“If we’re unable to replace the magnet,” McLan whispered again, “the boy John Barr will pick up the pebble instead, and the tide of probability will be turned—as, indeed, it is turned—toward Gyronchi. The boy will toss the pebble in his hand, and throw it in his sling to kill a singing bird. All his life thereafter will want a precious spark. It will remain curiously similar, yet significantly different.
“John Barr, in this outcome also, will run away from his father’s home, but now to become a shiftless migratory worker. He will marry the same woman, raise the same two children, and leave them at last. The same ingenuity, turned to the same basic problems of probability, will lead him to invent a new gambling device, on which he will make and lose a fortune. He will die, equally penniless, in the same year, and lie at last in the same graveyard.
“The secret of mentally released atomic power will now be discovered nine years later, but with a control far less complete than John Barr would have attained. The discoverer will be one Ivor Gyros, an exiled engineer from Soviet
Eurasia, working with a renegade Buddhist priest. Calling their half-mastered secret the gyrane, the two will guard it selfishly, use it to destroy their enemies and impress the superstitious. They’ll establish a fanatical new
religion, and a new despotic empire. That’s the beginning of the cult of the gyrane, and Sorainya’s dark dynasty. You have seen the end of them.”
“I have!”
And a shudder touched Lanning, as he recalled that desolate scene: mankind annihilated in the final war of the priests and the kings, by the gyrane and the monstrous creatures it had bred; the jungle returning across a devastated planet, to cover the-rusting pile of Sorainya’s citadel and the shattered ruins of her temple of ignorance and fear. He grasped at the rusty V-magnet.
“And so—” he nodded. “All we have to do is put it back, where John Barr will find it?”
“All,” rasped Wil McLan. “Enough!”
The sudden rattle of the Maxim took Lanning’s breath. Stiff with startled dread, Wil McLan was pointing. Lanning turned. Close beyond the dome, he saw the black ugly shape of the time ship from Gyronchi.
“Caught!” sobbed McLan. “The converter—failing!”
He flung his broken body toward the controls. But already, Lanning saw, the decks had touched. In the face of the hammering Maxim, a horde of the anthropoid ants were pouring over the rail. Leading them with her naming golden blade, magnificent in her crimson mail, came Sorainya!
CHAPTER XIV - Sorainya’s Kiss
Lanning shivered.
“Sorainya!” Wil McLan rasped savagely, as if her name had been an oath. His quivering, broken hands came slowly up to finger the odd little tube of bright-worn silver hanging at his throat. A smouldering hate glazed his eyes again, as he looked at the warrior-queen. Something twisted his white-scarred lips. A grimace of agony. Or was it a smile?
“Why, Sorainya?” he breathed faintly. “Why must it be?”
“Wil!” Lanning shouted at him. “They’re boarding us! Can’t we get away?”
“Huh!” McLan .blinked at the swarming monsters, as if he hadn’t seen them before. “ ‘Fraid not, Denny.” His thin hands dropped back to the controls, but he was shaking his head. The converter—already overloaded—”
A score of the black giants came over the rail, rushing the Maxim. Lao Meng Shan crouched to meet them with the clattering gun. Barry Halloran stood beside it, a sturdy, smiling, wholly human giant, ready with his bayonet.
“Fight ‘em!” his great voice was booming. “Stop that pass!”
Grinning blandly, the little Chinese made no sound at all.
With a ringing war cry, Sorainya had turned toward the turret, followed by a dozen warriors. The needle of her golden sword flashed up, pointing at Wil McLan in the dome. And her green-eyed face was suddenly contorted with such a furious passion of hate that Lanning shuddered.
“She’s coming here!” sobbed Wil McLan. “After me!”
Lanning was already on the turret stair. I’ll go down to meet her.”
McLan whispered after him, “I’ll pull away, if the converter’ll stand it—”
In the little turret, beside the crystal tube that projected the temporal field, Lanning belted on a Luger. He snatched the last Mauser from the rack, loaded it. His eye caught one hand grenade left in the box. He scooped it up, gripped the safety pin.
The little door was groaning and ringing to a furious assault from without—for the Chronion had not been designed for a fighting ship. It yielded suddenly, and a black monster pitched through.
Lanning tossed the grenade through the doorway, and ripped at the attacker with his bayonet. A sour reek of formic acid stung his eyes. A savage mandible ripped trousers and skin from his leg. But the third thrust stopped the creature, and he stepped into the doorway.
Outside, the grenade had checked the charge. Three black warriors lay where it had tossed them, crushed and dying. But the queen herself stood unharmed in the crimson mail, with eight more giants about her. A savage light of battle flamed in her long green eyes, and she urged them forward with her golden sword.
“Denny Lanning,” her voice cut cold as steel. “You were warned. But you defied Gyronchi, and chose Jonbar.
So—die!”
Yet Lanning, waiting in the turret door, had a moment left. He had time for a glimpse of Barry and Shan, now engaged in a furious battle about the Maxim, holding back a murderous avalanche. He caught Barry’s gasping:
“Fight! Fight, team! Fight!”
And he saw the high dark side of the other ship, beyond. He glimpsed the gaunt, cadaverous priest, Glarath, safe on his quarter-deck. He saw a second company of armored giants, gathering at the rail, ready to follow the first.
Panic gripped him. The odds were overwhelming—
But suddenly the black ship was gone, with Glafath and the rank of giants. There was only the dancing haze of the blue abyss. He knew that Wil McLan had driven the Chronion ahead once more, in that race into the past.
But Sorainya and her boarding party were still on the deck. The Maxim suddenly ceased to fire. Shan and Barry were surrounded. But then the attackers converged upon Lanning, and he crouched to meet them. The bayonet had proved more effective than bullets against the creatures. And now he fought with the same technique he had learned in Sorainya’s citadel.
A ripping lunge, a twist, a savage thrust. One giant fell. Another. A third. Black, reeking bodies piled the doorway. Spilled vital fluids were slippery on the deck. The bullet from a crimson gun raked Lanning’s side. A golden axe touched his head with searing pain. A heavy gun, flung spinning like a club, knocked out his breath. But he recovered himself, in time to lunge again.
Sorainya ran back and forth behind the warriors, screaming her battle cry, her white face both beautiful 86 The Legion of Time
and dreadful with the cold elation burning in her greenish eyes. Once, when the giants fell back and gave her an opening, she leveled the needle of her sword at Lanning. Knowing the deadly fire it held, he dropped and whipped a shot at her red-mailed body with the Luger.
His bullet whined harmless from her armor. And her jet of strange fire merely grazed his shoulder. A jolting shock hurled him aside against the wall. Half blind, dazed, he slapped at his burning shirt, and reeled back to meet her giants.
Four were left. His staggering lunge caught one. Another fell, queerly, before his bayonet had touched it. And a hearty voice came roaring to his ears:
“Fight, gang! Fight!”
He saw that the battle on the foredeck was ended. A great pile of Sorainya’s monsters lay dead about the Maxim. Lao
Meng Shan was looking over the barricade, with a curiously cheerful grin fixed on his yellow round face. And Barry Halloran, crimson and terrible with the marks of battle, came chanting down the deck. It was a burst from his Luger that had dropped the creature beside Lanning. He flung the empty pistol aside, and leveled his dripping bayonet.
L
anning was swaying, gasping for breath, fighting a descending blindness, as he fought the two remaining giants, feinted, lunged, recovered, parried, defending the turret door.
But he saw Sorainya turn to meet Barry Halloran, and heard her low mocking laugh. He saw the rifle lifted, in Barry’s crimson hands, ready for the lunge that might have pierced the queen’s woven mail.
“Fight—”
Barry’s chanting stopped on a low breathless cry, muted with astonishment. The grim smile of battle was driven from his face by a sudden, involuntary admiration.
“My God, I can’t—”
The bayonet wavered. And the queen of war, with a brilliant smile and a mocking flirt of her sable plume, darted quickly forward. The golden needle flickered out in a lightning thrust, to drive his body through.
Lanning’s reeling lunge caught one of the attackers. He ripped, twisted, recovered. He staggered back from a flashing yellow blade, lurched forward again to engage the one survivor.
But his eyes went back again to Barry and Sorainya. With all a dancer’s grace, she followed through with her savage thrust, and leaned to recover her blade. He saw her draw it through her naked hand, and then blow Barry a malicious kiss from fingers red with his own lifeblood.
A dark fountain burst and foamed from Barry Hal Halloran’s heart. The admiration on his face gave way to a pale grimace of hate. His hands tried to lift the rifle, but it slipped away from them and fell. His eyes came to Lanning, wide and dark and bewildered, like a lost child’s.
“Denny—” he sobbed faintly. “Kill her!”
And he slipped down, beyond Sorainya.
Lanning brought his staggered mind back to the one remaining giant. Too late. Its golden axe was falling, but he had time to finish his lunge. A little deflected, the flat of the blade crashed against his head, and drowned him in black pain.
Automatically, the run-down machine of his body finished that familiar rhythm: rip, twist, slash, before it toppled down beside the dying monster. Some atom of awareness lingered for another instant. Don’t quit now! it shrieked. Or
Sorainya will kill Wil McLan. She’ll take the magnet back. And Jonbar will be lost.
But that despairing scream faded with his consciousness.
CHAPTER XV - The Silver Tube
Agony was still a rush and a drumming beat, through all of Lanning’s head. But desperate purpose had torn through his oblivion, and somehow set him on his feet again. The throbbing deck spun beneath him, and the blinding fog in his eyes veiled the flickering blue. But he saw Lao Meng Shan and Barry Halloran lying dead among the slaughtered giants. Sorainya was gone from the deck, but he could hear her malicious golden voice.
“… a long pursuit, Wil McLan. I thank you for the pleasure of the chase. Remember, once I promised you my sword—” A terrible muted scream whispered down from the dome, and then Lanning heard Sorainya’s pitiless laugh.
“Perhaps you’ve always had the means to destroy me, Wil McLan. But never the will—for I know why you first came
to Gyronchi. Other men have tried to kill me—like moths trying with their wings to beat out a flame!”
“We’ll see, Sorainya,” Lanning muttered. “For Barry’s sake!”
His body moved stiffly, like a rusted machine. It staggered and reeled. Pain ran like a river through his brain. A mist of darkness clouded his sight. His limbs were dead, useless tools. Even his own garments hampered him, stiff with drying blood.
But he found the Mauser, and picked it up, and staggered into the turret he had tried to guard, where the metal stair led up to the bridge. Sorainya’s voice came down to him again, as she boasted:
“You’re a fool, Wil McLan, to bring your silly little men against me. For, since you brought us the secret of time, the gyrane can conquer death also. With the time shell, I’ve searched the future for the hour of my death. And I found no danger that can’t be avoided. I may be the last of my line—but I shall reign forever!”
Reeling up the turret stair, Lanning came into the space beneath the dome. Wil McLan lay on the floor, beneath the shining wheel. His broken hands were set down in a wide pool of his own dark blood, as he strove to raise himself. His emaciated face was lifted to Sorainya, sick and dreadful with a hopeless, helpless hate. Suspended by its thin white chain from his neck, the little silver tube hung over the spreading pool of blood.
Lithe and tall in the red splendor of her black-plumed mail, Sorainya stood smiling down at McLan, crimson drops still falling from her sword. But she heard Lanning’s unsteady step, and turned swiftly to meet him at the top of the stair. A bright exultation lit her face. A deadly eager light flashed in her narrowed eyes, at sight of Lanning.
“Well, Denny!” she greeted him. “So you would try, where all the rest have failed?”
Her ringing blade struck sparks from his bayonet.
She was as tall, almost, as Lanning, and quick with a hard feline vitality. The woven red mail followed every flowing curve of her. Her wide nostrils flared, and high breasts rose to her quickened breathing. She attacked like a panther springing.
Lanning parried with the bayonet, thrust warily. She swayed aside. The bayonet slid harmless by her armored breast. And the yellow needle nicked Lanning’s shoulder with a whip of pain.
His weapon was the longer, the heavier. It made no difference, he tried to tell himself, that she was a woman, so beautiful. Barry’s death was still dark agony writhing hi him, and he could see Wil McLan sprawled in the pool of blood behind her, gasping terribly for breath and following the battle with glazed, hate-litten eyes.
But he fought a fatigue more deadly than her blade. All his strength had been poured out ,in the battle with her giants. She was fresh, and she had a tireless quickness. He saw her cruel little smile of elation, as the rifle grew too heavy for his clumsy hands. His vision dulled to a blurry monochrome. Sorainya was a shadow, that could not die.
He was glad she blurred, for he could no longer see her lissome loveliness. He tried to see, in her place, one of her insectile monsters. He lunged into the rhythm of the old attack: rip, twist, slash.
But the bayonet slithered again, harmless, from her woven armor. And the flash of her sword drew a red line of pain down his arm. She danced back, with a pantherine grace, and then stood, as if to mock him, with the yellow needle lowered to her side.
“No, Denny Lanning!” She gave a little breathless laugh. “Strike if you will—for I shall never die. I scanned all the future for the hour of my death, and found no danger. I can’t be slain!”
“I’ll see!” Lanning caught a long gasping breath, and shook his ringing head. “For Barry—”
With the last atom of his ebbing strength, he gripped the rifle hard and rushed across the tiny room under the dome. He thrust the gleaming bayonet, with every ounce of muscle, up under the curve of her breast, toward her heart.
It was a choking sob of warning from Wil McLan. The golden needle flashed up to touch the rifle. Blue fire hissed from its point. The” rifle fell out of Lanning’s hands. He staggered backward, stunned and blinded by the shock, smelling his seared hands and a burning pungence of ozone.
He caught his weight against the curve of the dome, and leaned there, shuddering. It took all his will to keep his knees from buckling. He caught a deep rasping breath, and blinked his eyes. He saw Sorainya gliding forward, light as a dancer. Beneath stray wisps of golden hair, her white face was dazzling with a smile. And her lazy voice drawled softly:
“Now, Denny Lanning! Who is immortal?”
Her arm flashed up as she spoke, slim and red in its sleeve of mail. A terrible tigerish joy flashed in her green eyes. Her sword, like a living thing, leapt at Lanning’s heart.
He struck at the blade, with his empty hand. It slashed his wrist. Deflected a little, it drove through his shoulder, a cold thin needle of numbing pain, and rang against the hard crystal behind him.
Sorainya whipped out the sword, and wiped its thin length on her fingers. She blew him
a crimson kiss, and stood waiting with a thirsty smile for him to fall.
“Well?” Her voice was a liquid caress. “Another?”
Then Lanning’s failing eyes went beyond her. The tiny dome swam. It took a desperate effort for him to find Wil McLan. But he saw the jerky little movement that broke the thin white chain, tossed the worn silver tube toward him. He heard McLan’s voiceless gasp:
“Break it, Denny! I—can’t!”
Sorainya had sensed the movement behind her. Her breath caught sharply. The yellow sword darted again, swift as a flash of light, straight for Lanning’s heart. Even the tigerish quickness of that last thrust, he thought, was beautiful—
But the silver cylinder had rolled to his foot. Desperately, shuddering with a cold, incredulous awareness that, somehow, he was so crushing Sorainya’s victorious beauty, he drove his heel down upon the tube.
It made a tiny crunching sound. But Lanning didn’t look down. His eyes were fixed, in a trembling breathless dread, upon Sorainya. No visible hand had touched her. But, from the instant his heel came down, she was— stricken.
The bright blade slipped out of her hand, rang against the dome, and fell at Lanning’s feet. Her smile of triumph was somehow frozen on her face, forgotten. Then, in a fractional second, her beauty was—erased.
Her altered face was blind, hideous, pocked with queerly bluish ulcerations. Her features dissolved, frightfully, into fluid blue corruption. And Lanning had an instant’s impression of a naked skull grinning fearfully out of her red armor.
And Sorainya was gone.
The woven mail, for a weird timeless instant, still held the curves of her body. It slumped grotesquely, and fell with a dull little thud on the floor. The plumed helmet clattered down beside it, and rolled, and looked back at Lanning with an empty, enigmatic stare.
Lanning tried to look back at Wil McLan, for an explanation of this appalling victory. But a thickening darkness shut out his vision, and the ringing was deafening in his head. A shuddering numbness ran through him from the wound in his shoulder. And his knees collapsed.
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