“You said we could only attack it through its mind. But there may be another way. Its memories, its pride....”
He raised his scarred gypsy face to the green sky and shouted,
“You, Child of the Sun! Listen to me! You have beaten us. Go ahead and kill us. But remember this. You’re a child of the Sun, and we’re only puny humans, little ground-crawlers, shackled with weakness and fear.
“But we’re greater than you! Always and forever, greater than you!”
The writhing trees paused, the buds faltered in their hungry growth. Faintly, very faintly, the landscape flickered. Falken’s voice rose to a ringing shout.
“You were a child of the Sun. You had the galaxy for a toy, all the vast depths of space to play in. And what did you do? You sealed yourself like a craven into a black tomb, and lost all your greatness in the whimsies of a wicked child.
“You were afraid of your destiny. You were too weak for your own strength. We fought you, we little humans, and our strength was so great that you had to beat us by a lying trick.
“You can read our minds, Sun-child. Read them. See whether we fear you. And see whether we respect you, you who boast of your parentage and dream dreams of lost glory, and hide in a dark hole like a frightened rat!”
*
For one terrible moment the alien world was suffused with a glare of scarlet—anger so great that it was almost tangible. Then it greyed and faded, and Falken could see Sheila’s face, calm and smiling, and Hilton’s fingers locked in hers.
The ground dropped suddenly. Blurred trees writhed against a fading sky, and the suns went out in ebon shadow. Falken felt clean earth under him. The rotting stench was gone.
He looked up. The Sun-child floated overhead, under the rocky vault. They were back in the cavern world.
The Sun-child’s voice spoke in his brain, and its fires were a smoldering, dusky crimson.
“What was that you said, human?”
“Look into my mind and read it. You’ve thrown away your greatness. We had little, compared to you, but we kept it. You’ve won, but your very winning is a shame to you, that a child of the Sun should stoop to fight with little men.”
The smoldering crimson burned and grew, into glorious wicked fire that was sheer fury made visible. Falken felt death coiling to strike him out of that fire. But he faced it with bitter, mocking eyes, and he was surprised, even then, that he wasn’t afraid.
And the raging crimson fire faded and greyed, was quenched to a trembling mist of sad, dim mauves.
“You are right,” whispered the Sun-child. “And I am shamed.”
The ashes of burned-out flame stirred briefly. “I think I began to realize that when you fought me so well. You, Falken, who let your love betray you, and then shook your fist at me. I could kill you, but I couldn’t break you. You made me remember....”
Deep in the core of the Sun-child there was a flash of the old proud scarlet.
“I am a child of the Sun, with the galaxy to play with. I have so nearly forgotten. I have tried to forget, because I knew that what I did was weak and shameful and craven. But you haven’t let me forget, Falken. You’ve forced me to see, and know.
“You have made me remember. Remember! I am very old. I shall die soon, in open space. But I wish to see the Sun unveiled, and play again among the stars. The hunger has torn me for eons, but I was afraid. Afraid of death!
“Take this world, in payment for the pain I caused you. My creature will return here in Falken’s ship and vanish on the instant of landing. And now....”
The scarlet fire burned and writhed. Shafts of joyous gold pierced through it. The Sun-child trembled, and its little foaming flames, were sheer glory, the hearts of Sun-born opals.
It rose in the rainbow air, higher and higher, rushing in a cloud of living light toward the black crystal of the vault.
Once more there was a blinding flash and a quick sharp rush of air. Faintly, in Falken’s mind, a voice said,
“Thank you, human! Thank you for waking me from a dying sleep!”
A last wild shout of color on the air. And then it was gone, into open space and the naked fire of the Sun, and the rocky roof was whole.
Three silent people stood on the raw red earth of a new world.
Outpost on Io
In a crystalline death lay the only release for those prisoners of that Ionian hell-outpost. Yet MacVickers and the men had to escape—for to remain meant the conquering of the Solar System by the inhuman Europans.
MacVickers stopped at the brink of the dark round shaft.
It was cold, and he was stark naked except for the silver collar welded around his neck. But it was more than cold that made him shiver and clamp his long bony jaw.
He didn’t know what the shaft was for, or where it led. But he had a sudden feeling that once he went down he was down for good.
The small, round metal platform rocked uneasily under his feet. Beyond the railing, as far as MacVickers could see to the short curve of Io’s horizon, there was mud. Thin, slimy blue-green mud.
The shaft went down under the mud. MacVickers looked at it. He licked dry lips, and his grey-green eyes, narrow and hot in his gaunt dark face, flashed a desperate look at the small flyer from which he had just been taken.
It bobbed on the heaving mud, mocking him. The eight-foot Europan guard standing between it and MacVickers made a slow weaving motion with his tentacles.
MacVickers studied the Europan with the hating eyes of a wolf in a trap. His smooth black body had a dull sheen of red under the Jupiter-light. There was no back nor front to him, no face. Only the four long rubbery legs, the roundish body, and the tentacles in a waving crown above.
MacVickers bared white, uneven teeth. His big bony fists clenched. He took one step toward the Europan.
A tentacle flicked out, daintily, and touched the silver collar at the Earthman’s throat. Raw electric current, generated in the Europan’s body, struck into him, a shuddering, blinding agony surging down his spine.
He stumbled backward, and his foot went off into emptiness. He twisted blindly, catching the opposite side of the shaft, and hung there, groping with his foot for the ladder rungs, cursing in a harsh, toneless voice.
The tentacle struck out again, with swift, exquisite skill. Three times like a red-hot lash across his face, and twice, harder, across his hands. Then it touched the collar again.
MacVickers retched and let go. He fell jarringly down the ladder, managed to break his fall onto the metal floor below, and crouched there, sick and furious and afraid.
The hatch cover clanged down over him like the falling hammer of doom.
*
MacVickers dropped into a circular room thirty feet across, floored and walled with metal and badly lighted. The roof was of thick glassite plates. Through them, very clearly, MacVickers could see four Europan guards, watching.
“They’re always there,” said the Venusian softly. “You’ll come to love them, stranger.”
There were men standing around the ladder foot, thirteen of them, with the Venusian. Earthmen, Martians, Venusians, pale, stark naked, smeared with a blue-green stain. Their muscles stood out sharp on their gaunt bodies, their silver collars a mocking note of richness.
Deep, deep, inside himself, MacVickers shivered. His nostrils wrinkled. There was fear in the room.