Front matter

The Blue Warrior had journeyed far across the void in his search for power; but he found death along with it—in the eyes of a goddess!

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy March 1952 Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

Naked, still as death, the veiled woman-goddess men called Xaymar rested on a gold-draped dais within the great, glowing, crystal globe.

Xaymar, queen of storms. Ruler of rain and wind and lightning, empress of all the surging forces that spread their tumult across the sky. Sainted monster, evil savior. Old as time, and young as folly. Born of woman, damned of men, wise with dark wisdom gone astray.

Xaymar, passionate goddess. A word, a myth, a fading picture in forgotten books. A phantasm rising out of these ghostly, gutted cities, these ruins dead a thousand years.

Yet here she lay in this deep-sunk vault, nude save for the short, jeweled veil that masked the top half of her face. Her body still gleamed like a supple ivory statue, a vision of sleek, ripe-curved perfection. Rippling waves of jet-black hair framed the pale, veiled oval of her face in a darkly radiant nimbus. A faint rose glow touched lips and breasts. It seemed almost as if she could have been sleeping here mere hours only, instead of eons; as if she were still alive and vibrant ... all woman; all terrible, voluptuous promise....

The Shamon priest was bent with age, his face a deep-seamed net of wrinkles. The short cloak of his order, vivid with a hundred contrasting shades of blue, covered his thin shoulders, and a toloid tablet emblazoned with a stylized representation of a lightning bolt, Xaymar's emblem, hung suspended over his bony chest.

He said: "I want you to kill a woman."

Across the table, the blue warrior called Haral sat very still. He did not speak.

The old Shamon hurried on: "They say the same, all those to whom I've spoken—that you alone, of all the warriors here on Ulna, would dare to go against the raider Sark. The rest are brave until they hear his name; then, quickly, they sing another song. But you—" He hesitated, fumbling, and peered uncertainly at Haral out of rheumy, fading eyes. "Tell me, blue one, is it true that you went alone to Eros and slew the tyrant lord Querroon because he'd dared to put a price upon your head? And that then you defied the Federation to try to hang you, and slashed your way through the whole Federation fleet with your single ship?"

"It's true."

"You see—?" the oldster cried in quavering triumph. "You see it, Sha Haral? You are a warrior worthy of the name! In you there's iron instead of meal. That is why I come to you to kill this woman—"

"A woman—?" Haral repeated dully. He swirled the fiery kabat in his glass. "Why should I kill a woman?"

"Because I'll pay you well," the Shamon priest croaked eagerly. Coins clinked onto the table. "Here, look! Two hundred samori, Sha Haral! So much for such a simple task—enough to send you out again from Ulna, to put you once more on the road to wealth and power, ambition...."

Broodingly, Haral stared down into the kabat's green, too-potent depths. Of a sudden he was acutely conscious of the smoke and stench and jarring sound that eddied through the shadows of this filthy, frowsy deadfall that passed as a cafe. 'Wealth and power, ambition?' He laughed aloud, knowing as he did it that his tongue had grown too thick with kabat. This was the road down which ambition led—the road to stinking drinking dives, and dreary nights and drearier days on an outlaw world called Ulna. The road to blood and valor, a warrior's name—and proposals of woman-murder.

Ambition? Two hundred samori-worth of ambition! Bitterly, he laughed again, deep in his throat. There were other, better things to call it: greed; thirst for blood; a cursed, insatiate lust for power.

The old priest gripped his arm. "Three hundred, then! Three hundred samori, Sha Haral!"

Somberly, the blue man stared off into the crowd and smoke and shadows. It dawned on him that already new faces had sifted in; new forms, all arrogance and swagger.

The forms and faces of Gar Sark's raiders.

"Three hundred samori? Three hundred—to challenge Gar Sark and all his crew, as well as murder?" He smiled a thin, bleak, mirthless smile and shook his head. "No, old man. What you want is a madman, not a warrior."

"Four hundred—four hundred samori for a single blow!" In his eagerness the priest was slavering. "No? Five, then, Sha Haral! Five hundred, all for you. I have no more."

For the first time, Haral looked full at the Shamon. "Why do you want her dead?" he challenged. He brought his fist down with a heavy thud upon the table. "Why? That's what I want to know! Who is she? What has she done that calls for killing?"

"Why—?" Sweat came to the ancient's face. Uneasily, he shifted. "She—she—Sark is a monster, and his men have seized her for tomorrow's games in the arena. She'll die in agony at their hands. I—I cannot bring myself to let her suffer—"

"So you'd hire me to kill her instead?" Haral laughed harshly. "I hear your words, old man—"

"My name is Namboina."

"—Namboina, I hear your words. But I'll rot on your vidal planetoid before I believe them. Too many other Shamon have died on Ulna for you to worry about one more." He drained his glass and slammed it down. "No. Find someone else to do your killing. I like to know the facts before I murder."

The sweat stood out on the priest's forehead in great beads now. With shaking fingers, he wiped it away. "I—I see I must tell you all, Sha Haral. The—the woman is Kyla, a virgin priestess to our goddess Xaymar. Her life, her body, are consecrated to the goddess. She is not for mortal men. But Sark and his raiders care nothing for our Xaymar. In their blood-lust and madness they would defile even her priestess, Kyla. But it cannot be! Better that Kyla die—" He broke off, stared at Haral. "I, Namboina, am high priest to Xaymar. It is my duty to save Kyla from shame, our goddess from defilement—"

Haral said: "You lie in your teeth, Namboina! I've heard enough of your thrice-plagued Xaymar to know that she's called the passionate goddess—and her priestesses pattern themselves upon her! If there's a virgin still among them, it's news to the raider fleets that comb these warrens in search of women."

"No, no—! Not Kyla!" The Shamon's loose mouth worked. His face was a mask of desperation. "She is a votary, consecrated. She is not as the others—"

Haral shoved back his chair; surged to his feet. "I've had enough of your lies, old man!" he slashed. "Sing someone else your song of murder!"

Namboina's quavering voice rose, thin with fury: "A curse on you, alien! A curse on all your outland breed that have made a cesspool out of Ulna—"

But now a new voice cut him short, thundering through the shadows: "This is the one we want! The old one, the priest they call Namboina!"

Haral spun about.

A dozen fighting men from Sark's raider crews were coming towards him and Namboina. Spread in a menacing arc, weapons out and ready, they closed in like cold-eyed, deadly shadows.

Haral fell back a step, till he stood with his back against the wall. Big-eyed with fear, Namboina slumped in his seat, as if trying to hide behind the table.

It came to Haral that a hush had fallen over the kabat dive. The raucous voices had faded into silence. The rattle of glasses was suddenly stilled.

Then a glowering Martian who seemed to be in charge of the raider gang snapped orders: "Yes. This is the one. Bring him along!"

A Thorian's tentacle lashed out to grip Namboina and drag him bodily from his chair.

Now a Pervod jerked his scaly head towards Haral. "What of this one here? They were together."

The Martian pivoted for a brief, disdainful glance at the blue man. "That kabat-soaked scum?" And then: "But bring him, too. We'll take no chances."

Almost as if in intentional added insult, he turned away and sheathed his ray-gun.

A hot, tempestuous tide of anger swirled up within the warrior. But he did not move; he did not speak.

A second Martian caught his arm. "Come along, you zanat, before we stave in your ugly head!"

For an instant, in spite of himself, Haral's arm went rigid. Then, thin-lipped, he sucked in air, and fell in beside the quaking, shaking priest.

One of the raiders laughed contemptuously and shoved the pair of them ahead still faster.

They reached the narrow doorway that led out to the street. Then, while their prisoners paused, two of the raiders stepped outside.

A knot of tension drew tight in the pit of Haral's stomach. He let his shoulders slump, and slouched, half-turning.

Namboina stumbled on through the door.

A Pervod pushed the blue man forward.

With studied care, Haral, too, stumbled. He caught the handle of the open door as if to keep himself from falling.

Then, like lightning, he was turning, kicking. The Pervod crashed backward with a howl of anguish.

Haral leaped through the doorway, out into the street, slamming the heavy portal shut behind him. He caught a glimpse of the two crewmen there—startled, whirling.

But Namboina was between Haral and the raiders. Savagely, the blue man threw himself against the priest and sent him crashing into the nearest crewman.

The second of the raiders was a one-eyed, barrel-chested Malya. He leaped back, cat-fast, whipping up his ray-gun.

But Haral dived in beneath its shaft. His shoulder drove deep into the Malya's midriff, hammering the dark raider down. Clutching for the ray-gun, he tore it out of the other's hand.

In the same instant, he heard Namboina cry out in panic.

By instinct, pure and simple, he dropped flat on his belly. By instinct, too, he fired the ray-gun—straight into the face of the second raider, free now and charging down upon him.

The raider dropped dead in his tracks.

Haral pivoted, just as the door to the kabat-dive jerked open. Again he triggered the weapon.

The charge caught the Martian in charge of the party square in the belly. The others, behind him, sprang back inside, out of the way.

The narrow street echoed with Haral's wild, reckless laughter. Lurching to his feet, he stood there swaying for a moment, looking this way and that for old Namboina.

But the Shamon had disappeared as if by magic, and from within the kabat-dive came sounds that spoke of preparations for another sally.

Whirling. Haral raced full-tilt for the nearest alley.

When he stopped again, he was half a mile and a hundred worlds away, lost in the tangled maze of passageways that wound through the crumbling heart of the native town. His legs were shaking, his lungs afire, and the kabat-sickness swirled through him in agonizing, nauseous waves. Choking and retching, he slumped exhausted in a murky entryway.

Then that, too, passed, and he lay silent and unmoving in the darkness. But now another sickness was upon him, the sickness that led him to seek surcease in kabat; the sickness that came with the thoughts he could not push out of his brain.

Where would it end, this madness that ever drove him on? What prize lay in power, that he must waste his life away searching, groping, striving for it? Why could he not live and love and die like other men, unplagued by the fierce surge of insane ambition that still pursued him—even here, even now?

Even here, even now. That was the acid that gnawed his vitals. What had it brought him, all his striving? He'd carved a crimson course across half a solar system, till that very system itself disowned him. He'd drenched the warrior worlds in blood to no avail.

And the road ended here.

Was this, then, his destiny—to hide here, rotting, beyond the reach of the Federation, till at last the kabat took its toll? Must he sink lower and then still lower into the slime of this ugly outlaw world of Ulna, harassed at will by such scum as Sark?

But at least, there'd be no woman-murder. Not yet; not for a while. Even five hundred samori could not drag him down that far.

A new spasm of fury shook him, and he cursed Namboina aloud with the vilest epithets a dozen tongues could offer.

But the inner sickness still lingered with him. Bitterly, he stumbled to his feet, wondering in the same instant what had led the Shamon priest to lie—why he had really sought to have the woman called Kyla killed.

It was then he felt the weight in his side pocket.

Dully, he fumbled to find what it might be; then, puzzled, pulled it out into the open.

But it was only a bag ... a worn, somehow familiar bag.

A bag heavy with five hundred glittering samori....

CHAPTER II

He rode out at high noon astride the great, blue-scaled Mercurian hwalon dragon that in itself struck terror into lesser men. The wars of the void had burned his own skin blue with searing krypton radiation, and long years of battle service had dulled the polish of the heavy copronium armor that he wore.

Few knew his name, nor whence he came. He'd buried himself too deep for that. But then, they did not need to know, for those were unimportant things in this brutal, brawling world of Ulna, where death walked so close on every hand.

It was a world of dangerous men, this Ulna; an outlaw world, tumultuous haven for the hunter and the hunted. The scum of the spaceways had gathered here, dregs of the void—rabble quick to anger, quick to kill. Pervods of Venus brushed shoulders with Earthmen. Chonyas and Malyas stalked among strange mutants, weird life-forms drawn from a dozen far-flung planets.

Yet none came forth to challenge Haral. For those who eyed and measured him gave special attention to the slender, deadly, light-lance that was his weapon. Then, wordless, almost too quickly, they turned away.

So now he rode the filth-choked streets of this slattern town that served as Ulna's spaceport. And as he rode, beneath the blazing yellow sky, he smiled his thin, bleak, mirthless smile, and wondered how the motley mob that thronged these warrens would look if they realized his real mission.

Then, at last, he came to the plaza and Gar Sark.

Sark, the renegade; Sark, the raider. Sark, who had looted Bandjaran. Sark, the butcher, with the blood of all Horla on his hands. Sark. A sinister figure, at best. At worst, a monster to strike terror across the void.

Ulna was his today, for no creature dared to stand against him. His ships had blazoned the purple night with streaks of scarlet flame as they ramped; and his crews too had turned the town scarlet with their violence, till even the other lawless ones gathered here were cowed to sullen silence.

This morning, the raiders had seized this ragged, unkempt tract that passed as a central park—that they might enjoy their own savage brand of sport, the rumor went.

'Sport?' Haral smiled his mirthless smile again. It was a good excuse, and Sark's own crews might even believe it. But for Sark himself, unless the day had come when tigers changed their stripes, grim business was mixed in with the pleasure. That was Sark's way; he made no move that did not offer possibilities of profit.

But how? The blue man frowned; then shrugged and urged the hwalon on. It was enough that Sark was here; that the Shamon priest, Namboina, had made his murderous proposal. Something was in the wind. He'd have to bide his time and trust to luck for further details.

A shout went up, even as Haral reached the outskirts of the milling crowd that had gathered in the plaza—a shout and, through it, the scream of a soul gone mad with pain.

The blue man pressed the hwalon forward, trusting to the difference the armor made in his appearance to protect him from recognition by the members of last night's searching party.

The crowd of town rabble and raider crewmen gave way before him, parting under the menace of the hwalon's claws and collar and horrid, hook-beaked head.

Sark's crews had set up an arena of sorts, with seats for their chiefs along one side. In front of the seats a crude ring was fenced in with posts and thin, resilient duraloid cable.

Within the ring, they had an Ulno—one of the grotesque, two-headed primitives that were this planetoid's dull-witted subject people.

And there, too, stood one of the scarlet coleoptera, the giant thinking beetles that were Ulna's plague.

Now, as Haral reached the front of the crowd, the coleopteron stalked forward, towards the Ulno. Hideous and deadly, it stood nearly three feet tall at the thorax. Its protuberant multi-faceted eyes glittered evilly. Mandibles clacking, the misshapen head moved from side to side in short, menacing arcs.

The crowd roared its blood-lust, its tension.

Revulsion touched Haral. But he gave the sadistic show no heed beyond it. Bleakly, he looked across the ring, to Sark himself.

Sark: a smirking, bulbous, obscene thing; half humanoid, half reptilian. Gar of the space-raiders, king of killers. He sat in his famed Uranian riding-chair like some mad, monstrous potentate upon a throne. Eyes murder-bright beneath their reptilian lids, gross rolls of fat aquiver, he leaned far forward, watching the bloody battle unfold before him.

Here, looking at the raider chief for the first time, a wave of incredulous loathing, disillusion, rose up within Haral. Was this gross slug the best the warrior worlds could offer? Could a creature as soft and slack as this wield the power that had shaken half the void?

The bitter ashes of his own thwarted drive for empire ate at the blue man. The world swam with a crimson haze of hate and fury.

Then that mood passed, and Haral noticed other things.

For the raider's fat-rimmed eyes were never still, and the lights that gleamed deep in them told of craft and savage cunning. There was a brain behind those eyes—a brain so lightning-fast and wary that against it mere physical strength alone meant nothing. That was how he ruled this pack; that was why none lived to challenge.

And now, as he watched, Haral observed another thing: though the webbed fingers of Sark's left hand splayed out along one tree-like leg, kneading and clenching as if he were at one with the coleopteron, thirsting for the Ulno's very life, his right hand never moved from a switch set in the chair-arm.

Narrow-eyed, the blue man shifted for a better view. As best he could see, a cable led from the switch down to what appeared to be a bulky, black, cymosynthesizer box slung beneath the seat.

Frowning, Haral pondered. Almost unconsciously, he caressed his light-lance.

Then a new shout from the crowd drew his attention back to the arena.

In the ring, the wild-eyed, shaking Ulno was retreating before the giant beetle. One of his four hands already was shredded beyond all recognition. Blood gushed from a wound in another arm, slashed open to the bone. His two heads turned jerkily this way and that, desperately seeking some avenue of escape, some sign of mercy.

But no sign came. No path appeared.

The beetle poised. The point of its dagger-like antenna dropped a fraction lower.

With a shrill cry, the Ulno darted along the interlinked cables that bounded the arena in a last frantic effort to escape.

The coleopteron lunged. Beetle and primitive crashed together in wild, paroxysmic conflict.

Then, suddenly, the Ulno was reeling, falling. Again, his awful scream of pain and terror rent the air.

Like great, saw-toothed pincers, the coleopteron's mandibles stabbed in. The Ulno's cry cut off in bubbling death.

The crowd shrieked savage exaltation.

Once more, contempt, revulsion, gripped Haral. Thin-lipped, he worked his way around the ring towards Sark.

Laughter—ghoulish, obscene—rocked the raider chief. His rolls of fat shook. Tears of sheer sadistic glee spilled down his puffy cheeks.

But he still kept his hand on the switch set in the arm of the riding-chair.

Bleak, watchful, Haral brought the hwalon to a halt in the lee of the wall nearest the arena. With the casualness of long habit, he surveyed the crowd, the ground, the disposition of Sark's forces.

In the same instant, he caught himself wondering whether Sark would laugh as loud by the time this day was done.

Or whether either he or Sark would live to laugh.

He smiled wryly.

But now, for the time, the raider's mirth had passed. A sudden air of suppressed tension came into his manner. His fleshy hand came up in a curt, peremptory gesture.

Instantly, two leering reptilian Pervods from his crews dragged forward another victim.

But this time their prey was no quaking Ulno.

Instead, they held a woman.

A taut, furious excitement surged up within Haral. He sucked in air; leaned forward, gripping the hwalon's saddle hard between his knees.

Sark gestured. The Pervods dragged their prisoner to him.

She was young. Haral saw now; young, and slim, and incredibly lovely. Hair like spun gold hung to her waist—the silken blonde hair of the Shamon, the race that had ruled Ulna in the days before the renegades of a dozen worlds poured in from across the void to make the planetoid a blood-drenched, anarchistic madhouse.

But more than her face or body, it was her garb that held the blue man.

For she wore the blue cloak of Xaymar's order, and against her high, proud breasts hung the shining toloid metal tablet that signified her consecration.

Once more, the gross monster that was Gar Sark leaned forward. He spoke to the girl in a gentle, beguiling voice that struck a clashing paradox with the fiend's own soul that dwelt within him: "They call you Kyla, do they not?" He touched the tablet that rested upon her breasts. A webbed finger traced the lightning-bolt symbol emblazoned on it. "Kyla, virgin priestess to the veiled woman-goddess Xaymar, the one your people call the queen of storms...."

The blue man could see the tremor that rippled through the girl at Sark's grisly touch. But she did not quail. When she spoke, her voice was steady.

"That is true."

"Xaymar, queen of storms...." the raider chief repeated softly. He leaned back in the riding-chair, eyes sleepy and low-lidded. "She once lived, did she not, in mortal form? Here, on your planetoid of Ulna?"

"Yes. That is what the stories say."

"At her command, the storm-clouds gathered? She hurled the lightning bolts against her enemies?"

"So it is written in our sacred books."

"But then she went away," Sark murmured. "She left all you who were her people."

The girl called Kyla did not answer.

"Or did she?" Of a sudden the raider's lidded eyes were not so sleepy. His bulbous head came forward just a fraction. "There is another story, priestess ... a story that says the goddess Xaymar was truly woman—the most beautiful woman your world had ever seen. And because she was woman, human, she could not bear the thought that she must age and wither. So she commanded that she be placed, still young and in the full bloom of her beauty, within a secret crypt in frozen sleep, so that she might live forever as she had been."

For an instant Haral thought he could see a new tremor touch the priestess Kyla's slim young body. But only for an instant. Then her shoulders straightened. Her tone was cool, disdainful: "These are old wives' tales our stupid Ulnos tell—empty, without meaning. Xaymar was not even of my people, if indeed she ever lived. The old books say she came from a forgotten alien race, long vanished."

Haral felt a sudden rush of admiration—a kinship, almost, born of the girl's poise and unbending courage.

What path had she traveled to this final meeting? What forces had driven her to do whatever she had done to catch Sark's notice? Why was she playing for such stakes in a mad world filled with monsters?

What forces? His jaw tightened. Why had he, himself, come? Why was he throwing his own life into the balance? There could be no answer; not really. Not even five hundred samori were enough to account for it. A man did the things that he must do—played the crazy game as he saw it and made up the reasons later; that was all. Raider, priestess, adventurer—each carved his own destiny.

Even Sark....

The raider chief was smiling now—a slow, smirking, secretive smile that was somehow horrible and loathsome. "But the other part, priestess? Is it true? Was your Xaymar really sealed in frozen sleep in a hidden vault here on your pygmy world of Ulna?"

The girl's slim shoulders lifted in a shrug. "Who knows? We Shamon only let the tales go on to satisfy the Ulnos."

"What? You do not know?" Sark's fat-rimmed eyes now were bright and mocking; and, watching him, Haral gave new weight to the raider's craft and menace. "But I had heard a different story, Priestess Kyla! They told me you did know—that you knew more of it than any other."

It was coming now, the moment of crisis. Haral could see it in their faces.

Grimly, he gripped his light-lance.

But Kyla still faced the raider chieftain boldly. "I cannot help what others say. I do not know."

The squat monster in the riding-chair leaned back once more, still smiling his secretive, sinister smile. A strange horror clung to his very calm, the deadly benignity of his soft-spoken words. It was as if he were some great toad, toying tenderly with a lovely, captive moth that its agony might last the longer.

"They say your whole life is given to a search for Xaymar, priestess. That you dream of the days when the Shamon still ruled Ulna, and so you seek your goddess's hidden crypt, in order to rouse her from her sleep and turn her powers against all those whom you call alien." He licked his lips, and his head seemed to sink between his shoulders. "Some claim you even know where the crypt is hidden, and could go there now, were it not for fear of the thinking beetles, the coleoptera."

Slowly, the color drained from Kyla's face. A spark close akin to panic lighted in her eyes. She did not speak.

"Why do you blanch so, priestess?" Sark prodded. "I only seek to help you. Tell me where your goddess lies and I'll find her for you, in spite of the coleoptera. I'll bring her here, revive her, let her reign again among you—"

"You talk nonsense!" the girl cried. But her voice broke. Her whole body trembled.

Now, suddenly, Sark seemed to grow within the riding-chair, till he loomed like some gross giant. His lips drew back from his stained reptilian fangs. His eyes gleamed like burning coals. The mock-benignity, the gentleness, fell from him like a mask. His words slashed, low and savage: "Tell me where your bitch-goddess lies, you she-sabar! Tell me now, while you still have a voice to speak!"

"No, no—"

"So, virgin priestess—?" Sark's laugh rang like the mirth of hell. And then, with furious, fiendish passion: "You'll tell, or you'll not stay virgin long! There are mutants among my crews who have strange lusts. Press me too far, and you'll be the one to sate them! I'll turn them loose with you here in this arena as a show for the rest of us to see! What's left of your tender flesh when they are through will make a tasty morsel for the coleoptera!"

Sheer horror flooded Kyla's pale, lovely face. Convulsively, she tried to tear free from the grip of the two Pervods who held her.

But they laughed aloud and jerked her back; lifted her upright before their chief, panting and struggling.

Haral sucked in air. In spite of himself, he dug his knees hard into the hwalon's horny flanks. It took all his effort to hold himself otherwise immobile and fight down the fury that surged within him.

"Which shall it be, Priestess Kyla?" Sark now mocked with savage malice. "Do you talk and live, or meet my men? The choice is yours!"

For a moment the girl's eyes closed. Then, slowly, they opened once more, and she stood erect in the Pervods' grasp. Her breath came faster. "Do you think me so weak that I'd betray my goddess and my people to save myself?" she cried passionately. A wave of wild, half-hysterical laughter shook her. "I know what you want! You seek not Xaymar, but Xaymar's secret—the way she harnessed the power that lies within the lightning, a power so great that with it you might rule the universe! But you will not have it! Bring on your crew, your coleoptera—"

Haral went rigid in the hwalon's saddle. The girl's words rang in his ears, his brain.

There it was! There lay the secret, the prize that had lured Sark here to Ulna!

A prize of power.

The search for it had led this slim girl-priestess here, to death, dishonor.

The fear that such a secret might go to Sark, be lost to Ulna, had spurred the old high priest, Namboina, to dark plots and plans for murder.

Power! Haral's fist clenched. The lust for it had driven him on bloody courses that stretched across half this solar system. It had earned him a name, that lust; and then it had put a price on his head to match it, till at last he'd had no choice but to flee out here, beyond all law, to this mad, twisted world of Ulna.

And now—?

Within him his heart was pounding, pounding, like the beat of one of Titan's great corba dia; and of a sudden he knew it was destiny that had brought him to the blood and dirt and heat of this foul arena.

His own dark destiny that had marked him out from day of birth to carve an empire....

As from afar, he heard Sark's furious voice lashing out at Kyla: "Defy me, will you? Then so be it!" The raider surged up, half out of the riding-chair. Savagely, he slapped the slim girl-priestess across the face, so hard that his webbed fingers left great welts of white and scarlet. "To the ring with her! To the ring!"

The Pervods jerked Kyla back. Roughly, they dragged her to the fenced ring that served as pit for the arena and threw her in.

In his turn, the blue man shifted. The tension was running high within him now, locked in the icy bands of iron-nerved control. Once more, he surveyed the howling crowd and Sark's mongrel raider crewmen, then smiled to himself with dark, reckless mirth.

Fat face still livid, Sark sank back into the depths of his riding-chair. "Who's first?" he cried. "Who wants to test the brave priestess?"

A shout burst forth from a hundred savage throats. A churning mass of nightmare forms of life thrust forward.

But before the raider chief could even make a choice, a huge, hairy, heavy-thewed Uranian dau was charging to the fence. Full seven feet tall he stood, and he bowled the others from his path like byul-balls, a living avalanche of lust. Leaping high in the air, he caught the top strand of the cable and swung up and over, dropping into the arena like some monstrous, many-armed Earth gorilla.

The girl called Kyla stared at the creature as if paralyzed with horror. She did not even raise her hands.

"I give you your last thought as a chaste priestess!" Sark cried, taunting. "You shared your secret with another—the high priest, him they call Namboina! He, too, knows where Xaymar's crypt lies hidden! So all your stubbornness has gained you nothing, for I'll tear the truth from him even though you die here!"

Kyla's tragic eyes went wide—shocked, half-disbelieving.

Haral breathed deep. The tension was a tight knot in his stomach now. His hand grew sweaty against the light-lance.

Slavering, the Uranian shambled towards Kyla. The mad din of the crowd grew deafening.

A churning excitement boiled within the blue warrior. This was the moment for which he'd come; this was the final peak of crisis.

The dau lunged.

In one smooth flow of motion, Haral whipped up the light-lance. Its beam speared out, stabbing at the dau.

The lumbering creature stumbled and swerved, twisting in a sudden, agonized frenzy. Smoke curled from the matted hair of its massive torso. It tottered—fell back a step—another—another. Then, arms and legs jerking spasmodically, head out of control, it crumpled into the gory dirt of the arena and lay twitching.

A thunderous, stupefied silence fell upon the crowd. Creatures from the far-flung planets of the whole solar system stared in blank disbelief.

Then, suddenly, the shocked spell broke; and Sark was on his feet and shrieking, "Seize him! Kill him! Blast him down!"

The mob surged forward.

But now Haral was moving too, booting his great blue hwalon dragon into the screaming throng, clawing and slashing and trampling. A force ray struck him a hammer blow between the shoulders, but its impact broke on the heavy copronium armor and he paid it no heed. His light-lance blazed—again; again. A Pervod fell. A Malya writhed back in his death throes.

Then the hwalon was surging against the fence that bounded the arena. The blue man roared, "Kyla—!" And, to the crowd: "Back! Back—! Stand back or die!"

The wave of bodies broke. The milling mass gave way.

Savagely, Haral slashed at the cables with his lance-beam.

Snapping like tight-drawn strings, they parted. Already, beyond, the girl-priestess Kyla was running up beside him. Sweeping low in the saddle, he caught her arm and lifted her bodily to a place in front of him astride the hwalon.

But if the crowd, the rabble, was falling back, Sark's raiders now were forming.

Again Haral spurred the hwalon—driving it forward, straight at the mutant chieftain.

"You—Sark! Call off your pack if you want to live!" he cried.

He leveled the light-lance, like a helium hammer to drive home his words.

Sark's face took on the color of the molten purple mud in Mercury's sotol swamps. Spasmodically, he clutched the switch set in his chair-arm. His voice, his body, shook with seething fury. "Who are you, chitza, that you should come so long a way to die?"

Haral brought the hwalon to a halt, so close to the raider chief that the lance's ray-head gouged Sark's gross midriff.

"They call me Haral," he slashed back fiercely. "Perhaps you've heard the name—if they ever let you pause to listen where warriors spoke. As for dying, I'll meet that when it comes. But not from you, Sark. Not here; not now."

The raider's webbed fingers flexed and clenched. His fat-rimmed eyes glinted like murderous Titanian diamonds set in flesh.

"Haral—?" A sneer contorted his fat face. "A raider without a ship. A space tramp soaked in kabat." He bared his teeth. "You fool! What chance do you think you have? My men surround you, ready to blast you!"

Haral laughed aloud. "And what happens to the woman—Xaymar's priestess, Kyla?" he challenged harshly. "Her body's pressed next to mine. Can your blasters kill me, and let her live? Can they burn my armor through, yet leave her still unharmed?" Again he laughed, and the fierce recklessness he felt poured out in hot, slashing words. "No, Sark! You can't afford to have her die, no matter how you'd shame her or abuse her to break her spirit and make her speak. For though you talk of the old high priest, Namboina, you can't know for sure how much she told him. Your crew hasn't even managed to catch him. So if this woman dies, it may well be that your only chance for the goddess Xaymar's secret will die with her!"

In the same instant, he wondered bleakly what would happen if he'd guessed Sark and the situation wrong.

A veil seemed to fall across the raider's eyes. When he spoke, his voice had lost its fury. Now it was gentle again, almost—low-pitched, persuasive, as it had been when he first talked to Kyla.

"I've heard the tales they tell of you, Haral, and they all say that you're mad—mad with ambition, mad with daring. You want the whole universe for your own, they say, and you'll throw your own life on the block to claim it. But even ambition and daring can go too far."

He paused and eyed Haral. Then, when the blue man made no answer, he went on again. The persuasive note in his voice grew stronger.

"Can't you see what you're doing, warrior? I'm gar of the raiders. If I let you carry off this woman, it means the end of me. Every stabat on the spaceways will say, 'Sark has lost his strength. Sark has let Haral take a woman from him.' Even my own crews would mutiny against me."

"And so—?"

"So I cannot let you go, Haral. No matter what the cost, I must kill you. If not now, then later. If you take the woman, you must die!"

Haral could feel his stomach muscles quiver. The menace that radiated out from Sark hung over him like some deadly cloud.

Baring his own teeth in a death's-head grin, he dug the light-lance deeper into Sark's rolls of flesh.

He said: "If the things you say are true, Gar Sark, then I must kill you now, before you have the chance to slay me." He allowed himself the luxury of a thin, wry smile. "In fact, perhaps it would be best that way. With you dead, your men might pick me as their leader...."

Silence echoed for a moment long as eternity, while their eyes locked in a fierce, interminable battle.

Then, slowly, Sark smiled and shook his head. His webbed fingers caressed the switch set in his chair-arm.

"You'll never kill me, warrior," he answered Haral. "I have a reason for this riding-chair, a reason beyond mere comfort."

Haral said nothing.

"This switch"—the raider closed his hand about it—"connects with the box that hangs beneath me. A cymosynthesizer box, you may have guessed."

"A cymosynthesizer—?"

"A very special kind of cymosynthesizer, warrior." Sark chuckled grimly. "The multiplying waves of energy it radiates are synthesized and focused on the core of this pygmy planetoid of Ulna. When they strike it, they'll disrupt its whole atomic structure and set up a disintegrative chain reaction."

Haral stared at him, unbelieving. "You mean—?"

"I mean that I hold the power to destroy this whole world within my hand!" Sark cried in sudden, explosive anger. "This is my protection against you and all others! I have but to throw this switch, and Ulna itself will be torn asunder—and you and the woman and all else with it! If I die, you die, also! That is my answer to you, chitza!"

Haral said tightly: "You lie! No cymosynthesizer can set up an initiating wave strong enough to tear apart a whole planet!"

"Then try me! Make me prove it!" the raider chieftain spat. "It's simple, warrior! Just trigger a beam from your light-lance through me! As I die, I'll still throw the switch, and there will be your answer!"

Haral sat very still. He was gripping his lance's shaft so hard that the very bones of his fingers ached. A thin rill of sweat ran down his spine. Yet he could not fight off the spell of shock that gripped him.

As if sensing it, Sark spoke once more in coaxing tones: "You make your task hard, warrior. There is an easier way. Give up this madness, this trying to beat me and destroy me. Daring is a virtue I, too, admire. Stay with me and I'll make you a captain in my fleet, give you a ship so you can raid again. Then, when I've won this thrice-cursed Xaymar's secret, together we'll reach out across the universe to bring all planets into our power. Or, if it's the woman you want,"—he laughed his smirking, obscene laugh—"why, as soon as she's told me the things I want to know, I'll let you have her—"

Haral felt Kyla's slim body stiffen against him. A tremor ran through her.

His answer to Sark came almost without volition. "No."

"What—?"

The spell was broken, now. The recklessness was back, and the fierce surge of ambition.

That, and something more ... a something Haral could not quite touch.

He laughed aloud. "I'm leaving now, Sark!" he cried. "I'm leaving, and I'm taking the woman with me. Blast us if you will!"

The blandness fell from Sark. He half rose from his seat, his face contorted. "You chitza—!"

Haral laughed again. "Blast, Sark!" he mocked. "But if you do, remember—your chance for the girl dies with me!"

"Stabat! Zanat! Starbo—"

"Go ahead, great gar! Blast us! Take your chances on what you can learn from old Namboina!"

Slowly, then, Sark sank back into his chair. His eyes were like live coals, incredibly baleful.

"Go!" he choked thickly. "Go, for now, you chitza! Take your woman and your hwalon and your light-lance! My day will come, and when it does, you'll pray for a death that will not answer! You and the woman—you'll share your agony together, and in the end I'll still claim Xaymar's secret—"

Haral said: "Perhaps. Or perhaps it will be you who rots in hell instead."

Bleakly, he wheeled the hwalon; and to the crowd he shouted, "There's death in my lance for the man that follows!" Then, weapon ready, the girl close against him, heedless of the steaming hate and curses of the mob that parted before him, he rode away.

CHAPTER III

They rode fast and in silence—first skirting the outskirts of the town; then plunging full-tilt into the tangled maze that was the native quarter.

The Ulno Haral had hired on the chance he'd need someone to hide the hwalon was already waiting at the appointed place.

But the blue man rode on past the primitive with no sign of recognition, pausing instead around the next corner, by the entrance to a blackly burrow-like dead-end alley.

There he let the girl called Kyla down. For the first time since their escape, he spoke to her: "We'll take cover now, for a little while, priestess. Wait here in the shadows for me till I can hide my dragon. It won't take long—ten samori, maybe."

Wordless, eyes inscrutable, the lovely Shamon nodded.

Haral flashed her a tense smile. Then, wheeling the hwalon, he rode back in the direction from which they'd come.

But the instant he was out of sight around the corner, he dropped from the saddle and waved up the Ulno to take the nightmare steed.

Another moment, and he was peering warily towards the spot where he'd left Kyla.

But already the slim young priestess had abandoned her post. She was hurrying away, instead—running off down the narrow, crooked street, just as he'd gambled that she would.

It was ever dusk in these cramped warrens, where the yellow sky showed only straight up. Now, too, the purple Ulnese night drew near at hand. Black rivers of shadow were taking form at the bases of the buildings.

Taking advantage of every unevenness and entryway and patch of murk, Haral followed Kyla.

The girl led him a dizzy chase through jumbled streets and alleys, a world of strange smells and sounds and dull-witted, blank-eyed, two-headed Ulnos. Twice, only the glint of her long, blonde, Shamon hair kept him from losing her.

Then, abruptly, she halted.

Giving no attention to the vaguely-curious glances of nearby Ulnos, Haral drew back into the angle where two buildings came together. Pressed flat to the wall, he watched while Kyla peered this way and that, as if searching for some sign of pursuit.

A moment later she disappeared into the shadow-shrouded entrance of a shabby building.

Swiftly, Haral ran after her. But instead of approaching the door, he slipped down a narrow cleft between the place she'd entered and the one next to it.

A slot of window showed above him. Bracing his back against one wall, his feet against the other, he levered himself swiftly upward till he could peer through the casement.

It opened into an empty room.

A kick from one mailed foot burst it open. Another moment, and Haral himself stood inside.

Across the room was a door. Moving silently to it, he opened it a crack and listened.

From down the hall that ran outside came faint sounds of movement. Peering through the gloom, Haral caught a glint of light. Then a door opened. More light flooded out. He glimpsed Kyla in silhouette as she left the one room and went into another.

Now light blazed from the second room. Then that door closed, and there were sounds of running water.

Haral smiled thinly and loosened his ray-gun in its holster. Quickly, quietly, he walked down the hall to the room from which the girl had come.

Bleak and bare and windowless, it was sparsely furnished with a cot, table and two chairs. The clothes Kyla had worn—the cloak, the tablet, all her priestess' habit—were strewn across the cot. One of the self-sealing plastic boxes such as was used on Ulna for packing garments lay open on the table.

Across the hall, the sounds of running water ceased.

Silently, Haral stepped on into the room and behind the door. He caught the click of a latch: then the firm rhythm of Kyla's footsteps as she came towards this chamber where he stood in hiding.

She was humming softly as she entered—a weirdly lilting tune Haral had never heard before. Now, too, she wore the scant, filmy garments so favored by Shamon women. No indication that she was one of Xaymar's priestesses remained. While Haral watched in silence, she picked up a comb and began to smooth her shimmering, waist-long wealth of silken hair.

Haral said: "You're very lovely, Kyla—you treacherous little slazot!"

The girl whirled, her eyes suddenly big with terror. Her hand clutched her throat. Her breasts rose and fell too fast.

Her lips moved: "You—You...."

Haral poured acid into his voice: "My name's Haral, Kyla. Remember? I'm the man who saved your pretty carcass from Sark's arena not so very long ago."

The priestess sank into a chair. Her eyes closed, as if she were praying, or perhaps trying to blot out the very sight of the blue man from her brain.

Tight-lipped, Haral strode to her. He caught her chin and tilted back her head.

"Did you think I risked my life for you for nothing, priestess?" he clipped grimly. "Some say I'm worthless. But in my way, I still value my head."

Kyla's eyes opened. They were very large and innocent. "Truly, I am grateful, blue warrior...."

"Grateful—?" Haral brought up the crooked forefinger that held her chin so savagely her head snapped back. "Yes, you're grateful! So grateful you could hardly wait till my back was turned before you ran away! So grateful you'd gladly leave me to face Sark's tender mercies alone, so long as you got to cover!"

"But, warrior—You do not understand. I have a mission—a duty bigger than you or me, or the debt of gratitude I owe you—"

"Duty—?" Haral smashed one mailed fist into the palm of the other. "Will your duty save my neck? Will it halt Sark's crewmen as they haunt me and harry me and hunt me down?"

The girl's lips trembled. The violet eyes dodged his. "But—but—what would you have me do—?"

"You know what I want!" Haral gripped her shoulders. "My death warrant's sealed. You heard Sark say it. I've got just one chance—one, and one only. With your Xaymar's secret, it may be that I can smash Sark before he smashes me—"

"No—"

"That's what I want! I want the secret—your goddess, your queen of storms—"

"But I cannot—"

"You can! You will!" Fiercely, he shook her. "Where is she, Kyla? Where does she lie, this woman-goddess, Xaymar?"

The girl went limp in his grasp. Tears brimmed her eyes.

Slowly, Haral straightened. He let go the priestess' slim shoulders. "Can't you see?" he grated tightly. "Can't you understand? Now, this very moment, Sark's hunting for your doddering high priest, Namboina. When he catches him—and he will catch him, have no doubt of that—he'll tear your goddess's hiding-place from him like a tooth from the socket. Then where will you stand? What good will all your talk of duty do you? Would it not be better—"

"No." Even though Kyla's lips still trembled, there was no compromise in her tone. She flicked away her tears, and her back drew very straight. Her eyes met Haral's—defiant; proud and steady as his own.

"No, blue man," she repeated. "If helping me costs you your life, I'm sorry. But my duty lies with Ulna and with Xaymar. Do what you will; I'll tell you nothing."

"And Namboina? What of him? Will his loyalty match yours when Sark stretches him out for a taste of torture?"

"Sark has not yet caught Namboina."

As it had in the arena, admiration now touched Haral. Steel lay sheathed in the velvet of this Shamon girl's slim, soft body. He could not but respect its temper.

Yet he dared not let her know his thoughts.

Instead, coldly, he drew his ray-gun from its holster. "Then I have no choice...."

"You'll kill me, you mean—?" There was contempt in the girl's voice, the twist of her lips. "So in the end you're not so different from Gar Sark, after all."

Haral smiled thinly. "Say rather that I know enough to bow to reality when I face it. If I cannot win this battle, then I must come to terms another way." He let his smile broaden, building up impact for the climax. "But not by killing you, Priestess Kyla. That truly would get me nothing."

"Then what—?"

Haral shrugged. With careful casualness he said, "Sark still might strike a bargain for you."

"Sark—!"

The shock in the girl's voice stabbed at Haral. Fear was in her eyes now—the bright, shiny fear of those nightmare eternities she stood helpless in Sark's arena.

But the blue man held his face immobile. "You leave me no choice," he clipped. "I must either have the lightning-force, the secret of your goddess Xaymar, or I must buy back my life from Sark. Since I lack the stomach to force the secret from you, that leaves only Sark for me to turn to. You surely understand."

He watched the sickness come to Kyla's face, then. Her eyes closed. Her tongue flicked at her lips.

At long last she looked at him again. Dully, she said, "Put away your weapon, warrior. I am vanquished."

Wordless, Haral slipped the ray-gun back into its holster.

Kyla said: "I'd hoped this might have another ending, blue man. When you rode out in the face of Gar Sark and all his might to save me, my heart leaped, and strange feelings woke within me, here." She touched her breast. "I saw you as a Galahad of the spaceways, a valiant who fought for right and honor instead of booty. But now I see you true. You're as the rest—greedy, blood-thirsty, driven by hate and a lust for power."

A knife seemed to twist deep in Haral's vitals. He did not speak.

The girl's great, tragic eyes stayed set upon him. "Yet, blue man, you saved my life. There is indeed a debt of gratitude I owe you. I'll pay it now...."

She rose; came close to him. Her hand touched the heavy copronium brassart that sheathed his upper arm.

"There's a reason our living goddess Xaymar has lain sleeping through all these years of Ulna's sorrow, blue man," she told him tensely. "Did you think my people, my proud, unbending Shamon, would have suffered all the insults and degradation you alien raiders brought here with you had it not been so? Can you vision us submitting to your despoilment while we held an invincible weapon in our hands, unless the dangers that lay in unsheathing that weapon were even more dreadful than the worst that you, in your crude butchery, could offer?"

Haral shifted. Frowning, he studied the priestess' shadowed eyes and strain-straught face.

She breathed deep. Her words rushed forth in a flood, a frantic, half-hysterical jumble:

"I'll tell you the secret, warrior! I'll tell you why we left our goddess sleeping through all our hour of need!" Her lips parted. Her voice rose shrilly. "She's mad, that's the reason! Xaymar's mad! Mad with lust and power, and passion! Her beauty was a thing of shining splendor that no man could resist or deny. Each night she took a different lover—and then, at the dawn, at her command, each one was slain! She harnessed the lightning against our enemies—and when our own greatest city refused to send more of its sons to her for slaughter, she smashed it to rubble with her bolts! In her madness, it was she who gave the power of thought to the coleoptera—"

She broke off, laughing wildly. Her face came close to Haral's, her body against his.

"Would you waken her, warrior? Would you be the next to share her couch—and her graveyard? Beside her, Sark ranks as a saint—"

There was a prickling along Haral's spine as he pushed her back. But she still clung to him. He could feel his tension climbing. It was as if Kyla had hypnotized him with her rush of words, her fierce burst of emotion.

He said tightly: "You lie, Kyla! This is some kind of a trick—"

Like magic, her hysteria vanished.

"A trick? Of course! A good one—"

She twisted, and he felt the wrench of his ray-gun being jerked from its holster.

Before he could move, she had its muzzle between his teeth. Her triumphant voice echoed like the ring of steel on steel:

"Your first move will be your last, blue man! You'll die if even a finger twitches!"

Haral stood very still.

From somewhere below came the creak of a door opening, then the muffled slam of its closing.

Kyla laughed. Her eyes sparkled. "Did you speak of Namboina, warrior? Of how Sark would catch him? Yet here he comes now!"

Haral spoke carefully: "Wrong, priestess! Those steps are too quick for old Namboina's!"

Watching her eyes, he could see the doubt flicker, then flare into panic. Her lips parted as she strained to hear. She fell back a step. The ray-gun in her hand was suddenly shaking.

"If there's trouble," Haral observed, "that gun might prove surer in my hand than yours."

"No! Stand back!" the girl cried. "I'll shoot for your face! Your armor won't save you!"

The blue man halted.

The approaching footsteps were closer now—coming lightly, swiftly, towards this room.

Kyla pushed the door half shut, then stepped to its hinge side, gesturing Haral to a place before her. Her face was grey.

Outside the room, the footsteps halted. The door pushed open.

"Kyla—"

It was the voice of a woman—a woman in the garb of Xaymar's order who hurried into the room.

"Lyess—" cried Kyla. The ray-gun sagged in her hand.

The newcomer whirled in fright. Her eyes flicked from the priestess to Haral.

Kyla cried, "Why are you here, Lyess? Where is Namboina?" Her tone held a note of desperation.

"I came to tell you, Kyla—to warn you! Sark has found him! They say the torture is already under way to make him tell where Xaymar lies—"

Unspeaking, Haral looked to Kyla.

Her mouth was working. New tears had come to her eyes. Now, of a sudden, they overflowed and spilled down her cheeks.

Harshly, Haral slashed: "What now, priestess? Do we wait here while Sark tears out Namboina's heart, then goes and wakens your mad woman-goddess Xaymar?"

Slowly, the hand that held the ray-gun lowered, till the weapon hung loose against Kyla's side. Her shoulders, too, slumped. In the stillness, her falling tears made tiny splatting sounds as they hit the floor.

"Kyla, Kyla—!" the other priestess whispered. "You dare not linger! Sark seeks you, too. That is why I came to warn you—"

Again the silence echoed. Then, wearily, Kyla straightened. She shook away the tears. Her mouth stopped quivering.

Never had she been more lovely.

She turned to the blue man: "Haral...."

It came to him, with a queer sort of shock, that it was the first time she had ever called him by his name.

"Yes, Kyla...?"

"I've lost. I wanted Xaymar's secret for my people—this world of ours, this Ulna. But now, that cannot be. The most I can hope is that Sark, at least, shall never have it."

"Yes, Kyla."

"She—Xaymar—lies in the dead land—the land infested by the great thinking beetles, the coleoptera. The road to her crypt is a dangerous road."

"I've traveled dangerous roads before."

"Yes. Danger is in your blood, you aliens. And we of Ulna are weak, so weak...."

Gently, Haral said: "There's little time, Kyla. Namboina may be babbling all he knows already."

"Yes, and the way is long." Wearily, then, the girl held out the ray-gun to him. "You'll need this more than I, along the road that we must travel." She sighed. "You see, Haral? Destiny is on your side. In the end, you are the winner."

CHAPTER IV

The coleoptera were drawing their noose ever tighter now. A killer cordon, they ringed in Kyla and Haral. The rustle of their giant wing-sheaths, borne on the night wind, whispered of death. The great, flesh-rending mandibles clacked like the distant rattle of dry bones.

Flat on his belly amid this rubble that once had been a mighty city, the blue warrior let his head sink forward onto his arms. He closed his eyes, and weariness welled up in him, a dull, relentlessly-rising tide.

Pain throbbed along his whole left side, and blood still dripped from his numb left hand. Silently—absently, almost—he touched the shoulder-plate of his armor, probing the perforations and the wound.

Then a sound of spilling gravel came through the darkness. He looked up sharply.

A dozen yards to one side, one of the great scarlet beetles was clambering atop a heap of crumbling stone. Its wing-sheaths scraped harshly—a rasping, off-key note.

Kyla leaned close. Her words came, a fearful whisper, barely loud enough to hear: "Lift your helmet, blue man! Listen to the things the coleopteron tells—but carefully, lest its mind control should seize you...."

Cautiously, Haral tilted back his battered copronium headpiece. It had rendered strange service in its day, that scarred old helm; but none stranger than this. For by some weird clash between its metal and certain electrocephalic wave-pulsations, it guarded his brain from the probing beetle minds, just as Kyla's bucket-like Ulnese heaume—designed for the purpose—guarded hers.

Now, as Haral lifted the helmet, thought-vibrations washed in on him in throbbing waves: "Man-things, man-things! Find the man-things! Kill the man-things! Kill, kill, kill!"

A new vibration slashed through, fiercely urgent: "Blood! Blood! Here! They came this way!"

"Kill! Kill! Kill!"

Already the coleoptera were surging forward. Antennae outthrust like lance-points, Q-rays probing, they combed the murky waste—each rise, each hollow. Their feet slithered through the rubble with sounds like the writhings of Venus' great snake-things in dry leaves. The acrid stink of their hate crept on the breeze in biting tendrils.

Haral cast a longing glance back towards his hwalon, still standing at bay amid the crags where they had lost it in their last swift, clashing contact with the beetles.

But darting Q-rays hemmed in the dragon. And here and there between, a head, a leg, a thorax showed.

Haral bit down hard. The coleoptera were hoping they could tempt him to try to regain the hwalon.

For if he tried, he'd die in seconds.

Kyla crept close against him. Her voice shook: "I've lost my way, Haral. Even if the beetles were to leave us, I'd not know how to go."

For an aching moment Haral lay still. "I guessed as much," he said at last. "This running and fighting has pulled us from our path."

"If we could only find one of the pylons of which the old books spoke—"

"Yes. If." Grimly, the blue man fumbled the ray-pistol from his holster and shoved it into Kyla's hand. He gave no sign that he had even caught the tears, the desperation, creeping into her voice. "Here. Take this."

"What—?"

Haral held his voice flat, without emotion. "You'll need some weapon. The ray-gun will do as well as any." He settled the helmet more firmly on his head and took a new grip on his light-lance. "Come on!"

Twisting, dragging the light-lance beside him, he wormed his way towards the nearest of the skeletal shafts that rose like gravestones over this dead city, last monuments to a civilization fallen into dust.

Perhaps the shaft had been part of a building, once—a wall, a buttress, maybe. Now, pillar-like, it stood alone. Gaping holes showed through its mass. Great chunks of rock had fallen, here and there exposing the huge, corroding metal beams that were its core.

They reached its base. Haral pulled himself erect amid the black shadows cloaking the foundation. Wearily, he leaned against a fallen column.

The move brought fragments rattling down.

At the sound, a coleopteron in a nearby hollow came to a sudden halt. For a moment it hesitated, then began to work its way warily towards the shaft.

Kyla said, "Haral—!" in a voice choked with new panic.

"Stay here. Don't move," Haral clipped tightly. "And don't shoot—not unless you have to!"

As he spoke, he levered himself up onto the lowest beam.

More broken stone clattered to the ground below him.

The beetle came forward faster.

Awkwardly, the blue man climbed upward. His left arm was almost useless. The light-lance dragged and got in his way.

Below, the great scarlet insect stopped short. Of a sudden its mandibles clacked wildly.

Haral lifted his helmet a fraction. Vibrations poured into his brain: "Blood! Here, here, this way—!"

Cursing, Haral whipped up the light-lance and triggered a beam at the beetle's thorax.

The coleopteron wallowed backward, great wings threshing.

Clutching a vertical girder, again the warrior clambered upward.

Above him, and to one side, a gap that might once have housed a window loomed. Painfully, he worked towards it. His left arm dragged, less help than hindrance. He couldn't seem to get in air. His body rebelled at his brain's commands.

Then, at last, he got a grip on a jagged fragment near the edge of the slot-like opening. With a final, spasmodic effort, he dragged himself up and sprawled on his belly across the masonry.

On the other side of the wall, spread out before him in the shadowy purple of the Ulnese night, lay the heart of the dead city. From this height he could see its plan, its prospect. There, ragged strips that once had been broad avenues radiated out from a central park. There, a spider-web of cross streets showed, linking the great arteries together.

And there, too, were the ruins Kyla called the Triad—the huge, three-winged structure that rose in the park's heart.

Somewhere beneath it lay the shrine of Xaymar, queen of storms, living goddess of all Ulna.

Awe gripped Haral. Silent, brooding, he stared across the fallen splendor.

Such splendor, so far fallen.

These others, who once had walked this mighty city in its day of greatness—they, too, had been strong. They, too, had felt the drive to power.

Now they lay in dust beneath his feet.

And here he sprawled, beset and wounded, driven by a dream on a madman's quest, mayhap to meet death himself in this silent city of the dead.

His weariness welled up once more; engulfed him.

How had Sark put it—"Why have you come so long a way to die?"

Sark, and a dream turned nightmare.

Yet he'd ridden other nightmares in his time, with less to gain and more to lose. That was the meaning of life; the challenge.

There below lay a living goddess; and a priestess waited to guide him to her.

A priestess.... He pondered. Already there was a bond between them, for she had a courage to match her beauty, and courage was one trait he gave full honor, no matter what the cause to which it rallied. And it had taken courage to stand in the bloody mud of that arena, defying Sark.

Sark?... Haral smiled. Sark, too, would have a role to play before this game was done.

Sark had pledged him death. Sark would keep that pledge, unless he fell before the might of Xaymar's vaunted secret.

And as for himself, Haral—?

The battle lines were drawn: On the one hand, power beyond his fondest dreams ... a living goddess ... a lovely priestess.

On the other, Sark and the coleoptera, defeat and death.

What more was there for a fighting man to ask? What better prize for a wanderer to strive for as he carved his way up from the asteroids' bleak want and bondage?

He laughed aloud. His weariness fell away.

Sitting up, turning, he once more gave attention to the swarming scarlet beetles far below him.

Fear of his light-lance was upon them now, it seemed. They hung back, spread out in a menacing arc that centered on his side of the pillar.

Directly below him, Kyla crouched as if frozen, the ray-gun ready in her hand. But as yet the beetles had not come close enough to find her.

Haral shifted.

Like lightning, a Q-ray speared up from an ebon crevice to one side of the shaft.

The range was too great. The beam burned out yards short of Haral. But a flicker of movement betrayed that one of the monster insects now was climbing along the other side. The next ray might strike home.

Again, Haral sought out the Triad, and the great arterial avenue that led to it.

The nearest of the roadways lay within a hundred yards of this column that was his vantage-point. A pylon still thrust its weathered peak skyward on the far side of the thoroughfare.

A pylon: the crumbling, truncated pyramid burned into Haral's brain like a beacon. The very sight of it sent recklessness surging through him.

To Kyla, below, he cried, "Come round the wall, priestess! Come round! Quick!"

Then, cat-like, he twisted, swinging his legs up and through the gap in the masonry. His body arched—catapulting out into space, hurtling groundward along the towering shaft's other face.

But as he plunged, he shifted the light-lance. Bracing it against his body, he gripped its head between his feet and triggered it on, full strength. Its broad force beam blazed forth, straight at the ground below.

Like a flexible, compressing shaft of radiant energy, it slowed his plunge. Balancing skillfully, he rode the beam on down.

The force of the landing made him wince. But at least, for the moment, he was free of the coleoptera, though even now he could hear the scurrying of their hairy feet in the dirt as they raced to head him off.

Whirling, he ran along the base of the shaft.

As he reached the corner, Kyla came stumbling toward him from the other side of the shaft, scrambling over the ruins, debris, in desperate haste. Two huge beetles, hot for the kill, bore down upon her from behind, closing the gap that separated them from her with every slithering step.

Haral drew back and whipped up the light-lance.

Running full-tilt, the slim girl burst from the shadows, the coleoptera close at her heels.

Haral triggered the light-lance. Its beam slashed through the night. The foremost beetle drew into a writhing ball under its impact, rolling crazily through the rubble. The second fell back, its forelegs half burned off.

The blue man pivoted and ran after Kyla. Catching her by the arm, he half-dragged her with him towards the avenue.

Ahead, the ground leveled off. The broad expanse that had been the roadway spread before them.

Beyond it loomed the pylon.

Behind, the rustle of coleopteron wing-sheaths, the furious fluttering of the vestigial wings themselves, came loud as the rasp of branches in a storm-tossed forest, closer and closer.

Haral shoved the priestess on towards the roadway. Then, boldly, he turned and brought up the light-lance.

The coleoptera broke. Scrambling wildly, they rushed for cover.

"What, you sabars? You fear to meet my lance?" Haral shouted the words, even though he knew the beetles could not hear nor understand. Laughter boiled up in him—the ringing, defiant laughter that was not so much mirth as lust for battle.

But already the insects' Q-ray tubes were blinking. He had no choice but to wheel and again run after Kyla.

And as he ran, a new sound slashed through to him: the familiar keening blast of space-ship carrier craft lancing through the night.

Haral shot one swift glance upward. He glimpsed slim, silvery streaks ... streaks that were carriers in flight.

Sark's carriers—?

Haral cursed aloud. Panting, staggering with fatigue and the weight of his heavy copronium armor, he stumbled through the avenue's broken stone. Once he fell. But Kyla's ray-gun blazed above him, holding back the beetles till he could lurch up and wallow onward.

Then, at last, there was the pylon ... the yawning entrance at its base.

"Hurry!" Kyla cried. "They gain upon us!"

A Q-ray sang its shining song of death too near at hand.

The blue man threw all his strength into one last effort. Together, he and the girl ran through the entry, into the blackness.

Haral turned. He laced his back-track with the light-lance's searing beam.

The beetles halted.

"This way," said Kyla. Her hand gripped Haral's. In silence, he followed her further and further into the pylon's pitchy depths.

Now they walked on a strange, entangling surface that crunched brittly beneath their feet.

Haral flicked on his lance's illumination cell just long enough to glimpse the scene about them.

A prickling ran up and down his spine. For they walked a corridor of death, a passage carpeted with bones ... the bones of those who once had ruled this mighty city. A thousand skulls stared up at them, a hollow-eyed horror. Skeletons spread in heaps and tangles, rising on all sides like some rank, evil fungus.

Kyla's voice came through the darkness: "You wonder why we hate all aliens, warrior? Once, a thousand years ago, this was our proudest Shamon city. Then the first ships came out of space to Ulna. They hurled down bombs, and my people sought to hide here from them. But gas came with the bombs—a heavy gas, and deadly. It seeped into these ancient tunnels, and those who survived the blasts, the radiation, died by thousands—yes, by millions...."

The girl's voice broke.

Her horror, her pain, pressed in on Haral. But he dared not let himself think of them.

He said sharply: "This is no time for talk! Any moment, the coleoptera may be upon us. Those ships that passed above us, too—they may have been Sark's. If Namboina's told where Xaymar lies, Sark's men may beat us to her. If we're to find her first, we must go quickly—"

"Yes, quickly!" Again Kyla's trembling hand seized his. She led the way down a long, steep ramp, then on through what seemed endless blackness. "The old books say these tunnels end beneath the Triad. And then, below that—there lies our sleeping goddess, Xaymar!"

On they toiled, and on. Twice, in the ebon murk, they heard the muffled rattle of coleopteran mandibles. Once, the beetles' acrid stench rose rank and close into their nostrils.

"Pray to your gods, warrior, that they do not guess our goal in time to head us off," Kyla whispered hoarsely.

"Pray to your own, and my light-lance!" Haral answered harshly. He shifted, striving to ease the pain that still throbbed out from his wounded shoulder. Numbly, he wondered how much longer he could go on.

They came out of the tunnel, then, into a vast, echoing subterranean chamber.

"Now we must have light to find our way," the priestess said. "Already we are beneath the Triad."

Haral flicked on his lance's illumination cell.

The room stretched as far as its beam would throw. Other tunnels debouched from the walls on every side.

"This way," said Kyla. "Xaymar's shrine lies beneath the central staircase."

Together, they picked a path through more jumbled bones to the middle of the vast concourse, then descended down the stair they found there in spiral after spiral.

As they went down, the stink of the coleoptera grew steadily stronger.

"If this should be a trap—" Haral began.

"There is no other way," the priestess answered.

The staircase ended in a circular room. High ledges lined its walls. In the center stood a great bronze ball, high as a tall man's head and set in a base of polished stone. Markings were etched upon it, markings that matched the configurations of this wild outlaw world of Ulna.

But slashing even deeper were other markings—the stylized images of the lightning that were Xaymar's symbol.

"A strong man can roll the globe within its base," Kyla told Haral. She studied the markings, chose a spot. "Here is the place. Now spin it upward."

New uneasiness came upon Haral. The muscles along the back of his neck felt stiff and drawn with tension.

He wondered if it could be his weariness, his wound.

But he could not shrug it off.

He said tightly. "This smells of danger, Kyla. There's trouble here."

Once more, he swept the lance's illumination beam across the room.

A long smear on the floor shimmered. Haral dropped to one knee, touched it. "Look! This is wet, and not with water! It's more like the blood of the coleoptera!"

A tremor ran through Kyla. "Then hurry! Quick! Spin the globe!"

The blue man straightened. Narrow-eyed, uneasy, he laid the lance aside. Then, bracing himself, he put his unwounded shoulder to the globe and heaved at it with all his might.

It moved a bare inch; then another.

He strained again.

Slowly, the great sphere turned. The edge of a slot cut in its under side came into view—a crack that widened as the globe rolled within the base, till an oblong orifice lay exposed like a tunnel mouth leading down into the footing.

Haral started to step back.

But, of a sudden, a faint sound came—the muffled ring of metal against stone.

Haral lunged for the light-lance.

But a harsh, unfamiliar voice slashed in upon him—a voice from atop the high, flat ledge that lined the walls: "Drop it, chitza! Drop the light-lance!"

From a different angle, another voice rang: "Quick! Drop it!"

A third: "Just one false move...."

An icy knot gathered in the pit of Haral's stomach. He let the lance fall.

To his right, a Pervod rose into view upon the ledge, ray-gun murderously ready. A squat, tentacled Thorian appeared to his left. Sounds told him others were getting up behind him.

Desperately, he looked to Kyla.

But she stood rigid, fists clenched at her sides. The ray-pistol he'd given her had disappeared.

He turned back to the Pervod. "Well, finish it!" he cried. "You're here to burn us down. Get it done and be on your way!"

But the Pervod didn't answer.

Instead, there was laughter ... ghoulish, obscene laughter, laughter Haral had heard before.

A chill shook the blue man.

He wished he could be sure it was only his wound.

Again the laugh echoed; again. It came from the staircase, swelling louder and louder with each passing second.

And then, there were more Pervods, more Thorians, more Malyas and Martians and mutants. There, too, was Gar Sark's famed Uranian riding-chair sweeping into view on its anti-gravitational direction beam.

There was Sark.

He leered at Haral. Never had the menace stood out in his fat face more sharply.

"Burn you down—?" He repeated the blue man's words as if he liked their flavor. "No, no, you starbo. I'd not do that. Not now; not ever. It's far too quick a way for you to die."

"You'll do your worst, so do as you like." Haral forced himself to shrug despite the pain.

Sark smirked. "Of course. But first there's another task we must attend."

"Another task—?"

"Yes, now that you two have opened up the way." Sark chuckled, deep in his throat. His fat-rimmed eyes gleamed like tiny, vicious stars. "We go now to waken the living goddess, Xaymar, queen of storms, so that she can deliver her secret into my hands!"

CHAPTER V

There lay the woman!

Xaymar. Woman and death, the end of a madman's quest.

The great crystal globe that cased her rested atop a dais in the center of an echoing, high-roofed chamber. Pulsing, aglow with strange life, its radiance fought back the crypt's impinging gloom.

Haral swayed for a moment under the impact of the sight, his wounds forgotten. Excitement raced through him.

But Sark's men held him by either arm, and others penned him in front and behind, and Sark himself sat in the riding-chair mere feet away, his hand never straying from the cymosynthesizer switch.

And there was Kyla, pale and forlorn, in a Thorian's tentacled grasp.

The end of a quest, indeed. The bitter end.

Sickness came to Haral.

Yet because he was the man he was, such a mood could not last long even here, even now. Thoughtfully, he gazed about—taking in the vaulted roof; the walls, honeycombed with coleopteran burrows; the expressions with which Sark's mongrel crewmen tried to mask their awe.

Above all, he looked upon the woman.

Sark's eyes, too, were gleaming. Drawn as by some mighty lodestone, he sent his riding-chair scudding forward to the dais on which the globe encasing the sleeping goddess rested. His web-fingered hand reached out to touch the crystal.

Then, abruptly, he halted. Slowly, he withdrew his hand and wheeled the chair about. His eyes sought Haral, and his lips parted in a leer.

He said: "Ulna has little love for strangers, chitza."

Haral said nothing.

"Perhaps they thought to trap a few with this pretty bauble," the raider chief remarked. His smile was sinister. "Perhaps Namboina told the things he told too easily, in order that he might laugh in hell because I, too, had died."

Haral shrugged. "You talk in circles, starbo."

"You came here seeking to waken Xaymar, did you not?" Sark smirked. "I merely meant that you should have the chance to do it."

His smile vanished. His words crackled: "Go to the dais, chitza! Awaken Xaymar!"

Haral's captors shoved him forward. Numbly, he clumped across the floor.

Sark and his men drew back to the protection of the archway. Kyla stood in the shadows, pressed against a wall.

For the fraction of a second, the blue man thought of calling out to her to draw the ray-gun she'd hidden in her garments, and blast the raiders with it.

But the fascination that lay in the sleeping goddess pulled even stronger.

He ran his tongue along dry lips. It could be as Sark had guessed—that this was a trap for the unwary; that the first time he touched the bubble would also be the last.

Yet still he stepped onto the dais. Then, breathing deep, he wiped a window through the dust that shrouded the shining globe.

Nothing happened.

A mass of valves and tubes and coils of unfamiliar pattern were mounted high inside the bubble. To one side, a cord like a bell-pull hung nearly to the floor.

But Haral gave the equipment scant heed. He had eyes only for the woman known as Xaymar.

Her body gleamed smooth and sleek in this eerie light—voluptuous, lithe-limbed, perfect. Motionless, naked save for the short, jeweled veil that masked the top half of her face against a nimbus of jet-black hair, she lay like some lovely manikin, frozen in a sleep as deep as death itself. Yet, somehow, there was a warmth and texture to her skin that seemed to reach out even through the crystal; a melding of curves and hollows that cried out that once she, too, had been alive.

And might still live!

The blue man sucked in air. Pivoting, he studied the panel set in the great globe's base.

The switch was there, just as Kyla had described it.

And the secret prayer, the call to waken—?

Only the soul of dead Namboina could chant it now.

Haral clutched the lever. Then, stiff with tension, he jammed it shut.

Seconds crept by on leaden feet. He felt a lone drop of icy sweat slide down his spine.

Then, inside the bubble, greenish mist began to rise. It filled the crystal casing. Eddying, swirling, it thickened till the woman's recumbent form grew dim and blurred.

In the vibrant stillness, Haral could hear his own heart beat.

Slowly, the mist within the great globe thinned again. A tube set high above the woman flashed on. Waves of pale violet light washed over her smooth, nude, perfect body.

In spite of himself, Haral's tension soared.

Now—abruptly, without warning—a wild, shrill, keening sound rose thinly. A new light blazed above the woman. Like lightning striking, a shining, silvery beam lanced down out of a queerly-shaped projector.

A sheet of crackling silver flame encased the woman. Her body went suddenly rigid. She jerked spasmodically, lifting half clear of her cot in a writhing, twisting arch.

Then, sharply, light and sound cut off again.

The woman fell back limply and lay still.

It dawned on Haral that his nails were rasping against the crystal.

Through an interminable moment, the woman within sagged inert as any corpse. Then, almost imperceptibly, her lips quivered. The bare breasts stirred as she drew a shallow, sobbing breath.

In the same instant, it seemed to Haral that he could see her lids open beneath the veil. But he could not be sure.

She tried to lift herself; fell back.

Fiercely, Haral slashed at the crystal with his elbow.

The heavy copronium elbow-piece of his armor tore through the globe—puncturing, not shattering. Haral stabbed at the bubble again, and it ripped, in the manner of some flexible, transparent plastic. Forcing a hand into the gash, the blue man tore a great chunk loose, clear to the floor: then another.

Stepping inside, he bent over the woman—gripping her shoulders; straining for her whisper.

"Quick! The flagon—!" Her hand stretched out in a feeble gesture.

Haral followed the movement to a holder beside the cot. It held a flask. Snatching up the container, he tore away the seal, then lifted and held the woman while she drank in great, greedy gulps.

When at last the flask was empty, she sank back once more. But now color was flowing to her face. Her breathing steadily grew deeper and more regular.

Haral let his weight rest on the edge of the cot. Very gently, he reached to lift the goddess' veil.

Spasmodically, her hands came up. "No—!" Nails dug into his wrist.

He started at the tempestuous violence of her; the sudden strength. Then, wearily, he drew back his hand.

In the same instant Sark's voice lanced in: "Leave her alone, chitza!"

Haral turned.

The raider chief and his men were back, now. They poured into the crypt in a rush. Sark himself swept toward the dais in his riding-chair as on the crest of a wave, ahead of all the others. His thick lips were working, his eyes hot with excitement.

But his fingers never left the cymosynthesizer switch.

Haral clenched his fist in frustrated fury. Of a sudden his wounds, his weariness, hung heavy on him.

He glimpsed Kyla. Hesitantly, she, too, was coming towards the goddess. Her lips were parted as if to cry out in protest against this whole bizarre affair. Deep lines of strain marred the pale loveliness of her face.

Sark cried: "Back, chitza! Stand clear of Xaymar!"

For an instant Haral stiffened. Then, painfully, he forced himself to his feet.

But now a new voice interrupted, imperious and vibrant:

"Who are you to give commands, fat beast, here in the innermost sanctuary of Xaymar, queen of storms?"

Haral pivoted.

The woman on the cot now sat erect, her very stance a mirror of haughtiness and pride.

Anger flamed in Sark's puffy cheeks. "Who dares to question? I am Sark—"

"Yes. He is Sark," Haral cut in. He poured savage irony into his words. "They say you are a goddess, Xaymar. But he—he is Sark, gar of the space-raiders, a being so fierce and brave he does not even dare to waken you himself!"

"Silence, chitza!" shrieked the raider chief.

Haral mocked him: "He seeks your secrets, Xaymar—if he can pay the price with someone else's life, and not his own! As for commands—what does he care that others call you goddess? He is the great Gar Sark—"

Sark cried: "Kill the starbo—!"

Now, for the first time, the woman men knew as Xaymar gave the gross raider heed. Twisting, she faced him. Her hand touched the cord that hung down beside the cot on which she rested, and even that simple gesture was somehow pregnant with a nameless menace that halted Sark and his crewmen in their tracks.

In a voice suddenly cold as Pluto's ice-things, she said, "If he dies, creature, you die with him!"

For an instant there was a silence that echoed vibrant tension. Then, calmly, Xaymar turned again to Haral. "And you, blue one—?" she queried. "What of you? Why do you seek me?"

Haral let her words hang for a moment. He looked out across the crypt ... past Sark, the crewmen, Kyla....

Kyla. She, too, rode with destiny; but it was a different destiny than his, a destiny that tolled her doom already. The lines that etched her face seemed even deeper now, set off by the contrast with the shimmering spun gold of her hair. There was more than beauty in her. There was spirit, also, born of stark courage, and all at once the very sight of her brought a poignancy that stabbed him like a knife.

But he pushed it back, and let his laugh ring out. "I seek the only thing in the void worth seeking!" he slashed recklessly. "I seek power, Xaymar—the power to fulfill my destiny and carve an empire. But I never thought to find the key to it locked in the brain of a woman as beautiful as you, or I'd have sought it sooner!"

Xaymar's ripe lips parted. "Your tongue is skilled, blue man! It alone should carry you to your empire!"

"But does that skilled tongue have truth, too, my goddess? Or is it so practiced that now it lies by instinct?" It was Kyla who lashed out, from a place close by the dais. Passion had brought hot color to her cheeks.

"They lie, my goddess! All these aliens lie!" she rushed on fiercely. "Hate and greed are the only creed they know. Already Ulna lies drenched in the blood they've shed—the blood of your followers, ground down by these monsters to slaves or less. Now, still thirsting for more wealth, more power, they seek you, too, my goddess! They would make you their slave—tear your secrets from you, that they may use the power that lies within the lightning to reach out across the void for yet more worlds to conquer—"

The woman who was the living goddess Xaymar, queen of storms, stared coolly down at her slim young priestess, Kyla.

"You are of the Shamon, are you not?" she interrupted, and open condescension was in her tone.

"Yes, my goddess—"

"A race of stuffy fools, the Shamon."

"My goddess—!"

"You prove my point. Who but a race of stuffy fools would try to pass off a sleeping woman as a goddess? That is, unless they were knaves, instead, seeking some gain by their deception."

"But these aliens would destroy us—"

"And why not, if the best you can do is pray to me for succor? The blue one spoke true. Power is the only thing in all the void worth seeking—for without it, man and race alike are doomed!"

Kyla stood very still. But, watching her, Haral could see her lips begin to tremble. The color was draining from her face again. Her features had taken on a stiff, unnatural set.

"Then ... Xaymar, queen of storms, deserts her faithful ones for aliens? She casts off my Shamon people ... me, her priestess—?"

Xaymar tossed her head. "I tire of this dreary prattle!" she cried, and gestured to a massive, tentacled Thorian at Sark's side. "You! Take this Shamon drab away!"

For the fraction of a second the Thorian's great saucer eyes rolled from Xaymar to Sark to Kyla. Then, wordless, he undulated towards the shrinking girl.

And Haral, too, stared, still not quite believing that this incredible creature, be she woman or devil or goddess, could so take command even of Sark's own men.

Then, again, he glimpsed the stiffness in Kyla's face, and a strange uneasiness gripped him. Perhaps it was the way she stood, almost as if waiting for the Thorian, with no thought of retreating.

The Thorian whipped a tentacle towards her.

But in the same instant Kyla, too, was moving. Her hair shimmered like quicksilver as she slid beneath the Thorian's snake-like member. Her hand darted beneath her filmy outer garment, then out again, jerking forth her ray-gun. Her body twisted as she stabbed the weapon close to the Thorian's monstrous bulk.

Then she was blasting, at so short a range that the raider's flesh burst asunder under the impact of the beam.

The Thorian's tentacles lashed out in frenzy. But already the girl was leaping back beyond his grasp.

Now, she was turning; springing up onto the dais. Her voice rang with a fury born of outrage:

"Die, traitor! Die for the Shamon and for Ulna!"

She blazed a ray straight for Xaymar's naked body.

Haral threw himself forward, between the two women. Desperately, he tried to knock Kyla's ray-gun up with one hand while he swept Xaymar from her cot with the other.

But his wound-stiffened shoulder caught. The ray-gun's energy bolt burst on his own chest-plate. Its impact smashed him down. For a split second he saw the crypt as a blazing kaleidoscope of action, a maelstrom swirling in on a pain-wracked vortex that was his brain. He caught the madness in Kyla's eyes; the sudden panic in the way that Xaymar fell. Beyond them, the space-raiders' faces merged in a weird blurred jumble.

Then Sark was roaring, "Now! Now! Seize them—!"

Frantically, Haral tried to tear clear of pain and shock and debris.

But before he could move, Xaymar caught the cord that hung beside her. Spasmodically, she jerked it down.

He knew, somehow, that it was an alarm, even though the sound of its signal was pitched too high and thin for human ears.

The sight that followed was one of the strangest he had ever seen.

For out of the thousands of coleopteran burrows that pock-marked the walls of this hidden crypt, a horde came leaping—a horde of great scarlet beetles that hurtled down upon Sark and his raiders before they could so much as turn. A living wave, they burst over the crewmen and the dais—clutching the aliens, bearing them down; yet holding them, not killing.

Haral found himself flat on his back, pinned there by two monstrous coleoptera. Kyla, too, lay prone, shaking under the touch of another of the beetles.

Haral twisted, looking for Xaymar.

Alone out of all the throng, she stood erect, untouched. A horde of the coleoptera had grouped themselves about her. Now they bent low in weird attitudes of genuflection.

The woman waved them back with a quick, impatient gesture. Swiftly, she picked her way to Haral.

The beetles that held him gave way before her. Gripping the blue man's hand, she helped him to his feet.

"You see, warrior—?" She lifted her hand in a sweeping, all-inclusive gesture. "I know what power means—a power greater than any the void has ever seen. I, too, have carved an empire: the empire of these silent ones, the coleoptera. To them, I am truly goddess. They are mine to command."

Haral swayed a little. Tiny waves of nausea washed over him, rising like vapors out of the pain flowing from his wound. With a sort of dull detachment, he observed that blood had begun to drip from his left hand's fingers once again.

A trifle thickly, he said, "I hear your words. But what good is your beetle empire? Where can it lead you? How far can you go?"

The woman called Xaymar smiled a smile that was old when this outlaw world was young. "Did you not say I held the key to your fate, blue one? The coleoptera are my workers and my warriors. Because I saw the role that they might play, I helped them gain the power of thought; so now they help me turn my dreams to destiny."

"Dreams?" Haral muttered. "Dreams indeed! They say you've lain here sleeping a thousand years."

Xaymar laughed softly, tauntingly. "And why do you suppose I slept so long, blue warrior? Believe me, it was not out of boredom. No; I, too, like you, reached out for power. But first I had to fill my legion's ranks. I needed time for my coleoptera to breed and multiply, in preparation for my day of conquest...."

She paused, and the jewels with which her veil was set seemed to gleam so bright that Haral closed his eyes against them. Once again the air of nameless menace he'd felt before crept through the crypt.

Xaymar's voice came as from afar: "We shall ride together, warrior, you and I! You've saved my life, and you have a will that matches mine. I've longed this thousand years and more for a man like you to share my dreams...."

The words went on and on, but Haral could no longer hear. The sickness in him grew. He knew of a sudden that he was going to fall.

Words and more words—an incoherent jumble. He was toppling now, yet there was nothing he could do to stop it. In great, languorous spirals, the floor of the dais was roaring up into his eyes.

But as it approached, somehow, it grew dimmer ... dimmer ... dimmer....

Then new words came. Or, rather, old words, thundering out of the black sack of his memory.

Kyla's words:

"Each night she took a different lover—and then, at the dawn, at her command, each one was slain!"

The blackness closed in....

CHAPTER VI

Haral woke in the glow of a wondrous iridescent warmth that pulsed through every nerve and fiber of his body. The pain and weariness were gone. Surging strength, new vigor, flooded through him.