Chapter VI

It was late the following day when a car, bearing the royal insignia, drew up before the shop and one of the Guards asked for "Khosan."

Ketrik was ready. He'd been waiting for this. As they drove toward the palace grounds the two Guards looked at him enviously.

"You have won great favor with the Emperor for last night's work," one of them said. "He wants personal audience with you! It would not surprise me if he made you Captain of Praana's own guard!"

"It is true you were not supposed to be on the streets at that hour," said the other. "But Dar Vaajo will overlook that, considering the circumstances."

Ketrik remembered that Praana was not supposed to be on the streets either, but he didn't voice the thought. They reached the electronic wall. One of the men gave the signal, and a section of it moved upward. Their car passed through.

At last he was inside the forbidden grounds! Ketrik remained outwardly humble, but he kept his eyes open. They went along a sweeping drive bordered by stately _majagua_ trees. They passed a few buildings, fronted by splendid lawns. Then the palace itself loomed ahead, a magnificent two-storied structure of dark _culchite_ marble.

But Ketrik had no eyes for it. To the left was a building equally imposing, and covering more area, which could only be the royal laboratories! It was undoubtedly from that building that the phenomenon had come the night before. He noticed the roof in particular, glass-covered, curving into a shallow dome. If Dar Vaajo favored him, he could get a position in there....

Then they were past the building and approaching the palace. The audio-tube near the driver's head crackled to life, and a voice came through. Ketrik couldn't hear the words. A startled look appeared on the Guard's face. "Are you sure?" he said. "My orders were--"

"These are new orders! Obey them!" Ketrik heard those words all right. The audio went dead. The driver wheeled the car around abruptly, headed away from the palace.

"Something wrong?" Ketrik asked.

"Plans have been changed. Dar Vaajo doesn't want to see you quite yet." The man's voice was grim.

Ketrik felt a sudden foreboding. "Where are you taking me, then?"

No answer. Ketrik glanced at the Guard sitting next to him. This man had gone grim too, as his hand rested lightly on the electro beneath his tunic. Ketrik couldn't guess what had gone wrong or why, but he knew he wasn't going to see Dar Vaajo under favorable circumstances. He went tight inside.

They stopped before a low stone building. The driver came around, opened the car door. "Out!" he ordered curtly.

Ketrik came out. He launched himself bodily, his fist smashing to the other's face and making a bloody smear of it. The man staggered back. The momentum carried Ketrik out of the car and to his knees. He heard the rush of the other Guard, whirled to meet it. Too late. He only saw the dark blur of the man's arm coming down in a swift arc, then heavy metal crashed behind his ear, leaving him stunned.

His muscles wouldn't pull him up. The blows came again ... more than once, heavy and accurate. He ploughed forward onto cold pavement as his mind blanked out.

* * * * *

He came again to consciousness, groaned as heavy pain hammered through his skull. Gradually his eyes focused upon the details of the room. There weren't many details. It was a small room, quite bare. The floor was stone but the walls seemed to be of thick _crystyte_. Dim lights filtered through. There was no entrance of any kind that he could see.

"So you are awake at last, Earthman. And none the worse for wear." The voice came from within the room. Ketrik raised his head, stared at the opposite wall, a section of which had taken on the silvery radiance of a tele-vise.

Imaged there were the features of Dar Vaajo. Ketrik recognized him immediately.

It was an elderly face, but smooth--with the color and toughness and texture of old leather. The lips were tight and purposeful, the cheek-bones bulged beneath crisp, graying hair. And the eyes ... they held Ketrik. They weren't old eyes. They were hard and bright as jewels. An indomitable light came up from the dark depths of them.

Dar Vaajo spoke again from the screen.

"As you see, I prefer to hold audience with you in this manner. You are a dangerous man. Yes, very dangerous, to have come so far. Through my Space Patrol. Past my Specials. Into the city and past the inner wall itself." The lips quirked a little. "Yes, I have determined everything about you. Your name is not Khosan, but George Ketrik--I have heard something of your exploits in the past. You are the spy sent here by the Earth Councillor, Mark Travers." Again he paused. "You are not surprised that I know all this?"

If he was surprised, Ketrik didn't show it in the slight shrug he gave. He knew the voice would go on.

"I have learned this," Vaajo said, "within the past few hours. You see--we, too, have a development of the Scanner Beam. This beam was trained upon you from the very moment you drove into the palace grounds. We learned your true identity and purpose."

Ketrik went dry inside. It would have to be that, the one thing he couldn't have foreseen! He spoke to the screen. "Very well, so I have lost. I suppose I can expect no reward for saving the Princess."

Something showed in the dark depths of Vaajo's eyes. Amusement? But he spoke thoughtfully. "Very well, you shall have your reward. I think I will send you back to Mark Travers--in a most unique way!"

Quite suddenly then, Ketrik knew. He knew the reason for the beam he had seen launched into space, and almost he grasped the principle of it. He felt his insides twisting up into cold, hard knots. But he managed to say, "You mean--that just a part of me will go."

Vaajo chuckled. "So. You saw last night's display, felt a taste of it perhaps, and you have guessed. Yes, your surmise is correct! We utilize the Rajec caravans. Two hundred yesterday, and fine specimens they were! But they are now mere walking hulks, devoid of all but the most meager mental impulses. Their bodies will be sent north to work the Uranium pits. Their minds have already been absorbed into my--shall we say, weapon, increasing its potential considerably."

Ketrik's brain seemed to twist inside his skull, until he could not tell whether he felt horror or fury or both. He only knew he must keep control, learn more of this grisly thing that Vaajo was conducting with human minds.... He found his own voice, hard and dry, saying, "Yes, I saw it last night, felt it ... but still I cannot understand...." He passed a hand across his forehead in seeming bewilderment. He heard Vaajo saying, "It cannot matter now, for my beam reached Earth last night ... yes, it would please me to tell you something of it! You must have heard of the ancient city of M'Tonak, lying far beneath Mars' Polar Cap. And the sentient thought-force that came from outer space, or another dimension--no one ever knew--to land at M'Tonak where it remained for untold centuries. Through all that time the Entity remained barely alive, unknown to man, sustaining itself by sending out invisible radiations that fed on Martian minds! And you must have heard of the Earthman, Jim Landor, who found his way there and destroyed the Entity, leaving it crushed beneath tons of ice. All this was before your time or mine. Over a hundred years ago...."[3]

[Footnote 3: _City of the Living Flame_, Planet Stories, Fall, 1942.]

Ketrik nodded. He had heard the story many times.

* * * * *

Dar Vaajo went on. "The story of the thought-entity beneath our ice cap had always intrigued me," he said. "So several years ago I sent some workmen to uncover that ancient city. Yes, you have guessed. The Entity hadn't died! It remained there insentient but alive, frozen into suspended animation beneath miles of ice! It was then that I remembered the stories of its power, its insatiable appetite for the mental forces of man ... and thereupon I evolved my scheme. It has been dangerous, Ketrik, but I worked slowly and carefully.

"The first step was to waken it, which was easy. The second step was to keep it under control--not so easy. But I managed this by means of Uranium rays which seems to be the only thing capable of combating the Entity's own peculiar atomic structure. That was the reason for my Uranium embargo; I've had to increase the potential of these controlling rays as the Entity grew in size and power."

"You mean you ... _fed it_? Allowed it to _grow_?" Ketrik was aghast, listening to this cold-blooded recital.

"Of course! How else was I to reach Earth with it, across miles of space? That was my ultimate goal."

"But how? It must have taken a tremendous ... surely the Rajecs were not enough?"

Vaajo smiled blandly from the screen. "I told you I worked slowly. I began by communicating with it, telepathically. Yes! It's a highly intelligent entity, and it wishes to remain alive. It seems it came originally from a world _in another dimension bordering on ours_! It was the creation of a scientist on that world. The Entity became dangerous, threatened to get out of control, and could not be destroyed. The scientists rigged up a contra-dimensional device which hurled it out of that dimension. It landed quite by chance in ours--on Mars, near M'Tonak.

"So we made a sort of pact, the Entity and I. I wished it to grow in size and potential, but not at the sacrifice of my own people. I told it something of my plans. It, in turn, told me how to build a contra-dimensional machine by which to project it back into its own world! I managed this at last, adding a reverse control by which I could always bring it back.

"Fully a dozen times now it has crossed the dimensions. Whenever I brought it back, it had ... _fed_. You understand? It was satiating itself upon the populace of that other world! Until finally, it revealed to me that ... there was no more. The other-dimensional world was barren of sustenance!

"By this time, however, I was almost ready. It had grown tremendously in size and power. I always added more rays to keep it under control. Then I began testing for Earth, allowing it to reach out. Have you realized what a terrible weapon concentrated and projected thought can be? Several times it touched Earth spacers, absorbed the minds aboard them, and"-- Dar Vaajo shrugged--"I had to send my Patrollers out afterwards to destroy the spacers. But never were we quite able to reach Earth! It would take more potential, just a little more, and where was I to find it? Then I thought of the Rajecs. I made treaty with them, built the temple here to attract them ... I guess you know the rest."

Ketrik knew the rest, and more. He knew that Earth would have to capitulate to Vaajo's demands, or face destruction by a mind-destroying, mind-feeding Entity now capable of reaching across space. Venus would undoubtedly be next, leaving Dar Vaajo in control of the inner planets including the colonies recently established on Jupiter's moons.

"So, Ketrik, I shall send you back to Mark Travers," Dar Vaajo was saying. "Four days from now the orbits of our two planets reach their nearest juxtaposition. _Then_ is when the Entity shall reach out again for Earth, to give another sample of my power." Vaajo smiled maddeningly just before he caused the screen to blank out. "And isn't it ironic that you, or rather the mental part of you, shall be an infinitesimal part of it!"