"Help," Quiana said. "A weapon. Sanfel had promised me a weapon. He
was working very hard to make one, risking much ... and now time has
eaten him up--that strange, capricious time that varies so much between
your world and mine. To me it was only yesterday--and I still need the
weapon."
Dantan's laugh was harsh with jealousy of that unknown and long-dead
Martian.
"Then I'm the wrong man," he said roughly. "I've no weapon. I've men
tracking me down to kill me, now."
She leaned forward a little, gesturing.
"Can you escape? You are hidden here, you know."
"They'll find the same way I found, up above."
"The laboratory door can be locked, at the top of the shaft."
"I know. I locked it. But there's no food or water here.... No, if I
had any weapons I wouldn't be here now."
"Would you not?" she asked in a curious voice. "In old Klanvahr, Sanfel
once told me, they had a saying that none could hide from his destiny."
Dantan gave her a keen, inquiring look. Did she mean--herself? That
same face and voice and body, so cruelly come back from death to waken
the old grief anew? Or did she know whose likeness she wore--or could
it be only his imagination, after all? For if Sanfel had known her too,
and if Sanfel had died as long ago as he must have died, then this same
lovely image had lived centuries and milleniums before the girl at
Klanvahr Fortress....
"I remember," said Dantan briefly.
"My world," she went on, oblivious to the turmoil in his mind, "my
world is too different to offer you any shelter, though I suppose you
could enter it for a little while, in that protective armor that Sanfel
made. But not to stay. We spring from soil too alien to one another's
worlds.... Even this communication is not easy. And there is no safety
here in Zha either, now. Now that Sanfel has failed me."
"I--I'd help you if I could." He said it with difficulty, trying to
force the remembrance upon himself that this was a stranger.... "Tell
me what's wrong."
She shrugged with a poignantly familiar motion.
"I have an Enemy. One of a lower race. And he--it--there is no
word!--has cut me off from my people here in a part of Zha that
is--well, dangerous--I can't describe to you the conditions here. We
have no common terms to use in speaking of them. But there is great
danger, and the Enemy is coming closer--and I am alone. If there were
another of my people here to divide the peril I think I could destroy
him. He has a weapon of his own, and it is stronger than my power,
though not stronger than the power two of my race together can wield.
It--it _pulls_. It destroys, in a way I can find no word to say. I had
hoped from Sanfel something to divert him until he could be killed. I
told him how to forge such a weapon, but--time would not let him do it.
The teeth of time ground him into dust, as my Enemy's weapon will grind
me soon."
She shrugged again.
"If I could get you a gun," Dantan said. "A force-ray--"
"What are they?"
He described the weapons of his day. But Quiana's smile was a little
scornful when he finished.
"We of Zha have passed beyond the use of missile weapons--even such
missiles as bullets or rays. Nor could they touch my Enemy. No, we can
destroy in ways that require no--no beams or explosives. No, Dantan,
you speak in terms of your own universe. We have no common ground. It
is a pity that time eddied between Sanfel and me, but eddy it did, and
I am helpless now. And the Enemy will be upon me soon. Very soon."
* * * * *
She let her shoulders sag and resignation dimmed the remembered
vividness of her face. Dantan looked up at her grimly, muscles riding
his set jaw. It was almost intolerable, this facing her again in need,
and again helpless, and himself without power to aid. It had been bad
enough that first time, to learn long afterward that she had died at
enemy hands while he was too far away to protect her. But to see it all
take place again before his very eyes!
"There must be a way," he said, and his hand gripped the lever marked
"door" in the ancient tongue.
"Wait!" Quiana's voice was urgent.
"What would happen?"
"The door would open. I could enter your world, and you mine."
"Why can't you leave, then, and wait until it's safe to go back?"
"I have tried that," Quiana said. "It will never be safe. The Enemy
waited too. No, it must come, in the end, to a battle--and I shall not
win that fight. I shall not see my own people or my own land again,
and I suppose I must face that knowledge. But I did hope, when I heard
Sanfel's signal sound again...." She smiled a little. "I know you would
help me if you could, Dantan. But there is nothing to be done now."
"I'll come in," he said doggedly. "Maybe there's something I could do."
"You could not touch him. Even now there's danger. He was very close
when I heard that signal. This is his territory. When I heard the bell
and thought Sanfel had returned with a weapon for me, I dared greatly
in coming here." Her voice died away; a withdrawn look veiled her eyes
from him.
After a long silence she said, "The Enemy is coming. Turn off the
screen, Dantan. And goodbye."
"No," he said. "Wait!" But she shook her head and turned away from him,
her thin robe swirling, and moved off like a pale shadow into the dim,
shadowless emptiness of the background. He stood watching helplessly,
feeling all the old despair wash over him a second time as the girl he
loved went alone into danger he could not share. Sometimes as she moved
away she was eclipsed by objects he could not see--trees, he thought,
or rocks, that did not impinge upon his eyes through the protective
helmet. A strange world indeed Zha must be, whose very rocks and trees
were too alien for human eyes to look upon in safety.... Only Quiana
grew smaller and smaller upon the screen, and it seemed to Dantan as
though a cord stretched between them, pulling thinner and thinner as
she receded into danger and distance.
It was unbearable to think that the cord might break--break a second
time....
Far away something moved in the cloudy world of Zha. Tiny in the
distance though it was, it was unmistakably not human. Dantan
lost sight of Quiana. Had she found some hiding place behind some
unimaginable outcropping of Zha's terrain?
The Enemy came forward.
It was huge and scaled and terrible, human, but not a human; tailed,
but no beast; intelligent, but diabolic. He never saw it too clearly,
and he was grateful to his helmet for that. The polarized glass seemed
to translate a little, as well as to blot out. He felt sure that this
creature which he saw--or almost saw--did not look precisely as it
seemed to him upon the screen. Yet it was easy to believe that such a
being had sprung from the alien soil of Zha. There was nothing remotely
like it on any of the worlds he knew. And it was hateful. Every line of
it made his hackles bristle.
It carried a coil of brightly colored tubing slung over one grotesque
shoulder, and its monstrous head swung from side to side as it paced
forward into the screen like some strange and terrible mechanical toy.
It made no sound, and its progress was horrible in its sheer relentless
monotony.
* * * * *
Abruptly it paused. He thought it had sensed the girl's presence,
somewhere in hiding. It reached for the coil of tubing with one
malformed--hand?
"Quiana," it said--its voice as gentle as a child's.
Silence. Dantan's breathing was loud in the emptiness.
"Quiana?" The tone was querulous now.
"Quiana," the monster crooned, and swung about with sudden, unexpected
agility. Moving with smooth speed, it vanished into the clouds of the
background, as the girl had vanished. For an eternity Dantan watched
colored emptiness, trying to keep himself from trembling.
Then he heard the voice again, gentle no longer, but ringing like a
bell with terrible triumph, "_Quiana!_"
And out of the swirling clouds he saw Quiana break, despair upon her
face, her sheer garments streaming behind her. After her came the
Enemy. It had unslung the tube it wore over its shoulder, and as it
lifted the weapon Quiana swerved desperately aside. Then from the coil
of tubing blind lightning ravened.
Shattering the patternless obscurity, the blaze of its color burst out,
catching Quiana in a cone of expanding, shifting brilliance. And the
despair in her eyes was suddenly more than Dantan could endure.
His hand struck out at the lever marked "door"; he swung it far over
and the veil that had masked the screen was gone. He vaulted up over
its low threshold, not seeing anything but the face and the terror of
Quiana. But it was not Quiana's name he called as he leaped.
He lunged through the Door onto soft, yielding substance that was
unlike anything he had ever felt underfoot before. He scarcely knew it.
He flung himself forward, fists clenched, ready to drive futile blows
into the monstrous mask of the Enemy. It loomed over him like a tower,
tremendous, scarcely seen through the shelter of his helmet--and then
the glare of the light-cone caught him.
It was tangible light. It flung him back with a piledriver punch that
knocked the breath from his body. And the blow was psychic as well as
physical. Shaking and reeling from the shock, Dantan shut his eyes and
fought forward, as though against a steady current too strong to breast
very long. He felt Quiana beside him, caught in the same dreadful
stream. And beyond the source of the light the Enemy stood up in stark,
inhuman silhouette.
He never saw Quiana's world. The light was too blinding. And yet, in a
subtle sense, it was not blinding to the eyes, but to the mind. Nor
was it light, Dantan thought, with some sane part of his mind. Too late
he remembered Quiana's warning that the world of Zha was not Mars or
Earth, that in Zha even light was different.
Cold and heat mingled, indescribably bewildering, shook him hard. And
beyond these were--other things. The light from the Enemy's weapon was
not born in Dantan's universe, and it had properties that light should
not have. He felt bare, emptied, a hollow shell through which radiance
streamed.
For suddenly, every cell of his body was an eye. The glaring
brilliance, the intolerable vision beat at the foundations of his
sanity. Through him the glow went pouring, washing him, nerves, bone,
flesh, brain, in floods of color that were not color, sound that was
not sound, vibration that was spawned in the shaking hells of worlds
beyond imagination.
It inundated him like a tide, and for a long, long, timeless while he
stood helpless in its surge, moving within his body and without it,
and within his mind and soul as well. The color of stars thundered in
his brain. The crawling foulness of unspeakable hues writhed along his
nerves so monstrously that he felt he could never cleanse himself of
that obscenity.
And nothing else existed--only the light that was not light, but
blasphemy.
Then it began to ebb ... faded ... grew lesser and lesser,
until--Beside him he could see Quiana now. She was no longer stumbling
in the cone of light, no longer shuddering and wavering in its
violence, but standing erect and facing the Enemy, and from her
eyes--something--poured.
Steadily the cone of brilliance waned. But still its glittering,
shining foulness poured through Dantan. He felt himself weakening, his
senses fading, as the tide of dark horror mounted through his brain.
And covered him up with its blanketing immensity.
* * * * *
He was back in the laboratory, leaning against the wall and breathing
in deep, shuddering draughts. He did not remember stumbling through
the Door again, but he was no longer in Zha. Quiana stood beside him,
here upon the Martian soil of the laboratory. She was watching him
with a strange, quizzical look in her eyes as he slowly fought back to
normal, his heart quieting by degrees, his breath becoming evener. He
felt drained, exhausted, his emotions cleansed and purified as though
by baths of flame.
Presently he reached for the clasp that fastened his clumsy armor.
Quiana put out a quick hand, shaking her head.
"No," she said, and then stared at him again for a long moment without
speaking. Finally, "I had not known--I did not think this could be
done. Another of my own race--yes. But you, from Mars--I would not have
believed that you could stand against the Enemy for a moment, even with
your armor."
"I'm from Earth, not Mars. And I didn't stand long."
"Long enough." She smiled faintly. "You see now what happened? We of
Zha can destroy without weapons, using only the power inherent in our
bodies. Those like the Enemy have a little of that power too, but they
need mechanical devices to amplify it. And so when you diverted the
Enemy's attention and forced him to divide his attack between us--the
pressure upon me was relieved, and I could destroy him. But I would not
have believed it possible."
"You're safe now," Dantan said, with no expression in voice or face.
"Yes. I can return."
"And you will?"
"Of course I shall."
"We are more alike than you had realized."
She looked up toward the colored curtain of the screen. "That is true.
It is not the complete truth, Dantan."
He said, "I love you--Quiana." This time he called her by name.
Neither of them moved. Minutes went by silently.
Quiana said, as if she had not heard him, "Those who followed you are
here. I have been listening to them for some time now. They are trying
to break through the door at the top of the shaft."
He took her hand in his gloved grasp. "Stay here. Or let me go back to
Zha with you. Why not?"
"You could not live there without your armor."
"Then stay."
Quiana looked away, her eyes troubled. As Dantan moved to slip off his
helmet her hand came up again to stop him.
"Don't."
"Why not?"
For answer she rose, beckoning for him to follow. She stepped across
the threshold into the shaft and swiftly began to climb the pegs toward
the surface and the hammering of the Redhelms up above. Dantan, at her
gesture, followed.
Over her shoulder she said briefly,
"We are of two very different worlds. Watch--but be careful." And she
touched the device that locked the oval door.
It slipped down and swung aside.
* * * * *
Dantan caught one swift glimpse of Redhelm heads dodging back to
safety. They did not know, of course, that he was unarmed. He reached
up desperately, trying to pull Quiana back but she slipped aside and
sprang lightly out of the shaft into the cool gray light of the Martian
morning.
Forgetting her warning, Dantan pulled himself up behind her. But as his
head and shoulders emerged from the shaft he stopped, frozen. For the
Redhelms were falling. There was no mark upon them, yet they fell....
She did not stir, even when the last man had stiffened into rigid
immobility. Then Dantan clambered up and without looking at Quiana went
to the nearest body and turned it over. He could find no mark. Yet the
Redhelm was dead.
"That is why you had to wear the armor," she told him gently. "We are
of different worlds, you and I."
He took her in his arms--and the soft resilience of her was lost
against the stiffness of the protective suit. He would never even know
how her body felt, because of the armor between them.... He could not
even kiss her--again. He had taken his last kiss of the mouth so like
Quiana's mouth, long years ago, and he would never kiss it again. The
barrier was too high between them.
"You can't go back," he told her in a rough, uneven voice. "We _are_ of
the same world, no matter what--no matter how--You're no stranger to
me, Quiana!"
She looked up at him with troubled eyes, shaking her head, regret in
her voice.
"Do you think I don't know why you fought for me, Dantan?" she asked in
a clear voice. "Did you ever stop to wonder why Sanfel risked so much
for me, too?"
He stared down at her, his brain spinning, almost afraid to hear what
she would say next. He did not want to hear. But her voice went on
inexorably.
"I cheated you, Dantan. I cheated Sanfel yesterday--a thousand years
ago. My need was very great, you see--and our ways are not yours. I
knew that no man would fight for a stranger as I needed a man to fight
for me."
He held her tightly in gloved hands that could feel only a firm body
in their grasp, not what that body was really like, nothing about it
except its firmness. He caught his breath to interrupt, but she went on
with a rush.
"I have no way of knowing how you see me, Dantan," she said
relentlessly. "I don't know how Sanfel saw me. To each of you--because
I needed your help--I wore the shape to which you owed help most.
I could reach into your minds deeply enough for that--to mould a
remembered body for your eyes. My own shape is--different. You will
never know it." She sighed. "You were a brave man, Dantan. Braver and
stronger than I ever dreamed an alien could be. I wish--I wonder--Oh,
let me go! Let me go!"
She whirled out of his grasp with sudden vehemence, turning her face
away so that he could not see her eyes. Without glancing at him again
she bent over the shaft and found the topmost pegs, and in a moment was
gone.
Dantan stood there, waiting. Presently he heard the muffled humming of
a muted bell, as though sounding from another world. Then he knew that
there was no one in the ancient laboratory beneath his feet.
He shut the door carefully and scraped soil over it. He did not mark
the place. The dim red spot of the sun was rising above the canyon
wall. His face set, Dantan began walking toward the distant cavern
where his aircar was hidden. It was many miles away, but there was no
one to stop him, now.
He did not look back.