Cragin had little idea of how long they had flown, and none of the
number of continua through which they had warped. They had been allowed
to sleep, and upon awakening, had received food. That they were under
guard was only to be sensed.
"They can afford to take us for granted," he muttered. He felt for the
butts of his guns; they were still at his hips.
"Don't--" the girl said.
"Don't give it a second thought. I know when I've had it, and they know
I do."
"You're convinced, then."
Cragin looked about the confines of the small metal cubicle in which
they had been quartered as though trying to see through its walls
for another glimpse of one of the flagship's crew. The servants of
grade three were as unlike men as their cloaked captor had been
similar. But not less incredible than other creatures he had seen.
Only--intelligent. That, if nothing more. Cragin mused with a grimace.
"I could use a different word, kid, but it would come to the same
thing. If IQ meant the social register around here, even the snottiest
ancestors either of us ever had would look like only moderately
successful bums. They got us where the gray matter's short. Of that I
am convinced."
"They didn't have to fight very hard. Or should I be thanking you for
my life?"
"Up to you. I'm just stalling for what we can get out of it. Who wants
to die? Oh, I forgot--"
She turned away from him, and he fiddled with the controls of a small
built-in telescreen. It was simple enough and he got it working easily,
but it showed nothing. Just blackness. He left it on.
"You're thoroughly convinced of everything he told us, aren't you?" she
asked at last.
"From a purely logical standpoint, what else--"
"Purely logical! For a little while I thought there was a chance
that--that you weren't like all the rest."
"All what rest? I don't get your range, kid," Cragin answered.
"First you thought they were fakes--"
"At first that was logical, too. But old cloak-and-ray-gun there proved
pretty damn conclusively that the crowd he works for are the bosses,
the big bosses. That's what gets me."
"And it's the real reason, isn't it, that you wanted to call them
fakes? Couldn't bear the idea of the precious culture of Earth taking a
back seat to anything."
"That sounds good, coming from one of our top-notch scientists. The
daughter and pupil of Fowler Griffin. One of our most respected...."
"Did you think we weren't human? Are scientists something to be
worshipped?"
Cragin looked at her for a long, steady moment. He was mixed up again,
and she was doing it.
"Without our science, Miss Griffin, we'd've all died five hundred years
ago. Maybe that's why it takes top rating back home. What our men
of science say we can do, we do--what they say we can't, we know we
can't. It's that simple, only I don't see why I'm telling you this. For
five centuries men have known from the day they could talk what their
lives would be from that day to their deaths, and from one end of the
universe their forbears had mastered to the other. It's all mapped out.
It has to be, because the scientists tell us--they draw the maps. We
follow them."
The girl was silent then for a long time, and Cragin fell to wondering
exactly what she was getting at. Or maybe--maybe it was just the
strain, or the shock of realizing that there were scientists who were
of greater stature than Earth's, and it was they who truly ruled.
But the girl still had him mixed up.
There was a sudden gasp from her and he turned his head. The blackness
in the telescreen had suddenly become punctured with white-hot, burning
dots of light. Dots of light, perfectly aligned, in long, straight
rows--a gateway! A gateway of stars, forged by the hands of those who
owned all Space and Time, put into position to notify the entire cosmos
that here for all who might seek it was the entrance to the home of the
Owners!
For a moment Cragin could say nothing. He had seen their cloaked captor
give a demonstration of raw power. And here was its counterpart at the
other end of the ultimate in mastery--unvarnished, positive control.
They owned a universe, and were its architects as well.
"Ten million miles wide!" the girl breathed.
"A light-year long if it's a foot," Cragin said in a low voice. "And at
the end--"
* * * * *
They watched as the pattern shifted; the dots grew larger until they
were coruscating balls of white flame. And then, with a majestic
slowness, the entrance to the gateway became a static, unchanging
picture of unprecedented geometric symmetry.
"It's--we've stopped," the girl said.
"Cut our gun, that's all. Probably waiting for clearance to enter. The
whole damn fleet of us."
"It's--it's pompous ridiculousness!" Her voice was edged with
frustrated anger and it mounted as she spoke. "A gateway, a
show-piece--a stupid affectation of the ultimate in egocentricity! With
or without their little pathway, there's all of Space from which to
make an approach--"
"I doubt it, princess. Outside this little welcome-mat I'll bet my
pilot's papers there's a destructive field of some kind that'd blast
the dye out of your hair at ten light-years. One gets you a thousand
that this is the only way you get to see the top brass. And you don't
do that without an O.K. from a big somebody."
The minute hand on Cragin's wristchron made seven complete circuits
before the gateway again began expanding to receive them on the
telescreen.
And then they were past its opening, and hurtling headlong down its
great length at what Cragin knew must be a speed which, although no
longer requiring flight by comptometer, would have taxed his skill to
the utmost.
He and the girl watched the telescreen in silence for minutes, watching
the pin-points of light on either side grow from minute flecks in the
blackness to great spheres of flame within so many seconds, and then
pass....
"Look!"
"Yeah, it's a great show. But--hell! It couldn't be a--"
The scintillating point of light which lie dead ahead, in the exact
center of the gateway and at its extreme end, could not, Cragin
realized, be a planet. Unless it were a perfectly polished reflector,
it could not show so much like the miniature stars at either side.
It was a star, itself.
"It must be just illusion," he said evenly. "It's got to be."
"Oh no," Lin Griffin said. "Of course they live in the center of a
star! They rule all, don't they? They're the great masters of all
creation, aren't they? Certainly you don't think your great masters
would live on anything so simple as a mere planet! But of course they
live where the temperature is only several billion degrees--"
She began laughing and Cragin slapped her across the face.
"Cut it, kid, CUT IT!"
There were tears coming from her eyes and her face remained in the
twisted contortions of hysteria even after her voice had become
soundless.
She pulled away, and Cragin left her to herself. In a little while she
began to cry and he could hear her sobbing above the even hum of the
telescreen, but he left her alone.
And he knew one thing. It _had_ to be illusion. Damn it, Owners or not,
no matter what the hell they were, it had to be illusion!
Cragin had never felt shaken through to the inside of him before. Fear
and awe had been banished from the minds of men for five centuries.
Yet he felt as though he were staggering blindly, and he knew he was
helpless.
The pin-point had become a searing, blinding thing, and even as he
shielded his eyes, it filled the screen. They were going into it.
Into it.
Into a live star.
No, was the only word he could think. No.