In the center of the room, hanging in the heart of a filligreed framework which it did not seem to touch anywhere, a clear transparent cube three feet through floated free. Within it a tilted halo of—of stars?—rotated slowly through the solid substance of the block. And very faintly, Miller thought he could hear music as it turned, the same music he had caught from the night sky, subsonic but still perceptible to his new senses.
“The Power,” Orelle said, nodding toward the cube.
Miller went forward slowly until he stood by the delicate framework within which the block floated. He could feel a slight pressure constantly beating out from the rotating stars, and at the same time a slight equal suction—an impossible sort of double force that did not equalize itself but kept him in a continual state of muscular readjustment to balance the opposite pulls while he stood within its range.
He was trying to control the excitement that poured through him at his nearness to this unimaginable thing he had come so far to find. Slade would give all he had to possess it for, inexplicable as it was, there was a harnessed power in the mysterious thing unlike any power at man’s disposal in the lower world beyond Peak Seven Hundred.
Then, in his brain, Llesi said impatiently, “Later you can examine it. I need you now, if we’re going to stop Brann’s beast. Turn around—go to the far wall, reach up to that container of blue light and. …”
Miller’s conscious mind ceased to make sense out of the orders Llesi gave it but his body was obedient. He did not try to resist. He relaxed his own will and allowed Llesi full control, so that he was only dimly aware of what his body did in the next few minutes. His hands were busy, and there was an intense, quiet activity in his mind.
An activity that gradually began to slow. Lights swelled and sank beneath his busy fingers. Heat and cold and other stranger sensations he could not name bathed his hands and arms, beat against his intent face bent above them. But into his mind slowly a sense of frustration crept.
He made an effort to bring his own mind back into focus and asked Llesi a quick mental question.
“I don’t know,” Llesi’s mind replied. “It isn’t easy. I think I can stop the thing but at a cost we can scarcely afford. And I could only do it once. Brann will know that. He’ll have only to send another just like it and—” The thought blanked out as if even in his subconsciousness Llesi did not want to shape the end of that idea.
Miller put forth greater effort and shrugged off the inertia of his mind which had been necessary while Llesi worked. He was keenly alert now. He had a job to do.
“Will you listen to me?” he asked. “I think I’ve got an answer—if you’ll trust me.”
Llesi’s reply was wary but there was eagerness in it too. “What do you want us to do?”
“Tell me first—can you duplicate this Power source?”
With a double accord both Llesi and Miller turned to gaze at the floating cube with its lazily rotating halo of glittering light.
“I can, yes,” Llesi said. “Why?”
“Easily? Soon?”
“Not in time to stop Brann’s creature, no. It would take several hours.”
“Then,” Miller said, bracing himself for the storm he knew must follow his suggestion, “then I think you’ll have to let the thing downstairs take your Power and carry it back to Brann.”
There was a mental explosion of fury and refusal.
After it had died down, while Orelle still gazed at him with burning dark eyes full of distrust and hatred, and Llesi still smouldered angry thoughts in his brain, Miller went on.
“I know—I know. In your place I’d feel the same. But look at it dispassionately if you can. Brann has you where he wants you now. You can only drive off this mechanism downstairs once and Brann can send another to take the Power source anyhow. If you stay passive you’re beaten. But listen to me—and maybe you can still win. Attack! Let the Power go—but follow it.”
There was silence for a moment, while the two others digested this idea. Then Orelle said, “We could only follow to Brann’s walls. We’ve never been able to get into his castle and—”
“Don’t you see, this is the only way! He’ll have to make room for the cube of the Power to enter. If we follow, there ought to be a way for us to force an entry too. Especially if he doesn’t suspect. Oh, I know—you think I am Brann. I wish there were some way to—wait! Could you read my mind if I opened it to you? Would you believe me then?”
Slowly Orelle said, “I think it might be possible. Are you willing to let me try?”
Miller hesitated for a moment. There is a curious reluctance in the human mind to strip aside the last dark barrier that separates each individual from the world he lives in. The privacy of the mind is so jealously guarded a secret that not even if a man wills it can he wholly bare his thoughts to another. But unless Miller let Orelle into those innermost chambers there was little hope of success for any of them.
“If I don’t,” he thought, “Brann will win, in the end. And if he wins—well, I have more to lose than anyone here.” Aloud, in his mental voice, he said to Orelle, “Yes—try if you’re able.”
She smiled a little. “Let your mind go blank. Don’t offer any resistance—no, none at all—you are resisting me, Miller. Let me have the truth. Brann—Brann … are you Brann? I must know. …”
Her eyes held his and, as they had done once before, began to grow larger and larger until they blotted out
