Gardner F. Fox

“ The blow knocked the harp from his hand. He scrambled after it, where it lay on the cobblestones. His fingers missed as he snatched at it and swept across the strings. At the harsh, discordant sound that rose into the air the sfarran officer who had been reaching for him fell awkwardly to the stones, sprawling lifelessly.
Other sfarri were falling too, as if the breath of life had been blown from them. They lay here and there beside the fountain, like dead men.
Kael stared dumbly, hearing the shouts of the people of Clonn Fell falling back from the lifeless sfarri. ”

“ From the distant island where they watched, Althaya and Black Randolph screamed their rage. But Grim only laughed and waved an arm. With the globe in his hands, he rode the chestnut over the motionless ground, while all around him the earth rocked and bubbled and thrust itself upward into terrible contortions.
"It's like a magic symbol," whispered Tlokine, staring at the ribboned globe.
"People would have called this a magic land, once," said Grim. "But it's sheer science that makes the Change—and sheer science that knows the key to counteract it." ”

“ The galley slipped through the heaving ocean, and the red oars flashed in the sun, and the salt spray stung, and only when an errant wind swept across the seas was there any rest for the men who slaved on the benches. Sometimes men died, and were flung overboard. Other men were unshackled and dragged screaming to the foredeck, where the cat-woman waited, pink tongue licking her lips, the whip curling like a live thing in her hands.
And of all the men who worked the oars in this endless ocean, it was the McCanahan who was chosen most often for her amusement. ”

“ The High Mor sighed. "In a tower, well guarded. No harm has come to her. No harm will come. I am no sadist to harm a woman. Not when what I seek is possessed by a man. Tell me, Terran. What is your price?"
"Peace! Friendship with Terra and the men of Terra. Let the Solar Combine send its traders to Senorech. Peace between the peoples of the stars."
The High Mor laughed. "I too, seek peace. A peace that will end with my dragon banner floating above the towers of New Washington, Terra. With your precious Solar Combine run by the sfarri. I offer you a place in that peace, Kael McCanahan. ”

“ They went by one tall, metallic needle-tower after another. The towers stood like rigid fingers against the horizon as they went on and on.
Grim brooded above the whipping mane of his chestnut, "If the thing that sends the change is a machine, then it would need the towers to broadcast its force. It's limited in range, itself. The towers give it a wide radius of effectiveness. Now the question is—what operates only in a limited range?"
He thought of radio waves, but the ionized heaviside would throw them around the planet. He shook his head, whispering, "Some sort of wave-radio or energy." ”

“ He was smart and he was crazy and his brother Commanders loved him. They said to each other, "If anybody can do it, Grim will. He'll find out what grabs the Caravans and the cruisers."
Well, now he knew. Tortured and strained, bent in a thousand positions in a matter of minutes, he was sobbing out the thought that he wished he hadn't. There wasn't anything you could do to a force that turned your ship into a fantastic nightmare and cut you in two with lancets of agony.
The planet loomed in the forward window. A faint light hazed its outlines, as though a private sun of its own shone beyond it. ”

“ His hand went out, toward the gleaming red side of the monstrous jewel.
Come to me, Kael McCanahan! Come to the peace and the forgetfulness you have earned. Take me in your arms. Drink kisses from my lips!
The McCanahan sobbed.
He shook in torture more vivid than the agony in his feet and muscles.
"Not Flaith!" he cried. "Not Flaith! You—woman of the jewel! Witchwoman of Lirflane! Not Flaith!"
He went to his knees, to anchor himself the better to the ground, against the siren call of the mighty Eye.
"No. Got to fight! Get free. Free...." ”

“ It was a metal spire ending in a globe of interlaced wires and metal ribbons.
"Looks like an energy broadcaster," he muttered. Then he turned toward the girl. "Where can I see this Kohonnes of yours? What's he like?"
"He is All. He guides his people and shows them the way to a better, easier life. But some of his people do not want to wait—they want to be as powerful as Kohonnes before they are ready. And Althaya—the Red One—she is worse than any of them. Even now she is in special favor with the All. She knows somehow before the breath-storms come. She can walk freely across Stormland. ”

“ Their women!"
"They have no women! No man of Senorech has ever seen a sfarran girl. Rumor says that they shelter them because of their loveliness. But if this a diorama of the sfarran planet, and there are no women, then—"
Kael grunted. "You and your crazy theories! Look, woman! See for yourself. There are women there. There must be women!"
But though they hunted along all that corridor, staring at the sfarran world and its divers shapes and colors, its desert storms and wind-tossed seas, its magnificent white cities that looked like milky jewels, they found no woman. ”

“ Laughter touched his lips; but the bitterness in it stung like acid.
How does one fight a god? How does one go about killing a thing that is made only of white, radiant energy? A thing that by a mere touch of the blazing brightness that comprises it, can blast him and all his kind to a black dust that shifts restlessly across a floor, flung by an errant breeze!
His fists were clenched until the knotted muscles of his forearms ached. "I can't do it," he told the machines. "I'm only a man. I can't fight against a god!" ”

“ A woman only gets as mad as that when a man turns her down because she isn't intriguing enough—not because he won't go spacebad with her."
Althaya laughed harshly. Her green eyes approved him. Her bare shoulders lifted casually.
Grim said, "But while we're on the subject, what is the force that makes the change?"
"Kohonnes does it. He is the god of all this world."
"Is he a man? A beast? What?"
She shook her red head. "Kohonnes is made of metal. He has a thousand eyes that glow. He—"
"A machine," mused Grim. "But what kind of a machine does what this one will? ”

“ Terran! Wake to life, Kael McCanahan!
He was dead. He had thrown himself into the fiery maw of the thing that was Noorlythin. Who called him now? Who spoke these lies?
You live, Terran. You served as the catalyst that enabled us to focus our powers against Noorlythin.
Even a high school student knew that a catalyst retained its own identity during the chemical change it brought about between two substances; even such substances as were the Doyen, gods of space.
Kael opened his eyes.
He lay on a floor in the wreckage of the guardroom in the palace of Akkalan. ”

“ Tell me the weapon that slays the sfarri!"
But the McCanahan only shook his head and his hair, long uncut, tumbled on his bleeding shoulders.
The days were endless on that ocean, and the oars swung and the sail creaked, flapping overhead, and the overseer tramped the runway with endless patience, his voice a sullen growl. The cat-woman came to look upon the McCanahan and her slim greenish fingers came forth to stroke his naked back where her lash had marred it. Always her throaty voice whispered to him, speaking of the delights that might be found in her cabin, if only he were not so stubborn. ”

“ Even human bodies vibrate at a certain impulse.
"I studied for years on that theory. Then when I found this planet, I fitted it out during my vacations. When I retired and brought the spaceshock cases here—I was ready to follow and prove those theories."
A deep, sullen roar grew into a thundering volcano of sound, beyond the Temple gateway. Grim cried, "Althaya and her people. They've come to learn your secret, Jones. Quick, man—some weapons! We can hold them off easily enough if—"
Jasper Jones smiled and shook his head. "Outside of the vibration machine, I have no weapon. ”

“ Kael shook his head.
We are the Doyen. An ancient race, a race of once-men who have lived out the span of our lives a million centuries. In that time, we changed. Our bodies evolved upward from their primal shape, striving always to progress to that last, final shape of all.
"Noorlythin? He is one of you?"
Once he was. But Noorlythin could never forget the adoration that was showered on us by the sfarri. He hungered to be worshipped as a god, as once he was, many eons ago. Noorlythin turned his back to us, the Doyen. He has gone back, resuming the primal shapes of the men whose race is young. ”

“ He grinned, "Maybe we can stop them at that, Jasper."
"Sound is no weapon. Oh, it's been used against frogs and the lower vertebrate forms, but—"
A shower of arrows made a clanking noise against the face of the machine. Grim could hear Althaya screaming, "It is only a man inside it. I heard his voice. He knew the golden-hair. Break the god, my people." Something thumped into the machine; shook it wildly.
Jasper Jones screamed. "They will smash the bulbs if they keep that up!"
Grim grabbed him, shook him. "Listen to me! I don't want to hurt your people ... but we have to stop them. ”

“ He used them all in the sea vaults below Akkalan. He used the club like a sword, driving it hard into a Senn's face. He hit backwards with it. He used an overhand, downward stroke, that drove the inches-long spikes that studded its knob, deep into a man's braincase.
It is no easy matter for ten men to cage one man. Not in dimly lighted pits, with that one man an explosive cyclone of fists and bashing club. Ten men keep getting in the way of each other. And Kael McCanahan was there to make each mistake a costly one. ”

“ She said, "You like Althaya?"
Grim chuckled, "Any man would like you, gorgeous. But why the buildup? You're too pretty to need a sop for your vanity."
She looked around her, came even closer so that Grim was assailed by her perfume and smooth white arms. She said, "There is a man living in my castle, a man called Black Randolph—ah, you know him?"
"He is a pirate. I've followed him for eight years and never caught up with him." ”