"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 the _only_ way
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.]