CHAPTER XI

They stood there thus for a long, taut, echoing moment.

Then Kyrsis said: "You leave me no choice, Earthman. I see I must tell you Gadar's secret."

"_Gadar--?_"

Her lips twitched. "Yes, Earthman. Gadar, the dark star--the star hurled into your solar system from across the void: cold, bleak, barren, uninhabited Gadar."

"You mean that you--your people--are of Gadar?"

The silver woman nodded. "Yes. When our star cooled, in the course of that endless voyage across the void, we had no choice but to burrow deeper and deeper, like animals--cutting ourselves away from the awful cold of outer space, hunting desperately for the last dim vestiges of warmth at our planet's core. Then, when at last we had come into the family of your sun, we saw no reason to let it be known that we existed. For we knew the thing we had to do if we were still to live, and we knew that if you knew it, Gadar would be doomed."

"Then--this is Gadar? We are inside it now--deep down below the surface?"

"So deep that even the echographs of your Federation's exploration parties did not find us. Here, for a million years, we have built our civilization." A new glint came to the woman's violet eyes, a note of excitement to her voice. "The things we have done, Shane! The incredible things! You will never believe them until you see them. We have conquered time and space and matter--"

"And the child is dead," Shane said.

"The child--" Kyrsis broke off, and a shadow crossed her face. "Yes, the child is dead."

* * * * *

Unspeaking, the Earthman waited. His temple veins no longer throbbed, but his jaw was hewn of granite.

Kyrsis said: "There are so many things your childish science knows that are not true--and one of them is the nature of life."

Shane studied her, narrow-eyed. "So? In what way?"

"You think that life comes into being when certain conditions are correct. But we know otherwise."

"I hear only words, not meaning," Shane clipped coldly.

"Of course. Because the whole pattern of your thinking is based on false assumptions." The silver woman groped for words. "The thing I seek to say, too simply, is that life is not a creature of conditions. It is an entity, a basic element, a product of the whole great cosmic process of creation. Either it exists in a place, or it does not." She shrugged. "Your solar system has it."

"And Gadar--?"

"Gadar had it once, ten million years ago. But life is like any other resource. You use it up. It dissipates and scatters, transmuted into useless forms by a process that not even our science can reverse." Her voice fell. "Then, Shane, your planet dies."

Shane stared at her. "So you bought slaves--"

"Of course we bought slaves!" A note of hysteria crept into the silver woman's laugh. "Power, you talked about. Why would anyone buy slaves in a universe where power is free? What we sought was life--life in a form we could drink up, before our bodies finally died!" She came close to Shane, her pale face smooth and glowing, the violet eyes afire. "Look at me, Earthman! Look closely! How old would you guess me? How many of your Earth years?"

Shane did not speak.

"A hundred years, Earthman? A thousand? Ten thousand? A hundred thousand?" Again she laughed--wildly, up and down the scale. And then, steady once more: "Shane, I first drew breath a million years ago! Our science has kept me as I am--young in body and mind and heart. But without new life--without the living slaves we buy--I would wither and die in months. This child,"--and she gestured to the limp, dead body of the _Chonya_ girl--"what did she know of life? What did she care? I played with her, and comforted her, and she was happy; and then I sucked the life out of her body, and you hate me for it. But was it so wicked, really? Was it not better that I should live, I who have learned to love life through a million endless year, than she, who would have wasted that life and thrown it away in some dull corner of the asteroid belt?"

* * * * *

Shane shifted; stared down at the dead child for a long, long moment, then back at the woman again.

"You are thinking, 'Is there no other way?'" Kyrsis whispered. Her pale hand touched the Earthman's arm. "I tell you, Shane: there is none. How many years have our scientists sought it? How many eons of spatial time? But always, the answer is no. We must have life itself--humanoid life, like that of this girl here. No other can be transmuted to our bodies."

"If life is an element, as you say, a thing that wells up with creation, out of the birth of a planet, then you could have moved to another planet," Shane said in a dull, flat voice. "If life is gone from Gadar, then you could have migrated, picked a new home."

"It sounds so easy, does it not?" the silver woman taunted. "But where life exists, there life forms evolve. We could have taken such a planet only by conquest. Would your worlds have liked that, Shane? Would they have been willing to see us come in and seize their homelands? You fought out of pride, for the belt the _Chonya_ chieftains gave you. Would the worlds of your system do less if we tried to invade them?"

Shane stood mute.

Kyrsis' arm slipped about him. The rich purple lips came close to his. "Come with us, Shane! Join us!" she whispered. "For a million aching years I have sought a man like you. Do not leave me, now that I've found you...."

A weakness crept through Shane's body.

With a tremendous, savage effort, he hurled the silver woman from him.

"You'd steal my life as Quos Reggar stole my belt!" he shouted. Stark murder was in his eyes.

"No, Shane--! No!"

"Words!" the Earthman lashed fiercely. "Words, to lull me as you lulled that _Chonya_ child!" He caught Kyrsis' arm, dragged her up from the place where she had fallen. "You talk of life as if you, your people, were the only ones who knew the way to live it. But life belongs to each man, alone--his precious own, to waste or hoard as he sees fit--"

The woman asked: "And what will you do, now that you have decided?"

"Decided--?"

* * * * *

The look she threw him was a study in contempt. "I can see it in your eyes, Earthman. For a moment you hung, unsure, caught up by the vision of the wealth and power that might be yours; of me at your side, and endless years for us together. But then it dawned upon you of a sudden that I might suck your life out, as we suck those of the other slaves we take, though such was not my plan. The thought brought fear, and in the same instant you became the great _Gar_ Shane, who would strike down Gadar and save your solar system." She laughed, and the sound was chill as outer space. "You are as much a child as that dead lump there beside you. Do you think to pit yourself against my people--scientists who could plot your every thought ten million years before your birth? You are but a fool, and you will die as all the others have died, and Quos Reggar will wear your belt and serve us!"

"There comes a time for every man to die," Shane said. "If this is mine, I'll face it." He picked a heavy, club-like, metal ornament from a table, and his face had the rugged lines of carven stone. "We go now, Kyrsis. And if I can die--remember, so can you!"

"But where--?"

Shane bared his teeth in a death's-head grin. "To your ramps, _Shi_ Kyrsis. Even slavers carry a fleet alarm."

"A fleet alarm--?"

"When a space ship wallows through the void, out of control, a crewman throws the switch on the fleet alarm box. It sends out a distress call on a Federation beam--a call so strong that it can reach to the farthest star."

"And then--?"

"The fleet command sends aid." The Earthman laughed thinly. "They send a patrol most often, or even a single ship. But when they get a call straight out of the core of Gadar, they'll waste no time on mere patrols or squadrons. There'll be a fleet, the whole great Federation fleet, sweeping down upon your planet."

"Indeed?" the woman mocked. "So your Federation's fleet will come. What can they do to us, burrowed here deep within the solid rock of Gadar? And we have weapons, Earthman--weapons the like of which you've never seen."

"Then roll them out," Shane said. "This will be your chance to use them." He pushed her through the doorway; on past the other rooms and out into the car.

She asked, "What can you do if I will not aid you?"

Shane shrugged. "I'd have no choice but to go my way alone, I suppose ..."--and then, sinking in the barb with a savage twist--"after I'd beaten your brains out, killed you so dead that not even your people's science could ever put you back together!"

* * * * *

They traveled through endless miles of tube-like passage, after that, but always climbing ever upward--the silver woman sitting at the controls, Shane watching, hawk-like, alert in every nerve and fiber, the heavy club gripped ready in his hand.

Then, finally, they reached a place where great volcanic pipes led upward, and slaver space ships towered base-down, ramped and ready.

There was a guard, a silver guard, who said, "It is forbidden to go farther."

"Of course," Shane said--and smiled and struck him down.

"Must I go further?" Kyrsis asked. Panic was in her voice.

"Much further," Shane replied. Again he threw her the death's-head grin. "Life is a sacred thing, you've said, and I am a fool--fool enough, at least, to think it should be true for my _Chonyas_, as well as your people. So drive on--out along the ramp to where Quos Reggar's own great ship is waiting!"

"Not Reggar's own ship--!" The silver woman's lips were trembling. "Earthman, he may be on board now. He brought me back to Gadar with him, and--"

"--and if he's here, so much the better!" The recklessness was back in Shane's stance now. The blue eyes gleamed a chill excitement. "Why do you think I seek his ship, except to find him? He is the key to this bath of blood; were it not for him and his kind, your people might have been hard-put to implement their plans for slaughter. Fool that I am, lacking your skill and science, I've a feeling that if I can cut Quos Reggar's throat, I'll have traveled far towards choking off this madness!" He lifted his club. "Drive on, _Shi_ Kyrsis! Quickly, before the vision of that dead _Chonya_ child again seeps through me!"

Trembling, the silver woman worked at the controls. The car went racing down the ramp to where Quos Reggar's ship stood waiting.

"Inside!" Shane said. "Keep close before me!"

They clambered aboard the slaver, tight with tension. But there was no sign of life. Reggar's own quarters lay deserted.

"The control room, then," the Earthman said tightly.

In silence, they climbed the long steel ladder.

A lone _Pervod_ sat in the control room, rewiring a panel. He looked up, saw Kyrsis already in the doorway. Lust touched his sly reptilian face. "Ho, woman--!"

Shane smashed his skull.

And there was the black metal cube that was the fleet alarm box.

"You spoke of weapons, Kyrsis?" Shane said bleakly. "Now is the time, then. Roll them out!"

He threw the switch.