part0028

I THINK that time, in the world so far in the past, must have had a very different flow or flux than our own. These robot’s minds were geared to a faster pace of activity than a human mind could follow. Things began to happen with a startling, almost frightening rapidity. I think that I had not noticed this before because Eltona, being awake so long through the gradual slowing of the human race’s reactions and mental activity, had adjusted herself automatically to the slower rate of the mortals about her. But not so these newly awakened synthetic lives !

Speaking so of the robots, I thought of the past on Earth, when all priests had shaven their polls so that the secret people could get a better ray-contact with their mind, and so control them better to their way of thinking.

How sad it was that still they did not know of such things as Nonur under their feet, out of sight, preying on them endlessly. They could not allow it to be said there were caverns in the Earth without crying: “Madmen . . . Servants of Satan . . . Fiends from Hell.” How sad it was that men did not know the glorious truth of the Gods and the God above the Gods, as well as the idle parasitic race who had masqueraded as Gods for so long and so disastrously for us all.

Fascinated by the rapidity of the robots, I watched them bring from the many great tunnels of the ancient place an array of weapons and vehicles, and work on them with their hands a blur of speed. I looked longingly at Eltona supervising the ultra-rapid labor with a silly wish that I might somehow be the equal of these machine people in mental power and speed and strength. Her great light-emitting eyes flashed at me, telling me she had understood.

It was scarce an hour later that she called me to her. Into my arm she shot a hypodermic big enough to use on a horse before I had even a chance to protest. The stuff coursed through my body like liquid fire, bringing rapidly in its wake an awakened perception, a vast awareness, a strengthening flow of increasing vitality. Then she led me by the hand to a great wife cage that had been constructed in one of the ships they were refitting from the storehouses under the crumbling ancient palace. These were one of those rarest of finds to such as Ceulna, a place where the Elder race had left complete supplies which had remained untouched by the destruction of ignorant vandalistic hands through all the time that had passed. In the great ship they had dug out of the age of dust blanketing everything in those untouched stores, they had built what Eltona called a teupcage. It was a device which created within the wires surrounding it a field of magnetic which terrifically increased the rapidity of every electrical exchange that occurred within it. When I entered, and Eltona activated the wires about me, life and motion about me suddenly slowed to a snail’s pace, though myself remained very well coordinated. What had really happened was that all my neutral currents had been speeded up so that life, even the rapidly moving robots, seemed barely to crawl.

“Now perhaps you can keep track of things and be a part of it all . . .”

Eltona took herself off, leaving me there in the cage, which was equipped with telaug and weapon and levitator-mech controls. I soon found myself busy helping the now slowly moving robots with the levitators and speeding up the work everywhere with my telaug beams a step ahead of everyone else’s thoughts. Ceulna joined me after a time.

“Jim, you’re moving inside there like a man on a hot stove. What’s got into you? I never saw you move like that; I can’t even see your hands!”

“Come in, slowpoke, and find out for yourself. Then you tell me what it is!”

I held the door open, and she entered. She nearly fell down as the door closed, with surprise at the sudden change.

“It’s a time machine, or something. Everything outside has slowed down about ten times!”

“It’s just a conductive and re-enforcing magnetic field which speeds up your nerve energies. But it sure does change things, doesn’t it?”

Within a few hours the robots were ready for what lay ahead. The ships they had brought out, three great vessels, burnished all over and each separate mechanism serviced by the ultra-efficient living machines, lifted silently through the trees, accompanied by the awed cries of the frightened little spotted people, weeping and waving their grief and their goodbye to their Goddess. They could not understand what was happening, which was not strange, as it was too much for me as well.

Southward, swiftly and high, keeping within the wet cloud sheath, for Eltona wanted no word of her coming to precede her, went the four vessels, the long black craft of the Sea People dwarfed by the tremendous gleaming things the robots had unearthed beneath the great palace of Eltona. Southward, toward Ekippe and the battle line, if there was still a battle line? Ray warfare is apt to be sudden death for whole armies, does not ordinarily take long for some weapon to find itself outranging the others and wipe out the whole of the enemy. But with such masters as Nonur and Oanu and Oltissa behind the ancient mech, I doubted that this sudden ending would have occurred. Most of such ray wars consist of bringing some rays into action, gradually sounding out and testing the defense and the range of the enemy, then calling from the far ancient storerooms just those weapons best designed to meet and overcome the weapons of the enemy. But in this process, whole armies of men can fall to the terrible killing power of the vast-ranging penetrative rays.

That was why I knew that these four ships would contain probably the deciding factor of the conflict, if in the time we had been gone one had not managed to outrange the other. These robots must know the range of ray weapons, know exactly what weapons existed to out-range the greatest that Nonur’s limited knowledge of the Elder mech could imagine. Eltona certainly knew how to defeat Nonur, I more than suspected. Yet the four ships were a pitifully small force to pin such large hopes upon .

We passed over the volcanic peak of Nicosthene still keeping within the obscuring clouds, though I knew that if there were enemy rays watching the skies, they would not fail to find us with the penetrative rays. Beyond, toward Ekippe I could hear now with my telaug the deep mental waves of the discharging ray-bolts which are audible only to the mind. My heart rose. At least the conflict still continued. Nonur had not yet won free, nor the Mers been beaten!

Still high, we saw at last the vast ring of ships circling the city of Ekippe. Here Eltona stopped, hung there far from the battle while from the three ships following came over my telaug, their ultra-rapid thought and many strange sounds of activity. I swung my telaug upon the nearest of the three robot-manned ships. I didn’t want to miss a single motion of that amazing crew, of that too-rapid pseudo life and its ungraspable mental activity. I was like a cat fascinated by a television set. I couldn’t understand it at all, but I wanted to see what happened next.

Ceulna, hearing my eager thought, tele-pathed me:

“Get in your stim cage, Jim. Then you can follow them.”

We both raced for the contraption, and once inside, we could watch the robots with some chance of understanding their now naturally-timed movements.

Instead of watching the robots working over their strangely different beam mech, analyzing the character and nature of the rays visible from the rocks beneath Ekippe, Ceulna swung her own beam down toward Nonur’s position. I said:

“That is what the robots are doing, watching Nonur. We will learn more about Nonur reading the robot’s heads while they work on the problem of Nonur’s strength.”

Ceulna grinned at me.

“I hate her so I just wanted to see if she was still alive, or if someone had managed to pot her.”

“She is an admirable creature. . .” My voice meant the opposite of admirable.

So it was that Ceulna and myself had the opportunity of a lifetime, to see the thought-patterns which the Elders had built into the minds of robots work out in battle tactics.

With long needle beams the robots reached down toward the barrier rays blanketing all sight like a wall of darkness circling the city of Ekippe. Ekippe itself lies in a little valley between three great mountains; and a mountain stream, bright as crystal, flows through the center of the white-walled city. The buildings were much like those of Nicosthene, though taller and more graceful. It was an older city by far from its appearance, with that charm of age and use and living in the many deep worn paths, the mighty trees almost obscuring it with their limbs, the terraced gardens. But like Nicosthene, the Marshmen had abandoned the place to avoid the terrible rays of the battling forces. The Marsh-men had no weapons with which to join the struggle if they had wished.

The needle beams seemed to cause no effect in the dark barriers about Nonur’s stronghold, and apparently by their thought the robots did not expect any. They merely touched various instruments to the viewscreens of the mech emitting the beams, took a reading, scribbling down the reading upon a pad. After a series of such tests, they put their heads together over the pad, scribbled the figures out in large indescribable numerals of some forgotten system of mathematics upon a larger black plate upon the metal wall, and nodded gravely over the result of their figures. Then one of their ships swooped in a dive toward the barrier—and I watched them as they picked up speed. Down, down, their inhumanly capable hands and mechanically fearless minds cool and entirely detached from any personal interest in the possible disastrous results of their “test”, they went.

As they neared the barrier, one of the great fanlike spreads of ray dropped before them, and Nonur’s fiery disrays lashed at them. Lances of flame and the heavy explosive ray-bolts of blasting force sped toward them, lanced past them. They leveled out within feet of disaster, shot up in a long zoom. Returning to their former position the business of computation went forward again as calmly as before the dive. I realized they had drawn Nonur into using her heavy weapons to find out just what she had to fight with, to throw at them.

Now came a business of bringing many cables of heavy metallic weave from the storerooms, linking ray-mech to ray-mech, computing the combined power on the blackboard again. A business of turning the resultant great beam upon the black barriers below, and watching them flame into nothingness and collapse like the tower of darkness falling.

With the collapse of the barriers, the three robot ships dived in ultra-rapid evasive zig-zags, firing their heavy beam as they came, and below the lancing blasts of ear-splitting power became fewer. Unscathed, chased all over the sky by the reaching, futilely lashing beams of destruction, dancing at top speed of their space-spanning jets, flashing over the fortress in eye-defying ambits the battle went on and on. The robots were evading the terrible beams, but they were not reaching with their short bursts of fire the nerve-centers of the defense. After minutes of this ultra-rapid maneuvering, the three ships, now dominating the whole scene of battle, withdrew again to their former position behind the battle lines .

Followed a long conference in the antique tongue between Eltona and her revivified synthetic beings.

I couldn’t follow all their thought, though I tried hard. What they meant to do was so unbelievable I couldn’t take it in. I just stood there and stared as the power-cable-changing, the mech-moving went on in the three strange ships. Then from the three great master beams there flowed down upon the smoking earth about Ekippe a great blue beam. A very weird pulsing beam of force that looked to me like it was made of molasses being pushed along by little flickering flames.

For minutes that beam played upon the whole area of rock below Ekippe. And slowly it took hold; slowly the motion of the whipping, reaching, blasting force beams slowed and at last stilled entirely! They still burned upward toward us, but now these beams were still as though all below had fallen in death.

Eltona turned to her great master beam, sent it flashing out around the waiting circle of near a thousand ships: Tuon, Mers, a few Red-men, allies of the Tuons, and far off to one side the hovering ships of the Nameless.

“Descend, the rays are still. Advance and occupy the enemy territory! We have laid down a blocking force in which no ray is effective. Advance and give them your swords! Slay, slay! No ray can move or hurt you.”

Looking over the scene, I realized at last what had been done. The robots had thrown a powerful magnetic field across the whole area, and in the strong field, all impulses of energy were altered, so much so that the electrically powered ray-motors which moved the great beams could not even exert power because their flows were altered in nature just as though it had passed through a transformer’s coils. The great beams burning up at us were no more harmful now that so much light, their very wave-length changed into harmless impulses, and the power to move them was gone as well. I laughed. For now, surely, the day of vengeance had come! Only a weapon like a sword would work in that field of energy.

The robots and Eltona watched with a grim humor, I swear, as I buckled on the long-sword given be by Prince Donar, as Ceulna put on her own battle harness and sword. The ships settled to earth just outside the great circle of the field of force. We dashed out the ports, all of us but the Mers, and Ceulna and I sprang across the magnetically flattened grass toward Ekippe’s broad avenues, to enter those caverns where for the Hagmen was no ship to bear them away that would function now—for the field forbade all energy flows. To enter, and to slay and slay till there were no more blood-suckers alive on the planet of Love.

Ahead the revivified Tuons marched, rank on rank, still thin, the scars of radioactive burns on their faces, but their flesh firm, their step sound. Ceulna and I sprang forward, raced along the column seeking Oanu.

Rank on rank the warriors of Venus, the allies from the Red cities, the Marshmen who had many of them joined the war against Nonur and the Hagmen, all those of Venus who had suffered the loss of some dear one, a child or friend or best beloved, marched into Ekippe from out the ships that had held the ring around Ekippe so long.

The penetrative rays had long ago revealed, within the city, several entrances to the Elder caverns. One lay beneath the great central tower of the city. Another lay beneath an adjacent building and a third beneath a temple on the outskirts.

These entrances were nearly jammed with officers striving to hold back the fury, to keep discipline.

Following Oanu’s grimly erect figure, we entered at last the central tower of the city, followed into the passages beneath, marching steadily down and down.

Everywhere were the scorched paths left by the powerful penetrative rays bearing dis, and here and there lay the blasted bodies of the black duck-footed men, the green Marsh-men who had fallen serving Nonur, or who had failed to get away before the fighting started. Among these was an occasional Red Robe, and many a foot reached out from the marching line to kick a Red Robe’s dead body.

Entered at last, from the modern hand-cut rock tunnels into the smooth machine-cut vastly borings of the Elder Race, we passed along the gloomy grandeur of that long-gone race, past the mighty statues of those who were so much more than modern man, who lived when the Devil’s Tower in Wyoming was a tree, who lived when Ygdrasil was living truth.

On into the more and more complex chambering of the ancient city that lay beneath Ekippe, on through the empty echoing corridors, seeking for some sign of Nonur’s occupancy, seeking a flash of Red Robe fleeing in the distance we went, knowing that along every corridor the avengers were spreading out, loosing sword from the scabbard, knowing she could not now escape us ever again. For Eltona had rendered every ray unworkable with her Elder magic and delivered our enemy into our hands, armed only with the primitive sword.

At last we saw them, throwing up a barricade, brandishing swords over the hastily erected piles of furnishings to bluff us into waiting while yet one more bench or chair was added to the pile.

Some of Nonur’s duck-footed blacks had retained their primitive bows even though they had no opportunity to use them under her rule. From a half dozen of these, arrows shot out at us. They did not stop our advance one whit. There were but fifty or so men visible. I knew that they were busy erecting similar barricades along all the passages into the center of this place. I knew too that everywhere the Red Robes were working futilely over their ancient weapons. They would not understand, I did not believe, that they would never operate again until the last of them were dead.

We charged the barricade, swept over it. My blade tasted blood, and my own blood leaped within me in a fighting fury. I wished for my comrades, the Red men of the arena, and the thought added flame to the fury within me. I remembered my comrade dying the night I left with the Nameless maiden and Montagna.

The corridor was but wide enough for a score to meet face to face, and behind these we saw another barricade going up, and those behind the men we fought were retreating to gain this shelter.

I knew that Eltona’s swift mind outside had analyzed the situation, was swiftly summoning warriors from every friendly city, that ships were even now descending upon the cities of the Red Men, lifting again loaded with hate for the Hagmen, that up every boring leading to Ekippe warriors would surge steadily until the last drop of that evil blood had been spilled upon the rock.

And I was afraid! I was afraid that I would not reach Nonur and the inner circle of Red Robes in time to wet this ancient, noble sword in the blood they had stolen.

Over that first barricade we poured; the thin, worn Amazons of Tuon and myself, proud to be fighting side by side with women. For the women of the Tuons are that kind of warriors.

Behind us lay the first swathe of the death we intended to cut through the Hagmen. Ahead lay barrier after barrier, and behind each the swords of Nonur’s slaveys waved. But not confidently, not arrogantly; rather fearfully held before them, for our anger and our courage had slaughtered that first group so quickly that no man could see it without fear.

These Amazons, who had suffered every evil the followers of the blood-stealers could devise for some four centuries, who had been brought up in the shadow of fear and hate and horror of the Evil of the baby destroyers, of the parasitic Hagmen, always about them some reminder of the constant threat of their evil, now at last were advancing with equal terms, were presented with a chance to meet the Hagmen with only naked swords between.

On every face about me this fact was a shining expression of fierce, thankful ardor; was a thought of revenge suddenly made into actual occurrence. Their feet advanced toward the next barricade with a sound of grim unswerving doom, a kind of soft beating of flesh upon rock like no other sound. And the fear of that grim advance marked every face peering above the barricade.

The arrows which had marked our first attack were missing now, and I knew there would be few enough of them. For with the ray-weapons always at hand, Nonur had not encouraged the primitive slaveys in their natural weapons, had used them only for labor. Now when she needed them, they had nothing, not even their natural skill with swords any longer in first rate shape.

We poured over the flimsy pile of furnishings, of tall bronze statues, of marble busts and wooden benches, and met the clumsy efforts of the mixed horde of slaves, of warriors from all the races of Venus, with a fury of blows, not so much skillful as invincible in our anger, in our intent to slay quickly and cleanse the planet. They shrieked as the swords passed into them, they bounded and struck at us fearfully and hopelessly—and they died! We marched on.

As we rounded a long curve in the corridor, I noticed a haze growing, growing. To Ceulna I remarked:

“She must be laying down a smoke screen; perhaps she means to try to escape behind it!”

“We will be lucky if that haze is not some poisonous gas. She is from Earth, you know, where such weapons as gas are considered useful.”

Admiringly, I watched Ceulna’s flushed, angry war-like face. The noble Grecian brow, the thin ears so stiffly arching, the wide upsweeping eyebrows, the deep, long sea-green eyes, the pink nostriled and narrow-bridged beauty of her nose, the nostrils palpitant with eagerness to reach her enemy. Truly, there is a something that war and the need for war breeds, that courage and the need to face death brings out in men and in such women as the Tuons, perhaps in any women raised for warfare as had these Tuons in their centuries of horrible conflict with the followers of Hecate and her methods which meant extinction for all normal living peoples. I think that is one of the failures of peace, that it does not properly stress the need for need, does not bring up a child in the understanding of the awful need for real and enthusiastic action against evil.

The smoke grew steadily thicker, and we were half choking with it, hardly able to see. I called a halt, and Oanu backed me up as I counseled the need for some kind of caution. We had no ever-present telaug and penetrative ray to tell us what lay before, no way to know what trap Nonur was devising ahead in the complex warrens of the ancient tunnels. As we gathered in a group about Oanu, taking some needed breathing space and discussing the layout of the tunnels with which we were unacquainted, I counseled that since the smoke would rise, we must go lower and so avoid it, come upon her from beneath.

Our column turned down a side passage, wound down and down, leaving just beneath the smoke layer a guard to watch for anyone attempting to pass back along the passage we had quieted. On the next tier of borings, the smoke was less, and we took up our rapid march in toward the center of this tiered ancient city, as nearly as we could visualize its patterns.

I knew we were apt to become disunited with the other forces advancing upon the Hagmen, and even as I spoke to Oanu she dispatched couriers to make contact with the other columns of troops.

As they sped off, the floor began to trickle with a thin flowing film of water! For a minute I thought nothing of it, but it rapidly became inches deep, became an impeding force flowing along our ankles.

Ceulna said: “She has opened the water pipes, the antique water supply. It is disastrous. When the caverns fill no one will know how to empty them again. Where does she expect to be then?”

“Do those antique pipes bring a heavy supply? Will it take long to flood?”

“See how rapidly it rises! She has opened the great reserve reservoir as well. One cannot know how long it will take, but as sure as the sun arises in the morning, just as surely these caverns will never empty of water again!”

I did not dispute her. I said:

“I know little of how long it will take or how permanent the flood will be, but I know this, it was smart of us to seek the upper levels and block off the passages to the surface, there to await Nonur’s flight. She will be forced out of here just as surely as ourselves!”

The column turned, started back toward the surface. Rapidly, oh, too rapidly the water rose on our legs! More rapidly than rose the floor we passed along. The water raced past us in a flood, up to our knees, and now we had reached again the level of the smoke which somewhere Nonur had managed to create and fill the caverns. Choking, blinded with the smoke, stumbling along in the rapidly rising water, I realized that the plight of this column of brave Amazons was desperate. It was very likely we would never reach the surface ahead of the rising water. If we did, the smoke, now pungent and choking, could smother us if it grew thicker.

“We rushed in here without guides, Oanu. We are apt to pay for our haste.”

I should not have reproached her, for I knew the terrible hate of the Red Robes that had blinded her natural caution of her people.

Of numbers, or of possible tactics needed, I myself had given no thought at all. I had been sure that without the skill of the time-taught Red Robes at the ray-mech, my sword alone would be enough to slay them all, no matter how many or how disposed within the caves. I suppose some such thought had been in every mind: “Just let us at them without the rays that have always defended them from our wrath.” Now, we were drowning and smothering both at once, or soon would be.

To top it, Ceulna had been swept away from my side in the milling, nearly panicking Amazons. To go forward seemed every moment more impossible in the rising waters and the thickening smoke.

“Take the first passage we can find that rises upward, go up in spite of smoke or flame, of Hagmen or death itself.”

Oanu was striding on, eyes closed, one hand on the rock wall to guide her. I followed. I could only hope that Ceulna would find her way, there was no use and no time to look for her in this murk.

We swung into a side passage of small bore that seemed to have a rising ceiling and hastened up the tunnel three abreast. There was no hope of all of us entering this passage. As the entrance jammed, the others of our column pushed on along the original passage.

I recognized the nature of the passage as it widened and I came upon a series of stout wooden pens along the walls. These pens must underlay an arena, a huge ancient theatre circle which had been transformed into an arena of the bloody kind the Hagmen delighted in. Ahead I could see the glow of flames, understood that the Hagmen had set afire these pens to destroy the prisoners before release gave them a chance to vent their despair and rage upon their captors. That the smoke had proved a weapon was probably only accidental, but the flames barred our progress upward into the great theater bowl where it was possible the Red Robes had gathered their strength for a stand.

Behind us the water lapped higher and higher. Behind us the ceiling, rose steeply out of the water. Where we had just passed was now closed, all below were drowned. I knew that everyone who had not entered that small passage after Oanu must now be drowned in the lower, greater passage. Anxiously I looked about among the hundred or six score who had made their way behind Oanu and myself. My heart fell as I saw nowhere the bright head and gallant shoulders of my beloved Amazon. Was I to lose her now when victory loomed so very close? Had I lost her?

Rage flooded up within me even as the rising water behind. I drew the great sword of the Marsh-men from my scabbard, strode forward into the flame-lit wooden-walled corridors of the prison pens. I knew what it would be like to be shut up in there with the flames licking at your body, meant to free some of the wretches I realized must be within. The flames shot up; the water lapped at my heels. I saw or heard nothing, for a killing mad rage consumed me, a sorrow at the loss of Ceulna that was more terrible than burning anger at the fact that Nonur had managed to hurt me even now.

As I pushed on, bending low under the smoke pall, shielding my face against the darting, licking flames, screams and cries and groans began to beat about me. I saw the pens were filled with struggling, burning men ahead. The doors were locked.

I began to slash at the heavy timbered bars of the cages, prying out one more by strength than by the cutting edge of my blade, racing on to the next as the survivors poured out. Soon there were dozens of us dodging the flames, which kept high, our lungs burning with smoke, prying at the bars with timbers, battering at the locks with weapons from the arena supplies, working to free the dying men inside. The work was a blessed relief to my mind again assailed by the loss of Ceulna.

The water at our feet proved our salvation, as well as that of the smothering men inside. As it rose about our ankles, we wet garments in the water, wrapped them about our heads and shoulders. Soon there were hundreds of the arena warriors, scarred and battered from past battles in the arena, passing on ahead and out into the great bowl of the arena below Ekippe.

As the last of them was free I pushed on ahead, was among the first to enter the wide, white-sanded bowl of the arena into the glare of the great sun-lamps hanging above. The shape of this arena differed from that under Nicosthene, being a regular octagon instead of the smooth circle, and the tiers of seats were more numerous. I saw a robe of Scarlet and Gold disappearing in a side passage from the ramp running up between two tiers of seats, sprang after him. Behind me came a rabble of Red warriors, green Marsh-men, black duck footed slaves, and after them came the disciplined column, all that was left of the long column of thousands that had entered the central passage behind Oanu. I could not hear to think of how many must have perished. I pushed on as fast as I could run, hoping only to slay one of these red-robed things before I died.

I overtook him, cut him down with one savage blow from behind. As I stood over the nearly beheaded figure, I saw it was the heavy-bodied Massini who had captured me on my escape to Eltona’s castle in the jungle.

Ahead I heard the clangor of swords, the shrieks of dying men. I raced on, swung around the bend of the corridor, saw the great doors of some Master chamber of the past. Before the wide-arched doorway were a mass of struggling warriors. Red Robes sprinkled among the Redskins, and the Marsh-men before the doorway. It was evident the Hagmen were trying to hold the interior clear of us for some reason.

I leaped toward the battle, whirling that heavy Marsh-man sword above my head. My face blackened with smoke, my limbs burned in patches from the flames, I doubt my own Ceulna would have recognized me. My sword began to slash a path through the struggling mass before the door. A red haze in my mind swept me on. It was swing and crush, no chance in the press for anything fancy. The battle went to the strongest here. And I proved the strongest, for they fell away before me. I was through and into the great glittering vault, pillared with rosy glistening columns of some ancient work, vaulted and bright with concealed lights. In the center of the great chamber was a vast crystal door. Before the door were a score of Scarlet and Gold robes, and among the devils I saw the bare shoulders of Nonur, her body sheathed in that glittering metal mesh, her face writhing with frustration. I saw that that door represented escape by the way they paused before it, the way they looked at it. Beside Nonur I saw several other women, among them, strangely and impossibly, several Tuons bound.

I sprang across the smooth, moist floor. Already the flood was creeping in, even here. I slipped, went to one knee, got up, crashed up the steps, sending the heavy bodied Red Robes sprawling. I stood a half-dozen feet from Nonur, and a dozen swords reached for my life. I crashed my blade down upon them, whirled it aloft. Behind me the horde of prisoners from the arena pens poured in, screaming, bellowing their anger and their exultation at sight of Nonur.

We ringed that group with steel, and sparks flew like rain as edge met edge, as stroke met stroke. Savage, swarming death loosed at last upon those who had meted out death to all but their favorites for so long on Venus. Death to those who had raped every city, every hamlet, of children at some time, who had preyed upon the people of Venus as wolves upon sheep.

And we had her! She looked back at me, with a strange waiting puzzling to me upon her face. And then I saw what she waited for! I knew what that doorway was, and I shouted with sudden fear that she would yet escape us. That door was to one of the strange dream-mechs of the ancients!

They were built to serve the weary, the escapist of their complex ancient life, and they were built to exclude him from the world, to save him from all possible contact with the realities of life FOR SO LONG A PERIOD AS HE SHOULD SET THE TIMELOCK!

Nonur knew that no human power could enter one of those monstrous machines once they were shut and locked. The time lock operates from the inside. Ponderously the great crystalline outer door swung open, Nonur and a score of her followers, as well as the bound captives, pushed through after her. The great door swung shut in our faces. I stood there, among a hundred men as baffled as myself. On the other side of the crystal wall of the doorway, Nonur laughed at me evilly, triumphantly, and pointed to the prisoner who stood beside her, her arms wound with the white plastic cords of the ancient make. I had not noticed these captives except that they were Tuons, did not realize that by some passage some of our own attack force had won to Nonur and been captured. The face of the one Nonur pointed out to me was Ceulna! lovely Ceulna!

Ceulna, locked in the time-lock dream-mech with Nonur and a score of the Hagmen!

Behind me I could hear Oanu, knew she had pushed on, stood now beside me.

“She has but put off her fate. We will await her emergence though it takes a century.”

I moaned. I gnashed my teeth unconsciously.

“How long was it set for? Oanu, tell me more of the nature of what lies beyond. Why can’t we break in and set her free?”

“They built imperishably, Jim Steel. And they built those dream-palaces in which to retire and be undisturbed. And when they meant undisturbed, they meant undisturbed! No power on Venus today could break into that impervious, circling round-of-dreams.”

I pushed my face against the crystal outer door, to see within what might yet be a glimpse of my beloved Ceulna, my warrior maid of Venus.

The great metal inner door, composed of layer on layer of interlocking alloy, those alloys no modern tool will even scratch, was swinging slowly shut in answer to some mechanism within so protected by the insulative ray-impervious walls that the magnetic field of ray-neutralizing force laid down by Eltona affected it not at all! Six inches of space left by the slowly closing massive metal, and just behind I saw Ceulna’s lovely face, peering to catch a last glimpse of myself. Behind, Nonur peered, triumphant to see us frustrated of vengeance in the end. Seeing our love passing thus between us, poignant at the separation closing between us. Nonur’s face assumed a sudden, diabolical, wickedly joyful expression. She whipped a knife from her girdle, pressed it to Ceulna’s throat. As the door closed between us, I saw the knife flash in sudden slashing motion. Did I see the blood spurt from her white throat? Had Nonur only done it to leave me in torment, timing her motion so that it would appear to me she had slain Ceulna? Or had she done it so that my last sight of her would be of her slaying my own Ceulna? I could not know; the sight was not clear. I seized Oanu. My grasp hurt her; she winced.

“Did you see? Did she kill her?”

“No one could see for sure, Steel. I could not make out whether she made a pretense of the killing or did so in truth.”

“Oanu, when will the door open? When can we enter? We will get Eltona and blast that place apart piece by piece.”

“No one can enter there, Steel, until the time has passed. Not even Eltona! Everyone who knows anything of the Elder race-customs will know that. Those devices were built to give them an inviolable place to retire from this dull world into a world of their own, furnished entirely by visions from the dream machines within. We can only wait and hope, and keep the magnetic block-rays on so that she cannot send a ray out to see whether we still wait or not.”

“They have no food! They had not time to gather supplies!”

“We don’t even know that, Jim. They may be forced to emerge in weeks, and they may not come out of there for years! We can only wait and hope.”

I turned away; my head bowed. Like a sick man, I could not bear more of the continual frustration of my hopes for a life of some happiness, a natural human life.

Suddenly something broke within me, and I turned again; flung myself at that gleaming inscrutable plastic doorway which had shut me off from all happiness. I tore at it with my bare hands, fell and got up again. Mouthing curses, I clawed at the barrier between me and my only true love.