The Project Gutenberg eBook of Cry Chaos!, by Dwight V. Swain

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Title: Cry Chaos!

Author: Dwight V. Swain

Release Date: May 22, 2021 [eBook #65417]

Language: English

Character set encoding: UTF-8

Produced by: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CRY CHAOS! ***

CRY CHAOS!

By Dwight V. Swain

The dark star held a dread secret that Gar
Shane had to discover before our solar system was
destroyed. But to go there meant certain death....

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy
September 1951
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

They got the great silver ship's hatches pried open, finally, and dragged Shane out by his heels. They dumped him on his face in the gravel and cinders of the ramp like a pole-axed huecco.

He wasn't a particularly big man, as men came out here in the spaceways. But there was a spare, hard quality to his close-knit body, and the old scars that marked him told of forgotten battles, bitter fights to the death with no quarter asked or given. Strange suns had burnt him dark as a Malya. Mercury's blazing sands, the high deserts of Mars, had dulled the crisp brown of his hair. Faint bluish pockmarks along his left cheek bespoke Pluto and the ice-things that dwelt there.

And the Chonya belt still girded his waist; the great iron belt of the asteroids, one link for every chief who'd vowed fealty, eternal symbol of his power as gar.

So he lay there in the dirt of the ramp like a dog, while the motley rabble that were his captors gathered round. And because he was the man he was; because of the stories and scars; above all, because of that great iron belt of brotherhood he wore, the token of his might, they hung back just a little, still touched by awe of this fallen great one.

Only then Shane's eyes opened—eyes of that strange, pale blue found only among Earthmen; blank now, unseeing. His fingers scrabbled the dirt. Saliva drooled from the loose mouth and puddled beneath his cheek.

Explosively, a hard-faced Venusian Pervod laughed. "I claim the belt!" he cried, and sprang forward, reptilian claws gouging Shane's flesh, rolling the Earthman over.

An incoherent, protestful sound rose in Shane's throat. His mouth worked, and his hands batted clumsily at the Pervod's claws.

The Venusian's laugh rang out again—harsh, contemptuous. Skillfully, he fended Shane's blows with bony vestigial wings. His claws worked at the boss that clasped the belt.

Shane's blue eyes lost a little of their blankness. The loose mouth drew in a fraction. "No!" he choked. "No!" He clutched at the Pervod's wrists; tried to pull them away.

The Pervod twisted free. His claws left bloody paths across Shane's palms. Catching the Earthman's shoulders, he lifted him half clear of the ramp, then slammed him down again with stunning force.

Shane lay limp—panting, head lolled to one side.

The Pervod unclasped the belt and pulled it free of Shane's body.

Feebly, Shane clutched for the Venusian's ankle, and missed. Shaking, sobbing for breath, he struggled to a sitting position, bracing himself with his arms.

The Pervod dangled the belt tantalizingly. "Do you want it, Earthman?" he mocked. "Come get it—quick, while you have the chance!"

Veins stood out at Shane's temples. His fingers dug into the dirt. He brought one leg forward—levered up on it, lurched to his feet, stood swaying.

"The belt of the Chonyas!" the Pervod shrilled gleefully. "Here it is, starbo! The belt of a gar for the taking!"

He flicked the belt past Shane's face.

The Earthman lunged for it, staggering wildly. Only collision with the hull of the space ship kept him from pitching to the ground again.

"What? You don't want it?" cried the Pervod, sidling closer. "I thought you were gar of the asteroids, yanat—high chief of the Chonyas! Why don't you take your belt?"

Again Shane lunged. But this time the Venusian did not dart away. Instead, he ducked beneath the Earthman's outstretched arms and hurled his whole weight into Shane's middle.

Shane catapulted backward under the impact and crashed against a heavy-thewed Uranian.

"Not there, Gar Shane! Here! This way!" shrilled the Venusian.

The Uranian gave Shane a monstrous shove toward the Pervod.

But the Venusian side-stepped swiftly. Shane lurched past him, into the arms of a ghoulishly grinning Martian.

The Martian, in turn, shoved Shane on, sent him caroming off at yet another angle. From one to another they drove him, bouncing him about the ring they had formed like the huge ball in a game of ha lao. And all the time the Pervod danced and waved the belt and shrieked sadistic laughter.

And then, just once, he came too close.

Like the flash of a meteor, Shane's hand shot out. He caught one end of the belt and let it bring him up short.

His weight jerked the Venusian off balance. Before the Pervod could recover, Shane was upon him.

Claws slashing, the reptilian fought to hold the belt.

Only then, of a sudden, Shane let go of the precious links of iron. Catching the Pervod's wrist, turning as he moved, he ducked between arm and body and levered the arm up behind the Venusian's back.

The brittle reptilian bones snapped with a sound like the crackling of an angry fire. The Pervod shrieked in anguish.

The crowd stood frozen in stunned, unbelieving silence.

Shane caught the end of the iron belt and flicked it out in a loop that circled the Pervod's scaly throat. Then, one end in each hand, he whipped it tight.

The Venusian's scream cut off in mid-breath. His legs, his unbroken arm, flailed desperately.

But Shane stayed behind him, out of reach of the murderous claws, drawing the belt ever tighter.

The Pervod sagged.

The crowd's paralysis broke. The air rang with shouts. Beings from a dozen far-flung planets rushed forward.

The muscles in Shane's arms and shoulders bulged. Belt-ends still tight in his hands, he spun about, dragging the Venusian with him, elbowing the others out of the way. Faster he turned, and faster ... faster, till he was whirling like some monstrous gyro-top, the body of the Pervod swinging in a giant arc beyond him, clubbing the other raiders down.

They scrambled back as fast as they'd come, the laughter, the mockery, dead within them.

Shane let go one end of the belt. The Pervod's body shot out like a stone from a sling, the head half torn from the torso.

Dizzily, the Earthman lurched to the space ship and braced himself against it. Then, very deliberately, he slung the belt about his waist and snapped the clasp. The blue eyes flamed, no longer blank. Knots of muscle stood out at the hinges of his jaws.

"Who dares to try take the iron belt of the asteroids?" he shouted at the rabble ring that hemmed him in.

No one moved. No one spoke.

Shane swept them with cold, contemptuous eyes. "Scum!" he spat. "Scum of the spaceways! Carrion, one and all!"

But he swayed as he said it, and his face showed white beneath the tan.

"Scum ..." he repeated in a voice gone dead, and pitched forward, unconscious, to the ground.

CHAPTER II

The walls and floor and ceiling and door of Shane's windowless cell all had the cold green glitter of pure telonium.

So did the handcuffs and leg-irons that shackled him.

But the bare metal cot hinged to one wall was of steel.

Telonium rated harder than steel, seventeen point seven times harder. Its tensile strength figured nine times greater.

Even so, it took Shane most of the night to tear loose one of the cot's cross-straps, using the locking lug of the leg-irons as combination pry-bar and cutter.

The cross-strap measured about two inches wide by two feet long. It had the weight and striking edge to cave in the skull of a Uranian dau.

Shane laid it down beside him on the cot, and waited for someone to open the cell door.

After awhile faint whispering sounds of motion drifted in; then a clicking noise.

Shane turned so that shadow half hid his face. He twisted his body in a semblance of restless sleep, and closed his eyes to lash-shuttered slits. His fingers caressed the cross-strap mace.

The door opened. The doorway framed a burly, tentacled Thorian guard.

Then the guard stepped aside and a woman came past him, into Shane's cell, carrying a small, cloth-draped tray. Young and straight and slim, she moved with a tara's grace. Her high, firm breasts were bared in the Malya fashion, and the dark loveliness of her face was Malya also. Glistening blue-black hair hung clear to her waist in softly rippling waves.

Closing the vault-like door behind her, she crossed the cell to Shane's side: paused there for a moment, looking down at him.

Shane lay very still.

"Gar of the asteroids, high chief of the Chonyas," the woman said softly, almost to herself. Her voice held a note that might have been weariness, or pain. "You've traveled far, Earthman ... so far, to have it all end here."

She moved on, to the stand that flanked Shane's cot, and busied herself at her tray for a moment. Then, straightening, she held a hypodermic injector up to the light. It contained a colorless liquid. Deftly, she set the screw, adjusted the high-pressure gas ampule that would spray the injection straight into the bloodstream without breaking the skin.

Shane twisted a fraction further around on the cot. His breathing was careful, measured.

Turning, the woman bent over him. She poised the injector, close to his throat.

Shane's manacled hands shot up. He caught the woman's wrist; twisted sharply before she could jerk away.

She gave a sharp little in-drawn cry of shock and pain and came down hard on her knees, lithe body writhing. The injector fell from her twitching fingers.

Shane's heel smashed it into the floor. Already, he was up and off the cot, forcing the woman down onto it.

He said tightly: "The first scream breaks your arm, Malyalara!"

"A Malya does not scream, Sha Shane!" she answered through clenched teeth.

She tossed her head as she said it, proud even through the pain, and for the first time the right side of her face came into full view.

And along that whole right side, someone had cropped the glistening black hair short, square with the temple, in the ugly, outlawed badge of slavery.

For a long moment Shane did not move. Then, slowly, he drew back a fraction and relaxed his grip on the woman's arm.

Some of the tightness left the lovely face. She rose in a single smooth, supple movement. No fear showed in her dark eyes, even now. Rather, they probed boldly—eagerly, almost—as if measuring Shane's metal.

"What do they call you, Malyalara?" he asked.

"My name is Talu, Sha Shane."

"You wear your hair cropped like a slave's—"

"—Because I am a slave."

"The Federation banned slavery."

Bitterness twisted the woman's mouth. The midnight eyes burned with the fierce, blazing anger that had made her people the scourge of the void within the memory of living man. "I tell myself that every day, Sha Shane. But it does not free me."

Shane's lips drew thin. "Has it been long?"

"About an Earth year. I was of Hidalgo. First, the slavers sent in theol-smugglers. They sought out our leaders—"

"I know," Shane nodded grimly. "Theol breaks the will. Not even a Malya can fight, with the hunger for it in him." He broke off. "And then, Malyalara—?"

"Then the slave ships came. What else?" Again Talu's ripe lips took on the bitter twist. "They came by the score—whole fleets of them, blasting and killing and hunting us down. The Federation had taken our proton batteries and our fighting ship away, and theol had broken the men who should have led us. So they stripped Hidalgo bare: every man, every woman, every child—"

Shane's fingers dug into the slave girl's arms. "But where did they send you?" he demanded fiercely. "Who wants slaves in a solar system where power is broadcast free to all planets? What use is there for labor?"

"I do not know."

"My Chonyas have been raided, too. But why?" Shane clenched his fists. "Why raid for slaves, when machines can handle any task? Where do they take them? Are they here, in this place?"

Talu shook her head. "No, not here. This is only a ramping-spot—some small moon the slavers have taken over. But I have seen a woman here, a silver woman—Kyrsis, they name her." A momentary tremor rippled through the Malyalara. "She is evil ... more evil than words can tell. They say that she is the agent for those who buy. But where she comes from, why her people seek slaves—that I do not know."

"And who serves her? Who is the raider, the starbo whose wolf-pack gathers in the slaves?"

"His name is Reggar, Quos Reggar—"

"Quos Reggar!" Shane spat the name as if it were an epithet. "Slaver, smuggler, scum!" He twisted violently against his shackles, blue eyes blazing. "I should have known! I drove him out of the asteroids once—"

"—And he remembers, Sha Shane," Talu said softly. "He remembers, and he hates you, and he swears the day will come when you shall pray for death. He has gathered up the scum of the spaceways, the dregs of the void—"

"You mean, he captured me only for vengeance?" Shane broke in. "He dragged me here just to kill me—?"

Talu shook her head. "No, Sha Shane. There is more than vengeance. He has plans for using you, great plans. But that is all I know."

"But how did he capture me? How did he bring me here?" A haunted, haggard shadow flickered across Shane's face. He raised his manacled hands and held his head between them. "I was on a mission, an ... important ... mission, traveling through space. There was no sign of trouble. And then, all at once, the void went mad. It was a nightmare; I can't remember what happened—" He broke off, shaking his head as if to clear away the fog of memory. Then his hands fell, and his eyes met the girl's once more. "The next thing I knew, I was coming out of it on the ramp, with dirt in my mouth and a Pervod at my throat. And I still don't know how I got here."

"It was a projector, they say. A Paulsini projector, focussed on your ship. They captured your minds with it—yours, and all your crews'."

Shane stared at her incredulously. "A Paulsini that can reach out into space and take over a ship—? You're mad as a ban!"

"They say it is the strongest Paulsini mind-control beam the universe has ever seen, Sha Shane," Talu replied. "It was ten Earth years in the building. The power output would send a space ship beyond the stars."

Shane's eyes narrowed. "'The strongest Paulsini beam the universe has ever seen'," he repeated slowly. "It tells something, Malyalara. No common slaver ever had the brains or time or money to take on the building of such a machine as that." Thoughtfully, he stared down at his fetters. "And what happens, now that I'm here?"

"I do not know."

"You do not know?" Shane studied the woman's face. "Yet you came here, alone, with an injector, and tried to use it on me."

The other's hands moved in a small, helpless gesture. "The guard was to have done it, Sha Shane. But I was there when Reggar gave the order. I had heard of you so many times. I wanted to see you...."

"What was in the injector?"

The girl shook her head. "I do not know. They do not trust me to know too much."

"They do not trust you?" Shane's eyes probed hers while the seconds ticked by. He flicked the shattered remnants of the crushed injector with his toe. "But they let you come to my cell alone." The faintest of edges crept into his voice. "And they kept you here on this moon with them, Talu, and sent the rest of your people on across the void to slavery."

For a long moment Talu stood motionless as some dark statue. Then, all at once, she began to tremble. Her eyes struck sparks. The bare breasts rose and fell too fast.

"Yes, they kept me," she whispered tautly, fiercely. "A woman can often find a place here ... for a time."

She swayed forward, and in that instant she seemed suddenly all passion, all temptress. Her body brushed Shane's. The warm, half-parted lips invited him. He stood rigid at the very nearness of her.

Then she drew away once more, and her face had the look of graven stone. "I have made it my business to be kept here, Sha Shane," she said icily. "My body is good, and Malya blood runs hot, and even slavers can lose their caution. So I stay, and earn what trust I can, and do such work as brought me here. For my grandfather was Toran, the last great Malya raider chief. He taught me the old way, the Malya way—that blood cries out for blood. I live for the day when my chance will come, and I can let my knife drink deep from the heart of the monster, Quos Reggar, who set the slavers on Hidalgo!"

Grim-faced, Shane studied her. "You say the words, Talu," he clipped, "but will you prove it?"

"Prove it—?"

"The Chonya chiefs gave me a belt—the great iron belt of the asteroids, the symbol of my power as gar. I swore an oath when I took it ... an oath that the Chonyas' blood and tears would be my own."

Wordless, the woman watched him, her face a mirror of mixed emotions.

"They have taken my belt away, Talu, these slavers who raid Malya and Chonya alike. They have locked me here like a berserk vrong, and thrown the key away. But my oath still stands. The Chonyas made me gar because I knew how to fight, and feared no man. So I'll fight here."

The fierce eagerness crept back into Talu's face. Her hands clutched his. "Yes, yes! But what can you do?"

"I'll carve my way, Malyalara! I'll give them blood for blood and tears for tears, till the asteroids breath free again!" The ring of steel on steel was in Shane's voice. His face was carved with rocky lines. "You told me that a Malya does not scream, Talu. But if you were to scream, just once, would that slimy Thorian guard outside pay heed?"

She caught her breath. "And ... if he did—?"

Shane smiled a thin, hard, ruthless smile. "Even in leg-irons I can drag myself to the door." He bent over the cot and pulled free the broken cross-strap; slashed with it so it sighed and whispered through the air. "It sings a song of death, Talu!"

The woman's midnight eyes burned murder-bright. Her voice was a breathless whisper: "Strike hard and straight and fast, Sha Shane...."

CHAPTER III

"Now!" Shane clipped. The slave girl screamed—shrilly, piercingly.

Shane poised, the cross-strap mace drawn back and ready.

A dim whisper of running feet echoed from the corridor outside. The lock clicked sharply. The door burst open.

Light-gun already drawn, the Thorian guard lunged into the cell.

Shane swung the steel.

The Thorian's eyes flicked to the Earthman in the same instant. Desperately, he tried to halt his headlong plunge—to throw himself sidewise, out of the way.

He moved too late. The steel struck home. The end bit in along one side of the Thorian's bulbous head. It made a moist, explosive sound, like the bursting of a melon hurled onto pavement. Vile, grey-green sludge gushed forth.

The Thorian's great body jerked in a tremendous, threshing spasm. The light-pistol still clutched in one tentacle, needled a wildly-gyrating purple beam close past Shane's shoulder, then cut off again and clattered to the floor. The body went limp; lay still.

Shane dropped to his knees and clawed up the pistol. Twisting, he brought its muzzle close to the hobbling leg-irons. His finger triggered the exciter.

The purple beam lanced forth. The leg-irons' green telonium links took on a weirdly luminous glow.

Somewhere in the distance, a faint, humming sound arose.

Talu said: "Hurry! That noise—it is the guard-car!" Tension echoed in her voice.

Muscles stood out along Shane's neck. But he still crouched motionless, the light-beam rock-steady in his hand.

The humming sound grew louder.

"Hurry!" Talu whispered again in a tight, choked voice.

The telonium links were twisting, now—writhing, almost, beneath the pistol's ray.

"Ten seconds more!" Shane clipped.

The leg-irons fell apart.

The Earthman straightened. His lips were drawn to thin lines. "This guard-car—how does it come?"

"It moves up and down a shaft between the floors: then through the corridors. The Thorian must have rung the alarm as he came—"

"Where will it stop? Here, at this door?"

"No. It is set for the guard-post, down the corridor to the left—"

Shane pivoted. Ignoring the manacles that still held his wrists, he stepped swiftly from the cell.

Here, in the corridor, the humming was like that of a swarm of angry bees. Far off to the left, red lights winked in the dimness.

Talu caught her breath. "The guard-car!" she cried.

Shane broke into a run—left down the corridor, straight towards the oncoming lights.

"No! No, Sha Shane—!"

"The guard-post—where is it?"

"Just ahead. There, to the left—"

The post proved to be a mere niche in the wall, a sort of oversized sentry-box with cot and chair and table.

"Under the cot!" Shane snapped.

"But they will trap us here—kill us—"

The red lights were growing ever brighter now. The humming had risen to a low-throated roar. Roughly, Shane forced the Malya down and under the cot, then crawled in beside her himself.

"They will trap us!" Talu said again, and the tension in her voice vibrated like a taut-drawn wire. Yet, strangely, her tone held no fear, no panic: only a sort of fierce, throbbing exaltation.

"They'll trap us like lambs trap a lion!" Shane slashed back harshly. His blue eyes burned with a reckless fire. "Would you have us play the sheep—stand back there in the cell and be slaughtered? No! We'll meet them here, where they don't expect us. And if we die, some of them will go along."

Talu's full lips parted. Her laugh came, low and throaty. "You speak like a Malya, Sha Shane! My grandfather would have been proud to have you raiding with him."

The guard-car braked to a halt abreast them before Shane could reply. A panel in its metal side slid back. Two Martian falas and a hairy, heavy-thewed Uranian sprang out.

Shane triggered his light-pistol's exciter. The purple beam slashed through the dimness, straight to the breast of the first Martian.

A shrill scream of awful anguish burst from the creature's throat-sac. It leaped high in the air, then fell back again, a nerveless, dying heap.

The Uranian and the other fala whirled.

Shane lanced out the beam again. It took the top from the second fala's misshapen skull.

The Martian was dead before he hit the floor.

But now the Uranian had light-pistols in two of his four huge hands. A beam seared through the cot. Another burned a smoking path along the floor.

Shane surged to his feet, carrying the cot with him like a massive shield. The muscles of his back and arms and shoulders stood out. With a mighty effort, he swung the cot clear of the floor and hurled it broadside at the Uranian.

The hairy behemoth jerked up his two free hands to ward it off. But a tangle of falling covers got in the way. The cot's weight and impact rocked him.

Shane blazed through the cot.

Sagging, the Uranian lurched back against the car. The acrid stench of his burning flesh billowed up in choking waves.

Only then, instead of falling, he lunged forward. Barely in time, Shane leaped aside, lancing in beam after beam.

Blindly, the Uranian charged past him, with no attempt to turn. Straight ahead the creature lunged—on, towards the guard-post's rear wall ... the vocodor and the row of communication control switches below it.

"The alarm—!" Talu cried shrilly. She darted forward.

Shane caught her wrist and threw her bodily out of the way.

The Uranian crashed against the wall. One great hand swept the whole row of switches down.

An alarm bell jangled deafeningly.

The Uranian half-turned, as if to taunt them. Then his muscles, his joints, seemed to give way. He toppled forward ... struck the floor with an echoing thud.

Shane spun about. His eyes sought Talu.

She stood pressed flat to the guard-post's wall now, dark face aglow with an excitement that was mingled with something close akin to panic. "The bell—"

"Forget it! Come on!"

Together, they raced for the glittering metal guard-car.

Shane sprang aboard. "Hurry!" He caught the slave girl's hand and helped her to clamber in after him.

Here, inside, a control panel studded with switches and dials and push-buttons was set chest-high in one wall. Above it, a narrow, slot-like vision port of transparent silicon extended nearly to the top of the car. A series of charts, displayed beneath sheets of clear plastic cross-hatched with grid lines, flanked the port on either side.

Shane slammed shut the door. He pushed Talu to the instrument board. "Quick! The controls—how do they work?" The very clipped steadiness of his voice rang with urgency.

"It is simple—"

A red spark glinted in the vision port.

Shane froze to the slot. "Another car—coming this way, fast!"

Talu threw a switch. Her fingers flashed over the buttons.

Vibration shook the car.

Talu threw another switch.

With a rumble and roar, the vehicle began to move. Lights streaked past the vision ports, faster and faster.

Shane let out breath. "They're falling back!"

The dark girl pressed more buttons. The car jerked and changed direction, till it had veered from its former course three times. The lights of their pursuer disappeared. The car moved out onto a straightaway once more and picked up speed.

Talu turned. "Where now, Sha Shane?"

The Earthman laughed—harshly, without mirth. "The top is always the place to start, Malyalara. If you want to kill a snake, cut off its head."

The woman looked at him with a sort of wondering awe. "You mean ... Reggar?"

"I mean Reggar!" Shane echoed. His mouth twisted. "They say he cuts a figure when his raider ships come in on a helpless Chonya town. We'll see if he looks as bold when someone's hunting him!"

"But by now he knows you have escaped. He will be waiting—"

"He may. Or then, he may not. Most men Reggar has known asked only to get away."

The girl turned back to the controls. Again, the car veered, and again.

Once more, she faced the Earthman. She said, "Give me the light-gun now, Sha Shane. We must burn off your shackles while we have this chance."

Shane threw her a bleak smile. "You ride pressure well, Malyalara."

The girl's slim shoulders lifted in a shrug. "My grandfather said that pressure proved a man, Sha Shane." Already, the light-gun's purple beam was eating at the handcuff links.

"And Reggar—?"

"I have set the controls to take us to him. Five minutes will do it, if we are not cut off by his cars."

"But if we are—?"

"We still may find a way. There are twelve levels here, more corridors than can be counted—"

"Yet all on a slavers' moon? All Reggar's?"

"I do not know, Sha Shane. But Reggar is here; no other."

The last link holding the handcuffs broke. Talu straightened. "It will not be long—"

With startling suddenness, a bell clanged overhead.

"The crash alarm—!" Even as she cried out, the girl punched frantically at the control buttons.

The rear vision slot caught a gleam of red lights—dangerously close already; rushing at them headlong.

Barely in time, their own car veered right at an intersection.

The breath went out of Talu. Her knuckles stood out white beneath her skin.

Overhead, the collision bell clanged again.

This time, the other car hurtled out of a side passageway, cutting them off. Desperately, Talu manipulated the controls. They backed to the nearest cross-hall; fled down it as fast as the car would go.

Talu said: "They are hemming us in, Sha Shane. Reggar has guessed your thoughts."

Shane's hand knotted about the light-pistol's butt. "Can we still break clear? Is there a way?"

"If we could get to another level—"

"Try it!"

The girl's breath seemed to come a fraction faster. Her eyes caught the same reckless glint as Shane's. Her fingers flicked at the buttons.

Their car swung right. Ahead, a blank wall came rushing to meet them.

"A shaft," said Talu. Her voice shook just a little.

Just when it seemed that they must surely crash, the car slowed. Then, swiftly, they were dropping straight down, cushioned on a beam of force.

Three levels down, Talu threw a switch. The car swept out of the shaft and down a passageway.

The collision bell clanged.

Talu punched buttons.

Again, the bell.

More buttons.

Red lights, hurtling towards them.

"... another level—" Talu whispered.

They climbed a shaft at dizzying speed; rushed off through another corridor.

The bell. Buttons and switches. The bell again.

"They are hemming us in!" Talu choked. A ragged, desperate note had crept into her voice. "The corridors ahead are all dead ends—"

"Reggar—?"

"His quarters are not even on this level. Here there is only Kyrsis, the silver woman—"

"Kyrsis...."

The bell clanged.

The girl pressed a final button. Weariness, strain, defeat, were in her face. "We are trapped, Sha Shane. I am sorry...."

Shane's eyes were hot upon her. He laughed—a wild, fierce laugh that matched the reckless lines that carved his face. "Trapped? Not yet, Malyalara; not yet!"

She stared at him in blank bewilderment.

"How do you reverse the car, Malyalara?"

The girl pointed to the button.

The bell set up new clamor. Red lights blazed in the rear vision port.

"Jump, Talu!" Shane threw the brake-switch.

She flung back the door; leaped wide.

Shane jammed down the reverse button and sprang after the girl. He sprawled against the corridor wall as the empty car roared back towards their pursuer.

The other car's gears clashed in screaming protest. It shuddered under the braking action.

But too late. Shane's guard-car crashed into the other. The thunder of impact mingled with shrieks, and the scream of rending metal.

"Come on!" Shane cried. Light-gun in hand, he raced towards the wreck.

A third guard-car was already drawing up as they reached it. The panel door opened, and a lone Pervod leaped out.

Shane killed him with one slash of the light-beam.

Talu pulled herself up into the car and ran to the control board. The glow of excitement was back on her face once more. "Which way?" she cried.

The reckless glint in Shane's blue eyes was brighter than ever now. "Turn it loose and let it run for a decoy," he said tightly. "Our work just now is here."

For a moment the girl stared at him, confusion written in her face. Then, wordless, she set the controls.

Together, they leaped clear. The car thundered out of sight.

Still unspeaking, Talu turned back to Shane once more, a hundred mute questions in her glance.

Shane chuckled. "We'll visit the woman," he said, "the silver woman, Kyrsis."

The girl's dark eyes went wide. "No! No, Sha Shane—!"

"Yes! Reggar's hemmed us in and tied us down. He thinks we're beaten. So now, we strike again, where it will sting and hurt the most. And where better than at his market, this Kyrsis?"

"Please, no—" The girl was pleading now.

"Yes!" the Earthman came back sharply. His voice took on a darkly brooding note, and his face set in rocky lines. "She is the key, Malyalara. She is the one who buys slaves in a universe where power is free. I'm going to ask her why."

CHAPTER IV

The doors were protected by rigid barriers of projected force, and the light-pistol burned out before Shane had quite finished cutting through the wall. But he had taken a long knife from the dead Pervod in the third guard-car. He finished the job with it.

So, finally, they were inside, crawling through an ever-murkier blackness while the silence hammered at them like a living thing.

And then, suddenly, out of the ebon stillness, a voice said: "Welcome, Earthman!"

A man's voice, this; or at least, a voice not of woman: not loud, but harsh and alien; not thunderous, but vibrant with savage power.

"Welcome, Earthman!" the voice repeated. "Welcome to death!"

Shane flung himself sidewise. He crashed against some piece of furniture. The burned-out light-gun clattered to the floor.

The voice mocked: "Can you not see me, Earthman? And your pistol—why do you not pick it up? Does the darkness get in your way?"

Somewhere—very far away, it seemed—Talu whispered raggedly: "Sha Shane ... Sha Shane...."

Shane said, "Here, Malyalara. This way." He groped over the floor as if feeling for the now-useless pistol; slipped and fell flat, and under cover of it, slid the Pervod's long knife out of view beneath his jacket.

"Shall I give you light, great gar?" the voice taunted. "Shall I let you see me now?"

Shane's moving hand touched the light-pistol. His fingers gripped it—but flat to the floor, not lifting it. Muscles flexed, he poised, eyes probing the darkness. His voice echoed defiance: "Show yourself if you dare, starbo!"

"If I dare—!"

Like a quirst striking, Shane hurled the pistol at the voice.

The missile struck home with a meaty thud. A choked oath slashed the blackness.

Shane lunged forward. But he crashed into more furniture and fell again. Before he could rise, lights blazed.

For the fraction of a second Shane froze. Then—very slowly, very carefully—he turned and pulled himself to his feet.

Talu was already up—breathing too fast, a hand at her throat. Her dark eyes were wide and set, riveted on an open doorway in the opposite wall.

A strange figure loomed hulk-like in the shadows there—a gaunt, raw-boned giant in the vree-leather garb of the space rovers, with a light-pistol hanging ready in one webbed hand.

Yet this was no ordinary wanderer. The difference stood out in line and stance—a weird note of deviation that caught the eye instantly, even in a universe where bizarre and norm were one.

And about the waist was drawn a great iron belt ... Shane's belt, the belt of the asteroids.

Shane sucked in air.

The figure brought up one hand in a peremptory gesture of command.

Weapons poised, a half-dozen guards moved through the doorway. Nondescripts, being drawn from the backwaters of strange planets, they fanned out in a silent, menacing arc before Shane and the slave girl.

Wordless, cold-eyed, Shane stared them down. They halted, hesitating.

Now the giant in the doorway stalked forward, clear of the shadows.

Numbly, almost, Talu took a dragging step towards the hulking goliath, then another ... another....

"Out of the way, Malya! Let him see me!" The very repression that echoed in the giant's words was infinitely more fearsome than roars or rantings. A webbed fist lashed out backhanded at the slave girl, and the force of the blow sent her careening almost to Shane's side. "Remember me, Earthman? Remember?"

Shane did not move. He did not speak.

The creature standing there walked on two legs like a human. Its thumbs were opposed. It spoke through its mouth instead of a throat-sac.

But the great lobed eyes that saw in the dark were pure Fantay, and the scaly roughness of the mottled skin was Pervod. The bulge of the skull went with Mars; the peculiar, pad-footed stride with the swamplands of Io. Hybrid, mongrel, the thing was a queer, off-trail mixture of all the races of Mars and Earth and Venus, and the gods of the far stars knew where else.

And there, at its waist, hung the belt of the Chonyas.

"I remember," Shane said. "You're Reggar, Quos Reggar—the slaver, the theol-peddler." Deliberately, insultingly, he spat on the floor. "Or are you running light-guns to Mimas this time?"

The creature that was Reggar chuckled, but the sound held no mirth. "Your memory's good, you chitza! Maybe it even goes back to the days when you passed the word through the spaceports that you'd feed my heart to the kiavis if I ever ramped ship in the asteroid belt again."

"I said it; I meant it." Shane's eyes were bleak. He stood unyielding, jaw outthrust, and his words slashed. "When the chonya chiefs came in and struck their banners and picked me, an Earthman, as gar of the asteroids to lead them, I swore on the star-stone of Hiaroloch that I'd stop scum like you—"

"Only now I'm back," Reggar cut in harshly. "I'm bigger this time, Shane; big enough to make up for all the years I've had to stay away. My fleets are stronger than yours, and my brain is better. Today, when you broke free and fled, I said to myself: 'Where would the Earthman go? What will his first thought be?' And I know the way you think so well that I was here in Kyrsis' rooms before you!"

"So?"

"So I've taken your belt, and now I'm going to take your yodor Chonyas, too. I'll hit the asteroids, one after another, and clean them out, till there isn't a Chonya anywhere left free." The great lobed eyes glittered balefully. The alien voice struck a deeper note. "And you're going to help me, Shane!"

"You're mad as a ban, Reggar," Shane said tightly.

"Mad? You call me mad?" There was a sort of obscene glee in the other's chuckle. "Is it mad to strive for power, great gar—the kind of power you've held these years? Is it mad to hunt slaves for a market that pays triple prices and begs for more? No! That's why I brought you here—"

"Here or a million miles across the void, what makes you think I'd help you?" Shane slashed savagely. Beneath the jacket, his fingers caressed the hilt of the Pervod knife. "For that matter, how could I help you? Do you see the Chonya chiefs as such fools that they'd follow me into your net, no matter what I said or did?"

The creature before him grinned hideously. "It won't be as hard as you tell it, Shane. The trick is to split the Federation—and there is where I need you."

"The Federation—?"

"Your acting falls short of your memory, Earthman. Your secret conference on the slave raids—I know about it. You should have been there by now; the meetings start tomorrow. When you don't appear, there'll be talk about the Chonyas and Malyas, and how they always were slavers till the Federation beat them down."

"You talk nonsense, Reggar," Shane said curtly. But of a sudden his mouth seemed a trifle dry.

"Do I?" The alien voice rang with a note of dark triumph. "I have friends, Earthman ... friends so respectable, so high-placed, that they would not admit that they even so much as knew my name. But they have their price, and so they still play my game. They will be there, at the conference. They will cry out that the Chonyas and Malyas are behind these raids as in the days gone by."

"And when we deny it—?"

"You'll have no chance to deny it. Reports will come in—confirmed reports that say the Earthman, Shane, great gar of the asteroids, has gone the Chonya way. That he, himself, is leading raiders, sweeping the lesser moons for slaves."

Bleakly, Shane stared at the creature. His fists clenched spasmodically, and knots of muscle stood out at the hinges of his jaws.

Then that, too, passed.

"A lie is a lie, Reggar," he said tonelessly. "Someplace, sometime, it always breaks down."

"But there will be no lie, great gar," the other mocked. "The reports will speak the truth. For as you say, a lie breaks down, and this is one time I dare not chance a gamble. So you will be out there in the void, in a Chonya raider ship. I myself shall supply it. A wild Chonya crew will man it, drawn from the dregs that you cast out of the asteroids when the chiefs came in and named you gar. Shane the slaver, the worlds will call you."

"And then?" clipped Shane.

The note of triumph in the mongrel's voice rose higher. A scaly fist came up, in a gesture that spoke of arrogance and power. "Chaos will sweep the void, Earthman—and I shall sweep the asteroids! The fools in the Federation will hang deadlocked for a time, for some still fear war more than they fear raiders. So long as that deadlock lasts, the void is mine! The Chonyas have given up their war fleets; they cannot strike back. Yet no matter how they cry of raids and beg for mercy, no one will believe them. My friends will talk of their pleas as stratagems to lure out the Federation fleet. And when at last the deadlock breaks and the war-heads roar down on Ceres and Pallas and the rest—why, what will it matter to me? For by then my slavers will have taken the last Chonya off and stripped the last rock bare!" The creature paused; hammered the two webbed hands together. "A well-laid plan, is it not, Earthman? Can you find even one small flaw?"

Shane stood motionless for a moment. Then, slowly, his lips twisted into the ghost of a smile. "Yes, Reggar. I find one."

The other eyed him curiously, with an air that might have been a sort of repressed mirth. "And that one, great gar—?"

Shane said: "The flaw is me. For your plan to work I must go along. That leaves a decision in my hands: a choice. And I've already made it: no matter what you say or do, I'll have no part of your schemes." His jaw set. "You should have known that without my telling you, Reggar."

The mongrel nodded. Again, the strange note of mirth was in him. "Of course. I did know. As for choices—there are three, not two."

"Three choices—?"

"Three. The first, you may already know. We focused a Paulsini beam on the ship that was carrying you to the meeting on the slave raids. The frequency of the impulses in your brain was changed. My will became yours. I forced you to come here."

"Yes?"

"It is your first choice. You know the pain when your brain's frequency is forced to change. But if you insist, I shall use it—take control of your body, send you out to raid as I would."

Shane breathed deeply. "And the second?"

"That is even better. You know what happens to a man whose blood has three times tasted theol?"

"Yes."

"I sent the woman"—Reggar gestured to Talu—"to you with an injector. It held theol ... a special high-potency solution. If you wish, you shall have the three full doses I'd planned for you. After that, I can send you anywhere without fear, for the theol will break your will like any other, and you'll do the things you're told to do and always come crawling back for more, and more, and more."

Shane shifted. He flicked a glance to Talu.

She had not moved from the spot where she had fallen. Dark eyes unfathomable, face expressionless, she lay there, following Reggar's every gesture.

"Do my choices hit you so hard you cannot speak?" sneered Reggar. "Surely the great Shane would not crawl like an etavi, even before he hears my third offer?"

Shane folded his arms and met the creature's glare. His hand clenched on the hilt of the hidden knife. "There's been no groveling yet, Reggar. For my part, there'll be none. Get on with your babblings!"

"I like this third choice best of all," the other said, and his voice now was almost silky. "It is so simple, too! You raid as a slaver under me; of your own free will, you do my bidding: that is all."

"All—?"

"Your word is good across the void, Earthman. I, too, trust it. Pledge me on your soul that you'll serve me as faithfully and well as you know how, take my interests as yours, and you shall leave here as free as any man who ever breathed."

Again the hideous grin split Reggar's face. He rocked with harsh, horrible laughter.

"Do it, Earthman! I beg you, do it! It would be the sweetest revenge of all—you, Shane, gar of the asteroids, turning slaver to save your own worthless skin! You, the legend, the man without fear, crushing down your precious Chonyas rather than walk the other paths I've offered! Your name linked with mine, your fate in my hands by your choice—"

"One question, Reggar—" Shane broke in. Under cover of his folded arms, he drew the Pervod knife half clear. His weight was on the balls of his feet, now; his muscles ready.

"What—?"

"Will your loot buy back your soul from hell when the maggots are eating through your brain?"

"What?"

Shane's voice rose to sudden thunder: "Armor your heart, too, Reggar! The kiavis' teeth are sharp, and I swear they'll feed on you and the scum that ride with you! I'll see you dead, and your head will rot on a pike at the gates of Ceresta—"

The mottling on the mongrel's face turned livid.

"You want chaos, Reggar? Cry chaos, then! Because if chaos comes, your death comes with it! The Chonya war fleet will hunt you down—"

"You starbo!" roared Reggar.

He lunged at Shane.

Talu, the slave girl, cried out.

The guards rushed forward.

Shane moved like a leaping tiger. The knife was out, his muscles flexing. A shout of wild triumph rose in his throat.

Again Talu screamed.

Something struck Shane behind the knees—a heavy impact, hard and low.

He lurched—off balance, toppling. His blow went wild.

The next instant Reggar smashed him in the face. The knife flew out of his hand. A guard sledged him from behind.

Shane crashed to the floor. Desperately, he jerked up knees and elbows; twisted, trying to shield himself from Reggar's savage kicks.

His hands slapped another body sprawled against his—the body that had knocked him down. His fingers knotted in silken hair.

Spasmodically, he jerked.

A woman's sharp cry of pain rang out in answer.

It was Talu.

CHAPTER V

This room was large, and luxuriously furnished with the treasures of a score of satellites and planets. Here were rich tapestries from Orlon, a thousand blinding years in the making. Here, a table from Rhea, aglitter with the inlays of the spider men, delicate as the traceries of frost. Great borvne crystals from the pits of Neptune had been transformed into lamps, their cold fire blazing like the play of sun on glacial ice. A priceless Grecian vase from Earth, older almost than time itself, created a world of its own in one corner.

But it was the woman who held all eyes ... the silver woman.

She came forward now, a strange, shining creature. Her beauty was a breathless thing—ethereal, almost unreal. The cunningly-fashioned toga of silver cloth she wore matched the spun silver of her hair.

Yet her hair's silver could not have been that of age, for her skin still held the fresh glow of youth, though uniquely translucent and silvery itself—nearly as pale and clear as the bodies of Pluto's bloodless ice-things.

As if in studied contrast, her lips gleamed rich purple, more blue than red; and a hundred striking violet tints glinted in her eyes.

Even over the vocodor, her voice had a strange, alien lilt, as if her thoughts, her words, strained the unit's powers: "You ... you are the Earthman—the gar of the asteroids...."

She came close to Shane as she spoke; very close, till the fragrance of unknown flowers rose in his nostrils. Her pale hands touched his cheeks, and the violet eyes probed his.

They were strange eyes, as strange as the worlds had ever seen—young and clear as a girl's, yet somehow old, too ... old as the void itself; and the things that were in them sent queer tremors rippling through Shane like a chill. It was as if the woman were looking beyond the things that others saw—probing deeper, searching for some precious secret element that only she could grasp.

"You are strong, Earthman!" she said softly, and now her voice held a throaty urgency, an undertone that might have told of inner tension. "There is life in you ... much life. It flows hot in your veins...."

"He is not for you, Shi Kyrsis!" Reggar rasped harshly. "Our trap needs bait, and we cannot spare him!"

The hands drew away from Shane's cheeks. The woman turned, and her violet eyes grew big and dangerous. "You cannot—?" she asked, her voice even softer than before. "Who says you cannot, Reggar?"

"We cannot, Shi Kyrsis," Reggar answered. One webbed hand moved in an angry, incisive gesture. "We, the two of us, you and I. I cannot, because without him to serve as cover the Federation will sooner or later have my head. And you cannot, because without me there will be no slaves."

The woman's hands cupped, as if the long, purple-nailed fingers held some priceless goblet. "But life is a sacred thing!" she whispered. "It runs so strong within him...."

"It runs stronger than you know," Quos Reggar slashed back bitterly. "He is a legend, a madman who has carved his destiny across the void." He slapped the great Chonya belt that girded him. "Do you think that weakness won this belt? He is built of blood and iron! Even I confess it, though I hate him. But you cannot let yourself think of that now. For he must live, and he must raid, and he must be seen, if we are to break the power of the Federation and open up the void to slaving. Trust me, I know—"

Shane said: "I once knew a man who trusted Reggar. They were partners together in their dirty business, and as thick as thieves could get. When my blockade—"

"Shut up!" roared Reggar.

"When my blockade drove the slavers out of the asteroids, these two were trapped off Juno—"

Reggar sprang at Shane—webbed hands clutching, great lobed eyes aflame.

But the silver woman, Kyrsis, came between them. Gently, she said, "I'll hear him out, Reggar."

Shane smiled thinly. "When I ordered the pair of them to surrender, Reggar, here, came to me secretly, and offered to send me the partner's head if I'd let him—Reggar—go on a promise that he'd never ramp ship in the asteroid belt again. I agreed, and he brought the head."

"You chitza!" screamed Reggar. With agility amazing for his size, he leaped past the woman called Kyrsis.

Shane tried to dodge, but the guards who flanked him seized him.

Reggar struck him across the mouth.

Shane slumped back. He would have fallen but for the guards.

Then the woman's voice came—sharp, icecold: "I would not do that again, Reggar, if I were you ... if I wished to live!" And then, to Shane: "Is there more?"

Blood trickled from Shane's mouth. He swayed, and a crooked grin twisted his swollen lips. "Only one thing, Shi Kyrsis," he mumbled. "The partner was Tas Reggar—this creature's brother!"

"He lies!" snarled Reggar. "He lies in his teeth like the chitza he is! I have no brother—"

"Perhaps not—now!" Shane baited. "How could you have? You sent me his head in a sack!"

A sound of incoherent fury bubbled in Reggar's throat. The great lobed eyes were flecked with red. Again he sprang at Shane.

But again the silver woman came between them. The violet eyes were probing, thoughtful. "The story has a ring to it, Reggar—a twist that somehow fits you."

The other's mottled face contorted. The webbed hands clenched into fists. "It is a lie!" he snarled thickly. And then, in a voice that still trembled with repression: "I have no brother. I had none. But even if the tale were true, what difference would it make? We are here, together—"

Shane said: "What difference? For one thing, it would let her know whose neck would stretch, whose blood would spurt, if the time again came for you to make a choice. You'd cut her throat and save your own—"

"Silence!" roared the giant mongrel. He pivoted to face the woman. "Can you not see this yodor Earthman's goal, Shi Kyrsis? Is it not plain enough that he seeks to brew distrust between us, in the hope that out of it he can snatch a chance to break us both, and save his hide and his beloved Chonyas?"

Slowly, the woman nodded. "Perhaps ... yes, probably."

"And is there anyone but me who'll bring you slaves by the thousands?" Reggar pressed on, relentless. "Where else can you find these lives you're seeking?"

The woman made no answer.

"But why?" Shane cut in fiercely. "Where is your home, that you still need slaves? Work is for machines, and power is free. Why throw away living beings upon it?"

The silver woman stared. "You mean—you do not know—?"

"No! Quiet!" choked Reggar. "Have you gone mad, Shi Kyrsis? This man would destroy us. He must not know."

The silver woman looked from the mongrel to Shane and back again. "Then ... how do you plan—?"

Quos Reggar shrugged. "The theol will make him ours. Three injections, spaced one Earth day apart, give the habit." He turned, leered at Shane. "Do you know about theol, great gar? Have you heard what it does—how it paralyzes the will of even the strongest?"

"I know," Shane answered bleakly. "Call it madness, not habit. It works on the brain a hundred times worse than wormwood—and a thousand times faster."

"You live for it," the mongrel nodded, chuckling. "Night and day, you dream of it, they say. You'll steal for it, fight for it, kill for it. With every dose, you need it more. And nowhere is there a cure."

Shane said nothing.

Reggar gestured to the guards.

They caught Shane's arms once more; held him rigid.

Reggar drew an injector from inside his tunic; then a bottle. Quickly, he filled the needle and inserted the gas ampule.

Still Shane stood silent, stoney-faced.

Kyrsis said: "Why must you have it this way, Earthman? Give your sworn word that you'll serve us, and Reggar will put away the theol."

"I'd rather take the theol," Shane answered tightly.

"But why, Earthman? Why?"

Shane's laugh was bitter, curt. "It is a thing you would not understand, Shi Kyrsis. On Earth, they call it conscience."

A shadow seemed to pass across the silver woman's pale, lovely face. The violet eyes were suddenly uncertain. "I—I do not know...."

"You never will," Shane answered. Coldly, contemptuously, he met her gaze. "But the time will come, I promise you, when you'll know that I did not lie about Reggar—that no matter what he says, you cannot trust him. Even now—here, today, this very minute—he is planning to betray you."

"But how—?"

"Why bother to tell you more? You would not believe me. But when the day arrives, say to yourself just once, 'I had my chance; the Earthman warned me'."

"Hold him tight!" Reggar warned the guards angrily. "The theol will put an end to his mumblings!"

He came close to Shane. A webbed hand twitched the Earthman's head. The injector poised close to the sun-tanned throat.

Shane went completely limp. Dead weight, he sagged loose in the guards' hands.

They swayed under the drag of him; shifted, trying to regain their balance.

Shane writhed in a savage, spasmodic effort to break free. He kicked hard at Reggar.

But the guards' hold held. Reggar twisted out of the way of the kick. He jerked Shane's head around by the hair.

"It ends here, chitza!"

Face contorted in ghoulish triumph, he drove the injector's plunger home.

The theol sprayed into Shane's throat....

CHAPTER VI

They were singing in the dungeons—a wild Chonya song that had echoed down through the reckless years since that fateful day when the first great raider ship blasted off from the asteroids across the void:

"Oh, they've hunted us for ages,

Through the Belt and to the stars;

They have sought advice of sages,

And they've set up puppet gars.

But there's Chonya blood within us,

And when Chonyas take their stand,

There'll be blood upon the hatches

And a blight upon the land!"

"My whole crew?" Shane asked tonelessly.

One of the Martian falas of the escort nodded.

"Then why bother with me? They can tell you as much about the ship as I."

The fala shrugged. But a Pervod snarled: "The fools will do nothing without your orders—not even tell us which are the technicians. We broke the captain's back, but still he refused to explain the mechanism."

Shane's blue eyes grew cold as the pits of Neptune. "He's dead, then?"

"Yes, and so will the rest of them be, unless you tell them to obey."

"I'll give them their orders," Shane answered curtly. The muscles were standing out along his jaws.

They moved on, into the dungeon's outer room, where crowding Chonyas shouted their hate and shook the bars.

A crewman with a bloody bandage about his head leaped onto a bench and, pointing, cried out, "Gar Shane!"

The singing died away.

"Your first trick is your last!" the guard in charge snarled in Shane's ear. Roughly, he shoved the Earthman forward.

Shane strode through the settling silence. Wordless, he looked about him—at the glittering, unbreachable, green telonium walls; at the lean, tough horde of Chonya crewmen, pressing hot-eyed and intense against the bars; at the guards who flanked and backed him, light-guns out and lance-prods ready.

He swung back till again he faced the Chonyas; took a step or two with a reckless swagger. His back was stiff, his head unbowed.

In a hard flat voice he said: "These slavers who hold us here want full technical data on the Abaquist meteor repellers on our ship. Already, they have broken your captain's back because he would not give it to them."

The silence echoed.

"We were brought here with our minds locked in the control of a Paulsini beam. Through it, these starbos can drag out our innermost thoughts—force us to do their will. They would use it on us now, if they could. But they have insulated this whole satellite against it, so it is useless so long as we are here."

Still there was no sound, save for the restless scrape of feet, the rustle of heavy breathing.

"We are their prisoners, utterly and completely. They have even taken away the belt your chieftains gave me—" Shane ran his hands along his waist, "the Chonya belt, the great iron belt of the asteroids."

The scraping and rustling grew louder. A low, guttural rumble ran through the crowd.

"They say they'll cut us down if we do not obey them, and they've smeared their hands in your captain's blood to prove it!"

From somewhere in the back of the crowd, a Chonya shouted, "Where do you stand, Gar Shane? What would you have us do?"

"I?" Shane swept them with his gaze. "I? What would you have me say? We are their prisoners, are we not? They have conquered us, even if by a trick. We have no choice but to do their will ... for now." He paused; laughed harshly, cynically. "Were I to tell you otherwise, I, too, would die within the moment—and we all know it."

The captive crew flung back his bitter laughter. The first flush of hate was washed from the fierce faces, replaced by narrowed eyes and calculating glances.

Shane called: "Repeller crew—forward!" And then, quickly: "Orshawn ... Dylar ... Hebza ... Tisban ... Korch—"

Men pressed through to the bars. Without waiting, Shane wheeled to the guards. "Here are your men—the repeller crew itself! They will give you everything."

A fala shoved him aside, against the bars of the cage. A Mercurian threw the lever that controlled the lock.

Barely audible, one of the Chonyas whispered, "Gar Shane! You know—?"

"—that the repeller is fully automatic? That there is no crew?" Shane bared his teeth in the caricature of a smile. His eyes were very hard and bright. "Yes, Chonya; I know."

Now the crewmen that Shane had named were out. The door of bars clanged shut again.

A Thorian caught the Earthman by the arm. "Get on! And if these dogs of the asteroids do not tell us all Quos Reggar wants to know, both you and they will die by inches!" He cuffed Shane towards the dungeon's entrance.

Shane reeled ahead, half falling, and the guards laughed at the sight of him; and one booted him from behind so that he nearly sprawled on the glistening green telonium floor. But he clutched the outer door and recovered, hanging by the edge of it as it swung on its hinges till he was almost into the corridor beyond.

Only two guards remained there, both Pervods.

The fire in Shane's cold blue eyes burst into wild, singing flame. Of a sudden the laxness left his face. The awkwardness fell from his stance.

"Now, Chonyas!" he shouted.

In the same instant he whirled and shoved the great door open with all his might.

The edge caught the first of the guards behind him, a fala, full in the face.

Shane leaped upon the creature as it staggered. He caught the barrel of the thing's light-pistol; wrested it away.

With a hoarse cry the guard sprang after him, clawing for the weapon.

Rock-steady, Shane triggered the exciter. The pistol's purple beam struck the fala full in the face. Still clawing—clawing in the agonies of death, now—the creature lurched backward.

Beyond it boiled a scene of strange, wild carnage. The Chonyas of Shane's mythical "repeller crew" had leaped upon the other guards—tearing away weapons, beating them down.

Now one wrenched the ray-key that activated the locking lever from the Mercurian and slammed it home. The bolt that held the door of bars lifted.

With a wild roar, the Chonyas inside the cage burst forth.

The Pervods in the corridor beyond the dungeons rushed to bar the great outer door.

Shane blasted the first before he had even crossed the threshold.

The second turned to flee.

The Earthman's light-beam caught him in the middle of his first step.

A Chonya came running, a bloody lance-prod in his hands, eyes blazing with excitement. "Gar Shane! What now? The ship—?"

"You know where it is?"

"Yes. Close by here—"

"No matter. Get the men aboard and man the guns. Blast all the corridors but one. I'll need that to get back to you."

"But where—?"

"There's a job to do before we leave, if we're not to be dragged back here as we were before."

"The Paulsini—!"

"Right!" Shane laughed harshly. The sheer joy of battle shone in his face. "They'll expect us to blast off the instant the crew's aboard."

The Chonya's eyes gleamed fiercely. "You'll need help—"

"Three men, and a guard to guide us—"

The Chonya laughed aloud. "Two others and a guard, Gar Shane! I am the first!" he cried, exulting.

Commands crackled, then, and other crewmen crowded forward; and in brief seconds Shane and the Chonyas and a bloody-headed, bewildered Uranian were roaring down the echoing dimness of the corridor in a guard-car.

Then, on the Uranian's order, they changed direction, and now they were hurtling through vast, high-ceilinged chambers where giant machines stood row on row in countless thousands. No living being was anywhere evident ... only the machines, churning endlessly at their task with cold efficiency.

"Converters!" Shane muttered, half beneath his breath. "Power converters.... A different kind, one I've never seen before."

"Nor I," a Chonya technician at his side echoed grimly. "Who needs such power today, Gar Shane? And the source—where is it? It would take whole seas of energy to feed these monsters. There are too many!"

"Too many," Shane nodded. For a long moment he peered through the vision slot in silence, then backed away again. "A slaver is a slaver, Dylar. Some are small, and some are big. But this is too big for any slaver. The whole surface of this moon is covered with a rabbit-warren such as this, twelve levels deep. We find power converters by the million—more than a major planet could use, even in the days before the Federation began to broadcast free power to all."

Another of the Chonyas broke in now: "The Uranian says the Paulsini lies just beyond the next stop, Gar Shane—and his fear runs too high for him to lie."

Shane studied the great, hairy beast through narrowed eyes. "Is there a guard?" he clipped.

The Uranian shook his head jerkily.

"Get ready, then!" the Earthman rapped. Again his eyes sought out the Uranian, and after a moment he gestured towards him. "Shove him off first, and then land running."

The guard-car slowed.

Shane shaded his eyes and studied the dim spaces ahead through the vision port, the light-pistol ready in his hand.

Then the car was swaying, grinding to a stop. Two of the Chonyas pushed the Uranian towards the door.

But before they reached it their prisoner suddenly sprang aside. He caught one of the crewmen and hurled him bodily through the doorway by brute strength.

Outside, the corridor was suddenly laced with lances of purple light. A scream of anguish choked off in the Chonya's throat.

"A trap!" the technician, Dylar, cried. He jerked back levers on the control panel, and the car lurched forward again.

The Uranian lunged for him.

But Shane was already pivoting. He fired as he moved, and the great beast slammed to the floor, its four mighty arms flailing in a death-spasm.

"Stop the car!" Shane shouted.

Dylar threw a switch. The vehicle's mechanism shuddered and went dead.

"This way!" the Earthman snapped. He leaped to the corridor and ran back towards the Paulsini station. The Chonyas followed, close on his heels.

More of Reggar's men were there, clustered about the body of the fallen crewman. Then the sound of running feet reached them. They whirled.

Not even breaking stride, Shane blasted at them. Hastily, they fell back into a doorway, the same doorway from which they had loosed their barrage at the guard-car.

The Earthman moved in close to the left wall, out of their range of vision, and crept closer.

Abruptly, a purple beam lanced past his head, so close he could feel the searing heat of it. He jerked back against the crewman behind him.

"It's a stalemate till we can think of something," he clipped savagely. "They can't move, but neither can we."

The Chonya laughed. "Dylar will take care of that!" he chortled gleefully.

Like an echo, the now distant guard-car roared to life again. The next instant it was racing towards them.

Shane and the Chonya pressed back against the wall.

The car hurtled past them. A light-beam slashed from it as it came abreast the doorway where the guards were huddled.

There was a flurry of motion; hoarse shouts of panic.

Shane and the other Chonya moved in.

The last of Reggar's men sought to flee. But the technician, Dylar, cut them down.

Then Shane was bursting into the place where the great Paulsini mind-control projector was housed.

It was an awesome sight, a shaft that seemed to stretch away to infinity overhead. And in its center stood the incredible Paulsini tube, that infinitely delicate electronic unit that was the heart of the projector, core of the whole weird device that so deftly changed the frequencies of the waves within men's brains. A gigantic tube, almost unbelievable, so large that it staggered the imagination.

Even Shane stood half-incredulous as he stared up at it.

"It must be a hundred feet tall!" he said numbly. "No wonder they can reach out into space—"

Dylar nodded. "Yes. The whole center floor of the shaft is a huge lift, a hydratomic elevator to push the tube up into the air above this structure that covers the surface." He pointed a quivering finger. "See! There is a great lid capping off the shaft! No doubt it is linked to the lift mechanism so that it opens as the tube rises—"

Behind them, the other Chonya suddenly slammed shut the corridor door. "Guard-cars!" he called tensely. "A whole line of them, headed this way!"

It broke the spell of Shane's fascination.

"Our only hope for getting away from this moon alive is to smash this projector," he clipped tightly.

"And that means—smash this tube," Dylar answered. "Any other thing that we might do could be repaired."

Shane strode to the tube; hammered savagely at the transparent silicon with his light-gun's butt.

"It is no use," the Chonya technician told him grimly. "A tube as incredibly huge as this one will stand up against anything smaller than a proton cannon. It has been designed for strength—to handle power ... temperature changes ... shock and impact ... the sheer weight of its own structure." He shook his head. "I fear we've come here for nothing, Gar Shane. No efforts of ours can hope to smash this."

Bleakly, Shane stared at the monster tube ... at the glittering metal of the lift on which it stood ... at the great shaft, rising high above them to the cap of the dome.

The Chonya at the door said: "They're unloading here by hundreds, and they've brought enough equipment for a siege! When they start moving in, there'll be no stopping them."

Dylar's eyes flicked swiftly about the shaft. "There may be another way out—"

"No!" Shane snapped. His jaw was hard. He brought up a clenched fist; shook it grimly. "We came here to smash this thing. We're going to do it." He turned on his heel and ran to the nearest door. "Come on! We've got to find the control room!"

"The control room—?"

"Here! This is the place!" It was a windowless cubicle, but with a second door set opposite the one by which Shane stood. He scanned the massive control panels, the complicated dials and instruments. "Quick! How do you start the lift?"

Outside, the other Chonya called: "They're coming! I'll try to hold them—!" His voice was a trifle ragged.

"The lift—?" Dylar stared at the Earthman. "But why—?"

"Forget 'why'!" Shane slashed fiercely. "Quick! Show me!"

The technician scanned the maze of instruments. "This must be it! See! Here is the linking mechanism that couples it to the shaft cap, so that the top opens as the tube rises—"

Out beyond the shaft, something crashed. "They're trying to smash in the door!" the crewman there shouted. "There—! I got him!"

Shane whipped up his light-pistol. Face etched with strain, he focussed the beam on the linking mechanism. Wires gave way.

Dylar stared.

Gears twisted under the heat of the beam. A shaft snapped.

"Start the lift!" Shane clipped between clenched teeth.

"Of course!" cried Dylar. He threw switches.

"Here they come!" the Chonya outside shouted.

The next instant, his voice bubbled off in a scream. Shane leaped to the doorway, lanced a beam of light as a tentacled Thorian came into view. The creature slid back out of range.

The Earthman shot a glance at the Paulsini tube.

Smoothly, silently, it was rising, climbing swiftly towards the top of the shaft.

A fala hurled a lance-prod at Shane. It grazed his ribs. The sting of it hurt. Cursing, he dropped to one knee and triggered a beam at the Martian.

"It's almost there!" Dylar cried.

Shane risked another glance.

Even as he looked, the end of the tube reached the dome. For an instant it seemed to hesitate there. Then, with a faint groaning as of machinery under strain, it thrust on again ... harder ... harder ... harder....

The machinery of the lift groaned louder.

"Watch out!" shouted Dylar.

Shane leaped back in the same fraction of a second that the great tube burst. The noise was like a thunder-clap. It was as if the tube had exploded in mid-air. Shane glimpsed a Uranian racing towards him, and knew that he had waited too long, that he could never bring his pistol up in time; then saw the hairy thing reduced to bloody pulp by a great shard of blast-driven silicon.

It broke the paralysis that gripped him. He caught Dylar's arm. "Come on! Quick! To the ship!"

"Through that horde in the corridor?" The technician shook his head. "No, Gar Shane. You have performed a miracle—but not even you can travel that road."

A woman's voice said: "Then come this way."

Shane and the Chonya whirled.

She stood in the shadows of the control room's second doorway—a slim, shining figure in a toga of silver cloth.

Shane said: "Kyrsis—!"

"Yes, Shane." Her voice still had its strange, alien lilt. The rich purple lips parted in a smile, and she reached for his hand. "Come quickly. I shall take you to your ship."

"To the ship—?" Shane stared at her blankly. "But why—?"

"Why?" She laughed softly, and now there was mockery in the violet eyes. "Why not, Shane? It is the only way you can hope to escape this moon of madness. And the reason I help you to escape is—I want you to take me with you!"

CHAPTER VII

Now they were hurtling through the utter blackness that was space, away from the bleak moon that had been their prison. To port, Jupiter loomed monstrous, overwhelming, its great Red Spot weirdly aglow with seas of flaming hydrogen that seethed and boiled amid gigantic ice-cliffs carved from frozen gases. On the other side, Ganymede and Callisto swung slowly in their orbits; and beyond them, dwarfed by them, tiny Jupiter IX raced through the sky in the counter direction.

A navigator said: "The place they held us is Jupiter V—the satellite closest to the planet. The manuals say it is abandoned now. But it was built up as a power station by the Jupiterian entente in the days before the Federation began to broadcast energy."

"And now Quos Reggar holds it," the mate echoed. "What is your command, Gar Shane? Shall we ramp at Europa and report it?"

Bleakly, Shane stared into the visiscreen. Gadar, the dark star, hurled across the void into the solar system a thousand years ago, was coming into view now, the faint silver gleam of its profile barely visible.

"Or we could try Callisto," the mate went on. "They would notify the Federation unit stationed at Europa—send out patrols—"

"No," Shane said. "No. We'll go on to Federation headquarters, the Martian meeting. The things we have to tell will mean more there."

Abruptly, he turned and left the pilot room, and made his way to Kyrsis' quarters.

She came to his knock, and a glow of pleasure suffused her pale, silvery face at the sight of him. "Enter Shane...." The cool fingers touched his hand, drew him in. The violet eyes clung to his, as if in the sharing of some precious secret.

He closed the door behind him; breathed in deeply. "Why did you choose to come with me, Kyrsis?"

The rich purple lips curved and parted. As always, her eyes seemed to mock him. "How many times have you asked me, Shane?"

"How many times—?" he echoed, and now his voice had a bitter ring. "I wish I knew. But still I have no answer." He strode to the visiscreen across the room and snapped it on with an angry flick. Stared broodingly into it.

Gadar was almost to the screen's center now.

Shane said: "You're like that dark star, Kyrsis. What men can see is beautiful—but beneath the surface you're both all mystery. Where did you come from? Where are you going? And why? I always come back to that one question: why, why, why?"

She came very close to him, then, and what might have been sorrow was in her face, her eyes. "I've told you, Shane. To me, life is a sacred thing ... more sacred than you can ever dream. To see it wasted as yours would have been is the sin above all sin. And there was Reggar. After you'd told me the things you did, how could I believe him? How could I trust him? I had to get away from him, and quickly. If I could do it and save you, too, would I not have been a fool to throw away the chance?"

He turned on her. "But where is your home—your moon, your planet? Why do your people need slaves—?"

She shook her head sadly. "I am sorry, Shane, truly sorry. But those secrets are not mine to tell ... unless—"

"Unless what—?"

"Unless you are willing to travel with me ... to take the road Quos Reggar took." Again her hand was on his arm, her silvery body close to his. A note of tension crept into her voice. "Because we need slaves, Shane! You cannot know how desperately we need them! Nor is it hard. They do not suffer...."

For a moment the Earthman stood there with her, and her hand left his arm and came up to caress his cheek. "If you would but learn to understand us ... there is so much to learn."

Shane swayed a little. His blue eyes dulled, and his breathing was shallow, uneven.

The woman's eyes mirrored indefinable things, things old beyond all measure.

Shane stood rigid. Then, jerkily, he pulled away.

"I don't care why you need slaves," he said thickly. "It doesn't matter how you treat them—"

The silver woman spread her hands. "You see—?"

"But your people could work out a better way—"

"No." The word rang final. "For us there is—can be—no better way."

Shane's lips twisted. The dullness was gone from his eyes now. "Then, Kyrsis, we can never meet. You have picked your people's road, and I have taken the Chonya way."

"But then—"

"There can be nothing more. But you saved my life, and I must buy it back. So I'll land you at Horla, on Mars, and set you free, and you can go your way."

He turned to go.

Then the woman said: "Your throat, Gar Shane!"

The Earthman pivoted, face hard. "Yes?"

"There are flecks of green beneath the jaw—a slight eruption of the skin."

"I saw it in a mirror a while ago," Shane answered tightly. "It goes with theol."

"The first injection," the silver woman nodded, and now her smile was lazy, taunting. "With the second, the welts grow darker. After the third there are ... more obvious symptoms."

"You saved my life," Shane said, thin-lipped. "I'll see you safe to Mars."

He wheeled and left the room.

The committee on the interterrestrial slave trade was listening to a speaker from Titan when Shane reached the Federation chambers.

"Slavers? I can give you two names for slavers!" the Titanian cried out in a frenzy. "One is Chonya and the other is Malya! And those are the names for 'pirate,' too, and 'cutthroat' and 'thief and 'hypocrite'!"

Grim-faced, Shane started forward.

A basilisk-eyed Mercurian with a sly and smirking air barred his way. "Your credentials, please. You cannot enter the chamber without credentials."

"I left my credentials with a mongrel outlaw named Quos Reggar," Shane clipped tightly. "He ambushed my ship on the way. The chairman, the delegates—any of them can identify me."

"My deepest regrets, but identification is not enough." The Mercurian was openly grinning now. "My orders are specific: regardless of excuse, there will be no admission without credentials."

"The Chonyas and Malyas have made the asteroid belt a space ship graveyard!" the Titanian ranted shrilly.

"Get me the chairman!" Shane rapped.

"My orders are specific," the Mercurian repeated, smirking. "The issue of your attendance has already been discussed, Earthman, and you are barred—"

Shane raised his hand, tried to flag attention.

The chairman looked quickly away. Committee members turned till their backs were to him, or else openly ignored him.

"They have looted the void for a thousand years!" the Titanian screamed. "When we finally put that down, they grew clever, and now they wail of raids, even while they re-energize their proton cannon and hose the blood from their hatches—"

A sudden, mirthless grin twisted Shane's face.

"You lie in your teeth!" he shouted. Slamming the Mercurian to one side, he strode forward.

The Titanian cut off in mid-breath, great blue-green wattles shaking. Committee members spun about.

"Order!" bellowed the chairman, hammering on his desk. "Order in the chamber!"

"To hell with your order!" Shane shouted back savagely, eyes blazing. "I said he lied. I'll back it!"

"The Chonya delegate must wait his turn. He must clear his credentials—"

"Let someone wait who has yet to count his dead! I'm here to see that the Chonyas get justice and an end to slavery, not words! I'll stay till action's taken!"

A rubbery, flat-faced Europan leaped up. "And why were you not here before? Where have you been? What have you been doing?"

"Yes!" roared a delegate from Ganymede. "Eye-witnesses already have told us that the Chonyas are raiding for slaves again—and there are those who say that you, gar of the Chonyas, raid with them—that a raid is what kept you absent here—"

"My crew will tell you—"

"Your crew?" rasped a Venusian Vansta. "Your Chonya crew? Who ever heard of a Chonya with a mote of truth within him?"

A wave of raucous laughter swept through the chamber.

Then the delegate from Earth was on his feet, a tall, heavy man with thinning hair. "Silence!" he thundered. "Silence!"

The laughter, the shouts, died away.

The Earth delegate addressed Shane: "There is a woman called Kyrsis, of an unknown race, who is known to have been buying slaves. Do you know her?"

"Yes, but—"

"And is it true that when you landed at the Horla spaceport, less than an hour ago, this woman was with you?"

"Yes—"

"That you knew her to have been buying slaves, yet you let her go free, instead of turning her over to the constituted authorities?"

"But she—"

"Answer yes or no: is it true?"

"Yes, but—"

"'Buts' have no place in this committee, Shane!" The Earth delegate swung about. "My fellow-members. I am ashamed to confess that this renegade came from Earth. Now, as Earth delegate, the least I can do to atone is to demand, in the name of Earth, that he be placed under arrest as a slaver; and that the Chonyas whom he leads be expelled from the Federation, placed outside the protection of its laws, and subjected to an immediate punitive campaign by the Federation fleet to destroy their sovereignty and reduce them to the status of wards of the Federation!"

For the fraction of a second, silence echoed. Then the great room exploded into a cacophony of hate, a tumult of affirmation: "Yes, yes—!" "Seize him!" "Jail him!" "Burn him down!"

Two uniformed Fantays and the Mercurian from the door rushed towards Shane.

The Earthman stood as if frozen in his tracks. Then, explosively, he leaped backward, twisting, and of a sudden the light-pistol that had swung at his hip was in his hand.

"Who dares to seize me?"

The Fantays, the Mercurian, stopped short.

Blue eyes contemptuous, cold as death, Shane looked from them to the delegates ... the chairman. "I'm going out now," he said.

No answer came ... no comment or sound save that of the crowd's loud, nervous breathing.

"I'm going," he repeated savagely. "I'm going because the Federation holds knaves and fools enough that decent men no longer dare feel safe within it. The truth finds a graveyard here, and justice hangs in chains. Better to fight you and the slavers both than count on your weak-kneed aid. From this moment on, the Chonyas will carve their own way."

Not one of them would meet his eyes.

"No comments, no arguments?" The Earthman laughed sourly; he brought up the light-gun in a gesture that held at once both menace and defiance. "Then I'll leave you now. You may follow me—if you dare!"

Boldly, not even glancing back, he strode out of the room.

CHAPTER VIII

"This is the place," the Chonya said. "This is where the silver woman came."

Shane studied the structure. It was a house—a sort of fortress-dwelling in the ancient Fantay style, set a hundred feet from its nearest neighbor. Even in the semi-darkness of the early Martian night it looked old, mouldering old. Light from Phobos and Deimos, the tiny moons that raced across the sky overhead, glinted on the bosses that studded the great iridium-alloy door, and the weathered walls of lyndyse stone rose sheer and blank and forbidding to the second floor. Even there, the windows showed as narrow streaks of yellow light, criss-crossed with heavy bars.

"We are not the only ones drawn by this place, Gar Shane," the Chonya went on. "There was a Malya, a tough young buck with the walk of a fighting man. He stayed in the shadows, surveying the house from every angle, but not going near. After awhile, he went away. Then, later, a Europan came, a flat-faced chitza who looked this way and that, as if he were afraid he would be seen. He knocked at the door, and after they'd checked him through a peephole, they let him in. Later, there were three others, all shrouded in fala capes so I could not tell their race. They, too, went in."

"And none came out?"

"Only the Europan. He skulked away again in but a few moments."

"A Malya, a Europan, and three in fala cloaks," Shane repeated, half to himself. And then, speaking to the Chonya: "It's time we found out what black brew is cooking there, Nettar. Where are the hook and rope?"

"Here, Gar Shane," the other answered. He drew a coiled line and grappling iron from beneath his coat. "Which side shall it be?"

"To the left are fewer windows," said Shane. "Wait here for me, Nettar."

"No, Gar Shane! It is madness to go alone into such a death-trap—"

Shane's mirthless laugh rang through the darkness. "Worse madness for two. There'd be three times the noise."

"But Gar—"

"My mission holds less peril than you might think. But should trouble come—should I not return—I want you here, outside, to carry the word."

Silently, then, Shane ran to the building and left along it. He swung the grapnel in a tight arc ... sent it flying high into the air in an expert throw, over the roof of the house.

The hook landed with a flat thunk!

Shane hugged the shadows, listening tensely. But no sound came from within.

He tugged experimentally on the line.

The hook held.

Bracing his feet against the wall, leaning out from it, supported by the rope, the Earthman climbed swiftly upward. In half a minute he was over the coping and lying flat on his belly on the roof, drawing up the line.

The round dome of a typical Fantay solarium, glowing dimly with yellowish light from some point within but below Shane's line of vision, rose in the middle of the flat roof. Cat-like, the Earthman came to his feet and crossed to it, there to peer cautiously down through the crystal into the room below.

The solarium was empty, illuminated by only one dim lamp.

Quickly, Shane pried loose a crystal panel. Squeezing through the opening, he dropped to the floor.

A door stood half-open across the room. Noiselessly, Shane moved to it, paused and listened.

No sound came. The Earthman stepped outside, and found himself in a narrow hallway. Following it, he came to a stairway, descended cautiously.

Below, the lights were brighter, the air faintly redolent of age and cooking palorsch.

And, somewhere, a woman was singing softly.

Shane eased out his light-gun. Silently, he left the stairs and moved down another hallway. To the right, a door loomed. From the other side came a muffled mumble of voices.

But not the song. Cat-footed, Shane passed the portal.

The song came clearer now—a haunting, taunting melody in a tongue the Earthman did not know. The singer's voice held an alien lilt, a thread of silvery tone.

Kyrsis' voice.

It came from behind another door, and this one was open a crack.

Again Shane paused and listened. But there was no sound save the singing.

The Earthman stepped to the door's hinge side; threw a quick glance up and down the hall. It was still empty. Staying back of the jamb, out of sight from the room, he pressed his left hand against the door ever so gently and pushed it open—slowly, as if it were moving with a draft.

Still there was no sound but Kyrsis' voice. But after a moment it swelled a fraction, and the whisper of her footsteps crept through.

Then, of a sudden, her profile was framed between half-open door and jamb.

In two swift steps, Shane was inside—pushing her back, heeling shut the door.

The silver woman's great violet eyes went wide. She opened her mouth to scream. But before the sound could come, Shane's arm was about her. His hand clamped over her open mouth.

For an instant her body writhed against him. Her fists beat at his chest, her feet at his ankles.

He said: "If I break you, Kyrsis, the choice will be yours, not mine."

For a long moment her eyes probed his, her body still rigid, straining against him. Then, slowly, she relaxed.

Shane let her go.

Her pale, beautiful face held no expression now. With one last enigmatic glance, she turned from him and moved with perfect poise to a mirror that hung upon another door across the room. Her slender fingers smoothed her hair, rearranged her rumpled gown.

After a moment Shane followed her, stood close behind her, so that their eyes met in the mirror. Gently, he gripped her shoulders. "I came for a reason, Kyrsis," he said.

"A reason, Shane—?" She said it almost absently, her fingers still busy with her hair. "What reason?"

Shane's jaw was hard. "Perhaps you've heard that the Federation cast me out."

"Of course. It was expected." The rich purple lips curved in the faintest of mocking smiles. "Why else do you think I came to Horla with you, except to lay the ground?"

The lines in Shane's face deepened. "I don't know. That's why I took this chance to see you now."

"What, Shane—? I do not understand...."

"Once, on our way here, you asked me to try to understand you and your people. You said our paths might run together if I were to take the slavers' road."

"Shane—!" Of a sudden her body again was rigid. She twisted, stared up into Shane's eyes. "You mean—you would give up the Chonya way? You would raid for slaves as Quos Reggar raids?"

The Earthman's lips twisted. "I'd raid—on my own terms," he answered.

"On your terms—?"

"You might not care to meet them, Kyrsis."

"At least, tell me what they are."

"When the Chonya chieftains called me in, I took their way for mine. If I raid now, it will be because their ships are with me."

"But how—?"

Shane laughed harshly. "The Federation has turned us out, with the slaver brand upon us. If we must wear it, we'll earn it. Why should we stand by, helpless and hopeless, while both Reggar and the Federation fleet bleed us white? Better that we raid ourselves. At least, then, we'll get booty." His blue eyes gleamed. "We'll bring slaves to your people, Kyrsis—smug, fat slaves from the planets of the Federation. We'll drag them out by the thousands!"

A strange excitement seemed to seize the silver woman. "Yes, Shane, yes! We'll take your Chonyas—"

"There's more," Shane said.

"Yes—?"

"If you take us, you let Quos Reggar go."

She stared at him. "Are you mad, Shane?"

"No, Kyrsis; far from mad." He clenched his fist, and his face grew dark with anger. "Reggar is the dog who took away my belt. If he had his way, he'd see me with my brain rotted out with theol. So he is part of my price—the part that counts the most—"

"—the part that proves you are not so different from other men after all, Gar Shane." Kyrsis laughed softly. The things that showed in the violet eyes were very old. "For awhile I almost saw you as separate from the rest—a man apart, so hard and strong that nothing could sway you from what you saw as duty. But now ..."—she shrugged—"You seek to save your Chonyas, yes. But Reggar hurt your pride when he took your belt, so now, above all, you seek for vengeance."

"And if I do?" Shane clipped. "Does it matter to you? I bring you the Chonyas—born raiders, a race that has carved its name in blood across the void. Beside them, what is Reggar?—A mongrel, a cross-bred chitza served by the scum of the spaceways." He broke off. "But you are the one who must decide. What is your answer?"

The smile left the silver woman's face. Turning, she walked thoughtfully across the room, not speaking.

After a moment, Shane followed.

Again Kyrsis turned, looked up at him. Her expression was unfathomable. "You are a bold and clever man, Shane," she said. "It is a pity you can never hope to be quite clever enough."

"You mean—?"

"She means you've failed again, you chitza!" cut in a harsh familiar voice from the mirrored door behind Shane.

The Earthman spun about.

His great carcass draped in a fala cloak, Quos Reggar stood in the doorway, light-gun in hand.

Shane froze. His mouth took on a bitter twist. "I should have known you'd follow her here. But the fala cape—"

"It fooled you?" Reggar laughed harshly. "I thought it would. And Kyrsis did well, too, leading you over to my door, where I was sure to hear you."

Shane said nothing.

"There's someone else here for you to see," leered Reggar. He raised his voice, "Talu!"

"Here, Sha Reggar."

Shane caught his breath at the sound of her voice. But that was all, for then she was coming through the doorway, slim and graceful, her waist-long blue-black hair aripple in the light, her dark Malya face as proudly lovely as before.

And as before, she bore a tray in her hand.

"Sha Shane...." Her voice, her face, told nothing; nor could Shane interpret the message that flickered, just for an instant, in her eyes.

Reggar said: "Once before I sent Talu to you with an injector, Earthman, and you nearly broke her arm. This time, it will be different."

Shane made no attempt to answer.

"The injector, Talu—"

Face wooden, the Malyalara stripped back the cloth and picked up the hypodermic from the tray. "It is ready, Sha Reggar."

"Theol was in that other injector, starbo, and this one holds theol now. It will be your second dose. Madness is just one more away."

Shane stood very still. He looked from Kyrsis, with her pale ethereal beauty and silver hair and translucent skin, to Talu, the slave girl—dark, tempestuous, all Malya; then back to Reggar again. Instinctively, his muscles tensed.

The mongrel said: "You'll take the dose, Earthman—because if you so much as move a hair, I'll burn your arms off!" The light-gun in his webbed hand was rock-steady.

"Talu—"

"Yes, Sha Reggar." Quickly, efficiently, she stepped to the Earthman's side. "Twist your neck, Sha Shane."

"Twist it!" echoed Reggar. His huge lobed eyes were flecked with red.

Teeth clenched, eyes hot with hate, Shane obeyed.

The Malyalara pressed the plunger.

Reggar let out a breath, stepped back. "Tomorrow, great gar, you get the last," he gloated. "Then, after that, you'll serve with my fleet ... serve gladly, happy to help us in every way, just for the sake of another shot of theol." He chuckled ghoulishly. "It will be a fitting fate—the more so after the way you've tried so many schemes to split Shi Kyrsis from me, so that you could dispose of each of us alone. In fact—"

Somewhere, some living creature screamed. There was horror in the sound—a hideous note, as if soul were being torn from body.

Reggar froze. "What—?"

From the hallway came the faintest whisper of footsteps.

The mongrel's light-gun prodded Shane. "You, chitza—open the door!"

Wordless, Shane crossed the room. He gripped the handle, pulled back the door. Outside, the hall had gone black, lights out.

Instantly, before he could so much as draw a breath, dark hands came out of nowhere; seized him, jerked him half into the hall. A knife-point pricked his belly.

"Move and die, Earthman!" a voice breathed in his ear—a man's voice, cold, and hard, and heavy with a Malya accent.

Shane stood as if carved from stone.

From the room behind him, now, came another fierce Malya voice: "The light-gun, Reggar!"

For an instant silence echoed. Then Reggar cursed, and there was the thud of the pistol hitting the floor.

Now the Malyas holding Shane shoved him back into the room. There, another Malya—a hard-bitten, swaggering little man—already had Reggar pressed back against the wall, penned there by a knife like the one digging into Shane's belly. Other dark, cold-eyed fighting men stood by the mirrored door to the huge hybrid's quarters.

Talu was with them, her face aglow with fierce joy. "Malyas, Malyas—!"

The silver woman, Kyrsis, stood silent and apart. But shadows of strain showed in the lines and hollows of her face.

"We have done our work well," the leader of the dark men said. "We have the Earthman, Shane. We have Reggar, the mongrel. We have the silver woman. There'll be joy and feasting at Amara when we ramp our ships."

"You are of Amara, Malya?" Shane asked.

The other's dark eyes gleamed. "We are of Amara, Earthman—and before you die, you'll wish you'd never heard of us or our asteroid! Other races may let the slavers raid and not strike back. But we claim blood for blood—"

Shane said: "I am gar of the Chonyas, not a slaver. Ask Talu, the slave girl. She is of your people—"

"Who takes the word of a captive woman?" The Malya laughed thinly. "We Malyas have raided for slaves ourselves, in our day. A woman's heart goes with her man, not her race."

"Check with others, then—"

"We have checked already. The word is out: you raid with Reggar. You came to Horla with the woman, Kyrsis. It is enough!" Fierce lights gleamed in the Malya's eyes. He grinned—a savage, death's-head grimace. "We've tracked you down across the void, you three, and now we'll see you pay for the Malya blood you've spilt—battling the zanths for your lives in Amara's great arena!"

CHAPTER IX

This was Amara's great arena. The oval pit was full twenty feet deep and floored with sand ... sand that here and there was churned and trodden, stained dark brown with men's life blood.

Above the pit, seats rose into the star-flecked night in steep-banked tiers.

Those seats were full, now—packed from pit to rim with the savage, dark-faced Malya breed, a blood-lusting horde whose cries for slaughter rose in great, swelling waves like the screams of primeval beasts.

In the forefront, ringing the rim of the pit, sat the Malya chieftain and his court—the old raiders, the men of power, the warriors and their women.

And there, too, sat another woman, a slim, lovely Malyalara, placed close beside the chief himself.

Talu.

Slave girl no longer, she now wore a gown of richest kalor. Jeweled clips held the rippling, blue-black hair, and a jewel-studded harness accented her shoulders' softness, her throat's clean curve, the bare breasts' proud, firm swell.

Ankle-deep in the sand of the pit, Shane surveyed them, one and all.

Now the Malya chief leaned forward across the rim, a long fighting knife in his hand. His deep-set eyes gleamed anticipation. "You are the first, Earthman ... you and this knife against a zanth!"

Boldly, Shane met the chieftain's stare. "And if I win—?"

For the fraction of a second a sort of dull, throbbing silence seemed to fall over the crowd. Then it broke in a gale of wild, tumultuous laughter, echoing and re-echoing upward to the stars.

"If you win—?" the Malya chieftain choked. "Have you stayed too long in the sun of Mercury, chitza? No man has ever come out of the pit over a zanth."

"What holds for other men is not for me. I asked: what if I win?"

Admiration showed in the Malya's dark face. "If you fight as boldly as you talk—small wonder that the Chonyas made you gar!" And then: "If you win, you'll live—but here, on Amara, forever a slave."

"I ask no more," Shane came back coldly. Again his blue eyes swept the crowd, the sparkling night of a thousand stars. For a moment his gaze lingered on Talu, catching the fever in her eyes, the tension carved in every line. The noise of the shouting horde above beat down upon him. The fetid stench of the zanth came to his nostrils from the tunnel-chute.

"Your weapon, Earthman!" cried the Malya chief, and threw it down. "Keeper, prepare to loose the zanth!"

In one swift motion, Shane swept up the knife. Then, quickly, he moved to the shadows along the wall of the pit, out of the smoky torches' flickering glare.

In the tunnel, the zanth roared thunderously. Shane caught a glimpse of the panic on Kyrsis' pale face, where she sat in the prisoners' cage; of the fear that crawled in Quos Reggar's great lobed eyes.

Overhead, the Malya chieftain cried, "Turn loose the zanth!"

The heavy-grilled gate at the tunnel mouth swung up. In the blackness beyond, the zanth's eyes burned like coals of fire. Again it roared, and then again. Then, slowly, it came forward, out into the pit, there to stand for a moment, blinking against the glare.

Shane sucked in air. This zanth was big, bigger than any he had ever seen ... well over twenty feet. The murderous, serrated tail alone measured at least seven, and the great jaws were of a size to snap a man in two in a single bite. Its scales were big as dinner plates, and as thick, horny with age. Spurs and claws gleamed in the torchlight like curved knives.

Then the great, ringed nostrils flared as the creature scented Shane. The spiked diamond head came round, twisting and turning on the monstrous, snake-like neck; darting and probing to the full five feet of its length. The stink of its breath swept over the Earthman in a nauseous wave.

Shane stood very still.

But already the zanth was turning. The bulging eyes gleamed redly, searching for him.

The knife-haft was slippery in Shane's hand. A rill of sweat crept down his spine.

The zanth paused now, the spiked head moving sinuously to and fro. The tail flicked the blood-stained sand. Its powerful, armor-scaled body seemed to draw together.

Shane forgot to breathe.

The zanth lunged.

Shane dived as the great spiked head lanced forward. The jaws snapped shut where he had been with a clacking like the sound of monstrous castanets.

After that, there was no time for anything but action.

For even before the Earthman hit the ground, the thing was whirling. The claws of its eight feet sprayed the sand like a windstorm. Again, it lunged.

Desperately, Shane rolled out of the way.

But now the serrated, seven-foot tail lashed out at him, with a force that would have smashed through a solid brick wall.

Again Shane rolled—in, towards the zanth's body.

One of the feet clawed for him. A six-inch talon raked a bloody path along his side.

Panting, the Earthman scrambled away—back to the shadows, the wall of the pit.

The zanth whirled; charged.

Taut-muscled, Shane waited till the diamond head hammered forward. Then, in the last instant, he leaped aside.

The zanth's head smashed against the wall of the pit. Savagely, Shane stabbed for the crevice where the jaw-plates met, trying for the creature's tiny brain.

But the tough cartilage turned away the blade. With a roar, the zanth struck at him.

Shane leaped high into the air, and the awful head passed beneath him. Twisting, he landed on the writhing, tree-thick neck; balanced there for a precarious moment.

The zanth reared back, clawing for him, and Shane sprang clear. Again he took up his stand against the wall.

This time, the zanth broke off its charge to flail at him with its tail. Barely in time, the Earthman got out of the way. He was breathing hard, now—his whole body shaking under the strain.

The zanth lunged.

Desperately, Shane snatched up a handful of sand, hurled it straight into the oncoming monster's glaring eyes.

The creature came up short, shaking its head.

Shane moved like a striking quirst. Again he snatched sand, hurled it.

The zanth raised its head high, to the full length of the five-foot neck. Clawing, it leaped at the Earthman. The awful talons shredded his clothes, tore at his flesh.

Shane threw himself sideways.

The head lanced towards him.

He slashed at the eyes with his knife, felt the steel bite in.

A wild roar burst from the creature's throat. It threw itself at Shane in a frenzy, clawing and snapping and threshing.

Once more, Shane sprang aside—then darted back before the creature could make the double turn. Leaping to its neck, he threw himself flat upon it, clinging to it with legs and one arm as to a writhing log, while with the other hand, the knife hand, he stabbed again and again at the bulging eyes.

The zanth roared its agony. Twisting and jerking, it struggled to unseat the Earthman. One clawed foot reached his leg; laid it open. But still Shane clung to his place, slashing and stabbing.

Blindly, the monster crashed against the pit's wall. It reared, then surged forward, clawing its way up the sheer face. The great spiked head rocked and swayed; beat against the stonework in a spasm of pain, less than three feet below the rim.

A fierce light flamed in Shane's eyes. Clutching the base of the spike, he suddenly let go the zanth's neck with his legs. His toes dug into the overlap between the scales, and all at once he was running upward—up the snake-neck, onto the diamond head itself.

And then, before the Malyas realized what was happening, he leaped from the head to the rim of the pit. The fighting knife flashed in a savage arc. A warrior's shout choked off in a rush of blood. The others about him scrambled back from the slashing blade.

Behind Shane, back in the pit, the zanth screamed and hurled itself upward. Its head came over the rim. With a mighty, surging leap, its forefeet followed. A terrible roar burst from its throat as it caught the scent of the Malya warrior's blood, and it clawed its way onward, upward, out of the pit and into the rising tiers of seats.

It was a nightmare, a world gone mad. Wildly, the screaming Malyas fled. But the zanth's great tail lashed out and a score of them fell, crushed or smashed into the pit. The knife-claws tore; the great jaws ran ruby-red with blood.

Forgotten, Shane followed the panicked mob.

Only then, somehow, a voice slashed through to him through the tumult: "Shane—Shane!"

He whirled.

Talu was running towards him, across the seats. "This way!"

For an instant he hesitated, then changed his course to meet hers.

She caught his hand. "This way!"

Together, they raced back towards the chief's box at the rim of the pit, and now Shane saw that a trap door in the floor had been lifted.

"Hurry!" cried the Malyalara. "In a moment the warriors will bring in a proton cannon to kill the zanth, and someone will think of you, too. You must be gone before then!"

Shane shot one look at the pitch-black shaft. "Where does it go?"

"To a passage below the arena that leads to the chief's castle and the ramps. We can steal a flyer there. But hurry!"

Shane shot one quick look back.

The zanth still raged and ravened through the crowd, but already the warriors had rallied to hem it in.

Tightly, he said to Talu: "You first, then."

"First?"

"Do you think I'd let you get behind me?" he clipped bitterly. "Fool that I am, I'll go with you, because I have no choice. But my knife will be in your back every step of the way, ready for your next betrayal."

"'Betrayal'?" she repeated, and now the heat of anger was in her voice, her eyes. "Did you say betrayal, Earthman?"

"What would you call it?" He made no effort to keep the fury from his tone. "Who tripped me when I would have stabbed Quos Reggar? Who shot a second dose of theol into my veins?"

She drew away from him, then, and the look she threw stung like a whip. "Come, Sha Shane. If that is your belief, then I must indeed go first." Lithely, she lowered herself over the edge of the shaft and disappeared down a metal ladder set in one wall.

Knife still in hand, Shane followed. The effort made him shake, and under the strain of climbing, the claw-wound in his side began to bleed again.

Then, at last, they were in the murky passageway below, and Talu was leading him swiftly through the darkness. Once Shane staggered and would have fallen, had not the Malyalara caught him; and once he dropped the knife. But she picked it up again, and her groping hand strayed into the blood as she sought to return the weapon. So she made him sit down while she tore up some garment and bandaged his wounds, and her fingers were very gentle.

They went on again, then, for what seemed endless miles, till at last they came to a huge, dim-lighted ramping-spot where dull black Malya flyers stood in ordered rows, their bubbles pointed up into the starlit sky. And finally they even found one with its lower hatches open, and the girl helped Shane to climb aboard. She strapped him in the pilot's seat, and herself in the other seat beside him.

For a long time, it seemed, he worked at the controls with clumsy fingers, till at last, somehow, they were blasting off, roaring up and up and up into the gaudy heavens. And Talu talked to him, and braced him, and helped him hold the jet-globe steady, while seconds, or maybe hours, ticked by.

Only then, suddenly, the sky about them was full of ships, great black-hulled ships that were built for ranging clear across the void. They came in hundreds—thousands, maybe—blazing in thunderous silence through the blackness of spatial night. And one of the ships swerved and came alongside the little Malya flyer, and a great hatch opened in its side and sucked them in.

Then the hatch slid closed again, and the darkness about them was complete. Even their jets were blacked out, killed by the great ship's pickup neutralizers.

And still Shane sat in silence, staring stupidly straight ahead.

But the body of the girl, Talu, came warm against him in the ebon murk, her voice a fierce, husky whisper in his ear: "You must believe me, Shane! I did not betray you—not ever! The things I did, I had to do, in order to live to pay back the blood debt of my people. You could never have killed Quos Reggar with one thrust, no matter where, for he is a cross-bred mongrel, and his body does not work as ours do."

Shane forced out words: "Why tell me now? Why care about it?"

"Why? Why?" The girl's voice held a tremor now, a fear not even the black could hide. "I tell you so that you will know, and not die hating me to your last breath. That I could not stand! For die we will, and soon—because this ship is one of Reggar's slavers!"

CHAPTER X

"Here Is Life!" the vendor cried. "Fresh life from new planets! Young slaves, with the hot blood surging through their veins! And all yours—yours for the asking, going for the price you set yourselves!" He struck a note on a silver gong. "Look at this next wench—a warm and vibrant thing, my friends, throbbing with life and spirit! What am I offered for her?"

The woman on the block was Venusian, a weary, fading creature with the sucking tube and ear-stalks of the Transmi. Her eyes were veined with weeping, her sagging face shadowed with fear and fatigue.

"Come! Make the first bid!" cried the vendor. "Who'll start it? Do I hear five hundred?"

"Fifty," called a voice from the rear of the crowd.

"Fifty! Do you seek to insult me? She's worth five hundred if she is a xi—"

"You mean, you insult us, vendor," the bidder retorted caustically. "A fool can see that the life runs low within her. She would not last the night."

"Fifty!" cried the vendor. "I'm offered fifty, friends. Who'll raise it to sixty?"

No one spoke. After a moment, the vendor struck the silver gong again. "Sold to Callan at fifty!" He pushed the Venusian down the steps. "Get on with you, woman...."

An attendant pushed Shane forward, heavy with irons. "An Earthman, vendor—"

The vendor struck the gong. "An Earthman, my friends; a fighting man—powerful, surging with life in spite of his wounds. Who'll start it—?"

Coldly, Shane swept the auction room with his glance.

Here, in front, on one side, were the slaves—a motley assortment, dragged to this final degradation from a dozen far-flung planets. One by one, they were thrust upon the block, exposed to the ghoulish appraisal of the crowd that filled the room.

The crowd. A crowd of silver men and women, with gleaming hair and violet eyes and pale, translucent skins. A hundred hungry-eyed, avid brothers and sisters of Shi Kyrsis.

Even the room itself was strange. The materials resembled nothing known anywhere in all the void. The lush decor followed an alien theme.

"This man is good for long-time use!" exhorted the vendor. "See the strength of him—the fire and vigor! You cannot pass him by...."

A door to Shane's right opened. A woman came in, a silver woman.

The woman.

Kyrsis.

An old man close to the block called eagerly, "I'll give a hundred, vendor!" in a thin, cracking voice.

"A hundred I'm offered! Now who'll make it a hundred and fifty? No one can afford to let this strong man go at a mere hundred—"

"Hundred and ten!" someone shouted.

Kyrsis turned. For the first time, her eyes met Shane's, and she stopped suddenly, staring as if paralyzed.

"Hundred twenty!"

"Hundred thirty!"

"Do I hear a hundred forty? Surely no fine, strapping fighting man can go for less—"

"Two hundred," Kyrsis said.

"Two hundred! The Lady Kyrsis bids two hundred—"

"Two fifty, vendor!" cried the old man by the block.

"Three hundred," came back Kyrsis.

"Do I hear three fifty—?"

"With his wounds, he is worth no more than three," the old man mumbled.

"Three twenty-five then! Do I hear three twenty-five?"

"Three ten—"

"Three fifty," echoed Kyrsis.

The vendor paused and looked about. "Three fifty is bid...." He struck the gong. "Sold to the Lady Kyrsis for three fifty."

Shane left the block, strode to the silver woman's side; and for a moment they stood there in vibrant silence, alone in the crowd, duelling with their eyes.

Then Kyrsis asked: "What dark fate brought you here, Gar Shane? When I last saw you, you were hewing a path through the Malya horde at the arena...."

"And you were in the prisoners' cage." The Earthman ignored the strange tremor in the silver woman's voice. His words were clipped. "Talu and I escaped and fled Amara in a flyer. But one of Quos Reggar's slavers sucked us in and brought us here."

"The slavers came to rescue Reggar," Kyrsis said. "They swept Amara clean." She looked down, breathing deep as if to still some inner tension. And then: "Talu was with you? They brought her here—?"

"—and put here aside. Her hair was cropped, so they knew she already had a master." Shane laughed harshly. "Me—I'd worn no yoke, so they sent me to the block."

"Then ... let us go. I have already done my other buying." The tremor in Kyrsis' voice was stronger, now—a sort of undercurrent of strange excitement.

"Your 'other buying'—?"

"A few young slaves to ... to train for household use." The silver woman's fingers trembled, cold as ice, upon Shane's arm. "Come! Let us go now—quickly—"

She led Shane out, through other rooms, where other vendors hawked their wares, and other slaves stood shamed or sobbing, bared to the eager, weirdly-lusting eyes of the silver people.

Then they reached a sort of transit station, and an attendant brought a car of a type Shane had never seen before, and they got in.

Three frightened children, a Malya boy of perhaps twelve and two Chonya girls even younger, huddled at the back, their dark eyes big with panic.

"Your slaves, Lady Kyrsis?" Shane asked coldly. The barb in his voice would have slashed through the scales of a zanth.

The silver woman kept her eyes on the controls. The car hurtled off through a tube-like passage. She did not answer.

Then the car halted. They got out—Shane, Kyrsis, children—and entered rooms, rooms luxuriously furnished in the alien style of the silver people.

"And now?" Shane inquired thinly.

Kyrsis' breathing was fast and shallow, her face even more pale than before. She spoke too rapidly, in a ragged, uneven voice. "You are weary, Shane, so weary. You must rest now. Here—let me take off your shackles. There is a room here you will like—a quiet room...."

She unlocked the cuffs on his wrists and tossed them aside, then led him swiftly to an adjoining sleep chamber. Foam-soft cushioning a foot thick blanketed a dais along one wall, big enough for a dozen men. A lingering perfume filled the air. Soft lights cast a silvery glow. From somewhere came faint strains of elfin music.

"Rest here, Earthman," the silver woman said softly. "Rest until I call you...."

For a moment her icy fingers touched his cheek. Then she left the room, closing the door behind her.

Shane stared after her, a frown furrowing his brow. After a moment, he stepped to the door, tried the handle.

It was locked.

Shane's frown deepened. He rubbed a grimy hand across his cheek where the cold of Kyrsis' fingers still lingered; finally turned to a more thorough inspection of his quarters.

As he pivoted, light glinted on the glass-like surface of the wall that flanked the door—caught a vague flicker of movement.

Shane moved on across the chamber with no sign that he had seen it.

An alcove held a radiation bath. The Earthman stepped into the cubicle and flipped the switch, luxuriating under the warm tingle of the molecular bombardment. Slowly, the sweat and dirt and grime faded from his body, the dried blood washed away. The worst of the weariness left his muscles. His bones almost stopped aching.

Refreshed, he snapped off the radiation and, leaving the cubicle, drank greedily from a crystal bubbler set beside it.

Now he went back to the sleeping chamber. His eyes flickered over the spot in the wall beside the door.

The surface showed blank and dead as the rest.

Shane grinned sourly to himself; crossed the room and tried the door once more.

It was still locked.

The Earthman hesitated. Then, grimly, he braced one foot on the casing beside the lock, gripped the handle, and threw his full weight on it.

Inside the lock, something snapped. The handle twisted askew.

Again Shane tugged, his muscles swelling with the strain.

The broken handle pulled from its socket. Inserting a forefinger in the hole, Shane manipulated the lock, pulled back the bolt.

The door swung open.

Shane stepped outside. He glanced at the wall behind the spot where he had seen the movement.

A picture hung there. Lifting aside, he found a small, hinged panel. Opening it, he discovered that a lens set behind the shiny coating of the inner wall enabled him to survey the entire sleep chamber.

Again, the sour grin twisted Shane's lips. Swiftly, he strode through the silence, checking the other rooms. He found them empty, all but one. Its door was locked.

The Earthman drew back a moment.

A picture hung a few feet to one side of the locked door.

Shane stepped over to it and lifted it from the wall.

It concealed another peep hole. Shading his eyes, the Earthman peered through the lens.

Kyrsis was within ... Kyrsis and one of the captive Chonya girls.

The silver woman held the child upon her lap. She was talking to her—smiling, squeezing the chubby hands. Her manner was gentle, tender.

Yet under it all, somehow, hung a weird, unholy note—grotesque, obscene.

Some of the fear had left the child's eyes now. She smiled wanly ... nestled, not quite so tense, in the silver woman's arms.

Kyrsis' eyes closed. Her lips parted, and Shane knew that she was singing as she rocked the child.

The child's lips drooped. Trustingly, the small arms half-embraced the silver woman. The tired head rested on Kyrsis' breast.

The child slept.

Now new emotions came to Kyrsis' lovely face ... strange passion—a horrid anticipatory glow. Her nostrils flared. Her violet eyes grew large, gleamed with fires older than time itself. She cradled the child. Ever so tenderly, yet with a terrible air of strain, her parted lips sought the girl's.

Shane stood frozen, breathing hard, tight in indecision's grip.

The child moved languidly in Kyrsis' arms—restless, not struggling, and for a moment the silver woman straightened, sucked in air. Then, again, she pressed her lips against the girl's.

Shane cursed beneath his breath and turned towards the door.

But even as he did so, Kyrsis rose, the child still in her arms. The silver woman's face was serene now, ethereally beautiful, unmarred by any trace of strain. Gently, she laid down the still form of the child. Then, coming erect again, she moved towards the door.

Shane slid the picture back into place and stepped out of sight in the adjoining room.

The door to the room in which Kyrsis had been, opened and closed. The silver woman passed down the hall, out of sight.

Tense, silent, Shane made for the room from which she'd come.

The door was unlocked now. Swiftly, he slipped inside and stepped to the couch where the Chonya child still lay, so very still. He touched the soft hand. Lifted it with trembling fingers.

Behind him, the door-latch clicked.

Shane turned.

Kyrsis stood watching him. "You come unannounced, Earthman," she murmured coolly.

"I came in as you left," Shane said, and of a sudden his hands, his voice, his whole body, were shaking uncontrollably, gripped in a paroxysm of surging fury. "I saw you here, with the child! Do you hear me? I saw you—!"

"So...?" Kyrsis' face was still calm, the violet eyes unfathomable.

The veins at Shane's temples stood out, throbbing. With a tremendous effort, he brought his voice under a semblance of control.

He said: "This child is dead!"

CHAPTER XI

They stood there thus for a long, taut, echoing moment.

Then Kyrsis said: "You leave me no choice, Earthman. I see I must tell you Gadar's secret."

"Gadar—?"

Her lips twitched. "Yes, Earthman. Gadar, the dark star—the star hurled into your solar system from across the void: cold, bleak, barren, uninhabited Gadar."

"You mean that you—your people—are of Gadar?"

The silver woman nodded. "Yes. When our star cooled, in the course of that endless voyage across the void, we had no choice but to burrow deeper and deeper, like animals—cutting ourselves away from the awful cold of outer space, hunting desperately for the last dim vestiges of warmth at our planet's core. Then, when at last we had come into the family of your sun, we saw no reason to let it be known that we existed. For we knew the thing we had to do if we were still to live, and we knew that if you knew it, Gadar would be doomed."

"Then—this is Gadar? We are inside it now—deep down below the surface?"

"So deep that even the echographs of your Federation's exploration parties did not find us. Here, for a million years, we have built our civilization." A new glint came to the woman's violet eyes, a note of excitement to her voice. "The things we have done, Shane! The incredible things! You will never believe them until you see them. We have conquered time and space and matter—"

"And the child is dead," Shane said.

"The child—" Kyrsis broke off, and a shadow crossed her face. "Yes, the child is dead."

Unspeaking, the Earthman waited. His temple veins no longer throbbed, but his jaw was hewn of granite.

Kyrsis said: "There are so many things your childish science knows that are not true—and one of them is the nature of life."

Shane studied her, narrow-eyed. "So? In what way?"

"You think that life comes into being when certain conditions are correct. But we know otherwise."

"I hear only words, not meaning," Shane clipped coldly.

"Of course. Because the whole pattern of your thinking is based on false assumptions." The silver woman groped for words. "The thing I seek to say, too simply, is that life is not a creature of conditions. It is an entity, a basic element, a product of the whole great cosmic process of creation. Either it exists in a place, or it does not." She shrugged. "Your solar system has it."

"And Gadar—?"

"Gadar had it once, ten million years ago. But life is like any other resource. You use it up. It dissipates and scatters, transmuted into useless forms by a process that not even our science can reverse." Her voice fell. "Then, Shane, your planet dies."

Shane stared at her. "So you bought slaves—"

"Of course we bought slaves!" A note of hysteria crept into the silver woman's laugh. "Power, you talked about. Why would anyone buy slaves in a universe where power is free? What we sought was life—life in a form we could drink up, before our bodies finally died!" She came close to Shane, her pale face smooth and glowing, the violet eyes afire. "Look at me, Earthman! Look closely! How old would you guess me? How many of your Earth years?"

Shane did not speak.

"A hundred years, Earthman? A thousand? Ten thousand? A hundred thousand?" Again she laughed—wildly, up and down the scale. And then, steady once more: "Shane, I first drew breath a million years ago! Our science has kept me as I am—young in body and mind and heart. But without new life—without the living slaves we buy—I would wither and die in months. This child,"—and she gestured to the limp, dead body of the Chonya girl—"what did she know of life? What did she care? I played with her, and comforted her, and she was happy; and then I sucked the life out of her body, and you hate me for it. But was it so wicked, really? Was it not better that I should live, I who have learned to love life through a million endless year, than she, who would have wasted that life and thrown it away in some dull corner of the asteroid belt?"

Shane shifted; stared down at the dead child for a long, long moment, then back at the woman again.

"You are thinking, 'Is there no other way?'" Kyrsis whispered. Her pale hand touched the Earthman's arm. "I tell you, Shane: there is none. How many years have our scientists sought it? How many eons of spatial time? But always, the answer is no. We must have life itself—humanoid life, like that of this girl here. No other can be transmuted to our bodies."

"If life is an element, as you say, a thing that wells up with creation, out of the birth of a planet, then you could have moved to another planet," Shane said in a dull, flat voice. "If life is gone from Gadar, then you could have migrated, picked a new home."

"It sounds so easy, does it not?" the silver woman taunted. "But where life exists, there life forms evolve. We could have taken such a planet only by conquest. Would your worlds have liked that, Shane? Would they have been willing to see us come in and seize their homelands? You fought out of pride, for the belt the Chonya chieftains gave you. Would the worlds of your system do less if we tried to invade them?"

Shane stood mute.

Kyrsis' arm slipped about him. The rich purple lips came close to his. "Come with us, Shane! Join us!" she whispered. "For a million aching years I have sought a man like you. Do not leave me, now that I've found you...."

A weakness crept through Shane's body.

With a tremendous, savage effort, he hurled the silver woman from him.

"You'd steal my life as Quos Reggar stole my belt!" he shouted. Stark murder was in his eyes.

"No, Shane—! No!"

"Words!" the Earthman lashed fiercely. "Words, to lull me as you lulled that Chonya child!" He caught Kyrsis' arm, dragged her up from the place where she had fallen. "You talk of life as if you, your people, were the only ones who knew the way to live it. But life belongs to each man, alone—his precious own, to waste or hoard as he sees fit—"

The woman asked: "And what will you do, now that you have decided?"

"Decided—?"

The look she threw him was a study in contempt. "I can see it in your eyes, Earthman. For a moment you hung, unsure, caught up by the vision of the wealth and power that might be yours; of me at your side, and endless years for us together. But then it dawned upon you of a sudden that I might suck your life out, as we suck those of the other slaves we take, though such was not my plan. The thought brought fear, and in the same instant you became the great Gar Shane, who would strike down Gadar and save your solar system." She laughed, and the sound was chill as outer space. "You are as much a child as that dead lump there beside you. Do you think to pit yourself against my people—scientists who could plot your every thought ten million years before your birth? You are but a fool, and you will die as all the others have died, and Quos Reggar will wear your belt and serve us!"

"There comes a time for every man to die," Shane said. "If this is mine, I'll face it." He picked a heavy, club-like, metal ornament from a table, and his face had the rugged lines of carven stone. "We go now, Kyrsis. And if I can die—remember, so can you!"

"But where—?"

Shane bared his teeth in a death's-head grin. "To your ramps, Shi Kyrsis. Even slavers carry a fleet alarm."

"A fleet alarm—?"

"When a space ship wallows through the void, out of control, a crewman throws the switch on the fleet alarm box. It sends out a distress call on a Federation beam—a call so strong that it can reach to the farthest star."

"And then—?"

"The fleet command sends aid." The Earthman laughed thinly. "They send a patrol most often, or even a single ship. But when they get a call straight out of the core of Gadar, they'll waste no time on mere patrols or squadrons. There'll be a fleet, the whole great Federation fleet, sweeping down upon your planet."

"Indeed?" the woman mocked. "So your Federation's fleet will come. What can they do to us, burrowed here deep within the solid rock of Gadar? And we have weapons, Earthman—weapons the like of which you've never seen."

"Then roll them out," Shane said. "This will be your chance to use them." He pushed her through the doorway; on past the other rooms and out into the car.

She asked, "What can you do if I will not aid you?"

Shane shrugged. "I'd have no choice but to go my way alone, I suppose ..."—and then, sinking in the barb with a savage twist—"after I'd beaten your brains out, killed you so dead that not even your people's science could ever put you back together!"

They traveled through endless miles of tube-like passage, after that, but always climbing ever upward—the silver woman sitting at the controls, Shane watching, hawk-like, alert in every nerve and fiber, the heavy club gripped ready in his hand.

Then, finally, they reached a place where great volcanic pipes led upward, and slaver space ships towered base-down, ramped and ready.

There was a guard, a silver guard, who said, "It is forbidden to go farther."

"Of course," Shane said—and smiled and struck him down.

"Must I go further?" Kyrsis asked. Panic was in her voice.

"Much further," Shane replied. Again he threw her the death's-head grin. "Life is a sacred thing, you've said, and I am a fool—fool enough, at least, to think it should be true for my Chonyas, as well as your people. So drive on—out along the ramp to where Quos Reggar's own great ship is waiting!"

"Not Reggar's own ship—!" The silver woman's lips were trembling. "Earthman, he may be on board now. He brought me back to Gadar with him, and—"

"—and if he's here, so much the better!" The recklessness was back in Shane's stance now. The blue eyes gleamed a chill excitement. "Why do you think I seek his ship, except to find him? He is the key to this bath of blood; were it not for him and his kind, your people might have been hard-put to implement their plans for slaughter. Fool that I am, lacking your skill and science, I've a feeling that if I can cut Quos Reggar's throat, I'll have traveled far towards choking off this madness!" He lifted his club. "Drive on, Shi Kyrsis! Quickly, before the vision of that dead Chonya child again seeps through me!"

Trembling, the silver woman worked at the controls. The car went racing down the ramp to where Quos Reggar's ship stood waiting.

"Inside!" Shane said. "Keep close before me!"

They clambered aboard the slaver, tight with tension. But there was no sign of life. Reggar's own quarters lay deserted.

"The control room, then," the Earthman said tightly.

In silence, they climbed the long steel ladder.

A lone Pervod sat in the control room, rewiring a panel. He looked up, saw Kyrsis already in the doorway. Lust touched his sly reptilian face. "Ho, woman—!"

Shane smashed his skull.

And there was the black metal cube that was the fleet alarm box.

"You spoke of weapons, Kyrsis?" Shane said bleakly. "Now is the time, then. Roll them out!"

He threw the switch.

CHAPTER XII

They were coming now—a horde of great silver ships that lanced through the void like streaks of light, hurtling down on Gadar. The slim, sleek Chonya craft were with them, too ... the dull black Malya flyers; and Shane knew that his other calls had gotten through—that the worlds and the asteroids were uniting against slavery and death and chaos.

A siren blasted shrill alarm. Quos Reggar's renegades swarmed onto the ramp, racing for their ships to take up the challenge.

The light of battle shone in Shane's blue eyes. The reckless laugh rose in his throat. With a jerk, he levered the slaver flagship's great hatches shut. His thumb rammed home the contact button for the interlacing belts of proton cannon that girded the craft.

The exploding flame of pronic blasts erupted across the short-range visiscreen's whole viewer—searing the outlaws from the ramp, smashing the slaver ships off their bases, turning the great volcanic pits to a holocaust of flaming ruin.

And Shane the Earthman, gar of the Chonyas, high lord of the asteroids, laughed his wild, bold, reckless laugh and jammed the contact button home again ... again ... again....

But now a voice came through the amplifier—Quos Reggar's voice, shaking with rage and hate and fury: "Though it costs me my own ship, I'll blast you, chitza! You'll sear as my men have seared—"

Shane flicked the switch. "Blast, then, Reggar! Blast—but you'll blast the Lady Kyrsis with me!"

Beside him, Kyrsis screamed, "No Reggar! Not that—not that! The meteors—"

Shane snapped the switch. "The meteors—?"

The silver woman's poise was gone. She shook her fist, and the glittering metallic hair came tumbling down about her shoulders. "You'll see, Earthman! You'll see! We have weapons such as you've never dreamed of—"

Shane's eyes flicked back to the long-range visiscreen—to the silver fleet that raced towards Gadar. It was closer now ... so close he could see the fore-jets opening for the landing.

Only then, abruptly, the fleet was swerving—swinging wide in wild, irregular maneuver.

And then the meteors came—bright balls of flame in swirling clouds and clusters, with cores of stone and molten iron; flashing across the screen in the path of the Federation fleet ... hurtling through space in a murderous barrage.

And one ship swerved too late, and a great orange-and-purple monster crashed into it with a burst of fire and sparking shards.

"You talk of power, Earthman?" Kyrsis raged shrilly. "You brag of your Federation's broadcast system? Then look at this, and know what power really means! We have tapped a source of energy so great it makes all others puny—a source your science left untouched, though it lies within your solar system! But we have harnessed that force. We have concentrated it into great controlled magnetic fields that we can shift at will, so strong they pull the very meteors from their courses and hurl them to the place that we desire them!"

Shane rocked, and shock was suddenly written on his lean, hard face. Wordless, he stared into the screen.

"And there is more, Gar Shane—much more!" the woman cried. Swiftly, she stepped to the screen and twirled the dials. "There was a plan we drew for such a time as this—a plan to smash barbarian worlds to dust and ashes. We'll hurl the meteor swarms down on their cities, clouds of them so huge they'll cut through any atmospheric layer." She whirled. "Here, see your homeland, Earth! It will be the first to go! Already, the field is concentrating, forming—drawing in the meteor clouds out of the void—"

The viewer on the long-range screen was clearing. And there was Earth, Shane's native planet, a great, green-glowing arc in the lower corner. A lone space ship was rising in the foreground, speeding out into the void. But already, about it, were meteor clusters ... gathering swarms that grew with every passing minute.

"You see, Gar Shane? The people of your Earth are doomed!" the silver woman jeered in paranoiac frenzy. "There is no hope, no way to save them! The other planets, too, will go, till at last there is no one left but we of Gadar. Then we shall migrate out of this dark star, into your worlds, where life is not yet spent and faded. My people's strength will rise anew—"

Bleakly, Shane stared into the screen, through a moment that lasted all eternity.

Then, in one explosive motion, he snatched the space-phones from their rack. His voice crackled out into the void: "Chonyas ... Chonyas ... Shane, your gar, is calling—"

And taut-drawn Chonya words came back: "We stand by for your orders—"

"I want a ship," Shane answered tightly, "a single fast Chonya ship, equipped with Abaquist repellers, to try to break through the meteor swarm and come down to Gadar to me on the fleet alarm beam."

"We come, Gar Shane—"

Even with the words, a slim, sleek craft was breaking from the milling fleet, swerving through the sky in a monstrous arc.

Then it was coming round again—striking its course, plunging down on Gadar. Straight into the blazing meteor swarm it sped, and even on the screen Shane could see it tossing—careening, staggering, lurching with shock.

And then it was through the swarm and out again. Its hull was ripped, its hatches battered, but still it plummeted down towards Gadar.

Kyrsis cried: "Now I know you are truly mad, not just a fool, if you think you can fight both my people and Quos Reggar here on Gadar with the crew of a single ship!"

Shane said: "We're leaving now," and levered back the hatches. Again he fired a burst from the proton cannon to clear the way ... saw the shaft's walls vibrate with its violence.

The Chonya ship hurtled down the huge volcanic pipe like a shooting star. Barely in time, it braked and based upon the ramp.

Before she could read his thoughts, Shane snatched up Kyrsis bodily and raced through the smouldering pronic rubble to the Chonya craft.

"Blast!" he shouted, and swung aboard; and almost before the hatches were shut, the ship was in the air again, lancing up into the sky.

The commander said: "Where now, Gar Shane? What are your orders?"

The Earthman laughed harshly. "Send out the word to break the Federation fleet into squadrons, each to stay far from the others, and all to strike at Gadar. We'll see how many meteor swarms our friends down there can muster!"

"And the rest of us—the Malyas, Chonyas—?"

"You'll follow me," Shane said. He took the jet-globe. "I'll set the course."

Kyrsis' eyes were like great violet flames. "Pay him no heed, Chonya!" she cried hoarsely. "Kill him! Lock him away! He is of Earth, and he has gone mad with fear for his homeland! He takes you there to try to battle another, greater meteor swarm! It will be the death of all of you!"

The Chonya glanced curiously at her in her disarray, then looked into the visiscreen, the jet-globe. "A Chonya holds no fear of death, Silver One," he observed, iron-steady. "Besides, our course is set for Jupiter, not Earth."

"Jupiter—!" the woman cried, and now a new note of panic was in her voice. She clutched Shane's arm. "Why Jupiter, Earthman? Why?"

"Not Jupiter, Kyrsis, but one of Jupiter's moons," Shane answered thinly. "You see? There it lies in the visiscreen."

"Jupiter V—!" the silver woman whispered. "No, Shane! No—!"

"Yes, Kyrsis!" the Earthman came back coldly. "Jupiter V, the place where Reggar held me prisoner. And the satellite closest to the planet, a satellite heaped twelve levels deep with power converters."

"No, no—"

Relentlessly, Shane hammered on: "Who was it wanted all that power? Who built that great Paulsini unit? Not any slaver, surely! No, that took skill and science and years of work. And when it was done, your people had more power than the world had ever known—power drawn from the endless seas of energy of Jupiter's great Red Spot, the heat of oceans of flaming hydrogen, the force that lies congealed in gases held under such pressures that they turn to solids, all turned somehow to your use by those new converters that I saw there."

The silver woman looked at him. A little of the wildness left her eyes, replaced by something that might have been cunning. Her voice came down to its former liquid murmur. "And what will you do when you get to this moon, Earthman? Will it bring back the cities of your native planet?"

"Say what you mean," Shane came back tightly.

"Perhaps Earth could be spared—for your aid against the other worlds of the Federation."

Shane's eyes blazed. "You do think me a fool, Shi Kyrsis! After all that has gone, can you believe I would trust you?"

"It is a chance you must take, if you would save Earth's cities."

Strain showed in Shane's voice, his face. But his jaw stayed hard, his blue eyes steady. "If Earth must go, then go it will, Shi Kyrsis. For all I know, the meteors may this moment be hurtling down. But even if they are, and though it costs me my life and my homeland, I'll still take the chance in order to break your life-sucking people's power."

"But you cannot destroy that power—"

The Chonya commander broke in: "More meteors, Gar! They gather between us and the satellite!"

And Kyrsis jeered. "You see, Earthman? You have lost already!"

Shane said to the Chonya: "We're going through."

"Through the swarm?" The commander's face lost a little of its color, but his voice stayed firm. He picked up his space-phones. "I shall give the order."

"We're going through," Shane repeated grimly, "and some of us—those who have repellers—may get there. There will not be many, but only a handful of workers can be on that moon, with Reggar's crew withdrawn, so even a few ships will be enough."

"Yes, Gar," the Chonya nodded coolly. He spoke into the space-phones, gave the order.

The ship lanced into the swarm.

There was a nightmare quality to those endless moments. Space was suddenly ablaze about them with a thousand screaming lights that slashed at them from all directions. Off to the right, a great ball of fire appeared from nowhere and blotted out a ship. A streak of flame speared through another, and it exploded in mid-flight.

And still they drove on through the tempest, tossed and jostled, beaten, butchered.

An alarm bell clanged fiercely.

"A rip in the hull, upper port," the Chonya reported grimly.

Jupiter V was very large in the screens now. It loomed like a monstrous metal ball, glistening with the hood of structure that encased it.

"The swarm is following us now," the commander said. "It moves with us, traveling even faster than are we." His lips twisted wryly. "Their control is getting better all the time."

Shane stared into the visiscreen. It was as if the satellite were hurtling up to meet them. The exploding speed of it made the screen seem almost to whirl.

And still the meteors swarmed and blazed around them.

"Thirty seconds more," the Chonya said. "We must brake by then, or crash instead of ramp."

Jupiter V now extended past the edges of the screen. They could see but a segment of it—a segment that raced ever upward, ever towards them, dividing into a thousand and finer details every second.

"Twenty seconds," the Chonya reported.

The meteor swarm seemed to close in about them—tighter, tighter.

"Fifteen seconds."

The meteors' light was stunning, blinding.

Shane's teeth were clenched, his lips parted, his eyes glued tight to the viewer of the visiscreen. The muscles stood out along his neck. The tension about him was a living thing.

"Ten seconds."

A sort of paralysis seemed to grip the Earthman. He stood frozen, still staring like one in a trance.

The ribs in the satellite's casing stood out, now—the ports, the vents.

The meteors seemed to have grown to blazing suns.

"Five seconds."

Shane's paralysis broke. He snatched the phones, and of a sudden his eyes were blazing like the nightmare scene beyond their hull. "Veer!" he shouted. "Don't land! Veer—!"

The Chonya commander's hand struck the jet-globe with a crack like a whip. It spun till it sang, racing round and round.

The ship swung out in a wild gyration. Reeling, slashing crazily across the moon's perimeter, it hurtled off through space.

Behind them, the other ships, too, were peeling clear.

But not the meteor swarm. Down it plunged, down, in the course the ships had followed, straight at the hundred-mile ball that was Jupiter V.

"They'll crash—!" the Chonya cried, and jubilation was in his voice. "They did not know we were so close! Now it's too late to turn them!"

The explosive flash of the meteors bursting through the satellite's casing came like an exclamation point. Great cracks appeared—monstrous fissures, spewing flame.

And still more meteors hurtled down—the whole, vast, captive swarm. The planetoid's casing glowed red-hot, then white, till the moon was a fiery, radiant sphere.

Then suddenly, it seemed to shiver. A gigantic explosion ripped one side, sent the planetoid spinning over. A huge, wedge-shaped chunk tore loose and blasted off through space; then another ... another.

Without a word, the commander of the Chonya craft picked up the manual on interspatial navigation, riffled through to the page on Jupiter V. Tore it out, crumpled it, dropped it to the floor.

Shane threw him a grim, tight grin and said: "There's still work, back on Gadar."

The Chonya spun the jet-globe; focussed the visicreen on the dark star.

Even as the image drew sharp and clear, a ship shot out of one of the great volcanic pipes that served as the planet's ramping spots.

Shane's face went dark again. "That's Reggar's ship. Where is he going?"

And then, beside him, Kyrsis said, "Oh, no—!"

Shane turned at the sheer, stark panic in her voice.

Her face showed even more.

The Earthman looked back to the visiscreen again; and this time he, too, rocked under the impact of the thing that was happening.

Gadar was moving from its orbit!

Faster it went, and faster, slashing a course towards outer space. The ships of the Federation fleet raced madly from its path.

"No—!" Shi Kyrsis cried again. "No, they must not leave me!" Her face was working now, contorted. The silvery tones seemed duller, more like lead.

In an awe-struck voice Shane said: "This is the way they must have come! It was no cosmic accident! They hurled their own planet across the void—"

"No, no!" the silver woman shrieked, and the wild hysteria in her tones was giving way to madness. "They can't, they can't! I must go with them—!" Her twitching face was no longer human.

Then, before anyone could stop her, she turned and ran—out of the door, away from the control room.

But outside the room there was no place to run ... only an echoing, well-like shaft that dropped away a hundred feet through the vitals of the ship, its depths linked only by a steel-runged ladder.

Unseeing, unheeding, the silver woman plunged over the brink and plummeted downward. Her scream rose and fell in the banshee wail of a soul in torment.

It ended with a sound like the bursting of an air-filled paper bag a room or two away.

The Chonya sucked in air. He let it out with a sound that might have been pity.

White-lipped, Shane said: "There was a Chonya child, a little girl...." Abruptly, he turned away and spun the jet-globe.

The ship's commander frowned. "I do not understand, Gar Shane."

The Earthman's eyes stayed on the visiscreen. He said: "My road still lies before me. It leads to Quos Reggar, and my great iron belt, and Talu, the Malyalara."

CHAPTER XIII

They picked up the trail in the asteroid belt, in the wreckage of a gutted town. It led to Horla, then, and from there to the burning sands of Mercury's barren wastes, and then back out to the moons of Saturn. But always Reggar was a jump ahead, and always there was blood and death and pillage.

Once, on Juno, Shane thought he had him. But Reggar blasted off as the Earthman ramped in, and they lost the trail in the outer asteroids.

And then, one night, Shane came to Titan.

As always, there was desolation. As always, the great slaveship was gone. And a weeping bartok woman shook her fist at Shane and cried, "So now you come! But they have killed my man. My children starve, and I am left to care for Reggar's cursed, dying Malyalara—"

Shane turned on her, "A Malyalara—? Quos Reggar's Malyalara?"

An emotion that might have been fear flickered in the woman's eyes, and she would have fled had Shane not caught her arm. "Please, Earthman—!" she pleaded piteously. "My man is still warm in his grave. I say strange things—senseless, without meaning. Please let me go—" And when Shane released her, she scurried off through the rubble like a frightened mouse and disappeared in the ruins of a broken building.

But Shane followed her—cautious, cat-footed; through alleys and shadows and tumbled wreckage; till finally she went into one of the ancient, conical, loaf-like hovels in the oldest part of the native city.

For ten long minutes the Earthman watched and waited. Then, half-angrily, he rose from the place where he lay hidden, and slapped the gun slung at his hip, and strode to the door through which the woman had gone. His knock echoed.

After a moment the woman opened the door a crack. When she saw who it was, her eyes went wide, and she tried to force the door back shut.

But Shane put his weight against it and held it open, and said, "I want to see your house, bartok."

"No, no—!" the woman panted.

"I must," Shane said. As gently as he could, he pushed her aside, and stepped into the room.

And there was Quos Reggar.

The giant mongrel stood in the corner, behind the door through which Shane had entered. A light-pistol gleamed in one webbed hand, and the great lobed eyes were hot with hate.

And about the creature's waist still was drawn the iron-linked belt—Shane's Chonya belt, the belt of the asteroids.

"Welcome, Earthman!" the mongrel rasped, just as on the other night that now seemed so far away, so long ago. "Welcome to death!"

Shane froze in his tracks—statue-like, taut-muscled. His eyes alone moved ... gauging Quos Reggar, measuring the distance, weighing the light-gun against his own draw.

And the mongrel saw the things in the cold blue eyes—the death, the decision; and he snapped sharply, "No, chitza! Wait—!"

"Why?" clipped the Earthman. "Why put it off?" And there was recklessness in his voice; a fierce exaltation.

"Because it may be you need not die!" the mongrel came back swiftly. "Because there are things you do not know—things that still may save your life and make it worth living."

Shane still stood taut, motionless, waiting. He did not answer.

"I thought you would come to Talu's name," the hybrid told him, and now the creature's tone held a gloating note. "I planned it well—and you, fool that you are, came to the trap as on wings of fire."

"Get on with it!" Shane slashed harshly. "We both know what is between us. Why waste this time?"

"The time is not wasted," Reggar answered. "Your coming here as you did proves something ... a fine point on which much may hang, for you as well as me."

Shane bared his teeth. His left hand moved in a savage, contemptuous gesture. "Get on with it!" he slashed again. "What is it you seek to say?"

A sly smile of sorts came to Reggar's lips. He called: "Talu—"

"Here, Sha Reggar." She stepped through the doorway, lithely graceful as always, garbed in a ban-dong of scarlet and gold. A gold clip held the midnight hair, and a gleaming fire-ruby of Neptune hung by a golden chain in the hollow of her throat.

Her eyes met the Earthman's, poised and calm. "Sha Shane...."

A touch of color came to Shane's lean face. Quickly, he looked away, back to Quos Reggar.

But a ghoulish grin twisted the mongrel's lips. "Why stare at me, Earthman? Look at her, look at her! Is she not lovely?"

Shane's eyes did not waver. "I'm listening, Reggar," he answered tightly.

The hybrid chuckled. "You came quickly, Earthman ... so quickly, when you heard mention of this woman. You threw caution to the winds and came alone, in spite of all sense and judgment."

"So—?"

"So I knew there is a feeling between you and this Malyalara—a thing without logic, beyond your judgment, perhaps what you humanoids call love."

The color heightened in the Earthman's face. "You're mad as a ban, Reggar!" he challenged angrily.

"I think not," leered the mongrel. "And it is good. Because you shall have the woman—untouched, too, Earthman, for I am not as your race, and she could never catch my fancy, save as a pretty toy."

"And the price, Reggar?" Shane queried tightly. "What must I do to earn such favor?"

The creature before him shrugged. "I need not feign you have not hurt me. For you have. You and your Chonyas have harried me through the void, and up and down among the planets. You've tracked me down as the zanth tracks down its prey. But now, I tire of being hunted. My crew is weary and sick, and the hull of my ship is worn to cracking. So I have stayed behind this time to strike a bargain with you, if I can."

"A bargain?" The Earthman laughed harshly. "When was your word ever worth a xi, that I should take it now?" His eyes narrowed, and he studied the other. "Besides, what bargain could I make? The Federation hunts you also."

"The Federation?" Reggar sneered. "Loot will always buy someone in the Federation. But you—you fight from hate; and that is different."

"Then why haggle with me? Why not kill me now, if indeed you fear me?"

"Why does anyone bargain?" Again the mongrel shrugged. "Because you have something I want and need—something I cannot get without your aid."

"Well? What is it?"

Thoughtfully, the great lobed eyes surveyed the Earthman. The rasping voice sank lower. "It is sanctuary, Gar Shane. That is what I seek ... a place in the asteroids to hide, away from the eyes of the Federation. As for you, you need not even call off your war against me. Not openly; you will merely manage never quite to find me."

The Earthman frowned. He looked away—to Talu, still standing in the open doorway; to the woman who'd lured him here, mousy and frightened in the farthest corner; to the tawdry room and its tawdrier trimmings.

Then, at last, his eyes moved back to Reggar. In a tone of wonderment, he asked, "Did you really think that I might do it?—That I might break the oath I swore; betray the trust the Chonyas gave me with their great iron belt?"

Almost silkily, Reggar murmured: "Before you refuse, there are things you should consider."

The cloak of control fell away from Shane. His blue eyes blazed. His jaw was hard. "I swore my oath on the star-stone of Hiaroloch, Reggar," he slashed harshly. "There's nothing in this world or any other that will make me break it." And then, with savage force: "Get on with your killing, butcher—and make sure your first beam hits me true, for it will be your last!"

The mottlings stood out on Reggar's scaly face. The light-gun thrust forward, and muscles stood out along the webbed hand's bones. "Perhaps there is a thing you have forgotten, chitza!" he snarled. "Perhaps you do not recall—the theol!"

"The theol—?" And though the words came out as a question, already the color was draining from the Earthman's face.

"Yes, the theol, starbo—and you know what I mean, for the fear is crawling through your eyes like the worms of Thora! Two doses you've had. A third will make you my slave forever!"

The muscles in Shane's neck knotted. His head came forward just a fraction. "Wrong, Reggar!" he clipped. "To make me stand and take the theol, the fear of death must be in me even stronger. And that dread I do not have. I'll fight—here, now! So the choice is yours, not mine! You must kill me, or die yourself—"

"Wait, Shane—!" cried the mongrel. "There is more! There is the woman—the Malyalara!"

Shane went rigid.

"I can kill you," rasped Reggar. "Have no doubt about it. My gun is out, and yours is still holstered. But let me tell you this: if I do, Talu is the one who shall suffer! I'll sell her in the brothels of Uranus! The great, hairy beasts there shall have this woman of yours—and she will be a long time dying...."

Shane's lips drained white. His face grew grey. Of a sudden his hands were shaking.

"Is it not a pretty picture, Shane?" the creature before him gloated. "You dead—the Malyalara sold for the sport of the beasts there on Uranus—and all because you would not stretch your oath even a little—?"

"Damn you, Reggar!" the Earthman whispered. "Damn you, damn you, damn you—"

"Then it is agreed?" the mongrel cried, in a voice alive with hideous glee. "You will promise me sanctuary, somewhere in the asteroids? You'll pledge your sworn word to hide me and shield me and give me aid?"

"Reggar—" The veins were throbbing in the Earthman's temples.

Only then Talu cried out, "No, Shane! No—!" She rushed forward, hurled her lithe body straight at Quos Reggar. "I would rather die than see you yield! You know the things this monster has done to the Malyas, the Chonyas! Kill him, kill him—!"

A roar of rage burst from the mongrel. His clubbed light-gun slashed down at the woman's bare breasts, trying to drive her off.

Shane leaped like a tiger. He clawed at the hybrid's pistol; wrenched it back—away from Talu's supple body, hard against his own.

Twisting and snarling, Reggar crushed down the exciter.

A faint, misty spray spurted from the muzzle, straight into Shane's throat.

But now Shane's own gun was out. Purple light slashed like a sword at the mongrel's belly.

Reggar reeled back. He smashed a wild blow to Shane's head, sent the Earthman crashing to the floor. Again Shane fired.

Reggar's mottled face went black under the beam. An awful scream rose in his throat. He tottered ... lurched ... fell.

Talu was with Shane, then—clutching him to her, the dark face all anguish. "Shane, Shane...."

Dazedly, the Earthman muttered, "The light-gun ... what happened to his light-gun? He triggered it straight into my throat—"

With an effort, he rolled to the weapon; broke it open.

The ray mechanism was gone. A hypodermic injector had been inserted in its place.

Shane's hand clutched his throat.

There was still a trace of moisture there ... clear, colorless moisture.

Talu whispered: "Shane, let me hold you—"

Shaking, he forced her away. His voice quaked: "No, Malyalara. No! Get away from me—now, while you have the chance—"

"Shane, what is it—?"

Numbly, he showed her the gun. "An injector—with theol. It makes three doses. In the end, Reggar wins. The madness will come upon me—"

"No, Shane—" She would have embraced him.

"Get away!" he shouted fiercely. "Don't you understand? This was the third dose—the dose that brings madness. And there is no cure—"

His face was a mask—all despair, and all fury.

She laughed, gently, then—warm, comprehending. There was no panic in her face, her voice. "No, Shane," she told him. "There will be no madness."

He stared at her blankly. "It is theol—"

"Yes, it is theol. But not the third dose."

"Not the third—?" His tongue stumbled.

"No, Shane. Because before the third, there must be a second, and I gave you what Reggar thought was the second that night back at Horla. But he left me alone for a moment with the injector, and I replaced the theol with another solution—without color, but harmless."

A choking sound rose in the Earthman's throat. His trembling hands touched her—smoothed her hair, brushed her shoulder.

She came to him—smiling, lips warm with welcome. And suddenly their bodies were together, tight-welded, and he was whispering feverishly, "Talu ... Talu...."

And when at last they parted, she said, "I am yours, Earthman ... yours now and forever. But you still have a role to play, your oath to uphold. You are gar of the Chonyas."

"And you will rule with me!" he answered her fiercely.

"Your belt, Earthman...."

"My belt ... the belt of the asteroids." Bending, he stripped the iron links from the corpse of Quos Reggar and girded it tight about his own waist once more. His eyes met Talu's. "Come, Malyalara...."

Together, they crossed the threshold, into the night and the stars.

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