Front matter (continued 2)

Only then, while he watched, another sphere swept across the shining panel, followed by yet another and another.

Cartel ships.

There could be no escape from them. Not when they rallied in such numbers.

Even in that moment, the Independent ship was slowly swinging.

A numb sickness came to Boone. He'd counted on days alone here ... days to lay waste the Helgae city till at last he found Eileen.

Now that margin was reduced to cycles. For once Krobis found that he—Boone—and three carriers were missing from the sphere-ship just after it left Hyperion's orbit, it would be mere hours before Cartel ships were landing.

After that, there'd be Venus Barracks, as well as the emptiness of failure.

If he could only find Eileen before it happened....

He flicked off the visiscreen's main switch.

Like the hideous magnification of an echo, a scream rang through the carrier.

Boone whirled.

As he did so, the blond giant's head appeared, framed in the power-converter hatchway. His eyes were white-rimmed, staring, his left arm limp and bloody.

"Monsters!" he shrieked. "Monsters—!"

Those were the last words that he ever spoke. For as he shouted, six great clawed hands stretched through the hatch behind him and convulsed around his body.

The two top ones tore his head off....

CHAPTER VI

Boone died a thousand times in that one moment. Then, shouting a warning to the four remaining crewmen, he caught up an axe from the rack of emergency equipment and crept towards converter-room and monster.

The thing had withdrawn now, dragging the dead man's body with it—for what awful purpose Boone could not even guess.

Yet the question that lay implicit in the thought made him pause just short of the door for the fraction of a second. It turned out to be a pause that saved his life.

For in that same instant a claw-hand snaked back through the hatchway. Filth-encrusted nails scraped along his arm, endeavoring to seize him.

Boone jerked back with a hoarse, involuntary oath. Wildly, he swung the axe.

The keen blade bit into the monster's extended arm. A muddy sludge of blood gushed forth. The claw-hand jerked back.

Yet the thing made no sound—not a single groan or snarl or murmur.

Boone hesitated, even more wary than before. He kicked a fallen spanner towards the doorway.

Like lightning, the monster lunged from its hideout—and now Boone saw why it had made no outcry.

The thing had no head! It consisted of arms only—six hairy, humanoid arms radiating out from a central core that looked like an enormous mushroom button.

Careening, the creature changed course. The arms clawed out to clutch Boone.

Leaping wide, he slashed with the axe—a savage blow with all his strength behind it, straight for the central core, the button.

There was a sound like a watermelon bursting. The button broke and flew apart, not so much sliced as shattered. A sickening stench erupted through the cabin. The arms sagged, limp save for spasmodic twitchings.

Half-sick with the sight, the smell, Boone stumbled back.

But before he could even drop the axe, a new cry came.

It rose behind him, this time—from the cabin's other end, the hatchway to the landing ladder.

Boone spun, ran towards the ladder.

From the bottom of the narrow shaft, a white-faced crewman beckoned in a frenzy. "Out—! Get out!" He vanished through the exit port.

Boone dropped the axe and, sliding, plummeted down the ladder. In seconds he, too, was stumbling through the port.

The crewman who'd shouted crouched on the ground in the shadow of the ramping fins beside one of his fellows, the man who'd lain unconscious since they landed. "Look!" His whole arm shook as he pointed.

Boone veered, then froze.

If what had gone before were nightmare, surely this was utter madness! For from beyond the circling hills, a hand was stretching towards them—a hand vast beyond all human concept! Like living columns carved in flesh, the fingers reached out, nails glittering in the filtered sunlight of the ice-shell.

With a mighty effort, Boone forced himself to motion. Lunging back through the port, he tore a long-range blaster from its wall-clip, then leaped to the ground once more and raced away, off to one side where there was space clear of the ship for him to use the weapon.

His action seemed to break the paralysis of the crouching crewman. Jumping up, the fellow disappeared for a moment into the carrier, then rushed out again with a second blaster and darted after Boone.

The giant hand's shadow fell upon the ship. The circling fingers closed about it.

Boone stumbled to a halt. Twisting, he swung round the blaster ... triggered a bolt at the clutching hand.

For the barest instant the hand stopped short. Then, in one savage, spasmodic motion, the great fingers clamped down on the carrier, clenching.

There was a clash and crash of rending metal; a roar of compressor tanks exploding. Flame spurted out between the crushing fingers.

Wrist-muscles bulging, the hand whipped high into the air, then down again with earth-shaking force. The fingers opened ... spilled out the crumpled mass of wreckage that had been the ship.

... Wreckage, and the pitiful, broken bodies of the two crewmen who had been trapped inside.

A hoarse cry burst from the throat of their comrade, the man who'd followed Boone. Whipping up his blaster, he blazed bolt after bolt into the hand.

As a human might slap at a mosquito, the hand smashed down and crushed him, then started towards Boone.

Shock-rocked, quaking, he dived into the closest flower-clump's cover ... rolled and writhed through the foliage, flat against the earth.

Overhead the hand paused, searching.

Then, bare yards from him, suddenly, it fell.

But not in a blow. No. This was different. For it fell limp and sagging, as if the muscles all at once had lost their power.

Boone lay like a statue—frozen, waiting.

Nothing happened.

The tension in him grew moment by moment, till he could hold it down no longer. He surged to his feet, blaster at the ready.

But the hand did not move. Before his eyes, as he stood there, it was ... melting ... oozing away into the ground in stinking rivulets of slime.

Numbly, Boone moved along it; and now, incredibly, he could see its termination, just below the rim of the nearest hills.

For it was an arm without a body—an arm that trailed off into nothing, like a figure cast in wax.

Yet there too lay the carrier, crushed and crumpled ... the broken bodies of the men.

This limp, dead arm had done that....

It was more than human mind could take. Boone slumped to the ground and cowered there, shaking.

Nor would the seizure pass. It was as if he suddenly were chilling. Cold crept through his veins in icy tendrils to the very marrow of his bones.

Harder and harder he shook. Yet still no surcease came. His whole body was aching now and it dawned upon him, dimly, that no shock alone could leave him thus yet still alive.

Then, at long last, the chills and cold departed, driven out by a quick, fierce heat. His mouth grew dry. His tongue took on new thickness. Flowers, hills, wreckage—all seemed distorted. He burned as with a flaming fever....

Fever—?

He knew, then.

Titan fever!

What else could it be, here on Hyperion, but that strange pyrexia that mutated Man's gametes?

So there was no hope for him, no answer....

He never knew for sure what happened after that—how much was reality, how much fever-madness.

For delirium came, and in that state he wandered. The hills rolled down in lowering barriers of menace, and flowers talked to him, and he walked beside strange streams.

And then, sometimes, it seemed that Eileen stood beside him ... that he could hear her rippling laughter echo, and taste her lips, and smell the fragrance of her hair.

But Eileen was still a prisoner of the Helgae, sealed in a sphere somewhere within their weird, domed cities.

That meant he had to find her.

So he wandered on, babbling of mekronal and chandak ... precious chandak, the only remedy that could save him from his fate.

And Krobis was there, too, and Terral—all the others. Sometimes they mocked; sometimes they helped him.

Not that it mattered. For now, all at once, he could get away from his own body, floating cloud-like in space beneath three great green suns.

The monsters came, then.

The first was in the image of the Helgae—lumpish, mottled, but with a yawning orifice that he knew somehow was meant to be a mouth. Twice it tried to swallow him as he floated, then faded away again when he rolled away beyond its reach.

The second took the appearance of his own father. Its face pressed close, all clipped mustache and burning eyes and shiny skin.

He shrank before it.

But the face kept following him, pressing closer, and the feeling grew within him that if the tight grey lips should ever open, he would surely die.

So he surged away in utter terror ... fled through the green-tinged sky-sea around him.

But his muscles were all at once like water, his movements as inadequate and slow as only the responses in a dream can be.

Desperately, he tried to move faster ... faster....

The face rushed in. He screamed aloud.

Then he was falling. Head over heels, he pitched down into depths at once black as night and shining white and shimmering with weird iridescence.

The third monster rose out of the mists beneath him.

It was a thing of horror beyond the telling, with a body Boone sensed more than he saw.

But from that body rose a long and sinuously slender eyestalk, surmounted with a huge human eye.

It was the eye that held Boone; for as he stared into it in mute, numb fascination, he knew that it would draw him ever closer till at last the slime-mass that was the body could swirl out and suck him in.

A black wave of despair engulfed him. Of a sudden his palms, his whole body, were drenched with sweat. The feeling that he was falling faded. Vaguely, he became aware of roughnesses beneath him. A breeze washed over him and he chilled.

Slowly, painfully, he opened his eyes ... stared up into the murk of night.

But it was a night that was already dying. Far off to one side, a dim glow marked the coming of the day.

Cords of tension fell away. Once again, at last, he lived in a world of reality, not nightmare.

He hugged it to him; drew in the chill security of it with gusty, lung-expanding breaths.

The grey glow in the distance spread. Weakly, he sat up to look about him—and stared instead into the pale malevolence of a great, baleful, swaying eye!

He froze, not daring to move or speak.

For the thing before him was the monster of his fever-madness—the eyestalked horror from the dream.

Yet he knew—he knew!—that he had left delirium's valley. This was reality! Without question, the fever had waned and gone.

Then what—?

He had no answer. Not here; not now. He could only wait, and hope, and perhaps pray.

But while he watched, not daring to so much as flick an eye or move a muscle, the thing before him began to eddy slowly closer.

New sweat rilled down Boone's spine. A knot of tension drew tight within his belly.

Sinuously, the monster's eyestalk swayed. The huge orb atop stared at Boone unblinking.

Stiff-fingered, too fear-straught to even look away, he slid his hands out in arcs along the ground.

But they touched no stick, no stone, no clod, no debris. He remained as he had been, a warrior sore beset, without a weapon.

And still the monster eddied closer....

He could not even break and run. Weak as he was, he dared not even trust his muscles.

Spasmodically, his nails scraped at the dirt.

The dirt—!

He dug his fingers deep into it ... sucked a ragged breath to ease his hammering heart.

Like a serpent poising to strike, the monster paused. The horror that was its body drew together.

With a wild shout, Boone hurled the dirt square into the glaring eye.

The eyestalk whipped back, quivering and pulsing. Then, in an instant, recovering, the creature spilled forward in a rush.

But already Boone was twisting, scrambling, clawing his way along the ground.

Then there was a rock beneath his hands, big as a man's head. In spite of his weakness he clutched it, swung it up.

The monster swept down upon him as he pivoted.

Boone hurled the rock.

It struck at the base of the weird thing's eyestalk. With a snapping sound, the orb's stem broke.

Twitching, writhing, the body halted. Then, as with the giant arm, the other monsters, the creature's whole structure began to shrivel and ooze away in slime.

Panting, shaking, Boone slumped back to the ground, his brain a cauldron bubbling with inchoate thoughts.

Like a mosaic, then, the pieces fell into place.

This whole void-area—and this area only—seemed to crawl with mad phantasms ... lunatic life-forms like none that Man had ever seen before. Out of nowhere, they materialized aboard the Cartel's sphere-ships. Here, on Hyperion; Titan, too.

Those were the facts. Now, suddenly, they took on form and pattern.

For in his delirium, Boone knew he'd had nightmares of this specific slime-drenched horror.

Awakening, his fever gone, he'd faced the hideous thing on reality's plane.

And the Helgae could play strange tricks with human minds....

The Helgae—they were the correlating factor!

The Cartel had come and raped their silent cities for the sake of mekronal and chandak.

So lacking the power of discourse, words to protest, they'd struck back in their own dark way.

Somehow, they'd reached into men's deep subconscious and dredged up monsters—the paranoid delusions of fevered brains.

Then, as the mediums of another day had claimed to give spirits ectoplasmic body, so now the Helgae materialized nightmares into life!

What armor could turn aside such a weapon?

Yet beyond it lay the threat of Titan fever. For that, too, could be a blow struck by the Helgae—the main attack, designed to cripple the mass-mind of the whole, far-flung human race!

Boone shuddered.

Yet strength rose in him, not despair. For with knowledge, the fears he'd felt of the unknown vanished. He looked about in the growing light with new, fresh eyes.

The landscape had changed from that which he last remembered. This ground lay in altogether different contours.

Frowning, he turned.

Now, with a shock, he found himself staring out on a familiar scene: the arcs and domes and bubbles of the self-same sprawling Helgae city where he and Eileen had lain entombed.

... Where Eileen still might lie.

It was a thought to make his belly churn, his heart pound, wrenching cruelly at every atom of his being. He sagged, gripped his head between his hands.

The sleeve of his shirt fell across his face, ripped wide. Incredulously, he discovered that everything he wore hung in rags and tatters. Even his shoes were slashed and mud-caked.

How far had he strayed in his fever-wanderings? How long had it been since delirium struck?

He ran his fingers over cheek and chin: a three days' growth of beard at least ... maybe more.

Not that it mattered. For he was alive; and out of horror, hypothesis had been born. If, truly, the materializing monsters and Titan fever were weapons of the beleaguered Helgae, then a truce must somehow be arranged, even if it meant complete human withdrawal from all satellites of Saturn.

That called for action by the Federation: action which the Cartel's chiefs would fight with tooth and nail.

Yet IC might well defeat itself by its own opposition. All apart from any Helgae menace, the Independents would rally instantly to whatever cause should threaten to disrupt the Cartel's mekronal production.

But that could wait; Eileen could not. Here, now, somehow, he had to save her.

Or was that hopeless?

Only time and fate could give the answers. Meanwhile, the least that he could do was try.

Unsteadily, Boone rose. He cursed the fever that had drained his strength.

It was then he heard the crashing blaster bolt beyond the ridge, off to his right, away from the Helgae city.

Again, his heart leaped. Blasters spoke for men, not Helgae—human help, here on Hyperion with him!

Lurching, stumbling, he dragged himself up the hill.

At last, the crest.

Below, the hull of a ramped Independent carrier, scarlet and silver, came into view.

Now strength surged through Boone. He broke into a staggering run, straight down the slope.

Only then, as he careened too fast past a brushy thicket, something thrust out between his flying feet. He spilled forward in a bruising, sliding fall.

A voice rasped, "Don't move! I've got you covered!"

Painfully, Boone twisted.

A man stood in the shadow of the thicket—a man with a blaster, a man who wore the blue-grey field outfit of an Interplanetary Cartels guard.

The other's lean face split in a mirthless grin as he stalked forward. "You're Boone, aren't you?" And then: "Krobis had you figured. He said you'd come in if you spotted an Independent ship."

"Krobis—?" Boone's lips went stiff. "You mean, he's here?"

"Of course he's here." The guard chuckled. "You told him about this Helgae city underneath the ice-shell yourself, didn't you? So he set up a base but pronto, with manpower enough to fight off monsters. He plans to start blasting the domes before next cycle, get a mekronal unit into production, and claim Hyperion for the next Cartel."

He broke off; gestured to Boone with the blaster. "Get up! We're going in. The way Krobis feels about you, catching you's good for Earth leave and a sergeant's rating."

Numbly, Boone heaved himself to his feet, stood swaying.

Was this to be the end of all his sufferings—back where he started, a prisoner en route to a cell in Venus Barracks? Was the Cartel to go on butchering the Helgae till opposing life-forms clashed in full-scale war?

Above all, was he never to know the truth as to Eileen's fate? Did this mark the end of his last dim chance to save her?

For all illusion had died in him. Whatever else might be, there was no mercy in Martin Krobis. Ego, vengeance, ambition—those were the man's three key dynamics. Nothing else mattered to him; not truth, nor justice, nor even the life of Eileen Rey. He'd laugh at theories ... gloat over his triumphs ... sacrifice the rest of the human race if need be for the sake of the Cartel and his own fame and power.

"Get moving," the guard clipped. "We're going in."

Wearily, Boone turned and stumbled down the slope through the brush towards the ramped carrier.

But for all despair, fatigue, a spark still burned within him.

Krobis must not win! He must not!

Ahead, the ground fell away more sharply; and there were trees and bushes, saplings.

With cold deliberation, Boone tripped—pitched forward—let himself fall headlong.

But as he fell, he caught the limb of a slender treelet.

It bent almost double.

Prone now, Boone clung to it.

The guard ran to him, blaster ready. "Get up, you!" Face a mask of wary menace, he stepped closer.

Too close.

Boone let go of the limb.

The treelet snapped back. Branches slashed into the guard's face.

Out of reserves he had not known existed, Boone drew strength to hurl himself into spasmodic action. He twisted, kicked for the guard's legs with all his might.

The man went down with a hoarse, choked shout.

Boone lurched down upon him. His elbow smashed at the other's temple.

The guard sagged, glaze-eyed and groggy.

Snatching up the blaster, Boone hit his adversary with the butt, a savage blow.

The guard went limp, unconscious.

Sick, sobbing for breath, Boone slumped beside him.

But only for a moment.

Then, rallying, he fumbled the rations from the other's belt-case, gulping down the concentrates in great, gagging, half-chewed bites.

His protesting stomach writhed. For long seconds he thought he was going to vomit.

But that, too, passed. The sugars, the ectoids, began to reach his bloodstream.

Strength came with them.

Tight-lipped, clutching the blaster, Boone began the long, weary climb back up the hill.

... Back, and beyond, to the strange, domed city of the Helgae ... and to Eileen Rey....

CHAPTER VII

He saw the light-shafts first—two glowing cones of color that speared down from a single halo-source high in this vastest of all the bubble-chambers. The beam on the left shone rich with hues of deepest purple. The other, the one on the right, shimmered golden as Earth's September sun.

Numb, wordless, Boone moved forward with unsteady steps.

Now he saw the cones' bases as well as source; and all at once his heart was pounding, pounding, till he thought that it must surely burst.

For each light played on a separate transparent sphere that floated, somehow invisibly suspended, at eye-level in the bubble-room.

A nude human body lay within each sphere.

Shaking, Boone made his way to the gold-bathed globe.

But the figure inside was that of a man, a stranger, with a calm, vaguely-familiar face.

Boone turned to the second sphere, that on which played the cone of purple light.

This time, he looked upon a woman.

Eileen!

He swayed, still not daring to allow himself to believe it.

How had he found her in this weird maze, this bubble-catacomb? How long had he wandered through dim-lit passageways and domed, echoing chambers? How many times had he despaired?

It was as if destiny had walked beside him, guiding.

Destiny, or ... other minds. Alien minds, perhaps greater than his.

But whatever the answer, he'd kept on, and he'd found her. That was what counted.

Now, while he watched, new radiance suffused the chamber. The light-cones dimmed; and as they faded, the spheres floated slowly, gently, to the floor.

Then, as on that other, dream-like day that seemed so long ago, there was a crash of silent thunder. The globes split, fell apart.

Boone dropped to one knee. With trembling fingers he touched Eileen's bare breast.

Her flesh was warm, her heartbeat steady. Like a child awakening, her lashes fluttered. Then, lids already lifting, she turned and looked up at him with calm, untroubled eyes.

A sob rose in Boone's throat. He pressed her to him.

She laughed, ever so softly; and tenderness was in it. Cool fingers smoothed his brow, his hair. "Fred, you sound so—worried...."

His words came in a jumble, then: "You—you're all right? There's—nothing's happened?"

"No, of course not." She sounded not even quite certain of his meaning. "I only went to sleep for a little while; that's all."

The last tension drained from Boone's taut body. Weak, tremulous, unsteady, he slumped beside her amid the segments of the shattered sphere. "There's been so much, so many things—" He groped for words.

Only then, before he could say more, a distant impact rocked the chamber.

The impact of a demolition charge exploding.

In spite of emotional drain, exhaustion, Boone went rigid. "Krobis—!"

"What—?" Eileen's blue eyes distended. "Fred, you mean he's here?"

"Yes, with plans for blasting apart this whole cursed Helgae city!" Boone stumbled erect. "Quick! We've got to go!"

The girl rose beside him, then looked down in sudden, swift abashment. A flush swept up her throat. Her face turned scarlet. "My clothes—! Where are they?"

A man's voice answered, "Here."

As one, Boone and Eileen spun around.

The stranger, he who had lain in the golden sphere, was getting up. Calmly, he strode to a low ledge on the far side of the bubble and picked up one of two bulky bundles; tossed it deftly to Eileen. "Everything is there."

Boone gripped his blaster. He moved a quick step forward. "You! Who are you?"

"They call me Lor."

"A name's no answer. Where'd you come from? How'd you get here?"

The other bent to pick up the second bundle, then straightened and, turning, stood full-face to Boone. "You ... do not know? You cannot guess?"

Boone studied him ... stared narrow-eyed at the calm, strangely-familiar face.

A youthful face, yet with eyes somehow old beyond all years.

A prickling ran up and down Boone's spine. "You—look—like me!"

"Of course." Lor smiled, turned to Eileen. "Surely you can tell?"

Her hand rose to her throat. Her face grew pale. "I—I don't know. You're like Fred ... or—or—my father—"

"Yes." The sphere-man nodded gravely. "Indeed, I am—can only be—like both of you."

The silence echoed, then.

But it was a silence too taut to last for long. It had to break.

"You—can only be—like us?" Boone forced out the words.

Again, the other nodded. "Yes." And then: "Because—I am your son!"

Somewhere too close, another demolition charge exploded. But for Boone, the room rocked more with the stranger's words than from the blast.

"No!" he choked. "No!" Beside him, Eileen had slumped dazed-faced to the floor.

The sphere-man sighed. "I know. They told me it would be hard for you to understand."

"They—?"

"The ones you call the Helgae." For the first time, emotion seemed to grip Lor. He stared down at the bulky bundle in his hands; then, opening it, spread out an array of Cartel crewman's clothes. "They are an old race, older than you can know; and wise. They wanted no war with anyone, but there was no way for them to speak to a life-form so unlike theirs. So, when your ships attacked their cities on the world called Titan, they drew monsters from your minds to slow your onslaughts, then sought some way to bridge the barrier between your different brains."

Boone caught his breath. "You mean—mutation—?"

"It was the only answer." The man who claimed him father bent to slide on shoes. "By casting their powers of mind in human bodies through the contagion you call Titan fever, the source of conflict between your separate species once and for all could be removed."

"Of course!" Of a sudden Boone was pacing. "Only then, our sphere-ship hit Hyperion, broke the ice-shell—"

"—And menaced another whole Helgae world." Lor shrugged into a jacket. "It made the danger too great for them to wait on normal human reproduction and maturing.

"But you two were on that sphere-ship—and you were male and female, man and woman."

"Then—that's why they trapped us!"

"Yes. While you lay in your sphere here, in the state you call unconscious, your seed was planted in the woman. When growth began, the egg itself was taken, processed. By science beyond your human dreams, they speeded the whole cycle of gestation, then brought me on to manhood in days instead of years. The mind-rays drained all knowledge from both of you, gave it to me, that I might be able properly to play my role."

Boone stopped short in his pacing. "Your role—?"

"You'd call it that." Now fully dressed, the other straightened. "I am a messenger, a human spokesman for the Helgae, with no other goal than to help our race live at peace."

"There'll be men who take convincing of that."

"You mean—men like the one named Martin Krobis?"

Boone stared. "Krobis—? You know about him?"

"Of course." His mutant son still smiled. "The mind-rays poured your every thought into me—even those too utterly alien for the Helgae themselves to understand. So, I know of Krobis: the things he's done; the way he thinks; the fact that he is here now, blasting at this very city—"

Like an exclamation point, new impact came. Thread-like cracks shot through the radiance of the bubble-chamber's inner surface. The floor shook till Boone could hardly stand.

Lor's face went grim. His voice rang with sudden tension: "Come, quickly! We dare not die in this mad destruction! We dare not!"

He pivoted as he spoke; moved swiftly towards the bubble's exit.

Gripping his blaster, Eileen trembling beside him, Boone followed.

Now they walked another world—a world of weird translucence, bubble-cells and tunnels, pitch-blackness and colors too brilliant for human eyes to bear.

Yet through it all, the man called Lor strode swiftly, surely. Not once did he hesitate or falter. It was as if the whole, vast, maze-like pattern were etched in acid on his brain.

Then, at long last, they were on a ramp and climbing in slow spirals, ever upward. Ahead, a pale light glowed ... the light of Hyperion's ice-shell-filtered outer day.

Lor led them out a low-roofed cave-mouth ... helped them up the slope of a brushy rise. Bitterly, he flung his arm out: "Look—the city!"

Boone looked, then shuddered; and suddenly Eileen was sobbing.

For they gazed on a holocaust, a ruin, strewn with the smouldering shards of a thousand shattered domes.

"So these are the ways of men!" Now there was wonder in Lor's voice; and sadness. "They have so much to learn!"

"Oh, Lor—!" Eileen choked on her tears.

The mutant turned to face her. "You need not cry, my mother. We—I—shall teach them better." Then, once more smiling: "Think of some living thing—a thing of beauty. Picture it sharp and clear within your mind."

She stared up at him—face puzzled, eyes still brimming. "I—I'll try...."

"Then close your eyes."

She did as he had ordered.

Lor stood unmoving, placid. Yet while Boone watched, mists seemed to rise and gather, swirling. Then, in their midst, a flower took form, a perfect blood-red rose.

The sphere-man reached out, plucked it. "Here, my mother."

Eileen's eyes went wide with awe and sheer delight. She gasped aloud and held the opening bud close, drinking in its fragrance.

Lor faced Boone. "You asked for proof to convince doubters. Would such serve?"

Boone ran his tongue along dry lips. "Do I even need to answer?"

"Then let us go. We must reach those who can stop the blasting of these Helgae cities."

"That means the top men of the Federation. No one else could act against the Cartel."

"So, we must have a carrier." Lor smiled thinly. "Even one of Krobis', perhaps...."

Boone's blood quickened. "Yes. It might be. His base camp's near."

"Then—why are we waiting?"

Wordless again, they left the rise; and now there was new, silent tension in them—tension born of looming dangers yet to come ... of the very world-shaking import of their task.

Yet other factors, even more, churned Boone to turmoil.

Could he believe the man called Lor—the incredible tale he'd told, the things he'd said?

Or, even assuming belief, could he yet trust the other? What proof did he have of the real effects of the mutation, or of the Helgae's motives? True, they'd not harmed either him or Eileen. But might not that be a mere trick to lull suspicion? Perhaps Lor himself did not even know the facts. It could be that he was only a pawn—a being created as part of some dark plan to bring the whole human race down in disaster.

As for Eileen—Boone frowned and pondered. She was changed, somehow, from the girl he'd known. It was as if her basic drive, her fierce ambition, all at once had vanished. Now she was woman. Woman only.

Questions, questions. Seething, they loomed ever-larger, till at last they were more than his aching brain could cope with. Of a sudden it came to him that sometime, somewhere, there must be an end to thinking, indecision.

For him, that moment had already come. From here on, if he were not to find himself forever immobilized by doubt, there could be no choice for him but action.

So, he would act.

They topped another rise as Boone reached his decision ... looked out across a flower-field into the valley where the familiar scarlet outlines of the ramped Independent carrier rose.

It would be only simple justice were they to steal that captured craft back from Krobis.

Boldly, Boone strode forward. It was as if, suddenly, all fear had left him.

Or perhaps he knew instinctively, somehow, that here audacity might win where stealth had failed.

The flower-field fell behind them. They moved down a brushy draw into the valley. On, to the outskirts of the base camp.

And still no guards rose up to halt them. A strange, deserted air hung about the place. There was no sign of life, no human movement.

On, through the camp grounds. Across to the carrier. Around the great ramping-fins to the yawning hatchway.

Still naught but silence. An echoing silence, too complete to believe.

Eileen pressed against Boone. "Fred, I'm afraid!"

Only it was too late for fears now; too late for panic. He climbed through the port, not even answering.

Lor crowded behind him. "Let me go, my father—"

"You'll follow." Boone clipped it. "You've got a job; me—I don't matter."

On, up the ladder; then through other hatches.

Still silence. Still no sign of crewmen.

At last, the control room. Boone's heart pounding, pounding.

He stepped through the entrance.

But this cell, too, lay empty.

Slick-palmed, taut nerves quaking, Boone waved on the others.

They came in. Their breathing rasped loud in the stillness. Boone tightened his grip on the blaster.

Lor moved to the rear, to the converter chamber. "Perhaps here—" He pushed open the hatch-door.

The silence broke, then.

A thousand ways it broke: in the Whish! of a club, and the thud of a heavy blow landing; the quick scrape of feet, the blurred whir of fast movement. A curse and a clanking, a raw ring of metal.

Lor went down as a rock falls, blood spurting from a head-wound.

Eileen screamed.

And then, there was Krobis: tight-lipped, sharp-featured Krobis of the too-short legs and too-slicked black hair.

Guards crowding past him, he stood in the converter-room hatchway, and never had Boone seen such malice on any human face.

"So, you traitor!" Now Krobis was laughing. "I swore that I'd get you, and by Rega, I have!"

Boone stood wordless, gripped by sick numbness.

"Chelan, take that blaster!"

A guard shuffled forward.

"No!" Boone grated. His finger went tight on the trigger. He backed to the wall-plates.

"So—?" Krobis leered at him. "Think of the girl, Boone—your precious Eileen! What chance would she have, if you let go a blast-bolt?"

Eileen—! Boone turned to stare at her.

She stood slumped, face covered. Her shoulders were shaking. Wearily, Boone let the guard take the blaster.

"Good!" Krobis stalked forward, still leering. "But not for you, Boone! This time you don't get off with just Venus Barracks!"

Boone raised his head slowly. "Not Venus Barracks—?"

"No, damn you!" Krobis' voice rang with elation. "I'm in command here—and this is an unchartered base! Under space law, that gives me full power to try and pass sentence." A pause, electric with tension. "I'm condemning you to death!"

It was the strangest of moments. For all at once Boone's heart was no longer pounding. The tension drained from him. It was as if he had known from the start what was coming. The words in themselves brought only relief, not more panic.

Krobis wouldn't even be censured. He stood too high in the Cartel for that. Federation officials could be counted on to go along, too, if for no other reason than the trouble at the Thelema base, the wrecking of the airlocks.

Now Krobis was turning. He spoke to a sergeant: "Get a squad ready. They die in five minutes."

"'They'—?" Boone went rigid. "What do you mean, 'they'? I'm the one who's condemned, not Eileen and Lor!"

"Is that so?" Krobis' sharp-featured face was like granite. "You were in this together."

Fury rocked Boone. "You're afraid, Krobis; that's the answer—afraid that this whole dirty business will backfire—"

"Is that quite all?" Krobis' eyes, his voice, had never been colder. "If so"—this to the guard—"sergeant, you may proceed with the execution!"

Sweat chilled Boone. "Wait...." In spite of himself, all at once he was pleading. "Kill us both, then—Eileen and me. But not Lor, there. He's a mutant—"

"A mutant—?"

"Yes. The Helgae, those structures we process—they're living, not dead. They sent him to tell us, to give us their knowledge—"

"Their knowledge? What knowledge?" Of a sudden Krobis' black eyes were gleaming and wary.

Boone sucked in a breath. "How much would the Cartel give to learn mekronal's structure—the true chemistry of it?"

"Mekronal—? This creature can make it? From basic elements found outside Saturn's system?"

"Yes."

"Then he must die!"

Boone rocked under the onslaught. He groped for words; found none.

The other kept on talking: "There are things you should know, Boone—and these guards here are men I can trust, so I'll tell you." Martin Krobis smiled thinly. "You always forget that I stand for the Cartel. We're reaching for power, those of us high in it. Mekronal is our weapon. So long as it's ours alone, that power keeps growing. Make it free to all comers, and IC's backbone is broken."

"You mean that you'd wipe out a whole culture to hold it? You'd bring war with the Helgae for the sake of the Cartel?"

"Are you stupid enough that you have to ask me?" Krobis' words dripped contempt. "We'd do even more, you fool—as witness our gambit with chandak?"

"Your gambit—?" Boone rocked again.

"So I term it." Now the other was chuckling. "Consider that report Terral showed you, for instance. I meant him to have it."

"Then—chandak—"

"—Is a fraud, pure and simple. It has no effect at all on mutation. For that matter"—once more, Krobis chuckled—"our tests show that the mutation itself brings new mental powers, not loss of old ones. But a contrary report could bring panic, help to break our opponents. So...." He shrugged.

It was a world out of nightmare, a moment to madden.

"Damn you, Krobis!" Boone choked. "Damn you!"

He flung himself forward, then, heedless of weakness, and the guards, and the weapons.

If only his hands could reach Krobis' throat, rend it—!

But a clubbed blaster hit him. He sprawled to the floor-plates. Krobis' laugh rang out above him, harsh and vindictive. Death's chill fingers touched him.

Only then, in the shadows where Lor lay, his eyes caught strange movement—a slithering, a rustling, a swirling of vapors.

Numbly, he wondered....

But guards seized his arms and dragged him up roughly. Martin Krobis spat, "Kill him!" and bloodied his cheekbone.

The guards jerked him backwards, stumbling and reeling.

As they did so, the movement surged out of the shadows—and now it was more than mere vapor.

A monster, it rose up—a weird, insectile monster! Great mandibles speared out, clacking and slashing.

A guard saw it, cried hoarsely and leaped back.

Too late. The thing was upon him. Claws ripped at his belly. A stinger-shaft pierced him.

Someone fired with a nerve-gun.

He died the monster's second victim.

Panic roared through the room, then. The guards trampled each other in their rush for the hatchway, Boone swayed off balance, deserted.

Only five in the room now: Lor, Eileen, Krobis, Boone—and the monster.

The thing swung towards Krobis.

But Krobis spun aside, not even attempting to flee; he snatched up the fallen guard's nerve-gun.

Then, pivoting, ignoring the monster, he aimed the gun straight at Lor's prone figure.

Eyes open now, the mutant jerked back—trapped, cornered.

Boone and Eileen lunged as one.

The girl was closest. Her hand hit the nerve-gun as Krobis pulled the trigger.

The charge burned out against the wall-plates off to one side of Lor.

Before Krobis could fire again, Boone was upon him. They went down together, rolling and wrestling and panting. Boone could feel his strength begin to go.

But now it was not for himself that he was fighting. The fate of two races hung on the outcome.

With a curse, he writhed suddenly upward, then threw himself back, smashing Krobis' head down to the floor.

The other's muscles went slack. Sobbing, Boone kicked clear.

Then something whipped past him—the monster, all claws slashing.

Its stinger speared through Martin Krobis' brain.

There was darkness after that, for Boone; a shadowy darkness that somehow was more of his mind than in the room. Dimly, he knew that the carrier all at once was hurtling upward; that the monster had vanished back into whatever realm from whence it came.

Not that it mattered at this moment. Who cared for monsters? The thing was Lor's creation, surely—a Helgae weapon he'd materialized to save them, just as for his mother's—Eileen's—pleasure he had made a rose.

Lor, their son, the mutant. Lor, first clear-eyed champion of a new and higher race.

How many battles would they fight together? What perils would they face before the war against the Cartel's greed was won?

And then, Eileen....

As if in answer to his thought, she came now; knelt beside him, cradling his weary head close to her breast.

"Eileen," he whispered, "Eileen, we have a mission...."

She answered softly, "My mission is with you, Fred, now and always."

He liked that thought, Fred Boone decided. It was one on which a man could rest at peace.