Part 3

"We have a weapon on Earth, too," he whispered. "It's a kiss. Do you Zarathzans have the kiss?"

With arched brows the girl followed his thought, then shook her head a little disdainfully, saying, "No. That does not seem to be any sort of armament I know. Is it a good weapon?"

"The best there is on a night like this--with a girl like you."

* * * * *

Her mouth was warm and soft and moist beneath his. His lips held hers for a long time before he let her go. She opened her long-lashed eyes slowly, staring at him.

"That is no weapon," she accused softly. She put her arms up and drew his head down again, whispering, "--but I like it. I should really study it some more."

This time it was the girl whose lips clung.

Jonathan laughed, "For a Zarathzan you catch on pretty quickly."

"I'm a scientist," she retorted.

Nestled in his arms, with her hair flooding his chest and shoulder, Adatha Za said, "I wish--I wish that you and I could go back to Zarathza together, Jonathan Morgan. In my villa beside the Jaralayan Sea I would love to study this kiss-weapon of yours. It is such a nice weapon, even though it does frighten me a little."

She gasped suddenly and tried to sit up, but Jonathan's long arms held her.

"Now what's eating you?" he wanted to know.

"That kiss--how many times have you experimented with that weapon on Earth?"

Jonathan chuckled, "Next thing you'll be telling me I do it like an expert!"

Head to one side, Adatha Za surveyed him. At last she nodded pertly, laughing a little.

"Yes, I think you do. And no one ever became perfect without practice!"

"Don't forget. Shar Bytu made me a perfectionist."

Adatha Za sighed as she nestled back into his arms, and whispered, "There are some things, Jonathan Morgan, that even evolution can't do."

IV

Adatha Za came for him the next day, to go with him to the Arena. Her eyes were dark and sunken, her soft red mouth quivering. Her hair hung loose, uncoiffed. She came into his arms and kissed him; drew back to look up into his face, trembling.

"I am glad for last night," she whispered. "Though I did have hopes--some day in my villa over the Jaralayan Sea--"

She buried her face against his chest, moving it slowly from side to side, distrait.

"Hey," yelped Jonathan, lifting her face with a finger beneath her chin. "Why the gloom? I thought we'd decided last night that I had a chance."

"You did--last night. Today ... today Shar Bytu announced that the winner of the mental monomachy is to attempt the black shadows! So--"

"Oof," Jonathan grunted, "that sort of knocks the stilts out from under a guy. No matter who wins, both will die, unless--no, the age of miracles passed a long time ago. What does Morka Kar say to that?"

"Oh, he raved and swore, but he dared do nothing to disobey. After all, he is a scientist, and he is here to fight those flames. Even he cannot hope to fight all the scientists on Neeoorna right now. I--I think he will temporize. Have the monomachy declared a draw. That will allow him to save face and his life at the same time."

"I'm going to win if I can," Jonathan said slowly. "I just don't cotton to that guy."

Her long fingernails bit into the flesh of his wrists. Her voice was hoarse, desperate, "By Lallista's brood, Jonathan! Do not anger him. Your one chance is in Morka Kar's willingness to spare you that he may spare his own self. If he loses that temper of his--Jonathan, I want you alive."

He patted her bare shoulder, smiling.

"I'll still see that villa on the sea, honey. Don't fret your lovely head about it. But it's time to go, now. I don't want this affair called off on a forfeit."

They walked slowly, hand in hand, along the pebbled path to the great white Amphitheatre. It rose tall and grim, brooding over the lovely square that fronted its entrance. The square was deserted. Their footfalls sounded loud in their ears.

They went up the steps and through the oval doorway. Alone, they went down the black corridor toward the arena.

The seats were filled, inside the arena room. The batteries of ten thousand eyes gloomed at Jonathan as he walked toward the great ivory chair set on the sanded field. He knew Morka Kar watched him from the ebony throne opposite the ivory chair, but he'd be damned before he'd glance his way!

Jonathan settled himself in the seat before he looked at his opponent. Morka Kar sat facing him, both arms resting on the ebony arms. His thin mouth was twisted in a sardonic grin. His red-shot eyes glistened with hate.

Adatha Za came forward with an oblong coffer, ornate with jewels. Dropping to her knees, she unlocked the cover, and threw it open. Inside, row on row, glittered vials and retorts of liquids and powders, and long metal bars and needles.

Above Adatha Za's naked shoulders, Jonathan watched a three-legged Paravian dance-walk its way to Morka Kar. The Paravian also carried a monomachy casket.

Adatha Za spoke swiftly: "As you see his weapon form, combat it. Use the antidote. Not knowing that," she was choking now, almost sobbing, "not knowing that, attack the weapon with your mind. It has existence, but it is a mentally energized existence. Mental energy may dissipate it if strong enough. It is not considered good form--but it is safe."

The dark eyes shimmered through tears as she looked up at him.

"Farewell," she whispered.

And turned and fled.

Morka Kar stretched out a foot and kicked shut the cover of the coffer before his throne. The _clunk_ of the closing lid sounded loud in the high chamber, merging with the breathless gasp that shook the throng. Only a mathless monomachy fighter scorned the help of the box.

Jonathan looked at Morka Kar and grinned.

He put out his own foot and slammed the cover down. Dimly he caught, in some remote recess of his brain, the amaze that held the onlookers. They didn't know, as did Adatha Za, that the contents of that box were as much a mystery to Jonathan as were the black shadows. He'd be better off without it. It gave him less to think about, and he needed all his powers of thought.

Morka Kar snarled. His eyes blazed right at Jonathan--

Purple balls hung in the air before the Zarathzan!

They shimmered and glittered, filled with opalescent mists of green and red and white and purple. They danced eerily, as though drunk, as though to the music of some alien piper. They bounced and swayed on invisible strings in a wild and eerie saraband. They swung outward, circling.

Then darted straight at Jonathan.

* * * * *

Jonathan threw every bit of mental power at his control into his defense, but the first bubble did not break before it got within three feet of him. The others fell apart easily after that.

Jonathan frowned, and an automatic hung in the air before him. It turned to grey mists and faded, struck by a bolt of liquid fire.

Morka Kar rasped laughter, "Do better Earthling. We of Zarathza have forgotten weapons such as that."

A haze of colorless hue quivered in front of the Zarathzan. It seemed only a heat haze; but when he saw the sandy waste inside the shimmer, when he saw grey and rolling ocean instead of the sand, and saw ocean turn to roaring flames, he knew he looked on a weapon utterly foreign to Earth thought.

His knuckles bulged until the skin over them whitened in the fury of his concentration. Gasping, he saw the shimmer fade.

He cast a beam of radio-waves; saw them strike a beam of like power and shatter, useless. He hurled acid. It met an alkali. He threw a bullet and watched it melt in a shield of heat that turned the lead to smoke.

All the while the Zarathzan taunted him, shrilling, "Ape. Go back to the steamy jungles of your planet, ape. We do not need a loose-brain here. Go back, ape!"

A red triangle formed in the air before Morka Kar even as he spoke. It glowed and burned with green hell-fires. Jonathan dropped water on it and the green fires raged and grew and expanded, feeding on the water.

Jonathan shuddered when he finally extinguished them. Beads of cold sweat rose on his forehead. He was growing weaker. His brain could not stand this punishment. He had been subjecting it to too much. It would give, soon. It was not conditioned, as was the Zarathzan's.

He thought fleetingly of last night, with Adatha Za's mouth burning beneath his. Never to know that mouth again! She had trusted in his strength, in his boasts. She had told him of her villa above the sea. Now he was to fail her. He had bragged of a mickey finn. Of brass knuckles. What a crude jest. He had even mentioned--

Jonathan sat upright. He thought.

When Morka Kar saw the club in his hands, he hooted.

"A club! The ape has found a club with which to kill. Lallista! He jests."

Jonathan swung the wood in his hands with easy familiarity. He lifted it above his shoulders, then brought it about viciously. There was a sudden _splat_.

Morka Kar, still laughing his derision, crumpled and toppled from the ebony seat.

Jonathan discovered his knees shaking. He sat down quickly.

Adatha Za came running, sobbing, laughter.

"You beat him. You beat him. What a strange weapon. What was it? Morka Kar thought it but a club. He did not deign to spend his mental forces on it. But you fooled him!"

Jonathan held up the wood and shook it, laughing, "This is known in America as a baseball bat. A Louisville slugger. The old hickory, the ash. And the thing that hit Morka Kar was a baseball. Gods! A jest, he called it."

Shar Bytu looked from Morka Kar to Jonathan, saying, "You must destroy him. It is the great rule of mental monomachy."

But Jonathan shook his head, wearily.

Shar Bytu looked down at the Zarathzan. He almost seemed to relish what he did. But it was over in an instant. A few grains of dust settled groundwards. Jonathan felt sick.

The others gathered around him. Their voices were excited.

"A new weapon to fight the flames."

"The Earthling has solved our problem."

"If it baffled a monomachy fighter like Morka Kar, it might work on the flames."

Jonathan tried to explain, looking down at their faces.

"No, no," he cried out, talking down their thoughts. "It isn't a weapon. It's a sport we play back on Earth. I--it--the bat is used to hit a ball. Morka Kar didn't know that. He thought it just a club.

"Luckily, I could call my shot. A straight fast ball. Not a curve. A straight--"

Jonathan blinked. He stopped, choking; eyes wide.

"Maybe," he whispered. "Maybe--"

The others grew quiet, watching. They felt his intense excitement, saw his hands quiver, and the way his lips twitched. Adatha Za clung to his arm and her eyes were pools of purple hunger.

It wasn't too fantastic--yet.

It all depended on straight lines and curves, and whether a straight line can ever be curved. The shortest distance between two points. If the straight line could be moved to turn, then he was wrong.

But if he were right! If this type of straightness _could not_ curve, then it might conceivably eat its way through a universe which was based on something that should curve: light.

* * * * *

Dr. Wooden and he had made strides in their experiments on light rays derived from calcatryte. They had explored the quantum theory, had forced homogenous light against a metal plate and seen the electrons it extracted from it. This light energy had been partially turned into the kinetic energy of the bombarded electrons of metal.

From this it had been a step upward in discovering that calcatryte yielded a photon shower of such terrific concentration that it ate right through the metal plate; had given no evidence of stopping until they had constructed the plasticite screen: pure black, coated with a fine dust of calcatryte itself.

They had no way of knowing whether the rays stopped at the screen, exactly. They might go on and on. And if they ate through metal, releasing the electrons that composed it--they might eat through the universe!

Jonathan shuddered and looked around him.

He knew his course, now. But to prove it--

He had to go through the flames!

"You proclaimed that the winner of the mental monomachy would go through the flames, Shar Bytu," he said. "As winner, and as representative of Earth, I claim that right."

Shar Bytu looked at him and his eyes were like flecks of cold moonlight. Suddenly, they twinkled.

"The right is yours, Earthling. And something tells me that you may, at long last, be the one to succeed. I read it in your mind. Yes, your theory is a good one. To think that menace came from Earth. From little, uncivilized, barbaric Earth."

He waddled away, his ponderous reptilian head moving from side to side.

Adatha Za pressed her hot cheeks against Jonathan's chest. Her voice was low, troubled: "How will you fight the flames, Jonathan? What weapon is there that can destroy them?"

"No weapon under all the stars and all the suns can destroy the shadows, Adatha Za. They are alien. The only hope there is--is to shut them off."

He shot up rapidly from the sanded floor of the Arena. Beneath him for one long instant, he saw Adatha Za with her lovely face upturned: hands clasped between her breasts, red mouth bitten until it swelled, dark eyes misted. Shar Bytu stood beside her, his scaly hide brushing her naked arm. The others were grouped in twos and threes: silent and motionless, watching him.

How long they stood there, Jonathan never knew. His mind was fully occupied in a furious effort of incredible concentrative power: forcing his body into the rigid and alien pattern that his mind knew would alone spell safety from disaster.

Light that never deviated from its straight and ruthless path. Light that would absorb matter, that would shower a stream of electrons from it, releasing the electrons in a blast of power that fed upon the stuff it touched. Such were the black shadows!

And as he hurtled onward into the flames, he forced his body into beams of light, rigid and unbending. He had to merge with the flames, or be destroyed.

He hurtled onward, toward the ebony maw that shook and glistened and bellied against the dark of space like a translucent blob of jelly.

He held out his hands like a diver, going into the shadows. The movement helped him concentrate on straightness. The wind and the blackness was about him, licking at his lighteous form. Along his chest and thighs the flames touched, caressing.

The blackness was himself, now; part of him, a segment of his mind, a portion of his body.

And he went on swiftly.

Toward his goal.

On the planet, Neeoorna, Adatha Za knew the salt taste of her tears. Her red lips were puffed by the teethmarks driven deeply into their softness. Her breasts rose swiftly.

The others stood about her, and their minds were blank.

At that moment they comprehended, but joy and awe were stronger than mere knowledge.

The black shadows winked once. They winked again, fleetingly.

Then they disappeared.

V

Dr. Wooden stood silent as Jonathan Morgan drew his hand from the switch that drove a bath of heat at the blocks of calcatryte set in their metallic cradles. The humming of motors stopped. The blackish screen in the background went silent, dead.

"Well," said Dr. Wooden, straightening. "Hello."

Jonathan sat down and put out a trembling hand, drew an open pack of cigarettes toward him.

"I've been far away," he said slowly. "To the other side of the universe. Billions of miles away, and yet--in your own backyard."

Dr. Wooden grinned and sat on the edge of the sandstone tabletop. He lighted a cigarette himself, saying, "Tell me."

Jonathan told him. And then he said, "It seems understandable enough, really. Those powers I possess. What are they but an innate adaptability to environment. And isn't that the true goal of Nature?

"The environment is what destroys, is what weakens, is what kills. Call it a blast furnace. Call it disease. Call it a clawing tiger. It is, nevertheless, our environment: temporary or permanent. To survive that, man must be immortal, in a physical sense. In the sense that he possesses _in himself_ all the necessary attributes to enable him to overcome that environment. That way lies immortality."

Dr. Wooden regarded the glowing tip of his cigarette. He said, "That's clear enough. It is fantastic, but who knows what changes one million or two million years will bring in man. Lord knows, it brought a lot of changes on Earth itself! Now, about the flames--"

Jonathan crushed out his cigarette.

"They were the emanations from the calcatryte. I realized that eventually. It stood to reason. It had to be something alien to a universe where light curves. Something that either ate up matter or made it invisible or opened a door for it to leak out somewhere, into nothingness.

"Calcatryte gives off straight light, so powerful that it eats through metal. It could as easily eat through dirt and rock, through the moon of a planet, through a planet itself. Through the universe, in short. In a universe based on curving light, that unbendable light was an anomaly. It ate up our universe, or started to."

"Again, clear enough. It's reasonable, and possible. But when you went into the shadows and passed through them--you emerged here in my laboratory. But my laboratory is billions upon billions of miles from Neeoorna."

Jonathan grunted, "In terms of ordinary space, yes. I passed through hyperspace."

"That's a mathematical concept."

"I know. But we--you have proved it exists. It has been proven mathematically."

Dr. Wooden looked dubious. Jonathan picked up a pencil and pressed down with the point on a slip of graph paper.

"That black mark, that dot, is one-dimensional. Extend a line from that point to another dot. The line is also one-dimensional. Let us put the pencil on the line, supersede the line with the pencil. Since the pencil has three dimensions, so does the line--for the pencil is the line.

"Suppose an _n_-dimensional object. Supersede the pencil with the _n_-dimensional object and we have an _n_-dimensional line. It is an _n_-dimensional space of _n_-dimensional points, instead of our original definition of a line as a single dimensioned space of points set in a row.

"Ordinary space is called three-dimensional because it is occupied by three-dimensional things. Planes, for instance. But if we speak of lines of spheres or circles, we can easily step into the realm of _n_-dimensionality.

"The drawback is that we can't see it. We can't envision _n_-dimensionality.

"Consequently, we have always been intrigued by many-dimensionality because we can't picture it to ourselves. But the calcatryte rays weren't hindered by a lack of imagination. They just zoomed off into an _n_-dimensional space, and wound up near Neeoorna. They were lines, remember, straight lines. And lines can be _n_-dimensional."

Dr. Wooden rubbed his chin and said, "Could be, could be. But how does hyperspace solve your problem?"

"A dot inside a circle can go outside that circle without crossing its circumference. Likewise, I could pass from the inside to the outside of a sphere without going through the surface of a four-dimensional object.

"Those calcatryte rays beamed out from your lab into hyperspace, passing through ordinary space without touching it, and appeared billions of miles away. When I entered the shadows, I followed their course."

Dr. Wooden drew a deep breath, saying, "If I hadn't seen you materialize out of thin air--" and broke off, laughing.

"Seeing does enter it, doesn't it? But the attempts that were made to fight the shadows! Why were the attackers always destroyed? Unless--unless their weapons backfired on them--"

"That's my thought. They were shooting three-dimensional objects at an n-dimensional space. The three-dimensional objects never got anywhere. They didn't even leave their source. They expended their frightful energy right where they began."

"Well," muttered Dr. Wooden. "You could talk for hours and not _prove_ anything."

* * * * *

He broke off, looking at Jonathan. He lifted a wooden mallet and held it out to him.

"Destroy it," he said simply. "If it's that much of a danger to the universe, it deserves obliteration."

Jonathan put out his hand, brushed the mallet aside.

He bent over the table, setting both hands on it, partially supporting his weight.

The calcatryte in the metal cradles began to quiver as though made of soluble, moving liquid. Their veins ran into channels of color, red and green and blue and yellow. The blocks hazed over, writhing.

The calcatryte was fading, bit by bit.

Jonathan stood up. He looked worn, but his lips smiled.

"It's done," he whispered.

"You won't stay?"

A smile came and dwelt on Jonathan's lips.

"No," he said. "No, I won't stay. I am going back to Neeoorna, and then to Zarathza--to look at a sunrise coming up over the waters of the Jaralayan Sea."

He went out, and the door closed behind him, softly.