Halted!
In midair it halted, spreading across an invisible wall of nothingness
that was erected before the McCanahan and the girl he held.
There was puzzlement in the pulsing of the thing, in the blind, angry
dartings of the pencil-beam of flame. It moved to the floor, and
quested upward to the ceiling. It darted from wall to wall, seeking to
penetrate the barrier that sheltered its victims.
And now the amazement was gone. The white fire burned lower, as if
afraid.
In sheer anger, that made it blaze so brightly that Kael cried out and
lifted a hand to hide his face, the thing stabbed again. And again,
hungrily, raging with insane fury.
_The Doyen shelter you! Only the Doyen could stand against the power of
my will!_
McCanahan could feel the anger fall away before the fear that ate at
the thing. Almost, he could hear its thoughts. Perhaps it wanted him to
hear his thoughts.
_They can save you for a little while. But they cannot shelter you
forever. Not from Noorlythin-the-Doyen can they save you forever! I
shall work my will on you yet, man of Terra! You will crawl on bloody
stumps for legs, waving handless arms for mercy! Begging me with
tongueless mouth for the boon of death!_
It came to McCanahan that the thing spoke out of the grip of its own,
paralysing terror. It mouthed threats to bolster its own esteem.
Kael put his mind to the task and forced a laugh between his lips. He
made his laugh mocking, challenging.
"You'll never kill me, Noorlythin! I am servant to the Doyen. Such as
the Doyen protect those whom they select to serve them!"
The thing that was Noorlythin pulsated like a stream of cobwebs caught
in a mad wind. It lifted and shook, swirled and bellied.
And then, suddenly, it was quiet. It hung a foot above the yellow tile,
barely moving. And the inertia of the thing was more frightening than
all its blinding brilliance.
_The Doyen play the game according to its rules. They will not let me
harm you with my Doyen powers. Only by other gifts can I let the life
from your body, Terran! So be it!_
V
And the thing was gone, blanking instantly from sight with nothing left
behind to show its presence but a bit of black dust stirring restlessly
on the tiling as a breeze came in off the desert and moved down the
long corridor.
"Poor Lunol," whispered Flaith. "Oh, the poor old man!"
The McCanahan lifted his harp and stared dumbly at its glittering
surface of polished silver. "The string from my father's wrist broke
the tube in the machine. It summoned up Noorlythin from--from wherever
he was hidden."
"How can you use that knowledge?" wondered Flaith.
Kael shook his head. "I don't know yet. But I will. Somehow, I'll find
out the truth." He lifted his head and peered about the great tower.
"And where better to begin than here?"
They ate dried meat plucked from Flaith's girdle-pouch, chewing on
hard black bread. And then they slept, with Flaith cuddled against the
McCanahan's length, with his own head pillowed on an arm, both of them
stretched at the foot of the great metal machine.
It was the McCanahan who stirred first, rising from the soft body of
the girl, carefully so as not to disturb her. He wandered about the
tower, studying the strange machines that glistened at him from the
shadows. A man would need a dozen lifetimes to understand these things,
he told himself. He would find no help from them.
He tried to fight the pall of bitter despair that lay across his
shoulders. He was the servant of the gods of space, caught up by them
to hunt out and punish another god.
Laughter touched his lips; but the bitterness in it stung like acid.
How does one fight a god? How does one go about killing a thing that is
made only of white, radiant energy? A thing that by a mere touch of the
blazing brightness that comprises it, can blast him and all his kind to
a black dust that shifts restlessly across a floor, flung by an errant
breeze!
His fists were clenched until the knotted muscles of his forearms
ached. "I can't do it," he told the machines. "I'm only a man. I can't
fight against a god!"
Deep within him, he knew that someone had to make this fight, that
someone from one of the thousands of Terran worlds had to face
Noorlythin, had to stand to him and his awesome power, or the human
race itself would go down, crushed and torn and flung into nothingness,
as a sand castle went down before the relentless roll of the ocean.
When that happened, the sfarri and the Senn would expand, would lift
their faery castles and their monstrous, monolithic palaces, where now
Terran buildings stood. And those of the Senn would have their pick of
the women of Earth.