Chapter VII

Tjadlinn was gigantic. It rotated on its central axis once every forty hours and completed a revolution about Jorger Sun once every eighty-five years. The orbit was like that of a comet; at perihelion its velocity approached seventy miles per second. Now it had begun its journey away from the sun, swinging out into the infinite blackness of the lonely void.

Grimly the Guardian Captain looked at his crewmen, sturdy big-planet men like himself. There were six of them. Glayne wondered how many would be left when they returned--if they ever did return. He looked at the girl and wondered if she would return. She smiled at him as the artificial planetoid loomed hugely over their tiny landing launch. He felt no regret that she was along--his mind ignored all such feelings of that nature now. Instead it was concentrated to the highest degree of receptivity, sorting and classifying the sense impressions that came to it.

The massive beralloy portals of the outer air-lock gaped open at them and the launch jetted inside. Then they closed with a thunderous _clang_ and the inner doors slid open in an oddly obsequious fashion. They were much less ponderous than the outer doors, Glayne noted. A moment later the launch came to rest and General Hoteh Ganser, Chief of Delban Intelligence, stalked out of the cabin followed by representatives of the Stellar Guardians, now allied with the Delban Empire.

There was a group of high-ranking Delban Army and Fleet officers awaiting them as they stepped from the launch. They bowed ceremoniously to Ganser, then to Glayne and his party as they were introduced. The Guardian smiled, he bowed, he clicked his heels solemnly--but all the time his hand was casually resting inside of the fold of his jumper on the Cardy gun there.

The only name Glayne remembered was that of the commander of Tjadlinn discoid: Admiral Selzi-Narfid, Right Royal Protector of the Emperor's Hunting Preserves. But he was not notable because of his absurd title; rather, it was the hint of amusement that Glayne fancied he saw flickering in the depths of his jet black eyes.

It was Selzi-Narfid who turned to Ganser and said: "I'm sure you must be weary after your arduous journey, Your Excellency. Won't you and Captain Glayne and his party partake of some refreshment?"

Glayne frowned. That was not so good. They could not afford to waste time eating and drinking because the message craft might bring the warning from Sterle II at any minute. Yet how could they refuse?

Evidently this same train of thought flashed through the conditioned intellect of General Ganser. For just an instant he paused before saying yes, they would be delighted.

Again Selzi-Narfid bowed and this time Glayne was positive he saw mockery in the Tjadlinn commander's eyes. Following him, they entered a large mono-car poised on its single, gleaming span by gyros. It started with a jolt, picked up speed, and was presently bulleting down the tunnel, the walls a blur on either side. To Glayne it almost seemed as if they were moving down hill.

"You will notice the gravity attraction increasing as we progress," began Selzi-Narfid. "That is because we are approaching the Jewel. It is considerably more comfortable in my quarters close to the center. On the periphery of the discoid one has almost no weight because of the distance from the Jewel.

"No one knows the exact mass of the Tane Jewel. Probably around two hundred million tons, it is thought. Naturally it is not safe to approach too closely--the inverse square law, you know. Within a few meters the attraction is so tremendous that we have great difficulty in anchoring the power drain machinery. But you will see for yourself in the Jewel Chamber."

The mono-car sighed to a halt and Selzi-Narfid ushered them graciously into a tapestried corridor. Glayne noticed that the gravity was just about Terran Standard. He also noticed that Selzi-Narfid, in spite of his flow of suave conversation, was worried. Suddenly a peculiar sensation of _wrongness_ flared up in Glayne's mind and he knew that his battle-trained, preternatural intuition was at work. His hand tightened on the Cardy and his eyes flickered everywhere but could discover nothing.

At the wide entrance stage the Admiral held back, gesturing for Ganser, Glayne, and the others to precede him. The small hairs on the back of Glayne's neck arose as they entered the luxurious suite of the Tjadlinn commander. Something was definitely very wrong.

* * * * *

Then sick dismay scalded up in the pit of his stomach. He saw what was wrong. It was Gort Bro-Doral who faced them, a Cardy gun in his hand.

Calmly the Delban Overlord fired at Ganser. The energy beam lashed into the pseudo-Guardian, making a big, ragged hole where his belly had been.

Glayne could do nothing more than stare helplessly. He did not even think to resist when the room filled with armed Delbans who went about the job of disarming them in a very silent and efficient fashion.

"Such a pity," remarked Gort Bro-Doral, glancing down at Ganser's charred and crumpled body. "Hoteh was my right hand, but the poor wretch was just too thorough. His own mind-conditioning device caught him in the end." He produced his sickly, explosive laugh and inclined his head to one of the armed Delbans. "Take it away," he murmured.

"How did you get here so quickly?" Glayne said, asking the question uppermost in his mind. He was bewildered to think of the incredible acceleration the low-gravity Delban must have undergone to have beaten the Guardian ship.

"Another of the wonders of the glorious Tane Jewel," replied Bro-Doral with amused condescension. "Theoretically it was always possible to project material bodies into sub-space directly from planetary mass in the same way that the immaterial waves of an interstellar telephone message are cast directly into sub-space. Heretofore, however, there has never been sufficient power to form a shield around the material object strong enough to prevent its being completely crushed by the brutal space warp in the presence of mass. That difficulty vanishes when one has the unlimited power of the Tane Jewel at his disposal."

Glayne understood. Ganser, who had meticulously avoided all technical knowledge, did not know this. Consequently they had walked straight into a trap. Glayne's shoulders sagged as he looked around, savouring the taste of defeat. Tough old Graysen stood at his side, impotently balling his fists. His carefully picked crewmen were behind him, arms above their heads. They looked grim and ready for anything. But Niala...

Glayne fought down the painful lump in his throat. It made no difference. They had the _Algol_, too. So it mattered not at all whether she came along or stayed behind, he told himself. They had only one thing to look forward to--and that would be unpleasant. Surreptitiously he touched the massive ring on his hand. It contained a single blaster charge. Shakily he resolved to use it on Niala when it came to that.

Bro-Doral whinnied. "I have your day planned for you, Captain," he said. "I have often been accused of lacking a sense of justice, but you will see for yourself that such a charge wrongs me. Your men will be executed as humanly as possible. You and the esteemed Graysen will be given a chance to witness the destruction of your ship. And then--" the Delban snickered, "--the Vibra-Death! The girl ... I'm not sure. Yes, it will take some thought. But you may be sure that it will be interesting."

Bro-Doral's sadism was too much for Glayne. With a snarl of animal hatred he leaped at the Delban Overlord, brushing aside his Cardy gun and reaching for his throat. The force of his lunge carried them back a few steps and the Bro tripped. Glayne, blazing with blind rage, lifted his foot to crush the Bro like a worm. At that instant a cold beam lanced into his back. Its icy fingers played along his spine and paralyzed him with numbness. Helplessly his arms fell to his sides and two of the armed Delbans came up behind him, supporting him to prevent his falling.

Gort Bro-Doral clambered up from the floor. His heavily-veined eyes were red with insane ferocity. He thrust his contorted face close to Glayne's own and said: "Guardian, you will now be extended another privilege. You will be permitted to see the girl writhing in the agonies of the Vibra-Death!"

Bro-Doral turned to one of his men. "Take those crewmen away--execute them," he said. "Keep the girl here under guard while I show the two officers around."

Glayne was horrified at the fruits of his unthinking attack on the Bro. It was almost as if he himself had pulled the switch which would subject Niala to the most infamous nerve torture ever devised. Dully he realized that he could not even lift his hand to administer a merciful death with the clean, fast energy beam of his ring.

"The paralysis will wear off in a minute or two, Captain," observed Bro-Doral. He had completely regained his self-control. "Since you have exerted so much useless effort to destroy our Tane Jewel, I think you ought at least be permitted to see it. But after that--" he sighed expressively, "--after that, we will procrastinate no longer."

Even before the effects of the cold-beam had worn off completely, Bro-Doral nodded to his men and they took him by the arms and escorted him from the room. In despair, Glayne tried to jerk his head around to see the girl. For the briefest of instants he saw her smiling bravely at him. Then his view was cut off by the door as the guards maneuvered his still half-paralyzed frame around it.

In a couple of moments Glayne was able to move under his own power. He turned to find Graysen staring anxiously at him, alert for the slightest command. Glayne nodded imperceptibly and examined the guards. There were six of them. He noticed wryly that they held cold-beam weapons in their long-fingered fists while the ones that really produced the fatal damage--the Cardys--hung in holsters at their sides. Trust them not to risk killing their prisoners when so many more delightful methods presented themselves, he thought bitterly.

* * * * *

As he and Graysen were led side-by-side down a maze of corridors, their weight gradually increased. Along with it was the sensation of going down hill. Glayne's mind operated rapidly and with cold precision but the Delbans showed not the slightest weakness. Not even the increase in gravity seemed to annoy them. Nevertheless, Glayne resolved, he would risk everything on a sudden attack when they got as close to the Jewel as possible. There the conditions would be ideal for him. With eyes narrowed, he tried desperately to remember the turns they had taken through the winding corridors of the beralloy discoid.

As they progressed Glayne saw the tough, all-metal walls were more heavily buttressed with the massive beralloy supports. Selzi-Narfid saw the direction of his glance and said, "Those were necessary when we maneuvered the Jewel into the center of the discoid. You have no idea of what such a tremendous mass in a body the size of the Jewel can do when it is not balanced."

Glayne listened to the Admiral with just a part of his mind. His main attention was devoted to photographing mentally the warren of passages. Here and there he saw groups of Delban technicians, none of them armed.

Good, thought Glayne.

They reached the entrance stage of the Jewel Chamber. The beralloy walls here were nearly a meter thick. In single file the party crawled through the narrow opening that dilated ponderously in the entrance stage. Two very weary-looking guards snapped to attention as they passed, but almost immediately slumped back into their somnolent positions, exhausted by their abnormally increased weight.

Better yet, thought Glayne.

"This is the Jewel Chamber, Captain. It is the very heart of Tjadlinn," puffed Selzi-Narfid after he had crawled through the dilated entrance stage.

Glayne stared about the vaulted room curiously. It was shaped like the inside of an oval, thick at the center but tapering off to nothing at the sides. They were standing on a balcony which was heavily buttressed and ran all the way around the Chamber past several other massive portals. In the exact center of the Chamber a kind of a nest was formed by the tremendously thick beralloy girders. Something burned there with a cold, golden brilliance that filtered through the interstices of the girders and etched them sharply in banded shadows about the heavy walls.

An uncanny sensation possessed Glayne as he gazed at the Jewel. A vague dread passed over him and he found himself wondering if the Elder Tane Gods would emerge from their crypt and wreak hideous vengeance on mere mortals for disturbing their sleep. Uneasily he crushed the fantasy that was rioting up in his mind and determined to look for something more practical.

He concentrated on the power drain machinery which hung in clusters from the massive girders. Obviously those mechanisms were far more delicate than their supports and could be sabotaged with comparatively little work. As he calculated he gradually became aware of Bro-Doral who was speaking:

"--were remarkable creatures. As you know, Tane legends exist in every part of the known galaxy. They even possessed immortality--but they lost it for all practical purposes when they failed to adjust their bodies to the expanding universe.

"While the universe expands, quanta emission frequencies remain constant. You are familiar, of course, with the shift in the wave length of the cadmium spectrum, taken over the centuries. Ages ago, emission frequencies were so long, relatively speaking, that energy liberation from protein organisms was impossible. That definitely rules out protein construction for the Tane--but just what they were composed of is unknown. At any rate, their bodies couldn't stand the shortened emission frequencies which overloaded their muscles. They exploded. Like a plague. Billions and billions of them must have died before they discovered the answer to the strange death that was striking among them. And billions more must have died before their marvelous science was able to build the Second Universe, as the legends call it."

Gort Bro-Doral gestured at the Jewel which shed its cold, brilliant light about the Chamber.

"They enclosed themselves in that tiny ovoid crypt you see there," he went on. "That was countless ages ago. Somehow they had managed to construct shields capable of withstanding the spatial expansion of the universe. Who knows--they may still live in their static crypt?

"As millions and millions of years passed, the Tane Jewel--the Second Universe, as the legends call it--slowly dwindled in size when considered in relation to our own universe. As it dwindled, its energy potential grew. Now its accumulated charge is so titanic that it defies conception.

"Some day those beautiful engines of the Tane Gods would have run down and the shield would have collapsed. Then our own universe would have been destroyed. The sudden release of such a vast energy potential would have caused a concussion which would literally warp our flat space into the fourth-dimensional sub-space.

"Now that can't happen. We are draining off that infinite potential and broadcasting it--flooding it--through sub-space to be received everywhere there is a Delban receiving antenna. The power is limitless. We Delbans will be the rulers of the universe just as the Tane Gods were of old. There is no limit to our power!"

Bro-Doral's eyes blazed with a pure lust for power as he stared exultantly at the green brilliance of the Tane Jewel. His mouth was slack and he breathed heavily from the effort of his speech. Selzi-Narfid, too, was tired. Wearily he rested against the support rail of the balcony. The guards blinked their large pop-eyes from fatigue, shuffling from one foot to another to promote circulation. Most of them had placed their weapons in holsters as Bro-Doral talked. That is, all except one. He still held his weapon loosely in his fingers at his side. Slowly and gently Glayne poised, gathering his strength.

"Isn't it beautiful, Glayne?" mused the Delban Overlord, staring into the tiny radiant sun. "An artifact of the mightiest culture that ever existed. Now we will carry on in their footsteps. We will be the mightiest--"