despair.
The tower rocked. All the bright tapestries billowed and flowed against the walls. And the radiant thing that was the Aesir—
Went out like a blown flame. Stuart saw it darken in the quickness of a heartbeat from blinding brightness to an angry, sullen scarlet, and then to the color of embers, and then to darkness.
There was nothing there at all.
And Stuart’s brain dimmed with it one last glimpse he had of the shining smile on Kari’s face, triumph and delight, in the instant before the cloudiness of oblivion blotted her features out.
He was not dead. Somewhere, far away, his body lay prone upon the cold pavement of the Aesir’s hall, a hall terribly empty now of life. But Stuart himself hung in empty space, somewhere between life and death.
The thought of the Protectors touched him gently, almost caressingly.
“You are a mighty man, Derek Stuart. Your name shall not be forgotten while mankind lives.”
With infinite effort he roused his mind.
“Kari—” he said.
There was silence for a moment—a warm silence. But the voices, speaking as one, said gently, “Have you forgotten? When the Aesir died, Kari died too. And you, Derek Stuart—you can never go back to your body now. You remember that?”
Sudden rebellion shook Stuart’s bodiless brain. “Get out of my mind!” he raged at the double-voice. “What do you know about human beings? I’ve won for mankind—but what did I win for myself? Nothing—nothing! And Kari—Get out of my mind and let me die! What do you know about love?”
Amazingly, laughter pulsed softly.
“Love?” said the double-voice. “Love? You have not guessed who we are?”
Stuart’s bewildered mind framed only a voiceless question.
“We know humanity,” the twin voices said. “We were human once, a thousand years ago. Very human, Derek Stuart. And we remembered love.”
He half guessed the answer. “You are—”
“There was a man and a woman once,” the voices told him gently. “Mankind still remembers their legend—John Starr and Lorna, who defied the Aesir.”
“John Starr and Lorna!”
“We fought the Aesir in the days when we and they were human. We worked with them on the entropy device that made them what they are now—and made us—ourselves. When we saw what they planned with their power, we fought. … But they were five, and strong because they were ruthless. We had to flee.”
The voices that spoke as one voice were distant, remembering.
“They grew in power on their Asgard world, changing as the millenniums swept over them, as entropy accelerated for them. And we changed, too, in our own place, in our different way. We are not human now. But we are not monsters, as the Aesir were. We have known failure and bitterness and defeat many times, Derek Stuart. But we remember humanity. And as for love—”
Stuart said bitterly:
“You know your love. You have it forever. But Kari … Kari is dead.”
The voices were very gentle. “You have sacrificed more than we. You gave up your love and your bodies. We—”
Silence again. Then the woman, serene and gentle-voiced, “There is a way, John. But not an easy one—for us.”
Stuart thought, “But Kari is dead.”
The woman said, “Her body is empty of the Aesir life-force. And yours is burned out by the power we poured through it, so that no human could live in it again unless—unless one more than human upheld you.”
“Lorna—”
“We must part for awhile, John. We have been one for a long while. Now we must be two again, for the sake of these two. Until the change. …”
“What change?” asked Stuart eagerly.
“As we changed, so would you, if our lives upheld yours. Entropy would move for you as it moved for the Aesir and for us. And that, too, I think, is good. Mankind will need a leader. And we can help—John and I—more surely if we taste again of humanity. After awhile—after millenniums—the circle will close and John and I will be free to merge again. And you and Kari, too.”
Stuart thought, “But Kari—will it be Kari?”
“It will be,” the gentle voice said. “Cleansed of the evil of the Aesir, supported by my own strength, as you by John’s. You will be yourselves again, with the worlds before you, and afterward—a dwelling among the stars, with us. …”
The man’s voice said, “Lorna, Lorna—”
“You know we must, beloved,” the softer voice said. “We have asked too much of them to offer nothing in repayment. And it will not be goodbye.”
There was darkness and silence.
Stuart was dimly aware of cyclopean heights rising above him. Painfully he stirred. He was clothed in his own body again, and the battle-blasted hall of the dead Aesir towered high into the dimness above him.
He turned his head.
Beside him on the dais a girl, lying crumpled in the shower of her hair, stirred and sighed.
Trouble on Titan
I
Von Zorn Is Perturbed
Whenever Von Zorn, chief of Nine Planets Films, ran into trouble he automatically started the televisors humming with calls for Anthony Quade. The televisors were humming now. In fact they were shrieking hysterically. Quade’s code number bellowed out through a startled and partially deafened Hollywood on the Moon.
Von Zorn, teetering on the edge of his chair behind the great glass-brick desk, was throwing a fit.
“You can’t do this to me!” he yelped into the transmitter, his scrubby mustache bristling with outrage. “I know you can hear me, Quade! It’s a matter of life and death! Quade!”
A covey of anxious secretaries winced involuntarily as he swung the chair around.
“Get Quade!” he screamed. “Bring me Quade! All you do is stand around with your mouths open. I—” He paused, the light of an unpleasant idea dawning across his face. He was grinning disagreeably as he switched the televisor to a private wavelength.
“I’ll fix him!” he muttered. “I’ll—oh, hello.” This to the face that flashed onto the screen before him. Rapidly Von Zorn spoke to the face. It nodded, smiling grimly.
Afterward Von Zorn leaned back and called for a drink.
“Nine Planets on the brink of ruin,” he growled into the tilted glass, “and
