Sensation came back slowly. With it came a tingling, a warm vibration along his spine … about his throat … inside his brain. He could not move, but at the corner of his range of vision flamed a crimsonness—the cloak. He still wore it.
He wondered if the other captives could see him, if their minds were as active as his in their congealed bodies. Or whether the chill of deathlike silence held their brains along with their frozen limbs.
A slow, volcanic fury began to glow within him. Kari—traitor and murderess! Was she Aesir? Was she Earthborn? And that black-cloaked, cowled creature … which was not real. Another projector of the Aesir, as the giants had been?
You were sent by the Protectors.
Memory of Kari’s phrase came back to Stuart now. And with it, as though he had somehow unbarred a locked gate, opened it a mere crack, came a—a whispering.
Not audible. Faint, faraway, like the shadow of a wind rustling ghosts of autumn leaves, the murmur rose and fell … calling him.
The scarlet cloak moved … writhed … flowed more closely about him. Fainter grew the voices.
Stuart strained after them. His soul sprang up … reaching toward those friendly, utterly inhuman whispers that came from nowhere.
A dull lethargy numbed him. The cloak drew tighter. …
He ignored it. Deep in the citadel of his mind, he made himself receptive, all his being focused on that—that strange calling from beyond.
And, suddenly, there were words. …
“Derek Stuart. Can you hear us? Answer!”
His stiff lips could not speak, but his thoughts formed an answer. And, rising and falling as though the frequency of that incredible telepathy pulsed and changed continually, the message came—
“We have lost. You have lost too, Stuart. But we will stay with you—we must stay now—and perhaps your death will be easier because of that. …”
“Who are you?” he thought, oddly awed by the personality he sensed behind that voice that was really two voices.
“There is little time.” The—sound?—faded into a thin whisper, then grew stronger. “The cloak makes it hard for us to communicate with you. And now we can give you none of our power at all. It is a monstrous thing—a blasphemy such as only the Aesir would create. Half-alive—it makes an artificial synapse between the individual and outside mental contacts. We cannot help you—”
“Who are you?”
“We are the Protectors. Listen now, Stuart, for soon you must walk the Long Orbit with the others. We removed some of your memories, so the Aesir could not read your mind and have time to prepare themselves—we hoped we might destroy them this time. But—we have failed again. Now—we give you your memories back.”
Like a slowly rising tide, Stuart’s past began to return. He did not question how this was done; he was too busy lifting the veil that had darkened his mind since—since that night at the Singing Star in New Boston. A few drinks with the tired-eyed man, and then darkness—
But the curtain was lifting now. He remembered. …
He remembered a tiny, underground room, with armed men—not many of them—staring at him. A voice that said, “You must either join us or die. We dare run no risks. For hundreds of years a tiny band of us has survived, only because the Aesir did not know we existed.”
“Rebels?” he had asked.
“Sworn to destroy the Aesir,” the man told him, and an answering glow burned briefly in the eyes of the others.
Stuart laughed.
“You have courage,” the man said. “You’ll need it. I know why you laugh. But we don’t fight alone. Have you ever heard of the Protectors?”
“Never.”
“Few have. They aren’t human, any more than the Aesir are. But they are not evil. They’re humanity’s champions. They have sworn to destroy the Aesir, as we have—and so we serve them.”
“Who are they, then? What are they?”
“No man knows,” the other said quietly. “Who—and where—they are is a secret they keep to themselves. But we hear their messages. And once in a lifetime, not oftener, they tell us where we may find some man they have winnowed the planets to discover. In our lifetime, Stuart, you are the man.”
He gaped at them. “Why? I—”
“To be a weapon for the Protectors—a champion for mankind. The Protectors are so far beyond humanity they cannot fight our battles in their own forms. They need a—a vessel into which they can pour their power. Or—call it a sword to wield against the Aesir. They have searched the worlds over for a long while now, and you—” The man hesitated, looking narrowly at Stuart. “You are the only vessel they found. You have a great destiny, Derek Stuart.”
He had scowled at them. “All right, suppose I have. What do they offer?”
The man shook his head. “Death—if you’re lucky. No man before you has ever won a battle for the Protectors. You know that—the Aesir still rule! Every chance is against you. In a thousand years no man has won the gamble. But this is greater than you or us, Derek Stuart. Do you think you have any choice?”
Stuart stared the other man in the eyes. “There’s no chance?”
The leader smiled. All mankind’s indomitable hope was in the smile.
“Would the Protectors have spent all their efforts, and ours, to find you if there were no hope? They have mighty and terrible powers. With the right man for their vessel, they could be stronger than the Aesir. No man could stand alone against the Aesir. The Protectors could not stand alone. But together—sword and hand and brain welded into one—yes, Stuart, there’s a chance!”
“Then why have the others failed?”
“No one has yet been quite strong enough. Only once in forty years—fifty—is a man born who might, with luck, have the courage and the strength. Look at us here—do you think we would
