It is a wonder they have not all killed one another, but we know they are still alive, for every year they send us the obligatory signal. Klystar, no doubt, saw to their survival. As for ourselves, what harm is done? It is plain that Klystar is not going to return. We are happy here, living in harmony with one another, in benevolence, truthfulness and chastity. And our lives do not end.”
“The losers, of course, are the people on Erspia, who don’t have possession of their own minds.”
“Neither do we,” Kwenis reminded him. “Does anyone? That was the point of Klystar’s experiment. And anyway, it is better for them than if Ahriman were to reign supreme. That is the alternative.”
Nodding, Laedo decided to drop the subject. It was not politic to criticise the people he was hoping would help him.
“My own star drive is broken,” he said, coming straight to the point. “Can you help me repair it? It’s a simple sort of repair. Then I can be away from here—I’m sure you don’t want me as a permanent guest.”
“I shall have to see. Lylos, Dugas and Markeer are our technical experts. I’ll ask them what they can do.
Meantime I’ll show you to the sleeping quarters you can occupy while here.”
He rose, then turned to Laedo, blushing slightly. “You will, of course, occupy separate sleeping quarters from your companion’s. I know you have been down on Erspia where licentiousness is rife, but we can brook no such behaviour here!”
“What?” Laedo rose too, a disbelieving grin on his face. “But you just admitted Ormazdian morality is all arbitrary—the product of a machine!”
Shaking his head, Kwenis put up his hand as though thrusting away such an interpretation. “We are chaste, and kind to one another. We take seriously our role as Guardians of Ormazd.”
Oh boy, Laedo thought, wouldn’t Klystar like to see this! Knowledge conquered by suggestion! But he said no more, and obediently allowed Kwenis to lead him away.
The next ‘day’, as the guardians reckoned time, was as frustrating to Laedo as had been his experience with the metal-worker on Erspia. The ‘technicians’ prided themselves on being able to repair the projector and any of the equipment on the station. But their repair work, he discovered, consisted of pulling out malfunctioning modules and plugging in replacements from a ready-made stock, an operation which was required on average once every ten years. Klystar, like many technically proficient beings, did not have a fetish about sophistication. The whole thing could have been handled automatically with a little built-in redundancy, or, with better components, could have been made unnecessary. From the look of the station, Laedo guessed it had been put together in a cursory, even careless, manner. Hence the human crew: they were good enough, so why take more trouble?
When Laedo showed them his broken transductor, they clucked, tutted, and shook their heads.
He told Histrina. She became depressed. Already she had promised herself a wider world than Erspia.
He detected, in her disappointment, a private fury.
“So when do we go back to Erspia?” she asked bitterly.
“We don’t go back,” he said in a low voice.
“How… ?”
“There’s still a star drive here. I can hope to persuade the guardians to use it.”
“Or we can steal it,” she said quickly.
“I don’t see how.”
“No… you wouldn’t.”
Her tone was contemptuous. She walked away, her bare feet leaving damp imprints on the shiny floor.
Two days later Laedo’s proposal to the guardians that they should abandon their long vigil clearly was not going to get anywhere. Further, it became apparent that since his own drive could not be repaired, the guardians expected him and Histrina to return to Erspia before too long.
That night, he fell asleep mulling things over. Later, he was awakened by a hand shaking his shoulder.
Histrina stood there. She swayed slightly. Her face had a glassy look. In her right hand was his gun.
“It’s done,” she said.
He sat up. “What are you doing with my gun?” he demanded harshly. She must have taken it from the locker where their spacesuits were kept, he realized. She turned away, and beckoned.
Silently he followed her. She took him to the sleeping cubicle adjoining his. On the pallet, covered by a thin sheet, lay Lylos, one of the guardians who had been introduced to him as a technician.
Histrina pointed to his head. Laedo leaned closer.
Blood trickled from a neat hole bored just to the rear of Lylos’ temple. It was a close-focus shot from Laedo’s handgun.
Laedo had seen violent death many times on Erspia. He tried not to be shocked, especially when he thought of the pitiless experiment on which the guardians were engaged. But despite himself he was shocked. More than that, he felt frightened at having Histrina by his side, still holding the gun.
Wordlessly she led him to the other cubicles, first the men’s, then the women’s. In each skull the same neat hole had been drilled. Histrina had brought the centuried life of the entire projector station staff to an end.
“Now we can leave,” she said calmly.
He stared at her. “How could you do it?” he said blankly. “Especially in here… where Ormazd reigns.
Didn’t you feel his influence?”
“He doesn’t reign over me. ” Her face lost its look of trance. Her eyes flashed, became alive. “Ormazd can’t touch me now. Something happened to me when we flew towards Ahriman. He got deep inside me.”
Laedo said nothing. Perhaps it could happen, he thought. At such intensity the beam might work a permanent change in someone—if they were receptive to it.
He was becoming more impressed with Histrina’s mental sharpness. It was remarkable enough that she had guessed the gun to be a weapon, when there were only lances, swords and bows and arrows on Erspia. But that she had learned to use it so quickly…
This question was answered when she took him into her own sleeping cubicle. The walls were sprayed and splashed with molten material where she had experimented with the gun’s focusing ring.
“Here’s where I practised,” she told him. “Simple, really, isn’t it?”
He held out his hand. “Give it to me, Histrina.”
She drew the gun back, holding it behind her. “Oh, no, I want to keep it. Give it to me as a present.”
Laedo sighed. Histrina had become clever and evil. He was going to have to learn not to turn his back to her.
The first job was to get rid of the bodies. This they did together by the simple expedient of throwing them out of the hatch towards Erspia. They would, with fair probability, end up falling through the shallow atmosphere to land as flaming meteors.
Laedo realized that he had acquired a valuable property in the station. Thought projection was a technique with limitless possibilities, once it was understood. There were people who would pay him a vast sum for the projector. He set himself to studying the station’s controls. They were, he found, surprisingly simple to operate. Klystar had modelled them on the human technology then currently available—for the benefit of the human crew, no doubt—which wasn’t so very different from today’s.
Laedo didn’t bother himself over where Klystar had obtained the human beings to people his exercise in practical psychology, but the drive unit, too, appeared similar to that he was used to.
Not wanting to lose his own ship, he employed a trick familiar to spacemen, manoeuvring it round the globe to reposition it precisely on the axis of thrust, directly opposite the drive unit. In any other position it would have been torn away once the globe was in motion, for the drive unit’s energy field would only partially engulf it. If he had aligned it correctly it would now stay put, carried along by the globe’s velocity.