by Unknown
Although, on occasion, his mind hurtled stellar systems like a bird skimming the treetops, he didn’t realize that the Iku-Nuku network, of which he was but an infinitesimal link, fashioned a vast communication complex that spanned an empire of more than 1,000,000 sun systems. Neither did he know that without him, and the billions like him, the empire would perish, leaving only fragments in what, after all, was but a minute speck in the Universe.
Although in appearance a counterpart of other members of his race, Iku-Nuku 117G was a creature of pure response; reason and emotion were strangers. But he could feel; at the moment the scant warmth of the dying day felt good.
“Iku 997P to Iku 643S, scout cruiser Duxma now landing at Krunt.”
“Iku 223M…”
“Iku 117G…”
As the last call flashed in his brain, Iku-Nuku 117G instinctively responded. Retracting his tentacles, he raised his globular body from the warm deck and acknowledged, “Iku 117G.” At the same time, by some means he didn’t understand, he automatically tuned out the other channels on the listening band assigned him.
“Iku 214J, Subcommander Gobit to Lord Gultur.”
“Hold.” Slithering into the Hall of the Glorious Dead, Iku-Nuku 117G approached the Pool of Repose where Gultur, Lord of the Stars, was refreshing himself. Only a single baleful eye protruded above the dark surface. The Iku-Nuku waited dutifully as the Lord of the Stars gathered his tentacles under him, thrusting himself upward until his slit mouth came into view.
“Speak,” Gultur commanded.
“Subcommander Gobit, my lord.”
“Let him speak,” Gultur commanded testily. He disliked being disturbed when in the pool, even though he knew that the fate of empires might depend on what his second-in-command had to report from the laboratory world.
“May your stone be high.” The voice was the Iku-Nuku’s, but the words were Gobit’s; he spoke as if face-to-face with his commander.
“My stone will be high,” Gultur rebuked arrogantly, wondering if Gobit held any doubt.
“Of a certainty,” Gobit affirmed. “The six alien duplicates now are ready.”
“Are they exact replications?” he demanded coldly.
“To the last cell.”
“And they will be able to communicate with” — Gultur paused, feeling a slight revulsion — “the young alien on the laboratory world?”
“Mind Master Zandro assures me it is so.”
“Then it is so.” Gultur’s answer held a sharp rebuke, for the mind masters were all-knowing, all-wise. To question one was unthinkable. Yet he was uncomfortably aware of his own inner perturbation. The mind master’s plan to land duplicates of the creature on one of the worlds of his own race to gather strategic military information seemed risky. More, they would have to return the information telepathically to the young alien on the laboratory world, who in turn would reveal it to Zandro. That, too, contained an element of chance he disliked. He had Zandro’s assurance that his mental control of the creature was absolute, but still.
He said uneasily, “It strikes me as strange that the mind master can’t contact the duplicates directly, even across the black abyss. If he can’t, how can the young alien?” His single eye held the Iku-Nuku as if his second-in- command were standing before him personally.
“It has something to do with the structure of the alien’s mind,” Gobit explained. “It is…different.”
Different! That was it, Gultur reflected. The long study of the young alien had provided more questions than answers. He came from a race that held dear such qualities as mercy, compassion, love — emotions as alien to Gultur as the race itself. And it held war in low esteem! That was all to the good, of course.
But the difference went beyond that. It lay in the unique value the aliens placed on the individual as opposed to the Kroon philosophy — dictated by the gods — that any unit of life was but an instrument of divine will, created for the furtherance of the race destiny.
He said, as if speaking to himself, “Nevertheless, we shall destroy them.”
“Of a certainty,” Gobit acknowledged. He added diffidently, “The scout cruiser Duxma has landed to transport the duplicates to Makal.”
“Makal?”
“The alien name of the target planet,” Gobit answered. “Mind Master Zandro chose it.”
“Did he say why?”
“It’s the administrative center of a small local area — some four hundred sun systems,” his second-in-command explained. “The planet also lies on the edge of the black abyss.”
“Have the alien duplicates brought here,” Gultur instructed arrogantly. “I would inspect them.”
“Yes, my lord.”
“I shall be waiting.” Gultur dismissed the Iku-Nuku with a curt command, conscious again of a strange unease. He contemplated it. Mull had circled its dusky orange sun eleven times since he’d led his fleet to this lonely outpost on the edge of the great black abyss. Almost immediately his scout cruisers had detected and destroyed an alien vessel in a nearby planetary system.
From the mass of wreckage and exploded bodies, the reconstruction machines had managed to replicate the essential features of both ship and crew. Discovery that the aliens possessed an interstellar drive brought immediate consternation.
Throughout their long history the Kroons had encountered but few civilizations which had reached the nuclear stage of development, fewer still that had achieved interplanetary flight; but never a race that could cross between the stars.
Gultur still recalled his quick trepidation, the doubts that had assailed him. How old, how extensive, how powerful was the empire he faced? Much of his perturbation, he realized, sprang from a subconscious racial guilt which stemmed from the Kroons’ merciless annihilation of every life form they’d encountered — the inborn fear that one day they would meet a more powerful civilization. If such a day ever came, he knew, the Kroons could expect no mercy. Had that time come? No, it wasn’t possible.
But one race shall rule the Universe! Implicit in that decree of the gods was that all other races must perish; implicit, too, was the promise of ultimate and total victory. It could not be otherwise. Annihilation is the tool of expansion. That was written in the Book of the Conqueror.
Still he had hesitated, seeking some clue to the nature of the aliens without revealing his own position. It was then that a Kroon patrol vessel, making a biosweep of nearby sun systems in search of habitable worlds, had discovered a single alien of the same race — one of very young age, according to the biologists. Dwelling alone on the second planet of a nearby green sun, he apparently was the sole survivor of an accident in space.
Gultur had seized the opportunity avidly. Here, he had reasoned, was the key to the aliens, for even the mind of the newborn carries the treasury of its race. Back through the idiot telepaths had gone urgent messages; the Council of Mind Masters had responded immediately.
Zandro, the great mind master from the nearby Region of Ull, had been dispatched to the planet of the green sun. Declaring it a laboratory world, he had cut it off from all contact except through the voices of the Iku-Nuku. Since then, in isolation, he had been studying the young alien’s mind, wresting from it the secrets of his race. Gultur had waited patiently.
Now, shortly, when the alien duplicates reported the nature of the enemy worlds in detail, the Wind of Death would move across the stars. He contemplated the prospect smugly. The aliens, after all, didn’t appear such formidable adversaries; not when compared to the might of the empire!
Slithering out to the balcony, he eyed the towering monument to Dort, his predecessor. In the newborn night, it cut a slender notch against the faintly gleaming stars. Its height, 74 mokols, would forever testify that Dort had annihilated the life of 74 sun systems.
Gultur scarcely ever looked at the towering black needle but that he thought, On some far planet yet unknown, circling a sun not yet seen, his successors one day would erect such a monument to him; and they would s
ay of him, “He was Lord of the Stars.” And then like Dort, like Grug, like Ukul — like all the great conquerors extending back along the labyrinthine trail through time and space to the very cradle of Kroon history — he would live eternally in the memory of his race. The dream was sweet.
His single eye fastened on the monument, he felt a secret mockery. Dort had perpetuated his record in 74 mokols of stone; his own would surpass 100 mokols! Conscious of the long years already lost, he made the vow fiercely. Life went swiftly, but the towering stone remains forever. That, also, was written in the Book of the Conqueror.
He switched his gaze to a single patch of orange, now all but lost in the firmament. Beyond that ghostly sheen of color, at incredible distances beyond — yet quickly bridgeable through the minds of the Iku-Nuku — lay Munga, the Planet of Birth. There, at the beginning of time, the gods had brought the first Kroons from the depths of the slate-gray seas to rule the Universe.
It had been so ordained in The Beginning.
But Munga was more than the Planet of Birth. Lying amid centrally packed stars, the coruscations of which washed the blackness from the skies, it was also the political pulse of an empire of more than 1,000,000 sun systems. Governed by the Council of Mind Masters through the network of idiot telepaths, it was the seat of ultimate power. Now the empire around it, exploding from the pressure of its spawning grounds, was fragmenting throughout the galaxy.
To conquer — that was his job. He felt a fierce surge of pride. Nay, his stone would soar 200 mokols. A thousand! The alien worlds would die like autumn leaves. He had only to lead his mighty fleet across the gulf. The Wind of Death — he would sow it for a distance of 10,000 stars!
A nearby spray emitted a scent of musk, a signal that he had visitors. That would be Gobit with the alien duplicates. He cast a last look at Dort’s monument before returning to the Hall of the Glorious Dead.
As he approached the Pool of Repose, where Gobit was waiting, the subcommander’s tentacles twitched fearfully, his globular body trembled, his single eye rolled in wild terror; his attitude mirrored abject respect. Gultur watched approvingly; not many commanders could simulate groveling fear as well as his second-in-command. Gobit should go far, if he lived.
His ceremonial respects paid, Gobit drew his tentacles together, raising his body, but carefully so that his eye should remain below the level of his commander’s. “I have brought the six alien duplicates, my lord.” He gestured with a tentacle.
Gultur let his gaze linger on them for the first time. He suppressed a shudder. They appeared exactly alike — small, bipedal, with curious dual extensors, each of which terminated in a five-digital complex which, he guessed, had been instrumental in raising them above the level of the other animals in their biosphere.
But it was the odd cephalic structures that interested him most. Each contained two eyes set above a dual nostril system, two oddly shaped flaps of flesh that undoubtedly were designed to catch sound, a strangely lipped mouth; each was topped by a yellowish tuft of hair or fur, much like the bipedal animals he had exterminated on a planet of the Qudel sun. He found them utterly disgusting. He said so.
“Extremely disgusting,” Gobit agreed. “It is an awkward, ugly body. Its movements are grotesque.”
“Weak — it has no strength.”
“Strength is not possible in such a structure, my lord.”
“It is barbaric.”
“Barbaric?”
“The body decorations. I have seen such dress on lower animals before.”
“I believe it is to protect them against the weather,” Gobit ventured. “They are a soft race.”
Gultur said musingly, “Yet they have crossed between the stars.”
“That is the puzzle,” Gobit admitted.
“I dislike taking the risk of landing them on an alien world.”
“Mind Master Zandro believes it is imperative, my lord.”
“But why six? The risk of discovery is increased six-fold.”
“One will be stationed near each of six key points,” Gobit explained. “Mind Master Zandro believes that less dangerous than trying to direct a single unit to the various centers of information which, after all, are quite widely spread.”
“Does Zandro believe these creatures to be dangerous?”
“No, they amuse him. But still he would like to ascertain the extent of their power.”
“It will be negligible,” Gultur predicted disdainfully. His baleful eye dwelt on his subordinate. “Still, landing them could be risky. Should they be discovered…”
“There is but slight chance of that,” Gobit promised.
“But if they are, then, of course, you die.”
“Ten thousand deaths, my lord.”
“Take them away,” Gultur abruptly instructed. Slithering into the Pool of Repose, he sank to the bottom.
And slept.
Danny was curious, puzzled, a bit fearful. His perturbation, he knew, arose from the nightmares — a new experience — some of which had been frightful indeed. There was the recurring dream about the huge monster in a pool; he could see it clearly — a gigantic, black, globular body, the glowering eye, the snakelike limbs. And there was the bird with the beady red eyes — a bird that stalked him; a bird that was made of metal and wire!
He’d wanted to ask Zandro about the nightmares, yet sensed a curious caution. Zandro usually was friendly and helpful, but there were times when he was aloof, almost hostile. Those were times, Danny knew, when he asked just such questions. It was then, also, that he’d sense Zandro probing at his mind in the deep of night, in the still hours before the emerald sun — Aura Rawn, his father had named it — climbed above the forest-clad hills.
But more than that he was perturbed over Zandro himself. Twice, daringly, he had penetrated Zandro’s mind. The first time he’d caught the impression of a tall stone monument towering above a gray plain. Off to one side he’d seen row after row of great black sluglike forms that, somehow, he knew were starships. Beyond, a dusky orange sun lay low in the sky.
The second time Zandro’s mind had been more chaotic.
He’d scarcely entered it when he became aware of a hideous monster, almost exactly like the one he’d seen in his nightmares. Its dark body pulsating with life, its reddish, hate-filled eye seemed to stare at him.
Frightened, he’d started to withdraw when a strange voice in his mind said, “Iku 214J to Iku 998W, Subcommander Gobit to Mind Master Zandro.”
“Iku 998W,” another voice responded. “Hold.”
“Silence!” Danny recognized the single word, screamed in his mind, as coming from Zandro. The silence swept back, ominous and frightening. Quickly
he withdrew. What could he do? He had penetrated Zandro’s mind, and Zandro knew! He waited fearfully for Zandro to come. That night he did.
“Sleep, Danny, sleep,” Zandro said. His voice, as always at night, was comforting and lulling. Danny fought desperately to cling to a shred of consciousness.
“Sleep, sleep. Sleep and forget today. Danny.” The words held a powerful hypnotic effect. “There is no Iku 214J, no Iku 998W, no Subcommander Gobit. That was all a dream, Danny. Now sleep.”
As if in a trance, Danny resisted the soothing words, clinging to a vestige of consciousness until, finally, he felt Zandro slip away. Now, pondering the memory, he fought his fears.
Who was Iku 214J? Iku 998W? He had never imagined such names. Who was Subcommander Gobit? And why were they calling Zandro? What was it all about? He weighed the questions thoughtfully. One thing was clear: Zandro wasn’t alone. No matter what he said, there were others on the planet. But who? Where? The questions burned in his mind. Perhaps he should challenge Zandro.
Staring through the thick trees toward the plain, he wondered again who Zandro was. And why did he befriend him?
“Danny?”
Startled at Zandro’s unexpected call, he tried to mask his thoughts. “I’m hunting in the forest,” he answered lamely.
“I have a surprise for you,” Zandro said.
“Surprise?” He felt a quick suspicion.
“I have arranged for you to talk with others of your kind.”
“My kind? Where are they?” he asked eagerly. “Have they come to Wenda?”
“They’re not on this world, Danny.”
“Not on this world?” A great dismay gripped him. “Then how can I talk with them?”
“Like you talk to me, Danny — telepathically.”
“What world?” he persisted. The whole idea seemed crazy. Talking to Zandro was one thing, but to talk to someone on another planet.
“A planet your people call Makal,” Zandro explained. “It circles a pinkish-gray sun called Apar.”
“Can I talk with them now?” he asked eagerly.
“Not yet, Danny. Arrangements are still being made.”
“When?”
“Soon, very soon.”
“Thank you, thank you,” he cried fervently.
“It will be wonderful,” Zandro said. “You won’t be lonely anymore.”
“I don’t want to be lonely.”
“We could learn about your world together, Danny. Would you like that?”
Danny felt a sudden stillness inside him. “I guess so,” he assented finally.
“I would like to see your world, Danny.”
“See it?”
“Through your mind,” Zandro explained.
“How will I know what to ask?”
“I’ll tell you when the time comes.”
“But I want to know now,” he exclaimed.
A long silence ensued before Zandro said, “We can find out about the city where your friends will be — how the people live, travel, what they think. We can learn about your space ports, what kind of starships they have. Oh, we can learn a lot about them.”
“Would they know all that?” he asked dubiously.