Otis Adelbert Kline and E. Hoffman Price

“ Stealth, and the moonless darkness of Venus, guarded every move.
Zinlo stood on the broad balcony that overhung the vast court, watched the torrogos and their personal staffs filing from the darkened ships.
“Vorn Vangal,” he said, abruptly breaking into the profound speculations of the old scientist, “why not give up the idea of using the Doravians? It was a mistake to invite Tandor here. Those machine men will be more of a liability than an asset. We distrust their master – how can we trust the men?” ”

“ Swifter than light – swift as thought itself – it bored into space, propelled by the telekinetic amplifiers which by resonance of harmonic will impulses developed the terrific velocity which made the trip from Venus to Luna merely a matter of visualizing the vessel hovering about the bleak, pock-marked face of Terra’s satellite.
Zinlo, standing in the control room, watched Lotar’s deft manipulating of the space globe as, having retarded their velocity, he was slowly circling above Copernicus, awaiting the order to descend. ”

“ The emperor’s handsome, youthful features were dark with wrath, and his eyes were steel blue and hard as the blade of the curved scarbo at his side as he regarded gray-haired Vorn Vangal, his personal counsellor. The old scientist, however, was unruffled by the Torrogo’s outburst. ”

“ Xunia had taken one her spare bodies and packed it in a chest; and then, returning to Doravia, she had walked into her storage room, left the body she had worn on Olba, and flashing through space, had sent her ego to animate the smuggled form. The lovely body and features were almost identical; but Zinlo’s closer scrutiny revealed several betraying differences. The eyes, for instance, where narrower by a shade, and trifle longer. ”

“ Preeminent among the monarchs of Venus, he took his greatest pride in those mighty vessels which testified to the genius of the Olban scientist who had perfected a method of tremendously amplifying and harnessing telekinesis, the mysterious mental force which, operating on a small scale, enables Earthly mediums to move tables, chairs and other ponderable objects without physical contact. Olba alone of the empires of Venus had aerial battleships; and with the navy Zinlo had organized, he had enforced peace on that tempestuous planet. ”

“ The hostility between Zinlo and the royal family of Doravia had begun when the Torrogo of Olba had flatly refused to marry the outwardly lovely Xunia, an imperial match which had been proposed by Tandor in a spirit of scientific inquiry. Xunia, despite her being a mechanical creation animated by a spirit that had slipped from body to body for ages, had all the physical attributes of a normal, Venusian woman, and her brother, Tandor, had long speculated as to the offspring of that imperial Doravian beauty and the young Emperor of Olba. ”

“ I didn’t really kill her – and her ego had to get out and reanimate one of the bodies she has stored in Doravia.”
Then he shuddered at the memory of the warm caresses of those slender hands. The dark pool that was sluggishly creeping toward the bulkhead wasn’t blood; it was the chemical energizing fluid that aided the moving force for the synthetic body. Its corrosive action on the metal deck was indicated by the violet fumes that began bubbling from the now viscous fluid. He wiped the blade of his scarbo, and saw that its steel had been deeply etched by the machine woman’s chemical blood. ”

“ Vorn Vangal shook his head. “No, Your Majesty. The poison is concentrated in that lovely trouble maker and her ambitious brother. If we can win them over, the machine men, commanded by our officers, will serve us well enough. And remember this: they are splendid shock troops. Though the enemy kills them, they will straightway return to their spare bodies which are stored in the Doravian arsenals; and fast space globes will rush them back to the firing line to resume the assault. ”

“ And Zinlo’s flat, uncompromising refusal, which in itself was an affront to the pride of the oldest race on the planet, was heightened by his defeat of Tandor’s plans for marrying Loralie of Tyrhana, an imperial princess in her own right, and a ravishing beauty.
“Your Majesty is uncommonly acute,” murmured Vorn Vangal, reading the Emperor’s thought. “Xunia still wants to marry you – and that also must enter the calculations. Desire and vengeance and political intrigue are all hopelessly entangled threads in this impending conference.”
“Impending is just the word, Vorn Vangal. ”

“ The only way in which a Doravian could die would be through carelessly exposing himself to peril before he had drawn upon the Imperial Laboratories for a spare body which his soul, or ego, could animate, and thus prolong his Venusian existence. ”

“ Forewarned by his intuition, he had already devised a plan to thwart that lovely, insidiously evil creature whose amorous glances veiled her spite and resentment at Zinlo’s affront to her ancient race.
“I have already built a space-globe, patterned after the original designed by Dr. Morgan of Earth. Each of you will send me a volunteer delegate. They will be quartered here until Vorn Vangal receives a telepathic message from Dos-Tev, designating a rendezvous where we of Venus may meet the contingents from the other planets.
“You know the peril that hangs over us. ”

“ Grandon ot Terra will hold my throne during my absence. I will in person lead the expedition. All of you must give me the utmost cooperation, or our Solar System will become a collection of smoking ruins – desolate globes whirling thru space. ”