The aerodyne flew high in the black night, toward the Citadel. Above
there were clear stars. Below there were heavy clouds laced with
lightning, hiding the earth. Hiding the Belt, and the lines of men who
moved in it, among the dark trees, in the wind and the rain.
One full night had passed, and another was drawing to its close. Before
the sun went down again it would be all over, one way or the other.
Price was in that state of exaltation that comes at a certain point
of prolonged tension without rest, where you move a little bit
outside your body and above the ground, detached from every normal
consideration, and everything seems to go with a clear headlong rush,
as though a single initiating act has set an inevitable series of
reactions going, and all you have to do is keep pace with them. He
had not slept much, but he was not tired. The aspect of the Citadel
roof, the round red circle of the lift and the controls thereof, the
symbol marking the proper level, the shape and size and position of the
fire-control center, burned brightly in his mind. Their set and proper
sequence did not permit of any obstacles.
Sweetbriar sat beside him in the co-pilot's place. He held the shocker
in his gnarly hands, and from time to time he turned it over or stroked
its smooth and unfamiliar shape. So far he had not had any occasion
to use it. He had stood beside Price in a dozen wooden-built towns,
helping him harangue a dozen doubtful chiefs, or sub-chiefs, around the
perimeter of the Belt. He had not slept much, either, but his eye was
brilliant and steely as a hawk's. If the sensation of flight frightened
him, he had not shown it in any way.
The six men of his picking sat quietly in the cabin. They might have
been the same six men Price had first met when he landed in the Belt,
woods-rangers, hunters of deer and wild cattle, all speed and muscle,
born fighters. They were as lax as idle hound-dogs now, when there was
nothing to be done. They, too, had mastered whatever fear they had had
of flying.
The storm below was moving rapidly toward the east, over a broad
front. Price could easily have outflown it, but he did not, only
keeping high enough above it to get a sighting on the Citadel when it
came into visual range. He was grateful for the storm. It seemed like
an omen of good fortune. It would cover the advance of the tribesmen
from the west, and it would cover his own landing, if he paced it
properly. A thick night would make it easier to get his attacking party
onto the lift, and perhaps even below, before it was realized that they
were not Linna's party returning.
Poor Linna. He had seen her for just a minute before he left the
Capitol of the Missouris. He had wanted to make sure she was safe and
comfortable, and he had wanted to try once more to make her understand
how he felt.
"I'm not your enemy, Linna," he had said. "Believe that. After this is
all over--"
"If you take the Citadel," she had answered, "it won't matter who is
anybody's enemy. You and I will both be victims of the Ei. If you don't
take it--you'll be dead, and so will your crazy army, and how long will
they let me live after that? Either way, both of us lose."
And she had sounded so quietly despairing, that he had almost lost
heart.
But not quite.
Starshine and the lower flarings of lightning showed him a gleam of
dark metal far down in the night. He spoke to Sweetbriar and pointed.
The old man peered, squinting, and the six hunters roused themselves
and peered also.
"Don't look like much from here," one of them said.
Price did not dispute him. Perhaps it was just as well for his army of
seven not to have too clear a look at the fortress they were planning
to invade.
He hung for a little time in the high quiet air, watching the storm
front roll like a wave. When it had almost reached the distant gleam of
metal he said sharply,
"All right, _now_!"
And he dropped the aerodyne whistling down the sky.
* * * * *
The wild air-currents caught him, boiling ahead of the storm and over
it. For one horrible moment he thought he had lost control of the
aerodyne. It pitched and skittered and tossed, throwing him against
his seat-belt until his ribs cracked and his flesh felt as though it
was cut through. The tribesmen were now frankly and vocally terrified.
Then the built-in stabilizers and Price's own flier's brain took hold
again, and the whirling-leaf motion steadied to a rough and racking
but controlled descent.
He could not see anything now but the solid blackness of the
storm-clouds, until the lightning flared and lit the rain-swept barren
below with a vivid light, brief but enough to guide him. He had judged
carefully, and he let the main wind-drift carry him until the wall of
the Citadel showed up huge and startling in the glare of a striking
bolt. He hung rocking over the roof until another one showed him the
painted circle of the lift. Then he set the aerodyne down hard right
beside it.
There was no need for any talking. The instructions had all been
thoroughly discussed before. Price and the seven tribesmen were out and
across the intervening few feet of roof and onto the lift and going
down before the next flare of lightning broke.
The men breathed heavily, their throwing ropes in one hand, their
knives in the other. Sweetbriar glanced at the shocker. Then he gave it
to Price and unhooked the weighted bolo from his own belt, swinging it
gently.
There had been no alarm.
Price watched the symbols gliding past on the guide-strip. When the
right one showed he pushed the proper stud and waited. The lift
stopped. The automatic door slid back. They moved fast, out into the
corridor.
Only one man was in sight, going somewhere with a sheaf of papers in
his hand. He stopped, and his eyes widened, and his mouth opened. Price
fired the shocker. The man fell down and the papers scattered all
over the floor. Price began to run. His own shoes made a quick sharp
patting on the plastic surface. The moccasins of the hunters made no
sound at all. He counted the doors, and then turned for a last glance
at Sweetbriar and the men. Their eyes were very bright and the edges of
their teeth showed. Sweetbriar nodded.
Price flung open the door.
And it was easy, easier than he had dreamed. The four technicians in
their uniforms of dull gold turned and stood startled and staring for
as long as a man might catch his breath, and that was time enough.
Bolos wrapped around three of them like flying snakes and brought them
down, and the fourth fell under the shock-beam.
"Shut the door," said Price, and one of the hunters shut it.
Price knocked out the other three with the shocker, and the hunters
bound them. There was a rack of side-arms in one wall, with several
shockers in it. Price handed them out and then turned his attention to
the batteries of firing-studs. The hunters stood staring at the moving
pictures of the stormy Belt reflected in the scanner screens, until
Sweetbriar sent them to guard the door.
There were service-hatches below the waist-high control panels. Price
got one open and studied the wiring, panting more with excitement
than exertion. It was only a few minutes until the pre-arranged time
of attack. But he must not trip the firing relays accidentally in
trying to de-activate them. He was afraid to start pulling wires
indiscriminately.
But where the individual leads ran back to join the primary cable they
passed through a series of switches. It seemed logical to Price that
these were safety cut-offs to be used during maintenance, and that they
would cut off the nameless destructive engines on the roof.
He had nothing better to go on, and time had almost run out. He opened
one of the switches, and glanced swiftly at the screens. Nothing
happened. He flipped open the others fast, and ripped the wires loose
from the board. Then with a metal chair he smashed the studs.
As he finished, Sweetbriar shouted suddenly. "There they come--and
right on time!"
Price, sweating, looked up. Sweetbriar and the hunters were eagerly
gazing at the screens.
They showed the storm-swept Belt and they showed small dark figures in
it--hundreds of them--thousands--tribesmen running toward the Citadel.
An alarm-bell rang somewhere in the Citadel. Instantly other bells
echoed it, a distant confusion of alarms.
"Out of here fast," Price cried. "This is the first place the Vurna
will be coming. If we can get down through, we can help the others."
They ran back out of the room, back down the corridor past the
unconscious man who still lay on the floor. Whatever happened now, the
tribesmen pouring across the Belt were safe from the weapons on the
roof.
Without warning the lift-door opened right in front of them and five
green-clad Vurna came spilling out of it.
There was no chance to use shockers or bolos either--they were so close
to each other that it was hands and fists. They struggled, gripping and
striking at each other, their feet slipping on the smooth floor, with
the clamor of bells in the background.
A new note was added to that clamor. A dim sound of yelling voices,
many of them surging up from the lower part of the Citadel.
"The tribes are in!" shouted Sweetbriar. "By God, I--"
* * * * *
He was knocked back by a flailing green arm. His Vurna antagonist
scrabbled to get his shocker out of his belt. Price desperately kicked
out at his own personal foe and banged him back against the metal wall.
He saw the silver head bang the wall, and the man sagged at the knees.
Price rushed and knocked up the shocker now levelled at Sweetbriar. The
hunters yelped, their eyes blazing. It was their kind of a fight. They
liked it. After a sullen lifetime, they were using their fists on the
Star Lords and they liked that.
The surge of sound from levels underneath told of a far bigger melee
down there, spreading through the Citadel. And then that sound, and the
small, personal noises of their own staggering fight, were cut across
by a brutal authoritative new sound.
A hooting, loud and commanding, getting louder by the second, braying
like the voice of doom through the vast iron pile.
The two Vurna still left on their feet tried to turn and run down the
corridor. The hunter's bolos brought them down quickly.
Sweetbriar's leathery old face was wild and startled as he got to his
feet. "What the hell--"
"That's the Vurna's big battle-stations siren!" Price said. "They're a
bit late with it. Come on!"
He and the hunters began to look for stairs, racing swiftly along the
deserted corridors. They found some at last, and sped downward, level
after level.
Bellowing, deafening in volume now, the siren kept hooting.
It could not drown out the tumultuous uproar that filled the lower
levels. Price and the hunters were met suddenly by a mass of tribesmen
boiling up from the ground level. They were screaming, laughing,
capering in the halls, dragging with them one or two captured
Vurna--triumphant victors, dancing down a hated power under their
moccasined feet. Their hair and beards and their clothing were still
dripping wet with rain.
They swept up Price and Sweetbriar and the six others in their
advancing front, pounding their shoulders, hugging them.
"We did it! We got 'em!" they cried. "We took the Citadel!"
"Is it all over?" asked Price incredulously. "So soon?"
"That mighty caterwauling did it," said a red-bearded man. "All of a
sudden they quit fighting and began to run, like it was a signal, but
they couldn't get away from us. I heard they got old Arrin hisself
down there, in a big room, cussing and crying fit to bust."
"Where's Sawyer?" somebody shouted, and Sweetbriar took up the cry.
Price said,
"Somewhere on this level, I think. Get a Vurna that speaks English and
make him show you. It'll save time."
He pushed on through them to the stairs, and fought his way down. He
wanted to see Arrin. He wanted to see the pride of the Citadel humbled,
broken.
Tribesmen rioted through the corridors, smashing things like happy
children. They directed him to a vast sunken room that Price knew must
be the very heart and soul of the Citadel, its reason for being. It
was an overpowering place of screens and towering panels and complex
equipment. But these screens looked far beyond Earth, showing starry
spaces, burning suns and unimaginable dark abysses. From here the
Vurna had watched the whole sector of outer space, and these complex
controls must be the triggers of the mighty missile-batteries outside
the Citadel, the weapons that could strike fast and far into the void.
Here there was a guard to keep out the roisterers. The soberer of
the tribesmen had a sensible concern for the possible results of
tampering with these incomprehensible but obviously mighty powers.
They were afraid the whole Citadel might blow up with them in it. A few
technicians were still being hustled out as Price entered.
A number of the chiefs were in here, and Arrin was with them, but he
was neither cursing nor crying. He was standing between two muscular
tribesmen, facing the chiefs, and his face held such an agony of
despair and terror that Price was shaken by it.
"_What must I do_," he was saying, "_to make you understand?_ That
warning came from our fleet. The Ei have evaded it in the Centaurus
Gulf, and are sweeping in toward Earth. If we don't defend the
Citadel--"
He broke off as he saw Price come up. Then he said bitterly, "I
congratulate you. Few men can say that practically single-handed they
destroyed a world."
One of the chiefs asked Price, "Is Sawyer with you?"
Price shook his head. "They've gone to free him now. He'll be here in a
few minutes."
"Oh my God," said Arrin softly. "Don't let them free the Ei. Even two
of them at large here--we'd have no hope at all, with their fleet
coming." He looked at Price and Price's confident scorn drained
slowly out of him leaving a nasty void. Nobody, Vurna or not, could
counterfeit what he saw in Arrin's eyes.
"Do you wish me to go on my knees and beg?" whispered Arrin. "I'll do
it. Only go up and stop them from opening that bulkhead."
And Price knew suddenly that he must do that.
* * * * *
He turned and ran back along the hall and up the stairs, pushing and
kicking his way past the knots of tribesmen who wanted to congratulate
him for what he had done, and all the way there was a chill unpleasant
thing riding his back, and its first name was Doubt, and its second,
Fear.
_Was it possible, just barely possible, that the Vurna had been telling
the truth all the time?_
Uproar on the prison level guided him through a maze of corridors,
to an obligato of breaking doors. He turned a corner. Burr and Twist
and Sawyer were free. They formed part of the fore-front of a group
that was swarming down the hall systematically breaking down the cell
doors. Two Vurna guards lay prone, and a third man, probably the
English-speaking guide, was trying to crawl away unnoticed, his face
ashen with fear.
The bulkhead was open.
A man's voice neighed suddenly in terror. Then another, and another,
and the tribesmen were rolled back upon themselves as by the blow of a
great hand, as the fore edge of the group turned and burst its way to
the rear. There was a moment of wild panic. Price stood flat against
the wall and watched brave men run by him sobbing. And then a wave of
force, so cold and alien that it revolted the last small atom of his
human self, hit his mind like the back-blast of a bomb.
Two dark forms stood in the corridor.
They were taller than men. At first Price thought they were shrouded in
black like old monks, with cowls over their heads. But as they moved
he saw that the cowls and the floating draperies edged with a thin
translucent gray were their own substance, quivering, shifting, gliding
around some unguessable central core of being. He could not see whether
they had faces under the black folds, and eyes in the faces, but he
could feel them watching him. He could feel their minds stripping him
and tearing away his feeble defenses, leaving his own mind naked and
helpless before them.
And these were the Ei. These were the Big Lie of the Vurna.
_Only they were real!_
He could not stand them any longer. He ran.
They all ran. It was a compulsion. Run. Cry panic. Clear the Citadel
and get away!
He looked back and the Ei were behind them, gliding soundlessly along
the hall.
Run. Get away....
And then Price and the others, fleeing in the next corridor collided
with the chiefs who were hurrying to find out what had happened. They
still had Arrin with them, a prisoner.
"Out," said Sawyer thickly, his voice a hoarse croak. "Get out, fast--"
Arrin's voice cracked like a silver whiplash. "Yes, run. Because
they're making you, because their minds are too much for you! Run, and
let them have the Citadel, and when their fleet comes, let them have
the Earth!"
That stopped them. The horror they felt at that thought surged up
so strong that the frantic compulsion to flee lessened a little.
But behind them, somewhere back in the corridors, they would be
following....
Arrin raged and mocked them. "_We_ saved you from the Ei two
generations ago, when Ei ships had smashed your defenses and they were
ready to move in. We moved in first, we've held them back, but now
you've let them in! So run!"
"Good God!" said Sawyer, his face stricken. "Then it was all true, what
you told us about the Ei. It was true all the time!"
* * * * *
Price did not, like the other Earthmen, have a lifetime's thinking to
revise. He grabbed Arrin's shoulders.
"Can we face them?" he cried. "Can we kill them?"
"They can be killed," Arrin said. "Their minds can hold many--but
not an unlimited number. If we all rush them, many of us, there is a
chance...."
Price yelled down the corridors, "What are you running from? There's
only two of them. We're going back! We're going to pull them down!"
The tribesmen, their first horror a little abated, by sheer reaction
from shame of their own terror, exploded into sudden rage.
"There's only two of them--come on!"
And then of a sudden they were all of them running back down the
corridors, jostling, crowding, screaming, Price with Arrin beside him,
with old Sweetbriar ahead, with Sawyer shouting in hoarse anger. A mob,
not an army, a mob urged forward by its own horror.
Around the corner, and into the corridor where the two black shapes
came gliding fast. And it was like walking into night and death, into
bitter black winds and the stabbing of cruel swords, as the might of
alien minds blasted at them.
Tribesmen screamed and fell, clawing at their own heads. The mass
behind forced over them, forced the reeling first wave right into the
unimaginable shapes.
"Pull them down!"
Price was in the screeching fore-front now and he closed his eyes and
struck with his knife at the cloudy darkness of a cowl.
A cold like that of outer space struck through him and he staggered,
fainting and falling, and his mind closed on the awful sight of packed
men swaying and pulling and striking at the two tall cowled shapes,
mobbing them, beating them down.
When Price opened his eyes he was in another corridor and old Sawyer
was slapping his face with rough hands.
"Yes," said Sawyer thickly. "They're dead. And a good many men dead
with them, and some others that act like their brains are dead."
He shook his head, a little wildly. "To think it was true all the
time--"
_Whoom!_ came a deep sound from outside the Citadel. And then more of
them, in quick succession. _Whoom! Whoom! Whoom!_
"Arrin--" said Price, getting weakly to his feet.
"He's down in that room, with his men," said Sawyer. "And they're
turning loose on that Ei fleet out in space."
And now the great missiles from the launchers outside the Citadel were
going out so fast that the sounds of them could not be counted.
Price said, "Then you let him--"
"Let him?" repeated Sawyer. "We _asked_ him! Do you think we want a
whole fleet of--of _them_--reaching Earth?"
By the time Price and Sawyer got down to the missile-control room, the
deadly messengers were all on their way.
Arrin and his men watched the screens, and would not turn from them.
Price, and the tribesmen, saw only burning stars and dark space in
those screens--and then, finally, a little crackling of pin-prick
flares running like a swarm of fireflies in the dark void. Then nothing.
Arrin turned.
Sawyer said, painfully, "Did they--?"
"Yes," said Arrin. "We caught them--but none too soon. Our fleet out
there will mop up any Ei ships that survived."
He added, with slow weariness, "We've won a battle--not a war. The Ei
are many. But this outpost world is safe. And we'll press them back and
back--"
Sawyer looked at Price. Price said, "Don't be so damned proud. Go ahead
and say it."
Sawyer said to Arrin, "Seems like we were wrong about some things.
About you Vurna. We're hoping things'll be different between us, now."
"They can be," Arrin said.
"They will be, if you want it."
The old Chief of the Missouris asked, "Now it's all cleared up, just
who _was_ the traitor among us? Was it Oakes?"
For the first time, a little smile touched Arrin's face. "Do you really
want to know, now it's over?"
Sawyer grunted. "Guess not." He looked around the other chiefs, and
then stuck his gnarled hand out in the oldest gesture of Earth, and
Arrin took it.
* * * * *
Price and Linna stood next day on the roof of the Citadel and watched
the tribesmen going home.
There was, there had always been, a stiff-necked pride in the men of
Earth. They went away with their heads up, not looking back. But, at
the edge of the distant forest, there was a face turned and the flash
of a handwave before they went into the trees.
"They'll come back," Price said. "A few of them at first--then more and
more, to learn. A few years will make all the difference."
He thought that the sons of Earth and the sons of the stars would
together stand upon many far worlds. The long war against the Ei would
end some day, that dark and alien tide would be rolled back, and
Earthmen would do their share. But that was all to come.
Linna was saying earnestly, "And the people of your own hidden colony
in the west--they will join us too?"
Price looked at her. "There is no colony, Linna. I came alone from the
west."
"But your clothes--your plane--where _did_ you come from?" She was
startled, her eyes wide and wondering.
"I'll explain all that later. You won't believe it, at first. I hardly
do myself."
And, thinking of the strange freak of force and chance that had
snatched him from the older Earth, Price felt a last pang of nostalgia
for that lost world of long ago. That time when, safe on their cozy
little planet, men had dreamed of space and stars--it seemed now like
a long-dead idyll of youth.
The Earth of those days could never come again. The wider galaxy
had crashed in upon it, and terrible and magnificent realities had
shattered the youthful dreams, and it was a different and sterner
planet that was joining the community of star-worlds. Who knew what
awaited it on that wider, cosmic stage? His hand tightened on Linna's.
Of their own tiny part in that vast future, he felt suddenly very sure.