It did not look like a machine. At the center of the great paved area there rose a massive, flat-topped cement pedestal. Whatever apparatus there was, whatever perpetual power-source of nuclear or other nature, was hidden inside that. A flight of steps on each side of it led up to the summit of the eminence.
From the center of this flat summit, the opalescent beam sprang upward into the night. At its base, the beam was a curdled, seething luminescence that was dazzling to the eyes, flinging quaking aurora-rays in a twitching brilliance all around the plaza. Higher up, the beam imperceptibly lessened in intensity until far up in the night it was only a vague shining. The Converter. The ultimate step in space travel, the gateway to the freedom of the cosmos.
"The guards—see!” rang Dundonald's thought, urgently.
With an effort, Harlow wrenched his mind from the hypnotic fascination of the beam. Now he saw the two men.
They stood on the unrailed ledge or balcony that surrounded the beam, and the beam itself was between them. Their backs were to the beam as they could not stand its brilliance for too long, but they looked alertly upward and around them every few moments. Each of them carried a heavy, old-fashioned auto-rifle, cradled for instant use.
"They watch in case I try to come back out through the beam,” thought Dundonald. “Always, two watch. And they can see the whole plaza."
"Where are Taggart and the others?” whispered Harlow.
"See there—away to your left, not far from the Starquest. That square building with the domed roof."
Harlow saw it. It was not hard to identify, for light shone out through the windows of that building and all the others were dark.
He dropped back a little to where Kwolek was looking ahead with wide, wondering eyes.
"You'll take all the men except Garcia and me,” he told Kwolek. “Circle around and approach that building from behind. Wait near its front door until Garcia and I have got the two sentries up there on the Converter. Then, when Taggart and the rest come out, jump them fast."
"Okay,” said Kwolek, but Yrra had pressed forward and now was asking Harlow anxiously, “What of Brai?"
"If we overpower Taggart and his bunch we can release the prisoners easily,” Harlow told her. “But that has to come first.” He added, “You're to stay right here where you are, Yrra. No arguments! All right, Kwolek, get them going."
Kwolek did. They made a considerable-looking little body of dark figures as they slipped away across the street and disappeared among the buildings. But Harlow thought of their little short-range stunners, and of Taggart's old-fashioned lethal rifles, and he did not feel too happy.
He and Garcia were left, with Dundonald hovering beside them and Yrra a little behind them. Her face was both scared and mutinous.
"Listen, Harlow,” came Dundonald's rapid thought. “You and Garcia will be seen and shot if you just barge out onto the plaza. Let me distract those two sentries first."
"You? How?"
"You'll see. Wait till they turn their backs toward you."
With that thought, Dundonald suddenly flashed away from them. Like a little shooting-star he sped out and upward across the plaza, toward the upper reaches of the towering beam.
Harlow, watching tensely with Garcia, saw the two sentries up on the rim of the Converter suddenly point upward and call to each other. They were looking up at the eery, shining star that was Dundonald, as it flitted high up around the beam. They had their rifles ready for instant use now, and they were facing the beam.
"They think Dundonald's going to come through the beam—they're getting set to shoot if he does!” muttered Harlow. “That gives us a chance—you take the farther guard, I'll take the nearest."
"Luck,” whispered Garcia, and went out across the plaza in a swift run, looking miraculously neat after all they had been through, his little stunner glistening in his hand.
Harlow was right after him, taking a slightly different course. The two guards up there still had their backs to him, facing toward the beam and looking tensely up at Dundonald's firefly circlings.
Harlow reached the base of the steps on his side of the Converter. They were wide steps, their cement worn by the wind and weather of thousands of years.
He went quietly up them, his stunner in his hand. He had to get close, the little shocker-gadget had almost no range. He hoped he would get close enough.
And how many other men have gone up these steps toward the beam of the Converter, never to return? How many men and women have left their humanity behind them here to break through into the wider cosmos?
* * * *
He reached the top of the steps, and crouched a moment. The guard on this side of the Converter ledge was fifteen feet away, his back to Harlow.
Harlow waited, his eyes searching for the other guard part way around the beam. He and Garcia must make their play at the same time. But he could see the man only vaguely, through that brilliance. The beam sprang up from what seemed a transparent plate, twenty feet in diameter, and at this close distance it was utterly dazzling.
He was scared, and he was sweating, he wanted to jump forward and act but he mustn't compromise Garcia's chances, he had to wait...
He waited too long, and everything happened at once.
The other guard, partway around the beam, suddenly crumpled down onto the cement ledge. Garcia had come up close behind and had used his stunner.
Instantly, Harlow jumped forward toward his own man. But this guard had seen his comrade fall and he was whirling around, opening his mouth to shout.
He saw Harlow coming and threw up his rifle to fire. Harlow triggered the stunner. But he was running and he was not too used to weapons, and the invisible conical electric field of the stunner only brushed against the guard. The man staggered, but he did not fall.
Desperately, Harlow ran in. The stunner's charge was exhausted until it re-cycled, and he had to get in past that rifle. He hit the guard in the mouth as he started to yell an alarm, and then grabbed him.
"Harlow!” rang a wild thought in his mind. “No time now, Frayne's coming in—"
Harlow staggered, wrestling clumsily with the guard on the wide stone ledge, with the shining star that was Dundonald dancing in a frantic way close to him. The blood was roaring in his ears, and—No. The roaring was in the sky, it was getting louder and louder, a great dark bulk was sinking on plumes of flame toward the plaza.
Garcia reached him just as Harlow swung again and hit the guard's chin. The man collapsed and fell, his rifle clanging on the cement.
"Harlow! Run!"
The radiance that was Dundonald was whirling with wild urgency beside him yet, and Harlow heard his frantic thought. Had it been a voice he could not have heard, for the roar of the descending cruiser drowned everything.
Harlow cried, “Come through, Dundonald—through the beam!"
"Too late!” was the answering, agonized thought. “Look!"
The star-cruiser landed on the plaza, and instantly its lock opened. At the same moment over in front of the domed square building, shots rang out as Kwolek and the Thetis crew rushed Taggart's men, just emerging from the building.
Out of the newly-landed cruiser men came running. They had auto-rifles too, and Kwolek and the Thetis men were caught in a crossfire.
Harlow was starting to run for the steps when Garcia crumpled.
He caught him. The Mexican's neat tunic was drilled right through over the heart, and his face was lax and lifeless.
Bullets screamed off the cement beside Harlow and he turned and saw men from the cruiser—two—now three—of them, shooting at him.
Dundonald was a star beside him and the star was screaming in his mind.
"You can't run now! The beam, Harlow—it's that or death!"
The little battle was over and they had lost it, and Kwolek and the Thetis survivors were helplessly surrendering, and the rifles out there were leveled to rip through Harlow as he stood silhouetted against the blazing beam.
&n
bsp; He had a choice, of dying right there or not dying.
He chose. He threw himself into the beam.
CHAPTER VII
The impact was incredible. It was birth and death and resurrection all happening instantaneously and all together, with the violence of a whirlwind. Harlow knew fear for a brief instant, and then the very concept of fear as he knew it was overwhelmed and lost in an emotion so new and vast that he had no word for it.
He never really knew whether or not he lost consciousness. Perhaps that was because his whole concept of “consciousness” changed too, out of all recognition. There was a brilliant flare of light all through him when he entered the misty glowing pillar of force. The light was inside him as well as out, exploding in every cell of his flesh and bone, brain and marrow. It was as though for an instant his whole corporeal being had achieved a strange state of glory. But after that instant he was not sure of light or dark, time or place, being or not-being. Something unbelievably weird was happening to his body. He tried to see what it was but all he could achieve was a blurring of color like a kaleidoscope run mad. He could only feel and that did not tell him much because he had never felt anything like this before and so had no frame of reference whatever.
Only he knew that all at once he felt free.
It was a feeling so joyous, so poignant, that it was almost unbearable.
Free.
Free of weight and weariness, the dragging limitations of the flesh. Free of want and need, free of duty, free of responsibility, free forever of the haunting fear of death. Never in his life before, even in its most supreme moments, had he felt truly free, truly at one with the universe. It was revelation. It was life.
He leapt forward, impelled by the joy that was in him, and then he sensed that Dundonald was there waiting for him. It did not seem at all strange now that Dundonald should be a hovering cloud of sparks, a hazy patch of sheer energy. It seemed natural and right, the only sort of form for a sensible man to have. His thought—contact with him was clear and instantaneous, infinitely better than speech.
Well, now you've done it, Dundonald thought. How do you feel?
Free! cried Harlow. Free! Free!
Yes, said Dundonald. But look there.
Harlow looked, not with eyes any more but with a far clearer sense that had replaced them.
The men with rifles—Taggart's men and Frayne's men—stood looking baffledly toward the Converter, the gateway through which he, Harlow, had plunged. The change, then, had been very swift, almost instantaneous. Kwolek and the other surviving men of the Thetis were being disarmed, surrounded by more of Taggart's men.
One of them held Yrra. She was staring at the glowing misty beam of the Converter with anguished eyes and she was crying out a word. The word was Harlow. It was his name. He could read her thoughts, very dimly compared to Dundonald's, but clear enough. He was astounded by what he read in them.
"I could have told you how she thought of you,” Dundonald thought. “But I didn't think I should."
Some vestiges of Harlow's recent humanity still remained. He dropped down close to Yrra and she saw him, her face mirroring shock and pain but no fear now. There was another emotion in her far stronger than fear. The man who was holding her saw Harlow too and flinched away, raising his gun.
Harlow ignored him. He spoke to Yrra's mind. I'm safe, he said. Don't worry, I'll come back. I love you.
Stupid words. Human words. Everything had failed and he could not come back any more than Dundonald.
The watch over the Converter would be doubled now, to guard against any possibility of his and Dundonald's return during the time it would take the technicians from the Cartel ships to find a way of dismantling and removing the Converter. And once that was done, the way would be closed to them forever.
Yrra's voice—or was it her thoughts?—hurt him with sorrow and longing. He was not so free as he had thought. And then he saw Taggart talking to a neat efficient pleasant-looking chap with eyes like two brown marbles, and he knew that it must be Frayne. He felt their thoughts, cold, quick, clear, perfectly ruthless. For the first time he understood what it was that set men like that apart from the bulk of the human race. Their minds were like cold wells into which no light or warmth ever penetrated. They might counterfeit friendship or even love, but the capacity for them was not really there. All the emotions were turned inward, bound tightly around the core of Self.
And these were the men who had beaten him, the men who were robbing the galaxy of its mightiest possession.
Harlow became aware that he could still feel hate.
He sprang at the men. He reached out to strike them, and the substance of his being passed through them like bright smoke. They were startled, but that was all. And Taggart smiled.
"Is that you, Harlow? I thought so. There are disadvantages in not having a body, aren't there?” He gestured toward the Converter. “You can have yours back any time. Just come through."
And get killed? No use to lie, Taggart. I can read your mind.
"Well, then, you'll have to wait and hope that some day I'll get curious about your kind of life and come through where we can meet on equal ground. Though I wonder just what you could do to me even so."
Dundonald was close beside Harlow now. “Come on, you can't do any good here. As he says, there are disadvantages."
The fingers Harlow no longer itched for a weapon. “I'm not going back through."
"They'll kill you the instant you return. You know that."
"But if the two of us came together—if we came fast and went for both the guards—"
"Then there'd be two of us dead instead of one,"
"But if there were more of us, Dundonald. If there were ten, twenty, a hundred, all at once, pouring out through the Converter—” The idea grew in Harlow's mind. The cloud of energy that was his being pulsed and brightened, contracting into a ball of radiance. “The Vorn, Dundonald! That's our answer. The Vorn. This is their fight as much as it is ours. They built the Converter. It belongs to them, and if the Cartel takes it they'll be cut off too."
He sensed a doubt in Dundonald's mind.
"It's true, isn't it?” he cried, wild with impatience. “You know it's true. What's the matter?"
"They're so far away,” Dundonald said. “I've hardly met any of them—only one, really, and there was one other I sensed a long way off. Most of them, I think, have left this galaxy."
The rest of Dundonald's thought was clear in his mind for Harlow to read. The thought was, I doubt very much if the Vorn will care.
"Then we'll have to make them,” Harlow said. “There isn't anything else to try!"
Dundonald sighed mentally. “I suppose we might as well be doing that as hanging around here watching, as helpless as two shadows.” He shot away. “Come on then. I'll take you to where I spoke with one of them. He may still be in that sector—he was studying Cepheid variables, and there were two clusters there that were unusually well supplied."
Harlow cried. “Wait! How can I do it, how can I move-?"
"How did you move before, when you didn't think of it?” said Dundonald. “Exert your will. By will the polarity of your new electronic body is changed, so that it can grip and ride the great magnetic tides. Will it!"
Harlow did so. And a great wind between the stars seemed instantly to grip him and to carry him away with Dundonald, faster and faster.
* * * *
He was first appalled, then exhilarated by it. He kept Dundonald in close contact, and the world of the Vorn, the green star, the black-walled bay, all simply vanished. There was a flick of darkness like the wink of an eyelid and they were through the Horsehead, skimming above it like swallows with their wings borne on the forces of a million suns that shone around the edges of the great dark.
This could not be happening to him. He was Mark Harlow and he was a man of Earth, not a pattern of electrons rushing faster than thought upon the magnetic millrace currents of infinity. But it was happening, and he w
ent on and on.
At a speed compared to which light crawled, they two flashed past many-colored sparks that he knew were stars, and then before them rose up a globular cluster shaped like a swarm of hiving bees, only all the bees were suns. The swarm revolved with splendid glitterings in the blackness of space, moving onward and ever onward in a kind of grand and stately dance, while within this larger motion the component suns worked out their own complicated designs. The Cepheids waxed and waned, living their own intense inner lives, beyond understanding.
"He's not here,” said Dundonald, and sped on.
"How do you know?"
"Open your mind. Spread it wide. Feel with it."
They plunged through the cluster. The magneto-gravitational tides must have been enough to wrench a ship apart, but to Harlow they were only something stimulating. The blaze of the sun-swarm was like thunder, overpowering, stunning, magnificent. He could strangely sense the colors that shifted and changed. White, gold, blue, scarlet, green, the flashing of a cosmic prism where every facet was a sun. It passed and they were in the outer darkness again, the cluster dwindling like a lamp behind them.
And ahead was a curtain of golden fire hung half across the universe.
"The other cluster is beyond the nebula,” Dundonald thought. “Come on—"
Going into the Horsehead had been like diving against a solid basalt cliff. This was like plunging into a furnace, into living flame. And they were both illusion. The fires of this bright nebula were as cold as the dust-laden blackness of the dark one. But they were infinitely more beautiful. The more diffuse gaseous clouds blazed with the light of their captive suns instead of blotting them out. Harlow sped with Dundonald along golden rivers, over cataracts of fire a million miles high, through coils and plumes and great still lakes of light with the stars glowing in them like phosphorescent fish.
Then there was darkness again, and another cluster growing in it, another hive of stars patched with the sick radiance of the Cepheids. And Dundonald was sending out a silent cry, and suddenly there was an answering thought, a third mind in that vastness of space and stars.
The Godmen and The Stars, My Brothers Page 6