“Not always, Crane. This place is ruled by chaos, and sometimes a kind of quietness descends even in the midst of chaos. But the land is worse than I could have imagined. The Loti are losing their battle.” The depths of hatred in McArdle’s voice repelled Crane with the instinctive revulsion from the debased and debauched. “I knew they would never succeed! I told them! I warned them! But they would not listen — only a few, very few! But now my time has come! I, Trangor, will be master!”
Listening to McArdle’s rantings, Crane began to fit the pieces of the puzzle together. All the crazy events began to slip into shape. He had not failed to notice the absence of the tanks of the road. When that distant prospect of fire and beauty and terror appeared on the horizon he leaned forward in the back of the car and the expectation of great deeds set an icy thrill down his spine. The first lozenge of living light swooped down on the car as they breasted the last rise. McArdle chuckled his retching cough of laughter.
“Much good will it do the Loti! With the Amullieh I am invincible!”
Crane forebore to remind him that the Amullieh made Crane invincible, too — while he remained in the car.
Two other Loti gathered, their light playing across the road and car, casting disturbing shadows, dancing and pirouetting from side to side. Crane felt he had just about half the mystery solved now; but he dearly wanted to know the rest. He tried to estimate just how much of that golden-linked Amullieh he had broken off in his pocket when returning the map to McArdle; two links and a medallion, perhaps. Would that be enough to protect him from the Loti? Would it destroy the power of the Amullieh altogether?
Either way, McArdle was coming in for a nasty shock when they reached the city and their ways parted.
And in all that long journey they had seen not one clanking monster, not one tank, not one Warden.
The Loti clustered now, shining, casting wavering shadows that ran every which way like deformed dwarfs. The car reached the top of the rise and began to run downhill. Its engine stopped. The road rose a little, not much, just a gentle hump; but that slight undulation was enough to halt the car’s forward progress. With a quiet sigh the car stopped.
“What are you waiting for, McArdle? Start her up. I want to see inside that city.”
“The Loti have stopped the engine. It’s easy enough. With such a primitive device little is necessary to derange it.” McArdle opened the door. “We are within range of their instruments, now. I pity you, little Earthman.”
“If we have to get this near before they can stop our socalled primitive engine they can’t be so formidable.” But Crane knew he was puffing air even as he spoke. He, too, alighted from the car and his grip on the rifle tightened.
On McArdle’s face grew a ghostly look of unendurable longing as he stared at the clustered, swaying lozenges of light. He half-raised a hand and then let it drop to his side with a gesture of renunciation. He turned to Crane and in his eyes the glitter of unslaked ambition revealed what Crane could only believe to be the true man.
“Go on, Crane. Walk down to the city and knock upon the door. For your woman is there. The Loti have taken her as they have taken much else and she is there, waiting for you. Why do you hesitate? What pales your cheek? Has fear touched you too deeply?”
“And when I walk down there — as I am surely going to do — what is to prevent you from shooting me in the back?” Crane lifted the rifle until the muzzle centered blackly upon McArdle.
“You won’t shoot me, Crane. Not defenselessly like this. And I won’t shoot you. For you will begin my work for me. You will open the doors, break down the gates. The weaklings who cower in the city can be conquered by you — for met Go, Crane. Go and rescue your woman — and then seek to flee, for I am coming to take my own and on this planet nothing will stir but by my will. Go!”
Crane hesitated only for a moment, caught in the jeweled snare of the moment and the situation. He could not shoot down this man — if man he truly was — in cold blood. So he began to walk down the road, keeping an eye on McArdle, the rifle ready to lift and fire the moment McArdle brought out his own weapon, conscious of the strange truce of hatred between them. Slowly and casual seeming, McArdle walked around the car. He vanished from Crane’s sight. Instinctive reflex sent Crane into the ditch. He waited, the rifle thrust forward, aimed at the car. He thought he caught a glimpse of movement through the windows, and then he saw McArdle walking steadily away from the car, away from the road, at right angles to it, heading out into the shifting perspectives of the untamed Map Country.
On McArdle’s back was strapped a large box from which a whip aerial sprouted like those aerials rising from the backs of the tanks, under his arm he carried the twin rifle to the one held by Crane, and he marched as though imbued with a purpose that had fired his flinty heart.
Crane watched him go, even then undecided whether or not to pump a shot after him. But the man had, looking back, merely offered to warn him and had taken the map at the point of a gun — then Crane remembered that callous shot at the bush in the ditch and his finger tightened on the trigger. But he let McArdle go. The man — if man he was — had been right. Crane couldn’t shoot a defenseless man in the back when there appeared no need. Then McArdle disappeared behind a tree that lurched forward on its insensate line of march.
X
Crane climbed the last flight of green and gold-veined marble steps and stood looking up, one hand resting on the alabaster urn with its draggle of scarlet poppies crowning the handrail. Behind and below him the hundred-yard wide staircase dropped away to the point where the road ended. Only when he’d stepped off the road, onto the first marble step, had the importance of that road in the scheme of things struck him. It had been like a first solo.
His eyes squinted a little as sunlight bounced back from the tower before him. Glistening white was that tower; tall and wide and round, a drum tower, crenellated, loop-holed, flanked by curtain walls almost as tall as itself. In the center of the tower, directly facing him, the door seemed odd, out of place, small, black, mean — and shut.
He stared at that wall and that tower and that door and the thick heady scent of the poppies hung in his nostrils like a warning. The feel of the rifle in his hand could give him only passing, illusory comfort; for here he envisaged joining battle with beings that were not of the Earth that had borne him.
“Well,” he thought, for his own comfort, “better get on with it.”
He lifted the rifle. From what McArdle had said the problem of ammunition supply would not arise; the arm was charged and would last what, oh — five thousand rounds? Something that would normally burn out the lands into inaccuracy in mundane weapons. He body-aimed, ignoring the sights, and touched the trigger feather-light — but three distinct crumps of light splashed over the door and battered it into shredded rags hanging from warped hinges.
He smiled. “This is a real jim-dandy piece of ordnance,” he said, admiringly, and began to tramp the remaining distance to the tower and the shattered opening.
Under the arch he paused. Murdering holes leered down on him; but nothing spurted from them and he had long since formed the hard opinion that nothing lived in these ramparts girdling the city. His goal lay over there, in the city proper — if city it be. Glistening with pimpled light like a Christmas tree a missile gantry lifted — high, higher than any he had seen before on any film. This was real. This towered. It was the tree he had seen as a child and from which he had lately fled. Multiplicity of lattice-work and elevators, of pump lines and conveyers concealed the ship within — she was a ship. Crane knew that simply enough. A missile that size could blow half the Earth into mushrooms.