LITMIR.BIZ

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then. Tell me how you made the sfarri die!"

       Speak, man of Terra! Tell Noorlythin what he seeks! Only then, as he absorbs the knowledge, can we reach him!

      The McCanahan shrugged the great shoulders that were scarred with the lash above the smooth roll of their bulging muscles. His head hung so that his uncut hair shielded his face.

      "The harp," he whispered. "On the harp of Brith Tsinan is a silver string. The d-note! I strung it with a silvern wire that I loosed from my father's wrist!"

      And as he spoke, he moved.

      As liquid as the falling waters in the Veil of Valmoora was the leap of the McCanahan. Full into the High Mor he hurtled, knocking him sideways. And as they went down together—

      The Doyen struck!

      The very rocks of the palace misted and swirled under that awesome clutching. White fire flared and seared, and where it touched, all matter was destroyed! The walls of the palace shook and quivered. Beams groaned under the sudden stress.

      Where the guardroom had been, was empty nothingness!

      In a flame that lapped him protectingly as it flared fiercely and strongly at Noorlythin himself, the Doyen carried both men upward. So swift was their transmission through normal space that in one blinding surge of the white flame, the McCanahan found himself between the worlds, in some lost, dark blotch of empty space.

      "No Doyen may slay another Doyen!"

      That voice rang triumphantly in the abyss.

      "There is a way, Noorlythin! That is why we have let you work your will on this man. He hates you with a deadly hate, Noorlythin. You put him in your worlds of subspace, and you abandoned him to the creatures of your own creation!"

      "Aie! I abandoned him! Were it not for him and his harp, I would reign as a god on every planet in all inhabited space. The Solar Combine would have fallen to my sfarran battle fleet!"

      "You dared not move before you knew the one weapon that might defeat you!"

      "Now I know! Now! Now!"

      The radiant energy in the thing that was Noorlythin was awful. It beat and flared redly through the whiteness. The McCanahan shuddered as its heat beat out at him, chilling even as it seared.

       Courage, Terran! Courage for what lies ahead!

      And now the voices shrank and whispered, piping like elfin horns within his head, that none but he could hear.

       Through you, we may destroy him! Courage! With your help, he dies—forever!

      He knew what he had to do. Of his free will he had to offer himself to Noorlythin! Of his free will, he had to fling himself into the mad embrace of those pulsing tendrils, that had turned Lunol the peddler to black and drifting dust!

       He gave you to the Eye of Lirflane! He gave you to the cat-woman and her whip!

      The McCanahan snarled. "Destroy him, and I save the Solar Combine! I hear you, Doyen. I hear and I—obey!"

      And Kael McCanahan flung himself headlong, forward into the white whirlwind of force that was Noorlythin.

      * * * * *

      In the Chamber of Living Death, she who had been Slyss of Aakan quivered fitfully. A bubble of froth broke from her red lips. She moaned and stirred. A hand lifted, struggled feebly, fell back to her side, limp and waxen.

      Slyss opened brown eyes. She lay silent, staring upward at the ceiling. A sob fought its way upward from her throat.

      "Noorlythin is dead! His control over me and the others—gone forever!"

      She rolled off the dais and stared around her, at the dead bodies. She shivered. She went to the doors and pulled them open. In the distance, she could hear the frightened roaring of terrified men. She began to run.

      Flaith shook the bars of the cell that held her. Her red hair made a living flame about her shoulders.

      "What is happening? What is it?" she screamed.

      A terrified jailer paused in his heavy run past her cell.

      "The palace is falling in! The High Mor is dead. His body has been found!"

      Flaith shook the barred door.

      "Let me out! Please, please! Give me a chance to save myself!"

      The jailer licked his lips. He glanced up and down the corridor, then slid the key into the lock. The door opened under a push from his hand. "If the High Mor is dead," he told the girl, "maybe the sfarri won't stay here on Senorech! Maybe the Senn can rule themselves, now."

      Flaith caught the man by his arm.

      "The one I was captured with! Kael McCanahan, the Earther! Where is he?"

      "Nobody knows! His cell is empty."

      "His harp? Man, where is his harp?"

      The jailer shook himself free and started down the corridor. Over his shoulder he called, "Look in the storehouse beyond the cell block. We keep all prisoners' effects in there!"

       Terran! Wake to life, Kael McCanahan!

      He was dead. He had thrown himself into the fiery maw of the thing that was Noorlythin. Who called him now? Who spoke these lies?

       You live, Terran. You served as the catalyst that enabled us to focus our powers against Noorlythin.

      Even a high school student knew that a catalyst retained its own identity during the chemical change it brought about between two substances; even such substances as were the Doyen, gods of space.

      Kael opened his eyes.

      He lay on a floor in the wreckage of the guardroom in the palace of Akkalan. In the distance, but growing closer, he heard the faint strumming of harpstrings. He lay there and listened to the harp, as life flowed stronger into his body.

      The strumming came nearer.

      The McCanahan stood up and he waited, big and brown, marked with scars.

      Flaith stood in the broken doorway, her fingers falling from the harp. Tears had formed twin channels from her red-lashed eyes along her cheeks. When she saw Kael, she did not know him. And then he grinned, and his long hair and scarred brown body were forgotten.

      She flung herself at him, and lay against him, trembling.

      He told her of the High Mor and what he had been, and of how the Doyen had destroyed him. "We've won, Flaith. He's dead, forever. With the harp—and the vibrators that we'll build to duplicate its pitch—the Solar Combine will move on Sfar. Smash it, and its robot life!"

      Laughter bubbled in her throat as she looked up at him. "They'll reward you, Kael. Make you somebody big on Terra!"

      The McCanahan grinned and hugged her.

      "An admiral at least! How would you like to be wed to an admiral, Flaith mavourneen?"

      Her answer rocked him, in the hunger of her mouth on his.

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