It touched Scipio. The Carthaginian halted in mid-stride with the saber lifted, a grin of fury frozen on the gargoyle face.
Court leaped for Thordred, but the green ray caught him, too. The life was drained from him in a shock of icy cold. He stood motionless, paralyzed as the ray darted aside.
From the corner of his eye, Court saw Marion and Li Yang stiffen into immobility. The four stood helpless, while Thordred tossed his crystal from hand to hand and grinned.
"You fools!" his harsh voice grated. "So I did not kill you that other time, did I, Court? Well, I shall rectify that omission now. If not for the interference of all of you, I should never have lost the ship. Yet I can still have my vengeance."
He glanced down significantly at the lens he held.
"You shall die slowly, in the utmost agony. You shall burn gradually as I increase the strength of the ray. After that, I do not know what I shall do. Perhaps I can build another space ship. The knowledge I have stolen should enable me to do that. But that comes after my revenge."
The bearded face was murderous in the moonlight. The crystal flashed a ray that struck Court on the chest. The green light turned yellow. Simultaneously blinding pain racked the man. He smelled the odor of his own burning flesh.
"You shall die," Thordred gritted. "All of you. This is my vengeance."
CHAPTER XVIII
The Man Who Lived Again
When Thordred placed Ardath's body in the small space ship and sent it hurtling toward the Sun, he had thought the Kyrian dead. His fear of Ardath's giant intellect had been so great that he would feel safe only when the solar inferno had utterly consumed it. Yet by making doubly sure that his former master would meet death, Thordred had committed a serious error.
For Ardath was not dead. He awoke slowly, painfully, only vaguely conscious of his surroundings. For a time he lay quietly, blinking and striving to understand. He kept his eyes closed after a single glance at a dazzling glare.
He turned his head away from the bright light and reopened his eyes. His gaze took in his surroundings. He was in a space ship, a small one that was unfamiliar to him. Through the ports in the walls showed the starlit blackness of interplanetary space.
He was incredibly weak. He sat up, massaging his limbs until his numbed circulation was restored to normal. Then he rose with a great effort and looked around.
Sunlight flamed through a row of ports. Ardath instantly realized that he was falling directly into the rapidly enlarging Sun. He saw the controls, sprang toward them, almost collapsing in his weakness.
He examined the unfamiliar apparatus, tentatively fingering the panel. Presently the puzzle of strangeness was solved in his amazingly swift mind. He tried a lever, then another, and knew that he was master of the unknown ship. The vital problem just now was to escape from the Sun's attraction.
Luckily he was not yet even close to the chromosphere. He turned the vessel in a wide arc. After staring through the ports, he aimed its nose at the Earth. Then he locked the controls and searched for food.
Foreseeing emergencies, Court had stocked the little ship well. Much of the food was unfamiliar to Ardath, but he sampled it intelligently. Brandy stimulated him and gave him strength. As he ate, he pondered the situation.
How had he got here? What had awakened him from his cataleptic sleep? The last thing he remembered was emerging from the laboratory in his own ship, to encounter Thordred's ruthless blow. The bearded giant had betrayed him, but how long ago had that been? How long had Ardath slept? During his last period of awakening, he had arranged an automatic alarm which would react to the presence of any unusual mentality existing on Earth. Ardath wished to take no chances of sleeping past the lifetimes of geniuses. But he had not had time to set that alarm before Thordred stunned him. Everyone in the golden ship should have slept on until infinity, unless awakened by some outside force. What had that been?
Again Ardath went to a port and studied the constellations, noting the changes that time had made. He computed roughly that at least twenty centuries had elapsed since his last awakening. Perhaps, through his failure to set the automatic alarm, he had already slept through the lifetimes of innumerable super-mentalities.
Though Ardath did not know it, of course, he had not awakened to find Moses, Confucius, Socrates, Galileo, Newton, and a dozen others. The alarm, had it been set, would have aroused him when those men appeared on Earth.
Ardath glanced thoughtfully toward the Sun. Its powerful rays, unshielded by any atmosphere, had awakened him. He felt gratitude to the unknown builder of this ship, who had installed transparent ports, through which the vital radiations had poured. If the vessel had been on any other course, Ardath might have slept on to the end of time. But the Sun's rays had destroyed the artificial catalepsy.
Ardath rose and began to search the little ship. Its architecture was obviously Terrestrial, the natural development of art-forms he had seen in ancient days on Earth. Moreover, the use of Earth metals in the construction, and the absence of any unusual ones, confirmed this theory.
Certain equipment that Ardath found interested him. The mystery of a blowtorch he solved without difficulty. An electromagnet and vials of acids made him nod thoughtfully. When he measured one of the ports carefully, he realized that it coincided exactly with the size and shape of the entry-ports on his own ship.
The equipment indicated that the unknown owner of this little vessel had expected to find a barrier difficult to pass. The curious similarity of the ports on both ships added up to an unescapable conclusion. Someone on Earth had built this ship in order to reach and enter Ardath's craft. Obviously he had succeeded, but without the use of atomic energy.
He had duplicated the alloy that coated the hull of the Kyrian vessel, yet the energy was electrical in nature. Ardath's race had used electricity once, so many eons ago that it was mere legend when he had been born. Atomic energy had supplanted it. Yet Ardath must work with the tools at hand.
He found himself experiencing difficulty in breathing. The air supply, of course, had not bothered him during his cataleptic state, but now it was becoming a problem. He examined the air-renewers and purifiers, found them simple but effective.
Luckily there were the necessary chemicals aboard the ship to renew the exhausted apparatus. The names on the containers meant nothing to Ardath, but the chemicals were easily recognizable. In only one case did he find a test necessary.
It would be a long journey back to Earth. Meanwhile, Ardath examined some maps and charts that had been in a cupboard, as well as a popular novel which one of the workmen who built the ship had left in a corner and forgotten. These would be invaluable for learning the language. Since Ardath already knew Latin from his last period of awakening, he could learn English without too much difficulty. He could even approximate the present pronunciation, once he understood the letters—like w—which Romans did not have. The luckiest find of all, after that, was a newspaper.
Two problems faced Ardath— He must find his own ship, and he needed a weapon. Painstakingly he analyzed the situation.
Day after day dragged on while the space ship fled toward Earth. The Kyrian studied the charts, the book, and the newspaper, striving to understand. From a rubber stamp on the maps, he learned that the owner of the vessel was named Stephen Court, and that he lived in Wisconsin, near a town which Ardath finally located on one of the charts.
That became his destination. The Kyrian's keen understanding of psychology aided him in understanding what had happened during his unconsciousness. Placing himself in the respective positions of Thordred and Stephen Court, he applied rules of logic.