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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Warlord of Kor, by Terry Gene Carr
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Warlord of Kor
+
+
+Author: Terry Gene Carr
+
+
+
+Release Date: March 10, 2006  [eBook #17958]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WARLORD OF KOR***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Greg Weeks, Barbara Tozier, and the Project Gutenberg
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net/)
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Note:
+
+   A list of repaired typographical errors will be found at the
+   end of this e-book.
+
+
+
+
+
+WARLORD OF KOR
+
+by
+
+TERRY CARR
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+GOD, MACHINE--OR LISTENING POST FOR OUTSIDERS?
+
+Horng sat opposite the tiny, fragile creature who held a
+microphone, its wires attached to an interpreting machine. He
+blinked his huge eyes slowly, his stiff mouth fumblingly forming
+words of a language his race had not used for thirty thousand
+years.
+
+"Kor was ... is ... God ... Knowledge." He had tried to convey
+this to the small creatures who had invaded his world, but they
+did not heed. Their ill-equipped brains were trying futilely to
+comprehend the ancient race memory of his people.
+
+Now they would attempt further to discover the forbidden
+directives of Kor. Horng remembered, somewhere far back in the
+fossil layers of his thoughts, a warning. They must be stopped!
+If he had to, he would stamp out these creatures who were called
+"humans."
+
+
+
+
+CAST OF CHARACTERS
+
+
+Rynason
+
+His mental quest led him too close to a dangerous secret.
+
+
+Manning
+
+His ideas for colonizing that world didn't include survival for
+its native beings.
+
+
+Malhomme
+
+This ruffian-preacher could be the one man that everyone might
+have to trust.
+
+
+Mara
+
+She wanted to save the aliens, but did they want to be saved?
+
+
+Horng
+
+In the recesses of his brain was the key to a dead
+civilization--or a live menace....
+
+
+Kor
+
+Was it a legend, a king, a thing, or a trap from another galaxy?
+
+
+
+
+
+WARLORD OF KOR
+
+by
+
+TERRY CARR
+
+
+
+
+Ace Books, Inc.
+1120 Avenue of the Americas
+New York 36, N.Y.
+Copyright ©, 1963, by Ace Books, Inc.
+
+
+
+
+ONE
+
+
+Lee Rynason sat forward on the faded red-stone seat, watching the stylus
+of the interpreter as the massive grey being in front of him spoke, its
+dry, leathery mouth slowly and stumblingly forming the words of a spoken
+language its race had not used for over thirty thousand years. The
+stylus made no sound in the thin air of Hirlaj as it passed over the
+plasticene notepaper; the only sounds in the ancient building were those
+of the alien's surprisingly high and thin voice coming at intervals and
+Rynason's own slightly labored breathing.
+
+He did not listen to the alien's voice--by now he had heard it often
+enough so that it was merely irritating in its thin dryness, like old
+parchments being rubbed together. He watched the stylus as it jumped
+along sporadically:
+
+TEBRON MARL WAS OUR ... PRIEST KING HERO. NOT PRIEST BUT ONE WHO KNEW
+... THAT IS PRIEST.
+
+Rynason was a slender, sandy-haired man in his late twenties. A sharp
+scar from a knife cut left a line across his forehead over his right
+eyebrow. His eyes, perhaps brown, perhaps green--the light on Hirlaj was
+sometimes deceptive--were soft, but narrowed with an intent alertness.
+He raised the interpreter's mike and said, "How long ago?"
+
+The stylus recorded the Earthman's question too, but Rynason did not
+watch it. He looked up at the bulk of the alien, watching for the slow
+closing of its eyes, so slow that it could not be called a blink, that
+would show it had understood the question. The interpreter could feed
+the question direct to the telepathic alien, but there was no guarantee
+that it would be understood.
+
+The eyes, resting steadily on him, closed and opened and in a few
+moments came the Hirlaji's dry voice.
+
+THE GREAT AGE WAS IN THE EIGHTEENTH GENERATION PAST ... SEVEN THOUSAND
+YEARS AGO.
+
+Rynason calculated quickly. Translating that to about 8200
+Earth-standard years and subtracting, that would make it about the
+seventeenth century. About the time of the Restoration in England, when
+the western hemisphere of Earth was still being colonized. Eighteen
+generations ago on Hirlaj. He read the date into the mike for the stylus
+to record, and sat back and stretched.
+
+They were sitting amid the ruins of a vast hall, grey dust covering the
+stone floor all around them. Dry, hard vegetation had crept in through
+cracks and breaks in the walls and fallen across the dusty interior
+shadows of the building. Occasionally a small, quick animal would dart
+from a dark wall across the floor to another shadow, its feet soundless
+in the dust.
+
+Above Rynason the enormous arch of the Hirlaji dome loomed darkly
+against the deep cerulean blue of the sky. The lines of all Hirlaji
+architecture were deceptively simple, but Rynason had already found that
+if he tried to follow the curves and angles he would soon find his head
+swimming. There was a quality to these ancient buildings which was not
+quite understandable to a Terran mind, as though the old Hirlaji had
+built them on geometric principles just slightly at a tangent from those
+of Earth. The curve of the arch drew Rynason's eyes along its silhouette
+almost hypnotically. He caught himself, and shook his head, and turned
+again to the alien before him.
+
+The creature's name, as well as it could be rendered in a Terran script,
+was Horng. The head of the alien was dark and hairless, leathery,
+weathered; the light wires of the interpreter trailed down and across
+the floor from where they were clamped to the deep indentations of the
+temples. Massive boney ridges circled the shadowed eyes set low on the
+head, directly above the wide mouth which always hung open while the
+Hirlaji breathed in long gulps of air. Two atrophied nostrils were
+situated on either side and slightly below the eyes. The neck was so
+thick and massive that it was practically nonexistent, blending the head
+with the shoulders and trunk, on which the dry skin stretched so thin
+that Rynason could see the solid bone of the chest wall. Two squat arms
+hung from the shoulders, terminating in four-digited hands on which two
+sets of blunt fingers were opposed; Horng kept moving them constantly,
+in what Rynason automatically interpreted as a nervous habit. The lower
+body was composed of two heavily-muscled legs jointed so that they could
+move either forward or backward, and the feet had four stubby but
+powerful toes radiating from the center. The Hirlaji wore a dark garment
+of something which looked like wood-fibre, hanging from the head and
+gathered together by a cord just below the chest-wall.
+
+Rynason, since arriving on the planet three weeks before as one of a
+team of fifteen archaeological workers, had been interviewing Horng
+almost every day, but still he often found himself remembering only with
+difficulty that this was an intelligent being; Horng was so slow-moving
+and uncommunicative most of the time that he almost seemed like a mound
+of leather, like a pile of hides thrown together in a corner. But he was
+intelligent, and in his mind he held perhaps the entire history of his
+race.
+
+Rynason lifted the interpreter-mike again. "Was Tebron Marl king of all
+Hirlaj?"
+
+Horng's eyes slowly closed and opened. TEBRON MARL WAS RULER LEADER IN
+THE REGION OF MINES. HE UNITED ALL OF HIRLAJ AND WAS PRIEST RULER.
+
+"How did he unite the planet?"
+
+TEBRON LIVED AT THE END OF THE BARBARIC AGE. HE CONQUERED THE PLANET BY
+VIOLENCE AND DROVE THE ANCIENT PRIEST CASTE FROM THE TEMPLE.
+
+"But the reign of Tebron Marl is remembered as an era of peace."
+
+WHEN HE WAS PRIEST KING HE HELD THE PEACE. HE ENDED THE BARBARIC AGE.
+
+Rynason suddenly sat forward, watching the stylus record these words.
+"Then it was Tebron who abolished war on Hirlaj?"
+
+YES.
+
+Rynason felt a thrill go through him. This was what they had all been
+searching for--the point in the history of Hirlaj when wars had ceased,
+when the Hirlaji had given themselves over to completely peaceful
+living. He knew already that the transition had been sharp and sudden.
+It was the last question mark in the sketchy history of Hirlaj which the
+survey team had compiled since its arrival--how had the Hirlaji managed
+so abruptly to establish and maintain an era of peace which had lasted
+unbroken to the present?
+
+It was difficult even to think of these huge, slow-moving creatures as
+warriors ... but warriors they had been, for thousands of their years,
+gradually building their culture and science until, apparently almost
+overnight, the wars had ceased. Since then the Hirlaji moved in their
+slow way through their world, growing more complacent with the passage
+of ancient generations, growing passive, and, eventually, decadent. Now
+there were only some two dozen of the race left alive.
+
+They were telepathic, these leathery aliens, and behind those shadowed
+eyes they held the entire memories of their race. Experiences
+communicated telepathically through the centuries had formed a memory
+pool which each of the remaining Hirlaji shared. They could not, of
+course, integrate in their own minds all of that immense store of
+memories and understand it all clearly ... but the memories were there.
+
+It was at the same time a boon and a trial for Rynason and the rest of
+the survey team. They were trained archaeologists ... as well schooled
+as possible on the worlds of this far-flung sector near the constantly
+outward-moving Edge, the limit of Terran expansion. Rynason could
+operate and if necessary repair the portable carbondaters of the team,
+he knew the fine points of excavation and restoration of artifacts and
+had studied so many types of alien anatomy that he could make at least
+an educated guess at the reconstruction of beings from fragmentary
+fossil-remains or incomplete skeletons ... or exoskeletons.
+
+But the situation on Hirlaj was one which had never before been
+encountered; here he was not dealing with a dead race's remains, but
+directly with members of that race. It was not a matter of sifting
+fragmentary evidence of science, crafts and customs, finding out what he
+could and piecing together a composite picture from the remains at hand,
+as they had done with the artifacts of the Outsiders, those unknown
+beings who had left the ruins of their outposts and colonies in six
+galaxies already explored and settled by the Earthmen; all he had to do
+here was ask the right questions and he would get his answers.
+
+Sitting there under that massive dome, with the quiet-eyed alien before
+him, Rynason couldn't completely suppress a feeling of ridiculousness.
+The problem was that the Hirlaji could not be depended upon to be able
+to find a particular memory-series in their minds; the race memory was
+such a conglomeration that all they could do was strike randomly at
+memories until the correct area was touched, and then follow up from
+there. The result was usually irrelevant and unrelated information.
+
+But he seemed to be getting somewhere now. Having spent three weeks with
+Horng, gradually learning a little about the ways of his alien mind, he
+had at last run across what might be the important turning-point in the
+history of Hirlaj.
+
+Horng spoke, and Rynason turned to watch the stylus of the interpreter
+as it moved across the paper. TEBRON SPENT HIS YEARS BRINGING HIRLAJ
+TOGETHER. FIRST BY CONQUEST THEN BY ... LEADERSHIP LAW. HE FORBADE ...
+SCIENCES QUESTINGS EXPLORATIONS WHICH DREW HIRLAJ APART.
+
+"What were these sciences?"
+
+Horng closed and opened his eyes. MANY OF THEM ARE FORGOTTEN.
+
+Rynason looked up at the alien, who sat quietly on a rough stone
+benchlike seat. "But your race doesn't forget."
+
+THE MEMORIES ARE VERY FAR BACK AND ARE HARD TO FIND. THERE HAS BEEN NO
+EFFORT TO RETAIN CERTAIN MEMORIES.
+
+"But you can remember these if you try?"
+
+Horng's head dipped to one side, a characteristic movement which Rynason
+had not yet managed to interpret. The shadowed, wrinkled eyes closed
+slowly. THE MEMORIES ARE THERE. THEY ARE THE SCIENCES OF KOR. MANY OF
+THEM ARE WARLIKE SCIENCES.
+
+"You've mentioned Kor before. Who was he?"
+
+KOR WAS IS GOD KNOWLEDGE.
+
+Rynason frowned. The interpreter automatically translated terms which
+had no reliable parallel in Terran by giving two or three related words,
+and usually the concept was fairly clear. Not quite so with this
+sentence.
+
+"God and knowledge are two different words in our language," he said.
+"Can you explain your term more fully?"
+
+Horng shifted heavily on his seat, his blunt fingers tapping each other.
+KOR WAS IS EXISTENCE WHICH WE WORSHIP OBEY ADMIRE FOLLOW. ALSO ESSENCE
+CONCEPT OF KNOWLEDGE SCIENCE QUESTING.
+
+Rynason, watching the stylus, pursed his lips. "Mm," he said softly, and
+shrugged his shoulders. Kor was apparently some sort of god, but the
+interpreter didn't seem capable of translating the term precisely.
+
+"What were the sciences of Kor?"
+
+There was a silence as the stylus finished moving across the paper, and
+Rynason looked up at Horng. The alien's eyes were closed and he had
+stopped the constant motion of his leathery grey fingers; he sat
+immobile, like a giant statue, almost a part of the complex of the hall
+and the crumbling domed building. Rynason waited.
+
+The silence remained for a long time in the dry air of the empty hall.
+Rynason saw from the corner of his eye one of the dark little scavengers
+darting out of a gaping window. He could almost hear, it seemed, the
+noise of the brawling, makeshift town the Earthmen had established a
+little less than a mile away from the Hirlaji ruins, where already the
+nomads and adventurers and drifters had erected a cluster of prefab
+metal buildings and were settling in.
+
+"What were the sciences of Kor?" Rynason asked again, not wanting to
+think of the cheapness and dirt of the Earth outpost which huddled so
+near to the Hirlaji domes.
+
+He felt Horng's quiet gaze, heavy with centuries, resting on him. THEY
+WERE ARE THOSE SCIENCES QUESTINGS WHICH KOR PROCLAIMED INFORMED WERE
+SACRED PART OF THE ESSENCE.
+
+"Part of Kor?"
+
+Horng's head dipped to one side. APPROXIMATELY.
+
+"How is this known? Tebron broke the power of the priesthood, didn't
+he?"
+
+TEBRON REPLACED THE PRIESTS. THE KNOWLEDGE WAS GIVEN TO TEBRON.
+
+"Including the information that these sciences were prohibited?"
+
+Horng shifted forward, like a massive block of stone wavering. His
+fingers moved briefly and then rested. THE MEMORIES ARE BURIED DEEPLY.
+TEBRON PROCLAIMED THIS PROHIBITION AFTER COMMUNICATING WITH KOR.
+
+Rynason's head jerked up from the interpreter. "Tebron spoke with Kor?"
+
+After a pause, Horng's dry voice came. APPROXIMATELY. THERE WAS ...
+COMMUNICATION RAPPORT. TEBRON WAS KING PRIEST.
+
+"Then Tebron made this prohibition in the name of Kor. When did this
+occur?"
+
+THE KNOWLEDGE PROHIBITION WAS COMMUNICATED TO HIRLAJ WHEN TEBRON ASSUMED
+POWER RIGHT.
+
+"The same day?"
+
+THE DAY AFTER. TEBRON COMMUNICATED WITH KOR IMMEDIATELY AFTER OUSTING
+REPLACING THE PRIESTS.
+
+Rynason watched Horng's replies as they were recorded by the
+interpreter; he was frowning. So this dawn-era king was supposed to have
+spoken, perhaps telepathically, with the god of the Hirlaji. Could he
+have simply claimed to have done so in an effort to stabilize his own
+power? But the fact that this race was telepathic threw some doubt on
+that supposition.
+
+"Are there memories of Tebron's conversation with Kor?" he asked.
+
+Horng's eyes closed and opened in acknowledgement, and then abruptly the
+alien rose to his feet. He moved slowly past Rynason to the base of a
+long, sweeping flight of stairs which led upward toward the empty dome,
+trailing the wires of the interpreter. Rynason moved to unplug the
+wires, but Horng stopped at the base of the stairs, looking up along the
+curving ramp to where it ended in a blunt, weathered break two-thirds of
+the way up. Rubble lay below the break.
+
+Rynason watched the grey being staring silently up those broken steps,
+and asked softly, "What are you doing?"
+
+Horng, still gazing upward, dipped his head to one side. THERE IS NO
+PURPOSE. He turned and came slowly back to his stone seat.
+
+Rynason grinned wryly. He was beginning to get used to such things from
+Horng, whose mind often seemed to run in non sequiturs. It was as though
+the alien's perceptions of the present were as jumbled as the welter of
+memories he held. Crazy old mound of leather.
+
+But he was not crazy, of course; his mind simply ran in a way that was
+alien to the Earthmen. Rynason was beginning to learn to respect that
+alien way, if not to understand it.
+
+"Are there memories of Tebron's conversation with Kor?" Rynason asked
+again.
+
+TEBRON COMMUNICATED WITH KOR IMMEDIATELY AFTER OUSTING THE PRIESTS. IT
+OCCURRED IN THE TEMPLE.
+
+"Are there memories of what was said?"
+
+Horng sat silently, perhaps in thought. His reply didn't come for
+several minutes.
+
+THE MEMORIES ARE BURIED DEEPLY.
+
+"_Can you remember_ the actual communication?"
+
+Horng's head tilted to one side in a peculiarly strained fashion;
+Rynason could see a muscle jumping where the alien's neck blended with
+his torso. THE MEMORIES ARE BURIED SO DEEPLY. I CANNOT REACH THEM.
+
+Rynason gazed pensively at the interpreter as these words were recorded.
+What could have happened during that conversation that would have caused
+its memory to be so deeply buried?
+
+"Can you find among any of the rest of Tebron's memories any thoughts
+about Kor?"
+
+YES. TEBRON HAD MEMORIES THAT HE HAD COMMUNICATED WITH KOR, BUT THESE
+ARE FLEETING. THERE IS NOTHING CLEAR.
+
+The Hirlaji was shaking, his entire body trembling with some sort of
+tension which even communicated itself through the interpreter, causing
+the stylus to quaver and jump forward, dragging a jagged line across the
+paper. Rynason stared up at the alien, feeling a chill down his back
+which seemed to penetrate through to his chest and lungs. This massive
+creature was shaking like the rumbling warnings of an earthquake, his
+eyes cast downward from the deep shadows of their sockets; Rynason could
+almost feel the weight of their gaze like a heavy, dark blanket. He
+lifted the interpreter's mike slowly.
+
+"Your race does not forget," he said softly. "Why can't you remember
+this conversation?"
+
+Horng's four-digited hands clasped tightly and the powerful tendons
+stood out starkly on the heavy wrists as Horng drew in long breaths of
+air, the sound of his breathing loud in the great space under the dome.
+
+THERE IS NOTHING CLEAR. THERE IS NOTHING CLEAR.
+
+
+
+
+TWO
+
+
+The Earthman called the town Hirlaj too, because the spaceport was
+there. It was a new town, only a few months old, but the gleaming alloys
+of the buildings were already coated with dirt and pitted by the
+frequent dust storms that swept through. Garbage littered the alleys;
+its odor was strange but still foul in the alien atmosphere. The small,
+darting creatures were here too, foraging in the alleys and the
+outskirts of the town, where the streets ended in garbage heaps and new
+cemeteries or faded into the trackless flat where the spacers touched
+down.
+
+The Earthmen filled the streets ... drinking, fighting, laughing and
+cursing, arguing over money or power or, sometimes, women. The women
+here were hard and self-sufficient, following the path of Terran
+expansion in the stars and taking what they felt was due them as women
+or what they could get as men. Supply houses did a thriving business,
+their prices high between shipments on the spacers from the inner
+worlds; bars and gambling houses stayed open all night; rooming houses
+and restaurants and laundries displayed crude handlettered signs along
+the streets.
+
+Rynason pushed his way through a jostling crowd outside the door of a
+bar. He was supposed to meet the head of his Survey team here--Rice
+Manning, who had been pushing the survey as hard as he could since the
+day they'd set foot on Hirlaj. Manning was hard and ambitious--a leader
+of men, Rynason thought sardonically as he surveyed the tables in the
+dim interior. The floor of the bar was a dirty plastic-metal alloy,
+already scuffed and in places bloodstained. The tables were of the
+cheap, light metals so common on the spacer-supplied worlds of the Edge,
+and they wobbled.
+
+The low-ceilinged room was crowded with men. Rynason didn't know many of
+them by name, but he recognized a lot of the faces. The men of the Edge,
+though they lacked money, education, often brains and usually ethics, at
+least had the quality of distinctiveness: they didn't fit the half-dozen
+convenient molds which the highly developed culture of the inner worlds
+fitted over the more civilized citizens of the Terran Federation. These
+men were too self-interested to follow the group-thoughts which
+controlled the centers of empire, and the seams and wrinkles of their
+faces stamped a rough kind of individuality even more visually upon
+them.
+
+Of them all, the man who was instantly recognizable in any crowd like
+this was Rene Malhomme; Rynason immediately saw the man in one corner of
+the room. He stood six and a half feet tall, heavily muscled and a bit
+wild-eyed; his greying hair fell in disorder over his dirty forehead and
+sprayed out over his ears. He was surrounded by laughing and shouting
+men; Rynason couldn't tell from this distance whether he was engaged in
+one of his usual heated arguments on religion or in his other avocation
+of recounting stories of the women he had "converted". He waved a
+black-lettered sign saying REPENT! over his head--but then, he always
+did.
+
+Rynason found Manning in the back, sitting under a cheap print of a
+Picasso nude with cold light trained on it in typically bad taste. He
+had a woman with him. Rynason recognized her--Mara Stephens, in charge
+of communications and supplies for the survey team. She was a strange
+girl, aloof but not hard, and she carried herself with a quiet dignity.
+What was she doing with Manning?
+
+He passed a waiter on his way to the table and ordered a drink. Malhomme
+saw him as he passed: "Lee Rynason! Come and join me in repentance! Give
+your soul to God and your money to the barman, for as the prophet
+sayeth, lo, I am dry! Join us!"
+
+Rynason grinned and shook his head, walking past. He grabbed one of the
+light-metal chairs and sat down next to Mara.
+
+"You wanted to see me," he said to Manning.
+
+Manning looked up at him to apparent surprise. "Lee! Yes, yes--sit down.
+Wait, we'll get you a drink."
+
+So he was in that kind of a mood. "I've got one coming," Rynason said.
+"What's our problem today?"
+
+Manning smiled broadly. "No problem, Lee; no problem at all. Not unless
+you want to make one." He chuckled goodnaturedly, a tacit statement that
+he was expecting no such thing. "I've got good news today, by god. You
+tell him, Mara."
+
+Rynason turned to the girl, who smiled briefly. "It just came over the
+telecom," she said. "Manning has a good chance for the governorship
+here. The Council is supposed to announce its decision in two weeks."
+
+Rynason looked over at Manning, his face expressionless.
+"Congratulations. How did this happen?"
+
+"I've got an inside track; friend of mine knows several of the big guys.
+Throws parties, things like that. He's been putting in a word for me,
+here and there."
+
+"Isn't this a bit out of your line?" Rynason said.
+
+Manning sat back, a large man with close-cropped dark hair and heavy
+features. His beard was trimmed to a thin line along the ridge of his
+jaw--a style that was popular on the inner worlds, but rarely seen here
+on the Edge. "This _is_ my line," he said. "God, this is what I was
+after when I took this damned job. Survey teams are a dime a dozen out
+here, Lee; it's no job for a man."
+
+"We've got sort of a special case here," Rynason said evenly, glancing
+at Mara. She smiled at him. "We haven't run into any alien races before
+that were intelligent."
+
+Manning laughed, and took a long swallow of his drink. "Twenty-six lousy
+horsefaces--now there's an important discovery for you. No, Lee, this is
+peanuts. For that matter, they may be running into intelligent aliens
+all over the Edge by now--communication isn't so reliable out here that
+we'd necessarily know about it. What we've found here isn't any more
+important than all the rubble and trash the Outsiders left behind."
+
+"Still, it _is_ unique so far," Mara said.
+
+"I'll tell you exactly how unique it is," Manning said, leaning forward
+and setting down his glass with a bang. "It's just unique enough that I
+can make it sound important in my report to the Council. I can make
+myself sound a little impressive. That's how important it is; no more
+than that."
+
+Rynason pursed his lips, but didn't say anything. The waiter arrived
+with his drink; he threw a green coin onto the table which was scooped
+up before it had finished ringing to a stop, and sat back with the glass
+in his hand.
+
+"Is that your pitch to the Council?" he asked. "You're telling them that
+Hirlaj is an important archaeological area and that's why you should get
+the governorship?"
+
+"Something like that," Manning nodded. "That, and my friend at
+Seventeenth Cluster headquarters. Incidentally, he's an idiot and a
+slob--turns on quadsense telemuse instead of working, drinks hopsbrau
+from his own sector. I can't stand him. But I did him a few favors, just
+in case, and they're paying off."
+
+"I think it's marvelous the way our frontier policy caters to the
+colonists," Mara said quietly. She was still smiling, but it was an
+ironic smile which suddenly struck Rynason as characteristic of her.
+
+He knew exactly what she meant. Manning's little push for power was
+nothing new or shocking in Terran frontier politics. With the rapid
+expansion of the Edge through the centuries, the frontier policy of the
+Confederation had had to adapt itself to comparatively slipshod methods
+of setting up governments in the newly-opened areas. Back in the early
+days they'd tried sending out trained men from each Cluster
+headquarters, but that had been foredoomed to failure: travel between
+the stars was slow, and too often the governors had arrived after local
+officialdoms had already been established, and there had been clashes.
+The colonists had almost always backed the local governments, and there
+were a few full-scale revolts when the system had been backed too
+militantly by Cluster headquarters.
+
+So the Local Autonomy System had been sanctioned. The colonists would
+always support their own men, who at least knew conditions in the areas
+they were to govern. But since this necessarily limited the choice of
+Edge governorships to the roustabouts and drifters who wandered the
+outworlds, the resulting administrations were probably even more corrupt
+than they had been under the old system of what had amounted to
+centralized graft. The Cluster Councils retained the power of appointing
+the local governors, but aside from that the newly-opened worlds of the
+Edge were completely under their own rule. Some of the more vocal
+critics of the Local Autonomy System had dubbed it instead the
+Indigenous Corruption System; it was by now a fairly standard nickname
+in the outworlds.
+
+The system made for a wide-open frontier--bustling, wild, hectic, and
+rich. For the worlds of the Edge were untamed worlds, raw and
+forbidding, and the policy of the Councils was calculated to attract the
+kind of men who not only could but would open these frontiers. The
+roustabouts, the low drifters of the spaceways ... men who were hard and
+strong from repeated knocks, who were looking for a way to work or fight
+their way up. The lean and hungry of the outworlds.
+
+Rynason glanced across the table at Manning. He was neither lean nor
+hungry, but he had that look in his eyes. Rynason had been around the
+Edge for years--his father had travelled the spacers in the commercial
+lines--and he had seen that look on many men, in the fields and mines,
+in the spaceports, in the quickly-tarnished prefab towns that sprang up
+almost overnight when a planetfall was made. He could recognize it on
+Manning despite the man's casual, self-satisfied expression.
+
+"You don't have to worry about the colonists here," Manning was saying
+to the girl. "I'll treat 'em decently. There'll be money to be made
+here, and I can make it without stepping on too many toes."
+
+Mara seemed amused. "And what would happen if you _had_ to step on them
+to make your money? What if Hirlaj doesn't turn out to have any natural
+resources worth exploiting--a whole civilization has been here for
+thousands of years? What if the colony here starts to falter, and the
+men move on?"
+
+Manning frowned at her for a moment, then gave a grunting laugh. "No
+chance of that. It's like Lee was just saying--this planet is an
+important discovery--we've got tame aliens here, intelligent horsefaces
+that you can lead around with a rope on their necks. That alone will
+draw tourists. Maybe well set up an official Restricted Ground, a sort
+of reservation."
+
+"A zoo, you mean," Rynason interrupted.
+
+Manning raised an amused eyebrow at him. "A reservation, I said. You
+know what reservations are like, Lee."
+
+Rynason glared at the heavier man, then subsided. There was no point in
+getting into a fight over if's and maybe's; in the outworlds you learned
+quickly to confine your clashes to tangibles. "Why did you want to see
+me?" he said.
+
+"I want your preliminary report completed," Manning said. "I've got to
+have my complete report collated and transmitted within the week, if
+it's to have any effect on the Council. Most of the boys have got them
+in already; Breune and Larsborg have promised theirs within four days.
+But you're still holding me up."
+
+Rynason took a long swallow of his drink and put it down empty. The
+noise and smell of the bar seemed to grow around him, washing over him.
+It might have been the effects of the tarpaq in the drink, but he felt
+his stomach tighten and turn slightly when he thought of how Earth's
+culture presented itself, warped itself, here on the frontier Edge. Was
+this land of mercenary, slipshod rush really what had carried Earthmen
+to the stars?
+
+"I don't know if I'll have much to report for at least a week," he said
+shortly.
+
+"Then give me a report on what you've got!" Manning snapped. "If nothing
+else, turn in your transcripts and I'll do the report myself; I can
+handle it. What the hell do you mean, you won't have much to report?"
+
+"Larsborg said the same thing," Mara interjected.
+
+"Larsborg said he'd have his report ready in a couple of days anyway!"
+
+"I'll give you what I've got as soon as I can," Rynason said. "But
+things are just beginning to break for me--did you see my note this
+afternoon?"
+
+"Yes, of course. The part about this Tedron or whatever his name was?"
+
+"Tebron Marl. He's the link between their barbaric and civilized
+periods. I've only begun to get into it."
+
+Manning was waving for more drinks; he caught a waiter's eye and then
+turned back to Rynason. "What's this nonsense about some damned block
+you ran into? Have you got a crazy horse on your hands?"
+
+"There's something strange there," Rynason said. "He tells me this
+Tebron was actually supposed to have communicated with their god, or
+whatever he was. It sounds crazy, all right. But there's more to it than
+that, I'm sure of it. I wanted time to go into it further before I made
+my report."
+
+"I think you've got a nut alien there, boy. Don't let him foul you up;
+you're one of my best men."
+
+Rynason almost sneered, but he managed to bring it out as a grin. The
+role of protective father did not sit well on Manning's shoulders.
+"We're dealing here with a remarkably sane race," he pointed out. "The
+very fact that they have total recall argues against any insanity in
+them. There've been experiments on the inner worlds for over a century
+now, trying to bring out total recall in us, and not much luck so far.
+We're a sick, hung-up race."
+
+Manning slapped his hand down on the table. "What the hell are you
+trying to do, Lee? Are you trying to measure these aliens by our
+standards? I thought you had better sense. Total recall doesn't
+necessarily mean a damn thing in them--but when they start telling you
+straightforward and cold that they've talked with some god, and then
+they throw what sounds like an anxiety fit right in front of you....
+Well, what does it sound like to you?"
+
+Rynason accepted one of the drinks that the waiter banged down on the
+table and took a sip. He felt lightheaded. "It would have been an
+anxiety fit if Horng had been human," he said. "But you're right, I do
+know better than to judge him by our standards. No, it was something
+else."
+
+"What, then?"
+
+He shook his head. "I don't know. That's the point--I can't give you a
+decent report until I find out."
+
+"Then, dammit, give me an _indecent_ report! Fill it out with some very
+learned speculations, you know the type...." Manning stopped, and
+grinned. "Speaking of indecent reports, what have we turned up on their
+sex lives?"
+
+"Marc Stoworth covered that in his report yesterday," Mara said.
+"They're unisexual, and their sex life is singularly boring, if you'll
+pardon the expression. At least, Stoworth says so. If it weren't I'm
+sure he'd tell us all about it."
+
+Manning chuckled. "Yes, I imagine you're right; Marc is a good boy. Well
+look, Lee, I've told you the position I'm in. Now I'm counting on you to
+get me out of this spot. I've _got to_ transmit my report to Council
+within a week. I don't want to pressure you, but you know I'm in a
+position to do it if I have to. Dammit, give me a report."
+
+"I'll turn something in in a few days," Rynason said vaguely. His brain
+was definitely fuzzy now from the tarpaq.
+
+Manning stood up. "All right, don't forget it. Trick it out with some
+high-sounding guesses if you have to, like I said. Right now I've got to
+see a man about a woman." He paused, glancing at Mara. "You're busy?"
+
+"I'm busy, yes." Her face was studiedly expressionless.
+
+He shrugged briefly and went out, pushing and weaving his way through
+the hubbub that filled the bar. It was dark outside; Rynason caught a
+glimpse of the dark street as Manning went through the door. Night fell
+quickly on Hirlaj, with the suddenness of age.
+
+Rynason turned back to the table, and Mara. He looked at her curiously.
+
+"What were you doing with him, anyway? You usually keep to yourself."
+
+The girl smiled wryly. She had deep black hair which fell to her
+shoulders in soft waves. Most of the women here grew their hair down to
+their waists, in exaggerated imitation of inner-world styles, but Mara
+had more taste than that. Her eyes were a clear brown, and they met his
+directly. "He was in a sharp mood, so I came along as peacemaker. You
+don't seem to have needed me."
+
+"You helped, at that; thanks. Was that true about the governorship?"
+
+"Of course. Manning seldom brags, you should know that. He's a very
+capable man, in some ways."
+
+Rynason frowned. "He could be a lot more useful on this survey if he'd
+use his talents on tightening up the survey itself. He's forcing a
+premature report, and it isn't going to be worth much."
+
+"Is that what's really bothering you?" she asked.
+
+He tried to focus on her through the haze of the noisy bar. "Of course
+it is. That, and his whole attitude toward these people."
+
+"The Hirlaji? Are they people to you?"
+
+He shrugged. "What are people? Humans? Or reasoning beings you can talk
+to, communicate with?"
+
+"I should think people would be reasoning beings you could relate to,"
+she said softly. "Not just intellectually, but emotionally too. You have
+to be able to understand them to communicate that way--that's what makes
+people."
+
+Rynason was silent, trying to integrate that into the fog in his head.
+The raucous noise of the bar had faded into an underwater murmur around
+him, lost somewhere where he could not see.
+
+Finally, he said, "That's the trouble with them, the Hirlaji. I can't
+really understand them. It's like there's really no contact, not even
+through the interpreter." He stared into his drink. "I wish to hell we
+had some straight telepathers here; they might work with the Hirlaji,
+since they're telepathic anyway. I'd like to make a direct link myself."
+
+After a moment he felt Mara's hand on his arm, and realized that he had
+almost fallen asleep on the table.
+
+"You'd better go on back to your quarters," she said.
+
+He sat up, shaking his head to clear it. "No, but really--what do you
+think of that idea? What if I had a telepather, and I could link minds
+with Horng? Straight linkage, no interpreter in the middle. I could get
+right at that race memory myself!"
+
+"I think you need some sleep," she said. She seemed worried. "You're
+getting too wrapped up in this thing. And forget about the telepathers."
+
+Rynason looked at her and grinned. "Why?" he said quietly. "There's no
+harm in wishing."
+
+"Because," she said, "we've got three telepathers coming in the day
+after tomorrow."
+
+
+
+
+THREE
+
+
+Rynason continued to smile at her for several seconds, until her words
+penetrated. Then he abruptly sat up and steadied himself with one hand
+against the edge of the table.
+
+"Can you get one for me?"
+
+She gave a reluctant shrug. "If you insist, and if Manning okays it. But
+is it a good idea? Direct contact with a mind so alien?"
+
+As a matter of fact, now that he was faced with the actual possibility
+of it, he wasn't so sure. But he said, "We'll only know once we've tried
+it."
+
+Mara dropped her eyes and swirled her drink, watching the tiny red spots
+form inside the glass and rise to the surface. There was a brief silence
+between them.
+
+"_Repent_, Lee Rynason!" The words burst upon his ears over the waves of
+sound that filled the room. He turned, half-rising, to find Rene
+Malhomme hovering over him, his wide grin showing a tooth missing in the
+bottom row.
+
+Rynason settled back into his chair. "Don't shout. I'm going to have a
+headache soon enough."
+
+Malhomme took the chair which Manning had vacated and sat in it heavily.
+He set his hand-lettered placard against the edge of the table and
+leaned forward, waving a thick finger.
+
+"You consort with men who would enslave the pure in heart!" he rumbled,
+but Rynason didn't miss the laughter in his eye.
+
+"Manning?" he nodded. "He'd enslave every pure heart on this planet, if
+he could find one. As a matter of fact, I think he's already working on
+Mara here."
+
+Malhomme turned to her and sat back, appraising her boldly. Mara met his
+gaze calmly, raising her eyebrows slightly as she waited for his
+verdict.
+
+Malhomme shook his head. "If she's pure, then it's a sin," he said. "A
+thrice-damned sin, Lee. Have I ever expostulated to you upon the
+Janus-coin that is good and evil?"
+
+"Often," Rynason said.
+
+Malhomme shrugged and turned again to the girl. "Nevertheless," he said,
+"I greet you with pleasure."
+
+"Mara, this is Rene Malhomme," Rynason said wearily. "He imagines that
+we're friends, and I'm afraid he's right."
+
+Malhomme dipped his shaggy head. "The name is from the Old French of
+Earth--badman. I have a long and dishonorable family history, but the
+earliest of my ancestors whom I've been able to trace had the same name.
+Apparently there were too many Smiths, Carpenters, Bakers and Priests on
+that world--the time was ripe for a Malhomme. My first name would have
+been pronounced Reh-_nay_ before the language reform dropped all accent
+marks from Earth tongues."
+
+"Considering your background," Mara smiled, "you're in good company out
+here."
+
+"Good company!" Malhomme cried. "I'm not looking for good company! My
+work, my mission calls me to where men's hearts are the blackest, where
+repentance and redemption are needed--and so I come to the Edge."
+
+"You're religious?" she asked.
+
+"Who _is_ religious in these days?" Malhomme asked, shrugging. "Religion
+is of the past; it is dead. It is nearly forgotten, and one hears God's
+name spoken now in anger. God damn you, cry the masses! _That_ is our
+modern religion!"
+
+"Rene wanders around shouting about sin," Rynason explained, "so that he
+can take up collections to buy himself more to drink."
+
+Malhomme chuckled. "Ah, Lee, you're shortsighted. I'm an unbeliever, and
+a black rogue, but at least I have a mission. Our scientific advance has
+destroyed religion; we've penetrated to the heavens, and found no God.
+But science has not _dis_proved Him, either, and people forget that. I
+speak with the voice of the forgotten; I remind people of God, to even
+the scales." He stopped talking long enough to grab the arm of a passing
+waiter and order a drink. Then he turned back to them. "Nothing says I
+have to _believe_ in religion. If that were necessary, no one would
+preach it."
+
+"Have you been preaching to the Hirlaji?" Rynason asked.
+
+"An admirable idea!" Malhomme said. "Do they have souls?"
+
+"They have a god, at least. Or used to, anyway. Fellow named Kor, who
+was god, essence, knowledge, and several other things all rolled into
+one."
+
+"Return to Kor!" Malhomme said. "Perhaps it will be my next mission."
+
+"What's your mission now?" Mara asked, smiling in spite of herself.
+"Besides your apparently lifelong study and participation in sin, I
+mean."
+
+Malhomme sighed and sat back as his drink arrived. He dug into the pouch
+strung from his waist and flipped a coin to the waiter. "Believe it or
+not, I have one," he said, and his voice was now low and serious. "I'm
+not just a lounger, a drifter."
+
+"What are you?"
+
+"I am a spy," he said, and raised his glass to drain half of it with one
+swallow.
+
+Mara smiled again, but he didn't return it. He sat forward and turned to
+Rynason. "Manning has been busily wrapping up the appointment for the
+governorship here," he said. "You probably know that."
+
+Rynason nodded. The headache he had been expecting was already starting.
+
+"Did you also know that he's been buying men here to stand with him in
+case someone else is appointed?" He glanced at Mara. "I go among the men
+every day, talking, and I hear a lot. Manning will end up in control
+here, one way or another, unless he's stopped."
+
+"Buying men is nothing new," Rynason said. "In any case, is there a
+better man on the planet?"
+
+Malhomme shook his head. "I don't know; sometimes I give up on the human
+race. Manning at least has a little culture in him--but he's more
+vicious than he seems, nevertheless. If he gets control here...."
+
+"It will be no worse than any of the other planets out here," Rynason
+concluded for him.
+
+"Except for one thing, perhaps--the Hirlaji. I don't have much against
+men killing each other ... that's their own business. But unless we get
+somebody better than Manning governing here, the Hirlaji will be wiped
+out. The men here are already talking ... they're afraid of them."
+
+"Why? The Hirlaji are harmless."
+
+"Because of their size, and because we don't know anything about them.
+Because they're intelligent--any uneducated man is afraid of
+intelligence, and when it's an alien...." He shook his head. "Manning
+isn't helping the situation."
+
+"What do you mean by that?" Mara asked.
+
+Malhomme's frown deepened, creasing the dark lines of his forehead into
+furrows. "He's using the Hirlaji as bogey-men. Says he's the only man on
+the planet who knows how to deal with them safely. Oh, you should hear
+him when he moves among his people.... I envy his ability to control
+them with words. A little backslapping, a joke or two--most of them I
+was telling last year--and he talks to them man to man, very friendly."
+He shook his head again. "Manning is so friendly with this scum that his
+attitude is nothing short of patronizing."
+
+Rynason smiled wearily at Malhomme; for all the man's wildness, he
+couldn't help liking him. It had been like this every time he had run
+into him, on a dozen of the Edge-worlds. Malhomme, dirty and cynical,
+moved among the dregs of the stars preaching religion and fighting the
+corporations, the opportunists, the phony rebels who wanted nothing for
+anyone but themselves. He had been known to break heads together with
+his huge fists, and he had no qualms about stealing or even killing when
+his anger was aroused. Yet there was a peculiar honesty about him.
+
+"You always have to have a cause, don't you, Rene?"
+
+The greying giant shrugged. "It makes life interesting, and it makes me
+feel good sometimes. But I don't overestimate myself: I'm scum, like the
+rest of them. The only difference is that I know it; I'm just one man,
+with no more rights than anyone else, except those I can take." He held
+up his large knuckled hands and turned them in front of his face. "I've
+got broken bones in both of them. I wonder if the Buddha or the Christ
+ever hit a man. The books on religion that are left in the repositories
+don't say."
+
+"Would it make any difference if they hadn't?" Rynason asked.
+
+"Hell, no! I'm just curious." Malhomme stood up, hefting his repentance
+sign in the crook of one big arm. His face again took on its arched look
+as he said, "My duty calls me elsewhere. But I leave you with a message
+from the scriptures, and it has been my guiding light. 'Resist not
+evil,' my children. Resist not evil."
+
+"Who said that?" Rynason asked.
+
+Malhomme shook his head. "Damned if I know," he muttered, and went away.
+
+After a moment Rynason turned back to the girl; she was still watching
+Malhomme thread his way through the men on his way to the door.
+
+"So now you've met my spiritual father," he said.
+
+Her deep brown eyes flickered back to his. "I wish I could use a
+telepather on him. I'd like to know how he really thinks."
+
+"He thinks exactly as he speaks," Rynason said. "At least, at the moment
+he says something, he believes in it."
+
+She smiled. "I suppose that's the only possible explanation for him."
+She was silent for a moment, her face thoughtful. Then she said, "He
+didn't finish his drink."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"You're all hooked up," the girl said. "Nod or something when you're
+ready." She was bent over the telepather, double checking the
+connectives and the blinking meters. Rynason and Horng sat opposite each
+other, the huge dark mound of the alien looming silently over the
+Earthman.
+
+He never seemed upset, Rynason thought, looking up at him. Except for
+that one time when they'd run into the stone wall of the block on
+Tebron, Horng had displayed a completely even temperament--unruffled,
+calm, almost disinterested. But of course if the aliens had been
+completely uninterested in the Earthmen's probings at their history they
+would never have cooperated so readily; the Hirlaji were not animals to
+be ordered about by the Earthmen. Probably the codification of their
+history would prove useful to the aliens too; they had never arranged
+the race memory into a very coherent order themselves.
+
+Not that that was surprising, Rynason decided. The Hirlaji had no
+written language--their telepathic abilities had made that
+unnecessary--and organization of material into neatly outlined form was
+a characteristic as much of the Earth languages as of Terran mentality.
+Such organization was not a Hirlaji trait apparently, at least not now
+in the twilight of their civilization. The huge aliens lived dimly
+through these centuries, dreaming in their own way of the past ... and
+their way was not the Earthmen's.
+
+So if they cooperated with the survey team on codifying and recording
+their history, who was the servant?
+
+Well, with the direct linkage of minds the work should go faster.
+Rynason looked up at Mara and nodded, and she flicked the connection on
+the telepather.
+
+Suddenly, like being overwhelmed by a breaking wave of seawater, Rynason
+felt Horng's mind envelope him. A torrent of thoughts, memories,
+pictures and concepts poured over him in a jumble; the sensory
+sensations of the alien came to him sharply, and memories that were
+strange, ideas that were incomprehensible, all in a sudden rush upon his
+mind. He fought down the fear that had leapt in him, gritted his teeth
+and waited for the wave to subside.
+
+It did not subside; it settled. As the two minds, Earthman and Hirlaji,
+met in direct linkage they became almost one. Gradually Rynason could
+begin to see some pattern to the impressions of the alien. The picture
+of himself came first: he was small and angular, sitting several feet
+below Horng's--or his own--eyes; but more than that, he was not merely
+light, but pallid, not merely small, but fragile. The alien's view of
+reality, even through his direct sensations, was not merely visual or
+tactile but interpreted automatically in his own terms.
+
+The odor of the hall in which they sat was different, the very
+temperature warmer. Rynason could see himself reeling on the stone bench
+where he sat, and Mara, strangely distorted, put out a hand to steady
+him. At the same time he was seeing through his own eyes, feeling her
+hand on his shoulder. But the alien sensations were stronger; their very
+strangeness commanded the attention of his mind.
+
+He righted himself, physically and mentally, and began to probe
+tentatively in this new part of his mind. He could feel Horng too
+reaching slowly for contact; his presence was comfortable, mild,
+confused but unworried. As his thoughts blended with Horng's the present
+faded perceptibly; this confusion was merely a moment in centuries, and
+soon too it would pass. Rynason could feel himself relaxing.
+
+Now he could reach out and touch the strange areas of this mind: the
+concepts and attitudes of an alien race and culture and experience.
+Everything became dim and dream-like: the Earthmen possibly didn't
+exist, the dry wastes of Hirlaj had always been here or perhaps once
+they had been green but through four generations the Large Hall had
+stood thus and the animals changed by the day too fast to distinguish
+them even under Kor if he should be reached ... why? there was no
+reason. There was no purpose, no goal, no necessity, no wishing,
+questing, hoping ... no curiosity. All would pass. All was passing even
+now; perhaps already it was gone.
+
+Rynason shifted where he sat, reaching for the feeling of the stone
+bench beneath him for equilibrium, pulling out of Horng's thoughts and
+going back in almost immediately.
+
+A chaos of mind enveloped him, but he was beginning to familiarize
+himself with it now. He probed slowly for the memories, down through
+Horng's own personal memories of three centuries, dry feet on the dust
+and low winds, down to the racial pool. And he found it.
+
+Even knowing the outlines of the race's history did not help Rynason to
+place and correlate those impressions which came to him one on top of
+another, overlapping, merging, blending. He saw buildings which towered
+over him, masses of his people moving quietly around him, and thoughts
+came to him from their minds. He was Norhib, artisan, working slowly day
+by ... he was Rashanah, approaching the Gate of the Wall and looking ...
+he was Lohreen discussing the site where ... he was digging the ground,
+pushing the heavy cart, lying on the pelt of animals, demolishing the
+building which would soon fall, instructing a child in balance.
+
+A dirt-caked street stretched before him by night, the stones
+individually cut and smooth with the passage of heavy feet. "Tomorrow we
+will set out for the Region of Chalk while there is still time." A
+mind-voice from a Hirlaji hundreds, perhaps thousands of years old, dead
+but alive in the race-memory. Rynason could feel the whole personality
+there, in the memories, but he passed on.
+
+"Murba has said that the priests will take him."
+
+"There is no need for planting this year ... the soil is dry. There is
+no purpose."
+
+"The child's mind is ready for war."
+
+He felt Horng himself watching him, beside him or behind him ... nearby,
+anyway. The alien heard and saw with him, and stayed with him like a
+protector. Rynason felt his presence warmly: the calm of the alien
+continued to relax him. Old leather mother-hen, he thought, and Horng
+beside him seemed almost amused.
+
+Suddenly he was Tebron.
+
+Tebron Marl, prince in the Region of Mines, young and strong and
+ambitious. Rynason caught and held those impressions; he felt the
+muscles ripple strangely through his body as Tebron stretched, felt the
+cold wind of the flat cut through his loose garment. It was night, and
+he stood on the parapet of a heavy stone structure looking down across
+the immense stretch of the Flat, spotted here and there by lights. He
+controlled all this land, and would control more....
+
+He was Tebron again, marching across the Flat at the head of an army.
+Metal weapons hung at the sides of his men, crudely fashioned bludgeons
+and jagged-edged swords, all quickly forged in the workshops of the
+Region of Mines. The babble of mind voices swelled around him, fear and
+anger and boredom, dull resentment, and other emotions Rynason could not
+identify. They were marching on the City of the Temple....
+
+He slipped sideways in Tebron's mind, and suddenly he was in the middle
+of the battle. There was dust all around, kicked up by the scuffling
+feet of the huge warriors, and his breath came in gasps. Mind-voices
+shouted and screamed but he paid no attention; he swung his bludgeon
+over his head with a ferocity that made it whistle with a low sound in
+the wind. One of the defenders broke through the line around him, and he
+brought the bludgeon smashing down at him before he could thrust with
+his sword; the warrior fell to one side at the last moment and took the
+blow along one arm. He could feel the pain in his own mind, but he
+ignored it. Before the warrior could bring up his sword again Tebron
+crushed his head with the bludgeon, and the scream of pain in his own
+head disappeared. He heard the grunting and gasps of his own warriors
+and the clash of bodies and weapons around him....
+
+The Hirlaji could not really be moving so quickly, Rynason thought; it
+must be that to Tebron it seemed so. They were quiet, slow-moving
+creatures. Or had they degenerated physically through the centuries?
+Still smelling the sweat of battle, he found Tebron's mind again.
+
+There was still fighting in the city, but it was far away now; he heard
+it with the back of his mind as he mounted the steps of the Temple.
+Those were mop-up operations, clearing the streets of the last of the
+priest-king forces; he was not needed there. He had, to all intents,
+controlled the city since the night before, and had slept in the palace
+itself. Now it was time for the Temple.
+
+He mounted the heavy, steep steps slowly, three guards at his back and
+three in front of him. The priests would be gone from the Temple, but
+there might be one or two last-ditch defenders remaining, and they would
+be armed with the Weapons of Kor ... hand-weapons which shot dark beams
+that could disintegrate anything in their path. They would be dangerous.
+Well, there would be no temple-guards in the inner court; his own men
+could remain outside to take care of them while he went in.
+
+He stopped halfway up the steps and lifted his head to gaze up at the
+Temple walls rising above him. They were solid stone, built in the
+fashion of the Old Ones ... smooth-faced except for the carvings above
+the entrance itself. They too were in the traditional style, copied
+exactly from the older buildings which had been built thousands of years
+ago, before the Hirlaji had even developed telepathy. The symbols of Kor
+... so now at last he saw them.
+
+Tomorrow he would effect a mass-linkage of minds and broadcast his
+orders for reconstruction. That would mean staying up all night
+preparing the communication, for it was impossible to maintain complete
+planet-wide linkage for too long and Tebron had many plans. Perhaps it
+would be possible to find a way to extend the duration of mass-linkages
+if the science quest could be pushed forward fast enough.
+
+But that was tomorrow's problem--today, right now, it was right that he
+enter the Temple. It was not only symbolic of his assumption of power,
+but necessary religiously: every new ruler leader within the memory of
+the race had received sanction from Kor first.
+
+A momentary echo-whisper of another mind touched his, and he whirled to
+his right to see one of the temple-guards in the shadows; he had been
+unable to successfully shield his thoughts. Tebron dropped to the ground
+and sent a quick, cool order to his own guards: "Kill him." The heavy,
+dark warriors stepped forward as the guard tried to shrink back further
+into the shadows. He was trapped.
+
+But not unarmed. As he dropped to the steps and rolled quickly to one
+side Tebron heard the low vibration of a disintegrator beam pass over
+his shoulder and the crack of the wall behind him as it struck. And then
+the guards were on the warrior in the shadows.
+
+They had brought down several of the temple-guards the night before, and
+commandeered their weapons. In a matter of moments this one fell too,
+his head and most of his trunk gone. One of the warriors shoved the
+half-carcass down the stairs, and bent forward at the knees to pick up
+his fallen weapon.
+
+So now they had all fourteen of them; if any more of the temple-guards
+remained they could be dealt with easily. Tebron rose from the steps and
+wished momentarily that those weapons could be duplicated; if his whole
+army could be equipped with them.... But after today that would probably
+be unnecessary; the entire planet was his now.
+
+He walked up the last few steps and stepped into the shadows of the
+Temple of Kor....
+
+The walls melted around him and Rynason felt his mind wrenched
+painfully. There was a screaming all through him, thin and high,
+blotting out the contact he had held with Tebron's mind. It was Horng's
+scream, beside him, overpowering. Terror washed over him; he tried to
+fight it but he couldn't. The shadows of the walls twisted and faded,
+Tebron's thoughts disappeared, and all that remained was the screaming
+and the fear, like a mouth open wide against his ear and hot breath
+shouting into him. He felt his stomach turn and nausea and vertigo threw
+him panting out of Tebron's mind.
+
+Yet Horng was still beside him in the darkness, and as the echoes faded
+he felt him there ... alien, but calm. There had been fear in this huge
+alien mind, but it had disappeared almost immediately with the breaking
+of the connection with Tebron. All that remained in Horng's mind now was
+a dull quietness.
+
+Rynason felt a rueful grin on his face, and he said, perhaps aloud and
+perhaps not, "You haven't forgotten what happened here, old leather. The
+memories are there, all right."
+
+From Horng's mind came a slow rebuilding of the fear that he had just
+experienced, but it subsided. And as it did Rynason probed again into
+his mind, searching quickly for that contact he had just lost. He could
+almost feel Tebron's mind, began to see the darkness forming the
+wall-shadows, when again there was a blast of the terror and he felt his
+mind reeling back from those memories. The screaming filled his mind and
+body and this time he felt Horng himself blocking him, pushing him back.
+
+But there was no need for that; the fear was not Horng's alone. Rynason
+felt it too, and he retreated before its onslaught with an overpowering
+need to preserve his own sanity.
+
+When the darkness subsided Rynason became aware of himself still sitting
+on the stone bench, sweat drenching his body. Horng sat before him in
+the same position he had been in when they had started; it was as if
+nothing had happened at all. Rynason wearily raised one hand and
+motioned to Mara to break the linkage.
+
+She switched off the telepather and gingerly removed the wires from his
+head, frowning worriedly at him. But she waited for him to speak.
+
+He grinned at her after a moment and said, "It was a bit rough in there.
+We couldn't break through."
+
+She was removing the wires from Horng, who sat unmoving, staring dully
+over Rynason's shoulder at the wall behind him. "You should have seen
+yourself when you were under," she said. "I wanted to break the
+connection before, but I wasn't sure...."
+
+Rynason sat forward and flexed the muscles of his shoulders and back.
+They ached as though they had been tense for an hour, and his stomach
+was still knotted tight.
+
+"There's a real block there," he said. "It's like a thousand screaming
+birds flapping in your face. When you get that far into his mind, you
+feel it too." He sat staring down at his feet, exhausted mentally and
+physically.
+
+She sat on the bench and looked closely at him. "Anything else?"
+
+"Yes--Horng. At the end, the second time I went in, I could feel him,
+not only fighting me, but ... hating me." He looked up at her. "Can you
+imagine actually feeling him, right next to you in your mind like you
+were one person, hating you?"
+
+Across from them, the huge figure of the alien slowly stood up and
+looked at them for several long seconds, then turned and left the
+building.
+
+
+
+
+FOUR
+
+
+Manning's quarters were larger than most of the prefab structures in the
+new Earth town; the building was out near the end of one of the streets,
+a single-storied plastic-and-metal box on a quick-concrete slab base.
+Well, it was as well constructed as any of the buildings in the Edge
+planetfalls, Rynason reflected as he knocked on the door. And there was
+room for all of the survey team workers.
+
+Manning himself let him in, grabbing his hand in a firm grip that
+nevertheless lacked the man's usual heavy joviality. "Come on in; the
+others are already here," Manning said, and walked ahead of him into the
+larger of the two rooms inside. His step was brisk as always, but there
+was a touch of real hurry in it which Rynason noticed immediately.
+Manning was worried about something.
+
+"All right; we're all set," Manning said, leaning against a wall at the
+front of the room. Rynason found a seat on the arm of a chair next to
+Mara and Marc Stoworth, a slightly heavy, blond-haired man in his
+thirties who wore his hair cut short on the sides but long in back. He
+looked like every one of the young corporation executives Rynason had
+seen in the outworlds, and probably would have gone into that kind of
+position if he'd had the connections. He certainly seemed out of place
+even among the varied assortment of types who worked the archaeological
+and geological surveys ... but these surveys were conducted by the big
+corporations who were interested in developing the outworlds; probably
+Stoworth hoped eventually to move up into the lower management offices
+when the corporations moved in.
+
+"Gentlemen, there's something very wrong about these dumb horses we've
+been dealing with," Manning said. "I'm going to throw out a few facts at
+you and see if you don't come to the same conclusions that Larsborg and
+I did."
+
+Rynason leaned over to Mara and murmured, "What's his problem today?"
+
+But she was frowning. "He's got a real one. Listen."
+
+Manning had picked up a sheaf of typescript from the table next to him
+and was flipping through it, his lips pursed grimly. "This is the report
+I got yesterday from Larsborg here--architecture and various other
+artifacts. It's very interesting. Herb, throw that first photo onto the
+screen."
+
+The lights went off and the screen in the wall beside Manning lit up
+with a reproduction of one of the Hirlaji structures out on the Flat. It
+stood in the shadow of an overhanging rock-cliff, protected from the
+planet's heavy winds on three sides. Larsborg had apparently set up
+lights for a clearer picture; the whole building stood out sharply
+against the shadows of the background.
+
+"This look familiar to any of you?" Manning said quietly.
+
+For a moment Rynason continued to stare uncomprehending at the picture.
+He had seen a lot of the Hirlaji buildings since they'd landed; this one
+was better preserved but not essentially different in design. Larsborg
+had cleared away most of the dirt and sand which had been packed up
+against its sides, exposing the full height of the structure, and he'd
+apparently sand-blasted the carved designs over the entrance, but....
+
+Then he realized what he was seeing. The angle of the photo was a bit
+different than that from which he'd seen the other structure back on
+Tentar XI, but the similarity was unmistakable. This was a reproduction
+in stone of that same building, the one they'd reconstructed two years
+before.
+
+He heard a wave of voices growing around the room, and Manning's voice
+cut-through it with: "That's right, gentlemen: it's an Outsiders
+building. It's not in that crazy, damned metal or alloy or whatever it
+was that they used, but it's the same design. Take a good long look at
+it before we go on to the next photo."
+
+Rynason looked ... closely. Yes, it was the same design a bit cruder,
+and the carvings weren't the same, but the lines of the doorway and the
+cornice....
+
+The next picture flashed onto the screen. It was a closeup of the
+designs over the entrance, shot in sharp relief so that they stood out
+starkly. The room was so quiet that Rynason could hear the hum behind
+the screen in the wall.
+
+"That's Outsiders stuff too," said Breune. "It's not quite the same,
+though ... distorted."
+
+"It's carved in stone, not stamped in metal," Manning said. "It's the
+same thing, all right. Anybody disagree?"
+
+No one did.
+
+"All right, then; let's have the lights back up again."
+
+The lights came on and once more there was a murmur of talking around
+the room. Rynason shifted his position on the seat and tried to catch
+the thought that had slipped through his mind just before the screen had
+faded. There was another similarity.... Well, he'd seen a lot of the
+Outsider buildings in the past few years; it wasn't necessary to trace
+all the evidences right now.
+
+"What I want to know is, why didn't any of the rest of you see this?"
+said Manning angrily. "Have you all got plastic for brains? Over a dozen
+men spend weeks researching these damn horsefaces, and only one of you
+has the sense to see the evidence of his own eyes!"
+
+"Maybe we should turn in our spades," said Stoworth.
+
+Manning glared at him. "Maybe you should, if you think this isn't
+serious. Let's get this clear: these old horsefaces that so many of you
+think are just as quaint as can be have been building in exactly the
+same style as the Outsiders. Quaint, are they? Harmless too, I suppose!"
+
+He stood with his hands on his hips, dropped his head and took a long,
+deep breath. When he looked up again his forehead was furrowed into an
+intense frown. "Gentlemen ... as I call you from force of habit ...
+we've been finding dead cities of the Outsiders for centuries. They were
+all over God knows how many galaxies before your ancestors or mine had
+stopped playing with their tails; as far as we can tell they had a
+civilization as tightly-knit as our own, and probably stronger. And
+sometime about forty thousand years ago they started pulling out. They
+left absolutely nothing behind but empty buildings and a few crumbling
+bits of machinery. And we've been following those remains ever since we
+got out of our own star-system.
+
+"Well, we just may have found them at last. Right here, on Hirlaj. Now
+what do you think of that?"
+
+No one said anything for a minute. Rynason looked down at Mara, caught
+her smile, and stood up.
+
+"I don't think the Hirlaji are the Outsiders," he said calmly.
+
+Manning shot a sharp glance at him. "You saw the photos."
+
+"Yes, I saw them. That's Outsiders work, all right, or something a lot
+like it. But it doesn't necessarily prove that these ... how many of
+them are there? Twenty-five? I don't think these creatures are the
+Outsiders. We've traced their history back practically to the point of
+complete barbarism. Their culture was never once high enough to get them
+off this planet, let alone to let them spread all over among the stars."
+
+Manning waited for him to finish, then he turned back to the rest of the
+men in the room and spread his hands. "Now that, gentlemen, just shows
+how much we've found out so far." He looked over at Rynason again. "Has
+it occurred to you, Lee, that if these horses _are_ the Outsiders, that
+maybe they know a little more than we do? I suppose you're going to say
+you had a telepathic hookup with one of them and you didn't see a thing
+to make you suspicious ... but just remember that they've been using
+telepathy for several thousand years and that you hardly know what
+you're doing when you try it.
+
+"Look, I don't trust them--if they're the Outsiders they've got maybe a
+hundred thousand years head-start on us scientifically. There may be
+only a couple dozen of them, but we don't know how strong they are."
+
+"That's if they're really the Outsiders," said Rynason.
+
+Manning nodded his head impatiently. "Yes, that's what I'm saying. If
+they're the Outsiders, which looks like a sensible conclusion. Or do you
+have a better one?"
+
+"Well, I don't know if it's better," said Rynason. "It may not even be
+as attractive, for that matter. But have you considered that maybe when
+the Outsiders pulled out of our area they simply moved on elsewhere?
+We're so used to seeing dead cities that we think automatically that the
+Outsiders must be dead too, which I suppose is what's bothering you
+about finding the Hirlaji here alive. But it might be worse. That whole
+empire could simply have moved on to this area; we could be on the edge
+of it right now, ready to run head-on into a hundred star systems just
+crowded with the Outsiders."
+
+Manning stared at him, and the expression on his face was not quite
+anger. Something like it, but not anger.
+
+"The ruins we've found here were built by the Hirlaji," Rynason said. "I
+saw them building when I was linked with Horng, and these are the same
+structures. But the design was copied from older buildings, and I don't
+know how far back I'd have to search the memories before I found where
+they originally got that kind of approach to design. Maybe back before
+they developed telepathy. But this race simply isn't as old as the
+Outsiders; they came out of barbarism thousands of years after the
+Outsiders had left those dead cities we've been finding. The chances are
+that if the Hirlaji were influenced by the Outsiders it was sometime
+around thirty thousand years ago ... which means the Outsiders came this
+way when they left those cities. That would mean that we're following
+them ... and we might catch up at any time."
+
+He stopped for a moment, then said, "We're moving faster than they were,
+and we have no idea where they may have settled again. One more starfall
+further beyond the Edge, and we may run into one of their present
+outposts. But this isn't it. Not yet."
+
+Manning was still staring at Rynason, but it was a curious stare.
+"You're pretty sure that what you've been getting out of that
+horseface's head is real?" he asked levelly. "You trust them?"
+
+Rynason nodded. "Horng was really afraid; that was real. I felt it
+myself. And the rest of it was real, too--I could see the whole racial
+memory there, and nobody could have been making that up. If you'd
+experienced that..."
+
+"Well, I didn't," Manning said shortly. "And I don't think I trust
+them." He paused, and after a moment frowned. "But this direct linkage
+business does seem to be the best way we have of checking on them. I
+want you to get busy, Lee, and go after that horse's thoughts for us.
+Don't let him drive you out again; if he's hiding something, get in
+there and see what it is. Above all, don't trust him.
+
+"If these things are the Outsiders, they could be bluffing us."
+
+Manning stopped talking, and thought a minute. He looked up under raised
+eyebrows at Rynason. "And be careful, Lee. I'm counting on you."
+
+Rynason ignored his paternal gaze, and turned instead to Mara. "We'll
+try it again tomorrow," he said. "Get in a requisition for a telepather
+this afternoon; make sure we'll have one ready to go first thing in the
+morning. I'll check back with you about an hour after we leave here
+today."
+
+She looked up at him, surprised. "Check back? Why?"
+
+"I put in a requisition myself, yesterday. Wine from Cluster II, vintage
+'86. I was hoping for some company."
+
+She smiled. "All right."
+
+Manning was ending the session. "...Carl, be sure to get those studies
+of the Outsiders artifacts together for me by tonight. And I'm going to
+hand back your reports to each of the rest of you; go through them and
+watch for those inconsistencies you skipped over the first time. We may
+be able to turn up something else that doesn't check out. Go over them
+_carefully_--all the reports were sloppy jobs. You're all trying to work
+too fast."
+
+Rynason rose with the rest of them, grinning as he remembered how
+Manning had rushed those reports. Well, that was one of the privileges
+of authority: delegating fault. He started for the door.
+
+"Lee! Hold it a minute; I want to talk to you, alone."
+
+Rynason sat, and when all the others had gone Manning came back and sat
+down opposite him. He slowly took out a cigaret and lit it.
+
+"My last pack till the next spacer makes touchdown," he said. "Sorry I
+can't offer you one, but I'm a fiend for the things. I know they're
+supposed to be non-habit-forming these days, but I'm a man of many
+vices."
+
+Rynason shrugged, waiting for him to come to the point.
+
+"I guess it makes me a bit more open-minded about what the members of my
+staff do," Manning went on. "You know--why should I crack down on
+drinking or smoking, for instance, when I do it myself?"
+
+"I'm glad you see it that way," Rynason said drily. "Why did you want me
+to stay?"
+
+Manning exhaled a long plume of smoke slowly, watching it through
+narrowed eyes. "Well, even though I'm pretty easy going about things, I
+do try to keep an eye on you. When you come right down to it, I'm
+responsible for every man who's with me out here." He stopped, and
+laughed shortly. "Not that I'm as altruistic as that sounds, of
+course--you know me, Lee. But when you're in a position of authority you
+have to face the responsibilities. You understand me?"
+
+"You have to protect your own reputation back at Cluster headquarters,"
+Rynason said.
+
+"Well, yes. Of course, you get into a pattern of thinking eventually ...
+sort of a fatherly feeling, I suppose, though I've never even been on
+the parentage rolls back on the in-worlds. But I mean it--it happens, I
+get that feeling. And I'm getting a bit worried about you, Lee."
+
+Rynason could see what was coming now. He sat further back into the
+chair and said, "Why?"
+
+Manning frowned with concern. "I've been noticing you with Mara lately.
+You seem pretty interested in her."
+
+"Is she one of those vices you were telling me about, Manning?" said
+Rynason quietly. "You want to warn me to stay away from her?"
+
+Manning shook his head, a quick gesture dismissing the idea. "No, Lee,
+not at all. She's not that kind of a woman. And that's my point. I can
+see how you look at her, and you're on the wrong track. When you're out
+here on the Edge, you don't want a wife."
+
+"What I need is some good healthy vice, is that what you mean?"
+
+Manning sat forward. "That puts it pretty clearly. Yeah, that's about
+it. Lee, you're building up some strong tensions on this job, and don't
+think I'm not aware of it. Telepathing with that horseface is getting
+rough, judging from what you've told me. I think you should go get good
+and drunk and kick up hell tonight. And take one of the town women;
+they're always available. Do you good, I mean it."
+
+Rynason stood up. "Maybe tomorrow night," he said. "Tonight I'm busy.
+With Mara." He turned and walked toward the door.
+
+"I'd suggest you get busy with someone else," Manning said quietly
+behind him. "I'm really telling you this for your own good, believe it
+or not."
+
+Rynason turned at the door and regarded the man coldly. "She's not
+interested in you, Manning," he said. He went out and shut the door
+calmly behind him.
+
+Manning could be irritating with his conceited posing, but his veiled
+threats didn't bother Rynason. In any case, he had something else on his
+mind just now. He had finally remembered what it had been about the
+carvings over the Hirlaji building in the photo that had touched a
+memory within him: there was a strong similarity to the carvings that he
+had seen, through Tebron's eyes, outside the Temple of Kor. The symbols
+of Kor, Tebron had called them ... copied from the works of the Old
+Ones.
+
+The Outsiders?
+
+
+
+
+FIVE
+
+
+They had some trouble getting cooperation from Horng on any further
+mind-probing. The Hirlaji lived among some of the ruins out on the Flat,
+where the winds threw dust and sand against the weathered stone walls,
+leaving them worn smooth and rounded. The aliens kept these buildings in
+some state of repair, and there was a communal garden of the planet's
+dark, fungoid plant life. As Rynason and Mara strode between the massive
+buildings they passed several of the huge creatures; one or two of them
+turned and regarded the couple with dull eyes, and went on slowly
+through the grey shadows.
+
+They found Horng sitting motionlessly at the edge of the cluster of
+buildings, gazing out over the Flat toward the low hills which stood
+black against the deep blue of the horizon sky. Rynason lowered the
+telepather from his shoulder and approached him.
+
+The alien made no motion of protest when Rynason hooked up the
+interpreter, but when the Earthman raised the mike to speak, Horng's dry
+voice spoke in the silence of the thin air and the machine's stylus
+traced out, THERE IS NO PURPOSE.
+
+Rynason paused a moment, then said, "We're almost finished with our
+reports. We should finish today."
+
+THERE IS NO PURPOSE MEANING QUEST.
+
+"No purpose to the report?" Rynason said after a moment. "It's important
+to us, and we're almost finished. There would be even less purpose in
+stopping now, when so much has been done."
+
+Horng's large, leathery head turned toward him and Rynason felt the
+ancient creature's heavy gaze on him like a shadow.
+
+WE ARE ACCUSTOMED TO THAT.
+
+"We don't think alike," Rynason said to him. "To me there is a purpose.
+Will you help me once more?"
+
+There was no answer from the alien, only a slow nodding of his head to
+one side, which Rynason took for assent. He motioned Mara to set up the
+telepather.
+
+After their last experience Rynason could understand the creature's
+reluctance to continue. Perhaps even his statement that there was no
+purpose to the Earthmen's researches made sense--for could the
+codification of the history of a dying race mean much to its last
+members? Probably they didn't care; they walked slowly through the ruins
+of their world and felt all around them fading, and the jumbled past in
+their minds must be only one more thing that was to disappear.
+
+And Rynason had not forgotten the terrified waves of hatred which had
+blasted at him in Horng's mind--nor had Horng, he was sure.
+
+Mara connected the leads of the telepather while the alien sat
+motionlessly, his dark eyes only occasionally watching either of them.
+When she was finished Rynason nodded for her to activate the linkage.
+
+Then there was the rush of Horng's mind upon his, the dim
+thought-streams growing closer, the greyed images becoming sharper and
+washing over him, and in a moment he felt his own thoughts merge with
+them, felt the totality of his own consciousness blend with that of
+Horng. They were together; they were almost one mind.
+
+And in Horng he heard the whisper of distrust, of fear, and the echoes
+of that hatred which had struck at him once before. But they were in the
+background; all around him here on the surface was a pervading feeling
+of ... uselessness, resignation, almost of unreality. The calm which he
+had noted before in Horng had been shaken and turned, and in its place
+was this fog of hopelessness.
+
+Tentatively, Rynason reached for the racial memories in that grey mind,
+feeling Horng's own consciousness heavy beside him. He found them,
+layers of thoughts of unknown aliens still alive here, the pictures and
+sounds of thousands of years past. He probed among them, looking again
+for the memories of Tebron ... and found what he was searching for.
+
+He was Tebron, marching across that vast Flat which he had seen before,
+the winds alive around him among the shuffling feet of his army. He felt
+the muscles of his massive legs tight with weariness, and tasted the
+dryness of the air as he drew in long gasps. He was still hours from the
+City, but they would rest before dawn....
+
+Rynason turned among those memories, moving forward in them, and was
+aware of Horng watching him. There was still the wariness in his mind,
+and a stir of anxiety, but it was blanketed by the tired hopelessness he
+had seen. He reached further in the memories, and....
+
+The temple-guard fell in the shadows, and one of his own warriors
+stepped forward to retrieve his weapon. The remains of the guard's body
+rolled down three, four, five of the steps of the Temple, and stopped.
+His eyes lingered on that body for only a moment, and then he turned and
+went up to the entrance.
+
+There was a moaning of pain, or of fright, rising somewhere in his head;
+he was only partly aware of it. He walked into the shadows of the
+doorway and paused. But only for a moment: there was no movement inside,
+and he stepped forward, down one step into the interior.
+
+Screams echoed through the halls and corridors of the Temple--high and
+piercing, growing in volume as they echoed, buffeting him almost into
+unconsciousness. He knew they were from Horng, but he fought them,
+watching his own steps across the dark inner room. He was Tebron Marl,
+king priest ruler of all Hirlaj, in the Temple of Kor, and he could feel
+the stone solid beneath his feet. Sweat broke out on his back--his own,
+or Tebron's? But he _was_ Tebron, and he fought the blast of fear in his
+mind as though it were a battle for his very identity. He _was_ Tebron.
+
+The screaming faded, and he stood in silence before the Altar of Kor.
+
+So this is the source, he thought. For how many days had he fought
+toward this? It was useless to remember; the muscles of his body were
+remembrance enough, and the scar-tissue that hindered the movement of
+one shoulder. If he remembered those battles he would again hear the
+fading echoes of enemy minds dying within his, and he had had enough of
+that. This was the goal, and it was his; perhaps there need be no more
+such killing.
+
+He opened his mouth and spoke the words which he had learned so many
+years before, during his apprenticeship in the Region of Mines. The
+rituals of the Temple were always conducted in the ancient spoken
+language; Kor demanded it, and only the priest-caste knew these words,
+for they were so old that their form had changed almost completely even
+by the time his people had developed telepathy and discarded speech;
+they were not communicated to the rest of the people.
+
+"I am Tebron Marl, king priest leader of all Hirlaj. I await your orders
+guidance."
+
+He knelt, according to ritual, and gazed up at the altar. The Eye of Kor
+blinked there, a small circle of light in the dark room. The altar was
+simple but massive; its heavy columns, built upon the traditional lines,
+supported the weight of the Eye. He watched its slow waxing and waning,
+and waited; within him, Rynason's mind stirred.
+
+And Kor spoke.
+
+_Remain motionless. Do not go forward._
+
+He felt a child as a wave of sensitivity spread through all of his skin
+and his organs sped for a moment. Then it was true: in the Temple of
+Kor, the god leader really did speak.
+
+"I await further words."
+
+The Eye held his gaze almost hypnotically in the dimness. The voice
+sounded in the huge arched room. _The sciences quests of your race lead
+you to extinction. The knowledge words offered to me by your priests
+make it clear that within a hundred years your race will leave its
+planet. You must not go forward, for that way lies the extermination of
+all your race._
+
+His mind swam; this was not what he had expected. The god leader Kor had
+always aided his people in their sciences; in the knowledge word
+offerings they reported to the Eye the results of their studies, and
+often, if asked properly, the god leader would clarify uncertainties
+which they faced. But now he ordered an ending to research quests. This
+was unthinkable! Knowledge was godhood; godhood was knowledge, of the
+essence; the essence was knowing understanding. To him, to his people,
+it was a unity--and now that unity repudiated itself. Faintly in the
+darkness somewhere he again heard screaming.
+
+"Are we to abandon all progress? Are the stars so dangerous?"
+
+_The concept wish of progress must die within your people. There must be
+no purpose in any field of knowledge. You must remain motionless,
+consolidate what you have, and live in peace._ The Eye in the dimness
+seemed larger and brighter the longer he looked at it; all else in the
+echoing room was darkness. _The stars are not dangerous, but there is a
+race which rises with you, and it rises more rapidly. Should you expand
+into the stars you will only meet that race sooner, and they will be
+stronger. They are more warlike than your people; already you are
+capable of peace, and that must be your aim. Remain on your world;
+consolidate; cultivate the fruits of your civilization as it is, but do
+not go forward. In that way, you will have five thousand years before
+that race finds you, and if you are no threat to them they will not
+destroy you._
+
+He felt a rising anger in him as the god leader's words came to him in
+the dark room, and a fear that lay deeper. He was a warrior, and a
+quester ... how could he give up all such pursuits, and how could he be
+expected to force all his people to do the same? There would be no hope
+wish of advance, no curiosity ... no purpose.
+
+"Is this other race so much more advanced than we are?" he asked.
+
+He heard a low humming from the altar and the Eye grew brighter again.
+_They are not so much ahead of you now ... but they are more warlike,
+and will therefore develop more quickly. In both your races, war is a
+quest which you use as a release for what is in you. Your sciences
+questings and your wars are the same thing ... you must suppress both.
+They are discontentment, and you will find that only in peace, if at
+all._
+
+He dipped his head to one side, a gesture of acquiescence or agreement.
+He couldn't argue with the god leader Kor, and he had been wrong even to
+think of it.
+
+"How am I to suppress the race? Is it possible to convince each of them
+of the necessity for abandoning forgetting all questing?"
+
+The Eye hummed, and grew brighter against the darkness of the carved
+wall behind it, but it was some time before Kor spoke again. _It would
+be impossible to convince every one. The reasons must be kept from them,
+and kept from the shared memories; you must not communicate my knowledge
+words in any way. Consolidate your power, force peace upon them and lead
+them into acceptance. The knowledge questing can be made to die within
+them. Remember that there will be no purpose ... in that they must find
+contentment._
+
+The king priest leader of all Hirlaj waited a moment, and was ready to
+rise and leave when the Eye spoke again.
+
+_You must abolish the priesthood. The knowledge which I have given to
+you must die when you die._
+
+He waited for a long time in the dim, suddenly cold hall for the god
+leader to speak again, then slowly rose and walked to the door, the
+image of the Eye of Kor still bright in his vision. He stopped outside
+the doorway, hearing the soft wind of the city flowing slowly past the
+stone archway above him. One of his guards reached out and touched his
+mind tentatively, but he blocked his thoughts and strode heavily down
+the steps past them.
+
+The sound of the wind above him rose to a screaming, and suddenly it was
+as though he were tumbling down the entire length of the stairway,
+fragments of sky and stone and faces flashing past in a kaleidoscope,
+and the screaming all around him. He almost reached for his bludgeon,
+but then he realized that he was not Tebron Marl ... he was Lee Rynason,
+and the screaming was Horng and he was being driven out of those
+thoughts, tumbling through a thousand memories so fast he could not
+grasp any one of them.
+
+He withdrew from Horng's mind as though from a nightmare; he became
+aware of his own body, lying in the dust of Hirlaj, and he opened his
+eyes and motioned weakly to Mara to break the connection.
+
+When she had done so he slowly sat up and shook his head, waiting for it
+to clear. For awhile he had been an ancient king of Hirlaj, and it took
+some time to return to the present, to his own consciousness. He was
+dimly aware of Mara kneeling beside him, but he couldn't make out her
+words at first.
+
+"Are you all right? Are you sure? Look up at me, Lee, please."
+
+He found himself nodding to reassure her, and then he saw the expression
+on her face and felt the last wisps of alien fog clearing from his mind.
+There were tears in her eyes, and he touched the side of her face with
+his hand and said, "I'm all right. But why don't you kiss me or
+something?"
+
+She did, but before Rynason could really immerse himself in it she broke
+away and said, "You must have had a bad time with him! It was as though
+you were dead."
+
+He grinned a trifle sheepishly and said, "Well, it was engrossing. You'd
+better unhook the beast; he had a bad time of it too."
+
+Mara rose and removed the wires from Horng gingerly. Rynason remained
+sitting; some of the meaning of what he had just experienced was coming
+to him now. It certainly explained why the Hirlaji had suddenly passed
+from their war era into lasting peace, and why the memories had been
+blocked. But could he credit those memories of a voice of an alien god?
+
+And sitting in the dust at the edge of the vast Hirlaj plain the full
+realization came to him, as it could not when he had been Tebron. Not
+only the Temple, but the Altar of Kor itself had been unmistakably the
+workmanship of the Outsiders.
+
+
+
+
+SIX
+
+
+They left Horng sitting dully at the edge of the Flat and retraced their
+steps through the Hirlaji ruins, still drawing no notice from the
+aliens. Rynason had been in some of the small planetfall towns where
+settlements had been established only to be abandoned by the main flow
+of interstellar traffic ... those backwater areas where contact with the
+parent civilization was so slight that an entirely local culture had
+developed, almost as different from that of the mainstream Terran
+colonies as was this last vestige of the Hirlaji civilization. And in
+some of those areas interest in Earth was so slight that the offworlders
+were ignored, as the Earthmen were here ... but he had never felt the
+total lack of attention that was here. It was not as though the Hirlaji
+had seen the Earthmen and grown used to them; Rynason had the feeling
+that to the Hirlaji the Earthmen were no more important than the winds
+or the dust beneath their feet.
+
+As they passed through the settled portion of the ruins Rynason had to
+step around a Hirlaji who crossed his path. He walked silently past, his
+eyes not even flickering toward the Earthlings. Crazy grey hidepiles,
+Rynason thought, and he and Mara hurried out across the Flat toward the
+nearby Earth town.
+
+On the outskirts of the town, where the packed-dirt streets faded into
+loose dust and garbage was already piled several feet high, they were
+met by Rene Malhomme. He sat long-legged with his back leaning against a
+weathered stone outcropping. He seemed old already, though he was not
+yet fifty; his windblown hair was almost the color of the surrounding
+grey dust and rock--perhaps because it was filled with that dust,
+Rynason thought. He stopped and looked down at the worn, tired man whose
+eyes belied that weariness.
+
+"And have you communicated with God, Lee Rynason?" Malhomme asked with
+his rumbling, sardonic voice.
+
+Rynason met his gaze, wondering what he wanted. He lowered the
+telepather pack from his shoulder and set it in the dust. Mara sat on a
+low rock beside him.
+
+"Will an alien god do?" Rynason said.
+
+Malhomme's eyes rested on the telepather for a moment. "You spoke with
+Kor?" he asked.
+
+Rynason nodded slowly. "I made a linkage with one of the Hirlaji, and
+tapped the race-memory. I suppose you could say I spoke with Kor."
+
+"You have touched the alien godhead," Malhomme mused. "Then it's real?
+Their god is real?"
+
+"No," said Rynason. "Kor is a machine."
+
+Malhomme's head jerked up. "A machine? _Deus ex machina_, to quote an
+ancient curse. We make our own machines, and make gods of them." The
+tired lines of his face relaxed. "Well, that's a bit better. The gods
+remain a myth, and it's better that way."
+
+Rynason stood over him on the windy Flat, still puzzled by his manner.
+He glanced at Mara, but she too was watching Malhomme, waiting for him
+to speak again.
+
+Suddenly, Malhomme laughed, a dry laugh which almost rasped in his
+throat. "Lee Rynason, I have called men to God for so long that I almost
+began to believe it myself. And when the men started talking about the
+god of these aliens...." He shook his head, the spent laughter still
+drawing his mouth back into a grin. "Well, I'm glad it isn't true.
+Religion wouldn't be worth a damn if it were true."
+
+"How did the men find out about Kor?" Rynason asked.
+
+Malhomme spread his hands. "Manning has been talking, as usual. He
+ridicules the Hirlaji, and their god. And at the same time he says they
+are a menace."
+
+"Why? Is he still trying to work the townsmen up against them?"
+
+"Of course. Manning wants all the power he can get. If it means
+sacrificing the Hirlaji, he'll do it." Malhomme stood up, stretching
+himself. "He says they may be the Outsiders, and he's stirring up all
+the fear he can. He'll grab any excuse, no matter how impossible."
+
+"It's not so impossible," Rynason said. "Kor is an Outsiders machine."
+
+Malhomme stared at him. "You're sure of that?"
+
+He nodded. "There's no doubt of it--I saw it from three feet away." He
+told Malhomme of his linkage with Horng, the contact with the memories,
+the mind, Tebron, and of the interview with the machine that was Kor.
+Malhomme listened with fascination, his shaggy head tilted to one side,
+occasionally throwing in a comment or a question.
+
+As he finished, Rynason said, "That race that Kor warned them about
+sounds remarkably like us. A warlike race that would crush them if they
+left the planet. We haven't found any other intelligent life ... just
+the Hirlaji, and us."
+
+"And the Outsiders," said Malhomme.
+
+"No. This was a race which was still growing from barbarism, at about
+the same level as the Hirlaji themselves. Remember, the Outsiders had
+already spread through a thousand star-systems long before this. No,
+we're the race they were warned against."
+
+"What about the weapons?" Malhomme said. "Disintegrators. We haven't got
+anything that powerful that a man can carry in his hand. And yet the
+Hirlaji had them thousands of years ago."
+
+"Yes, but for some reason they couldn't duplicate them. It doesn't make
+sense: those weapons were apparently beyond the technological level of
+the Hirlaji, but they had them."
+
+"Perhaps your aliens _were_ the Outsiders," Malhomme said. "Perhaps we
+see around us the remnants of a great race fallen."
+
+Rynason shook his head.
+
+"But they must have had some contact with the Outsiders," Mara said.
+"Sometime even before Tebron's lifetime. The Outsiders could have left
+the disintegrators, and the machine that they thought was a god...."
+
+"That's just speculation," Rynason said. "Tebron himself didn't really
+know where they'd come from; they'd been passed down through the
+priesthood for a long time, and within the priesthood they did have some
+secrets. I suppose if I could search the race-memory long enough I might
+find another nice big block there hiding that secret. But it's
+difficult."
+
+"And you may not have time," Malhomme said. "When Manning hears that the
+Altar of Kor was an Outsiders machine, there'll be no way left to stop
+him from slaughtering the Hirlaji."
+
+"I'm not sure there'll be any real trouble," Rynason said.
+
+Malhomme's lips drew back into the deep lines of his face. "There is
+always trouble. Always. Whoever or whatever spoke through the machine
+knew that much about us. The only way you could stop it, Lee, would be
+to hold back this information from Manning. And to do that, you would
+have to be sure, yourself, that there is no danger from the Hirlaji.
+You're in the key position, right now."
+
+Rynason frowned. He knew Malhomme was right--it would be difficult to
+stop Manning if what he'd said about the man's push for power was true.
+But could he be sure that the Hirlaji were as harmless as they seemed?
+He remembered the reassuring touch of Horng's mind upon his own, the
+calmness he found in it, and the resignation ... but he also remembered
+the fear, and the screaming, and the hot rush of anger that had touched
+him.
+
+In the silence on the edge of the Flat, Mara spoke. "Lee, I think you
+should report it all to Manning."
+
+"Why?"
+
+Her face was clouded. "I'm not sure. But ... when I disconnected the
+wires of the telepather, Horng looked at me.... Have you ever looked
+into his eyes, up close? It's frightening: it makes you remember how old
+they are, and how strong. Lee, that creature has muscles in his face as
+strong as most men's arms!"
+
+"He just looked at you?" said Rynason. "Nothing else?"
+
+"That's all. But those eyes ... they were so deep, and so full. You
+don't usually notice them, because they're set so deeply in the shadows
+of his face, but his eyes are _large_." She stopped, and shook her head
+in confusion. "I can't really explain it. When I moved around him to the
+other side, I could see his eyes following me. He didn't move,
+otherwise--it was as though only his eyes were alive. But they
+frightened me. There was much more in them than just ... not seeing, or
+not caring. His eyes were alive."
+
+"That's not much evidence to make you think the Hirlaji are dangerous."
+
+"Oh, I don't _know_ if they could be dangerous. But they're not just ...
+passive. They're not vegetables. Not with those eyes."
+
+"All right," Rynason said. "I'll give Manning a full report, and we'll
+put it in his hands."
+
+He picked up the telepather pack and slung it over his shoulder. Mara
+stood up, shaking away the dust which had blown against her feet.
+
+"What will you do," Malhomme asked, "if Manning decides that's enough
+cause to kill the Hirlaji?"
+
+"I'll stop him," Rynason said. "He's not in control here, yet."
+
+Malhomme flashed his sardonic smile again. "Perhaps not ... but if you
+need help, call to God. The books say nothing about alien races, but
+surely these must be God's creatures too. And I'm always ready to break
+a few heads, if it will help." He turned and spat into the dust. "Or
+even just for the hell of it," he said.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Rynason found Manning that same afternoon, going over reports in his
+quarters. As soon as he began his description of the orders given to
+Tebron he found that Malhomme's warnings had been correct.
+
+"What did this machine say about us?" Manning asked sharply. "Why were
+the Hirlaji supposed to stay away from us?"
+
+"Because we're a warlike race. The idea was that if the Hirlaji stayed
+out of space they'd have about five thousand years before we found
+them."
+
+"How long ago was all this? I had your report here...."
+
+"At least eight thousand years," Rynason said. "They overestimated us."
+
+Manning stood up, scowling. There were heavy lines around his eyes and
+he hadn't trimmed his thin beard. Whatever he was working on, Rynason
+thought, he was putting a lot of effort into it.
+
+"This doesn't make sense, Lee. Damn it, since when do machines make
+guesses? Wrong ones, at that?"
+
+Rynason shrugged. "Well, you've got to remember that this was an alien
+machine; maybe that's the way they built them."
+
+Manning threw a cold glance at him and poured a glass of Sector Three
+brandy for himself. "You're not being amusing," he said shortly. "Now,
+go on, and make some sense."
+
+"I'd like to," Rynason said. "Frankly, my theory is that the machine was
+a communication-link with the Outsiders. It could explain a lot of
+things--maybe even the similarities in architecture."
+
+Manning scowled and turned away from him. He paced heavily across the
+room and looked out through the plasticene window at the nearly empty,
+dust-strewn street for a few moments; when he returned the frown was
+still on his face.
+
+"Damn it, Lee, you're not keeping your mind on the problems here. While
+you were looking into Horng's mind, how do you know he wasn't spying in
+yours? You had an equal hookup, right?"
+
+Rynason nodded. "I couldn't have prevented him in any case. Why? Are we
+supposed to be hiding anything?"
+
+"I told you not to trust them!" Manning snapped. "Now if you can't even
+match wits with a senile horsehead...."
+
+"You were the one who said they might be more adept at telepathy than we
+are," Rynason said. "It was a chance we had to take."
+
+"There's a difference between taking chances and handing them
+information on a silver platter," Manning said angrily. "Did you make
+any effort at all to keep him from finding out too much about us?"
+
+Rynason shrugged. "I kept him pretty busy. All of the time I was running
+through Tebron's memories I could feel Horng screaming somewhere; he
+must have been too upset to do any probing in my mind."
+
+Manning was silent for a moment. "Let's hope so," he said shortly. "If
+they find out how weak we are, how long it would take us to get
+reinforcements out here...."
+
+"They're still just a dying race, remember," Rynason said. "They're not
+the Outsiders. What makes you so sure that they're dangerous?"
+
+"Oh, come _on_, Lee! Think! They're in contact with the Outsiders; you
+said so yourself. And just remember this: _the Outsiders obviously
+considered it inevitable that there would be war between us_. Now put
+those two facts together and tell me the horses aren't dangerous!"
+
+Rynason said slowly, "It isn't as simple as that. The order given to
+Tebron was to stop all scientific progress and stifle any military
+development, and he seems to have done just that. The idea was that if
+the Hirlaji were harmless when we found them there might be no need for
+fighting."
+
+"Perhaps. But we weren't supposed to know that they were in contact with
+the Outsiders, either--that was probably part of the purpose of the
+block in the race-memory. But we got through the block, and they know
+it, and presumably by now the Outsiders know it. That changes the
+picture, and I'd like to know just how much it changes it."
+
+"They're not in contact with the Outsiders any longer," said Rynason.
+
+"What makes you so sure of that?"
+
+"Tebron broke the contact--that was in the orders too. The priesthood,
+which had been the connecting link with the Outsiders through the
+machine, was disbanded. When Tebron died he didn't appoint a successor;
+the machine hasn't been used since."
+
+Manning thought about that, still frowning. "Where is the machine?"
+
+"I don't know. If it hasn't been kept in repair it might not even be
+usable any more, wherever it is."
+
+"I'll tell you something, Lee," said Manning. "There's still too much
+that we don't know--and too much that the Hirlaji _do_ know, now.
+Whether or not your horse-buddy was picking your brains, they know we're
+not as strong as they thought we were. It took us eight thousand years
+to get here instead of five thousand. Let's just hope they don't think
+about that too much."
+
+He stopped, and paced to the window again. "Look around you, Lee--out on
+the street, in the town. We've hardly put our feet down on this planet;
+we've got very little in the way of weapons with us and it will take
+weeks to get any more in here; there's practically no organization here
+yet. We could be wiped off this planet before we knew what hit us. We're
+sitting ducks."
+
+He came back to stand before Rynason. "And what about the Outsiders?
+They think of us strictly in terms of war, and they've been keeping
+themselves away from us all this time. That's obviously why they pulled
+out of this sector of space. Up until now we'd thought they were dead.
+But now we find they've been in contact with this planet ... all right,
+it was eight thousand years ago. But that's a lot more recent than the
+last evidences we've had of them, and they've obviously been watching
+us.
+
+"Now, you've been in direct contact with the horses' minds; you've
+practically been one of them yourself, for awhile. All right, what's
+their reaction going to be when they realize that the Outsiders, their
+god, overestimated us? What will they do?"
+
+Rynason thought about that. He tried to remember the minds he had
+touched during the linkage with Horng: Tebron, the ancient warrior-king,
+and the young Hirlaji staring at the buildings of one of the ancient
+cities, and the old, dying one who had decided not to plant again one
+year ... and Horng himself, tired and calm on the edge of the Flat, amid
+the ruins of a city. He remembered the others in that crumbling last
+home of an entire race ... slow, quiet, uncaring.
+
+"I don't think they'll do anything. They wouldn't see any point to it."
+He paused, remembering. "They lost all their purpose eight thousand
+years ago," he said quietly.
+
+Manning grunted. "Somehow I lack your touching faith in them."
+
+"And somehow," Rynason said, "I lack your burning ambition to find an
+enemy, a handy menace to crush. You argue too hard, Manning."
+
+Manning raised an eyebrow. "I suppose I haven't even put a doubt in your
+mind about them? Not one doubt?"
+
+Rynason turned away and didn't answer.
+
+Manning sighed. "Maybe it's time I went out there myself and had a
+seance with the horses." He set down his glass of brandy, which he had
+been turning in his hand as he spoke. "Lee, I want you to check back
+here with me in two hours ... by then I should have things straightened
+up and ready to go."
+
+He strode to the supply closet at one end of the room and took from it a
+belt and holster, from which he removed a recent-model regulation
+stunner. "This is as powerful a weapon as we have here so far, except
+for the heavy stuff. I hope we never have to use any of that--clearing
+it for use is a lot of red tape." He looked up and saw the cold
+expression on Rynason's face. "Of course, I hope we don't have to use
+the stunners, either," he said calmly.
+
+Rynason turned without a word and went to the door. He stopped there for
+a moment and watched Manning checking over the weapon. He was thinking
+of the disintegrators he had seen on the steps of the Temple of Kor, and
+of the shell of a body tumbling out of the shadows.
+
+"I'll see you at 600," he said.
+
+
+
+
+SEVEN
+
+
+Rynason spent the next two hours in town, moving through the windy
+streets and thinking about what Manning had said. He was right, in a
+way: this was no more than a foothold for the Earthmen, a touchdown
+point. It wasn't even a community yet; buildings were still going up,
+prices varied widely not only between landings of spacers but also
+according to who did the selling. A lot of the men here were trying some
+mining out on the west Flat; their findings had so far been small but
+they brought the only real income the planet had so far yielded. The
+rest of the town was rising on its own weight: bars, rooming houses,
+laundries, and diners--establishments which thrived only because there
+were men here to patronize them. Several weeks before a few of the men
+had tried killing and eating the small animals who darted through the
+alleys, but too many of those men had died and the practice had been
+quickly abandoned. And they had noticed that when those animals foraged
+in the refuse heaps outside the town, they died too.
+
+A few of the big corporations had sent out field men to look around, but
+it was too soon for any industry to have established itself here; all
+the planet offered so far was room to expand. Despite the wide expansion
+of the Earthmen through the stars, a planet where conditions were at all
+favorable for living was not to be overlooked; the continuing population
+explosion, despite tight regulations on the inner worlds, had kept up
+with the colonization of these worlds, and new room was constantly
+needed.
+
+But the planetfall on Hirlaj was still new. A handful of Earthmen had
+come, but they had not yet brought their civilization with them. They
+stood precariously on the Flat, waiting for more settlers to come in and
+build with them. If there should be trouble before more men arrived....
+
+At 600 Rynason walked out on the dirt-packed street to Manning's
+quarters. He met Marc Stoworth and Jules Lessingham coming out the door.
+They looked worried.
+
+"What's wrong?" he said.
+
+They didn't stop as they went by. "Ask the old man," said Stoworth,
+going past with an uncharacteristically hurried step.
+
+Rynason went on in through the open door. Manning was in the front room,
+amid several crates of stunner-units. He looked up quickly as Rynason
+entered and waved brusquely to him.
+
+"Help me get this stuff unloaded, Lee."
+
+Rynason fished for his sheath-knife and started cutting open one of the
+crates. "Why are you unloading the arsenal?"
+
+"Because we may need it. Couple of the boys were just out at the
+horse-pasture, and they say the friendly natives have disappeared."
+
+"Jules and Stoworth? I met them on the way in."
+
+"They were doing some follow-up work out there ... or at least they were
+going to. There's not a single one of them there, not a trace of them."
+
+Rynason frowned. "They were all there this morning."
+
+"They're not there now!" Manning snapped. "I don't like it, not after
+what you've told me. We're going to look for them."
+
+"With stunners?"
+
+"Yes. Right now Mara is out at the field clearing several of the fliers
+to use in scouting for them."
+
+Rynason stacked the boxes of weapons and power-packs on the floor where
+Manning indicated. There were about forty of them--blunt-barrelled guns
+with thick casing around the powerpacks, weighing about ten pounds each.
+They looked as statically blunt as anvils, but they could stun any
+animal at two hundred yards; within a two-foot range, they could shake a
+rock wall down.
+
+"How many men are we taking with us?" Rynason asked, eying the stacks on
+the floor.
+
+Manning looked up at him briefly. "As many as we can get. I'm calling a
+militia; Stoworth and Lessingham went into town to round up some men."
+
+So he was going ahead with the power-grab; Malhomme had been right. No
+danger had been proven yet, but that wouldn't stop Manning--nor the
+drifters he'd been buying in the town. Killing was an everyday thing to
+them.
+
+"How many of the Hirlaji do you think we'll have to kill to make it look
+important to the Council?" Rynason asked after a moment, his voice
+deliberately inflectionless.
+
+Manning looked up at him with a calculating eye. Rynason met his gaze
+directly, daring the man to take offense. He didn't.
+
+"All right, it's a break for me," Manning shrugged. "What did you
+expect? There's precious little opportunity on this desert rock for
+leadership in any sense that you might approve of." He paused. "I don't
+know if it will be necessary to kill any of them. Take it easy and we'll
+see."
+
+Rynason's eyes were cold. "All right, we'll see. But just remember, I'll
+be watching just as closely as you. If you start any violence that isn't
+necessary...."
+
+"What will you do, Lee?" said Manning. "Report me to the Council?
+They'll listen to me before they'd pay attention to complaints from a
+nobody who's been drifting around the outworlds for most of his life.
+That's all you are, you know, Lee--a drifter, a bum, like the rest of
+them. That's what everybody out here on the Edge is ... unless he does
+something about it.
+
+"I hold the reins right now. If I decide to do something that you don't
+like, you won't be able to stop me ... neither you, nor your female
+friend."
+
+"So Mara's against you too?" Rynason said.
+
+"She made a few remarks earlier," Manning said calmly. "She may regret
+it soon enough."
+
+Rynason looked at the man through narrowed eyes for a moment, then
+strapped on a gunbelt and loaded one of the stunners. He snapped it into
+the holster carefully, wondering just what Manning had meant by his last
+remark. Was it a threat in any real sense, or was Manning just letting
+off steam? Well, they'd see about that too ... and Rynason would be
+watching.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Within half an hour close to sixty men had collected outside Manning's
+door. They were dirty and unshaven; some of them were working in the
+town, a few were miners, but most of them were drifters who had followed
+the advance of the star frontier, who drank and brawled in the streets
+of the town, sleeping by day and raising hell at night. They stole when
+they could, killed when they wanted.
+
+The drifters were men who had been all over the worlds of the Edge, who
+had spent years watching the new planets opened for colonization and
+exploitation, but had never got their own piece. They knew the feel of
+these planetfall towns on the Edge, and could talk for hours about the
+worlds they had seen. But they were city men, all of them; they had seen
+the untamed worlds, but only from the streets. They hadn't taken part in
+the exploring or the building, only in the initial touchdowns. When the
+building was done, they signed on to the spacers again and drifted to
+the next world, farther out.
+
+Rynason looked at their faces from where he stood in the doorway,
+listening to Manning talking to them. They were hard men, mean and
+sometimes vicious. Nameless faces, all of them, having no place in the
+more developed areas of the Terran civilization. And maybe that was
+their own fault. But Rynason knew that they were running, not to
+anything, but from the civilization itself. Running ... because when an
+area was settled and started to become respectable, they began to see
+what they did not have. The temporary quarters would come down, to be
+replaced by permanent buildings that were meant to be lived in, not just
+as places for sleeping. Closets, and shelters for landcars; quadsense
+receivers and food integrators. They didn't want to see that ... because
+they hated it, or because they wanted it? It didn't matter, Rynason
+decided. They ran, and now they were here on the Edge with all their
+anger and frustration, and Manning was ready to give them a way to let
+it out.
+
+At the side of the mob he saw a familiar grey shock of hair--Rene
+Malhomme. Was he with them, then? Rynason craned his neck for a better
+view, and for a moment the crowd parted enough to let him see Malhomme's
+face. He was looking directly toward Rynason, holding a dully gleaming
+knife flat against his thick chest ... and his lips were drawn back into
+the crooked, sardonic smile which Rynason had seen many times. No,
+Malhomme at least was not part of this mob.
+
+"We already know which direction they went," Manning was saying.
+"Lessingham will be in charge of the main body, and you'll follow him.
+If he gives you an order, _take it_. This is a serious business; we
+won't have room for bickering.
+
+"Some of us will be scouting with the flyers. Well be in radio contact
+with you. When we find out where they are we'll reconnoiter and make our
+plans from there."
+
+Manning paused, looking appraisingly at the faces before him. "Most of
+you are armed already, I see. We have some extra stunners here; if you
+need them, come on up. But remember, the men who carry the shockers will
+be in front; and their business will be simply to down the horses--any
+killing that's to be done will be left to those of you who have knives,
+or anything lethal."
+
+There was a rising wave of voices from the crowd. Some men came forward
+for weapons; Rynason saw others drawing knives and hatchets, and a few
+of them had heavy guns, projectile type. Rynason watched with narrowed
+eyes; it had been a filthy maneuver on Manning's part to organize this
+mob, and his open acceptance of their temper was dangerous. Once they
+were turned loose, what could stop them?
+
+There was a sudden shouting in the back of the mob; men surged and fell
+away, cursing. Rynason heard scuffing back there, and sounds of bone
+meeting flesh. The men at the front of the mob turned to look back, and
+some tried to shove their way through to the fight.
+
+A scream came from the midst of the crowd, and was answered by an
+excited, angry swelling of voices around the fighting men. Suddenly
+Manning was among them, smashing his way through with a stunner in his
+hand, swinging it like a club.
+
+"Get the hell out of the way!" he shouted, stepping quickly through the
+men. They grumbled and fell back to let him by, but Rynason heard the
+men still fighting in the rear, and then he saw them. There were three
+of them, two men and what looked like a boy still in his teens. The boy
+had red hair and a dark, ruddy complexion: he was new to the outworlds.
+The two older men had the pallor of the Edge drifters, nurtured in the
+artificial light of spacers and sealed survival quarters on the less
+hospitable worlds.
+
+The larger of the two men had a knife, a heavy blade of a type that was
+common out here; many of the men used them as hatchets when necessary.
+This one dripped with blood; the smaller man's left arm was torn open
+just below the shoulder, and hanging uselessly. He stood swaying in the
+dust, hurling a string of curses at the man with the knife, while the
+boy stood slightly behind him, staring with both fear and hatred in his
+eyes. He had a smaller knife, but he held it loosely and uncertainly at
+his side.
+
+Manning stepped between them. He had sized up the situation already, and
+he paused now only long enough to bite out three short, clipped words
+which told these men exactly what he thought of them. The man with the
+knife stopped back and muttered something which Rynason didn't hear.
+
+Manning raised the stunner coldly and let him have it. The blast caught
+the man in the shoulder and spun him around, throwing him into the
+crowd; several of them went down. The long knife fell to the ground,
+where dirt mixed with the blood on it. There was silence.
+
+Manning looked around him, swinging the stunner loosely in his hand.
+After a moment he said calmly, but loud enough for all to hear, "We
+won't have time for fighting among ourselves. The next man who starts
+anything will be killed outright. Now get these men out of here." He
+turned and strode back through the mob while the boy and a couple of the
+other men took the wounded away.
+
+Malhomme had moved further into the crowd. He was strangely silent;
+usually he went among these men roughly and jovially, cursing them all
+with goodnatured ease. But now he stood watching the men around him with
+a frown creasing his heavily lined face. Malhomme was worried, and
+Rynason, seeing that, felt his stomach tighten.
+
+Manning faced the men from the front of the crowd. He stared at them
+shrewdly, holding each man's gaze for a few seconds. Then he grinned,
+and said, "Save it for the horses, boys. Save it for them."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Rynason rode out to the field with Manning, Stoworth, and a few of the
+others. It was a short trip in the landcar, and none of them spoke much.
+Even Stoworth rode silently, his usual easy flow of trivia forgotten.
+Rynason was thinking about Manning: he had handled the outbreak quickly
+and decisively enough, keeping the men in line, but it had been only a
+temporary measure. They would be expecting some real action soon, and
+Manning was already offering them the Hirlaji. If the alarm turned out
+to be a false one, would he be as easily able to stop them then?
+
+Or would he even try?
+
+The flyers were ready when they got to the field, but Mara was gone. Les
+Harcourt met them at the radio office on the edge of the field; he was
+the communications man out here. He led them into the low,
+quick-concrete construction office and shoved some forms at Manning to
+be signed.
+
+"If there's any trouble, you'll be responsible for it," he said to
+Manning. "The men can look out for themselves, but the flyers are
+Company property."
+
+Manning scowled impatiently and bent to sign the papers.
+
+"Where's Mara?" Rynason asked.
+
+"She's already taken one of the flyers out," Harcourt said. "Left ten
+minutes ago. We've got her screen in the next room." He waved a hand
+toward the door in the rear of the room.
+
+Rynason went on back and found the live set. The screen, monitored from
+a camera on the flyer, showed the foothills of the southern mountains
+over which Mara was flying. They were bare and blunt; the rock
+outcroppings which thrust up from the Flat had been weathered smooth in
+the passage of years. Mara was passing over a low range and on to the
+desert beyond.
+
+Rynason picked up the mike. "Mara, this is Lee; we just got here. Have
+you found them yet?"
+
+Her voice came thinly over the speaker. "Not yet. I thought I saw some
+movement in one of the passes, but the light wasn't too good. I'm
+looking for that pass again."
+
+"All right. We'll be going up ourselves in a few minutes; if you find
+them, be careful. Wait for us."
+
+He refitted the mike in its stand and rose. But as he turned to the door
+her voice came again: "There they are!"
+
+He looked at the screen, but for the moment he couldn't see anything.
+Mara's flyer was coming down out of the rocky hills now, the Flat
+stretching before her on the screen. Rynason could see the pass through
+which she had been flying, but there was no movement there; it took him
+several seconds to see the low ruins off to the right, and the figures
+moving through them.
+
+The screen banked and turned toward them; she was lowering her altitude.
+
+"I see them," he said into the mike. "Can't make out what they're doing,
+on the screen. Can you see them any more clearly?"
+
+"They're entering one of the buildings down there," she said after a
+moment. "I've counted almost twenty of them so far; they must all be
+here."
+
+"Can you go down and see what they're doing? The sooner we find out, the
+better: Manning's got a pretty ugly bunch of so-called vigilantes on the
+way out there."
+
+She didn't reply, but on the screen he saw the crumbling buildings grow
+larger and nearer. He could make out individual structures now: a wall
+had fallen and was half-buried in the dust and sand; an entire roof had
+caved in on another building, leaving only rubble in the interior. It
+was difficult to tell sometimes when the original lines of the buildings
+had fallen: they had all been smoothed by the wind-blown sand, so that
+broken pillars looked almost as though they had been built that way,
+smooth and upright, solitary.
+
+At last, he saw the Hirlaji. They were slowly mounting the steps of one
+of the largest of the buildings and passing into the shadows of the
+interior. This building was not as deteriorated as most of the others;
+as Mara's flyer dipped low over it Rynason could see its characteristic
+lines unbroken and clear.
+
+With a start, he sat up and said hurriedly, "Mara, take another close
+pass over that building, the one they're entering."
+
+In a moment she came in again over the smooth stone structure, and
+Rynason looked closely at the screen. There was no mistaking it now: the
+high steep steps leading up to a colonnade which almost circled the
+building, the large carvings over the main entrance.
+
+"You'd better set down away from them!" he said. "That's the Temple of
+Kor!" But even as he finished speaking the image on the screen jolted
+and rocked, and the flyer dipped even closer toward the jumbled ruins
+below.
+
+"They're firing something!"
+
+He saw that she was trying to gain altitude, but something was wrong;
+the buildings on the screen dipped and wavered, up and down, spinning.
+
+"Mara! Pull up--get out of there!"
+
+"One of the wings is damaged," she said quickly, and suddenly there was
+another jolt on the screen and he heard her gasp. The picture spun and
+righted itself, seemed to hang motionless for a moment, and then the
+stone wall of one of the buildings was directly ahead and growing
+larger.
+
+"Mara!"
+
+The image spun wildly, the building filled the screen, and then it went
+black; he heard a crash from the speaker, cut off almost before it had
+sounded. The room was silent.
+
+
+
+
+EIGHT
+
+
+Rynason stared at the dead screen for only a moment; he wheeled and ran
+back to the outer room.
+
+"Let's get those flyers up! Mara's found them, but they've brought her
+down." He was already going out the door as he spoke.
+
+Manning and the others were right behind him as he dashed out onto the
+field. Rynason headed for the nearest flyer, a small runabout which had
+been discarded as obsolete on the inner worlds and consigned to use out
+here on the Edge, where equipment was scarce. He leaped through the port
+and was shutting the door when Manning caught it.
+
+"Where are they? What's happened to the woman?"
+
+"They were shooting something!" Rynason snapped. The knife-scar over his
+right eye stood out sharply in his anger. "She crashed--may be badly
+hurt. She didn't have too much altitude, though. The hell with where she
+is--_follow_ me!"
+
+He slammed the door and squeezed into the flying seat. While he warmed
+the engines he saw the others scattering across the field to the other
+flyers. In a moment the hum of the radioset told him that their
+communications were open. He saw the props of the other flyers starting
+to turn, and flicked on his mike.
+
+"They're on the other side of the south range," he said quickly. "She
+didn't give me coördinates, but I should be able to find the spot. When
+we get there, we land away from the city and go in on foot."
+
+Manning's voice came coldly through the radioset: "Are you giving orders
+now, Lee?"
+
+"Right now I am, yes! If you want to try going in before reconnoitering,
+that's your funeral. They have weapons."
+
+"When we touch ground again I'll take over," Manning said. "Now let's
+get going--Lee, you're first."
+
+But Rynason was already starting his run across the field. When he had
+some speed he kicked in the rocket booster and fought the little flyer
+skyward. When he had caught the air he banked southward and fed the
+motors all he had. He didn't look around for the others; he was setting
+his own pace.
+
+The mountain range was ten miles to the south; they should be able to
+make it in five or six minutes, he figured. Below him on the dry Flat he
+saw the pale shadow of his flyer skimming across the dust. The drone of
+the motors filled the compartment.
+
+The radio cut in again. It was Manning. "What's this about a city, Lee?
+Is that where they are?"
+
+"The City of the Temple," Rynason said. "It's down among overhanging
+rocks--no wonder we hadn't seen it before. Doesn't seem to have been
+used for centuries or more. But that's where the Temple of Kor is--and
+the Hirlaji are all in the Temple."
+
+Static hissed at him for a moment. "How did they bring her down?"
+someone asked. It sounded like Stoworth.
+
+"Probably the disintegrators," Rynason said. "The Hirlaji don't have
+many of them, but they've got enough power to give us a lot of trouble."
+
+"And they're using them, eh?" Manning said. "What do you think of your
+horses now, Lee?"
+
+Rynason didn't answer.
+
+In a few minutes they were over the range. Rynason had to scout for
+awhile before he found the pass he had seen on Mara's screen, but once
+he saw it below him he followed it out to the other side. The city was
+there, lying darkly amid the shadows of the mountains. Rynason banked
+off and set down half a mile away.
+
+He waited for the others to land before he left the flyer. He took a
+pair of binocs from the supply kit and trained them on the city across
+the Flat, but he couldn't find Mara's fallen flyer.
+
+When they were all down he clambered out of the compartment and alighted
+heavily in the dust. Manning strode quickly to him, wearing twin
+stunners. He took one from its holster and fingered it thoughtfully as
+he spoke.
+
+"The main party was back in the pass. They should be here inside half an
+hour. We'll storm the temple immediately--we've got them outnumbered."
+
+Rynason made a dubious sound deep in his throat, looking out at the
+city. He was remembering that he had seen it before from this Flat ...
+and had stormed it before. The defensive walls were high.
+
+"They can fire down on us from the walls," he said in a low voice.
+"There's no cover out there--they'd wipe half of us out before we could
+get in."
+
+"We can come around from the pass," Manning said. "There's plenty of
+cover from that direction."
+
+"And more fortification, too!" Rynason snapped. "Just remember, Manning,
+that city was built as a fortress. We'd _have_ to come from the Flat."
+
+Manning paused, frowning. "We've got to take them anyway," he said
+slowly. "Damn it, we can't just stand here and wait for them to come out
+at us. What are they doing, anyway?"
+
+Rynason regarded the older man for several moments, almost amused.
+"Right now," he said, "they're probably having a conference--with the
+Outsiders. That's where the machine is, remember."
+
+"Then the sooner we attack, the better," Manning said. "Marc, get the
+main party on the hand-radio--tell them to get here as fast as they
+can." He turned for a moment to look out across the Flat at the city.
+"And you can promise them some action," he said.
+
+Stoworth dropped the radio from his shoulder and threw back the cover.
+He switched on the power, and static sounded in the dry air. He lifted
+the mike ... and a voice cut through the static.
+
+"Is anyone picking this up? Is anyone there?"
+
+It was Mara's voice.
+
+Rynason knelt beside the set and took the mike from Stoworth's hand.
+"This is Lee. Are you hurt?"
+
+"Lee?"
+
+"I hear you. Are you hurt?"
+
+"Not badly. Lee, what are you doing? I saw the flyers land."
+
+"Manning wants to attack the city as soon as the land party gets here.
+What's going on there?"
+
+"I'm ... in the temple. I've been trying to communicate with them. I've
+got an interpreter, but they don't listen to what I say. Lee, this is
+incredible here! They've brought out a lot of weapons ... some of them
+don't work. The hall is half-filled with dust and sand, and they move so
+clumsily! They're trying to hurry, because they saw you too, but it's
+like ... like they've forgotten how. They think they can get rid of us
+all, but they.... It's pitiful--they're so slow."
+
+"Those disintegrators aren't slow," Rynason said. Manning was standing
+beside him; he dropped a hand on his shoulder, but Rynason shook it off.
+"Are they using the machine ... the altar?"
+
+"They were using it when they brought me in. I think it _is_ the
+Outsiders. But they don't seem to know it's just a machine--they kneel
+in front of it, and chant. It's so strange, in that language of theirs
+... those thin, high voices, and the echoes...."
+
+"They're holding you prisoner?"
+
+"Yes. I think they want to hold you off till they can get ready for
+their own attack."
+
+"_For their what?_" Rynason stood up, and looked toward the city; he
+could see no movement there.
+
+"I know ... it's incredible. Lee, they don't know what they're doing.
+Horng said on the interpreter that they were going to drive us off the
+planet, and then rebuild their cities, and re-arm. It's something to do
+with Kor, or the Outsiders. The orders have changed. They think that if
+they can drive us away for awhile they can build themselves up to where
+they can repel any further touchdowns here."
+
+"This order came from the machine?"
+
+"Yes. There was a mistake, and Horng realized it after you linked with
+him this morning. The Outsiders, or Kor or whatever it is, had
+overestimated us."
+
+"Maybe then, but not now. They're committing suicide!" Rynason said.
+
+"I know, and I tried to tell them that. But the machine says
+differently. Lee, do you think that's really the Outsiders?"
+
+"If it is," he said slowly, "they wouldn't send the Hirlaji against us
+without some help." He thought a minute, while the wind of the Flat blew
+sand against his leg and static came from the radio. "They could be
+making another mistake!" Mara said. "I'm sure what they told the
+Outsiders wasn't true--they think they're as strong as they were before.
+But their eyes ... their eyes are afraid. I know it."
+
+"Do they know what you're saying to me?"
+
+"No. Lee, I'm not even sure they know what a radio is. Maybe they think
+I carry my portable altar with me." Her voice had taken on a frantic
+note. "It's a ... a simple case of freedom of religion, Lee! Freedom of
+religion!"
+
+"Mara! Calm down! Calm down!" He waited for a few seconds, until her
+voice came again, more quietly:
+
+"I'm sorry ... it's just that they're so...."
+
+"Forget it. Sit tight there. I think I know how to slip in--alone." He
+switched off.
+
+He stood up and shrugged his shoulders heavily, loosening his tensed
+muscles. Then he turned purposefully to Manning.
+
+"The rest of the party won't be here for awhile yet, so you can't
+possibly go in now. I'm going to try to get Mara out before any fighting
+starts."
+
+"What if they capture you too?" Manning said. "I can't hold off an
+attack too long--you could be right about the Outsiders helping them.
+The sooner we finish them off, the better."
+
+Rynason looked coldly at him. "You heard what Mara said. We won't have
+any trouble taking them. You can't attack them while she's in there,
+though. Or can you?"
+
+"Lee. I've told you--I can't take chances. If the Outsiders are in this,
+it's a dangerous business. You can go in if you want, but we're not
+waiting more than half an hour for you to get out."
+
+Rynason met his gaze steadily for a moment, then nodded brusquely. "All
+right." He turned and moved into the over-hanging shadows of the
+mountains, toward the ancient, alien city.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He stayed in the shadows as he approached the walls of the fortress,
+darting quickly across exposed ground. The Hirlaji were large and
+powerful, physical battle with them was of course out of the question.
+But he had some things on his side: he was small, and therefore less
+likely to be seen; he was faster than the quiet, aged aliens. And he
+knew the city, the fortress and the temple, almost as well as they did.
+
+Perhaps better, in fact, for his purposes. For while he had shared
+Tebron's mind he had been ... not only Tebron, but also Rynason,
+Earthman. A corner of his mind had been alert and aware ... hearing the
+distant screams of Horng, wondering about the design of the Altar of
+Kor. And he had seen other things when he looked through Tebron's eyes:
+when the ancient warlord had stormed the city-fortress, there had been
+an observer in him who had said: An Earthman could go in this way,
+unobserved. A smaller attacker could slip through _here_, could conceal
+himself where no Hirlaji could reach.
+
+He arrived, at last, at the base of the wall where the blunt rocks of
+the mountains tumbled to a dead-end against flat, weathered stone. So
+far he must not have been seen; there had been no disintegrator beams
+fired at him, no leathery Hirlaji heads watching from the walls. He
+flattened against the stone and raised his eyes to the barriers.
+
+The wall here had been built higher than the portions which faced the
+Flat, and it was stronger. No one had tried to storm the city from this
+position, because it was too well protected. But the walls had been
+built against the heavy, clumsy bodies of the grey aliens; with luck, a
+man could scale this wall. The footholds in the weathered stones would
+be precarious, but perhaps it could be done. And the Hirlaji, who
+regarded this wall as impregnable, would not be guarding it.
+
+Sighting upward from flat against the wall, he chose his path quickly,
+and began to climb. The stone was smooth but grainy; he dug his fingers
+into narrow niches and pulled himself slowly upward, bracing himself
+with footholds whenever he could. It was laborious, painful work; twice
+he lost handholds and hung precariously until his straining fingers
+again found some indentation. Sweat covered him; the wind from the Flat
+whipped around the wall and touched the moisture on his back coldly. But
+his face was set in a frozen grimness and though his breath came in
+gasps he made no other sound.
+
+When he had neared the top he suddenly seemed to reach a dead-end; the
+stones were smooth above him. His arms ached, his shoulders seemed
+deadened; he clung numbly to the wall and searched for another path.
+When he found it, he had to descend ten feet and move to the right
+before he could re-ascend; as he retraced his route down the wall he
+noticed blood where his torn fingers had left their mark. But he could
+not feel the pain in his fingers.
+
+At last, when the wall had come to seem a separate world of existence
+which was all that he would ever know, a vertical plane to which he
+clung with dim determination, hardly knowing why any longer ... at last,
+he reached the top. His groping hand reached up and found the edge of
+the wall; his fingers grasped it gratefully and he pulled himself up to
+hang by both hands and survey the interior of the fortress.
+
+A deserted floor stretched before him, shadowed by the late-afternoon
+darkness which crept down from the mountains to rest on the aged remains
+of the city. Forty feet down the walkway he saw stairs descending, but
+his head swam and all he could focus on clearly was the light film of
+dust and sand which covered even this topmost level of the city, blown
+in shallow drifts against the walls which rose a few feet above the
+floor here. There were no footprints in that dust; no one had walked
+here for thousands of years.
+
+Wearily, he pulled himself over the last barrier and fell numbly to the
+floor, where he lay for long minutes fighting for breath. His lungs were
+raw; the thin air of the planet caught and rasped in his throat. His
+hands were torn and bleeding, and the knife-scar over his right eye had
+begun to throb, but he ignored the pain. He had to clear his head....
+
+Eventually he was able to stand, swaying beneath the dark sky. Below him
+he saw the city, broken and dim, empty streets winding between fallen
+walls and pillars. Mara's flyer lay shattered against one of those
+broken walls; seeing it, he wondered how badly she had been hurt.
+
+He moved toward the stairs, and descended them slowly. The stairs of the
+city were as he had remembered them from Tebron's memories, and yet not
+the same. To the Earthman they were steep: the steps were like separate
+levels, three feet across and almost four feet deep. His legs ached at
+each step as the shock of his weight fell on them.
+
+He reached the bottom level and paused in the doorway onto the street.
+It was empty, but he had to think a moment before he could remember his
+bearings. Yes, the Temple was that way, somewhere down the dusty street.
+He moved through the deeper shadows at the base of the buildings,
+remembering.
+
+Tebron had taken this city at the head of a force of warriors. To him it
+had been large and majestic, a place of power and knowledge. But
+Rynason, moving wearily through the dust of the ages which had fallen
+upon the city since the ancient king, found it not merely large, but
+huge; not majestic, but futile. And the power and knowledge which it
+once had held was but a dusty shadow now. Somewhere ahead, in the
+Temple, the survivors of that ages-old culture were trying to bring the
+city to life again. With or without the Outsiders, he felt, they must
+fail. They really wanted to bring themselves back to life, to reawaken
+their minds, their dreams, their own power. But they tried to do it with
+memories, and that was not the way.
+
+No one was guarding the Temple. Rynason went up the steps as quickly as
+he could, vaulting from level to level, trying to stay in the shadows,
+listening for movement. But sounds did not carry far in the air of
+Hirlaj; the aliens would not hear him approaching, but he might not hear
+any of them either until he stumbled upon them.
+
+At the top of the stairs he darted into the shadows of the colonnade
+which surrounded the interior. Doorways opened at intervals of fifty
+feet around the building; he would have to circle to the side and enter
+there if at all. He slipped quickly between the columns and paused at
+the third doorway. He dropped to the floor, lay flat on his chest and
+looked inside.
+
+They were all there--two dozen heavy grey aliens, sitting, standing,
+staring quietly at the floor. There was little movement among them, but
+nevertheless he could feel the excitement which pervaded the Temple. No,
+not excitement--anxiety. Fear. Watching those huge bodies huddling into
+themselves, he heard an echo of Horng's screams in his mind. These
+creatures were afraid of battle, of conflict, and yet they had thrust
+themselves into a fight which they must lose. Did they know that? Could
+they believe what the machine of the Outsiders told them, after it had
+been proven fallible?
+
+The Eye of Kor glowed dully in the dark inner room; two of the Hirlaji
+stood silently before it, watching, waiting. But the religion of Kor had
+played no part in the lives of the Hirlaji for generations. Now that the
+ancient, muddled religion had been brought to life again, could it have
+the same hold on them that it had once had?
+
+Mara was on the floor of the Temple, leaning with her back against the
+wall. One of the doorways from the outer colonnade was nearby, but five
+of the Hirlaji surrounded her. And with a start Rynason noticed that her
+left arm hung limp and twisted at her side, and blood showed on her
+forehead. Her face showed no emotion, but as he watched she raised her
+right hand to run fingers through her long dark hair, nervously.
+
+She had not seen him, but she was waiting. When he made his move she
+would follow him. Rynason slipped back from the doorway and circled the
+building again until he had reached the entrance nearest the girl. He
+drew out his stunner from its holster and looked at it for a moment. He
+would have to be fast; his weapon would give him no advantage against
+the disintegrators of the Hirlaji, but surprise and speed might. And,
+perhaps ... fear.
+
+He broke around the corner of the doorway at a dead run, firing as he
+went. Two of the Hirlaji fell before they could even turn; they crumpled
+to the floor heavily. Then he screamed--a high scream, like Horng's, and
+as loud as he could make it, a wail, a cry of anguish and terror and
+pain. They felt it, and it touched a response in them; the Hirlaji who
+surrounded Mara twisted to look at him, but they instinctively shrank
+away. He continued to fire, bringing down three more of them while the
+confusion lasted. He broke through to Mara, who was already on her feet;
+without breaking his stride he grasped her by her good shoulder and
+pulled her along with him as he ran through.
+
+But some of the Hirlaji recovered in time to block their escape. Rynason
+wheeled, looking frantically around the room for an unguarded exit. None
+of those within reach were clear. He fired again, and ran for the altar.
+
+One of the Hirlaji had raised a disintegrator; Rynason caught him with
+the stunner as he fired, and the beam of the alien's weapon shot past
+his leg, digging a pit into the floor beyond him. Other weapons were
+raised now; they had only seconds left.
+
+But they had reached the altar; the two Hirlaji there moved to block
+them, but they were unarmed and Rynason dropped them with the stunner.
+He pushed Mara past them and around to the side of the altar, seeking
+cover from the disintegrators.
+
+Behind the altar, there was a space just large enough for them to
+squeeze through. Rynason's heart leaped; he pointed quickly to it and
+turned to fire again as Mara pushed her way into the narrow aperture. A
+disintegrator beam hissed over his head; another tore into the wall two
+feet away from him. The Hirlaji were trying to keep their fire away from
+the altar itself.
+
+Rynason turned and squeezed behind the altar as soon as Mara was clear.
+It was tight, but he made it, and once through the narrow opening they
+found more room in the darkness. They could hear noise outside as the
+Hirlaji moved toward the altar, but it sounded far away and dim. Mara
+moved back into the darkness, and he followed.
+
+They moved perhaps twenty feet into the wall behind the altar before
+they were brought to a halt. The passage ended. Well, no matter; if it
+was not an escape route, at least it would afford cover from the weapons
+of the Hirlaji. Rynason dropped to the floor and rested.
+
+Mara sat beside him. "Lee, you shouldn't have tried it," she said
+anxiously. "Now we're trapped." He felt her hand touch his face in the
+darkness.
+
+"Maybe," he said. "But we may be able to catch them off their guard
+again, and if so we may be able to get out."
+
+She was silent. He felt her lean against his shoulder wearily, her hair
+soft against his neck. Then he remembered that she had been hurt.
+
+"What happened to your arm? And you were bleeding."
+
+"I think it's broken. The bleeding was nothing, though: you should see
+yourself. You were so tattered and bloody when you came in that I hardly
+knew you. Knights should come in more properly shining armor."
+
+He grinned wearily. "Wait till next time."
+
+"Lee, where are we?" she said abruptly. Their eyes were becoming
+adjusted to the darkness, and they could see rising around them a
+complexity of machine relays, connectives, and pieces which did not seem
+to make sense.
+
+Rynason looked more closely at the complex. It was definitely Outsiders
+work, but what was it? Part of the Altar of Kor, obviously, but the
+Outsiders telecommunicators had never used such extensive machinery. Yet
+it did look familiar. He tried to remember the different types of
+Outsiders machinery which had been found and partially reconstructed by
+the advancing Earthmen in the centuries past. There weren't many....
+
+Then, suddenly, he had it, and it was so simple that he was surprised he
+hadn't thought of it before.
+
+"This is Kor," he said. "It's not a communicator--it's a computer. An
+Outsiders computer."
+
+
+
+
+NINE
+
+
+Mara's frown deepened; she looked around them in the dimness, her eyes
+taking in the complexity and extent of the circuitry. It faded into the
+darkness behind them; lines ran into the walls and floor.
+
+"They built their computers in the grand manner, didn't they?" she said
+softly.
+
+"I've seen fragments of them before," Rynason said. "This is a big
+one--no telling how much area the total complex takes up. One thing's
+certain, though: it's no ordinary computer of theirs. Not for plain
+math-work, nor even for specialized computations, like the one on Rigel
+II--that was apparently used for astrogation, but it wasn't half the
+size of this. And navigation between stars, even with the kind of drive
+they must have had, is no simple problem."
+
+"The Hirlaji think it's a god," she said.
+
+"That raised another problem," Rynason mused. "The Outsiders built it,
+and must have left it here when they pulled back to wherever they were
+going ... if they ever left the planet. But the Hirlaji use it, and they
+communicate with it verbally. The Hirlaji are apparently responsible for
+keeping it protected since then. But why should the Hirlaji be able to
+use it?"
+
+"Unless they're the Outsiders after all?" said Mara.
+
+Rynason frowned. "No, I'm still not convinced of that. The clue seems to
+be that they communicate verbally with it--they must have been using it
+since before they developed telepathy."
+
+"Couldn't there have been direct contact between the Hirlaji and the
+Outsiders back when the Hirlaji were just evolving out of the beast
+stage?"
+
+"There must have been," said Rynason. "The Temple rituals are conducted
+in an even older form of their language than most remembered--a
+proto-language that was kept alive only by the priest caste, because the
+machine had been set to respond to that language."
+
+"But aren't primitive languages usually composed of simple, basic words
+and concepts? How well could they communicate in such a language?"
+
+"Not very well," Rynason said. "Which would explain why the machine
+seemed to make mistakes--clumsiness of language. So the Outsiders,
+maybe, left the machine when they pulled out, but they set it to respond
+to the Hirlaji language because our horsefaced friends were beginning to
+build a civilization of their own and the Outsiders thought they'd leave
+them some guidance...." He stopped for a moment, remembering that first
+linkage with Horng, and Tebron's memories. "The Hirlaji called them the
+Old Ones," he said.
+
+"And that order to Tebron ... about the other race that they would meet
+someday. That was based on Outsiders observations."
+
+"I wonder when the Outsiders were on Earth," Rynason said. "Sometime
+after we'd started our own rise, certainly. Maybe in ancient
+Mesopotamia, or India. Or later, during the Renaissance?"
+
+"The time doesn't matter, does it?" Mara said. "They touched down on
+Earth, took note of us, and left. Somehow they thought we were going to
+develop more rapidly than we did."
+
+"Probably before the Dark Ages," Rynason said. "Maybe they didn't see
+that thousand-year setback coming...." He stopped, and stood up in the
+low passageway among the ancient circuitry. "So here we are,
+second-guessing the Outsiders. And outside, their proteges have
+disintegrators probably left by the Outsiders, and they're just waiting
+for us to try to get out."
+
+"Our new-found knowledge isn't doing us much good, is it?" she said.
+
+He shook his head slowly. "When I was still on the secondary senseteach
+units I met Rene Malhomme for the first time. My father worked the
+spacers, so I don't even remember what planet this was on. But I
+remember the night I first saw Rene--he was speaking from the top of a
+blue-lumber pile, shouting about the corporations that were moving in.
+He was getting all worked up about something, and several people in the
+crowd were shouting back at him; I stopped to watch. All of a sudden six
+or seven men moved in from somewhere and dragged him down from where he
+was standing. There was a fight--people were thrown all around. I hid
+till it was over.
+
+"When the crowd finally cleared, there was Rene. His clothes were torn,
+but he wasn't hurt. Every one of the men who had attacked him had to be
+carried away; I think one of them was dead. Rene stood there laughing;
+then he saw me hidden in the darkness and he took me home. He told me
+that when he'd been younger he'd worked his way all the way in to Earth,
+and studied some of the cultures there. He'd learned karate, which was
+an ancient Japanese way of fighting."
+
+Rynason took a deep breath. "He said everything a person learns will be
+useful someday. And I believed him."
+
+"A nice parable," Mara said. "We could use him against the Hirlaji,
+though."
+
+Rynason was silent, thinking. If they could only catch the aliens off
+guard ... but of course they couldn't, now. He let his eyes wander
+aimlessly along the circuitry surrounding them. Tell me, old Kor, what
+do we do now?
+
+After a moment his eyes narrowed; he reached up and traced a connection
+with his fingers, back to the front, toward the altar. It led directly
+to ... the speaker!
+
+The voice of Kor.
+
+And if he could interrupt that connection, put his own voice through the
+speaker, out through the altar....
+
+"Mara, we're going out. I've found my own brand of karate for our
+friends out there."
+
+He helped her to her feet. She moved somewhat painfully, her broken left
+arm hanging stiffly at her side, but she made no protest.
+
+"We've got to be fast," he said. "I don't know how well this will
+work--it depends on how much they trust their clay-footed god today."
+Quickly, he outlined his plan. Mara listened silently and nodded.
+
+Then he set to work. It was largely guesswork, following those intricate
+alien connections, but Rynason had seen this part of such machines
+before. He found the penultimate point at which the impulses from the
+brain were translated into sound and broadcast through the speaker. He
+disconnected this, his torn fingers working awkwardly on the delicate
+linkages.
+
+"Ready?"
+
+Mara was just inside the narrow passage behind the altar. She nodded
+quickly.
+
+Rynason twisted himself so that he could speak directly into the input
+of the speaker. He raised his voice to approximate the thin, high sounds
+of the Hirlaji language.
+
+_Remain motionless. Remain motionless. Remain motionless._
+
+The command burst out upon the altar room of the Temple, shattering the
+silence. The Hirlaji turned in surprise to the altar--and stood still.
+
+_Remain motionless. Remain motionless._
+
+It was the phrase he had heard the machine use so often to Tebron, king
+priest leader of all Hirlaj. It had meant something else then, but the
+proto-language of the Hirlaji had no precise meanings; given by itself,
+it seemed to mean precisely what it said.
+
+"All right, let's go out!" Rynason said, and the two of them broke from
+behind the altar. The Hirlaji stood completely still; several of those
+that Rynason had dropped with his stunner had recovered consciousness,
+but they made no move either. Rynason and the girl ran right through the
+quiet aliens; only a few of them turned shadowed eyes to look at them as
+they passed. They made the outside colonnade in safety, and paused
+there.
+
+"They may see through this in a minute," Rynason said. "Don't wait for
+me--get out of the city!"
+
+"You're not coming?"
+
+"I won't be too far behind. Get going!"
+
+She hesitated only a moment, then hurried down the broad levels of the
+Temple steps. Rynason watched her to the bottom, then turned and
+re-entered the altar room.
+
+Rynason went quickly among them, taking their weapons. Most of them made
+no effort to stop him, but a few tightened their grips on the
+disintegrators and he had to pry those thick fingers from the weapons,
+cursing to himself. How long would they wait?
+
+There were fourteen of the disintegrators. They were large and heavy; he
+couldn't hold them all at once. He dumped five of them outside the altar
+room and returned to disarm the rest of the aliens. Sweat formed beads
+on his forehead, but he moved without hesitation.
+
+Another of the Hirlaji tightened his grip when Rynason began to take the
+weapon from him. He looked up, and saw the quiet eyes of Horng resting
+on him. The leathery grey wrinkles which surrounded those eyes quivered
+slightly, but otherwise he made no movement. Rynason dropped his gaze
+from that contact and wrested the weapon away.
+
+As he started to move on to the next, Horng silently dipped his massive
+head to one side. Rynason felt a chill go down his back.
+
+In a few more minutes he had disarmed them all. He set the last three
+disintegrators on the stone floor of the colonnade--and a movement in
+the distance caught his eye. It was on the south wall of the city; two
+men stood for a moment silhouetted against the Flat, then disappeared
+into the shadows. In a moment, another man appeared, and he too dropped
+inside the wall.
+
+So Manning had already sent the men in. The mob was unleashed.
+
+Rynason hesitated for a moment, then turned and went quickly back into
+the altar room. Mara's radio was there; he lifted it by its strap and
+took it with him out to the colonnade.
+
+He could see the Earthmen moving through the streets now, darting from
+wall to wall in the gathering darkness of evening. In a short time it
+would be full night--and Rynason knew that these men would like nothing
+better than to attack in the dark.
+
+He warmed the radio and opened the transmitter.
+
+"Manning, call off your dogs. I've disarmed the Hirlaji."
+
+The radio spat static at him, and for several seconds he thought his
+signal hadn't even been picked up. But at last there was a reply:
+
+"Then get out of the Temple. It's too late to stop this."
+
+"Manning!"
+
+"I said get clear. You've done all you can there."
+
+"Damn it, there's no need for any fighting!"
+
+Manning's voice sounded cold even in the faint reception of the
+hand-radio. "That's for me to decide. I'm running this show, remember."
+
+"You're running a massacre!" Rynason shouted.
+
+"Call it what you like. Mara says they weren't so docile when you broke
+in."
+
+Rynason's mind raced; he had to stall for time. If he could get Manning
+to stop those men until they cooled down....
+
+"Manning, there's no need for this! Didn't she tell you that the altar
+is just a computer? These people haven't had anything to do with the
+Outsiders since before they can remember!"
+
+The radio carried the faint sound of Manning's chuckle. "So now they're
+people to you, Lee? Or are you one of them now?"
+
+"What the hell are you talking about?"
+
+"Lee, my boy, you're sounding like an old horsefaced nursemaid. You
+linked minds with them, and you say you were practically a Hirlaji
+yourself when you went into that linkage. Well, I'm not so sure you ever
+came out of it. You're _still_ one of them!"
+
+"Is that the only reason you can think of that I might have for wanting
+to prevent a massacre?" Rynason said icily.
+
+"If they tried to revolt once, they'll try it again," Manning said.
+"Well crush them _now_."
+
+"You think that will impress the Council? Slaughtering the only
+intelligent race we've found?"
+
+"I'm not playing to the Council!" Manning snapped. "I've got these men
+following me, and I'll listen to what _they_ want!"
+
+Rynason stared at the microphone for a moment. "Are you sure you aren't
+afraid of your own mob?" he said.
+
+"We're coming in, Lee. Get out of there or we'll cut you down too."
+
+"Manning!"
+
+"I'm switching off."
+
+"_Not quite yet._ There's one more thing, and you'd better hear this
+one!"
+
+"Make it fast," Manning said. His voice sounded uninterested.
+
+"If any of your boys try to come in, I'll stop them myself. I've got the
+disintegrators, and I'll use them."
+
+There was silence from the radio, save for the static. It lasted for
+long seconds. Then:
+
+"It's your funeral." There was a faint click as Manning switched off.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Rynason stared angrily at the radioset for a moment, then left it lying
+at the top of the steps and went back inside. The Hirlaji stood
+motionlessly in dimness; it took awhile for Rynason's eyes to adjust to
+it. He found the interpreter that Mara had left and quickly hooked it up
+to Horng. The alien's eyes, moving heavily in their sockets, watched him
+as he connected the wires.
+
+When everything was ready Rynason lifted the interpreter's mike. "The
+Earthmen are going to attack you," he said. "I want to help you fight
+them off."
+
+There was no reaction from the alien; only those quiet eyes resting on
+him like the shadows of the entire past.
+
+"Can you still believe that Kor is a god? That's only a machine--I spoke
+through it myself, minutes ago! Don't you realize that?"
+
+After a moment Horng's eyes slowly closed and opened in acknowledgement.
+KOR WAS GOD KNOWLEDGE. THE OLD ONES DIED BEFORE TIME, AND PASSED INTO
+KOR. NOW KOR IS DEAD.
+
+"And all of you will be dead too!" Rynason said.
+
+The huge alien sat unmoving. His eyes turned away from Rynason.
+
+"You've got to fight them!" Rynason said.
+
+But he could see that it was useless. Horng had made no reply, but
+Rynason knew what was in his thoughts now.
+
+THERE IS NO PURPOSE.
+
+
+
+
+TEN
+
+
+Wearily, Rynason switched off the interpreter, leaving the wires still
+connected to the alien. He walked through the faintly echoing,
+dust-filled temple and stepped out onto the colonnade around it. It was
+almost dark now; the deep blue of the Hirlaj sky had turned almost black
+and the pinpoint lights of the stars broke through. The wind was rising
+from the Flat; it caught his hair and whipped it roughly around his
+head. He looked up at the emerging stars, remembering the day when Horng
+had suddenly, inexplicably stood and walked to the base of a broken
+staircase. He had looked up those stairs, past where they had broken and
+fallen, past the shattered roof, to the sky. The Hirlaji had never
+reached the stars, but they might have. It had taken a god, or a jumbled
+legacy from an older, greater race, to forestall them. And now all they
+had was the dust and the wind.
+
+Rynason could hear the rising moan of that wind gathering itself around
+him, building to a wailing planet-dirge among the columns of the Temple.
+And inside, the Hirlaji were dying. The knives and bludgeons of the
+Earth mob outside would only complete the job; the Hirlaji were too
+tired to live. They dreamed dimly under the shadowed foreheads ...
+dreamed of the past. And sometimes, perhaps, of the stars.
+
+Behind the altar, the huge and intricate mass of alien circuits glowed
+and clicked and pulsated ... slowly; seemingly at random, but steadily.
+The brain must be self-perpetuating to have lasted this long ... feeding
+its energy cells from some power-source Rynason could only guess at, and
+repairing its time-worn linkages when necessary. In its memory banks was
+stored the science of the race which had preceded even the ancient
+Hirlaji. The Outsiders had sprung up when this planet was young, had
+fought their way to the stars and galaxies, and eventually, when aeons
+of time pressed down, had pulled in their outposts and fallen back to
+this world. And they had died here, on this world, falling to dust which
+was ground under by the grey race which had followed them to dominance.
+"Before time," Horng had said; that must have meant before the Hirlaji
+had developed telepathy, before the period covered by the race-memory.
+
+But the Outsiders were still here, alive in that huge alien brain ...
+the science, the knowledge, the strange arts of a race which had
+conquered the stars while men still wondered about the magic of
+lightning and fire. A science was encapsuled here which could speak of
+war and curiosity as discontent, but could say nothing definite of
+contentment. An incomplete science? A merely alien science? Rynason
+didn't know.
+
+And the Hirlaji.... Twenty-six of their race remained, dreaming under
+heavy domes through which the stars shone at night and silhouetted the
+worn edges of broken stone. Twenty-six grey, hopeless beings who had not
+even been waiting. And the Earthmen had come.
+
+For a moment Rynason wondered if the Hirlaji did not perhaps carry a
+message for the Earthmen too: that decadence was the price of peace,
+death the inevitable end of contentment. The Hirlaji had stilled
+themselves, back in the grey past ... had taken their measure of quiet
+and contentment for thousands of years, the searching drives of their
+race dying within them. And this was their end.
+
+THERE IS NO PURPOSE.
+
+Rynason shook himself, and felt the cold wind cut through his clothing;
+it reawakened him. Stooping, he gathered up several of the
+disintegrators and brought them with him to the head of the massive
+stairs up which the attackers must come. He crouched beside those
+stairs, watching for movement below. But he couldn't see anything.
+
+Something about the Hirlaji still bothered him; kneeling in the
+gathering darkness he finally isolated it in his mind. It was their
+hopelessness, the numbness that had crept over them through the
+centuries. No purpose? But they had lived in peace for thousands of
+years. No, their death was not merely one of decadence ... it was
+suffocation.
+
+They had not chosen peace; it had been thrust upon them. The Hirlaji had
+been at the height of their power, their growth still gathering momentum
+... and they had to stifle it. The end in view didn't really matter: it
+had not been what they would have chosen. And, having had peace forced
+upon them before they had been ready for it, they had been unable to
+enjoy it; and the stifling of scientific curiosity that had been
+necessary to complete the suppression of the war-instinct had left the
+Hirlaji with nothing.
+
+But it had all been so unnecessary, Rynason thought. The ancient
+Outsiders brain, computing from insufficient evidence probably gathered
+during a brief touchdown on Earth, had undoubtedly been able to give
+only a tentative appraisal of the situation. But the proto-Hirlaji
+language was not constructed to accommodate if's and maybe's, and the
+judgments of the brain were taken as law by the Hirlaji.
+
+Now the Earthmen for whom this race had deadened itself into
+near-extinction would complete the job ... because the Hirlaji had
+learned their mistake far too late.
+
+Rynason shook his head; there was a sickness in his stomach, a gnawing
+anger at the ways of history. It was capricious, cruel, senseless. It
+played jokes spanning millennia.
+
+Suddenly there were sounds on the stairs below him. Rynason's head
+jerked up and he saw five of the Earthmen climbing the stairs, moving as
+quickly as they could from level to level, crouching momentarily at each
+beneath the cover of the steps. He raised one of the disintegrators,
+feeling the rage building up within him.
+
+There was a humming sound by his ear; the beam of one of the stunners
+passed by him, touching the rock wall. The wall vibrated at the touch,
+but the range was too great for the beam to have done it any damage.
+They were close enough, though to stun Rynason if they hit him.
+
+He dropped flat, looking for the man who had fired. In a moment he found
+him: a small, lean man slipped almost silently over the edge of one of
+the step-levels and rolled quickly to cover beneath the next. He had got
+further than Rynason had realized; only three levels separated them now.
+He could see, from this distance in the near-dark, the cruel lines of
+the man's face. It was a harsh, dirty face, with wrinkles like seams;
+the man's eyes were harsh slits. Rynason had seen too many faces like
+that here on the Edge; this was a man with a bitter hatred, looking for
+the chance to unleash it upon anyone who got in his way. And the
+enjoyment which Rynason saw gleaming in the man's eyes chilled him
+momentarily.
+
+In that moment the man leaped to the next level, sending off a beam
+which struck the wall two feet from Rynason; he felt the stinging
+vibration against his body as he lay flat. Slowly he sighted the
+disintegrator at the top of the level under which the man had crouched
+for cover, and waited for his next leap. Within him he felt only a
+bitter cold which matched the wind whipping above him.
+
+Again the man moved--but he had crept to the side of the stairs before
+he leaped, and Rynason's shot bit into the stone beside him as he rolled
+to safety. Now only one level separated them.
+
+Further down the stairs, Rynason saw the others moving up behind the
+smaller man. Still more were moving out from the other buildings and
+darting to the stairs. But he had no time to hold them back.
+
+There was silence, except for the wind.
+
+And the man leaped, firing once, twice. The second beam took Rynason in
+the left wrist and spun him off-balance for a moment. But he was already
+firing in return, rolling to one side. His third shot took the man's
+right shoulder off, and bit into his neck. The man staggered forward two
+steps, trying to raise his stunner again, but suddenly it clattered to
+the floor and he crumpled on top of it. A pool of blood spread around
+him.
+
+Rynason moved back to the cover of the side wall, and watched for the
+other men. The first one had got too near; Rynason hadn't realized how
+easily they could approach in this near-darkness. He felt the numbness
+of the stunnerbeam spreading nearly to his shoulder; his left arm was
+useless. Cursing, he trained the disintegrator along the line of the
+steps and fired.
+
+The disintegrator cut through the stone as though it were putty, for a
+range of twenty feet. Rynason played the beam back and forth along the
+steps, cutting them down to a smooth ramp which the attackers would have
+to climb before they could get to him.
+
+One of them tried to leap the last few levels before Rynason could cut
+them, but he sliced the man in two through the chest. The separate parts
+of the man's body fell and rolled back to the untouched levels below. He
+had not had time to utter even a cry of pain.
+
+For a time, now, there was complete silence in the wind. Rynason could
+see the inert legs of the last attacker projecting out over the edge of
+the third level down, and undoubtedly the others saw them too. They were
+hesitating now, unsure of themselves. Rynason stayed pressed to the
+stone floor, waiting. The wind whipped in a rising moan through the
+upper reaches of the building.
+
+Another of the men slipped over the edge of the massive stairs, hugging
+the deeper darkness at the side of the stair-wall, and slowly inched his
+way up the newly-flattened ramp. Rynason watched him coldly, through a
+grey haze of fury which was yet tinged with despair. What use was all
+this, the killing, the blood and sweat and pain? It disgusted him--yet
+by its perverse senselessness it angered him too.
+
+He cut a swathe through the crawling man, through head and neck and
+back. A gory shell-like hulk slid back to the foot of the ramp.
+
+And abruptly the remaining men broke and ran. One of them rose and
+stumbled down the steep levels of the stairs, heedless of his exposure;
+with a shock, Rynason saw that it was Rene Malhomme. Another followed
+... and another. There were almost a dozen of them on the stairs; they
+all broke and ran. Rynason sent one beam after them, biting a depression
+into the rock wall beside them. Then they were gone.
+
+Rynason moved back from the head of the stairs and leaned wearily
+against the stone. His left arm was beginning to tingle with returning
+circulation now; he rubbed it absently with his good hand and wondered
+if they would try the sheer walls on the other side of the Temple. He
+had scaled one of these ancient walls, but would they try it? Certainly
+they stood little chance coming up the stairs, unless they gathered for
+a concerted rush. And who would lead such a suicidal attack? These men
+were vicious, but they valued their lives too.
+
+Yet he couldn't watch the black walls. Leaving the stairway unguarded
+would be the most dangerous course of all.
+
+In a few minutes the hand-radio, forgotten on the stone floor behind
+him, flashed an intermittent light which caught his eye in the dusk.
+That would be Manning.
+
+Rynason slid the radio over to the head of the stairs and switched on
+there, keeping an eye on the stairway.
+
+"Lee, do you hear me?"
+
+"I hear you." His voice was low and bitter.
+
+"I'm coming in to talk. Hold your God damned fire."
+
+"Why should I?" said Rynason,
+
+"Because I'm bringing Mara with me. It's too bad you don't trust me,
+Lee, but if that's the way you want it I won't trust you either."
+
+"That's a good idea," he said, and switched off.
+
+Almost immediately he saw them come out from behind the cover of a
+fallen wall across the dusty street. Mara walked in front of Manning;
+her head was high, her face almost expressionless. The cold wind threw
+dust against their legs as they crossed the open space to the base of
+the steps.
+
+Rynason stood motionless, watching them come up. Manning still had his
+two stunners, but they were in their holsters. He kept behind the girl
+all the way, pausing before pushing her up the open ramp at the top,
+then moving even more closely behind her. Rynason stood with the
+disintegrator hanging loosely in one hand at his side.
+
+On the colonnade Manning gripped the girl by her undamaged arm. He
+nodded to one of the doorways into the temple, and Rynason preceded him
+inside.
+
+As they entered Manning lit a handlight and set it on the floor. The
+room was thrown into stark relief, the shadows of the motionless aliens
+striking the walls and ceiling with an almost physical harshness.
+Manning paused a moment to look at the Hirlaji, and at the altar across
+the room.
+
+"We can hear each other in here," he said at last.
+
+"What do you want?" said Rynason. There was cool hatred in his voice,
+and the knife-scar on his forehead was a dark snake-line in the hard
+glare of the handlight.
+
+Manning shrugged, a bit too quickly. He was nervous. "I want you out of
+here, Lee, and I'm not accepting any argument this time."
+
+Rynason looked at Mara, standing helplessly in the older man's grip. He
+glanced down at the disintegrator in his hand.
+
+Manning drew one of his stunners quickly, and trained it at Rynason's
+face. "I said no arguments. Put the weapon down, Lee."
+
+Rynason couldn't risk a shot at the man, with Mara in front of him. He
+carefully laid the disintegrator on the floor.
+
+"Slide it over here."
+
+Rynason kicked it across the floor. Manning bent and picked it up,
+returned the stunner to its holster and held the disintegrator on him.
+
+"That's better. Now we can avoid arguments--right, Lee? You've always
+like peaceful settlements, haven't you?"
+
+Rynason glared at him, but didn't say anything. He walked slowly into
+the center of the room, among the Hirlaji. They paid no attention.
+
+"Lee, he's going to kill them!" Mara burst out.
+
+Rynason was standing now next to the interpreter. The handlight which
+Manning had set on the floor across the room was trained upwards, and
+the interpreter was still in the darkness. He lowered his head as if in
+thought and switched on the machine with his foot.
+
+"Is that true, Manning? Are you going to kill them?" His voice was loud
+and it echoed from the walls.
+
+"I can't trust them," Manning said, his voice automatically growing
+louder in response to Rynason's own. He stepped forward, pushing Mara in
+front of him. "They're not human, Lee--you keep forgetting that, for
+some reason. Think of it as clearing the area of hostile native animal
+life--that comes under the duties of a governor, now doesn't it?"
+
+"And what about the men outside? Did you put it that way to them?"
+
+"They do what I say!" Manning snapped. "They don't give a damn who they
+kill. There's going to be fighting here whether it's against the Hirlaji
+or between the townsmen. As governor, I'd rather they took it all out on
+the horses here. Domestic tranquillity, shall we say?" He was smiling
+now; he had everything in control.
+
+"So that's your purpose?" Rynason said. There was anger in his voice,
+feigned or real--perhaps both. But his voice rose still higher. "Is
+butchery your only goal in life, Manning?"
+
+Manning stepped toward him again, his eyes narrowing. "Butchery? It's
+better than no purpose at all, Lee! It'll get me off of these damned
+outworlds eventually, if I'm a good enough butcher. And I mean to be,
+Lee ... I mean to be."
+
+Rynason turned his back on the man in contempt, and walked past Horng to
+the base of the ancient altar. He looked up at the Eye of Kor, dim now
+when not in use. He turned.
+
+"_Is_ it better, Manning?" he shouted. "Does it give you a right to
+live, while you slaughter the Hirlaji?"
+
+Manning cursed under his breath, and took a quick step toward Rynason;
+his hard, black shadow leaped up the wall.
+
+"_Yes!_ It gives me any right I can take!"
+
+It happened quickly. Manning was now beside the massive figure of the
+alien, Horng; in his anger he had loosened his grip on Mara. He raised
+the disintegrator toward Rynason.
+
+And Horng's huge fist smashed it from his hand.
+
+Manning never knew what hit him. Before he had even realized that the
+disintegrator was gone Horng had him. One heavy hand circled his throat;
+the other gripped his shoulder. The alien lifted him viciously and broke
+him like a stick; Rynason could almost hear the man's neck break, so
+final was that twist of the alien's hands.
+
+Horng lifted the lifeless body above his head and hurled it to the floor
+with such force that the man's head was stoved in and his body lay
+twisted and motionless where it fell.
+
+Afterwards there was silence in the room, save for the distant sound of
+the wind against the building outside. Horng stood looking down at the
+broken body at his feet, his expression as unfathomable as it had ever
+been. Mara stared in shocked silence at the alien.
+
+Rynason walked slowly to the mike lying beside the interpreter. He
+raised it.
+
+"You can move quickly, old leather, when there's a reason for it," he
+said.
+
+Horng turned his head to him and silently dipped it to one side.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Rynason lifted the broken form of Manning's body and carried it out to
+the top of the steps leading down from the temple. Mara went with him,
+carrying the handlight; it fell harshly on Manning's crushed features as
+Rynason waited atop the huge, steep stairway. The wind tore at his hair,
+whipping it wildly around his head ... but Manning's head was caked with
+blood. In a moment, the men from the town came out from cover; they
+stood at the base of the steps, indecisive.
+
+They too were waiting for something.
+
+Rynason hefted the body up over one shoulder and drew a disintegrator
+with the hand he had freed. Slowly, then, he descended the steps.
+
+When he had neared the bottom the circle of men fell back. They were
+uneasy and sullen ... but they had seen the power of the disintegrator,
+and now they saw Manning's crushed body.
+
+Rynason bent and dropped the body to the ground. He looked up coldly at
+the ring of faces and said, "One of the Hirlaji did that with his hands.
+That's all--just his hands."
+
+For a moment everyone was still ... and then one of the men broke from
+the crowd, snarling, with a heavy knife in his hand. He stopped just
+outside the white circle of the handlight, the knife extended before
+him. Rynason raised the disintegrator and trained it on him, his face
+frozen into a cold mask.
+
+The man stood in indecision.
+
+And from the crowd behind him another figure stepped forward. It was
+Malhomme, and his lips were drawn back in disgust. He struck with an
+open hand, the side of his palm catching the man's neck beneath his ear.
+The man fell sprawling to the ground, and lay still.
+
+Malhomme looked at him for a moment, then he turned to the men behind
+him. "That's enough!" he shouted. "_Enough!_" Angrily, he looked down at
+the crumpled form of Manning's body. "Bury him!" he said.
+
+There was still no movement from the men; Malhomme grabbed two of them
+roughly and shoved them out of the crowd. They hesitated, looking
+quickly from Malhomme to the disintegrator in Rynason's hand, then bent
+to pick up the body.
+
+"It's a measure of man's eternal mercy," said Malhomme acidly, "that at
+least we bury each other." He stared at the men in the mob, and the fury
+in his eyes broke them at last. Muttering, shrugging, shaking their
+heads, they dispersed, going off in two and threes to take cover from
+the wind-driven sand.
+
+Malhomme turned to Rynason and Mara, his face relaxing at last. The hard
+lines around his mouth softened into a rueful smile as he put his arm
+around Rynason's shoulder. "We can all take shelter in the buildings
+here for the night. You could use some rest, Lee Rynason--you look like
+hell. And maybe I can put a temporary splint on your arm, woman."
+
+They found a nearby building where the roof had long ago fallen in, but
+the walls were still standing. While Malhomme ministered to Mara he did
+not stop talking for a moment; Rynason couldn't tell whether he was
+trying to keep the girl's mind off the pain or whether he was simply
+unwinding his emotions.
+
+"You know, I've preached at these men for so many years I've got
+callouses in my throat. And one of these days maybe they'll know what
+I'm talking about, so that I won't have to shout." He shrugged. "Well,
+it would be a dull world, where I didn't have a good excuse to shout.
+Sometimes you might ask your alien friends up there, Lee ... what did
+they get out of choosing peace?"
+
+"They didn't choose it," said Rynason.
+
+Malhomme grimaced. "I wonder if anybody, anywhere, ever will. Maybe the
+Outsiders did, but they're not around to tell us about it. It's an
+intriguing question to think about, if you don't have anything to drink
+... what do you do, when there's nothing more to fight against, or even
+for?"
+
+He straightened up; the splint on Mara's arm was set now. He settled her
+back in a drift of sand as comfortably as possible.
+
+"I've got another question," Rynason said. "What were you doing among
+those men who came at me on the steps earlier?"
+
+Malhomme's face broke into a wide grin. "That was a suicidal rush on
+you, Lee. A damned stupid tactic ... a rush like that is only as strong
+as the weakest coward in it. All it takes is one man to break and run,
+and everybody else will run too. So it was easy for me to break it up."
+
+Rynason couldn't help chuckling at that; and once he had started, the
+tension that had gripped him for the past several hours found release in
+a full, stomach-shaking laugh.
+
+"Rene Malhomme," he gasped, "that's the kind of leadership this planet
+needs!"
+
+Mara smiled up from where she lay. "You know," she said, "now that
+Manning is dead they'll have to find someone else to be governor...."
+
+"Don't be ridiculous," said Malhomme.
+
+
+
+
+
+
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+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Note: Typographical errors have been repaired in this text.
+
+  Spelling
+
+    Old: cemetaries
+    New: cemeteries
+
+    Old: hefting his repentence sign
+    New: hefting his repentance sign
+
+    Old: what happenedt here, old leather
+    New: what happened here, old leather
+
+    Old: I suppose, thought I've never even been
+    New: I suppose, though I've never even been
+
+    Old: casing aound the powerpacks
+    New: casing around the powerpacks
+
+    Old: as staticly blunt as anvils
+    New: as statically blunt as anvils
+
+    Old: Rynason knelt beside the set and took the Mike
+    New: Rynason knelt beside the set and took the mike
+
+    Old: can repell any further touchdowns
+    New: can repel any further touchdowns
+
+    Old: over-hanging shadows of the mounains
+    New: over-hanging shadows of the mountains
+
+    Old: collonade
+    New: colonnade
+
+    Old: The brain must be eslf-perpetuating
+    New: The brain must be self-perpetuating
+
+    Old: their hoplessness,
+    New: their hopelessness,
+
+    Old: millenia
+    New: millennia
+
+  Punctuation
+
+    Old: Manning's quarters, He met Marc Stoworth
+    New: Manning's quarters. He met Marc Stoworth
+
+    Old: daring the man to take offense. He didn't."
+    New: daring the man to take offense. He didn't.
+
+    Old: "Where's Mara? Rynason asked.
+    New: "Where's Mara?" Rynason asked.
+
+    Old: echo of Horng's screams in his mind
+    New: echo of Horng's screams in his mind.
+
+    Old: Manning said. I'm going to throw out
+    New: Manning said. "I'm going to throw out
+
+    Old: he said. Tonight I'm busy.
+    New: he said. "Tonight I'm busy.
+
+  Missing word
+
+    Old: Rynason that that it was Rene Malhomme
+    New: Rynason saw that it was Rene Malhomme
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WARLORD OF KOR***
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