Lura
Lura
Lura
"Did he lie?" she asked.
"He spoke the truth," the Elder said evenly.
Lura smiled then, and the warmth of her smile was like the soothing fingers of a Summer breeze stroking Trent's features.
"I am glad," she said simply. "One who faces a Master and his brok should be one of us." She beckoned to Korm. "You fought once; now meet as friends."
Korm grinned, held out his hand. "My sister told me of how you saved her; I am your friend." He tensed the muscles of his proud neck, winced instinctively. "Some time you must show me that fighting trick; never before have I been bested in battle."
"Any time," Kimball Trent said.
"Come," Valur said. "Light talk shall wait until later."
Kimball Trent turned to follow his guides, conscious of the slim girl at his side, wondering how any woman could be so fearlessly reliant and so feminine at the same time. He glanced at the blond giant, saw the knowing look that came to the grey eyes when they went from him to Lura, and hotness flooded upward from his throat.
He turned his attention to the Elder. "What first?" he asked. "My people," the Elder said simply.
Together, they began their tour.
IV
Three weeks had passed since Kimball Trent's arrival. At first, he had met doubt and suspicion from the inhabitants of the tunnels beneath the rubble of New York. His manner of speech was odd, as were his weapons, his clothing and his knowledge. But gradually, he had been accepted by the majority of those he had met through the Elder.
The dwellers of the underground caverns were a strange admixture of modern and primitive cultures. None but the Elder, the Reader and his acolytes could read or write. They knew nothing of the past except what the Reader gave to them from his books, or what the Singers gave to them in their songs of legend.
They had been cleaved into three classes: workers, warriors and growers, each with its distinct duties, each contributing to the welfare of the whole. The warriors were the hunters of wild game and the protectors of their homes; the workers kept everything used in as good repair as they were capable of doing, except upon the mechanical machines and contrivances of which they had no knowledge either inherited or acquired. The growers were the food gardeners and flock tenders, utilizing their skill in abandoned subway tubes where gardens grew fabulously beneath the radi-lights studding the walls, and where various food and milk animals and food fowls were kept in penned-in tunnels.
Over all were the Elder and his council of five. They ruled by election of the people, and so kindly and wise had been their rule that never had one been deposed except by death. They studied the old books, sent parties searching on great journeys in efforts to contact other groups of men and women hidden from the invaders. They made the laws that were needed, interpreted them, and meted out what punishment was necessary. Major crimes were unknown, for the knowledge had been bred into generation after generation that life could only be maintained by absolute dependence upon each other.
This was the society that Kimball Trent found beneath the earth, one that amazed and embittered him; for in his mind was the world that had been his, one of freedom of movement and thinking, with only the coming of the Gharrians to mar the peace that had seemed eternal.
He found a great admiration, too, for the people of the caverns. Never had he heard grumbling among them, always there had been soft laughter. And always had there been, deep beneath their mannerisms, that steel-like will that would never bow beneath the weird tyrants.
For the first week, he had done little more than meet the men and women and children, acquainting himself with their way of living, measuring them against his memories of those who had fought at his side five hundred years before. He had felt the bite of conscience, remembering the fortress that lay hidden but a few hours away from these tunnel homes; but he kept the knowledge to himself, not certain that these people were what they claimed to be in actuality.
In the second week, he began his repairing of the machines that lay abandoned where they had fallen into disuse. He grinned at the sounds of amazement made by Lura and Korm, his constant companions, as he replaced wiring and reset the atomic burners so that machines would work and run again. To him the repairing was as simple as the setting of a watch, for the machines had been almost indestructible and foolproof when they were built. They had needed but to have certain small parts replaced, and the atomic vibrators replenished with fuel; but to Lura and Korm the sudden working of machines discarded long before they were born was little short of miraculous.
Kimball Trent had explained as he repaired, showing the simplicity of every machine, indicating how many others could be repaired and maintained. Korm had grasped the knowledge with a natural skill, had elected himself to instruct others in the 'mechanic' art. Lura had been more slow, mechanics not her natural bent, but she retained what she learned, and demonstrated it on several occasions.
There had been other long hours, too, spent in talks with the Elder and the Council of Five. In them, he had told of the past, had explained the manner in which people lived, had told of the religions and the work and the miracles of machinery that made living comfortable and easy of accomplishment. He had used his smattering of several foreign languages to open dusty books to the inquiring mind of the Readers, had given knowledge that would raise the standard of living of the cavern dwellers.
In return, he had learned that colonies were scattered over the world, underground cities where tens of thousands of free men lived and died, waiting for the day when the Earth would be delivered of the monsters that held it in an iron grip of tyrannical mastery.
He had made his decision to disclose the location of the underground fortress, with its weapons and facilities for living in comfort. He knew now that these were his people, even though they had come five centuries after him. Within them burned the flame that motivated him, and he sensed that within them might lie the salvation of the world.
He was finishing the repairing of a water pump, when first he heard the excited voice of Korm calling from nearby. Straightening, wrench in hand, he waved an answer, waited until the blond giant had come to his side.
"Your guns, Trent," Korm said breathlessly. "We make a raid today."
"A raid? Where?"
"At the south of York. Spies have brought information that new prisoners have been brought to the encampment; they will be more than willing to escape. And perhaps others may come, too."
The thrill of the words swept through Kimball Trent's mind, surged hot blood into his temples. He dropped the wrench, caught up his guns from where they lay beside the pump.
"How many are going?" he asked.
"A few," Korm answered, setting the pace toward a small group waiting beside a tunnel mouth.
"Hurry," a voice called clearly.
"Lura!" Kimball Trent said. "Surely you're not letting her go along."
Korm frowned. "Of course," he said. "She is good with knife and spear; she has been on many raids."
"But she is a woman!"
Korm shrugged. "That is good; she will influence the female breeders to escape."
Then they were at the edge of the group, and Korm was introducing the five men and two women. Valur and Lura, Trent had already met. He shook hands with Frong, a jovial red-haired giant almost as huge as Korm. Neela, the second woman smiled shyly in greeting, clung hand to hand with her dark-skinned husband, Matt. Nels and Parb, the last two men, nodded silent greetings, their strong hands caressing the spears they carried.
They had discarded the tunnel-robes, were dressed now in chest harnesses hung with knives, and in brief leather skirts that came halfway down their thighs. Sandals protected their feet and ankles.
"Come," Korm said, led the way into the side tunnel.
They walked the length of the tunnel, entered a large mono-wheel car, Korm sending it speeding down the single track. The walls blurred from the speed, and conversation was impossible for the fifteen minutes of the ride.
This was the first time that Kimball Trent had travelled in this direction from the tunnel city. He prodded his memory, trying to recall details of the city, recognizing Grand Central Air Terminal, and farther on the tubes that had been used by ground traffic and the underground trains to reach New Jersey. But after that, he recognized no stations or details; evidently the tunnels had been built after he had been frozen in the fortress.
Korm touched studs on the control panel, brought the car to a sliding stop. "We go no farther by car," he said quietly. "Follow me, and be careful to make no sound; broks might be around."
He stepped to the small platform at the right of the car, gently eased open a small door, went through the black opening. Lura followed on his heels, and after her came Trent and the rest of the party.
They followed a dank sloping repair tunnel, slipping on the mossy damp flooring, going toward the faint glimmer of light a hundred feet ahead. Korm hissed for silence at the end, carefully parted the fringe of camouflaging bushes, searched the landscape for signs of hidden watchers. Satisfied, he slipped into the open, gave a helping hand to Lura. Within seconds, all stood within the cover of a thick growth of trees and bushes.
"This way," Korm whispered.
They squirmed through the brush, taking care to make no sound, keen eyes searching everywhere about. Kimball Trent felt the tension mounting unconsciously in his heart, felt the cold sheen of sweat on his body. He gripped the rifle with nervous hands, felt a bit of relief when Lura flashed him a brief warm smile. Somehow, they were very close at the moment.
"There!" Korm said at last, squatted behind a bush.
Kimball Trent saw the building first, towering like the round silo of a Midwestern farmer, slotted windows strips of black against the gleaming red surface of seamless plastic. His gaze drifted to the ground, and muscles bulged along his back.
There were people there, herded together in a great wire pen. There were men and women and children; and even from a distance, Trent could see the hate and fear and despair that tortured every face.
He scowled unbelievingly when he saw the guards. They were metal men, robots, stalking steady guard duty a few feet outside of the wire enclosure. They were weird caricatures of men, quartz eyes staring straight ahead, concussor boxes dangling from waist cords, tiny puffs of dust spurting with each step of their flat mechanical feet.
Kimball Trent shook his head. He had heard nothing of the robots, had never seen them when first he fought the Gharrians. Evidently they had been created after the world had been conquered. Now they walked in deadly silence, a menace against which an unarmed man would have no chance at all.
A man died, even as Trent watched. He cried his hate and raced toward the fence, leaping high so as to clamber over it with catlike speed and agility. Trent felt the unheard warning coming from his chest, stifled it, even as electricity crackled and writhed along the figure of the man and dropped him in a smouldering blackened heap onto the ground.
No sound came from the prisoners; they stared in dull hate, as the nearest robot ignored the crackling electricity and pulled the body below the lowest strand of wire. Dragging the corpse by the legs, the robot soullessly pulled it toward a shallow ditch, dumped it in, then again began its endless patrol.
"The inhuman beasts!" Lura cried softly, tears in her eyes.
A Gharrian came from the base of the tower, walking with its ponderous smoothness, the single eye glittering in the sunlight. There was something obscene and deadly about its deliberate stalking of the prisoners huddled within the enclosure.
Its long multi-fingered arms were like writhing tentacles, as it singled out a man and woman, capturing them before they could move. Three men hurled themselves at its broad back, beating insanely with their fists. A robot came rushing in, battered them free, then beat them into unconsciousness with mailed feet. The Gharrian turned, stalked toward the tower, dragging the man and woman with an unconscious incredible ease. It was like a blue monster from hell dragging two victims to some hideous sacrifice.
"Where?" Kimball Trent breathed.
Korm shrugged. "We're not certain," he said. "One escaped prisoner said that, in the tower, tests are made of their mentality and fertility." His great hands knotted about the heavy spear shaft. "Some day I shall enter that tower, and all hell shall not stop my destroying every Master therein!"
Then the passion was gone from his voice, and he was their leader again. "Matt, Nels, Parb," he ordered. "Go around to the other side and create a diversion. We shall tear down the fence from this side."
The three men nodded and were gone like drifting shadows. Korm opened the small bundle Frong, the red-haired giant, handed him, disclosing several plastic ropes, gang-hooks attached to one end of each. He distributed the ropes to Valur, Frong and himself. Trent watched intently, as they fitted the spears to the hooked end of the ropes.
"Is this your plan?" he asked quietly.
Korm nodded shortly, testing a knot with heavy fingers.
Kimball Trent lifted his rifle. "I can blow the fence to pieces with a couple of shots?" he said.
"No!" Lura laid a slim hand on the rifle barrel. "We want no more noise than necessary. They discovered us early the last time we raided, and loosed the broks. We lost more than half of our group."
Trent shrugged. "All right, then, what do I do?"
"Sit and watch," Korm said shortly. "Cover us with your weapons."
Then he and Frong were in the open, walking steadily down the gentle slope, ropes coiled in their left hands, the spears couched in their right. And even as they began their march, a yellow rope sailed out of the trees across the enclosure, settled about the neck of a robot, tightened with a whiplike snap. The robot spun halfway about, then toppled with a metallic clatter.
"Ready?" Lura whispered.
Neela nodded, dark eyes worried and intent as she watched her husband and two companions pulling with all their strength upon the far rope.
Four robots had whirled at the clattering, were speeding to the aid of their companion. Cable fingers caught at the black concussors at their waists, were lifting them for lethal shots.
"Now!" Korm's voice came winging back.
He and Frong threw with gigantic strength, the spears speeding aloft, hovering, dropping just past the coppery strands of electrified wire. Sparks danced a drunken saraband along the fence, grounded through the spears. Then the connecting ropes were pulling taut, the hooks catching firmly. The two giants braced heavy legs, muscles rippling, and swelling along massive shoulders. The ropes tightened, grew solid, and the fence began to lean toward them. Posts snapped with brittle reports—and then the fence was ruptured, broken wires leaping and sparking with white-hot violence.
"Ho, Barbs!" Korm bellowed. "Run for freedom. Dodge the wires and follow me."
Then the action was almost too swift to follow. The four robots turned as one, lifting their concussors to focus on the blond giant. Kimball Trent fired in one swift move, levering the rifle for explosive needles, the racking bellow of the concussions bounding through the churning air. One robot blew to pieces, and the explosion knocked down the second. The third fired, but the shot went wild, for a second rope whirled from nowhere, jerked him off balance. The shot exploded fifty feet over Trent's head, blasted him face down in the dirt.
He scrambled to his knees, fired at the fourth robot, blew it to pieces, then whirled to watch the enclosure again. He saw the two Gharrians standing in the doorway of the tower, blasted two shots their way, saw them rock from the explosions.
Men and women were running for the breach in the fence. Some died, touched by the vicious sparks that flicked from the whipping wires; others scrambled through to safety. They made no sound, but came in an instinctive rush, coming directly toward the great blond and red giants who had torn down the fence with insulated ropes of soft plastic.
"Good!" Neela said quietly, straightened to her full height.
"Broks!" Lura cried desperately, and terror was in the single word, a terror more horrible than the word could express.
They came gliding from a side door, one after the other, until fully a dozen stood before the tower. Then they turned and came in a murderous wave of death up the slope, going straight toward the rescuers, ignoring the escaping prisoners. Saliva dropped from gaping fangs, and their six legs threw them forward with an incredible speed. They mewled like gigantic cats, then hissed their hate.
Korm and Frong turned and ran before the group of prisoners, knives glittering in their hands as they watched the beasts come in a circling attack. There was no fear in their features, only a calm determination that didn't alter.
Kimball Trent came to his feet, braced heavy thigh muscles against the concussion shocks that were coming, then set the rifle for continuous fire. He swayed the muzzle like a fire hose, spraying death into the broks, blowing them to bloody scraps of bone and flesh, cursing, as some of them escaped the blasting fire.
The rifle clicked empty, and he caught at the flame gun. Korm and Frong were at his side then, knives bared, and he waved them on.
"Run, you fools," he snarled. "Get the prisoners to safety. I can kill them all with the flame gun."
He fired as he spoke, and the orange flames gushed in a hellish holocaust that roasted two of the fanged monsters to death in midleap. Three others whipped to one side, split forces, came whirling in from different directions.
The last of the prisoners were by him now, except for a few who had dropped from concussion shock. He tried to scream a warning at Lura, who had darted out and was helping a woman to her feet; but he had no time, for the three snake-scaled broks came snarling in.
Full power he had the gun, and full power he needed. The first brok charged directly into the flame, vanished in a greasy puff of smoke. The second was barely caught by the swinging flame, screamed in agony, bounded to safety. The third drove squarely in, evading the flame for a second, then died, the vortex of surging energy slashing away the forepart of its body with magical speed.
Kimball Trent whirled, sent a spear of flame after the fleeing brok, caught it a hundred yards away, dropped it in its tracks. Then, breathing deeply, sickened by the odor of burning flesh, he raced to aid Lura. She had half-lifted the woman to her feet, and he bent to lift her to his shoulders. It was then he saw the terror in Lura's violet eyes. He tried to whirl, managed only to get part of the way about.
He saw the single eye of the Gharrian, cursed himself for lulling himself into thinking that the alien monsters moved but slowly. He reached for his gun, knowing the weapon was useless, hoping only to give Lura a chance at escape.
Then the first arm of the Gharrian lashed out, coiled about him like an octopus tentacle, drew him close, and a second sledged with a brutal scientific precision. He felt the hurt spreading in a racing wave over his body, tried to fight away the blanket of darkness. He heard Lura's scream, saw dimly that the Gharrian had caught her with his other arms.
Then the blackness became opaque and he could see nothing. He felt a second blow, and he was sinking into a funnel of darkness that had no bottom. He heard a faint echo of Lura's scream; then he knew no more.
He was on a boat, water slapping his face each time the boat rocked in the troughs of the spilling waves. He tried to sit, but nausea cramped his belly, and he felt the blackness knotting his mind again. He heard his name called again and again, but he did not have the strength to answer.
Then the curtain began lifting from his memory, and thoughts came flooding to his mind. He blinked dazedly, focusing his eyes grimly, saw that Lura was bent over him, a wet cloth in her hand.
"Some fight!" he tried to joke, and the pain of his head took all of the jolliness from his tone.
"You'll be all right," Laura said.
He leaned back against the pressure of her arm, saw that he had been lying on a crude bunk against the wall of an unfurnished room. He swung his legs to the floor, braced his head with both hands, gently explored the swelling bruise-knots that marked his skull.
"Never again," he said grimly. "Next time, I run."
Lura smiled gamely, worry shadows fleeing back into the depths of her violet eyes. She brushed back a stray lock of red-gold hair from her cheek, allowed her gaze to wander about the room.
"The Master brought us here and left a metal man on guard. You have been unconscious for hours."
Kimball Trent came groggily to his feet, bracing himself with one hand on the wall. Then he circled the room, stopping at the slit window, trying to see into the velvet night, going on to peer through the barred grille in the door at the expressionless inhuman face of the robot that stood at motionless guard across the hallway. Farther down the hall, on either side, he could see more doors with grilled openings.
"Are we in the tower?" he asked.
"Yes," Lura answered from where she sat. "The Master brought us directly here."
"Did the others escape?"
"I do not know. I did not see them when we were brought in, and none have been brought here since." Her self control gave slightly. "Kim, what are we going to do?"
Kimball Trent grinned, forcing back the futility that beat at his thoughts. "We're going to get out of here, one way or the other," he said reassuringly.
"How?"
Trent shrugged, wished the ache in his head would stop bouncing about. "I don't know," he said equably. "But I've got a hunch we're in for a little quiz session with the Gharrians."
"Quiz session?"
"Sure. Questions and answers; they question and we answer."
Lura's face was white beneath her tan, but she smiled at Trent. "I hope they hurry with whatever they've got planned; I'm beginning to feel hungry."
They laughed then, laughed with the brightness and hope of youth, amused by the incongruity of worrying about a meal when their lives were probably forfeit for the events that had taken place. They laughed, and the robot moved to the grille, stared with blank telephotic eyes.
"Curious little devil, isn't he?" Trent said, walked toward the bunk.
He watched the grille for a moment, thoughts whirling in his mind, trying to form some plan of escape that could be based on the reactions of the robot to anything out of the ordinary that happened among the prisoners he was set to guard.
The minutes walked by on leaden feet, neither of them speaking, each intent on silent thoughts. There were no sounds, inside or out, and a chill came to the room from the night air.
Then there came the heavy sound of metallic footsteps from the corridor, echoed by the shuffling of bare feet. Hands fumbled at the door, and it swung open, an Earthman entering, the doorway blocked by a single robot.
"I've some questions to ask," the intruder said fearfully.
"Traitor!" Lura spat, turned to Trent. "He gave himself up to the Masters weeks ago, fleeing from a Connet colony he betrayed."
The man drew himself up, glancing at the robot at his back, then turning to face the prisoners. Fear was in his eyes, but brutality masked his face.
"I can order you killed," he said. "Don't drive me far." He glanced at the rifle and flame gun he carried. "Where did you get these weapons?" he asked Trent.
"Arethey weapons?" Kimball Trent asked mockingly.
"I don—the Master says they are."
"Then they can talk?" Incredulity was in Trent's voice. "I thought they had no speech."
"They do not speak, not the way we do; but they make themselves understood." Perspiration slid in greasy drops down the man's face. "Where did you get these weapons?" he asked again.
The robot came into the room, staring glassily, tentacular arms swaying gently at its sides. Lura stiffened, pressed closer to Trent. He grinned, nodded at the metal man.
"Your dog?" he asked.
"Dog?" the man said puzzledly, turned his head.
And Kimball Trent flowed into action, leaping with the grace and darting agility of a panther.
His left hand reached out, caught the arm of the man, and his right hand chopped down in a vicious rabbit punch at the base of the other's neck. Bones snapped from the brutal power, and the man went utterly limp.
The robot came driving forward with an incredible speed, tentacles of whipping steel lashing for Trent's throat. But even as the robot came swinging in, Trent whirled, spinning the rifle as a club, smashed the automaton squarely across the eyes.
Glass popped and shattered, tiny shards flying through the air. Light flared intensely white in each eye socket, then died to red and vanished into blackness.
Then the robot was but an eyeless machine methodically smashing its way about the room. It was a legged juggernaut, a ton of destruction that crushed the bunk to splinters with a double sweep of its heavy tentacles.
Trent bent low, avoiding death by a fraction of an inch, saw that Lura had flowed into action almost as quickly as he. She stood at the door now, flame gun in hand, waiting for him. He dodged to her side, caught the door, slammed it shut, then locked it with a turn of the switch.
He dropped the shattered rifle, caught the flame gun in his right hand. "This is it," he said briefly, led the way at a run down the corridor.
They ducked about the corner of the hall, heard the battering sounds disappearing behind. Their breaths were hot in their throats, and the utter soullessness of the tower was a dank mantle that shrouded them.
"Which way?" Lura said at the double door facing them at the end of the corridor.
"This," Trent said shortly, pushed through a swing door.
The second hall was lighted by radi-lights in ceiling brackets, and a current of air came strong against their faces from the far end. Light shone through the bottom crack of a doorway, and they went toward it on cat-feet, making no sound, stifling their very breathing for fear of discovery.
Strangely, there was no sound of alarm above, nor did they hear sounds of pursuit. They glanced instinctively at each other, then drifted forward, the single weapon their only defense against attack.
Kimball Trent almost smiled when he remembered the wish that had been Korm's that day. He would have given ten years of his life to exchange places with Lura and Trent, to have had this opportunity of wreaking his vengeance upon the Masters in their fortress.
Then the thought was gone, and they stood before the door of the room from which light came. Trent laid his finger across his lips, nodded for Lura to wait. She shook her head impatiently, started to speak.
It was the natural thing to do to keep her quiet. He bent his head to hers, and her lips were soft and sweet and fragrant against his mouth. He came close to her, savoring her warmth and pliancy, feeling the urge that lay in them both. Then he backed away, smiled from deep in his heart.
"Wait for me," he whispered, and was gone through the doorway.
His gun was out in front of him, finger trembling on the stud. He saw the Gharrian standing to one side, and hell raved from his flame pistol as he fired instinctively. The cone of ravening energy twisted its deadly way over the entire body—yet the alien monster made no move to flee or to attack.
Heat grew and built and swelled, drove him back a full step—and still the blue-grey monster made no move. Red rage pulsed in Trent's mind, and he whispered, "Damn! Damn! Damn!" over again as the last charge in the flame began to die away.
And at last, the gun empty and cooling in his hand, he stood facing the Gharrian, blinking against the heat, smelling the odor of charred plastic where the flame had touched the wall. Then he gasped, bent forward in excitement.
For the Gharrian had no head.
Kimball Trent took two cautious steps forward, standing on tiptoe, staring at the cavity where the eye-head had been. And what he saw chilled the blood in his body.
For the Gharrian was a robot, a tiny control board deep in the aperture, a curved hood dropping on hinges to the back.
Kimball Trent whirled then and began to stalk the room. He didn't know exactly what he sought, but there was a singing in his mind, and the knowledge he had just gained was the answer to many things that had never been solved.
He saw the flickering movement at the corner of the room, took two long strides that way, snatched with bare hands at the monstrosity that squirmed with miniature strength against the grip of his lean fingers.
He almost vomited at sight of the weird creature that fought to free itself. It was like a pink convoluted brain, with spider legs like wormy tentacles coiling and uncoiling in mad rage. Two tiny eyes glared lidlessly at Trent, and a hole like a sucker mouth gaped, showing blue toothless gums.
Trent increased the pressure of his fingers, and the tiny eyes popped in agony, the tentacles wrapping about his fingers, trying to pry them free. And in the midst of the struggle, a thought pried its way into Trent's consciousness.
"Do not slay me, Earthman. Let me live."
Kimball Trent went to the side table where small machines and tools were scattered haphazardly. He emptied out a deep plastic jar, set it upright, then dropped the pink monstrosity into its depths. His skin crawled, and he heard Lura's gasp, as the Gharrian righted itself, trying frantically to climb the glasslike walls of the prison.
"Laura, bolt the door," Trent said without turning his head, then spoke directly at the squirming blob of flesh. "Do you understand what I am saying?" he asked.
"Faintly," the answer came welling into his mind. "Our minds are not enough alike to catch all thoughts."
"So you are one of the Masters!" Trent sighed contemptuously, glancing at the monster robot that all Earth had thought to be a creature that lived.
"I am one," the Gharrian thought.
Lura came to Trent's side. "Put a cover on the jar," she said, shuddering, "and we shall take him along with us."
Mental laughter shook their minds, a dry ironical humor all the more terrible because there was no sound. They stared in horror at the brain-beast, while its thoughts raced through their consciousness.
"You cannot escape; all doors are guarded."
"Maybe!" Trent said aloud, lifting a sharp tool from the table, balancing it idly in one hand. Then he reached over, probed delicately at the scrambling pink beast in the jar, watched critically as green ichor oozed from a tiny cut the tool had inflicted.
"See us safely out, or you die," he said unemotionally.
The thought came hurtling back, utterly savage and unafraid. "Destroy me, and you surely die." There was an interval in which no message came. Then: "I shall bargain with you. Tell me where those ancient weapons were found, make yourself my prisoner, and the girl, as you call her, shall go free."
Trent carefully dropped the razor-sharp tool, heard the soundless shriek of agony that welled high as a tentacular leg was sheared completely away.
"I make no bargains," he said coldly.
He turned about, studying the single window that studded the far wall of the room, catching up several tools from the bench, he crossed the plastic floor, studied the incredibly hard plastic that served as a pane through which the outer world could be seen.
He searched for a catch, realized there would be none, for this was a ground floor, and the Gharrians would leave no openings through which an attack could be made. Calmly, he beat at the pane with his pistol butt, bruising his hand, making absolutely no impression.
"Will it break?" Lura called softly.
"No. But it may cut." Trent chose the sharpest of the tools, bore down with all his weight.
The squeal of metal on plastic keened high, setting his teeth on edge; and then the sound had passed too high for him to hear. He finished the stroke, bent close, then straightened in defeat. There was not the slightest of scratches on the plastic window.
"Kim!" Lura cried, and he raced to her side.
Even as he reached her, the Gharrian began to putrefy. It had died during the few moments Trent had tried to break the window; and its monstrosity of a body was already beginning to rot in upon itself like a blighted spider caught in a flame.
"Damn!" Trent swore softly. "I probably squeezed too hard. Come."
He led the way toward the door through which they had come, lifted the single bar. He smiled tiredly, gamely, was warmed by the unquenchable courage that flamed in her bearing.
"Ready?" he asked, threw open the door at her wordless nod.
Facing them from ten feet away, single eyes emotionlessly watching, were three of the robot-Gharrians.
VI
"Run!" Trent snapped, threw himself to one side, pausing for a fraction of a second to permit Lura to dart past him. Then, even before the Gharrians could move, they were darting through the side door, flung instantly open by Trent's driving hand.
He slammed the door, slammed the single bar shut, then whirled to follow the girl. A soundless gasp of incredible awe came from his throat, and he froze motionless.
Kimball Trent went dashing forward, smashed the single darting pink monstrosity, as it raced toward a robot, with his heel, then stopped, and watched the incredible thing that filled the entire center of the room.
It was like a monster fishbowl, great cables snaking to atomic motors that hummed with quiet power. Colors glowed and played and flickered in the greenish liquid that filled the bowl, and the liquid bubbled softly within itself.
But the things that brought the sickness to Trent's and Lura's hearts and minds were the things that bobbed in the liquid. They were brains, some large, some shrunken in upon themselves, each attached to fine wires that led to grids at the center of the bowl. Larger wires ran from the grids to the sides of the bowl, slipped through and dropped to small platforms upon which rested the spider monsters who ruled the world.
"Life eaters!" Trent whispered. "They live on the lives and brains of the people they kill."
He walked about the great bowl, watching the lights flicker behind the plastic wall, seeing the sluggish movements of the creatures who sucked the life forces from the liquid bubbling so gently. Then with a calm viciousness that surprised even himself, he methodically crushed each of the pinkish monsters to death.
And with the death of the last monster, the first of the Gharrians in the hall attacked the door. Great sledging blows smashed at the plastic, each blow driving bulges where no man could have scratched the surface.
Kimball Trent stared thoughtfully at the bulging panel, his mind working clearly for the first time in minutes. There was no fear in him now, no blazing hate, only the crystal brightness of logic in his mind. He looked about the room, then beckoned for Lura to come to his side. She came trustingly, staring into his eyes, and he knew then his future was yet to come.
He grinned, kissed her gently. "You will do as I say. Go to the Reader and tell him to read about sound waves. Tell him that the Gharrians can be killed with supersonic waves of sound; that that is theonlyway that they can be killed while in their armor. Do you understand?"
"I understand," Lura said quietly. "But I do not leave."
The door shattered inward, hanging on a single hinge, and through the opening came the invulnerable Gharrians, moving slowly toward the unarmed Earthman and girl.
Kimball Trent swung the girl behind him, retreated, wondering if the mad scheme he had would possibly work. And even as he thought, his hand reached out, ripped loose the cables from one of the motors that fed the current to the life-trap bowl.
He raced to the second, tore the cables free, winced, as the motor sang a shriller song, power mounting now that it no longer fed the bowl. He tore the third bunch of cables free, then shielded Lura with his body, as the motors began to race with incredible speed, their screams mounting higher and higher.
Still the Gharrians came forward, moving with an implacable deadliness that nothing could stop apparently, their concussors dangling from their waists. They would use their strength here, for concussion would wreck the life bowl, and they had no reason to fear the puny strengths of the couple they faced.
The screams of the motors were like knife blades now, biting into every nerve, wrenching agony from their brains. Trent and Lura gasped from the pain, pressed farther back around the great transparent bowl, striving desperately to evade that last moment when the Masters would reach them.
And then the shrill screams of the motor eased, were gone, vibrations scaling past the audible, going into a supersonic range that their ears could not catch.
The first Gharrian lifted a mailed arm—and died.
He died rather horribly, beating insanely at his companion and the plastic wall. Then he was dead, and was but a toppling metal hulk that smashed to the floor.
Almost in the same instant, the others died. They died as silently as they had lived, except for one simultaneous thought of agony that came clearly to the humans' minds.
Kimball Trent leaped past the bulk of the first slain Gharrian, closed the switches on the motors. Slowly they stopped, grew silent.
Without a word, Trent switched on the motors again, then raced at Lura's side from the room. Behind, the motors began their keening song again.
They found the outer door without trouble, guided by a supernal instinct that needed no voluntary thought. Trent threw the great bar and they raced outside, going toward the slope from which they had attacked the Gharrians hours before.
They heard Korm's great voice cry out, and relief gave strength to their flying legs. Then the blond giant was at their side, and behind him they saw the hundreds who had followed his leadership.
"Run!" Trent panted. "The tower will blow within seconds."
Then the motors exploded, lifting the tower in shattered fragments, blowing to dust the place that had been one of the Gharrians' strongholds. Flames leaped a mile into the air, fed by the ruptured atomic motors, spreading crimson light like the wave of a rock dropped into a still pond. The concussion passed, and all was still, the column of brilliance still leaping and pulsing into the night.
And watching the flame, his arm tight about the slender shoulders of Lura, was Kimball Trent, the man who had lived five hundred years to save his doomed world. He held her tightly, and the hope in his heart was a singing melody that crept into his mind, tangling his thoughts.
"Call the Elder," he said to grinning Korm. "I have a story to tell of a new home for all of us. And"—his voice grew strong, rang like that of a prophet—"of a weapon we can make that the Gharrians cannot fight."
Then he and Lura stood alone in a night that was a dream and they the dreamers. The first streamers of dawn were coming in the sky, foretelling of the new day that was coming to their world.
[Transcriber's Note: No section V heading in original text.]