The Godmen

return? How many men and women have left their humanity behind them here to break through into the wider cosmos?

* * *

He reached the top of the steps, and crouched a moment. The guard on this side of the Converter ledge was fifteen feet away, his back to Harlow.

Harlow waited, his eyes searching for the other guard part way around the beam. He and Garcia must make their play at the same time. But he could see the man only vaguely, through that brilliance. The beam sprang up from what seemed a transparent plate, twenty feet in diameter, and at this close distance it was utterly dazzling.

He was scared, and he was sweating, he wanted to jump forward and act but he mustn't compromise Garcia's chances, he had to wait…

He waited too long, and everything happened at once.

The other guard, partway around the beam, suddenly crumpled down onto the cement ledge. Garcia had come up close behind and had used his stunner.

Instantly, Harlow jumped forward toward his own man. But this guard had seen his comrade fall and he was whirling around, opening his mouth to shout.

He saw Harlow coming and threw up his rifle to fire. Harlow triggered the stunner. But he was running and he was not too used to weapons, and the invisible conical electric field of the stunner only brushed against the guard. The man staggered, but he did not fall.

Desperately, Harlow ran in. The stunner's charge was exhausted until it re-cycled, and he had to get in past that rifle. He hit the guard in the mouth as he started to yell an alarm, and then grabbed him.

'Harlow!” rang a wild thought in his mind. “No time now, Frayne's coming in—'

Harlow staggered, wrestling clumsily with the guard on the wide stone ledge, with the shining star that was Dundonald dancing in a frantic way close to him. The blood was roaring in his ears, and — No. The roaring was in the sky, it was getting louder and louder, a great dark bulk was sinking on plumes of flame toward the plaza.

Garcia reached him just as Harlow swung again and hit the guard's chin. The man collapsed and fell, his rifle clanging on the cement.

'Harlow! Run!'

The radiance that was Dundonald was whirling with wild urgency beside him yet, and Harlow heard his frantic thought. Had it been a voice he could not have heard, for the roar of the descending cruiser drowned everything.

Harlow cried, “Come through, Dundonald — through the beam!'

'Too late!” was the answering, agonized thought. “Look!'

The star-cruiser landed on the plaza, and instantly its lock opened. At the same moment over in front of the domed square building, shots rang out as Kwolek and the Thetis crew rushed Taggart's men, just emerging from the building.

Out of the newly-landed cruiser men came running. They had auto-rifles too, and Kwolek and the Thetis men were caught in a crossfire.

Harlow was starting to run for the steps when Garcia crumpled.

He caught him. The Mexican's neat tunic was drilled right through over the heart, and his face was lax and lifeless.

Bullets screamed off the cement beside Harlow and he turned and saw men from the cruiser — two — now three — of them, shooting at him.

Dundonald was a star beside him and the star was screaming in his mind.

'You can't run now! The beam, Harlow — it's that or death!'

The little battle was over and they had lost it, and Kwolek and the Thetis survivors were helplessly surrendering, and the rifles out there were leveled to rip through Harlow as he stood silhouetted against the blazing beam.

He had a choice, of dying right there or not dying.

He chose. He threw himself into the beam.

CHAPTER VII

The impact was incredible. It was birth and death and resurrection all happening instantaneously and all together, with the violence of a whirlwind. Harlow knew fear for a brief instant, and then the very concept of fear as he knew it was overwhelmed and lost in an emotion so new and vast that he had no word for it.

He never really knew whether or not he lost consciousness. Perhaps that was because his whole concept of “consciousness” changed too, out of all recognition. There was a brilliant flare of light all through him when he entered the misty glowing pillar of force. The light was inside him as well as out, exploding in every cell of his flesh and bone, brain and marrow. It was as though for an instant his whole corporeal being had achieved a strange state of glory. But after that instant he was not sure of light or dark, time or place, being or not-being. Something unbelievably weird was happening to his body. He tried to see what it was but all he could achieve was a blurring of color like a kaleidoscope run mad. He could only feel and that did not tell him much because he had never felt anything like this before and so had no frame of reference whatever.

Only he knew that all at once he felt free.

It was a feeling so joyous, so poignant, that it was almost unbearable.

Free.

Free of weight and weariness, the dragging limitations of the flesh. Free of want and need, free of duty, free of responsibility, free forever of the haunting fear of death. Never in his life before, even in its most supreme moments, had he felt truly free, truly at one with the universe. It was revelation. It was life.

He leapt forward, impelled by the joy that was in him, and then he sensed that Dundonald was there waiting for him. It did not seem at all strange now that Dundonald should be a hovering cloud of sparks, a hazy patch of sheer energy. It seemed natural and right, the only sort of form for a sensible man to have. His thought — contact with him was clear and instantaneous, infinitely better than speech.

Well, now you've done it, Dundonald thought. How do you feel?

Free! cried Harlow. Free! Free!

Yes, said Dundonald. But look there.

Harlow looked, not with eyes any more but with a far clearer sense that had replaced them.

The men with rifles — Taggart's men and Frayne's men — stood looking baffledly toward the Converter, the gateway through which he, Harlow, had plunged. The change, then, had been very swift, almost instantaneous. Kwolek and the other surviving men of the Thetis were being disarmed, surrounded by more of Taggart's men.

One of them held Yrra. She was staring at the glowing misty beam of the Converter with anguished eyes and she was crying out a word. The word was Harlow. It was his name. He could read her thoughts, very dimly compared to Dundonald's, but clear enough. He was astounded by what he read in them.

'I could have told you how she thought of you,” Dundonald thought. “But I didn't think I should.'

Some vestiges of Harlow's recent humanity still remained. He dropped down close to Yrra and she saw him, her face mirroring shock and pain but no fear now. There was another emotion in her far stronger than fear. The man who was holding her saw Harlow too and flinched away, raising his gun.

Harlow ignored him. He spoke to Yrra's mind. I'm safe, he said. Don't worry, I'll come back. I love you.

Stupid words. Human words. Everything had failed and he could not come back any more than Dundonald.

The watch over the Converter would be doubled now, to guard against any possibility of his and Dundonald's return during the time it would take the technicians from the Cartel ships to find a way of dismantling and removing the Converter. And once that was done, the way would be closed to them forever.