Then he understood.
“By God, Rrulu did it! A wave of force, that’s tuned to de-cohere
He got Sharr to her feet and started back with her, running toward the compound on the wide open trail that the Worker had made.
He reached the edge of the compound. They stopped, staring.
The warehouse in which he had left Rrulu and Lindeman was gone. So was everything that had been in it, except Lindeman’s senseless form, and Rrulu, and the machine of crystal over which the K’harn bent.
The crystal spheres of that alien mechanism were silently spinning around the central sphere, faster than the eye could follow. Light, blazing force, pulsed out from them as though pumped outward. Here was the source of that expanding ring of metal-destroying force.
The ring of force had expanded across half the compound. The other warehouses were gone. The star-ships in the docks were all gone but one, and even as Evers stared that one ship melted into vapor, and so did the Workers stalking beyond it, and the cranes and machinery beyond them.
The men of Schuyler were standing paralyzed by the incredible, stupefied by the vanishing of the weapons in their hands, the cars and tracs they had been driving, the ships upon which they had been working.
Evers and Sharr ran to Rrulu. The K’ham’s great eyes flared with triumph.
“You did it — but you destroyed all the things that were stolen from your own worlds!” cried Evers.
“And that is well,” said Rrulu. “Those things will never be used by murderers. Nor this one — when its work is done, I will destroy it too.”
A hoarse voice yelling in the distance swung Evers around. It came from a tall figure in a silken blue coverall who was shouting frenziedly to the stupefied, staring men. It was Schuyler.
“Get them with your bare hands!” Schuyler was yelling. “Stop them before—”
One of the men pointed, crying out, and Schuyler turned and looked. And there in the distance the expanding ring of force had reached the looming metal mansion. The proud dome wavered, shifted into smoke, and then was gone from among the tall flower-trees.
Schuyler turned back and came straight on toward Evers and Rrulu, and his face was now the face of a madman.
“Don’t kill him!” cried Evers.
Rrulu had bounded forward, a terrible figure in his scuttling spidery rush, and had seized the magnate.
Evers ran toward them. “Don’t kill him! He’s our hostage against his men — when they recover from their daze, we’ll need him to hold them back till GC gets here!”
He pried the K’harn’s hands away from Schuyler’s throat. Schuyler’s face was already distorted and blue, but he was still breathing.
Across the compound, the men were still standing like men in a dream, some of them babbling, some of them just staring wildly.
Rrulu reached out and touched the base of the machine, and the spinning crystal spheres slowed their revolutions. The ring of force disappeared. They looked at each other, and then across the compound from which everything metal, every man-made structure, had disappeared.
There was no triumph in Rrulu’s face now. It was sick and strained and strange as he looked at Evers. He said.
“I am the first K’harn ever to use our wisdom for destruction. It was necessary. But I am ashamed.”
In the GC cruiser speeding away from Arkar, Lindeman lay sleeping. Evers gave up all idea of awakening him yet, and he and Sharr went out of the little cabin.
The commander of the cruiser met them in the corridor. He said,
“I’ve been down to see our prisoners. Schuyler’s all right, and talking about his lawyers.”
“He won’t squeeze out of this, will he?” said Evers.
The commander laughed. “A dozen of his men are ready right now to give evidence. He hasn’t got a chance. If nothing else, your queer friend’s testimony would be enough.”
He looked along the corridor to where Rrulu stood beside a window, looking somberly at the blurred grayness outside.
The GC officer shivered. “He surely did a job. Never saw anything like it. I’ll be glad when he and his knowledge are back in their own galaxy.” He added, his face hardening, “That’ll be as soon as we can build the Lindeman drive into a dozen cruisers. We’re going to Andromeda in force — and any of Schuyler’s looters still there will get a nasty surprise.”
When the GC man had gone, Sharr said, “I will soon be back in my own home, too. It will be good. I don’t like Earthmen.”
She did not look at him as she said it. Evers looked down at her. He said,
“You know very well that you’re not going back to Valloa, that I love you and you’re going with me. You just want to make me say it.”
She still did not look up at him, but she came and put her head against him and began to cry.
Evers, holding her, patted her red head. He said, “Only two things. On Earth, people don’t understand the respectability of being an hereditary thief. So no more of that.”
“No more,” said Sharr muffledly.
He felt the back of his neck. “And no matter what arguments we have, no more Valloan judo.
