And it found one. Passing by the great fifth planet of the unresisting white sun, the rogue reached out with its plasma arms to snatch a string of moons. It gathered them to itself, fused their shattered mass into its own body, linked their electrons into its transcience patterns. With its new mass it strengthened its defenses.
And secure in its new strength, it drew more strength from the attacking stars themselves. It sucked their transcience energies, through the blue bolts and the golden ones, tightened its transflection fields and hurled its new mass always faster toward the maddening white star that glowed on, contemptuous of all the rogue could do.
And that phase of the battle ended.
Though the rogue had never struck back at the twin attacking giants, they were beaten.
Their plasma coils had exhausted even their giant strength. The coils withdrew, collapsed, disintegrated. The blue giant shrank and dimmed; its golden companion swelled and reddened.
And then they were both dead. Their fusion fires still blazed on—but mindlessly now; the intellects that had animated them were drained empty.
Sentience had fled from them. Anger and fear and purpose had gone. The blue star swelled again, the golden companion shrank back to normal size; they had become merely globes of reacting nuclear gas, normal atomic engines no longer controlled by any transcience intellect.
It was a clear victory for the rogue—but its major enemy, the bright white star in its path, was still the same.
It was not defeated. If it was even threatened, it gave no sign.
The rogue felt its vast quiet mind watching, alert but strangely unafraid. It was anomalous, the rogue considered, that the target star did not request mercy, or a discussion of terms. Anomalous—and somehow disturbing.
But the rogue would not be deterred from its purpose. It plunged on to smash the white star and its haughty pride. It sought and found new fuel for its vengeance. Passing a cloud of asteroids, it swept them up and added them to its mass. It reached ahead to gather in the barren satellite of the fourth planet, and crushed and fused the new mass into its own as it sought to crush and fuse all the suns of Almalik.
Already in anticipation, it tasted the acrid joy of victory and destruction.
Thirteen suns would die or be driven to mindless burning. A hundred planets, and a thousand inhabited worldlets would be destroyed. A million billion living things would go up in white-hot plasma as the stars died . . .
And among them, thought the rogue with a bleak stab of pain, would be the trivial living blob of organized matter called Molly Zaldivar.
/ do not wish Molly Zaldivar to die. She must die. I will not save her. But I do not wish her to die, because I love her.
In its deadly plunge toward the white star it sent thin threads of plasma effectors ahead to seek her out. Its sensor filaments ranged the cubic miles of void, and found her at last, still on the sleeth, far ahead of the rogue and dropping toward the atmosphere of the third planet. The arm of the golden giant that had freed her from the rogue was gone now, with its master's death; but Molly Zaldivar still lived.
And felt the rogue's delicate tendril touch.
She looked up unerringly toward the point in space where his massed energies were driving the planet down to its primary. "Monster?" she whispered.
The rogue was silent. It merely watched, and listened.
"Monster," she said, more confident now, "I know you're there. I don't mind."
She was silent for a moment, leaning forward over the sleek black skin of the sleeth, staring toward the cloudy world below. "You've done so much harm, monster," she sighed, "I wish—and yet you've tried to be good to me. Monster, I'm so sorry that you must make war on Almalik!"
The rogue did not answer. But it probed her interior spectrum of thoughts and energies, registered the dark shadow of sadness and, with it, a pale golden glow of—of what? Love? Fondness at least, the rogue considered.
It contracted its tendril to the merest whisper, content only to observe her, while it considered. Its strength was so immeasurably greater than her own that it could lift her from the sleeth in an instant. The energies that had hurled planets about and slain stars could fold both her and the sleeth back into its own fused and glowing mass effortlessly, carrying them with it into the collision with the proud white star ahead.
But it did not.
It watched her carefully, but without interfering, as she darted, secure in the sleeth's shimmering transflection fields, into the ionized border layers of the third planet's atmosphere and dropped swiftly toward the cities on its surface.
The third planet was a blue-green world, and beautiful. It was a world of peaceful seas and friendly continents. Dazzling cities dwelt along its oceans and rivers, inhabited by all the many kinds of creatures that were companions of Almalik.
The rogue watched her drop into the towering spires of one of the cities. It was not yet too late; it could sweep her up even there, and bring her back in the effortless recoil of one of its plasma arms.
But it stayed its energies. It merely watched, as it drove on toward the collision, now little more than an hour off, which would sear and melt this world, and destroy the organized mass of matter that was Molly Zaldivar.
26
The flyer, with its organic passengers and trailed by the green spirals and the pink cloud citizen, fell endlessly through the transflection distances, and emerged into the exit port of Kaymar, crown city of the planet of Kaymar, central world of Almalik.
Clothilde Kwai Kwich's hand tightened in consternation on Andy Quam's arm. Beside him the boy gasped. "Preacher! Looks like we've come to a bad place!"
The great central dome of the city seethed with citizens of all kinds. Many were human, in this central city of the worlds of Almalik; calm Terrestrials, bronzed giants from the reefs. But there were citizens in myriad shapes and in no shapes at all, liquid citizens and gaseous citizens, citizens that had no form of matter to clothe the bare energies that constituted their beings. The diaphragm of the transflex cube behind them was already contracting on a full load of refugees lucky enough to be on their way to some other world. The shouts, cries, hissing whistles, electronic pulses and other signals of the countless thousands who had not yet been so lucky added up to a vast chorus of pleas for help. Twenty crystal citizens hung just before them, their razor-sharp edges of bright blue transparency flashing in the suns of Almalik. Quam dropped the flyer to the ramp, opened the door and led the way, ducking under the crystal citizens.
"Got to get out of this crush," he panted. "Headquarters of the Companions of the Star is just over here—I think. . ."
Clothilde Kwai Kwich cried breathlessly, "Yes, Andy! They'll still be functioning; we'll go there, and—" but she had no breath to finish. It was all they could do to urge their way through the incredible press of citizens. There was neither violence nor outright panic; these were not the enemy. But there were so many of them, so many countless thousands more than the transflex cube could evacuate in the few score minutes left, and backed by so many thousands of thousands more that had not yet managed to make their way even into the central dome of the city. They were orderly. They were brave. But each of them knew that most of them were doomed.
They fought their way to a clear space and paused for breath. The carnivore citizen was the least affected of them; he glanced at young Rufe and bayed a laughing comment which the translators in Quamodian's ear rendered as: "Let the cub ride my shoulders! We'll never make it any other way."
"Naw!" flamed Rufe. "I can keep up if you can. Come on, preacher, let's do what we came to do!"