What will they do if something goes wrong? Jerome thought. He considered the question for a short time and in his growing tiredness found it just as intractable as the other problem whose perplexities still lingered in his mind. It was impossible for him to visualize the pattern of events which would be consequent on everything going right for the Dorrinians. He close his eyes, shutting out the distractions of the unearthly scene, and allowed himself to drift, wondering at his ability even to contemplate sleep when the fate of two worlds was about to be decided…
There were no sounds of alarm—but the feeling was unmistakable.
Jerome snapped his eyes open, responding to the psychic turbulence, and scanned his surroundings. Instinct caused him to direct his attention to the panoramic image on the screen, but it was as lifeless and changeless as ever; then he noticed that one of the Guardians had crossed the chamber and was talking quietly to the group of tunnel technicians. Jerome guessed that the speaker was Conforden, whose duty it was to act as an interface between the Guardians and other Dorrinians. Ostensibly there was nothing disturbing in that, but his yammering sense of unease persisted. Toying with the idea that his inherited neural complex might have retained some telepathic ability, he watched Conforden closely until the muted conversation had ended. He waited until Conforden was returning to his place with the Guardians, then stood up quickly and intercepted him.
“It’s bad manners to whisper in company, Pirt,” he said. “You told me there were no secrets on Dorrin.”
“I thought you were sleeping,” Conforden replied. The raised circular faceplate of his helmet was haloed with reflections, and his face was almost invisible in the shaded aperture below.
“I was resting my eyes. Is there a problem?“
Conforden appeared to weigh the question. “We have just picked up some news broadcasts from Earth. The Quicksilver has reported that Baumanis is ill.”
“Is this on the radio? I didn’t know you listened on the radio.”
“It’s the easiest method of getting information,” Conforden said, moving on his way. “Take our word for it.”
Jerome side-stepped to maintain the contact. “Are you worried about him, Pirt? Do you think it’s serious, your man being sick?”
“I thought you understood these things by this time.” Conforden’s voice was oddly wooden. “A Dorrinian with Marmorc’s powers never has an illness.”
“So what’s the explanation?”
“You have already met the explanation,” Conforden said, placing one hand flat on Jerome’s chest as a signal that he was prepared to say no more. “The Prince has grown stronger than we knew.”
Jerome stared at Conforden’s retreating figure, too numbed to go after him or call out. Now and then during his time in Cuthtranel he had thought about Prince Belzor—always with a frisson of dread as he recalled the baleful eyes and the pallid, implacable face—but somehow he had relegated him to the past. Perhaps his subconscious had decreed that he had too much to contend with as it was, predisposing him to a woolly optimism which assured him the Prince would have no further influence over his fate.
But now, without warning, the situation had changed.
A bleak new version of reality was obtruding, one in which Jerome’s hopes for the future were revealed as foolishly ill-founded, impossibly precarious. Believing that his eventual return to Earth was threatened by nothing more than the possible unreliability of a spacecraft had been naiïvety. It appeared that the ominous Prince Belzor, the Dorrinian superman who had come so close to obliterating Jerome, was now intent on condemning him to…to…The thought was insupportable. Jerome’s mind rebelled against even visualizing a lifetime in the hopeless sterility of the Precinct. The life that would be one endless, silent scream.
“Don’t just walk away like that, Pirt,” he pleaded, breaking the petrifying spell. “What are you talking about? What can Belzor do at this range?”
Conforden continued walking and joined the knot of five other Guardians. They had risen to their feet and were standing close together, possibly in telepathic communion, the bulkiness of their vacuum suits disguising the proportion of men to women. These were the enigmatic mandarins of Dorrinian society, remote and venerated entities, regarded as direct instruments of the Four Thousand. An ordinary Dorrinian might speak to one only once in his life, and even then with many elaborate preliminaries, but Jerome was a driven man. He strode towards the Guardians, waving his arms to gain their attention. Conforden looked around, saw him coming and quit the group to bar his way.
“Stay back,” he whispered urgently. “You don’t know what you’re doing.”
“That’s the trouble.” Finding himself unable to pass the Dorrinian, Jerome raised his voice. “I don’t know what anybody’s doing around here. What’s all this crap about Belzor? I demand to…” He broke off, confounded, as one of the Guardians turned to face him and even in the darkness of the helmet’s maw he saw the eyes begin to lase and felt the blossoming of pain, the special pain…
More than two thousand years of life have not been enough to satisfy the Prince. Indeed, his appetites are greater than ever. And now that he feels threatened he has become a monster in human form. He is clever, egotistical, amoral, ruthless, and dangerous. Above all, he is dangerous—the ultimate threat to the future of the Dorrinian race.
As soon as the Prince identified Rithan Tell Marmorc, incarnated on Earth as Charles Baumanis, as the Guardian who would transport the Thabbren to Earth he set out to destroy him. He was the cause of two fatal accidents on Quicksilver training missions, but Marmorc managed to escape each time. The Prince then devised a new form of attack. His enormous life-span has enabled him to develop his psychic powers to an unprecedented extent, and he began using them to mount a direct telepathic assault on Marmorc. His method was to drive a needle cone of mind-energy through Marmorc’s personal defences, to disrupt and dissipate Marmorc’s kald.
The plan almost succeeded. Marmorc came near to death, but he was saved because such an attack is as directional as a laser beam, and other Guardians were able to interpose themselves between the Prince and Marmorc. Four of them died before the Guardians could assemble in sufficient numbers to nullify Belzor’s power. From that time onwards, until he boarded the Quicksilver, Marmorc was protected continuously by a ring of Dorrinian supertelepaths. There was a brief period when it was even hoped that Belzor himself might be destroyed, because he could not attack again without betraying his own position, and by then many Guardians were mobilized and ready to go against him. He was, however, too wary to make that mistake.
Instead, he resorted for a time to the tactic he has employed against Guardians in the past—random, widely-separated attacks, often involving the use of conventional weapons, against Dorrinians, especially those who were important to the CryoCare organization. He then ceased his activities and dropped out of sight, and it was assumed that he was gathering his resources for a final onslaught, centred either on Marmorc when he returned to Earth or on the CryoCare base in the Antarctic.