CHAPTER VIII

Morning on Womar.

The hot winds were flames whipping at Jarl's face, and the driven sand slashed and burned like pelting needles. Slowly, the night died and, off to his right, the sun rose--fiery, incandescent. Venus, to his left, stretched in a great, shining arc as far as the eye could see. Dust swirled about him in smothering clouds. He wallowed through a sea of powdery, ankle-deep grit where rocks shoved up in hidden reefs to trap him. Hollows loomed in his bloodshot eyes like chasms, and hillocks grew to mountains up which he toiled on hands and knees, choking and gasping. His cheeks were rasped raw now, his lips all parched and cracking.

Still he lurched onward--lost and disoriented, without destination.

But not without goal.

A goal--? He laughed aloud--the muddled, drunken laughter of a heat-twisted brain. Yes, he had a goal; but it was the goal of utter madness.

For somewhere in this blazing waste, Womar's primitives lay waiting. He knew; he'd seen them charge before. How they sensed an alien's coming was a secret no stranger had ever fathomed. But sense it they did; so they'd hide and wait, till at last the sun and dust and slashing wind had done their work and the invader fell and could not rise.

Then, and then only, they would come, from whatever dark, hidden maze they came from. Their blood-thirsting screams would rise above the howling wind, and their hideous metal masks would flash like mirrors of madness in the white flame of the sunlight.

And after that ... Jarl choked on his parched, swelling tongue. After that, there would come other things ... things no alien being had survived, rites so awful as to make this blazing wilderness seem a cool Elysium.

What was left, they'd spread out in neat display as their own black warning to other straying strangers.

That was his goal: that the primitives should seize him.

Yet now, as the moment neared when he would fall to rise no more, he knew of a sudden how mad it was. Not even Ceresta and the raider fleet were worth it; not even freedom. Nothing could be worth it.

But now, there was no turning back. He'd come too far; he'd pressed his luck one time too many.

Swaying and staggering, he came to another, deeper hollow, where bare rock showed through the dust and sand along the slopes in serrate ledges. At the bottom, the drifting grit lay in smooth-swept whorls like a hill-bounded cove where ripples had somehow been trapped in motion, frozen into the surface of the water.

He laughed once, wildly, and lurched ahead; then slipped and pitched forward, tumbling headlong. Rocks gashed at him as he fell--tearing, clutching, as if even they shared the primitives' hatred for all aliens.

Stunned, choked, half blinded, he came to rest at last at the edge of the pool of rippled sand. Here, away from the sweep of the wind, the heat bore down like a smothering blanket. Jarl's brain reeled. He could draw no strength from the air that scorched his lungs. He knew instinctively that no being of his race could long survive the drain and pressure.

Frantically, he dragged himself up and wallowed forward, out onto the sand.

Even as his feet sank into the sifting dust, he knew he should have gone the other way, back up the slope. But by then it was too late. Deeper he sank, and deeper, till the loose sand was thigh-high about his legs.

* * * * *

Desperately, he threw himself flat, trying to spread the weight of his body. But the grit gave way beneath him, sliding and swirling, hungrily sucking him deeper. Dust clogged his nostrils. When he tried to open his mouth to suck air, sand flooded in.

He floundered wildly, and the thought flashed through his mind, _Do I die here--here, in this whirlpool of shifting grit, swallowed up, buried alive, before I even find the primitives...?_

He struggled again to rise, and could not. The choking dust swirled higher. His senses dimmed. The blazing sun began to darken.

And then they came.

They came with a rush, across the crest, their metal masks blurred to blinding flashes. Out of the clefts of the rocks they came, and up from the sand-pool's edges, howling like the screamings in a nightmare, the wailings of banshees.

Their bodies were brown as the sun-blistered rocks, their shoulder-plumes scarlet as heart-blood. Their girdles were scarlet, too, and the plumed bands that circled wrists and ankles. Monstrous footgear, broad as their lean, hard bodies, sprayed sand as they charged. Light flared in iridescent splendor from strange, outré weapons.

Desperately, Jarl tried again to rise. But again, the eddying grit gave way beneath him.

Then they were upon him--seizing him, dragging him up and out of the powder-dry morass that held him. The great webbed shoes they wore did not sink in, but, rather, skimmed the surface.

Vainly, Jarl struck out and sought to struggle. But he was as a child in the grip of giants. The primitives' hands were like shackling bands of steel upon him.

He let himself go limp. After all, was this not the very thing he'd come for?

Unless they killed him here and now....

But they carried him back bodily to the sand-pool's edge, to a place where the serrate rocks rose in lowering, brooding ledges. A crevice yawned. Swiftly, they shoved him between the saw-toothed boulders, down into it.

Now other hands reached up from the depths of an inner cavern to receive him. He found himself lifted into the black emptiness of a narrow tunnel.

Then he was on his own feet once more. But the hands still gripped his arms, pushing him along as he stumbled through the ebon passage. Dimly, he became aware of a strange odor in his nostrils--a sweet yet musty scent he'd never smelled before.

* * * * *

The passage led on, ever downward. Steadily it grew cooler. Jarl began to lose the sense of draining pressure. His captors jabbered in the darkness. But their speech was like no tongue he'd ever heard before, all consonants and gutturals.

It seemed they hurried on for miles. Then, at last, a dim light showed ahead.

The party halted. Someone clamped a heavy metal mask upon Jarl's head--a mask with neither eye- nor ear-holes. It shut him off in a throbbing private night, through which the guttural voices drifted only as dim whispers.

Once more, the primitives shoved Jarl ahead, and as they moved forward, he had a sudden feeling that they had left the tunnel and come out into a larger room.

Then they were lifting him again; laying him down flat on some smooth surface; holding him there, rigid.

He clenched his teeth, bracing himself for the torture that he knew would sooner or later be his lot.

But no pain came. Instead, of a sudden, the surface on which he lay was vibrating, moving. Air whipped at him. With a shock, he realized that he and the others were hurtling through Womar's heart at jarring speed on some strange transport unit.

It made his spine crawl, just a little. How primitive were these primitives? Had all the worlds been wrong about them? What dark secrets did they hold hidden, here in these black caves that honeycombed the rock beneath this satellite's blazing deserts?

And what of the robots? Where were they hidden?

Or did they exist at all--?

But he had no time to ponder, for as suddenly as the motion had begun, it ended. The rush of air slowed, then halted. Once more, the primitives' hands were lifting him, dragging him forward.

But this time the passageway through which they moved led upward.

The heat rose as they climbed, till Jarl was sweating and choking inside the helmet. Then the slope leveled off again, and he sensed that they had come out into another, larger room. New voices joined the dim whisperings of his escort, till their volume swelled to a tremendous, throbbing chorus. Bodies buffeted against Jarl, milling about him. Hands clawed at him--clubbing, tugging, scratching. He could feel the crowd's hot hate crushing in upon him. The musty, cloying, sweetish odor he'd smelled before grew even stronger till he was sick and dizzy, ready to vomit.

His captors pressed on, not hesitating. Roughly, they led Jarl stumbling up a flight of steps.

At the top, there was a brief halt. Then the faint squeal of massive hinges.

A blast of heat struck Jarl a hammer blow. He reeled under its impact.

From behind, someone gave him a savage shove. He lurched forward.

A new burst of sound smashed at him, even through the metal helmet--a wild shout, torn from a thousand throats, fierce and welling in its hatred. The heat and smell were great sledges, pounding at him.

* * * * *

In spite of all of his control, Jarl felt a sudden rush of panic. Stumbling, staggering, he came upright--fists clenched, braced to meet the fury of those about him even in his helplessness, his blindness.

But again hands seized him before he could strike a blow. Someone fumbled at the catches of the shrouding helmet.

The metal mask came away. Sound, light, heat, stench, smashed in on Jarl.

He jerked back and threw his hands up across his eyes, trying to shut out the blinding blaze of Womar's sun.

But other hands jerked down his own. Blinking, half blinded, stiff with shock, he stared out incredulously upon a sight such as he had never seen before.

For he stood in the prow of a great space-ship--a ship vast beyond the belief of mortal man.

It was old, this ship--old with an age that staggered Jarl Corvett's mind. Eons were in the sagging plates and splitting arches. The crystals that glinted in the dull, warped metal spoke of untold ages here on Womar. The hull was smashed and shattered, too, and the blazing sun poured in through a thousand great jagged holes and rifts. One whole end of the craft was crumpled, buckled, where it had plowed deep into the rocks and sand as it crashed here.

And it was alien. A thousand differences stood out in line and structure and material. The size alone would have been enough to mark it as having come from outside this solar system. Yet without bulkheads, without bracing, the mass of it loomed as one incredibly vast and far-spreading room--an engineering feat to stagger man's imagination.

And here, too, were the primitives, heirs to Womar's scorched, windswept deserts. A thousand strong--ten thousand--they packed the huge hold in a screaming, seething mass, metal masks hideously aglint in the streaming sunlight.

But for Jarl Corvett, ship and primitives alike were mere incidentals. Swaying, staring, he could find eyes only for one thing: the robots.

The robots--! He rocked--incredulous, unbelieving.

But here they were--metal monsters that towered rank on rank in this great hold, like monstrous originals of the figures in _Ktar_ Wassreck's workshop. Like a forest they rose ... a forest of utter, malign menace.

Their feet alone stood higher than a tall man's head; and the glinting orientation-slots of the great head-units towered so far above the crowd as to have been beacon lights on distant mountains.

Chill, unmoving, they stood here in the hull of this shattered ship as they had stood for ages. But where ship and fittings were decaying, these mighty warriors still shone resplendent, fabricated of some different, finer metal. Strength gleamed in every line of their orange-gold figures. The screaming primitives were only ants that crawled and danced and raged upon them.

* * * * *

Staring at them, Jarl Corvett could only choke and tremble. There was room for but one thought within his reeling brain: _Wassreck was right--! He was right! He was right...!_

It made this whole mad gamble worth the while. Even if he died here, all his efforts unavailing, it would still be worth it.

And what could not an army of these giant automatons accomplish? What chance would even the mighty Federation stand against them?

It was destiny. More surely even than he knew his name, Jarl knew that destiny had brought him here ... the strange, dark destiny of courage and fighting men that ever seemed to ride on the side of the outlaw worlds, and freedom.

But now that he was here, destiny would need a strong right arm to implement it.

His arm.

He swung round, then, with his old, bold coat of arrogance upon him--surveying his captors, searching for some faintest hint of hidden weakness.

But the primitives did not waver. Their eyes stayed cold, leering out at him from their metal masks, grim as the day of judgment.

Those masks.... With a sudden rush of recognition, it came to Jarl that their stylized patterns were modeled after the head-units of the towering robots.

Such a little thing, that recognition. Yet again, Jarl felt his tension lift a fraction. He smiled a thin, wry smile and waited.

But now, to one side of the stage-like platform on which he and his escort party stood, there was a sudden stir of motion. A new door opened in what had been a bulkhead barring the way to another part of the ancient, fallen ship.

A cry went up from the seething multitude. The mass of primitives surged forward, close against the platform.

Slowly, creaking and groaning, a great stone slab was wheeled forth. Its sides were deep-graven with carved figures ... strange, hideous figures that writhed in ecstasy and anguish. Stains smudged its upper surface. Heavy metal clamps, long age-corroded, were set into each corner.

With a sickening jolt, it came to Jarl that it was an altar.

Straining and grunting, a crew of primitives tugged it into position in the platform's center.

Jarl's captors gripped his arms.

The panting group by the altar straightened and hurried back through the door in the bulkhead. Rattling sounds came forth. A moment later, the primitives reappeared, rolling out a monstrous, shining metal tub on wheels, big as one of the kettledrums of the spider men of Rhea. Its sides were graven with the same contorted figures as the altar.

The din of the crowd swelled louder. Masked primitives leaped and screamed in impassioned frenzy.

Tight-jawed, Jarl waited.

The wheeled tub was set in place beside the altar. It moved easily and smoothly. Then, again, the altar-crew retreated through the bulkhead.

This time, when they returned, they bore a living, struggling creature.

* * * * *

Man-sized, the thing was like no animal Jarl had ever seen before, with brown, bead-like skin and tiny brain-case. Off-hand, he judged it to belong to some desert species native to this grit-drifted hell-hole, Womar.

The primitives carried it to the altar; clamped its spradled body face up atop the stone with the ancient shackles. The din of the crowd was deafening.

Somewhere on high, a great gong sounded. The shouts and screaming died away.

In the same instant, a new door opened in the bulkhead. Another primitive stepped forth; paused, posing.

This creature's garb was different from the others! His metal mask was ebon. So were his plumes, his girdle. A great scarlet jewel was set in the forehead of the dead-black helmet. His hands were gloved in sleek jet gauntlets.

Now, while Jarl watched, the posing primitive's arms came up, till the gloved hands were high above his head, displayed, as if they were a symbol.

The throng below stood frozen, rigid.

The black-masked primitive strode forward, to a spot between the altar and the shining metal tub. Swiftly, he lifted the lid that capped the drum-like vat.

Two of the altar-crew rushed forward and held it open for him. Another held out a strange implement that, to Jarl, looked like some crude sort of grease-gun.

The black-masked figure dipped the nozzle of the thing into the tub and worked a plunger, then turned to the struggling life-form shackled to the altar. Deftly, he stabbed the snout of the tool into a spot below the creature's breast-bone.

The captive tried to jerk away, to no avail. With smooth precision, the primitive in black pressed home the plunger.

A gusty sigh ran through the throng about the platform. It came to Jarl that he was cold as ice despite the heat and blazing sun. The musty, sweetish smell he'd caught before swirled about him, even stronger.

The black-masked figure straightened. With quick, sure movements, he twisted at a fitting, then lifted away the tool. The nozzle he left sticking in the creature on the altar. It thrust up from the hollow below the breast-bone like the hilt of a deep-plunged dagger.

The two primitives by the wheeled tub let the lid fall back. Turning, one darted to the bulkhead door. When he came out, he bore a flaring torch.

New silence fell upon the crowd, so complete that the altar-crewman's footsteps rang and echoed in the stillness.

He passed the torch to his black-masked fellow.

Black-Mask swung the flaming brand on high and, turning, faced Jarl Corvett. His voice thundered, harsh and guttural.

Jarl stood rock-rigid. The words he could not understand. But the threat, the menace--they needed no translator.

* * * * *

Pivoting, the primitive stepped back from the altar; thrust out the torch till its flame touched the tip of the nozzle protruding out of the shackled prisoner's chest.

Of a sudden Jarl's whole body was drenched with icy sweat. He could not move; he could not breathe. The tales of horror he'd heard so many times swirled through his brain.

For an instant, nothing happened.

Then, all at once, there was a puff of sound, a flash of flame above the captive. A great black jet of smoke shot high into the air, out of the nozzle.

The life-form on the altar gave one shrill cry that was agony, incarnate. Its body jerked and twisted, lashing against the shackles in a frenzy.

The primitives went mad. The huge room rocked with their howls and screamings.

But Jarl Corvett hardly heard them.

He'd seen cruel death before, on a dozen far-flung planets.

But this....

For while he watched, thin lines of fire were racing along the doomed sacrifice's writhing body. In a spreading network, the flesh itself was bursting open, flames leaping up in a thousand places.

In a searing flash, the truth came to Jarl: _The creature's blood was burning!_

He sagged in his escort's grip, and retched--shock-stunned, sick with horror.

But the primitives who flanked him jerked him upright. An open hand stung his face with brutal slaps.

The spell that gripped Jarl broke. Numb, tight-jawed, he forced himself to look again upon the altar.

The shackled creature lay there still, a charred, contorted horror.

While Jarl watched, the monster in the ebon mask stepped back and passed the torch to the altar-crewman who had brought it. Other primitives unclamped the gyves and dragged the corpse away.

Again Black-Mask brought up his hands. Again the crowd's tumultuous hubbub faded.

Black-Mask's hands came down. He swung about till he faced Jarl. Imperiously, he gestured.

Jarl's captors dragged him forward. The torch-bearer stepped quickly back, out of their path.

Fear was in Jarl Corvett, then--a fear that verged on shrieking terror. His body seemed like a thing apart--a statue carved from living ice, with no relation to his being.

But hate came with the terror, a flaming hate that grew at every step, till its white-hot fire ate up the fear and burned away his sickness and his trembling. Of a sudden he was himself again. He sucked in air. Without volition, his muscles stiffened against the digging fingers of his savage escort.

They jerked him up short before the altar. The black-masked figure shook a jet-gloved fist and shouted guttural imprecations.

* * * * *

The last shreds of Jarl's terror vanished, washed away in the flood of his tormentor's fury. Out of nowhere, a thing that Wassreck once had said came flashing to him: _Hate is the face of fear, not courage._

That hate which showed in the primitive's every line and gesture--it, too, was born of terror ... a welling fear of all and any beings who came down from the skies to Womar.

Jarl laughed aloud, it was so funny--that he and this other should face each other so, in deadly menace, when within they were only quivering twins of terror.

And as he laughed, his own hate died the same swift death to which his fear had fallen. A grim, bleak poise replaced them both. For if the primitives, in their hearts, felt the self-same fear that he had, there was still a chance for recklessness to blaze a path through this wilderness of desperation.

His laugh cut short the black-masked figure's shouting. The primitive stared at him, as if unbelieving.

Cold-eyed, cold-nerved, Jarl drew himself to his full height. Rigid, he probed for some--for any--last wild gambit.

But Black-Mask, too, was straightening. He cried out fiercely to his helpers.

They shoved Jarl forward.

As they did so, the primitive beside the huge, wheeled tank lifted up the lid.

Jarl glanced down into it.

The vat was full. The awful broth almost lapped the brim. From it, in sickening waves, rose the sweetish, cloying fumes Jarl had come to associate with the primitives.

Black-Mask leaned forward. Shouting again, he lashed out. His jet-gloved fist raked at Jarl's face.

Instinctively, Jarl rocked back. New tides of black despair washed through him. What could he do, locked in his captor's grasp, hemmed between tank and torch-bearer, black-masked fiend and blood-drenched altar?

Tank--and torch-bearer--!

That link ... in an instant it grew to a searing, surging flame, hotter even than these creatures' own hell-fire brew.

Spasmodically, Jarl twisted round.

The primitive with the blazing brand still stood statue-like at the corner of the great stone slab.

Black-Mask snarled another order. His henchmen jerked Jarl back--lifting him, swinging him upward, till he hung suspended above the altar.

By instinct, Jarl wrenched against them; felt them, too, stiffen in the face of his resistance.

But if he could not fight them, perhaps there was another way....

Before they could lower him to the slab, he let himself go limp, loose-limbed and unresisting as any corpse.

It broke their balance. He hit the stone with a sodden thud ... lay there unmoving, head lolled back.

For the fraction of a second their grip relaxed.

* * * * *

It was Jarl's moment.... Savagely, then, he lashed out with all his might, in a violent spasm of arms and legs and torso. His feet smashed the metal mask into one primitive's face. His elbow sank fist-deep in another's midriff.

The restraining hands fell from him.

Desperately, he threw himself across the altar, toward the torch-bearer. Before the creature could recoil, Jarl was upon him--smashing him down with fists and knees and shoulders; snatching the flaming brand out of his hands.

Falling over each other in their haste, the others lunged to seize Jarl.

But instead of fleeing, he leaped back onto the altar. There was a prayer in his heart--his heart in his mouth. With a wild curse, he hurled the torch straight for the vat of hell-broth.

It struck the open lid, then plunged on down into the liquid.

But even as it fell, the fumes were flaring. Flame and smoke leaped up in a roaring column. A cloudburst of liquid fire sprayed out in all directions.

The cries of the primitives exploded into one great scream of pain and terror. As Jarl threw himself flat, with the altar-stone between him and the tank, he glimpsed the reeling, flame-cased figure of his jet-masked tormentor--stumbling, falling.

Then the black smoke billowed out in nauseous, all-obscuring murk that swallowed even the thundering holocaust that still roared around what had been the tank of liquid.

Jarl rolled from the wheeled platform on which the altar rested. Bent double, he raced through the choking haze for the bulkhead. In seconds, he was fumbling his way along it to the nearest doorway ... slipping through and ramming the heavy bolt home behind him.

Ahead, a shaft and spiral stairway loomed. Panting, he sprinted upward, past level after level.

The stairway ended against another metal door.

The outlined figure of one of the mighty warrior robots was blazoned on it.

Jarl's heart pounded harder.

Shoving open the hatch, he half-fell inside and locked it, too, behind him.

He found himself now in a control room. Panels thick with dust lined three of its walls. The fourth was a single massive, transparent, plastic plate through which occupants could look out across the great hold where the robots were massed ... where brief moments before Jarl Corvett had stood face to face with hideous death.

Stumbling to it, Jarl stared down upon the smoke-smirched scene below. Flames still were leaping about the platform. Here and there, he could catch dim glimpses of primitives' hurrying figures as they ran among the metal monsters.

* * * * *

Overhead, the dense black smoke almost hid the roof. Eddying, slowly rising, it swirled out through the cracks and rifts in the ancient hull, up into the blazing, sunlit heat of Womar's desert sky.

Of a sudden Jarl was weak to the point of sickness. Numbly, he turned and surveyed the rest of the control room with a closer scrutiny.

Bank after bank of dials and indicators marked with strange symbols leered down at him like a host of huge blank eyes. Against the far wall, units with focussing plates like the viziscreens of his own solar system were ranged in a precise row.

And everywhere--on every panel, every instrument--were stamped neat, stylized images of the warrior robots.

The numbness in Jarl grew. He knew instinctively, without question, that this was the place sought by _Ktar_ Wassreck--the brain, the nerve center, for the shining metal monsters that were to have saved the warrior worlds.

But now that he was here, what could he do? His own ignorance was a tight-drawn, all-concealing blindfold.

With time enough, and skill and patience, he might perhaps have worked his way through to an understanding of how the robots were controlled. But time was the one thing he did not have. Second by second, the precious hours were ticking by. As far as he was concerned--lacking knowledge, training, understanding--he might as well have been on Venus.

And so the warrior worlds would die. The Federation fleet would sweep down on Ceresta.

Already, the three days given by _rey_ Gundre were running out....

Jarl shook in the grip of helpless, frustrating fury. He had come so far; yet now that he was here, he could do nothing.

He cursed aloud; and as he did so, a new sound drifted to him.

A familiar sound ... the sound of a space-ship's blasting rockets.

He whirled; leaped back to the broad expanse of transparent plastic panel.

He reached it just in time to see a great section in the top of the hull above the hold suddenly buckle and crash down. Sunlight streamed through smoke and dust.

The roar of the blasting rockets echoed louder. A moment later, another huge chunk of hull tore loose and fell. Then another, and another, till the hole showed like a spreading canopy of sky above the robots.

Below, the last of the primitives were fleeing. Breathing hard, pressed tight to the observation panel, Jarl watched and waited.

The rocket-roar took on the peculiar whistling sound that went with ramping. Before Jarl's eyes, a ship dropped down stern-first into the hold and rocked to a landing amid the debris and towering robots.

Now the ship, as well as the sound, was suddenly familiar.

Too familiar.

It was the flagship of High Commissioner _rey_ Gundre's mighty Federation fleet!