They crossed the soft, green lawn toward the building. Hammill could see no opening in the smooth flawless beauty of the wall, but when they were within a few yards of it, a spot appeared and quickly dilated to reveal a round opening. From it stepped the loveliest girl Hammill had ever seen. She was wearing a close-fitting tunic, and the figure beneath was subtly rounded and desirable-looking. Her lustrous blonde hair was swept up in a chignon, reminding Hammill of the ancient carvings of the Grecian Aphrodite, the goddess of love.
She turned her cool blue eyes on him, and her soft, red mouth smiled faintly. “Your thoughts are flattering, Laird Hammill, but somewhat intimate.”
Hammill was not the blushing kind, but he came near to it as he realized that the girl had read the thoughts on the surface of his mind. “I apologize,” he said.
Her smile brightened just a little. “There is no need. I’m not offended.” She glanced at the tall man standing next to the Earthman. “We’ll speak aloud for his benefit, Karr. The Council is waiting for him.”
“Council?” asked Hammill. “Your rulers?”
The girl’s silvery laughter rang in the warm air, blending with the warm grins of the men.
“No. Laird,” the girl said, “we have no need of rulers here. We are not like other worlds.”
“I don’t understand,” Hammill said. “What sort of planet is this?”
“You’ll find out,” she said. “There are many things you will find out.”
Hammill grinned. “I’ll say. I don’t even know your name, you know.”
“Nita,” she said. “And now, let us go. The Council is waiting for you.”
They sat behind a curving, translucent arc of glowing plastic that provided illumination for the great room. There were eight of them, men neither old nor young, their deep-set eyes warm with a wisdom and a benignity that Hammill accepted immediately. As he stood before them, Nita at his side, the pain and terror of the last weeks seemed to wash away.
“You are Laird Hammill, of Earth,” said the foremost of the eight. “Welcome to Rhodanas.”
Hammill faced him squarely. “Just where am I and what is going on?”
“Patience,” the Councilman said. “First—may we have permission to enter your mind? Speaking aloud is clumsy and inefficient.”
Hammill stared uncertainly at him for a long moment, remembering the flaming agony of the moment when Lord Kleyne of Denerix had broken through his barriers and probed his mind. He did not want that to happen again. But—somehow, he trusted the Rhodanans.
“Very well,” he said.
It was like stepping into a soothing raybath. The mental energy of the Rhodanans seeped into him, washed over him, left him feeling calmed and refreshed. His perceptions were heightened; he could see Nita, at his side, take on a glowing beauty that he had not known it was possible for a woman to possess, while the members of the Council grew in dignity and authority.
“Welcome to Rhodanas a second time,” the elder said. Only now his voice was an unspoken thought, and Hammill knew not only that he was Lorkan, nominal head of the Council of Rhodanas, but that he was Nita’s father, and that he was on a world which far surpassed in mental power any that the galaxy had ever known.
“You could have destroyed me,” he said. “Why did you bring me here?”
“We do not destroy unless we are directly threatened,” Lorkan said. “And, as usual, our friends of Shanador bungled the job when they planted the command in you.”
“Command?” Hammill groped for the information he lacked.
“You were sent here to steal the hsrorn,” Lorkan said quietly.
Immediately awareness came flooding back. Hammill rocked dizzily as the pieces fell into place, as the whole picture took form and meaning and coherence.
The minds of the Rhodanans meshed with his own, and Nita’s warm hand tightened in his as the dams broke and the data tumbled through him. He saw a sweeping vista of Galactic history in an instant, a record of millennia-long eras.
He knew why he was here.
It had begun millions of years in the distant cosmic past, here on the world of Rhodanas. The Rhodanans, who had sprung from the same hardy stock that had gone on to give rise to the peoples of the Earth federation, had, through untold centuries of evolution, reached a state of near-perfection. They had mastered the ability of controlling the hsrorn.
Which was, Hammill learned in that blinding instant, the key to the conflict that threatened to consume the civilized galaxy. The hsrorn was a semi-living entity that resided in the hearts of suns, a light-being which existed at incalculable temperatures, neither fully alive nor totally inanimate.
The Rhodanans had mastered the skill of snapping their minds across space to the star in which lived the hsrorn, seizing a microscopic fragment of the light that composed the entity, and crystallizing it instantly into a lambent jewel. Hammill noticed the hsrorn for the first time—a tiny bead that glistened brilliantly at the throat of each of the Rhodanans.
Mastering the hsrorn had been the final step in the Rhodanans’ path toward perfection. Its peculiar property was its ability to act as a focus for the mental powers, to allow them to project their thoughts to one another, to enter into each other’s minds, to live in perfect harmony and utter balance with each other.
Only—not all the Rhodanans were capable of using the hsrorn. In some, the genes of evil still lurked. And they, these inferior Rhodanans, were consumed with jealousy, cut off as they were from the wondrous mental blending the hsrorn afforded. Bitter, thwarted, twisted and warped, they banded together and attempted to steal the hsrorn from those Rhodanans who rightfully possessed it.
But the hsrorn was a weapon as well as a source of eternal harmony. Gathering their united powers and focussing their thoughts through their hsrorn, the Rhodanans had risen to what would be their final act of violence for all time, and in a mighty battle had swept away the outcasts. They had been hurled from Rhodanas forever.
“And now they are the Starlords,” Hammill said quietly, still shaken by the force of the experience that had poured into him.
“Yes,” Lorkan said. “When we drove them away, they settled in a distant cluster, gathering themselves together in defeat. They have remained there ever since, scheming against one another and against us, caught forever in their web of destruction.”
“We have nothing but pity for them,” said Nita.
“They do not dare return to Rhodanas,” Lorkan went on. “They fear us and they know our might. They are well aware that we could hurl them back just as easily a second time as a first.
“But you—an Earthman—they had hoped somehow to send you to us and have you steal the hsrorn for them. It was a mad plan—but they are madmen, the Starlords.”
Hammill nodded. “Yes. But suppose I did succeed in stealing the—the hsrorn. What then? Do they think they could defeat you?”
“No. Not us. They want the hsrorn to focus their hatred against the peoples of the Earth Federation, who even now threaten to smash them.”
“So they sent me here to snaffle the super-weapon that would smash my own people,” Hammill said. He smiled. “But if you should give me the hsrorn, and I take it to the Earth fleet to use against the Starlords—”
“No,” Lorkan said gravely. “That would be impossible. We do not interfere in cosmic struggles.”
Hammill frowned, then. “Now wait just a second. If you don’t intend to do anything, why did you bring me here?”
“I will be frank with you, Laird,” the Rhodanan said. “We wouldn’t have brought you here ordinarily. The so-called Starlords have sent a good many emissaries here under hypnotic compulsion. None of them have ever landed. We stopped their vessels in space long before they reached us. And, much as we dislike violence, even on a mental level, we blanked their minds and sent them away.”
“Why am I so special?” Hammill asked.
Lorkan smiled. “You are the first being we have ever known who had the innate mental a
bility to break the mental compulsion of a Starlord. Our race—and that includes the Starlords—is one of vast mental powers, vaster than you know, even yet. The Starlords are the weakest of us, but no one has ever been able to break away from their mind control—until you did.
“That’s why we brought you here, Hammill. We wanted to see what kind of man you were.”
Hammill was astounded. “Me? Strong mind? Why, I hardly was able to resist him more than a fraction of a second. He—Lord Kleyne—went through my mind block like a hot knife through butter.”
“True. But you did resist him. Even though your block only held for a short time, it was more than anyone else has ever done. And, too, you were able to break the compulsion after five days. And that takes strength—real strength!”
Hammill felt a chill run up his back. If the Starlords were actually that strong, Earth and her Federation didn’t stand a chance against the combined might of Shanador!
“Look, Lorkan,” Hammill said, “you’ve got to help us! You’re the people who drove those men off of Rhodanas! Now they’ve enslaved a whole Galaxy and are going on to more! They’ve got to be stopped, and you’re the only one who can do it!”
Lorkan shook his head. “You don’t understand. Each race must work out its own destiny; we have worked out ours, we will let others work out theirs. We do not interfere!”
“You won’t help then?”
“We cannot. I’m sorry, Hammill.”
Laird Hammill’s teeth were clenched. “I presume I’m free to go at any time?”
“As soon as your ship is repaired,” Lorkan said. “The paramagnetic beam jammed the controls, but they will be ready soon.” He asked no question; there was no need to. He knew exactly what the Earthman was thinking, and he didn’t seem to care.
“You’re snobs,” said Hammill. “Every one of you. You sit here on this tight little world of yours and pay no attention to what’s going on in the rest of the Universe. One of these fine days, when the Starlords have conquered themselves enough territory, they’ll turn on you—and you can’t fight physical force with a little telepathic compulsion!”
Lorkan only smiled. “There is some truth in that. But, remember, you don’t know all of the facts. Possibly you never will. You will just have to accept our word for it.”
Then Nita’s thought cut across the subdued comments of the councilors. “Just a moment, please. May I speak?”
A thought of assent came from the Council.
“It has occurred to me that it may be wise to make a personal investigation of the Shanador Galaxy.”
“Indeed?” came the general thought of the Council.
“And why?” thought Lorkan to his daughter. “We have them under continual mental observation. Our Observers report nothing unusual.”
“Remember,” said Nita, “in spite of their weaknesses and their warped minds, the Starlords are of our race. They know us. It’s possible that they may have developed a method of hiding their activities from our Observers.”
Hammill kept out of it. He sensed that the girl was on his side, and she seemed to be making her point. There was no need to interrupt yet.
Lorkan was silent for a moment. Then he sent out a powerful thought. “Observers! Link up and come in with us.”
In several star systems scattered throughout the local cluster, fifty Rhodanans linked their minds together to become, in effect, one mind. Then that mind sent a thought to the Council. “What do you wish?” The Council, too, had linked themselves together, thinking as one individual.
“Have you made the latest check on the activities of the Outcasts?”
“Shanador?” came the Observers’ thought. “We have.”
“Is there anything unusual to report?” the Council asked.
“Nothing,” said the Observers. “They are arming, of course, and they war among themselves and with others. They have expanded in the past few centuries, but we have nothing to fear from them.”
“Excellent. But is there any chance that they may be acting in a manner which is not detectable to you?”
There was a silence for a moment, then the Observers said: “It is admittedly possible that they may have developed a method of concealing their activities from us. But the probability is so remote that we have not taken it into account. We will, however, check again. It will not take long.”
“Do so,” said the Council. “And this time, make a careful check for any clues that might mean that they have found a method of screening us out.”
“One moment.”
It had lasted only a minute fraction of a second of time, that conversation. And through it all, Hammill had listened and watched. What a people! What minds! Here was a race that could really think!
The answer came from the Observers. “Our results are negative. We find nothing suspicious whatsoever. No Starlord or any of his subordinates anywhere are working on any weapon or device which might prove inimical to us. And that, of course, in the light of your question, is highly suspicious in itself.
“Other than that, we have nothing to report.”
“Thank you,” said the Council.
The councilors unlinked their minds and became separate people once again.
Lorkan looked puzzled. “We have no evidence that there is anything wrong—nor do you, Hammill. But, in view of the remote possibility that something may be happening of which we are utterly ignorant, we must, for our own safety, check the Galaxy of Shanador in person.
“Will you be willing to aid our agent?”
Hammill nodded. “If it will help convince you that the Starlords of Shanador are more dangerous than you think, I’ll go with your agent wherever he wants to go.”
“Not he,” Lorkan said, smiling. “She. My daughter will go with you.”
The small ship curved upward from the surface of Rhodanas as in a tight, smooth arc and shot away into the blackness of space. Hammill fed coordinates into the automatic pilot while Nita, at his side, watched with great interest.
“We’ll return to the Earth Federation fleet,” he told her, as he guided the tape into the entry slot of the computer that controlled the ship. “Then we can get our plans squared away with them.”
Nita smiled. “Remember, I’m just along as an observer on this flight. Don’t start figuring either me or the hsrorn into your plans, Laird.”
He glanced at her. She was wearing an abbreviated tunic that clung to her tightly from breast to thigh, and nestled in the valley between her full breasts was the glowing radiance of the hsrorn. Hammill had to force himself to recall that she was not merely another lovely girl, but a representative of the universe’s wisest race.
“I think you’ll see what the Starlords are up to, Nita. They’re assaulting innocent races—and if you and your people let them do it, the guilt will be on Rhodanas forever.”
She shook her head. “Our custom is not to interfere,” she said. “But I will see if there is justification in what you say.”
He returned his attention to the drive, and worked rapidly until the ship was fully automatic. Then he moved to the sub-space radio and began setting up the coordinates that would put him in contact with the Flagship Gifford of the Earth Federation fleet.
There was a momentary whine and crackle of static, and then the Gifford came in.
“Starship Gifford. Starship Gifford. Come in, please. Over.”
“Gifford, this is Laird Hammill.”
“Hammill! Where have you been?”
“It’s a long story, Sparks. But I’m on the way back to the fleet with something interesting.”
“You’ve been missing for more than a week! We’d written you off as dead.”
“I’ll explain it to the captain,” Hammill said. “Beam me in.”
“Are you crazy? In the middle of a battle?”
“Battle?” Hammill glanced at Nita and then back at the subradio. “What’s happened?”
“Didn’t you know? The Starlord’s fleets have been on
us for three days! We’ve been dodging where we could and fighting where we had to. We have them pretty much at a standstill now; they can’t find us. But we’ve been completely outmaneuvered. We’re out-gunned and outmanned, and they are fighting us on their own territory!”
“How about reinforcements?”
“From the home Galaxy? It’ll take days! By that time, we’ll be wiped out, and the Starlords can set a trap for the reinforcements!” Then there was a sudden roaring crackle of static.
“Gifford! Battleship Gifford! Come in!” Hammill shouted.
But there was no answer.
Hammill clenched his fists and glared at Nita. “That may have been a battleship exploding! Do you see what your stupid ‘hands off’ policy is doing? You’ve set a bunch of maniacs loose in the Universe, and you’re doing nothing about it!”
Nita shook her head. “I’m sorry, Laird, if you think so badly of us. But don’t judge us until you’ve uncovered all the facts.”
“Men are dying out there,” he said coldly.
Nita’s face sobered. “Perhaps we can help them.”
“How?” Hammill’s voice was sarcastic. “We’re only an hour out from Rhodanas! It’s a five day trip from here to there, even in this ship.”
Nita looked at him for a long moment before answering. Then she said: “Laird, you have a strong mind. You’ve got more power than you know—perhaps more than I know. But if you push your abilities too hard and fail, you may die. Do you want to take the chance?”
“What sort of chance?”
“Would you risk your life in the off chance that you might be able to reach the Earth fleet in time to help them—even if your help wasn’t worth much?”
Hammill’s face became hard. “You know damned well I would!”
“Very well, then.” The girl put her hands behind her head and unclasped the necklace that encircled her neck. The chain came away from her throat as she brought her left hand out. From her hand dangled the iridium chain—and at the end of the chain glowed the supernal light of the tiny hsrorn jewel. With her right hand she reached out and cradled the scintillating gem in her palm. Then she looked again at the Earthman. “Hold my hand,” she said softly, extending the palm containing the jewel.