LITMIR.BIZ

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Friendship with Terra and the men of Terra. Let the Solar Combine send its traders to Senorech. Peace between the peoples of the stars."

      The High Mor laughed. "I too, seek peace. A peace that will end with my dragon banner floating above the towers of New Washington, Terra. With your precious Solar Combine run by the sfarri. I offer you a place in that peace, Kael McCanahan. A high place. The highest place of all! I am a god! I have no need of earthly things. You do.

      "Give me your answer, Terran!"

      For a moment, the temptation was there. But in that same moment, the McCanahan remembered the blasted Eclipse, and the dead Father he loved, and Captain Edmunds, straight and lean in his white Fleet uniform. A memory came to him of Cassy Garson and the kisses she had given him in a drifting galley on the Tigranian Sea. The High Mor was not human. He knew nothing of the loves and lusts, the fears and terrors of human beings. He was as far removed from the Senn and Terrans as man is from the ant.

      "I answer—no! You'd blacken Earth with your rays and leave empty ruins. You'd take everything in space! And me—what of me?"

      The High Mor smiled. "You would rule the universe!"

      But Kael McCanahan shook his head stubbornly. "I cannot believe that. If I once tell you—"

       Beware, Terran!

      The Doyen thought warned him just in time.

      The High Mor brought his hand out from under his cloak and he held a black-metal stinger in his fingers. It spat a stream of violent fire at the McCanahan.

      Kael dove sideways. The tip of his finger slipped through the violet fire and it stung with the agony of seared nerve-ends. If full effect of that blast had touched him he would be writhing helplessly on the floor, his body one gigantic mass of pain.

      He had seen the stinger turned on unregenerate killers. It softened them in a hurry.

      His shoulder hit the edge of the table where the High Mor sat. The table upended, and the High Mor fell to the floor with him.

      Kael put a hand to the throat of the other man and his fingers tightened and squeezed. It was like choking a bar of steel. The High Mor forced a laugh through his lips, and his body twisted like an uncoiling spring and forced the McCanahan from him.

      "The Doyen warned you. I caught the thought they put in your brain! Well, let them play their game. They can only interfere with me when I use my Doyen powers to destroy you. I have other gifts to use!"

      A fist dove at his face, but the McCanahan was a master at rough and tumble fighting. He slipped it and bored in. His fists drummed into the High Mor's belly, lifted and threw him back to rebound off the far wall.

      A dozen weapons came tumbling down on the ruler of Senorech. A cloak swathed his flailing arms.

      Kael stepped back, waiting.

      That was where he made his mistake. For the High Mor slid to the floor in a crumpled heap, and the thing that was Noorlythin glowed and pulsed and moved its frosted tendrils, free of its fallen body.

      As Noorlythin moved its tendrils, the floor fell away beneath the booted heels of the McCanahan. The walls of the guardroom went out of existence, and Kael was falling, falling.

       Gird yourself, Terran! You go into subspace where no other living thing can enter! Not even another Doyen to shield you from my wrath! For each Doyen has in him the seeds of material creation, and what one Doyen materializes, no other Doyen can disturb!

      And the high, mocking laughter followed him down and down, into the eternal blackness where he fell.

      VII

      A hot sun blanketed his naked body. It blazed from a molten sky and cooked him where he lay on warm red rocks. Kael McCanahan lifted his head and stared at the searing desolation before him. Sand and rock, and the shale of evaporated seas, stretching like the finger of Time to infinity itself, outward to that blazing blue bowl of sky where the golden sun hung high, pouring down its heat.

      He came to his feet and swayed with the pain that the heat was putting in his muscles.

       Come to me! Come! Come!

      He put trembling hands to his head, and again that sweet call sounded, with the siren lure of all the lost treasures of all space.

      He stumbled forward, hearing the summons in his brain, in every fibre of his being.

       Come to my riches! Lift up your hands to the jewel that gives man everything he wants! Touch me! I am yours!

      He was running across the hot sands that bit his naked feet with hot teeth, and over the sharp rocks that cut into his flesh until he bled. Dimly, he knew that nothing could help him now. That here he was cut off from everything that was sane.

      This mad world was a creation of Noorlythin. His was the wild brain that dreamed the sands and the rocks and the awful desolation. His dream, that sun that cooked while it shone.

      Sobbing, he ran. He fell to his knees, and he crawled.

      With bleeding fingers he clawed at the rocks, making himself rise and run again.

      It seemed to the man that had once been Kael McCanahan that he was running around a planet. The pain was part of him, now. His muscles jerked in agony at every step, yet always he forced himself to run faster, faster, gulping down the hot desert air. That siren call was strong in his ears.

       Run, Terran! Run to me!

      He ran on and on, and now he saw the others, men like himself, running on bleeding feet, crawling when those feet were worn to cracked stumps. And before each of those men, or before Kael McCanahan's own eyes, gleamed—

       The eye of Lirflane!

      A globe of a red jewel it was, the eye. Imprisoned in its faceted surface were the dreams of a billion people. The man that looked on it saw the happiness he sought, and he fought to join himself to it, that his own dreams would add to the total of all the others. And on the dreams and on the flesh of these men who came to it, drawn by its siren voice and by the eternity of delight it promised, the eye of Lirflane feasted, waxed and swelled.

      A man tried to claw at his legs as Kael McCanahan ran past him. Red eyes in a bloated face hurled hate at him, as his hand closed on his ankle.

      The McCanahan shook himself free and ran on.

      The eye was closer now.

      It grew massive, transparent. In its redness, the redness of the hair of flaming Flaith beckoned. Her white body swayed and danced, and her throaty voice summoned him.

      The McCanahan's arms shook as he put them out, trying to pull himself forward with handfulls of hot, desert air.

      Now the Eye of Lirflane was before him, and all he could see was Flaith moving toward him, her arms wide and beckoning—

      One step he moved, and another.

      His hand went out, toward the gleaming red side of the monstrous jewel.

       Come to me, Kael McCanahan! Come to the peace and the forgetfulness you have earned. Take me in your arms. Drink kisses from my lips!

      The McCanahan sobbed.

      He shook in torture more vivid than the agony in his feet and muscles.

      "Not Flaith!" he cried. "Not Flaith! You—woman of the jewel! Witchwoman of Lirflane! Not Flaith!"

      He went to his knees, to anchor himself the better to the ground, against the siren call of the mighty Eye.

      "No. Got to fight! Get free. Free...."

      He fought there on his knees, while men streamed past him, rushing with insane desire into the red heaven of the jewel. Their eyes were mad with the

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