"Shades of Bridget na Gablach! Their women!"
"They have no women! No man of Senorech has ever seen a sfarran girl.
Rumor says that they shelter them because of their loveliness. But if
this a diorama of the sfarran planet, and there are no women, then--"
Kael grunted. "You and your crazy theories! Look, woman! See for
yourself. There are women there. There must be women!"
But though they hunted along all that corridor, staring at the
sfarran world and its divers shapes and colors, its desert storms and
wind-tossed seas, its magnificent white cities that looked like milky
jewels, they found no woman.
For two hours they hunted, until the McCanahan discovered that by
moving a red lever he could make the scenes within the bubbles come
to life. The tiny men moved, as if released from a frozen tomb. They
walked and piloted their vessels, and went about their tasks. Yet even
so, no woman appeared.
"It's some sort of televisic communicator," the McCanahan muttered,
"that's spacecasting across a billion billion miles of space."
"They have no hospitals, either," said Flaith in a troubled voice.
"Now what will you be meaning by that?"
* * * * *
The redhead smiled wryly. "Even in this advanced day and age on
Senorech, Kael my darling, women still go to hospitals to have their
babies!"
The McCanahan scowled. "And if there are no hospitals, they'll have
their brats at home, won't they?"
"Brats, indeed!" flared Flaith, whirling, chin high.
"Peace, peace," grinned Kael. "It's only teasing I was. But I begin to
see your drift, mavourneen. No women, no hospitals, no children. Then
the sfarri are not human. Or maybe it's because they're ovopoid. Maybe
they're sexless, like an amoeba, or maybe they fertilize themselves and
lay an egg to hatch a little sfarran."
"There are no little sfarri. All are grown men. Every last one."
McCanahan brooded with his lower lip thrust out. "No little ones. No
coibche to bind a man and a woman in holy matehood. No women, even, to
comfort a man when he's sad with loneliness. Then they aren't human,
with no heart in their chests to beat a little faster at the kiss from
a woman's lips. And if they have no hearts, they must be--
"_Robots!_"
The McCanahan walked in his excitement, taking long steps that drew
him past the metal machine with its glass-encased tubes and wirings.
"_Robots!_ No wonder they're perfect! No wonder it is that none has
ever been caught by a Terran battle fleet for questioning! Being
robots, they destroy themselves before capture. And being robots, too,
they fight with the same mechanized, incredible fury that's smashed a
dozen war fleets between Achernar and Sol."
The McCanahan was warming to his subject. "We fought the sfarri across
a score of galaxies, ever since my grandfather Rhoderick--bless his
memory!--first crossed atomic disintegration beams with their cruisers.
They've pushed us back, away from the Rim planets. Everywhere our
paths have met, there's been bloody war. Bloody? Ha! There's been no
blood spilled on their side. Just cogs and wheels and wire!"
Flaith tossed back a lock of reddish gold hair from before her eyes.
"You killed them in Clonn Fell. You slew them when you touched your
harp strings! The sound did it."
"The harp of Brith Tsinan. Aie! It had the silver string that I took
from my father's wrist attached to it. Do you remember how I broke the
other, when I threw the harp on the road from Akkalan? Where is the
harp, Flaith?"
The old peddler came shuffling forward from the doorway, dropping his
shoulder to loosen the strap that held the black sack to his back. From
the sack the bright silver harp tumbled into the McCanahan's eager
fingers.
He lifted the harp and set it to his shoulder. His hands played across
the strings, and the wild sharp peal of the strings swept up and
through the tower.
In answer to the high, keening notes, a tube in the great metal machine
spanged shrilly. The tinkle of broken glass was loud in the sudden
silence as Kael dropped his fingers from the quivering harp strings.
Lunol, the peddler, cried out harshly, his face a wet mass of sweating
fear. Flaith screamed high and shrill. Her bare arm lifted and pointed.
The McCanahan whirled, and his harp fell from numb fingers.
Bright and blazing, like the core of a giant sun, a whirling mass of
fiery matter whirled and quivered, pulsing before the great machine.
Its incandescence was blinding, brilliant. They could read the fury in
the flame of its sentient heart. They needed no voice to tell them.
_Noorlythin!_
The sunburst of brilliance lifted, shuddering. It foamed and grew,
incandescent in the sheer brilliance of the white fire that burst and
bloomed within it.
A thin stream of fire reached out, touched Lunol and laved him in its
blinding whiteness.
And Lunol shrank in upon himself, grew smaller, almost tiny within the
bubble of brilliance that held him. He grew, then. Expanded suddenly.
And where Lunol and the hungry white fire had been was just blackened
smoke, drifting across the yellow floor.
Flaith turned her face in against Kael's chest. Her fingers bit their
nails convulsively into his flesh. Her body shook so badly that its
trembling moved the McCanahan as he stood on firmly planted legs.
Another pencil of fire stabbed out.