Part 14

It was more than just, more than ironic, he thought. It was his high privilege to wipe out some of the guilt that he knew he could never smother or rationalize out of his mind--the guilt of having been the one to bring Demarzule back to life.

Of them all in that control room, only Illia uttered a sound, and hers was a half audible cry choked back before it was fully spoken.

He lay apparently relaxed with eyes closed in the huge chair in the control room of the _Lavoisier_, but the essence, the force that was Delmar Underwood, was sixty thousand miles away, hovering over the force shell dome that hid the Carlson Museum.

Simultaneously with Illia's cry there came a smashing alarm that rang through the room with its insistent, murderous message.

"We're hit! Number three and four shell generators have gone out!"

As Underwood held to the point of view of the advancing wave-front of perception, he had the sensation of diving headlong toward the throng that was gathering as if by magic about the white, shining columns of the building. As if knowing of the battle that was to be fought between the titans, the waiting thousands had gathered when the force shell went over the Carlson and the battle fleets took to space. They watched, waiting for the unknown, the unexpected, somehow sensing their destiny was being decided.

Sight of the milling thousands was lost to Underwood as he plunged deep below the protecting shell over the building as if it did not exist. The lightlessness inside the shell was broken by the blaze of lights that showered their radiance everywhere upon the grounds and museum that had become a monstrous palace.

Waiting, hesitant guards and servants moved about the grounds, gathering in knots to ask one another what the appearance of the battleships and the sudden use of the shell meant. It was inconceivable that anyone should be challenging the Great One, but the very improbability of it filled them with fearful dismay.

Underwood entered the building. The vast assemblage of instruments and machines that had filled the main hall when he last saw it was gone now, replaced with rich paintings and fabulous tapestries had been ransacked from the treasuries of the Earth.

There was no one in sight. Underwood continued on until he came to the series of large exhibition rooms toward the rear. Here, apparently, were set up administrative offices to maintain whatever personal contact was necessary between Demarzule and the Disciples he ruled.

* * * * *

Then Underwood came to the central room at the rear of the center section of the building. Demarzule was there.

It was with an involuntary shock that Underwood saw again the alien creature he had restored to life. As he sat in the throne-like chair in the center of one wall of the room, the Great One seemed like some sculpture of an ancient god of evil executed in weathered bronze. Only the startling white of his eyes gave evidence of life in that enormous bulk.

Underwood hadn't expected the twenty Earthmen who sat near Demarzule, forming a semi-circle with the Great One in the center, as if in council. They sat in brooding silence. Not a word seemed to be passing between them, and Underwood watched in wonderment.

Then, slowly, Demarzule stirred. His white staring eyes moved, as though searching the room. His words came to Underwood.

"So you have come at last," he said. "You challenge Demarzule the Great One with your feeble powers. I know you, Delmar Underwood. They tell me it was you who found and restored me. I owe you much, and I would have offered you a high place in my realm which shall encompass the Universe. Yet you set yourself against me.

"I am merciful. You may still have your place if you choose. I need one such as you, just as I needed the brain and hands of Toshmere, who was so foolish as to think he could be the one to conquer the eons in my place. You know of his fate, I am sure."

Demarzule's speech was a paralyzing shock. Underwood had made no revelation of himself, yet the alien had detected his presence. Through the _abasa_, he sensed the might and power of Demarzule, the full potentialities that lay in the three organs that the ancient race had developed, potentialities that he had scarcely touched in the short weeks of experimentation.

It made him sick for an instant with the fear of almost certain defeat. Then he struck, furiously, and with all the power that was in him.

Never before had he hurled such a bolt of devastation. With satisfaction he sensed Demarzule's powers sway and wither before its blast, but the Great One absorbed it and recovered after an instant.

* * * * *

"You are a worthy opponent," said Demarzule. "You have accomplished much in so short a time, but not enough, I fear. Once more I extend my offer to join me. As my lieutenant, you might become governor of many Galaxies."

Underwood remained silent, conserving his forces for another blast which Demarzule could surely not endure. He hurled it and felt the energies flowing from him in a life-destroying stream. Demarzule's bronze face was only smiling sardonically as he met that attack--and absorbed it.

"When you have exhausted yourself thoroughly," he said, "I shall demonstrate my own powers--but slowly, so that death will not be too quick for you."

The use of such waves of force was exhausting to Underwood, but he knew that Demarzule's absorptive organ should soon reach maximum capacity, if it were not allowed to drain away in the meantime.

A third time he blasted. Then sudden, terrible realization came that Demarzule was not absorbing the energy. It was being diverted, drawn aside before it even approached the Sirenian.

In something approaching panic, Underwood directed his senses to locate the source of the diversion, and found it in the twenty Earthmen sitting motionlessly about Demarzule.

Demarzule seemed to know the instant that Underwood became aware of the fact. "Yes," he said, "we have duplicated the _abasa_. Cancer is plentiful among you. In five thousand more years you would have stopped fighting it and learned how to use it. There are twenty of us. You would not have come had you known you would have that many to fight singlehanded, would you? Now it is too late!"

With that word, a wave, of paralyzing, destroying force swept over Underwood. How it was affecting him, what senses it was attacking, he did not know. He only knew that a flaming agony was burning out life, as if reluctant to give him a speedy, merciful death.

He must withdraw to the ship to recover his forces. He could never withstand the attack of twenty-one _abasas_.

Underwood relaxed and threw his powers back toward the ship--and failed!

Abruptly, the metallic glint of Demarzule's lips parted in a roar of laughter without merriment, but of triumph.

"No, my brave Earthling, you cannot retreat. You did not know that. For those who would challenge the Great One there is no retreat. Your decision is made, and you will fail and you will die--but only when I wish, and your fellow Earthmen will find amusement in toying with you as a cat with a mouse before I give the final blow that will destroy your rash, impatient ego."

The flaming fire of Demarzule's attack continued while Underwood fought savagely and vainly to retreat. How was he being held there against his efforts to retreat? He did not know that the _abasa_ held such powers and he would not have known how to exert them himself if he had been aware of them.

He gave up and turned back, letting the power flow into the absorptive cells of the _dor-abasa_, but it could not be for long, for the organ would disrupt under such stress.

Then, as if in keeping with his promise to prolong the agony, the attack ceased, and Demarzule allowed him to rest.

"You were brash, were you not?" he taunted. "How could you dare come against the mightiest power of the Universe, the greatest mind ever created, and attack with your puny powers? You blaspheme the Great One by your presumption!"

"Once, long ago," said Underwood, "the Sirenian forces were defeated by the Dragbora. Again it is the Dragbora you face, Demarzule. Remember that, and defend yourself!"

* * * * *

Underwood was startled. Incredibly, it seemed that he had not spoken those words, but rather that the dead Jandro was with him, silently backing him, teaching, advising--.

He lashed out, but not at Demarzule. He struck swiftly at the nearest Earthman. Almost instantly, the unfortunate shuddered and fell to the floor, dead. In quick succession Underwood struck at the nerve cells of the next five and they died without sound.

In snarling fury and retaliation, Demarzule retaliated. Underwood absorbed the blow--and incredibly hurled it back.

It was as if he had suddenly become aware of techniques that he had never dreamed of. He had not known it was possible to absorb the nerve-destroying force with his own _dor-abasa_ and whip it back upon the attacker, like a ball caught and thrown.

It hardly seemed as if he were acting through his own volition, yet he acted. He felt the surprise of Demarzule, and in that moment he knew the secret. The Earthmen apparently possessed only a single primitive organ, hardly identifiable as one of the _abasa_, for they had the capacity for defense, but not for attack. Four more of them toppled, and then Underwood was forced to face the attack of Demarzule again.

Something like terror had entered the mind of the alien now. Underwood sensed the thoughts of possible defeat that flooded Demarzule's mind.

* * * * *

"Remember that day on _Vorga_?" Underwood asked. "Remember how the Dragboran powers pierced the great force shell you flung about the planet? Remember how your men fell one by one, and their weapons went cold and the force shell dropped for lack of control? Remember, Demarzule, it was the Dragbora you fought that day, and it is the Dragbora you fight now. I have not come to challenge as a puny Earthman. I come as a Dragboran--to complete the unfinished task of my ancestors!"

The Sirenian was silent and new confidence filled Underwood. He felt that he was not fighting alone, that all of the ancient Dragboran civilization was behind him, battling its age-old enemies to extinction. He felt as if Jandro himself were there.

The energy he absorbed from Demarzule he turned upon the cohorts, who sat as if frozen with fear as they watched their fellows slump and fall to the floor in soundless death.

In near-madness, Demarzule increased his attacks. He adopted a shifting, feinting attack that shocked Underwood's _abasa_ with each surging wave of force. But Underwood learned how to control those surges, to pass them on to his own attacks, which still were directed upon the Earthmen within the chamber.

Within moments of each other, the last two on either side of Demarzule fell. The Sirenian seemed not to have noticed, for all his energies and concentration now were directed at Underwood.

Underwood was tiring swiftly. The energies draining out of him seemed as if they were sapping every cell of his being, and back on board the _Lavoisier_, every spasm of torture was reflected involuntarily on his physical face. Those who watched suffered for him.

Illia sat in a corner of the room opposite him and her fists pressed white spots into her cheeks. Dreyer's nervous reaction was expressed in the incessant puffs and chewing on his normally steady cigar. The others merely watched with taut faces and teeth sinking into their lips.

In the chamber of the great museum palace, the tempo of the battle was slowly building up. Though he felt exhausted almost to the point of defeat, Underwood strained for more energy and found that it was at his command. His _dor-abasa_ fed upon the attacking force of Demarzule and returned it with added energy potential.

In each of them, the same process was going on, and the outcome would be determined by the final resultant flow of destroying power.

He could retreat now, Underwood realized. He doubted that Demarzule could exert a holding force upon him, but nothing would be gained by abandoning the battle now. He drove on with increasing surges.

Suddenly there was a faltering and Underwood exulted within himself. Demarzule's force wavered for the barest fraction of an instant, and it was not a feint.

"You are old and weak," said Underwood. "Half a million years ago, civilization rejected you. _We reject you!_"

He smashed on almost without hindrance now. Demarzule's great form writhed in pain upon the throne--and fought with one desperate surge of energy.

Underwood caught and hurled it back mercilessly. He felt his way into the innermost recesses of the Sirenian mind, groped along the nerve ways of the Great One. And as he went, he burned and destroyed the vital synapses.

Demarzule was dying--slowly, because of his resistance--and in endless pain because there was no other way. He screamed aloud in ultimate agony, and then the giant figure of Demarzule, the Sirenian--the Great One--crashed to the floor.

* * * * *

The relief that came to Underwood was near agony. The wild forces of the Dragbora tore relentlessly from him and filled the room with their lethal energy before they died.

Then, in greater calm, he regarded what he had done. It was finished, almost unbelievably finished.

Yet there were a few things to do. He left the building and sought out the guards and the caretakers and whispered into their minds, "Demarzule is dead! The Great One has died and you are men once more."

He sought out the controls of the force shell and caused the operator to drop the shield. Then he whispered, "The Great One is dead," and like the wind, his voice encompassed the vast thousands who had gathered.

The message sank unspoken into their minds and each man looked at his neighbor as if to ask how it had come. They pressed forward, a battling, maddened mob who had for an hour lived in a childish, primitive world where men were not required to think but only to obey. They pushed forward and flowed into the building, battering, clawing one another. But they managed to view the body of the fallen Sirenian, so that the message was confirmed and spread, soon to circle the Earth.

* * * * *

Underwood studied the writhing, bewildered mass. Could Dreyer possibly be right? Would it ever end--men's unthinking grasping for leadership, their mindless search for kings and gods, while within them their own powers withered? Always it had been the same; leaders arose holding before men the illusion of vast, glorious promises while they carefully led them into hells of lost dreams and broken promises.

Yes, it would be different, Underwood told himself. The Dragbora had proved that it could be different. Their origin could have been no less lowly than man's. They must have trodden the same tortuous stairway to dreams that man was now on, and they had learned how to live with one another.

Man was already nearer that goal--far nearer now that Demarzule was dead. Underwood formed a silent prayer that fate would be merciful to man and not send another like Demarzule.

And he allowed himself a moment's pride, an instant of pleasure in the thought that he had been able to take part in the crisis.

With a final pity for the scene below, he fled back into space. What he saw there turned him sick with fear. The great fleet was broken and burned with atomic fires. Only two of the battleships remained to challenge the attackers. But they were no longer challenging. They signalled abject surrender and were fallen upon by ravenous interceptors.

The _Lavoisier_ herself was darkened and drifting, her force shell feeble and waning, while the flaming disruptors of a trio of dreadnaughts concentrated upon her.

Underwood hurled himself toward the nearest of the enemy ships. In its depths he sought out the gunners and cut off life in them before they were aware of his bodiless presence. Swiftly he turned their beams upon each other and watched them wallow and disappear in sudden flame.

Others rushed forward now. Still more than a score of them to defeat the single crippled laboratory ship, more than he could hope to conquer in time.

* * * * *

But they did not fire. Their shields remained intact; then slowly their courses changed and they drifted away. Without comprehension, Underwood peered into those hulls and knew the answer.

The news had come to them of Demarzule's death. Like men in pursuit of a mirage, they could not endure the reality that came with the vanishing of their dream. Their defeat was utter and complete. Throughout the Earth Demarzule's defeat was the defeat of all men who had not yet become strong enough to walk in the sun of their own decisions, but clung to the shadow of illusory leadership.

Underwood swept back toward the darkened _Lavoisier_. He moved like a ghost through its bleak halls and vacant corridors. Down in the generator rooms, he found the cause of the disaster in the blasted remains of overburdened force shell generators. Four of them must have given way at once, ripping the ship throughout its length with concussion and lethal waves.

The control room was dark, like the rest of the ship, and the forms of his companions were strewn upon the floor. But there was life yet and he dared to hope as he spoke to their minds, insistent, commanding, forcing life and consciousness back into their nerve cells. He seemed to become aware of unknown powers of resurrection that dwelt within his own being.

His mission was complete. He returned to his own physical form and abandoned the _abasic_ senses. He sat there in the huge chair in the control room, while those about him revived and life gradually returned to the dying ship. Of the enemy fleet there was no more, for it was descending to an Earth shorn of the hope of Galaxy-wide conquest.

They did not know yet where they would go or where they could find refuge, but when the wreckage was cleared and the ship lived again, Underwood and Illia stood alone in a darkened observation pit, watching the stars slip across the massive arc of the screens.

As Underwood watched, he thought he sensed something of the drive that might have whipped Demarzule's brain, the goad that made vast superior powers intolerable in the possession of even a beneficent man, for he would no longer remain beneficent.

By the might that was in him he had vanquished the Great One! He could stand in the place of the Great One if he chose! He did not know if his powers were becoming greater than those of Jandro, like a strengthened plant in new soil, but surely they were growing. The secrets of the Universe seemed to be appearing before him, one by one.

A mere glance at a slab of inert matter, and his senses could delve into the composition of its atoms and sort out and predict its properties and reactions. One look into the far spaces beyond the Solar System and he could sense himself soaring in eternity. Yes, he was growing in power and perception, and where it might lead, he dared not look.

But there were other things to be had, other, simpler ambitions in which common men had found fulfillment throughout the ages.

Illia was warm against him, soft in his arms.

"I want you to operate again, as quickly as possible," he said.

* * * * *

She looked up at him with a start. "What do you mean?"

"You must take out the _abasic_ organs. They've served their purpose. I don't want to live with them. I could become another Demarzule with the power I have."

Her eyes were faintly blue in the light that came from the panel and they were intent upon him. In them he read something that made him afraid.

"There is always a need for men with greater powers and greater knowledge than the average man," she said. "The race has need of its mutants. They are dealt so sparingly to us that we cannot afford not to utilize them."

"_Mutants?_"

"You are a true mutant, whether artificial or not, possessing organs and abilities that are unique. The race needs them. You cannot ask me to destroy them."

He had never thought of himself as a mutant, yet she was right for all practical purposes. His powers and perceptions would perhaps not have been produced naturally in any man of his race for thousands of years to come. Perhaps he _could_ use them to assist man's slow rise. A new wealth of science, a new strength of leadership and guidance if necessary--.

"I could become the world's greatest criminal," he said. "There's no secret, no property that's safe from my grasp. I have only to reach out for possessions, for power."

"You worry too much about that," she said lightly. "You could no more become a villain than I could."

"Why are you so sure of that?"

"Don't you remember the properties of the _seaa-abasa_? But then you didn't hear the last words that Jandro ever spoke, did you? He said, 'I retire to the _seaa-abasa_.' Do you know what that means?"

* * * * *

Suddenly, Underwood felt cold. A score of whisperings came thundering into his mind. The moment when he had first awakened from the operation, when it seemed as if death would have him and only the power of a demanding will had helped him cling to life. The voice that seemed to penetrate and call him back. The voice of Jandro. And then the final conflict in the chambers of Demarzule.

New skills and new strength had suddenly come to him as if out of nowhere. He had been conceited to call it his increased experience and ability. Yet could it have come from outside himself? He sought frantically and urgently within his own nerve channels, in the cells of his own being, and in the pathways of the alien organs that lent him those unearthly senses. There seemed nothing but an echo, as if within a great empty hall. There was no answer, yet it seemed as if down those channels of perception there was the dim shadow of a wary prey who could never be caught, who could never be found in those endless pathways, but who would never be far away.

Underwood knew then that if it was Jandro, he would never make himself known for reasons of his own, perhaps. But there was a sudden peace as if he had found some secret purification, as if he had been taken to a high place and looked about the world and had been able to turn his back upon it. Whether he would ever find Jandro or not, he was sure that the guardian was there.

Illia was saying, "I can't operate, Del. Even if you hate me for the rest of our lives, I won't do it. And there is no one else in the world who would know how. You would be killed if you let anyone else attempt to cut those nerves. Tell me that you believe I'm right."

"I do," he said in cheerful resignation. "But don't forget it's half your funeral as well. It means that you're going to have to spend the rest of your life with a mutant."

She turned her face up to his. "I can think of worse fates."

END