Hall remembered then that the ancient Egyptians had numbered a crocodile god among their many deities. Lowering his eyes, he saw that the girl's hands were tightly clasped together on her lap, and he realized that despite her deceptively calm demeanor she was terrified. Apparently in her primitive way she knew as well as he did that the hand of death was in the sky.
He tried to reassure her. "Sebek will be gone before morning, and Amen-Ra wilt rise in his glory. Relax, Ahura."
She shook her head. "All is not well, Dan'el," she repeated. "It is not the presence of Sebek alone from which I know this. AH day, a tale about a prince which was told to me as a child hath been on my mind, and I cannot drive it away, and from this, too, I know that all is not well."
"The best way to get something off your mind is to tell it to someone, so why not tell the tale to me?"
She looked at him solemnly, as though trying to make up her mind. It dawned on him all of a sudden that in a way he had never quite figured on. she was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. "Very well," she said presently, "I will tell thee. There was once a king to whom no son was bom; and his heart was grieved, and he prayed for himself unto the gods around him for a child. They decreed that one should be bom to him. And his wife, after her time was fulfilled, brought forth a son. Then came the Hathors to decree for him a desinty; they said, 'His death is to be by the crocodile, or by the serpent, or by the dog.' Then his Majesty's heart sickened very greatly. And his Majesty caused a house to be built upon the desert; it was furnished with people and with all good things of the royal house, that the child should not go abroad. And when the child was grown, he went up upon the roof, and he saw a dog; it was following a man who was walking on the road. He spoke to his page, who was with him, 'What is this that walks behind the man?' The page answered him,*This is a dog.' The child said to him, 'Let there be brought to me one like it.' The page went to repeat it to his Majesty. And his Majesty said, 'Let there be brought to him a little pet dog, lest his heart be sad.' And behold they brought him a dog."
"You see the significance there, don't you?" Hall interrupted. "By being indulgent in the seemingly most harmless aspect of his son's destiny, the father made him all the more vulnerable to the other two."
There was wonderment in Ahura's golden brown eyes as they touched his. "Thou art wise, Dan'el," she said. "I am sorry I called thee a slave. When the child became grown in all his limbs," she went on, "he sent a message to his father saying, 'Come, wherefore am I kept here? Inasmuch as I am fated to three evil fates, let me follow my desire.' They agreed to all he said, and gave him all sorts of arms, and also his dog to follow him, 'Behold, go thou whither thou wilt.'
His dog was with him, and he went northward, following his heart in the desert, while he lived on alt the best of me game of the desert. He went to the chief of Naharaina.
"And behold there had not been any born to the chief of Naharaina, except one daughter. Behold, there had been built for her a house; its seventy windows were seventy cubits from the ground. And me chief had caused to be brought all me sons of the chiefs of the land, and had said to them, 'He who reaches the window of my daughter, she shall be to him for a wife.' "Seeing the youths climbing for the window, the young prince asked, 'What is it that ye do here?' They told him. and another day the sons of the chief came to climb, and the youth came to climb with them. He climbed, and he reached me window of the daughter of the chief of Naharaina. She kissed him, she embraced him in all his limbs…"
Ahura's eyes had strayed to the sky again-to me western Pleiades this time. Their "rise" was slightly slower than that of the eastern Pleiades, owing perhaps to the fact that the former's course coincided with NRGC 984-D's rotational direction, or perhaps to their commander's disinclination to tush matters. Nevertheless, it was evident that the forthcoming battle would take place in the center of the NRGC 984-D's heavens-"in" the constellation of the crocodile.
Which were the good guys and which were the bad? Hall wondered. Certainly, their ideological differences weren't apparent at this distance. Would the differences be apparent to an objective observer such as the Sphinx from any distance?
Hall grinned wryly. Ahura was twining and untwining her fingers on her tap, and a barely perceptible quivering was going on in her lower lip. He moved a little closer to her, wanting to put his arm around her but not quite daring to.
"Get on with your story," he said. "You left me hanging on a cliff seventy cubits high."
Her bewilderment would have been comical under less Hying conditions. "Thou speakest in riddles, Dan'el. In many ways thou art like She-who-builds-sepulchers. But I will tell thee the rest of the tale.
"When the chief of Naharaina saw that the young prince had indeed reached the window of his daughter, he gave to him his daughter to wife; he gave also to him a house, and serfs, and fields, also cattle and all manner of good things.
And after the days of these things were passed, the youth said to his wife, 1! am doomed to three fates-a crocodile, a serpent, and a dog.' She said to him, 'Let one kill the dog which belongs to thee.' He replied to her, 'I am not going to kill my dog, which I have brought up from when it was small.' And she feared greatly for her husband, and would not let him go alone abroad.
"And one went with the youth toward the land of Egypt, to travel in that country, and with him also went his dogBehold the crocodile of the river, he came out by the town in which the youth was. And in that town was a mighty man.
And the mighty man would not suffer the crocodile to escape.
And when the crocodile was bound, the mighty man went out and walked abroad. And when the sun rose the mighty man went back to the house; and he did so every day, during two months of days.
"Now when the days passed after this, the youth sat making a good day in his house. And when the evening came, he lay down on his bed, sleep seized upon his limbs; and his wife filled a bowl of milk, and placed it by his side.
Behold the dog, it entereth into the house, and behind it came a serpent to bite the youth; behold his wife sitting by him, she lay not down. Thereupon the servants gave milk to the serpent, and he drank, and was drunk, and lay upside down.
Then his wife made it to perish with the blows of her dagger.
And they woke her husband, who was astonished; and she said unto him: 'Behold thy God has given one of thy dooms into thy hand; he will also give thee me others.' And he sacrificed to God, adoring him, and praising his spirits from day to day.
"And when the days were passed after these things, the youth went to walk in the fields of his domain. He went not alone, behold his dog was following him. And his dog ran aside after the wild game, and he followed the dog. He came to the river, and entered the river behind his dog. Then-"
Abruptly Ahura paused as a beam of blinding light leaped from the eastern to the western Pleiades, glanced from a deflector screen and lanced through NRGC 984-D's atmosphere, narrowly missing the mountains that formed the western boundary of the Sphinx's demesne. The Sphinx, silhouetted darkly against the eastern heavens, did not move.
Trembling, the girl raised her hands and pressed mem tightly against her mouth. "It's all right." Hall said. "scream if you want to. No one ever had a better right to."
Another blinding beam-this one from the western Pleiades- speared the heavens, ricocheted from an enemy deflector, and arrowed off into deep space. The law of averages made it an even bet that the next one would strike NRGC 984-D dead center, gouge a crater two thousand miles deep, and precipitate a tectonic revolution. It was also an even bet that me tectonic revolution would give birth to a series of others and that the accompanying seismic and volcanic activity would alter every facet of NRGC 984-D's surface features and in the process destroy every living being on the planet.