Chapter V

For what seemed a long time, Telis floated in throbbing darkness. Pain spun in little wind-devils of fire across the surface of his mind and it was not physical pain alone. Two thoughts tortured him constantly. He had failed the Maldia and he had deserted his friend, leaving him to die at the hands of the cannibal tribesmen.

Aeons swept by in that timeless, vitalizing darkness, and at last Telis opened his eyes.

For a moment he thought that he was back in the Central Temple of Dorliss, but as his eyes focused more clearly, he saw that he was in a small, neatly bare room. The walls were white, and one of them seemed to curve gently overhead until it met the first plane of the ceiling.

A cool hand was stroking his forehead, and Telis turned to meet the eyes of Leslie Karr. She sat at his bedside watchfully, and somehow he knew that she had been there for a long time.

Her clothing was different than he remembered. Her harness was gone. Now, her supple figure was clad in a straight tunic of dark metallic cloth that hung from her shoulders to the middle of her thighs, caught at her small waist by a linked belt. Her dark hair was swept back from her face, exposing her small, elfin ears. There was a look of health and vitality about her that was amazing when Telis recalled her condition in the air-sled.

"Wh ... what magic is this?" he asked.

Leslie smiled. "No magic," she said. "Only some decent air."

Telis drew a deep breath: It was true. The air was different ... and wondrous. Vitality filled him and with it came a thousand questions. Where was he? What was this place? What had happened after the fight on the desert? And the question he most wanted answered--what of Gorla?

Leslie laid a warning hand over his lips and cautioned him against spending his new found strength too prodigally. He was healing, she told him, and within a very few days he would be able to be up and around. At that time, all his questions would be answered. This last she told him with something like reluctance in her voice.

Plainly, wherever they were, Leslie was at home here.

The days passed almost too swiftly. Strange men came and went, giving him odd medications and dressing his wound. All his questions were tactfully avoided. Yet their concern for a stranger was confusing to Telis. By the code that Telis had lived his six haads with, a stranger was ipso facto an enemy. According to that tenet he had lived and had become a great soldier and a high officer of the Laurr of Laurr himself. Now here were strangers treating him with kindness ... and their kindness was striking at the roots of everything he had ever believed. And there was Leslie. She remained with him constantly, tending him and comforting him with her presence. Telis felt himself losing his heart to this exotic girl with her kindness and her breathtaking beauty.

* * * * *

Four days passed and then his confinement was over. He was able to rise from his hospital cot. His harness was brought to him, and even his weapons. If proof were needed, Telis thought, the act of returning his weapons proved that he was among friends. And true friends they must be, for they had nursed him and fed him, and he could not forget that his friend had been willing to remain behind alone to face the Guski so that he, Telis, might be brought here. And that recalled the burning question mark. _Why?_

When he had dressed himself, Leslie came into the room. Her face was sombre. "Telis," she began, "I have something that I must tell you before you leave this room. Believe me, it is not easy. You see, I ... I have not been honest with you.... Not that I have lied. Believe me, I haven't. But...." She broke off momentarily in confusion. Her face was flushed. "I have let you mislead yourself, and that's very like lying, isn't it?" She did not wait for a reply, but rushed on. "Now I have to stand by and watch you find out who and what I am. Oh, believe me, I have no wish to hurt you or your people, Telis. I couldn't ... now ... because I ... I...." She bit her lips. "All this is necessary. You had to be convinced, you see, because of your great influence with the Laurr...." She gave a short, nervous laugh. "All this isn't making very much sense, is it?"

"No," replied Telis, puzzled.

"You know by now that you were tricked into coming here. It was all planned by us and by the Temple...."

Telis felt the blood drain from his face. He knew exactly what was coming next. The whole incredible picture was clear.

"Oh, Telis," cried Leslie. "Please understand! Gorla understood ... and he gave his life so that we could make _you_ see! Can't you see what I am trying to tell you? Can't you see that if you help us we can bring life back to Laurr? And that if you won't it might mean ages of senseless warfare? Telis ... _try_...."

Telis of Lars stared. It all came flooding back to him. All the tiny, irrelevant pieces of the puzzle. The mask back in Dorliss! A respirator! Her need for oxygen ... the anoxia that struck her down in the air-sled ... the rich air of this room! Her weight ... the greater density of a heavy gravity planet's evolution! Alien, alien!

Leslie Karr could feel the barrier rising between them and she cried out against it. Tears streaked her face, and even that added to Telis' sense of alienage. Laurrians did not weep. The water in their bodies was far too precious for that. It was all too grotesque! He, the former leader of the Maldia, beholden to the invaders for his very life!

Then the shock began to wear off, and his mind to function more clearly. This place with its sloping wall was a compartment in the Tellurian spacecraft, that much was now obvious. Yet they had trusted him within it ... armed. And they had been kind to him, they had nursed him back to health after the Guski's wound almost killed him. Why? It was not enough that he had great influence with the Laurr. He had had the feeling that they _liked_ him. Could it be, he wondered, that the whole basic philosophy of the Maldia was in error? The Temple spoke of mighty Tellurian science. Could it actually do what the High Superior of Dorliss claimed? Redeem the planet and give it hope again?

And there was Leslie. In that moment of introspection, Telis knew with a distinct shock that, Tellurian or not, he loved her. Telis of Lars, peer of the ancient realm of Laurr, member of the dread, anti-Tellurian Maldia, was in love with an alien woman! Creature of another world--different and strange--and yet he loved her! Standing there, watching her tears course down her cheeks, he felt his heart constrict, and he knew that she had won.

"Please, Telis--my Telis--let me show that we can be friends!" she cried.

Telis stared at her. "Friends?" he asked thickly.

Leslie took a step nearer, her eyes suddenly wide, almost afraid. It came to Telis in a blinding flash of insight that she too was feeling the soul-wrenching conflicts of love for an alien creature. To her Telis was the exotic, the outlander.

Then like the snapping of a steel wire, the barrier was broken, and she was in his arms, returning his kisses with an almost desperate abandon....

* * * * *

The Tellurian camp was a revelation to Telis. Guided by Leslie and a group of Tellurian scientists, he beheld machines such as had not existed on the surface of Laurr for ten thousand haads. Here, among the squat, pressurized domes of the camp were the end-products of all the theories the Temple had salvaged from the lost books of the ancients.

Power was drawn from the destruction of infinitesimal particles of matter by a mysterious process the scientist referred to as "fission," and Telis found to his surprise that Leslie was not a noblewoman as he had supposed, but something called a "metallurgist." These terms meant nothing to him, but the teeming activity of the camp and the matter of fact way in which miracles were daily performed made him begin to understand what the High Superior had meant when he had said that together the races of Terra and Laurr might one day rule the solar system. The machines and the magnificent, graceful projectile that was the spaceship fired Telis' imagination.

If any doubt remained in his mind, it was shattered irretrievably when Leslie showed him the mining operations. Thus far, they had begun only on an experimental basis, the Tellurians wisely wary of extending themselves before permission to remain was granted by the Laurr. But, even on a small scale, what Telis saw stirred him more deeply than had any of the other wondrous things he had been shown.

Since the deserts of Laurr were almost pure iron oxide, it was explained to him that they were the result of the ubiquitous iron's propensity for uniting with oxygen. The result, after many aeons, was that the air was actually rusting away. By the marvelous miracle of Tellurian chemistry, the iron oxide was broken down into its constituent elements. This resulted in a stream of iron ingots, and ... free oxygen!

Telis was quick to realize what this process would mean to Laurr over a period of time if it was made universal. Great quantities of the precious oxygen would be released into the air to revitalize it, and later to combine with the large amounts of hydrogen in Laurr's atmosphere to form water!

The Tellurians had in fact already set up a pilot plant where oxygen and hydrogen were mixed to make the water they needed for their own purposes. Part of it was used for drinking and bathing, and part was used for puddling the iron oxide before it was passed through the separation process. Great pressure hoses washed the impurities from the ferric oxide even as Telis watched, astounded. Never had a Laurrian seen precious water treated so carelessly, but with a great effort he was able to acclimate himself finally to an economy of plentiful water, and the sight of great streams of it churning the desert to reddish mud shocked him less and less as the days passed.

Only two thoughts marred Telis' happiness during these days spent in the camp. First the thought of Gorla's fate remained with him always, and he resolved that his friend's sacrifice should not be for nothing. And, second, there was the Maldia. Now, with Prince Brand at its head, it was more than ever a threat to the safety of the people from the third planet, to himself, to the Laurr and by extension to the world of Laurr itself.

Telis resolved that he must return immediately to the capital and lay his findings before the Laurr. Only in that way could the danger of the Maldia be removed. With the safe-conduct from the supreme ruler confirmed publicly, the Maldia would not dare to attack the camp.

The air-sled was repaired, and Telis made ready to leave the following morning over the protests of Leslie and the camp medical staff who contended that his wound was not yet sufficiently healed.

But Telis' resolution had come too late. Even as the sled was loaded, a shout from the watchtower brought the whole camp out into the streets. With sinking heart Telis heard the words of the camp guard. The Maldia had come, and the camp found itself surrounded.