Alfred Coppel

“ Dropping their weapons, they fled out into the desert—away from the accursed place that the Goddess had chosen to enchant! And, in their flight, they carried the mounted nobles of the Maldia, cursing, shouting, trying to regroup their shattered cohorts.
Telis stood in the downpour, his body tingling to the touch of the precious water. He was thinking not that this trick of Tellurian technics had saved his life; rather he was thinking of Laurr and what this could mean to the planet. The deserts could be conquered, the world could be redeemed! ”

“ Telis measured him carefully and swung. With all the power and co-ordination of a soldier's superbly conditioned body behind it, Telis' fist caught the Priest on the point of his jaw and knocked him sprawling to the thick carpet. Quickly dropping to his knees, Telis relieved the fallen man of his two swords and stun-gun. He strapped them to his own harness and looked about for a means of reviving the Priest. Taking the wine bottle from the table, he splashed some of the dark fluid into Gorla's face. For a moment, Telis had the feeling that it had all been too easy. ”

“ Telis sought his sith wearily and mounted. He turned back toward the camp without another look at Brand. All the fury and excitement of battle was washed out of him, and he felt very tired.
The gentle movement of the sith's gait helped to steady him. He rode slowly along, looking out over the wastes of the Great Red Desert, envisioning the land as it would be one day ... green and fertile, alive under a sky no longer starkly clear, but laced with clouds that would bring soft rains and stirring life from the land. ”

“ It struck in the sand near Leslie Karr's prostrate body. Telis threw himself on the girl, protecting her body with his own. With pain lancing through him from the blade that still impaled him, he freed one of his swords and his stun-gun, throwing them to Gorla. Their personal quarrel was forgotten in the heat of the attack.
Blood was flowing out of him. Gritting his teeth to keep from crying out, Telis twisted the imbedded sword free. With a sobbing moan he dropped it to the sand. He fought back the blackness that threatened to engulf him. Gorla must not fight alone! ”

“ Brand's heavy face darkened. For answer he raised his hands to the buglers.
"Attack!"
The force swept forward like a great tawny wave, shrieking and cursing. Telis stared aghast. An attack he had been expecting, and even the possibility of the Maldia finally taking the camp had occurred to him. But that fifty five hundred roaring madmen would attack one man was more than he had prepared himself for.
Death seemed a certainty, and a fleeting image of Leslie swept across his mind. He lifted his futile swords and murmured a prayer to the Goddess.... ”

“ Gorla broke the silence, "can you tell me where we are?"
Telis shook his head.
"Why are we climbing?" Leslie asked. She looked afraid. "Please—I—I asked you to—"
Telis cut her off almost sharply. "I know what you asked me. But we must get high enough to have a look around us. To be lost out here would mean the end for all of us; an unpleasant end, too. It will only be for a short time."
Leslie dropped into an uneasy silence. Higher and higher the air-sled climbed until at last Telis levelled the aircraft off and began a systematic search of the horizon to the east. ”

“ Then it was that a stray beam of light from the closely guarded gate caught a jewelled glyph on the harness of one of the assassins and Telis' heart froze. The insigne was the Sword and Atom—the ensign of the Secular Guard of the Holy Temple!
The disclosure was like a blow. It was Gorla rather than Brand, who was trying to kill him! The bitter understanding seemed to sap his strength. When he felt the stun-gun's tingling impact, it was almost a relief. Blackness came ... darker than the primeval night, and he felt himself falling.... ”

“ Here Telis' eyes sought the girl, but her expression told him nothing. He looked back at the High Superior.
"... that you profess to hate so are now Laurr's only chance for survival."
"Words," Telis said coldly.
The old man nodded slowly. "But true words. Words that can bring life instead of death. Better words than you will ever hear in that barbaric Maldia!" His old eyes seemed to bore through Telis now, stripping him bare of intellectual barriers and misunderstanding. "We could," the priest mused, "turn you over to our psychologists and let them drive the devils out of your mind...." ”

“ Telis was a soldier and, like all soldiers everywhere, he ate first, rested next, and was content to await developments in all the comfort that his surroundings could afford him.
For a prisoner, he thought with a wry smile, I am certainly being treated royally. By the Goddess! How would I be treated if I were a friend?
At last the strain of the night's events took its toll on him, and the young Lord of Lars slept as the Temple City of Dorliss awoke to its many and varied tasks.... ”

“ You will remain here in Dorliss until we are able to evolve some scheme for the protection of our friends. In time even you will see that we act for the best good of Laurr.
"These other-worldlings have narrowly averted on their own world the catastrophe of atomic war that wrecked ours. Hence, they are no longer a warrior race. They have devoted themselves to science in ways that we never knew even in the golden haads. Their technics can be our salvation, if we are only intelligent enough to accept their offered hand of friendship!"
Telis was listening with only half an ear now. ”

“ The man wanted full authority, not command of troops in the field as Telis had had. Brand was far too concerned with his own safety for that; he wanted command of the striking force of assassins that would murder the handful of invaders out in the desert. The victory over a few scientists from another world would give Brand the renown he craved and at negligible risk, for all his dark talk about mystery weapons and his pleas for caution.
The only need for caution that Telis could see was the possible intervention of the Temple or the Laurr. And the Temple knew nothing. ”

“ But into this peculiar age-old arrangement the Tellurian spaceship had fallen like a disrupting bolt from the sky. And men—men like the men of Laurr—had emerged from the vessel ... seeming to prove the Temple's much-doubted hypothesis that both Laurr and the planet the aliens called Terra had been colonized by a great race of interstellar travelers. How much more could be proved or done with the Tellurians' aid remained to be seen. The Temple was already calling them the Redeemers of Laurr, and through its good offices a safe-conduct had been granted by the Laurr of Laurr himself. ”

“ The Temple elders are wise men and you will do well to listen and learn when they speak with you...."
Telis made an angry retort that the wind snatched from his lips and whirled away into the night.
"I know you are angry with me, Telis," the young Priest continued, "but you have made all this necessary. Remember, it is for Laurr!" He laid an arm across the prisoner's shoulders that Telis could not find the heart even in his anger to shrug off. "And," the Priest was smiling now, "you shall see Dorliss, Telis. Few laymen ever do...." ”

“ A thousand other things there were that filled the young warrior with awe ... for mere beauty per se had long ago passed the surface of Laurr, and only here in the inmost sanctum of the Temple could such things survive and be cherished.
Another thing Telis noticed also. Though guards abounded outside the city, he had seen but a handful within the walls. He remembered something Gorla had told him long ago: that science could not really thrive against a militaristic background, and that was why so much of the ancient lore was lost when the planet became nothing more than a battleground. ”

“ And it is the duty of the Temple to see that Laurr does not suffer for your foolishness. The Maldia is a fearful thing, Telis, a creation of senseless hate. Why do you hate the Tellurians? You have never even seen one. They are but men like ourselves, and they bring gifts of great promise to Laurr. It is not fit that such as you should be joined with a renegade like Prince Brand ... ”

“ A plan of escape.
"... remember that the races of both Terra and Laurr are sprung from the loins of a single great transgalactic people," the High Superior was saying, "and together they might one day rule the Solar System. Think of it, Telis of Lars! Even the knowledge of interplanetary travel will be ours if we join in brotherhood with Terra! All the might of our Temple science could not achieve that in the short haads left to us ... but the Tellurians offer it now! And the only payment they ask is some of the deadly iron that eats away our atmosphere and drains us of our precious water! ”

“ Moreover, such a move would destroy the camp and all its machinery, negating the entire purpose of the expedition.
It was then that Telis stepped forward with his plan. The Tellurians seemed doubtful that it would work, but Leslie who had been among the Laurrians more than the rest of them, convinced them that they could lose nothing by trying.
"Telis is of Laurr," she said to them, "and he knows the ways and beliefs of his people. I, for one, think that his plan is our only hope. Outnumbered as we are, and by savage fighting men and women, our only chance is fear. ”

“ Telis hurried with Leslie to the watchtower and his horrified eyes looked out over the surrounding desert. Fully five thousand Guski men and women surrounded them, led by at least five hundred well-armed and sith-mounted warriors. Telis recognized many of them as his former comrades of the Maldia. And Prince Brand was there. Telis felt a hot wave of hate for the man. ”

“ There was a tense lull during which the Guski butchered their dead, and Gorla tried fruitlessly to start the dead motor of the sled. Then the Guski began to close in, and Gorla and Telis both were forced to leave the sled and advance to meet them. Leslie stayed near the aircraft, digging frantically at the jammed jet.
To Telis, his sword seemed suddenly very, very heavy. He touched Gorla on the shoulder. "At least ... we'll die ... friends ... together," he muttered. ”

“ Gorla understood ... and he gave his life so that we could make you see! Can't you see what I am trying to tell you? Can't you see that if you help us we can bring life back to Laurr? And that if you won't it might mean ages of senseless warfare? Telis ... try...."
Telis of Lars stared. It all came flooding back to him. All the tiny, irrelevant pieces of the puzzle. The mask back in Dorliss! A respirator! Her need for oxygen ... the anoxia that struck her down in the air-sled ... the rich air of this room! Her weight ... the greater density of a heavy gravity planet's evolution! Alien, alien! ”

“ Guided by Leslie and a group of Tellurian scientists, he beheld machines such as had not existed on the surface of Laurr for ten thousand haads. Here, among the squat, pressurized domes of the camp were the end-products of all the theories the Temple had salvaged from the lost books of the ancients.
Power was drawn from the destruction of infinitesimal particles of matter by a mysterious process the scientist referred to as "fission," and Telis found to his surprise that Leslie was not a noblewoman as he had supposed, but something called a "metallurgist." ”

“ Before the others who had dropped from the sled could close in on him, Telis whirled and ran along the base of the wall. If he could reach the gate of the household wing he would be safe, for no assassins would dare follow him into the inner sanctum of the Laurr himself. ”