Gene took the gnarled, furry hand in a warm grip, then turned and
bounded down the steps. His hands seemed to be all thumbs as he climbed
the ladder.
At least, he thought as he spun the dials to long range, the
ego-transposer would undo some of its horrors before its evil existence
came to an end.
The splendid, sun-tanned form of a tall youth coalesced on one screen
and Gene froze it there with a flick of his finger.
A panorama of life hastened across the other screen, and he recoiled
impulsively as the flat, stupid face of a half-man leaped at him from
its depth. But he knew that intelligence reposed behind those fearsome
features--intelligence that would build a world.
Now the transposer was analyzing the race-egos--and the Wronged Ones
were swarming into the cave!
* * * * *
Kac had been unable to hold them. They had merely side-stepped him and
come on, silent now and grim. They would not harm their chief, but they
would let nothing stand in the way of their vengeance.
Gene rushed to the platform's edge and brought his foot down on a
shaggy hand. A stone dagger swished past his ear and shattered against
the machine. Heart racing, he flung himself against the master switch
and slammed it shut.
Silence, then a chorus of meaningless grunts drifted up to his ears.
Below, the half-men milled about like cattle, feeling stupidly of their
bodies. They could not understand; they felt wonderingly of their heads
where eyes should be, trying to lift the darkness.
The _New Frontiers_ still rested where it had crashed--how long ago?
Gene replaced the smashed tube and jockeyed the ship clear of the
debris. The tubes roared with power and the landscape fell away.
As he sped toward the cave city, his thoughts went back to the events
of a few short hours ago.
In his feeling for the Wronged Ones, he had followed the only course
that offered itself. That was the transference of their egos to Venus,
to the bodies of the human-like inhabitants of that planet. To those
whom Man had wronged long in the dim past. Gene had given a new life,
atoned for Man's darkest deed.
At the same time, he had given new hope to Man himself; for now, trade
between Earth and Venus would become a reality as soon as the Wronged
Ones could orient themselves to the new surroundings--a year at the
most. The clouds of Venus had long since lifted, and the tribe would
thrive in the warm sunshine that now bathed the planet. Under Kac's
able leadership they would aid in restoring Earth's depleted mineral
wealth, and in turn Earth would help them in building a lasting
civilization.
Now he was over the cave city, and he knew what he must do. On the
Vizio-screen he could see tiny specks moving about in the valley. They
were stumbling away from the caves, away from what they could not
understand.
He dived on the city and depressed the firing stud of the
atomic-cannon. A gigantic concussion rocked his ship as the valley wall
exploded upward.
On the screen he could see the remains of the machines in the rubble
below. So ended the ego-transposer, a devil machine that could lift the
spider-web of self from the very brain on which it was spun.
So, too, ended the destructive ray that a desperate people, ever greedy
for new wealth, had unwittingly turned upon themselves on that day of
infancy in the now-forgotten past.
Now to Venus, where the end of his strange adventure awaited. There
had been many more Venusians than Wronged Ones. This surplus now
belonged to the beasts--mindless, with only the instincts of the
beast remaining. These mindless ones must be segregated to prevent
inter-breeding with the others.
As the _New Frontiers_ flashed sunward, Gene caught one final glimpse
of the transposed Venusians on his Vizio. Now a race without hope, were
they. In undoing one great wrong, he had committed another. But this
was a primitive, ignorant people to whom intelligence would never have
come in time to aid Earth in the crisis that threatened.
He had played God to them, but they would never know, never realize ...
or would they?