He will not return a second time. The tank needs no more victims.”
Ignoring their stunned looks, he left the gallery. No one tried to stop him as he descended the spiral stairs, regained the grand entrance hall and walked back to his cargo ship, where he found Histrina stirring into wakefulness. He told her to get herself some breakfast, then made his way once more to the Excelsior. It took him more than an hour to lug the damaged forming machine to his own ship and place it in storage there. Then he made one more trip, searching till he found several pieces of metal which he hoped were of the right quality. These also he stored.
By then Histrina had eaten a plate of pancakes. She gave him some coffee, which he gulped gratefully.
He looked at her with a new sense of pity. If he was any judge, a rude awakening was in store for her.
On the external viewscreen he saw that a large body of people had emerged from the palace complex and was marching on the cargo ship. The palace staff had finally got their wits together and were in a mood to ask questions.
“Time we were going, Histrina.”
He powered the manoeuvring engine. The ship soared above the small moonscape, leaving the approaching crowd gawping.
The atmosphere ended abruptly five miles up. It took only a short while to cross space to the atmosphere of Erspia-5. Laedo eased the ship into it and began to look for the grounded projector station among the spread of fields and villages.
That took a little longer, but eventually he spotted the spherical shape. Hovering briefly to unlock its portal with a radio burst, he settled beside it, to see that men were working in the nearby field as before.
Already they were running towards the ship. Brio Fong was among them. Reluctantly Laedo rose from the control panel and took himself outside.
Anxiously Brio searched his face. He pointed a finger at the sky.
“Have you been—up there? To the Heavenly Mansion?”
Poker-faced, Laedo nodded.
“Did you see my little Helsey?” Brio asked eagerly. “Is she happy?”
Laedo stayed poker-faced. “No,” he lied, “I didn’t see her.”
He turned away to face the projector station. The radio burst had not only released the lock on the portal but had also brought the access stairway snaking down to the ground. That had not happened when he had used the same trick in space. He thought only the lever Histrina had found worked that mechanism.
Anyway, it saved him the trouble of having to climb up to the entrance by means of treads and handgrips on the station’s outer skin.
Histrina had appeared at the doorway. He beckoned her on to the turf, locked the door, then led her into the projector station, ignoring the Erspians altogether.
He seated himself at the control board and spoke into the air.
“The experiment is complete. Klystar has gathered his data and departed. Pass control of this station to me.”
The printer chattered, ejecting a sheet of parchment through the slot.
Completion confirmed. Control transferred to manual or voice.
It was hardly likely that the mechanism was taking his word for it. Laedo deduced that ‘Klystar’ had ordered the station to relinquish control, as requested, in his last moments.
Surprisingly, there was a civilised side to Klystar’s bodily shell after all.
He sat there thinking. The sensible thing now would be to affix his cargo ship to its previous pick-a-back position on the station, and set course for Harkio. If, that was, the projector station staff had been told the truth by Klystar.
Laedo saw no reason to believe that.
And anyway Laedo was no longer thinking sensibly. Incongruously acting as his conscience, ‘Klystar’
had made him aware of a wrong he had committed, and which he had to make amends for, inasmuch as that was possible. Furthermore it had to be done without delay, for delay would be unethical. He could not merely fly to Harkio and then try to direct the help of the authorities from there.
What he planned would jeopardise his original mission, true. But there was no other course.
He turned to Histrina. “How would you like to visit your home village?”
She clapped her hands. “Oh yes! I can see my family!”
Leaving his seat, he took Histrina’s hands in his.
“Do you still feel that you belong to Ahriman?”
Frowning, she shook her heed. “I can’t say I feel I belong to anyone or anything.”
“But Ahriman rules on your world. The goodness of Ormazd has been taken away. Hoggora has had plenty of time to reach your village. Everyone there might be dead.”
Histrina, of course, did not know what he was talking about; did not know what he had done and probably would not be able to understand it, despite his earlier effort to explain the artificial nature of the twin gods.
She shook her head again, more vigorously then before. “Oh no! There is an army to keep the evil ones at bay. Hoggora’s camp was fun… but he’ll never get through to Courhart.”
“Things may be different now, Histrina,” Laedo said sadly.
He spoke to the control board. “Show me a map of the Erspia worlds.”
The panel obeyed. A hitherto blank extra viewplate displayed an ebony background against which glowed a number of locations connected by lines on which distances were printed.
There were in fact twelve Erspias, not ten as Garo had thought. But which was which? Though he had privately numbered those he had visited One to Five, he didn’t know if there was an actual numbering.
The locations on the screen had neither numbers nor names.
He spoke again.
“Return the Ormazd projector to its original position.”
At once he heard the whine of the main drive starting up. The station swayed and lifted into the air. In hardly more than seconds they were again in the blackness of space, hurtling through the cluster of worldlets.
Two plans of action had occurred to Laedo. One was to park his cargo ship on the projector station, pick-a-back, as before, return the projector station to its proper place, and switch the Ormazd beam back on, thus restoring the status quo ante. He could then set about trying to make a transductor, and if successful, go home.
But he wasn’t satisfied with the status quo ante. He wanted to free the Erspians from mind control altogether. So he had decided on his second plan, which called for something more drastic. It would also endanger the cargo ship, which was why he had taken the dreadful risk of leaving it behind.
In little more than half an hour a glowing Erspian world swam into view. The station took up its fixed non-orbiting position diametrically opposite the Ahrimanic projector and automatically pointed the projector tube at the planetoid’s surface. Nothing issued from it, of course. The beam was still switched off.
Laedo took over the manual controls. He moved the station again, steering it to the other side of the worldlet. Gleaming in the light of the tiny sun, the Ahrimanic globe was wickedly on station.
“See that, Histrina? That’s Ahriman’s mouth. That’s where all your evil thoughts come from. Do you remember my showing it to you before?”
“It’s all vague,” she murmured, standing behind him. “What are you going to do?”
He waved to her. “Strap yourself into that couch. The inertial field should protect us, but it might get a little bumpy.”
He took the station further out and positioned it behind the Ahrimanic globe, which he could see hovering against the beautiful, slowly turning spectacle of Erspia-1. The projector stations did not need to orbit or maintain themselves against Erspia-1’s gravity—that petered out some miles below them. Laedo reasoned that the adjusting mechanism which rectified drift would therefore be low-powered. He was gambling that a sudden displacement would be too much for that mechanism to handle.