"To our Leader! The Zemmd!" Emotion came into Frane's voice, a tone of
such awe that Curt was startled.
"The Zemmd," Curt repeated, not liking the sound of it. The car came to
a halt. The door slid smoothly back.
They stepped into an area aglow with a gentle radiance, ineffably
blue as a summer day on Earth. Curt glanced around. They were beneath
the Electronic Curtain! It reached above them in a shallow dome of
indeterminate diameter. The clang of metal on metal reached their ears,
and a faint sound of atomic furnaces. A few buildings were seen, and
groups of men at work--Martians and Jovians, Venusians and Earthmen
alike.
The captives were hurried toward a central domed building that towered
above the others. Before they quite reached it, Tor stopped dead in
his tracks. Across his face came an indescribable look of hate as he
uttered a word. A name.
"Jal Tagar!"
A group of men had come from a nearby building, and among them was Jal
Tagar, the Martian Overlord! In that split second of recognition a
bitter taste of hate seemed to rise up in Kueelo. He would have leaped
forward. Only Curt's fierce grip held him back.
Impatiently, Frane motioned them on. They entered the central building,
passed into a huge circular chamber that seemed alive with a violet
color reaching from floor to ceiling and wall to wall. Here there was
utter stillness. Even the floor was soft and cushionly, absorbing the
sound of their entrance.
Frane and his men seemed waiting for something. As their eyes became
slowly adapted to this room they saw a patch of deeper color across the
far wall. It moved. Gradually it changed size and shape. Purposeful,
deliberate, it drifted slowly up. Then, somehow, as if by a mental as
well as visual perception, they saw it clearly.
Here was a super creation, huge and wondrous beyond belief! The thought
leaped instantly to Curt's mind. It was more than mere color. It seemed
composed of thousands of the smaller, radiant tear-drop shapes, yet a
complete entity in itself and infinitely more alive! Beyond doubt it
was self-created, could add or subtract from itself at will. Here was
the thing Frane had referred to so reverently as the Zemmd!
Spinning, gently pulsing with some inner sentience, it was a thing of
horror yet surpassing beauty. It drifted toward them. It probed at them
with fingers of violet light.
* * * * *
Frane and his men threw themselves to the floor in an attitude of
worship. The sight disgusted Curt. No doubt remained now! Inwardly they
were as alien as the composite thing drifting there above them. It went
beyond mere worship. Here was an undeniable _affinity_!
Rikert was muttering. Then he acted with the stupid bravado of his
kind. He flung himself toward one of the prone men, grabbed an electro
and whirled toward the drifting bulk. Lorine screamed a warning, a
shrill lance of sound in the soundless room.
For the merest instant the great radiant shape tumbled back. Almost, is
seemed afraid. Then it came drifting forward, fast, swirling angrily.
In a blur of motion Curt whirled upon Rikert, swung a heavy fist to the
man's jaw. Rikert dropped to the floor, and Curt kicked the gun from
his hand.
Zemmd's drifting bulk paused, as if surveying this scene with some
inner faculty. Slowly the radiant anger died away. Rikert came up from
the floor, muttering balefully, and Curt gripped his arm.
"Quiet, you fool! If you value your lives, don't move, any of you!"
But the entity seemed to have lost interest in them, for the moment at
least. Its probing light resolved into a blanket of soft color that
reached down to encompass Frane and the others. The men came to their
feet. Now they seemed in mental _rapport_, doubtless recounting the
story of these newcomers.
Then a part of the light focussed, reached out. Curt steeled himself
against it. It was cold but not unpleasant. It merely brushed over
them, clung for a moment, then drew away. Curt had the fleeting
impression that it was dismissing them because it knew, already, all
there was to know about their basic life-principle and their science as
well!
Curt was almost sorry. He would have liked to study this entity more.
But the thing drew a veil of deepest purple about itself and drifted
back into the dim recesses of the chamber. Once more Frane and his men
made obeisance, then herded the captives from the building.
* * * * *
They were taken this time across the compound, away from the area where
the work was going on. Curt noticed that most of the activity centered
around one particular building. He wondered if the silver spaceship
he'd seen could be there! Like a jig-saw puzzle, the reason for all
this activity was beginning to take shape in his mind.
He flashed his companions a warning look, said tentatively to Frane,
"What happens to us now?"
Frane answered him obliquely. "Already we are aware of all that led to
your coming here. It is unfortunate. There must be no interruption of
our plans now--so I think you will become a part of us."
Curt had a pretty clear picture of what becoming a "part" of them
meant! To have one of the radiant life-forms somehow enter his body,
take possession of his mind until all that was individualistic, all
that was Curt Emmons, would be gone! To be under the encompassing
control of that entity they called the Zemmd! It was evident that every
man here, Earthman or Martian or Jovian, was merely a controlled unit.
But for what ultimate purpose? Curt felt a chill along his spine as he
remembered the hundreds of alien forms waiting patiently, in suspended
animation....
Tor's voice, bitter with hate, broke upon his tumult of thoughts.
"Become a part of you--just as Jal Tagar did? A traitor to everything
that we--"
"You have no choice," Frane replied in cold, unhuman tones. "Every man
here is part and substance of the great Zemmd. Just as the sum and
total of all that is in your brains will become a part of him." He
turned his gaze upon Rikert. "Even this one, who sought to defy the
Zemmd, will become a part."
"Yeah? We'll see about that!" Rikert laughed unpleasantly.
They were silent then, under the watchful guidance of Frane and his
men. Once more they were taken below the level of the compound, then
ushered into a plainly furnished room.
"You will not lack for comfort," Frane said, "but you must remain here
until time for the transition. I promise it will be soon!" There was
pride in his tone, as though conferring a great honor upon them. He
employed a metal device in the arched doorway. A sheet of crackling
color passed across it, effectively barring the entrance.
Rikert leaped forward in a last effort, but a searing heat from the
barrier stopped him. Bitterly he turned back.
"Fine thing, Emmons! If you'd let me blast that hunk of brain-trust
when I had the chance--"
"You'd be dead now, and the rest of us with you! Can't you ungroove
that brain of yours, Rikert?"
Rikert surged forward, fists clenched, but Jeffers stepped between the
men.
"I don't know, Emmons," Jeffers said slowly. "I think Rikert had the
thing scared there for a minute. Didn't you notice the way it moved
back from the electro--"
"It was a darn fool thing to try, and this kind of talk isn't helping
us!" Curt turned abruptly, began examining the room.
Walls, floor and ceiling seemed to be of solid-hewed stone with no
break of any kind. The arched doorway failed to reveal the source of
the radiant barrier; it was electronic, Curt was sure.
Lorine was a pitiful figure, despair making an unreal mask of her face.
All the fine courage that had carried her this far, seemed to fail her
now.
Once more Tor hummed the high-pitched aria which Curt hadn't heard
since they left Mercury. The tune seemed to sustain the little Martian
in times of trouble. Jeffers and Rikert were aimless automatons pacing
the room.
Curt sank down and let despair wash over him. Yet a thought,
half-formed, struggled to emerge from the recesses of his mind;
something he had noticed about that entity, Zemmd; an idea that danced
away as he sought to remember.
He couldn't quite grasp it. It was maddening.
Such a weariness of body and mind came upon Curt that he fell into a
fitful sleep. His last conscious thought was of the sentient entity, of
which they were to become a part.
All would be over then.
* * * * *
Curt dreamed. A great arctic wind, alive as if with a snapping
intelligence, seemed to roar about his huddled carcass. Far away a
door whispered open and closed with a sigh. A stranger seemed to have
entered the room, a great towering figure with silvery hair, who stood
looking down at them and then paced away in the gloom like the going of
a breeze.
Curt rolled over, mumbling in his sleep.
The wind crept back like a padding cat, whispering in his ears. It
resolved itself into a voice, a human voice very real and urgent. Curt
sat up abruptly. This was no dream, the towering stranger was still
there.
Somehow he had passed through the electronic curtain across the
doorway....
Curt leaped to his feet as he recognized George Landreth.