A hot sun blanketed his naked body. It blazed from a molten sky and
cooked him where he lay on warm red rocks. Kael McCanahan lifted his
head and stared at the searing desolation before him. Sand and rock,
and the shale of evaporated seas, stretching like the finger of Time
to infinity itself, outward to that blazing blue bowl of sky where the
golden sun hung high, pouring down its heat.
He came to his feet and swayed with the pain that the heat was putting
in his muscles.
_Come to me! Come! Come!_
He put trembling hands to his head, and again that sweet call sounded,
with the siren lure of all the lost treasures of all space.
He stumbled forward, hearing the summons in his brain, in every fibre
of his being.
_Come to my riches! Lift up your hands to the jewel that gives man
everything he wants! Touch me! I am yours!_
He was running across the hot sands that bit his naked feet with hot
teeth, and over the sharp rocks that cut into his flesh until he bled.
Dimly, he knew that nothing could help him now. That here he was cut
off from everything that was sane.
This mad world was a creation of Noorlythin. His was the wild brain
that dreamed the sands and the rocks and the awful desolation. His
dream, that sun that cooked while it shone.
Sobbing, he ran. He fell to his knees, and he crawled.
With bleeding fingers he clawed at the rocks, making himself rise and
run again.
It seemed to the man that had once been Kael McCanahan that he was
running around a planet. The pain was part of him, now. His muscles
jerked in agony at every step, yet always he forced himself to run
faster, faster, gulping down the hot desert air. That siren call was
strong in his ears.
_Run, Terran! Run to me!_
He ran on and on, and now he saw the others, men like himself, running
on bleeding feet, crawling when those feet were worn to cracked stumps.
And before each of those men, or before Kael McCanahan's own eyes,
gleamed--
_The eye of Lirflane!_
A globe of a red jewel it was, the eye. Imprisoned in its faceted
surface were the dreams of a billion people. The man that looked on it
saw the happiness he sought, and he fought to join himself to it, that
his own dreams would add to the total of all the others. And on the
dreams and on the flesh of these men who came to it, drawn by its siren
voice and by the eternity of delight it promised, the eye of Lirflane
feasted, waxed and swelled.
A man tried to claw at his legs as Kael McCanahan ran past him. Red
eyes in a bloated face hurled hate at him, as his hand closed on his
ankle.
The McCanahan shook himself free and ran on.
The eye was closer now.
It grew massive, transparent. In its redness, the redness of the hair
of flaming Flaith beckoned. Her white body swayed and danced, and her
throaty voice summoned him.
The McCanahan's arms shook as he put them out, trying to pull himself
forward with handfulls of hot, desert air.
Now the Eye of Lirflane was before him, and all he could see was Flaith
moving toward him, her arms wide and beckoning--
One step he moved, and another.
His hand went out, toward the gleaming red side of the monstrous jewel.
_Come to me, Kael McCanahan! Come to the peace and the forgetfulness
you have earned. Take me in your arms. Drink kisses from my lips!_
The McCanahan sobbed.
He shook in torture more vivid than the agony in his feet and muscles.
"Not Flaith!" he cried. "Not Flaith! You--woman of the jewel!
Witchwoman of Lirflane! Not Flaith!"
He went to his knees, to anchor himself the better to the ground,
against the siren call of the mighty Eye.
"No. Got to fight! Get free. Free...."
He fought there on his knees, while men streamed past him, rushing
with insane desire into the red heaven of the jewel. Their eyes were
mad with the greed or the lust that shook them, for every man saw in
the Eye of Lirflane what his own eyes wanted most to see. Their bodies
were torn and gaunt from their struggle across the sand and rock
desolation. But they would lose their pain, within the bosom of the red
eye.
Kael fought. He fought silently, until the sweat came out on his face
in big globes, until it runneled down his chest and thighs. His belly
and his back were awash with the salt dampness.
At last he turned, just a little, so that only a corner of the fabulous
Eye remained in his vision.
An hour later, he turned again, and now he saw only the barren
loneliness of this abandoned world. And as he stared, the sand and the
rocks and the sky ran with liquid movement as a painting might run in
a bath of chemicals. And the streaming reds and buffs and yellows, the
black and the greens and purples flowed together and formed a river,
that swept the tortured legs of the McCanahan out from under him.
* * * * *
He screamed in his agony as the salt water bit into his bleeding
wounds. He babbled and twisted, flailing the salt sea with animal
desperation. He drowned in this vast emptiness of ocean, with no hand
to grasp his or eye to witness his going.
"No," he shouted to the gray leaden sky above him. "I won't die! I'll
live! I'll live!"
His arms and his legs moved, and clumsily, he swam. No driftwood
floated here. Here a man had to swim to stay alive, until his arms and
his legs grew numb with his effort, and he sank.
The McCanahan turned on his back, and the salt water buoyed him up. He
floated for endless days, and during endless nights, and the tiny spark
of life within him waxed and waned. And out of the eternity of no-time,
as he swam and alternately floated, a wing-prowed galley slipped
through the foam-crested waves. Its white sail bellied in the ocean
wind. It veered and came for him, running easily in the water.
From the rail, a bearded face scowled down at him. A hairy hand threw
a rope that he twisted around his middle. He was dragged on deck, to
stand dripping with the salt water that seared his wounds.
A rope was whipped around his wet wrists and he was dragged to the slim
mast that rose from the deck, before the oarbanks where slaves pulled
at smooth-handled oars.
A woman whose flesh was tinted a delicate green came toward him. She
walked with quick, supple strides, and the McCanahan noted numbly that
her eyes were a feral green, and that her tiny ears were pointed. A
whip coiled in her hand.
She showed her tiny teeth in a cruel smile.
"You are the man from Terra! You are the one who turned down all the
worlds of space! For that you must be punished!"
And the long lash went snaking out in an arc, slashing into his back,
and the sheer agony of the cutting whip slammed his body against the
mast. The lash came down and lifted, came down and lifted, and the
McCanahan sagged in the ropes that held him.
With the cruelty of her species, the cat-woman flogged him. When she
was done, she cut him loose and stood over him on the swaying deck that
was stained with his blood. Her voice was soft, furry.
"Take him and chain him to an oar! Rivet the manacles on his wrists and
ankles! Let him tug an oar for a year! Then perhaps he will obey Him
who is ALL!"
He was kicked and shoved across the deck. He tumbled into an empty slot
on an oarbench. His wrists and ankles were shackled, the armorer not
caring where his metal mallet fell.
For a day he rested, with black bread soaked in wine forced between
his teeth. For a day, he knew only the blessedness of not moving. His
slumber was dreamless--
In a red dawn, he was wakened by the bite of an overseer's whip across
his bloody back. His hands lifted and went to the oar-handle, and his
body swayed and returned, and he put his weight with the weight of the
men who held the same oar as he.
The galley slipped through the heaving ocean, and the red oars flashed
in the sun, and the salt spray stung, and only when an errant wind
swept across the seas was there any rest for the men who slaved on the
benches. Sometimes men died, and were flung overboard. Other men were
unshackled and dragged screaming to the foredeck, where the cat-woman
waited, pink tongue licking her lips, the whip curling like a live
thing in her hands.
And of all the men who worked the oars in this endless ocean, it was
the McCanahan who was chosen most often for her amusement.
Once he almost died under the biting whip, and in that moment of pain
and numbness, when his senses seemed about to float from his body,
the cat-woman leaned close and her furry voice whispered, "Speak your
secret to me, man of Terra! Tell me the weapon that slays the sfarri!"
But the McCanahan only shook his head and his hair, long uncut, tumbled
on his bleeding shoulders.
The days were endless on that ocean, and the oars swung and the sail
creaked, flapping overhead, and the overseer tramped the runway with
endless patience, his voice a sullen growl. The cat-woman came to look
upon the McCanahan and her slim greenish fingers came forth to stroke
his naked back where her lash had marred it. Always her throaty voice
whispered to him, speaking of the delights that might be found in her
cabin, if only he were not so stubborn.
When her patience was at an end, she motioned to the overseer and he
came with armed guards and unchained the McCanahan, and he was led to
the mast and roped.
And then, in the middle of a whipsting, the ocean and the ship and the
cat-woman's whip fell away....
* * * * *
He lay on a hard, cold floor.
The High Mor stood before him, his hard eyes glittering. Kael was back
in the guardroom that he had left--how long ago?
"A year," said the High Mor, reading his thought. "A year and five
days! And yet, the barest split second of Time. I sent you out to those
worlds of subspace, Kael McCanahan. There you lived, and almost died.
You rowed at a real oar. You suffered the cuts of a real whip. Look at
yourself!"
The High Mor threw a small metal mirror at him. Dazedly he stared at
the grim, hard brown face and the cold blue eyes he saw mirrored on its
surface. His flesh was brown, and great muscles swelled under it. The
oar had put those muscles there, as the whip had put the scars on his
ribs and back.
"Only a split second of our time, Terran," said the High Mor. "But a
year and five days in the worlds I made! I told you I had gifts! I
have made a thousand million worlds for that subspace, in the eons that
I have roamed the stars. I am a god!"
Kael shook his head and his long hair flicked his naked arms. If he
needed proof of the High Mor's words, his long-uncut hair was proof
enough.
He thought, _Tell him, and let him have his way! How can a man fight a
god?_ The thought washed over him that he fought for all mankind, that
the men and women of a thousand planets unknowingly depended on his
fight. Women like the flame-tressed Flaith, men like his father and
Captain Edmunds, who did their duty and died for it, all depended on
what he did.
He had to think, to go over this logically. What would be the thought
processes of a god? A god was no mere mortal, to be judged and weighed
by human wants and failings. In it there was no mercy, no thought for
anything but itself.
Kael pushed himself away from the floor to stand on long brown legs.
_Courage, man of Terra! He shall not trap you so again!_
The Doyen voice gave him heart, but the High Mor sneered.
"I heard it, too, Terran! The Doyen cannot help you. Not unless I
strive by Doyen means to kill you. I need not do that, Kael McCanahan,
need I?"
The McCanahan shook his head like a dumb animal. He would never go back
to that subspace where Noorlythin was a god in truth! To that hell,
where a second was a year, where the Doyen themselves could not enter!
"I could put you there again, Terran. I could forget you, let you live
out your life for an eternity of seconds that are years! Would you
listen to reason then? Would you like to test your will again against
that of the Eye of Lirflane? Or feel once more the lash of Vigrette,
the cat-woman? No, I read in your eyes that you would not!
"Come, then. Tell me how you made the sfarri die!"
_Speak, man of Terra! Tell Noorlythin what he seeks! Only then, as he
absorbs the knowledge, can we reach him!_
The McCanahan shrugged the great shoulders that were scarred with the
lash above the smooth roll of their bulging muscles. His head hung so
that his uncut hair shielded his face.
"The harp," he whispered. "On the harp of Brith Tsinan is a silver
string. The d-note! I strung it with a silvern wire that I loosed from
my father's wrist!"
And as he spoke, he moved.
As liquid as the falling waters in the Veil of Valmoora was the leap
of the McCanahan. Full into the High Mor he hurtled, knocking him
sideways. And as they went down together--
The Doyen struck!
The very rocks of the palace misted and swirled under that awesome
clutching. White fire flared and seared, and where it touched, all
matter was destroyed! The walls of the palace shook and quivered. Beams
groaned under the sudden stress.
Where the guardroom had been, was empty nothingness!
In a flame that lapped him protectingly as it flared fiercely and
strongly at Noorlythin himself, the Doyen carried both men upward. So
swift was their transmission through normal space that in one blinding
surge of the white flame, the McCanahan found himself between the
worlds, in some lost, dark blotch of empty space.
"No Doyen may slay another Doyen!"
That voice rang triumphantly in the abyss.
"There is a way, Noorlythin! That is why we have let you work your will
on this man. He hates you with a deadly hate, Noorlythin. You put him
in your worlds of subspace, and you abandoned him to the creatures of
your own creation!"
"Aie! I abandoned him! Were it not for him and his harp, I would reign
as a god on every planet in all inhabited space. The Solar Combine
would have fallen to my sfarran battle fleet!"
"You dared not move before you knew the one weapon that might defeat
you!"
"Now I know! Now! Now!"
The radiant energy in the thing that was Noorlythin was awful. It beat
and flared redly through the whiteness. The McCanahan shuddered as its
heat beat out at him, chilling even as it seared.
_Courage, Terran! Courage for what lies ahead!_
And now the voices shrank and whispered, piping like elfin horns
within his head, that none but he could hear.
_Through you, we may destroy him! Courage! With your help, he
dies--forever!_
He knew what he had to do. Of his free will he had to offer himself
to Noorlythin! Of his free will, he had to fling himself into the mad
embrace of those pulsing tendrils, that had turned Lunol the peddler to
black and drifting dust!
_He gave you to the Eye of Lirflane! He gave you to the cat-woman and
her whip!_
The McCanahan snarled. "Destroy him, and I save the Solar Combine! I
hear you, Doyen. I hear and I--obey!"
And Kael McCanahan flung himself headlong, forward into the white
whirlwind of force that was Noorlythin.
* * * * *
In the Chamber of Living Death, she who had been Slyss of Aakan
quivered fitfully. A bubble of froth broke from her red lips. She
moaned and stirred. A hand lifted, struggled feebly, fell back to her
side, limp and waxen.
Slyss opened brown eyes. She lay silent, staring upward at the ceiling.
A sob fought its way upward from her throat.
"Noorlythin is dead! His control over me and the others--gone forever!"
She rolled off the dais and stared around her, at the dead bodies. She
shivered. She went to the doors and pulled them open. In the distance,
she could hear the frightened roaring of terrified men. She began to
run.
Flaith shook the bars of the cell that held her. Her red hair made a
living flame about her shoulders.
"What is happening? What is it?" she screamed.
A terrified jailer paused in his heavy run past her cell.
"The palace is falling in! The High Mor is dead. His body has been
found!"
Flaith shook the barred door.
"Let me out! Please, please! Give me a chance to save myself!"
The jailer licked his lips. He glanced up and down the corridor, then
slid the key into the lock. The door opened under a push from his hand.
"If the High Mor is dead," he told the girl, "maybe the sfarri won't
stay here on Senorech! Maybe the Senn can rule themselves, now."
Flaith caught the man by his arm.
"The one I was captured with! Kael McCanahan, the Earther! Where is he?"
"Nobody knows! His cell is empty."
"His harp? Man, where is his harp?"
The jailer shook himself free and started down the corridor. Over his
shoulder he called, "Look in the storehouse beyond the cell block. We
keep all prisoners' effects in there!"
_Terran! Wake to life, Kael McCanahan!_
He was dead. He had thrown himself into the fiery maw of the thing that
was Noorlythin. Who called him now? Who spoke these lies?
_You live, Terran. You served as the catalyst that enabled us to focus
our powers against Noorlythin._
Even a high school student knew that a catalyst retained its own
identity during the chemical change it brought about between two
substances; even such substances as were the Doyen, gods of space.
Kael opened his eyes.
He lay on a floor in the wreckage of the guardroom in the palace of
Akkalan. In the distance, but growing closer, he heard the faint
strumming of harpstrings. He lay there and listened to the harp, as
life flowed stronger into his body.
The strumming came nearer.
The McCanahan stood up and he waited, big and brown, marked with scars.
Flaith stood in the broken doorway, her fingers falling from the harp.
Tears had formed twin channels from her red-lashed eyes along her
cheeks. When she saw Kael, she did not know him. And then he grinned,
and his long hair and scarred brown body were forgotten.
She flung herself at him, and lay against him, trembling.
He told her of the High Mor and what he had been, and of how the Doyen
had destroyed him. "We've won, Flaith. He's dead, forever. With the
harp--and the vibrators that we'll build to duplicate its pitch--the
Solar Combine will move on Sfar. Smash it, and its robot life!"
Laughter bubbled in her throat as she looked up at him. "They'll reward
you, Kael. Make you somebody big on Terra!"
The McCanahan grinned and hugged her.
"An admiral at least! How would you like to be wed to an admiral,
Flaith mavourneen?"
Her answer rocked him, in the hunger of her mouth on his.