I nodded.

"What else could it be?"

"What's it doin' out here in no man's land?" Polter asked. "You'd think

strangers like that would land near a city, try to make some kind of

official contact."

"If you were landing on a strange world, would you land near a city?" I

asked.

Polter laughed.

"I guess you hit it. They don't know whether they'd be welcome or not.

Scared, eh?"

"Just careful, I'd say. We don't know anything about them. But ships

like that have been reported off and on for hundreds of years. Don't be

surprised if you never see a trace of it again, and if no one else but

me ever believes you when you mention it. I don't think we'll have to

worry about the flying saucer."

"What the hell do they want, then?" Noldi didn't know what I meant,

exactly.

"Nobody knows, Frans. Nobody ever saw them as close as you just did

today."

* * *

Watching Jake Barto next morning, I saw that the little image in his

hand pointed right across the center of that cloud-topping mountain.

That meant we had to go around it, for we were not equipped for such

climbing, nor would there have been any sense in it. Jake figured on

circling to the left, and I was glad, for I for one wanted no parts of

that disk ship that Polter and Noldi had seen in the other direction.

Jake ignored me. He was unpredictable!

It was a long mountain, and we traveled along one side, toward the

north, figuring on crossing to the east wherever a pass appeared. After

a time a faint trail showed, and we followed it. It drew us higher,

until we were moving perilously along a ledge of rock, with precipitous

walls above and a sharp drop below. Higher and higher, above the

tree-line now, the path went on, and there were signs of travel along it

that worried me.

Polter was in the lead, and as we rounded a shoulder of rock, gave a cry

of wonder. We hurried after, to see the trail breaking over a low crest

of the mountain, and leading now downward. This shoulder of rock

outthrust here marked the place where the trail we were following

crossed the ridge of the mountain crest at its lowest point. But it also

marked something else, which was what had caused Polter's cry.

A line of dust across the trail and along the near-bare rocks stirred

and lifted and fell fitfully, as if the air was barred passage by some

invisible wall, and there were the skeletons of birds that had flung

themselves against the invisible wall and died, falling there. There was

the skeleton of a goat half across the trail; and at one side, what had

once been a man! All these dead--and the bones could be seen here and

there along the far line of the dust--had gone so far and no farther.

Polter had stopped fearfully ten feet from the clearly marked line--and

I for one had no desire to add my skeleton to the others.

For a few minutes none of us had anything to say, then reason reasserted

itself, and I pressed past Polter, knowing that the thing was an

illusion born of coincidence and wind currents. Some baffling current of

wind around the mountain formed here a wall of air cleavage, and the

skeletons were merely coincidence. I pushed up to the strange line of

lifting and falling dust, a little roll showing the magic of invisible

force, and pressed on, as if to cross.

Behind me a cry gave me pause. I turned, looking for that cry's source,

for it seemed to me the cry was the girl I had rescued from Barto. That

saved me, for the little horse behind me pressed on across the strange

line--and faltered, gave a horse-scream of terror, fell dead before me.

We stopped, terror of the unknown in our breasts, wondering--afraid to

put the wonder into words. We did not look at each other or discuss the

thing, we just accepted it, and stared dumbly at it like animals. I

tossed a rock across the body of the now quite motionless pack animal,

the rock reached the wall beneath which my animal lay dead--slowed,

curved sharply to the ground, did not roll, but lay as if imprisoned in

invisible jelly!

There was a wall of invisible and deadly force there, and there was no

known explanation for it!

I growled at Barto, all the suspicion and distrust that had been

building up in me toward him in my voice.

"What does your golden girl tell you now, Jake?"

Jake surprised me. He walked ahead toward that frightening manifestation

of the unknown, holding the little statuette before him like a sword,

his ugly face rapt in some listening beyond me. As the little statue

crossed the line, he sang out:

"Listen, Goddess of the Golden forces, listen and heed! We come from

afar to pay our worship, to give to you our devotion, and we are met

with this wall of death! Is that the way you greet your friends?"

Jake waved the statuette in a circular motion, then crossed the circle

twice with the waving gold. He stood there, his crossed eyes darting

here and there along the line of force, and after a long minute, after a

time that seemed filled with a distant chuckling, like thunder too far

off to be heard clearly--the lift and fall of the dust on the baffled

wind stopped, the strict line of the wind's stoppage began to disappear,

the line of demarcation was gone!

Jake reached out an arm, feeling cautiously for the invisible wall, and

after a minute, his face lightened from its habitual gloom, he stepped

across the line, and did not stagger and fall as had the horse. The wall

was gone! Jake turned, said calmly:

"Come on, our friends have decided to let us in."

My mind in a whirl at the unexpected display of knowledge beyond me, of

forces beyond the power of any rifle bullet to overcome, of strange

hidden things here--I stepped across the line, keeping close to the

tracks left by Jake's big feet. Polter and Noldi followed and the horses

plodded after. We trudged on, but not the same. We were afraid, and we

were conscious of a vast ignorance, of a fear that we did not belong

here, that the only wise thing for us to do was to turn back and give up

this Jake Barto and his cross eyes and his mumbo jumbo statue to his own

doom.

At least that's the way I felt, but something stronger than curiosity

drew me on. I wanted to know why I was so drawn when reason kept

demanding I give up this quest. I wanted to know why a golden statue

pointed always to one point on the horizon, and why that wall of force

had obeyed Jake's injunction to go away. Or was I unable to think,

really? Was I shocked out of my ability to reason and act on my reason's

dictates?

Ahead, as the trail dipped low, a vast panorama of valley and hill and

hollow, of eerie rocky spires, lay outspread. Here and there were

cultivated fields, and figures at work on the fields. In the distance

shone a stream. It flowed meandering into a wide lake. There were two

villages, not clear in the haze. At the distant lake, some kind of

larger structure lifted tall towers, shining with prismatic glitter, a

city of strange appearance.

We had crossed a barrier, and we had entered a land of the living--but

it was unclear before us. The drifting mountain mists, the sun-glitter

and the haze of noon kept the scene from striking through to our brains

with its true significance. For there was an eerie _difference_ about

the scene; it was not a land below us such as any of us had ever seen.

I felt that and yet I could not think clearly about it. We moved along

like zombies, not thinking--just accepting the unusual and the unknown

as casually as if we were travelers who could not be astounded. But

inside, my mind was busily turning the significance and the meaning of

this wall of force. I had heard of such walls before--upon Shasta in

California, and in Tibet, and in ancient times in Ireland, and there

were other instances of a similar wall in the past, and in the present

in other places. But what it could really mean, that was what I did not

know.

After crossing that invisible barrier, things began to happen in a

sequence, of a strangeness and with a rapidity such that I was unable to

analyze or to rationalize. From there on I was like a man on a

tightrope, hounded by invisible tormentors trying to shake me off. I had

not time to wonder whether it was true that spirits existed. What I did

think was that some of these Korean primitives had a Devil Doctor who

surpassed all others in trickiness, and was amusing himself at our

expense. But I did not _think_ it, I _clung_ to the idea to save my

reason from tottering over the brink.

The first thing after the wall that could not exist but did--after we

had passed on over the ridge and half way down the mountain side--was a

gully along the mountain side, up which Barto turned. I assumed he was

still following the pointing of the magnetic statuette, but I was

vaguely conscious that none of us were _really_ conscious--were under a

kind of spell in which our actions and our thoughts were

predetermined--inevitable! I knew it, but I could not shake it off, nor

put my finger on any reason why I should shake it off and call a halt to

the strange, wordless, silent following of Jake and his eerie talisman.

The faint trail led along the bottom of the gully, and after twenty

minutes of downward progress, led into a dark overhang of rock, the sky

hardly visible where the rocks almost met overhead. Down the semi-cavern

we went; still silent, zombie-like; and I felt ever more strongly the

compulsion that made us so move and so unable to do otherwise.

Jake was striding rapidly now, his dark ugly face aflame with weird

eagerness, my own heart pounding with alarm at the strangeness and the

irrationality of the whole proceeding. He held the statuette out

stiffly, it seemed fairly to leap in his hands, as if tugging with an

ecstatic longing to reach the dark place ahead. The rocks closed

completely overhead; the dimness changed to stygian darkness. I got out

my flashlight, sent the beam ahead. But Jake was pressing on through the

darkness, directly in the center of the trail.

Quite suddenly the cavern turned, opened ahead, wider and wider--and

before us lay a room of jeweled splendor, the temple of some

forgotten--_or was it forgotten?_--cult of worship.

The golden statue in the center of the big round chamber drew our eyes

from the splendor of the peculiarly decorated walls, from the strange

crystal pillar on the tall dais at the far wall, from the weird

assemblages of crystals and metals that had an eerie resemblance to

machines--to a science entirely unknown to modern men. All these details

of that chamber I remember now, looking back, but then--my attention and

that of the others was entirely drawn to the beauty of the tall, golden

woman who stood in frozen metallic wonder at the center of the forgotten

crypt.

Jake, his ugly face in a transport, had fallen to his knees, was

crawling forward to the statue abjectly, mouthing phrases of worship

and self-abnegation. Close on his heels came Polter and Noldi, eyes

rapt, movements mechanical. I stopped, some last remnant of sense

remaining in my head, and by a strong effort of will held my limbs

motionless.

As Jake reached the statue, the little golden replica of the life-sized

woman of gold seemed to leap out of his reaching hands, and clung

against the metallic waist of the golden woman as a lodestone to the

mother lode.

Even as Barto's hands touched the statue, he slumped, lay there

outstretched, his fingertips touching the metal hem of the golden skirt;

and whether he was unconscious from unsupportable ecstasy or for what

mad reason, I did not know, but I did not _want_ to know.

Undeterred by Jake's condition, the two men following in his steps also

reached out hands to touch the golden metal--and fell flat on their

faces beside Jake Barto, unconscious, or dead!

I stood, numb and with a terrific compulsion running through my nerves,

which I resisted with all my will. I drew my eyes from the strangely

pleasant magnetic lure of the metal woman with an effort and examined

that strange chamber.

The walls were covered with a crystalline glittering substance, like

molten glass sprayed on and allowed to harden. Behind this glasseous

protective surface, paintings and carvings spread a fantasy of strange

form and color, but the light was too dim to make much of it, except

that it was alien to my experience, and exceedingly well done, speaking

of a culture second to none.

Beyond the central form of the strange golden statue, was the dais which

I had noticed at once, and now my eyes picked out the fact that on it

was also a glasseous protective sheath about a form--another statue, I

thought.

Thoughtfully I prowled along the rim of the room, examining the wall

frescoes foot by foot, seeing on them a strange depiction of semi-human

forms, of crab-men and crab-women, of snake-men and snake-women, of men

half-goat and half-man, of creatures hardly human with great jaws that

looked like rock-cutters, with hands like moles on short powerful arms,

fish people with finned legs and arms, their hands engaged in catching

great fish and placing them in nets, a nightmare of weird half-human

shapes that gradually brought to me a message that I could not accept.

If that rock painting was telling a true story and not some allegorical

fantasy--these people who had built this place had been a race who knew

the secrets of life so intimately they could manipulate the unborn child

into shapes intended to give it powers and physical attributes fitting

it for amphibious life, for the underground boring life of a mole, for

the tending of flocks in the goat-legged men--the whole gamut of these

monstrous diversions from the normal human seemed to me

designed--purposely--to build a race which, like ants, has a shape

fitted to its trade.

I threw off the illusion of a deformed past race the wall art gave me,

and passed on to examine the crystalline pillar on the dais. I stood a

long time, before the dais, drinking in the beauty of the form locked

within the prisoning glass.

No human, no earth woman--she was different from anything I had ever

even imagined.

Female, vaguely human in form she was, with an unearthly beauty; but

four-armed, with a forehead that went up and up and ended in a single

tall horn, as on the fabled unicorn.

Her eyes were closed, if she had eyes beneath the heavy purple-veined

lids, so like the petals of some night-flower, pungent with perfume.

Naked the figure was, except for a belt of what looked iron chain around

the waist, black and corroded with time, holding her with a great bolt

and link to the side of that crystalline prison.

Her hair, black as night, was pressed tight to the skull by the pressure

of the crystal, which must have been poured about her in a molten or

liquid state.

As I stood there agaze at the strangeness and wonder of her, a voice at

my shoulder made me whirl in surprise. A soft, silky familiar voice:

"Do you find the dead Goddess so fascinating, stranger from the world of

men?"

It was the girl of the forest, no longer in hunting garb, but dressed in

Turkish trousers, vest and slippers with upturned toes. Jewels glittered

about her waist and neck and arms, her wrists jangled with heavy

bangles, in her ears two great pendants swayed--her eyelids were

darkened and her lips reddened. She was a ravishing houri of the harem,

and I gasped a little at the change.

"Have you put on such clothes for my benefit?" I asked, for I really

thought perhaps she had.

She frowned and stamped her foot in sudden anger.

"I come here to save you from what has happened to your friends, and you

insult me. Don't you want to live? Do you want to become what they are

going to become?" She pointed to the bodies of Jake and Noldi and

Polter.

I turned where she pointed, to see a thing that very nearly made me

scream out in revulsion.

I shuddered, shrank back; for several creatures were bending over the

three, lifting them, bearing them away.

It was the strange, revolting difference from men in them that caused my

fear. Once they may have been men, their far-off ancestors, perhaps--or

in some other more recent way their bodies had been transformed, made

over into creatures not human, not beast, not ghoul. What they were was

not thinkable or acceptable by me. I turned my face away, shuddering.

They were men such as the wall-paintings pictured, something that had

been made from the main stock of mankind, changed unthinkably into a

creature who bore his tools of his trade in his own bone and flesh.

Mole-men, men with short heavy arms and wide-clawed hands, made for

digging through hard earth. They bore my friends away on their

hairy-naked shoulders, and I stood too shocked to say a word. Three

mole-men, accompanied by three tall, pale-white figures, figures

inexpressibly alien--even through the heavy white robes--that moved with

an odd hopping step that no human limb could manage, turned their

paper-white, long, expressionless faces toward me for an instant, then

were gone, on the trail of the mole-man. Beneath those robes must have

been a body as attenuated as a skeleton, as different as an insect's

from man's. Within those odd egg-shaped heads must have been a mind as

alien to mine as an ant's mind.

"Why do your people take my companions?" I managed, when I had regained

my composure.

"They are not my people; they are of the enemies of the Dead Goddess."

The girl gestured to the figure in the crystal pillar. "My people have

no time for them, but neither have we power over them. They go their

way, and we go ours. Once, long ago, it was different, but time has

made us a people divided."

"What will become of the three men?"

"They will become workmen of one kind or another. Everyone works, in

_their_ life-way. But it is not _our_ way! They guard our land from such

intruders; we let them. It is an ancient pact we have with them."

"Why did they not seize me, I am an intruder as much as the others?"

"Because I signed to them to let you stay. You did not see,

whatever-your-name-is...."

"Call me Carlin Keele, Carl for short. What is your name, and what is

your race, and why are you so different from people as I know them?"

"My name is Nokomee, as I told you before. You are still confused from

the magic that led you here. I have saved you once, and _now we are

even_; my debt to you is paid. You will never see your friends again,

and if you do, you will be sorry that you saw them, for they will have

become beasts of burden. Now go, before it is too late. This is not your

kind of country."

Something in her eyes, something in the sharp peremptory tone she used,

told me the truth.

"You don't really want me to go, Nokomee. I don't want to go. Many

things make me want to stay--your beauty is not the least attraction. I

could learn so much that my people do not know, that yours seem to

know."

"I would not want my beauty to lead you to your death." Nokomee did not

smile, she only looked at me, and I saw there a deep loneliness, a

tender need for companionship and sympathy that had never been filled in

her life. She looked at me, and her lower lip trembled a little, her

eyes suddenly averted from mine.

"Nokomee, there is so much we would have to tell each other, you of your

life, and I of the great country of which you have never heard. Would

you not like to see the great cities of my country?"

She shook her head, turned on me with sudden fierce words:

"When you came and struck down that hideous cross-eyed man, my heart

went out to you in gratitude. Go, while my heart remains soft, it is not

so often that the heart of a _Zerv_ is soft toward any outlander. Go, I

cannot protect you from this place."

"I will stay," I said.

"Stubborn fool!" She stamped her foot prettily, imperiously, vexed at my

refusal to go out of that weird place the way I had entered. "Stay then,

but do not expect me to keep off the slaves of the Goddess. This place

can be most evil to those who do not know what it is, nor why it is

secret."

She turned, walked behind the great dais of the crystal sarcophagus, and

I followed just in time to see her disappear behind a hanging curtain of

leather. I hastened after, my hand on my gun, for I had no wish to be

left alone where I had seen my three companions stricken down with no

enemy in sight.

Behind the curtain a passage led, along the passage were several doors.

She sped past these lightly, almost running. I followed, she must have

heard me, but she did not look back. The doors along the passage were

curtained. Through the gaps of the curtain I could see they were empty

of life. The curtains were rotted as if long unused, dirty and blotched

with mould staining the leather.

Though she had spoken to me in Korean, and I had answered in the same

tongue, I knew she was no native, for she spoke it differently, perhaps

no better than myself. I was no judge; what she used may have been a

dialect different from that I had heard previously.

I followed as she emerged from the long tunnel into the blaze of

sunlight. She stood for a moment letting her eyes adjust to the glare. I

stumbled to her side, half-blinded, stood looking down at the scene

which seemed to engross her.

Gradually it came clear, like a television screen coming into perfect

tune--the immense inner valley that the mountain of cloud-like snow

enclosed. In the center of the encircled valley a lake shimmered blue as

the sky, and about that lake was a city.

My eyes refused, at first, to accept what they were seeing. My mind

rebelled, but after a minute of staring and making sure--I gasped.

Alien to this earth it was, but beautiful! Towers, and round-based

dwellings braced together in one single unit of structural strength, a

designed whole such as our architects dream of and never achieve. Walled

with white marble, the city was a fortress, but a lovely fortress. Yet

there was a coldness, an angularity, that told me these Zervs, as

Nokomee had called her race, lacked true sympathy for life forms, lacked

emotion as we know it in art. Yet it was beautiful, if repellent because

so alien, so pure in design, so lacking in the sympathetic understanding

of man's nature. This was a city no earthman could ever call home. It

lacked something. There were no dogs, no strolling women or running

children, it lay silent and waiting--for what?

Nokomee waved a hand.

"Titanis, our first earth colony. But it is no longer ours. The Schrees

have taken it from us. That is why it is silent."

I did not understand. There were plodding lines of people, disciplined,

carrying burdens, no bigger than ants at this distance. There was an

ominous horror about the quiet beauty of the place. It was somehow like

a beautiful woman lying just slain. Yet I could see no wounds of war, no

reason for the feeling that I had, like the sudden shrinking one might

have at sight of the stump of a man's arm just amputated.

I looked into Nokomee's face, and there were tears in her eyes. My heart

sank. I felt a vast sympathy for her sorrow, though I could not

understand.

"We planned so much with our new freedom here in your wilderness. Then

came the raiders, to freeze our Queen in her sleep, to drive us into

your forests, to make of us that remained mindless slaves and maimed

horrors. I cannot bear it, stranger. I cannot...."

She turned and wept, her head on my chest. I patted her head, feeling

entirely incompetent to console her for what injuries I could not

imagine.

"What raiders, Nokomee? Tell me. Perhaps there is a way I can help. Who

knows?"

"We are so few now, who were so many and so strong--and every day fewer.

There is no hope. Do not try to wake it in me. It would be madness."

"Tell me. Perhaps that alone would help you."

"How can I tell you the long history of my home world, the immortal

wisdom of our Queen, the strange science her immortal family gave her,

of how we fought to protect her from our own tyrants and at last fled

into space with her? How can I tell you of what she is? How could you

understand the ages of struggle on our own world that reduced her kind

to but a dozen, and left our kind, the mortals, at the mercy of the

Schrees? You ask, but it is impossible for you to believe things you do

not know about."

"Perhaps if I told you of my people and their life, you would understand

that I could understand what you think is impossible for me. I am not

ignorant as the others of earth people you have met. And my nation is

numerous, the greatest of this earth."

"Our ways are too strange to you. But I will try. You need not try to

tell me of your people; we examined your earth carefully before we chose

this valley for our retreat. Here we built and raised the force wall to

keep out inquiring interlopers like yourself who might bring the powers

of your nation in ignorant war against us. But from our home world the

Schrees were sent on our trail, and they found us. They were too many.

Our only hope was in safe hiding, and they found us out. We did not know

they could find us, or we would never have built. We thought pursuit had

long been abandoned, but they are driven by single-minded hate, not by

logic. It has been a lifetime of wandering they have followed us. It has

been all my lifetime, making this home here, thinking ourselves

safe--and then they came and destroyed all our work."

As she talked, she had quieted. We had resumed walking along the ledge

of the mountainside. Suddenly from ahead a man leaped out, his strange

weapon trained on my breast. I stood, not daring to move, while Nokomee

shouted a string of shrill alien syllables at him. He thrust the weapon

back in his belt, and fell in behind us as we passed. I could not help

staring at him, and at the thing he had pointed at me.

It was a tapering tube about a foot long, triggered on the thumb side

with a projecting stud, with a hand-grip shaped with finger grooves. I

knew it was a weapon with a long history of development behind it by the

simplicity of the lines, the entire efficiency of its appearance. The

small end was a half-inch, perhaps, in bore, the big end perhaps three

inches or less. He handled it as though it weighed but a trifle. I did

not ask what it was.

The man himself was no taller than Nokomee, though much more solidly

built, with thick, slightly bowed legs and heavy black brows on bulging

bone structure, his eyes deep-set beneath. His ears, like Nokomee's,

were high and too small to be natural. His teeth were larger than normal

on earth, and the incisors smaller and more pointed, the canines heavier

and longer. There was a point to his chin, heavy-angled and thick-boned

as it was, it was not an earthman's chin. His neck was long, more supple

and active, he kept moving his head in an unnatural watchfulness like a

wild animal's. I wondered what other differences, small in themselves,

but adding up to complete strangeness of aspect, I would find in time.

"That is Holaf," murmured Nokomee in Korean to me. "He is a chief among

us now, since the fall of our strength. He is good, but young and always

too impetuous. He needs long experience, and it looks as if he would get

it, now."

"You have more than one leader?" I asked.

"We have three chiefs left to us, who rule their families--their clans.

We have but one real leader. He is an old wise man left us by good

fortune. He is our lone scientist. The chiefs of the clans listen to the

leader, but they argue. Things look bad for us all."

"You are too few to reconquer the city?"

"Too few, yes. And time plays against us, for with the coming of the

ships from our home planet--that I should call that tyrant's nest

home!--there will be even more of the Schrees, then. We are a lost

people now. There is no hope, eventually we will be hunted down as you

earthmen will be hunted down, like animals. Made into slaves--and worse

than slaves. You will learn what I mean when next you see your three

friends."

It was too much for me. I asked:

"Why don't you leave this place, and go on to another?"

"On your little world? It is not big enough to hide ourselves from them.

And we have lost our ships, we cannot get others."

"You think that they mean to conquer our whole planet?"

"In time they will do so. Not yet, but when they are many, they will

spread, slaughter all who fight them, and enslave all who do not. They

are very terrible creatures, not men at all, you know."

"Not like you and I?"

"Not at all. You will see, soon. Hurry, it is late, and we have council

to attend."

There was a deep passion in her words, quick and sharp and strange on

her lips as they were, a passion of anger and hopeless effort that

somehow roused me into desire to help her and these strange people of

hers. Too, if what she said was true, these raiders who had despoiled

her people would in time engulf the world with a war of conquest, even

if they were less able to defeat us than she estimated. I resolved to

make the most of this opportunity to learn the worst of this hidden

threat to men everywhere. I felt a kinship with Nokomee and her friend,

silent and alert beside me, and I realized it could well be that I had

in my hands the future of mankind, and that it behooved me not to let it

fall through carelessness.

Lapsed now into silence, we reached the end of the trail along the

ledge. We came out upon a broad shelf, with several cave mouths opening

along its cliff-side. Gathered here in the twilight were some two-score

men and women, bearing weapons; some the short powerful bow I had seen

in Nokomee's hands; others weapons like Holaf's tapered tube; still

others bearing small, round metal shields embossed with weird designs

that meant nothing to me. Squatted here, without fire, they fell silent

at our approach, eyeing me with curiosity and the beginnings of anger at

my intrusion. Nokomee began to talk swiftly in that rattling,

high-pitched tongue of theirs. I squatted down on my heels, took out my

pipe, lit it. At the flare of my match Holaf struck it from my hand. I

realized it had been a blunder, even a spark might attract attention to

their presence on the hillside. Still, the incident told me Nokomee had

not been lying to me.

Holaf pointed at the city far below, now glowing here and there with

lights, and at the match on the ground. Then he motioned to a cave

mouth, and I followed him. Inside there was a fire burning, furs strewn

about the floor, metal urns and even mirrors hung on the rough stone

walls. I sat on a rude wooden bench of newly-hewed wood, lit my pipe

again without interference. But I was sorry to miss that conference

outside in the open air. I wanted to hear, even if I could not

understand. Holaf still remained by my side, and his hand did not leave

the oddly-carved butt of the tapered tube-gun.

I sat there, feeling very much alone, with Holaf watching me somberly,

the only light a flickering amber from the fire. I started to my feet as

a musically pitched, almost singing voice questioned Holaf in their

tongue. I looked about for the source, then saw her moving toward me in

the half-light, and I stepped back in a kind of awe and embarrassment,

for this was new.

She was as tall as myself, shaped with slender Amazonian strength, but

curved and soft and subtly aware of her feminine allure, strongly

interested and pleased at the awe and pleasure in my face. Her, rounded,

fully adult body was sketched over with a web of silkily gleaming black

net, light and unsubstantial as a dream, clinging and wholly revealing.

Her eyes were dark-lidded and wide-set, her brow high and proud, and

about her neck hung a web of emeralds set in a golden mesh of yielding

links.

She came on, moving on shoes like Japanese water shoes, completely

mystifying as to how she balanced on the stilt-like soles. Stepping thus

in little balancing steps like a dancer, she moved very close, peering

into my eyes, so that I blushed deeply at the nearness and the nudity of

her, and she laughed, amusedly, as at a child. Her long, gemmed hand

reached out and touched me, and she talked to Holaf excitedly, her face

all smiles and interest; I was a wholly fascinating new toy he had

brought her, it seemed. Then she sank to the bench, crossing her lovely

knees over her hands, clasped together as if to make sure they behaved.

To me she was wholly cultured and I some strange boor who had never been

in a drawing room. I felt the impact of that culture in her interested

eyes and in the sleek, smart bearing of her utterly relaxed body. She

stretched a hand to gesture me to be seated, and I tried Korean on her.

"It is a pleasure to meet you, lady. If I but knew who you were, and how

to speak properly, there is much we could find of interest to discuss."

"I am sure of it, stranger. First you must tell me of yourself, and then

later we will talk of what is familiar to me. I cannot put off the

curiosity which burns me. Please tell me all about your people and

yourself!" Her voice was hard to follow, she handled the clumsy Korean

with a bird-like quickness and an utter disregard for the nature of the

language. Her eyes burned into my own, and I sat embarrassed beside her,

tongue-tied, while Holaf smiled quietly and kept his hand on his weapon.

So I talked about New York, about my home town in Indiana, about my mine

in South America, about anything and everything, and she listened, rapt

eyes encouraging me, hanging on every stumbling, mispronounced,

difficult word. I would have given an arm to have been able to talk

expertly in her own tongue.

Thus engaged, and engrossed by her, I glanced up absently to note

Nokomee's eyes blazing into my own in fury, and spaced about the room in

a listening circle, a score of others. I stopped abruptly, and Nokomee

lashed out at the woman beside me with a string of alien expletives that

made her face flame with an anger as great as Nokomee's own. I wondered

vaguely what I had done....

Their strange, grim faces, all watching me, seeming to peer inside me,

trying to gauge me as an enemy or a friend. I stood up, for the exciting

near-nude body of the woman who had caused Nokomee's outburst was too

close, too intimately relaxed.

Abruptly Nokomee took me by the hand, led me out and along the ledge on

the cliff. Into another cavern entrance she led me, to a smaller

chamber, where another fire burned, and another bench invited to its

warmth. She half pushed me to a seat, and busied herself in the next

adjoining chamber, rattling dishware, and now and again giving a sharp

exclamation as of extreme disgust.

I gathered I had been guilty of falling for the Zerv equivalent of a

vamp. How wrong I was in this deduction I was to learn. It was not the

woman's beauty that Nokomee feared, but something vastly more dangerous.

I was very ignorant then. The Zervs were an ancient people and their

ways were strange entirely. For the net-clad beauty had been a "Zoorph."

I asked Nokomee, as she repeated the word again.

"What is a Zoorph, that makes you so angry? I thought she was very

charming. I saw no harm in talking to her!"

Nokomee thrust her head out of the curtained doorway, from which the

smell of food told me I had not eaten since morning.

"A Zoorph dear _child_ of earth, is a creature not good for man or

beast! Only a Zerv would be fool enough to keep so dangerous an animal

about! If I told you, you would not believe it."

"Tell me anyway, Nokomee."

The girl came, bearing food on a tray. She squatted at my feet, putting

the tray on the bench, and holding a large graceful urn of some liquid

to replenish my cup. Very prettily she did this, yet I gathered that it

was something which would have overwhelmed me with the honor if I had

understood. I did appreciate her service, and I tried to say so, but she

silenced me.

"Never mind, one day you will understand how proud we are, that in our

own world and in our own society _you_ would be less than a worm. Yet I

serve you, who am more above you than a princess would be in your world.

Thus does the world change about one, and one adjusts. But do not think

of it. It must be, or some terrible thing like the Zoorph would seize

upon you here among us."

I laughed a little, for I was sure she was telling a lie, to warn me

against the "vamp" in the only words she could think of in the alien

tongue.

Her face flushed deep red at my laughter, and she half rose as if to

leave, but restrained her anger.

"A Zoorph is worse than a disease, it has enervated my people until they

have lost everything, and still they are among us. They are children

raised by a secret cult on my own world, trained into strange practices.

It is somewhat like a witch or sorcerer would be to you, but much, much

different. You could not understand unless you were raised among us.

When men are tired of life, they go to a Zoorph. It is not nice to speak

of, what they are and what they do. To us, it is like death, only worse.

Yet we have them, as ants have pets, as dogs have lice, as your people

have disease. It is a custom. It is a kind of escape from life and

life's dullness--but it is escape into madness, for the Zoorph has an

art that is utter degradation, and few realize how bad they are for us.

You must never go near her again!"

Days passed into weeks, and every day I learned a few words of the Zerv

language, every day I picked up a little more insight into their utterly

different ways and customs and standards--their scale of values. It was

a process replete with surprises, with revelations, with new

understanding of nature itself as seen through the alien eyes.

I remained as a kind of semi-prisoner, tolerated because of Nokomee's

position and her affection for me. Nokomee, I learned, was "of the

blood," though there were few surviving of her family to carry on the

power and prestige she would have inherited. Yet, she was "of the blood"

and entitled to all the respect and obedience the Zervs gave even to

their old ruler.

He was an attenuated skeleton of a man, with weary eyes and trembling

hands, and I grew more and more sure that the inactivity against their

usurpers visible in the valley beneath was due more to his age and

timorous nature than to any inability to turn the tables. They seemed to

hold the "Schrees" in contempt, yet never took any action against them,

so that I wondered if the contempt were justified or was an inherited,

sublimated hatred.

The supplies, rifles and ammunition which had been left on our horses

when we entered the cavern of the golden image, had been brought to

Nokomee's cavern and locked in a small chamber before my eyes. It was

all there. As the time dragged on, I chafed at the inactivity, fought

against the barriers of language and alien custom that separated me from

these people, struggled to overcome their indifference and their, to me,

impossible waiting for _what_ I did not understand.

Finally I could wait no longer. In the night, I burst the lock of the

closet with a bar, took out a rifle and .45 and two belts of cartridges.

I slid over the lip of the ledge that hid us from the city's eyes. I was

going to see for myself what we were hiding from, what we were waiting

for, was going to take my chances with the dangers in that place they

had built and from which they now hid. I had pressed Nokomee for

explanations and promises of future participation in their life and

activities, and I had been refused for the last time! Like a runaway, I

slid down the steep cliff face, putting as much space between the Zervs

and myself as rapidly as I could.

The night was dark as pitch. I had left Nokomee asleep in her chamber. I

had avoided Holaf, who still kept a kind of amused watch over my

activities, and I was free. Free to explore that weird city of plodding

lives, of strange unexplained sounds, of ominously hidden activity!

Scrambling, sliding, worrying in the dimness, I finally reached the less

precipitous slopes of the base of the cliff. As I stopped to get a

bearing on the direction of the city, above me came a slithering, a soft

feminine exclamation, and down upon me came a perfumed weight, knocking

me sprawling in the grass.

My eyes quickly adjusted, I crawled to the dim shape struggling to her

feet. Her face was not Nokomee's, as I had at first thought. Those

enormous shadowed eyes, that thin lovely nose, the flower-fragile lips,

the mysterious allure--were the woman whom Nokomee had described as a

"Zoorph" and whom she had both feared and despised. I spoke sharply in

the tongue of the Zervs. I had learned enough under Nokomee's tutelage

to carry on a conversation.

"Why do you follow me, Zoorph?"

"Because I am weary of being cooped up with those who do not trust me,

just as you. I want to find a new, exciting thing; just as do you. Even

if it is death or worse, I want it. I am alive, as are you."

I put down the dislike and distrust the girl Nokomee had aroused in me

against her. Perhaps she _had_ been merely jealous of her.

"Don't you _know_ what could happen in the city?" To me it was curious

that she should want to go where the others feared to go.

"I know no better than you what awaits there, and I do not believe what

they have told me of the Schrees. They are not wholly human, but neither

are they evil wholly, as the Zervs suppose."

"Why do the Zervs wait, instead of trying to do something for

themselves? They speak of the threat of these raiders, yet they do not

try to help me bring others of my people here to stop the threat they

speak of so fearfully. I do not understand."

"The old ruler thinks the ships will come and drive them off from his

city. But he is wrong, they will never come. It is like waiting for the

moon to fall. The raiders' ships will return, and they will be stronger

than ever. But not a ship of the Zervs remains in neighboring space to

succor us. Yet he hopes, and his followers wait. It is foolish, and he

cannot trust you or men like you to get help for him. He is too old to

meet new conditions and to understand."

Few of the Zervs had shown the rapt interest in me and my people that

this Zoorph had made so plain. I thought backward on how carefully she

and I had been kept apart since our first meeting, and I realized there

was more to it than Nokomee's words of anger.

"What is a Zoorph, and what is your name? Why did Nokomee warn me

against all Zoorphs?"

"A Zoorph is a member of a cult; a student of mysteries not understood

by the many. The others have a superstition about us, that we destroy

souls and make others slaves to our will. It is stupid, but it is like

all superstitions--hard to disprove because so vague in nature." She

flickered impossible eyelashes at me languishingly, in perfect coquetry.

"You don't think me dangerous to your soul, do you?"

I didn't. I thought her a very charming and talented woman, whom I

wanted to know much better. I said so, and she laughed.

"You are wiser than I thought, to see through their lies. They are good

people, but like all people everywhere, they have their little

insanities, their beliefs and their intolerances."

Yet within me there was a little warning shudder borne of the strange

power of her eyes on my own, of the chill of the night, of many little

past-observed strangenesses in her ways, in the fear the Zervs bore for

her ... I reserved something of caution. She saw this in my eyes and

smiled sadly, and that sad and understanding smile was perfectly

calculated to dispel my last doubt of her. I slid closer across the

grass, to lie beside her.

"What could I gain by a knowledge of what lies in the city, Zoorph?" I

asked.

"My name is _Carna_, stranger. In that city you can learn whether there

is danger for your people in what the Schrees plan on earth. We could

not tell that, for we do not know enough about your own race's

abilities. You could steal a vehicle to take you to your own rich

cities. And as for me, I could go with you, to practice my arts in your

cities and become rich and famous."

"What are your arts, Carna?"

"Nothing you would call spectacular, perhaps. I can read thought, I can

foretell the future, and I can sometimes make things happen fortunately,

if I try very hard. Such things, very unsubstantial arts, not like your

gun which kills. Subtle things, like making men fall in love with me,

perhaps."

She laughed into my eyes and I got abruptly to my feet. She was telling

the truth in the last sentence, and I did not blame Nokomee for fearing

her power.

"Let us see, then, Carna, what the night can give us. I cannot wait

forever for chance to bring me freedom. Come," I bent and helped her to

her feet, very pleasant and clinging her grasp on my arm, very soft and

utterly smooth the flesh of her arm in my hand, very graceful and lovely

her swift movement to rise. My heart was beating wildly, she was a kind

I understood, but could not resist any the better for knowing. Or was I

unkind, and she but starved for kindness and human sympathy, so long

among a people who disliked and feared her?

We walked along in the darkness, the distant moving lights of that city

closer each step, and a dread in my breast at what I would find there, a

dread that grew. Beside me Carna was silent, her face lovely and glowing

in the night, her step graceful as a deer's.

We circled the high wall of white marble keeping some twenty feet away,

where the grass gave knee-high cover we could drop into instantly. We

came around to the far side from the cliff, and stopped where a paved

highway ran smooth, like pebbled glass, straight across the valley. I

glanced at Carna, she gestured toward the open gate in the wall, and

smiled a daring word.

"In...?"

"In!" I answered, and like two kids, hand in hand, we stole through the

shadowed gateway, sliding quickly out of the light, standing with our

backs to the wall, looking up the long, dim-lit way along which a myriad

dark doorways told of life. But it was seemingly deserted. Carna

whispered softly:

"When it was ours, the night was gay with life and love, now--_it is

death!_"

"Death or taxes, we're going to take a look."

We stole along the shadowed side of the street, the moon was up,

shedding much too bright a light now for comfort. Perhaps a hundred

yards along that strange street we went, I letting the Zoorph lead the

way, for I had an idea she must know the city and have some plan, or she

would not be here. If she meant to use me to escape into my world, I was

all for her.

Then, from ahead, came the sound of feet, many of them in unison. We

darted into a doorway, crouched behind a balustrade. Nearer came the

feet, and I peered between the interstices of the screening balustrade.

The feet came on; slow, rhythmic, marching without zest or pause or

break, perfection without snap. As the first marching figure came into

sight in the moonlight, I shuddered to the core with something worse

than fear.

For they were men who were no longer men! When Barto and Polter and

Noldi had been carried off unconscious, Nokomee had told me:

"They are not my people. They go their way and we go ours. Time has made

us a people divided. Time, _and a cruel science_."

These were the mole-men, the crab-men, the creatures built for specific

purposes as tools are built. Each _thing_ bore on his back a bale of

goods, or a bar of metal, a burden sizeable enough for two ordinary men.

They were strong, and they were silent and smooth-moving as machines. I

realized they _were_ machines--made out of flesh.

"Are these slaves, or what?" I asked Carna.

"These were once the slaves, or workmen of the race of Zervs. They now

serve the Schrees, for they are mindless, in a way. They are not

important. It is those who guard and guide them I wait to see. I have

not yet seen a Schree, but only heard the Zervs describe them."

The nightmare procession went on for minutes, long minutes that were to

me a nightmare. Yet I realized that if I had been raised to the idea of

humankind made into machines, it would not be revolting--not after they

had been hereditarily moulded for centuries into what they were. Yet

what a crime it was, what they might have been if left to develop as

nature intended, rather than as man cruelly mal-intended. They must have

been once specially selected for strength as well as beauty, for about

them was a sad and terrible grace, a remainder of noble chiseling of

brow and nostril, distorted as by a fiend into the horror that it

was--these had once been a noble race!

"Do you feel the terrible horror of this sight?" I asked Carna.

"Always I have felt the horror that was done to them in the past. It is

_still_ done to man. Look, there are the three who came with you, and

fell into the hands _of the priests_. They are the thing that the Zervs

_really fear_, yet they live with it, and have done so for centuries.

They can despise the Schrees, but they are as bad themselves--look!"

I followed with my eye her pointing finger. Yes, that figure _was_

hulking Barto, and I almost yelled "Jake, snap out of it!" before I

remembered my own peril.

Then he came into the full light, and passed not twenty feet away. I

leaned against the railing of stone, sick as a dog and retching. They

had made him over, with some unknown aborted science of an evil world!

Jake was clubfooted, lumbering, with his jaws grown into great jowls of

bone, his arms elongated and ending in hooks. Two of the fingers, or the

thumb and finger had been enlarged or grafted into a bone-like semblance

of a crab's claw. What he was going to be when they got through, I

didn't know, but neither did Jake. He didn't know anything! He clumped

along, his crossed eyes unmoving, his back bent with a weight heavy for

even his broad shoulders--a man no longer, but a mindless zombie. A

cross-eyed zombie!

I cursed silently, tearing my hands against the stone as I resisted the

impulse to fire and fire again upon those hopping, thin, white things

that came after.

"Just _what_ are those hopping things?"

"They are a separate race, who have lived with both Zervs and with

Schrees. They are a part of our life. You have dogs, horses, machines.

We have _Jivros_--that is, priests--and we have the workmen we call

Shinros, and too, we have the Zoorphs!" She laughed a little as I stared

at her. "Do not worry, the Zoorphs are not really so different. But the

Schrees and Shinros _are_ different."

"Damned, beastly, demoniac life it must be."

"To you, who expect things to be like your knowledge tells you it must

be. To us, it is our way. For a Zerv, or for a Schree, it is a good way.

The Jivros do the supervisory work, the Shinros do the hard work, and

the Schrees take it easy and enjoy life. Why do you have machines?"

"Machines are not alive. That is different."

"Neither are the Shinros alive, they only seem so. They do not know what

they have lost--it is much as if they had died.

"But come, I must show you where we can get a ship to take us away from

this and into your world. I have a life to live, I want to _live_ it!

You--have a message to deliver to your people, or they will become the

Shinros of the whole race of Schrees. I do not like to think what can

happen to your world!"

I followed her again on our furtive way among the shadows. She was

swift and sure, and made good time. She knew where she was going. It was

a broad open space deep within the city. On three sides were wide closed

doors like hangar doors. The fourth was a massive structure of rose

granite, beetling above us, a monstrous shape in the dimness, throwing a

shadow half across the paved space. We raced across the shadow toward

the nearest doorway, flattened against it, listening for life inside.

Carna worked on the catch of the door, after a second slid the door

aside slowly, carefully. Inside I could see a shimmering smoothness,

round, higher than my head, a top-shaped object. I guessed that this was

the ship she meant to steal from the Schrees. Suddenly the door she was

sliding open scraped, and emitted a shrill, high-pitched sound. I did

not know if it was an alarm activated by the opening door or just rust

on the rails and wheels of the door mechanism. Carna cried:

"Hurry, get into the ship, we must take off at once. They will come;

they must have heard that sound!"

I ducked into the darkness, circled the bulging shape, looking for an

opening. Smooth, there seemed no way I could find.

"Here it is, help me open it," Carna panted behind me.

I leaped to her side. She was twisting at an inset handle around which

faint lines indicated the door edge. I pulled her aside, took hold of

the handle, twisted hard. It bent, then gave, and the door swung easily

open in my hands. We tumbled in. Carna raced through the first chamber,

and even as I got the door closed, the floor lifted under my feet

easily, drifted out of the wide doorway, shot upward so quickly I was

thrown to the floor. I lay there, the increasing acceleration pressing

me hard against the cool metal. After a time I struggled up, made my way

to the woman's side.

Ahead was the moonlit range of mountains. Carna was setting a course

straight along the ridge of them, heading southward.

"How far will this thing fly?" I asked.

"It will fly around your world many times, if I want it to."

"What kind of fuel does it use?" I asked incredulously.

"I don't know what that is. It uses a substance we call Ziss. It is a

good fuel."

"It must be!"

I looked back along the ridge of the mountain's top toward the valley we

had left. We were in a bubble on the top of the flat, circular ship; one

could see in any direction. Back there a series of glowing round shapes

shot upward, came after us in a long curve that would bring them ahead

of us on our course. Carna changed her course to parallel the pursuit,

and they changed again, to intercept her new direction. Again she

changed, circling farther west.

But it was no use! Rapidly they overhauled us.

"Can't you get more speed out of it?" I shouted at her, for they were

very close.

"We have been unlucky, my friend. This ship is not in good shape. There

is something wrong with it. I cannot make it go as it should, or there

is something I do not know...."

Swiftly they came up with us, over us, and beams of light shot from them

down upon us. The ship was held now, rigid. One could feel the

acceleration cease. Like a bird on a string we followed as they swung

back toward the valley. Minutes later we were being lowered into the

open space we had just left. I clicked the safety off my rifle,

loosened the gun in my holster. I covered the door, shielding myself

behind the round shape of a machine. But Carna put a hand on my weapon,

shook her head.

"If you kill some of them, they will make of you a Shinro. If you submit

meekly, it may be I can talk to someone and save you. I have ways. I

understand them. They will be glad to get me, and I will tell them _you_

know many things they need to know. I can save your life. Later we can

try again, in another ship. Next time we will not be so unlucky."

It sounded like sense, and I looked into her deep eyes searchingly. She

meant well. Perhaps she could do what she said. I did not know these

aliens; she was almost one of them.

As the door opened in the side, I lay the rifle down, stood with crossed

arms as the thin, hopping horrors came near.

These things had _never_ been men. They had faces that were empty of

features, just flat, shiny, gray eyes, two holes where they breathed, no

mouth that I could see. There was a long neck around which the collar of

their white robe was gathered in folds. Their hands were horny, like an

insect's claws. They were not human, they were only four-limbed, and

walked--or hopped--in an erect position. There the resemblance ceased.

They led us out, Carna rattling off a series of sounds I could hardly

follow. Something about:

"We had to flee from the Zervs, we did not believe you would take us in,

we had to steal a ship. I am Carna, a Zoorph of the first grade, and

this man is a native of the United States, the greatest country of this

earth. Do not harm him, he can help you if he wishes."

Her words must have had quite an effect, for the weird, insect-like men

examined me with their eyes as we hurried along, across the hangar

space, into the big building of rose granite. Within twenty minutes we

were entering a tremendous room, and Carna nudged me.

"Their boss, Carl! Look impressed."

It was easy to look impressed. I _was_ mightily impressed by the _She_

on the throne!

* * *

I had no eyes for the score or so of Schrees that surrounded the massive

carved chair, even though I was curious about their difference from men.

Above them were her sleepy eyes, wide almonds, molten and wise,

incandescent with intense inner fire above a mouth that was a wide,

scarlet oval torn into the whitely-glowing face.

A great black pelt softened the harsh lines of the throne, framed her

chalk-white body so that it curved starkly sensual, dominating the great

chamber with beauty. It was a beauty one knew this woman used as a tool,

a weapon, keen and polished and ready, and it struck at me swift as a

great serpent, the fires behind her eyes driving the blow.

She wore a kind of sark of shadowy black veil, sewn over with sparkling

bits of gem. It was in truth but an effective ornament for the proud

firm breasts, the narrow waist, the arch of the hips and the curves of

her thighs. Inadvertently I let out a low whistle of approbation and

astonishment. Carna, beside me, nudged me sharply, and I snapped out of

it.

The purple, lazy lids of her eyes moved, the slow weary-wise gaze

centered on me, her hand moved. In two strides a man from the

throne-side had me by the arm, and another seized my other, tugged me

forward to her feet, thrust me down on my knees. Still, I looked.

Curiosity and something more held me in a grip I couldn't shake.

This was more than a woman, I sensed. There was an awe of her throbbing

in me. Not fear--something deeper, something one feels before the

unexplainable, something one feels gazing at the moon and wondering; an

ominous, deep, thrilling and unexplainable emotion.

Closer, I could see her firm flesh was dusted over with a glittering

powder, the soft curves of her hair swept back to mingle and lose

themselves in the black fur of the pelt so that the night-black hair

seemed to spread everywhere about her and melt into the shadows.

Her hands were sinuous as serpents, the fingers tapering, the nails very

long like the Chinese. Her nose was exquisite, but thin-edged, and with

a cruel line on each side that vanished when she spoke.

"It is death to strangers in this valley...." she mused, not speaking to

me or to anyone, but with a cruel intent to toy with me in the words,

mocking, waiting for me to answer.

"I have been long on the way," I answered, in much the same tone, as

though we were speaking of some one not present.

"The way to death is sometimes long, and sometimes short. And, too,

there are things worse than death. But what was it you came here

seeking?"

"I did not know, until just now," I answered, still looking at her eyes,

which glanced at me, then away, then back again. She was interested in

spite of her apparent weariness with routine--or perhaps with life

itself.

"Now that you know, will you tell me?" She smiled a little, not a good

smile, but a secret jest with herself. An appearance of extreme evil sat

for a moment on her face, then went again, like the wind. Her voice was

grave, careless, yet modulated with an extreme care as if she spoke to a

child.

"I seek the wisdom I see in your eyes, to know what is and why it

wearies you. I want to know a great many things, about your people and

what they do here, what they mean to mine, what your plans may be--a

great many things I need now."

The sleepiness left her eyes, and she bent toward me with the grace of a

great cat and the shadows circling her eyes lifted a little. Wise,

aloof, indifferent, yet she did not know what I was, or what I meant,

and she meant to find out.

"So you know...." she mused, as if to herself.

"I know you are from space. I know it has been a long long time since

you first touched here; your people, that is. I know that you drove the

Zervs from this city and took it for your own. But that is all."

"It is too much. You cannot leave here." Her voice was sharp, and I was

surprised to learn that she had even considered letting me go free. It

was encouraging, after the dire pictures the Zervs and Nokomee had drawn

for me of these Schrees.

I looked curiously at them, the Zervs had called them "not human." They

_were_ different, as a negro is different from a white, or an Oriental

from a Finn. Their eyes were wide-set and a little prominent, their ears

thinner and smaller, their necks very long and supple--different still

from the Zervs. Yet they were a human race. I had misunderstood--or I

had not yet met those whom the Zervs called Schree.

Carna had knelt beside me, and I murmured to her:

"Are these the Schrees, or something else?"

"These are the high-class Schrees, they are very like the Zervs in

appearance. The other classes of the Schrees at sometime in the past

were changed by medical treatments into a different appearance. It was a

way of fixing the caste system permanently--understand?" She answered me

swiftly, in a whisper, and the woman on the throne frowned as she

noticed our conversation.

Her eyes fixed ours as she said, with a curiously excited inflection, no

longer bored with us: "Take these two to the place of questioning. I

will supervise the proceeding. I must know what these two intended here,

whether others of this man's people understand us."

"We're in for it!" said Carna, and I knew what she meant. Jerked to our

feet, we were hurried from the big throne room, down a corridor, through

a great open door which closed behind us.

That place! It was a laboratory out of Mr. Hyde's nightmares.

Up until now I had accepted the many divergencies and peculiarities of

the Zervs, the priestly insect-men, the monstrous workers--all the

variance of this colony from space--as only to be expected of another

planet's races. I had consciously tried to resist the impact of horror

on my mind, had tried to put it aside as a natural reaction and one

which did not necessarily mean that this expedition from space was a

horrible threat to men. I had tried to accept their ways as not

necessarily monstrous, but as a different way of life that _could_ be as

good a way as our own if I once understood it. There were attractive

points about the Zervs and even about these Schrees' rulers which bore

out this impulse toward tolerance in me.

But in this laboratory--or _abattoir_--some nameless, ominous aura or

smell or electric force--what it was I know not--struck at my already

staggering understanding with a final blow.

Now at last I met the real Schrees! I knew without asking. They seemed

to me to be an attempt by the peculiar insect-like "priests" to make

from normal men a creature more like themselves in appearance. Perhaps

it had been done from the natural urge to have about them beings more

like themselves than men ... and it was plain that the race of the

insect-like creatures and of men had become inextricably linked--become

a social unity in the past. It was also increasingly plain that the

four-limbed insect creatures had in the beginning been the cultured

race, been the fathers of the science and culture of this race, had

through the centuries lost their dominance to the Zervs and the Schree's

upper classes--had retained the "priest" role as their own place in

society. It was perhaps at that time that their science had brought the

Schree type into existence. There were perhaps a hundred of them at work

in the big chamber--a chamber bewilderingly filled with hanging surgical

non-glare lights, filling the place with a shadowless illumination,

revealing great, gurgling bottles of fluid with tubes and gleaming metal

rods; pulsing elastic bulbs; throbbing little pumps, with row on row of

gauges and dials and little levers along the walls.

There were a score of ominous-looking operating tables, some occupied,

some empty, about them gathered group after group of white-masked

Schrees. These were taller than men, near seven feet, with very bony

arms and legs, a skeletal structure altered into attenuation, with

high, narrow skulls, great liquid eyes, no brows, hairless skulls

showing bare and pointed above the white surgical masks.

Very like the Jivro caste, yes, but different as men are different from

insect. They walked with a long graceful stride, not hopping as the

priests' class. Their eyes were mournful and liquid with a dog-like

softness, their hands were snake-quick and long, they looked like

sad-faced ghouls busy about the dismemberment of a corpse--a corpse of

someone they had loved, and they appearing very sad about the necessity.

Such was their appearance; mournful, ghoulish, yet human and warm in a

repressed, frustrated way.

The tall, sad-eyed Schrees turned from the preparation of two rigs like

dental chairs, except that they were not that at all, but only similarly

surrounded with gadgetry incomprehensible to me. We had stood isolated,

waiting, with four guards between us and the door.

As we were each placed in one of these chairs, our wrists and ankles

fastened with straps of metal, I expected almost any horrible torture to

be inflicted upon us.

They shot a beam of energy through my head and I heard words, sentences,

a rapid expounding of alien grammar and pronunciation which sank deep

into my brain. My memory was being ineradicably written upon with all

the power needed to make of me whatever they wanted. But apparently

their only purpose now was to give me a complete understanding of their

language. An hour, two, swept by, and now the heretofore almost

unintelligible gibberish about me became to my ears distinct and

understandable words. I was now acquainted with the tongue of the

Schrees, far better than little Nokomee had taught me the somewhat

different tongue of the Zervs.

Then they wrapped about my waist and chest a strong net of metal mesh,

and I knew that now something strenuous was going to occur, for I could

not move a muscle because of the complete wrapping of metal mesh.

Now a metal disk was set to swinging in front of my nose so that I could

not see what they were doing to my companion. I watched the metal disk,

and saw behind it the tall swaying figure of the Queen enter and

approach. She stopped a few feet from my chair, and her eyes were intent

upon me. Then a light flashed blindingly in the reflecting disk, it went

back and forth faster and faster, and I felt a strong vibration of

energy pass in a beam through my head, throbbing, throbbing ... darkness

engulfed me. It was a darkness that was a black whirlwind of emotion.

The sense of the desertion by humankind, by God and mercy and

rationality swept through me and overwhelmed my inner self. I will never

forget the utter agony of shrieking pain and loss that formed a whirling

ocean of darkness into which I dived....

In this maelstrom of seeming destruction I lost all grip, had no will,

was at sea mentally. Into this shrieking hurricane of madness a calm

voice intruded. I recognized a familiar note--it was the ruler herself,

her voice no longer bored, but with a cruel curiosity that I knew meant

to be satisfied if it killed me.

"Tell me what your people intend to do about the flying saucers they

speak of in their newspapers?"

"They do not believe they exist; they are told they are delusions," I

heard myself answering. I was surprised to hear my voice, for it came

with no conscious volition on my part.

"That is for the public; that is a lie. But what do the powers behind

the scenes intend to do about them?"

"They are searching for them, to learn all they can about them. They do

not understand where they come from, but they have some information.

They suspect they are from space, and are afraid of them."

"And they sent you here to learn what you could. They brought you the

golden statuette to help you gain an entry, did they not?"

I tried to resist the impulse to tell the truth, for I could realize

that if she thought I had the power of my government behind me, my fate

might be different than if I did not. I tried to say "yes, they sent

me," but I could not! I answered like an automaton:

"No, my government has no knowledge of my expedition. I came purely to

get gold and for no other reason. Mining is my business."

She gave a little exclamation of frustration. Then after a pause she

asked:

"Do you think our way of life and your own could live together in peace,

could grow to be one?"

Again I made futile efforts to hide my revulsion and fear of them all.

It was no use. The flood of force pouring through my head was more

effective than any truth serum.

"No, to me you are horrors, and my people would never consent to live at

peace with you. You could never conquer us. Until the last of our

cultured members were dead they would resist the horrible practices of

your culture."

"That is as I surmised," she mused. "But I would have you tell me why

this is so. What is it you find so revolting about us."

"What have you done to my companions? Do you think men want that to

happen to them?"

"That was a punishment for entering here without permission. That would

not happen to any but enemies."

"Men could never accept the altering of the shapes of workers, the

tinkering with the hereditary form of their children, the artificial

grafting upon our race of revolting and unnecessary form changes. Your

whole science is a degeneration of wisdom into evil, tampering with life

itself. You are horrors, and you do not know it."

I could hear her steps as she turned and left, tapping angrily upon the

floor. After her I could hear the shuffling, heavier tread of her

retinue. As the flood of vibration ceased, I began to curse aloud for

the undiplomatic truths I had been forced to utter. In seconds my arms

were free, and I was led out, a tall grim-faced guard on each side, with

a firm grip on my arms. I wondered what was happening to the lovely

Zoorph, but I did not get a chance to look. I was thrown into a cell,

and the heavy wooden door shut. The thud of a bar dropped in place

punctuated the evening's experience with a glum finality.

* * *

I lay for hours with my mind in a whirl from the effects of the truth

ray. Jivros, or insect-priests, moved phantom-like before my sleepless

eyes, watching from the dark and waiting. Gradually my thinking became

more normal, and I began a systematic analysis and summing up of what I

had learned of these people. There were but a few members of the ruling

groups, and it was evident the rule was split between the Jivro caste of

the insect men and some normal-appearing groups who had divided the

power with them in the past. Under these were the Schrees, and under

these the malformed working caste or castes. The Schrees had contact

with some space-state, the Zervs were outcasts of the ruler caste who

had been driven from that space-state--perhaps more than one

planet--sometime in the past and had hid out upon earth until recently

located by the power that ruled on their home planets. Now they were

fugitive and nearly powerless, and I knew the Zervs were few in number

from my own observation. There were perhaps a hundred, perhaps two

hundred. They had contact with some of the Jivros with whom they were

familiar, but the appearance of Jake and Noldi and Polter among the

workmen in the city told me that these Jivros could be traitors to them,

could be giving new allegiance to the conquerors of the Zervs. My mind

centered on two facts. The Jivro caste were the real source of the evil

in these people. It was their unnatural attitude toward human life which

had made this race the horror it was, and they were still exercising

that evil influence.

Morning came through a high barred window, and after a while food came,

slid beneath the door. I did not see the bearer of the food, though I

called out in curiosity. He did not answer, only shuffled wearily away.

The morning crawled past, the sun mounted until I could see the golden

orb near zenith. Then came what I dreaded, the tread of a number of

feet. The bar was lifted; I saw four armed guards and a waiting

white-robed Jivro, his protruding pupiless eyes moving as he ran his

gaze over my figure. I could not help shrinking from the horror of his

examination, brief though it was, for I realized he might be deciding

just what freak of nature he could make out of me.

I was marched out, down the corridor, up a long ramp, a turn, along two

other corridors, up another ramp. The tour ended before a wide metal

door, the guards spaced themselves at each side, the door was opened by

the agile, hopping Jivro. I went in ahead of it.

There were but four beings in the room, and I stood before the long,

foot-high table behind which the four reclined upon cushioned couches.

They were four divergent creatures. One was the queen, whose name I had

yet to hear spoken. One was a very old Jivro, his skin ash-white and

covered with a repulsive scale, like leprosy. The third was a

mournful-eyed Schree, clad in an ornamented smock-like garment, from

which his thin limbs thrust grotesquely. The fourth was a handsome,

long-necked male who resembled the queen. He lounged negligently some

distance from the three, as if in attendance upon her. I deduced he was

her paramour, husband or close relative, perhaps a brother.

I stood eyeing them silently, waiting. I gathered the three heads of the

government were here, and the extra one represented the balance of power

in the hands of the queen. His negligent lack of interest seemed to me

to be an evident giving of his voice to the queen, if he was a part of

this gathering.

The queen's voice had lost its sleepy, mocking tones, was sharp,

incisive:

"You present a problem new to us, earthman. Sooner or later, if we

decide to remain upon this planet permanently, we will have to meet and

conquer, or meet and engage in commerce with the other members of your

race. You are the first educated member of your race who has fallen into

our hands. We must study your people, and we would like your willing

cooperation. Will you give it willingly? Or must we put you to death?

Which would perhaps symbolize, even indicate directly, our future

attitude toward your races."

"I am quite willing," I said, before I had a chance to bungle it worse,

"quite willing to exchange information on your people for the same about

my own. However, I doubt that your people will find this planet

congenial to an invader who ignores the natives as you have done."

"We did not come here to colonize, earthman. We came in pursuit of

renegades from our law, fugitives who fled when their plots were

uncovered. But we are considering the possibility of a permanent colony

here, and you could help us...."

For an instant her eyes dwelt upon mine with a peculiar warning

expression, as evident as a wink, and the expression was evanescent as a

breath. I caught on, and made my face agreeable and subservient.

Immediately her own reassumed a harsh, proud set, her voice became even

more incisive and cold.

My eyes drifted casually to the blank, cold stare of the old Jivro, to

the mournful liquid eyes of the Schree, on to the apparently

disinterested gaze of the queen's friend. The only ominous feeling I got

was from the eyes of the aged insect-man, and my deduction that they

were the source of the evils of these people was strengthened. The

chills ran down my back, and something within me thrilled as I

understood that this queen was playing a part to please the Jivros, that

her interests were actually divergent. Her voice was saying:

"You could help us greatly by explaining your life to us, who are so

different; make it possible that in the future trade and cultural

intercourse might spring up between the two alien ways of life. There

will be no peace without understanding, you realize!"

"I quite agree with your views, and will help you in any way that I

can," I said loudly, for the old Jivro seemed to be hearing with

difficulty. He leaned back at my words, seemed to relax as if pleased.

The queen turned to her companion, smiled and said:

"Genner, you will see that he is taken care of as a guest, and endeavor

to learn what you can from him. I will hold you responsible for the

success of this experiment."

"Very well," Genner murmured, "but it seems to me, Wananda Highest, that

we can never allow the wall of secrecy between ourselves and the people

of this planet to be breached. To consider doing otherwise ..." for an

instant his eye hesitated upon hers, then he went on, "... could hardly

be logical, but of course, there is much we could learn from them, and

they from us. That, I see, as the only purpose of this exception."

Just then a great hullabaloo broke out in the corridors outside, the

door burst open, and into the room three captives were borne,

half-carried, half-pushed. I stood back out of the way, and the three

were prodded into a row in front of the low table. Among them I

recognized with a start my erstwhile guard, Holaf, of the Zervs.

Wananda leaned forward, her eyes glittering with sudden triumph, her

voice thrilling with a cruel mocking note.

"More of the skulking Zervs fail to avoid our warriors! Where did you

find them, Officer?"

"They were attempting to release the captive Croen female in the crystal

prison of the cave of the Golden statue, your highness. Our spies among

the Zervs informed us of the attempt."

Wananda's eyes blazed at Holaf. Her voice became more shrill with

something almost like fear. The three men shrank back visibly from her

fury.

"So it is not enough you plot treason, you must also turn against your

Gods? You know the Croen powers, you know what she would do to us all,

you included. But so that you can overcome the Schrees, nothing else to

you is sacred, nothing too vile for you to do. Away with them, let them

become the least among the mindless men."

The tall Schree warriors, their long faces expressionless, started to

hustle the three captives toward the door again. Holaf wrenched free,

turned, his face contorted with hatred.

"You have hounded us until we are but few, Wananda the Faithless, but

you will never conquer us. We still have your doom in our hands, and it

will find you out. Death to you, woman without mercy, creature without

soul! These sacred Jivros plot your downfall, and your people pray that

they will succeed. The ancient Jivro rule would be better than the

justice you administer, you snake in a woman's flesh!"

The Schree holding Holaf's arms let go, tugged a weapon from his belt,

struck Holaf over the head with it. He slumped unconscious, with blood

running over his face from the blow. The three were taken out, and

Wananda leaned back. Seeing my intent face, she waved a hand to her

companion, Genner, who rose to his feet and motioning to me, preceded me

from the room by another door than that which I had entered. I followed

him.

Apparently I was on my honor, for no guard followed, and Genner bore no

weapons I could see but a little jeweled dagger in his belt.

As he walked a step ahead of me, I asked:

"Who is this Croen that Holaf spoke of, in the crystal column. I saw

her, wondered at her, in the room of the golden goddess. Why do they

think she could be released?"

"The Croen are a powerful race of wizards, Carlin Keele. They live far

off from our home planets in space, and they have a code of conduct that

makes them monitors, doctors, interferers in all matters of other races'

business. If she were released, she would at once attempt to overthrow

our power, to set up a state after the Croen pattern. It is their way.

They consider themselves as superior to all others, and they do have a

knowledge of nature which they use to impose their will upon all

peoples. They are worshipped as Gods by many primitive people, and so

consider themselves above all laws but their own. She was captured many

years ago in an attempt to overthrow the rule of Wananda upon a small

satellite planet. Wananda did not kill her, but placed her in suspended

animation within the protective crystal plastic. Our queen intends to

revive her and study her mind for her wisdom, but we have not had time

because of the press of events. Soon, now, she will become a tool in our

hands to build greater the eminence of Wananda."

"Peculiar looking creature, yet attractive," I murmured.

"The Croens are physically beautiful, but they are warlike and cruel,

they do not desire peace and the way of life of the Schrees and Jivros

is an irritant to them. They hate and despise us, and we return them the

favor."

I did not reply, but my heart seemed to throb in sympathy with the Zerv

attempt to free the beautiful creature from her living tomb.

"Could she turn the tables for the Zervs if they had succeeded?"

"I really don't know," answered Genner, opening a door and motioning me

into the apartment. "These are my quarters. There is plenty of room, the

place is usually empty of all but slaves. I seldom sleep here myself,

preferring more congenial and less lonesome sleeping accommodations. I

think you will find it comfortable. I will see you at the evening meal

time."

As I walked in, the door closed and I heard the lock click. I was a

"guest" with reservations.

Curiously I examined the place, the unreadable books kept in niches

behind transparent sections of the wall, the strange furnishings, at

once exotic and comfortless to me. The books I could not get at, finding

no way to open the transparent panels which seemed an integral part of

the wall. I could not feel comfortable in the seats and lounges, as they

were very low, requiring an oriental squat at which I am not adept. I

compromised by stretching out along a hard couch raised some six inches

above the floor. There were no gadgets to tinker with, the place was to

me barren of necessary appurtenances ... strange people, indeed.

As I was dozing off, the lock clicked in the door, and I sat up,

startled to see Wananda glide in and close the door quickly behind her.

She was alone, and there was something furtive about her.

"Welcome to my abode, beautiful one."

The woman smiled, an almost human smile; reserved, yet with an

unexpected warmth. I waited with intense curiosity for her explanation

of her visit.

"I come to you for aid, for I can talk to none of my own. I am in

trouble which perhaps no one but you could remedy. Will you give me your

honor, will you do what I ask without question, will you be my friend?"

I was taken aback that this apparently powerful personage should be

seeking aid of me, a prisoner. I answered:

"I see no reason why you should not trust me, as I know no one here to

betray you to. But are you not the supreme power here? Why should you

want my aid?"

"Because you do not understand my position does not mean that I am not

in trouble. These Jivros are difficult allies for one with blood in her

veins. I was raised to be a ruler. The Jivro priests were my tutors and

my administrators before I came of age. It is only reluctantly they have

followed the orders from the rulers of our home planets to obey me. They

intend to slay me, and report my death as an accident. I live in fear,

and I have long awaited their treachery. There is but one hope for me

and that is Cyane, the Superior One whom I saved only by enclosing her

in that living coffin. That is what I ask of you--to succeed where the

Zervs have failed, and to release her and guide her in flight from here.

She can lead your people, save them from these monstrous Jivros who have

made of my race the things which you see. I would save your people as

well as myself. Will you try to release her?"

I leaned back against the cushions, crossed my legs, took out my pipe.

This was not exactly a surprise, but I had not realized the rift between

her and the peculiar insect-men was such as to cause her to fear for her

life.

"How does one release a person from such a death?" I asked. "In my

people's understanding of life, death comes with the stopping of the

breath."

"She can be released by an injection of a stimulant which I can obtain

for you. She is not dead, but in a condition very near to death, like a

spider stung by a wasp. If she were free, she would soon scour your

earth clean of the Jivros. Our race needs her even more than your own,

yet I must pretend to be her enemy. I must pretend to be your

seductress, and worm from you the knowledge which the Jivros will use to

conquer and enslave your planet and your people. I must play this part,

unnatural to me, of a cruel and heartless ruler, or they will have me

killed by some subtle poison which they will call illness. You see, the

Jivros are our doctors. Much of the wisdom of our race is in their

hands. They are our priests and our administrators. They leave to us

only useless occupations which will not allow us to be dangerous. For

centuries they have been taking over every vital function of our life. I

am allowed to live only so long as I am a willing tool, and foolish

enough to wreak their evil will upon my people. It is a part I cannot

continue to play. Every instinct of my being shrinks from what I am

forced to order done daily, from what I am forced to allow them to do to

human beings."

This was a different kettle of fish than I had expected. This slender,

lovely creature, with her hands wrung together in pain and sorrow for

her brutally maltreated people, this tear-streaked lovely face contorted

with an agony which she had not spoken of to anyone else--this actress

supreme, who for all her life had pretended to approve of the alien

Jivro's sabotage of her own racial stock--was a heart-rending picture,

and her own face told me with its extreme tension that what she said was

a fact. But perhaps this alien from space _could_ act that well? I

preferred to believe her.

"I don't see how you expect me to get a chance to release Cyane of her

crystal coffin? I will have no opportunity."

"I will _make_ an opportunity. I am not yet alone or helpless, much as

the insects would like me to be. This is my only power, that I am the

same blood as the people, and not a Jivro. They know that, and

constantly try to destroy this strength of mine by making me commit

cruelties which I cannot always avoid for fear of such of them as the

old Jivro whom you met at the council. So long as I retain his favor, I

live. When he raises his finger in the death signal, my days will be few

thereafter."

"I think I understand your position. I have heard of puppet rulers

before--woman whom I am delighted to learn has a human heart after all.

I am wholly with you, and want you to feel that you can trust me to the

hilt."

She smiled and dried her eyes. After a moment she leaned forward, and

the glory of her beauty, the near nudity of her utterly graceful body

struck at me as she fixed my eyes with her own, her face now intent with

will to make me completely understand quickly what she knew must be very

obscure to me.

"The Jivros fear the power of Cyane, the Croen captive, as they fear

death! The Croens have fought to destroy their power for centuries, on

many planets in our area of space. Cyane is one of their greatest. She

is a scientist of vast wisdom, and one who has developed a technique of

increasing the vitality of life within herself, as well as in anyone she

chooses to favor. You could well win from her such gifts, if you should

release her. It is one reason I wish to release her, in order to win

from her that secret of long life which she holds. The Croens are

masters of warfare and she would be able, with only a little help, to

develop an attack which they could not withstand."

"If they are so powerful, how is it they have not defeated the Jivros?"

"The Jivros are a very ancient, very widespread race. The Croens came

into our space-area recently, as time goes, only three centuries by your

time. They were lost. There were only a few hundred in a great ship, and

they settled upon a small uninhabited and airless satellite of our home

planet, were there for many years before they were discovered. When the

Jivros attacked them to destroy them, they found in spite of their

innumerable ships and countless warriors they could not harm them. But

their attacks angered the superior ones, and they began a campaign of

extermination against the insect men's empire. Since the Croen were

few, they began to recruit from among the Zervs and other groups who

were subservient to the Schrees. The Schrees were the ancient tools of

the Jivros, and have always held positions as tributary rulers, since

the insect-men themselves found subject peoples obeyed the Schrees more

readily. They have always kept the priest-like power and, by poisoning

and other devices, remove any Schree puppet who displeases them."

"Go on," I said huskily, her rapt face and intent manner, her utterly

lovely ivory body, glittering everywhere with the shining powder which

she used, the subtle penetrative scent of her--I was hard put to

concentrate upon her words.

"I plan to have the crystal pillar opened, perhaps, have Cyane brought

to my own chambers, and I will pretend to set up apparatus to read her

sleeping mind and so learn from her. Naturally the Jivros will become

suspicious of me if I do so, as they fear the knowledge of the Croen

which has always proved too great for them. There will be but a few days

time between my action in bringing her here, and my own death or her

confiscation by the Jivros. But in order to overrule me in this, they

will have to make a pretext, charge me with infidelity, convince the old

Jivro that I intend harm to him and his. During that time you must find

a way to release Cyane and escape with her."

"Why don't you yourself release her and escape with her?" I asked.

"Because I can be useful to her when she attacks us. Besides, I am

constantly under the Jivro eyes, and they know me so well they would see

my perturbation, they would know something was wrong and forestall me.

You alone could do it, and, too, I depend upon your alien knowledge to

provide a barrier or two to their overcoming you. Your weapons which you

bore when we captured you--do they fear them?"

"I never shot any of them; I don't know."

"Perhaps I will send you with the party to get Cyane. That way you can

find a chance to inject the stimulant when they are not looking. They

must remove the crystal from about her to move her; it is too heavy to

carry otherwise. Then when she awakes, you can find a way to divert

their pursuit, provide a false trail. Do you understand?"

"I could try, but I cannot tell if I could outwit them or not."

"They are really very stupid things, the Jivros. Like an insect, their

patterns are fixed and repetitive. They are almost incapable of original

thought. Once you know them, you can always outwit them. With you will

go my brother, Genner. He may be successful where you are not."

"It is agreed then." I stood up; this low couch made my knees stiff. She

took my movement as a dismissal of her, and flushed deeply. I smiled at

her embarrassment, and went down on one knee to bring my face level with

hers where she half reclined on the bench-like lounge.

"Dear lady," I said in English, not finding the necessary Schree words

in my artificial memory for a term of respect--then in Schree phrases,

"I will do my utter best to help you and your people. It is my duty to

my own race, too, as it is yours to yours. Trust me, so far as good-will

may go. Together, we will rid ourselves of these unclean Jivros of

yours!"

She rose then, and I stood too, still holding her hand that I had seized

in my own to impress her with my sincerity. For an instant she looked

at our two hands clasped together, then she placed an arm on my

shoulder, leaning against me and trembling slightly with emotion. Tears

sprang out in her eyes. She brushed them aside.

I did not know what to do. For fear of offending her, I restrained the

impulse to take her in my arms, and it took great willpower.

Something about her aroused my deepest admiration. Here was a woman who

had been playing a difficult part for years, whose heart was sore with

sorrow for her blighted people, and who must yet seem to approve. The

signs of long strain were very plain on her face. I understood that this

was one of her greatest fears, that her mind would give way and betray

her true emotions to the Jivros.

Clumsily I patted her bare shoulder. For an instant her wet cheek was

pressed against my own, then she went gliding swiftly away, her face

once again proud and empty of all human feeling. At the door she turned,

swept her palm once over her face, removing the tears and as the hand

passed upward she smiled as sweetly as a young girl, with a pathetic and

utterly charming mischievous expression. Then the palm passed downward,

and her face was left again stiff and masklike, the lips twisted a

little into a cruel thinness, her eyes hard as agates on my own. She was

superb, and I silently applauded. Then she was gone.

As I stood there, musing on the nature and the strange life of Wananda,

a mocking, sultry laugh made me whirl, for I had thought I was alone.

Standing beside the tall, open window--a window I had examined and found

impossible of exit because beneath it was a straight drop of some

seventy or eighty feet--was my erstwhile companion and prisoner, the

Zoorph, Carna!

Still in her hand was the long, fantastically ornamented drape behind

which she had been concealed during my "secret" interview with the

puppet queen.

"You!" I exploded. "Where did you come from and what did you hear?"

"Very interesting things, friend Keele. She is a fascinating woman, is

she not?" Carna made a pretty mouth, as if kissing something, and with

her fingers a gesture new to me, but one unmistakable in meaning. "She

now has your simple heart in her hand, to do with as she wishes. You are

a fine fool, you!"

"I thought you had psychic powers. You claim to read minds and foretell

the future, and you do not understand that she is fine and honest and

utterly admirable! You are the fool, Carna!"

She laughed.

"You are right, and not so simple. I said that only to know if your

perceptions were keen enough to know that what she said was true."

"Now you know. How did you get here, what do you want, what have they

done to you?"