Crimson lips lost their curve of happiness. A scream burst from her
lips and went shuddering through the air. Her eyes opened--but blindly.
Unseeingly. Her hands reached up to clutch at--blindness!
One moment--of utter fantastic horror. One moment when her body swayed
and fell and writhed and twisted in unutterable pain. One moment when
her beauty was crushed by a sledge-hammer of unspeakable anguish.
And as suddenly she was gone. As suddenly, she was back again in the
room of the distant world, and the silver sphere was hurtling back into
the remote depths.
Ilon's mind reeled. He felt resistance crumbling. The solid barriers of
the room were melting. He staggered. Solidity vanished. Figures--grim
and demanding--leaped in. He was helpless before them. But old Nyo's
mind flashed out, indignant and hot.
[Illustration: _Ilon's mind reeled. He felt resistance crumbling._]
"What is this!" his father was thundering. "Spies intruding upon a
Galax-Mentor! What would you have?"
* * * * *
Ilon saw the suddenly startled faces of the many spies, saw their
bewilderment, their wonder and fear. They retreated hurriedly,
sheepishly. In a moment the room was whole again. Ilon felt stunned.
Memory of the girl's unseeing pain crushed him. His father's arm was
about his shoulders now.
"Come, Ilon," said Nyo. "The variable-star Necktor has changed three
times. Another moment, and your union with Nyrilla will have been
recorded. You must go to meet her. It is the time-old custom of the
Galax."
"But the girl, father, the girl of the silver sphere...."
"I disobeyed the laws of the Galax, son, and brought her here for an
instant, so that you might understand. Our race of beings is a glorious
race, son. It has come across vast universes, across unthinkable aeons
of time, and across unmeasurable dimensions of space. Somewhere along
the paths, seeds have been lost, and life remained in retrograde
places--like this little planet you have just witnessed.
"This silver sphere has floated forever in several surrounding seas
of--force--shall we say, son. Gravity--atmosphere--and several other
energies of which we will not speak.
"But several faculties--such as we know them--menta-portation,
radiance-life--are impossible under the layers of atmospheric
molecules. Though the power for menta-portation lies dormant in their
bodies, as in our own, their atmosphere prevented its use.
"So--as the mastodons in the mines are blind because they have not seen
light--so are the people of the silver sphere without true powers of
the mind, because they have never been able to use them.
"When I transported her here, the sudden comprehension of these powers
would have killed her in another instant. So I sent her back, Ilon,
back to her own true world. Have I done rightly, son? Will you go now
to Nyrilla?"
Ilon reached out for the strength of his father's arm. Memory of the
girl, her pliant erectness, her sheer beauty, was like a racing livid
fire in his mind.
He would have to forget her--and go on loving her. He would have to
leave her unnamed, unknown, a savage creature in her own primitive
world. And though her memory never quite went from his mind, well, that
was something to be faced. For her own sake he would never dare again
to think of bridging the space that separated them.
"Let us go, father," he said.
Softly their bodies arose. As lightly as feathers they floated through
an opening in the barrier that came at their mere wishing....
* * * * *
Cheryl Ramsden, torch singer for the _Midnight Club_, screamed just
once in her apartment. They found her prostrate and writhing, as though
from the after-effects of a seizure.
"Nerves!" the physician pronounced it. "Better take it easy, girl!"
"Look, doc," cried Cheryl. "I ain't going nuts, am I? For an instant it
was like swimming through space. Suddenly it was like being inside a
flame, with every part of me going up in ashes and...."
The doctor looked very serious, as if he felt the surge of forces that
had swept her up. Then he shrugged his shoulders as though to say some
things were better to be left unnamed and guessed at.
"That's what comes of too much torch singing," he said lightly, and
being young and not immune to beauty, he smiled encouragingly and with
depth. "Maybe you've been burning the torch at both ends, Cheryl."
"What would you suggest, Doctor--"
"Mudd! Phineas Axelton Mudd!--mi-lady!"
"How horrible! Did your parents actually tack that onto you or was it
invented to torture your patients?"
"A little of both, but I'd recommend a long drive into the country,
maybe a swim at the seashore--"
"In the company of a young doctor, red-haired, by the name of Mudd?"
"Well, I didn't say that, Cheryl, but could be, gal, could be."