'They're dead?' My lips were dry.
'What semblance of life they had left is now gone. The Other cannot use them again.'
Lhar swayed toward me. A cool tentacle swept out, pressing lightly on my forehead. Another touched my breast, above the heart.
'I give you of my strength,' Lhar said. 'It will be as shield and buckler to you. The rest of the way you must go alone....'
Into me tide of power flowed. I sank into cool depths, passionless and calm. Something was entering my body, my mind and soul, drowning my fears, stiffening my resolve.
Strength of Lhar was now my strength!
The tentacles dropped away, their work done. The robot's cilia signalled and Lhar said, 'Your way lies there. That temple—do you see it?'
I saw it. Far in the distance, half shrouded by the fog, a scarlet structure, not ruined like the others, was visible.
'You will find the Other there. Slay the last Indio, then destroy the Other.'
I had no doubt now of my ability to do that. A new power seemed to lift me from my feet, send me running across the moss. Once I glanced back, to see Lhar and her robot standing motionless, watching me.
The temple enlarged as I came nearer. It was built of the same reddish stone as the other ruined blocks I had seen. But erosion had weathered its harsh angles till nothing now remained but a rounded, smoothly sculptured monolith, twenty feet tall, shaped like a rifle shell.
A doorway gaped in the crimson wall. I paused for a moment on the threshold. In the dimness within a shadow stirred. I stepped forward, finding myself in a room that was tall and narrow, the ceiling hidden in gloom. Along the walls were carvings I could not clearly see. They gave a suggestion of inhuman beings that watched.
It was dark but I could see the Indio girl who had been Miranda Valle. Her eyes were on me, and, even through the protecting armor of Lhar strength; I could feel their terrible power.
The life in the girl was certainly not human!
'Destroy her!' my mind warned. 'Destroy her! Quickly!'
But as I hesitated a veil of darkness seemed to fall upon me. Utter cold, a frigidity as of outer space, lanced into my brain. My senses reeled under the assault. Desperately, blind and sick and giddy, I called on the reserve strength Lhar had given me. Then I blacked out....
When I awoke I saw smoke coiling up from the muzzle of the pistol in my hand. At my feet lay the Indio girl, dead. My bullet had crashed into her brain, driving out the terrible dweller there.
My eyes were drawn to the farther wall. An archway gaped there. I walked across the room, passed under the archway. Instantly I was in complete, stygian darkness. But I was not alone!
The power of the Other struck me like a tangible blow. I have no words to tell of an experience so completely disassociated from human memories. I remember only this: my mind and soul were sucked down into a black abyss where I had no volition or consciousness. It was another dimension of the mind where my senses were altered....
Nothing existed there but the intense blackness beyond time and space. I could not see the Other nor conceive of it. It was pure intelligence, stripped of flesh. It was alive and it had power—power that was god- like.
There in the great darkness I stood alone, unaided, sensing the approach of an entity from some horribly remote place where all values were altered.
I sensed Lhar's nearness. 'Hurry!' her thought came to me. 'Before it wakens!'
Warmth flowed into me. The blackness receded....
Against the farther wall something lay, a thing bafflingly human.... a great-headed thing with a tiny pallid body coiled beneath it. It was squirming toward me....
'Destroy it!' Lhar communicated.
The pistol in my hand thundered, bucking against my palm. Echoes roared against the walls. I fired and fired again until the gun was empty....
'It is dead,' Lhar's thought entered my mind.
I stumbled, dropped the pistol.
'It was the child of an old super-race—a child not yet born.'
Can you conceive of such a race? Where even the unborn had power beyond human understanding? My mind wondered what the adult Alien must be.
I shivered, suddenly cold. An icy wind gusted through the temple. Lhar's thought was clear in my mind.
'Now the valley is no longer a barrier to the elements. The Other created fog and warmth to protect itself. Now it is dead and your world reclaims its own.'
From the outer door of the temple I could see the fog being driven away by a swift wind. Snow was falling slowly, great white flakes that blanketed the blue moss and lay like caps on the red shards that dotted the valley.
'I shall die swiftly and easily now, instead of slowly, by starvation,' Lhar said.
A moment later a thought crossed my mind, faint and intangible as a snowflake and I knew Lhar was saying goodbye.
I left the valley. Once I looked back, but there was only a veil of snow behind me.
And out of the greatest adventure the cosmic gods ever conceived—only this: For a little while the eternal veil of time was ripped away and the door to the unknown was held ajar.
But now the door is closed once more. Below Huascan a robot guards a tomb, that is all.
The snow fell faster. Shivering, I ploughed through the deepening drifts. My compass needle pointed north. The spell that had enthralled the valley was gone.
Half an hour later I found the trail, and the road to safety lay open before me. Fra Rafael would be waiting to hear my story.
But I did not think that he would believe it....
