“Hold it!” he snapped, hearing his own cold voice still a little alien to his ears. But he was himself now. The possessor was gone. And it must have shown on his face and in his impassive eyes under the full lids, for Brekkir paused, reading danger in the voice he could not understand. A second of indecision, and then Brekkir shook himself and stepped back, his breath coming in heavy, uneven gusts.
“All right, Karen?” Alan asked without looking at her. “Will he—”
“I don’t know. Sir Colin’s the only one who can handle him. Whatever happened, it was bad.”
Mike Smith licked dry lips. “It was the Alien. He was here. He was you.”
Sir Colin got painfully to his feet, came forward to put an arm about Brekkir’s great shoulders. The Terasi muttered, shaken. Sir Colin answered briefly.
“Gie me yer gun, Alan. He doesna trust you. It’s all right now, but gie me the gun.”
Alan laid it in his outstretched hand, hesitating a little. Brekkir seemed relieved, but his smouldering eyes still brooded upon the other. Sir Colin said: “All right now, laddie? Ah-h. But—God, mon! What happened? Ye were—were—”
ALAN sat down heavily. “I’m all right now. But I could stand a drink.”
“Hold hard.” Sir Colin’s grip steadied his shoulder. “Let me see your eyes. Yet . . . But for a while they were all pupil. Black as the mouth of Hell! I’ll admit, ye’ve shaken me. But I think I know the answer.”
“You do?” Alan moistened his lips. “Then tell me.”
“It was the Alien, laddie. Ye are verra, verra sensitive to that creature. Like a bit of iron sensitized by a magnet. It may pass. I trust it will.”
Alan pressed his palms against aching eyes. “It’s like being possessed of a devil.”
“It is that! Ye maun fight it, then. If it can control ye from a distance—yet ye fought the thing in Carcasilla.”
“I hope to God it never happens again,” Alan said in a shaken voice. “The worst part was that I—I liked it. I lost all sense of personal identity.” His teeth showed in a furious grin. “I—let’s not talk about it just now.”
Sic Colin glanced at him sharply for a moment, then seemed satisfied. “Aye, but Brekkir—”
At the sound of his name the Terasi glowered and muttered something. Sir Colin nibbled his lower lip. “Brekkir fears ye, laddie. Or rather fears your falling under the Alien’s control. It’s like having a spy from the enemy in your camp. Ye’d better stick close to me. I’ve promised Brekkir I’ll keep my eye on ye.”
A voice shouted from outside. Brekkir listened, then grunted to Sir Colin and hurried out. The Scotsman grunted in turn. “Come along, all of ye. Trouble, as usual. And a good thing for you, Alan; it’ll give Brekkir something else to think about!”
They hurried through the Terasi village, where ragged savages shrank away from Alan with loathing in their eyes. Evidently rumor had run fast through the town. But the gongs were not booming now, which was one small comfort. The Alien had withdrawn—for a time, and for its own purposes. They were to know in a moment what those purposes were.
Sir Colin led them at Brekkir’s heels around the base of a vast leaning tower of deep-green plastic and in through a sloping door in its base. Spiral stairs rose steeply. They were all dizzy with the rapid turns before they came out into a domed room high above the cavern floor. A sort of frieze ran about the circular wall, head-high, divided into foot-long rectangles of cloudy glass. Beneath each were several wheels like safe-dials. Most of the screens bore decorative designs, but the one before which Brekkir stopped showed a picture.
A picture of Evaya!
Alan pushed closer, staring. He seemed to be looking down upon the scene, and from one side. The screen was full of motion now—full of the men and women of Carcasilla, streaming along the Way of the Gods, their faces glowing with fanatical exultation. And Evaya walked before them, her lovely pale hair drifting upon the air-currents, her face blank with the blankness of her possession.
“A television plate in the passage,” Sir Colin’s precise explanation came. “This is the scanner room, Alan. It connects with thousands of viewers scattered through the caverns, many of them not working any more, of course. Watch.”
Brekkir spun a dial; a new scene showed—the Way of the Gods, bare and empty. Far away along it, motion stirred. The swirl of gossamer robes, pale faces crowding. And then—striding with great swooping bounds, robed in darkness and in light, in firer and cloud—came the shape that no eyes could clearly see. Leading the Carcasillians strode their god, the Light-Wearer.
A shock of dismay shook Alan. He felt Brekkir’s shoulder beside him heave convulsively. Mike Smith made a hoarse, wordless sound deep in his throat.
“Logical,” Sir Colin said quietly, as though he were lecturing at Edinburgh. “I should have foreseen this. They have no weapons yet, but I don’t doubt It knows where to find weapons.”
“What are you talking about?” Mike snapped. “Is it coming here?”
“Certainly. Where else? It wants food, and we are its food, not the Carcasillians. It can’t pass our sonic protection alone, so it calls in the Carcasillians as an attacking force, to silence our gongs if they can. After that . . .”
Brekkir barked an order over his shoulder. One of the Terasi in the room went out swiftly. Brekkir pulled at his beard and eyed Sir Colin. The Scotsman grunted.
“Less than a hundred Terasi, but the women can fight, too. The Carcasillians—how many, Alan?”
“Several hundred, I’d guess.”
“They’ll be no match for us, alone. But depend on it, they’ll have some sort of weapons when they get here.”
Alan turned his mind from the sickening picture of the delicate doll-army from Carcasilla falling beneath the bludgeons of the Terasi. But he knew he could not protest. The Terasi were right. Even Evaya’s blown-glass loveliness was a vessel for the Alien now—a vessel to be shattered.
He would not think of it.
Brekkir grunted something behind him, and Sir Colin nodded.
“Forget that now. Tell me about the fountain, laddie. All you remember. It’s important.”
“There isn’t much to tell.” Alan frowned, remembering.
“It’s still alive? Still powerful?”
“Well, it healed me. And it gives the Carcasillians immortality.”
Sir Colin spoke to Brekkir, who fumbled with the dials.
“Here’s the story, laddie. Listen now, it’s important. Forget the Carcasillians while ye can. It may be we’ve got the solution right here in our hands—if we live through the next few hours. This rebel race that lived here in the cavern was a sort of maintenance crew for the Way of the Gods. It kept the worlds alive along it. So we have these scanners and other things. It’s a library, too. There are visual historical records. I’ll show you, presently. Mind you, this is important. Because the Aliens told their slave-race how to maintain the underground worlds. Gave them too much knowledge, perhaps, for they never expected revolt. And when the revolt came, the slaves died, as I told ye. But the records remain. Look.”
UNDER Brekkir’s blunt fingers a picture flashed upon the screen. Alan watched with less than half his mind. He could see only the Carcasillians, blind and helpless and deadly dangerous, marching on the Terasi.
But as the pictures changed on the screen he found himself watching involuntarily. The world’s surface, smooth and lifeless, slid past In panorama. He saw gigantic ruins, like nothing man’s world had ever known. He saw death and desolation everywhere.
Once, he caught a glimpse of the great abnormal asymmetries of the citadel lifting against a misty sky, and curiosity suddenly burned in his mind about what lay inside it, but he knew he would never learn that now.
And once he saw the flash of a deep gorge, bottomless, vertiginous, its far side hidden in fog. And far away along it a moving white wall that drew nearer. Alan thought of a flood bursting down a dry arroyo. But this chasm was immeasurably vast, and the flood was del
uge. Prismatic rainbows veiled it. Boiling, crashing, and seething like a hundred Niagaras, now, the mighty tide swept toward them, brimming the chasm.
Alan felt a faint tremble shake the floor. Sir Colin nodded.
“The sea-bed—what’s left of it. The moon’s verra close now, and its drag Is tremendous. In a million years, it’s cut a gorge across the planet. This is all that remains of the ocean. It follows the moon around the earth.”
“That thunder we heard when we first left the ship,” Alan remembered. “That was It?”
“Aye. Watch.”
Vision after vision shifted across the screen. Desolation, ruin. And yet there was life here. Gigantic worm-shapes slid through the mists, and once one of the flying half-human things drifted down the slopes of air above the tidal chasm.
“No intelligence,” Sir Colin murmured, pointing. “They follow the water and eat weeds and fish. They are no longer human.”
More scenes changing on the screen. Gray dust, gray death . . . And then, unexpectedly, a forest—green, lovely, veiled in silvery fog. A shallow pool where a fish rose in a ring of widening ripples. A small brown animal raced out of the underbrush and fled beyond the scanner’s range.
Alan leaned forward, suddenly sick with a passion of longing for the past he would never see again. Green earth, lost springtime of the world! He could not speak for a moment.
“It is the past,” Sir Colin said gravely. “A part of history, but a history we never saw. Perhaps a thousand years ago, perhaps more. It is the planet Venus.”
“The Aliens went there?”
“Aye. But they didna stay. No human life to feed them. They came back to earth and died here. But do ye na see it, Alan—Venus is habitable! Humans could live there!”
“A thousand years ago—”
“Or more—nothing in the life of a planet. We have records of the atmosphere on Venus, the elements, the water and food. Humans can live there, I tell ye, laddie! And now, perhaps will!” He lifted bony shoulders. “If what we hope is true. And if we live to prove it.”
It was Karen who answered.
“The Allens destroyed their space-ships, toward the end. Used up the metal for some other purpose, maybe, or maybe for the energy in them. For a long time the Terasi have known they could live on Venus if they had a ship and a power-source. Now there’s a ship. The one that brought us here.”
“Well, the ship’s big enough to carry us all—Terasi too, I think. We could go to Venus and rebuild the race on a new world. If we had any power.”
“It is a second chance for mankind,” Sir Colin said gravely. “But—no power. No power in all the world. The Terasi checked that long ago. Only little scraps like those that keep these scanners going. Till I saw you, Alan, I had no idea that there might be a power-source left on earth.”
“The fountain!” Alan said.
“Aye. The Terasi knew no Carcasillians until you came. They never guessed about the fountain. But there it is, and there must be a source to keep it burning. Enough to take a ship to Venus! That I know.” Sir Colin struck a gnarled fist into his palm. “I have searched and studied here, and I’d stake my soul on that. If we could only take it out—power the ship with it!”
“What is the source?”
“I dinna quite know. Radioactivity, perhaps, yet something more. The Aliens brought it with them from the stars, and it’s a strange stuff. I know a little from charts the robot-humans left here. A glowing little nucleus that consumes itself slowly and sends out radiations. Will ye bet there isn’t one of them under that fountain in Carcasilla?” His voice shook as he spoke.
“That fountain—the Carcasillians live by it,” Alan reminded him slowly.
“Aye, a sterile life. They’ll never rebuild civilization. But the Terasi, now—they’re strong enough to face hardships on the new world. And they have fine minds. If we could get back to Carcasilla—we canna be sentimental about this, Alan, laddie. That may be the last power-source on earth, and we maun use it to save mankind.”
Alan nodded without speaking. Yes, they must take it If they could. There was nothing the Carcasillians could do to prevent them. All over the city, that violet light dying, the fountain of life fading, the delicate folk who were made for toys tasting mortality at last—hunger and thirst and death. The bubble city shivering in the cold winds from outside, its floating castles shattered, its colors dimmed. And Evaya in the gathering shadows—Evaya, with her eyes blank mirrors, through which the Light-Wearer stared!
Alan said harshly, “All right. What’s the plan?”
It was Karen who laughed. “The plan? Why, keep the gongs going while we can, until the Alien breaks through and gets us.” Her voice was brittle.
Sir Colin said evenly, as if she had not spoken, “The plan would be to get back into Carcasilla, I suppose—now, while the people are gone—and try to find what lies beneath the fountain and see if we can use it.”
Alan said suddenly, “Flande! Flande won’t be gone! Flande’s no fragile toy for the Light-Wearer to command. And the Carcasillians aren’t quite as helpless as we thought, not while Flande’s alive. He’ll prevent our taking away the power source, if only for his own safety!”
“Aye, Flande,” Sir Colin said heavily. “I’d forgotten him. Flande’s a force I haven’t reckoned with. He’s too enigmatic to fit in anywhere until we know who he is, or what. But Karen’s right, laddie.” The big shoulders of the older man sagged.
“We’ve got another problem here and now,” he said, then. He nodded toward the screen upon which the flutter of gossamer garments was passing. “They must be nearly here. The Alien’s making his last bid, you know. He’ll have something—”
The brazen note of a gong thundered out from the cavern below them, cutting off his words. The echoes spread shuddering through the whole great space of the cave, and another gong answered them, deeper-toned, vibrating. And then another. A diapason of quivering metal, like the striking of shields, rose and bellowed and rent the air within the cavern with a mighty crashing.
Mike’s hand went to his gun. “This is it.”
Brekkir sprang to the stairway. They followed him dizzily upward, around and around, until the sloping roof opened before them. Far below lay the machine-city and the cavern floor.
THE deafening vibrations of beaten metal roared out, echoing and reechoing from the walls and the arched roof. Around them, on roof-tops, in the streets, knots of Terasi were gathered about heavy plates that gleamed like brass. Crude sledges swung and crashed with resounding force against the gongs.
Booming, roaring, bellowing, the Terasi thundered their defiance to the last of the living gods.
Brekkir pointed. In the cracks that split the cavern walls, figures stirred. Pale figures, gossamer-robed. The Carcasillians, clambering like hundreds of ants above them.
Mike jerked out his pistol and fired, but Karen struck down his arm.
“Hold it! Save ’em, Mike. We haven’t got too much ammunition.”
Mike looked at her, paling. Karen shrugged. Then she looked up quickly as a thin lance of light shot down from the distant cavern wall. It touched a platform nearby, where Terasi were swinging their measured blows heavily against the bronze plate.
The Terasi jumped aside, startled. But the ray did not seem to harm them. It went through their bodies like x-rays made visible. But on the surface of the metal it exploded in white fire. Broke there, and crawled, like a stain.
The Terasi lifted their hammers again and struck savagely. No vibrating thunder followed the blows. The gong clanked dully, like struck lead.
Sir Colin grimaced.
“Heat-rays that don’t harm living organisms,” he said.
“What is it?” Karen asked.
“After a bell’s been heated in a furnace, it won’t vibrate. Same principle, I think. The Carcasillians can silence every gong here with those. See, there goes another. Now, where the Alien found such weapons, I’d give a lot to know.”
“You w
on’t know,” Mike told him, with a faint echo of hysteria in his voice. “We’ll never know. Look—another gong has gone!”
The worst thing, thought Alan, was the fact that the heat-rays did not harm human flesh. The Alien was saving his humans alive.
“And we can’t do anything!” raged Karen, striking the rail before her with both hands. “We’ve even got to save our ammunition for the noise—or for each other.”
The delicately colored carriers of doom were creeping closer now, ignoring the Terasi arrows. Now and then Alan saw one find its mark and a gossamer-robed denizen of the city that never knew death fell silently among the rocks. But the Carcasillians crept on, and long fingers of light went probing out before them, seeking and silencing the gongs. That tremendous swelling bellow of sound still rioted through the cavern, but just perceptibly it was lessening now. One gong, or two or three, made no real difference that could be measured. But the toll inevitably was mounting.
Helplessly Alan watched the fragile army advance. How incongruous it seemed, that these doll-like creatures could bring doom upon the savage Terasi, creeping down the walls in their floating garments, firing as they came. Evaya would be somewhere among them, fragile and lovely and blind. Unless an arrow had found her already . . .
(It had been like holding life itself in his arms, to hold that resilient steel-spring body, so delicate and so strong. He had been near to forgetting that latent strength in her, which would never matter to him now. He thought of the dizzy moment of their kiss, while the bubble city rocked below them. He must forget it now and forever—for whatever time in enternity remained.)
And he knew that this way of dying was perhaps as good as any, and easier than some. For now he would not have to watch Carcasilla shattered and ruined and dark.
Also, he knew, suddenly, as he heard the gongs falling silent one by one below him, that he would never have left Evaya in a dying Carcasilla while the Terasi set sail for the future, even if Flande had let them rob the fountain of its power. He knew he would have gone back to the ruined city and taken that fragile, resilient body in his arms and held her, waiting while the darkness closed around them both.
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