Part 3

He could see now what she was doing. The west wall of the tower that appeared through the nacre light was a giant visiscreen. In it the tower of Rudra in his city of Kovokod stood like a blackened giant above the ruins of the leveled city. Stone buildings were tossed and flattened. Smoke eddied upward in huge billows from charred and stark stumps of buildings. A woman fled with clothes ablaze along the upended stones of what had been a broad street. From the black and sullen sky red and fiery balls rolled and thundered, broke and splashed, devouring, on the city. The balls toppled walls, exploding; ate up wooden buildings with flaming tongues, caught and engulfed human beings, burning.

Sickened, Travis turned away--

It caught him, then. Bent and flung him back. Staring, he saw Nuala half out of the crystal block, rigid and writhing, twisted and distorted by some queer force. Her red mouth drew back in agony, screams gurgling in her throat.

And bent and twisted in her likeness, straining until their molecules whined, were the dynamos and cones and globes.

"Magnetic ... flux ... by Grock! Grock!" she screamed. "I can't hang on. It's got me. Grock ... good Grock...."

Travis dove to yank her free--and ran into it. He felt it in his fingers, first. It was a maddening wrench that bent them as if they had been boneless. He leaped sideways and the thing caught him in the middle. On hands and knees he crawled away, crawled toward the only spot that offered safety.

He slid into the nacre coldness, dropped onto the stone floor of the captured tower. Sobbing, he lay there, listening to Nuala scream.

_This is the end of it. There is no way out_--

No way out. Only death from torture. Or--maybe not death. Just torture for Nuala. He remembered the pink and menacing girdle that secured the crypt from the _arklings_. The unseen voices, recorded somehow by the first humanoid race, had told of tortures--_Nuala, stop screaming! God, I can't stand it!_

Nuala, screaming. And Rudra--gloating!

Rudra!

Travis lifted his tanned face. His eyes burned savagely, staring across the tower toward the dials and levers that controlled those forces that only Rudra and Nuala understood. Travis moved his hands, getting to his feet. He looked at his hands, balled them into hard fists. He whispered, "I wanted something to come to grips with. I needed something to put my hands on, to hit, to batter!"

Travis snarled, "Rudra!" and slammed his hands on the levers. He had watched Nuala move them. He knew how to move the tower through the dimensional paths Nuala had guided it.

Under his feet the tower swayed, reeled sickeningly.

And then--

The two towers met with a jarring crash. Travis was already in midair, leaping through the gap. Stones met and tumbled. The roof of Rudra's blackened tower was caving in. Travis swept through the air, aimed for a crumbled section of roofing. His hands went out to fasten on smashed tile. Through the rent, he saw Rudra at his visiscreen, laughing at the twisted, helpless thing that was Nuala in the calyx--

* * * * *

Travis went mad. He leaped for Rudra, leaped from the roof. His fist caught him beside the cheek, drove his head back. His knees hit the man's chest as he fell, toppled him backward. Sobbing, Travis went for him even before he hit the floor.

They rolled across the tiling, bounced off the metal leg of a table, rammed into the base of the great visiscreen. Travis fought with the strength of a hundred men, thinking of the crumpled loveliness of Nuala. His fists were as ten. His endurance seemed drawn from a bottomless well of energy. He fought and hammered and sobbed, a red haze of fury floating before his eyes.

And Rudra weathered the storm. The stars that circled about his head glowed brighter and brighter. Strength grew and grew in Rudra's body. He broke free of Travis, thrust him back with a vicious kick: laughed at him. He moved his hands in the fluid motion and there was blind, stabbing pain in Travis's guts, an agony that lanced red-hot needles from the roots of his hair to his toenails.

Travis rolled on the floor, clutching his broken body. He saw legs, hit them. Rudra fell over him.

Travis summoned all his strength, tore loose from the pain inside him, fell on Rudra. The revolving stars cut his lip, blinded him with their brilliance.

It was a voice whispering inside him, like Nuala's voice. "_The star-girdle is his weakness. Break the stars and you break Rudra. Without the stars, Rudra is_--nothing!"

Travis lifted his hands and closed them on the stars. Rudra whispered. For the first time, Travis detected fear in the man's eyes. He tried to wrench free, brought his hands back from inside Travis, scrabbled for his wrists.

Silently they struggled there. The pain was gone and Travis knew that this was it. He had to win now, or not at all. Now ... _now_....

The stars came free. They whispered sibilantly, loosening in their orbit, shooting wildly across the room. They stung and bit into Travis's hands. They whirled, exploding into puffs of silvery dust. The dust showered down on Rudra, on Travis. It stung the nostrils, the eyeballs....

"Rudra!" whispered Travis.

There was no Rudra, only a widening glob of black wetness, melting away as wax melts from a candle in fierce heat. Travis rolled free, slapped at the blackish stains on spaceslacks and jacket.

The blob of jelly loosened rapidly, went to liquid as a breeze swept over the ruined city and into the blasted tower. The liquid ran freely, went down the cracks, dripped wetly on the rafters and the stones far below.

_Ancient! Ancient! So old the tongues of men had no word for it. From the beginning he was, and was no more...._

Travis turned away from the stench. He stumbled across the room toward the control levers on the wall. With trembling hands he shut them off.

* * * * *

It was easy, going back. Through the nacre curtain, as the tower settled down, Travis saw Nuala standing beside the shattered calyx. Both hands were plunged in her thick golden hair. Her blue eyes were blank and staring.

Her memory is gone, Travis thought, running toward her. The pain and the magnetic flux did it. She isn't Nuala of the crystal crypt any longer. She is only a girl.

His dream of Nuala cooking a _jalanadon_ steak in his little apartment at Mars Port would come true. This Nuala he could marry.

Travis caught her in his arms. Her lips were sweet as he bent and kissed her.