Beautiful, impossibly savage, Prince Ilon loved
her madly. For her he would almost dare the blackest
secret of the cosmos. Almost--but not quite....
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Fall 1947.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
A silver sphere swam in vague depths. The surrounding frame of
intricate mechanism gave off a soft phosphorescence that strengthened
and faded by turns. A young man, robed in gossamer _vitri_ of richest
hue, leaned over, watching keenly.
His fingers moved controls at the bottom of the machine. The silver
sphere leaped upward in the vision plate, swelling like a balloon.
Continents and seas were now visible. Then one area swelled over the
visor-plate. Gradually a small spot became a city, a strange sprawling
city. He found a certain street, a certain house, a certain room.
She was walking around on the floor of the room, dressed in the scant
costume of the period of that silver sphere. She never left the floor.
Her body was singularly graceful, her face angelic. Strangely, it
seemed, she had no control over gravity, and was forced to _walk_ or be
_conveyed_ across the surface of her planet.
"Oh beautiful, primitive girl!" he whispered chokingly, gripping his
fingers tight on the control board before him. "Savage girl of lost
ages!"
The girl smiled. She seemed to turn directly toward him, and her blue
eyes were filled with a dreamy, half-yearning promise, as if she had
heard his words and had answered.
Yet she had never seen him. She didn't even know he existed. She
couldn't even imagine the wonders of flashing through interstellar
worlds by use of thought-force, nor picture a means of existing
entirely on basic radiation, sucked from the atoms themselves. This
young man, slender and well-proportioned, was a product of endless
evolution and progression. She was a retrograde current of atavism that
had persisted somehow on one outlaw world.
Savage, yes! But there was no mistaking the light in Ilon Karth's eyes
as he followed every movement of her little graceful body.
Suddenly an awareness of someone approaching burst into his mentality.
He wheeled, an expression of annoyance on his face. With an abrupt
movement of his hand he struck a switch that caused the glowing of the
machine to die. The sphere, and the lovely girl of that alien globe,
vanished utterly.
* * * * *
Now the surrounding walls, glowing with light of their own, flickered.
An ovoid opening in solidity appeared, forced by the mental-push of the
approaching person. The figure of an old man, venerable of appearance,
stooped and robed in the gold-mesh-cloth of the Galax-Mentor, floated
into the room. The wisdom of ages lay imprinted on the face that was
like wrinkled parchment beneath the blue emerald set in a forehead
band, denoting his rank in the Supreme Council of Seven. The face lost
its strain of menta-portation, and the old man landed gently at his
side.
"Greeting, Ilon," greeted Nyo Karth, his eyes darting intelligently
about the room.
"Er--Greeting, dad," said Ilon Karth, hiding his irritation. As the
opening had been menta-forced into the room, his hand had darted
instinctively toward a hidden compartment in the machine. Now he tried
to hide the movement of his hand and what it contained as it sped
toward the secret pocket again. But the keen eyes of his father saw
and grew narrow and steely with surprise and suspicion. The older man
reached out and grabbed his wrist. In Ilon's open palm lay a needle-ray
weapon of defense.
"What is it you fear, son?" he demanded sternly. "What can you, a
princeling of your own people, fear here in our own galaxy?"
Ilon Karth averted his eyes. "Has enough tonnage of _ithilyn_ been
removed from the mines lately?" he asked, ignoring the other's question.
"But there is only one thing to fear," continued his father
wonderingly. "That is the minion spies. The guards of the secret
galaxy. But what have you done to fear them? Don't tell me, Ilon, that
you have been crazy enough to probe through the dark ultra-universes in
search for lower life-forms?"
"Look, father," said Ilon, indicating the machines. "I perform my
assigned tasks here. Those only. I supervise the _ithilyn_ mines,
watching their daily output through the scanner."
Suddenly a greenish glowing swam through the open air, like the rays of
a fairy elfin, settling around the room.
The older man gasped. "It's the spy-rays of the minions, son! Whatever
you've been doing, son, blank your mind as I do. When they're gone,
we'll go into this foolish thing you've been doing."
So they stood at the scanner and inspected the scenes of the lower
_ithilyn_ mines. As Ilon's hands moved the controls, various scenes
shifted before them. In the headquarters room, other men such as
himself raised their heads, smiled and saluted, or answered direct
personal questions.
They came to the digging scenes. Huge giants toiled in a deep hole,
like larval bodies in cocoons. Rest-time had come. Food had been
shuttled in on a chain of grav-belts. Now the great fingerless hand of
the giant reached down, felt around expertly, and picked up the food
shuttles. The great eye in his forehead did not waver, for the giant
was blind. Yet the hand, misformed now into a digging claw, threw the
food expertly into the huge, gaping maw and the jaws began to chew with
animal-like gusto.
Then the elfin glowing was gone. Nyo Karth spun accusingly upon his son.
"Ilon--my son, my son," he cried in a softly troubled thought tone.
"Have you forgotten, boy, that after all you have a father? And a
friend? Have you forgotten the person to whom you took all your
troubles to as a lad?"
Ilon Karth frowned, still averting his eyes. "But I'm a man now,
father, faced with the problems of a man of the upper Galax."
"True, true, son, but--"
"And if the conventions of an age-old universal society bore me to
death, father, then it's--"
"Oh!" cried the older man understandingly, and a smile tugged at his
mouth, which relaxed somewhat. "Then it does not please you that the
Hygiene Board has decreed a marriage union be officially recorded in a
few short star-periods to--"
"It's not that I hate Nyrilla," burst out Ilon. "Not that she isn't as
attractive as all women of Coralinth. It's simply that I don't have
anything to say about it. There's no demand for agreement from either
party. It just happens that her gene-patterns match up and supplement
mine. Our children would be benefited by the mating. At a given time,
some official moves a hand across a sheet. Two names are written down
and whether or no--it's happened. Besides, I don't _love_ Nyrilla.
Don't you understand, father?"
"You don't--" began the older man, and suddenly his astonishment melted
into a sunshine of laughter. "Love--eh--you say, boy? Love."
* * * * *
He repeated the word softly, as if testing the sound and depth of a
meaning almost forgotten. "Yes, I remember the term now. So it's that."
Then a growing concern replaced his merriment. "But that's a thing
of bygone ages, son. You _are_ having a trend. Why not take it to a
psych-treater, son? Have it removed from your mind. You'd be surprised
what a beautiful and understanding girl Nyrilla of Coralinth is, once--"
"Psych-treater! Psych-treater! That's all you hear! If you have
something that bothers you, you forget it in a psych-treater! If you
have an original thought that tantalizes you--go to a psych-treater!
Is that sensible, father, to forget the problems that may affect the
entire future of your life? Besides, the girl of the silver sphere--"
The words had leaped out impatiently. Now Ilon stopped suddenly,
clasping his hand to his temple from where the mental words had burst.
But too late. Old Nyo was looking intently at him and then was moving
toward him with sudden wrath on his high brow, his hand upraised as if
to strike him.
Ilon ducked, fearing the blow, but his eyes did not leave the angrily
pulsing blood vessels that throbbed on his father's forehead.
"Fool!" spat out Nyo Karth in horrified anger. "Then you have been
breaking the laws of the Mentors. Plumbing the universe, seeking
contact with life in lesser forms. Don't you realize the gravity of
this offense? Don't you realize you may lose your princeship, be
banished from the Galax, or even executed?"