Front matter (continued 2)

As they progressed Glayne saw the tough, all-metal walls were more heavily buttressed with the massive beralloy supports. Selzi-Narfid saw the direction of his glance and said, "Those were necessary when we maneuvered the Jewel into the center of the discoid. You have no idea of what such a tremendous mass in a body the size of the Jewel can do when it is not balanced."

Glayne listened to the Admiral with just a part of his mind. His main attention was devoted to photographing mentally the warren of passages. Here and there he saw groups of Delban technicians, none of them armed.

Good, thought Glayne.

They reached the entrance stage of the Jewel Chamber. The beralloy walls here were nearly a meter thick. In single file the party crawled through the narrow opening that dilated ponderously in the entrance stage. Two very weary-looking guards snapped to attention as they passed, but almost immediately slumped back into their somnolent positions, exhausted by their abnormally increased weight.

Better yet, thought Glayne.

"This is the Jewel Chamber, Captain. It is the very heart of Tjadlinn," puffed Selzi-Narfid after he had crawled through the dilated entrance stage.

Glayne stared about the vaulted room curiously. It was shaped like the inside of an oval, thick at the center but tapering off to nothing at the sides. They were standing on a balcony which was heavily buttressed and ran all the way around the Chamber past several other massive portals. In the exact center of the Chamber a kind of a nest was formed by the tremendously thick beralloy girders. Something burned there with a cold, golden brilliance that filtered through the interstices of the girders and etched them sharply in banded shadows about the heavy walls.

An uncanny sensation possessed Glayne as he gazed at the Jewel. A vague dread passed over him and he found himself wondering if the Elder Tane Gods would emerge from their crypt and wreak hideous vengeance on mere mortals for disturbing their sleep. Uneasily he crushed the fantasy that was rioting up in his mind and determined to look for something more practical.

He concentrated on the power drain machinery which hung in clusters from the massive girders. Obviously those mechanisms were far more delicate than their supports and could be sabotaged with comparatively little work. As he calculated he gradually became aware of Bro-Doral who was speaking:

"—were remarkable creatures. As you know, Tane legends exist in every part of the known galaxy. They even possessed immortality—but they lost it for all practical purposes when they failed to adjust their bodies to the expanding universe.

"While the universe expands, quanta emission frequencies remain constant. You are familiar, of course, with the shift in the wave length of the cadmium spectrum, taken over the centuries. Ages ago, emission frequencies were so long, relatively speaking, that energy liberation from protein organisms was impossible. That definitely rules out protein construction for the Tane—but just what they were composed of is unknown. At any rate, their bodies couldn't stand the shortened emission frequencies which overloaded their muscles. They exploded. Like a plague. Billions and billions of them must have died before they discovered the answer to the strange death that was striking among them. And billions more must have died before their marvelous science was able to build the Second Universe, as the legends call it."

Gort Bro-Doral gestured at the Jewel which shed its cold, brilliant light about the Chamber.

"They enclosed themselves in that tiny ovoid crypt you see there," he went on. "That was countless ages ago. Somehow they had managed to construct shields capable of withstanding the spatial expansion of the universe. Who knows—they may still live in their static crypt?

"As millions and millions of years passed, the Tane Jewel—the Second Universe, as the legends call it—slowly dwindled in size when considered in relation to our own universe. As it dwindled, its energy potential grew. Now its accumulated charge is so titanic that it defies conception.

"Some day those beautiful engines of the Tane Gods would have run down and the shield would have collapsed. Then our own universe would have been destroyed. The sudden release of such a vast energy potential would have caused a concussion which would literally warp our flat space into the fourth-dimensional sub-space.

"Now that can't happen. We are draining off that infinite potential and broadcasting it—flooding it—through sub-space to be received everywhere there is a Delban receiving antenna. The power is limitless. We Delbans will be the rulers of the universe just as the Tane Gods were of old. There is no limit to our power!"

Bro-Doral's eyes blazed with a pure lust for power as he stared exultantly at the green brilliance of the Tane Jewel. His mouth was slack and he breathed heavily from the effort of his speech. Selzi-Narfid, too, was tired. Wearily he rested against the support rail of the balcony. The guards blinked their large pop-eyes from fatigue, shuffling from one foot to another to promote circulation. Most of them had placed their weapons in holsters as Bro-Doral talked. That is, all except one. He still held his weapon loosely in his fingers at his side. Slowly and gently Glayne poised, gathering his strength.

"Isn't it beautiful, Glayne?" mused the Delban Overlord, staring into the tiny radiant sun. "An artifact of the mightiest culture that ever existed. Now we will carry on in their footsteps. We will be the mightiest—"

VIII

Then Glayne leaped. With one flailing fist he caught the Delban guard on his bony jaw and with the other he snatched the cold-beam gun from his limp fingers. Whirling, he played it among the stupefied guards. Then old Graysen exploded into action, seizing Selzi-Narfid and hurling him bodily at Bro-Doral who was in the act of bringing up his Cardy gun. Three of the guards had collapsed and another was crumpling on his knees under Glayne's cold-beam. The other two had crouched back in the shadows of the entrance portal, trying to bring their weapons to bear upon Glayne.

Graysen whirled and lunged at them, smashing one down with a single blow. The last guard on his feet, surprised and dismayed by this attack from the rear, fled to the portal and tried to dilate it. But he was too late and sagged in a heap under Glayne's hand weapon.

Scooping up two of the Cardy guns which had fallen to the balcony floor, Glayne shouted: "Pick up an energy gun, Graysen. Cut down the power drain machinery."

Graysen reached for an energy gun in the holster of one of the paralyzed guards. He never even saw Gort Bro-Doral scramble to his feet and fire point blank. His head disappeared as the Delban's beam struck full force. Glayne fired back wildly but he was off balance and missed. Before he could collect himself to fire again, Bro-Doral had fled to another stage and darted through the dilation.

Glayne whirled toward the Delbans. Selzi-Narfid had a broken neck and was obviously dead. The guards were all unconscious and would remain so for a long time.

Glayne turned back to the Jewel which cast its chill, gold light steadily through the interstices of the surrounding girders. Calmly he leveled the Cardy gun and fired at it. As if it were so much water, the deadly little energy beam washed off the Tane Jewel and fused with the beralloy supports. It was as he had expected. Given several hours, the little hand weapon might have made an impression on the incredibly tough beralloy but Glayne had no time to lose.

As he had seen before, the power drain machinery which hung in clusters from the big beams and transmitted the energy through the heavy busbars looked to be the most fragile. Glayne wondered what would happen if he fired into them. There was only one way to find out. The muscles of his jaw hardened as he depressed the firing stud on the Cardy.

Nothing happened. He let the beam of his energy gun play up and down the clusters of power drains, fusing them into slag. Now the thin, invisible rays of power which the drains extracted from the Jewel no longer existed since they had no place to go. But nothing happened.

Then it occurred to him that nothing would happen in the Jewel Chamber itself. It needed no power for lights—the Jewel provided all the light needed. Heartened, Glayne blasted at every drain in reach, following the balcony around the Chamber.

But even this method, he realized, would take too long. Gort Bro-Doral would soon have squads of men hurrying into the Chamber after him. Grimly he wished he had an energy bomb. With one of those he could finish the job in a few seconds.

Suddenly he remembered an old Guardian trick. Hurriedly he began to tinker with one of the Cardy guns. By jamming a couple of the safety gadgets, it was possible to make the weapon fire out of phase. When the trigger stud was depressed, its tiny miatron coils would build up an unstable load in a couple of seconds, then explode. Quickly he fixed the weapon to his satisfaction, then hurried on around the balcony to find a suitable opening in the girders through which to hurl the ersatz bomb.

Halfway around, he met two panic-stricken Delban technicians. The instant they saw him they turned tail and ran back through the portal. Obviously something must be happening, Glayne thought with grim satisfaction. Then he found a good spot, pressed the firing stud of the doctored Cardy gun, then flung it with all his strength into the remaining power drains. In an instant he had pivoted and lunged for the port of the entrance stage behind him, feeling in the shadow for its dilator stud.

It refused to open!

Obviously Glayne himself had sabotaged its power circuit. Now he was trapped in the Chamber and the ersatz bomb was about to explode. Tensely he crouched as far back in the recess of the port as he could and waited. With a terrific roar the bomb exploded in the confined Chamber, rupturing the membranes of his nose and crushing him violently against the port. Parts of the devastated power drains were hurled against the massive walls, then fell back to the Jewel. One of the heavy busbars had collapsed, ripping festoons of cables from the top of the Chamber which shorted violently against one another.

Dazed, Glayne pulled himself to his feet. Fortunately he had broken no bones. But one of his ear drums was ruptured and his nose bled unremittingly. He had lost his other Cardy. Hurriedly he felt about, found it, and thrust it into the fold of his tattered jumper.

He turned back to the port and found that the concussion had dilated it for him. Breathing heavily, he crawled through it into the inky blackness of the passages. On all sides he heard the sound of running footsteps. By touch he staggered into the blackness, realizing that he must keep going uphill, away from the Jewel's attraction.

The exertion cleared his head a bit. He knew he was lost, but he hoped to be able to find his way back to Selzi-Narfid's quarters. There he would find Niala and be oriented with the rest of the discoid.

Figures bumped into him in the blackness, hurrying to the scene of destruction. The Delbans were badly disorganized. Obviously they had not been prepared to cope with such devastation wreaked on their sacred Jewel. Not even to the extent of auxiliary power for lights, he thought as he panted up the black passages.

Even as he thought about it, the lights began to flicker weakly in their fluorescent tubes, growing stronger with each passing second. Startled, Glayne crouched back in the shadow of a recess in the wall. That was Luck in all her perversity, he thought grimly. His hand sought the butt of the blaster in his jumper. Fortunately the lights did not wax as brightly as they had when the Jewel was still functioning, but that did not offer much consolation. He would be recognized instantly by the outline of his thick-chested body if he was seen in the corridor.

He noticed that fewer Delbans were passing. He decided to chance it. Tightly grasping the gun in his jumper, he crept from his hiding place and ran on the balls of his feet, dodging and ducking into shadows every time one of the enemy passed. Once he was seen and pursued by a squad of Delban guards. Breathlessly he ran at full tilt through a cross-corridor, up a flight of high steps, and twisted into another of the endless passages of the discoid.

The pull of the Jewel had become very slight. In fact it was much slighter than it had been in Selzi-Narfid's suite. Glayne pushed on, realizing that he was hopelessly lost. His only chance now was to find the mono-rail on which they had ridden from the landing dock to the Tjadlinn commander's suite. It occurred to him that even if he did find Niala, they might never escape Tjadlinn. And it was absolutely imperative that he make contact with Garstow at Scone III. The slightest delay on the part of the Stellar Guardian Admiral in attacking the Karkara Station might give the Delbans the precious time they needed to repair the damage he had effected.

There were two entrance stages, one on either side, in the corridor through which he was hurrying. He tried one and found it was locked. He was more fortunate with the other. It creaked open slowly when he flipped the dilator stud. Tensely, hand on the Cardy gun in his jumper, he crept through the port.

It was the landing dock!

Glayne's heart jumped with delight as he crouched back in a shadow and examined the place. Not a hundred meters away was the launch which had brought his party from the Algol. His eyes drank it in avidly and a plan for escape formed rapidly in his mind. A message craft of some sort was preparing to leave, he saw. As soon as the inner lock door closed behind it, he would smash the launch through it and the air pressure would fling him out of the discoid. How very simple!

Then the impact of the realization that he would have to leave Niala Chodred behind struck him. He was stunned by its very violence.

Leave Niala? Abandon her to Gort Bro-Doral and his sadistic vengeance for the sabotage Glayne himself had performed? No! That was out of the question. But what of the Terran Combine? What did the life of Citizen Niala Chodred mean against the lives of the trillions who made up that Combine to which she had sworn allegiance? Viewed in that light, it was obvious that the life of one person was a cheap price to pay for security of the Combine against the Tane Jewel.

Glayne crouched in the shadow and buried his face in his hands. In an agony of indecision he prodded his weary mind to discover an alternative to the horrible dilemma. But he could find none. He would have to decide between Niala, the laughing, green-eyed Niala, and the ideal of human progress which he had sworn the Guardian Oath to protect.

Dully he realized that the power of the abstract was too strong. He would forsake Niala. The pain redoubled itself as he made his decision but he set his face in a granite-mask against it. Unfortunately it was not so easy to quell the agony that burned within him.

Grimly he stood up. He saw that the time had come for action. The message craft was slowly jetting down the cinder blastway toward the lock door. Glayne tensed for an instant, then raced for the launch, covering ten meters at a stride in the light gravity. Three Delban mechanics caught sight of him as he rounded the stubby fins and leaped for the lock. In mid-stride he whipped out his Cardy gun and brought them down in charred heaps.

A guard squad saw him and fired. Their beams sang dangerously close, smashing into the beralloy side of the launch. They crunched down the blastway in pursuit as Glayne jumped through the open lock, slammed it shut, and darted to the controls. The atomic driver engine coughed and surged into life. He let it scream up beyond audibility, then fed power to the jets. The blast washed over the guards who were closest to the launch and the others fell back hastily before its searing heat.

The inner lock of the entrance port had slid shut behind the message craft. It was now or never, Glayne realized. He opened the atomic driver wide and the stubby launch shuddered for an instant, then lunged for the lock. The sudden thrust created constricting hands about Glayne's chest and he fought precariously on the edge of blacking out. For a brief instant Glayne was aware of the huge outer doors swinging shut before him—and then the air pressure struck them and flung the launch bodily through the narrow space left between them.

The launch tumbled crazily end-over-end until Glayne straightened it out and oriented himself with Tjadlinn and Jorger Sun. He had just sighted the tiny gleaming speck of the Algol a dozen kilometers distant when something struck the launch a terrific blow. Almost instantly the tell-tales indicated air was escaping. Dismayed, Glayne shot a glance over his shoulder at the receding discoid. He discovered that they were firing at him with the secondary Kellander batteries, using auxiliaries to power the miatrons. Feverishly he changed course, zig-zagging wildly away from the discoid.

Due to over confidence, the Delbans had not destroyed the Algol immediately. They preferred to play cat and mouse. And now, with the titanic energies of the Jewel no longer available to them, they could not destroy the Algol.

The Kellander energy beams slashed dangerously close to the fleeing launch. Not in salvos but by ones and twos. That meant that their fire control was badly disorganized—and it was that fact which saved Glayne. Harbin had raised the Algol's anti-shield when the Delbans had commenced firing but he had not turned tail as Glayne had ordered, realizing that the launch was fleeing in his direction.

Glayne flipped the stud of the shield-nullifier that was matched to the frequency of the Algol's anti-shield and darted the launch through it, braking with eye-searing blasts of the forward jets as the huge Reception Deck locks yawned open. With a heavy lurch, his battered craft came to rest inside the lip of the gaping outer doors.

IX

The Algol's officers formed a silent group beneath the huge glassene dome of the navigation bridge. They looked expectantly at Glayne as the elevator port dilated and he approached them, weary and unshaven, his face covered with blood.

Ignoring their unspoken questions, Glayne said brusquely, glancing at the navigation chrono, "Lieutenant Harbin: Compute an orbit for Scone III. Get the ship under way immediately ... drop into sub-space at three ten to the seventh kilos from Jorger Sun. Thrust—eight G's."

He was about to turn on his heel when Harbin's hesitant voice stopped him.

"Sir ... what ... what about Commander Graysen and the others?"

Glayne stared at the youngster bleakly. "Graysen is dead," he said with a flat voice. "So is Ganser. And I presume that our escort has been executed."

Harbin's youthful jaw tightened. "And Lieutenant Chodred?"

The lines about Glayne's mouth deepened. He let his gaze travel over Harbin's troubled face and the impassive faces of the rest of the ship's officers. He saw accusation in their eyes along with resentment and veiled hostility. He knew what they were thinking. Why should he be the only one to return. Why had he abandoned the others? And now they wanted to know what had happened to the girl. So he told them.

"She is still alive." Bitterly he wondered why Fate had designated her to be the only one left to face Gort Bro-Doral's vengeance. He looked up again at the silent cluster of officers. "If your curiosity is satisfied, gentlemen, suppose we get on with the war?"

"If Tjadlinn is without Jewel power," persisted Harbin stubbornly, "why can't we attack? We might be able to rescue Lieutenant Chodred. It's the least we could do—"

"Follow my orders!" Glayne cut in savagely. He turned on his heel and mounted to his shock seat in the Captain's Station. Yes, he thought bitterly, they could attack Tjadlinn, incur heavy damage on the discoid—perhaps even accomplish a miraculous rescue of Niala. But weighed against that was the possibility that the Algol might be heavily damaged or destroyed by the highly potent secondary Kellanders of the discoid. Unless he got through to Garstow, the conservative Grand Admiral of the Stellar Guardians was likely to delay his attack on Karkara—and such a delay would be suicidal.

Gradually a floor began to build under his feet and the Algol got under way. As the thrust increased, the discoid began to shrink in the distance. Glayne stared at its image grimly in the battle screen. He didn't say farewell because he knew he would be back. He rubbed his bristly cheek. He saw success now. He felt it on the tips of his clutching fingers. But something else was beyond his grasp now—something that made success dry and unpalatable. He covered his eyes with his hand as the thought stabbed him: The laughing, green-eyed Niala....

The Stellar Guardian fleet lay motionless across forty thousand kilometers of space when the Algol reached the rendezvous at Scone III. Admiral Garstow's anxious face formed rapidly in the featureless grey surface of Glayne's ship-to-ship communicator screen.

"Give me a fast, verbal report on the Jewel, Glayne," ordered the Admiral.

The Guardian Captain complied, rapidly sketching the main details of his sabotage and providing a rough outline of the Delban defense of the discoid.

When he finished, Garstow nodded thoughtfully. "Do you think it advisable to risk an immediate attack on the discoid on the chance that we can knock it out before they repair the power drains?"

Glayne frowned, then said, "No. It's too long a chance. They will mass their fleet at Tjadlinn immediately. Under normal circumstances we could lick them, but if they repair that Jewel faster than I expect, then we'll be sitting ducks."

Garstow nodded again. "Lieutenant Brodis informed me of the plan you had in mind of attacking the Karkara Fleet Station on Scone III and thereby acquiring the Jewel power-receiving antennae. On the whole, I think that is the shrewder move. Since you've managed this show up to now, Captain, I think you might as well organize the attack."

"Thank you, sir," Glayne replied. "I'll take my own cruiser division in first to clear away what little resistance they'll put up. That will be the simplest part about it. The real difficulty will come when we install the antennae. As Brodis probably told you, we were unable to get any technical information from General Ganser."

Garstow rubbed his fleshy nose thoughtfully, then said, "It's in your hands, Captain." Then he cut out.

Rapidly Glayne organized the attack, placing his own cruiser division at the point of the spearhead. Smoothly the Stellar Guardian striking force flashed down on Scone III. As Glayne had anticipated, their sudden assault was little more than an armed landing. The Delbans were caught completely off guard. They put up a fanatical resistance with the auxiliary-powered Kellander secondary batteries, but the superior weight of Glayne's miatron blasters soon crushed every last shred of opposition.

As soon as the Algol had jetted down on the immense space-port of the Karkara Fleet Station, a group of technicians in addition to the landing party raced off to confiscate an antennae unit for the big ship. Glayne set up an operations unit in the glassene dome of the Algol to assign landing patterns to the other Guardian fleet units. The heaviest Cluster and Galactic class warships he assigned to fast orbits about Scone to defend the ships which had already landed.

After he saw that landing operations were proceeding smoothly he descended to the engine room of the Algol to see how the installation of the antenna was progressing. Massive cables snaked across the deck in confusions, waiting to be hooked into the heavy buses which the technicians were jockeying into place. Outside on the hull, gangs of men were welding in the mesh antenna. Fuming, he looked at his wrist-chrono repeatedly.

"How much longer?" he asked Harbin impatiently.

"Thirty minutes at the most, sir," replied Harbin stiffly, refusing to meet Glayne's eyes.

Glayne rubbed his bristly cheek thoughtfully as he turned away. The young officer was determined to give him the silent treatment along with the rest of the officers in his crew. Word would spread; soon the whole fleet would hear of his cowardly negligence. He smiled thinly as he made his way back up to the navigation bridge. He had seen it happen before. There were just two ways to escape it. One was retirement. The other involved a Cardy gun placed at the temple....

The red light of his personal communicator was blinking intermittently when he regained the bridge. It was Garstow.

"Glayne!" he barked abruptly, "Bardled is on his way in with the fleet of Imperial Terra. And a dozen other Sectors have massed their fleets and are on the way, too."

"Excellent," said Glayne. "We're working faster now. We've put the Delban technicians to work and repaired the damage to their assembly lines. We ought to be able to handle a thousand ships an hour. How long before Bardled will arrive?"

"Four hours ... maybe six."

"I'm lifting in a few minutes," Glayne said. "When Bardled arrives, install the units in his heavy ships first. Those tubs will smash the Tjadlinn anti-shield if anything will."

Rapidly Glayne went on to sketch his plan of attack. When he finished, Garstow nodded ponderously. "Then we will sub-space as soon as we pick up the power broadcast. A sound strategy, Captain. Good luck!" His face faded from the screen.

The first of the big Cluster class battleships were easing down on vast fingers of flame when Harbin reported that the work of installation was complete. In quick succession the other cruisers of his division reported readiness and he gave the command to blast off.

The Algol was almost two hundred million kilos below Scone System's plane of ecliptic when the hastily installed antenna unit began to pick up the first surges of power from the Tane Jewel. Cautiously the Algol's pilot experimented with it, accustoming himself to unlimited power at his finger tips. One by one, the ship's atomic drivers fell silent as the pilot gained confidence.

"Raise the anti-shield, Lieutenant Harbin," Glayne said crisply over his inter-ship phone. "We'll sub-space right now."

Harbin's image stared at him incredulously from the communicator screen for an instant but he fought down the words that trembled on his lips.

"Aye, sir," he snapped.

Glayne was grimly amused at his anxiety but said nothing to relieve it. They were dangerously close to mass, he knew, but if Gort Bro-Doral could blast into sub-space directly from Sterle II with a shield supported by Jewel power, then he ought to be able to get away with it at two hundred million kilos from mass.

Briefly Glayne communicated his intent to the commanders of the thirty other cruisers in his division and their anti-shields began to build. At his curt command they dropped smoothly into sub-space, their shield generators heating up slightly as the sudden strain hit them.

They plunged on through sub-space, building up to incredible velocities in that nether dimension where such commonplace things as mass and light did not exist. Glayne's mind worked rapidly, analyzing his plan of battle for any defects. Obviously the enemy would mass his fleet at the all-important Tjadlinn. If his calculations were correct, his cruiser division would pop into normal space right among them. If they struck fast enough, they could disorganize the Delbans sufficiently for Garstow and Bardled to get in among them with the heavy units of their fleets. And that, he knew, would be the end of the Delban Grand Fleet.

The discoid was another matter. Paradoxically, it contained within it the very source of the power which they would use to destroy it. The only possible way the Delbans could deprive them of the Jewel power would be to turn off the non-directional broadcast entirely. That, however, would leave them open to an attack by the regular miatron batteries of the heavy Guardian and Terran battleships. They could not possibly hope to beat off such an attack with their Kellander secondaries. Hence, Glayne reasoned, they would keep up the power broadcast at all costs.

Satisfied with his plan, Glayne let his mind relax and drift where it wanted. Abruptly it turned to thoughts of Niala Chodred and he winced at the pain which filled him. Grimly, he realized that if the silent treatment by his fellow officers failed to ruin him, the bitter acid of remorse which burned his soul would certainly accomplish the job.

X

One instant the fleet of the Delban Empire was assembling about the vital Tjadlinn discoid in an orderly fashion. An instant later all hell broke loose amid its massed ranks.

Glayne's cruiser division popped out of sub-space at two hundred kilometers per second and flailed through the Delbans like a giant scythe. His eyes glued to the small battle screen in front of him, Glayne clipped off rapid commands over the ship-to-ship communicator that kept him in touch with the rest of his group.

Three Delban warships—one a battle-ship—had been caught with their shields down and were now exploding enthusiastically in nova-fashion. A dozen others had been heavily damaged by the slashing miatron beams as they vainly sought to lift their shields.

The Algol screamed in protest as the pilot flung her around to bore in again. Her armored hide seemed to crawl in squealing agony at the twenty G turn. Glayne panted, on the verge of blacking out. Dimly he glimpsed the strained features of the pilot wracked with spasms of coughing that flung lobs of blood and lung tissue against the terraced banks of instruments at his side....

Then they were among the Delbans again, slashing right and left with Kellander miatron beams. This time the Delbans were ready for them and replied with a vengeance. Torrents of energy smashed at the Algol's shield which shuddered like a live thing under the impact. Behind Glayne a knot of sweating gunnery officers rattled off firing data to waiting Kellander crews before the mammoth battle screen. Somewhere in the bowels of the ship the accumulators were screaming as they fed the Jewel energies from the antenna to the smoking banks of shield generators and the ravenous Kellander condensers. But dominating the ear-splitting crescendo of the Algol in full fighting stride was the continuous, ravening thunder of Kellander projectors as they flung their blasts at the Delban warships.

Glayne saw that his division had scattered widely—but, at the same time, the disorganization of the Delbans was even more evident. Unaware that the sudden attack was a feint to draw them away from Tjadlinn, a dozen Delban fleet divisions abandoned the Jewel to join the fray.

As the Guardian Captain scanned the screen, he saw that the tide was fast running in favor of the Delbans. The Anza was finished for the day. A flotilla of swift Delban destroyers had darted in with mines and torpedoes, one of which had gotten through her shield and exploded with a devastating energy concussion against her stern, sheering off plates and jet tubes by it force. The Altor and Astrid were cornered by a dozen Delban Galactics and Clusters and their shields coruscated in brilliant hues as they trembled on the point of collapse. A third Guardian ship, the Aesir, blasted in to offer aid and even as Glayne watched, hurled her energies in a concerted salvo at a point just below the jets of one of the Delban Clusters. Its shield coruscated brilliantly, tottered, and suddenly it was strewing its guts, nova-fashion. Almost immediately the Aesir followed her example as a salvo of Galactic beams struck her amidships, rupturing her shield. A torpedo ripped into the bridge of the Astrid and she exploded in an eye-searing nova. The Altor managed to limp away in the confusion, her beralloy hide mangled and torn from a near miss.

The Algol herself was in trouble. Two Delban Stellars were hurling torrents of energy at her shield, making it coruscate in a blaze of overloaded power foci. A pack of destroyers was circling hungrily, looking for a chance to dart in and plant their seeds of destruction. The pilot maneuvered desperately, but the overloaded power lines could not shunt sufficient power through the drivers to pull them out of their difficulty.

Glayne swore, wondering where the rest of the fleet was. It couldn't go on much longer. The Akkad had novaed; the Ashlar and Asgard had disappeared without leaving a trace. Only six of his original thirty were in fighting shape—and even as he watched he had to revise it to five. The Atlas, surrounded by a dozen enemies, exploded in nova-fashion as her shield collapsed.

And then the void was suddenly full of great warships bearing the Guardian and Terran insignia, appearing magically in the midst of the Delbans. What had appeared to be triumph suddenly turned into a rout for the Delbans. Badly disorganized, they attempted to flee back to the safety of the mighty Kellander projectors of Tjadlinn.

But Glayne's annihilated cruiser division had done its work well; the Delbans, drawn too far from the discoid, were cut off by the fleets that opposed them. They fought desperately and fanatically, but there was only one possible outcome. One after another they exploded nova-fashion as the massed salvos of the tremendous Terran and Guardian battle ships swept aside their shields and touched destructive fingers to their beralloy sides.

Glayne's ship-to-ship suddenly crackled into life and Garstow's heavy face appeared on the screen. "My boy," he boomed, "I'm proud of you. Excellent work! We've bagged them all at almost no cost. Bardled tells me he didn't lose a ship."

Glayne gazed stupidly at him for a moment before he could adjust himself to the idea of victory. Then he said quietly: "I have five ships left out of a command of thirty."

"Oh! ... that's too bad," mumbled Garstow, his broad face becoming serious. "What I mean to say is—"

"The chaplain will say what needs to be said," Glayne cut in with unnecessary bitterness. "If you still want me to run this show, then I submit that we attack Tjadlinn without delay."

Admiral Garstow nodded, his face like a deflated balloon.

Quickly Glayne outlined his plan for the assault on the discoid itself. The battle would be fought between the Kellander accumulator and condenser capacity of the massed fleets and the total generator capacity of the mighty anti-shield which the Delbans would raise from the discoid. If the Delban shield capacity was less than the massed strength of the fleet, then the discoid would be destroyed. But if the Delbans held them off, they would try something else.

It took several hours to assemble the scattered and highly numerous Terran and Guardian warships into a closely-integrated formation. Matters were not helped by the appearance of dozens of warships from the fleets of other Sectors. They roamed about searching for enemy stragglers, but succeeded only in getting in the way. Finally, however, Glayne got them organized and the enormous fleet moved ponderously on Tjadlinn.

The Delbans waited behind their featureless grey shield, not firing a single Kellander blast at the advancing fleet. When it reached to within fifty kilometers of the discoid, Glayne gave the order to commence fire.

In the center of the huge discoid the Jewel, the Second Universe of the Elder Tane, blazed with a chill, golden luminescence. It did not waver a fraction as the tremendous energy demands struck it. The power drains fed voraciously of its infinite energies and flooded them into sub-space. The cumbersome mesh antennae on the hulls of the numberless ships in the massed fleet gulped it up and transmitted it to screaming accumulators which in turn fed it to the ravenous Kellander condensers. They, in turn, cast it through the miatron projectors at the shield of Tjadlinn from whence it had emerged.

For minutes on end those titanic torrents of energy blasted at that phenomenal shield. But it held. The inconceivable energies could not crack it. Not even when every single accumulator and condenser in the massed fleets of the Terran Combine labored at peak capacity did the shield so much as tremble. Not even to the extent of a tiny spider web of coruscation along the power foci.

Glayne barked a command to cease fire. He saw that the hail of torpedoes and mines which they had strewn had penetrated the shield. But they had been detonated by roving beams from the Tjadlinn secondaries before they could strike the surface of the discoid. If they could get through that mighty barrier, Glayne reasoned, then so could the Algol. He peered into the battle screen, attempting to locate the mammoth landing dock of the discoid through its shimmering grey shield.

He made his decision. Garstow's face came to life on his communicator screen. Briefly he communicated his intention to the Guardian leader. When he had finished, Garstow nodded soberly and mumbled farewell.

When he learned that the Algol's Kellander batteries had been rigged to fire by remote control from the pilot's seat, Glayne contacted Harbin.

"Abandon ship!" he ordered laconically when the youngster's face filled the screen.

"Wha—what?" blurted Harbin incredulously.

"I said," Glayne repeated curtly, "abandon ship. Make haste!"

"Aye, sir," said Harbin. His face still mirrored astonishment as it faded from the screen.

XI

Glayne sat alone in the pilot's massive shock seat of the Algol. The instruments rose about him on all sides in terraced banks with the battle screen directly in front of his eyes. Tentatively he reached for the firing studs, accustoming his fingers to their shape. When he saw that the last of the Algol's lifeboats had been picked up he realized that the time had come.

He transferred his gaze to the discoid that was vague and indistinct beneath its anti-energy shield. Fastening his eyes to the armored outer lock doors of the landing dock, he gently fed power to the drivers. The Algol shuddered and gradually picked up speed. Glayne dropped the anti-shield, realizing that he would never get through the barrier with the energized shield functioning. But once he was through, it would have to go up quickly or his ship would be shattered by the roving secondaries. Hand hovering tensely over the shield control, he guided the ship toward the landing dock.

His speed increased; at twenty kilometers he was streaking toward the discoid in a free fall, all energy sources quiet. Fifteen—ten—five—and the Algol was boring through the energy barrier, stormed and buffeted as it sought to impede the passage of the individual circuits. Suddenly she emerged inside the shield and Tjadlinn was rushing upwards.

Like lightning Glayne's fingers stabbed at the shield control and fed power to the drivers. He braked the ship crazily to avoid the lashing secondary beams that reached hungrily for him. Once ... twice—and yet a third time the Kellander beams found the cruiser and slashed through her half-formed shield, dealing terrific blows to the plummeting ship.

Then the massive beralloy doors of the landing stage were expanding hugely in his screen and he braked with all the power he could shunt into the straining drivers. Somehow his clutching fingers found the Kellander firing studs and he lashed out repeatedly against the outer lock. It whitened, ran into slag, crusted, and flared again and again as the ravening bolts struck it. Desperately Glayne fought to prevent blackness encroaching on the corners of his vision.

Suddenly a rending, thundering roar filled the Algol and she was crashing headlong through the weakened beralloy doors of the landing dock. But even above that deafening roar, Glayne could hear the scream of twisted and tortured metal. Then the big ship stopped moving and all was quiet except for the shriek of air escaping through the crevices around her mangled hull.

Groggily, Glayne shook his head in an effort to shake off the black-out which had engulfed his vision. In spite of his circulation exercises he couldn't see anything. Then a glimmering of the answer occurred to him and with wild surmise he experimentally flicked the firing stud of the ship's Kellanders.

Nothing happened.

Then Glayne understood. Every bit of the ship's power was cut off, including the lights and the battle screen. Obviously the Jewel power was cut off. Evidently the impact of the Algol's crash had jarred the delicate power drains so that Tjadlinn was once again without power. But he'd have to make sure.

Heartened, he rose and took a space suit from the locker, checking to see if its light torch was operating. As he turned away, a vague, ridiculous hope struck him. He took a second suit from the locker.

Twisted and buckled beralloy plates had sheered long, jagged gashes in the equally tough armor of the cruiser, Glayne saw, as he clambered from the emergency lock. A little air still sighed through the huge rent which the cruiser had smashed in the skin of the discoid. The gigantic landing dock was dwarfed by the three hundred meter bulk of the cruiser. Small Delban craft had been flung violently on either side and now littered the walls with their battered bodies. One or two of the Delban technicians had been caught by the crash and were either smeared thinly along the blastway or turned inside out as their bodies exploded from lack of air pressure.

Hurriedly Glayne flashed his torch about, trying to find the mono-car which his party had used to get to Selzi-Narfid's quarters. The car itself was gone but he found the gleaming mono-rail and followed it at a rapid trot. Fortunately the passage was well-equipped with automatic air-locks, one of which had whipped in place when the air pressure dropped suddenly. When he came to the first of these, he found that the dilator was without power. He fumed at the wasted time as he burned around the lock with his torch and triggered the mechanism with his finger.

After he closed it behind him, Glayne picked up his jogging pace down the mono-rail passage. He felt a kind of grim, ruthless hatred when he thought of Bro-Doral. He hoped wistfully that he would find the sneering sadist before Garstow's energy beams ripped the discoid to pieces.

He wondered what had happened to Niala Chodred. During the battle he had consciously held his thoughts away from her and the dull ache of her memory. A chill loathing spread through him as he thought of the Vibra-Death. He knew of the agonies of that nerve torture; it produced not one slow death but thousands. More passionately than ever he longed to find the Bro.

Suddenly Glayne felt the floor of the discoid tremble under his feet. At first he ignored it, but it grew persistently stronger and he realized that the fleet was again hurling its energy beams at the discoid—but this time they were penetrating because there was no shield to stop them. He quickened his pace, rounded a long curve, and found that he had reached his goal.

He vaulted the high curbing and pounded down the tapestried corridor to the wide entrance stage. The dilator stud refused to operate, so Glayne burned into the lock to operate the stud. He discovered that the port itself was locked and a sudden unreasoning hope blazed up in him. With rapid movements he burned the lock out altogether and threw his weight against the door. With a wheeze it dilated and he staggered into the luxurious apartment, stumbling from the force of his own momentum.

He was scrambling to his feet when something hit him. It was soft with rounded contours which he perceived even through the unsympathetic thickness of his spacesuit. And it had red hair and green eyes.

It was Niala.

"Glayne ... oh, Glayne," she murmured, clinging tightly to him.

"But ... but you're not hurt," he stammered, his mind striving to adjust to the realization of a hope which it had long rejected.

"I thought they had killed you," she sobbed happily. "But you got away."

"Yes, he did," remarked a third voice, familiar and hated. "It was unfortunate."

Glayne whirled. Gort Bro-Doral stood inside the entrance stage, a black Cardy gun in his hand.

"Without you in the audience, Captain, I didn't see much point in amusing myself with the girl. But now that you have returned, Glayne—"

The big Guardian crouched to spring at the Delban, gathering his legs under him.

"I shouldn't do that, Captain," Bro-Doral observed sharply, waving the Cardy menacingly. "Life is too sweet to throw it away so rashly, isn't it? Besides, such refined methods require time and I fear your leader, Admiral Garstow, doesn't propose to give us that commodity."

It was true, Glayne realized. The energy beams of the assaulting fleets were smashing tremendous blows at the discoid so that it shuddered violently. The shocks increased in strength even as he turned his attention to them. Somewhere deep in Tjadlinn air was escaping with a screaming whistle where the skin was ruptured.

"You seem to have no idea how hideous Death is, Glayne," said the Delban, approaching them slowly. "Out here on the periphery of the galaxy we like to make some sort of a ceremony of his coming—you see, he is always hovering around us." The Delban produced his explosive, nasal snicker. "Death is a fascinating subject; I have often wondered why you people in the Main Galaxy ignore him. Ever present, you know. And always waiting for you to step into his dark embrace."

Glayne watched Bro-Doral narrowly. He was but a couple of meters away. As the blows of the Kellander beams smashing into the discoid increased, he became more preoccupied with his subject and his grip on the Cardy grew lax. Glayne's hand tightened imperceptibly on the spare spacesuit.

"—out here on the Edge," Bro-Doral was saying, "Life is considered only a prelude to Death. Personally—"

Glayne lunged, flinging the extra spacesuit to one side. Bro-Doral alerted instantaneously, but his Cardy wavered for a fraction of an instant toward the empty space suit. Before he could recover his mistake Glayne's flying body had struck him. The two went down together in a thrashing tangle. Glayne's movements were hampered by the bulky spacesuit and he felt his desperate grip on the Delban slipping. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Bro-Doral extending his long fingers for the Cardy which he had dropped. Frantically he sought to restrain the Delban's long arm, missed, and saw the Delban slither from his grasp and reach for the gun.

Glayne scrambled to his feet just in time to see Niala snatch up the weapon a split second ahead of Bro-Doral. For a brief instant the Ruler of Ten Thousand Suns stared into the muzzle of Death. Then it wrapped him in its dark embrace forever as Niala fired.

Glayne retrieved the spacesuit and hurriedly helped her don it. The screaming whistle of escaping air formed a mad symphony with the rumbling crashes of corridors and whole levels caving in upon themselves. They raced from the apartment, through the tapestried corridor to the mono-rail which twisted like a live thing under the impact of the blasting energy beams. Jolt after jolt shook the discoid as torpedoes and mines exploded with devastating energy concussions deep within its entrails.

It was uphill all the way as the tremendous mass of the Tane Jewel dragged at their flagging steps. Niala fell a half a dozen times from the smashing shocks that shook the discoid. Glayne helped her to her feet, only to be thrown down himself the next instant by the concussion of an energy torpedo. Huge seams opened in the tough beralloy sides of the mono-rail passage as the mammoth support beams fractured.

Panting, they finally reached the point where the air-lock had fallen in place automatically. Glayne pushed at the port, expecting it to dilate. It didn't move a fraction of a centimeter. A rapid examination showed that it was sprung. Feverishly he felt for his torch to cut it down.

But it was gone!

He suddenly felt sick, realizing that he had lost it in the struggle with Bro-Doral. Now he would never be able to find it again. They were trapped. Waves of defeat swept over him as he crouched in the darkness.

Suddenly he heard a new sound in the mad cacaphony of destruction that raged about them. It was the tortured scream of rending, snapping beralloy. And along with it came the sensation of increased weight.

The Tane Jewel!

The huge beams which had anchored it in place had evidently collapsed under the impact of the assault and now the Jewel was falling freely through space, crashing through everything that stood in its path. And it was falling toward them!

Glayne's weight grew unbearable as it approached. Vaguely he could make out its steady gold brilliance behind him in the passage. Grimly he clung to a projection in the wall with one arm and hung onto Niala with the other.

Then the miraculous happened.

The air-lock door which had been sprung now dilated under its own tremendous weight and the air pressure which remained in the passage flung Glayne and Niala through the lock.

Summoning the last reserves of his diminishing strength, Glayne put his arm around her body and half-supported her, half-dragged her up the few remaining steps of the mono-rail passage to the landing dock. Forty meters separated him from the emergency lock of the Algol. Thirty meters. His straining muscles groaned in anguish. Twenty meters. Niala was unconscious and her slight form was an unbearable weight to him as he dragged her with painfully slow steps. Ten.... Five ... he reached the lock.

The battle raged on across the stars!

He heaved her bodily into the lock and clambered in himself. Then through the inner door. Across to the elevator. His muscles were a symphony of agony. Slowly, slowly the elevator climbed. The discoid was splitting and breaking up around the Algol—or was it wedging the cruiser more firmly than ever in the vise grip of the beralloy outer portals? The elevator door quivered for a moment, then dilated in a series of little shudders. Ever so slowly Glayne crawled across the bridge deck, dragging the girl. A shock seat ... a surette of verchromynal into the blue vein inside her elbow.

The crescendo of destruction reached new heights. The Tane Jewel was following him, splashing its insidious yellow radiance through the glassene window of the navigation bridge. It dogged his footsteps ... closer ... closer. The pilot's seat. The surette. Blackness encroached upon his vision. Dimly he was aware of his arm; it moved instinctively ... slowly ... slowly. The regular driver atomics began to shriek. His arm made another movement, flicking jet studs. Power suddenly sang in the forward jet chambers and ejected itself in a great, mushrooming flame. The Algol lurched backwards ... another lurch ... straining ... a third. And the Algol was suddenly free.

The yawning pit of blackness closed its gaping maw on Glayne and he slid down, down, down....

It occurred to Glayne, when he woke up, that his quarters in the Algol had a changed appearance. He climbed from his acceleration hammock and bounded to the shower.

"Terran Standard!" he snorted to himself. "What the hell is Harbin doing puttering along like that?"

As he dried himself from the tingling shower he tried to put his finger on the change that had come over his quarters. For one thing, he couldn't find what he wanted. But an even worse defect was the absence of his dust.

Flag officers in the Stellar Guardians were generally conceded some slight idiosyncrasy through which they could assert their individuality in a service where individuality was otherwise rigorously suppressed. Glayne's own idiosyncrasy was dust. After five long years as a Dorleb training-cadet without a speck of dust to his name, Glayne felt he had earned his right to wallow in a bit of dust. But now it was all gone. His quarters were spotless.

He had finished dressing when a cautious knock sounded on his entrance portal; then it dilated before he could answer. Harbin's face appeared in the opening.

"Oh! I'm sorry, sir. Didn't think you were awake yet," Harbin said apologetically.

"Forget it," grunted Glayne. "Come in."

Harbin entered the room and fidgeted nervously for a moment. "Sir!" he finally burst out, "I ... we're sorry about that unpleasantness. I want to apologize on behalf of—"

Glayne snorted and cut him off with a wave of his arm. "What I want to know," he said with deceptive calmness, "is, where the hell is my dust?"

Harbin grinned. "Lieutenant Chodred. I advised her against it—told her it was one of your peculiarities. But she wouldn't listen."

"What 'she' is this?" inquired a new voice, pleasantly husky.

Glayne turned and saw Niala leaning in the entrance stage. "You know damned well whom we are talking about," he said ominously. "Why did you take away my dust?"

"Oh, is that all?" she laughed. It was a deliciously cool and tinkling laugh. Harbin foresaw an imminent explosion. Being a discreet warrior who longs to fight another day, he fled from the room.

But it never quite jelled. Glayne extended his arms to the laughing, green-eyed Niala. But she stood her ground.

"No," she teased. "Not when you have a beard like that."

Glayne swore and reached for his depilatory. He was going to set a new galactic speed record for shaving.