gazing in awe at the floating core of radiance. He said, “Something else, Dundonald. “The girl's brother, Brai. She came after him. Is he still living?"
"He's with Taggart's prisoners — my men,” came the answering thought. “How long any of them will live if Taggart pulls this off, you can guess."
Harlow told Yrra briefly, in her own language, and saw the tears start in her eyes.
"For God's sake, will you hurry!” prodded Dundonald's thought.
* * *
Feeling very strange indeed, like a man dreaming or drunk or in partial shock, Harlow spun the Thetis around on her tail and sent her plunging toward the black cliff of dust.
He filled in Kwolek and Garcia as much as he could in a few words, and had Garcia get on the intercom to the crew. He tried not to look at the dust-cliff ahead. It was a million miles each way and it looked as solid as basalt. The green glare of the distant sun touched its edges with a poisonous light.
"Relax,” said Dundonald. “It only looks that way. I've been through it a dozen times."
"Fine,” said Harlow, “but we're still bound to our old fleshly selves, not at all impervious to floating hunks of rock."
"I'll take you through, Harlow. Don't worry."
Harlow worried.
The cliff was black and imminent before them. Instinctively Harlow raised his arm before his face, flinching as they hit. There was no impact. Only suddenly it was dark, as dark as Erebus, and the telltales on the board flopped crazily. The Thetis was blind and deaf, racing headlong through the stellar dust.
Kwolek muttered, “This is crazy. We just imagined we saw and heard—"
"Shut up,” whispered Harlow. “I can't hear—” He looked around. Panic hit him. The patch of radiance was gone. Dundonald was gone. Dundonald? How did he know it was Dundonald and not a deceitful stranger, one of the old Vorn sent to lead him to destruction? He could wander forever in this cosmic night until the ship was hulled and they died, and still they would wander forever—
"Pull your nose up,” came Dundonald's thought sharply. “Three degrees at least. What the hell, Mark! Pull it up. Now. Starboard ten degrees — forget the degrees. Keep turning until I tell you to stop. Good. Now keep her steady — there's some stuff ahead but we'll go under it. Steady—"
Harlow did as he was told, and presently he saw what he had not seen before — the misty brightness that was Dundonald's strange new being drawn thin as a filament and extending out of sight through the fabric of the ship. Harlow found time to be ashamed.
The utter dark went on, not quite forever. There was no thinning, no diffusion. Or perhaps they went through the fringe area so swiftly that none was apparent. One moment the screens were dead black and in the next moment the green sunblaze burst painfully upon their eyes and they were out of the cloud, back in the vast, dark walled bay of the Vorn. But their detour through the dark had now brought them out on the other side of the green star and its planet.
Dundonald's thought reached him, urgent. “Taggart expects you to come after him, straight in through the bay the way he came. He's got his ship cruising out in front of the planet to radar your approach."
"And we've got the planet between us and his ship, masking us,” Harlow said. “If we keep it between, we can land secretly."
"That's it, Harlow. But you've got to hurry! I'll guide you in."
Strange pilot for the strangest landing a man ever made, thought Harlow. Don't think about it, don't think about what Dundonald has become, play it as it comes, take her in.
He took her in. The Thetis hit the atmosphere and it was like plunging into a green well.
"I'm trying to land you as near Lurluun as I can,” said Dundonald. “But this planet rotates, and Lurluun is rolling toward the picketship out there, and you have to keep the curve of the planet hiding you."
The ship plunged downward, and now weird-colored forests rolled beneath them, vast deserts of greenish sand, mountains of black rock stained with verdigris like old copper, a strange, unearthly landscape under the light of the emerald sun that was setting as this side of the planet turned away from it.
A low black range rose ahead of them and Dundonald urged him toward it, and the Thetis went down on a long slant with the screeching roar of riven atmosphere about them. And Harlow, his hands tense on the controls, thought that he saw scattered cities fly past beneath them.
"All dead,” came Dundonald's thought. “More and more of the Vorn took to star-roving and fewer and fewer came back, until gradually the race here died out. And now hardly any of the Vorn are left in even this part of the galaxy. They've moved on and out."
An instant later he warned, "Drop her! This side of the ridge!"
They landed in a desert where a river had cut a deep fantastic gorge down through the sand and the layers of many-colored rock. The tawny waters ran toward the rocky ridge, and through a canyon Dundonald said, “Don't waste time on atmosphere-check, the air's breathable. I lived here for months, and the Vorn lived here for ages, and they were as human as us."
Harlow went to the intercom and gave an order. “Crack the lock. All hands out."
When they went outside, it was into air that was dry and warm and faintly metallic in smell. The green desert stretched around them, and the light of the viridescent sun struck brilliantly across it and painted the looming black rock of the ridge with poisonous colors. There was a silence, except for the murmur of the river in its gorge.
The men looked dumbly at each other and then at Harlow. And then, as a little dancing star of radiance flicked past them and bobbed close to Harlow, the tough Earth faces changed. Harlow had tried to explain but it was no use, all they knew was that the dancing star was supposed to have been human once and they did not like it, they were af
raid and they showed it. All of them, and that included Kwolek and Garcia and Yrra too, kept looking at the floating radiance that had been Dundonald.
"Don't speak aloud to me, they're getting panicky,” came Dundonald's thought. “Think it strongly, and I'll get it."
"Which way to Lurluun?” thought Harlow.
"The way the river flows. But you can't follow the river, Harlow, the gorge is too deep. You'll have to go over the ridge."
"How many men has Taggart got there?"
"Fourteen,” Dundonald answered. “All heavily armed. Plus eight more out in his ship."
Harlow spoke aloud to Kwolek. “Serve out the sidearms."
The little stunners were duly handed out — purely defensive weapons to be used only to save the lives of personnel. They did not have an effective range of more than a few feet, and they did not carry a lethal charge — Star Survey was very tender of native feelings. The light feel of the thing in his hand did not give Harlow much confidence.
He said aloud to the men, “You know what Taggart did to us back at ML-441. Here's our chance to get back at him. He's over that ridge. We're going over and hit him."
"All of us, sir?” said Garcia. “Don't you want a guard left on the Thetis?"
Harlow shook his head. “Unless we overpower that bunch, we won't be coming back to the Thetis. We're twenty to their fourteen, but they've got weapons that make ours look like water-pistols."
Yrra's face flamed with eagerness in the fading green light. “Then I go with you too."
Harlow looked at her dubiously. “I suppose you have to. Stay close to me, and obey orders."
He turned toward the patch of radiance hovering in the air beside him, shining brighter now that the green sun was setting and the light lessening. He thought, “Dundonald, can you go ahead and find out where Taggart has his sentries posted in that city? I must know exactly before we go in."
"Yes. I can do that."
And then men of the Thetis flinched back as the radiance whirled and spun and then flashed away through the gathering twilight. A shining feather, a shooting star, an incredible will-of-the-wisp, darting toward-the looming black ridge and disappearing.
Harlow raised his voice. “We're moving out right now. Pick them up and keep them going."
And in a compact column they started across the sand, keeping a little away from the river-gorge. As the last rays of the green star lit the rock rampart ahead, Harley surveyed it dubiously. He thought he saw a way over it but was not yet sure.
Then he found that they were following an ancient roadway, one so drifted over by sand that he would have strayed from it had there not been stone markers along it. Back from the road rose dark, low, rambling structures that looked like scattered villas. The wind had piled the sand in drifts around them. And in the deepening twilight, there was no sound but the wind and the river. Nobody had lived in those villas for thousands of years.
Yrra, marching beside him, shivered. “It is evil,” she said. “Men were meant to live like men. Suppose everyone were to become like the Vorn? All the worlds of the galaxy would be like this."
It was a frightening thought. Harlow's mind leaped ahead, in imagination, to a time in the future when the human race might vanish utterly and only creatures like Dundonald would be left, immortal, sterile, building nothing, creating nothing, existing only for the thrill of pure knowledge, lovely bits of force and flame wandering forever through the reaches of space, universes without end.
Was that the ultimate goal of a race who went to space, their final evolution? Had the first rockets been only the first steps of an evolution that would take man and make something more than human and less than human of him?
He forced that eerie thought from his mind. They were nearing the ridge and he saw now that the ancient roadway climbed along its face in an easy grade.
"This way,” he called.
The darkness was becoming absolute. There were no stars in the sky, nothing but the blackness of the mighty Horsehead in which this world was embayed. The tiny flash of his pocket-light was drowned.
But as they climbed higher, Harlow thought that he saw a steady pulsing of light from the other side of the ridge. It grew stronger in the sky. They reached the crest of the ridge.
They stood and stared, all their faces bewildered and strange in the light that now struck upon them.
"What is it?” whispered Yrra. A few miles from them, on the other side of the ridge, a great column of opalescent light rose skyward. It was most intense at its base, fading as it ascended. It seethed and coruscated uncannily, yet it maintained itself and sent a strange glow out to touch everything around it.
By that glow, Harlow saw that the opalescent pillar rose from the center of a city. Dark roofs, walls, towers, quivered in the unearthly glow, and shadows clotted the ways between them. There was no other light at all in the silent place, and no visible movement.
"That's the city of the Vorn,” he said. “Lurluun. It's dead, all right."
"But the light?"
"I don't know—” Then Harlow broke off in relief as he saw a flying, shining star that came rushing up toward them. “Dundonald can tell us."
Dundonald had something to tell them, but it was not that. From that hovering star of radiance, his thoughts beat at Harlow frantically.
"It may be too late, Harlow. They've had a message from Frayne. Frayne's ship has entered the Horsehead and is coming on to this world right now!"
CHAPTER VI
The sudden imminence of complete defeat had a curiously numbing effect upon Harlow. He had come a long way, they all had, and they were tired, and it seemed that they were too late and it had all been for nothing. And what was he doing so far from Earth, standing in the night of an alien world and looking across a dead, dark city at a pillar of glory while a floating radiance that had once been human whispered in his mind?
Then Harlow's momentary despair was swept away by good, strong rage. His anger had nothing to do with his mission, important as that was. It was ordinary human anger at being beaten, out-thought, bested, by someone cleverer than himself. He would not let Taggart get away with this!
"Then we've got to hit Taggart before Frayne's ship arrives,” he said.
He spoke aloud, so that Kwolek and the others could understand as well as Dundonald. He asked Dundonald, “Where are Taggart and his sentries?"
"You see that pillar of light, Harlow?"
"I see it. What is it?"
"It's the operative beam of the Converter. It's perpetual, undying. It springs from the mechanism of the Converter itself. Enter the base of the beam and its forces take the atoms of your body, the very electrons, and rearrange them so that you become like me — like the Vorn. But if, as a Vorn, you enter the upper part of the beam, it triggers the reverse process and the beam draws you down and re-arranges your electrons into solidity, into ordinary humanity, again."
"You can tell me how it works later — right now I've got to know about those sentries,” pressed Harlow.
"I'm trying to tell you,” thought Dundonald. “Up on the rim of the Converter itself are two guards with auto-rifles — in case I try to emerge. They also can cover every foot of the big plaza in which the Converter stands. Taggart and his men have their base in a large building on the south side of the plaza. They've got a communic there and their prisoners — my men and Brai — are locked up in a windowless room of the building."
"Taggart's awake?"
"Yes. He was talking by communic with his ship out there. Telling them to hit your ship with missiles the moment you show up, but not to mistake Frayne's ship for yours."
Harlow tried to think fast. This was a soldier's job and he was not a soldier, Star Survey didn't teach strategy. Nor was there time to evolve elaborate plans. He said, “We'll have to knock out the two outside sentries before we can hit Taggart, then. We'll see what the set-up is. Let's move."
They went forward on the double, down the descending roadway toward the d
ark city that brooded under the loom of the ridge. For light they had the opalescent rays of the great column of brilliance ahead.
Their hurrying feet shuffled the dust and sand of thousands of years’ drifting, and made echoes that whispered in the starless night. The echoes became louder when they came down into one of the wide streets that led straight away between low black buildings toward the vertical beam.
Fast and far had Earthmen come from their little world, thought Harlow. The swift snowballing of technical progress had made one breakthrough after another and now a score of’ Earthmen were hurrying through the night of an alien star-world toward something that could be the biggest breakthrough of all.
A deep shiver shook Harlow as he looked at the shining will-of-the-wisp gliding beside him, and then at the dark and silent buildings. Men had once lived here as men. Now they were all gone, dispersed as the radiant Vorn far across the galaxies, and had that breakthrough been good? He thought of a secret like that in the hands of ambitious men, and looked again at the gliding, dancing star beside him, and he quickened his pace.
They came to where the street debauched into the plaza. They kept close against the side of a building, and Harlow motioned his men to stay there in the shadow. He and Kwolek and Garcia with the flitting gleam of Dundonald, moved forward until they could peer out into the open space.
Plaza, park, shrine — what would you call it? Harlow wondered.
Whatever it had been called, this smoothly-paved space was vast. So vast that far away around its curving rim, a parked star-cruiser as large as his own looked small.
"My Starquest," murmured Dundonald's thought.
Harlow spared it only a glance. His eyes flew to the thing that dominated the plaza, the city, the whole planet.
The Converter. The ultimate triumph of an alien science, the machine that had made men into the Vorn.
It did not look like a machine. At the center of the great paved area there rose a massive, flat-topped cement pedestal. Whatever apparatus there was, whatever perpetual power-source of nuclear or other nature, was hidden inside that. A flight of steps on each side of it led up to the summit of the eminence.
The Godmen Page 5
