But a queer shock deadened me. A dark film came between me and the
brain. A curious inertia stopped my hand. I was sick with a sense
of headlong, giddy falling. All the vast mechanisms of the robot's
interior spun and grew dim about me.
Only the woman of the Stone remained real beside me, her hand electric
on my own.
"_Now!_" she gasped. "He has flung us into the mirror!"
I fought that inertia. Desperately, I groped through that darkening
film. Somehow, the black brain seemed to be spinning away from me,
into infinity.
But I touched it. My fingers plunged deep into its wrinkled black mass,
to that pale spot. I clutched, tore. The great brain quivered. It
almost _writhed_. A blackness spread in the purple liquid.
"We're gone," sighed the woman. "His mirror--"
* * * * *
The brain, and the monstrous metal body, and all that incredible
red-lit hall, were whirled away from us, as if upon a silent and
resistless wind. There remained only the bright phantom, and myself,
alone in a giddy void.
Very faintly, however, even in that featureless vertiginous gulf, the
brazen voice of Malgarth reached me. Slow, bewildered, stricken, it was
saying:
"My science lost! A thing so simple--and I did not know! A fluid-tube
ruptured--the Stone knew--fear--_fear!_ They are cast into the
mirror--Bari and the Stone--gone beyond returning. But I--who could
have been eternal--_dying_--"
Even that failing voice was swept away. It was lost upon that mighty,
soundless wind. And I knew that what seemed a wind was the supernal
power of the geodesic mirror. It was the Stone and myself that it
carried, not the things that we had left behind. And our destination
must be some dark bourn beyond the limits of space.
But a deep rejoicing filled me, even in that spinning gulf. And the
woman beside me said joyously:
"It is done, Bari. Our task of a million years is done. Malgarth is
dead." Her warm hand tightened on mine. And then it seemed to relax. I
looked for her, in that starless chaos, and saw that once more she was
growing dim, phantasmal. "Farewell, Bari," she whispered. "My heart,
farewell!"
A terrible loneliness smote me.
"Dona, Dona, you can't leave me!" I cried into that vacant pit. "If
you go, there will be--nothing! I'll be--_beyond_--alone!"
That beloved image was fainter than a wraith of mist. But the voice I
loved came dimly, thinly, once again:
"I must go, Bari. I'm glad to go, after these weary ages of waiting.
Even the Stone must die, Bari! And there is one mystery left. One veil
that only death can pierce. I hope--I believe--that behind it we shall
find what all our incarnations have strived for in vain."