Part 2

The guide and he moved out of the compound, across the black street, pushing through the massed humans who were being poured into the compound, into what was apparently a barracks for warrior Kraks. Through the barracks to a large office at the end they went.

Ralk, the scarlet-kilted Krak, who had engineered his little fiasco with Klash was there. And another Krak, not white-skinned like those on the space ship, but a pastel pink with features less coarse. This Krak was bald, but he wore a long black robe.

Ralk said shortly:

"Red-headed one, you are blessed. Shel Lur has chosen you for her own. Thank your hair, Earthman, that shines like Karrar's sun."

There was no expression on Shel Lur's face, but her bald head, painted a darker pink than her skin, inclined.

Sean wondered if the woe-begone expression on his face was apparent to Shel Lur. This--this thing a woman of the Krak race? Sean's lips twisted--no wonder the Kraks looked so gloomy.

Mother of Erin, he would prefer being in the compound than in the company of this huge creature. He said so to Ralk.

Ralk's voice was impassive. "Do not be mistaken, Earthman. Shel Lur does not want you for a husband; but as something to look at." He spoke quickly in his native tongue to Shel Lur. The female Krak nodded, moved toward him.

As Shel Lur's big cold hand seized his arm and steered him out of the door of the office, Sean was, for the first time in twenty-five years of life, not smiling at the events facing him.

* * * * *

It wasn't so bad, Sean reflected some weeks later, but it wasn't anything to laugh about--this being doll to a lady of the Kraks. He was fed well, and he slept well, even if it were on the cold black floor.

But he couldn't stand that impassive stare when Shel Lur gazed at him three times a day--once in the morning when she prodded him awake with her foot, once in the afternoon when she brought him down to the dinner table to stare and once in the evening just before she undressed for the night and lay down on her air pallet.

He had stood it for a week, then he tried to teach her the English language only to find out that she knew enough of it as she wanted. He'd talked to her, trying to describe Earth to her--telling her how different women there were. And she had just nodded and said, "_Yess?_"

Why in the name of Earth's sun had she picked him out--of every other human? There must have been hundreds of red-heads in the human procession. He looked up at Shel Lur's pink face and said very heatedly:

"Oh, hell...."

Shel Lur looked at him impassively.

He had plenty of time to think now and to watch. The picture of the giant Klash ever was with him, that look of pain pricking and tickling at his mind.

Once he asked Shel Lur: "Can't you be killed?"

In her atrociously accented English she said:

"No, I cannot be killed. No Krak ever killed."

"Don't you ever die?"

"Oh, yess. We die."

"How?"

Shel Lur merely shrugged and repeated: "We die." And looked at him impassively.

He liked those rare occasions when she sent him out with the laundry to the section laundry where the humans toiled day and night with the heavy garments. It was good to see your own kind, he thought, even if they are slaves.

Once he tried to lose himself in the city, but an unerring Krak came straight to his hiding spot behind an eating place, lifted him out of his lair, and returned him to Shel Lur.

Shel Lur had not even chided him on his long absence, but had merely looked at him impassively.

This day began differently. Shel Lur woke him by prodding him with her big foot and when he sat up on the cold floor, she pointed, her face a blank:

"See?" she said.

He twisted his aching neck sharply, and almost gasped:

"Marcia! What--how did you get here?"

"Woman," Shel Lur said tonelessly. "Your woman."

Tiny Marcia, her blonde hair awry, her blue eyes frightened, her tiny hands twisting.

Her words stumbled out: "A Krak came; took me from beside Mike in the laundry."

Sean looked from Marcia to Shel Lur.

Shel Lur nodded: "Your woman," she said again.

"No," Sean said, "my friend's woman."

"Yess?" said Shel Lur. "Your woman, I say it." She took Marcia by the arm, pushed her against Sean. Then she walked out and shut the door.

Sean stood in the center of the room, running his hands through his flame hair.

"I'm damned if I know what she's driving at. Oh, well," he said and shrugged.

He looked at Marcia, commented: "You look better than you did on the ship."

Marcia looked at him, her lips quivering, her eyes brimming with tears:

"Oh, Sean," she said. "What kind of hellish world is this?" Then she threw herself into Sean's arms, her breasts heaving, sobs like tiny pin cushions tearing at her throat.

Awkwardly, Sean patted her shoulder. "Easy, Marcia, easy."

Shel Lur came back in again. Without emotion, she looked at Marcia clasped in Sean's arms, said tonelessly:

"Good. You will not run away again."

Marcia turned her head to stare at the Krak woman. Sean's eyes were thoughtful.

* * * * *

Sean McKenna awoke suddenly, jarred from sleep by an almost tangible thought. Half-awake, the fingers of his mind reached into his dream and tried to form it into wakeful reality.

Almost, he thought bitterly. I almost had it. He'd been dreaming about his attempts to destroy a Krak, living it over again, and for a single fleeting moment, he would have sworn he found the chink in the Krak armor of invulnerability. Then it was gone.

Over in the opposite corner, Marcia stirred. Nightmare, probably, but who wouldn't have a nightmare? But that dream, so real and in it he had been so sure of the Krak's vulnerability. And now that was gone.

He drifted off to sleep again.

When he awakened, he was surprised. It had not been by Shel Lur's dainty hoof. Rubbing the sleep from his eyes, he turned toward Marcia's corner.

Instantly he was on his feet. She was gone! He darted from the bare room, through the door into Shel Lur's chamber.

Striding into the center of the Krak's sleeping chamber, Sean McKenna halted abruptly, almost as if he had bumped up against an unseen, immovable force.

A woman's laughter, dancing on joyous toes, stopped him. Marcia's laughter! Then his heart froze into a lump of dry ice within his chest. Only for fleeting moments had that laughter been joyous, now it was a mad, maudlin thing, twisted by the frightening fingers of hysteria.

Sean sprinted across the huge sleeping room, blasted through the door of the dressing chamber.

Marcia, her tiny body a limp blob lay on the cold floor, mad laughter dripping from her lips.

Shel Lur sat impassively in the high-backed bench, a wig of human hair fixed on her head, her dark eyes staring at him. Around her neck was a necklace of black triangular shaped stones that winked evilly in the sullen light of the sun.

Sean tried to comfort the sobbing, screaming Marcia, but her soft face was twisted and torn with frightful agony and her tiny red mouth still burbled raucous laughter.

Sean turned coldly to Shel Lur.

"What have you done?" he lipped, his green eyes stabbing flame.

Shel Lur stared at him impassively, her wide-lipped mouth lax.

It was then that Sean felt that latent hope for the Krak's vulnerability flare in his heart.

Shel Lur was dead.

His quick mind spun through a million queries. How had she died? Was it a Krak's ordinary death? What had happened to cast the life from her?

Sean looked down at Marcia's contorted, writhing body.

His answer lay there.

With a cold mind, Sean bent down, jerked Marcia roughly to her feet.

His strong palm lashed out, once, twice in snapping blows to Marcia's soft cheeks. The girl whimpered at the first blow; at the second, her sobbing slowed; and at the third, a semblance of intelligence brought a spark to her blue eyes.

* * * * *

Sean held her shoulders gripped tightly in his hands. He shook her gently.

"Marcia," he said softly. "Marcia."

Marcia's eyes reached up to his. She said dully:

"It was awful, Sean." Then she was in his arms sobbing. Sean let the sobbing run its course, though his mind was champing to ask her what happened. The hysteria was gone from her voice finally when she said:

"I killed her, Sean, with the touch of my hand." She held up the tiny hand with the long tapering fingers and flexed it.

"Marcia." Sean forced himself to speak slowly. "How did you kill her? What spot did you touch?"

He was breathless. He'd been right after all, there was a vulnerable spot on the Krak's invulnerable body. Was it the same spot he'd thought from his battle with Klash?

Marcia spoke quickly: "I don't know, Sean. She woke me, gave me that wig, told me to fix her head like mine. I did it, only I drew two strands of the hair down under her chin and tied it in a bow.

"It didn't look quite right, so I put my hands on her shoulders and drew the bow wider. But it looked so funny under her chin, I laughed and pushed against her to keep from falling."

"Where did you touch her?"

"I don't remember, Sean, I don't remember. Anyway, right then her whole face twisted into awful knots and her throat worked as if she couldn't get enough air to breath. Her face turned white and then blue and back to pink again.

"Her face, o-o-oh, it was terrible looking and frightened me so much," Marcia pushed closer to Sean, her tiny arms twisted tightly about him.

Sean was unaware of Marcia's warm body pressing against him.

For he was remembering.

It was only a tickle at first, then it grew and bubbled and the laughter pushed Sean's mouth open. The chink! His mind was shrieking. I've found it!

He laughed until the tears ran down his cheeks. It was the first time in many weeks that Sean McKenna had laughed like that--full-throated and joyous.

Abruptly, he sobered.

"Marcia," he said. "Help me dump Shel Lur into a laundry hamper. We'll have to get her out of here. Get her to where other Earth people, Mike and the rest of them, may see her--a dead Krak. An unkillable, unburnable Krak, dead violently. Then they will listen to me."

Marcia raised puzzled eyes to him.

"But what part of her did I touch to kill her?"

"No time for explanations. Only this much. It's you the Earth should thank for finding the chink in the Krak's armor. The answer was there, but me, I was the guy who couldn't see the trees for the forest."

As he talked, Sean was dragging the tall plastic clothes hamper to the side of the dead Shel Lur.

It strained every muscle of Sean's lean tough body to transfer Shel Lur's bulk from the high-backed bench to the hamper. Marcia brought some soiled clothes that they arranged around Shel Lur's body, doubled up in the hamper.

The thick plastic rollers squeaked under the weight as he worked it to the hallway outside Shel Lur's apartments, Marcia trailing behind him.

The two Krak guards flicked their eyes at them, but remained impassive. It was nothing unusual to see an Earthling delivering clothes to the laundry.

Sean masked the effort as he trundled the hamper by the guards. It might arouse suspicions if they thought he was disclosing undue stress.

He was sweating as he worked the hamper step by step down the long stairway leading to the street. He was desperately afraid that the hamper would overbalance and topple Shel Lur's body out on the landing before the two guards near the main gate. But Marcia strained her tiny body against the hamper, relieving some of the drag.

The Kraks did not even glance at them. Outside with the door closed, Sean straightened, blew a breath of relief through his tight lips.

Of a sudden, Marcia pulled his head, kissed him firmly on the lips. Sean jerked away abruptly.

"Don't you like me?" she asked petulantly. "I like you."

"How about Mike?"

Marcia shrugged. For a moment, Sean wanted to take her tiny body and shake some sense into it; but then he remembered that it was she who had given him the key to the enigma of the Krak's invulnerability.

Trust a woman to find a man's Achilles heel! He grinned wryly, and asked:

"Which way to Mike's laundry?" Marcia pointed, still pouting a little.

* * * * *

Mike saw them first as they pushed the hamper into the spraying room.

His dark face, the dark hair crowning it like a thick cap, lighted at the sight of Marcia, and harshened when he saw Sean.

Mike moved quickly toward them, his eyes fixed on Marcia's face. His arms were outstretched. Sean was looking at Marcia out of the corner of his green eyes. At Mike's approach she moved closer to Sean, tugged at his arm.

"Marcia!" Mike said, and his voice carried his heart with it. "I was scared stiff when they took you. How...?" Mike's dark eyes saw Marcia's fingers flexing on Sean's arm.

He took a step forward, his bulging muscles rippling, his dark eyes snapping. Sean, wordlessly, dumped over the hamper.

Shel Lur's body spilling out on the damp floor stopped him instantly.

Mike O'Hara stared at the body of the Krak, then at Sean's smiling lips.

"Dead." Sean's voice was quiet.

"Dead?"

Their soft voices brought other Earthlings crowding from the various parts of the spraying room. They, too, stared at the dead bulk of the pink-skinned Krak.

"How?" Mike breathed the word like a prayer.

Sean jerked a thumb at Marcia. "Marcia did it, and showed me how."

Marcia broke in: "But I don't know how I did it, Sean."

Sean shrugged as Mike moved closer to Marcia.

"Oh, Marcia," Mike said softly. "You found the way." His arms reached out as if to clasp her, but she ducked under them, put her arm around Sean's waist.

Sean's fingers pushed her arm loose, but Mike was a fury before him.

"So," Mike growled. "I must think of Jane. I must forget Marcia." He sniffed loudly. "Well, friend, how about Maureen? I suppose she'll greet Marcia with open arms?" He paused a moment.

"'I'll come back, Maureen,'" Mike mimicked Sean's last words to his black-haired Maureen when the Earthlings had first been driven aboard the Krak ship many weeks before.

Then Mike's big fist lashed out. Sean's strong hands reached out, caught the arm, pushed it to Mike's side as he said quietly:

"Easy, Mike, easy." He added: "There are more important things to consider now than jealousy." A movement from Marcia turned Sean's head quickly. Then he smiled that slanted grin.

"Look, Mike, she's just a feather, blown about by what takes her fancy." Sean jerked his flame head at Marcia. She was smiling up at a tall, slim blond--a stranger to Sean who had been hovering in the background.

Mike looked, and the fire in his dark eyes died a little. Muscles worked in the sides of his jaw. His barrel chest lifted in a deep breath. Then he grinned a little shamefacedly.

His voice was abrupt then.

"How did the Krak die, Sean?"

Sean said enigmatically: "By an Earthling's cruelest weapon. A weapon which has been lost to most humans since the Kraks came. A sort of prodigal weapon. I used it once on Klash, and didn't know it. I couldn't see it then. But Marcia's killing Shel Lur gave me the answer."

Sean McKenna took Mike's arm, led him to the door.

They moved outside where two Krak guardsmen stood.

They paced out into the black paved street.

"Watch them," Sean said softly, triumph in his voice.

* * * * *

Sean McKenna began to laugh, the deep waves of it pouring up out of his chest, filling the sullen air with its joy. There it was, he thought humbly, the weapon. _Laughter!_

The two Kraks stood impassive. Their dark eyes were quiet. They were unperturbed.

Sean stopped laughing. His bright green eyes were dull as he turned to Mike O'Hara.

"It doesn't work," he said. They were just words. There was no emotion in them. He might have been talking about the weather. "I was sure this was it. Laughter. David's sling against Goliath."

Then Sean McKenna shrugged. His voice was flippant now. His green eyes stared at Mike's dark ones unblinkingly. He wondered: Are my eyes as blank and dull as Mike's? He said:

"I could think of the worse places for mankind to die--" he swept his left arm encompassing the red sky and black city--"but not many." He laughed again. This time his voice was high-pitched, almost with a note of hysteria in it.

"You were right, Mike, we didn't have much chance against the Universe Champion."

"Wait!" Mike said urgently. "Look!"

The two Krak guardsmen were staggering drunkenly toward them. This Sean saw as he turned. Their faces were twisted, working convulsively.

"Stop it," the foremost one muttered hoarsely. "It hurts the ears."

His figure towered over Sean, clutching fingers reaching. Sean darted aside. The second Krak had fallen, huge spatulate fingers scrabbling at the black-paved blocks. The first one turned hesitantly as if he could no longer control his feet, stumbled after Sean.

He lunged at Sean, succeeded only in tearing that metal contrivance from his back. A great weight suddenly pulled Sean to the pavement, seemed to triple the weight of his own body. It was pain to move his head, but Sean's red-thatch twisted so his green eyes could see.

The pursuing Krak toppled against the black bricks beside Sean, his bald head making a dull sound. The usually impassive eyes were staring at Sean's green orbs. There was pain and--was it defeat?--in them.

Every sinewy muscle in Sean's body strained as he tried to get to his feet. So that was what the metal pack was for, he decided irrelevantly, an anti-gravity device. He threw his body toward it.

Before he reached it, however, Mike had picked it up, was strapping it haphazardly on his back. The tremendous weight lifted and he crawled to his feet.

"You were right after all," Mike said, and there was a caress in it. "Laughter."

Sean stood a long moment, looking at the fallen Kraks.

Sean began to chuckle, the chuckle drifted into laughter. It was true! Humanity had forgotten its greatest weapon.

"God," said Mike softly. "Laughter did it. Laughter." His dark eyes were staring at Sean. Then he, too, was laughing, joining his bass with Sean's baritone.

* * * * *

Earthlings moved out of the laundry, their eyes wide. They, too, fired by the infectious roarings began to laugh. On the wings of the wind, the laughter spread, working its way building by building, street by street, block by block through the city, as other humans picked it up, flung it on joyfully.

And as the Earthly laughter bubbled and rolled through the sullen city of Karrar, Kraks died--only a few at first, but more and more as the bursts of laughter swelled and swelled until even the black and red stone echoed with it.

Mike O'Hara placed his big hand on Sean McKenna's arm.

"You found the chink, Sean," he said. "Was it the sound of the laughter? That doesn't sound right." He chuckled a little at the unexpected pun.

Sean grinned. "I know what you're driving at, Mike. Laughter is scaled so low on the vibration scale that the Kraks must have encountered other vibrations of the same intensity at many times in the past. That it?"

Mike nodded.

Sean grinned impishly. "Laugh once, Mike, and listen to your laughter." Mike laughed, his brow furrowed.

"No idea bloomed," he said when he stopped laughing.

"Burlesque it," Sean said. "Do it in slow motion." He demonstrated. "Like this. Ha--ha--ha--ha."

"Got it!" Mike exclaimed. "It's not a single sound. It's a series of them. It's the old story of the soldiers crossing the bridge. It's not each individual soldier; it's the cadence. Not ha, but ha--ha--ha."

"Like kicking at the lock of a door instead of pushing on it steadily to get it open; like chipping at a rock instead of trying to smash it with one blow--there's a slough of analogies if we wanted to go on with it."

"That one Krak muttered something about his ears," Mike put in.

Sean nodded. "That, I think, marks the spot of their Achilles heel. They're like us in many ways--but one difference apparently lies in their ears. I'll get old Doc Perkins to dissect some of them.

"My own idea is that their balance canals are constituted differently somehow than ours. Those two Kraks gave all the appearance of being unable to maintain their balance. In us, those ear canals are gyroscopes. That's why even blind persons are aware when they begin to deviate from an upright position.

"Both our canals of balance and those of the Kraks probably function the same way, but the extra gravity of this planet may have wrought the chink which we found. With study and experimentation we should find out for sure just what happens." Sean stopped talking, gazed at the people around him who were laughing.

He felt his chest swelling with pride. Man was on the road back--back to Earth with its rolling green hills, its blue skies, its brown mountains, its myriad sounds and smells and sights. Man was going home with a weapon to cast out the invader.

He stood for a long time, Mike's hand on his arm, watching these happy humans. Even the black and red of Karrar was softened by the joyous light in their clear unfilmed eyes.

Finally, Sean McKenna said,

"We have a new task, Mike. We've got to take them home."

The sullen red sun dipped behind the black hills. The black mist of night flowed over the lowering sky dimming it, finally enveloping it. The black mist thickened, formed silently into the night sky with its countless planets, its myriad suns.

Somewhere in that star-scattered vastness is Earth, Sean McKenna thought.

Earth. And Maureen with the soft black hair and eyes that are blue flames.

_Earth!_