A blue man-thing pulled itself into his hair. It was singing in a small clear baritone. Lanarck set it upon the ground. His mind grew calmer. This was no nightmare; this was reality, however the word could be interpreted! Haste! The surge of people had passed; the way was relatively open. "Let's go!"
He pulled at the two girls who had been watching the slug which hung across the sky. As they started off, there came the metamorphosis Lanarck had been expecting, and dreading. The matter of Gahadion, and all Markavvel, altered into unnatural substances. The buildings of white marble became putty, slumped beneath their own weight. The Malachite Temple, an airy dome on green malachite pillars, sagged and slid to a sodden lump. Lanarck urged the gasping girls to greater speed.
The Gahadionites no longer ran; there was no destination. They stood staring up, frozen in horror by the glittering slug in the sky. A voice screamed: "Laoome, Laoome!" Other voices took up the cry: "Laoome, Laoome!"
If Laoome heard, he gave no sign.
Lanarck kept an anxious eye on these folk, dreading lest they also, as dream-creatures, alter to shocking half-things. For should they change, so would Jiro. Why take her to the spaceboat? She could not exist outside the mind of Laoome. ... But how could he let her go?
The face of Markavvel was changing. Black pyramids sprouted through the ground and, lengthening tremendously, darted upward, to become black spikes, miles high.
Lanarck saw the spaceboat, still sound and whole, a product of more durable mind-stuff, perhaps, than Markavvel itself. Tremendous processes were transpiring beneath his feet, as if the core of the planet itself were degenerating. Another hundred yards to the spaceboat! "Faster!" he panted to the girls.
All the while they ran, he watched the folk of Gahadion. Like a cold wind blowing on his brain, he knew that the change had come. He almost slowed his steps for despair. The Gahadionites themselves knew. They staggered in unbelieving surprise, regarding their hands, feeling their faces.
Too late! Unreasonably Lanarck had hoped that once in space, away from Markavvel, Jiro might retain her identity. But too late! A blight had befallen the Gahadionites. They clawed their shriveling faces, tottered and fell, their shrunken legs unable to support them.
In anguish Lanarck felt one of the hands he was holding become hard and wrinkled. As her legs withered, he felt her sag. He paused and turned, to look sadly upon what had been Jiro.
The ground beneath his feet lurched. Around him twisted dying Gahadionites. Above, dropping through the weird sky, came the slug. Black spikes towered tremendously over his head. Lanarck heeded none of these. Before him stood Jiro - a Jiro gasping and reeling in exhaustion, but a Jiro sound and golden still! Dying on the marble pavement was the shriveled dream-thing he had known as Isabel May. Taking lire's hand, he turned and made for the spaceboat.
Hauling back the port, he pushed Jiro inside. Even as he touched the hull, he realized that the spaceboat was changing also. The cold metal had acquired a palpitant life of its own. Lanarck slammed shut the port, and, heedless of fracturing cold thrust-tubes, gushed power astern.
Off careened the spaceboat, dodging through the forest of glittering black spines, now hundreds of miles tall, swerving a thousand miles to escape the great slug falling inexorably to the surface of Markavvel. As the ship darted free into space, Lanarck looked back to see the slug sprawled across half a hemisphere. It writhed, impaled on the tall black spikes.
Lanarck drove the spaceboat at full speed toward the landmark star. Blue and luminous it shone, the only steadfast object in the heavens. All else poured in turbulent streams through black space: motes eddying in a pool of ink.
Lanarck looked briefly toward Jiro, and spoke. "Just when I decided that nothing else could surprise me, Isabel May died, while you, Jiro the Gahadionite, are alive." "I am Isabel May. You knew already." "I knew, yes, because it was the only possibility." He put his hand against the hull. The impersonal metallic feel had altered to a warm vitality. "Now, if we escape from this mess, it'll be a miracle."
Changes came quickly. The controls atrophied; the ports grew dull and opaque, like cartilage. Engines and fittings became voluted organs; the walls were pink moist flesh, pulsing regularly. From outside came a sound like the snapping of pinions; about their feet swirled dark liquid. Lanarck, pale, shook his head. Isabel pressed close to him. "We're in the stomach of-something." Isabel made no answer.
A sound like a cork popped from a bottle, a gush of gray light. Lanarck had guided the spaceboat aright; it had continued into the sane universe and its own destruction.
The two Earth creatures found themselves stumbling on the floor of Laoome's dwelling. At first they could not comprehend their deliverance; safety seemed but another shifting of scenes. Lanarck regained his equilibrium. He helped Isabel to feet; together they surveyed Laoome, who was still in midst of his spasm. Rippling tremors ran along his hide, the saucer eyes were blank and glazed.
"Let's go!" whispered Isabel.
Lanarck silently took her arm; they stepped out on the glaring wind-whipped plain. There stood the two spaceboats just as before. Lanarck guided Isabel to his craft, opened the port and motioned her inside. "I'm going back for one moment." .
Lanarck locked the power-arm. "Just to guard against any new surprises."
Isabel said nothing.
Walking around to the spaceboat in which Isabel May had arrived, Lanarck similarly locked the mechanism. Then he crossed to the white concrete structure.
Isabel listened, but the moaning of the wind drowned all other sounds. The chatter of a needle-beam? She could not be sure.
Lanarck emerged from the building. He climbed into boat and slammed the port. They sat in silence as the thrust tubes warmed, nor did they speak as he threw over the power-arm and the boat slanted off into the sky.
Not until they were far off in space did either of themspeak. Lanarck looked toward Isabel. "How did you know Laoome?"
"Through my father. Twenty years ago he did Laoome some trifling favor-killed a lizard which had been annoyi Laoome, or something of the sort."
"And that's why Laoome shielded you from me by creating the dream Isabel?"
"Yes. He told me you were coming down looking for me. He arranged that you should meet a purported Isabel May that I might assess you without your knowledge."
"Why don't you look more like the photograph?"
"I was furious; I'd been crying; I was practically gnashing my teeth. I certainly hope I don't look like that"
"How about your hair?"
"It's bleached."
"Did the other Isabel know your identity?"
"I don't think so. No, I know she didn't. Laoome equip her with my brain and all its memories. She actually was I."
Lanarck nodded. Here was the source of the inklings recognition. He said thoughtfully: "She was very perceptive. She said that you and I were, well, attracted to each other. I Wonder if she was right"
"I wonder."
'There will be time to consider the subject... . One last point: the documents, with the over-ride."
Isabel laughed cheerfully. "There aren't any documents."
"No documents?"
"None. Do you care to search me?"
"Where are the documents?"
"Document, in the singular. A slip of paper. I tore it up."
"What was on the paper?"
"The over-ride. I'm the only person alive who knows it. Don't you think I should keep the secret to myself?"
Lanarck reflected a moment. "I'd like to know. That kind of knowledge is always useful."
"Where is the hundred million dollars you promised me?"
"It's back on Earth. When we get there you can use the over-ride."
Isabel laughed. "You're a most practical man. What happened to Laoome?"
"Laoome is dead."
"How?"
"I destroyed him. I thought of what we just went through, his dream-creatures-were they real? They seemed real to me and to themselves. Is a person responsible for what happens during a nightmare? I don't know. I obeyed my instincts, or conscience, whatever it's called, and killed him."