He leapt forward, impelled by the joy that was in him, and then he sensed that Dundonald was there waiting for him. It did not seem at all strange now that Dundonald should be a hovering cloud of sparks, a hazy patch of sheer energy. It seemed natural and right, the only sort of form for a sensible man to have. His thought — contact with him was clear and instantaneous, infinitely better than speech.
Well, now you've done it, Dundonald thought. How do you feel?
Free! cried Harlow. Free! Free!
Yes, said Dundonald. But look there.
Harlow looked, not with eyes any more but with a far clearer sense that had replaced them.
The men with rifles — Taggart's men and Frayne's men — stood looking baffledly toward the Converter, the gateway through which he, Harlow, had plunged. The change, then, had been very swift, almost instantaneous. Kwolek and the other surviving men of the Thetis were being disarmed, surrounded by more of Taggart's men.
One of them held Yrra. She was staring at the glowing misty beam of the Converter with anguished eyes and she was crying out a word. The word was Harlow. It was his name. He could read her thoughts, very dimly compared to Dundonald's, but clear enough. He was astounded by what he read in them.
"I could have told you how she thought of you,” Dundonald thought. “But I didn't think I should."
Some vestiges of Harlow's recent humanity still remained. He dropped down close to Yrra and she saw him, her face mirroring shock and pain but no fear now. There was another emotion in her far stronger than fear. The man who was holding her saw Harlow too and flinched away, raising his gun.
Harlow ignored him. He spoke to Yrra's mind. I'm safe, he said. Don't worry, I'll come back. I love you.
Stupid words. Human words. Everything had failed and he could not come back any more than Dundonald.
The watch over the Converter would be doubled now, to guard against any possibility of his and Dundonald's return during the time it would take the technicians from the Cartel ships to find a way of dismantling and removing the Converter. And once that was done, the way would be closed to them forever.
Yrra's voice — or was it her thoughts? — hurt him with sorrow and longing. He was not so free as he had thought. And then he saw Taggart talking to a neat efficient pleasant-looking chap with eyes like two brown marbles, and he knew that it must be Frayne. He felt their thoughts, cold, quick, clear, perfectly ruthless. For the first time he understood what it was that set men like that apart from the bulk of the human race. Their minds were like cold wells into which no light or warmth ever penetrated. They might counterfeit friendship or even love, but the capacity for them was not really there. All the emotions were turned inward, bound tightly around the core of Self.
And these were the men who had beaten him, the men who were robbing the galaxy of its mightiest possession.
Harlow became aware that he could still feel hate.
He sprang at the men. He reached out to strike them, and the substance of his being passed through them like bright smoke. They were startled, but that was all. And Taggart smiled.
"Is that you, Harlow? I thought so. There are disadvantages in not having a body, aren't there?” He gestured toward the Converter. “You can have yours back any time. Just come through."
And get killed? No use to lie, Taggart. I can read your mind.
"Well, then, you'll have to wait and hope that some day I'll get curious about your kind of life and come through where we can meet on equal ground. Though I wonder just what you could do to me even so."
Dundonald was close beside Harlow now. “Come on, you can't do any good here. As he says, there are disadvantages."
The fingers Harlow no longer itched for a weapon. “I'm not going back through."
"They'll kill you the instant you return. You know that."
"But if the two of us came together — if we came fast and went for both the guards—"
"Then there'd be two of us dead instead of one,"
"But if there were more of us, Dundonald. If there were ten, twenty, a hundred, all at once, pouring out through the Converter—” The idea grew in Harlow's mind. The cloud of energy that was his being pulsed and brightened, contracting into a ball of radiance. “The Vorn, Dundonald! That's our answer. The Vorn. This is their fight as much as it is ours. They built the Converter. It belongs to them, and if the Cartel takes it they'll be cut off too."
He sensed a doubt in Dundonald's mind.
"It's true, isn't it?” he cried, wild with impatience. “You know it's true. What's the matter?"
"They're so far away,” Dundonald said. “I've hardly met any of them — only one, really, and there was one other I sensed a long way off. Most of them, I think, have left this galaxy."
The rest of Dundonald's thought was clear in his mind for Harlow to read. The thought was, I doubt very much if the Vorn will care.
"Then we'll have to make them,” Harlow said. “There isn't anything else to try!"
Dundonald sighed mentally. “I suppose we might as well be doing that as hanging around here watching, as helpless as two shadows.” He shot away. “Come on then. I'll take you to where I spoke with one of them. He may still be in that sector — he was studying Cepheid variables, and there were two clusters there that were unusually well supplied."
Harlow cried. “Wait! How can I do it, how can I move-?"
"How did you move before, when you didn't think of it?” said Dundonald. “Exert your will. By will the polarity of your new electronic body is changed, so that it can grip and ride the great magnetic tides. Will it!"
Harlow did so. And a great wind between the stars seemed instantly to grip him and to carry him away with Dundonald, faster and faster.
He was first appalled, then exhilarated by it. He kept Dundonald in close contact, and the world of the Vorn, the green star, the black-walled bay, all simply vanished. There was a flick of darkness like the wink of an eyelid and they were through the Horsehead, skimming above it like swallows with their wings borne on the forces of a million suns that shone around the edges of the great dark.
This could not be happening to him. He was Mark Harlow and he was a man of Earth, not a pattern of electrons rushing faster than thought upon the magnetic millrace currents of infinity. But it was happening, and he went on and on.
At a speed compared to which light crawled, they two flashed past many-colored sparks that he knew were stars, and then before them rose up a globular cluster shaped like a swarm of hiving bees, only all the bees were suns. The swarm revolved with splendid glitterings in the blackness of space, moving onward and ever onward in a kind of grand and stately dance, while within this larger motion the component suns worked out their own complicated designs. The Cepheids waxed and waned, living their own intense inner lives, beyond understanding.
"He's not here,” said Dundonald, and sped on.
"How do you know?"
"Open your mind. Spread it wide. Feel with it."
They plunged through the cluster. The magneto-gravitational tides must have been enough to wrench a ship apart, but to Harlow they were only something stimulating. The blaze of the sun-swarm was like thunder, overpowering, stunning, magnificent. He could strangely sense the colors that shifted and changed. White, gold, blue, scarlet, green, the flashing of a cosmic prism where every facet was a sun. It passed and they were in the outer darkness again, the cluster dwindling like a lamp behind them.
And ahead was a curtain of golden fire hung half across the universe.