"We have no time for a discussion of metaphysics or of love, woman.
Come, we must get out."
Carna gestured toward the doorway. I whirled, stood frozen with startled
nerves. There stood the old Jivro whom I had met in the council beside
the queen. In his hands were no weapons, and at his back were no tall
Schree guards. I wondered if the desertion of the Jivros had been so
complete. Even as I stooped to retrieve the heavy rifle from the floor,
his hands gestured, and the rifle eluded my reach, seeming to glide
across the floor. I followed it, and he gestured again.
Some force seemed to freeze me. It had not been nerves that held me
before, I learned, but his eyes upon me! Unwinking, the ancient master
of what worlds unknown to me, regarded me, and I knew I was helpless
before the power he controlled. My lips moved, but no sound came out.
A sudden blast of light came from the window, and the vast concussion
shook the building terribly. For an instant I felt freedom in my limbs.
I tugged out the .45 at my belt, leveled it, fired. The Old One
staggered, his eyes blazed at me, and his hand gestured again. The gun
fell from my hands, and some terrible black thing struck into my brain,
tearing, rending. I fell forward into blackness....
* * *
Swirling nothingness, a dry cachination as of some dead-as-dust thing
laughing at life itself, a shuddering vibrance flooding through my flesh
in waves of terrible nausea, a dim glow that grew and grew into
terrifying painful brilliance, then paled and died again into the
swirling blankness that was not death, but a knowledge of deep
injury....
Again and again the swirling horror of my brain slowed, almost stopped.
My eyes almost opened into the painful light, and the deep interior
vibrating sensation swelled into overpowering violence. I sank again
into darkness. Over and over I struggled almost to the doors of
consciousness, only to be shoved back by the consciously controlled
exterior force.
At last the sickness passed, and my mind quieted. I struggled into
wakefulness. As I opened my eyes, the face of the old Jivro gaped with
its noseless, bulging eyes not a foot away, the thin, wide lips and
mouth hanging open like a trap, the ridges across the mouth like a fish,
white and horrible.
I retched at the repellent sight, and the mouth moved, the words came
out so strangely, like a mechanical voice:
"Tell me, earthman, how is the weapon with which you shot my men on the
roof made? What are the details of its construction, and the formula for
its explosive?"