LITMIR.BIZ

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or the lust that shook them, for every man saw in the Eye of Lirflane what his own eyes wanted most to see. Their bodies were torn and gaunt from their struggle across the sand and rock desolation. But they would lose their pain, within the bosom of the red eye.

      Kael fought. He fought silently, until the sweat came out on his face in big globes, until it runneled down his chest and thighs. His belly and his back were awash with the salt dampness.

      At last he turned, just a little, so that only a corner of the fabulous Eye remained in his vision.

      An hour later, he turned again, and now he saw only the barren loneliness of this abandoned world. And as he stared, the sand and the rocks and the sky ran with liquid movement as a painting might run in a bath of chemicals. And the streaming reds and buffs and yellows, the black and the greens and purples flowed together and formed a river, that swept the tortured legs of the McCanahan out from under him.

      * * * * *

      He screamed in his agony as the salt water bit into his bleeding wounds. He babbled and twisted, flailing the salt sea with animal desperation. He drowned in this vast emptiness of ocean, with no hand to grasp his or eye to witness his going.

      "No," he shouted to the gray leaden sky above him. "I won't die! I'll live! I'll live!"

      His arms and his legs moved, and clumsily, he swam. No driftwood floated here. Here a man had to swim to stay alive, until his arms and his legs grew numb with his effort, and he sank.

      The McCanahan turned on his back, and the salt water buoyed him up. He floated for endless days, and during endless nights, and the tiny spark of life within him waxed and waned. And out of the eternity of no-time, as he swam and alternately floated, a wing-prowed galley slipped through the foam-crested waves. Its white sail bellied in the ocean wind. It veered and came for him, running easily in the water.

      From the rail, a bearded face scowled down at him. A hairy hand threw a rope that he twisted around his middle. He was dragged on deck, to stand dripping with the salt water that seared his wounds.

      A rope was whipped around his wet wrists and he was dragged to the slim mast that rose from the deck, before the oarbanks where slaves pulled at smooth-handled oars.

      A woman whose flesh was tinted a delicate green came toward him. She walked with quick, supple strides, and the McCanahan noted numbly that her eyes were a feral green, and that her tiny ears were pointed. A whip coiled in her hand.

      She showed her tiny teeth in a cruel smile.

      "You are the man from Terra! You are the one who turned down all the worlds of space! For that you must be punished!"

      And the long lash went snaking out in an arc, slashing into his back, and the sheer agony of the cutting whip slammed his body against the mast. The lash came down and lifted, came down and lifted, and the McCanahan sagged in the ropes that held him.

      With the cruelty of her species, the cat-woman flogged him. When she was done, she cut him loose and stood over him on the swaying deck that was stained with his blood. Her voice was soft, furry.

      "Take him and chain him to an oar! Rivet the manacles on his wrists and ankles! Let him tug an oar for a year! Then perhaps he will obey Him who is ALL!"

      He was kicked and shoved across the deck. He tumbled into an empty slot on an oarbench. His wrists and ankles were shackled, the armorer not caring where his metal mallet fell.

      For a day he rested, with black bread soaked in wine forced between his teeth. For a day, he knew only the blessedness of not moving. His slumber was dreamless—

      In a red dawn, he was wakened by the bite of an overseer's whip across his bloody back. His hands lifted and went to the oar-handle, and his body swayed and returned, and he put his weight with the weight of the men who held the same oar as he.

      The galley slipped through the heaving ocean, and the red oars flashed in the sun, and the salt spray stung, and only when an errant wind swept across the seas was there any rest for the men who slaved on the benches. Sometimes men died, and were flung overboard. Other men were unshackled and dragged screaming to the foredeck, where the cat-woman waited, pink tongue licking her lips, the whip curling like a live thing in her hands.

      And of all the men who worked the oars in this endless ocean, it was the McCanahan who was chosen most often for her amusement.

      Once he almost died under the biting whip, and in that moment of pain and numbness, when his senses seemed about to float from his body, the cat-woman leaned close and her furry voice whispered, "Speak your secret to me, man of Terra! Tell me the weapon that slays the sfarri!"

      But the McCanahan only shook his head and his hair, long uncut, tumbled on his bleeding shoulders.

      The days were endless on that ocean, and the oars swung and the sail creaked, flapping overhead, and the overseer tramped the runway with endless patience, his voice a sullen growl. The cat-woman came to look upon the McCanahan and her slim greenish fingers came forth to stroke his naked back where her lash had marred it. Always her throaty voice whispered to him, speaking of the delights that might be found in her cabin, if only he were not so stubborn.

      When her patience was at an end, she motioned to the overseer and he came with armed guards and unchained the McCanahan, and he was led to the mast and roped.

      And then, in the middle of a whipsting, the ocean and the ship and the cat-woman's whip fell away....

      * * * * *

      He lay on a hard, cold floor.

      The High Mor stood before him, his hard eyes glittering. Kael was back in the guardroom that he had left—how long ago?

      "A year," said the High Mor, reading his thought. "A year and five days! And yet, the barest split second of Time. I sent you out to those worlds of subspace, Kael McCanahan. There you lived, and almost died. You rowed at a real oar. You suffered the cuts of a real whip. Look at yourself!"

      The High Mor threw a small metal mirror at him. Dazedly he stared at the grim, hard brown face and the cold blue eyes he saw mirrored on its surface. His flesh was brown, and great muscles swelled under it. The oar had put those muscles there, as the whip had put the scars on his ribs and back.

      "Only a split second of our time, Terran," said the High Mor. "But a year and five days in the worlds I made! I told you I had gifts! I have made a thousand million worlds for that subspace, in the eons that I have roamed the stars. I am a god!"

      Kael shook his head and his long hair flicked his naked arms. If he needed proof of the High Mor's words, his long-uncut hair was proof enough.

      He thought, Tell him, and let him have his way! How can a man fight a god? The thought washed over him that he fought for all mankind, that the men and women of a thousand planets unknowingly depended on his fight. Women like the flame-tressed Flaith, men like his father and Captain Edmunds, who did their duty and died for it, all depended on what he did.

      He had to think, to go over this logically. What would be the thought processes of a god? A god was no mere mortal, to be judged and weighed by human wants and failings. In it there was no mercy, no thought for anything but itself.

      Kael pushed himself away from the floor to stand on long brown legs.

       Courage, man of Terra! He shall not trap you so again!

      The Doyen voice gave him heart, but the High Mor sneered.

      "I heard it, too, Terran! The Doyen cannot help you. Not unless I strive by Doyen means to kill you. I need not do that, Kael McCanahan, need I?"

      The McCanahan shook his head like a dumb animal. He would never go back to that subspace where Noorlythin was a god in truth! To that hell, where a second was a year, where the Doyen themselves could not enter!

      "I could put you there again, Terran. I could forget you, let you live out your life for an eternity of seconds that are years! Would you listen to reason then? Would you like to test

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