Auxiliary engines were removed from the hulk of the destroyed flagship.
Installed in the Lavoisier, they could easily bring her speed up to
that of the fastest ship in the fleet.
So with the small laboratory ship, Lavoisier, as flagship, the
ravaged and reorganized fleet turned once again toward Earth. As the
long days in space passed while they sped Earthward at incredible
velocities, the physicists and engineers turned the Lavoisier into a
deadly warship, the equal of any in their fleet. New and more powerful
Atom Stream projectors were installed, and massive disruptor units were
built into previous areas of more peaceful uses.
And while they hurled through the vault of space, Underwood moved from
ship to ship by means of his abasic senses, testing, examining and
filtering out the men of the battle crews.
If he could have afforded pity, all he possessed would have been
expended upon them, for they were a pitiable lot. He knew that their
standards of values had been scattered again by their defeat at
his hands. If their belief in the invincibility of Demarzule, and
themselves because they were the Disciples of Demarzule, had not
been so great, their defeat would have been less easy. Underwood was
thankful for the conceit that rendered them vulnerable when defeat hove
in sight.
Their allegiance to him was no stable thing, he knew. But most of them
were willing to throw their loyalties with the scientists because they
hungered for leadership with a neurotic longing, and the power that
could silently and unseen wipe out two of the Great One's warships was
surely a power to command their respect. So they reasoned in their
bewildered minds.
Underwood removed from the key places those who were doubtful and
rebellious, and he spoke to them daily throughout the long voyage,
sometimes reasoning, sometimes commanding, but always with a display
of power that they had to respect. In the end he felt he had a set of
crews as trustworthy as Earthmen could be made in this culture of doubt
and universal disregard of trust and honesty.
He practised constantly in perfecting the powers of the abasa, and
as his facility grew, so did his regard for the little offshoot of
Dragboran culture that had flourished upon the barren little moon.
Such powers as he possessed would have meant suicide to his own race.
Sometimes he wondered if he could himself endure their temptations
long enough to accomplish his goal. Certainly, with that completed, he
would have the organs removed. Their call to power, wealth, and the
misappropriation were almost more than any human mind in this
stage of evolution could endure.
Almost in Earth's own front yard, at the orbit of Mars, the first
signs of the coming struggle appeared. The lookout called his warning.
A score of fast interceptors were leaving Earth, headed in their
direction.
Underwood wished that he'd paid more attention to the military arts. He
dared trust none of the warriors who were his by conquest, for he could
not appear to be less than they in any respect. But neither he nor any
of the other scientists were competent to lead a complex military unit,
such as his fleet represented, into the vortex of battle.
Yet he must do what had to be done. He formed the fleet into a massive
tactical cylinder with the Lavoisier at the center and the remainder
of the ships at the periphery. There would be no fancy maneuvering,
only blunt, smashing force, every erg of it that could be generated
within the hulls of those warships.
The entropy dissipators were already at work absorbing a fraction of
the momentum that had carried the fleet across the reaches of space,
but as it drove into the heart of the Solar System, its velocity was
still immeasurable by Solarian standards.
The interceptors were powerless to match that speed in so short a time,
but one wave approached on a near collision course, with the fury of
all its disruptors and Atom Streams bearing upon the fleet.
The effect was negligible, however, as the fleet smashed by, its own
weapons flaming.
But that passage meant nothing. If the Lavoisier were to attempt
a landing, it couldn't continue to hurl by at such velocities, for
already it was passing Earth.
Underwood, though, was satisfied as he opened his physical eyes in the
control room and abandoned the abasic senses for a return to his
normal self.
"I'm sure my useful range with these powers is at least eighty thousand
miles. Jandro ought to have been able to examine the Dragboran planet
by means of the abasa, but maybe he didn't realize it. I know that
my own range is increasing constantly."
"What do you intend to do?" asked Terry. "Are you going to try a
landing or attack Demarzule without going down?"
"I believe we'll be safer to remain in space. If we can maneuver into
an orbit of fifty thousand miles or so from Earth, and can hold off
the attacks long enough for me to find Demarzule, that ought to be our
greatest chance of success. If we landed we'd be sitting ducks."
There was general agreement with Underwood's estimate, though no one
aboard the ship felt very much confidence in their ability to hold off
the attacks they knew were coming. They kept reminding themselves that
it was not important to save themselves or their ships. What mattered
to give Underwood an adequate opportunity to hurl the powers of the
abasic weapons at Demarzule. After that, chance would have to take
care of the rest.
The hurtling projectile turned long after it had passed Earth. The
entropy dissipators absorbed the flaming energy of the ships' flight
and dispersed it into space to recreate the infinitesimal particles
that had been broken down to obtain that energy.
So, as the fleet braked its momentum and turned into an
ever-tightening spiral, the interceptors swept down once more.
The thundering mass that was the fleet held its course now. Torrents
of energy, slashed from the hearts of incalculable numbers of atoms,
washed into space from the throats of the great radiators aboard the
battleships. Three of the interceptors went down in that barrage before
their own force shields went up.
It became a fantastic battle between almost irresistible forces. Both
the Atom Stream and the disruptor beams could be fired only through a
hiatus in the force shell, but such an opening was itself vulnerable
to the enemy fire of Atom Streams. Therefore, the technique of warfare
between similarly armed forces consisted of rapidly shifting the attack
from radiator to radiator in a given vessel, so that no single opening
would exist long enough for the enemy to concentrate fire upon that
spot.
The interceptors were too small to mount the equipment for such defense
tactics. Their only value lay in maneuverability. Slashing across the
lanes of the battleships, their beams could cross the radiator pattern
in unpredictable courses. The laws of chance were sometimes with them
and their Atom Streams struck an opening directly. Regardless of the
speed of closing the hiatus, such a coincidence was sufficient to
destroy the ship. And so Underwood and his companions, watching, saw
one of their great battleships explode in a nova of atomic fire as such
a hit was scored upon it.
The interceptor itself was fired an instant later by the concentrated
fire of the two adjacent battleships, but its loss was negligible to
the enemy. The interceptors were expendable, expendable for now another
score were seen leaving the rim of Earth and taking up the pursuit of
the fleet.
But it was not their approach that caused the hearts of the men aboard
the Lavoisier to quail. Behind them, slowly and ponderously, rose a
terrible fleet of fifty dreadnaughts with vast firepower.
"What's our orbital radius at present?" Underwood demanded abruptly of
the navigator.
"Sixty thousand."
"Take it, Mason," Underwood said. "I'm going down."
The impact of that moment hit them all, though they had been trying to
anticipate it since they had first known that it would come. It was
not their regard and friendship for Underwood, who might presently die
before their eyes. It was not their own almost extinction before the
fire of the invincible fleet rising to do battle.
It was that this moment would decide the course of man's history.
Everything depended upon a single strange weapon snatched from the
hands of a forgotten people in a little eddy of civilization, whose
sole purpose in existence might have been to carry this weapon through
time to this moment.
And only one of them could wield that weapon, while the others stood
by, neither knowing the progress of that conflict nor able to assist.
Underwood sat down in the deep chair that would hold his body restfully
while his abasic senses swept Earthward to envelop and crush the
anachronism that he had turned upon civilization.
It was more than just, more than ironic, he thought. It was his high
privilege to wipe out some of the guilt that he knew he could never
smother or rationalize out of his mind—the guilt of having been the
one to bring Demarzule back to life.
Of them all in that control room, only Illia uttered a sound, and hers
was a half audible cry choked back before it was fully spoken.
He lay apparently relaxed with eyes closed in the huge chair in the
control room of the Lavoisier, but the essence, the force that was
Delmar Underwood, was sixty thousand miles away, hovering over the
force shell dome that hid the Carlson Museum.
Simultaneously with Illia's cry there came a smashing alarm that rang
through the room with its insistent, murderous message.
"We're hit! Number three and four shell generators have gone out!"
As Underwood held to the point of view of the advancing wave-front of
perception, he had the sensation of diving headlong toward the throng
that was gathering as if by magic about the white, shining columns
of the building. As if knowing of the battle that was to be fought
between the titans, the waiting thousands had gathered when the force
shell went over the Carlson and the battle fleets took to space. They
watched, waiting for the unknown, the unexpected, somehow sensing their
destiny was being decided.
Sight of the milling thousands was lost to Underwood as he plunged deep
below the protecting shell over the building as if it did not exist.
The lightlessness inside the shell was broken by the blaze of lights
that showered their radiance everywhere upon the grounds and museum
that had become a monstrous palace.
Waiting, hesitant guards and servants moved about the grounds,
gathering in knots to ask one another what the appearance of the
battleships and the sudden use of the shell meant. It was inconceivable
that anyone should be challenging the Great One, but the very
improbability of it filled them with fearful dismay.
Underwood entered the building. The vast assemblage of instruments and
machines that had filled the main hall when he last saw it was gone
now, replaced with rich paintings and fabulous tapestries had been
ransacked from the treasuries of the Earth.
There was no one in sight. Underwood continued on until he came to the
series of large exhibition rooms toward the rear. Here, apparently,
were set up administrative offices to maintain whatever personal
contact was necessary between Demarzule and the Disciples he ruled.
Then Underwood came to the central room at the rear of the center
section of the building. Demarzule was there.
It was with an involuntary shock that Underwood saw again the alien
creature he had restored to life. As he sat in the throne-like chair
in the center of one wall of the room, the Great One seemed like some
sculpture of an ancient god of evil executed in weathered bronze. Only
the startling white of his eyes gave evidence of life in that enormous
bulk.
Underwood hadn't expected the twenty Earthmen who sat near Demarzule,
forming a semi-circle with the Great One in the center, as if in
council. They sat in brooding silence. Not a word seemed to be passing
between them, and Underwood watched in wonderment.
Then, slowly, Demarzule stirred. His white staring eyes moved, as
though searching the room. His words came to Underwood.
"So you have come at last," he said. "You challenge Demarzule the Great
One with your feeble powers. I know you, Delmar Underwood. They tell
me it was you who found and restored me. I owe you much, and I would
have offered you a high place in my realm which shall encompass the
Universe. Yet you set yourself against me.
"I am merciful. You may still have your place if you choose. I need one
such as you, just as I needed the brain and hands of Toshmere, who was
so foolish as to think he could be the one to conquer the eons in my
place. You know of his fate, I am sure."
Demarzule's speech was a paralyzing shock. Underwood had made no
revelation of himself, yet the alien had detected his presence. Through
the abasa, he sensed the might and power of Demarzule, the full
potentialities that lay in the three organs that the ancient race had
developed, potentialities that he had scarcely touched in the short
weeks of experimentation.
It made him sick for an instant with the fear of almost certain defeat.
Then he struck, furiously, and with all the power that was in him.
Never before had he hurled such a bolt of devastation. With
satisfaction he sensed Demarzule's powers sway and wither before its
blast, but the Great One absorbed it and recovered after an instant.
"You are a worthy opponent," said Demarzule. "You have accomplished
much in so short a time, but not enough, I fear. Once more I extend my
offer to join me. As my lieutenant, you might become governor of many
Galaxies."
Underwood remained silent, conserving his forces for another blast
which Demarzule could surely not endure. He hurled it and felt the
energies flowing from him in a life-destroying stream. Demarzule's
bronze face was only smiling sardonically as he met that attack—and
absorbed it.
"When you have exhausted yourself thoroughly," he said, "I shall
demonstrate my own powers—but slowly, so that death will not be too
quick for you."
The use of such waves of force was exhausting to Underwood, but he knew
that Demarzule's absorptive organ should soon reach maximum capacity,
if it were not allowed to drain away in the meantime.
A third time he blasted. Then sudden, terrible realization came that
Demarzule was not absorbing the energy. It was being diverted, drawn
aside before it even approached the Sirenian.
In something approaching panic, Underwood directed his senses to locate
the source of the diversion, and found it in the twenty Earthmen
sitting motionlessly about Demarzule.
Demarzule seemed to know the instant that Underwood became aware of
the fact. "Yes," he said, "we have duplicated the abasa. Cancer is
plentiful among you. In five thousand more years you would have stopped
fighting it and learned how to use it. There are twenty of us. You
would not have come had you known you would have that many to fight
singlehanded, would you? Now it is too late!"
With that word, a wave, of paralyzing, destroying force swept over
Underwood. How it was affecting him, what senses it was attacking, he
did not know. He only knew that a flaming agony was burning out life,
as if reluctant to give him a speedy, merciful death.
He must withdraw to the ship to recover his forces. He could never
withstand the attack of twenty-one abasas.
Underwood relaxed and threw his powers back toward the ship—and failed!
Abruptly, the metallic glint of Demarzule's lips parted in a roar of
laughter without merriment, but of triumph.
"No, my brave Earthling, you cannot retreat. You did not know that.
For those who would challenge the Great One there is no retreat. Your
decision is made, and you will fail and you will die—but only when I
wish, and your fellow Earthmen will find amusement in toying with you
as a cat with a mouse before I give the final blow that will destroy
your rash, impatient ego."
The flaming fire of Demarzule's attack continued while Underwood fought
savagely and vainly to retreat. How was he being held there against his
efforts to retreat? He did not know that the abasa held such powers
and he would not have known how to exert them himself if he had been
aware of them.
He gave up and turned back, letting the power flow into the absorptive
cells of the dor-abasa, but it could not be for long, for the organ
would disrupt under such stress.
Then, as if in keeping with his promise to prolong the agony, the
attack ceased, and Demarzule allowed him to rest.
"You were brash, were you not?" he taunted. "How could you dare come
against the mightiest power of the Universe, the greatest mind ever
created, and attack with your puny powers? You blaspheme the Great One
by your presumption!"
"Once, long ago," said Underwood, "the Sirenian forces were defeated by
the Dragbora. Again it is the Dragbora you face, Demarzule. Remember
that, and defend yourself!"
Underwood was startled. Incredibly, it seemed that he had not spoken
those words, but rather that the dead Jandro was with him, silently
backing him, teaching, advising—.
He lashed out, but not at Demarzule. He struck swiftly at the nearest
Earthman. Almost instantly, the unfortunate shuddered and fell to the
floor, dead. In quick succession Underwood struck at the nerve cells of
the next five and they died without sound.
In snarling fury and retaliation, Demarzule retaliated. Underwood
absorbed the blow—and incredibly hurled it back.
It was as if he had suddenly become aware of techniques that he had
never dreamed of. He had not known it was possible to absorb the
nerve-destroying force with his own dor-abasa and whip it back upon
the attacker, like a ball caught and thrown.
It hardly seemed as if he were acting through his own volition, yet he
acted. He felt the surprise of Demarzule, and in that moment he knew
the secret. The Earthmen apparently possessed only a single primitive
organ, hardly identifiable as one of the abasa, for they had the
capacity for defense, but not for attack. Four more of them toppled,
and then Underwood was forced to face the attack of Demarzule again.
Something like terror had entered the mind of the alien now. Underwood
sensed the thoughts of possible defeat that flooded Demarzule's mind.
"Remember that day on Vorga?" Underwood asked. "Remember how the
Dragboran powers pierced the great force shell you flung about the
planet? Remember how your men fell one by one, and their weapons
went cold and the force shell dropped for lack of control? Remember,
Demarzule, it was the Dragbora you fought that day, and it is the
Dragbora you fight now. I have not come to challenge as a puny
Earthman. I come as a Dragboran—to complete the unfinished task of my
ancestors!"
The Sirenian was silent and new confidence filled Underwood. He felt
that he was not fighting alone, that all of the ancient Dragboran
civilization was behind him, battling its age-old enemies to
extinction. He felt as if Jandro himself were there.
The energy he absorbed from Demarzule he turned upon the cohorts, who
sat as if frozen with fear as they watched their fellows slump and fall
to the floor in soundless death.
In near-madness, Demarzule increased his attacks. He adopted a
shifting, feinting attack that shocked Underwood's abasa with each
surging wave of force. But Underwood learned how to control those
surges, to pass them on to his own attacks, which still were directed
upon the Earthmen within the chamber.
Within moments of each other, the last two on either side of Demarzule
fell. The Sirenian seemed not to have noticed, for all his energies and
concentration now were directed at Underwood.
Underwood was tiring swiftly. The energies draining out of him seemed
as if they were sapping every cell of his being, and back on board the
Lavoisier, every spasm of torture was reflected involuntarily on his
physical face. Those who watched suffered for him.
Illia sat in a corner of the room opposite him and her fists pressed
white spots into her cheeks. Dreyer's nervous reaction was expressed
in the incessant puffs and chewing on his normally steady cigar. The
others merely watched with taut faces and teeth sinking into their lips.
In the chamber of the great museum palace, the tempo of the battle was
slowly building up. Though he felt exhausted almost to the point of
defeat, Underwood strained for more energy and found that it was at his
command. His dor-abasa fed upon the attacking force of Demarzule and
returned it with added energy potential.
In each of them, the same process was going on, and the outcome would
be determined by the final resultant flow of destroying power.
He could retreat now, Underwood realized. He doubted that Demarzule
could exert a holding force upon him, but nothing would be gained by
abandoning the battle now. He drove on with increasing surges.
Suddenly there was a faltering and Underwood exulted within himself.
Demarzule's force wavered for the barest fraction of an instant, and it
was not a feint.
"You are old and weak," said Underwood. "Half a million years ago,
civilization rejected you. We reject you!"
He smashed on almost without hindrance now. Demarzule's great form
writhed in pain upon the throne—and fought with one desperate surge of
energy.
Underwood caught and hurled it back mercilessly. He felt his way into
the innermost recesses of the Sirenian mind, groped along the nerve
ways of the Great One. And as he went, he burned and destroyed the
vital synapses.
Demarzule was dying—slowly, because of his resistance—and in endless
pain because there was no other way. He screamed aloud in ultimate
agony, and then the giant figure of Demarzule, the Sirenian—the Great
One—crashed to the floor.
The relief that came to Underwood was near agony. The wild forces of
the Dragbora tore relentlessly from him and filled the room with their
lethal energy before they died.
Then, in greater calm, he regarded what he had done. It was finished,
almost unbelievably finished.
Yet there were a few things to do. He left the building and sought
out the guards and the caretakers and whispered into their minds,
"Demarzule is dead! The Great One has died and you are men once more."
He sought out the controls of the force shell and caused the operator
to drop the shield. Then he whispered, "The Great One is dead," and
like the wind, his voice encompassed the vast thousands who had
gathered.
The message sank unspoken into their minds and each man looked at
his neighbor as if to ask how it had come. They pressed forward,
a battling, maddened mob who had for an hour lived in a childish,
primitive world where men were not required to think but only to obey.
They pushed forward and flowed into the building, battering, clawing
one another. But they managed to view the body of the fallen Sirenian,
so that the message was confirmed and spread, soon to circle the Earth.
Underwood studied the writhing, bewildered mass. Could Dreyer possibly
be right? Would it ever end—men's unthinking grasping for leadership,
their mindless search for kings and gods, while within them their own
powers withered? Always it had been the same; leaders arose holding
before men the illusion of vast, glorious promises while they carefully
led them into hells of lost dreams and broken promises.
Yes, it would be different, Underwood told himself. The Dragbora had
proved that it could be different. Their origin could have been no less
lowly than man's. They must have trodden the same tortuous stairway to
dreams that man was now on, and they had learned how to live with one
another.
Man was already nearer that goal—far nearer now that Demarzule was
dead. Underwood formed a silent prayer that fate would be merciful to
man and not send another like Demarzule.
And he allowed himself a moment's pride, an instant of pleasure in the
thought that he had been able to take part in the crisis.
With a final pity for the scene below, he fled back into space. What
he saw there turned him sick with fear. The great fleet was broken
and burned with atomic fires. Only two of the battleships remained
to challenge the attackers. But they were no longer challenging.
They signalled abject surrender and were fallen upon by ravenous
interceptors.
The Lavoisier herself was darkened and drifting, her force shell
feeble and waning, while the flaming disruptors of a trio of
dreadnaughts concentrated upon her.
Underwood hurled himself toward the nearest of the enemy ships. In its
depths he sought out the gunners and cut off life in them before they
were aware of his bodiless presence. Swiftly he turned their beams upon
each other and watched them wallow and disappear in sudden flame.
Others rushed forward now. Still more than a score of them to defeat
the single crippled laboratory ship, more than he could hope to conquer
in time.
But they did not fire. Their shields remained intact; then slowly their
courses changed and they drifted away. Without comprehension, Underwood
peered into those hulls and knew the answer.
The news had come to them of Demarzule's death. Like men in pursuit
of a mirage, they could not endure the reality that came with the
vanishing of their dream. Their defeat was utter and complete.
Throughout the Earth Demarzule's defeat was the defeat of all men
who had not yet become strong enough to walk in the sun of their own
decisions, but clung to the shadow of illusory leadership.
Underwood swept back toward the darkened Lavoisier. He moved like
a ghost through its bleak halls and vacant corridors. Down in the
generator rooms, he found the cause of the disaster in the blasted
remains of overburdened force shell generators. Four of them must
have given way at once, ripping the ship throughout its length with
concussion and lethal waves.
The control room was dark, like the rest of the ship, and the forms of
his companions were strewn upon the floor. But there was life yet and
he dared to hope as he spoke to their minds, insistent, commanding,
forcing life and consciousness back into their nerve cells. He seemed
to become aware of unknown powers of resurrection that dwelt within his
own being.
His mission was complete. He returned to his own physical form and
abandoned the abasic senses. He sat there in the huge chair in the
control room, while those about him revived and life gradually returned
to the dying ship. Of the enemy fleet there was no more, for it was
descending to an Earth shorn of the hope of Galaxy-wide conquest.
They did not know yet where they would go or where they could find
refuge, but when the wreckage was cleared and the ship lived again,
Underwood and Illia stood alone in a darkened observation pit, watching
the stars slip across the massive arc of the screens.
As Underwood watched, he thought he sensed something of the drive that
might have whipped Demarzule's brain, the goad that made vast superior
powers intolerable in the possession of even a beneficent man, for he
would no longer remain beneficent.
By the might that was in him he had vanquished the Great One! He could
stand in the place of the Great One if he chose! He did not know if his
powers were becoming greater than those of Jandro, like a strengthened
plant in new soil, but surely they were growing. The secrets of the
Universe seemed to be appearing before him, one by one.
A mere glance at a slab of inert matter, and his senses could delve
into the composition of its atoms and sort out and predict its
properties and reactions. One look into the far spaces beyond the Solar
System and he could sense himself soaring in eternity. Yes, he was
growing in power and perception, and where it might lead, he dared not
look.
But there were other things to be had, other, simpler ambitions in
which common men had found fulfillment throughout the ages.
Illia was warm against him, soft in his arms.
"I want you to operate again, as quickly as possible," he said.
She looked up at him with a start. "What do you mean?"
"You must take out the abasic organs. They've served their purpose.
I don't want to live with them. I could become another Demarzule with
the power I have."
Her eyes were faintly blue in the light that came from the panel and
they were intent upon him. In them he read something that made him
afraid.
"There is always a need for men with greater powers and greater
knowledge than the average man," she said. "The race has need of its
mutants. They are dealt so sparingly to us that we cannot afford not to
utilize them."
"Mutants?"
"You are a true mutant, whether artificial or not, possessing organs
and abilities that are unique. The race needs them. You cannot ask me
to destroy them."
He had never thought of himself as a mutant, yet she was right for
all practical purposes. His powers and perceptions would perhaps not
have been produced naturally in any man of his race for thousands of
years to come. Perhaps he could use them to assist man's slow rise.
A new wealth of science, a new strength of leadership and guidance if
necessary—.
"I could become the world's greatest criminal," he said. "There's no
secret, no property that's safe from my grasp. I have only to reach out
for possessions, for power."
"You worry too much about that," she said lightly. "You could no more
become a villain than I could."
"Why are you so sure of that?"
"Don't you remember the properties of the seaa-abasa? But then you
didn't hear the last words that Jandro ever spoke, did you? He said, 'I
retire to the seaa-abasa.' Do you know what that means?"
Suddenly, Underwood felt cold. A score of whisperings came thundering
into his mind. The moment when he had first awakened from the
operation, when it seemed as if death would have him and only the power
of a demanding will had helped him cling to life. The voice that seemed
to penetrate and call him back. The voice of Jandro. And then the final
conflict in the chambers of Demarzule.
New skills and new strength had suddenly come to him as if out of
nowhere. He had been conceited to call it his increased experience
and ability. Yet could it have come from outside himself? He sought
frantically and urgently within his own nerve channels, in the cells of
his own being, and in the pathways of the alien organs that lent him
those unearthly senses. There seemed nothing but an echo, as if within
a great empty hall. There was no answer, yet it seemed as if down
those channels of perception there was the dim shadow of a wary prey
who could never be caught, who could never be found in those endless
pathways, but who would never be far away.
Underwood knew then that if it was Jandro, he would never make himself
known for reasons of his own, perhaps. But there was a sudden peace as
if he had found some secret purification, as if he had been taken to
a high place and looked about the world and had been able to turn his
back upon it. Whether he would ever find Jandro or not, he was sure
that the guardian was there.
Illia was saying, "I can't operate, Del. Even if you hate me for the
rest of our lives, I won't do it. And there is no one else in the world
who would know how. You would be killed if you let anyone else attempt
to cut those nerves. Tell me that you believe I'm right."
"I do," he said in cheerful resignation. "But don't forget it's half
your funeral as well. It means that you're going to have to spend the
rest of your life with a mutant."
She turned her face up to his. "I can think of worse fates."
END
