Part 4

So that was the reason Kortha had been given! Ilse held her eyes shut tightly. Her left hand bit its long fingernails into the naked skin of her flank. Pain! Pain would help to cancel the sodden ache in her heart.

"Yes," she whispered. "I know. But Mars doesn't know that, and Mars has to be told. If Mars could hear the truth from your lips--

"Come with me to radio-city Ruuzol, Kortha. Broadcast to Mars. Be the first to let the planet know you and Guantra are friends. You be the first; you, his friend."

Kortha nodded slowly. He felt Ilse's hands squeezing his.

"It must be a secret, though. We can't let Guantra know, or the surprise would be spoiled. You have to come with me."

She saw his eyes light after a moment, and she knew she had won; that he would go with her away from the Blue Grotto and its magical machine that could steal men's minds from them and give them something different in exchange. She turned, dove for the water.

Kortha was beside her, sinking into the blue fire of water, dropping down and down past coral growths and bannery weeds that slithered in ripples as the currents wafted them to and fro. Following her threshing legs, clinging to coral branches as did she, pulling himself along, Kortha went under a ledge and rose swiftly in a tiny cave.

Ilse said as she treaded water, "My 'copter is outside. It will take us to Ruuzol."

Ruuzol was the communication center of all Mars. A vast glassite paraboloid was built on a flat mesa against a cliffside. It housed vast turbines and generators, and the central controls, as well as laboratories and rows of dwellings, where the men lived. A fountain-dotted park gave the small city an air of leisure.

Their 'copter swooped in over the flat plains surrounding the mesa, casting its shadow from the high cliffs all around the plain out across the flatlands, up onto the mesa sides.

Flanking the great transparent paraboloid were the twin tubes, taller than the dome itself, thrusting their glass-and-steel structures two thousand feet into the air. At their tops, three metal planes were inserted into their trunks; planes that were the secret of the Martian radio beams, planes that sent the spacevox rocketing to Earth and Venus, and the direct broadcasts out over the sandy wastes of Mars.

Ilse flashed her 'copter past a tube and spiralled gracefully to one of the white landing strips beyond the dome.

They walked toward the paraboloid. Ilse showed credentials to the guards at the entrance; then they were through and into the cool, pleasant air of the paraboloid, moving on one of the glass walks.

The harsh tones of the communicator sprang to speech around them: "The princess Ilse. The princess Ilse. The Emperor desires speech. The Emperor desires speech."

Kortha muttered something under his breath, but Ilse pretended not to hear him, saying, "It will only be a moment."

They found Hurlgut propped in cushions, flushed and worried. His eyes opened wide at sight of Kortha, and the worry fled.

"Kortha!" he cried, putting out both hands, lifting a little where he sat. "So Ilse did find you!"

Ilse stepped to one side, offering prayers to Zut.

Kortha looked at Hurlgut, saw him lying white and broken among the striped pillows. He wanted to rage at this liar, at this mongerer of scandal. He learned with a little surprise that he could not. If Hurlgut wanted to blame him, let him. Kortha had never fought cripples before. He would not begin now.

"--so good to see you, man. Give me your hand. Give it to me, man! There! Let me look at you. The same, the same. Big. Strong. Unbending. Mars' only hope. I need you, Kortha. Guantra has but now concluded speaking on the radio beams. He knows you fled from him, came here. He traced you in that cosmiclarifier of his."

Kortha remembered the black screen in the flagship stateroom.

"Guantra will be surprised when I broadcast. Eh, Ilse?"

"Yes," whispered Ilse.

Hurlgut looked surprised, exclaiming, "Why, Guantra will not let you broadcast, Kortha. He will destroy Ruuzol first. He threatened to, in fact."

"But he can't. Not until I've made my speech to Mars, told them how he and I will unite--"

Ilse touched her temple and her heart, looking at Hurlgut, nodding toward Kortha. Then Kortha was whirling on her, saying, "Get me to a magnifone. I'll speak to Guantra's ship, tell him what I intend to do. The surprise is off, Ilse--but the speech can still be made!"

Suddenly Kortha swayed a little. He put a hand to his forehead. This was all wrong! Ilse and Hurlgut were his friends! No, no. It was Guantra who was his friend. Guantra has always befriended me. He gave me my start. It is with him that my fortune lies. I must tell him so.

_But Ilse?_

Look at her, man. Look at her blue eyes again. They are so serious, so sad, as she watches you. There is naught of the wanton there. A wanton would laugh and giggle and be gay. Instead there is yearning and sorrow and love in her eyes as she regards you.

_And Hurlgut?_

He lay helpless in his cushions, unable to move below the waist. He looked at Kortha, too, and there was pity in his eyes. Kortha did not fight with men who could not walk to meet him. Did Guantra? He had the sharp, hard conviction that he must know the answer to that. It might help him decide incongruities.

* * * * *

Kortha sighed. He wished that he could solve this enigma that turned him inside-out in puzzlement. He found himself liking Ilse and Hurlgut, even knowing what he did to them; and learned he was close to hating Guantra. Guantra had the power. Hurlgut was a cripple, and Ilse a girl. Could Guantra fight them with the armies and the fleets of Mars, and still hold his head high? Could--he?

Ilse stood at the open door, watching him. Kortha realized she had been standing there for minutes, as he had thought. He scowled, and muttered, "Get me to the magnifone. I'll speak to Guantra."

Following Ilse to the lift, Kortha brooded at her.

Zut, but she was lovely! If only she were not the wanton he knew her for. And yet--always that ... and yet! And yet, there was nothing of the wanton about her. The perfume from her fur bolero floated around them in the lift. It reminded him of things, that perfume: of memories that were stored so deeply in his subconscious that he had completely forgotten them. Kisses over the canals in a drifting 'coptondola. An Academy dance with Ilse wearing a black, filmy thing that made the blue of her eyes and the silver hair weirdly beautiful. And those nights when they had eaten cold fruit and drank of iced _bessa_-mead in the palace gardens near colored-water fountains, before he had--before the guard had crippled Hurlgut.

He could not square remembered happiness with other memories. There was a leak somewhere. He had to learn more--

"Ilse," he said.

The lift was opening and the girl was going down the corridor. Kortha shrugged and followed her. He was probably mistaken. Those memories were the overflow from a forgotten dream.

In the big control room he stood watching Ilse punch buttons. A beam-man stared at him from a corner panel-slot. Let him look. The name of Kortha was legendary on Mars. He heard Ilse saying, "Guantra. Guantra!" into a fine-meshed magnifone.

The screen above the panelling came alive with the Premier's sneering, point-bearded face; and his voice was harsh, cold.

"So. You got to Kortha before me, Ilse. It is too bad. I would like to know whether--let me speak to him."

Kortha stared up at Guantra's scowling face. The man was worried. The way his tongue licked unceasingly at his thin lips, the hands tugging at the crested metal buckle of his belt, the creases around his narrowed eyes: they were signal flares pointing his anxiety. There was something bothering Guantra, too, even as it bothered him.

What was it? Kortha had to know. Kortha sucked in his breath, realizing that the duel was between him and Guantra. Each had knowledge, and they had to trade to know where they stood. Guantra wanted to be sure of what? Of his friendship? But--why? He himself sought to test that elusive memory of his. It told him Ilse was wanton and Hurlgut a danger; but his senses belittled that memory.

Perhaps Guantra could be persuaded to give him the knowledge he sought. He put Ilse aside, placed mouth to the magnifone.

"Kortha on the beam, Guantra. Tell me something. Am I your friend, Guantra?"

The man with the jutting beard licked at his lips for a split second, but it was long enough. Kortha knew now that Guantra _did not know_! That meant that his senses might be right, after all; that his memory was wrong. And if his memory were wrong, then Ilse and Hurlgut were not what he thought them.

He listened to Guantra bluster, calling out to him to recall and act on their old friendship. Smiling grimly, he leaned closer to the image on the screen. Test him, Kortha!

"Let me broadcast to all Mars, Guantra. Let me tell Mars that we are friends."

"No," said Guantra swiftly. "That would not be politic right now. Better that you and I should meet, Kortha. Come aboard my flagship."

Afraid of what he might say, the Premier would not let him speak to Mars. Kortha wanted to know the reason why Guantra doubted their friendship. Looking at the cold austerity, the pride and ambition of the man as marked in the lines of his face and the manner of his bearing, Kortha rather thought the reason was not Ilse. A man like Guantra would not bother so about a woman.

"I will broadcast, Guantra," Kortha said slowly.

"No. I will have to stop that, my friend. I cannot allow it, until I have seen and spoken with you, face to face. I am coming in for you now."

They saw the Premier reach out and break connection.

Kortha looked at the blank screen; he whirled on Ilse, and his big hands went out to catch her by the shoulders and bring her up close to him.

He said savagely, "Tell me! Tell me what I don't know. Why has Guantra turned against me? Why does he doubt my friendship? It can't be over you. He is not the man to endanger his power for a woman. What is his reason?"

Her blue eyes were unafraid. She said, "Guantra was never your friend. I dared not tell you before, but I can now because you have doubts of what your memory tells you. You saw how indecisive he was. He does not know whether his psychoanalyser in the Blue Grotto had time to change you. I got you out of there before he knew, before he had seen and spoken with you."

The giant released her; ran fingers that shook a little through the thick mop of his yellow hair, frowning.

"I don't understand. What psychoanalyser? What Blue Grotto? Wait--I remember the grotto, with the blue sea. But the rest is strange to me."

"And the room fitted with drapes? The couch with the ocemar pelts?"

"I slept there."

* * * * *

She told him then, hurriedly: of how the psychoanalyser was one of the machines Guantra had taken from the tower of Zut in Yassa and set it up in his hidden lair, and how he used it to turn key men into his friends by giving them new memories that were so closely linked with their old that rarely were they so much as hesitant about them. Only Kortha doubted, and that was because Ilse had come to him before Guantra. She picked up the thread of his life at the smithy in the desert and went on with it.

Once he interrupted, with, "But it was Hurlgut who sent men to kill me in the tower of Zut?"

Ilse scorned that, "Hurlgut send men? Who on Mars would serve a cripple when Guantra rules the fleets? Would Hurlgut hide in Ruuzol if he could put his banners in the air?"

When she was through, he whispered through stiff lips, "This psychoanalyser. It changes men, then?"

"Guantra changed several men in council positions with it. He needed their support. He got it. It can make a brave man a craven; or a coward, a hero. It was built by the Ancients, who understood the mind as well as other sciences. They realized that the memory cells that govern many of our habits and thoughts could be altered by hypnotically suggested alterations. They built a machine that would do that. We learned of it, but could never do anything about it. People would have laughed, said we fought Guantra with myths."

Kortha growled, "I'm still not sure. But I'll fight Guantra until I can make up my own mind!"

Ilse's lips twitched wryly. Her shoulders sagged a little as she leaned against a table, looking up at him.

"Fight Guantra? Here in Ruuzol? You are mad, Kortha. There isn't a single gun in Ruuzol. No weaponry of any sort. It can't defend itself; was never intended to. This mesa is one mass of radio laboratories and generators, tubes and condensors."

No weapon. No gun. Just a lot of magnifones, and words never killed anybody yet. Kortha bared his teeth in a silent snarl.

"I'll broadcast before he can stop me. Let him fire on us, then!"

"No. He won't fire, not yet. Have you forgotten the lightning guns? They will cripple all our power. We couldn't broadcast past those metal mountains without power."

The lightning guns. Kortha came up short on that. He cursed softly, brows furrowed. Aye, he remembered the lightning guns, psychoanalyser or no psychoanalyser! With them it would be as Ilse said. Guantra would break their power; land men, and take over the city.

"The laboratories," he grated. "Get me to your laboratories. There may still be a way to stop those lightning guns."

Ilse looked at him; gasped suddenly at the old, flaring lights in his green eyes. She laughed softly, gladly, and turned and ran ahead of him.

The ceiling lights were blue and bright, flooding the long laboratory chambers where chrome and steelite glistened and glass fittings refracted rainbows of color against the scalloped walls. Black, short shadows flickered where men stood at their places, staring.

"This is Kortha," said Ilse, head flung back, eyes blazing with azure fire. "If anyone can stop Guantra, he can."

A sullen giant hulked forward from a bench, arms dangling, scowling, "Surrender to him, _I_ say. We have no chance against the fleet. The rest of you--Guantra has no fight with us. Why do we do what one girl and one man tell us?"

Kortha uncoiled, springing. His fist shot out like a flatheaded piston, cracking the sullen man on the jaw. The _splat_ of the blow was loud in the silence broken only by the brrring of the ceiling reflectors lazily rotating.

Over the body of the unconscious man, Kortha snarled, "Anyone else advise surrender?"

They looked at him, and dropped their eyes. Heads shook.

"Good. Get me blueprint papers, and diagrams of your ultraviolet radiator batteries. I want relayed batteries set up, and I must know how many I have to work with."

Ilse saw hope struggling for place in the eyes of the men as they looked at Kortha. She laughed gaily, putting a hand on the big man's arm, saying loudly, "This is Kortha. I told you. He can pull miracles out of a hole in space!"

Feet pounded on the linoleotile flooring. Drawers opened, banged shut; glass cabinets clinked faintly, and papers rustled. Ilse stood against Kortha, touching him, smiling wryly.

"Only your name could make them hop like that against the power that is Guantra. They're all loyal, but practical. They know to an iotagram what chance Hurlgut has!"

"He has a good chance," growled Kortha. He did not look at her. He did not dare: she was too lovely, with her blue eyes and platinum hair, and the kissable mouth. He had not decided yet, and wanted his reason to figure this out, not his emotions.

* * * * *

The men came and spread their diagrams and date-sheets and charts before him. His keen eyes flicked back and forth, ran down columns, studied hook-ups and relays.

"These batteries," he said suddenly, pointing. "Shift them there. These others, over to this spot. Move those back, arrange them in arcs. They must be distributed evenly around Ruuzol. Here, I'll work it out for you."

He sketched quickly. With T-square and calipers he strove for arrangements on the blueprints, and succeeded. The engineers and physicists looked at his work and up at him, puzzled. Kortha snorted.

"The batteries will furnish ultraviolet rays, won't they? In the patterns we set by grouping them like this?"

A young engineer nodded dubiously.

"Yes, but--"

Kortha rasped an oath, stood up.

"Do what I say. I'll explain to you later, when I bring the final distribution sheets to you. You'll have to follow my instructions to the letter. The radiator batteries must be set so, to make a pattern thus. Any deviation will result in disaster. Hurry!"

Up in the control tower the red light was flickering. Kortha allowed himself a smile. The ultraviolet batteries were in place, needing only a fingerpress on a button beneath his hand to fire them. He looked up at the flagship maneuvering in circles above the dome. They were ready up there now.

Kortha depressed the button, and laughed.

An instant later, white fires burst from the guns of the flagship, flaring zigzags that darted toward the upright tubes on either side of the paraboloid. The metal planes would draw that lightning; it would sear them, crack them, erupt into thunderous cascades of escaping power--

The lightnings never touched their target.

As though an invisible mantle of veins were spread above the radio city, the lightnings sprayed away, following the veins, grounding in showers of tiny sparks on the plains below. They made eerie traceries of light over the city as the guns spouted lightning again and again. The glassite dome was bathed in a white, luminescent glow from the nets of meshed zigzags in the air above it, that ran in streaks of jagged white fire all around the city.

And always the lightnings grounded on the plains. The city lay untouched.

Kortha chuckled. He laughed aloud. He bellowed his mirth, slapping a thigh with his big hand, yelping, "A million _kofuls_ to see Guantra's face I'd give right now. He must be swallowing his tongue in rage. I'll bet he's hopping. He doesn't know what I've done. He thinks I'm a magician!"

"A lot of other people think the same thing," said Ilse dryly. "Including myself. And those engineers! They'll be sweating their curiosity, now that they see how your diagrams are working. They pestered me with questions, but I couldn't answer them."

"Summon them," grinned Kortha.

When they stood silent before him, he laughed them into smiles. One of them echoed his laughter, and then they all were bellowing.

Kortha said when they were wiping tears of delight from their eyes, "Lightning follows a pattern through the air, doesn't it? It follows beams of ionized air that are everywhere. Those ionized air beams flow down to Ruuzol, too. The only way to stop lightning from hitting us was to form other ionized air currents that lead it away from us."

A man with beaming face shouted, "Ultraviolet rays ionize air!"

"All we needed to do was set the batteries of radiators up in such a sequence that the lightning followed the ionized air beams they created. We made our own air currents and naturally the lightning had to follow them. It couldn't get past them!"

The cheer that rang in the room dropped to a hush as the screen glowed with Guantra's snarling face.

"You've won this round, Kortha. But I'm bringing the fleet here. We'll see if you can work magic against belching guns. However, your evil genius can plan, it can't work miracles all the time. You--you imp of Zut's black brother, you!"

Kortha laughed in his face.

The screen went dead.

The engineers went dead, too, until Kortha sent his booming laugh out at them, shouting, "Let him bring his fleet. It's the showdown fight we want. Let him come to us. I've an ace up my sleeve that I haven't played yet. Why, if Earth and Venus were to send their space fleets here with Guantra, we'd still win!"

The men did not believe that, but they shuffled their feet, uncertain. It is hard to doubt a man who has just performed a miracle that your own eyes have seen. There is always that lurking thought that he might pull another, too.

Ilse said, "We have no guns on Ruuzol."

"This whole city is a gun," said Kortha, and laughed again.

His mirth was infectious. The engineers grinned and looked at each other and laughed a little. They hadn't the slightest notion of why Kortha laughed, or why they grinned, but no one could resist such a magnificent confidence in a city that was without a weapon, and yet a gun all by itself.

* * * * *

Kortha spread his hands, asking, "This is a radio-city, isn't it? It has every science necessary to perfect radio technique, hasn't it? Get me Xax! He and I have work to do."

The tumblie shrilled a greeting, passing the engineers leaving the room. He rolled across to the bronzed giant, clicking his needles, eager, curious. Kortha grinned at him, dropped to a knee to speak to him.

"You are the only one in all Ruuzol who can do this job, Xax. Any other who left here would be shot by the guards Guantra will post before he goes. It's up to you. Will you help me fight Guantra? I won't blame you if you refuse."

"Tell me what you want me to do," said Xax simply. "You waste time, talking nonsense."

Kortha took Xax to the tower window and showed him the red cliffs that rose all around Ruuzol, towering toward the sky.

"Years ago, when I first came to Ruuzol from the Academy, I sank cables into the metal of those cliffs. I laid them underground to the mesa, here. I connected their vast bulk with the generators and tube relays of the city. I have to know if those cables are still attached. You can tell me. I shall let you know what tests to apply in the tiny caves where the cable-controls are sunk. You can perform those tests with you feelers, Xax."

"What tests, Kortha?"

The giant told him, repeating himself for emphasis. But the tumblie understood, and said so. Kortha watched him click-roll out of the tower, and rose, sighing.

To Ilse he said, "Let's go back to the laboratories again. I'll need to make more diagrams. Get the engineers to meet me. They'll have to change cable terminals and install them on a different hookup."

Down in the laboratories, Ilse sat for hours, watching Kortha as he labored over charts and graphs, often without moving more than hands and eyes for an hour at a stretch. When he was done, he stood up and stretched like a waking tiger. He grinned, and handed the graphs to her.

Her eyes widened, looking down.

"Why, this is just--" she looked up, startled, beginning to smile.

"Something any modern housewife knows," he agreed. He laughed and said, "Guantra will call it more magic."

"It is magic," Ilse said softly. "It is the magic of your brain that can think of something like this at a time like this."

"Bah," chuckled Kortha, but he tingled meeting her eyes.

Hours later, the western sky grew dark with warships.

Kortha and Ilse stood once more in the tower over the paraboloid city, their arms touching. Before Kortha lay a white metal box with a red enamel switch disappearing inside it.

They watched the mighty battlefliers loom sullen and black above the coppery cliffs, pointing their blunt noses downward, dropping one after the other from the blue sky into the reddish plains below. They came swiftly, in perfect echelon, masts flying the black panther banner of Guantra. Their gunports lay open, the lean metal nozzles of their guns glistening in the sunlight.

"Zut," whispered Ilse. "Guantra compliments you. He has stripped all of Mars to capture you."

Xax said dryly, "The legend of Kortha is more than a legend, it seems."

"To destroy that fleet would cripple Mars for a decade," Kortha whispered. "I couldn't do it, unless I was sure that the stakes we fight for are worth it."

"We fight for Mars," said Ilse.

"Yes. Yes, I begin to believe that. When one man is so powerful he can do with a warfleet what he will, to achieve his own personal ambitions--"