"Okay,” said Kwolek, but Yrra had pressed forward and now was asking Harlow anxiously, “What of Brai?"
"If we overpower Taggart and his bunch we can release the prisoners easily,” Harlow told her. “But that has to come first.” He added, “You're to stay right here where you are, Yrra. No arguments! All right, Kwolek, get them going."
Kwolek did. They made a considerable-looking little body of dark figures as they slipped away across the street and disappeared among the buildings. But Harlow thought of their little short-range stunners, and of Taggart's old-fashioned lethal rifles, and he did not feel too happy.
He and Garcia were left, with Dundonald hovering beside them and Yrra a little behind them. Her face was both scared and mutinous.
"Listen, Harlow,” came Dundonald's rapid thought. “You and Garcia will be seen and shot if you just barge out onto the plaza. Let me distract those two sentries first."
"You? How?"
"You'll see. Wait till they turn their backs toward you."
With that thought, Dundonald suddenly flashed away from them. Like a little shooting-star he sped out and upward across the plaza, toward the upper reaches of the towering beam.
Harlow, watching tensely with Garcia, saw the two sentries up on the rim of the Converter suddenly point upward and call to each other. They were looking up at the eery, shining star that was Dundonald, as it flitted high up around the beam. They had their rifles ready for instant use now, and they were facing the beam.
"They think Dundonald's going to come through the beam — they're getting set to shoot if he does!” muttered Harlow. “That gives us a chance — you take the farther guard, I'll take the nearest."
"Luck,” whispered Garcia, and went out across the plaza in a swift run, looking miraculously neat after all they had been through, his little stunner glistening in his hand.
Harlow was right after him, taking a slightly different course. The two guards up there still had their backs to him, facing toward the beam and looking tensely up at Dundonald's firefly circlings.
Harlow reached the base of the steps on his side of the Converter. They were wide steps, their cement worn by the wind and weather of thousands of years.
He went quietly up them, his stunner in his hand. He had to get close, the little shocker-gadget had almost no range. He hoped he would get close enough.
And how many other men have gone up these steps toward the beam of the Converter, never to return? How many men and women have left their humanity behind them here to break through into the wider cosmos?
He reached the top of the steps, and crouched a moment. The guard on this side of the Converter ledge was fifteen feet away, his back to Harlow.
Harlow waited, his eyes searching for the other guard part way around the beam. He and Garcia must make their play at the same time. But he could see the man only vaguely, through that brilliance. The beam sprang up from what seemed a transparent plate, twenty feet in diameter, and at this close distance it was utterly dazzling.
He was scared, and he was sweating, he wanted to jump forward and act but he mustn't compromise Garcia's chances, he had to wait…
He waited too long, and everything happened at once.
The other guard, partway around the beam, suddenly crumpled down onto the cement ledge. Garcia had come up close behind and had used his stunner.
Instantly, Harlow jumped forward toward his own man. But this guard had seen his comrade fall and he was whirling around, opening his mouth to shout.
He saw Harlow coming and threw up his rifle to fire. Harlow triggered the stunner. But he was running and he was not too used to weapons, and the invisible conical electric field of the stunner only brushed against the guard. The man staggered, but he did not fall.
Desperately, Harlow ran in. The stunner's charge was exhausted until it re-cycled, and he had to get in past that rifle. He hit the guard in the mouth as he started to yell an alarm, and then grabbed him.
"Harlow!” rang a wild thought in his mind. “No time now, Frayne's coming in—"
Harlow staggered, wrestling clumsily with the guard on the wide stone ledge, with the shining star that was Dundonald dancing in a frantic way close to him. The blood was roaring in his ears, and — No. The roaring was in the sky, it was getting louder and louder, a great dark bulk was sinking on plumes of flame toward the plaza.
Garcia reached him just as Harlow swung again and hit the guard's chin. The man collapsed and fell, his rifle clanging on the cement.
"Harlow! Run!"
The radiance that was Dundonald was whirling with wild urgency beside him yet, and Harlow heard his frantic thought. Had it been a voice he could not have heard, for the roar of the descending cruiser drowned everything.
Harlow cried, “Come through, Dundonald — through the beam!"
"Too late!” was the answering, agonized thought. “Look!"
The star-cruiser landed on the plaza, and instantly its lock opened. At the same moment over in front of the domed square building, shots rang out as Kwolek and the Thetis crew rushed Taggart's men, just emerging from the building.
Out of the newly-landed cruiser men came running. They had auto-rifles too, and Kwolek and the Thetis men were caught in a crossfire.
Harlow was starting to run for the steps when Garcia crumpled.
He caught him. The Mexican's neat tunic was drilled right through over the heart, and his face was lax and lifeless.
Bullets screamed off the cement beside Harlow and he turned and saw men from the cruiser — two — now three — of them, shooting at him.
Dundonald was a star beside him and the star was screaming in his mind.
"You can't run now! The beam, Harlow — it's that or death!"
The little battle was over and they had lost it, and Kwolek and the Thetis survivors were helplessly surrendering, and the rifles out there were leveled to rip through Harlow as he stood silhouetted against the blazing beam.
He had a choice, of dying right there or not dying.
He chose. He threw himself into the beam.
CHAPTER VII
The impact was incredible. It was birth and death and resurrection all happening instantaneously and all together, with the violence of a whirlwind. Harlow knew fear for a brief instant, and then the very concept of fear as he knew it was overwhelmed and lost in an emotion so new and vast that he had no word for it.
He never really knew whether or not he lost consciousness. Perhaps that was because his whole concept of “consciousness” changed too, out of all recognition. There was a brilliant flare of light all through him when he entered the misty glowing pillar of force. The light was inside him as well as out, exploding in every cell of his flesh and bone, brain and marrow. It was as though for an instant his whole corporeal being had achieved a strange state of glory. But after that instant he was not sure of light or dark, time or place, being or not-being. Something unbelievably weird was happening to his body. He tried to see what it was but all he could achieve was a blurring of color like a kaleidoscope run mad. He could only feel and that did not tell him much because he had never felt anything like this before and so had no frame of reference whatever.
Only he knew that all at once he felt free.
It was a feeling so joyous, so poignant, that it was almost unbearable.
Free.
Free of weight and weariness, the dragging limitations of the flesh. Free of want and need, free of duty, free of responsibility, free forever of the haunting fear of death. Never in his life before, even in its most supreme moments, had he felt truly free, truly at one with the universe. It was revelation. It was life.