The proving grounds lay semi-circular behind a great green spread
of lawn. At the north end of the vast field an arc of white marble
terraces lifted rosy columns to the sky. Below the pillars stretched
marble benches, now rapidly filling with emissaries.
The Moratoyons marched to a gleaming gun set in concrete in the center
of the dusty field behind the lawn. The gun shone a queer white, with
two red domes surmounting its breech, and fitted on either side with
knobs and levers. It quivered and gleamed in the heat haze that shifted
over the proving sands.
Jonathan felt Adatha Za press against him with thigh and shoulder.
She choked a whisper to his ears, "It is their atom-gun. It cannot be
compared with some others we have seen, but if they've improved it--"
her voice broke with a soundless sob. "We hope it may work. But we
are--afraid."
Jonathan could almost feel the anxiety and hope around him like a
living thing. From the somewhat transparent thought beings of Sallarsee
to the robotmen of Kankang, each sat watchful; grim, intent. Those who
had lips tensed them to thin lines. Those who had eyes narrowed them
expectantly. The others floated or stood, quiescent.
The Moratoyons on the field moved swiftly. They clamped brakes and
levers down and locked them; spun wheels and twisted dials. From the
steel and cement cradle where it rested, the great cylinder of dull
white metal lifted its blunt nose slowly, almost cautiously, and aimed
it at the sky.
"It shoots atoms supercharged with light-photons," whispered Adatha Za.
The chief scientist of all Moratoyo paused and looked at Shar Bytu, who
nodded. The Moratoyon whirled, shouting harshly, watching his men leap
for the firing dials.
One after another the dials spun.
The firing pin was punched.
"God!" choked Jonathan hoarsely, staring in numb horror.
Where once the gun stood bright and shining there was a faint red mist
that hung close to earth, beating bloodily in the flood of the arc
carbon-dioxide lamps as though welling with life. Then it began to
dissipate as a faint breeze wafted across the field.
There was a little hole in the ground, where the gun had been.
Jonathan became aware slowly of Adatha Za's hand that clung like a
vise about his left wrist. He looked at her, saw her eyes convulsively
closed; saw two tears trickling from beneath her long dark lashes.
Her moist red mouth trembled as she whispered, "They all fail. All of
them. Like that. One moment they are here. Then they are gone. It is
almost as if they destroyed themselves."
Jonathan put an arm around her naked shoulders and hugged her against
his chest.
"Buck up," he grated. "We aren't licked yet. Why, hell! We haven't
started to fight, yet!"
He saw Morka Kar sneering at him from two stadium seats away, his thin
mouth curling in fanatical contempt. He felt the hate beat redly from
the man's eyes. Jonathan bared his teeth in answer to that fierce,
unspoken taunt.
He said, loud enough for the Zarathzan to hear, "One of us will find a
way. We're bound to. There's a key to that riddle. There has to be. The
universe can't end--not like this--"
"Perhaps," said Morka Kar loudly, "the Earthling might amuse the
shadows by--tumbling?"
Jonathan didn't know until later that Adatha Za put out a hand to
restrain him. He was away like a sprinter, and his big left fist was
lifting, swiftly. His fist hit Morka Kar, a little to one side of his
jaw.
It snapped the Zarathzan's head around and backwards, and lifted him
off his feet, and dropped him three seats below.
* * * * *
Morka Kar lay there outstretched, unmoving. Jonathan grinned hugely
and rubbed his knuckles. It began to penetrate after a while that the
others were staring at him in complete horror.
Adatha Za gasped and sobbed, then came and stood silently beside him,
her soft hand reaching for his fist. She held her dark head high, and
her eyes glared defiance.
"A beast--"
"--useless to expect help from things still ruled by emotion--"
"--a mistake. Shar Bytu should not--"
He heard the murmurs and the whispers, but Adatha Za was speaking,
saying, "Morka Kar insulted him before the assembly was called. He is
not like us, this Earthling. He fights when he is attacked!"
Shar Bytu waddled forward, his reptilian face grave. He blinked a
little curious, at Jonathan.
"We cannot have disturbances among ourselves," he said. "We need
scientific and philosophic calm to meet the shadow menace."
"It wasn't what he said," Jonathan said softly. "It was the way he said
it. He was asking for it."
"Asking for what?" puzzled Shar Bytu, looking about.
The reptile, moving his ponderous head in looking for what Morka Kar
had asked, struck Jonathan as unconsciously funny. He grinned, and was
buoyed up.
He said, "I'm sorry. I don't want to break up any gathering like this.
Apparently my action strikes you as something primitive. I don't look
at it that way at all. I didn't ask to be brought here, or to be given
the powers to make the trip. Now that I'm here, however, I'll do
everything I can to help. Naturally. But no Zarathzan's going to walk
all over me whenever he feels like it."
A snarl answered him. Morka Kar was climbing unsteadily to his feet,
aided by two Goqualian metallic robotmen.
"Shar Bytu," fumed the Zarathzan, shaking off the hands that held him.
"It has been long since a being of my standing indulged in personal
combat, but I wish to meet this Earthling. Just the two of us. Face to
face, mind to mind, in mental monomachy!"
Adatha Za went white. Shar Bytu looked gravely unhappy.
Shar Bytu whispered, "I had hoped to learn something from the Earth
man--"
Jonathan interrupted, "You're all conceding victory to Morka Kar. Maybe
so, maybe not. That isn't just what I want to say, though. The main
thing that occupies us is the problem of the flames, or shadows.
"Much as I hate to admit it, I'm afraid I'm not much help against
them. You see, when you gave me the powers of ultimate evolution, my
scientific and other knowledge didn't keep pace with them. There are
thousands of Earth men who would have made better ambassadors than
I. Apparently I was more psychic, perhaps more malleable in brain
structure, than they. I don't presume to know the whys and wherefores
of that. I'm here and I'm glad I'm here. If I can help, I will.
"But--much as I hate to admit it, I'm out of my depth. Those shadows,
or whatever it is out there in space, is beyond me. So if you lose
me--which I hope you don't--you aren't losing too much."
Jonathan took a deep breath; went on, "A poet on Earth once said
something about not loving a woman loved he not honor more. Well, I
love the universe, but I'm not hiding behind any danger to it when a
man wants to fight me for a woman I--love."
He heard Adatha Za's quickened breathing; felt her hand touch his arm
and squeeze. He stood there with her hand on his arm and looked about
him, at the thought beings and the robotmen and the reptiles. On a few
faces, on the faces of those who looked most like men, he read a grave
applause. On the features of the others, a blank attention, as though
he spoke of geology to a monkey. They just couldn't get his viewpoint
at all.
But Morka Kar did, and he snarled. His sullen mouth writhed and his
eyes glowed fiercely as he glanced from Adatha Za to Jonathan.
"Another thing," grated Jonathan, and he looked Morka Kar full in
the eyes, "I may be an animal, but I know others who possess animal
characteristics--no matter what they mistakenly call themselves."
Morka Kar fought in the metal arms of the robotmen who flanked him.
Shar Bytu turned and fixed him with a cold eye.
"You will be still, Zarathzan," he whispered icily. "I have long heard
your taunts to one or another of our group. As yet the deputation from
Zarathza has not attempted the flames, though I have heard many words
spoken by them of it."
Morka Kar quieted swiftly.
"The mental monomachy will occur tomorrow at this place. Until then I
forbid Morka Kar and the Earthling to meet. If harm befalls either of
them, the other shall pay with his life. See to it."
He turned and waddled away. Morka Kar seethed a glance at Jonathan,
then followed the reptile. The others split into groups, silently
transmitting puzzled thoughts.
* * * * *
Adatha Za sat on the stone bench and looked up at him, and her red
mouth was rueful. Her eyes beneath the dark fringes of her lashes
accused him.
"I had hoped that some day you would visit Zarathza with me," she said
softly. "Now you--"
"Now nothing has changed," grinned Jonathan, dropping beside her and
taking her soft hands between his. "Shar Bytu made me infinite, didn't
he? How can Morka Kar hurt me?"
Her eyes widened in concern. "But Morka Kar is also infinite, as you
put it. He will fight your mind. You do not know the sciences that
Morka Kar knows. Not knowing what he can do against you, you will be
helpless. He will stun your brain, drive it mad, then--destroy it."
"If I can't think as fast as that bullying windbag, I'm willing to be
destroyed."
Adatha Za sounded annoyed. "It is not a question of thinking _fast_,
although that does enter into it. It is more a matter of knowing how to
oppose the weapons that Morka Kar will create to fight you."
"--that he will _create_?"
"Certainly. Of old on Zarathza, men carried swords and shields. Later
they used percussion guns, still later, atomic disintegrators. But as
the years passed into eons, and as life on Zarathza evolved, it was
discovered that these weapons were of no use against a trained mind
that could shoot a bolt of mental force against the weapon to destroy
it. So men went naked into combat and there they thought up their
weapons swiftly, through force of mind alone. Their opponents met their
mental creations with defenses and weapons of their own. The more
unusual the weapon, the easier it was to decide the victor."
Jonathan whistled.
"My ideas on weapons stop about at a .45 caliber automatic. A sword is
useless. So's a bow and arrows. Or a spear. You say Zarathza had atomic
disintegrators a long time ago, eh?"
The girl shivered.
"Atomic disintegrators are seen only in museums today," she whispered.
"And you of Earth do not even have them. Lallista! You are a dead man
walking around."
"Hey," chuckled Jonathan, grabbing her arms and pulling her around to
face him. "Chin up. I may not know much about weapons, but I'll bet
I've still got a trick or two up my sleeve. I'll show that windbag
where he gets off. You wait. You'll see."
Her eyes begged his for reassurance. She lay close against him and her
mouth quivered into a smile.
"You were--joking me, then? You do know of weapons that you haven't
mentioned?"
"Sure," he boasted gaily. "Lots of them. Brass knuckles. Galloping
dominoes. A ginrickey. A mickey finn. The Brooklyn Dodgers."
"I am so glad," she whispered. "That makes me feel so much better."
She did not see his frown as she walked with him across the white
composition walk toward their guest quarters. He wasn't thinking of
himself. He was wondering what Morka Kar would do to her--after he got
through with him.
"Just the same," the girl was saying, "I think that I will show you
some of the weapons Morka Kar may use. Those, at least, that I know. We
will go and sit together beneath the moons, and I will teach them to
you, one after the other."
Jonathan looked at her red mouth and grinned, "I'll show you a weapon,
too. On Earth we call it a--kiss."
The night was warm and the moons that hurtled across the Neeoornian sky
shed a pale lustre on the gardens where Adatha Za and Jonathan Morgan
sat. Between her legs lay a box filled with strips of queerly colored
metals, vials of shining dull and iridescent chemicals, containers and
compartments of tubes and alloys.
"It is from these that Morka Kar will fashion his weapons," she said,
fingering the objects before her. "From the mints provided by the
monomachy coffer, he will be enabled to throw weapon after weapon at
you. For instance, this--from this he will make a molecular magnetizer
that will cause the molecules that make up your body so to attract each
other that your body will shrink in upon itself--assume the density
of a dwarf star--fall through the earth to the center of this planet!
Or with this he could form a ray that is hot as the hottest sun in
the universe. He may not use that. It is a weapon that even Morka Kar
fears. It is too deadly. Were it to escape his mental control, it could
blow up the entire planet. Now from this tube--"
Jonathan listened dutifully. He was in this away over his head, and no
amount of last minute cramming would help. To assimilate this knowledge
would require years. He wasn't quitting, but he realized that if he did
win, it would be by some method purely Earthian, and not by a study of
Zarathzan weaponry.
He looked at Adatha Za. He put his hands on her soft shoulders and
turned her toward him. Her eyes were questioning.
"We have a weapon on Earth, too," he whispered. "It's a kiss. Do you
Zarathzans have the kiss?"
With arched brows the girl followed his thought, then shook her head a
little disdainfully, saying, "No. That does not seem to be any sort of
armament I know. Is it a good weapon?"
"The best there is on a night like this--with a girl like you."
* * * * *
Her mouth was warm and soft and moist beneath his. His lips held hers
for a long time before he let her go. She opened her long-lashed eyes
slowly, staring at him.
"That is no weapon," she accused softly. She put her arms up and drew
his head down again, whispering, "--but I like it. I should really
study it some more."
This time it was the girl whose lips clung.