Chapter II: Part 2

He slipped sideways in Tebron's mind, and suddenly he was in the middle of the battle. There was dust all around, kicked up by the scuffling feet of the huge warriors, and his breath came in gasps. Mind-voices shouted and screamed but he paid no attention; he swung his bludgeon over his head with a ferocity that made it whistle with a low sound in the wind. One of the defenders broke through the line around him, and he brought the bludgeon smashing down at him before he could thrust with his sword; the warrior fell to one side at the last moment and took the blow along one arm. He could feel the pain in his own mind, but he ignored it. Before the warrior could bring up his sword again Tebron crushed his head with the bludgeon, and the scream of pain in his own head disappeared. He heard the grunting and gasps of his own warriors and the clash of bodies and weapons around him....

The Hirlaji could not really be moving so quickly, Rynason thought; it must be that to Tebron it seemed so. They were quiet, slow-moving creatures. Or had they degenerated physically through the centuries? Still smelling the sweat of battle, he found Tebron's mind again.

There was still fighting in the city, but it was far away now; he heard it with the back of his mind as he mounted the steps of the Temple. Those were mop-up operations, clearing the streets of the last of the priest-king forces; he was not needed there. He had, to all intents, controlled the city since the night before, and had slept in the palace itself. Now it was time for the Temple.

He mounted the heavy, steep steps slowly, three guards at his back and three in front of him. The priests would be gone from the Temple, but there might be one or two last-ditch defenders remaining, and they would be armed with the Weapons of Kor ... hand-weapons which shot dark beams that could disintegrate anything in their path. They would be dangerous. Well, there would be no temple-guards in the inner court; his own men could remain outside to take care of them while he went in.

He stopped halfway up the steps and lifted his head to gaze up at the Temple walls rising above him. They were solid stone, built in the fashion of the Old Ones ... smooth-faced except for the carvings above the entrance itself. They too were in the traditional style, copied exactly from the older buildings which had been built thousands of years ago, before the Hirlaji had even developed telepathy. The symbols of Kor ... so now at last he saw them.

Tomorrow he would effect a mass-linkage of minds and broadcast his orders for reconstruction. That would mean staying up all night preparing the communication, for it was impossible to maintain complete planet-wide linkage for too long and Tebron had many plans. Perhaps it would be possible to find a way to extend the duration of mass-linkages if the science quest could be pushed forward fast enough.

But that was tomorrow's problem--today, right now, it was right that he enter the Temple. It was not only symbolic of his assumption of power, but necessary religiously: every new ruler leader within the memory of the race had received sanction from Kor first.

A momentary echo-whisper of another mind touched his, and he whirled to his right to see one of the temple-guards in the shadows; he had been unable to successfully shield his thoughts. Tebron dropped to the ground and sent a quick, cool order to his own guards: "Kill him." The heavy, dark warriors stepped forward as the guard tried to shrink back further into the shadows. He was trapped.

But not unarmed. As he dropped to the steps and rolled quickly to one side Tebron heard the low vibration of a disintegrator beam pass over his shoulder and the crack of the wall behind him as it struck. And then the guards were on the warrior in the shadows.

They had brought down several of the temple-guards the night before, and commandeered their weapons. In a matter of moments this one fell too, his head and most of his trunk gone. One of the warriors shoved the half-carcass down the stairs, and bent forward at the knees to pick up his fallen weapon.

So now they had all fourteen of them; if any more of the temple-guards remained they could be dealt with easily. Tebron rose from the steps and wished momentarily that those weapons could be duplicated; if his whole army could be equipped with them.... But after today that would probably be unnecessary; the entire planet was his now.

He walked up the last few steps and stepped into the shadows of the Temple of Kor....

The walls melted around him and Rynason felt his mind wrenched painfully. There was a screaming all through him, thin and high, blotting out the contact he had held with Tebron's mind. It was Horng's scream, beside him, overpowering. Terror washed over him; he tried to fight it but he couldn't. The shadows of the walls twisted and faded, Tebron's thoughts disappeared, and all that remained was the screaming and the fear, like a mouth open wide against his ear and hot breath shouting into him. He felt his stomach turn and nausea and vertigo threw him panting out of Tebron's mind.

Yet Horng was still beside him in the darkness, and as the echoes faded he felt him there ... alien, but calm. There had been fear in this huge alien mind, but it had disappeared almost immediately with the breaking of the connection with Tebron. All that remained in Horng's mind now was a dull quietness.

Rynason felt a rueful grin on his face, and he said, perhaps aloud and perhaps not, "You haven't forgotten what happened here, old leather. The memories are there, all right."

From Horng's mind came a slow rebuilding of the fear that he had just experienced, but it subsided. And as it did Rynason probed again into his mind, searching quickly for that contact he had just lost. He could almost feel Tebron's mind, began to see the darkness forming the wall-shadows, when again there was a blast of the terror and he felt his mind reeling back from those memories. The screaming filled his mind and body and this time he felt Horng himself blocking him, pushing him back.

But there was no need for that; the fear was not Horng's alone. Rynason felt it too, and he retreated before its onslaught with an overpowering need to preserve his own sanity.

When the darkness subsided Rynason became aware of himself still sitting on the stone bench, sweat drenching his body. Horng sat before him in the same position he had been in when they had started; it was as if nothing had happened at all. Rynason wearily raised one hand and motioned to Mara to break the linkage.

She switched off the telepather and gingerly removed the wires from his head, frowning worriedly at him. But she waited for him to speak.

He grinned at her after a moment and said, "It was a bit rough in there. We couldn't break through."

She was removing the wires from Horng, who sat unmoving, staring dully over Rynason's shoulder at the wall behind him. "You should have seen yourself when you were under," she said. "I wanted to break the connection before, but I wasn't sure...."

Rynason sat forward and flexed the muscles of his shoulders and back. They ached as though they had been tense for an hour, and his stomach was still knotted tight.

"There's a real block there," he said. "It's like a thousand screaming birds flapping in your face. When you get that far into his mind, you feel it too." He sat staring down at his feet, exhausted mentally and physically.

She sat on the bench and looked closely at him. "Anything else?"

"Yes--Horng. At the end, the second time I went in, I could feel him, not only fighting me, but ... hating me." He looked up at her. "Can you imagine actually feeling him, right next to you in your mind like you were one person, hating you?"

Across from them, the huge figure of the alien slowly stood up and looked at them for several long seconds, then turned and left the building.

FOUR

Manning's quarters were larger than most of the prefab structures in the new Earth town; the building was out near the end of one of the streets, a single-storied plastic-and-metal box on a quick-concrete slab base. Well, it was as well constructed as any of the buildings in the Edge planetfalls, Rynason reflected as he knocked on the door. And there was room for all of the survey team workers.

Manning himself let him in, grabbing his hand in a firm grip that nevertheless lacked the man's usual heavy joviality. "Come on in; the others are already here," Manning said, and walked ahead of him into the larger of the two rooms inside. His step was brisk as always, but there was a touch of real hurry in it which Rynason noticed immediately. Manning was worried about something.

"All right; we're all set," Manning said, leaning against a wall at the front of the room. Rynason found a seat on the arm of a chair next to Mara and Marc Stoworth, a slightly heavy, blond-haired man in his thirties who wore his hair cut short on the sides but long in back. He looked like every one of the young corporation executives Rynason had seen in the outworlds, and probably would have gone into that kind of position if he'd had the connections. He certainly seemed out of place even among the varied assortment of types who worked the archaeological and geological surveys ... but these surveys were conducted by the big corporations who were interested in developing the outworlds; probably Stoworth hoped eventually to move up into the lower management offices when the corporations moved in.

"Gentlemen, there's something very wrong about these dumb horses we've been dealing with," Manning said. "I'm going to throw out a few facts at you and see if you don't come to the same conclusions that Larsborg and I did."

Rynason leaned over to Mara and murmured, "What's his problem today?"

But she was frowning. "He's got a real one. Listen."

Manning had picked up a sheaf of typescript from the table next to him and was flipping through it, his lips pursed grimly. "This is the report I got yesterday from Larsborg here--architecture and various other artifacts. It's very interesting. Herb, throw that first photo onto the screen."

The lights went off and the screen in the wall beside Manning lit up with a reproduction of one of the Hirlaji structures out on the Flat. It stood in the shadow of an overhanging rock-cliff, protected from the planet's heavy winds on three sides. Larsborg had apparently set up lights for a clearer picture; the whole building stood out sharply against the shadows of the background.

"This look familiar to any of you?" Manning said quietly.

For a moment Rynason continued to stare uncomprehending at the picture. He had seen a lot of the Hirlaji buildings since they'd landed; this one was better preserved but not essentially different in design. Larsborg had cleared away most of the dirt and sand which had been packed up against its sides, exposing the full height of the structure, and he'd apparently sand-blasted the carved designs over the entrance, but....

Then he realized what he was seeing. The angle of the photo was a bit different than that from which he'd seen the other structure back on Tentar XI, but the similarity was unmistakable. This was a reproduction in stone of that same building, the one they'd reconstructed two years before.

He heard a wave of voices growing around the room, and Manning's voice cut-through it with: "That's right, gentlemen: it's an Outsiders building. It's not in that crazy, damned metal or alloy or whatever it was that they used, but it's the same design. Take a good long look at it before we go on to the next photo."

Rynason looked ... closely. Yes, it was the same design a bit cruder, and the carvings weren't the same, but the lines of the doorway and the cornice....

The next picture flashed onto the screen. It was a closeup of the designs over the entrance, shot in sharp relief so that they stood out starkly. The room was so quiet that Rynason could hear the hum behind the screen in the wall.

"That's Outsiders stuff too," said Breune. "It's not quite the same, though ... distorted."

"It's carved in stone, not stamped in metal," Manning said. "It's the same thing, all right. Anybody disagree?"

No one did.

"All right, then; let's have the lights back up again."

The lights came on and once more there was a murmur of talking around the room. Rynason shifted his position on the seat and tried to catch the thought that had slipped through his mind just before the screen had faded. There was another similarity.... Well, he'd seen a lot of the Outsider buildings in the past few years; it wasn't necessary to trace all the evidences right now.

"What I want to know is, why didn't any of the rest of you see this?" said Manning angrily. "Have you all got plastic for brains? Over a dozen men spend weeks researching these damn horsefaces, and only one of you has the sense to see the evidence of his own eyes!"

"Maybe we should turn in our spades," said Stoworth.

Manning glared at him. "Maybe you should, if you think this isn't serious. Let's get this clear: these old horsefaces that so many of you think are just as quaint as can be have been building in exactly the same style as the Outsiders. Quaint, are they? Harmless too, I suppose!"

He stood with his hands on his hips, dropped his head and took a long, deep breath. When he looked up again his forehead was furrowed into an intense frown. "Gentlemen ... as I call you from force of habit ... we've been finding dead cities of the Outsiders for centuries. They were all over God knows how many galaxies before your ancestors or mine had stopped playing with their tails; as far as we can tell they had a civilization as tightly-knit as our own, and probably stronger. And sometime about forty thousand years ago they started pulling out. They left absolutely nothing behind but empty buildings and a few crumbling bits of machinery. And we've been following those remains ever since we got out of our own star-system.

"Well, we just may have found them at last. Right here, on Hirlaj. Now what do you think of that?"

No one said anything for a minute. Rynason looked down at Mara, caught her smile, and stood up.

"I don't think the Hirlaji are the Outsiders," he said calmly.

Manning shot a sharp glance at him. "You saw the photos."

"Yes, I saw them. That's Outsiders work, all right, or something a lot like it. But it doesn't necessarily prove that these ... how many of them are there? Twenty-five? I don't think these creatures are the Outsiders. We've traced their history back practically to the point of complete barbarism. Their culture was never once high enough to get them off this planet, let alone to let them spread all over among the stars."

Manning waited for him to finish, then he turned back to the rest of the men in the room and spread his hands. "Now that, gentlemen, just shows how much we've found out so far." He looked over at Rynason again. "Has it occurred to you, Lee, that if these horses _are_ the Outsiders, that maybe they know a little more than we do? I suppose you're going to say you had a telepathic hookup with one of them and you didn't see a thing to make you suspicious ... but just remember that they've been using telepathy for several thousand years and that you hardly know what you're doing when you try it.

"Look, I don't trust them--if they're the Outsiders they've got maybe a hundred thousand years head-start on us scientifically. There may be only a couple dozen of them, but we don't know how strong they are."

"That's if they're really the Outsiders," said Rynason.

Manning nodded his head impatiently. "Yes, that's what I'm saying. If they're the Outsiders, which looks like a sensible conclusion. Or do you have a better one?"

"Well, I don't know if it's better," said Rynason. "It may not even be as attractive, for that matter. But have you considered that maybe when the Outsiders pulled out of our area they simply moved on elsewhere? We're so used to seeing dead cities that we think automatically that the Outsiders must be dead too, which I suppose is what's bothering you about finding the Hirlaji here alive. But it might be worse. That whole empire could simply have moved on to this area; we could be on the edge of it right now, ready to run head-on into a hundred star systems just crowded with the Outsiders."

Manning stared at him, and the expression on his face was not quite anger. Something like it, but not anger.

"The ruins we've found here were built by the Hirlaji," Rynason said. "I saw them building when I was linked with Horng, and these are the same structures. But the design was copied from older buildings, and I don't know how far back I'd have to search the memories before I found where they originally got that kind of approach to design. Maybe back before they developed telepathy. But this race simply isn't as old as the Outsiders; they came out of barbarism thousands of years after the Outsiders had left those dead cities we've been finding. The chances are that if the Hirlaji were influenced by the Outsiders it was sometime around thirty thousand years ago ... which means the Outsiders came this way when they left those cities. That would mean that we're following them ... and we might catch up at any time."

He stopped for a moment, then said, "We're moving faster than they were, and we have no idea where they may have settled again. One more starfall further beyond the Edge, and we may run into one of their present outposts. But this isn't it. Not yet."

Manning was still staring at Rynason, but it was a curious stare. "You're pretty sure that what you've been getting out of that horseface's head is real?" he asked levelly. "You trust them?"

Rynason nodded. "Horng was really afraid; that was real. I felt it myself. And the rest of it was real, too--I could see the whole racial memory there, and nobody could have been making that up. If you'd experienced that..."

"Well, I didn't," Manning said shortly. "And I don't think I trust them." He paused, and after a moment frowned. "But this direct linkage business does seem to be the best way we have of checking on them. I want you to get busy, Lee, and go after that horse's thoughts for us. Don't let him drive you out again; if he's hiding something, get in there and see what it is. Above all, don't trust him.

"If these things are the Outsiders, they could be bluffing us."

Manning stopped talking, and thought a minute. He looked up under raised eyebrows at Rynason. "And be careful, Lee. I'm counting on you."

Rynason ignored his paternal gaze, and turned instead to Mara. "We'll try it again tomorrow," he said. "Get in a requisition for a telepather this afternoon; make sure we'll have one ready to go first thing in the morning. I'll check back with you about an hour after we leave here today."

She looked up at him, surprised. "Check back? Why?"

"I put in a requisition myself, yesterday. Wine from Cluster II, vintage '86. I was hoping for some company."

She smiled. "All right."

Manning was ending the session. "...Carl, be sure to get those studies of the Outsiders artifacts together for me by tonight. And I'm going to hand back your reports to each of the rest of you; go through them and watch for those inconsistencies you skipped over the first time. We may be able to turn up something else that doesn't check out. Go over them _carefully_--all the reports were sloppy jobs. You're all trying to work too fast."

Rynason rose with the rest of them, grinning as he remembered how Manning had rushed those reports. Well, that was one of the privileges of authority: delegating fault. He started for the door.

"Lee! Hold it a minute; I want to talk to you, alone."

Rynason sat, and when all the others had gone Manning came back and sat down opposite him. He slowly took out a cigaret and lit it.

"My last pack till the next spacer makes touchdown," he said. "Sorry I can't offer you one, but I'm a fiend for the things. I know they're supposed to be non-habit-forming these days, but I'm a man of many vices."

Rynason shrugged, waiting for him to come to the point.

"I guess it makes me a bit more open-minded about what the members of my staff do," Manning went on. "You know--why should I crack down on drinking or smoking, for instance, when I do it myself?"

"I'm glad you see it that way," Rynason said drily. "Why did you want me to stay?"

Manning exhaled a long plume of smoke slowly, watching it through narrowed eyes. "Well, even though I'm pretty easy going about things, I do try to keep an eye on you. When you come right down to it, I'm responsible for every man who's with me out here." He stopped, and laughed shortly. "Not that I'm as altruistic as that sounds, of course--you know me, Lee. But when you're in a position of authority you have to face the responsibilities. You understand me?"

"You have to protect your own reputation back at Cluster headquarters," Rynason said.

"Well, yes. Of course, you get into a pattern of thinking eventually ... sort of a fatherly feeling, I suppose, though I've never even been on the parentage rolls back on the in-worlds. But I mean it--it happens, I get that feeling. And I'm getting a bit worried about you, Lee."

Rynason could see what was coming now. He sat further back into the chair and said, "Why?"

Manning frowned with concern. "I've been noticing you with Mara lately. You seem pretty interested in her."

"Is she one of those vices you were telling me about, Manning?" said Rynason quietly. "You want to warn me to stay away from her?"

Manning shook his head, a quick gesture dismissing the idea. "No, Lee, not at all. She's not that kind of a woman. And that's my point. I can see how you look at her, and you're on the wrong track. When you're out here on the Edge, you don't want a wife."

"What I need is some good healthy vice, is that what you mean?"

Manning sat forward. "That puts it pretty clearly. Yeah, that's about it. Lee, you're building up some strong tensions on this job, and don't think I'm not aware of it. Telepathing with that horseface is getting rough, judging from what you've told me. I think you should go get good and drunk and kick up hell tonight. And take one of the town women; they're always available. Do you good, I mean it."

Rynason stood up. "Maybe tomorrow night," he said. "Tonight I'm busy. With Mara." He turned and walked toward the door.

"I'd suggest you get busy with someone else," Manning said quietly behind him. "I'm really telling you this for your own good, believe it or not."

Rynason turned at the door and regarded the man coldly. "She's not interested in you, Manning," he said. He went out and shut the door calmly behind him.

Manning could be irritating with his conceited posing, but his veiled threats didn't bother Rynason. In any case, he had something else on his mind just now. He had finally remembered what it had been about the carvings over the Hirlaji building in the photo that had touched a memory within him: there was a strong similarity to the carvings that he had seen, through Tebron's eyes, outside the Temple of Kor. The symbols of Kor, Tebron had called them ... copied from the works of the Old Ones.

The Outsiders?

FIVE

They had some trouble getting cooperation from Horng on any further mind-probing. The Hirlaji lived among some of the ruins out on the Flat, where the winds threw dust and sand against the weathered stone walls, leaving them worn smooth and rounded. The aliens kept these buildings in some state of repair, and there was a communal garden of the planet's dark, fungoid plant life. As Rynason and Mara strode between the massive buildings they passed several of the huge creatures; one or two of them turned and regarded the couple with dull eyes, and went on slowly through the grey shadows.

They found Horng sitting motionlessly at the edge of the cluster of buildings, gazing out over the Flat toward the low hills which stood black against the deep blue of the horizon sky. Rynason lowered the telepather from his shoulder and approached him.

The alien made no motion of protest when Rynason hooked up the interpreter, but when the Earthman raised the mike to speak, Horng's dry voice spoke in the silence of the thin air and the machine's stylus traced out, THERE IS NO PURPOSE.

Rynason paused a moment, then said, "We're almost finished with our reports. We should finish today."

THERE IS NO PURPOSE MEANING QUEST.

"No purpose to the report?" Rynason said after a moment. "It's important to us, and we're almost finished. There would be even less purpose in stopping now, when so much has been done."

Horng's large, leathery head turned toward him and Rynason felt the ancient creature's heavy gaze on him like a shadow.

WE ARE ACCUSTOMED TO THAT.

"We don't think alike," Rynason said to him. "To me there is a purpose. Will you help me once more?"

There was no answer from the alien, only a slow nodding of his head to one side, which Rynason took for assent. He motioned Mara to set up the telepather.

After their last experience Rynason could understand the creature's reluctance to continue. Perhaps even his statement that there was no purpose to the Earthmen's researches made sense--for could the codification of the history of a dying race mean much to its last members? Probably they didn't care; they walked slowly through the ruins of their world and felt all around them fading, and the jumbled past in their minds must be only one more thing that was to disappear.

And Rynason had not forgotten the terrified waves of hatred which had blasted at him in Horng's mind--nor had Horng, he was sure.

Mara connected the leads of the telepather while the alien sat motionlessly, his dark eyes only occasionally watching either of them. When she was finished Rynason nodded for her to activate the linkage.

Then there was the rush of Horng's mind upon his, the dim thought-streams growing closer, the greyed images becoming sharper and washing over him, and in a moment he felt his own thoughts merge with them, felt the totality of his own consciousness blend with that of Horng. They were together; they were almost one mind.

And in Horng he heard the whisper of distrust, of fear, and the echoes of that hatred which had struck at him once before. But they were in the background; all around him here on the surface was a pervading feeling of ... uselessness, resignation, almost of unreality. The calm which he had noted before in Horng had been shaken and turned, and in its place was this fog of hopelessness.

Tentatively, Rynason reached for the racial memories in that grey mind, feeling Horng's own consciousness heavy beside him. He found them, layers of thoughts of unknown aliens still alive here, the pictures and sounds of thousands of years past. He probed among them, looking again for the memories of Tebron ... and found what he was searching for.

He was Tebron, marching across that vast Flat which he had seen before, the winds alive around him among the shuffling feet of his army. He felt the muscles of his massive legs tight with weariness, and tasted the dryness of the air as he drew in long gasps. He was still hours from the City, but they would rest before dawn....

Rynason turned among those memories, moving forward in them, and was aware of Horng watching him. There was still the wariness in his mind, and a stir of anxiety, but it was blanketed by the tired hopelessness he had seen. He reached further in the memories, and....

The temple-guard fell in the shadows, and one of his own warriors stepped forward to retrieve his weapon. The remains of the guard's body rolled down three, four, five of the steps of the Temple, and stopped. His eyes lingered on that body for only a moment, and then he turned and went up to the entrance.

There was a moaning of pain, or of fright, rising somewhere in his head; he was only partly aware of it. He walked into the shadows of the doorway and paused. But only for a moment: there was no movement inside, and he stepped forward, down one step into the interior.

Screams echoed through the halls and corridors of the Temple--high and piercing, growing in volume as they echoed, buffeting him almost into unconsciousness. He knew they were from Horng, but he fought them, watching his own steps across the dark inner room. He was Tebron Marl, king priest ruler of all Hirlaj, in the Temple of Kor, and he could feel the stone solid beneath his feet. Sweat broke out on his back--his own, or Tebron's? But he _was_ Tebron, and he fought the blast of fear in his mind as though it were a battle for his very identity. He _was_ Tebron.

The screaming faded, and he stood in silence before the Altar of Kor.

So this is the source, he thought. For how many days had he fought toward this? It was useless to remember; the muscles of his body were remembrance enough, and the scar-tissue that hindered the movement of one shoulder. If he remembered those battles he would again hear the fading echoes of enemy minds dying within his, and he had had enough of that. This was the goal, and it was his; perhaps there need be no more such killing.

He opened his mouth and spoke the words which he had learned so many years before, during his apprenticeship in the Region of Mines. The rituals of the Temple were always conducted in the ancient spoken language; Kor demanded it, and only the priest-caste knew these words, for they were so old that their form had changed almost completely even by the time his people had developed telepathy and discarded speech; they were not communicated to the rest of the people.

"I am Tebron Marl, king priest leader of all Hirlaj. I await your orders guidance."

He knelt, according to ritual, and gazed up at the altar. The Eye of Kor blinked there, a small circle of light in the dark room. The altar was simple but massive; its heavy columns, built upon the traditional lines, supported the weight of the Eye. He watched its slow waxing and waning, and waited; within him, Rynason's mind stirred.

And Kor spoke.

_Remain motionless. Do not go forward._

He felt a child as a wave of sensitivity spread through all of his skin and his organs sped for a moment. Then it was true: in the Temple of Kor, the god leader really did speak.

"I await further words."

The Eye held his gaze almost hypnotically in the dimness. The voice sounded in the huge arched room. _The sciences quests of your race lead you to extinction. The knowledge words offered to me by your priests make it clear that within a hundred years your race will leave its planet. You must not go forward, for that way lies the extermination of all your race._

His mind swam; this was not what he had expected. The god leader Kor had always aided his people in their sciences; in the knowledge word offerings they reported to the Eye the results of their studies, and often, if asked properly, the god leader would clarify uncertainties which they faced. But now he ordered an ending to research quests. This was unthinkable! Knowledge was godhood; godhood was knowledge, of the essence; the essence was knowing understanding. To him, to his people, it was a unity--and now that unity repudiated itself. Faintly in the darkness somewhere he again heard screaming.

"Are we to abandon all progress? Are the stars so dangerous?"

_The concept wish of progress must die within your people. There must be no purpose in any field of knowledge. You must remain motionless, consolidate what you have, and live in peace._ The Eye in the dimness seemed larger and brighter the longer he looked at it; all else in the echoing room was darkness. _The stars are not dangerous, but there is a race which rises with you, and it rises more rapidly. Should you expand into the stars you will only meet that race sooner, and they will be stronger. They are more warlike than your people; already you are capable of peace, and that must be your aim. Remain on your world; consolidate; cultivate the fruits of your civilization as it is, but do not go forward. In that way, you will have five thousand years before that race finds you, and if you are no threat to them they will not destroy you._

He felt a rising anger in him as the god leader's words came to him in the dark room, and a fear that lay deeper. He was a warrior, and a quester ... how could he give up all such pursuits, and how could he be expected to force all his people to do the same? There would be no hope wish of advance, no curiosity ... no purpose.

"Is this other race so much more advanced than we are?" he asked.

He heard a low humming from the altar and the Eye grew brighter again. _They are not so much ahead of you now ... but they are more warlike, and will therefore develop more quickly. In both your races, war is a quest which you use as a release for what is in you. Your sciences questings and your wars are the same thing ... you must suppress both. They are discontentment, and you will find that only in peace, if at all._

He dipped his head to one side, a gesture of acquiescence or agreement. He couldn't argue with the god leader Kor, and he had been wrong even to think of it.

"How am I to suppress the race? Is it possible to convince each of them of the necessity for abandoning forgetting all questing?"

The Eye hummed, and grew brighter against the darkness of the carved wall behind it, but it was some time before Kor spoke again. _It would be impossible to convince every one. The reasons must be kept from them, and kept from the shared memories; you must not communicate my knowledge words in any way. Consolidate your power, force peace upon them and lead them into acceptance. The knowledge questing can be made to die within them. Remember that there will be no purpose ... in that they must find contentment._

The king priest leader of all Hirlaj waited a moment, and was ready to rise and leave when the Eye spoke again.

_You must abolish the priesthood. The knowledge which I have given to you must die when you die._

He waited for a long time in the dim, suddenly cold hall for the god leader to speak again, then slowly rose and walked to the door, the image of the Eye of Kor still bright in his vision. He stopped outside the doorway, hearing the soft wind of the city flowing slowly past the stone archway above him. One of his guards reached out and touched his mind tentatively, but he blocked his thoughts and strode heavily down the steps past them.

The sound of the wind above him rose to a screaming, and suddenly it was as though he were tumbling down the entire length of the stairway, fragments of sky and stone and faces flashing past in a kaleidoscope, and the screaming all around him. He almost reached for his bludgeon, but then he realized that he was not Tebron Marl ... he was Lee Rynason, and the screaming was Horng and he was being driven out of those thoughts, tumbling through a thousand memories so fast he could not grasp any one of them.

He withdrew from Horng's mind as though from a nightmare; he became aware of his own body, lying in the dust of Hirlaj, and he opened his eyes and motioned weakly to Mara to break the connection.

When she had done so he slowly sat up and shook his head, waiting for it to clear. For awhile he had been an ancient king of Hirlaj, and it took some time to return to the present, to his own consciousness. He was dimly aware of Mara kneeling beside him, but he couldn't make out her words at first.

"Are you all right? Are you sure? Look up at me, Lee, please."

He found himself nodding to reassure her, and then he saw the expression on her face and felt the last wisps of alien fog clearing from his mind. There were tears in her eyes, and he touched the side of her face with his hand and said, "I'm all right. But why don't you kiss me or something?"

She did, but before Rynason could really immerse himself in it she broke away and said, "You must have had a bad time with him! It was as though you were dead."

He grinned a trifle sheepishly and said, "Well, it was engrossing. You'd better unhook the beast; he had a bad time of it too."

Mara rose and removed the wires from Horng gingerly. Rynason remained sitting; some of the meaning of what he had just experienced was coming to him now. It certainly explained why the Hirlaji had suddenly passed from their war era into lasting peace, and why the memories had been blocked. But could he credit those memories of a voice of an alien god?

And sitting in the dust at the edge of the vast Hirlaj plain the full realization came to him, as it could not when he had been Tebron. Not only the Temple, but the Altar of Kor itself had been unmistakably the workmanship of the Outsiders.

SIX

They left Horng sitting dully at the edge of the Flat and retraced their steps through the Hirlaji ruins, still drawing no notice from the aliens. Rynason had been in some of the small planetfall towns where settlements had been established only to be abandoned by the main flow of interstellar traffic ... those backwater areas where contact with the parent civilization was so slight that an entirely local culture had developed, almost as different from that of the mainstream Terran colonies as was this last vestige of the Hirlaji civilization. And in some of those areas interest in Earth was so slight that the offworlders were ignored, as the Earthmen were here ... but he had never felt the total lack of attention that was here. It was not as though the Hirlaji had seen the Earthmen and grown used to them; Rynason had the feeling that to the Hirlaji the Earthmen were no more important than the winds or the dust beneath their feet.

As they passed through the settled portion of the ruins Rynason had to step around a Hirlaji who crossed his path. He walked silently past, his eyes not even flickering toward the Earthlings. Crazy grey hidepiles, Rynason thought, and he and Mara hurried out across the Flat toward the nearby Earth town.

On the outskirts of the town, where the packed-dirt streets faded into loose dust and garbage was already piled several feet high, they were met by Rene Malhomme. He sat long-legged with his back leaning against a weathered stone outcropping. He seemed old already, though he was not yet fifty; his windblown hair was almost the color of the surrounding grey dust and rock--perhaps because it was filled with that dust, Rynason thought. He stopped and looked down at the worn, tired man whose eyes belied that weariness.

"And have you communicated with God, Lee Rynason?" Malhomme asked with his rumbling, sardonic voice.

Rynason met his gaze, wondering what he wanted. He lowered the telepather pack from his shoulder and set it in the dust. Mara sat on a low rock beside him.

"Will an alien god do?" Rynason said.

Malhomme's eyes rested on the telepather for a moment. "You spoke with Kor?" he asked.

Rynason nodded slowly. "I made a linkage with one of the Hirlaji, and tapped the race-memory. I suppose you could say I spoke with Kor."

"You have touched the alien godhead," Malhomme mused. "Then it's real? Their god is real?"

"No," said Rynason. "Kor is a machine."

Malhomme's head jerked up. "A machine? _Deus ex machina_, to quote an ancient curse. We make our own machines, and make gods of them." The tired lines of his face relaxed. "Well, that's a bit better. The gods remain a myth, and it's better that way."

Rynason stood over him on the windy Flat, still puzzled by his manner. He glanced at Mara, but she too was watching Malhomme, waiting for him to speak again.

Suddenly, Malhomme laughed, a dry laugh which almost rasped in his throat. "Lee Rynason, I have called men to God for so long that I almost began to believe it myself. And when the men started talking about the god of these aliens...." He shook his head, the spent laughter still drawing his mouth back into a grin. "Well, I'm glad it isn't true. Religion wouldn't be worth a damn if it were true."

"How did the men find out about Kor?" Rynason asked.

Malhomme spread his hands. "Manning has been talking, as usual. He ridicules the Hirlaji, and their god. And at the same time he says they are a menace."

"Why? Is he still trying to work the townsmen up against them?"

"Of course. Manning wants all the power he can get. If it means sacrificing the Hirlaji, he'll do it." Malhomme stood up, stretching himself. "He says they may be the Outsiders, and he's stirring up all the fear he can. He'll grab any excuse, no matter how impossible."

"It's not so impossible," Rynason said. "Kor is an Outsiders machine."

Malhomme stared at him. "You're sure of that?"

He nodded. "There's no doubt of it--I saw it from three feet away." He told Malhomme of his linkage with Horng, the contact with the memories, the mind, Tebron, and of the interview with the machine that was Kor. Malhomme listened with fascination, his shaggy head tilted to one side, occasionally throwing in a comment or a question.

As he finished, Rynason said, "That race that Kor warned them about sounds remarkably like us. A warlike race that would crush them if they left the planet. We haven't found any other intelligent life ... just the Hirlaji, and us."

"And the Outsiders," said Malhomme.

"No. This was a race which was still growing from barbarism, at about the same level as the Hirlaji themselves. Remember, the Outsiders had already spread through a thousand star-systems long before this. No, we're the race they were warned against."

"What about the weapons?" Malhomme said. "Disintegrators. We haven't got anything that powerful that a man can carry in his hand. And yet the Hirlaji had them thousands of years ago."

"Yes, but for some reason they couldn't duplicate them. It doesn't make sense: those weapons were apparently beyond the technological level of the Hirlaji, but they had them."

"Perhaps your aliens _were_ the Outsiders," Malhomme said. "Perhaps we see around us the remnants of a great race fallen."

Rynason shook his head.

"But they must have had some contact with the Outsiders," Mara said. "Sometime even before Tebron's lifetime. The Outsiders could have left the disintegrators, and the machine that they thought was a god...."

"That's just speculation," Rynason said. "Tebron himself didn't really know where they'd come from; they'd been passed down through the priesthood for a long time, and within the priesthood they did have some secrets. I suppose if I could search the race-memory long enough I might find another nice big block there hiding that secret. But it's difficult."

"And you may not have time," Malhomme said. "When Manning hears that the Altar of Kor was an Outsiders machine, there'll be no way left to stop him from slaughtering the Hirlaji."

"I'm not sure there'll be any real trouble," Rynason said.

Malhomme's lips drew back into the deep lines of his face. "There is always trouble. Always. Whoever or whatever spoke through the machine knew that much about us. The only way you could stop it, Lee, would be to hold back this information from Manning. And to do that, you would have to be sure, yourself, that there is no danger from the Hirlaji. You're in the key position, right now."

Rynason frowned. He knew Malhomme was right--it would be difficult to stop Manning if what he'd said about the man's push for power was true. But could he be sure that the Hirlaji were as harmless as they seemed? He remembered the reassuring touch of Horng's mind upon his own, the calmness he found in it, and the resignation ... but he also remembered the fear, and the screaming, and the hot rush of anger that had touched him.

In the silence on the edge of the Flat, Mara spoke. "Lee, I think you should report it all to Manning."

"Why?"

Her face was clouded. "I'm not sure. But ... when I disconnected the wires of the telepather, Horng looked at me.... Have you ever looked into his eyes, up close? It's frightening: it makes you remember how old they are, and how strong. Lee, that creature has muscles in his face as strong as most men's arms!"

"He just looked at you?" said Rynason. "Nothing else?"

"That's all. But those eyes ... they were so deep, and so full. You don't usually notice them, because they're set so deeply in the shadows of his face, but his eyes are _large_." She stopped, and shook her head in confusion. "I can't really explain it. When I moved around him to the other side, I could see his eyes following me. He didn't move, otherwise--it was as though only his eyes were alive. But they frightened me. There was much more in them than just ... not seeing, or not caring. His eyes were alive."

"That's not much evidence to make you think the Hirlaji are dangerous."

"Oh, I don't _know_ if they could be dangerous. But they're not just ... passive. They're not vegetables. Not with those eyes."

"All right," Rynason said. "I'll give Manning a full report, and we'll put it in his hands."

He picked up the telepather pack and slung it over his shoulder. Mara stood up, shaking away the dust which had blown against her feet.

"What will you do," Malhomme asked, "if Manning decides that's enough cause to kill the Hirlaji?"

"I'll stop him," Rynason said. "He's not in control here, yet."

Malhomme flashed his sardonic smile again. "Perhaps not ... but if you need help, call to God. The books say nothing about alien races, but surely these must be God's creatures too. And I'm always ready to break a few heads, if it will help." He turned and spat into the dust. "Or even just for the hell of it," he said.

* * * * *

Rynason found Manning that same afternoon, going over reports in his quarters. As soon as he began his description of the orders given to Tebron he found that Malhomme's warnings had been correct.

"What did this machine say about us?" Manning asked sharply. "Why were the Hirlaji supposed to stay away from us?"

"Because we're a warlike race. The idea was that if the Hirlaji stayed out of space they'd have about five thousand years before we found them."

"How long ago was all this? I had your report here...."

"At least eight thousand years," Rynason said. "They overestimated us."

Manning stood up, scowling. There were heavy lines around his eyes and he hadn't trimmed his thin beard. Whatever he was working on, Rynason thought, he was putting a lot of effort into it.

"This doesn't make sense, Lee. Damn it, since when do machines make guesses? Wrong ones, at that?"

Rynason shrugged. "Well, you've got to remember that this was an alien machine; maybe that's the way they built them."

Manning threw a cold glance at him and poured a glass of Sector Three brandy for himself. "You're not being amusing," he said shortly. "Now, go on, and make some sense."

"I'd like to," Rynason said. "Frankly, my theory is that the machine was a communication-link with the Outsiders. It could explain a lot of things--maybe even the similarities in architecture."

Manning scowled and turned away from him. He paced heavily across the room and looked out through the plasticene window at the nearly empty, dust-strewn street for a few moments; when he returned the frown was still on his face.

"Damn it, Lee, you're not keeping your mind on the problems here. While you were looking into Horng's mind, how do you know he wasn't spying in yours? You had an equal hookup, right?"

Rynason nodded. "I couldn't have prevented him in any case. Why? Are we supposed to be hiding anything?"

"I told you not to trust them!" Manning snapped. "Now if you can't even match wits with a senile horsehead...."

"You were the one who said they might be more adept at telepathy than we are," Rynason said. "It was a chance we had to take."

"There's a difference between taking chances and handing them information on a silver platter," Manning said angrily. "Did you make any effort at all to keep him from finding out too much about us?"

Rynason shrugged. "I kept him pretty busy. All of the time I was running through Tebron's memories I could feel Horng screaming somewhere; he must have been too upset to do any probing in my mind."

Manning was silent for a moment. "Let's hope so," he said shortly. "If they find out how weak we are, how long it would take us to get reinforcements out here...."

"They're still just a dying race, remember," Rynason said. "They're not the Outsiders. What makes you so sure that they're dangerous?"

"Oh, come _on_, Lee! Think! They're in contact with the Outsiders; you said so yourself. And just remember this: _the Outsiders obviously considered it inevitable that there would be war between us_. Now put those two facts together and tell me the horses aren't dangerous!"

Rynason said slowly, "It isn't as simple as that. The order given to Tebron was to stop all scientific progress and stifle any military development, and he seems to have done just that. The idea was that if the Hirlaji were harmless when we found them there might be no need for fighting."

"Perhaps. But we weren't supposed to know that they were in contact with the Outsiders, either--that was probably part of the purpose of the block in the race-memory. But we got through the block, and they know it, and presumably by now the Outsiders know it. That changes the picture, and I'd like to know just how much it changes it."

"They're not in contact with the Outsiders any longer," said Rynason.

"What makes you so sure of that?"

"Tebron broke the contact--that was in the orders too. The priesthood, which had been the connecting link with the Outsiders through the machine, was disbanded. When Tebron died he didn't appoint a successor; the machine hasn't been used since."

Manning thought about that, still frowning. "Where is the machine?"

"I don't know. If it hasn't been kept in repair it might not even be usable any more, wherever it is."

"I'll tell you something, Lee," said Manning. "There's still too much that we don't know--and too much that the Hirlaji _do_ know, now. Whether or not your horse-buddy was picking your brains, they know we're not as strong as they thought we were. It took us eight thousand years to get here instead of five thousand. Let's just hope they don't think about that too much."