life, he would use all the power of the scout battery to blast it. He worked in an ever-widening circle, leaving the building housing the communications complex at the center of the area of destruction. Hours later, the devastation behind him was impressive and ahead of him was the huge, long building he knew must be an acceleration chamber. He was taking a bead on the installation. No. It was a single word, leaping into his brain. He readied the weapons. No. He was, he knew, in communication. It was no longer possible for them to ignore him. He had, at last, reached them, was threatening something that obviously was valued. He blasted a subsidiary annex of the atomic installation and waited. Do not force us to destroy you. «Then we talk,» Plank said aloud. When no response came, he readied his weapons once again. As he activated them, he felt a wrench inside himself, and as the deadly beams shot out, the landscape was changed, the beams striking and burning not the atomic installation, but an oddly contoured mass of metals he had not seen before. He had been shifted instantaneously. He did not recognize the area. He blinked upward for a view to orient himself. He was above an entirely separate landmass, but still on the planet. By way of experiment, he blasted two more installations and got no response. He blinked back toward the area of the accelerator, began to take aim once more on the installation and again found himself in a different area before the weapons could be discharged. He withdrew and sent a missile from the Pride downward toward the accelerator. The missile ceased to exist just before impact. When Plank aimed all weapons aboard the Pride downward, threatening total destruction of the planet, he felt that slight distortion in time and space and all was blackness. He existed now inside the mobile form. He had no contact with the
Pride. In the total darkness, he tried to reach up, out, and was blocked. He did not know how he could exist without contact with the one human thing remaining to him, his brain, but he was existing and, as he soon
discovered, he was still in the scout ship. He activated instruments by feel, and at first, the readings puzzled him. Then he knew. The scout was encased in solid rock. He could measure vast mass all around him, above, below, on all sides. Still, he was not dead. He had to believe that they did not want him dead; otherwise, with the vast powers they had displayed, they could have destroyed him easily. He waited. He thought messages, pleading for contact. There was nothing. Angered, he readied all weapons. Discharging them, he imagined, would do small damage to his solid stone encasement, but would have
serious effect on the scout and all its contents, including the mobile form. He poised to activate. He took a deep breath and discharged all beams at once. Into open air. He was orbiting the planet. Instantly he punched the coordinates of the area of the accelerator and began firing as he came out of the short blink. He had no way of knowing how effective his actions were, he knew only that he had to do something. Hopelessly outclassed, he could only hope to gain the attention of those who could so easily manipulate him. Again, his blast leveled unimportant constructions in another area of the planet and again he tried to gain the area of the accelerator. He was naked. He stood, in his mobile form, in the center of a large area. The surface underneath him was dirt. Uneven walls surrounded the arena— that was the effect, a large dirt area enclosed by walls. He heard a low, coughing growl and turned to see the tiger come, running low and
swift, from an opening in the near wall. It was a beast out of Earth's past, huge, saber-toothed, hot-eyed. The tiger paused, went down onto its belly, tail switching, hot eyes regarding him as it crouched there, 15 meters away, waiting. Like a house cat stalking a sparrow, the tiger crawled closer, hugging the ground. Then it charged, powerful muscles thrusting, claws digging into the soft dirt, tail switching violently. Plank met the charge head-on and was bowled over, the cat's claws raking his body. He rolled to his feet and the cat, having gone over the top of him, whirled and shot out a heavy front paw, claws extended. Plank avoided the blow and danced away. He felt no pain. The body of his mobile form had been slit open by the initial charge, but, although the interior seemed fleshlike, there was no blood. The cat charged, and trying to avoid the rush, Plank was toppled by a heavy blow and felt the huge teeth sink into his thigh. He punched for the
cat's eyes, fingers extended stiffly. He found his target and the cat released its hold on his thigh with a roar. The beast rolled him, its massive weight
too much for Plank to resist. He saw the blow coming, felt the impact of it, a massive foreleg delivering the blow to his head; then he looked into the maw of the giant cat as the jaws closed over his face and he heard the crunch, smelled the rancid animal breath. He felt his bones giving way. And he was in space in the scout, looking down onto the quietness of the tinker-toy planet. He punched the coordinates instantly, saw the accelerator and activated the weapons. He was suspended, hands and legs chained to a stone wall. This time he felt pain. The weight of his body pulled, the metal rings around his arms suspending him, cutting into his flesh. He screamed. Unbearable waves of pain swept through his arms. He had been hanging for an eternity and an eternity awaited him, an eternity of pain. He fainted only to revive to the deadening, terrible pain. He could not feel his hands. His fingers would not move. He screamed again. He begged. He sobbed in his agony as the slow hours crawled. He willed himself to die, but he knew that he would not. After an age of it he felt the merciful blackness begin to creep over him once again, and below him the planet was cold, metallic, wildly covered with the insane constructions. He punched and fired. He was back in the arena with a sword in his hand. A giant in armor advanced on him. His small weapon was knocked aside by the first blow. His left arm was severed by the next swing and the force of the blow sent him crashing to the dirt. He looked up into the bearded face: it was a face out of his childhood, Goliath, the giant from a picture story of the Bible. And, lo, Goliath proceeded to sever his other arm, then his legs. Waves of agony coursed through him, but he did not faint until, a legless, armless torso, he writhed in the dirt, his blood gushing, making the dirt wet and dark. And then the blade of the giant was raised, swung down and before blackness he felt his head roll in the dirt. It took a moment for his mind to recover from the remembered pain, but it was only a moment before, stubbornly, hopelessly, he reenacted the punching of coordinates, the blink, the reading of weapons charge and the firing. Chained to a table, helpless, he was surrounded by them, hundreds of them. He had always hated rats. They closed in, their eyes glowing in the
darkness. He felt the first pinch of teeth, felt the small rippings, screamed and struggled against his chains. He could move his head. When the rats began to attack him there, teeth ripping his ears, small bodies leaping and brushing against his lips, his nose, his closed eyes, he began to jerk his head from side to side, screaming. He felt the teeth sink into his nose and he bit, closing on a small, squeaking body. He spat and screamed and bit and a section of his lower lip was torn away and an eyelid felt the bite of teeth and his body was a sea of fiery pain as hundreds of teeth sank, tore, ripped. For a moment sanity went and he struggled wildly, screaming hoarsely. A vein was open in his throat. He could feel the pumping of his blood. And in the depth of his mind came a flash of insight. At first, when he was being eaten by the tiger, there was no blood. He clung to that thought as he was slowly devoured. He punched the coordinates wearily into the generator and blinked back, trying once more. The accelerator. The fire of the deadly beams. In total darkness, he recognized the odor. He had smelled it before, in an Earth zoo. The reptile pit. Even as he recognized it, a rattle sounded near his ear and something struck his naked flank, sinking fangs. Pain shot up as deadly poison was injected, and he leaped to his feet only to bang his head painfully against a low, stone ceiling. He sat. Around him the snakes hissed and rattled; fangs shot into his flesh as he writhed. But, he told himself, when I was fighting the tiger there was no blood. It is only the mechanical form of the mobile unit. I have no flesh, no body. He could feel the poison from repeated strikes creeping through him, fire burning him. And as death closed down once again, he forced himself to laugh. The sound was weak, croaking, but it was a laugh. This time he did not, immediately, attack. He waited to allow himself some thinking time. Obviously, he was not going to be killed. He had been taken through all of his old childhood horrors. The only thing left was being boiled alive in oil. He punched, fired and screamed as he was
lowered, slowly, into the huge vat of bubbling oil. He felt his skin shrivel. The pain was unbelievable. He screamed again and again as the boiling liquid engulfed him, his feet, his calves, his knees, his groin, his soft stomach skin. Regaining control, he willed the pain to stop. It did not stop. It crept upward, to his chest, to his neck. Then he was halted in his downward motion, and seas of agony swept over him. But instead of a scream, the raspy, eerie laugh came from his lips. Once again he willed the pain to stop and slowly, steadily, he gained control. «You will have to destroy me,» he said aloud, seated in the scout. «That is your only choice. Destroy me or talk.» Below him, the planet went wild. Quakes buckled the crust, sent wild constructions toppling. Fire and lightning flashed, inflicting tremendous destruction. The sea rose and smashed the shore, inundating thousands of the erratic constructions. Volcanoes appeared where no volcanoes had been, spouting fire and smoke, darkening the atmosphere. Plank laughed wildly. He punched, blinked and was ready to fire. «I'll give you a hand,» he said, «since you seem to want to wreck the whole place.» But the area surrounding the atomic accelerator was unharmed and his beams did not touch it, smoking instead into a previous area of destruction as he was, once again, shifted. The voice in his head had a petulant quality. Why can't you be nice? Plank roared. The sound was a mixture of rage and laughter. He punched in the coordinates and blinked and fired and felt the shiftings and he was seated in a luxurious
