In midair the fiery lance failed and died. The Aesir drew back a step, drawing its cloak about it as if in surprise. And Kari—Kari shrank back, too, and something strangely like hope flashed for a moment across her dazzling, her more than mortal loveliness. Hope? But she was of the Aesir now. And if they failed, she died. Then why—
The Aesir’s cloak flickered, and a second gush of fiery light fountained toward Stuart.
Up surged the tide of power in him again. Blind and dazed with his own tremendous energy, Stuart felt a curve like a dim shield flung up to meet that lance. The Aesir’s fire struck—and flashed into blazing fragments on the Protector’s shield. Each droplet sang intolerable music as it faded and winked out. And behind the Aesir, more dazzling than any immortal fire had been, Stuart saw Kari’s sudden, shining smile. …
She would die if the Aesir failed. She must know she would die. But the brilliance of her smile struck him as the Aesir’s spear of fire could never strike. He knew, then. He understood. …
The Aesir’s cloak whirled like a storm-cloud, in dark, deep billows. The Aesir itself grew taller for a moment, as if it drew itself up to a godlike height. And then it did for Derek Stuart what no Aesir had ever done for a mortal man before. No Aesir had ever needed to. It cast off the hampering cloak and stood stripped for battle with this primitive manling whose forebears immemorially long ago had been the Aesir’s forebears. There was in that stripping something almost of kinship—an acknowledgment that here at last in the hall of the Aesir stood an equal, sprung of equal stock. …
Naked in its terrible power, the Aesir stood up to face the man.
Not human. Not ever human, except in the mysterious basics which these people of a thousand millenniums in the future had chosen to retain. The flesh they had cast off, and the flesh the Aesir stood up in to face his forebear was pure, blazing, blinding energy. Twice as tall as a man it stood, shining with supernal brilliance, terrible and magnificent.
The great hall rang soundlessly with the power of the Protectors.
And then from above a streak of light came flashing, and another, and another. And were engulfed in the one Aesir who stood shining before its adversary, growing ever brighter and more terrible. The rest of the Aesir, coming to the aid of their fellow, forming a single entity to crush the champion of mankind.
Stuart braced himself for the incredible torrent of energy that would come blasting through him from the Protectors. And in a split second—it came!
Mind and body reeled beneath the impact of that power as force flared through him and struck out at the tower of lightning which was the Aesir. But the force which was trying his human body to its utmost was not force enough to touch that blinding column. Energy lashed out from it, struck him a reeling blow—Stuart dropped to his knees, the hall swimming in fire around him.
But what he saw was not the terrible, blazing image of his adversary, but Kari’s face beyond. His falling meant her life—but when she saw him go down the brilliance dimmed upon her features. The hope he had seen there went out like a candle-flame and she was once more only a vessel of human flesh which the Aesir had possessed and degraded.
In his despair and his dizziness he cried soundlessly, “Help me, Protectors! Give me your power!”
The still double-voice said, “You could not hold it. You would be burned out utterly.”
“I’ll hold it long enough!” he promised desperately. “One second of power—only that! Enough to smash the Aesir. Then death—but not till then!”
There was one instant when time stopped. That cataclysmic horror that had risen a thousand years ago and raged through the worlds like a holocaust stood blazing before Stuart’s eyes. It stooped toward him, poising for the hammer blow that would smash him to nothing—
Then a power like the drive of galaxies through space thundered into Stuart’s mind.
He had not expected this. Nothing in human experience could have taught him to expect it. For the Protectors were not human. No more human than the Aesir themselves. And the unleashed energy that roared soundlessly through Stuart rocked his very soul on its foundations. He could not stir. He could not think. He could only stay upon his knees facing the Aesir-thing as galactic power thundered through him and wielded him like a sword against man’s enemies.
Higher and higher rose the crashing tides of contest. The citadel shook ponderously upon the rocks of the god-made little world. Perhaps that world itself staggered in space as the titans battled together on its rocking surface.
Faster spun the core of radiant light which was the Aesir. Faster raced the tides of power through Stuart’s blasted body, seeming to rip his very flesh apart and blaze in his brain like hammers of cosmic fire.
Terribly, terribly he yearned for surcease, for the end of this unthinkable destruction that was tearing his brain and body apart. And he knew he could end it in a moment, if he chose to let go. …
Grimly he clung to the power that was destroying him. Second by second, counting each moment an eternity, he clung to consciousness. The crashing lances of the Protectors drove on upon the armor of the Aesir, and the cyclopean pillars of the great hall reeled upon their foundations, and the very air blazed into liquid fire around him.
He never knew what final blow of cosmic violence ended that battle. But suddenly, without warning, the vast column of the Aesir pulsed with violent brilliance and the whole hall rang with a cry too shrill and terrible for ears or the very mind to hear, except as a thrilling of
