The Central Tower of Torneulan, the Tower of Zenaor. Hard-faced guards.
Echoing passageways. The bleak metal and leather of Zenaor's private
chambers.
And Zenaor.
The Lord Zenaor, high chief of all Kukzubas barons.
The lean face was set in cruel lines now, the jet eyes narrowed to
black diamonds beneath their heavy brows.
"So, alien...." His voice rasped, thick with menace. "At last you come
to me, begging for mercy--"
"Mercy? From you?" Craig Nesom shrugged in spite of the guards'
restraining hands, the shackles. "No, Zenaor. I beg nothing of you,
neither life nor lenience. The things I've done I'd do again. I've
given up only to stop this senseless slaughter."
"An altruistic gesture, alien," Zenaor chuckled. "But a trifle late."
He rose as he spoke and stepped to a paneled wall behind his seat.
A carved section slid back at his touch, revealing a bleak, compact
laboratory chamber.
A transparent, closet-sized cubicle stood on a stand in the
compartment's center ... a cubicle whose every inch and crack and
crevice seethed and eddied with the swirling grey slime of ourobos.
In spite of himself, Craig Nesom stiffened; caught the whisper of
Narla's quick-drawn breath.
Zenaor pivoted, still chuckling. "You see, alien? Here we have ourobos!"
Craig nodded slowly.
"And what is the ourobos?" Zenaor was gloating now, caught up in the
excitement of his own revelation. "It is what your science would term
a thallophyte, Earthman--a semi-intelligent thallophyte, a sort of
deadly, highly-mobile fungus for which no specific weapon has been
discovered!"
"A fungus--!"
"Yes, alien! That's why no weapon prevails against it! Blast it, even
with fire, and still asexual spores fly out, each to form the nucleus
for another of its kind, a new ourobos!"
Craig's lips were dry. His voice shook. "Then--this planet, Lysor--"
"Lysor is doomed, you mean?" Triumph rang in the chief barons' voice.
"Indeed it is, alien! Now that I've brought the ourobos from Xumar,
nothing can stop them! Your sacrifice is wasted! There's barely enough
tanagree oil to treat a handful of our barons!"
Craig choked. "No, Zenaor! Not even you could doom a whole race--"
But Zenaor still was speaking: "This is my answer to the free Baemae,
Earthman! They wanted Lysor--they shall have it! As for the rest of
us--my friends among the Kukzubas, a few loyal serfmen--I have ships
already ramped to take us off to Odak, third planet of our system."
Craig stood numb, unable to move or speak.
So now, at last, he knew the truth--the secret behind Zenaor's dark
dream of conquest.
Only now was too late. Now was a nonexistent second between the moment
of the chief of barons' flight and the time when he'd lay down his
challenge to a hundred, a thousand, other planets, backed by the
horrid, devastating threat of the ourobos.
And Narla--
* * * * *
Slowly, desolately, Craig turned to look at her ... to see again the
helpless anguish stamped on her lovely, horror-blanched face.
"Now you look to my daughter for solace, Earthman?" Again, it was
Zenaor speaking. "You seek to drown the bitterness of death and failure
in the knowledge that she, at least, will live because you came in and
surrendered?"
New tendrils fluttered in Craig Nesom's belly. He swung back; stared at
his lean, merciless captor.
"Shall I tell you more, alien--another thing you did not know?" The
chief of barons bared his teeth in a grin that belonged on a bleaching
skull. He leaned forward, voice dropping lower: "Though I raised her as
such, Narla is not my daughter!"
The very walls rang with shock. Even the cold-eyed guards went rigid.
Zenaor said: "Her father was of the Baemae, alien--and I lusted after
the Baemae wife who bore his daughter, Narla. So I slew him, and took
wife and child alike into my harem."
"Father--Zenaor...." Narla's poise was cracking.
Ruthlessly, the other pressed on: "She is not of my blood, alien. No
ties coerce me to forgive her treason. So she dies here with you--with
you, and all my enemies, Baemae or baron!"
A madness seized Craig Nesom. Savagely, he hurled himself at his
tormentor.
But the guards were too quick, too strong. Brutally, they jerked him
back.
He writhed helpless, raging.
Only then a voice--a woman's voice, low and gentle as the hiss of the
asp is gentle: "Your enemies, Zenaor--like me, perhaps?"
Craig went rigid. The guards, too; Zenaor; Narla.
A hanging moved aside. Dark Vydys the Cruel stood framed in a
doorway--fire-gun in hand, liveried warriors behind her.
"_Vydys--!_" Zenaor's color was draining.
The woman laughed softly. "Surely, my lord, my coming does not surprise
you? By way of a test, I injected some of the fluid you gave me into a
serfman, then sent him out to meet the ourobos. But they swallowed him
up as they would any other, so I came here to discuss it." Airily, she
gestured. "Of course, there was some small difficulty with your men at
the gates. My troops had to slay them--"
Zenaor sucked in air.
Vydys said, "Your plans for the spaceships--they please me. The fleet
shall blast for Odak according to schedule." A pause. A cat's smile.
"Of course, you'll not be with it. It's better that you stay here with
the Baemae."
"Vydys, in the name of our ancestors--our common blood as Kukzubas--"
"I remember it, Zenaor. You shall not stand unprotected." Vydys
brought a flat object from beneath her waist-cape, tossed it onto a
table. "Here. I leave you this weapon."
It was the jewel-box that held Tumek's crystal.
Zenaor's fists clenched. "Curse you, Vydys--!"
She turned away as if he had not spoken. Smiling at Craig, she purred,
"A last chance for you, Earthling. Would you join me?"
Craig's eyes met Narla's. Then, quietly, he said, "You know my answer,
Vydys."
Her face contorted. "Die, then, you fool!"
She started to turn back to Zenaor.
Only then, incredibly, a fire-gun was in his hand, too, whipping up
from beneath his scarlet cloak.
They fired together.
Vydys screamed in the same instant. For the fraction of a second green
flame seemed to envelope her. A great black char-scar spread across her
naked belly.
She tottered. Her guards lunged forward.
But already Zenaor was leaping into the laboratory chamber. Headlong,
he dived for the transparent cubicle in the center and wrenched its
hatch open.
* * * * *
Like a wave of slime, the ourobos belched forth, spilling across the
floor in a hideous, writhing blot.
The foremost of Vydys' charging guards screamed and tried to stop.
Too late. He pitched into the fungous tide; screamed just once more.
A bubbling scream....
The room erupted into chaos. Alike, Vydys' men and Zenaor's fled in
shrieking panic.
Craig thrust a foot across one's path; snatched a fire-gun as the man
fell sprawling.
The room was empty, then ... empty save for dead Vydys and her guard,
and Zenaor, and Narla, and Craig Nesom.
And the ourobos.
Coolly, Zenaor stood his ground beside the cubicle. Ourobos swept in
close about his feet, then eddied back. They would not touch him.
He laughed; gestured. "You see, alien? The tanagree oil is in my veins;
they will not touch me. But you...." He laughed again.
Craig said, "Much good may it do you, Zenaor. A corpse is a corpse,
even if the worms won't eat it."
He raised the fire-gun.
Zenaor's laughter died. He half-turned. "Wait, Earthman--"
He whipped up his own weapon.
Craig fired.
Zenaor died.
Then Narla was in the Earthman's arms again, heedless of the ourobos'
creeping tendrils. "So we die, Craig Nesom. But at least we die
together."
Craig held her close. "No, Narla."
"No--?" He could feel her body stiffen. "But--what--?"
"I said no, Narla. We don't die. Neither of us."
She stared at him.
He said, "Don't you see? The ourobos--they're thallophytes. That's the
answer." And then, when she still showed no comprehension: "Tumek knew.
That's why he said his crystal was the only weapon that would stop
them. And Bukal hit it right--by accident--when he looked at the thing
and said it might as well be a lamp-lens."
"Craig, I don't understand--"
"I'll show you." Pushing the girl back, Craig took the jewel-case from
the table where Vydys had tossed it and crossed to the nearest lamp ...
carefully replaced the focus prism with the crystal.
The beam sprayed out, all green and purple.
Tilting the lamp, Craig brought it to bear on the encroaching slime of
the ourobos.
Before his and Narla's very eyes, the creatures shriveled. The grey
wave drew back.
Craig clipped, "This crystal concentrates some ray that's deadly to
the ourobos, just as on my world quartz glass lets ultraviolet pass.
That was Tumek's secret. Somehow, he discovered Zenaor's plans and then
worked out this answer.
"Now, Baemae craftsmen can duplicate the formula and produce crystals
by the thousands. It means the end of the ourobos."
He moved the light. More grey slime dried to sticky viscous blackness.
Then, arm in arm, together, he and Narla walked out into Yoh's bright
noonday light, shining down on the free-world-to-be of Lysor.