The Valley of Creation

message begin again. They reached Nsharra, back in the shadows.

'I failed,' Nelson told her bitterly. 'They will come on now. You should not have come here, Nsharra!'

She looked at him steadily, her face a white blur in the shadows. 'I think L'Lan dies tonight and, if it does, I have no wish to live.'

He took her into his arms. And it was then, as he held her, that Nick Sloan's calm voice came out to them.

Sloan and the other three had issued from the tube into the turbine, but they had not come out of the turbine into the light of the cold fire. Nelson knew why. They were afraid he had more bullets.

'Nelson!' called the cool, hard voice. 'Nelson, are you ready to quit making a fool of yourself and talk business?'

'Say what you have to say, Sloan,' he called back.

The other's voice was almost a drawl. 'Nelson, even though you got your body back, you joined the losing side and I guess now you know it. You're trapped, but I've no wish to rub you out. Give yourself up and I'll let you go free out of L'Lan.'

Nelson thought swiftly. 'You'd let the girl, and Tark, go with me?'

'Sure,' came the quick answer. 'Just toss your gun out and come out with hands raised.'

Eric Nelson's mind was racing. He saw a vague possibility, a slender chance—

He put no faith whatever in Sloan's specious promise. He knew as completely as he could know anything that, when he walked out unarmed into the light, Sloan would give him a burst. But he had still one card in his hand that the others knew nothing of — a card that was a poor one, perhaps, but worth playing.

'I don't trust you, Sloan,' he answered harshly. 'But I'll give my gun to Shan Kar if he will guarantee our safety.'

Instantly came Shan Kar's voice. 'I will promise that, Nelson.'

'Sure, and we'll stick by it,' Sloan chimed in. 'Won't we, Piet?'

'Then let Shan Kar come here and I'll surrender to him — but only to him,' Nelson said.

There was a pause, a silence from the huge wrecked turbine. Then came the Humanite leader's voice.

'I am coming, Eric Nelson. Remember that if you kill me it will only seal your own doom.'

Shan Kar came out into the light. He had sword in hand and his head was high, his stride confident as he came back toward the shadows. He glimpsed Nelson, standing with Nsharra and Tark in the shadows beyond the platinum pillars. He came toward them, his hand extended for the pistol that Nelson was holding out butt- foremost.

And then, as he stepped between the two quartz spheres on the pillars, Shan Kar stopped. A bewildered look came upon his face.

'What — what—?' he faltered, amazed.

Nelson knew. He knew that in Shan Kar's mind was now sounding that thought-record, that solemn message of the ancients.

'Take warning!'

Shan Kar stood rooted, listening — listening to that tremendous voice of the dim past repeating its saga of the coming of intelligence to Earth. And the Humanite's face grew strange.

Nelson knew when the record had ended. For Shan Kar moved forward again, hand still reaching out to take the empty gun. But he moved now like a man in a dream. And his eyes stared at them unseeingly.

'The word of the ancients!' he whispered. 'But then it is true that the Brotherhood of the Clans is as old as man! Then the myths that we Humanites thought were lies are true.'

'They are true, Shan Kar,' said Nsharra. 'You would not believe my father because you did not want to believe him. And he could not bring you in here to hear because the ancients themselves prohibited that unscrupulous or ignorant men should enter here. But they are true!'

Shan Kar's olive, handsome face was pallid. 'Then what we Humanites have believed, the natural dominance of man over the Clans—that is the lie!'

Nelson almost pitied the Humanite in this moment. Shan Kar had built a fanatic belief upon a basis that now was swept away.

He saw in the man's face the awful realization that he had brought fire and blood and death to L'Lan for a fanatic faith in human right to rule that had no warrant in reality.

'You can pass that gun over to me,' said Nick Sloan.

He and Van Voss, with Hoik behind them, had come out of the turbine, their submachine-guns held breast- high. They stood not a dozen feet behind Shan Kar.

Shan Kar, wild-eyed, swung around to them. His voice was a hoarse cry. 'We have done wrong! The legend of the Brotherhood is true! This killing must stop.'

'The thing I dislike about working with fanatics,' said Nick Sloan boredly, 'is that you can't depend on them.'

He pressed trigger as he spoke, briefly. The little burst of slugs spun Shan Kar around and flung him into the dust between the pillars.

* * *

Sloan stepped forward, his eyes searching the shadows for Nelson and the girl. 'Sorry it has to end this way, Nelson. You always were a fool in some ways. I hope—'

Nelson, almost dully, had watched him step forward. His last card, his hope of setting Shan Kar against Sloan by means of the thought-record, had failed him.

But had it? There was still a thin chance left if he could make it. Sloan stepped between the platinum pillars.

For a heartbeat, as the solemn thought-voice of the ancients automatically spoke to him, Sloan looked startled. That was the moment when Nelson charged him.

The submachine-gun blasted over his head with a fiery breath and voice of thunder as he hit Sloan low and brought him down. They rolled together over the Cavern floor, toward the shaking curtain of cold light, Van Voss running after them to get in a burst that would not hit Sloan.

'This for Barin!' raged a wild wolf-thought and, as he rolled, Nelson glimpsed Tark's great body at the Dutchman's throat.

Sloan was battering him with his knee as he strove to tear loose his heavy gun and bang it against Nelson's skull. Abruptly then Sloan quit that and pulled the trigger. Flame and hot lead plowed along Nelson's forearm — and Sloan instantly wrenched free.

Sloan jumped to his feet, on the edge of the cleft of cold fire, standing magnified to giant proportions by the curtain of shaking light behind him as he swiftly leveled his gun at Nelson.

'This time there won't be any—'

A slim, flying thing of metal flashed past Nelson's head from behind him — a flung sword. It struck Sloan, not point foremost as had been intended, but flatly. The impact knocked him backward.

His foot clawed the edge of the cleft, he staggered and toppled backward still gripping the submachine-gun, then vanished into that blaze of radiant light.

A scream came out of that glory of cold fire — a scream that made Nelson feel sick.

He forced himself to turn around. Van Voss lay staring up with pale empty eyes at the Cavern roof, his throat torn out. Tark's fangs showed red in the shaking glare and there was madness in the wolf's eyes.

'Hoik, listen!'

Shan Kar, sitting in the dust between the pillars with blood streaming from his breast, had uttered that whispered call.

And Shan Kar, he knew now, was the one who, with dying strength, had flung the sword and toppled Nick Sloan into the most terrible of deaths. The Humanite's face was a gray mask. Hoik, who had stood stunned by the swift turn of events, came toward him. Nelson, gripping his bleeding arm, went too.

'Hoik, listen to the record of the ancients — then let the others listen too,' Shan Kar whispered. 'Let the war end, the Brotherhood be restored. I sinned when I tried to break it.'

Hoik looked up with sudden awe, as the man died. Nelson knew that he too now was hearing that solemn voice.

'You who shall come after us, take warning!'