THE HOUNDS OF THE ZARLES

a full moon was rising above the scarred hills. Over twisted trees, strangled by heavy vines, it traced little lines of silver, and across streams that were choked by weeds and moss, it wove the ghosts of bridges. A faint mist was rising from the swampland below and was clinging to the ruined towers that followed the old and blasted road. The moonbeams touched the gathering mist and rebuilt the crumbling towers into spires of opal.

The fugitive came out of the shadows and stood in the middle of the road, kicking with heavy boots at the vines that still clung to his feet. His huge chest heaving, he turned and looked back toward the lowlands. Holding his labored breath for a second, he listened, letting the gnarled club that he had fashioned from a fallen limb rest across one shoulder.

From far below came a howl that was neither brute nor banshee—a scream that died down to a poisonous hiss and rose again to a wail of madness. The howl was taken up by other throats until even the katydids and treetoads in the choked undergrowth about the road grew silent and stared into the thin, gleaming mist, as though asking the night what caldron of space had brewed such horror.

The pursued stared up at the few stars that shone feebly through the mist, as though he were asking the same question. They did not answer. The howling, hissing screams of the pursuers, far below, diminished and, at length, stopped. The silence that followed reached out toward the hunted man with little shivery feelers and urged him on. Then a night bird far awav broke the stillness with three mournful notes. Reassured, the little crawling things hidden in the vines and weeds took up their age-old song as though the affairs of a man were not now and had never been their particular concern.

The man—big, young, and with an unkempt shock of hair catching a bit of light from the rising moon—looked down the broken road toward his pursuers. Then he hefted his club and trotted slowly upward toward the bare hills that stood beneath the moonlight like broken teeth. The mist crept after him, made a few last feeble plunges, then rolled back toward the lowlands.

The fugitive went at a dogtrot, saving his strength for whatever the long night held in store. As the road went upward it slowly fell apart. There were cracks and gullies across it, and now and then hundred-foot craters completely obliterated it so that the man had to feel his way around them and search again and again for traces of concrete on the other side. Once he stopped and looked down into a large crater. The rocks below were glowing. Witch-fires smoldered about them.

At regular intervals the pack that followed set up their hellish screaming—still far away but a little nearer with each outcry. And always on the trail.

The man stopped and listened each time he heard his pursuers. Each time, he hefted the club and felt icy fingers creeping across the nape of his neck. He had heard that the Hounds of the Zarles could follow a month-old trail. Certainly they had followed him this night across a good half-mile of swamp. For a time he had waded hip-deep through snaky, stagnant waters. He had counted a great deal on that swamp. But somehow the Hounds had followed. Each time the pack screamed behind him he had a feeling that his luck was playing out.

Once he caught himself running and falling, but he stopped and got a grip on himself. If they caught up with him he wanted enough strength to fight. To get as many of the Hounds as he could, and maybe get close enough to Shurz, the overseer, to kill him. That would be good. Very good. It would be much better, though, to take Raiult the Zarle with him if he had to go this night. But that was only wishing. He had heard that two hundred years before his people had killed some of the Zarles, though not many—not near enough of them. But in his time no man had killed one. The few who had gone berserk and tried it were like little children attacking a well-armed overseer. Six years—no, seven years before—he had stood at attention all through one hot, steamy afternoon and watched a man die slowly for an attack upon a Zarle.

His plan of escape had been carefully thought out and was based upon old, yellow maps and stories that older men had told him. Once over the wall he had headed for the swamp, and then for the uplands to the northwest. Apparently this had failed. The muddy water had scarcely slowed the Hounds and the men who followed. According to reports, the road that he was trying to follow led upward into the mountains and crossed a canyon whose walls were as straight as though they had been carved by a giant's knife. Old Soames had been there—forty or fifty years before. Soames was not sure about the time. All that was left of the suspension bridge that had once spanned the gorge was one single rusty cable. He planned to cross that cable. In his pocket was a four inch scrap from a steel saw he had stolen from the shop. With it he hoped to cut that cable and keep the canyon between him and the slavery of the Zarles forever. He would have swung across hell's pit on cobwebs to escape the Zarles, so much did he hate them.

Oh, it was a foolish plan. Almost a child's plan. But he had so little to go on. His life had been spent behind the walls of the Zarles. And now, in a ruined world, following the ghost of a road, with the baying of the Hounds growing louder behind him, he had a feeling that his luck was playing out.

The rising moon helped him. No trees or bushes were left now. He was nearly to the crest of the hill. Then he came up against a wall of stone.

At some time in the past, the crest of the hill had parted and this side had spilled down, taking the road with it. Frantically he searched about. Nearly fifty yards over he found an inclined slope where two massive chunks of granite had leaned against each other and left a yard-wide trail that still struggled steeply upward. He scrambled up the incline, stones slipping and rolling beneath his feet. Once on top of the hill he looked down at the canyon and the wild wasteland that beckoned from the other side. There in the faint moonlight it made a grand and beautiful sight, awful in its loneliness, stark, but free. The little wind that came across the canyon was chill and clean, untainted by the festering swamps and the decaying plantations of the Zarles.

He followed the brink of the precipice, searching for traces of the road and the cable which spanned the gorge At last he felt a bit of concrete beneath his feet, and running this way and that like the hunted thing that he was, he found the ruined pylon which had held one of the cables. It had been made of concrete and steel, but it was so old, so rusty and ruined, that at first he had mistaken it for an upended boulder.

His heart sank within him as he looked, but he stumbled to it and felt his way around it. On the far side was a two-foot length of cable, its many broken wires spreading out fanwise at the end. They crumbled as he touched them. Since Soames had been there the cable had parted. Even now, with hopelessness settling upon his shoulders he wondered at its size and breathed one gasp of admiration across the void of years to the men who had fashioned it. That bundle of cables had measured nearly a foot across. It was beyond his comprehension. Reaching into his pocket he took out the stolen scrap of saw-blade and flung it into the canyon.

For a few minutes he sat there beside the crumbling pylon, looking across the canyon at the bare, beautiful country which was bathed in silver moonlight. Then with a tired sigh he got to his feet. Hefting his club, he retraced his steps to the spot where the two leaning boulders guarded the narrow trail that climbed upward.

Leaning against one of the pillars and resting the head of the club by the side of his braced feet, he listened for the baying of the Hounds. He did not have long to wait. The

Hounds screamed at him from the darkness below. Nearer. More deadly and frightening. The man waited.

The hunters came out of the darkness below, moon-splashed shadows rising from a sea of blackness and mist.

There were seven men—if the tall, thin one behind who urged the others on was a man. A burly one who cursed the others and even kicked one out of his way was carrying a shotgun. The other five, dressed in heavy boots and tatters like the fugitive, were carrying clubs and ropes.

In front of the men were four things that were neither hounds nor lizards. About three feet high and nearly six feet long, from forked tongue to razor-edged tails, they waddled swiftly forward on bowed legs, stopping now and then to sniff the air and tear the night apart with their screams. The moonlight glinted on long fangs and curved talons—the feet of the hounds were more like long-fingered hands than paws. Their backs were arched and from between their shoulders a single curve of armor gleamed in the night like sharpened * bone. Aside from this bit of carapace, the bodies of the Hounds were gray, smooth and shining as though burned metallic in some hell's pit.

Even as he watched them come out of the shadows the man who waited above was wondering about them. Some said the Zarles had brought the Hounds with them. Others claimed that the Zarles had fashioned them in their own laboratories where flesh and cells were re-shaped like red-hot iron upon an anvil.

Peering down, the man watched them approach the cliff that had stopped him. Then, without faltering, the Hounds turned aside and followed his trail. They reached the incline that led upward to the two stone pillars where he was waiting.

Then with a bedlam of screams they came at him, shouldering and snapping at each other to be first up that narrow pathway.

They came fast. For all their squat, bowlegged appearance the Hounds turned into fanged javelins as they threw themselves toward him.

Club upraised, he waited for the first one. They had to come single-file now, and those behind were clawing at the ones in front. The burly man with the shotgun was calling to them, and the tall shadow who still stayed behind the group was blowing upon a tiny pipe, making a shrill wail that barely touched the edge of sound.

The first Hound leaped forward. The hunted swung his club. There were huge muscles behind the blow—arms and shoulders, sweated clean of fat at the Zarles' work, delivered it with all the force and timing that hate and desperation could muster.

The man gasped an explosive "hu-hu" as the blow landed. There was a crackling sound like the breaking of eggshells. Its ophidian skull smashed, the Hound rose upon its hind legs, clawed at the air, nearly raking the club from the hunted man's hand when it fell backward. Then it rolled down upon the other three, slashing talons and snapping fangs working wildly—not yet knowing it was dead. It raked one Hound from shoulder-blade to flank, and falling, it seized upon another's leg, severed it and took it along with it. The three Hounds forgot the fugitive and followed the rolling thing down the incline. Screaming and hissing, they tore at each other while the tall man advanced with his shrill pipe and the stocky one with the shotgun pointed his weapon at the four tearing and clawing things and begged for permission to fire.

At length the tall man brought one of them to heel. The other three were dead or dying, but still thrashing and clawing about, even more deadly now than they had been when alive. Upon orders of the leader the man with the shotgun began firing at them—loading and reloading until at last there were only three shapeless, quivering masses of flesh left for the others to rope and drag out of the way.

Then the tall man sent the remaining Hound up the trail. Its first swift thrust took what was left of the hunted's shirt away and left three flowing streaks across his chest. But as he stepped back the fugitive brought the club down again and sent the Hound rolling back upon the hunters, its head practically torn away.

"Let me go after him," the man with the shotgun was begging. "Damn him, I can't see to fire from here, but halfway up—"

"Go slowly, then," the tall man consented. His voice was sibilant and calm—so alien that it might have belonged to the Hounds. "Wait," he urged. "I'll follow after. One or the other of us should get in a shot. Good hunting, Shurz." He spoke in odd fashion, accenting each syllable alike. Then he laughed—a tittering, unearthly laugh that made the five unarmed pursuers move closer together and look dumbly into each other's faces as though they hoped the fugitive got away.

"Ready, then?" the big man asked.

"Ready," the tall one answered. He had trouble with the "R."

Now as he moved to the foot of the path, he took something from beneath his long cloak. It was a narrow, shiny rod, scarcely eighteen inches long. As he started up the trail the moonlight fell full upon him. The illusion of a man was lost. He was thin, and his high, narrow head with a round tawny spot behind each eye did not look like the head of a man-not even like the head of a mummy which was what it most resembled. But any likeness to men vanished at sight of the hand that clutched the gleaming tube. He had no fingers. Four reddish tentacles—more like rats' tails than snakes-wound themselves about his weapon.

Half way up the two paused. "See him, Shurz?" the tall one asked.

"Damn him. He's hiding behind one of them rocks. Come out, you—"

But the fugitive did not show himself. The two hunters went on, carefully.

They were almost to the arch that the two great boulders made at the top of the path when the hunted stepped out— a clear target there in the moonlight.

The muzzle of Shurz's shotgun nearly touched his chest.

Behind the big man, the tall one was leaning over his shoulder, aiming the tiny tube.

"Shurz," the hunted man's voice was low and steady. "You're near enough now. You can blow my chest apart—but I'll die like one of your Hounds. I'll brain you as I die. And it'll be good to kill you. I can't run any more, but I'm taking you tonight."

With the club upraised he took one short step forward. The big man's fingers were closing about the two triggers of the shotgun. Behind him the Zarle was urging in his hissing voice. "Bend lower, Shurz. I can get him."

The other five were looking upward at the moon-crested stage, wide-eyed and wide-mouthed.

Then it happened.

Half of a great, golden bubble slowly rose above the canyon's rim. It was set like a jewel into an arrowhead of fire. Within the half-bubble a man was seated, and lights were flashing all about him. Around the base of the curious platform on which the bubble rested were dozens of tubes, all spouting fire and smoke.

It thundered so loudly that it drowned out the noise of the Hound. It roared above Shurz's steady cursing and the piping of the Zarle.

It hovered there, half a step from the fugitive. The man within the bubble beckoned with his hand.

The hunted man threw his club at Shurz, nearly toppling him back upon the others. The shotgun spurted two barrels of flame; the sound of the shots were lost in the roar of that strange, spouting thing.

Then the pursued stepped out into space. The man within the bubble reached for him. Their hands met.

Abruptly all the lights within the bubble went out. The screaming flames from the tubes died and were still. It fell like a plummet into the canyon.

From the five watchers came gasps of amazement.

Shurz cursed and ran forward, reloading his shotgun as he went. Behind him came the tall one.

"What was it, Shurz?" he called. And even his calmness was shaken.

At the top of the pathway they looked about. The hill was flooded with moonlight. They saw nothing.

They stared down into the dark shadows of the canyon. There was nothing to see. No spark. No light.

A trail of greasy smoke hung upon the heavy air. It moved them and set them to coughing. But they saw nothing and heard nothing. The fugitive had stepped out into that half-bubble which had been shimmering with winking lights. Then he, the bubble, and the roaring flames had vanished.

THE REHFT

for sevehal days after the Zarle and his worn men returned empty-handed from the hunt, a quiet dread hung over the walled plantation. There was little work. Shurz, the overseer, spent most of his time with Raiult. The slaves did not welcome their needed rest. A storm was brewing and each day it was delayed meant that its fury would be that much stronger.

All but Old Soames avoided Jeff Gambrell. Knowing that he could not hide his part in his brother's escape, Jeff left them alone. After all, he and Jim had planned that getaway. There was no need of dragging others down with him.

Jeff waited. He had heard whispers about Jim. At first he thought that the Hounds had got him, but now it seemed that no one knew for sure. Finally he found one of the men who had accompanied the hunting party. It was Smith who had always been their friend, and who swore with sweat streaming down his face and Jeff's forbidden, short-bladed knife just breaking the skin above his belt that the whole affair was a mystery—a mystery to the slaves, a mystery to Raiult the Zarle, and a mystery to Shurz.

Finally Jeff got the story from him, such as it was. Then he let poor, quaking Smith go, and found a quiet spot in an old deserted sheep-shed where he sat down and thought the matter over. A man just couldn't disappear like that. Not even the Zarles had a machine which could do as much. They could melt a man into a pinkish mist with a blast of flame. They could blow him into nothingness with a shot that could be heard for miles. But for a man to step out from the canyon's rim into a bellowing, blazing bubble, and wink out like a candle—without a flicker—without a sound—without a trace.

Of course, there was another explanation. His brother might have taken a few backward steps and plunged over the cliff. Or Shurz could have thrown him over. Still, it didn't make sense.

Both the Zarle and Shurz boasted that only one man had ever escaped them. If Jim Gambrell had died by suicide or accident, Shurz would have told them gleefully. Every slave behind Raiult's walls would have heard the fate of the fugitive. And if Shurz had thrown him over the cliff there would have been no end to his boasting.

Jeff Gambrell knew his brother. Jim wouldn't have chosen suicide. And if he had been forced back to the precipice he would have found some way to clutch the overseer and take him with him.

No, the story didn't make sense.

At last he got to his feet and went to find Old Soames and talk it over.

Soames was dismissing a class of ragged urchins, searching them before they left for any precious paper or pages from the ancient, tattered schoolbooks. The old man was crowding ninety. Years before, he had told Jeff that he didn't know who would take his place at the thankless task of school-teaching—unless it was Jeff himself. Jeff had done nothing about it, however, knowing that Shurz would never release a strong back—and least of all, the strong back of a Gambrell —from the fields.

After the children were gone Soames droopec¹ at his desk while Jeff told the story he had heard.

"Smith swore that was all. Can you figure it out, Tutor." (It was a name that had been handed down to them for generations. Most of the slaves supposed it was because Soames tooted an old brass horn for the beginning of his classes.)

Soames chuckled. "He got three of the Hounds, did he? Good boy!"

"Yes, three. But what happened to him? You've studied the old books. How could he have vanished away like that?"

Soames shook his head. "Never heard or read of such WaitI Our people once had a flying machine that could hold still in the air and let down a rope and rescue people—quick, as a wink, I've heard."

Jeff Grambrell shook his head. "It was moon-bright. They'd have seen any machine."

"Yes, I guess so. Of course, in some of my books there are tales about people changing themselves to bats and owls."

"Jim couldn't have changed himself to a bat or an owl."

"No. Jim never was much of a scholar. Strong, though. Peppery. Killed three of them Hounds. Huhl Anyway, I think those tales are just superstition. You see, Jeff, these books of mine were just sort of gathered up, catch-as-catch-can, a long time after the Zarles took over. It's hard to tell which are learnin* books and which are just entertainment books. Used to try separate 'em when I was younger, but nobody took much interest."

"Could it have been some trick of the Zarle's?"

"Don't see how. Raiult had the tube with him. Certain death. Wouldn't have needed any tricks."

Jeff GambreD got to his feet with a sigh. "Well, I'll need a trick or two. Raiult and Shurz won't wait much longer. They're bound to know I'm the only one who would help Jim over the wall. They're liable to give it to me—but good."

Soames was thoughtful. "I've wondered about that. There's a beam runs along the top of the wall that'll fry a man. How'd you manage it, Jeff? Course, you don't have to tell me if you don't want to."

"It was easy for two men. I read about it in one of your books. We practiced at it for a time too. First, we cut and stripped a tall sapling. I'd stand it on end and hold it up and he'd climb it. Were both plenty strong—"

"Yeah."

"Well, Jim would practice balancing on the very top of it. That night I held the pole up about five feet from the wall. When he was balanced on the top I just let it fall over the wall and he vaulted across the beam. It was a long fall to the other side. I'll bet it jarred him. But he called to me that he was okay. That's the last I ever heard from him. Soames, he had to do it! Shurz was looking for a chance to kill him. Jim couldn't stand much more."

"Yeah. Shurz hates the name of Gambrell. Your pa and Shurz both wanted to marry your ma. She was a beautiful girl, Jeff. Your pa fooled Raiult and all of 'em. He was the strongest and smartest young fellow on the plantation. You could see that Raiult had him marked for overseer to take the place of Shurz' dad. Well, your pa got permission to marry your mother, but she died when Jim was born. An' all the time I could see that Shurz and his pa, who was overseer then and meaner than his son, were tryin' to get your daddy riled. Well, your pa fooled 'em. One night he got Old Shurz—must have used a cane-knife 'cause they found him in the weeds with the head nearly cut off. And that was the last anyone ever heard of your pa. They searched for weeks. Shurz Jr. was made overseer in his place, and I guess he'd have killed you and Jim then if it hadn't been for the law. The Zarles want their slaves to grow up and work. A mighty clever man, your pa. Always reading books and studying. He patched up some old machinery and put it together in his cabin. Funny thing, he burned his books and smashed the machinery to bits before he took off."

Jeff Gambrell went back to his cabin and fried a few strips of salt pork for lunch. He had hardly finished eating when the wail of the siren broke the hot stillness that hung over the quarters.

The slaves—over two hundred of them—were lined up on the shimmering lawn before the house of the Zarle. In front of them, shotgun ready, stood Shurz, a huge man, red-faced and with red, close-cropped hair that was sprinkled with gray. Though his shoulders were wide, his chest drooped down to a sagging paunch which not even a two-inch belt could hide. Behind Shurz and off to one side stood Raiult the Zarle, his tall, lean figure swathed in his long black cloak in spite of the heat of the day. Gambrell studied him, knowing what was coming, thinking that he might as well

* confess his part in his brother's escape and spare the others this ordeal. Raiult stood there, motionless, his small black eyes shining like jet. He was bareheaded and on the top of his scalp was what appeared to be a small patch of thin, black hair carefully plastered down. Jeff knew that it was not. The Zarle's crownpiece consisted of close-set, feathery scales. Soames claimed that the dark patches behind Raiult's eyes and the scaly crown controlled two extra senses.

The slaves waited, sweating and afraid. Even the children kept still, watching Shurz and Raiult with wide eyes. Jeff felt sorry for them. They, who should have been heirs to the earth, cringing before two slave drivers. Two hundred years of slavery were behind them. These children could not know the position that mankind had once held before the ships of the Zarles had come tumbling out of the azure sky.

Behind the Zarle and his overseer the palace loomed like a black mushroom clinging close to the earth. It covered nearly an acre of ground. The palace was windowless and without chimneys or any sign of ventilation other than a huge studded door and a few portholes, scarcely a foot in diameter, which were covered over by metallic black plates that gleamed even darker than the black walls. The roof of the palace had a barely perceptible slope; it, too, was covered by dull black slate, which, at ten-foot intervals was broken by little nipples of the same gleaming black metal that covered the portholes.

More of a fort than a house, thought Gambrell, He had been in the Zarle's palace twice in his life and he recalled what a shock it was to step through that gaunt doorway and look down a marble staircase into a vast room whose ceiling must have been fifty feet from the polished, black floor. The room had fairly blazed with light, too, but he had never known where the light came from. Most of the Zarle's palace was underground, and Soames had said there were other chambers below the one he had seen. But what Gambrell most remembered about the palace was the overpowering heat and the fetid staleness of the air.

Time caught itself in an eddy of fear and stood still while Raiult looked calmly up and down the line of raggle-taggle slaves: old and young, men and women, all having a certain resemblance because of the Zarle's selective breeding, and all chained to each other by unseen bonds of helplessness, hate, and dread.

"Well well begin now Shurz." Raiult's sibilant voice brought the slaves to attention. From the inner folds of his black cloak he took out two objects and stood there with a quiet smile on his thin lips, the reddish tentacles of his hands crawling about the two things that he held before him. One was a copper sphere into which had been set a score of many-faceted diamonds. It was about three inches in diameter. The other object was smaller. It had the appearance of one of those red and yellow Easter eggs that the slaves dyed for their children on the first morning of spring—one of the few old customs that the Zarles had permitted to survive.

But no Easter egg was ever greeted with such horror.

A woman screamed: "No. Not the Rehft!"

Two hundred pairs of eyes stared at the thing in Raiult's tentacles. A little girl began to cry. Some one put a hand over her mouth; then the line of slaves stood there in silence, eyeing the thing with loathing.

The Rehftl No one ever knew whether it was a living force or a mechanical thing. The Zarles had many way-stations on their voyage of centuries that had led from their cindered planet on the edge of space to the slaves' luckless world. What they had learned, what they had seen, what they had taken aboard their huge shuttle-shaped craft they never told the children of men. Even in the beginning, when the men had fought against them and at last had proposed armistices for co-existence, they had answered all questions with contempt. They never had but three answers for mankind: contempt, death, and slavery.

"Now," Raiult said calmly, "I will tell you why you are here. A man has escaped. Some one helped him over the wall. That is against the law. It would be better now if that one should confess. Then you can all go back to your work."

Silence answered him and he stood there with that same smile on his face, looking down at the gem-set copper globe and the red and white thing that he held in his coiling fingers.

"There must be no loyalty but to me." Raiult's voice was almost a whisper, and yet every slave heard him. "If anyone knows who the offender is let him report. I will not long forgive this silence."

Silence again.

Raiult lifted the globe a few inches, staring into it with jet, feverish eyes.

He spoke nothing but his words made a perpetual murmuring and fluttering in each slave's ear.

"The Zarles are masterful but they are merciful. They keep you from want. Never do you wonder where your shelter, food, and clothing will come from. You do not have to drudge through the fields and woods or tramp the hard streets of cities as your fathers did. Always uncertain, always seeking security. The Zarles keep you well. Have your crops ever failed you? The Zarles have harnessed the sun. They bring the rain when it is needed and disperse it when it threatens. It is wrong, very wrong, to war in your heart against the Zarles. Let him who has wronged the Zarles step forth and confess. The Zarles are stern but they are merciful. It is wrong, very wrong, to war in your heart against the Zarles."

Over and over the refrain beat at each slave's ears. Over and over—until the looks of fear and dread faded from their eyes and was replaced by a tranced enchantment. Faces were no longer human now, but dazed with a sort of worshipful fear.

And fighting against it, screaming to himself, **Lies, all lies," Jeff Gambrell felt that hypnotizing remorse creeping through him. Why, he had been wrong to help his brother escape. And Jim had done a terrible thing when he ran away. It would be better now to step forward and confess-to beg for mercy and forgiveness from the Zarle.

But he braced himself and kept repeating: "Lies. All lies."

Raiult sighed. "Well, you have had your chance. There are other ways. I know the culprit now, but I want him to confess."

Still smiling, he tossed the red and yellow egg into the air. It hung there and burst into flame. It sprouted filmy wings of light, and from its underside little rainbow tendrils sprouted downward, feeling the hot air, drinking it.

An aura of sparks gathered about the Rehft. It uttered a shrill whine of mingled hunger, hate, and anticipation. Nostrils were filled with the sharp smell of ozone.

The slaves were screaming now. Some were on their knees, shielding their heads and faces with their arms.

"Now," Raiult the Zarle whispered into the copper globe that he held before him. The wings of the Rehft fluttered. The thing moved toward the slaves.

"Wait."

It was old Soames. Bent, his scant, white hair falling about his shoulders, the old man stepped from the line.

"I confess. I did it. No one helped me. Jim Gambrell and I cut a tall sapling. I braced it on end near the wall—braced it with ropes like I saw in the engineering books. He climbed it and I cut the ropes and let him topple over the wall. There-"

The old man looked down at his feet, his thin shoulders trying to straighten themselves against what time had done.

The Rehft whined louder and moved toward the old man—hovered above him.

"Wait," Raiult commanded. The Rehft stopped its movement.

"Shurz," Raiult called silkily. "This man is lying. Why haven't you kept your eyes open, Shurz? I have given other overseers to the Rehft. Can't you see that this one is old and doddery? His brain is warped, his loyalty belongs to others."

Shurz cringed. "The old fool never acted this way before. He's been a good teacher. Never mind, I'll gun him—"

"Wait. He has probably been too good ? teacher. He may have already done great harm while you were blundering about the place. I expect you to be a brute, Shurz.

It is your natural inheritance. But I also expect you to use that tiny brain of yours."

And when Shurz tried to protest Raiult silenced him. "Well, this can be remedied. We should hold these meetings more often."

His free hand swept under his cloak. The long silver tube flashed in the sun.

The deafening blast that followed did not come from the tube. It tore the air apart around Soames' withered body. For a split second the old man became a pillar of fire. Then it was over. The blackened, charred thing that fell to the bright lawn did not resemble a man.

Raiult shoved the tube under his coat.

"Now, we will continue."

With a shrill whine the Rehft darted above Jeff Gambrell. The tendrils came coiling down. Like seedlings forcing themselves into soft loam, they felt over his head and shoulders. One gouged at his ear. They pierced his skull; they burrowed through the muscles across his back and slashed their way into his spine.

His hands gripped his legs above the knees as he bent forward. Never in his life had he felt such pain. He had known the splashing of molten metal from the forges. That pain was nothing. The agony was searing and cutting. At the same time the whining thing above him seemed to be drawing his life's energy away.

He did not want to but he went to his knees. He had not screamed yet but he bit his underlip through, knowing that soon he must weaken and scream—or die.

Then it was over. The pain and the shrill scream of the Rehft faded away.

He struggled to his feet.

The thing above him had risen into the air. The tendrils went coiling upward and disappeared into that shimmering body. It hung still and quiet save for the faintest of humming—the sound that late bees make over the last bells of clover.

Jeff Gambrell turned his eyes away from the thing that had tortured him, and staggering, looked at Raiult, then away from Raiult at the creature beside him—a dazzling, clean creature who as far as he knew had appeared as magically as one of those elfin madens in Soames' stories. She was a woman, but much smaller than the women of the fields.

Her skin was the whitest he had ever seen. Her eyes were blue—or were they green? Her sleeveless dress was shimmering white, the same material that Raiult's cloak was made from—nylon, he had heard it called. About her waist was a pale green sash and from the lobe of each ear hung a sparkling green stone.

She called to the thing above him and her voice was low and musical. Like birds singing, Jeff Gambrell thought. Obediently the Rehft moved through the air and hovered over her head. She held up a white hand. Abruptly the flames flickered away from the Rehft and it settled into her palm—a red and yellow Easter egg again, though larger than before.

She turned toward Raiult the Zarle and held the thing toward him. "Master," she said, "y°^u gave me the Rehft for protection and now you take it away." There was deference and fear in her voice now, but music still.

"I warned you not to leave the house." Raiult's voice was hissing with rage. *T pamper you because your songs and your music are more restful than sleep, but you are not beyond punishment. You have been punished before."

"Yes," she said wearily, "I have been punished before,"

Behind Jeff Gambrell the voice of one of the slaves said, "The kitten. The kitten."

And women along the line echoed in voices that were drenched with hate: "The kitten."

Ill

THE KITTEN

the slaves were dismissed.

Jeff Gambrell, Raiult the Zarle, the overseer, and the kitten stood diere on the green lawn and looked into each other's faces with mixed emotions of contempt and hate. Gambrell could feel his face flushing. To be saved from punishment by a kitten! He could never live that down among the slaves. Raiult or Shurz might as well shoot him now.

All the Zarles kept kittens. Some had many of them. Raiult had but one. Jeff had heard of the kitten, of course. But this was the first time he had seen her. Soames—God, they would pay him some day for Soames—had told him that the Zarles were very old and at times were in great pain. Kittens were selected when they were infants, chosen in that strange way that the Zarles had of studying a child and foretelling its possibilities. Raiult made a ritual of this choosing every year and Jeff had seen the Zarle shrug his shoulders and hand babies over to the overseer for extermination. Many a night in his cabin he had shut his ears to keep from hearing the sobbing of the mothers for their lost ones.

All he knew about the Zarles he had learned from Soames. Now that the old man was dead, and even in those dread moments, he could recall entire visits with the old man. The Zarles could, apparently, look at a child and sense all its possibilities. Just as some men could look at a rosebud and tell the size, color and texture of the rose. Soames said it was a pity mankind had never learned that trick—in the days before the coming of the Zarles there had been many wasted lives because of groping, guessing, and forcing. "Square pegs in round holes," Soames had said, "cost humanity half its progress." For five hundred years, men had tried to solve this problem of growth and development, of innate possibilities, and had failed. This failure, Soames had thought, might have explained the triumph of the Zarles—since no man wanted such a triumph.

The kittens were little girls with a keen talent for music "Tone perfect/* Soames called them. When they grew up they developed fine voices and were usually mistresses of two or three instruments. They were all sopranos. Soames had found records of the first years of the Zarles' rule: they had tried castrating young boys in order to shape their voices, but the experiment had never pleased them. Perhaps it was because of their snake-like ancestry—no one knew for sure—but there was a certain type of music and a certain type of voice that could lull a Zarle like an opiate.

Soames had been sure that all those nasty stories which the slaves told in their cabins about the kittens were mere lies, born of prejudice and hate. As far as men had learned, the Zarles were sexless. There had never been any mating between the two races.

With a shrug of his thin shoulders Raiult led the way toward the house. Jeff and the kitten walked behind him, their heads high, each unwilling to notice the other. Behind them came Shurz, holding the shotgun ready and grumbling because the Zarle had not let him use it.

When they came to the back door, Raiult took a tiny whistle from his coat and held it to his slit of a mouth. There was no sound that Jeff could hear, but the door swung open.

They walked down the long stairway and once again Jeff was amazed at the size of the room below. It was suffused by a pale yellow light, and yet he could not tell where it came from. It seemed to build itself up from the hot stifling air. Looking up, he had a feeling of staring into strange depths. The ceiling had disappeared and in its place was that yellowish glow which seemed to be pouring down from the sky. And fixing his eyes upon one spot it seemed to Jeff that beyond it there were other tiers of space, each building itself into clouds of yellowish light and spilling down upon the one below. It made him dizzy to stare into the vastness of glowing space piled upon space. He stumbled and almost fell forward upon the Zarle's trailing cloak, but Shurz caught him and straightened him up with a curse of warning.

Then they were at floor-level and Raiult led them toward some large ottomans that looked like black mushrooms growing from the metallic floor. Actually, there were not over a dozen pieces of furniture in the entire room: two tall safes, their dials shining with hieroglyphs; one table; the oversized ottomans. Most of these were shoved toward one end of the room where a yard-wide crimson circle glowed in the black wall like an ember. The hall was large and the weird ceiling gave it an effect of being larger still, so that the few bits of furniture looked to Gambrell like toys left in a deserted hall. There were no decorations, no scenes, and no paintings. Aside from the red bulls-eye upon the wall there was no attempt at color. It was some kind of stove, he surmised, for as they neared it he could feel waves of heat pouring from it into an already stifling room.

They stopped. Raiult turned upon his heel and surveyed the three with critical eyes. "You have all disappointed me," he said slowly. "I do not like to be disappointed. I expect so little of your race—but even so I am disappointed. Shurz, you have not used your brains in the matter. Go over there and sit quietly until you are called."

Shurz began to protest. "Over there, sir!" Raiult ordered cooly. "I do not like protests and excuses. I am about in the mood to send all three of you to the laboratories."

With a shrug and a scowl Shurz moved quickly to the farthest ottoman and sat down stiffly, the shotgun resting across his knees.

"That is much better. Obedience is your only virtue, Shurz. And as for you, kitten, I fear that you have forgotten your manners. Apparently you need some mental conditioning since your mind has strayed far from the few patterns that we allow a kitten. No matter, a few hours of the Snow will correct this tendency. Will it not, kitten? Remember?"

The girl shrank away from him, horror in her wide-apart eyes, but her chin was still high as she sank down upon a cushion.

"And now we come to prisoner number one." Raiult laughed a twittering laugh. "How does it feel to be number one, for once in your life, Jeff Gambrell?"

The question did not seem to require an answer, so Jeff kept silent.

"You owe me and the kitten a debt of gratitude. You have no idea how you would have looked and felt had I left the Rehft with you for an hour. But please don't get romantic notions. The kitten did not save you. I merely wanted you to enjoy—is that the word?—the first caress of the Rehft. There are things about the past few weeks that need to be explained. You, perchance, can explain them?"

And when Jeff did not answer but braced his feet wide-apart and stared back at him, Raiult hastened to add: "Oh, we have ways of learning the truth. We have been able to trace images from a brain three hours dead. So, you see, there is no sense in stiffening yourself. Shurz wanted to kill you, didn't you, Shurz? I am not wasteful and I am just. In the past few years we have picked up several guarded messages and thoughts. I hate to admit it, but it now appears that we Zarles were not as thorough as we thought. We had every reason to believe that we had exterminated all humans except those behind our walls. Still, there were so many of you—like little lice. Some of you—very few—even had annoying little brains. There is nothing more bothersome and dangerous than a flicker of intelligence instead of a flame. You think we were cruel. Why, Jeff Gambrell, if a Zarle had been born with twice the capacities of you noisy little humans he would have been exterminated on the spot as a dangerous deficient."

Raiult threw back his head and laughed again—that same twittering, hissing laughter that set GambreH's flesh to crawling. Suddenly the laughter ended in a choking cough. The dark face of the Zarle mottled, as he doubled over. Then he straightened himself and seized a lacy handkerchief from under his cloak and held it to his lips. Jeff thought he detected a fleck of blood upon the lace as Raiult shoved the cloth out of sight.

"Your pardon," Raiult bowed mockingly. "You have not answered a word, Jeff GambrelL Are you afraid?"

"No." Jeff lied. "I was thinking that perhaps you have confused deficiency with a deviation from the norm."

"Deviation from the norml Such talk from a slave who was supposed to work in the shops and the fields. That Soames should have been killed a score of years ago. Shurz, you idiot, the Rehft is hungry for you."

Shurz hung his head and mumbled protests.

"No matter. Now, Jeff Gambrell, tell me if you or your brother had any contact with men on the outside?"

When Jeff shrugged, the Zarle added. "Remember, I have ways of picking secrets from your mind. If necessary I can transfer your conscious to a silver sphere and study it at my leisure, but you would be a groping imbecile after that. Besides, I do not like such experiments. Your lives and your thoughts are both boring and nauseating."

Jeff thought the matter over for a few more seconds. "No," he answered truthfully. "We didn't even know there were men on the outside."

"At the last, someone helped your brother to escape me. Could he have made contact with an outsider and not have told you? Think, now. He may have dropped some word? Left some clue in his cabin?"

"Damn it, I told you 'No.' I don't like this idea of being quizzed about Jim, even though I have nothing to tell. I helped him over the wall. I guess you know that. It's all I know. If there are men beyond the wall who helped him, then they are smarter than you thought. That worries you, doesn't it—lizard! Now, kill me."

Again Raiult's face mottled. "Kill you? Why, Jeff Gambrell, I wouldn't think of it. I should keep you alive for a long, long time—for amusement." As he spat the last two words at his prisoner his right arm made a strange gesture through the air—the tentacles of his hands coiling and uncoiling.

Spiralling coils of flame leaped toward Jeff. They struck his face and chest, searing, scorching. The smell of burning flesh filled his nostrils. With a groan he flung his hands about Ins face and cowered down.

"Wait." The voice seemed to come from the red spot of heat upon the wall. The coiling flames disappeared and Jeff straightened himself, looking down in wonder at his arms. The shirt was no more ragged than before. There were no scars where he had felt the flames bite deep. Staggering, he realized that there had been no flames save in the Zarle's mind and his own. Then how could a man ever hope to outwit these things from hell's pit of space? And in his ears Jeff Gambrell heard the ringing of cosmic laughter.

Raiult was looking at the crimson bull's eye, his thin arm reaching beneath his cloak.

The voice laughed. "There. That worries you—Raiult. Let him worry, Gambrell. Let him try his devil's tricks. Did you see him hold the handkerchief to his mouth? Ask him if he can help himself. Ask him why there are so many less Zarles infesting the world than there were a century ago. They who were deathless." The voice laughed again.

Raiult leveled the silver tube at the spot of red heat. "If you are sending your voice through there, then I can blast you. Any fool can convert thought into sound in the presence of such energy. But it works both ways."

"I think not. Tell your slaves what's worrying you, Raiult. Tell them."

"There is nothing in this miserable world that can worry a Zarle. We mastered it, just as we mastered a hundred planets before."

Again the voice laughed. "But you found no homes, did you, Raiult? Some you cindered. Some you conquered. Some you rebuilt. But you left something out of your scheme. Something was always wrong. You never quite made it."

Raiult was choking with rage. "If we found a planet unsuitable we sent it spinning into its sun as we left it behind —just as we will send this one spinning. Your voice is a man's. You have learned some trick, but we know thousands."

"Not the one that counts, Raiult. Look at your slave here.

Like all men he stands with his feet in the mud, but he reaches for the stars. You have left the stars behind and are crawling back into the slime. How many Zarles have you helped to exterminate, Raiult?"

A red foam had gathered upon Raiult's lips. He dashed it away with a tentacled hand. The silver tube came up. "My answer," he screamed. He fired point blank at the heatspot and the voice.

The blinding flash that followed speared between Raiult and Jeff Gambrell, charring the Zarle's robe as it passed. It played full upon the dark stairway. The three lower steps melted and poured down into the room in little waves of lava.

The Zarle looked at the hardening puddle in wonder. Three rat-tail tentacles felt over his chin as he studied the problem. "The surge of power should have gone the other way," he said half-aloud. "Now—"

Shurz had got to his feet and was staring at the damage the blast had done. "My God, Raiult, if you had been three feet over. Or if the slave had been that much nearer to you. Not that it matters about a Gambrell." He gave Jeff a venomous look.

The tentacles of Raiult's left hand wriggled toward him for silence.

"If they could send their voices through that power beam they could see through it too. They knew where we were standing. I wonder if they would have dared to send a counter-surge if I had been directly in front of the heat-disc. Shurz, no man can do what not even a Zarle can do. The miserable, despicable, soulless little beastsl Still, it was the voice of a man—"

"Yeah. Somewhere I've heard that voice before."

"Well, no matter, Shurz. Please don't try to think. The situation is puzzling enough. Here, send this man to his quarters. And you, kitten, to your room. I may decide to give you to Shurz. You have become a nuisance and I detest nuisances. There is a Zarle at the laboratory who owns two kittens, and either one can reach an octave higher than you. Still, I like to train my own. Go, girl! Go! Don t stand there! This day, this whole plantation, are filled with disturbing influences. They make me ill. But I have been ill before. Damn you all, don't stand there gawking. You know that we Zarles have solved the secret of life. Barring mishaps we are deathless. Deathless—not painless, and I can stand pain—I who have driven test-ships through the corollas of suns you have never seen. Now, scamper, before I unleash the Rehft."

When Shurz returned to the Zarle after taking the slave to his cabin, he found Raiult sitting upon the largest ottoman, his lean knees drawn up to his chin, staring curiously at the damaged steps and floor.

"Sit down, Shurz," Raiult said oddly. There was the merest hint of tenderness and wistfulness in his voice— Shurz had never heard such tones before. He obeyed.

"The man, Jeff Gambrell, is a problem, is he not, Shurz?"

"Not if you'd let me gun him."

"I am not mad at you any more, Shurz."

"Then," Shurz said gleefully, "I can gun him?"

"I haven't decided. No, I am not sure about that at all. I was thinking that you have served me faithfully. Of course, you enjoyed the privilege of brutality that my system afforded. Still, you have served me faithfully. This is as near to gratitude as I can get. But you have made mistakes. Soames was one. Over a period of years you have made many. Your hair is grizzled now, though you seem as strong as ever. Perhaps I should send a shotgun to this Jeff Gambrell and let you two decide who is to be overseer."

"Himl He won't serve you."

"I pay well—and I could throw in the kitten. I think she might swing the balance in my direction, for all the nonsense that he learned out of the schoolmaster's books. We will not have any more schoolmasters here, Shurz."

"Yes, sir. And if you say so I'll fight him and kill him too. But why not just let me gun him now and save you the trouble. No one could ever trust a Gambrell."

"Hmm. Yes, I suppose you are right. Still, give him another night and another day. Perhaps this—er, influence might try to reach him again. Tomorrow night you can shoot him. But wait until tomorrow night, Shurz, or I'll give you to the Rehft."

Shurz sighed contentedly. "I've waited a long time for a Gambrell. I can wait a while longer. Good night, sir."

At the top of the stairs he turned and looked back toward the Zarle. Raiult was still sitting upon the ottoman, one tentacled hand resting upon a knee—the other now and then lifting the lacy handkerchief to his lips—his eyes staring up at the yellowish light as though searching through the star spaces for worlds that were dead and done with.

"Tomorrow night," Shurz chuckled.

ESCAPE

Jeff Gambpell awoke. His shoulders and neck were aching. In his restless sleep he had dreamed that the Rehft had him again and was thrusting lancets of flame into his back.

The room was dark and hot. His sleeveless pajamas were wet with sweat. With a groan Jeff turned over and sat upon the side of his bed, the old springs creaking and protesting against his weight. He winced in pain as he rubbed his shoulders, his bare feet braced against the old, splintery floor. A mosquito sang hungrily about his ear. He brushed it away, groaned again, and looked out the window. It was midnight—or maybe a bit later, he judged. Then, as he rubbed more of the stiffness away, he fell to wondering why he had awakened so early. The Rehft had weakened him. Toward sundown, when he had fallen into bed he had assured himself he could sleep the clock around. But he had slept restlessly and painfully; now, long before morning, he was wide awake.

He got to his feet. Maybe a few dippers of water over his head and shoulders would help. As he stumbled toward the tiny kitchen a voice stopped him.

"Jeff Gambrell. Jeff. Mister Gambrell."

It was a soft voice, vibrant and musical. A timid voice— and scared.

"Jeff. Mister Gambrell. I must talk with you."

He stood quietly until he spied the silhouette of a woman's head low against a sill.

It was Kitten. No other woman on the plantation had such a voice as that. Besides, the slave women had close-cropped hair. That was the law. This silhouette's hair came nearly to her shoulders and fluffed out in curls which caught the moonlight in shimmering waves.

Jeff Gambrell leaped toward the window and stood against the wall beside it.

"You fool," he whispered. "No one's to be out after eight. You know that. There's trouble enough."

She lowered her voice. "But I must see you. It's important."

"Go away," he answered savagely.

He shouldn't have talked to her like that, he thought. But she was a fool to be here. His voice softened. "Please, Kitten. Look, I didn't mean to hurt you. But the Zarle or Shurz will get you for being out here at this hour. And if the slaves find you, they'll beat your brains out—and laugh. You saved me from plenty of punishment yesterday. I know. But there's more a-coming. Keep out of it, Kitten. You're small and soft—and beautiful. I couldn't take what they dished out to me. How could you?"

She sobbed quietly. Then she spoke again—whispered rather —and anger and humiliation were so mixed in her voice that he could not tell which was stronger.

"And did you think I chose my life instead of the fields? Oh, you're the fool. You with little more than twelve hours to live, standing there in a hot little shack, afraid you'll lose somebody's good will. You fool, you haven't got any good will to lose. When they blasted that old man yesterday your last friend was gone. Unless you take a kitten for a friend, you don't have one left. Not one. But you're afraid to talk to a kitten, afraid of the slaves' opinion. As though I'm not a slave too. Oh—"

"For God's sake, don't talk so loud. And keep your head down. I'll pull some shades. Then you can come in."

The shadow ducked below the window sill. Jeff pulled all the window shades, then went to the door and called to her. She groped her way around the house and took his arm. He led her to the middle of the room. "Now, stand there until I get a light," he ordered.

Kitten stood quietly while he closed and locked the door. Then he found a candle and a match. When the room was filled with pale candlelight, she looked about her in wonder and disapproval. Her eyes were filled with fear, and she was holding a little bundle to her breast as though it were a shield.

"And this is how you live?" She asked. "No, I didn't mean to make fun of you. But—it—it's so—so meager."

He laughed. "I suppose this is the first time a kitten ever saw a slave's shack. This is it. My teacher, the man you saw killed, said that the Zarles studied our past. They worked out a combination of the old plantation system and the older feudal system for us. A system that'd keep slaves in their places for a thousand years, and maybe give someone like Shurz a chance to serve the Zarles a bit better." He laughed scornfully. "Yes, this is it. Been this way for two hundred years, I've been told. It hasn't changed. It can't change. The Zarles are clever. Their system works for them."

"And the candle?" She looked at it with curiosity in her wide-apart, blue-green eyes. Raiult told me once there was enough power in his house to blast the whole plantation. And he gives you candles."

"Yes," he answered bitterly, "he gives us candles."

She moved over to the bed and sat down wearily, placing the bundle carefully to one side. Worried as he was, and with one shoulder still burning with pain, he had to admit to himself that the girl's visit was making him feel better. Much better. He looked at her with admiration. Lord she was pretty—and tiny. Barefooted, Jeff Gambrell stood six feet; his work at the forges had streamlined him down to one hundred eighty. Kitten couldn't be over five-feet-two. She was so small and fragile-looking. Seated there in her white dress, her ash-blonde hair catching the candle light, she looked more like a picture of a little girl out of Soames' books than a slave. Her tiny, sandalled feet barely touched the floor. She had a clean look too. The sweat and the grime from the shops, the shafts, and the fields had never touched her.

He went over and sat down beside her. "Power?" he asked. "With my brother and Soames gone, I thought I was the only slave left who knew anydiing about power-lighting."

"We— uh—kittens—are well-educated, after a fashion," she told him quietly. "There was a woman, an older kitten, who taught me. The Zarles do not like stupidity. Yes, she taught me, and I think she loved me. Then, when I was trained she was exterminated. Just as some day I will train another and be—oh, dammit, how many slaves have come and gone in two hundred years! Like raindrops splashing into a pool."

"The voice said something was wrong with Raiult," he comforted.

She brushed a curl away from one eye with a tiny, jewelled hand. "I know. He's in pain at times. Great pain. But he says he can't die."

"He's lying. If I had a chance I could prove it. With these two hands."

"You won't get the chance, Jeff Gambrell. That's why I'm here. You're going to die this afternoon—unless you do as I say. Without my help you're as good as dead."

Kitten began to untie the bundle she had brought with her.

"Do as you say!" he repeated and wanted to laugh. She looked so small and helpless there as she struggled with the knot that he couldn't imagine her helping with the dusting.

The bundle opened. Gambrell looked down at several foil-wrapped packages of food, a book, a black box, and something which looked like an enormous silver locket fastened to a silver chain.

"What's this?" Curious, he picked up the latter.

"Careful," she warned. "Don't touch anything."

The locket, as he called it, was a disc about five inches across and an inch thick. One side was smooth. In the other was set a single glass eye. To each side of the eye was a tiny button: one white, the other black. Beneath the eye and the buttons were several lines of writing in the wavy hieroglyphs of the Zarles. It seemed to Jeff that the disc was a trifle warmer than the chain which was attached to it.

"What in thunderl" he mumbled. "The eye looks natural enough. What's it for?"

"It's far the most mportant thing in the bundle," she told him. "They use it to scare their slaves. They also play a game with it. But you've got to learn how to use it." "Rubbish. If it's a game—"

"Oh, put the chain around your neck and hold the disc in front of you. The Zarles have a peculiar sense of humor. Their games can be rough."

He obeyed.

She picked up the black box and went to the far corner. Then, holding it to her eye, and peering fixedly into one of its windows she warned him: "Now."

"My God."

Shurz stood in front of him, his shotgun ready, looking even more brutish and dirty than Jeff had ever seen him.

Gambrell reached for the gun. The figure of Shurz wavered and faded away—reappeared again—shivered and twisted like an image in a broken mirror.

"I'm not very good at this," she told him. "Raiult's images are more substantial. In time, you can feel their blows, or think you can. Now, Jeff press the white button."

He obeyed. The blurred image of Shurz grew transparent, hung there on the heavy air for a second like a bit of trailing smoke, then vanished away.

"Remember." She told him. "The white button. Now, well try once more. This time I'll show you how to use the eye and the other button."

Again she looked into the black box. Shurz reappeared at Jeff's side, his shotgun menacing.

"Now," she instructed. "Hold the disc up. Stare into the eye. Think of that image. Imagine it turning upon me. Order it to do so. Then press the black button."

He obeyed. The figure of Shurz streaked across the room, rushed at Kitten so swiftly that she let out a startled "ooohl" and lowered the box. Immediately, the phantom vanished.

She came over to him. "See," she said. "If you get away, he'll send worse images than Shurz after you. I've seen the Zarles at their game, hurling monsters at each other from nothingness—scrambling, trying to force each other to lower either the disc or the box—coming as near as they can to laughter. Wild, insane laughter. That's what Raiult will send after you if you escape. Remember, the white button merely repels and dissolves images; the black one and the eye can hurl them back."

He looked down at the disc and chain in wonder. "God, did he use this on Jim that night?"

"No," she told him. "I heard him talking about the chase. He understimated your brother. He was so sure that the Hounds would provide enough sport."

The disc was warm to his touch now. "Any danger of this thing burning out?" he asked. "How is it powered?"

"A tiny battery made from radioactive silicate," she replied. "It lasts for centuries and the disc wont burn out."

"You know," he mused, "I'm continually amazed by the Zarles. They place no value upon life in any form. But when I was sent to the shops, I noticed that the machines that they sent up for repairs had very few working parts. They were built to last a long time and they had been given the best of care."

"But did you ever see any new machines?" Kitten inquired.

He shook his head. "No. They were all old. Very old. I wondered about that."

She laughed. "Well, we can't solve the riddle of the Zarles. And Raiult may miss me at any time. I've known him to pace the levels of his castle all night long. Jeff, he's going to kill you. I heard him tell Shurz to leave you alone until the next night. That's tonight, Jeff. It's after one o'clock. After that, Shurz can gun you!"

His spirits sagged. Somehow, with Kitten there in the cabin with him, the hot night had seemed a little brighter. He rubbed his chin thoughtfully and sighed.

"I knew he would, sooner or later. I had hoped for a little time—"

"As soon as daylight comes, Shurz will be watching." From the folds of her dress she took two wrist watches and handed one to Jeff.

"I've synchronized them. It's now ten after one."

He strapped the watch about his big wrist. It had several hands and many markings. A military chronometer. A souvenir of the last battle that mankind had fought.

"How long would it take you to climb over the wall?" she asked abruptly.

"The wall's no problem. But the beam that runs across the top is a different proposition. I got Jim over it. But it took practice and strength."

"If I shut the power off at two o'clock, can you be there, ready to go over the wall?"

"Easy. But Raiult will murder you."

Her eyes were big and frightened now. "He may. Without my music, he's in hell. But I'm not indispensable. I'll have to chance it."

"No. Kitten, I can't let you."

"Shurz will shoot you without warning."

Suddenly she was in his arms. He was holding her close, and standing on tiptoe, she kissed him.

Then she was out of his embrace and backing toward the door. "Don't forget the things I brought. Go south—not north. Your only chance is the south. You can't miss the old road. It sinks into swampland about ten miles from here. Then it rises up again and you'll find a ruined city. It is odd, but I think the Zarles are superstitious about those old cities of our people. Keep the disc with you at all times. Remember, I'll cut the power off at two. I can't possibly leave it off for more than three minutes—maybe not over one minute. Get over that wall—fast. And think of me, Jeff. And good-bye, dear."

Her eyes filled with tears and there was a sob in her throat as she blew out the candle. He heard her at the door. Then she was gone.

Long before two, Jeff Gambrell was crouching in the shadow of the wall. Craning his neck he stared upward. The wall was not over ten feet high; it would be an easy matter to leap up, get a good purchase, and pull himself over. But when he nearly closed his eyelids he could see the faint blue beam that ran along the top. Nearly invisible, soundless, it was death.

As he watched, a sound came from the top of the wall-hardly louder than the flicker of a moth against a flame.

Something fell at his feet. He stooped and picked it up. It was a nightbird which had chanced the beam. It was quite dead and its feathers were hot and metallic in his hand. He threw the charred thing aside and waited, half-closed eyes staring up at the beam.

Now and then he looked down at the watch. Like flies caught in a web of eternity the hands crawled toward two.

Then the faint beam above him flickered out. His heart moving upward to his throat, he backed off, caught his breath once, and ran forward-Leaped—

Caught the top of the wall and pulled himself up. Threw one leg across, sweating now as he thought of what would happen if someone closed a power switch.

Then he poised for one brief second and jumped down into the free, ruined world outside.

He crouched in the weeds for a few minutes, catching his breath, and making certain that he had lost none of his supplies in the jump. He had tied the little bundle to his waist. The chain of the disc was about his neck. The disc like a great silver locket was swinging across his huge chest. He held it up to the faint light and pressed the white button. His only other possession, his knife in its leather sheath, was safe at his side.

Then he started southward at a dogtrot.

Toward sunup Kitten awoke. She had slept little since two o'clock; finally, only an hour before, she had fallen into a sleep of exhaustion and had dreamed of crashing suns and exploding worlds. The worlds turned into swirling clouds of dust drifting in space. Clouds that moiled and eddied and shaped themselves into black cloaks from which two long hands with tentacle-like fingers reached out and plucked the twinkling planets as though they were golden oranges. Clouds that grew long, dark heads, from which slitted eyes peered balefully out at the drifting wreckage of ruined galaxies.

She awoke. Yellow light was pouring down upon her from the curious ceiling of her room. Raiult the Zarle was standing by her bed, tall and grim in his black coat. Coiling fingers were at his pointed chin and he was staring down at her in his usual detached way—as though he saw her but was measuring a dozen problems at the same time.

She sat up, threw a shimmering cover aside, and pulled a white dressing gown about her bare shoulders.

"Sleep well, Kitten?" he asked, his dark eyes sparkling with amusement. "You are a strange race. Do you cover your shoulders to hide them or to make them appear more alluring? I sometimes wish we had conquered a more practical people. Your little instincts and idiosyncrasies make little sense. Anyway, I am not impressed. No Zarle has ever shown admiration for anything. That strange word "love" which your ancestors were always prattling about has no meaning to us. We have a fierce pride in ourselves and our accomplishments. It has carried us past a thousand suns. Now, do sit up straight and stop staring at me like a hypnotized chicken and try to give me a few intelligent answers."

Her shoulders straightened. "I was not staring at you like a hypnotized chicken," she answered haughtily. "And I don't like what you are talking about,"

He sneered. "Please. The charts show that the power was turned off for two minutes and forty seconds at two o'clock this morning. Your fingerprints and—ah, if you will pardon the expression—your smell are all over the control room." He bowed mockingly. "Moreover, I stood here for a few minutes before you awoke, pering into your dull, dull mind. This slave, Jeff Gambrell, seems to have taken colossal proportions in your thoughts. And I note that you have developed a fear of your master that borders upon the psychopathic. Sex and fear." He sighed. "The two emotions that could always send your race gibbering back into the caves."

Her curls were falling about her face. She spread her fingers apart and drew them through her hair. Then she looked up into his face, steadily.

"Very well," Kitten said and her voice was not wavering now. "I turned off the power. I turned it off so Jeff Gambrell could escape."

Raiult's thin lips smiled reassuringly. "I knew, of course. It does not matter. It will be amusing to bring him back. I have learned to expect so many foolish things from your people. The question is: Are you sorry for what you did, Kitten?"

She held her breath as she looked up into his face. A stray curl had fallen down over one eye and she brushed it away. "No," she answered softly. "I am not ashamed."

Raiult's face mottled with rage. His fingers coiled about her arm, lifted her to her feet, and flung her across the room. Her feet flying, she struck against the far wall and fell, sobbing with hurt and rage she pressed her hands against the floor and forced herself to sit up. Raiult was strong. She had fallen so hard that everything was reeling about her. And wheeling with the rest of the room was Raiult the Zarle, staring down at her with blazing eyes.

"Very well!" he screamed. "We will leave you with but two memories: your music and the obedience that you owe to the Zarle. A dash of Snow, eh, Kitten?"

"No. No." She screamed her protest.

The yellow light of the room turned into falling snowflakes. Softly, slowly, they began to fall about her and a keen, cold wind was whipping the white robe from her body. Drifts were piling about her now. She could see nothing in the room, but from a great distance Raiult's dark eyes were peering at her.

She was no longer in her room. She was in a swirling world of snow. It fell furiously and the cold wind grew colder still. Colder until the snow changed to sleet, sleet that fell in curious patterns and piled itself into strange shapes. Trees of ice grew up from the snow about her; their branches sprouted sharp icicles that broke with a sound of crashing crystal and fell down upon her, piercing her breasts and face and eyes, striking like shining fangs into her skull, driving deep, deep down into her brain-She was no longer a person. No longer the screaming, freezing, tortured thing pinned to the snow. She was a mind —maybe a cringing, frightened little ghost—fleeing through the tunnels and labyrinths of her own brain. The walls of the labyrinth about her were gray and pulsing, netted with blueish veins, whorled and carved like limestone that has stood in the path of a cold flood for thousands of years. The chill wind and the swirling ice crystals pursued, caught up with her, and beat her body numb with cold and pain.

There were memories in the tunnels of her brain. The woman who had loved her, Kitten's old teacher, stood there smiling. The ice gathered about her, thrust out jagged spars, glittered, formed a shining pillar that finally broke with a tinkling crash, and fell into a thousand sparkling particles that danced with the wind and flew away. Where the image of the woman had been there was nothing—and to Kitten's mind that woman had never been.

One by one the swirling snow and ice crystals sought out memory-images, froze them, shattered them into nothingness.

At last there was but one figure remaining. Jeff Gambrell stood there, the snow and the cold swirling about him. Slowly he became imbedded in ice. Barely visible, like something lost for a long time in a glacier. She tried to hold herself between the freezing pillar and the dancing flakes. She tore at budding limbs and thorns of ice, broke them and cast them aside until her fingers were bleeding. And still the ice and snow piled about the memory of Jeff Gambrell.

The cold piled about him, freezing, until at last the pillar of ice broke with a sound of silver falling. The wind howled as it dashed the little cloud of ice crystals down a far corridor. And she was alone in an ice-choked tunnel, ciying like a child for something she had lost but could only faintly remember.

THE CITY OF RUINS

Jeff Gambrell did not know that this was one of the rare nights when Raiult was sleeping. Toward daybreak Raiult was busy. In his rage he had postponed the search for his fugitive slave.

Eventually Jeff found the ruined road and stumbled southward.

He had expected all sorts of phantoms to pursue him, and had hoped that Kitten had been right when she said that the disc would turn them back. But no phantoms came. An owl hooted at him inquiringly. Smaller things dived into the underbrush with a scurrying and scrabbling that set his nerves to twitching.

In time the road sank into a swamp. A general subsidence had occurred in the area, the effect of the shattering bombs that both the Zarles and men had unleashed during that short, hopeless war when armies had stood up to repel the invader and had reeled down to defeat.

Jeff waded knee-deep through the slime, his feet slipping on the slick roadway beneath him. At times he stepped off into holes that brought the water up to his belt. Once he tripped and fell headlong. Blacksnakes and turtles hurried out of his path. Usually the snakes would head for a convenient log or cypress tree, coil there, and watch him venomously, their heads darting toward him, their tongues flickering as they hissed their anger at being disturbed.

And all the while there was the fear and respect of Raiult's strange science which turned him sick with dread and made a heavy, cold lump at the pit of his stomach. That fear of things to come, he thought, was worse than facing them. That constant waiting—expecting the things of Raiult's projection to come slavering at him, as real as flesh. And wondering if the disc could repel Raiult's images as easily as it had Kitten's.

He had his doubts, since Raiult was long familiar with the use of the black box.

But no images came to taunt him. By sunup he struggled out of the swamp toward the ruins of a city. What was left of it was falling apart. He judged that it might have sheltered a hundred thousand people in better days. The frame houses that must have been there once had turned into little mounds where the weeds grew thicker and higher than elsewhere. All that was standing now were a few stone and brick walls off in the distance and some twisted, rusty girders that reached upward in all directions as though they were trying to write an epitaph across the morning sky.

He found a path that was probably used by wild goats and cattle and started toward the middle of the ruins, where the walls and shattered buildings stood higher. At times he crossed acres of ground that had been burned brick hard and glassy by the force of some blast that had melted everything in its path.

Still, no images.

But as he drew near the central ruins he stopped to look at the weeds and wild flowers that bordered the trail. Something was wrong.

They were watching him I

He drew near to one whose fleshy leaves were a poisonous green and studied it cautiously. It was so large and its foliage was so thick that at first he thought something was peering at him from behind it.

But upon examination it presented even more of a mystery. It was unmistakably a jimpson weed, such as grew along the fences and walls of the plantation. But this plant had gone wild. Its white flowers were two feet across and were dotted by crimson spots. Like it had been splashed by blood, Jeff was thinking. One seed pod drooped down. He drew in his breath. The pod was nearly six inches across, its protective thorns porportionately large.

He moved—and almost jumped out of his tracks. The white flowers had moved too turning like great, spattered plates to face him.

He moved again. The flowers followed his movements. Squatting down he studied the huge, thomy pod that was almost too heavy for its supporting limb. Jimpsons grew large on the plantation. The field hands were kept busy keeping them out of the crops. But he had never seen one like this.

A grasshopper crept out from under the foliage and, suddenly alarmed jumped toward his face. Jeff fell back.

As he did, the limb that supported the pod bunched itself and struck. The heavy thom-cased pod whistled through the air. Jeff Cambrell felt weak. Two inches closer and the thing would have taken off half of his face.

Sweating he got up and took the middle of the path. As he went on toward the ruins, he thought of that monstrous, spattered jimpson recalling the things that Soames had told him. After the war, Soames had said, there were all sorts of freaks in the lowlands. Skunks, rabbits, opossums, birds, had grown horns; had produced frightening, twisted giants; or dwarfy, misshapen progeny that crept and crawled. It was due to the radiation, Soames had explained: genes had been altered. Vegetation had done the same: turned into green flesh; produced nightmarish blossoms; grew into giants, got hungry, and thrust out blood-sucking fangs. But all these mutations had soon died out.

Furthermore, the Zarles had long ago plundered all the ruined cities with crews of slaves. They were like packrats, the Zarles, gathering up all sorts of things which they did not especially need. Surely, if plants like this had grown near the city, some slave would have brought back a hair-raising tale to the plantation. He laughed to himself. It would be hard to embroider upon his encounter with the giant jimpson. Reality had been enough—more than enough.

He went on toward the ruins and passed through a grove of violets that grew in clumps ten feet high. The white and purple blossoms were as large as umbrellas and their perfume clung to the air and almost stifled him.

As he neared the heart of the dead city he came upon one more mystery. It was a clump of wild onions. There was no chance of mistaking them. But they were thrusting up great tulip-shaped, orange-and-black blossoms.

He came to the ruins. The main part of the city had been built about a square. Only the larger buildings about it had lasted. Some still stood there three or four stories high, their walls blasted and broken. Torn, black windows looked down at him: hollow, mournful eyes protesting against being awakened from their long sleep.

In the center of the square was a broken fountain, choked by moss and water lilies. A few tiny goldfish came to the surface of the green water and flirted with him.

A pedestal, commemorating someone long forgotten, had fallen nearby. Jeff Gambrell sat upon it, wondering why Raiult had done nothing as yet. It was not like the Zarle.

Then he saw something near the fountain that brought him to his feet. It was only a pile of ashes, and near it upon the blackened marble of the pool's rim were three little brownish blobs.

Quickly he got to his feet and studied the ashes. The blobs were little piles of dottle shaken from a pipe. There were bones in the ashes. Campflre. The Zarles did not use tobacco, though they permitted the slaves to grow a few rows. They ate synthetic food. Not long ago a man, or several men, had camped here. Jeff remembered Raiult's words. Could free men really be living outside the walls?

The ashes were old. Several rains had fallen upon them. But Jeff's hopes were rising. If free men still lived he'd find them. And if the Zarles built hell's pits about their plantations, he'd still find a way to go back and bring Kitten away.

Searching through the ruins he soon found a room that was not filled with debris. With a weary sigh he sat dowii and untied the bundle. Opening a can of meat and a package of biscuits, he ate ravenously. Then he picked up the book that Kitten had taken from Raiult's house and thumbed through it. It was a loose-leaf affair and the pages felt leathery to the touch. Most of it was filled with curious designs, charts, and the wavy-lined spidery writing of the Zarles. The last few pages were blank. A notebook, he imagined. There was one peculiar thing about it: the writing had been done in several shades; on one page alone he found four different colors. Long ago he and Soames had wondered if the Zarles were not color-blind.

He wrapped the book and his remaining food together and tied the bundle to his belt again. Then he stretched out on the floor with a tired sigh.

It was then that Raiult finished with Kitten and began his

_4t_{1 -}₁₁

sendmgs.

Jeff's eyes were nearly closing when a pack of Hounds broke through the door and rushed at him. He leaped to his feet and reached for his knife. The Hounds came on, curved talons and fangs slashing. They leaped—wavered— became as transparent as die thinnest smoke—and vanished as they clawed at him.

Again and again, rank after rank, the Hounds came. And when the last of them was gone, a thing that was mostly neck and wide jaws crawled toward him, leaped, and faded into nothingness.

For an hour he endured Raiult's torment. Sweat drenched his shirt. Raiult was wearing him down. He knew nothing about the workings of the disc. The mental science of the Zarles was beyond his thinking. And all the while he was wondering if the protective shield that the disc put out against these nightmares would hold. The things were swarming about him, snapping, screaming, striking. Always vanishing—but, it seemed to him, always striking a bit nearer.

And all the while the voice of Riault was fluttering in his ears.

"Jeff. Jeff Gambrell, tell me where you are. How are you keeping your thoughts from me? Tell me, Jeff. Resistance can not help. In time I will find you. These creatures will rend you. You had better come back now. If you wait I may be so provoked that I will unwind the nerve threads from your body—slowly. You should see kitten now, Jeff. Harmless. But quite beautiful. What did you steal from me, Jeff Gambrell? Bring it back now. I may relent. I may even give Kitten to you. Come back, Jeff. Come back, or I may give her to Shurz. Come back, now, you idiot, or when I do get you I will hold High Festival. You will live for a week—but I will make that week seem like ten thousand years. Come back, Jeff. While there is time. While I can still forgive you—"

Then, as though Raiult the Zarle was determined to prove his artistry and had brought all the skill of his unmeasured mind and science into one somber performance the dim walls faded away. They became a jungle where leprous trees with sallow, flesh-tinted flowers struggled from drenched earth that was neither liquid nor solid; dismal and lacklustre, the entire scene appeared to be slowly quivering and struggling against the shape it had taken and might at any time dissolve into miasmal mist. From crepuscular shadows an army of giant scorpions slowly formed themselves and advanced toward Gambrell in an ominous, sidelong crawl. Their acid-tipped stings arced upward; pincers waving they sidled forward, halted, backed away, danced hideous dances. Some carried their young upon their backs, feeding upon raw, stinking flesh. But though they danced and backed and sidled away they gained ground; and each macabre sally brought them a bit nearer.

Jeff GambrelFs jaws clenched until they ached. Sweat was dripping over his face. Sanity could not long stand against such nightmares. Now, if ever, he had to chance the eye of the Zarle's disc against all the evil that Raiult had called out of the steaming air.

Groaning he held the disc to his eyes, stared into the eye, and concentrated upon the struggling, crawling things that filled the room.

He pressed the black button.

One by one the phantoms faded away. One last monster made a frantic rush toward him—grew transparent and vanished. The swampy soil turned into mist, lifted, and was gone.

Weak and shaken, Gambrell lowered the disc. His mind felt lifeless, empty, drained of strength and will.

Raiult was staring into a window of the black box when Jeff" Gambrell hurled the swarm of scorpions back at him. The trees and the dripping land wavered at the edge of the Zarle's hall, spewing forth more and more of the struggling things.

One by one he flicked them into nothingness. At the last the backdrop of trees wavered and disappeared. With a sigh Raiult lowered the box from his eye. Rubbing his forehead he stumbled toward an ottoman and dropped upon it. Raiult the Zarle felt very old and very tired. It was as though the stars in their courses had suddenly formed a strange pattern and he was looking down a deep vista of space which led to worlds' ends, a galatial dump-pile where outmoded things—pitted moons, fossils, burned-out meteors, and Zarles—came falling out of nowhere to he blasted and forgotten until space was nothing but one vast, curving, dust-cloud that would finally burst with the weight of its own pressing atoms and begin creation anew.

"So she gave him a disc," he said thoughtfully. "And I was so annoyed that I erased her mind before searching it. I wonder what else she gave him. That was a strong picture he sent. The disc is more than a machine, no better than the will behind it. I wonder, now. Could we have underestimated them? No. They have no brains. They couldn't pursue a single idea to a conclusion. They are like monkeys in a store-room, running from first one thing to another. Somehow, I misjudged this Jeff Gambrell. I even misjudged a soft, mindless kitten. Two hundred years ago I would have searched her mind thoroughly. Oh, this hellish planet. Two have escaped me. And one had tricked me. The council will not like that. Perhaps we should have investigated that odd emotion their ancestors were always jabbering about. What was it? Love. Oh, nonsense, it was nothing but a mating urge. It was their own self-delusion that weakened them and ruined them. Love! A half-formed, weakling driving power. No wonder they never got anywhere. I have my pride. I will never admit—"

He got up and took a turn around the room, his hands clasped behind him, his head bowed.

"Wait," he said aloud. "There was something in her mind about a book. Now, what was it?"

Suddenly he doubled up with a coughing spell and dashed a bit of bloody froth from his lips.

"A book. Not-No!"

Raiult strode over to his safe and flung it open. Stooping he created a whirlwind of papers as he searched through it.

"My book," he echoed. "She gave him my book."

He got to his feet, clenched his fists, and raised them toward the lighted ceiling. "Why didn't I kill her? What good would it do now to kill her? She has no memory. Well, he has the book. So what. He couldn't decipher that book. It would take a million years of steady improvement for them to understand it. But the council won't like this matter."

He sat down again and bowed his head. "Well," he said at last, "I can't reach his thoughts now. If I trailed him with the Hounds he'd send them yelping after shadows. Time is on my side. Soner or later he will overplay his hand. Zarles can wait. By all the blind systems that choke the universe, how long have we waited and searched? Searching for what? The past, maybe. A satellite of a sun that will duplicate another satellite which winked out centuries ago. How many centuries, I wonder? Five hundred. Or ten thousand? There was no way of measuring time out there in space, in the void between the galaxies. You crash on and on, crowding the light-barrier; and at the same time you are like a glow-worm creeping through dewy grass. A paradox, indeed. At that pace, how long does it take a clock to tick one second? How many years in a single heartbeat? And all that for what? To find a duplicate planet." He threw his lean head toward the ceiling and hissed his laughter at the space beyond. "Hunting for a duplication. Knowing that the mad Chance which governs suns and worlds and Zarles does not duplicate. I wonder—"

Jeff Gambrell set the white button on the disc and laid down. He was long awake though he was dead-tired. But nothing came to disturb him the rest of the day. He slept most of the afternoon. When he awoke only a few shafts of gray light were creeping through the cracked walls of his hiding place.

He was thirsty. A somber twilight had fallen upon the shattered square when he picked his way over the debris in the hallway and came to the carved, sagging door that had once opened upon the street. He waited for a moment at the entrance, peering out like a small, hunted thing. Indeed, it seemed to Jeff that the longer he stayed in the ruins the smaller he felt. Uneasy, too. As though the city had died so violently that some of the violence and sudden fear still clung to the ruins.

Far off in the distance, above a broken spire, he saw a strange bird, wings thrust out and back, gliding noiselessly along. A crow going home to a rookery, he thought. And then it came to him that either the dusk had played a trick upon his eyes or else this was a very large bird indeed. It was out of sight when he had this thought. How far away had it been? Well, it was a dismal place and sights and sounds were becoming half-unreal.

With a shrug he walked over to the fountain and leaned across the broken rim and drank deep. He got to his feet and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. The water was brackish and mossy but it was wet. Good. He'd have to find a jar and take some with him to his hiding place.

The ruins of a prescription shop were nearby. It was strewn with bits of glass and discolored by powders and elixirs that had once been smashed across its walls and floors. But at last he found a cracked, quart bottle. Going back to the fountain he washed and filled the container—looking with disgust at the greenish liquid when he held it up to the fading light

probably the same person who was producing the weird music, was casting fragments of a terrible play upon the distorted, pitted wall. Some bits were in colors; others were so gray and pale that they could hardly be seen. At times suns blazed up into novae that should have blasted the darkness; comets^- streaked across the screen; and horrible pictures were imposed upon each other. Some, he guessed, were shown upside down—while others were so alien and dimensionless that they had neither top nor bottom, but a depth that seemed to rush up from other depths.

Gambrell witnessed hideous tortures, vivisections, bloody battles between monsters that the earth had never seen. Then the picture would shift to a comsic pattern and he witnessed crashing suns, planets spinning down like tired things to splash and dissolve into fervid seas. Worlds within worlds, wheeling about worlds, until he lay flat upon the chill floor of the hall and held to the cracks in the floor lest he fall upward into that jumble of space gone mad. And all the while the music matched the strange scenes, as alien as the suns that melted upon the screen and dropped down to the dark street in blobs of flame.

Though the suns blazed across the front of the old building and atomic blasts spattered across the night, the street outside remained pitch-dark.

Only once did the pictures and the music strike a chord that he could understand. There was a huge, mountainless, green world with sluggish seas and steaming swamps. The lush continents were temperate and green, devoid of hills or desert; even the black cities that dotted them were sunk into their surface like dark stones that have lain for a long time upon damp earth. The sky was blue and peaceful and the reddish sun to which this planet belonged looked at it with a fierce pride.

Then the scene changed. The music rose into a wail of despair. And screaming like a flaming saw a tiny, blue-white sun and its swarm of planetoids came hurtling out of space.

Gambrell saw the fleeing ships rising from the featurless continents. Some fled away like frightened things. A few hesitated and turned back. The last to leave wavered and fell as red sun and blue sun strove with each other with spears of flame. And then the screen showed nothing but splashing fire that faded into red coals and falling ashes, fast drifting away. The ashes were gone and where they had been was only the night and the far-off stars peering with little interest at the void where the suns had fought to the death.

The music was plaintive now, crying softly. And Jeff Gam-brell felt a sick sadness in his heart for all the homeless things everywhere.

There was no sleeping that night. The phantasmagoria of sound and pictures became only a ruined building staring at the morning with hollow eyes. With a sound like the snapping of many strings the music abruptly stopped. The silence that followed sighed with relief.

Jeff Gambrell lay still and waited. The fountain was still in shadows. When the morning light dipped down into the ruins he saw another shadow seated upon the marble rim. It was thin and tall. Swathed in a black cloak it drooped dejectedly as though the music and the cavalcade of the night had drained it of strength.

Jeff's heart quickened as the morning light brought the tall, black shadow into view. It was a Zarle.

The thing got to its feet with a weary groan and drew tentacled hands across its face. Then it moved about; at first, aimlessly; finally it set a course toward JefFs hiding place. Once it stumbled and nearly went down. Then it righted itself with a groan and came on. As it drew nearer Jeff saw that something was wrong. The long, lean head was lop-sided. There was a great blue swelling across one side of its face. An eye was gone and the extra-sensory spot behind it was lost in the swelling. Jeff got to his knees, his knife ready. Surely now the Zarle would know of his presence, would sense him as a snake senses a rabbit in the dark of night. It had taken a potshot at him before; now, with morning breaking, the Zarle was coming to finish him.

But this was no normal Zarle. It came on with faltering steps, aimlessly, with no apparent reason. It stumbled again as it reached the doorway, steadied itself with coiling fingers against the facing. Then it groaned again and came on into the hall.

Jeff Gambrell was waiting. As the Zarle stepped into the shadows he struck. The blade sank deep into the thing's side. It faltered. Then it leaped toward him. Cold fingers coiled about his throat. With the other hand the Zarle was reaching under its black robe. Jeff caught that reaching hand, got the knife free and struck and struck again. They fell to the floor. The Zarle was still trying to get something from its cloak. They rolled over and over and came to rest against a wall, with Jeff on top of the lean, writhing thing, sinking his blade again and again into the struggling body.

He kept striking long after there was any need. With a tired sigh as though glad to be dead, the Zarle collapsed beneath him, its muscles still quivering and thrashing. Jeff kept on with the knife. Two hundred years of slavery and hate were behind his blows. He knifed it time and again, cursing, sobbing for breath, wishing he had all the Zarles in the world within reach of his knife. The black cloak tore into shreds. Nothing was left of the thing's chest and sides but a blueish, dripping pulp. Something clanged across the floor.

The sound brought him to his senses and he got to his feet, the wet blade still in his hands. He looked down at the dead thing whose limbs were still thrashing slowly about. He didn't like to look at that face which was only half a face. The blue swelling which extended from one high temple down into the throat had made that side of the head featureless. The dead Zarle had a disagreeable odor. Jeff had read enough of the old books. He thought he knew what that blueish swelling meant.

Half-sick, he was tempted to throw the knife away.

Then he searched about the floor, the scrabbling sound of the dead thing's slow thrashing scraping in his ears.

He found it, one of those silver death-tubes that every

Zarle carried. As he picked it up he thought that he was probably the first man ever to touch one of these weapons. He studied it. The barrel of the tube was slightly smaller than the base. The muzzle was an inch in diameter while the handle—if it could be called a handle—was twice as thick and was grooved for the tentacle fingers of the Zarles. In the base was set one tiny button. An unhandy place for fingers to reach, more suitable for the jointless tentacles of the dead thing before him.

The gloom that had oppressed him was lifting. Why, with one of these weapons and the disc he could face any of that hell's spawn. They liked to live singly. Maybe he could kill —and kill—and kill-But as his mind fashioned sally after sally upon unsuspecting Zarles, the swollen mouth of the dead, writhing thing before him opened and Raiult's voice began to speak.

"So you have killed a Zarle, my poor fugitive slave. Listen now, before the cells of this brain wink out and I can no longer reach them. Don't feel so elated, Jeff Gambrell. Poor Golun had gone quite mad and was hiding here under sentence of death. In fact, I had been detailed to dispatch him. You have saved me the trouble. I could no longer reach you, but I could contact Golun, mad as he was. You have killed a Zarle now. You have a death-tube. But I know where to find you, Jeff Gambrell. Wait for me. I will send my Rehfts. A swarm of them, if necessary. The tube will be of little help. You are under four sentences of death now. We will let you die four times. Wait for me, Jeff Gam-"

The last bit of oxygen burned out of the dead thing's body. It's lips still writhed. Raiult's voice became a whisper and was still.

At last the thing that had been Golun the Zarle stopped writhing. Jeff found a rusty cable, hooked it about the body's leg, and dragged it several blocks away. Golun was light. Jeff doubted if the Zarle had eaten for weeks.

As he trudged along, his grisly burden scraping along the ground behind him, some of the elation that had left him when Raiult spoke was returning. The Zarles were neither deathless nor infallible. This thing had certainly come here to die. In a way, he had merely done it a favor. He had the disc. And at his belt, thrust there at a jaunty angle like a sword, was the silver tube. Golun, with his brains burned out and half of his face gone, was ample evidence that something was wrong with the Zarles. Let 'em all rot and go crazy as March haresl Soames had been right. They were dying off. And no one had ever seen a young Zarle. He had once heard Raiult say some ugly things about the human clan breeding like flies. Well, the slaves kept coming on, didn't they? And if the Zarles were falling apart, one by one, then it was merely a matter of simple arithmetic. Oh, hell, he didn't know enough about the Zarles to risk any rapid calculation.

It was no trouble to find a dump-heap for Golun. Except for the square, the city had long ago been reduced to a number of rubbish heaps. He cast the body upon one and returned to the fountain. Maybe this Golun, two hundred years before, had fired the blast that turned the city to rubble. That would be poetic justice, eh? What was it Soames was always quoting? "The mills of the gods grind slow but exceedingly fine."

"Well, at any rate, there had been some use for this Golun in the scheme of things. He—or it—had at last provided a man with a death-tube. And that show of the night before—what a swan song, even for a mad brain! He wondered if Golun had used one of those black boxes to fashion the pagenatry. Zarles usually carried quite a bit of para-phenalia with them. The thing probably had a hiding place somewhere in the square.

But there were more important things to do than hunt for the dead thing's cache. For all their brain-power, the Zarles spent a great deal of time collecting junk, anyway.

Just before he reached the square he found a cellar that had two feet of water in it. Jeff stripped and bathed, for his encounter with the Zarle had made him feel unclean.

Now he returned to the fountain and ate a hearty breakfast. The sun was bright and birds were singing among the ruins. For one cent he'd return to the plantation, blast Raiult and Shurz and their hell-hounds, and take Kitten with him to the lands toward the northwest. Zarles didn't go there. Evidentiy, their whole lost planet had been one low, steaming swamp. They had made the transition from reptile to super-brain in one long jump. They had traveled faster that way, no doubt, but they never had to learn how to adapt themselves—and now with the star-bells tolling for them, they couldn't.

After breakfast he tried a few practice shots with the silver tube. It was fun. Just point it at a ruin, press the button at the base of the handle, and—whaml The old buildings came apart like a cold glass thrown into a hot fire. With just about as much safety too. Stone-dust and flying particles drove him back to his hiding place. He thought the matter over for a time and decided that the range and intensity of the tube was determined by the trigger itself. He ventured out again and tried this idea. It worked. The harder you pressed the button the greater the blast. By barely thumbing the control he learned to shatter smaller objects at a distance of a few yards without wrecking his eardrums and dodging flying debris.

"Now, let him come," he muttered fiercely. "Just let him come."

There seemed to be no way of reloading the tube. Apparently it was good for a long time.

Raiult sent the Rehfts after Jeff at four o'clock.

Six of them came floating toward the square, their shining tendrils coiling out beneath them, their wings of energy shimmering like light caught in a prism. They came in a line, rising and falling upon the heavy air, drifting along about twenty yards apart. They buzzed and whined hungrily.

Jeff Gambrell was waiting beside the old entrance-way. Still in a line they circled the square, complaining, searching. Then the foremost drifted toward him.

"Now." He gritted his teeth. "Let's see what they can take."

He leveled the tube. The blast that followed wrapped the leader in a yard-wide burst of white flame. It melted tendrils and "wings" from it. The Rehft shrieked in agony. As the flames died, a single, bright-colored oval body plummeted toward the ground.

"Like shootin' quail," he exulted to himself. And then he groaned in astonishment.

Just before that plummeting Easter egg touched the ground it sprouted new filmy wings. New feelers coiled out of the body. It righted itself and rose into the air again. Wavered, and held steady. Then it hung there, motionless, surveying him, whining its hate.

The other five hesitated behind it. Then, in the same formation they moved slowly toward him.

He blasted them until his eyes were nearly blinded by the flames. They fell, righted themselves, and came on.

It was unbelievable. He had shattered a three-story building with his first practice blast. And these things—force, machines, alien life, or whatever they were—faltered, renewed themselves, and came on.

He backed down the hall, still firing. They followed. Once a well-directed shot drove them back to the doorway. But they formed their line again and came back.

Then it happened.

Like hornets two dove for his head. He ducked and gave one a blast that momentarily melted it into flame and sent it spinning back. At that same time the second Rehft whizzed over his head and stopped itself a dozen yards away. It was between him and his hiding place.

Jeff stumbled over the debris and found a side-door. It complained as he forced it open. Before him was a dusty stairway. He closed the door after him and started upward. He had not yet reached the landing above when he looked back and saw the steel door turning red-hot. Then six jagged holes melted in it and they came through—like angry hornets diving through cobwebs.

He forced another door open, stumbled out upon a landing, and found the next stairway. The doors delayed the things but they did not stop them. So at last he stumbled out upon the ruins of the fourth floor, the sunshine bright about him. There was no place left to retreat. He turned and faced the door which was glowing as the Rehfts behind it started to burn their way through.

Then a voice caused him to wheel about.

"Get in here, for God's sake. Quick, man!"

It was a tall, ragged stranger whose face was almost hidden behind a close-cropped reddish beard. He was standing beside the strangest craft that Jeff Gambrell had ever seen.

It looked more like a great shining arrowhead than anything else. About eight feet long, its barb-like wings were thrust far back. All along the wings, set about a foot apart, were tubes that looked like they had been made of rock-crystal. A clear plastic hemisphere was set into the top of the machine, and through it Jeff could see a couple of seats and a simple-looldng control panel.

The stranger opened a door in the half-bubble and motioned Jeff toward it. But one of the Rehfts succeeded in burning a hole through the door and darted for Jeff's back as he turned toward his rescuer. He stiffened as the searing flames dug into his shoulders, braced himself, and tried to shake the thing off so he could get in one more delaying shot. The other Rehfts were still working at the door. If they had minds, it had not occurred to them to use the hole that their leader had made. Enraged individualists, they were each energetically making their own entrances, whining stridently as they strove at the steel.

The pain grew unbearable. Jeff tried to tear at the thing with his hands. It was like clutching white-hot wires that melted as he touched them.

Then the stranger was at his side, swinging something at the thing that had fastened upon him. Jeff was so dazed now that he didn't know what sort of weapon the redbearded man was using. It looked like a net. He learned later that it was a net—made of finely-drawn threads of spun glass.

The stranger managed to get it over the Rehft. Flames and sparks beat at Jeff's neck and face as the thing held on. But the stranger hauled it away and threw it aside with a curse. The Rehft complained, hornet-like, and began to disentangle itself from the trap.

The red-faced man grabbed Jeff by the arm and fairly carried him toward the machine, opened a plastic door and forced Jeff into a seat. Fiercely he worked the control panel, still cursing all the while. The arrowhead-craft came alive with a thunder of explosions.

Slowly it lifted into the air.

The man turned to Gambrell. "That porthole there. Your friends are still coming after. Take that gun of yours or whatever it is and blast hell out of 'em."

Jeff thrust the tube through the porthole. The Rehfts had formed themselves into a V and were rushing the slowly-rising craft. He pressed the button down with all his might—held it.

The Rehfts became six blobs of plummeting flame. Beneath them the old ruin smoked, shivered, and settled down with a roar of breaking timbers and grinding girders.

The strange ship and its two occupants rose higher, hovered quite still for a second while the red-bearded man calmly surveyed the havoc below. Then from the flame, smoke, and dust the six pursuers re-formed and came flashing upward. Red Beard cursed them and touched a switch. The arrowhead-craft streaked away, leaving two plumes of greasy smoke behind. The Rehfts tackled the swirling smoke, fought it, absorbed it.

Just before Red-Beard crashed the sound-barrier he saw the last of them weaving in and out of the smoke-trail, exulting in the attack.

Jeff Gambrell did not. His charred shirt falling about his scalded shoulders, he had slumped into his chair, struggling against the pain and the waves of darkness that kept flooding him.

The pain and the darkness won. And he hurtled forward into a dark abyss where suns grew like jewels upon black velvet and where long, tentacle fingers reached out and took them in, one by one.

THE SATELLITE

Jeff awoke to a sight which was as wild as his dreams. He was still within the bubble of the ship, for Red-Beard was still there, studying some charts and adjusting the controls. There were a few glowing lights on the panel; otherwise, they were in darkness. Night was all about them, but a different night from any he had ever seen. It was purple-black, and the stars and planets were larger than he had ever imagined. None of them were winking. It was, as in his dream, a scattered collection of jewels spilled out upon gleaming velvet.

He rubbed his shoulders and groaned in pain. Red-Beard looked around and grinned reassuringly, the faint light from the panels turning his long, lean, bearded face into that of a gargoyle.

"Feelin better?" he asked. "You're Jeff Gambrell, I reckon, unless two men got away from the plantation. No, you're a Gambrell. Well, I'm O'Leary, though mostly they call me Red. As you can plainly see."

"You pulled me out of a mighty hot place." Jeff thanked him. "Mighty lucky you were there."

"Not exactly luck. I was sent to fetch you—though I was up there scratching my ears trying to figger out how to get you. Things were jumping, weren't they? And my orders were to let you go if there was any chance of losing the ship. No Zarle has ever seen one of these ships.

"But who sent for me?" Jeff asked, still a bit bewildered.

"Oh, a lot of folks. Your brother and your dad, especially."

"Then they're alive? Jim got away?"

"Shore. I whisked him off that canyon's rim like an owl swooping down on a bunny."

"But where are we now?"

Red looked down at the panel and charts and laughed.

"Well, we're somewhere in the dark. That's where we are. This little boat isn't made for a thousand miles up. We're just up here on the shadowy side of ol' terra firma waitin' for a bigger ship to show up. I'm sendin' out all sorts of signals, though you can't hear or see 'em. They'll find us, by and by. Then they'll take you along with them and help you to grow some nice, new skin on your back. You're peeled, boy. And I'll just sort of fall back to ground—sort of slow-like, of course, and do some more scouting. I'm about the scoutingest guy you ever saw. Been creepin' around the Zarles' camps for years and years, never got to kill one though. I think I could have a few times, but I had strict orders." He sighed his disappointment. "Well, thanks, Red."

The two shook hands, and the bearded man's grip was like a vise. Jeff winced and squeezed harder. Red-Beard let out a yip. "Yeah, you're a Gambrell," he laughed.

"I killed a Zarle," Jeff told him.

"Did you? I set old Betsy down on that top floor before sunup and was waiting there all the time. Couldn't see a thing. Heard all sorts of commotions. Sneaked down the stairs* right after sunup and couldn't find you. I thought maybe you had been taken but I was supposed to stay there until dark, anyway."

"That must have been when I dragged the Zarle away," Jeff explained. "A dead Zarle stinks. Did you know that?"

"They all stink—Heyl there's a signal."

Jeff stared forward but could see nothing.

Red laughed. "It's all done with mirrors, Gambrell. Mirrors and light and stuff like that. Me, I'm a scout. I never bothered to learn all this scientific junk. Now, watch this plate, the one that looks like a black mirror. I'll switch the red-beam."

Suddenly, before them, outlined in a reddish glow was a ship, a big one. It was cigar-shaped, except for a huge bulge underneath.

It was traveling in the same direction they were but Red was slowly overtaking it.

"Keep your eye on that ruptured gut," Red advised.

As they came closer a door opened in the bulge. Inside was a landing stage, still outlined in red fire.

They swept closer. "Hold your hat, boy," Red yelled gleefully. "We're goin' in there. Not much clearance. It takes an old expert like me to get the job done. They flunked me in calculus and extra-terrestrial navigation and the Classical Age in Literature, whatever the hell that was. But it's old Red who can pick these little babies up and put them down. So you killed a Zarle, huh?"

"Wasn't much of a Zarle. I didn't intend to be bragging. Hey."

He stiffened his legs as Red's ship lunged forward. The opening in the big craft was rushing toward them and it didn't seem to be much larger than Red's ship. "Like throwing a key at a keyhole," he thought.

Then they were inside the ship, hovering a scant yard above the floor. Red set the little boat down gently. The huge door behind them closed with a clang.

For a second they were in pitch-dark. Then lights came on everywhere.

Red pulled a lever and the half-bubble about them parted and slowly sank into the floor of the cockpit.

At least a dozen men were running forward, leaping up to help them.

Then two were at his side, busily unbuckling his safety belts. And Jeff Gambrell forgot all the rest.

There was his brother Jim, grinning broadly, and giving Jeff a massage with his knuckles. The other was an older and even larger model of Jeff. A huge man with iron-gray hair, smiling and laughing, and pausing now and then to dash a few unmanly tears from his eyes.

Jeff couldn't remember how he had looked. But he remembered old Soames' description, and Red had told him his father was alive. Seeing Jeff and the larger man together, no one could make a mistake. The man with the iron-gray hair was his father.

He yelled once when they flung their arms about his shoulders. Then all of them were hurrying him and the protesting Red into a crowded elevator and they went up and up into the middle of the ship. The elevator stopped. He was led out into an elaborate drawing room.

And all the while Red was complaining. "Leave the lad alone, you numskulls. His back's in bad shape. It's liable to come off if you whack him a few more times. Ya-a-a-h. You daydreamers just float around up here and draw little circles on charts and figure out the square root of e pluribus unum. But it was me who got him out of them things' clutches. Snatched him out of the jaws of death. It was a rare fight, I tell you. And you guys up here, figgering logistics or playing pinochle. Ya-a-ah. You nitwits couldn't save a cat from a rain barrel. But old Red goes right in and hauls the lad out by the scruff of his neck. How did you manage to pick us up anyway? Use a chess board, or did you put some co-sines in your breakfast food?"

Half-jocular, half-meant remarks like that, until a gentleman in a resplendent blue uniform reminded him that although a scout took orders from HQ only, he was now on an admiral's ship and would jolly well take orders or be tossed into the jolly-jolly brig.

To which Red opened his mouth to reply but was taken in arm by a nervous young captain who claimed he had laid in a supply of hybrid tobacco from the experiment station and wouldn't Red sample it, since he was such a proven judge of so many excellent things. Red hurried off, saying he had been out of a smoke for a month, due to the stinginess of certain quartermasters, and the failure of logistics to consider the amount of burley that a real man might require.

At a glance from the admiral the others saluted and hurried off, to be followed by the admiral himself, leaving Jeff, his brother, and his father alone.

"We'll have to rush' you to the doctor," the elder man urged.

"No. Not until you tell me how Jim got here. And where are we anyway? Jim, Raiult killed Soames. Or maybe you know that. Seems like this bunch is pretty well informed."

Jim frowned. "We didn't know. They—we, I mean—can tap the Zarles' power lines. He must have killed Soames out in the open. Another score we'll settle with Raiult."

"And Shurz." the father interrupted.

"Well, how did you get here, Jim?"

"Red brought me here. Just like he brought you. The free men keep twenty scouts down there. Red just lifted his ship up out of the canyon, held it in midair, opened the door, and I jumped. I'd have dived off that cliff toward a wet washrag if there had been one below. Then Red cut off all the power and let the ship glide down to a sandbed below. It was pitch dark in the canyon and I thought he'd kill us for sure. He's a great guy."

"One of the best," the father agreed. "Takes the most dangerous assignments. Actually he likes everybody, but he spends most of his spare time complaining and poking fun at the Freemen's red tape. Says he hates 'em all because some professor flunked him in math once. Really, he never opened a book when he was in school and never wanted to. He's a throwback. Sort of a cross between the old Irish freebooters and the plains' scouts of the old West. Can't stand discipline for over twenty minutes but absolutely invaluable."

It gave Jeff a start to hear his father talking. Talking like a free man—not like the hasty, furtive conversations of the slaves. And Jim too. Already he had a free lookl

Seventy-two hours, by Jeff's watch, had passed since he boarded the space ship. He was sitting in their apartment with Jim and his father.

"Don't you think you had better call me Bill," his father had said again and again. "After all, twenty-two years is a long time. You can't remember me. May even think I deserted you. But I was marked for the kill, boy. I had to. Then, when I made that radio and learned there were free men somewhere, I had to go." It was all he ever told his sons about his escape from the plantation.

"Bill it is," Jeff agreed.

Before them, on a five-by-five screen, against a background of spangled space was a huge wheel. The rim and the spokes were like fat sausages; the hub was swollen.

"Over a mile across," Bill Gambrell told him. "Ten thousand people. No Zarles. No wars. No taxes. No tribute. Been there for two hundred years. Just about all the learning that men ever had is stored there, and a great deal more accumulated. Those ten thousand could support themselves on less than an hour s work each day for every able-bodied grownup. If they didn't have an objective, they could. But from the first they've planned to take the world back from the Zarles some day. So they work ten hours out of every twenty-four. Been working like that for two hundred years. Maybe it sounds dull—but they're free. And they're about ready."

"Professor Benjamin is kickin' up his heels over that book you brought with you," Jim exclaimed.

"He can read it?" It was hard for Jeff to get over the idea that the Zarles were so superior.

"They've been peeking over the Zarles' shoulders for a long time," Bill Gambrell explained. "It seems to be a fundamental characteristic of all conquerors that they underrate the conquered. We don't know everything about them. Just some peeps now and then through the years. Like opening a book to a certain page and trying to guess the story. But that book of yours—"

"It might answer quite a few questions." Jeff sighed. "Kitten and I got the idea that maybe Raiult was a pretty big cheese among the Zarles."

"Poor girl." Bill stared at the wall as though he was looking at the lost years. "I imagine she has paid for your escape. We tapped his power-line twice. Can't try that trick too often. Her mind is a blank. We're sorry, Jeff."

Jeff cursed. "While she's alive there's hope. I can't admit that a person is only a few fines and cells in a brain."

The father sighed again. "Your mother used to say things like that. You'll have to admit that the Zarles are thorough.

They're an old race and they've seen much."

"I'll see something they won't see." Jeff Gambrell squared his shoulders. "Their graves."

"We'll see. We will see," the father advised. "You can't expect the Freemen to throw away all their years of work to kill themselves on the Zarles* doorstep. They've kept hidden away all this time. You see, when the Zarles attacked, men had already built a small satellite and were at work on the big one there. When all was lost, a few completed it and moved it into the earth's shadow. It's been circling there ever since. We have enough uranium stored away to turn it into a sun. The only hope of the Freemen is to keep this last base a secret. They can just make one attack. It must be complete and final. They've made their plans carefully. But there are still unknown factors. Maybe the book will clear up some of those."

"It sounds like a rabbity scheme to me," Jeff objected. "I killed one Zarle. Now I want Raiult."

"And I want Shurz," the older man said soberly. "You don't know how many times I've prayed that the attack will come in my time so I can get Shurz—But patience is the word, boy."

"Foolishness!" His sons answered in chorus.

The older man was silent now, watching the screen intensely, thinking of the plantation and the bride he had lost. Wondering if the gulf of space out there was as wide as the twenty-odd years between him and his two strong sons.

Jeff's seared back which should have laid him up for a month was healed within a week. There followed a series of tests and vaccinations that kept him in bed for a few more days. He was deciding that his trip wasn't worth the trouble, when the ship moved out of its course, aimed at the satellite, and accellerated. It was such a sickening feeling, piled on top of the multiple vaccinations, that he was in sick bay when they landed, feeling far from a hero.

There followed interminable reports that he made to various groups and individulas. Questions and answers. Day after day. The disc and the book were the talk of the moonlet. Even the daily paper gave him a full page. Jeff felt like the tourist who came a long way to see a city, and for one reason after another was never able to leave his hotel.

But at last, quizzes completed, his father took him and Jim on a tour. There were parks., ponds, lawns, artificial farms, aquariums, birds, and even a zoo. The moonlet made its own sunlight and atmosphere. Even its own climate. The people were busy and healthy, conditioned a bit by the size of their little world and those never-ending preparations for "Mass Attack." When Jeff talked to them, he felt quite ignorant. Quite a letdown from being the most well-read slave on the plantation. The planetarium and its three-dimensional pictures amazed him. He had read all of Soames' books on astronomy. They were primers compared to what men had learned in two hundred years from such a vantage-point as the moonlet.

They saw a baseball game and went to a night-club. They enjoyed themselves immensely. Then Jim met a slick-clad, red-headed lieutenant who told them sweetly that she was a second cousin of Red O'Leary. After that, Jeff saw his brother less and less.

He decided that the moonlet was the most boring place imaginable, and wondered how five generations had survived there without going mad.

Then, in spite of his father's urging him to get out and have a good time, he spent most of his waking hours hanging around the policed "Viewing Tower" where Bill Gambrell had been an employee for years and years. He begged, protested, cursed, but his requests were merely "put through channels."

"Channeled to outer space," he complained to Bill Gambrell. "Get me out of here. Red O'Leary is the only guy with any sense that I've seen since I escaped. You said yourself it was a simple matter to take a look-see into Raiult's quarters."

"We already have. I told you that Kitten has no mind now, except what Raiult allows. She wouldn't know you. You couldn't stand to see her. Better forget the whole business, Jeff. You're young. Look at Jim. He and that O'Leary girl are having a good time and you sit here moping. If you keep on being so miserable, they'll think you an undesirable."

He gave his son more advice, urged him to try for a commission, suggested some classes at the university.

Tired of waiting, Jeff went to a night club, got in a fight with a brash major. He was gleefully wrecking the place when the police arrived and put him to sleep with a whiff of sweet-smelling gas. They threw him into a quite modern, sanitary cell.

The next day, with his father and his brother at his side, he stood up before an elderly judge and pleaded guilty to disturbing the peace. His dad paid his fine. The judge gave Jeff a lecture.

Jeff lost his temper. "This moonlet is more confining than Raiult's plantation," he scoffed. "Get me out of here. Give me my things and let Red O'Leary set me back on my own world. I want to fight. Moonlet, you call this place, huh. You're all a bunch of moonies. Little loonies hiding in a shadow, looking through little mouse holes, peeping at the big bad Zarles."

The judge's face grew red. He whammed the desk with his gavel and doubled the amount of the fine.

Just then an officer came forward, whispered in the judge's car, and handed him a note.

The old man read it. Then, with a slow smile spreading over his red face, he announced:

"Sentence suspended. You want to go back and fight, do you? Well, young man, that's what the Military Council has decided. You're going back, on your own. And don't ever come into my court and call me a loonie again."

He was still sputtering when Bill Gambrell and his friends hurried Jeff away.

RETURN

the Chief of Staff and his six assistants were waiting with worried frowns when Jeff and his father joined them.

On previous occasions when he had made reports to the authorities, Jeff had been told that the Seven composed the choicest military and scientific brains of the satellite. Operation Earth, as it was called, was in their hands. The government of the moonlet was apart from the Staff, but since the beginning of the satellite's history it was assumed that a state of war existed. For this reason the Staff had certain powers over the elected officials, and could call upon the civil government for personnel and materials.

"Otherwise," the elder Gambrell assured his son, "You would be in jail for disturbing the peace and contempt of court."

Jeff was in no mood to concede anything. As he and his father sat down at the long table with the Seven, he glared at them. "Mice," he thought to himself. "Mice! Peeping at the Zarles. Ready to run—"

The Chief seemed to anticipate his thoughts. He was a white-haired man with military shoulders and a young face. His gray eyes twinkled beneath heavy, black brows.

He tapped the table with a gold pencil. "Gambrell," he said softly, "we realize that these have been bad days for you. We appreciate the information you brought us. Try to be patient. After all, we have but one objective—the same as yours, to be free of the Zarles forever. We are vulnerable, however. We have to take precautions. They may seem cold-blooded to you. We may appear to be highly-regimented. Still, you were a slave only a few weeks ago."

"Not exactly," Jeff retorted. "I freed myself."

As soon as he said it he was sorry. There was no sense in antagonizing these men. And he had not freed himself.

Without Kitten's help he would have been dead. Poor girl. His fists clenched at the thought of what had happened to Kitten, and he slumped in his chair, sick at heart and homesick for the wide skies and the broad fields of earth.

Then he looked up into the Chief's face and smiled. "I'm sorry, sir. After all, I was trained to serve harder masters. This moonlet, this life, is not what I dreamed about when I read the old histories."

"For two hundred years," Professor Benjamin interrupted, "we have considered it makeshift. After all, I come of a race that has endured much but has never forgotten the dignity of man. Bear with us a little while, young Gambrell. Tomorrow or the next tomorrow we will walk wide in the world. We will look up at the stars—or at the hills—or across the seas—and we will exult as our fathers did. And, I fear, we will fail at perfection—as they did. It is only the young men who dream of Utopia. And I am no longer young."

On several occasions Jeff had talked with the professor about the book which Kitten had stolen from Raiult. Benjamin was old, and reminded Jeff of Soames. He was bent and wrinkled. There was little left of him but a lambent glow of wisdom and a fierce intensity in his dark eyes.

The Chief, a military man, was growing tired of speeches. He cleared his throat. "Gambrell," he began, "you brought us important information, but some of it is distressing. First, Benjamin, tell him about the book—but for heaven's sake, make it brief."

Benjamin got to his feet. "First, gentlemen, my department has translated Raiult's book. All of it that we can ever understand. Bear in mind that the Zarles have two extra senses. Some pages will never be understood. We have little in common with them. We end up with syllables where we should have sentences—"

"Brevity, sir. Brevity." The Chief groaned.

"Very well. The manuscript appears to be a notebook. Apparently, it is the current one of a series which goes back for countless years."

Again the Chief cleared his throat.

"I am being as brief as possible," Professor Benjamin said sharply. "This notebook covers the conquest of nine planets. The Zarles are a race of verv few words."

"At least they have one desirable trait," the Chief interrupted. "I wish my staff would emulate them."

Benjamin continued. "Eight planets were ruthlessly destroyed. The Zarles are unable to adapt themselves. In spite of their vaunted brainpower they rage against the solar-systems they have ravished. Eight planets have been destroyed, gentlemen. Countless more, no doubt. But the important thing, the dreadful thing, is that they now plan to destroy the earth. They have failed. They are dying off. They have been unable to conquer two diseases: tuberculosis and cancer. Both diseases strike their lungs and brains with deadly intensity. Gentlemen, I discovered one astounding footnote. Of the 500,000 Zarles who conquered our world, only 10,000 survive. In all their travels, the Zarles have never encountered our two dread diseases before."

Benjamin paused. "Gentlemen," he continued, "while we were preparing to destroy the Zarles our own world has destroyed them with deadly efficiency."

"But haven't there been any births?" One of the Seven asked.

"Apparently, none. Here is one note which has given us a great deal of trouble." Taking a scrap of paper from his pocket and adjusting a tiny pair of spectacles to his big nose, Benjamin read: "The Cavrith at the Citadel has failed us again. Monsters. Oh, this accursed planet. One success and we can bring our numbers up to the required quota."

"May I interrupt a moment," the Chief ordered. "I would like for Dr. Everts—our head scientist—" he explained to Jeff, "to give his opinions on these sentences."

A small, bald-headed man got to his feet. "We can only guess," he explained. "The Citadel, as we know, is a huge pile which the Zarles have built for a meeting place. Sort of a seat of government. They do not live there, but most of them attend meetings at the Citadel twice a year. As for the Cavrith, my department's guess is that it is some sort of incubator. Another sentence, elsewhere, indicates that they build living things from cells of tissue."

"Not altogether impossible," a walrus-mustached general growled. "We can sever the leg of a frog, expose the stump to a saline solution and an irritant, and under proper conditions the stump can grow a new leg—web, toes, and all."

"In their quick jump from the slime-pits to the skies," Professor Benjamin interrupted, "they seem to have lost all reproductive organs. We refer to Raiult and others as 'he*. No doubt, we are using the pronoun in a connotative sense. The Zarles' destructiveness and ruthlessness make them virile enough."

"I object," said the general with the walrus mustache. "Was Helen of Troy more deadly than the combined armies of Agamemnon and Priam? I think she was."

"Please," the Chief interrupted. "This is no time to quibble. Benjamin, please continue your report."

"I can make it brief enough," the old man sighed. "In this one narrative alone, we have a record of eight planets being destroyed. Not a single clue as to how the job was done. Now, Raiult calmly states that if the next Cavrith fails they will destroy this planet also—indeed, have all the machinery ready—and will go on to other worlds. The next Cavrith, gentlemen, is within a week—ii my theory that they use a lunar calendar is correct."

"Cavrith?" Jeff asked. "You just said that is their word for 'incubator.'"

"We have so little time," Benjamin explained. "Raiult used the word in at least three different meanings. An incubator, an attempt at incubation, and, if we are correct in our assumption, a call to incubation. Frankly, the last meaning is puzzling. But it is not uncommon among civilized people to have more than three meanings for the same word. We ourselves—"

General Byron interrupted again. "The whole matter runs our logistics up a blind alley. If there are only 10,000 Zarles, we are ready to strike—have been ready for ten years—but if they are prepared to blow the earth up and send it spinning back to the sun, what use are our plans for conquest? To witness a display of pyrotechnics on a vast scale?"

"Byron," the Chief admonished, "you have a way of reducing arguments to absurdities. In a court of law that is okay. For a mass attack, such a method is a hindrance."

Byron sputtered. "Hindrance, eh? Can we disregard things as they are? I hold to the opinions of my illustrious ancestor."

"Bull! You have no proof that Lord Byron was your ancestor," the Chief interrupted.

"I have too. My grand-daddy brought the papers with him when he came to this spinning-wheel in space."

"Gentlemen," Professor Benjamin interrupted. "This is getting us nowhere. We must admit at this late date that we come from a long line of able and illustrious ancestors. Otherwise we would not be here."

"Correct," growled another member of the Seven, a barrel-chested Negro whose sleeves were herring boned with silver-stripes. The left side of his chest was a blaze of ribbons.

"Maybe we ought to attack," suggested another member of the Staff. He was a raw-boned, copper-skinned Indian who wore a copy of the old Congressional Medal about his throat. Jeff Gambrell learned later that this was given him for leading the first landing-party upon the moon. After all, the satellite just couldn't spin about for two-hundred years with nothing but the Zarles in mind. With space beckoning, men had to go on.

Jeff was still aggravated. Rabbits, he thought to himself. And then, aloud. "I brought you the best weapon you'll ever have. The disc. What's become of it?"

General Byron sighed. "My men have studied it until they're half-blind. It's mechanical. But it depends upon a sheet of copper alloy one-thousandth of an inch thick. In time we could duplicate the alloy. In time we could make a sheet that thin. But not now. That's the folly of all these ideas for new inventions. Back in the nineteen hundreds men knew how to build a motor that would carry a plane ten thousand miles per hour. But they never learned how to keep the armor from melting away at that speed. In short, sir, your disc is no damn good to us."

With a growl of rage Jeff got to his feet. "Then give me my disc and get me out of here. You guys have set out here in space weighting both ends against the middle until you're on dead center."

Bedlam followed. General Byron said, old as he was, he could trim the upstarts' ears. The Indian with the Congressional Medal claimed he was younger and could whip Jeff with one hand tied behind him.

The Chief silenced him. "That is why we called you, Jeff Gambrell. You are the only man who has used the disc. Time is running out. We propose that you take it and go back to earth. The machinery is already installed—according to Raiult's book—for destruction. The Zarles will meet at the Citadel once more. After that, the deluge. We want you to stop Raiult. Evidently, the machinery is somewhere near his own palace. Ruin that machinery, Jeff, and we guarantee that we can wreck the Zarles within twenty-four hours. What good would it do to destroy them and lose the world?"

Jeff forgot his anger. He thought of the years of drudgery on the plantation—of old Soames—of Kitten—of the blue sky—and the lush green field—of the beckoning hills—and of Kitten-

"Very well," he agreed. "But if we win I want a world like the world that Soames dreamed about. The freedom that men once had. With the whole world ahead of you, the regimentation of this satellite can't survive. If nothing else, free men will just strike out for the wide-open spaces—like they did long ago."

"I'll go along with that," the Indian said.

The Chief and the others agreed.

"And who will take me back?" Jeff asked.

"Red O'Leary, of course. He's the best we've got."

"Good," Jeff said.

Professor Benjamin produced a map and drew a circle upon it. "As far as we know, all the Zarles are here. For some reason they can't live on the coast. They can't stand winter. They can't stand too much sun. They're in an area that covers what was once parts of Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas, and Oklahoma. The country along Red River. Under careful conditions they worked out the uranium mines of Colorado long ago and abandoned them. The Citadel is near the ruins of Texarkana. Their economy seems to be based on uranium, aluminum, coal, and cellulose. They're scattered over a relatively small area. It's the greatest point in our favor. They couldn't survive elsewhere. Being Zarles, they destroyed a world to gain parts of four states."

"It will be that much easier when we kill them," General Byron said, and began to sharpen an old-fashioned pencil with a bowie knife.

The Chief got up and shook hands.

"Your disc and death-tube, as you call it, are ready. We have also prepared a few other things which might be of help. A ship is waiting, and we have sent Red O'Leary orders to meet you. Good luck, Gambrell. A great deal depends on you. After all, you're the only man who ever faced the Zarles with their own weapons. Red can contact us at any time."

"Contact 'em at any time," said Red O'Leary. "They sure made it sound easy. Maybe I ought to stand up and wig-wag 'em a signal from this dad-blamed cotton-patch."

Jeff and Red were lying on their bellies in one of Raiult's fields. Behind them, Red's ship which was half-covered by crushed stalks gleamed dully beneath a crescent moon. They had brought it down shortly after dark and had been waiting for the slaves' curfew to sound.

Off in the distance a bell clanged. Jeff got to his feet and fastened a small leather case to his belt. Red began to laugh.

"They sure gave you enough junk to carry. Are you sure you remember what all those gadgets are for?"

Jeff grinned. "Half of 'em, maybe. I didn't have much time for briefing."

"Listen, pal." Red swept a huge arm toward the sky.

"They're good guys up there. But we're down here. Just me and you. The chips are down, boy, and me and you are the only ones on our side. Now, why don't we forget a few things. Why don't we just march to Raiult's stinking palace and shoot him—shoot all the Hounds we can see—get your girlfriend—shoot this rat Shurz—turn the slaves loose— and go on to the next Zarle? See, it's that simple."

"You're forgetting that somewhere these snakes have set up the machinery to blow everything to kingdom come."

Red snorted. "If I was writing a little old notebook, and trying to keep a bunch of ninnies scared silly, I'd sure mention something about a secret weapon, like that machinery. Maybe Raiult's bluffing."

"But he didn't plan on the notebook getting into our hands. Anyway, I thought I'd do some scouting. If I can find Kitten, she may be able to clear up a few things."

Red's big hand rested upon Jeff's shoulder. "Sure, I know. Or maybe I don't know. I'm sort of a misfit, I guess. Never cared much for them nylon dolls back on the moonlet —funny, I never think of the place as home. This Kitten, now. She sounds like a mighty fine gal. But the report is that Raiult did things to her mind. It's tough, but don't go off half-cocked. Raiult and Shurz may want you to come back. A good looking woman, brain or no brain, makes mighty pretty bait for a trap."

Jeff laughed softly. "You red-headed throw-back. What would you do in my place?"

"Hell, I'd go after the gal. Then I'd stake Raiult out on an ant-bed. But you'd better let old Red come along. I'm mighty handy in a fight."

"Well, you wait here, pal. If I come back on the run, get that crate ready."

There were no lights in the cabins. A single candle was burning in the overseer's house; Jeff could see a fat shadow bent over a table, a bottle at one hand, a stack of papers at the other.

From the kennels the Hounds set up a screaming and wailing. Shurz got up from the table and appeared at his doorway a few seconds later, his shotgun in his hand.

Jeff opened the leather case and found the disc. He pressed the button; the Hounds rushed to the far side of the kennel, hissing and clawing at a phantom. Then they got into a fight among themselves. Jeff heard Shurz curse as he shut his door.

Gambrell went around the slave quarters and came at last to the dark palace. Cautiously he approached the front door. He got the silver tube in his hand and, rummaging around in the leather case, found a tiny whistle that the Chief had given him. He raised it to his lips.

There was no sound from the whistle. There was no sound from the door as it opened. Jeff looked down into the lighted depths of the huge room. As the door closed behind him a wave of stifling air struck him in the face.

The room looked just as it had before, except for the piano. It had been placed in a far corner—and a vase of roses was upon it. Roses! Certainly not Raiult's. As he watched, Kitten came through a sliding panel and walked to the piano.

She walked like a dead thing. Her eyes were staring straight ahead. And the horror of what had happened to her struck Jeff like a lash. For a moment there was nothing in his mind but hate. He wanted to take her with him and then stand in the front doorway and blast away with the Zarle's own weapon against that windowless house.

He went down the stairs. She did not hear him, but sat at the piano, her tiny hands feeling over the keys, building the faintest ghost of a tune upon the heavy air.

He came up behind her. "Kitten," he said. And then, to himself, "God, let her hear me. Let her know me. This cant be."

Unafraid, she turned about and stared up into his worried face.

"Who are you?" she asked. Like a child who has not yet learned fear. He shook her.

"I'm Jeff. Don't you know me. I loved you, Kitten, and you loved me. I said that I'd be back. And here I am."

"Jeff! Do I know Jeff? Please, you're hurting me. No." She buried her face in her hands. "I knew a boy once—but I was punished for loving him. Sometimes there is the tiniest whisper in my brain. I loved, yes, loved him, but he went away. Raiult made me forget. Maybe I dreamed it. I can't remember. I would not know him now if I saw him." She cried softly, and he took his hand from her shoulder.

"Then where's Raiult?" Fierce anger sent all his plans tumbling. Let some other man fight for the satellite. Let the Zarles turn the world into one gashed and smoking ruin. It did not matter. He wanted to stand up against Raiult— to smash that mummied face—to crush that lean bodv until the evil thing that had been Zarle was only a battered bit of writhing flesh.

"Raiult," she replied dreamily. "He has gone to the Citadel. There was something I was to tell the boy who was in my dream. But I have forgotten."

"Kitten, you can't stay here. I'll take you away. We can make you well."

"Well? There is nothing wrong. I am where I belong. I am Raiult's slave. I know him and Shurz. A few other Zarles who come here. These are all."

"Kitten!"

"Please go. And why is your face so filled with worry? Did you lose something too? You do not belong here. You frighten me. Raiult said my world would never change again."

Tears were in his eyes as he stumbled up the stairs.

But she called to him as he stood as the door.

He looked back. Her fingers were feeling over the piano keys. A dreamy wonder was in her eyes as she looked up.

"If you see the one I have forgotten, there is one thing you should tell him. Tell him this is the last help that Kitten can give him, for I have paid for helping the boy who I have forgotten. Tell him Kitten said: There is a doom underground'."

"Kitten," he pleaded. "What does it mean? Please, Kitten. It's Jeff. You can remember."

"I do not know what it means. I do not know this Jeff. It came to me as I touched the keys that there is a doom underground. I promised myself that I would tell someone. But I have forgotten. Now, please go."

She buried her face in her hands and sobbed.

Jeff stumbled from Raiult's palace.

If Shurz had been walking out that night, he could have shot a Gambrell. Jeff Gambrell would have welcomed him.

THE CITADEL

Jeff Gambrell could never remember how he made his way back to the field. He seemed to walk a dark treadmill, and the night was laced with cobwebs. There was a voice which kept on cursing the Zarles, and sometimes the voice ended in a hoarse sob. He choked it back and realized that the voice was his own.

Then Red O'Leary rose up out of the waist-high cotton. A tall, broad-shouldered shadow, Red caught Jeff by the shoulder and shook him. Like a drunken man Jeff knocked Red's arm aside. Red's breath whistled between his teeth, and he slapped him—hard.

Pain and anger brought Gambrell back to his senses. For one brief second his fists doubled and he swung at O'Leary. The shadow bobbed down and Jeff's fists flailed the air. The force of the swing wheeled him half-way around, and Red O'Leary caught him in a bear-hug that squeezed the fight out of him.

"Sit down, you damned fool," Red whispered savagely. "You'll have the whole pack of Hounds on us before we can get away."

Jeff squatted down and rested his arms and head against his knees. He stopped gasping for air. He stopped cursing. There was nothing left now save an overpowering weakness and a dark feeling of despair over this thing that Raiult had done. Then he looked up at the stars. They stared back, for they had seen men choke down tears before. With this weakness upon him, Jeff suddenly felt that the stars were kind. And he remembered a line from a very old book that Soames had once read aloud:

"I weep for you because your troubles are many and your days are not long."

Red sat beside him, one big hand bearing down on his forearm.

"That's better," he said. "Maybe you can tell me what happened back there."

"I got into that house—that black bubble from hell— Raiult was gone. But I found her. She—she didn't know me." Anger and sorrow were gone now. Jeff told his story simply, in a low monotone, while Red listened and shook his head.

But when Jeff finished talking it was Red's time to curse. "This scheme is no good. I told 'em it was no good. Nitwits, all of 'cm. The way to kill Zarles is to get 'em one at a time. Now, what do we do? Oh, hell, I know what the orders were. But I'm about ready to desert this here army and start me one of my own. Which way did Raiult go?"

"I guess we ought to go to the Citadel. Kitten said he went there. It was the second step in the Staff's plan."

Red's opinion of the Staff's plan was unprintable.

"Have you ever seen the Citadel, Red?"

"Sure. I've flown over it many a time. I could have dropped dozens of bombs. Think what one small hydrogen bomb in a cobalt case would do to that place, Jeff? If it's so important to the Zarles, one bomb would swing the balance to our side. But no! The Staff said we gotta wait until the right moment. Any minute is the right one for killing Zarles."

"Well, we'd better get going."

"Okay. You'll probably end up in one of their laboratories. But if you haven't seen the Citadel you've got a sight in store for you, boy. I'll never forget the first time I saw it. Anyway, I'm not in any mood to take you on a tour. Oh, hell, let's get going."

There was an auxiliary motor on Red's boat that could take it straight up like a whirly-bird. But as soon as they were a mile high, O'Leary cut in with the jets and they rocketed across the sky.

"Now, watch that infra-red screen," Red admonished.

"You've never seen anything like what you're going to see."

In a short time he picked up the Citadel and the surrounding area. To Jeff it was like looking at a picture that has been traced in red fire upon a black canvas. The Citadel was one huge structure. A perfect globe, half a mile in diameter, cradled like a golf ball upon a tee. It rested upon a pillar of interlaced, zigzag girders that lifted it a thousand feet into the night.

For miles around the base of the Citadel the ground had been cleared and levelled. Off to one side of the screen, Jeff counted twenty-one cigar-shaped objects. Their length matched the globe's diameter, although they were not nearly so wide across the middle. They were ranked together, seven in a row, and the screen showed some indistinct markings about them.

Red O'Leary pointed. "They're the Zarles' ships. AH of them are in cradles, and there's heavy machinery about each one. I suppose they can be lifted and pointed toward the sky. They've been sitting there for two-hundred years, I guess. Underbrush has grown up about 'em. Anyone could tell that the Zarles have gone to pieces just by looking at those ships. Man, they're big though. Plenty big. Oh, yes. You can't tell it by looking at that screen. But the big globe there—the Citadel—is black, just like Raiult's house. The ships aren't. They're the brightest white you ever saw. Don't look like they're painted either. Never heard of a white metal, but that's the way they look."

Red cut off the jets. "Hold on now, Jeff. We're goin' to glide in like a boid." And he began to whistle a little "cheep-cheep-cheep" reassuringly, never taking his eyes away from the controls and the screen before him.

Jeff tightened his belt and wondered if this was the time for levity. But they made it—as easily as a gnat landing on top of a basket-ball.

The globe was so large that when they got out Jeff could barely detect the downward curve of the roof.

Red took out a tiny flashlight and switched it on and off, rapidly.

"Over there, I think. Yeah, that's an air vent. There's dozens of 'em. One ought to be as good as another. After all, we can't just keep wandering around. We're at the very top of the globe. Any way we go is down. And this is a screwball idea anyway. No man knows what's inside them vents. A meat-chopper, maybe. Or a magic beam to turn you into an ikmik."

"You're about as encouraging as a rain-crow."

Red's grotesque humor was getting the better of him. "Well, if you get hopelessly stuck down there you'll have one consolation. Eventually you'll stink 'em out. Say, that's an idea. When I was in school back on the moonlet I put a stink bomb in the air vent once. Had a great time while the fun lasted. That's when the experts decided I wasn't the right material for a P.H.U.D. There's a bottle of hydrogen sulphide in the ship. Why don't we just stay up here and keep dosing those air-vents with essence of rotten eggs?"

"We don't even know whether the Zarles can smell rotten eggs."

Red looked at him curiously and winked.

"Boy, how serious can you get? One hour ago you were ready to start whipping the world—men and Zarles, both. Now you're making weaselish excuses like the guys up there. Before long they'll make you a P.H.U.D. and give you a time clock to punch. Then I'll be all alone again. Pore old maladjusted Red." He shook his head soberly and winked again.

Meanwhile, he had taken a small tool kit from one of the huge pockets of his coveralls and was working at the grating which covered the air-vent. Jeff stood in front of the opening which was a yard across and felt the down-draft of air gently fanning his clothes. Thank God, the current was slow and steady. When he had first heard of the Chief's plan for him to spy upon the Citadel, he had imagined himself squeezing through a narrow crevice with a veritable tornado whipping around him.

"There." Red grunted his satisfaction. The screen came off and was thrown aside. The tall man put the tools back in the little folding case and returned them to the cavernous pocket. "I've gotta go back to the ship. Don't go away now."

He disappeared in the darkness and returned a few minutes later with a coil of rope over one shoulder and a bundle under one arm.

"Now, according to them experts who I still say don't know a damn thing, it's going to be plenty hot down there. This rope's been treated. It would take a blow-torch to burn through it." He unwrapped the bundle and handed Jeff a plastic jacket. "This thing's been treated too. Put it on. And these gloves."

"It's too warm up here already." Jeff objected.

"Now, don't go arguing with the old man. You don't wanta be fired like an aig, do you?"

"What's the difference. Down there, with that rig on, I'll be boiled in my own sweat."

But he struggled into the coat which was surprisingly light and pulled on the gloves.

Red O'Leary tied the rope around the base of the air vent and tossed the coils into the opening. "There, now. Operation Mouse is ready to start. You got all that junk they gave you?"

"Yeah. And I've got my disc too. I'm beginning to think it's the only thing that'll get me out of there, once I go in."

"Don't think gloomy thoughts," Red cajoled. "They'll probably give you the state of Texas for this night's work. Remember that little space-talkie the Chief gave you. It's set. You can talk to HQ any time. And I'll be listening in. Just give the word and I'll yank you out of there just like you was a catfish. I'll cover up the plane with black cloth and just set up here and sizzle while you're down there being a hero."

Jeff climbed into the aperture and lowered himself down. For a while he could look up and see a square of the starry sky with Red's head and shoulders outlined against it. Then he reached an S-shaped trap and negotiated it with some difficulty. After that he went on down in pitch-darkness.

The current was stronger now and the air was getting hotter.

Finally the darknes lessened. Looking down he saw a reddish glow awaiting him.

It was two huge grids, set about two feet apart and red-hot. Jeff groaned. He'd have to get through there in a hurry or be broiled alive.

He braced his feet against the walls; holding the rope with one hand, he felt for the little space-talkie in his pocket. It was not much larger than a watch.

"Hey, up there," he called. "I'm at a battery of grids."

"Can you get through?" A metallic voice inquired. The Chiefs, he supposed. All voices sounded alike over the talkie. "As few words as possible," the voice cautioned.

Sweat was blinding Jeff, but he stared down and tried to make out what was below the red wires. "I think this tunnel levels out down there. Red, pull up the rope about eight feet. Let me go when I give the word."

A few more seconds and he was hauled up—four quick jerks from Red's muscular arms that nearly tore him loose from his hold.

It was a welcome relief to get that far away from the fierce heat but after a few deep breaths of hot, but not scorching, air he lowered himself down again until his feet touched the top of the grids. His shoes began to smoke.

The rope went on down between the two red-hot plates. It too was beginning to fry.

Carefully he raised his feet and thrust his less down be-tween the two grids. "Now," he cried. "Drop me."

He went flashing down. And as he fell, he hoped he had been right when he thought the air-channel leveled off down there.

He struck with a jar that sent him rolling over upon the hot, polished floor of the tunnel. For the next few minutes he was busy putting out the flames that were crawling across the legs of his coveralls.

There were deep burns on his ankles and thighs. He wondered how many blisters were on his feet. He was lucky that the cobbler back on the plantation made heavy shoes that would last. Those thin shoes they wore on the moonlet would have melted away.

There was a sizeable length of rope still coiled about the floor. He wondered if he would need it again. But the hot air was filling with smoke, and looking up he saw that the rope which was running between the two grids was beginning to singe.

He took up the talkie again. "Redl you'll have to pull the rope up. It can't stand this heat."

"Reckon Til be able to snake it down again?" Red objected.

"Quit talking," the Chief interrupted. "It's dangerous," The rope began to move upward. Finally the knotted end

went up beyond the grids and Jeff whispered "Okay" into

the talkie.

Then he went on alone.

THE FORGERS OF FLESH

he had a tiny flash which he switched on at intervals. But there was little to be seen. Twice he came to branches in the tunnel. Marking his way with a luminous pencil, Jeff went on—crawling until his knees could stand no more punishment, or bent over until his back was near to breaking. The floor of the tunnel went steadily downward. He was carrying the coat and gloves now. The heat was stifling. His hair and clothes were drenched with sweat, and his legs and feet were aching.

When the pain was growing intolerable he came at last to a grate that looked out upon a huge theater which was filled with yellow light. Gambrell crouched down upon his belly and studied the enclosure.

The Staff had carefully mapped the rooms of the Citadel. At the center of the globe, he knew, was one vast circular hall which was used for a meeting place. It was larger than a stadium, and row after row of seats led down to a railing. Beyond that was a dais upon which was mounted tons of machinery, some over forty feet high. The machines—he hadn't the slightest idea what they were—were standing within a pool of water like children's blocks thrown into a shallow wading pool. The water was not like any he had ever seen. It burned with a greenish-yellow fire, and was struggling within itself, building turbulent, oily waves that dashed against each other. Bubbles appeared and broke, spouting little puffs of glittering smoke. It was as though a viscous liquid was boiling furiously, he thought, but the splashing, waving surface of the pool gave no impression of viscosity. In fact, he could see through it to the bases of the machines.

Nor could he think of any explanation for the bright sparks within the liquid or the smoke. They were more brilliant than those from a forge and they swept into tiny orbits, or flamed into little novae, and weaved about each other in ecstatic dances that built fiery, clanging music upon the heavy air.

And without knowing why, he thought: This was the way the primeval seas must have looked when they were struggling to bring forth life!

As he studied the hall, his impression of a vast stadium vanished. It reminded him more of the pictures he had seen of a surgical room. The chairs marched steeply upward. The dais, the pool, and the complicated machines that were set within it were under a blazing light. But even so the sparks that rose from the water, or dashed about within it, were undimmed. Though they strove to build themselves into patterns, an occasional spark would streak away and burn itself out in the upper reaches of the curving ceiling.

He took the disc out of his pack and put it around his neck.

There was nothing to do now but wait. One thought worried him. The Zarles had a keen sense of smell. To protect him, the Staff had impregnated his clothes with a synthetic odor—the smell of Zarles. It was an idea they had got from reading about the elephant hunters among the pygmies. But, he wondered, how much of that smell had been destroyed when he slid between those two hell's griddles up there? Time would tell. Making himself as comfortable as possible, and wetting his face from a small canteen, Jeff Gambrell waited.

Time within the Citadel was relative. He had his watch, of course. But if the Zarles acknowledged any gods they were blind gods. Raiult often assured his slaves that the Zarles had conquered time. Here where the light of the sun had never shown, but where its energy and the energy lost in space had been bottled and cast into the theater in down-pouring waves, Raiult's boast was easy to believe. A sort of time-senselessness or time-craziness swept over Jeff Gambrell as he waited behind the screen. It was probable that the Zarles had changed the composition of the air in the Citadel, lie struggled against batting his eyes lest he awake at the age of ten—or twelve—or twenty—or any age that the swirling, shining atoms might decree.

Nor was this all. Perhaps an aura of the Zarles' concentrated contempt for humanity hung over the place. He found himself wondering. Certainly, there was little in the Zarles* teachings to make him think such thoughts, for they had long ago succeeded in reducing mankind—except for the hated overseers—to an equality of misery and slavery. Still, although he struggled against it, he found himself thinking of the imperfections of mankind.

Always fighting. Always hating each other. Class against class, race against race, and religion against religion. The human clan, so far as he and Soames had reconstructed it, had spent most of its time dividing itself into little groups, erecting barriers tougher than steel.

And he thought of all the races who had gone a-conquering. Of all the classes who had set themselves above others. Of all those who had fought back. Torturings, burning, slaughters! Blood had soaked the earth—and tears.

"Why, then, am I here," he thought. "I can never get back through the red-hot heat up there. It would be different if I knew I was dying to help humanity. But to help them rebuild their barriers, re-forge their hate against each other —it would be better to give up the fight and die here among the Zarles."

But a small voice said: "We stand condemned. But wave after wave we crawl up the beach of change. Bear with us yet, O man who was once a slave, and some day we shall storm the gates of Asgard. Gods and men, shoulder to shoulder, one last fight."

"And why do I stay here with death around me?" he questioned. "It would be different if I were fighting for someone. But Kitten is dead and worse than dead. She of the blue eyes—or were they green—and the white, white skin. She of the corn-silk hair and the curving lips that were softer than cotton and wanner than flames. She was frail as a summers breeze, but she held centuries and the world in her hands. But she is worse than dead. And I am a husk waiting for the fires of the Zarles to consume me."

And still, the small voice replied; "Because you are a man. In times past they huddled within the caves while the saber-tooth screamed outside. And a man went out to meet him. Armies quaked and a youth with a sling went out against the giant. They died of ignorance and a man with his books plodded daily to the school where so few waited. They died of the plague and a young doctor attended them while his young wife who was frail as a summer's breeze awaited him. Because you are a man, Jeff Gambrell, that's why!"

The spell of the hot, changed air left him. The contempt that two hundred years of the Zarles had impressed upon the chamber was gone.

He waited and watched the theater fill with Zarles.

They came in a shambling procession; yet, each one was apart from the others. They filled the seats about the dais. Ten thousand of them. Still, the room seemed empty.

For the only time in his life Jeff Gambrell felt sorry for the Zarles. They were old, all of them. Like the last worshippers before a forgotten god, hopeless but steadfast, they took their seats.

A Zarle appeared upon the dais, the fleeing sparks circling about him, falling like diamonds upon the black robe.

It was Raiult.

Jeff made sure that the space-talkie was set. Raiult made a speech in the Zarles' strange language. Jeff was sure that the Staff was listening, that Professor Benjamin was busily scribbling a translation.

The speech was not long. Each of the assembled Zarles fitted a mask-like object to his head. It consisted of earphones, bulging goggles, and a thin antenna. *

Raiult said a few more words. Then he turned to the machines. He pulled a lever. Aside from the strident whine of power as it surged through the dais the room was in silence. Jeff could feel the Zarles' concentration.

The sparks in the greenish-yellow liquid went mad. The machines began to glow—first red, then flickering through all the colors to the deepest violet—then back again—pulsing —throbbing.

The scream of surging energy was almost deafening now. The sparks beat themselves against Raiult's face and cloak like bright bees.

One glowing machine tilted and an enormous spout poured thousands of tiny tadpoles down into the luminous pool. They swarmed, circled, sucked in the energy of the strange liquid.

The Zarles were watching these whirling things excitedly.

Suddenly Jeff saw Raiult turn his attention from the pool. Raiult looked straight toward him. And Jeff concentrated upon the disc, his heart thumping against his ribs. "There is no one here," he thought fiercely. "There is only a grating. No one would dare to come near the Zarles. The Zarles are all-powerful. Men are cowards. Men are foolish. Their little minds could not force them to spy. The Zarles are superior—"

Over and over again he repeated his thoughts, while Raiult—far, far below upon the dais was staring directly at the grating.

Then Raiult turned his attention to the thousands of things that dashed about the glittering water of the pool.

The things had grown now, but they still resembled tadpoles. The largest and most hideous tadpoles Jeff had ever seen. Their flesh seemed to quiver. And Jeff wondered if they might dissolve or take on new shapes at any second. Theirs was a primordial plasm that quivered upon the verge of shape—always changing—always struggling. The tense thoughts of the Zarles struck Jeff with hideous clarity.

They were shaping that quivering, growing flesh.

Mankind's old theories of mind over matter with a vengeancel

The things struggled to the outermost rim of the pool And as they fought for freedom they grew.

Jeff Gambrell was sure that the Zarles made no sound, but at the last a combined shriek of failure blasted his ears.

The things rose up from the pool. No two were alike. Flippers fought the heavy air. Tentacles thrashed furiously. Some grew barbels that lashed the water. Fangs and talons slashed as Jeff watched. Some sprouted tails—others thrust out webbed feet and paws. Some, he was sure, turned vegetable, and grew great, curving thorns that lashed out at the Zarles who had made them. Flipping and flopping, crawling and pulling, writhing and growing, they struggled over the rim and looked at the Zarles with saucer-like eyes that blazed with hate at being called forth from the peaceful, dark quarries of sleep into a demanding world.

The nearest, he judged, were three feet high and growing furiously.

They shrieked, screamed, yammered, and howled at their creators. And at the last the Zarles shrieked back. Shrieked in despair at the things they had made.

Attendants joined Raiult. They fired at the growing things. Raiult pulled a lever and the whine of power faded away. The pool dimmed and the gleaming water faded to gray agate.

Some blackened, thrashing things had fallen over the edge of the pool. Raiult and his attendants tossed them back into the lackluster water. The growing things within the pool stopped moving, dissolved. Where water had been there was now a stinking jelly that still quivered from it! own decomposition.

The vast chamber was still. Raiult raised tentacled hands for attention. Jeff could not understand a word that he said. But hate and a fierce hopelessness crawled through every syllable.

The Zarles removed their headpieces. They echoed Raiult's words with fierce shouts.

Now their thoughts took shape within Jeff Gambrell's brain. "Destroy. Destroy. And then go on into space, for in all the desolate years we have been unbeaten. Go on and on —until space melts with fervid heat and the stars stream out and drip down like glowing curtains across the backdrop of the night. On and on—for we will not yield. Better to crush the suns like purple grapes than to admit defeat. Destroy. Then on and on. Though time and space war against us, we will build bonfires of suns and systems until their wrekage chokes the hollows between the galaxies and the Year First and the Last Year cry out together to the Zarles for mercy."

The Chiefs voice, excited and metallic, came through the space-talkie.

"Gambrell. He just gave the signal for the world's destruction. Get out of there! For God's sake, Gambrell, do what you can!"

Bent over until his back ached to the breaking-point, Jeff Gambrell struggled up the steep, polished incline of the ventilation tube. He had fallen so many times that there was no feeling left in his knees.

At last the fierce heat of the grids was beating down upon him and he was looking up at the red-hot glow and crying over the space-talkie:

"Red, drop the rope."

He could dimly see a coiling shadow beyond the red flame. But the rope didn't come down. He waited in despair and once more Jeff's face began to stream with sweat.

Minutes—or hours—passed. "Red's voice groaned over the talkie, "It won't go down. That S-curve—Hold on now, Jeff, I'm coming after you."

Once Red was beyond the curve, he began throwing loops down the rope. It writhed and swung at the top of the grids. Finally it came through and dropped down. Jeff struggled into the coat and gloves.

Reaching up, he took a firm hold.

"Now," he called.

Over the talkie, he heard Red's fierce grunt as he took in the slack. O'Leary was strong. Jeff went up in three quick jerks. His right shoulder raked against a grid and he screamed with pain.

Then he was clear. And, with Red reeling in the rope, Jeff flew up the steep slope of the ventilation tube. "Like the last man pn a crack-the-whip line," he thought.

Red hauled him up into the S-curve. Then, hand over hand, they went up the rope to the vent above.

Once out of the globe they lay upon the dark metal roof and gasped for breath. The stifling heat was gone now. Nothing was left save that fierce pain at Jeff's shoulder. The sweat dried from his face and back. Looking up, he saw the stars' looking down at him. They were on his side now and they cheered him on with their twinkling good-humor.

"Raiult's going to blow the world apart," he said to Red, leaning upon his elbows and still gulping in fresh, night air.

"A lot of guys have tried to set the world on fire," Red growled. "Me, I've read history. They all look good until somebody like me gets them over the sights of a gun—"

"Red, Soames was sure there were caverns beneath Raiult's palace. Kitten said there was a doom underground. The machinery to blast the earth must be there—below Raiult's big hall. Otherwise, she wouldn't know. Raiult's a bigwig among the Zarles. I got the idea he was asking for permission to proceed with his plans. They sure gave it to him. They were hysterical as blackbirds. I don't blame 'em. Man, if you could have seen those things taking shape—"

"Easy, Jeff. I caught a thought now and then. I reckon it was a horrible sight down there. We'll just go back to Raiult's palace. You've done enough. I'll go in and tear his head from his shoulders."

"No. He's mine, I tell you. He's mine."

"Well," Red agreed, "maybe we'd both better get back to Raiult's palace. I've been in on this for a long, long time. It's been kinda lonely out here, running back and forth above a ruined world, spying when I could. You know, Jeff sometimes even the slaves' lives looked good to me. Oh, hell, what am I palavering about? Let's get out of here and pay a little call on Raiult. He's been needing us for a long, long time."

RAIULT'S WIZARDRY

when Red O'Leary put the little arrowhead-shaped craft down in Raiult's cotton field, Jeff Gambrell thought to himself that this would be the last time they would skulk around the palace of their Zarles.

Time was running out. Either the Zarles would make their boast good and cinder the planet or they would go down to defeat and free men could take up the tremendous task of rebuilding a ruined world.

They got out and looked around. There was the palest of light in the east.

"I'd better hurry," Gambrell told Red. "Shurz and the Hounds will be out before long. The slaves start to work at sunup."

Red was strapping a huge automatic to his hip. "I told you I was going along this time. Old Betsy here may not be as good as one of those death-tubes but she can blow a hole through a Zarle. You've been in there before. Can you think of anything else we'll need?"

Jeff sighed. "I've got the tube and the disc. The knapsack too. This business of equipment is becoming a joke. Let's go in there and blast what we can find—or die there. I'm tired. There's an inch-thick blister across my shoulder. My dad's safe and well-contented. My brother's safe and so happy that he turns handsprings every time that brainless, red-headed cousin of yours smiles."

Red grinned. "She is kinda dumb, ain't she? But she's okay. They'll probably end up with a dozen kids,"

"Slaves don't have many friends—not on the Zarles' plantations, anyway. Soames was about the only one I had, and he's long-gone. I didn't have time to make any friends up there on the satellite. There was nobody else except Kitten, and she was—was, well everything, Red. And she would be better off dead, now. So that leaves you." He grinned and held out his hand. "You homely throwback, we'll go in there together."

Red took his hand and his eyes were bright in the pale light of morning. "Together." he echoed. "Hey, I just thought of an old word. We'll go berserker—"

"Right. Berserker it is."

They went across the field and skirted the quarters. They stole around the low, black palace of the Zarle. Jeff readied the silver tube in his hand and blew upon the tiny whistle that was pitched higher than their hearing could reach. The black door opened. Together they went down into the hot hall that glittered with yellow light. Red looked up at the deceptive ceiling with wonder. Taking his gun from his holster and thumbing the safety-catch, he said:

"Well, there's no one here. And there ain't any doors. So where do we go?"

Jeff began blowing upon the whistle again. One by one a dozen doors slid open.

They made a circuit of the hall, looking for stairs. Finding some at last, they went down to another level. Here was where the Zarle kept his stores. They searchd through room after room, trying the pitch-pipe now and then. There were ingots and bars of various metals, stacked neatly together and tagged in the Zarle's spidery hand.

There were cannisters, barrels, and bales of food and materials. In one room the things that had once belonged to men were heaped willy-nilly, as though some antiquarian had started to catalogue the past and had grown tired. Books, machines, tools, pictures, bottles, clothes, weapons, armor, tractors, cars, thousands of things that the Zarles had picked up after the conquest. Even a skeleton, dangling from the beam of a crane by a thin wire. Red touched it and it began to quiver. Over in a corner as though thrown in contempt was a heap of jewelry and fine-cut stones. A king's ransom, they smoldered there; and a spider had spun a web across them.

Finally they discovered another door and another stairway.

This second cellar, larger than the first, housed the Zarle's machinery. Even in this closed space it was practically noiseless; only a faint, high-pitched throbbing met their ears. Red whistled at the sight of a transformer that seemed a hundred feet wide.

No one was there, but they found another door and went down countless steps that seemed older than time. A pale-yellow light emanated from the walls and the musty odor of dead, over-heated air assailed them. They went down and down—

Until at last they came to a vast cavern, far underground, set into a twelve-foot, flattened globe of copper. Above this globe a single iridescent pillar, a foot in diameter, was thrust upward. And below it, the same pillar went down into the marble floor.

Off to one side, Kitten was sitting upon a bench, staring aimlessly at Raiult and the machinery that held his attention.

The far reaches of the cavern were shadowy. It was the first time that Gambrell had seen a room of the Zarles that was not suffused with light, and he wondered if Raiult had not burrowed into some underground tunnel.

Aside from the opalescent pillar and the copper globe through which it passed, there was only one other object within sight.

This was a shining, shell-like craft that was made of the same shimmering material as the pillar. It was nearly circular, about ten feet long, and its sides were fluted. Toward the prow—for it looked as much like a boat as anything—the shell curved back into a horizontal cylinder of mother-of-pearl. From this a single golden lever extended. That was all.

Jeff Gambrell and Red O'Leary stepped out into the cavern, their guns ready. Raiult was so engrossed with the dials that he did not hear them. They came up behind him and Jeff spoke:

"Now, snake, turn around—slowly."

Raiult turned. But at the last he pivoted and a tentacled hand came from beneath the black cloak with a silver tube. The report of Red's gun was deafening. It echoed through

the cavern again and again. The tube clanged to the floor; and Raiult, his dark eyes flashing hate, stood there before them, the tentacles of one hand squeezing his wrist. Purplish blood was seeping through those rat-tail fingers.

He shrugged his thin shoulders. "So my slave has come back and brought a gorilla with him? Well, it will do you no good. The doom is set now. That column of copper goes down for ten miles. Could you drill such a hole? Or fill it with a pillar such as that? Could you destroy it within a day? Nonsense. You have no comprehension of the power we are tapping." ^

"It won't take me a day to do what I'm goind to do," Red O'Leary growled. "Ask him what questions you have in mind, Jeff. After that, I have a few things to do. I'm going to see how a Zarle can fight—not with words or machines, but just me and him, hand to hand."

Raiult smiled. "We tried that two hundred years ago. To give us sport we fought with some of the strongest captives. But it was not very exciting. I see that you have the disc which you stole from me, Jeff Gambrell. What a pity. If it's fighting you want, I could build some vicious things upon the air."

"I have it, as you can see," Jeff told him. "We fight phantoms no longer. You Zarles have dodged through space like quicksilver, and when the pressure got rough you made phantoms. Well, no more. When we are through here I'm the one who is going to kill you."

Raiult threw back his lean head and the cavern echoed with his tittering laughter. "You?" he asked. "A few weeks ago you were running like a rabbit. And now you want to fight a Zarle. But I don't see how you can do anything. The machinery is set. There is no way to turn it off. If you listen closely you can hear it throbbing. And now I know that this ugly friend of yours comes from a man-made satellite. We should have thought of that. But it is not too late. If you blasted me now, I could still send a message to the Citadel. One ship—just one—could dispose of such a flimsy little moonlet as that. Meanwhile, your world goes—" He made an upward gesture with his two tentacled hands and added: "Boom." He laughed again—laughed until flecks of blood were upon his thin lips. "How do you know I have not already contacted the Citadel?" he asked.

"Let's tie him up," Red suggested. "I've got some matches—"

Raiult looked at him and smiled again. "You humans will never understand our contempt for pain. We made ourselves deathless, aside from injuries, but pain was the price we paid. You are too ephemeral to understand. Pain was the price we paid for the stars, and pride was our battle-flag. But why do I stand here arguing with a slave and an orangoutang?"

Red's face grew crimson. ""Orang-outang, eh?" he mocked. "Well, I'm happy, which is more than you're going to be. I'm going to take you apart, Zarle. And I'll laugh while I'm doing it."

Jeff took his eyes away from the Zarle to look at Kitten. She was still sitting upon the high bench, her feet swinging like a child's. Kitten was looking at them in puzzled curiosity; a tiny furrow plowed itself into her forehead as she tried to fathom the words that were being traded. Jeff's heart sank. A child and less than a childl Then she looked into his eyes and for one magical moment Jeff thought she knew him.

A yell of warning from Red and a flash of flame made him turn his eyes away.From the folds of his black cloak Raiult had swept a handful of crystal beads. Like a sower he was scattering them about, and where each tiny seed landed it sprouted a tree of scarlet.

Red was firing, but Raiult was already dodging back toward the glistening shell. A spray of sparks caught Red and hurled him backward. The muscles of his huge arms knotted as though he had received a tremendous shock. The gun fell from his hands, and he looked helplessly at Gambrell. His jaws clenched and his lips drew back in pain from his strong teeth.

Jeff ran around the fountains of flame and sparks. Already, Raiult had pulled himself aboard the shell. Jeff reached it and threw one leg across the gunnel. Raiult pulled the golden lever.

There was a rushing in Jeff GambrelFs ears as though a cyclone were pursuing him. The tunnel, the Zarle's machine, Red, and Kitten became transparent and faded away. The opalescent shell lifted into the air and streaked toward a diminishing wall. The wall turned to smoke and then the shell was out in space with the stars wheeling about. They whirled in crazy orbits, like sparks caught in a maelstrom of force, and finally they were no brighter than a spiders eye peering from a dark tunnel. Then they were gone and the abyss of darkness that splashed upward tore even the rushing sound from his ears.

All the while, Jeff was struggling to get aboard, one foot thrown over the lip of the shell. Raiult saw him and began to beat at his fingers. The dark changed to a sullen glow of light. The light contracted. The ship seemed to be at the center of a shrinking bubble. Then the bubble closed about them, lifted Jeff, and threw him into the shell of mother-of-pearl.

He lay face down upon the smooth, ridged floor of the shell, gasping for breath, struggling for life, while Raiult beat at his head and shoulders. At last Jeff got to his knees and threw the Zarle aside.

Instead of fighting back, Raiult got up and hurried to the lever that controlled the shell. He pulled it again. Until then they were streaking through silence; now, Jeff heard the whine of unseen gears.

The yellow glow of space coagulated into one shining spot. The spot became a luminous world. They hurtled toward it and Jeff shut his eyes at the approaching impact.

The impact never came. It was not as though they had landed anywhere. It was more like plunging through fathoms of cobwebs to sink down, with all momentum lost, upon a featherbed.

The gleaming shell came to rest upon a green meadow. Birds were singing and weaving intricate patterns upon the air. Advancing toward them, half-curiously,; half-hungrily, was a cat. Its eyes were yellow, slanted ovals. Its dark bulk filled the sky, and it reached out with saber-claws that thrid in and out. Then, like a kitten playing, it raised a paw to give them a cuff. Raiult pulled the lever again. Green meadow and cat-shadow vanished. Once more there was a rushing in Jeff's ears. It dwindled to silence and they hurtled onward.

Before Raiult could turn away from the control, Jeff lifted the silver tube from his belt.

"Don't touch it again, snake. I've had enough. I don't know where we are or where we're going. But we'll stop with a dead Zarle. I told you I'd kill you. Now—"

Raiult was as calm as ever.

"Do you have the slightest idea where we are?" he asked.

Jeff laughed bitterly. "I've seen enough of your mental conditioning. All this may be something out of your own mind—maybe my disc went wrong. But you're here. It's all that matters."

Raiult laughed. "We are circling through the worlds of If, slave. It is difiiicult to explain—though I have learned that you are well-read, as far as your kind can read." He looked at Jeff with a curious snarl upon his face. "Where is the greatest amount of energy stored, Jeff Gambrell?"

"I don't know. In the largest sun, I suppose."

"And your kind once aspired to the starsl It is in space, fool. Space is large. The energy of countless suns lies there like far-scattered flakes of gunpowder, waiting to be set in motion again. And your idiot scientists thought of space as a vacuum; at the same time they taught that nature abhorred a vacuum. Oh! Your kind irritated me more than any race we ever conquered. You had a way of going blithely on from two suppositions that made each other improbable. You blundered on from one premise to another— in science, morality, economics, politics, and a dozen others. You never confessed a fault. You simply re-adjusted."

"And we won a world. A fine world—until the Zarles came."

"Bosh! You won nothing. You solved no problems. You created many. You simply dashed on from one failure to another."

"Even so, I'm going to kill you, Raiult." Jeff raised the tube.

"If you wish. Many times I have longed for death, but at the last some atom warred against it. This must be the basic rule of creation, for I have seen the same upon many worlds. Still, before you fire that tube, consider what I have said."

"YouVe said nothing. As always, you have mouthed about the Zarles' superiority but you've said nothing."

"Consider, Jeff Gambrell. We are crashing through hyper-space at a speed that can not be measured. It is either one inch per century or ten times faster than light, you yourself must determine that. But about us is energy lost from a million suns. Fire that tube and you may set off the chain that will build another Antares—or you may re-create the Hanging Gardens. The effect is unpredictable, for frozen energy is unpredictable once it is awakened. One thing is certain; in such a striving of energy to build itself into^sshape, you and I will be reduced to nothing at all."

"But what was that world we just passed. And how—" Jeff was staring straight ahead. Off in the distance, and rushing toward them, another lambent glow was forming.

"I told you that these are the worlds of If. The worlds of X, if you prefer. That was X plus 1. How did you like that tabby? Big as a house, eh?"

"Did you make it?"

Raiult shrugged. "Would I bother to create a super-cat? Bah! No, this craft and this shining cylinder here can warp through space. But it can not create. Still, like many of our machines, there is mental exertion required. But at the last, when this machine has warped space and energy into a world of If—separated a certain amount from its continuum, I might say, and doled it out into a substantial unit—there is still something beyond the machine and the mind of a Zarle. It's a bit like the old slot machines that your ancestors frittered away their time with. Pull the lever and end up with a certain pattern. The mind itself might help to shape that pattern. But not entirely. There is always chance. Chance defeats us at every turn." The Zarle sighed. "Otherwise, we would have shaped ourselves a comfortable world here among the worlds of X. See? But something always creeps into the pattern. A galatial Punch who jumps out on the stage to confuse us. You saw the tabby, eh?"

"Yeah. I saw it. Now, what's this spot of light that's approaching?"

"X plus 2, of course. There is no such thing as a straight line. We are circling through hyper-space. It is hard to explain to you, Gambrell, but we are something like your story of the frog who fell into milk. By kicking about, he was able to churn up little flakes of butter and squeezed these into stepping-stones. This boat—I see you call it that— condenses large chunks of space into improbable worlds, and we crawl from one to another like an ant creeping around a chain of golden beads."

"I don't know whether to believe you or not. You Zarles are such liars. Anyhow, you'd better brace yourself. We're headed toward that second world like a thunderbolt."

"There won't be any shock. I just told you—"

Again there was the sensation of plunging through fathoms of cobwebs and slowly coming to rest.

The world of X plus 2 was a barren world. It had been tortured into shape. They were resting upon a plain of black lava that was cracked and gashed. A few tiny craters with jagged rims were thrust up and one was still smoking. Off to one side, in striking contrast to its dark surroundings was a huge egg-shaped stone, one end tilted a bit upward like a resting Humpty-Dumpty. Jeff was sure it was a stone; its surface gleamed, and on that plain which must have recently withstood countless brooms of flame it gave the impression of infinite hardness.

And yet, a mouth appeared in the middle of the stone egg. A long, red tongue licked out toward them. Raiult pulled the lever again and they rushed onward.

"You see, Jeff Gambrell. There is always something improbable that creeps into the scheme."

"1 still think you're lying, Zarle. Now, turn around and head back."

Again Raiult shrugged. "After all my explaining. Think, now. I mentioned stepping-stones and beads upon a string. We have to take these worlds one at a time in order to get back to the starting place. We can concentrate larger chunks of hyper-space and thus shorten the trip. Otherwise we would go on forever. X plus infinity. See?"

"No, I don't see. If we had a starting point on the earth, then you're saying that it is merely one of the worlds of X."

"Not exactly. The place where we started from, the cavern, became a sort of a porthole into improbability. That is all."

"I think you're lying. No more of your devil's tricks or 111 shoot you now."

"You can't shoot me. Without me to guide the machine you will simply coast on forever, making brief but countless stops. And for the first time in centuries I find that I need help. You have a weapon and my wrist is almost useless." He pulled up the black sleeve. Dried clots of blood had formed about a deep gash where Red's bullet had grazed him. "See Jeff Gambrell. At each pause of the journey there is a single second where we are helpless. I don't know what we will meet but there will be—uh, things. Some will be very quick. And all will be hungry. Hunger seems to be another law of creation."

Without a jolt their craft stopped at X plus 3. It was a green world. Trees and vines rose up about them, towering hundreds of feet above their heads. Even the thin mist that clung to their leaves had a greenish tinge, and the air had a greenhouse smell to it.

Raiult reached for the lever again.

A down-coiling vine wrapped itself about him and lifted him out of the boat. At first it swung him high into the air. Then it lowered him and rushed him toward a great transparent flower a hundred feet away.

Raiult let out one startled hiss of fear. He twisted about in the huge tendril's' grip and looked at Jeff. He gave Gam-
brell one swift glance

Jeff reached for the lever. He remembered Kitten and the long years of slavery. Let Raiult stay. He could go on.

But as the vine swung slowly toward the shimmering flower, the petals opened wide and a thorny maw waited for the Zarle.

Without thinking Jeff raised the silver tube and fired.

The huge flower was blasted into a thousand blackened bits. The vine thrashed down and Raiult struggled free. He ran toward the shell. One tentacled hand reached up and Jeff swung him aboard.

"Now why did I do that?" he said absently as Raiult reached for the control.

As they swept forward the green world melted away from them. Raiult looked back over his shoulder at his ex-slave.

"A truce, eh, Gambrell? I see you have decided. Well, for a little while a Zarle and a man must fight together. The situation is disgusting."

Raiult the Zarle had very little gratitude in his makeup.

THE TRUCE

the worlds of X plunged by. The same sensation struck Jeff Gambrell each time they landed. It was like plunging through miles upon miles of cobwebs to land at last upon a sinking featherbed.

Now that he and Raiult had come to some sort of a tacit agreement, the Zarle ignored him. He stood straight at the helm of their craft, nursing his wounded arm. Not a single word of complaint escaped him, but now and then he sighed—deeply.

"Don't you even have a first aid kit aboard this fool boat?" Jeff asked. "I could doctor that wrist."

Raiult laughed. "Did you think I was worrying about the wrist, Gambrell? I blocked off the pain hours ago. No, it was something else that I was thinking of. Something far away and long ago. And the things that happen." His voice softened a little. "I gave you very little to remember, Gambrell. Tell me now do you ever think of the plantation as home?"

"Not exactly. I think some of the slaves do. Remember, my mother was dead and my father was gone before I started remembering anything. My brother and I were raised by the community. Slaves have so little. They can't give very much to orphans."

"Orphans? Oh, yes, it is a word you have. I had no father. My mother was an incubator. Yes, I know now that you were there at the Citadel at the last attempt. Well, is parentage such an important thing? As important as you humans think it is, I mean?"

"How would I know," Jeff answered slowly. "I remember a little boy who cried himself to sleep for his father. He was a strong, good man who had gone away. Sometimes I dreamed he had come back. When I was awake I daydreamed that he would come back for me and rid the world of plantations and Zarles. Not that I blame him now for leaving—"

The Zarle laughed. "Such foolishness. No wonder your creeds were failures. The big father or the big brother— always returning. Gambrell, your race has almost bored me to tears."

Jeff Gambrell tried to choke down his anger. After all, since they were literally in the same boat, there was no use for insults.

"I doubt if you understood us at all, Zarle. From what I have read, the race stumbled again and again. There would be no use now in singing its praises or making excuses. But in the old dreams of mankind, there was always something or someone—a Force if you prefer, since you are certainly a believer in Forces—that led us on. Men grew old and died, or they died on the rack or the cross, or they went out to battle and died by the walls and the trenches. They died, all of them. But there was a sad, sweet singing in their ears, Zarle—a singing you could never understand. This was not all. There was a spark over and beyond this. Here we are circling through worlds without end. And you are sneering. Why, with nothing to go on but simple faith, my people believed in wordls within worlds, worlds beyond worlds, and worlds without end. Their lives were inadequate and age cut them down like a mower with a scythe. But there was still the Idea."

Raiult's tittering laughter rang through the little boat. "You have just said that they died. There is your answer."

"No, Zarle, it is not the answer. Was death such a curse? Why, look at yourselves. You defied death and you received pain, homelessness, and self-pity in return. Have you ever thought of anyone but yourself Zarle?"

"I thought of other Zarles—in the abstract," Raiult commented. "And I have no self-pity. I will go on and on until space is filled with the wreckage of what I have cast into it. Self-pity, hal Pity you mortals, rather."

"You are not immortal, Raiult. I should know, for I killed a Zarle."

"Humph! You killed one who had no control of his senses. Doomed by two diseases."

"Then you are not immortal. No more than the races of men."

"Practically so."

"You are quibbling. I repeat now: Was death such a curse? Look at you. Did you have any feeling for that Zarle that I killed?"

"Of course not. I had been detailed to dispatch poor Golun."

"But to yourself, Raiult, death is dissolution. The final outrage."

"Certainly. And given the proper environment we can control it. Not upon your hideous planet—but soon your planet will be no more."

"Now I have you," Jeff exulted. "Think of the men and women who have faced that outrage without flinching. Oh, we recoiled against it. But we faced it—though you accuse us of wallowing in the deepest ignorance. We admitted that we were not all alike. Given immortality upon the earth, a few of us would soon have reduced the rest to a hellish life. So we faced it—'Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.' And now, what of the things you said a few minutes—or was it hours—ago? You laughed, snake, because you thought we had evaded the question. And you assured me that matter could not be destroyed."

"Oh, these sophomoric arguments " Raiult lamented. "Being cooped up with an earthling is more than I can stand."

"But did we ever deny that a spark could be destroyed? The life that pulsed within us was a great and curious thing. And we admitted it. It burned dim and maybe at times we tired of it, but did we ever venture so far as to claim that it would be totally destroyed?"

"Nonsense," Raiult said. "I will listen to no more of this piffle. You are an imperfect and a most wasteful ferment. That is all."

"Okay." Jeff changed the subject as they hurtled on and a yellow glow of light appeared in the distance. "I'll say no more. But what were you thinking about, Raiult?"

"Something far away and long ago, as I said before. My planet had its seasons, though not so sharply defined. Even then, spring came on forever with a flood of blossoms and leaves. I remember a house. There was a tree—not unlike your pear trees—at the door. And it burst into a little cloud of yellow-white blossoms when spring came by. Oh, Gam-brell you accuse me of having no feelings, but I would give all the worlds we have conquered for a sight of that tree again. I was young then, and life surged within me. And you asked me if I could shape these worldsl Why, if I could, I would build me a home out here like the one I lost. And heaven could rear itself high above me—and hell could melt into fiery pits below me, and I would not care. Gambrell, you who were once my slave, I may be growing weak out here where space and time are lost, but let me ask you this: Will I find that tree again?"

Jeff Gambrell looked into Raiult's dark eyes and shook his head. "No," he answered.

"Then I will go on and on. If that tree was what you call heaven, and it was lost, then I will build bonfires of suns. I will crash world upon world. I'll scatter the stars out into flaming sparks, and I will roll the Milky Way up into a blazing ball. All this I will do until time and space give me back what I have lost. And they will relent, Jeff Gambrell. They will be glad to give me back the home I lost. Consider the price. When they weigh such a small ransom against so much destruction, they are bound to give me my little price."

And Jeff Gambrell looked into the Zarle's black eyes and shook his head and answered:

"No. They won'tl"

While they were talking, the glimmering shell was rushing toward another world. It came to rest. This was a world of topaz. As far as Jeff could see the earth gleamed yellow beneath smoldering, binary suns which almost touched each other. They were lying at the center of a saucer-shaped plain. It was bare—unless the few jeweled clumps of bayonetlike spikes that were thrust up here and there could be called vegtation. Off in the distance a row of low, breast-shaped hills rose up and they too gleamed orange-yellow beneath the smoldering sky.

The blazing light almost blinded them. Then beyond the hills a topaz shadow reared itself high. It filled one comer of the sky and rose higher still, until the indistinct head was lost in yellow clouds.

The paw that smashed down at them was curved like a scythe. It came fast, a raking, nightmare horror. Jeff fired, and the paw disintegrated into a jeweled stump that splashed yellowish gouts of blood across the plain. Far away, beyond the hills, the tall shadow was yowling in pain. Raiult pulled the lever.

Another paw came at them. The plain and the world vanished in yellow smoke as the scythe-shadow came down.

Once more they were hurtling through space while the noise of lost atoms roared in their ears.

"Close?" Raiult asked, his face squeezing a smile. "Too close," Jeff agreed.

They went on and on. Yellow beads of worlds came and went. Some were harmless. Some were spent. Others were still struggling to be born; torrents of rain fell across molten hills, and rose again in moiling clouds of steam.

But always, something was askew. Vegetation and brutes sprang toward them. Half-alive Juggernauts came out of the rocks and rolled forward. Or even the ground grew blubbery mouths with many fangs that growled and snapped.

Suns stopped their orderly wheeling and licked out with tongues of flame. Ice and crystal grew mile-high columns that broke and thundered down.

On and on until time was lost, and space was a whirlpool that plunged into an agonized vortex which swallowed worlds and suns and roared for more.

Behind them, in a receding curve of light, the worlds of If flashed like riffled playing-cards. The first was lost in a pinpoint beam now, and the half-circle of light was closing in upon itself.

Raiult's fit of depression had left him, and he was in a sardonic humor.

"After all, Gambrell, I didn't ask you to come along. You invited yourself. I have mined these worlds before. In time I had hoped to shape the possible out of the impossible. But when your red-headed friend was so handy with his gun, I decided to use this as an escape route. After all, things as they are can be partially controlled, and I don't have to go back to the cavern. I think I can get back to the Citadel. The trip may seem ages long, but it takes only a few minutes of time as you measure it. When we return you can go on to the laboratories. And our ships can blast off. Within a few hours your world will explode and plunge out of its course. That little man-made satellite will go with it. Creation will be rid of a most antagonistic world and an annoying race of pygmy minds. Does that make you happy, slave?"

"We're not licked yet." Jeff replied. "You have always been a liar, Raiult. Besides, if things get too bad I can shoot you. You've said a lot about wanting to die, but I notice you're always scampering away from death as soon as the going gets rough."

"Are you saying that I am both a liar and a coward?"

"I certainly am. Where is your superiority? Even if this machine is all you say it is, what good is it? We are running in a circle, and from your own admission that's all you Zarles have ever done." Jeff Gambrell laughed, and Raiult's eyes blazed their hate.

"The pygmy, pragmatic mind." Raiult sneered. "But I'll talk to you no more. Even under the most trying circumstances, one must draw the line somewhere."

He stood above the gleaming cylinder, his hand upon the lever, looking down with concentrated fury.

Jeff watched him curiously. Suppose he's lying, he thought. All this could be more of his fantasies. But even if he's telling the truth, he's doing a poor job. He said that the pattern could be shaped in part. I couldn't do much worse. And he'll shape no pattern in my favor—that's certain.

The shining circle of past worlds was nearing completion. Jeff took a step forward—and another. He was behind Raiult now. The Zarle's tentacles were tightening about the lever.

Jeff seized the thin, steely wrist and yanked Raiult away. The Zarle struck at him, and cursed fluently.

"Fool. Get away. Do you want to stay here forever?"

Jeff tripped him and threw him aside. The Zarle went head over heels across the polished floor, his black cloak flying. Gambrell seized the gold lever and looked down into the shimmering cylinder. It was translucent, and tiny sparks seemed to be rising within it.

"Now," he thought—or in his excitement he may have spoken the words aloud. He threw all his will into that glittering shell. "I want my own world, my own Kitten. And I want the Zarle's hellish machine out here in nothingness, drifting forever between impossible worlds.

"No. No." Raiult was struggling to his knees. He dived forward and caught Jeff about the legs. "No. The controls are rnine. You fool—"

Jeff pulled the lever.

The craft bucked and pitched. It careened through space like a frightened thing. Raiult was shoving against him and Jeff struck at the back of his head and neck with hammer blows. The ship careened again. It nearly upended and Jeff tumbled across the gunnel and plunged out into fathoms of darkness.

The careening shell, the black figure of Raiult struggling with the controls, and the shining circle of worlds disappeared.

Jeff went on, falling through the darkness like a meteor. His body grew numb. Silence fell in black waves. Drowsiness swept over him and he lay still.

LOST

there were no stars. Nothing but darkness assailed his eyes, and even the sense of movement which at first had almost taken his breath away was gone.

Occasionally he fancied that shadows which were even darker than the black night went by on flapping wings. But these must have been delirium born of the night, for this was an icy void. The cold emptiness of space beat at him. Freezing now, he waited for the end, straining to look about. Surely there must have been a spark of light somewhere. To die here, or to freeze into a fearful coma like a paralyzed spider in a wasp's nest, beyond sound, beyond time, beyind movement, this was the greatest indignity of all.

"Light," he begged. "Light."

A handful of suns drifted across his vision. They swung in crazy circles and finally flamed out in concentric rings. All except one which took the shape of an owl and sat there in the darkness and stared at him speculatively.

Then the shining rings melted and dripped down across the sky. They fell in burning gobbets, flamed and flared, and finally winked out. Even the nebulous owl wavered into bands of luminous smoke and drifted away.

The night came on again. Time passed. "Light," he pleaded. "Light."

A swarm of golden specks swirled out of the distance and gathered about him, weaving in and out among themselves. And as they danced, they broke the stillness with their strange music.

It was fainter than tinkling crystal. Even the scale that they ran was alien. They flickered and guttered. Their music grew lower than the softest sigh. Then it rose again and became a nerve-wracking spattering, like grains of sand striking one after one against a window pane. "Who is this creature? asked one.

"Silly. It is one of those left over from the last explosion of suns, when time died, and we were all that were left."

"Shall we haul it to the trans-uranic heap and see if the glow can thaw it back into life?"

"Of course not. We tried it with others. They came out alive, but still, like the finest porcelain, and they hated us with their eyes until we had to hide them deep within the dust clouds."

"Let us go," said another. "There is neither life nor energy left here for us to feed upon."

And finally, Jeff Gambrell summoned a single breath from his frozen self and whispered: "Shoo."

They flew away, with little twittering squawks of fear. Even as they fled they still danced strange patterns upon the night.

Time passed. The night and the cold returned. Half asleep, he floated upon that dark sea. Then a voice, far, far away, reached him:

"Jeff. Jeff. Jeff Gambrell. Come back to me, Jeff. JeffI Jeff."

It was a woman's voice. He tried to rouse himself against the cold. He had known that voice before. But so long ago! Suns had born and died since then. How could he remember?

The voice repeated: "Jeff."

And another voice broke in: "Lie there, slave. You nearly wrecked me, but I made it back. When the last sea of space has been crossed, it is the Zarles who will beach their boats and heave them to. Lie there, Gambrell, in the ebb and flow of nothingness. Lie there until your joints have turned to jewels and your eyes are mossed over by the atoms that build themselves from whirlpools of nothingness. Lie there. Die there. Slavel"

Even in that cold sleep, he recognized the voice. It was the voice of Raiult the Zarle, And the old hate came back, warming Jeff for a moment. "But it was all so long ago/' he thought. "Why should he trouble me now?"

Then the woman's voice returned. It was louder and warmer than before.

"Jeff. Jeff GambrelL Come back to me, Jeff. I love you."

It was Kitten's voice. He remembered how he had loved her—so long ago.

She cried again. "Jeff!"

The voice of Raiult interfered. "Out there you are beyond life and beyond death. How can you answer her? Go back to the drift."

"No." He thought fiercely. And with a surge of effort he cried out: "Kitten."

Red streaks ran across the darkness. Suns and moons flamed up. And a strange faraway music cheered him on.

"I love you, Kitten," Jeff cried.

From Raiult the Zarle, one single howl of disappointment screamed through the night.

Space rebuilt itself. Time took up its old vigil. The dimensions fell into place like tumblers in a well-oiled lock.

And Jeff was standing there in the underground cavern with Kitten—holding her close. Her arms were about his neck. And her hps were soft and warm.

She was crying, over and over, "Jeff."

Jeff took a deep breath, and even the hot air felt good. He reeled and looked about him. Red O'Leary, an automatic still clutched in his hand, was staring at him in wonder.

Jeff took Kitten's shoulders and held her away from him. For a long time he looked into her face. Remembrance had returned to those eyes. They were tearful, but the coldness that Raiult had frozen into them was gone. The blank stare was no more. Suddenly her shoulders began to shake with sobs.

Red holstered his gun and came over to them.

"Boy, I thought you were gone. I don't believe what I saw. I'll never believe it. I felt over it after you were gone, and it was solid. Solid as—as a rock."

"How long was I gone?" Jeff asked, still bewildered from that long, breathless, curving ride through hyper-space.

"Not over three minutes. Maybe two. I didn't have time to check the seconds. Jeff, all hell broke loose after you took off. She was standing right here and I was feeling about the wall over there. And all of a sudden that machinery of Raiult's started shining with the coldest light I ever felt. It just raised up toward the roof of the tunnel and disappeared. Mile after mile of gleaming pipe coming up out of that hole—rushing toward the ceiling—but never reaching it. God, it's hard to believe."

"It's true though, Red. It's gone. Somehow, I knew it would be gone. It's out there in space somewhere—turning and spinning—lost forever."

Red grinned. "If it would do what Raiult said it would, I can't think of anything I'd rather lose."

"It doesn't matter. If he was telling the truth, and it should explode now, wherever it is, it would be no more than a lighted match. Space is big out there, Red. Plenty big."

"I dunno." Red shook his head. "I'm puzzled by all this. If I hadn't seen you and Raiult and that funny-looking boat slide into the wall, I'd just say that the air is stale down here and we all dreamed a mighty funny dream."

"The strangest dream," Jeff Gambrell echoed.

"Well, it worked out okay. After that machinery and pipe of Raiult's disappeared, she stood there looking around, just as blank as blank can be. And then, all of a sudden, it was like seeing her waking up. Her face and eyes changed. And she started crying for you."

"Raiult said she couldn't change. He figured everything wrong, thank goodness. Say, I remember something else. Raiult's back at the Citadel. Or I think he is. Where's that talkie?"

"Right here in the knapsack. You dropped it when you dived after the Zarle. Look outl Don't step into that hole. It goes ten miles down."

The Chief began to sputter as soon as Jeff lifted the little talkie to his ear.

"Where have you been, Gambrell? I told you and O'Leary to be ready at all times. What's going on and where have you been?"

"I'll never know, and that's an honest answer, sir."

The little talkie began to scream. "Gambrell. Talk sense."

Jeff answered: "There's no time to explain now. The Zarles are back at the Citadel. They're about ready to take off. The machine that they built has been—er—destroyed."

"Good. You and O'Leary will be decorated for this."

"Tell him to quit gabbing," O'Leary whispered.

"What's that? I think I heard-"

"Nothing, sir. I can't explain what happened. But the Zarle's machinery is where it can't do any harm,"

"Save the fragments of that machine, whatever it was. Benjamin wants to study it."

"There are no fragments, sir. And you had better hurry. The Zarles are ready. They know about the satellite."

"We have had everything in readiness here for days. Now, are you sure about this report? You and O'Leary sound like—no, you wouldn't be drinking at a time like this."

"Please, Chief! This is urgent. Transportation is no problem to a Zarle. The Citadel is probably swarming with them."

"Right. We're ready. You and O'Leary stand by."

There was a tiny click from the talkie.

Red was gleeful. "At last they've decided to do something. Come on. Let's get out of here. After waiting this long, we don't want to miss the fun."

"He said for us to stand by," Jeff objected.

"But he didn't say where. This tunnel gives me the creeps. Let's get back to my ship. We'll go 'way up and maybe we can see some fireworks."

Jeff took Kitten's arm and they followed Red up the long stairway.

Red called over his shoulder. "Maybe you'd rather take a few minutes off to kill Shurz. It wouldn't take long."

Gambrell shook his head. "Not now. Besides, somebody else has claimed him."

"Oh, well, there'll be plenty of time."

They reached the main floor of Raiult's palace. The lighted ceiling was flickering strangely.

"More of his tricks," Red guessed. "Come on. A screwball like that might have left a time-bomb or something."

The three stole back to the cotton field. It was hard for Jeff to realize that it was still not quite daylight. It seemed years since he and Red had gone into the lower levels of the palace. That strange voyage which he and Raiult had made—how could it be measured?

Kitten had never seen a plane before, and she stared at it in wonder. But she did not hesitate when Jeff lifted her up to Red.

The little plane roared into the sky, going almost straight up. The morning sun was full upon them now and they looked down at the green world with its lace of rivers and streams. It was beautiful, and the morning mist that was fading away had left it bright and clean. Red 0*Leary was singing an old battle song, and Jeff felt his blood pulsing to the tune. The last sunrise upon a world of slavesl

But after they had risen higher, Red held the plane in the air. Jeff's exhilaration left him. From far and near, greasy columns of smoke were rising into the clear sky. His heart sank. The Zarles had fired the plantations, shops, and mines. Far-scattered, the smoke troubled the morning. Occasionally a mushroom of flame would billow up into the air. The poor slaves, he thought. Were they being destroyed along with the palaces that the Zarles had built?

Off in the distance where a lake had been an underwater mine was smoldering, and steam was rushing up in vast clouds. The columns of smoke grew.

Red O'Leary began cursing. "The dirty spawn of the stars. It's mighty little they're going to leave us."

Soon the green world was hidden by smoke and steam. Red had to dip lower again. At the last, the Zarles had made their own weather. Rain dripped down and the high winds tore at each other. They watched a tornado spin through a two-hundred year old forest, leaving nothing but stumps and bark-stripped limbs in its wake.

"The dirty devils," Red swore. And Jeff Gambrell was cursing them too. At the last, with Raiult's machinery of doom gone, they were improvising. Bombs were going off at ten-mile intervals, and sheets of flame were crawling across the land, burning the green trees and grass as though they were tinder. Brooks and sloughs turned into swirling steam and the landscape below was already checkerboarded by squares that had been baked brick-hard. In spots where sand had predominated, sheets of glass were cooling.

One of Red's machines was clicking madly. "We'll have to go back up," he whispered to Jeff. "Radioactivity is getting poisonous already."

Kitten stared down at the growing ruin below with wide eyes, but she did not cry. Once, when Jeff gave her shoulder a reassuring pat, she turned and kissed him. "They can't ruin everything, dear," she told him with a smile. "And we're free. No matter what happens, they won't get us again. They're through. Let them burn and break and poison as they will. They are the worst poison of all. And we will be rid of them. After this day, the earth will have time to turn green and fresh again."

Red headed back through the clouds.

Above them he continued higher. Suddenly he drew in his breath and fairly stood the little ship upon its fin. They went straight up like a rocket.

"Did you see that?" Red asked.

Jeff shook his head.

Red turned on the scanning beam. He moved it about. The screen lit up. Pictures that were traced in lines of fire crawled across it. Some looked like porcupines; others like round burrs.

"Air and space mines," Red explained. "The dirty devils."

MASS ATTACK

twenty miles up, Red leveled off and they went ahead in a straight line once more. Nothing was to be seen below now except rolling clouds through which an occasional column of flame would burst.

From time to time Red turned on the screen and they looked beyond the clouds to the surface of their world which was being systematically wrecked. Then he would busy himself with the talkie and give a few words of advice to the satellite. At last he turned to them with a big smile.

"They're on their way. Now, we'll see. Man, the long days I've waited for this! Skulking around in the shadow of the Zarles, flying like a scared bat at night. Hey, look, the clouds are breaking."

He nosed the plane down once more. They were approaching the Citadel.

As though held back by invisible forces, the streaming clouds parted in a ten-mile-wide porthole above the Zarles. Red and Jeff studied the activity below through powerful field-glasses.

The twenty-one white ships had been lifted. They were now pointing toward the sky. From the Citadel a black swarm of machines were crawling back and forth to the ships. The Zarles had erected a circular barricade of lancing flames about their base. It was these flames, swinging back and forth like spotlights, that had burned the huge hole through the sky.

"I've got a few rockets of my own." Red laughed. "Somebody's got to fire the first shot. Might as well be me. Make a note of that for history, Jeff. Red OXeary fired the first shot for freedom."

He sighted carefully and pressed a button. Then he counted thirty seconds, and pressed the button again. Red continued until ten torpedoes were winging toward the Citadel. They watched for the first to strike, and held their breaths. And Jeff wondered: Can it be this easy?

The first exploded high above the Citadel, as though striking some invisible barrier. Red sighted again and aimed another burst toward the white ships. A great window opened in the side of the Citadel. From it floated a black globe, spinning slowly about, its belt bristling with guns.

They watched the last burst waste itself far above the ships.

"I should have known," Red mumbled disappointedly. "They couldn't make a trip through space like that without protection against meteors. The same would work against rockets. Hey—"

The black globe spun lazily above the top of the Citadel. Suddenly it tipped and its guns spouted flame.

Red brought the ship out of its slow dive and they danced upon the air. Then he headed straight up again, and the thin air shrieked against the sides of the transparent fuselage. Below them a green sheet of flame arched by. It burned through the air with such force that it left a little storm in its wake. Thunder followed them on their way up, lightning struck with forked tongues, and the little plane whirled and tossed in the wake of the Zarles' blast.

Red dashed the sweat from his face. "Man. Did you see that? Today ain't going to be no picnic, I betcha."

He got busy with the talkie—warning the approaching armada of the death they had so barely missed.

And the Chiefs voice fairly screamed over the talkie.

"Get out of there, you fools. We're coming in."

"Get out, he says." Red looked at Jeff and laughed. "Them's the best orders I ever got."

Fifty miles away, he held the ship steady in the air above a sea of clouds that was pouring floods of rain upon the groaning world.

"Let me see, now. I was the best gunner in school. Only my teachers didn't know it. I could send a rocket skimming low, and it could go between them machines that are spouting flames. There's bound to be some gaps down there. He did some raipd calculating, set the sights again, and pressed the button—one, two, three. "Now, what have we? You know, I'm enjoying this." Red's big, homely face was wreathed in smiles.

Red turned on the screen. The Citadel and the ships, their circles of flames, and the thousand and one machines that the Zarles were using at the last appeared in miniature.

They waited. They could see the burst of two torpedoes which hit a bit high and wasted themselves against the Zarles' shield. The third got through. A line of trucks and tractors which were loading one of the ships dissolved into flame.

"Hey, I did it. How's that for tactics. Hey, Chief-" Red got busy with the talkie. "See what I done. Skim some torpedoes along the ground. They'll get through."

Somehow, the Zarles picked them up on their scanners. A dozen burrlike mines rushed toward them. Red ducked and dodged. Another rush of green flame swept beneath them and sent them spinning.

This time they climbed miles above the earth. Red had the Citadel upon the screen, and they saw the first of the attackers' bombs go in. A swarm of torpedoes, each sixty feet long, hurtled downward. Like filings rushing toward a magnet, the air-mines swept toward them. The black globe rose high above the Citadel, spinning and firing as it came. From opened windows within the tower other globes and even stranger craft were pouring. Like angry wasps the globes and air-mines came streaming.

Then all was hidden by a sheet of green and crimson flame. It rushed out into space, and where torpedoes, mines, and globes had fought there was nothing. Other globes were coming out of the Citadel's windows, spinning and floating. The twenty-one ships were still there, and the work of loading them continued as though nothing had happened.

Days later, Jeff Gambrell learned that when the signal for the Mass Attack was given, practically every man, woman, and child on the satellite had gone into the ships of the armada. Only the old and the sick were left with a gallant crew of guided-missile experts who had orders to fight to the last.

The Supreme Command had decided that the satellite was too vulnerable. The population would be safer on the attacking ships.

But the defenders of the satellite were determined. For hours they turned back each attack. The Zarles had found them now, and were sending wave after wave of robot-manned torpedoes and missiles at the moonlet.

The defenders exploded those waves far out in space. A swarm of little one-man interceptors circled in careful orbits about the moonlet. They died, one by one, but few of the Zarles' torpedoes got through.

At last, one torpedo blew a great chunk out of the satellite. It spun crazily, like a doughnut with a big bite taken out of it. Then the airlocks closed the gaping hole away from the rest of the little world. The old mechanism for moving the moonlet out of its orbit was not set in motion, and drew it a hundred miles closer to earth. Green flames built a miniature sun in the void where it had been—and the last of the one-man ships died up there in space.

So much for the satellite. Meanwhile, the armada was strung out across space in a crazy-quilt pattern.

Red scatted off to one side while the Zarles' globes and the hurtling bombs tore each other to bits. Far away now, the three watched the battle, while Red turned the screen back and forth from the Citadel to the armada. The latter, composed of one hundred large ships, swept into a great circle a thousand miles above the earth. The circle of ships grew smaller; in close formation the armada dropped down. The cloud of fire below them slowly burned itself out. There was a momentary lull in the battle.

Then from the side of each ship a thin lace of sparks and flame began spinning out to the center of the circle. It was as though they were weaving a shimmering cobweb up there. A cobweb that burned blue, yellow, and crimson. The strands met at the center of the circle. There they began to build a fiery ball. It grew and grew—

The cobweb of force became a Saturn-shaped, spinning world, streaked with everv color of the rainbow.

It blazed brighter. The ships broke formation and backed away from the fire they had built. The ringed planet of force they left behind them spun like a saw. Then it sank slowly down.

It fell straight toward the ceiling of the Zarle's defences.

Mines and interceptors were rushing upward now. They met it. The ringed planet gushed mile-wide sparks as it took the interceptors and whirled them about. Then it consumed them and sank lower.

The Zarle's shield of force met it ten miles above the Citadel. The spinning globe and its shining belt burned brighter. The explosion that followed bathed the tortured world in flames. It blazed through the clouds, and the three watchers saw the smoldering, green earth below them for a second—as when a burst of lightning pierces sheets of rain.

Then the flame was gone.

Red turned to the screen. The Citadel was leaning. There was a great dent in its top. Still, the work of loading the ships went on—the steady procession of machines continued their trip from the base of the Citadel to the white ships of the Zarles.

The armada re-formed and again circled. Once more little cobweb strands of flame spun out toward the center of the circle. Once more, a ringed planet of pure force took shape. The circling ships backed off as though they were dancing some cosmic dance up there in space.

The ringed world, blazing as before, sank slowly down toward the Citadel.

Red gripped Jeff's arm. "This is it. Boy, this is it. They can't take another blast like the last one."

They waited.

Blazing and spinning, the miniature Saturn came down. Jeff realized that it must be plummeting at a furious rate, but the ships that had built it were so high up in space that it seemed to float down toward the Citadel and its defenses.

"This is it," Red assured him and Kitten once more. The tall scout was farily jumping up and down in excitement.

From the Zarle's landing field where the white ships had lain peacefully for two-hundred years came.a blast of flame and smoke. One long craft came rushing upward—trailing a fan of light. It headed straight toward the descending, spinning world. It crashed into it, and space melted in the flames of their impact. Then the ship roared upward, the ball of energy still clinging to it, burning and eating.

The armada had been returning to formation. The Zarles' ship swerved. It struck the circle in one vast curve.

"No," Kitten screamed and covered her eyes.

Grimly, Red and Jeff were counting: "One, two, three," and on and on, "nine, ten, eleven—" they continued.

Then it was over. The Zarles' long ship and the eleven it had crashed melted into a flaming ball and hurtled out toward the depths of space. Neither Zarle nor man could have withstood that holocaust. The ball of fire became a shooting star, and dwindled to a tiny speck as it rushed beyond the planets. It vanished from sight. (Instruments upon the armada traced it as far as Pluto's orbit, then it plunged out into space.)

Several of the armada's ships were limping away from the fight. The remaining formed another circle. But they built no more planets of force. Neither Jeff nor Red knew whether they were biding their time, or whether the Zarle's suicide ship had taken too heavy a toll. They could only guess —and wait. Red's exuberance left him.

"It's going to be a longer fight than I figured," he admitted. "But we've got to win. We've got to."

A turret had opened at the top of the Citadel. Sheets of green flame were rushing toward the attackers.

Then a swarm of those little burr-like mines found Red O'Leary's ship, and for the next few minutes they were too busy fighting and dodging to see how the armada was faring.

Minutes later and miles away Red sent the last mine plunging to earth in a shower of sparks. Then they watched the screen again.

The Citadel was there, dented and leaning, but still belching puffs of green flame into the sky. Where the armada had been there was nothing. One by one, Red picked up the ships upon the screen. They were fleeing away. Not in formation, but every ship for itself.

Red began to curse. "They've given up. Not now, you cowards!"

He shook his fist at the screen, then buried his ugly face in his hands. His shoulders were quaking, but no sound escaped him.

"A few more suicide ships like that, and they'd have been wiped out," Jeff tried to encourage his friend. "Don't give up, Red. Maybe they'll try another attack."

"The hell they will. They've given up. Cowards." Red lifted his face to curse the screen. "Cowards, every last one of you."

Jeff didn't feel like encouraging anyone. The clouds below had parted. They looked down at what had been a tiny range of hills that had suddenly folded themselves up onto a mile-high crater that was spouting flame and lava.

"The devils," he swore. "The dirty devils."

"A few more hours and there won't be anything left to fight over," Kitten said wearily.

"It's about finished," Red agreed. Then he looked into the screen once more and whooped. "Hey, look, they're coming back."

The ships of the armada, at least seventy of them, were sweeping back toward the Citadel in one long, curving line.

The first, bathed in bursts of greenish flame, passed over that ten-mile hole in the sky which the Zarles still held. It went on, but as it soared away it dropped a single rope of flame that went coiling down toward the Citadel. The second plane whizzed by, and another strand of flame joined the first. They twined about each other.

Like a plummet, the growing strand of fire fell toward the Citadel. Each plane added a strand of gleaming fire to the growing rope.

At last it stood high above the Citadel, rearing itself miles upon miles into the sky. It wavered and rippled. Like a gleaming snake, it coiled down upon the Citadel, while its head, towering far out in space glided sinuously about. It grew larger and larger until the head became a shimmering ball.

Then the ball-like head ran swiftly down the gleaming strand of fire. A spider of sheer energy, it dropped down to the Citadel. Air-mines rushed at it. Green flames lanced. They did it no harm. It reached the Citadel.

The explosion that followed filled the Zarles' last fortress with smoke and flame.

Even the screen rippled into splashing waves.

The screen cleared. Red, Jeff, and Kitten yelled and danced at sight of the havoc.

The Citadel had melted into half of an eggshell. Molten metal was still pouring from it. As they watched, the last support gave way and it rolled down upon the black machines that were still crazily trying to load the ships. The nearest ship had been caught in the explosion and had been thrown aside, burned and blackened.

Some of the others were leaning awkwardly in their cradles.

Out in space, the Armada was coming back in a single line. The first swept above the Zarles* ruined fort and dropped another coil of force upon it.

The ships of the Zarles began to blast off. The supports of one space-leviathan fell away before it could clear the ground. It stood on end for a moment and melted a hole into the baked earth beneath it. Then slowly it slid down into the deep crater it was building. There was a molten splash and it disappeared.

The others soared free, guns blazing in all directions— at the earth they were leaving, at the ships above them.

They cleared. Eighteen huge ships picked up speed at each thrust. They slid across the screen and vanished at the edge of space. Watching them, a man had only to blink his eyes and they were gone.

The remaining ship went up minutes after the eighteen had crawled beyond reach of the screen. It rose slowly, awkwardly, spinning just a little. All its guns were set so that it seemed to be wrapped in flame from nose to rudder.

Gleefully the ships of the armada circled it, like killer sharks about a whale. They followed it up and a fusillade got through its damaged screen and tore out most of its belly.

Then it came down, its guns still flaming.

As it fell, a hundred or more tiny craft broke free of its carcass. Some turned tail and tried to follow the Zarles. Others dashed toward the armada. Size was reversed now. These glittering, deadly little minnows striking frenziedly at the sides of larger fish.

A few headed back toward the smoking world below them, as though they hoped to make one last stand.

"It's our turn now," Red bellowed. "Check your belts. We're going after them."

Other scouts, who had remained unseen, were coming up through the clouds. One of the armada's largest ships was spilling scores of tiny pursuit planes across the sky.

The Zarles' emergency boats were turtle-shaped, but there the similarity ended. They were fast, mighty fast-deadly.

Red sent his little arrow-head plane in a long dive upon one of the boats. His small cannon were firing like machine guns, and he was cursing himself for not saving a few of his rockets.

The direct hits did not seem to dent the turtle-shell. It fired back with a burst of green flame that exploded the thin air about them and sent Red's ship spinning away. Red fought the controls for miles. Then he righted the plane and came in again. One lucky shot must have hit within the enemy's jets, for it veered off in a long spiral, its guns still spitting. When it came out of the last, long curve, Red was waiting. He pumped enough shells into it to sink a battleship. At last it spouted a long, comet's-tail of flame and dived toward the ground. Red followed it until its doom was certain. Then he roared back into the sky as the exploding boat built a new crater beneath them.

Such battles were going on all over the sky. The Zarles took their last toll. Over three hundred of the satellite's fighter planes were lost. Eighty turtle-shell boats crashed in flames. A score left the fight and struck out into space, following the other Zarles.

Three, seeing that they had no chance, ducked and dodged away. With a whole fleet pursuing them they headed for the Gulf and dived into the water. A stubby, bristling ship of the armada took up the hunt—tracked them after they had turned themselves into submarines—dropped mine after mine —and at last counted three glistening oil-slicks upon the blue water.

Far in the west the^un dipped low—swollen and red as it tried to pierce the smoke that rose from the world. The battle was won.

The armada's ships could not land for days. But the scouts could.

They brought back reports of a shattered world. The water and land mines of the Zarles were yet burning. Still, there was hope in the message that they brought. Though explosions were throwing smoke and flame miles into the air, though lakes were dried up, though cyclones raged, and even the surface of the world was wrinkling and breaking.

The fires that the Zarles had left behind were burning out. Earth and mankind who had endured so much were enduring still. Over eighty percent of the Zarles' slaves had died; it seemed impossible for anything to survive such havoc, but mankind still lived upon the planet. The wild things were already creeping out of their burrows. A few birds were appearing. Of the billions of seeds and roots that had been blasted, a very few were sending forth little green shoots to try their luck in the world above them.

As Professor Benjamin wrote in his massive, twelvevolume history, long after: "The Zarles never took the time to learn what the earth and its living things had suffered. Life had always accepted the odds of a million to one— not happily but stoically. Now, with the odds altered by the Zarles to ten million to one, life gritted its teeth and hung

_«

AND LAST

after nightfall Red received a message from HQ. They went up and slid into the lock beneath the flagship.

Then, as before, they got into an elevator and were lifted to the inner levels of the ship.

After that, it was not as before. The emergency rooms and sick bays had overflowed. Patients were everywhere, swathed in bandages, attended by nurses, doctors, and recruits. Bottles of aerated soapy sprays were scattered about. The attendants used them. Patients who were the least damaged sprayed themselves. The floor, the ceiling, and the walls dripped with soap bubbles. A special kind of soap bubbles, Jeff thought, for some of these were thirty inches across.

They glittered and sparkled, broke loose from their moorings and sailed across the room. They broke with a dazzling glimmer and splashed into opal stars.

"Good work," the Chief told them. The left side of his face was badly burned and the doctors had amputated his ear. "We'd never have made it without you three. Never." Then he gave a pair of shiny medals to Red and Jeff. Red squirmed.

"Three-fourths of the crew ruined by radiation," the Chief explained. "We thought we had perfect insulation. After all that we saw, we found the Zarles to be tougher than we supposed. Benjamin thinks the soapy spray will work a cure."

And Professor Benjamin was there, smiling in his old timid way, and shaking their hands.

"So you're Kitten?" Benjamin said as he was being introduced. "My dear, when things are straightened out, I must ask you a thousand questions. I must."

Jeff's father and brother came in from another room. The older man was unhurt, but Jim Gambrell had one foot wrapped in bandages. He was leaning upon the shoulder of a red-haired girl in uniform who seemed to think he would fall apart at any minute.

"Hi, Jeff," said Jim. His smile was as warm as his handshake. "I got my foot burned manning one of those guns. There, at the last, you couldn't tell which way energy would flow. Half the time the guns were bucking back upon us. But I wouldn't have missed this for ten plantations. Til tell my grandchildren about this day—and they'll listen, or I'll whale the daylights out of 'em. And I'm going to have a hundred grandchildren, Jeff. Meet my wife, the former Miss

Ruby O'Leary.