and the generations that were born to them, perished in the 'Kiss.' I'm one of the conscious few, for the Energasts needed some of us for telepathic transmission. Vibration, as you now know, is their death.

"Down in the depths of that great sea they've built their cities, where preparations for the invasion of your planets has gone on for fifty of your years."

"But couldn't you have made some sort of compromise? Murder on such a vast scale seems pointless, even if they're vampires of life!" Bill Nardon was puzzled.

"Compromise!" A tragic smile lifted the corners of the carven lips. "Yes, we had our choice—although to us there was no alternative—to serve as an invading army to conquer your planets ... or die!" The Aurean girl was silent as if nothing more need be said.

A vast astonishment held Bill mute, and something akin to a boundless admiration. Here was a people so high in the mental and spiritual scale, that rather than offer resistance and kill, had carried passive resistance to the ultimate point—to the ultimate oblivion even, of catalepsis!

"Would you care to watch the battle?" Bill Nardon asked softly. "Perhaps it will repay you for the agonies you've undergone. I'm sure those four-armed vampires are going to get a taste of their own medicine they're never likely to forget!"

A strange light came into the girl's eyes, something like the ghost of an incalculable past, but she sighed smiling, and shook the golden head that seemed to be crowned with an aura of light.

As Bill stood unwilling to go, held by the glory of the amazing Aurean being, the tele-panel in the communications quadrangle glowed into life, and the voice of Nydron himself broke the spell:

"Commander, we're about to begin!" That was all. It was so characteristic of the man. The screen went blank, and Bill Nardon pivoted towards the door enroute to the control room.

The broad shining sea below was a maelstrom of fury, as if convulsed by submarine volcanoes, as the spinning globes hurtled into its depths. Mountainous spouts of the shimmering liquid seemed to be reaching their descending spacer. Towards the far horizon, the rapidly receding outline of a few surviving spheres raced in pell-mell flight. Silence reigned, but for the tortured heaving of the lashing waves.

"Land as close to the city as possible!" Bill 

 Prev. P 35/41 next