Part 2

With a superhuman effort he broke that frozen fear, snatching for the flying reins, whirling as the monstrous thing swept past him in a thunder of terrifying hoofs. Desperately he clung to the reins, and as the thing rushed by he somehow got a clutching hand upon the saddle-horn and found a stirrup that swung sickeningly when it took his weight.

Then he was in the saddle, dizzy still with the terrors of childhood, but astride the nightmare.

And now, with a sudden intoxicating clarity, the fear fell from his mind. For an instant he sat high on the back of the incredible fanged thing, an old, old terror clearing from his mind. Confidence which was, he knew, his own and no bodiless reassurance drawn from dreams, such as he had felt in the jungle, flooded warmly through him. He was not afraid any more--he would never be afraid. The festering terror buried deep in his childhood had come to light at last and was wiped away. He caught the reins tight and flashed a sudden grin around the hall--

Brazen laughter boomed through the building. And beneath his knees Stuart felt the horse's body alter incredibly. One moment he was gripping a solid, warm-fleshed, hairy thing whose body had a familiar pitch and motion beneath the saddle. Then, then--

Indescribably the body _writhed_ under him. The warm hairy flesh flowed and changed. Cold struck through leatheroid against his thighs, and it was a smooth, pouring cold of many alien muscles working powerfully together in a way no mammal knows. He looked down.

He was riding a monstrous snake that twisted its head to look at him in the moment he realized what had happened. Its great diamond-shaped head towered high and came looping down toward him, wide-mouthed, tongue like a flame flickering....

It laid its cold, smooth cheek against his with a hideous caressing motion, sliding around his neck, sliding down his arm and side, laying a loop of cold, scaly strength around him and pressing, pressing....

His hands closed around the thickness of its throat, futilely--and the throat melted in his grasp and was hairy with a hairiness no mammal ever knew. The motion of the body he bestrode changed again and was incredibly springy and light.

He rode a monstrous spider. His hands were sunk wrist-deep in loathsome coarse hair, and his eyes stared into great cold faceted eyes that mirrored his own face a thousandfold. He saw his own distorted features looking back at him in countless miniatures, but behind the faces, in the great eyes of the spider, he saw no consciousness regarding him. The cold multiple eyes were not aware of Derek Stuart. Behind the shield of its terrible face the spider shut away its own arachnid thoughts and the memories of the red fields of Mars that were its home. With dreadful, impersonal aloofness its mandibles gaped forward toward its prey.

Loathing ran in waves of weakness through Stuart's whole body, but he shut his eyes and blindly struck out at the nearer of those great mirroring eyes, feeling wetness shatter against his fist as--as--

As the horror shifted and vanished, while rippling waves of green light darkened all about him. Now they coagulated, drew together into a meadow, cool with Earthly grass, bordered by familiar trees far away. Primroses gleamed here and there. Above him was the blue sky and the warm bright sun that shone only upon the hills of Earth.

But what he felt was horror.

Twenty feet from him was a rank, rounded patch of weeds. His gaze was drawn inexorably to that spot. And it was from there that the crawling dread reached out to him.

Faintly he heard laughter ... of the gods ... of the Aesir. The Aesir? Who--what were they? How had he, Derek Stuart, ever heard of them except as a name whispered in fear as the spaceships streaked through the clouds above that Dakota farmstead....

Derek Stuart ... a boy of eleven....

But--but--that was wrong, somehow. He wasn't a child any more. He had matured, become a spaceman--

Dreams. The dreams of an eleven-year-old.

Yet the hollow, dreadful laughter throbbed somewhere, in the vaults of the blue overhead, in the solidity of the very ground beneath him.

This had happened before. It had happened to a boy in South Dakota--a boy who had not known what lay concealed in that verdant clump of weeds.

But now, somehow--and very strangely--Stuart knew what he would find there.

He was afraid. Horribly, sickeningly afraid. Cold nausea crawled up his spine and the calves of his legs. He wanted to turn and run to the farmhouse half a mile away. He almost turned, and then paused as the distant laughter grew louder.

_They_ wanted him to run. _They_ were trying to scare him--and, once the defenses of his courage had broken, he would be lost. Stuart knew that with an icy certainty.

Somewhere, very far away, he sensed a man standing in a cyclopean hall--a man in ragged spaceman's garb, hard-faced, thin-lipped, angry-eyed. A familiar figure. The man was urging him on--telling him to go on toward that clump of weeds--

Derek Stuart obeyed the voiceless command. His throat dry, his heart pumping, he forced himself across the meadow till he stood at his goal and looked down at the bloody, twisted corpse of the tramp who had been knifed by another hobo, twenty years before, on that Dakota farm. The old nausea of shocked horror took him by the throat and strangled him.

He fought it down. This time he didn't run screaming back to the farmhouse....

And suddenly the laughter of the gods was stilled. Derek Stuart, a man once more in mind, stood again in the tower of the Aesir. The thrones between the monstrous pillars were vacant.

The Aesir were gone.

III

Stuart let out his breath in a long sigh. He had no illusions about the vanishment of the Aesir; he knew he had not conquered those mighty beings. It would take more than human powers to do that. But at least he had a respite. All but the most stolid spacemen develop hypertension, and there seems to be a curious mathematical rule about that; it increases according to the distance from the Sun. Which may be explained by the fact that environmental differences also increase as the outer planets are reached--and alien environments breed alien creatures. A great many men have gone insane on Pluto....

This was not Pluto; it was nearer Sunward than Jupiter, but the utter alienage that brooded over Asgard was almost palpable. Even the solidity under Stuart's feet, the very stones of the planetoid, were artificially created, by a science a million years beyond that of his own time. And the Aesir--

Unexpectedly his deep chest shook with laughter. The inexplicable self-confidence that had first come to him in the Asgard forests had not waned; it seemed to have grown even stronger since his meeting with the Aesir giants. Now he stared around the colossal hall, his eyes straining toward the spot of light far above where those incredible columns converged. His own insignificance by comparison did not trouble him.

Whether or not he could have the slightest hope of winning this game--at least he was giving his enemies a run for their money!

A sound from the pit roused him. Stuart walked warily toward the edge. The dozen motionless figures were still there, fifty feet below, and among them was one he had not noticed before--an Earthgirl, he thought, with curling dark hair framing a white face as she tilted up her chin and stared at him.

At this distance he could make out few details; she wore a close-fitting green suit which left slender arms and legs bare.

"Earthman--" she said, in a clear, carrying voice. "Earthman! Quick! The Aesir will be back--go now! Leave their temple before they--"

"Don't waste your breath," Stuart said. "This is Asgard." Whoever the girl was, she should know the impossibility of leaving the taboo world. "If I can find a rope--"

She said quickly, "You won't find one. Not here, in the temple."

"How can I get you out of there? And the others?"

"You're mad," the girl said. "What good would it do...." She shook her head. "Better to die at once."

Stuart narrowed his eyes at the dozen frozen figures. "I don't think so. Fourteen of us can put up a better fight than one. If your friends wake up--"

The girl said, "On your left, between the pillars, there's a tapestry showing Perseus and the Gorgon. Touch the helm of Perseus and the hand of Andromeda. Then go carefully--there may be traps."

"What is it?"

"It will lead you down here. You can free us. If you hurry--oh, but it's hopeless! The Aesir--"

"Damn the Aesir," Stuart snarled. "Wake up the others!" He whirled and ran toward the distant wall, where he could see the Perseus tapestry, brown and gold, a huge curtain between two columns.

If the Aesir saw, they made no move....

Stuart's lips twisted in a bitter smile. The crazy confidence had not left him, but he was conscious of a reassuring warmth; at least he was no longer completely alone. That would help. Between the worlds, and on the desolate planets that swing along the edge of the System, loneliness is the lurking terror, more horrible than the most exotic monster ever spawned by the radioactive Plutonian earth.

He touched the tapestry twice; it swept away from him, and a staircase was visible, leading down through stone or metal--he could not tell which. Stuart fought back the impulse that urged him to race down those curving spiral steps. The girl had spoken of traps.

He went warily, testing each tread before he put his weight upon it. Though he did not think that the snares of the Aesir would be so simple.

At the bottom, he emerged into a vaulted chamber, tiny by comparison with the one he had left. It was oval, domed ceiling and walls and floor shining with a milky radiance--except at one spot.

There he saw a door--transparent. Through it he looked into the pit. He was on a level with the floor of that shaft now; he could see the dozen figures still standing motionless in a huddled group, and a few feet beyond the glassy pane was the Earthgirl. She was looking directly at him, but her dark eyes had a blind seeking, as though the door was opaque from her side.

Stuart paused, his hand on the complicated mechanism that, he guessed, would open the portal. His hard, dark face was impassive, but he was conscious of an unfamiliar stirring deep within him. From above, he had not seen the girl's beauty.

He saw it now.

* * * * *

She couldn't be an Earthgirl--entirely. She must be one of those disturbingly lovely interplanetary halfbreeds. Earth-blood she had, of course, and predominantly, but there was something more, the pure essence of beauty that blazed through her like a flame kindled in a lamp of crystal. In all his wanderings between the worlds, Stuart had never seen a girl as breathtakingly lovely as this one.

His hand moved on the controls: the door slid silently open. The girl's eyes brightened. She gave a little gasp and ran toward him. Without question she sought refuge in his arms, and for a moment Stuart held her--not unwillingly.

He thrust her away gently.

"The others."

She said, "It's useless. The paralysis--"

Stuart scowled and stepped across the threshold into the pit. Uneasiness crawled along his spine as he did so. The Aesir might be watching from above, or--or--

There was nothing. Only dead silence, and the uneven breathing of the girl as she stood in the doorway watching. Stuart stopped before the leather-clad Earthman and tested a burly arm. The man stood frozen, his flesh cold and hard as stone, his eyes staring glassily. He was not even breathing.

So with the others. Stuart grimaced and shrugged. He turned back toward the girl, and felt a pulse of relief as he stepped into the shining chamber. He might be no safer here, but at least he wasn't so conscious of inhuman eyes that might be watching from above. Not that solid stone might be any barrier to the Aesir's probing gaze....

The girl touched the mechanism; the door slid silently shut. "It's no use," she said. "The paralysis holds all the others. Only I could battle it--a little. And that was because--"

"Save it," Stuart said. He turned toward the door by which he had entered, but an urgent hand gripped his wrist.

"Let me talk," the quiet voice said. "We're as safe here as anywhere. And there may be a way--now that I can think clearly again."

"A way out? A _safe_ way?"

There was a haunted look in her dark eyes. "I don't know. I've lived here for a long time. The others--" she pointed toward the door of the pit. "The sacrifices were brought to Asgard only yesterday. But I've been here many moons. The Aesir kept me alive for a bit, to amuse them. Then they tired, and I was thrown in with the others. But I learned a little. I--I--no one can dwell here in the Aesir stronghold without--changing a little. That's why the paralysis didn't hold me as long as it holds the others."

"Can we save them?"

"I don't know," she said, with a small, helpless shrug. "I don't even know if we can save ourselves. It's been so long since I was brought to Asgard that I--I scarcely remember my life before that. But I have learned a little of the Aesir--and that may help us now."

Stuart watched her. She tried to smile, but not successfully.

She said, "I'm Kari. The rest--I've forgotten. You're--"

"Derek Stuart."

"Tell me what happened."

"We haven't time," Stuart said impatiently, but Kari shook her head.

"We'll need weapons, and I must know--first--if you can use them. Tell me!"

Well, she was right. She had knowledge that Stuart needed. So he told her, very briefly, what he remembered.

She stared at him. "Voices--in your mind?"

"Something like that. I don't know--"

"No. No. Or--wait--" He tried to focus his thoughts upon a far, faint calling that came from infinite distances. His name. An urgent summons--

It faded and was gone.

"There's nothing," Stuart said finally, and Kari moved her shoulders uneasily.

"No help there, then."

"Tell me one thing. What's the Aesir's power? Hypnotism?"

"No," Kari said, "or not entirely. They can make thoughts into real things. They are--what the race of man will evolve into in a million years. And they have changed, into beings utterly alien to humans."

"They looked human--giants, though."

"They can assume any shape," Kari told him. "Their real form is unimaginable. Being of pure energy ... mental force ... matrixes of electronic power. They were striking at you through your mind."

Stuart said, "I wondered why they didn't set some of their Watchers on me."

"I don't know why they didn't," Kari frowned. "Instead, they hammered at your weaknesses--old fears that hung on to you for years. Experiences that frightened you in the past. They sent your mind back into that past--but you were too strong for them."

"Too strong--?"

"Then. They have other powers, Stuart--incredible powers. You can't fight them alone. And you _must_ fight them. In a thousand years no one has dared--"

Stuart remembered something. "Two dared--once."

* * * * *

Kari nodded. "I know. I know the legends, anyway. About John Starr and Lorna. The great rebels who first defied the Aesir when the tyranny began. But they may have been only legendary figures. Even if they were real--they failed."

"Yes, they failed. And they're a thousand years dead. But it shows something--to me at least. Man wasn't meant to be a slave to these monsters. Rebellion--"

Kari watched him. Stuart's eyes were shadowed.

"John Starr and Lorna," he whispered. "I wonder what their world was like, a thousand years ago? We've got all the worlds now, all the planets of the System from Jupiter to the smallest asteroid. But we don't rule them, as men owned their own Earth in those days. We're slaves to the Aesir."

"The Aesir are--are gods."

"John Starr didn't think so," Stuart said. "Neither do I. And at worst I can always die, as he did. Listen, Kari." He gripped her arms. "Think. You've lived here for a while. Is there any weapon against those devils?"

She met his gaze steadily. "Yes," she said. "But--"

"What is it? Where?"

Abruptly Kari's face changed. She pressed herself against Stuart, avoiding his lips, simply seeking--he knew--warmth and companionship. She was crying softly.

"So long--" Kari whispered, her arms tight around him. "I've been here so long--with the gods. And I'm so lonely, Derek Stuart. So lonely for green fields and fires and the blue sky. I wish--"

"You'll see Earth again," Stuart promised. At that Kari pulled away. Her strange half-breed loveliness was never more real than then, with tears sparkling on her dark lashes, and her mouth trembling.

She said, a catch in her voice, "I'll show you the weapon, Stuart."

She turned toward the wall. Her hand moved in a quick gesture. A panel opened there in the glowing surface.

Kari reached in, and when she withdrew her arm, it was as though she held a torrent of blood that poured down from her grip. It was a cloak, Stuart saw, made of some material so fine that it rippled like water. Its crimson violence was bizarre against the cool green of Kari's garment.

"This cloak--" she said. "You must wear it if we face the Aesir."

Stuart grimaced. "What good is a piece of cloth? A blaster gun's what I want."

"A blaster wouldn't help," Kari said. "This is more than a piece of cloth, Stuart. It is half-alive--made so by the sciences of the Aesir. Wear it! It will protect you."

She swung the great, scarlet billows about Stuart's shoulders. Her fingers fumbled with the clasp at his throat. And then--

_She lies!_

The desperate urgency of the thought roared through Stuart's mind. He knew that soundless voice, so sharp now with violent intensity. His hands came up to rip the cloak from him--

He was too late. Kari sprang back, wide-eyed, as the fastenings of the cloak tightened like a noose about Stuart's neck. He felt a stinging shock that ran like white fire along his spine and up into his brain. One instant of blazing disorientation, a hopeless, despairing cry in his mind--a _double_ cry, as of two telepathetic voices--and then, his muscles too weak to hold him, he crashed down upon the floor.

It was not paralysis. He was simply drained of all strength. There was pressure about his throat, cold flames along his spine and in his brain, and he could feel the texture of the cloak wrapped about him, striking through his spaceman's garb--tingling, sentient, half-alive!

He whispered an oath. Kari's face had not changed. He read something strangely like pity in her dark eyes.

From the gap in the wall whence she had drawn the cloak came a figure, cloaked in black, a jet cowl hiding its head and face completely. It was taller than the girl by a foot. It shuffled forward with an odd, rocking gait, and paused near her.

Stuart whispered, "I--should have remembered. The--the Aesir can change their shapes. Those giants I saw weren't real. And neither are you--not even human!"

Kari shook her head. "_I_ am real," she said slowly. "_He_ is not." She gestured toward the black-cloaked figure. "But we are all of the Aesir. And, as we thought, you were sent by the Protectors. Now your power is gone, and you must walk the Long Orbit with the other captives."

The cowled creature came forward. It bent, but Stuart could see nothing in the shadow of the hood. A fold of cloth writhed out and touched Stuart's forehead.

Darkness wrapped him like the shroud of the scarlet cloak.

IV

For a long time he had only his thoughts for company. They were not pleasant. He felt alone, as he had never felt so utterly lonely and deserted before anywhere in the System. Now he realized that even since his landing on Asgard, he had had companionship of a sort--that the twin voices murmuring in his brain had been more real than he had realized. A living warmth, a sense of--of _presence_--had been with him then.

But it was gone now. Its absence left a black void within him. He stood alone.

And Kari.... If he saw her again when his hands were free, he would kill her. He knew that. But--but her shining smile lightened the darkness that engulfed him now. He had never seen loveliness like Kari's, and he had known so many women, so many, too many.... A man who has fought his way Sunward and back again by way of Pluto's chasmed midnight is not so easily misled by the smile of a pretty woman.

Kari was no ordinary woman--God knew she was not! Perhaps not even human, perhaps not even real at all. It might be that very touch of alienage that had stamped her shining image upon his memory, but he could not put the image aside now. He saw her clearly in the darkness of his captivity and the deeper dark of his loneliness, now that the voices were stilled. Lovely, exotic, with the eyes full of longing and terror--what lies they told!--and that lovely, that dazzling smile.

Bitterness made a wry taste in his mouth. Either she was one of the Aesir, or she served them. Served them well. A knife in the heart was the only answer he had for her, and he meant to give her that edged answer if he lived. But she was so very lovely....

Slowly the veil of darkness lifted. He saw a face he had seen before--the harsh, seamed features of the burly Earthman in the pit. And beyond him, the slim Martian girl. All motionless, standing like statues beside him ... beside him! For Stuart was one of them now. He was in the pit, with the other captives.

Sensation came back slowly. With it came a tingling, a warm vibration along his spine ... about his throat ... inside his brain. He could not move, but at the corner of his range of vision flamed a crimsonness--the cloak. He still wore it.

He wondered if the other captives could see him, if their minds were as active as his in their congealed bodies. Or whether the chill of deathlike silence held their brains along with their frozen limbs.

A slow, volcanic fury began to glow within him. Kari--traitor and murderess! Was she Aesir? Was she Earth-born? And that black-cloaked, cowled creature ... which was not real. Another projector of the Aesir, as the giants had been?

_You were sent by the Protectors._

Memory of Kari's phrase came back to Stuart now. And with it, as though he had somehow unbarred a locked gate, opened it a mere crack, came a--a whispering.

Not audible. Faint, faraway, like the shadow of a wind rustling ghosts of autumn leaves, the murmur rose and fell ... calling him.

The scarlet cloak moved ... writhed ... flowed more closely about him. Fainter grew the voices.

Stuart strained after them. His soul sprang up ... reaching toward those friendly, utterly inhuman whispers that came from nowhere.

A dull lethargy numbed him. The cloak drew tighter....

He ignored it. Deep in the citadel of his mind, he made himself receptive, all his being focused on that--that strange calling from beyond.

And, suddenly, there were words....

"_Derek Stuart. Can you hear us? Answer!_"

His stiff lips could not speak, but his thoughts formed an answer. And, rising and falling as though the frequency of that incredible telepathy pulsed and changed continually, the message came--

"We have lost. You have lost too, Stuart. But we will stay with you--we _must_ stay now--and perhaps your death will be easier because of that...."

"Who are you?" he thought, oddly awed by the personality he sensed behind that voice that was really two voices.

"There is little time." The--sound?--faded into a thin whisper, then grew stronger. "The cloak makes it hard for us to communicate with you. And now we can give you none of our power at all. It is a monstrous thing--a blasphemy such as only the Aesir would create. Half-alive--it makes an artificial synapse between the individual and outside mental contacts. We cannot help you--"

"Who are you?"