Part 2

A tongue of green fire stabbed upwards out of the black urn. For one long instant it hung there, quivering and pulsing. It broke and faded into green mist that the breezes blew out across the chamber.

"That was the manifestation of Aava. Now we will see him as he really is."

They swept through the air with the speed of light. Matter that was wall and stone and metal blurred into a liquescent dimness that darkened the further they went. From grey to black to grim jet went the colours. And still they went on. Now the colour grew light tan, like sand.

"We are in the bowels of the Mountains of Distortion. The blackness is rock hidden forever from a glimpse of sunlight. We are nearly there. Go cautiously! This buried desert is right above him."

It was a cave. From the high rock ceiling stalactites drooped like the fringes of a weeping willow eternally etched in stone. Amid a riotous profusion of clubshaped stalagmites thrusting up from the rough cave floor, lay a circle of red space.

And in the red space stood Aava.

Green light, flickering and flaring, now subdued, now pouring forth in a verdant shower of pride and strength, flooded the cave. Thor could feel its sentience through every beat and pulse of it. Like the tongue of some mighty star trapped in matter, it licked and thrust and strove to speak its greatness.

The green fire lowered, hung brooding.

"I smell men."

"Careful," thought the Discoverer.

Thor moved no muscle, took no breath in his spirit form. Yet the machinations of his mind slipped a cog. He thought, and the green flames knew.

A sword of flame lunged outward, at him. He felt its heat, the wild life of it, the pride and all the cruelty.

He tried to cry out. Then his mind went. The last he knew was the voice of the Discoverer.

"Come!"

* * * * *

Thor gasped lungfuls of sweet, cool air, staring up at the sun in the blue sky. Yellow hair splashed on his face and chest as Karola wept and whimpered. Wonderingly, Thor put a big hand to his face. It was beaded with damp sweat.

The Discoverer beamed a thought at him.

"That was a near thing, man of Earth. Had I not kept constant control of your mind, Aava would have had you."

"What--what is he? That green fire is alive. I could feel it. I knew its emotions."

"Aava is alive. He has been alive for eons piled upon eons. His beginning I know not. Whether he will have an end--I also know not."

Thor shuddered.

The Discoverer went on, "Destroy Aava, and destroy his universe, and you may return to your own. But how can you destroy Aava when even I, the Discoverer, must admit failure?"

Thor shook his head. Destroy that flame? It was impossible.

When he looked up, the Discoverer was oozing a path into the distance and Karola was hugging herself to him. Thor put an arm around her, smiling grimly into her frightened eyes.

"We're in it, baby. All the way. Lost in some mad corner of space that nobody can get in or out of. Trapped. And me with an education to catch up on. Although," he grinned, looking at her thick yellow hair and large red mouth, "I'm not feeling any too scholarly at the moment. Yeah, I guess it could be worse. I guess it could."

Slag came toward them with three rabbits dangling from his right hand. He knelt and began to make a fire. Thor and Karola watched him until the roasting flesh scents reached their nostrils.

Thor laughed, "Hell. I'm just hungry. After a good meal, I'll feel better about it all."

But that meal was never finished.

The androids came in the middle of the second rabbit. One moment there was only the stars and the rolling meadowland, and the red flames making shadows on the grass and on their arms and legs. The next they were falling out of thin air, all over them, fists hitting at Slag and Thor, hands reaching out for, and lifting, a screaming, clawing Karola.

"Thor! Thor!" she cried.

Thor heaved up from under three androids. His muscles rended with the strain, but he threw them from him. His fists lashed out and thudded into rib and jaw. He clove a path through living men, dropping them with chops and uppercuts.

Karola stood writhing in the grasp of three giants. Their hands were wrapped about her wrists, and their free hands fumbled at the jewels that hung about their necks.

Thor flung an android from him; whirled to his left, avoiding a sword thrust, hitting down with the edge of his hand against the android's neck even as he turned. His knees slid under another's knife and splintered his ribs. He heard Slag's club crunching home to his left, but all he could see was Karola with the firelight playing across legs and midriff.

"Thor! Thor! It's dark, Thor! I'm frightened!"

Her scream sent cold horror into his spine. Her white feet were almost in the fire. How could it be dark to her? Unless these fiends who came and went were blinding her--

Thor roared.

He lowered his head and charged, as some Viking ancestor might have charged a longboat's deck. His fists hammered and clubbed. He blasted a path through cursing, sobbing men.

Karola was in front of him.

He reached out for her.

Karola disappeared.

Thor felt his hands sink through empty space where Karola should have been; where she was standing, one instant before. On spraddled legs he stood, naked chest gulping in cool air, staring at the darkness.

"Karola!" he cried.

The androids were all fading. Thor dimly understood that it was Karola they had been after, seeing them drop into nothingness, one after the other. The fire flared brighter. In its red beams, one still sat, fumbling a little dazedly at the jewel on his chest. Thor knew his own thoughts were fumbling, just as the other's fingers were. Karola was gone. The androids were going, only one was left. There was no way to follow.

The firelight hung in the ruby jewel for one bursting moment, like red blood bursting. Red jewel. Fumbling fingers clawing at it. Three androids with Karola also clawing at their jewels. And Karola disappearing--

Thor leaped.

His big right hand stabbed for the ruby. He closed his fingers on it and tugged. The chain resisted, and then the android came awake to what Thor wanted and pounded at him. Thor lowered his head and chin until his jaw rested against his chest and hunched his shoulders. He rode the buffets, swaying as he did in the ring.

Tug, tug. Tug and tear with that right hand, his mind kept telling him.

Get that jewel!

It broke and came loose in his hand. The android screamed, reaching out. Slag came over the fire with a tremendous bound and his club swung. It caved in the android's head and toppled him forward into the fire.

Thor stared at the dying green fire that spilled from the android's head. That was a part of Aava, that fire. It was the life-force.

He looked at the jewel throbbing soft red fire in his palm. He grinned.

II

The ruby was the size of a small egg. It was cut and polished until its burnished sides threatened to obscure the inner fires with their glimmerings. But deep inside the jewel was a core of flame that would never be extinguished. That flame looked purple.

Thor wondered. Purple heart of red ruby. Suppose Aava had imprisoned a jot of his immortal fire inside the ruby, as he had with the androids!

He turned it over. There was a rocking instant of vertigo, of pitch blackness and cold.

The meadowlands were gone. He was standing on a rocky escarpment that brooded over a small valley. And set in the middle of the valley, like a vision from an Arabic nightmare, was a city of elfin loveliness. Towers pointed slender spires to the sky, and hemispheric domes glowed softly in pale moonlight.

"The City of Aava," murmured Thor. "This is the place they sang the song to the urn, the city the Discoverer showed me."

His fingers tightened on the ruby. He turned it carefully.

He was back with Slag.

The dwarf-man was whining, and looking around him like a scared dog until he saw Thor looming massive in the fire-flames. He grinned and came close, shaking his club.

"You go where Karola went? Where the men come from?"

"Yes. It's a different world, Slag, but the same. I've a feeling this ruby with the green fire in it is some sort of passport, or key, that unlocks the path into Aava's realm. It's a physical manifestation of a geometry Euclid never got around to. Dimensional worlds."

Slag grunted. "We go after her?"

"Take hold of the ruby. That's it."

Their hands held the warm jewel. Slowly they turned it. Darkness and coldness, and dizziness, and Slag and Thor found rock under their feet, and a white moon high above them.

Thor hunted for and found a narrow path of rock that twisted from the escarpment and curved downwards toward the valley. He called to Slag and they trotted Indian fashion along it.

The walls of the elfin city loomed gigantic as they crossed the sandy plain that stretched for miles in front of it. Cyclopean stones were fitted one on another until they spread up and up, seemingly toward the stars themselves. Thor felt like a midge about to attack a mastodon.

His feet kicked endless grains of dust walking along that massive barrier. Mile after mile they trudged, and found no gates.

Slag said, "How get in?"

Thor put a hand in his frayed pocket and drew out the warm ruby. He said, "This must be the only key. We haven't found any door yet."

They put hands on the jewel and moved it. They went forward over the red grasslands for a hundred feet. Thor said, "This ought to be just about right." Once more they turned the jewel, and experienced the dark, the coldness, and the vertigo.

Cobblestones underfoot, and smooth rock walls lining the streets as they crept forward. It was a dead city lying under the white moon, stark in its emptiness, sorrowful in its brooding strength. The windows were dark, the doorways shadowed.

Once Thor and Slag heard footsteps, but they came from a great distance, and soon faded into the eternal silence.

Ahead of them loomed the temple with the golden dome, where the paean to Aava had thundered forth, where the urn that held the green flame stood on its white pedestal.

"They will have taken Karola there, to Aava," whispered Thor. "That is where we must go. To the temple of the green flame."

A massive knob of bronze, covered with greenish rot and carved with the emblem of Aava-in-the-urn, screeched as Thor turned it. The thick oaken door swung wide. Pale radiance bathed the arched columns that trod the mosaic floor of the vast chamber. At the far end of the room, the black urn stood empty and black.

Thor ran across the vast chamber, his footfalls sounding loud and lonely. He stepped to the white pedestal and peered within the black urn. Green flakes and crystal chips encrusted the bowled bottom of the urn.

He slipped a torn handkerchief from his pocket, and with the buckle of his belt, loosened some of the crystal chips.

"I don't know whether I can ever analyze these," he said to Slag, "but I'll take them along, anyhow."

Slag stood at one of the tall, arched windows, red head gleaming in the sun. He was making guttural noises in his throat, and he kept lifting and dropping his big warclub. Thor stepped to his side and looked into the streets.

Men were walking stealthily along the cobblestones.

* * * * *

Thor blinked and rubbed his eyes. He was staring down at men clad in chain-mail armour, men in fur skins, men in suits of the same cut as he wore. There was a huge creature that Thor would have sworn was an ape, except for the two tusks depending from its lips, and its erect, intelligent bearing. There was a four-legged being, and something that had two heads. There was--

"They are men, Slag. Real men. Not androids!"

He felt a warm delight in him, a welling of friendliness inspired by the weeks of wandering on the red, lonely grasslands. He lifted an arm and opened his lips to shout. A mental censor made him close his mouth. It would be better to wait, to see what manner of men these were who stalked the empty streets of a deserted city, before showing himself.

Thor vaulted over the stone sill, calling to Slag to follow. Side by side they crept after the group.

They went deeper into the heart of the city. By twisted alleys the stalkers went, and their furtive tread and cautious glances told Thor that they were in hostile territory. Where a building cast gloomy shadows, he ran nearer, until he could distinguish voices.

To his amazement, some of the beings spoke English. He could catch fragments of words, of phrases. Mixed with his own language were terms of the jewel-speech of Klogor. And there were other tongues, too, languages that were like the cacklings of monkeys or the shrill treble of singing birds. They were mingled together, as through the ages of common living had created a new tongue that was all of none, yet something of each.

Thor whispered to Slag, "They are after women."

"So are we. Karola."

"Yes. I wonder now--"

He stood out from the shadows and called, "I am an American."

A man in tweed suit that hung in tatters from bulky shoulders whirled and stared. His hair was pale blond, and his eyes were icy blue. Thor didn't need his, "Jove, you are!" to tell he was from England.

"Thor Masterson," he said, putting out a hand.

The Englishman chuckled, "Peter Gordon. I'm a gentleman farmer--or was, you know--from Devon. When did you get into this place?"

"A few weeks ago. How long've you been here?"

"Seven years, near as I can make it. How--how are things back--back there?"

Thor told him. Gordon opened wide eyes at news of the war. He shook his head, smiling, "It seems so far away, when you've lived here for a while. It's as though you knew no other life, Jove! War. Well, we fight a war here all the time. With the Black Priest. He and his men raid our little settlements. For women, you know. Have to raid back, naturally. Got to have women to breed kids to fight the Flame."

Gordon led Thor forward toward a group of three. One was the white-haired ape. When Thor looked into his eyes, he saw keen intelligence blazing out of black eyes. Another was a lavender-tinted man clad in broad leathern belt and kilt of dark maroon. He was from a planet named Zarathza. The third man was a giant in a black fur mantle, who carried a spear that looked like a small Oregon pine.

"We must attack that low-walled building over there," said the Zarathzan, whose name was Tor Kan. "They keep the women in there. We don't have many weapons, as you can see. We'll lose a lot of men."

Thor thought of the robots he had fought. They didn't seem like such brilliant warriors. He said so.

The giant in the black fur grunted, "A frontal attack is always costly, even if you fought against women."

"Why attack frontally? Create a diversion, with a false attack. Then slip through the walls--"

"Through the walls? You sound like a bally ghost," smiled Gordon.

Thor lifted the ruby from his pocket and showed it to them. Their eyes bulged in awe, looking at it. "A gatestone!" whispered the Zarathzan, licking his lips. "With that we could go anywhere."

The white ape, whom Thor later learned was from Fomalhaut's fifth planet and called Yorg, drew back his lips from his big fangs. He rumbled, "Let the American hie himself and his red dwarf through the walls with a few of us. Others will storm the gates of the compound. The American can open the gates when he is inside. If," he added wistfully, "he could get us a few of the robots' weapons--"

Thor grinned, "Come on, Yorg. You and Slag and I will turn ourselves into an ordnance crew. We'll get the weapons."

They joined hands and turned the ruby.

The red grasslands were back, blowing in the breeze. The three ran swiftly forward. Yorg, who knew the compound almost as he did his own settlement, called to them to halt.

"Now turn the gatestone."

When the blackness of the dimensional barrier faded, Thor found himself in a room that was formed by a circle of grey stones. From wooden racks inset in the stone hung swords and spears, tall bows and metal-tipped arrows.

Yorg whispered, "There is almost no metal on this planet. That partially accounts for the reason that we fight with bows and arrows. To make weapons that are any more powerful you need steel and other iron alloys. And besides, I often think that Aava only trusts his androids as far as he can see them.

"The magnetic current of the planet that drags men and women and anything it touches onto its surface must at some time or other have taken potent weapons. But if there are any, only Aava knows where they are hidden. Then too, you need intelligence to use complicated weapons. The androids possess only a pseudo-intellect."

Trip after trip the trio made, their heavily muscled arms laden with every weapon in the arsenal. Once Yorg said grimly, "If ever we had a gatestone in our possession before, things would be different today." He looked at Thor and added, "The man who owns a gatestone could rule the settlements."

"I don't want to rule anything," growled Thor. "I just want to find my woman--and have another go at Aava."

* * * * *

Yorg had been slashing air with a sword, testing its balance. Now he lowered the point and popped black eyes at Thor, in amazement. "Another go? Have you seen Aava? And you live?"

As they carted the weapons back across the grasslands, Thor told him of his experience with the Discoverer. York listened in silence, then dropped a gigantic paw to his naked shoulder.

"Forget Aava," he counselled. "Aava is too powerful. Nothing can defeat him."

"I'm a funny guy," replied Thor. "The longer the odds, the better I fight. It's a sort of tradition in my country. The Alamo. Custer and his last stand. Bataan. Wake Island. Yeah, I'd like another try at Aava. Some of these days, I'll get around to it."

Tor Kan crooned in his throat when he fitted his palm around the hilt of a sword. Morlon, the giant in the black fur pulled his lips back from white teeth in delight as he hefted a huge bow. Peter Gordon twanged a bowstring, with, "I used to do a bit of archery in Devon. For fun, you know. I haven't forgotten how to feather a shaft."

In the shadows, the other weapons were handed out to eager hands while throats whined in battle lust.

They turned to Thor then, and stood waiting. He drew a deep breath.

"The best archers among you, do you know them? Good. You're the artillery. You stand in the shadows and shoot at any who show themselves on that wall. You others--swordsmen and spearmen--follow Tor Kan and Yorg. They'll charge for the gates. Slag and I will get inside the compound walls and open them for you.

"Listen, all of you. Listen well.

"I don't know whether any of us will ever go back to what we used to call home. Maybe there isn't any need for that. We have a world all our own, now. We can make it what we will.

"But we have to defeat Aava. Don't flinch at his name. He has you licked already if you do that. By fighting his robots, you're fighting him. They're his arms and legs. Take them away and Aava isn't anything!"

Their voices growled angry reassurances in the shadows. Weapons glinted as they were swung, shimmery in the moonrays.

"Come, Slag."

The purple light deep inside the ruby seemed to flare in mad anger as Thor held the jewel in his palm, looking down at it. Turn it slowly, turn it gently. Go into the darkness and the nothingness, to--

Thor stood inside the walls. Ahead of him was the great gate with rusted bolt, looming in the white walls like a gap between bright teeth. He leaped for the bolt and wrenched at it.

Slag came to help him. Between them they broke the rust of years, watching reddish flakes fly as the barrel-bolt turned in its groove.

An arrow plunked into the wooden door, an inch from Thor's brown hair where it hung to his big shoulders. He whirled and deflected its fellow with his sword as Slag threw wide the gates.

A horde of furred and savage fighters came roaring into the compound, swords and warclubs in their hands. Thor saw the androids swarming from the far side of the enclosure, racing to meet the invaders. Yorg grasped his arm and swung him around.

"The women," he gasped. "Hurry! We won't have much time. Those androids can only be stopped by smashing the machinery inside their skulls."

Thor ran with the white ape across the hard flooring of the pavilion. He could hear the screams and excited cries of women beyond the inner battlements.

He hit the lock a blow that crumpled the cup-guard of his blade, but the lock broke. Yorg threw open the doors.

"Come! All you women, come!"

Thor pressed against the open gate, staring at women in rags, women naked, women in torn silks and satins. There were red heads, and brunettes, and girls with hair the colour of old amber. Some were lovely, some ugly, some were furred like Yorg. They ran silently, scenting freedom.

Thor was a tall man. Standing, he looked over those tossing heads, seeking Karola. He saw her in the press, clothes almost ripped entirely away. He bellowed and shook his battered sword above his head.

He clove a path to her, swung her up on his hip, and ran.

She whimpered, "It is glorious, but useless--_look_!"

Thor stared toward a balcony four feet above the sun-baked floor of the compound. A giant of an android, with bristling black beard matting his red face was gesturing to three others who were bent and straining at something between them.

When they moved, Thor saw it was the black urn.

"It is Aava," Karola whispered hoarsely. "The women told me of him. And that is the Black Priest, the one they call Malgrim. He will move the urn to face us. Aava will kill all, even his own men. What are men to Aava?"

A scream of fear and fury tore from the throats of the fighters. Shrilling above it was the frightened cry of the women.

Yorg was bellowing, "The gates! Fly! Save yourselves, if you can."

It was too late. The urn was turning in the hands of the androids.

* * * * *

The Black Priest cried in a strangely sweet voice for such a man, "Foolish rebels! For the last time you have dared defy the power of all-consuming Aava. This time you die! Swing the urn. Let the outlaws taste the green kiss of mighty Aava, that he may take them with him to the land of nevermore!"

The black orifice of the urn was becoming rounder as it tilted down. Deep in the rounded bowl, green fire shimmered.

Thor went forward, swinging his sword. It was not as good as an axe, but it would do. He flung it straight for the broad chest of the Black Priest, and followed it.

He saw the blade go deep into the man, saw him stagger backwards, bellowing his rage. Then Thor was reaching for the top rail of the balcony, leaping, his legs like springs beneath him.

Thor caught the top rail and used it as the pole vaulter uses his pole. His wrists turned and his hips twisted. He went up over the bar.

His feet hit the urn, with two hundred pounds of muscles and desperation behind it.

The urn tilted back.

The androids screamed as the green flame leaped outward. For one instant they hung there, as though in green mist. Their open mouths and bulging eyes were straining to escape what they tasted and saw. It was no use.

Thor knew the androids were dissolving even as he brought his left fist up to the Black Priest's jaw. The man went back, heels dragging on the balcony floor. He lay where he had fallen, motionless.

Thor went and stared into the urn. The green flame was dead, now, just glittering green stuff, like crystallized moss.

Yorg called, "Hurry, Thor Masterson. We have broken them but Aava will send more."

He swung from the balcony, a frown furrowing his forehead. There was something about that green flame--

Karola was waiting for him. She slipped her hand in his and tugged. "We mustn't stay here, Thor. You heard what Yorg said."