Chapter V: Part 5

Again he was merely a very frightened man with no particular liking for morbidity who had been trapped in total darkness on an alien planet and had everything to lose by abandoning himself to wild conjecture when only clear, logical, determined thinking could save him.

If he had thought at all of wasps and hornets, if he had instantly seized upon such a comparison--there had to be a reason behind such a forceful, almost irresistible distortion of thought.

He was almost sure that it was a distortion. The mere appearance of a flylike creature close to him in the darkness, huge and malignant as it appeared to be, would not ordinarily have started such a train of thought in his mind and opened up vistas so specifically ghastly.

In all probability his thoughts had been deliberately guided. The paralyzed caterpillar-feasting grub comparison had been firmly implanted in his mind by a skillful mental manipulation of his imagination.

And if his mind was being manipulated, if the alien city dwellers were--

Loring straightened, cold sweat breaking out on his forehead, his eyes darting to the entrance. The entrance was darkening again. A shadow had fallen across it, partly blotting out the radiance from outside the building.

It was not a massive shadow and he knew that it could not have been cast by the flylike creature moving about in the darkness. It was an advancing, not a retreating shadow, and it was very slender. It cut off a portion of the light for only a fraction of the time it had taken the insect to pass from the glow into the darkness. It was accompanied by footsteps, quick, uncertain and a brief flurry of movement. Then the slender intruder was inside the building, silhouetted against the glow a few feet from the entrance.

NINE

"Janice!"

Loring spoke her name in a choked whisper, as if an instrument of torture had been applied without warning to his flesh and was slowly crushing every bone in his body. He whispered her name twice, and then his voice broke and he could only stare, gripped by a fear so tormenting that it completely shattered all of his defenses.

He was unable to move or think clearly. If the aliens had chosen that moment of shock to attack nothing could have saved him, for he was incapable of resistance. But they did not attack. It was almost as though they themselves had been caught off guard, checkmated by the very violence of his emotions. Perhaps they had not known that a man in love may lose all concern for his own safety and redouble it in another direction, transfer it to someone whose life is infinitely more precious to him. Perhaps that total forgetfulness of self was so alien to their thinking that they were unable to make instant and effective use of it as a weapon.

Janice's voice broke the stillness, calling out to him in a frightened appeal. "David! David! Where are you? I was too worried about you to wait any longer. When you didn't come back--"

She swayed a little and moved a few steps closer to him, as if groping for something tangible to guide her in the darkness. Then he was at her side, stilling her trembling with the firmness of his embrace, murmuring reassurances.

"What I just said was a lie, David," Janice whispered, holding on to him as if she would never let him go. "Your mind was made up, so I had to pretend I wasn't going to follow you. Now there's nothing you can do about it, is there, darling?"

"No, nothing," Loring said, smoothing her hair, wishing it weren't true but not wanting to alarm her more than he had to.

"You're glad I'm here--glad I did come?"

"Very glad," Loring said, the lie making him tormentingly aware of how difficult it would be to tell her the truth. But she had to know.

The insect might attack at any moment. It was still close to him in the darkness, close to Janice now as well and when he strained his ears he could still hear the faint whirring of its wings. He was aware of its chilling odor too: acrid, and laden with a slight effluvium of mustiness and decay, as if it had just emerged from some airless, long-abandoned sepulchre deep underground.

He tried to keep his voice level when he described it to her, holding nothing back, making no attempt to minimize the danger and asking her to listen herself to the faint whirring of the creature's wings.

She began to tremble again, slightly at first and then more violently, so that he had to tighten his grip on her shoulder and draw her firmly back against the wall.

"Something seems to be keeping it from attacking," he whispered. "Perhaps it won't attack at all if we keep very still and think about getting out."

"Think about it?" Her voice was so faint he had to strain to catch the words. "The entrance is right in front of us. Why can't we make a dash for it?"

"We may have to. It may be a risk we'll have to take. But if we can save ourselves in some other way--"

"What do you mean? Why should we even try? If we head straight for the entrance we'll be outside in two or three seconds. Can that--that insect thing move fast enough to intercept us if we know that our lives are at stake?"

"I think it can. If they release it, I think it can. They may expect us to try to get out that way. Remember, an insect can move with lightning swiftness."

"But there's only one entrance. We can't hope to escape in any other way?"

Loring did a strange thing. He leaned back against the wall, pressed himself more firmly against it, and ran his fingers exploringly over its smooth metal surface.

Then he tightened his grip on Janice's arm and moved slowly along the wall, continuing to explore the surface with his free hand as he drew her with him through the darkness.

Before he had progressed more than four yards his fingers encountered a slight roughness. The roughness increased as he advanced, became a series of firmly projecting ridges. He stopped advancing, his breathing slightly quickened, and tugged experimentally at one of the ridges.

Nothing happened for an instant. Then he felt the wall move slightly under his hand. He tugged more vigorously, increasing the tightness of his grip. A section of the wall began to swing open. He wedged one shoulder solidly against it, and exerted a steady, unrelenting pressure, to counterbalance the tugging and keep the movement stabilized.

There was a sudden change in the darkness. It became less impenetrable and by straining his eyes he could make out the shadowy outlines of a flight of steps leading downward. A blast of cold air swept upwards through the aperture, causing Janice to cry out in surprise and press closer to him. She spoke with a stunned breathlessness.

"David, how did you know?"

"I think--they wanted us to know."

"But why, David? I don't understand."

"I had a sudden impulse to look for another way out. It was as if the thought had been implanted in my mind, as if I was being guided. Something started me searching the instant you said there was only one way to escape, through the doorway. They may have feared I'd decide not to make a dash for it. And I think they want us to go on, to at least try to escape. I don't know why. I can't explain it."

He reached out for her hand, clasped it firmly. "We're going down those stairs. Even if it's what they want us to do we're going to take the risk. To stay here would be too dangerous. The slightest display of weakness or indecision could offset any advantage we might gain by staying. With you here, sharing the danger, I couldn't withstand the pressure. I'd be sure to crack."

She was in his arms suddenly, embracing him with a passion so maddeningly feminine in its soft, clinging sweetness that he forgot for an instant that it must have been inspired by terror and desperation, and a mad desire to wed her body to his for the comfort he could bring her.

"David," she whispered. Her hand was exploring him with tender concern. "I want you--now. I must."

"But, darling--"

"That's why, darling," she whispered, "I love you. I want your seed to grow inside me before one of those monsters rapes me. And David, if anything happens to you, I want someone to remember you by. It's our duty David. We must survive."

He was roused. He touched her, and he knew she was ready for him. "It seems crazy, Janice," he protested, "but your reasons are sound. As you say, darling."

Her lips burned on his. Her lovely breasts pressed against his torso. Her small round stomach quivered against his.

"They might see," he warned. "They're watching us."

"I don't care!" Janice cried fiercely. "Let them see how decent human beings behave." She moved against him. "I'll conceive, David, I know. I'm ovulating. It's one of the unsafe days. Remember how careful we used to be." Her voice was almost gay. "Now we can be utterly careless. With your child in me, David, I won't be scared of anything. Come on, darling."

She took him then. The bliss of their union banished his fears. The warmth of her pulsating body, the rapture of her lips, the quivering of her loins, brought them together in complete harmony. The moment that is eternity for lovers came to both simultaneously.

"Hold me tight just for a little while," Janice pleaded afterwards. "Don't move!" She locked her arms round his waist.

Their bodies still joined, she leaned away from him, hanging her head back exposing the loveliness of her throat. Loring kissed it, because it seemed the natural thing to do. It was an impulsive gesture.

He was startled to feel her tighten against him, as if she were suddenly roused again. Slowly, with a beatific smile on her face, she raised herself, and looked up at him. Love stars were shining in her eyes.

"David," she said seriously, "That was the rightest, purest thing we have ever done. Now we both have something to live for. I am not afraid any more."

He released her wordlessly, tightened his grip on her hand and together they started downward. The stairway was in darkness at first, but it began to glow as they descended.

They moved hand-in-hand, aware that the stairway was even longer than the one they had previously descended; both longer and set at a more precipitous angle. Vast distances fell away beneath them, and Loring knew that they were descending into the heart of the city.

"Don't look down," Loring warned, slowing his steps. The steepness was one source of danger, but there were others which he feared more: the dazzling brightness of the radiance which now enveloped them or a sudden seizure of dizziness.

"Listen!" Janice whispered, halting abruptly and turning to face him with a swift intake of her breath.

"What is it? We can't--"

"Listen, David. Don't you hear it? A whirring sound, right up above us. Not too near, but--David, I'm frightened. That thing must be following us!"

He had to stand very still and strain his ears for an instant before he caught it. It was unmistakable, but so faint that, under calmer circumstances, he would have been amazed by the acuteness of Janice's hearing. But now there was no room in his mind for amazement. Only horror.

"All right," he said. "It's following us. We might have known that it would. I sensed its rapacity the instant I saw it, and if they kept it from attacking us they must have had a reason."

"What reason, David? Don't try to spare me, if you think you know."

"I don't know for sure. How could I? But I can make a guess that has some ugly implications. It could be a kind of insectlike--"

He hesitated, fighting for control, reproaching himself for his harshness. He was making no attempt to soften the blow and he knew why. He had spoken with a slight edge of angry impatience in his voice because he did not want her to know how profoundly the thought had unnerved him.

It was more than chilling, for there was something diabolically calculated, wholly vicious, about the use of such a horror as a weapon.

A relentlessly pursued man--an escaped prisoner floundering in desperation through a swamp or trapped in a mountain gully--can experience many dreads. But only one that claws at his mind like a sharp-taloned, utterly merciless harpy.

The appeal in Janice's eyes put a quick end to his hesitation. "What could it be, David? Tell me."

"A kind of insectlike bloodhound. A scent-tracking animal can demoralize a fleeing man in a very terrible way, and I'm sure they know it. I think they deliberately kept it from attacking to give us time to escape from the building. Then they let it pick up our scent. They may be planning to prolong the pursuit until we abandon all hope and just wait helplessly for the worst to happen."

He gave her no time to reply. Tightening his grip on her hand he pulled her forward, his voice urgent, rising a little as the distance beneath them dwindled and they could see the shining expanse of metal at the base of the stairway.

"I didn't tell you that to frighten you. But we've got to build up our mental defenses fast. You've got to try not to think of it as a bloodhound. Our instinctive fear of insects isn't as great as our fear of savage, wolflike animals. Bloodhounds aren't wolflike, but to a pursued man there are no beasts more sinister. We must keep thinking of it as an insect."

"Are you sure that will help, David? An insect so large--"

"On Earth all insects are small. It's natural for us to think of them as small. Remember, man's fear of insects is real enough. But it can be overcome, thrown off. All small, crawling things make us recoil in revulsion. But the bloodhound image strikes a deadlier chord of fear. We've got to shut our minds to it."

* * * * *

"Then why didn't you keep silent about it? If you hadn't told me, if I hadn't known at all--"

"You had to know. You can't fight the Unknown, can't use the right mental weapons unless you know exactly what it is you've got to overcome. Full knowledge first, and then a choice of weapons. We're choosing a weapon that will clamp a mental block on that knowledge where it has sharp points of deadliness. We'll keep it limited, but we won't forget the danger. The weapon we're choosing is--a controlled self-hypnosis."

Janice flushed and flashed a quick glance at him. She was still trembling, breathless with hurrying, but the strain in her eyes had diminished a little. "Darling, I--I'm sorry. I pleaded with you to tell me. I guess I was being stupidly unthinking and irrational."

"I only told you because I thought it would cut down the danger. You've got to do your best to substitute another, less destructive fear. You're in a garden and a spider is moving slowly toward you across a gleaming web. But even if it's a black widow spider you don't succumb to panic. You know that you have time to leap up and run swiftly out of the garden."

"But I could also reach out and crush the spider between my thumb and forefinger. Or stamp on it. Shake it from the web, and mash it into a pulp. But we're not in a garden on Earth, David. We're trapped on an alien world, with not even a garden wall to protect us. How can we hope to outdistance an insect larger than we are? You said yourself that insects can move with lightning speed."

"Not this particular insect, perhaps. In the building it seemed to move slowly, with a shuffling sound. I was afraid it could move swiftly and that made me hesitate to make a dash for the entrance. But now we can't afford to let such a possibility demoralize us. We've got to seize on the doubt and build it up in our minds. Build it up, do you understand? _Make ourselves believe it._"

"But the creature is winged! David, I thought--"

"Don't think. Just make yourself believe. Not all winged insects can fly. The wings may be vestigial. You've got to believe that it's slow moving and blot its size from your mind. We instinctively think of insects as small, visualize them as small. Hold fast to that visualization. You can if you try."

"You mean deliberately distort the truth, cling to an illusion which we know, deep in our minds, can't possibly be true?"

"Only in regard to its size. It may well be slow-moving. That margin of doubt gives us an advantage we'd be foolish to abandon. If we can control our fear in the right way we won't succumb to panic."

"The right way? Just what is the right way, David? How do you want me to feel?"

"As if you were being pursued by an insect on Earth. A dangerous insect, but small. We've got to stay alert to the danger without succumbing to a paralyzing fear. Just remember that it's not a baying, savage dog."

"All right, David. I'll try."

"Just will yourself to believe that we can save ourselves if we move fast enough. There's a very good chance that we can. We're in no more danger than we'd be if we were well ahead of a swarm of foraging army ants in the African jungle. We could outrun the ants easily enough by keeping our heads and keeping to the trail."

"You think they're trying to break down our resistance by making a deliberate attack on our minds. Is that it?"

"That's about it. We can't afford to lower our defenses for an instant. Our lives may depend on it."

"All right, darling. No doubts. It helps just to know we're together."

"We're close to the bottom now. Just twenty or thirty steps to go. But the glare's getting worse. We've got to be careful. They may be hoping we'll stumble."

"We won't, David. I'm watching every step."

"The steps are tricky. Stay careful and keep close to me. There are buildings straight ahead. Three or four, about two hundred feet from the bottom. I can just barely make them out."

"I can see them," Janice said quickly. "Just the roofs. They look more like shining disks hovering in the air. Are you sure they're buildings?"

"They're buildings, all right. The nearest one stands out when the brightness shifts a little."

"Yes ... I can see it now. Quite plainly. Three buildings."

When they reached the bottom of the stairs, Loring paused for an instant to make a quick survey of the shining metal pavement directly ahead of them, and the nearest of the three buildings. The pavement was similar to the slightly mushrooming surface on the level above, widening out as it swept toward the buildings.

The brightness ahead was so dazzling that it was difficult to make out the massive foundations of the nearest glow-enveloped structure, but by straining his eyes he could tell that it was a far larger structure than the one from which they had escaped.

He did not regret having taken the gamble. It was better to be free and pursued than imprisoned with a gigantic insect in total darkness. The memory made his flesh crawl. It had never completely stopped crawling, but even a limited freedom of movement, a freedom that could end at any moment, was better than the feeling that you were hideously trapped and had no chance of keeping terror at arm's length. There was no chance at all if you waited in blind panic with the deadliness drawing closer, relentlessly closing in.

Any action was better than the paralysis of inertia, the helplessness which panic could bring about. Any action. He must keep remembering that. Must force himself to remember, keep all of his thoughts centered on the one aspect of the struggle that was vital when survival became the sole prize to be won, the only issue immediately at stake.

He looked at Janice and nodded, sensing the need for continued haste. They headed straight for the nearest building, with no exchange of words now, for they were both too sharply aware of the danger to experience a need to talk further about it or even to pause for breath.

TEN

It was hard for Loring to realize that they had reached the building so fast, harder still to accept the fact that they were almost inside of it. The high portals arched above them, glimmering in the radiance, and their shadows were flickering on both sides of the entrance-way before he remembered that he had at first decided it would be wiser to bypass the structure--to circle around it and keep on fleeing.

Fortunately he had looked back and changed his decision without conscious deliberation, so instinctively that the wisdom of it did not dawn on him until he was less than forty feet from the base of the building. The quick, backward glance had shown him the pursuing insect clearly, etched sharply against the glow, and its terrifying nearness had made him change his mind almost automatically, with a nightmarelike absence of any clear-cut reasoning process.

Only now did he realize that the human mind cannot think or will anything, dreaming or awake, in a completely purposeless way. And he had certainly not been dreaming. The creature was so near, so close on their heels, that they could not hope to outdistance it by running.

The building, then, was their only refuge. Into an imprisoning darkness again, but darkness was better than a hopeless attempt to escape pursuit in the open.

Darkness? How could they be sure? This building might be lighted, as bright within as without. And what could be worse, if you were trapped, with all escape cut off, than a blinding burst of illumination?

It could be far worse than any darkness. You staggered and fell, and the light burned through your eyelids into your brain, no matter how tight you tried to shut your eyes.

And through the radiance, through the burning glare that could not be shut out, you saw it coming toward you, its wings thrumming as it closed in with clashing mandibles, while the light turned red around it.

No, no--those were not his thoughts! He straightened and looked at Janice and was glad that she was not being tortured as he was. She was moving ahead of him now, very swiftly, but there was no wavering in her steps, nothing to indicate that a direct attack was being made on her mind.

For some reason they were attacking him only. And almost unendurable as the torment was he could still recognize it as a mental distortion, a coldly merciless assault on his sanity.

He forced himself to resist panic, to remember that darkness was worse than brightness. It was always worse, because in total darkness unconscious fears, hidden and instinctive fears, became monstrous. Darkness was the natural breeding ground for such fears; light, no matter how blinding, an aid in dispelling them. Man's remote ancestors had lived in dread of the coming of night, had huddled together in the darkness of the forest, in the depths of caves, fearing that another dawn would never come for them, knowing how sinister the night could be.

Night fears, hideous and distorted, haunted the dreams of every normal child. It haunted the dreams of savages, and cavemen far back in the Ice Age had crouched around rude fires, fearing an attack from shapes of the night both imagined and real. Cave bears, lions and tigers, invisible demons, the ghosts of the dead. It was darkness they feared, not light. Light, fire, and the dawn were all protections.

The light widened and the pillars on both sides of the building's entrance-way dwindled and fell away. A vast interior swept into view. All about them enormous shadow-shapes loomed, beneath a ceiling so high that it had the depth-beyond-depth look of a stretch of open sky.

The ceiling was ablaze with light and the floor threw back the brightness in concentric circles of shimmering radiance, so that they seemed to be looking at the shadow-shapes through a wavering prism that half blinded them. Then, gradually, their eyes adjusted to the glare and they saw the shapes clearly.

They were no longer shadow-shapes. They were articulated animal skeletons, so large that they would have dwarfed the largest of terrestrial dinosaurs. No Brontosaurus floundering through a Cretaceous swamp in the Age of Reptiles on Earth, no Triceratops or Trachodon had ever loomed so gigantic in Earth's primeval past. But in general aspect the skeletons were unmistakably reptilian, some with shrunken forelimbs, rearing postures and massive skulls armed with sharp teeth, others armor-plated and horned, with bony spikes projecting from their spines, long, angular skulls and short legs of uniform length.

There were three winged skeletons, flying monsters much larger than the horned monsters and a tortoise-like creature eighty or ninety feet in length. At its side stood one of its newly hatched young, with remnants of fossilized flesh still clinging to the splintered egg from which the far from tiny creature had emerged at some remote period in geologic time. The egg was also fossilized and so massive that it would have taken the combined strength of two men to lift it.

For an instant the sheer wonder of it drove all thought of danger from Loring's mind. He forgot where he was and was aware only of that long vista of gigantic skeletons stretching away into brightness. The exhibit dazzled and awed him, made him feel inconsequential, of no importance, a stunned human interloper on a drama of stupendous dimensions. For an instant nothing mattered except the almost hypnotic fascination which Nature imparts to everything colossal in scope and formidable in design.

Janice's voice broke the spell. "David, what are they? They're moving! They must be alive!"

Loring gripped her firmly by the arm and drew her close to him.

"No. It's just the light which makes them waver like that. We're looking at them through a shifting film of radiance. Can't you see? They're only skeletons. No flesh on the bones, no animation, nothing to become alarmed about. They must be gigantic extinct reptiles native to this world. This building is probably a museum."

Janice made no reply. She was staring wordlessly now, standing very still, as if something had started screaming inside of her and she was doing her best to subdue it.

"Size again," Loring said, making no effort to conceal his bewilderment but keeping his voice level. "A gigantic insect and now prehistoric reptiles much larger than you'd expect to find on a planet of this size. But it may have no particular significance. Animal life here may differ in size just as it does on Earth, over a wide range of species. Some of the animals native to this planet may be quite small."

Janice found her voice then. "Some of the living animals may be small. But how do you know these aren't the skeletons of living animals? Reptiles like these may be roaming the planet today. How do you know they're extinct? How can you be sure?"

Loring's voice did not change. He still spoke calmly, staring into the brightness, his eyes narrowed a little. "The bones look fossilized, eroded with age. That gravel-pit look could be counterfeited easily enough, but it would be difficult to erase in a genuine fossil."

"Then you think--"

"I think they may want us to believe that there are forests and swamps here with reptiles like that at large in them. If this is a museum our taking refuge in it would suit their purpose very well. The building could hardly have been moved here for that purpose, as part of their plan. It just happened to be here, in our line of flight, and they're taking full advantage of it. You don't always need to rig an advantage in a deadly game of skill and cunning. Chance, blind luck, may sometimes provide a loaded, dangerously destructive pawn."

He nodded, conviction strong in his voice. "The pawn's loaded and they're making it more destructive by a deliberate assault on our minds. They're hoping these skeletons will slow us up, demoralize us just enough to make us easy victims when that insect comes in here after us. If it's following our scent, it won't waste any time."

Janice shuddered and looked at him, fear rising in her eyes again. "But we'll be at its mercy anyway. How can we get out? We couldn't be more hopelessly trapped."

"There may be another entrance. We've got to look for it. We've got to keep moving."

Janice made no reply. She had turned and was staring back at the shadowed columns just inside the entrance through which they had passed. Something huge and long-legged was emerging into the hall, its bulk blending with the shadows, and making it seem even larger than it actually was.

For an instant it hovered just inside the entrance-way, swaying hideously back and forth, a shape of nightmare horror with many-faceted eyes, its bloated scarlet abdomen half-raised, its rapier-sharp stinger darting in and out.

Then it was advancing toward them, slowly at first and then more rapidly, with a violent quivering of its entire bulk. Loring looked around him in search of a weapon, but saw nothing that he could clasp and hurl. The bones of the skeleton reptiles were embedded in mountings and were too massive to dislodge. No weapon-shaped fragment could be chipped from them without making use of a knife or saw, and there were no cutting instruments in the vast hall. He had thought for an instant there might be paleontological tools left scattered about. But it was an insane thought and he put it quickly from him.

Vain hopes now could be dangerous, could result in a lessening of his alertness, a lowering of his guard. He was unarmed and defenseless, completely at the swift-moving creature's mercy. He only knew that it had to be stopped. It could not be allowed to attack and destroy him first and be free to turn about and attack Janice, sinking its cruel stinger deep in her flesh.

She saw it coming, and screamed in utter panic. It had bypassed Loring and was darting straight toward her, as if a female of the human species had aroused in it some instinctive awareness of how much better nourishment a more rounded, full-fleshed body would provide for its grubs.

It was instinct solely which prompted Loring to strip himself naked at that instant. Not to convince the fly that his own body was in any way comparable as a source of nourishment, but solely to protect the woman he loved. He needed a weapon. And the strange, sash-like garment which engirdled his loins was a weapon of a sort. It was not a weapon which could save them for long. But if he used it as a net, hurling it directly at the fly and entangling the creature in its folds--

The fly was almost upon Janice when the skillfully flung garment swirled above it, descended upon its head and wrapped itself around the rearing insect's upraised forelegs.

Loring had not completely let go of the garment, and he jerked back on it relentlessly, so that it became both a net and a strangling whipcord. It cut cruelly into the fly's substance and tightened in a quite terrible way.

Suddenly Loring saw that the fly had no head. Its head was in a fold of the garment, an enshrouded and bulging horror, still squirming, the huge compound eyes visible through the almost transparent cloth. The completely decapitated body was sinking jerkily to the floor.

He was still gripping the end of the garment, but he flung it from him suddenly with a shudder of revulsion, and turned.

Janice had slumped to the floor in a dead faint.

* * * * *

"Wake up," a cold voice said. "It is over now. You have won your struggle and are in a garden of delight."

There was a drowsy hum in Loring's ears, as of bees in a woodland glade. Not the hum of long-bodied hornets, cruel and rapacious, but the gentler hum of golden, honey-seeking bumblebees. And bumblebees did not sting if you did not anger them. They did not paralyze their victims to provide food for their grubs.

He awoke to an awareness of sunlight and shadow, garlanded bowers, grassy slopes and the gleaming bright waters of a stream. He blinked sleep from his eyes and rose to a sitting position.

He saw the women by the stream first, bare to the waist, their ivory breasts dew-bright in the dawn glow, their hips voluptuously curved. Some of the women were bending above the stream, filling long-necked, delicately-fashioned urns with water. Others were bathing in the stream and had removed their garments completely.

Then, quite suddenly, Loring realized that there was no need for him to watch the women bathing. Or even the women who were bending with such tantalizingly sensual grace on the banks of the stream.

There were women much closer to him, attired in the same way or wearing no clothes at all. One of them was embracing him now, her arms creeping up under his....

He remembered the strange garment that had been placed upon him before an earlier awakening and how he had flung it from him. And he realized now that he was not encumbered by a garment of any sort.

He had felt a little embarrassed before, to be even lightly clad in Janice's presence. But he experienced no such embarrassment now. The woman closest to him was whispering soft words in his ear.

"You were very brave. You did not flinch or draw back when the hornet attacked. I adore men who are very strong, as you are, and completely sure of themselves. What a lover you will make! I have claimed you first and the others can wait. There is no need for them to grow impatient. No one woman could hope to exhaust the capacity for love of a man like you. There will be enough love for all. But I have claimed you first and you I shall have. Now. Kiss me, lover! Hold me close!"

She moved in his arms, and it seemed to him that he was clasping not one woman, but a hundred, each different in her knowledge of the dedicatory arts that can be learned only at Eros' shrine, but each a woman passionate and responsive and by the same token eternally the same.

One woman blending with many, her loveliness dissolving and reforming, but her ardor remaining constant, a living flame.

He heard himself whispering: "I am more human than you seem to believe. The struggle was almost too much for me. Without the solace of love I would not have had the strength to endure."

"You have that solace now," she whispered. "Kiss me, lover. And do not be a fool. All men are little boys at heart. At least, there is a little boy in them, buried deep in their nature--the little boy they once were. In moments of stress and torment that little boy lives again. It does not make them less manly, less sure of themselves when they desire a woman as you now desire me. Make love to me."

It was no longer in Loring's power to resist or to care how completely he abandoned himself to the woman in his arms. His desire, in fact, had already surpassed hers and he could find no fault with her ardor.

It came to him then that this was a real woman. The passion of her had stirred him as he had never been stirred before. He was in a whirlpool of passion. His lips were on her breasts that had swollen with desire; warm, soft, round, dazzling, spheres made for man's pleasure.

Caressing them, he remembered as if from some pre-existence that man's first desire was for woman's breasts, to draw the sweet milk of motherhood. The breasts burgeoning under him now, were incomparable.

Her body, that had been virginal a moment before, was moving in frenetic appeal. The heat of her passion was burning him. Heavens, he thought in sudden panic, supposing she gets pregnant? Gosh what will I do, siring a child by this creature? It's a sin. I've got to stop. He tried to withdraw, but it was too late. The seed of his loins was already fighting its way into her quivering body.

She knew what had happened. "Wonderful, wonderful," she cried stiffening her entire body in physical ecstacy. "My beautiful brilliant man." Then, with a little moan that was half pain and half pleasure, she went limp in his arms. Their mating was complete. Loring lay dazed and exhausted.

It was at that moment that he heard Janice scream. It seemed to him that a white-hot shaft of dread went through him before a coldness fastened on his heart, and he began to tremble violently. He thrust the woman in his arms almost brutally from him, and struggled to rise. It was a struggle, because the arms of other women had instantly entwined themselves about his arms and shoulders and even about his legs. It was as if they had mistaken his blind, fear-inspired brutality for rejection of one woman in favor of many, and thought of the many as themselves.

He thrust their arms aside, forced them to release him by smiting them cheek and thigh. He did it unconsciously, thinking only of Janice and what the scream might mean. But they seemed to take the blows as compliments and murmured: "What a lover! What a man!"

He saw her then--saw her above the straining white arms and tumultuously heaving breasts of women who seemed suddenly Medusa-like, the shadowy Gorgons of some monstrous dream.

She was struggling in the arms of a man who seemed in all respects the exact opposite of a brute. He had the body of an Athenian athlete in the days of Grecian splendor and his head was aureoled in gold. He was young and lithe-limbed and the band of gold which encircled his light blond hair, worn long, above the classic manliness of his features, glittered in the sunlight, giving him an almost Apollo-like aspect as he stood by the stream. Apollo, the Sun god.

Damn him to hell, Loring thought.

He knew nothing about how a woman would feel but from his knowledge of women he could hardly doubt or question the man's undisputed right to consider himself literally brimming over with male sex appeal. He was the kind of man it was hard to imagine any woman resisting for long and yet Janice was struggling violently in his arms!

Loring had freed himself completely now and he lost no time in reaching the man's side. Greek athlete or not, the man had no chance at all and he seemed to realize it the instant he looked into Loring's eyes.

He released Janice and started to move backwards, away from Loring. But Loring did not let him retreat far. He dropped the repulsed Apollo to the ground with a savage right to the jaw.

ELEVEN

Tragor sat facing the Chief Coordinator for the second time in four days, and if he had been shaken the first time he was infinitely more alarmed now. His shoulders were trembling so that he was sure the Coordinator would remark about it, and all of the color had drained from his face.

"Tragor," Kraii said, his eyes piercingly accusing, "your plan for Earth conquest has been a disastrous failure from first to last. Subject a man to struggle and hardship, you said--place his life in danger, and he will find an android woman impossible to resist! Well, did that fool of an artist find thirty android women irresistible? Did he? Answer me, Tragor."

It did not seem as though Tragor's face could have gone any paler. But suddenly it did. It seemed paler than pale, as if the receding blood had turned it into a thin tissue so hueless that the term "color" could not even be applied to it.

"His surrender would have been complete if the Earthwoman had not screamed," he said. "All of his resistance was gone."

"Tragor, have you lost your mind? Two-thirds of the men in high places on Earth have women they love just as compulsively. And if we put your miserable plan into operation a good many women would scream. Just the sight of us would start them screaming. You have proved conclusively that the Plan cannot work."

Tragor started to rise, appalled by the sudden fury which blazed in the Coordinator's eyes. He recoiled backwards and as he did so a hand-gun clattered on the chart stand before him. Kraii had whipped the hand-gun from beneath the stand so quickly that it seemed almost like a conjuring trick. But to deceive the eye of a Martian frozen with terror was no great feat and Kraii knew it.

He seemed to enjoy the sudden look of stricken disbelief in Tragor's stare. He seemed actually to relish inflicting such an irrevocable choice of evils on a Martian completely at his mercy.

"Do it now, Tragor," he said. "If you put it off even for a moment you'll waver and lack the courage to kill yourself. Then we shall have to execute you publicly. Think of the shame and disgrace of a public execution, Tragor. I am offering you the easiest choice first. Do it immediately. Right here and now. When it is over, I'll aerate the compartment thoroughly, so you need not worry on that score."

"No, I can't! You're asking too much of me!"

Tragor recoiled another step, looking at the Chief Coordinator with an almost childlike simplicity of appeal that would have moved a Martian with a heart of stone. But if Kraii had a heart, it was certainly not of stone. Stone can be splintered and shattered and even dissolved. Quite obviously the fierce, dangerous and obdurate metal of the Chief Coordinator's heart was not in the least like stone.

"Oh, I know, I know," Kraii said. "It's customarily done after a decent interval, in the privacy of the condemned's own compartment. Watching you kill yourself will be very painful to me. But I am prepared to endure it for your sake. It will be easier for you this way.

"Think, Tragor. I'll be right here, close to you, and if you imagine for a moment that I am not still your friend you do me a grievous injustice. My nearness right up to the end should be comforting to you. A fellow Martian, sharing every one of your life drives, every compulsive emotion you've ever experienced from the cradle to the grave. I did not blunder as you did, but that is the only real difference between us. Do you imagine for a moment that I do not sympathize with you?"

"No, no. Give me a little time. Only a few minutes," Tragor pleaded. "That's all I ask. Then if you can't--"

Tragor's voice broke on a strangled sob.

"Tragor, listen to me. You have a choice of two alternatives. You can either kill yourself--and that is the honorable way--or you'll be shamefully executed. Which will it be?"

Tragor took a slow step forward. It was a short step and it hardly seemed to bring him much nearer to the hand-gun. But to the Chief Coordinator it seemed a step in the right direction and his features relaxed a little.

"I'm glad you've decided on the honorable way, Tragor. It would be humiliating to be publicly executed in full view of a wretch like Sull. You are right in distrusting him. He hates you and will try to step into your shoes. I may even be compelled to permit it as a necessary expediency."

"No," Tragor said, slowly. "No one is going to step into my shoes--or over them when I am lying dead. Not even you."

Tragor had the hand-gun before Kraii could grasp the implications of a statement so unbelievable.

Tragor held the weapon firmly. He drew himself up and just as resolutely stepped quickly back from the desk again. But he did not raise the hand-gun to his own brow. Instead he narrowed his eyes and pointed the weapon directly at Kraii. He fired three times, straight across the chart table, aiming at the Chief Coordinator's heart.

The bullets struck Kraii just above the heart and went right through him.

Blood spattered on the chart table. It spattered also on the Chief Coordinator's resplendent uniform, his outflung arms, his vacantly staring face. He fell straight forward across the chart table, and as he collapsed upon it Tragor fired for the fourth and last time.

He stood for a moment with the still smoking weapon in his hand, a cold, triumphant smirk on his face. The terrible hatred that had been generated within him by the Chief Coordinator's final taunts had dispelled every vestige of his fear and he was no longer trembling. In working off his fury on the lump of cold clay before him he had forgotten the meaning of fright. It was that way with most Martians. They could be demoralized by terror until an outlet for vindictiveness presented itself with overwhelming force. Then they became exacters of vengeance, cold, deadly, precise.

The fact that the Chief Coordinator had died without speaking marred just a little the completeness of Tragor's triumph. But not seriously, and he immediately set about taking the precautions that would turn that triumph into permanent victory for himself.

He stepped to the chart table, raised the slain Martian's taloned right hand, and coiled the limp talons firmly around the hand-gun, having taken care to wipe all talon prints from the weapon first. He left just a little slack, to make sure that when rigor set in the resulting contraction would not appear excessive, or cause anyone to question the naturalness of the "suicide's" grip.

Then he stepped back and surveyed his handiwork. He was well pleased with himself. By a near miracle psychology had played directly into his hands, the very psychology Kraii had accused him of neglecting in his appraisal of Earthmen.

It was taken for granted that no one--_no one_--would dare oppose the judgment of a Chief Coordinator. It was taken for granted that a hand-gun sent clattering before a condemned Martian could be used in only one way. That it should be turned on the Chief Coordinator himself was against all reason. It went contrary to the most powerful of ingrained psychological compulsions: a Martian's need to feel himself completely a Martian until the moment of his death.

But for one incredible moment Tragor had not thought of himself as a Martian. He had thought of himself as an instrument of destiny, set apart from all other members of his race by a plan for conquest he had spent half a lifetime in perfecting. It was intolerable that the Great Plan should perish with him. It was intolerable that he should die in any case.

His love of life was greater even than the Martian hunger for inflicting death. In that respect he was unusual. Among Martians, he was, perhaps, unique.

Tragor looked briefly and for the last time at the slain Coordinator's hated features, reflecting with satisfaction that no one--not even a Chief Coordinator--could maintain his dignity in death.

Then he turned and walked resolutely from the compartment.

He was half way down the passageway outside when he saw the woman he had taken captive and would have died to possess. She was advancing slowly to meet him and saw with amazement that she was clasping a hand-gun similar to the one he had just used with such deadly accuracy of aim. How, he wondered with a swift intake of his breath, had she managed to secure it? Had she stolen it from one of the warrior-caste brutes? There could be no other way of explaining it, but--

He had no time to puzzle it out, because she raised the weapon suddenly and blew off his head, splintering and shattering the skull and filling the passageway with a drifting spiral of smoke.

"You beast!" she whispered. "You monstrous beast!"

TWELVE

A change in command on any level, on any world, must have instant repercussions. Morale will sag or soar. New faces will appear and grow authoritative and forbidding and old faces will dim and vanish. When the change is limited in scope, only small thrones totter. When it is planet-wide a new world of power comes into existence.

On Mars, the death of the Chief Coordinator produced a social, political, economic and military earthquake; or what, on Mars, was the equivalent of an earthquake. The Martian social structure was shaken to its foundations. Political power became a plum ripe for the plucking. A dozen taloned hands reached for it, but the hands of Sull were the most adroit and experienced.

Sull grasped the plum and began steadily to squeeze it, until it began to remold itself to his satisfaction. But it was not a remolding which could take place overnight, and while power was changing hands, demoralization gained a momentary ascendancy.

On Mars there was famine, pestilence and widespread vandalism. There was a wavering, an uncertainty, in Martian military planning. Orders were delayed or garbled, and the commanders of the Martian ships did not quite know what course of action to follow or how much leeway between the golden heights of a soaring prestige and the deadly shoals of treason.

That uncertainty generated a need for solidarity in action, and the Martian commanders, though wary and suspicious of one another, were drawn more closely together in their hatred of the common enemy. They became defiantly reckless, and for the first time Martian ships took to traveling openly in mass formation, in a display of armored strength which they foolishly imagined might bring Earth to its knees.

While Loring and Janice stood alone on Mars, in a small room with one window, under constant guard and completely at Sull's mercy, five Martian ships moved westward across the Eastern United States, and began deliberately to court--Armageddon.

Colonel Richard Clegman of the United States Air Force awoke from a dream of coffee cups set in a row, each cup steaming and unstirred, and blinked sleep from his eyelids. In his dream it hadn't been just the coffee cups which had upset him with their tantalizing aroma, which seemed to hover just beyond the less appetizing aromas of drifting smoke, vaporized rocket fuels and burning rubber. He had been annoyed by the barking of a dog just outside the high wire fence where four Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles stood on their launching platforms with their nose-cones pointing skyward, their silvery tail-fins resplendent against the dawn sky.

Dogs at a guided missile and bombing plane base were an anomaly he strongly resented, but could do nothing about. Air Force personnel in general were not in the least allergic to mascots and dogs and cats were mascots, of a sort. But so were pin-up blondes, and as Clegman did not have the kind of mind which might have permitted him, under certain circumstances, to confuse the two, they remained forever distinct and poles apart in his thoughts.

A blonde pin-up met with his full approval, and he even carried one himself, in a small gold locket beneath his meticulously laundered officer's shirt. Only--he would not have cared to admit to anyone that the girl in the photograph was his wife. To do so would have been a betrayal, because it was important that the members of his command should think of him as a devil of a fellow who could trade Rabelaisian jests with the salty freedom which can come only from a wide range of experience in all fields of human warfare, not excluding the amorous.

That sort of thing made for tough-fibered camaraderie in action, as every experienced soldier knew. In fact, Clegman was quite sure that even John Paul Jones and Lord Nelson had played down the fact that they'd been one-woman men to keep shipboard morale on a gusty, universally shared "I've a big-eyed doll in Tokyo" level.

He had only to think about it for a moment for Korean War memories to come roaring back, with the deck of the Flat Top awash in the dawn and the big bombing planes warming up. Not as big as the jets of today but big enough.