"I haven't seen him," O'Brien said. "I don't know where he is."
"Uh-huh. What have you been doing?"
"She brought me here. The crystals took care of me. And Deirdre--" He
stood up. "She's summoning me. Wait, Steve--I'll be back."
Arnsen put out a detaining hand; it was useless. O'Brien stepped
through the portal and was gone. A dozen crystals swept after him.
* * * * *
Arnsen followed, refusing to admit that he, too, wanted another glimpse
of the girl. Down the passage he went in O'Brien's trail, till the
boy vanished from sight. Arnsen increased his pace. He halted on the
threshold of the cavern where the pillar of flame swept up to the roof.
He had thought it thundered. It did not--it rushed up in utter silence,
shaking and swaying with the surcharged intensity of its power. The
walls were crusted with the dancing, watching crystals. Now Arnsen saw
that some were dull gray, motionless and dead. These were sprinkled
among the others, and there were thousands of them.
O'Brien paced forward--and suddenly Circe was standing with her back to
Arnsen, the gems clustering about her caressingly. She lifted her arms,
and O'Brien turned.
A great hunger leaped into his face. The girl did not move, and O'Brien
came into the circle of her arms.
So swift was her movement that Arnsen did not realize it till too late.
The slender arms slid free; Circe stepped back a pace--and thrust
O'Brien toward the tower of flame!
He stumbled, off balance, and the crystals leaped from Circe's body.
They were no longer a garment. They pressed against O'Brien, forcing
him away, thrusting, pushing. Arnsen cried out and sprang forward--
O'Brien reeled, was engulfed by the flame-pillar. The pouring torrent
swallowed him.
Simultaneously from the farther wall a gray, dead jewel detached itself
and shot toward the tower of fire. Into the blazing heart it fled and
vanished.
The pillar sank down. It pulsed--thundered up again, silently streaming
like a torrent toward the roof. And out of its depths the jewel came
transformed.
Sentiment, blazing, shining with a myriad hues, it swirled toward
Circe. Scintillant with delight, it hovered about her caressingly.
It was alive!
Arnsen cried out, flung himself forward. Circe turned to face him.
Still her eyes were hidden; her face was aloofly lovely and inhuman.
The crystal swept toward Arnsen, cupping itself into his outthrust
hand. From it a wave of mad delight rushed into his brain.
It was Doug--_it was Doug!_ Frozen with sick horror, Arnsen halted,
while thoughts poured from the sentient crystal into his mind.
"The--the gray jewel--" His tongue fumbled thickly with the words. He
looked up to where the dull gems clung among the shining ones.
"Machines, Steve." The thought lanced into him from the living
thing he held. "Robots, not energized. Only one thing can energize
them--life-force, vital energy. The flame-pillar does that, through
atomic transmutation. It's not earthly science--it was created in
another galaxy. There, Deirdre's race had slave people to energize the
crystals."
"Doug--she's killed you--"
"I'm not dead. I'm alive, Steve, more alive than I ever have been.
All the crystals--Martians, Venusians, beings from other systems and
galaxies that landed on this asteroid. Deirdre took them for her own.
As she took Hastings. As she has taken me. We serve her now--"
The jewel tore free from Arnsen's grip. It fled back to Circe, brushing
her lips, caressing her hair. The other gems, scores of them, danced
about the girl like elfin lovers.
* * * * *
Arnsen stood there, sick and nauseated. He understood now. The
intricate crystal machines were too complicated to work unless
life-force energized them. Circe, who took the minds of living beings
and prisoned them in silicate robot-forms.
They felt no resentment. They were content to serve.
"Damn you!" Arnsen mouthed, and took a step forward. His fists balled.
His fingers ached to curl about the girl's slender neck and snap it
with sharp, vicious pressure.
Her lashes swept up. Her eyes looked into his.
They were black as space, with stars prisoned in their depths. They
were not human eyes.
Now Arnsen knew why O'Brien had asked if he had looked into Deirdre's
eyes. They were her secret and her power. Her human form was not enough
to enchant and enslave the beings of a hundred worlds. It was the
soul-shaking alienage that looked out of Circe's eyes.
Through those dark windows Arnsen saw the Outside. He saw the gulf
between the stars, and no longer did he fear it. For Circe was a
goddess.
She was above and beyond humanity. A great void opened between her
and the man, the void of countless evolutionary cycles, and a million
light-years of space. But across that gulf something reached and met
and clung, and Arnsen's senses drowned in a soul-shaking longing for
Circe.
It was her power. She could control emotion, as she could control the
crystals, and the power of her mind reached into Arnsen and wrung
sanity and self from it. Only in outer semblance was she even slightly
human. Beside her Arnsen was an animal, and like an animal he could be
controlled.
She blazed like a flame before him. He forgot O'Brien, forgot Hastings
and Earth and his purpose. Her power clutched him and left him helpless.
The grip upon his mind relaxed. Circe, confident of her triumph, let
her eyelids droop.
And Arnsen's mind came back in a long, slow cycle from the gulfs
between the stars, drifted leisurely back into the crystalline cavern
and the presence of the goddess--and woke.
Not wholly. He would never be whole again. But he felt the crowding
vibrations of the countless prisoners in crystal who had gone the way
his own feet were walking now, bewildered, drunken and drowning in
emotions without name, sacrificing identity without knowing what they
sacrificed. Flung into eternity at the whim of a careless goddess to
whom all life-forms were one....
She was turning half away as realization came back to Arnsen. She had
lifted one round white arm to let the crystals cascade along it. She
did not even see him lurch forward.
What he did was without thought. The emotions she had called up in him
drowned all thought. He only knew that he must do what he did--he could
not yet think why.
The breath hissed between his lips as he stumbled forward and thrust
Circe into the flame....
* * * * *
From the roof a gray jewel dropped. The tower of fire paused in its
rhythm--beat out strongly again. From it a crystal leaped. It hung
motionless in the air, and Arnsen seized it with shaking fingers. He
felt great, racking sobs shake him. His fingers caressed the jewel,
pressed it to his lips.
"Circe!" he whispered, eyes blind with tears. "Circe--"
_Epilogue_
Arnsen had not spoken for a long time. Through the window I could see
the Cairo stratoship being wheeled into place. Beyond, the lights of
New York glowed yellow.
"And so you came back," I said.
He nodded. "And so I came back. I put on my space-suit and went back
to the ship. The crystals didn't try to stop me. They seemed to be
waiting. I don't know for what. I blasted off and headed Sunward. I
knew enough to do that. After a while I began to send out S.O.S.
signals, and a patrol boat picked me up. That was all."
"Doug--"
"Still there, I suppose. With all the others. Vail, why did I do it?
Was I right?" He didn't wait for an answer, but cupped the little
shagreen box in his hand. He didn't open it.
"No," he went on, "you can't answer me; nobody can. Circe took the soul
out of my body, and I'm empty now. There's no peace for me on Earth,
or in the space-ways. And out there, somewhere, on that asteroid, the
crystals are waiting--waiting for Circe to come back--
"But she will never come back. She will stay with me till I die, and
then she'll be buried with me in space. In the meantime--Circe doesn't
like it here on Earth. So I'm going out again. Sometime, perhaps, I'll
take her back Outside, to the unknown place from which she came. I
don't know--"
An audio announced the plane for Kansas. Arnsen stood up, gave me a
smile from his ravaged face, and without a word went out.