Manning’s quarters were larger than most of the prefab structures in the new Earth town; the building was out near the end of one of the streets, a single-storied plastic-and-metal box on a quick-concrete slab base. Well, it was as well constructed as any of the buildings in the Edge planetfalls, Rynason reflected as he knocked on the door. And there was room for all of the survey team workers.
Manning himself let him in, grabbing his hand in a firm grip that nevertheless lacked the man’s usual heavy joviality. “Come on in; the others are already here,” Manning said, and walked ahead of him into the larger of the two rooms inside. His step was brisk as always, but there was a touch of real hurry in it which Rynason noticed immediately. Manning was worried about something.
“All right; we’re all set,” Manning said, leaning against a wall at the front of the room. Rynason found a seat on the arm of a chair next to Mara and Marc Stoworth, a slightly heavy, blond-haired man in his thirties who wore his hair cut short on the sides but long in back. He looked like every one of the young corporation executives Rynason had seen in the outworlds, and probably would have gone into that kind of position if he’d had the connections. He certainly seemed out of place even among the varied assortment of types who worked the archaeological and geological surveys … but these surveys were conducted by the big corporations who were interested in developing the outworlds; probably Stoworth hoped eventually to move up into the lower management offices when the corporations moved in.
“Gentlemen, there’s something very wrong about these dumb horses we’ve been dealing with,” Manning said. “I’m going to throw out a few facts at you and see if you don’t come to the same conclusions that Larsborg and I did.”
Rynason leaned over to Mara and murmured, “What’s his problem today?”
But she was frowning. “He’s got a real one. Listen.”
Manning had picked up a sheaf of typescript from the table next to him and was flipping through it, his lips pursed grimly. “This is the report I got yesterday from Larsborg here—architecture and various other artifacts. It’s very interesting. Herb, throw that first photo onto the screen.”
The lights went off and the screen in the wall beside Manning lit up with a reproduction of one of the Hirlaji structures out on the Flat. It stood in the shadow of an overhanging rock-cliff, protected from the planet’s heavy winds on three sides. Larsborg had apparently set up lights for a clearer picture; the whole building stood out sharply against the shadows of the background.
“This look familiar to any of you?” Manning said quietly.
For a moment Rynason continued to stare uncomprehending at the picture. He had seen a lot of the Hirlaji buildings since they’d landed; this one was better preserved but not essentially different in design. Larsborg had cleared away most of the dirt and sand which had been packed up against its sides, exposing the full height of the structure, and he’d apparently sand-blasted the carved designs over the entrance, but….
Then he realized what he was seeing. The angle of the photo was a bit different than that from which he’d seen the other structure back on Tentar XI, but the similarity was unmistakable. This was a reproduction in stone of that same building, the one they’d reconstructed two years before.
He heard a wave of voices growing around the room, and Manning’s voice cut-through it with: “That’s right, gentlemen: it’s an Outsiders building. It’s not in that crazy, damned metal or alloy or whatever it was that they used, but it’s the same design. Take a good long look at it before we go on to the next photo.”
Rynason looked … closely. Yes, it was the same design a bit cruder, and the carvings weren’t the same, but the lines of the doorway and the cornice….
The next picture flashed onto the screen. It was a closeup of the designs over the entrance, shot in sharp relief so that they stood out starkly. The room was so quiet that Rynason could hear the hum behind the screen in the wall.
“That’s Outsiders stuff too,” said Breune. “It’s not quite the same, though … distorted.”
“It’s carved in stone, not stamped in metal,” Manning said. “It’s the same thing, all right. Anybody disagree?”
No one did.
“All right, then; let’s have the lights back up again.”
The lights came on and once more there was a murmur of talking around the room. Rynason shifted his position on the seat and tried to catch the thought that had slipped through his mind just before the screen had faded. There was another similarity…. Well, he’d seen a lot of the Outsider buildings in the past few years; it wasn’t necessary to trace all the evidences right now.
“What I want to know is, why didn’t any of the rest of you see this?” said Manning angrily. “Have you all got plastic for brains? Over a dozen men spend weeks researching these damn horsefaces, and only one of you has the sense to see the evidence of his own eyes!”
“Maybe we should turn in our spades,” said Stoworth.
Manning glared at him. “Maybe you should, if you think this isn’t serious. Let’s get this clear: these old horsefaces that so many of you think are just as quaint as can be have been building in exactly the same style as the Outsiders. Quaint, are they? Harmless too, I suppose!”
He stood with his hands on his hips, dropped his head and took a long, deep breath. When he looked up again his forehead was furrowed into an intense frown. “Gentlemen … as I call you from force of habit … we’ve been finding dead cities of the Outsiders for centuries. They were all over God knows how many galaxies before your ancestors or mine had stopped playing with their tails; as far as we can tell they had a civilization as tightly-knit as our own, and probably stronger. And sometime about forty thousand years ago they started pulling out. They left absolutely nothing behind but empty buildings and a few crumbling bits of machinery. And we’ve been following those remains ever since we got out of our own star-system.
“Well, we just may have found them at last. Right here, on Hirlaj. Now what do you think of that?”
No one said anything for a minute. Rynason looked down at Mara, caught her smile, and stood up.
“I don’t think the Hirlaji are the Outsiders,” he said calmly.
Manning shot a sharp glance at him. “You saw the photos.”
“Yes, I saw them. That’s Outsiders work, all right, or something a lot like it. But it doesn’t necessarily prove that these … how many of them are there? Twenty-five? I don’t think these creatures are the Outsiders. We’ve traced their history back practically to the point of complete barbarism. Their culture was never once high enough to get them off this planet, let alone to let them spread all over among the stars.”
Manning waited for him to finish, then he turned back to the rest of the men in the room and spread his hands. “Now that, gentlemen, just shows how much we’ve found out so far.” He looked over at Rynason again. “Has it occurred to you, Lee, that if these horsesarethe Outsiders, that maybe they know a little more than we do? I suppose you’re going to say you had a telepathic hookup with one of them and you didn’t see a thing to make you suspicious … but just remember that they’ve been using telepathy for several thousand years and that you hardly know what you’re doing when you try it.
“Look, I don’t trust them—if they’re the Outsiders they’ve got maybe a hundred thousand years head-start on us scientifically. There may be only a couple dozen of them, but we don’t know how strong they are.”
“That’s if they’re really the Outsiders,” said Rynason.
Manning nodded his head impatiently. “Yes, that’s what I’m saying. If they’re the Outsiders, which looks like a sensible conclusion. Or do you have a better one?”
“Well, I don’t know if it’s better,” said Rynason. “It may not even be as attractive, for that matter. But have you considered that maybe when the Outsiders pulled out of our area they simply moved on elsewhere? We’re so used to seeing dead cities that we think automatically that the Outsiders must be dead too, which I suppose is what’s bothering you about finding the Hirlaji here alive. But it might be worse. That whole empire could simply have moved on to this area; we could be on the edge of it right now, ready to run head-on into a hundred star systems just crowded with the Outsiders.”
Manning stared at him, and the expression on his face was not quite anger. Something like it, but not anger.
“The ruins we’ve found here were built by the Hirlaji,” Rynason said. “I saw them building when I was linked with Horng, and these are the same structures. But the design was copied from older buildings, and I don’t know how far back I’d have to search the memories before I found where they originally got that kind of approach to design. Maybe back before they developed telepathy. But this race simply isn’t as old as the Outsiders; they came out of barbarism thousands of years after the Outsiders had left those dead cities we’ve been finding. The chances are that if the Hirlaji were influenced by the Outsiders it was sometime around thirty thousand years ago … which means the Outsiders came this way when they left those cities. That would mean that we’re following them … and we might catch up at any time.”
He stopped for a moment, then said, “We’re moving faster than they were, and we have no idea where they may have settled again. One more starfall further beyond the Edge, and we may run into one of their present outposts. But this isn’t it. Not yet.”
Manning was still staring at Rynason, but it was a curious stare. “You’re pretty sure that what you’ve been getting out of that horseface’s head is real?” he asked levelly. “You trust them?”
Rynason nodded. “Horng was really afraid; that was real. I felt it myself. And the rest of it was real, too—I could see the whole racial memory there, and nobody could have been making that up. If you’d experienced that…”
“Well, I didn’t,” Manning said shortly. “And I don’t think I trust them.” He paused, and after a moment frowned. “But this direct linkage business does seem to be the best way we have of checking on them. I want you to get busy, Lee, and go after that horse’s thoughts for us. Don’t let him drive you out again; if he’s hiding something, get in there and see what it is. Above all, don’t trust him.
“If these things are the Outsiders, they could be bluffing us.”
Manning stopped talking, and thought a minute. He looked up under raised eyebrows at Rynason. “And be careful, Lee. I’m counting on you.”
Rynason ignored his paternal gaze, and turned instead to Mara. “We’ll try it again tomorrow,” he said. “Get in a requisition for a telepather this afternoon; make sure we’ll have one ready to go first thing in the morning. I’ll check back with you about an hour after we leave here today.”
She looked up at him, surprised. “Check back? Why?”
“I put in a requisition myself, yesterday. Wine from Cluster II, vintage ’86. I was hoping for some company.”
She smiled. “All right.”
Manning was ending the session. “…Carl, be sure to get those studies of the Outsiders artifacts together for me by tonight. And I’m going to hand back your reports to each of the rest of you; go through them and watch for those inconsistencies you skipped over the first time. We may be able to turn up something else that doesn’t check out. Go over themcarefully—all the reports were sloppy jobs. You’re all trying to work too fast.”
Rynason rose with the rest of them, grinning as he remembered how Manning had rushed those reports. Well, that was one of the privileges of authority: delegating fault. He started for the door.
“Lee! Hold it a minute; I want to talk to you, alone.”
Rynason sat, and when all the others had gone Manning came back and sat down opposite him. He slowly took out a cigaret and lit it.
“My last pack till the next spacer makes touchdown,” he said. “Sorry I can’t offer you one, but I’m a fiend for the things. I know they’re supposed to be non-habit-forming these days, but I’m a man of many vices.”
Rynason shrugged, waiting for him to come to the point.
“I guess it makes me a bit more open-minded about what the members of my staff do,” Manning went on. “You know—why should I crack down on drinking or smoking, for instance, when I do it myself?”
“I’m glad you see it that way,” Rynason said drily. “Why did you want me to stay?”
Manning exhaled a long plume of smoke slowly, watching it through narrowed eyes. “Well, even though I’m pretty easy going about things, I do try to keep an eye on you. When you come right down to it, I’m responsible for every man who’s with me out here.” He stopped, and laughed shortly. “Not that I’m as altruistic as that sounds, of course—you know me, Lee. But when you’re in a position of authority you have to face the responsibilities. You understand me?”
“You have to protect your own reputation back at Cluster headquarters,” Rynason said.
“Well, yes. Of course, you get into a pattern of thinking eventually … sort of a fatherly feeling, I suppose, though I’ve never even been on the parentage rolls back on the in-worlds. But I mean it—it happens, I get that feeling. And I’m getting a bit worried about you, Lee.”
Rynason could see what was coming now. He sat further back into the chair and said, “Why?”
Manning frowned with concern. “I’ve been noticing you with Mara lately. You seem pretty interested in her.”
“Is she one of those vices you were telling me about, Manning?” said Rynason quietly. “You want to warn me to stay away from her?”
Manning shook his head, a quick gesture dismissing the idea. “No, Lee, not at all. She’s not that kind of a woman. And that’s my point. I can see how you look at her, and you’re on the wrong track. When you’re out here on the Edge, you don’t want a wife.”
“What I need is some good healthy vice, is that what you mean?”
Manning sat forward. “That puts it pretty clearly. Yeah, that’s about it. Lee, you’re building up some strong tensions on this job, and don’t think I’m not aware of it. Telepathing with that horseface is getting rough, judging from what you’ve told me. I think you should go get good and drunk and kick up hell tonight. And take one of the town women; they’re always available. Do you good, I mean it.”
Rynason stood up. “Maybe tomorrow night,” he said. “Tonight I’m busy. With Mara.” He turned and walked toward the door.
“I’d suggest you get busy with someone else,” Manning said quietly behind him. “I’m really telling you this for your own good, believe it or not.”
Rynason turned at the door and regarded the man coldly. “She’s not interested in you, Manning,” he said. He went out and shut the door calmly behind him.
Manning could be irritating with his conceited posing, but his veiled threats didn’t bother Rynason. In any case, he had something else on his mind just now. He had finally remembered what it had been about the carvings over the Hirlaji building in the photo that had touched a memory within him: there was a strong similarity to the carvings that he had seen, through Tebron’s eyes, outside the Temple of Kor. The symbols of Kor, Tebron had called them … copied from the works of the Old Ones.
The Outsiders?
They had some trouble getting cooperation from Horng on any further mind-probing. The Hirlaji lived among some of the ruins out on the Flat, where the winds threw dust and sand against the weathered stone walls, leaving them worn smooth and rounded. The aliens kept these buildings in some state of repair, and there was a communal garden of the planet’s dark, fungoid plant life. As Rynason and Mara strode between the massive buildings they passed several of the huge creatures; one or two of them turned and regarded the couple with dull eyes, and went on slowly through the grey shadows.
They found Horng sitting motionlessly at the edge of the cluster of buildings, gazing out over the Flat toward the low hills which stood black against the deep blue of the horizon sky. Rynason lowered the telepather from his shoulder and approached him.
The alien made no motion of protest when Rynason hooked up the interpreter, but when the Earthman raised the mike to speak, Horng’s dry voice spoke in the silence of the thin air and the machine’s stylus traced out, THERE IS NO PURPOSE.
Rynason paused a moment, then said, “We’re almost finished with our reports. We should finish today.”
THERE IS NO PURPOSE MEANING QUEST.
“No purpose to the report?” Rynason said after a moment. “It’s important to us, and we’re almost finished. There would be even less purpose in stopping now, when so much has been done.”
Horng’s large, leathery head turned toward him and Rynason felt the ancient creature’s heavy gaze on him like a shadow.
WE ARE ACCUSTOMED TO THAT.
“We don’t think alike,” Rynason said to him. “To me there is a purpose. Will you help me once more?”
There was no answer from the alien, only a slow nodding of his head to one side, which Rynason took for assent. He motioned Mara to set up the telepather.
After their last experience Rynason could understand the creature’s reluctance to continue. Perhaps even his statement that there was no purpose to the Earthmen’s researches made sense—for could the codification of the history of a dying race mean much to its last members? Probably they didn’t care; they walked slowly through the ruins of their world and felt all around them fading, and the jumbled past in their minds must be only one more thing that was to disappear.
And Rynason had not forgotten the terrified waves of hatred which had blasted at him in Horng’s mind—nor had Horng, he was sure.
Mara connected the leads of the telepather while the alien sat motionlessly, his dark eyes only occasionally watching either of them. When she was finished Rynason nodded for her to activate the linkage.
Then there was the rush of Horng’s mind upon his, the dim thought-streams growing closer, the greyed images becoming sharper and washing over him, and in a moment he felt his own thoughts merge with them, felt the totality of his own consciousness blend with that of Horng. They were together; they were almost one mind.
And in Horng he heard the whisper of distrust, of fear, and the echoes of that hatred which had struck at him once before. But they were in the background; all around him here on the surface was a pervading feeling of … uselessness, resignation, almost of unreality. The calm which he had noted before in Horng had been shaken and turned, and in its place was this fog of hopelessness.
Tentatively, Rynason reached for the racial memories in that grey mind, feeling Horng’s own consciousness heavy beside him. He found them, layers of thoughts of unknown aliens still alive here, the pictures and sounds of thousands of years past. He probed among them, looking again for the memories of Tebron … and found what he was searching for.
He was Tebron, marching across that vast Flat which he had seen before, the winds alive around him among the shuffling feet of his army. He felt the muscles of his massive legs tight with weariness, and tasted the dryness of the air as he drew in long gasps. He was still hours from the City, but they would rest before dawn….
Rynason turned among those memories, moving forward in them, and was aware of Horng watching him. There was still the wariness in his mind, and a stir of anxiety, but it was blanketed by the tired hopelessness he had seen. He reached further in the memories, and….
The temple-guard fell in the shadows, and one of his own warriors stepped forward to retrieve his weapon. The remains of the guard’s body rolled down three, four, five of the steps of the Temple, and stopped. His eyes lingered on that body for only a moment, and then he turned and went up to the entrance.
There was a moaning of pain, or of fright, rising somewhere in his head; he was only partly aware of it. He walked into the shadows of the doorway and paused. But only for a moment: there was no movement inside, and he stepped forward, down one step into the interior.
Screams echoed through the halls and corridors of the Temple—high and piercing, growing in volume as they echoed, buffeting him almost into unconsciousness. He knew they were from Horng, but he fought them, watching his own steps across the dark inner room. He was Tebron Marl, king priest ruler of all Hirlaj, in the Temple of Kor, and he could feel the stone solid beneath his feet. Sweat broke out on his back—his own, or Tebron’s? But hewasTebron, and he fought the blast of fear in his mind as though it were a battle for his very identity. HewasTebron.
The screaming faded, and he stood in silence before the Altar of Kor.
So this is the source, he thought. For how many days had he fought toward this? It was useless to remember; the muscles of his body were remembrance enough, and the scar-tissue that hindered the movement of one shoulder. If he remembered those battles he would again hear the fading echoes of enemy minds dying within his, and he had had enough of that. This was the goal, and it was his; perhaps there need be no more such killing.
He opened his mouth and spoke the words which he had learned so many years before, during his apprenticeship in the Region of Mines. The rituals of the Temple were always conducted in the ancient spoken language; Kor demanded it, and only the priest-caste knew these words, for they were so old that their form had changed almost completely even by the time his people had developed telepathy and discarded speech; they were not communicated to the rest of the people.
“I am Tebron Marl, king priest leader of all Hirlaj. I await your orders guidance.”
He knelt, according to ritual, and gazed up at the altar. The Eye of Kor blinked there, a small circle of light in the dark room. The altar was simple but massive; its heavy columns, built upon the traditional lines, supported the weight of the Eye. He watched its slow waxing and waning, and waited; within him, Rynason’s mind stirred.
And Kor spoke.
Remain motionless. Do not go forward.
He felt a child as a wave of sensitivity spread through all of his skin and his organs sped for a moment. Then it was true: in the Temple of Kor, the god leader really did speak.
“I await further words.”
The Eye held his gaze almost hypnotically in the dimness. The voice sounded in the huge arched room.The sciences quests of your race lead you to extinction. The knowledge words offered to me by your priests make it clear that within a hundred years your race will leave its planet. You must not go forward, for that way lies the extermination of all your race.
His mind swam; this was not what he had expected. The god leader Kor had always aided his people in their sciences; in the knowledge word offerings they reported to the Eye the results of their studies, and often, if asked properly, the god leader would clarify uncertainties which they faced. But now he ordered an ending to research quests. This was unthinkable! Knowledge was godhood; godhood was knowledge, of the essence; the essence was knowing understanding. To him, to his people, it was a unity—and now that unity repudiated itself. Faintly in the darkness somewhere he again heard screaming.
“Are we to abandon all progress? Are the stars so dangerous?”
The concept wish of progress must die within your people. There must be no purpose in any field of knowledge. You must remain motionless, consolidate what you have, and live in peace.The Eye in the dimness seemed larger and brighter the longer he looked at it; all else in the echoing room was darkness.The stars are not dangerous, but there is a race which rises with you, and it rises more rapidly. Should you expand into the stars you will only meet that race sooner, and they will be stronger. They are more warlike than your people; already you are capable of peace, and that must be your aim. Remain on your world; consolidate; cultivate the fruits of your civilization as it is, but do not go forward. In that way, you will have five thousand years before that race finds you, and if you are no threat to them they will not destroy you.
He felt a rising anger in him as the god leader’s words came to him in the dark room, and a fear that lay deeper. He was a warrior, and a quester … how could he give up all such pursuits, and how could he be expected to force all his people to do the same? There would be no hope wish of advance, no curiosity … no purpose.
“Is this other race so much more advanced than we are?” he asked.
He heard a low humming from the altar and the Eye grew brighter again.They are not so much ahead of you now … but they are more warlike, and will therefore develop more quickly. In both your races, war is a quest which you use as a release for what is in you. Your sciences questings and your wars are the same thing … you must suppress both. They are discontentment, and you will find that only in peace, if at all.
He dipped his head to one side, a gesture of acquiescence or agreement. He couldn’t argue with the god leader Kor, and he had been wrong even to think of it.
“How am I to suppress the race? Is it possible to convince each of them of the necessity for abandoning forgetting all questing?”
The Eye hummed, and grew brighter against the darkness of the carved wall behind it, but it was some time before Kor spoke again.It would be impossible to convince every one. The reasons must be kept from them, and kept from the shared memories; you must not communicate my knowledge words in any way. Consolidate your power, force peace upon them and lead them into acceptance. The knowledge questing can be made to die within them. Remember that there will be no purpose … in that they must find contentment.
The king priest leader of all Hirlaj waited a moment, and was ready to rise and leave when the Eye spoke again.
You must abolish the priesthood. The knowledge which I have given to you must die when you die.
He waited for a long time in the dim, suddenly cold hall for the god leader to speak again, then slowly rose and walked to the door, the image of the Eye of Kor still bright in his vision. He stopped outside the doorway, hearing the soft wind of the city flowing slowly past the stone archway above him. One of his guards reached out and touched his mind tentatively, but he blocked his thoughts and strode heavily down the steps past them.
The sound of the wind above him rose to a screaming, and suddenly it was as though he were tumbling down the entire length of the stairway, fragments of sky and stone and faces flashing past in a kaleidoscope, and the screaming all around him. He almost reached for his bludgeon, but then he realized that he was not Tebron Marl … he was Lee Rynason, and the screaming was Horng and he was being driven out of those thoughts, tumbling through a thousand memories so fast he could not grasp any one of them.
He withdrew from Horng’s mind as though from a nightmare; he became aware of his own body, lying in the dust of Hirlaj, and he opened his eyes and motioned weakly to Mara to break the connection.
When she had done so he slowly sat up and shook his head, waiting for it to clear. For awhile he had been an ancient king of Hirlaj, and it took some time to return to the present, to his own consciousness. He was dimly aware of Mara kneeling beside him, but he couldn’t make out her words at first.
“Are you all right? Are you sure? Look up at me, Lee, please.”
He found himself nodding to reassure her, and then he saw the expression on her face and felt the last wisps of alien fog clearing from his mind. There were tears in her eyes, and he touched the side of her face with his hand and said, “I’m all right. But why don’t you kiss me or something?”
She did, but before Rynason could really immerse himself in it she broke away and said, “You must have had a bad time with him! It was as though you were dead.”
He grinned a trifle sheepishly and said, “Well, it was engrossing. You’d better unhook the beast; he had a bad time of it too.”
Mara rose and removed the wires from Horng gingerly. Rynason remained sitting; some of the meaning of what he had just experienced was coming to him now. It certainly explained why the Hirlaji had suddenly passed from their war era into lasting peace, and why the memories had been blocked. But could he credit those memories of a voice of an alien god?
And sitting in the dust at the edge of the vast Hirlaj plain the full realization came to him, as it could not when he had been Tebron. Not only the Temple, but the Altar of Kor itself had been unmistakably the workmanship of the Outsiders.
They left Horng sitting dully at the edge of the Flat and retraced their steps through the Hirlaji ruins, still drawing no notice from the aliens. Rynason had been in some of the small planetfall towns where settlements had been established only to be abandoned by the main flow of interstellar traffic … those backwater areas where contact with the parent civilization was so slight that an entirely local culture had developed, almost as different from that of the mainstream Terran colonies as was this last vestige of the Hirlaji civilization. And in some of those areas interest in Earth was so slight that the offworlders were ignored, as the Earthmen were here … but he had never felt the total lack of attention that was here. It was not as though the Hirlaji had seen the Earthmen and grown used to them; Rynason had the feeling that to the Hirlaji the Earthmen were no more important than the winds or the dust beneath their feet.
As they passed through the settled portion of the ruins Rynason had to step around a Hirlaji who crossed his path. He walked silently past, his eyes not even flickering toward the Earthlings. Crazy grey hidepiles, Rynason thought, and he and Mara hurried out across the Flat toward the nearby Earth town.
On the outskirts of the town, where the packed-dirt streets faded into loose dust and garbage was already piled several feet high, they were met by Rene Malhomme. He sat long-legged with his back leaning against a weathered stone outcropping. He seemed old already, though he was not yet fifty; his windblown hair was almost the color of the surrounding grey dust and rock—perhaps because it was filled with that dust, Rynason thought. He stopped and looked down at the worn, tired man whose eyes belied that weariness.
“And have you communicated with God, Lee Rynason?” Malhomme asked with his rumbling, sardonic voice.
Rynason met his gaze, wondering what he wanted. He lowered the telepather pack from his shoulder and set it in the dust. Mara sat on a low rock beside him.
“Will an alien god do?” Rynason said.
Malhomme’s eyes rested on the telepather for a moment. “You spoke with Kor?” he asked.
Rynason nodded slowly. “I made a linkage with one of the Hirlaji, and tapped the race-memory. I suppose you could say I spoke with Kor.”
“You have touched the alien godhead,” Malhomme mused. “Then it’s real? Their god is real?”
“No,” said Rynason. “Kor is a machine.”
Malhomme’s head jerked up. “A machine?Deus ex machina, to quote an ancient curse. We make our own machines, and make gods of them.” The tired lines of his face relaxed. “Well, that’s a bit better. The gods remain a myth, and it’s better that way.”
Rynason stood over him on the windy Flat, still puzzled by his manner. He glanced at Mara, but she too was watching Malhomme, waiting for him to speak again.
Suddenly, Malhomme laughed, a dry laugh which almost rasped in his throat. “Lee Rynason, I have called men to God for so long that I almost began to believe it myself. And when the men started talking about the god of these aliens….” He shook his head, the spent laughter still drawing his mouth back into a grin. “Well, I’m glad it isn’t true. Religion wouldn’t be worth a damn if it were true.”
“How did the men find out about Kor?” Rynason asked.
Malhomme spread his hands. “Manning has been talking, as usual. He ridicules the Hirlaji, and their god. And at the same time he says they are a menace.”
“Why? Is he still trying to work the townsmen up against them?”
“Of course. Manning wants all the power he can get. If it means sacrificing the Hirlaji, he’ll do it.” Malhomme stood up, stretching himself. “He says they may be the Outsiders, and he’s stirring up all the fear he can. He’ll grab any excuse, no matter how impossible.”
“It’s not so impossible,” Rynason said. “Kor is an Outsiders machine.”
Malhomme stared at him. “You’re sure of that?”
He nodded. “There’s no doubt of it—I saw it from three feet away.” He told Malhomme of his linkage with Horng, the contact with the memories, the mind, Tebron, and of the interview with the machine that was Kor. Malhomme listened with fascination, his shaggy head tilted to one side, occasionally throwing in a comment or a question.
As he finished, Rynason said, “That race that Kor warned them about sounds remarkably like us. A warlike race that would crush them if they left the planet. We haven’t found any other intelligent life … just the Hirlaji, and us.”
“And the Outsiders,” said Malhomme.
“No. This was a race which was still growing from barbarism, at about the same level as the Hirlaji themselves. Remember, the Outsiders had already spread through a thousand star-systems long before this. No, we’re the race they were warned against.”
“What about the weapons?” Malhomme said. “Disintegrators. We haven’t got anything that powerful that a man can carry in his hand. And yet the Hirlaji had them thousands of years ago.”
“Yes, but for some reason they couldn’t duplicate them. It doesn’t make sense: those weapons were apparently beyond the technological level of the Hirlaji, but they had them.”
“Perhaps your alienswerethe Outsiders,” Malhomme said. “Perhaps we see around us the remnants of a great race fallen.”
Rynason shook his head.
“But they must have had some contact with the Outsiders,” Mara said. “Sometime even before Tebron’s lifetime. The Outsiders could have left the disintegrators, and the machine that they thought was a god….”
“That’s just speculation,” Rynason said. “Tebron himself didn’t really know where they’d come from; they’d been passed down through the priesthood for a long time, and within the priesthood they did have some secrets. I suppose if I could search the race-memory long enough I might find another nice big block there hiding that secret. But it’s difficult.”
“And you may not have time,” Malhomme said. “When Manning hears that the Altar of Kor was an Outsiders machine, there’ll be no way left to stop him from slaughtering the Hirlaji.”
“I’m not sure there’ll be any real trouble,” Rynason said.
Malhomme’s lips drew back into the deep lines of his face. “There is always trouble. Always. Whoever or whatever spoke through the machine knew that much about us. The only way you could stop it, Lee, would be to hold back this information from Manning. And to do that, you would have to be sure, yourself, that there is no danger from the Hirlaji. You’re in the key position, right now.”
Rynason frowned. He knew Malhomme was right—it would be difficult to stop Manning if what he’d said about the man’s push for power was true. But could he be sure that the Hirlaji were as harmless as they seemed? He remembered the reassuring touch of Horng’s mind upon his own, the calmness he found in it, and the resignation … but he also remembered the fear, and the screaming, and the hot rush of anger that had touched him.
In the silence on the edge of the Flat, Mara spoke. “Lee, I think you should report it all to Manning.”
“Why?”
Her face was clouded. “I’m not sure. But … when I disconnected the wires of the telepather, Horng looked at me…. Have you ever looked into his eyes, up close? It’s frightening: it makes you remember how old they are, and how strong. Lee, that creature has muscles in his face as strong as most men’s arms!”
“He just looked at you?” said Rynason. “Nothing else?”
“That’s all. But those eyes … they were so deep, and so full. You don’t usually notice them, because they’re set so deeply in the shadows of his face, but his eyes arelarge.” She stopped, and shook her head in confusion. “I can’t really explain it. When I moved around him to the other side, I could see his eyes following me. He didn’t move, otherwise—it was as though only his eyes were alive. But they frightened me. There was much more in them than just … not seeing, or not caring. His eyes were alive.”
“That’s not much evidence to make you think the Hirlaji are dangerous.”
“Oh, I don’tknowif they could be dangerous. But they’re not just … passive. They’re not vegetables. Not with those eyes.”
“All right,” Rynason said. “I’ll give Manning a full report, and we’ll put it in his hands.”
He picked up the telepather pack and slung it over his shoulder. Mara stood up, shaking away the dust which had blown against her feet.
“What will you do,” Malhomme asked, “if Manning decides that’s enough cause to kill the Hirlaji?”
“I’ll stop him,” Rynason said. “He’s not in control here, yet.”
Malhomme flashed his sardonic smile again. “Perhaps not … but if you need help, call to God. The books say nothing about alien races, but surely these must be God’s creatures too. And I’m always ready to break a few heads, if it will help.” He turned and spat into the dust. “Or even just for the hell of it,” he said.
Rynason found Manning that same afternoon, going over reports in his quarters. As soon as he began his description of the orders given to Tebron he found that Malhomme’s warnings had been correct.
“What did this machine say about us?” Manning asked sharply. “Why were the Hirlaji supposed to stay away from us?”
“Because we’re a warlike race. The idea was that if the Hirlaji stayed out of space they’d have about five thousand years before we found them.”
“How long ago was all this? I had your report here….”
“At least eight thousand years,” Rynason said. “They overestimated us.”
Manning stood up, scowling. There were heavy lines around his eyes and he hadn’t trimmed his thin beard. Whatever he was working on, Rynason thought, he was putting a lot of effort into it.
“This doesn’t make sense, Lee. Damn it, since when do machines make guesses? Wrong ones, at that?”
Rynason shrugged. “Well, you’ve got to remember that this was an alien machine; maybe that’s the way they built them.”
Manning threw a cold glance at him and poured a glass of Sector Three brandy for himself. “You’re not being amusing,” he said shortly. “Now, go on, and make some sense.”
“I’d like to,” Rynason said. “Frankly, my theory is that the machine was a communication-link with the Outsiders. It could explain a lot of things—maybe even the similarities in architecture.”
Manning scowled and turned away from him. He paced heavily across the room and looked out through the plasticene window at the nearly empty, dust-strewn street for a few moments; when he returned the frown was still on his face.
“Damn it, Lee, you’re not keeping your mind on the problems here. While you were looking into Horng’s mind, how do you know he wasn’t spying in yours? You had an equal hookup, right?”
Rynason nodded. “I couldn’t have prevented him in any case. Why? Are we supposed to be hiding anything?”
“I told you not to trust them!” Manning snapped. “Now if you can’t even match wits with a senile horsehead….”
“You were the one who said they might be more adept at telepathy than we are,” Rynason said. “It was a chance we had to take.”
“There’s a difference between taking chances and handing them information on a silver platter,” Manning said angrily. “Did you make any effort at all to keep him from finding out too much about us?”
Rynason shrugged. “I kept him pretty busy. All of the time I was running through Tebron’s memories I could feel Horng screaming somewhere; he must have been too upset to do any probing in my mind.”
Manning was silent for a moment. “Let’s hope so,” he said shortly. “If they find out how weak we are, how long it would take us to get reinforcements out here….”
“They’re still just a dying race, remember,” Rynason said. “They’re not the Outsiders. What makes you so sure that they’re dangerous?”
“Oh, comeon, Lee! Think! They’re in contact with the Outsiders; you said so yourself. And just remember this:the Outsiders obviously considered it inevitable that there would be war between us. Now put those two facts together and tell me the horses aren’t dangerous!”
Rynason said slowly, “It isn’t as simple as that. The order given to Tebron was to stop all scientific progress and stifle any military development, and he seems to have done just that. The idea was that if the Hirlaji were harmless when we found them there might be no need for fighting.”
“Perhaps. But we weren’t supposed to know that they were in contact with the Outsiders, either—that was probably part of the purpose of the block in the race-memory. But we got through the block, and they know it, and presumably by now the Outsiders know it. That changes the picture, and I’d like to know just how much it changes it.”
“They’re not in contact with the Outsiders any longer,” said Rynason.
“What makes you so sure of that?”
“Tebron broke the contact—that was in the orders too. The priesthood, which had been the connecting link with the Outsiders through the machine, was disbanded. When Tebron died he didn’t appoint a successor; the machine hasn’t been used since.”
Manning thought about that, still frowning. “Where is the machine?”
“I don’t know. If it hasn’t been kept in repair it might not even be usable any more, wherever it is.”
“I’ll tell you something, Lee,” said Manning. “There’s still too much that we don’t know—and too much that the Hirlajidoknow, now. Whether or not your horse-buddy was picking your brains, they know we’re not as strong as they thought we were. It took us eight thousand years to get here instead of five thousand. Let’s just hope they don’t think about that too much.”
He stopped, and paced to the window again. “Look around you, Lee—out on the street, in the town. We’ve hardly put our feet down on this planet; we’ve got very little in the way of weapons with us and it will take weeks to get any more in here; there’s practically no organization here yet. We could be wiped off this planet before we knew what hit us. We’re sitting ducks.”
He came back to stand before Rynason. “And what about the Outsiders? They think of us strictly in terms of war, and they’ve been keeping themselves away from us all this time. That’s obviously why they pulled out of this sector of space. Up until now we’d thought they were dead. But now we find they’ve been in contact with this planet … all right, it was eight thousand years ago. But that’s a lot more recent than the last evidences we’ve had of them, and they’ve obviously been watching us.
“Now, you’ve been in direct contact with the horses’ minds; you’ve practically been one of them yourself, for awhile. All right, what’s their reaction going to be when they realize that the Outsiders, their god, overestimated us? What will they do?”
Rynason thought about that. He tried to remember the minds he had touched during the linkage with Horng: Tebron, the ancient warrior-king, and the young Hirlaji staring at the buildings of one of the ancient cities, and the old, dying one who had decided not to plant again one year … and Horng himself, tired and calm on the edge of the Flat, amid the ruins of a city. He remembered the others in that crumbling last home of an entire race … slow, quiet, uncaring.
“I don’t think they’ll do anything. They wouldn’t see any point to it.” He paused, remembering. “They lost all their purpose eight thousand years ago,” he said quietly.
Manning grunted. “Somehow I lack your touching faith in them.”
“And somehow,” Rynason said, “I lack your burning ambition to find an enemy, a handy menace to crush. You argue too hard, Manning.”
Manning raised an eyebrow. “I suppose I haven’t even put a doubt in your mind about them? Not one doubt?”
Rynason turned away and didn’t answer.
Manning sighed. “Maybe it’s time I went out there myself and had a seance with the horses.” He set down his glass of brandy, which he had been turning in his hand as he spoke. “Lee, I want you to check back here with me in two hours … by then I should have things straightened up and ready to go.”
He strode to the supply closet at one end of the room and took from it a belt and holster, from which he removed a recent-model regulation stunner. “This is as powerful a weapon as we have here so far, except for the heavy stuff. I hope we never have to use any of that—clearing it for use is a lot of red tape.” He looked up and saw the cold expression on Rynason’s face. “Of course, I hope we don’t have to use the stunners, either,” he said calmly.
Rynason turned without a word and went to the door. He stopped there for a moment and watched Manning checking over the weapon. He was thinking of the disintegrators he had seen on the steps of the Temple of Kor, and of the shell of a body tumbling out of the shadows.
“I’ll see you at 600,” he said.
Rynason spent the next two hours in town, moving through the windy streets and thinking about what Manning had said. He was right, in a way: this was no more than a foothold for the Earthmen, a touchdown point. It wasn’t even a community yet; buildings were still going up, prices varied widely not only between landings of spacers but also according to who did the selling. A lot of the men here were trying some mining out on the west Flat; their findings had so far been small but they brought the only real income the planet had so far yielded. The rest of the town was rising on its own weight: bars, rooming houses, laundries, and diners—establishments which thrived only because there were men here to patronize them. Several weeks before a few of the men had tried killing and eating the small animals who darted through the alleys, but too many of those men had died and the practice had been quickly abandoned. And they had noticed that when those animals foraged in the refuse heaps outside the town, they died too.
A few of the big corporations had sent out field men to look around, but it was too soon for any industry to have established itself here; all the planet offered so far was room to expand. Despite the wide expansion of the Earthmen through the stars, a planet where conditions were at all favorable for living was not to be overlooked; the continuing population explosion, despite tight regulations on the inner worlds, had kept up with the colonization of these worlds, and new room was constantly needed.
But the planetfall on Hirlaj was still new. A handful of Earthmen had come, but they had not yet brought their civilization with them. They stood precariously on the Flat, waiting for more settlers to come in and build with them. If there should be trouble before more men arrived….
At 600 Rynason walked out on the dirt-packed street to Manning’s quarters. He met Marc Stoworth and Jules Lessingham coming out the door. They looked worried.
“What’s wrong?” he said.
They didn’t stop as they went by. “Ask the old man,” said Stoworth, going past with an uncharacteristically hurried step.
Rynason went on in through the open door. Manning was in the front room, amid several crates of stunner-units. He looked up quickly as Rynason entered and waved brusquely to him.
“Help me get this stuff unloaded, Lee.”
Rynason fished for his sheath-knife and started cutting open one of the crates. “Why are you unloading the arsenal?”
“Because we may need it. Couple of the boys were just out at the horse-pasture, and they say the friendly natives have disappeared.”
“Jules and Stoworth? I met them on the way in.”
“They were doing some follow-up work out there … or at least they were going to. There’s not a single one of them there, not a trace of them.”
Rynason frowned. “They were all there this morning.”
“They’re not there now!” Manning snapped. “I don’t like it, not after what you’ve told me. We’re going to look for them.”
“With stunners?”
“Yes. Right now Mara is out at the field clearing several of the fliers to use in scouting for them.”
Rynason stacked the boxes of weapons and power-packs on the floor where Manning indicated. There were about forty of them—blunt-barrelled guns with thick casing around the powerpacks, weighing about ten pounds each. They looked as statically blunt as anvils, but they could stun any animal at two hundred yards; within a two-foot range, they could shake a rock wall down.
“How many men are we taking with us?” Rynason asked, eying the stacks on the floor.
Manning looked up at him briefly. “As many as we can get. I’m calling a militia; Stoworth and Lessingham went into town to round up some men.”
So he was going ahead with the power-grab; Malhomme had been right. No danger had been proven yet, but that wouldn’t stop Manning—nor the drifters he’d been buying in the town. Killing was an everyday thing to them.
“How many of the Hirlaji do you think we’ll have to kill to make it look important to the Council?” Rynason asked after a moment, his voice deliberately inflectionless.
Manning looked up at him with a calculating eye. Rynason met his gaze directly, daring the man to take offense. He didn’t.
“All right, it’s a break for me,” Manning shrugged. “What did you expect? There’s precious little opportunity on this desert rock for leadership in any sense that you might approve of.” He paused. “I don’t know if it will be necessary to kill any of them. Take it easy and we’ll see.”
Rynason’s eyes were cold. “All right, we’ll see. But just remember, I’ll be watching just as closely as you. If you start any violence that isn’t necessary….”
“What will you do, Lee?” said Manning. “Report me to the Council? They’ll listen to me before they’d pay attention to complaints from a nobody who’s been drifting around the outworlds for most of his life. That’s all you are, you know, Lee—a drifter, a bum, like the rest of them. That’s what everybody out here on the Edge is … unless he does something about it.
“I hold the reins right now. If I decide to do something that you don’t like, you won’t be able to stop me … neither you, nor your female friend.”
“So Mara’s against you too?” Rynason said.
“She made a few remarks earlier,” Manning said calmly. “She may regret it soon enough.”
Rynason looked at the man through narrowed eyes for a moment, then strapped on a gunbelt and loaded one of the stunners. He snapped it into the holster carefully, wondering just what Manning had meant by his last remark. Was it a threat in any real sense, or was Manning just letting off steam? Well, they’d see about that too … and Rynason would be watching.
Within half an hour close to sixty men had collected outside Manning’s door. They were dirty and unshaven; some of them were working in the town, a few were miners, but most of them were drifters who had followed the advance of the star frontier, who drank and brawled in the streets of the town, sleeping by day and raising hell at night. They stole when they could, killed when they wanted.
The drifters were men who had been all over the worlds of the Edge, who had spent years watching the new planets opened for colonization and exploitation, but had never got their own piece. They knew the feel of these planetfall towns on the Edge, and could talk for hours about the worlds they had seen. But they were city men, all of them; they had seen the untamed worlds, but only from the streets. They hadn’t taken part in the exploring or the building, only in the initial touchdowns. When the building was done, they signed on to the spacers again and drifted to the next world, farther out.
Rynason looked at their faces from where he stood in the doorway, listening to Manning talking to them. They were hard men, mean and sometimes vicious. Nameless faces, all of them, having no place in the more developed areas of the Terran civilization. And maybe that was their own fault. But Rynason knew that they were running, not to anything, but from the civilization itself. Running … because when an area was settled and started to become respectable, they began to see what they did not have. The temporary quarters would come down, to be replaced by permanent buildings that were meant to be lived in, not just as places for sleeping. Closets, and shelters for landcars; quadsense receivers and food integrators. They didn’t want to see that … because they hated it, or because they wanted it? It didn’t matter, Rynason decided. They ran, and now they were here on the Edge with all their anger and frustration, and Manning was ready to give them a way to let it out.
At the side of the mob he saw a familiar grey shock of hair—Rene Malhomme. Was he with them, then? Rynason craned his neck for a better view, and for a moment the crowd parted enough to let him see Malhomme’s face. He was looking directly toward Rynason, holding a dully gleaming knife flat against his thick chest … and his lips were drawn back into the crooked, sardonic smile which Rynason had seen many times. No, Malhomme at least was not part of this mob.
“We already know which direction they went,” Manning was saying. “Lessingham will be in charge of the main body, and you’ll follow him. If he gives you an order,take it. This is a serious business; we won’t have room for bickering.
“Some of us will be scouting with the flyers. We’ll be in radio contact with you. When we find out where they are we’ll reconnoiter and make our plans from there.”
Manning paused, looking appraisingly at the faces before him. “Most of you are armed already, I see. We have some extra stunners here; if you need them, come on up. But remember, the men who carry the shockers will be in front; and their business will be simply to down the horses—any killing that’s to be done will be left to those of you who have knives, or anything lethal.”
There was a rising wave of voices from the crowd. Some men came forward for weapons; Rynason saw others drawing knives and hatchets, and a few of them had heavy guns, projectile type. Rynason watched with narrowed eyes; it had been a filthy maneuver on Manning’s part to organize this mob, and his open acceptance of their temper was dangerous. Once they were turned loose, what could stop them?
There was a sudden shouting in the back of the mob; men surged and fell away, cursing. Rynason heard scuffing back there, and sounds of bone meeting flesh. The men at the front of the mob turned to look back, and some tried to shove their way through to the fight.
A scream came from the midst of the crowd, and was answered by an excited, angry swelling of voices around the fighting men. Suddenly Manning was among them, smashing his way through with a stunner in his hand, swinging it like a club.
“Get the hell out of the way!” he shouted, stepping quickly through the men. They grumbled and fell back to let him by, but Rynason heard the men still fighting in the rear, and then he saw them. There were three of them, two men and what looked like a boy still in his teens. The boy had red hair and a dark, ruddy complexion: he was new to the outworlds. The two older men had the pallor of the Edge drifters, nurtured in the artificial light of spacers and sealed survival quarters on the less hospitable worlds.
The larger of the two men had a knife, a heavy blade of a type that was common out here; many of the men used them as hatchets when necessary. This one dripped with blood; the smaller man’s left arm was torn open just below the shoulder, and hanging uselessly. He stood swaying in the dust, hurling a string of curses at the man with the knife, while the boy stood slightly behind him, staring with both fear and hatred in his eyes. He had a smaller knife, but he held it loosely and uncertainly at his side.
Manning stepped between them. He had sized up the situation already, and he paused now only long enough to bite out three short, clipped words which told these men exactly what he thought of them. The man with the knife stepped back and muttered something which Rynason didn’t hear.
Manning raised the stunner coldly and let him have it. The blast caught the man in the shoulder and spun him around, throwing him into the crowd; several of them went down. The long knife fell to the ground, where dirt mixed with the blood on it. There was silence.
Manning looked around him, swinging the stunner loosely in his hand. After a moment he said calmly, but loud enough for all to hear, “We won’t have time for fighting among ourselves. The next man who starts anything will be killed outright. Now get these men out of here.” He turned and strode back through the mob while the boy and a couple of the other men took the wounded away.
Malhomme had moved further into the crowd. He was strangely silent; usually he went among these men roughly and jovially, cursing them all with goodnatured ease. But now he stood watching the men around him with a frown creasing his heavily lined face. Malhomme was worried, and Rynason, seeing that, felt his stomach tighten.
Manning faced the men from the front of the crowd. He stared at them shrewdly, holding each man’s gaze for a few seconds. Then he grinned, and said, “Save it for the horses, boys. Save it for them.”
Rynason rode out to the field with Manning, Stoworth, and a few of the others. It was a short trip in the landcar, and none of them spoke much. Even Stoworth rode silently, his usual easy flow of trivia forgotten. Rynason was thinking about Manning: he had handled the outbreak quickly and decisively enough, keeping the men in line, but it had been only a temporary measure. They would be expecting some real action soon, and Manning was already offering them the Hirlaji. If the alarm turned out to be a false one, would he be as easily able to stop them then?
Or would he even try?
The flyers were ready when they got to the field, but Mara was gone. Les Harcourt met them at the radio office on the edge of the field; he was the communications man out here. He led them into the low, quick-concrete construction office and shoved some forms at Manning to be signed.
“If there’s any trouble, you’ll be responsible for it,” he said to Manning. “The men can look out for themselves, but the flyers are Company property.”
Manning scowled impatiently and bent to sign the papers.
“Where’s Mara?” Rynason asked.
“She’s already taken one of the flyers out,” Harcourt said. “Left ten minutes ago. We’ve got her screen in the next room.” He waved a hand toward the door in the rear of the room.
Rynason went on back and found the live set. The screen, monitored from a camera on the flyer, showed the foothills of the southern mountains over which Mara was flying. They were bare and blunt; the rock outcroppings which thrust up from the Flat had been weathered smooth in the passage of years. Mara was passing over a low range and on to the desert beyond.
Rynason picked up the mike. “Mara, this is Lee; we just got here. Have you found them yet?”
Her voice came thinly over the speaker. “Not yet. I thought I saw some movement in one of the passes, but the light wasn’t too good. I’m looking for that pass again.”
“All right. We’ll be going up ourselves in a few minutes; if you find them, be careful. Wait for us.”
He refitted the mike in its stand and rose. But as he turned to the door her voice came again: “There they are!”
He looked at the screen, but for the moment he couldn’t see anything. Mara’s flyer was coming down out of the rocky hills now, the Flat stretching before her on the screen. Rynason could see the pass through which she had been flying, but there was no movement there; it took him several seconds to see the low ruins off to the right, and the figures moving through them.
The screen banked and turned toward them; she was lowering her altitude.
“I see them,” he said into the mike. “Can’t make out what they’re doing, on the screen. Can you see them any more clearly?”
“They’re entering one of the buildings down there,” she said after a moment. “I’ve counted almost twenty of them so far; they must all be here.”
“Can you go down and see what they’re doing? The sooner we find out, the better: Manning’s got a pretty ugly bunch of so-called vigilantes on the way out there.”
She didn’t reply, but on the screen he saw the crumbling buildings grow larger and nearer. He could make out individual structures now: a wall had fallen and was half-buried in the dust and sand; an entire roof had caved in on another building, leaving only rubble in the interior. It was difficult to tell sometimes when the original lines of the buildings had fallen: they had all been smoothed by the wind-blown sand, so that broken pillars looked almost as though they had been built that way, smooth and upright, solitary.
At last, he saw the Hirlaji. They were slowly mounting the steps of one of the largest of the buildings and passing into the shadows of the interior. This building was not as deteriorated as most of the others; as Mara’s flyer dipped low over it Rynason could see its characteristic lines unbroken and clear.
With a start, he sat up and said hurriedly, “Mara, take another close pass over that building, the one they’re entering.”
In a moment she came in again over the smooth stone structure, and Rynason looked closely at the screen. There was no mistaking it now: the high steep steps leading up to a colonnade which almost circled the building, the large carvings over the main entrance.
“You’d better set down away from them!” he said. “That’s the Temple of Kor!” But even as he finished speaking the image on the screen jolted and rocked, and the flyer dipped even closer toward the jumbled ruins below.
“They’re firing something!”
He saw that she was trying to gain altitude, but something was wrong; the buildings on the screen dipped and wavered, up and down, spinning.
“Mara! Pull up—get out of there!”
“One of the wings is damaged,” she said quickly, and suddenly there was another jolt on the screen and he heard her gasp. The picture spun and righted itself, seemed to hang motionless for a moment, and then the stone wall of one of the buildings was directly ahead and growing larger.
“Mara!”
The image spun wildly, the building filled the screen, and then it went black; he heard a crash from the speaker, cut off almost before it had sounded. The room was silent.