Over the limp body of Prince Azuri, Agila crouched, snarling and showing his white teeth, like a wild beast brought to bay by hunting-hounds. In one hand he clenched one of the two power guns.
From the other hand, looped and trailing chains of jeweled fire flashed and glowed and glimmered. The lean wolf had been in the act of robbing Azuri’s body when he had been interrupted.
Zuarra clutched Brant’s arm, nodding in the other direction. “Oh, no!” she moaned under her breath. Brant looked in that direction and saw Suoli, shaking with fear or excitement— perhaps from both—holding the other power gun in trembling fingers.
Just before Brant and the others had burst upon the scene of the crime, some of the Sea People who dwelt in the palace had come upon it unexpectedly. It was from their throats had come the cries of alarm and shock and consternation which had alerted Brant and Tuan.
They stood frozen in disbelief, the naked youths and maidens. They seemed not so much angry as appalled, and it occurred to Brant that perhaps never before in their young lives had the Sea People observed a crime of violence. In this peaceful floating paradise, violence and crime, theft and murder, were doubtless completely unknown.
And Brant groaned a curse under his breath, staring at Agila. This dreamlike fairyland, with its innocent golden children had reminded him of the old story of Eden—of Eden before the Serpent. And now the Serpent was come at last into Eden, and they had brought him in… .
Agila caught Brant’s attention with a savage gesture.
“You speak their strange tongue a little, fyagh,” he snarled, his voice shaking as if he was dangerously near to losing his self-control. “Tell them that these things we hold are weapons of great power, weapons that can slay from afar, and of power so great that at will we could bring this city down upon their heads!”
“Agila, don’t be more of a fool than you already are,” said Brant swiftly. “Put down the guns, you and Suoli and surrender. These are a people given to peaceful way, at very most, they will drive you out of the city, and the two of you can easily fend for yourselves in the fungus forests of the mainland—”
The cold, unwinking black eye of his own power gun stabbed in the direction of Brant’s gut. “Do as I say,” hissed Agila, his eyes wild and wary.
Tuan caught Brant’s eye. “Do as the dog orders,” whispered the outlaw chief. “Or we are all dead men.”
Just then a newcomer came pushing through the shock-frozen crowd of the Sea People, and stopped abruptly at the scene before him. Brant recognized the man as Hathera, he who had orchestrated the Dream Festival earlier, and who seemed in a position of some authority in the palace of Zhah.
Hathera said nothing, not even bothering to inquire what had happened here. He looked sorrowfully at the naked body of his Prince, sprawled in an awkward position like that of a jointed puppet whose strings have suddenly been cut.
“Aihee!” moaned Hathera in sobbing tones. “Aihee, O my brethren! Behold the young Prince, the beautiful Prince, struck down by the hand of one that was a visitor in his own city and a guest in his own house!” And he swayed, moaning a soft, crooning, wordless song. One by one all of the other Sea People began to sway to the same slow rhythm, joining their voices to his own.
“Aihee, aihee,” they chanted. And strangely there was no anger in their expressions, only sadness, a deep, heart-aching sadness that touched Brant to his soul.
“Aihee, my brethren, come … let us join minds in memory of our fallen Prince, Azuri the Beautiful,” moaned Hathera softly, and he closed his eyes as if concentrating, as did all of the Sea People in the room.
And Brant’s guts went ice-cold, for he knew exactly what was about to happen—
26 The Ending
As the Sea People joined hands in mental communion, their eyes became blank and vacant, their faces smoothed from grimaces of sadness and despair into placid expressionlessness.
For a long, breathless moment nothing at all happened.
Then—
Agila staggered, paled to a greenish, sickly hue, his eyes wide and bright with fear and lack of comprehension.
The power gun fell from slackening fingers to thud against the floor-mats.
The thief seemed struggling for breath, face blackening with the effort to suck air into starved lungs. His eyes bulged hideously from their sockets: it was as if bands of iron tightened about his ribs, crushing the breath from him.
Then he fell limply, sprawling across the body of the Prince. He kicked out once or twice, an involuntary action. Then he lay dead as a piece of stone.
And Brant sucked in his breath, heart chill with fear. For he knew exactly what had happened. The communion of minds, it seemed, could touch other nerve centers of the brain besides the visual sense. It could gontrol even the involuntary muscles of the body, those over which the will has little or no control, such as the beating of the heart …
The Sea People had slain the murderer of their Prince in their own way … by thought alone.
Suoli uttered a shriek of despair when Agila staggered and fell. Now, soft, plump little hands shaking like leaves in a tempest, she turned like a cornered beast upon the folk of Zhah.
Brant’s second power gun was in those trembling hands. And Suoli knew how to use it—
“Suoli, no—!” the big Earthsider yelled from a raw throat, but she was too far gone in panic even to comprehend his words.
Hathera turned his sorrowful gaze upon the small woman, and she dropped the gun. She sagged and crumpled to the flooring, and crawled feebly some small distance, until her head lay upon the breast of her lover. Then, as if somehow contented, she breathed a small sigh. And … died.
An hour or two had passed since that terrible scene in the chambers of the Prince, and Brant paced up and down, restless as a caged tiger. Tuan sat, arms clasped about his knees, face grim, eyes brooding on nothingness.
Strangely enough, no vengeance had been visited upon the rest of the strangers: only upon Agila and Suoli. But the mind-force had herded them together into a side-room, and they found themselves unable to leave it. Doubtless at this very moment Hathera and the leaders of the princely clan were conferring upon the manner of their doom.
The old scientist glanced at Brant impatiently. “Jim, I wish you’d stop pacing back and forth! You’re making me nervous.”
Brant grunted sourly, and flung himself down beside where Zuarra sat. He said nothing: but all of this waiting was making him nervous.
The outlaw chief caught Brant’s eye with a small, mirthless grin. “Tuan wishes that the Sea People would make an end to this,” he stated flatly. “If they intend to kill us, then by the Timeless Ones, let them get it over with!”
Nobody made reply, but the rest of Tuan’s warriors stirred restively, hefting their weapons.
“Maybe we should make a break for it,” Brant muttered. “We still have the guns.”
“How far would we get?” asked Will Harbin. “Besides, we can’t pass through the door. The mental power of the Sea People holds us under constraint as surely as if there were iron bars across the door.”
“We could try something,” said Brant. “Set the building on fire, maybe. They’d be too busy putting it out to bother with us …”
His voice died away lamely into the silence. He knew it was a lousy idea, but the raw instinct to fight for survival was strong within him. Much rather would he go forth to face Death like a man, than crouch like a coward or a weakling, and wait for it to visit him at its leisure… .