Along clay-brick streets they went, as Thor told of the urns they were
bringing from the shore. He scowled and shook his white-furred head.
"We cannot last when Aava sears holes in our walls. The androids will
come, and then the Outlaws will be no more."
"If we had some wood on this accursed planet," growled Thor, "I might
be able to rig a catapult."
He explained the function of the catapult to Yorg, who nodded, lips
tightly drawn. In his eyes was the flicker of a new hope. "It might be.
We gather what we can from the spacewrecks that the planet gathers.
Other things we steal. We have some wood stored. And some cording. I
will get to work at once."
Yorg led Thor to a great circular building with walls of glass, where
sunlight fused across a tile floor, making the room alive with light.
A girl with long yellow hair turned from a group at the end of the
chamber. She screamed her delight.
"Thor! Peter, Slag, it's Thor!"
Their delight chased the worry from their eyes and faces for a few
moments, as they shook his hand and pounded his shoulders. Peter Gordon
said, "Jolly good to have you back, old man. But I'm afraid even having
you here won't do any good. The androids have us surrounded. You say
they are bringing Aava in the urns. Looks as though it's all over."
"Not yet," Thor growled, and told them of the Discoverer, and the
astral voyage they had made.
Gordon wrinkled furrowed brows. "Can't see what good knowing that is,
you know. It--"
"Think, man. I'm not too good at chemistry, but there are clues and
hints all over this planet. Most of it is sand, rolling mile after
mile. Even the red grasslands have sandy beds. And the rocks. There
is almost as much rock as sand. What do you and the robots build your
cities of? Clay! What jewels are embedded in the cave where Aava
dwells? Opal, onyx, carnelian, jasper!
"Aava lives in a circle of pure quartz. Look!"
* * * * *
Thor put his hand in his pocket, drew out tiny green flecks of crystal,
"I got this by scraping the urn where Aava appeared to his androids
in the temple. It's glass! Something in Aava's nature was hardened by
oxygen, and the sand in the substance of the urn turned into glass!
"When the Discoverer took me out into space and back in Time, when I
saw the worlds of this space-realm created, one thing struck me. I
watched Aava and his planet evolve from an empty void, saw the planet
grow and take form.
"Gordon, I saw no fern forests, no great jungles of vegetation whose
rotting and sinking into peat bogs gave us coal. Coal is carbon.
And there were no petroleum wells, and petroleum is a compound of
hydrocarbons."
Gordon rubbed his chin, frowning. "It's all jolly interesting, old
man."
Thor waved a hand. "Can't you see? It all argues just one thing. No
coal, no oil. No forms of carbon at all. Just quartz, sand, onyx,
jasper, clay, carnelian, opal, rock--all forms of silicon.
"Aava is silicate life, where we are carbon life!"
The Englishman whistled low.
Thor went on, "Silicon is almost as ingenious as carbon. Both have
a valence of six. Both unite with other substances to form various
compounds. But, just as life with carbon structure cannot stand its
own refuse--the carbon dioxide that we exhale when we breathe, so life
with a silicate base cannot stand its own refuse--silicon dioxide--or
_sand_!"
"Afraid I'm rather stupid, old man. Not following you very well."
"Human beings exhale carbon dioxide when they breathe, after taking
the oxygen into their lungs to help release their energy. But if they
breathed only that refuse, or carbon dioxide, they would soon die.
The same with a being formed of silicon, such as Aava is. He forms
sand--silicon dioxide--as his debris when he removes the oxygen from
the air that is necessary to his life. Suppose we fed only sand to
Aava?"
"You mean it would smother him?"
"You're thinking of human death. This is different. Why must all death
be a matter of limp, lifeless clay? Why couldn't silicon beings die and
become--"
"Of course. Sand and the heat generated by Aava's flame, plus the high
silicate content in the flame itself--_glass_!"
"And glass is a form of death."
Gordon stared at him with wide blue eyes. "Man, man. You've solved
it. But how can we get that sand onto Aava without getting killed
ourselves? Even supposing we can get out of this trap?"
"You'll have to create a diversion. An attack on the urns. At night.
I'll slip out and get to the Undying Sea. I'll swim underwater. I'll
need a length of clay pipe to breathe through. And before I go, I want
to make one more trip to the Mountains of Distortion. I remember there
was a lot of sand over the cave of Aava. I want to check that. If true,
one man might kill him. I'm going to try, anyhow."
Thor walked around the room, eyes gleaming brightly. He said, "Peter,
we have a world here that we can make our own. We're locked inside a
bubble of space, a cancerous growth that keeps this universe and our
old universe apart. We are free to make whatever kind of place we want,
in here. It's up to us to do it. We can't fail."
Outside the walls, they heard the deep-throated roar of the androids as
the urns rolled forward. Gordon said simply, "If you succeed, it will
have to be soon. Or there will be none left to profit by it!"