'Then we've got to hit Taggart before Frayne's ship arrives,” he said.
He spoke aloud, so that Kwolek and the others could understand as well as Dundonald. He asked Dundonald, “Where are Taggart and his sentries?'
'You see that pillar of light, Harlow?'
'I see it. What is it?'
'It's the operative beam of the Converter. It's perpetual, undying. It springs from the mechanism of the Converter itself. Enter the base of the beam and its forces take the atoms of your body, the very electrons, and rearrange them so that you become like me — like the Vorn. But if, as a Vorn, you enter the upper part of the beam, it triggers the reverse process and the beam draws you down and re-arranges your electrons into solidity, into ordinary humanity, again.'
'You can tell me how it works later — right now I've got to know about those sentries,” pressed Harlow.
'I'm trying to tell you,” thought Dundonald. “Up on the rim of the Converter itself are two guards with auto- rifles — in case I try to emerge. They also can cover every foot of the big plaza in which the Converter stands. Taggart and his men have their base in a large building on the south side of the plaza. They've got a communic there and their prisoners — my men and Brai — are locked up in a windowless room of the building.'
'Taggart's awake?'
'Yes. He was talking by communic with his ship out there. Telling them to hit your ship with missiles the moment you show up, but not to mistake Frayne's ship for yours.'
Harlow tried to think fast. This was a soldier's job and he was not a soldier, Star Survey didn't teach strategy. Nor was there time to evolve elaborate plans. He said, “We'll have to knock out the two outside sentries before we can hit Taggart, then. We'll see what the set-up is. Let's move.'
They went forward on the double, down the descending roadway toward the dark city that brooded under the loom of the ridge. For light they had the opalescent rays of the great column of brilliance ahead.
Their hurrying feet shuffled the dust and sand of thousands of years’ drifting, and made echoes that whispered in the starless night. The echoes became louder when they came down into one of the wide streets that led straight away between low black buildings toward the vertical beam.
Fast and far had Earthmen come from their little world, thought Harlow. The swift snowballing of technical progress had made one breakthrough after another and now a score of’ Earthmen were hurrying through the night of an alien star-world toward something that could be the biggest breakthrough of all.
A deep shiver shook Harlow as he looked at the shining will-of-the-wisp gliding beside him, and then at the dark and silent buildings. Men had once lived here as men. Now they were all gone, dispersed as the radiant Vorn far across the galaxies, and had that breakthrough been good? He thought of a secret like that in the hands of ambitious men, and looked again at the gliding, dancing star beside him, and he quickened his pace.
They came to where the street debauched into the plaza. They kept close against the side of a building, and Harlow motioned his men to stay there in the shadow. He and Kwolek and Garcia with the flitting gleam of Dundonald, moved forward until they could peer out into the open space.
Whatever it had been called, this smoothly-paved space was vast. So vast that far away around its curving rim, a parked star-cruiser as large as his own looked small.
'My
Harlow spared it only a glance. His eyes flew to the thing that dominated the plaza, the city, the whole planet.
The Converter. The ultimate triumph of an alien science, the machine that had made men into the Vorn.
It did not look like a machine. At the center of the great paved area there rose a massive, flat-topped cement pedestal. Whatever apparatus there was, whatever perpetual power-source of nuclear or other nature, was hidden inside that. A flight of steps on each side of it led up to the summit of the eminence.
From the center of this flat summit, the opalescent beam sprang upward into the night. At its base, the beam was a curdled, seething luminescence that was dazzling to the eyes, flinging quaking aurora-rays in a twitching brilliance all around the plaza. Higher up, the beam imperceptibly lessened in intensity until far up in the night it was only a vague shining. The Converter. The ultimate step in space travel, the gateway to the freedom of the cosmos.
'The guards — see!” rang Dundonald's thought, urgently.
With an effort, Harlow wrenched his mind from the hypnotic fascination of the beam. Now he saw the two men.
They stood on the unrailed ledge or balcony that surrounded the beam, and the beam itself was between them. Their backs were to the beam as they could not stand its brilliance for too long, but they looked alertly upward and around them every few moments. Each of them carried a heavy, old-fashioned auto-rifle, cradled for instant use.
'They watch in case I try to come back out through the beam,” thought Dundonald. “Always, two watch. And they can see the whole plaza.'
'Where are Taggart and the others?” whispered Harlow.
'See there — away to your left, not far from the
Harlow saw it. It was not hard to identify, for light shone out through the windows of that building and all the others were dark.
He dropped back a little to where Kwolek was looking ahead with wide, wondering eyes.
'You'll take all the men except Garcia and me,” he told Kwolek. “Circle around and approach that building from behind. Wait near its front door until Garcia and I have got the two sentries up there on the Converter. Then, when Taggart and the rest come out, jump them fast.'
'Okay,” said Kwolek, but Yrra had pressed forward and now was asking Harlow anxiously, “What of Brai?'
'If we overpower Taggart and his bunch we can release the prisoners easily,” Harlow told her. “But that has to come first.” He added, “You're to stay right here where you are, Yrra. No arguments! All right, Kwolek, get them going.'
Kwolek did. They made a considerable-looking little body of dark figures as they slipped away across the street and disappeared among the buildings. But Harlow thought of their little short-range stunners, and of Taggart's old-fashioned lethal rifles, and he did not feel too happy.
He and Garcia were left, with Dundonald hovering beside them and Yrra a little behind them. Her face was both scared and mutinous.
'Listen, Harlow,” came Dundonald's rapid thought. “You and Garcia will be seen and shot if you just barge out onto the plaza. Let me distract those two sentries first.'
'You? How?'
'You'll see. Wait till they turn their backs toward you.'
With that thought, Dundonald suddenly flashed away from them. Like a little shooting-star he sped out and upward across the plaza, toward the upper reaches of the towering beam.
Harlow, watching tensely with Garcia, saw the two sentries up on the rim of the Converter suddenly point upward and call to each other. They were looking up at the eery, shining star that was Dundonald, as it flitted high up around the beam. They had their rifles ready for instant use now, and they were facing the beam.
'They think Dundonald's going to come through the beam — they're getting set to shoot if he does!” muttered Harlow. “That gives us a chance — you take the farther guard, I'll take the nearest.'
'Luck,” whispered Garcia, and went out across the plaza in a swift run, looking miraculously neat after all they had been through, his little stunner glistening in his hand.
Harlow was right after him, taking a slightly different course. The two guards up there still had their backs to him, facing toward the beam and looking tensely up at Dundonald's firefly circlings.
Harlow reached the base of the steps on his side of the Converter. They were wide steps, their cement worn by the wind and weather of thousands of years.
He went quietly up them, his stunner in his hand. He had to get close, the little shocker-gadget had almost no range. He hoped he would get close enough.
