single madman could smash in days the work of millennia.

Santane's face was again rigid and cold. "Perhaps you have not seen what my biological weapons can do.... Guard! Bring in the others!"

Aram felt an icy hand closing about his heart. The others....

Kant Mikal ... the men and women of the Star Cluster....

"Santane ... you haven't...!" Jerrold broke off in horror as the guard returned, leading a line of five shambling beasts. The creatures fought the chains that bound them, howling with outrage.

"How," demanded Santane, "can Terminus attack me if they face that?" His eyes lit, kindled with some obscene pleasure at the spectacle. "First there are pains in the neck and head. Blinding—agonizing pains! Then comes unconsciousness, and memory goes ... then the glands alter, and men become ... beasts...."

Deve Jennet moaned. Her friends and comrades were in that line of disfigured subhuman things. She clutched at Aram for support.

Jerrold felt red fury explode within him. He wanted to feel his bare hands on Santane's throat ... his teeth in his flesh. With an oath he launched himself bodily at the smiling madman, hands groping for the throat under the twisted grin. He saw Santane back away in sudden fright, and the black flash of the guard interposing himself between them. The guard raised his rifle and brought the muzzle down in a chopping arc. Aram felt a searing pain above his eyes and pitched into a reddish blur of oblivion....

Jerrold awoke in a small, glassed-in chamber. His head ached dully, and he could feel the stiffness of dried blood on his brow. He rolled over and staggered to his feet, realizing that he must be at the very pinnacle of the mighty skylon that housed Santane's headquarters.

The same black guard who had struck him down stood impassive in the corner, and Aram could see Santane standing with Deve on a small landing stage beyond the glass. He saw something else, too, and his breath came faster. There was a small air-sled on the landing stage, bright with new paint and Santane's own insigne of the Trident and Flame.

There was a subspace radio installation in the corner of the aerie, and Aram Jerrold knew instantly that he had been brought up to the skylon's top to establish contact with the invading Fleet, to warn the forces of the Thirty Suns to surrender.

Santane 

 Prev. P 34/41 next