by Gardner Fox
Slowly the strange brightness coalesced. Its transparency was shot with milkiness now, a coruscation of whiteness so bright it made the eyes ache. A radiance, pulsing gently, shaping itself. A life form with which man was unfamiliar.
I scarcely breathed. The hairs on the back of my neck were standing stiffly. This was alien, monstrous. Its very presence turned the bowels to mush and the knees to rubber. I had to use the utmost will power to stand erect. I was glad I was not in the forefront of the Llynn.
A voice touched my mind as the thing sent its thoughts outward through the room. You have been summoned because it is shosthin, the time of spawning. To maintain my own life, I must devour yours.
My skin crawled.
The whiteness was rising, lifting upward as might the head of a snake, twisting, writhing, gathering its power. A moment it hung between the marble block and the golden dome.
Alien! Alien!
Terror kept me still, unmoving, when every instinct shouted for me to turn, to bolt, to flee this living madness.
The thing stabbed out. It flowed down around a young woman, enveloping her in its whiteness. She stood within a thick mist. I could scarcely see her body, that whiteness was so heavy, so brilliant. It pulsed and quivered. It devoured. It feasted on the living spirit of the girl, on her flesh and blood and bones.
Slowly the girl faded from view, as though she were being merged into the brightness. There was only the thing, towering, triumphant. My mind caught its paean of victory, of life.
Then it flowed back toward the marble block.
An instant the girl stood, oddly shrunken. Her skin was withered, brown, wrinkled. Her eyes were sightless, dead. Then she collapsed and lay on the floor motionless.
My lip was bleeding, I was biting so fiercely to prevent an outcry of pure horror. What was this thing? Out of what ancient maelstrom of life had it come, to batten on living intelligence?
Again it rose upward, questing.
And froze motionless.
My skull exploded with pain. I cried out and bent over, both hands catching at my forehead. The voice was booming thunder in my brain.
A human! Out of the other universe, which I thought empty of all life. So long ago, so long ago …
It was speaking to itself, but it was inside my head. I felt its touch, cold and alien, questing along my bloodstream, into my bones and through my flesh, down to my very nerve-ends. It flooded my brain.
Man, they called themselves. Not Llynn—man! How many eons? How many uncountable centuries has it been since I feasted on their wisdom, their intelligence? I thought they were all gone from the star worlds. Now they are alive. Many of them, so many. Strong. Alert. Filled with vitality, not like these Llynn out of whom I have drained everything but a childlike existence.
I was crawling across the floor. It may have been a reflex action of my nerves and muscles but I was not conscious of crawling until I realized suddenly that I was almost at the great stairway. The Llynn could not move, but I could, painfully, a foot at a time.
My skull was almost bursting from the painful grip with which the thing tried to hold it. Yet I knew I should go mad if I did not try to get away. My hands and my knees moved steadily, steadily.
Man! You human! Listen to me! If I were not at the time of spawning I would keep you here, make you part of me as I make these others. I am weak for I have not feasted. It has been a long time, too long a time! Yet over the years and the centuries, I have had to eat slowly, slowly, for my supply is not inexhaustible.
Long ago I made that mistake, when I found Man in the stars. I ate and ate, prodigally, without thought for a tomorrow. I am eternal if I can feast at my time for spawning. Long ago and far away I ate too swiftly, like a glutton. And I did away with the race of Men.
Or thought I did! I see now I was mistaken.
There are more men in the stars. I have feasted long enough in Slarrn. I will come soon into your world and feast again upon mankind as I have feasted before…
I crawled out of the city along the road to the grassy places and at every foot of the way the grip on my mind loosened. Perhaps the brain of man is different from that of the Llynn. The thing was not used to the proper hold on my type of brain, having forgotten across the eons.
My hands were bleeding, so were my knees, but I went on and on, just crawling, not daring to stand. I had to get away, to escape back through the gateway. My heart and my mind were cold inside me.
The thing that ate intelligence and life was hungry to come back into our universe. The Llynn had been devoured until they gave little nourishment to such a thing as the pulsing whiteness, now.
By coming here I had made it realize that there were men among the stars, men who would serve as prey for its strange sort of life. Billions of men on thousands of planets strung like jewels across the Milky Way. It would feast a little while longer on the Llynn, then come for us. There was no hurry, though. The thing was eternal.
I must carry a warning to the Empire.
Or there would be no Empire.
And—no men.
CHAPTER SEVEN
KAEL CARRICK was sweating. Clammy perspiration ran down his chest and back and across the ridged muscles of his belly. Terror lay like an animal in his mind and gibbered.
Ylth’yl—alive!
Ylth’yl—about to pounce on the star worlds! Perhaps even now it was sliding, slipping between the barriers that kept the universes separate, questing in its hungry way for Man and his intelligence, his life forces.
But no. The news of its coming would have been flashed on all the space screens, over all the many communication devices by which the star planets keep in touch with one another. No, Ylth’yl had not left the Slarrn worlds as yet. There was still time to alert the Empire.
He must learn all he could.
He began reading again.
I have locked myself in my laboratory, with the plastic bags filled with the dirt and stones, hair clippings and other impedimenta of the Slarrn world. For unending hours, I have been making tests.
The world of Slarrn is vastly similar to our own. Its life processes are based on carbon molecules just as are ours. Neither man nor Slarrn can stand up to the white being in the—temple?—because of this likeness.
But suppose there were another form of life? Alien life to fight with—alien? Life based on silicon, rather than on carbon? It is a theory I mean to explore.
I am very tired. I have been working days and nights without rest since my last entry. Yet I believe—how my heart is hammering!—that I am on the track of a way to make silicon life. I have learned to create silicate cell plasma—living cell plasma, by which I can build flesh and tissue, muscle and bones. It is a great break-through in biologic science, allied as it is with molecular genetics and protein chemistry.
I will put the formulae in my notes, but here I can give just a hint, a suggestion. Radiant energy, focussed on silicate cybernicells, will give life to them. I can—I have, as a matter of fact!—created a mouse of silicon. It ran twice about its cage before it collapsed and died. It was mindless, of course. I have been unable to duplicate a living brain, even on that low level. It did not know enough even to eat.
Ah, but if I took the brain from a living mouse?
I have done just that. The silicate mouse is alive and well. It is bright, alert. It comes when I whistle, for then I feed it and this it knows.
Now I have made a silicate cat and a silicate dog. They too are alive and well. They give me great hope. All I need now is a human brain around which to build a body. Ah, and what a body I shall make! I shall cause a miracle in living flesh. I shall add glands and organs with strange and terrible properties. These glands and organs shall be artificial—mighty miniature machines, perfectly capable of functioning through the silicate flesh of my created body as through metal itself. Only such a man—and here I use the word advisedly, for I am dealing with a human being—could stand a chance against the devil-thing called Ylth’yl.
>
Today I found such a man. Little of him is alive outside his brain and his heart. He is a basket case as a result of the Vrenn war. He has agreed to my terms. I will give him a new body—a very different body—formed of silicon cells and artificial glands and organs hidden in his flesh.
I will not explain all I have done, to him. He will have much to find out for himself. If he has the courage to do what must be done, he will be the savior of all mankind. And Kael Carrick has courage. I have learned this in my association with him.
The diary slipped from his fingers and rested on his thighs. Now the mystery of himself was a mystery no longer. Hannes Stryker had fashioned him of silicon, with a definite purpose in mind.
Ylth’yl feasted on carbon beings.
He might not be able to ingest someone made of silicon.
Carrick snorted. He wished Stryker had confided more in him, had explained odd little facts which needed explaining. Or—perhaps he had. On Dakkan planet, he had known Ylth’yl. Stryker may have fed hypnotic suggestions to his mind while he slept, during his operations and those long, long days when he was building up his body, cell by cell, while Carrick lay inert under anaesthesia.
He lifted the diary. Savior! Was this the word Hannes Stryker used about him, about Kael Carrick? What sort of savior or deliverer could he make?
The answer was obvious.
Hannes Stryker had built him to fight Ylth’yl.
Carrick shuddered. He wanted no part of that alien being, its pulsing white brilliance and its awesome otherness. He wanted only to clear his name, to stand innocent before the star worlds.
Mai Valoris heard him as he left his chair. She sat up suddenly, staring, then gave a little laugh. “I was dreaming I was back on Dakkan and that Than Lear had captured you and—” She shuddered. “It was not nice, what he intended doing to you.”
She frowned. “Was the diary any help?”
“Too much help. It scared me.”
He told her what Hannes Stryker had written. She grew pale toward its conclusion. “What’ll you do?” she wondered.
“Go on with what I was doing before I read it, trying to clear my name. And yours. I’m no deliverer. If Ylth’yl comes into our world—well, maybe then I’ll offer my services.”
She smiled at him. “You’re trying to say you’re no hero, but when the chips are down you’ll come through.”
He considered her with his eyes and with his mind and Kael Carrick knew a deep bitterness, a resentment against Hannes Stryker. The man had played at being God. He had fashioned Kael Carrick as he had manufactured a mindless mouse. Not to give him back a lost body. No, no. He had remade Kael Carrick for one purpose.
To fight with and destroy Ylth’yl.
There was sound at a corner of the room.
The door opened. Alton Raymond stood on the threshold, smiling at them. He had lost his jitters. Here on Skytowers he was king, unmatched and unrivalled by any mere man. His eyes held steady on Carrick as he came into the room.
“Well, will you go? Into the Slarrn world and face that—that thing?” The fat man shuddered. “I didn’t believe what Hannes wrote, at first. I thought it something he made up to frighten off anyone who might steal his diary. I was so sure of this, I went through the gateway myself.”
Sweat came out on his forehead. He wiped at it with a hand, smiling faintly, “He didn’t lie. I saw the people walking through the grasses, just the whites of their eyes showing. I think I felt—the thing hunting for me with its mind. It wouldn’t have let me go if I’d continued on with them, or maybe I wouldn’t have been strong enough to get away, as Stryker did. I’d be back there in Slarrn, dead.”
Raymond went to the bar, poured himself a drink shot through with yellow fires. He sipped it, seeming to gather strength from its warmth. “Well, Carrick? Will you be my partner?”
“What do you want me to do?”
The fat man looked surprised. “I thought it would be pretty obvious, after you read the diary. Hannes Stryker gave you a body for one reason. To destroy Ylth’yl. Do that and I’ll make you the richest man—outside myself, naturally—in the Empire.”
Mai Valoris almost stopped breathing. Her elfin eyes were fixed on Carrick and her hands were balled into tight fists. Carrick must make this decision, for Carrick was the one who must do the fighting against Ylth’yl. She had long ago made up her mind that he would decide everything for both of them. Honestly enough, she did not know which way she wanted him to jump.
“I don’t know enough,” Carrick said slowly.
“What more do you need to know?” Raymond asked impatiently.
Carrick looked at him. “Hannes Stryker came to you for money. What happened between you?”
The fat man took a long pull of the yellow drink. When he put the glass down it was empty. He went and sat on a bench built into the wood-panelled wall.
“Yes, he asked for money. He wanted to enlarge his gateway, to make it so big transport ships could take colonists—engineers, technicians, educators—into the Slarrn worlds. First he meant to destroy the alien life form with you, of course. I learned this only by reading his diary, much later. At the time he just asked for money, telling me that he had opened the barrier into another universe, a universe, rich with metal, with minerals, with many of the things used up by our own civilizations. You know as well as I, how dependent our culture is on synthetics. And some things can’t be synthesized.”
“If you’d given him the money, you’d have been his partner?”
Alton Raymond nodded. “Yes, naturally. There was enough for both of us. I am already rich. I had no special desire for more money.”
Liar, thought Carrick. No man whose god is money ever has enough. And yet he might be doing the fat man an injustice.
“I liked the idea of playing philanthropist, of giving mankind a whole new set of worlds for its own. I would be a co-ruler of this new universe. Stryker and I would be its emperors.” The fat man grinned. “Now you and I can be its emperors, Carrick. Doesn’t it sound good?”
“Yes, it sounds fine.”
The other man stared at him sharply. “Yet you hesitate. I want to know why. I’m offering you a multi-billionaire credit rating and you boggle at—what? What is it that sticks in your craw?”
“I need time to think. After all, it’s my life I’m offering up by taking on Ylth’yl.”
The rich man scowled, then nodded. “Your life, yes. I got enough of a scare in that other-universe to respect a man’s hesitancy about tackling that thing. I point out to you, though—you’ve been a soldier. You’ve put your life on the line again and again. Dying—”
“Dying is one thing. I have a feeling a man doesn’t quite—die—when Ylth’yl embraces him.”
Alton Raymond slapped the leather cover of the bench where he sat. “To win a billion or more credits, a man ought to be willing to take a few risks.”
“I’ve told myself that. As I say, I want time to weigh pros and cons.” He grinned coldly at the fat man. “Suppose I agree. Suppose further that I can defeat or kill Ylth’yl. What’s to stop you from turning me over to the authorities as Hannes Stryker’s escaped killer?”
Raymond swore viciously, in vexation. “Man, if I wanted to do that, I could have Skytowers surrounded in minutes.”
“You wouldn’t do that. I’m the only one who can stop Ylth’yl—if even I can. You must destroy Ylth’yl at all costs. No, I’m safe enough until after I match strengths with that thing. You’ll see to that, I know.”
Raymond looked at Mai Valoris and spread his hands, mutely asking her what else he could say to swing Carrick to his way of thinking. The girl was watching Carrick, biting her full lower lip. Only vaguely did she hear Raymond say, “Talk to him, honey. Tell him what a billion credits can mean in the Empire.”
A billion credits. More money than she or anyone she had ever known had even dreamed of having. Its interest alone would let a man live in luxury the rest of his life. Invested wisely, it mig
ht double itself in ten years.
“Kael,” she said slowly, “do whatever you think is right.”
He brooded at her, then looked at the fat man. Stubbornly, he shook his head. “I need time to think. I won’t make any snap decisions. Time. I want time.”
Raymond pounded the bench with his hand. “There is no time. You read the diary. Already Ylth’yl may be coming through the barriers between the universes. If he can, that is.”
Oh, he can, Carrick thought. He went from Dakkan planet long ago into the Slarrn world. He can come back.
“A week only,” Carrick said. “A week in which to think. Somewhere—where there won’t be distractions. Somewhere…”
His hand gestured vaguely.
Alton Raymond let his head sink. After a moment he sighed, “It’s the best I can hope for, I suppose. I have a hunting lodge on Acrux-2, on the edge of the Border worlds. There’s good hunting, fishing. Not much else. It’s desolate.” He smiled wryly. “I keep it for customers. It’s too uncivilized for me, I like my creature comforts. You’d like it, though.”
Carrick nodded. A hunting lodge on a planet teeming with game animals and not much else. Yes, something like that—well off the beaten path, close to the Border worlds—might be his answer.
“It sounds good,” Carrick put enthusiasm into his voice. “I haven’t been hunting in a long time.”
“You like to hunt?”
Carrick grinned, “Maybe it’s the killer streak in me.”
“Go kill Ylth’yl and the hunting lodge—hell, all Acrux—is yours. A gift from me. Go there. Sample the sort of hunting it affords.” Alton Raymond was growing enthusiastic himself, understanding that by giving Kael Carrick a glimpse of what his life could be like if he were a credit billionaire, he would be influencing his decision.
“I’ll need a ship.”