It was already dark when he landed in the village. Marden opened the door with the reluctance of a man who knew in advance who his visitor was, and was not interested.
"I thought you were leaving," he said.
"I have a favor to ask," said Clane.
Marden peered through the slit of the door, polite from habit.
"We have to try to come to an agreement with the Riss," said Clane. "Do you think one of your people—of those who are allowed aboard the Riss ship—would be willing to help my emissaries meet the Riss?"
Marden laughed, as at a private joke: "Oh, yes, Guylan would."
"Guylan?"
"When he learned of the enmity between you and the Riss, he thought something should be done to bring you together." Marden's tone suggested that Guylan was a little simple about such things. He finished, "I'll talk to him about this in the morning."
Clane urged, "Why not now?" He had to fight his impatience. "All this is very serious, Marden. If our two ships should meet, there might be a big battle. It's not too late in the evening yet. Could you possibly
contact him for me immediately?"
He tried to hide his anxiety. There was just a chance that Marden would realize his real intentions. He was counting on their intricacy, and their mechanical aspects, to baffle the Outlander's suspicions. He saw that the man seemed doubtful.
"There's something about your purpose—" Marden began. He shook his head. "But then you people don't think straight, do you?" He seemed to be talking to himself. "This fear of yours," he said aloud thoughtfully. Once more he failed to finish a sentence. "Just a minute," he said.
He disappeared into the house. Not one, but several minutes went by. Then he came to the door with a tall, thin, mild-faced man.
"This is Guylan," he said. He added, "Good night." He closed the door.
The battle began in the hours of darkness before the dawn. In the weapon control room, Clane sat in a chair at the back of the room. From that vantage point he could see all the viewing plates.
High on the "forward" screen, the Riss battleship was clearly visible. Like a monstrous torpedo, it was silhouetted against the dark sky of Outland.
All the plates were on infrared light control, and visibility was amazingly sharp.
A hand tugged at Clane's arm. It was Guylan. "Is it time?" the Outlander asked anxiously.
Clane hesitated, and glanced at the thirty volunteers waiting in the corridor outside. They had been training for hours, and there was such a thing as letting too much tension build up. They had their instructions. All he had to do was give the signal.
His hesitation ended. "All right, Guylan," he said.
He did not look to see what the reaction was, but touched a button that flicked on a light in front of the man controlling the molecular weapon. The officer paused to aim along a sighting device, and then released the firing pin.
He held the aiming device steady.
A line of fire crept along the length of the enemy battleship. The effect was beyond Clane's anticipation. The flame licked high and bright. The night came alive with the coruscating fury of that immense fire. The dark land below sparkled with reflected glare.
And still there was no answering fire. Clane stole a glance at the corridor, where the volunteers had waited. It was empty.
A shout brought his gaze back to the Riss ship. "It's falling!" somebody yelled.
It was, slowly and majestically, one end tilted down, and the other end came up. It made a complete somersault in the first five miles of its fall, and then began to spin faster. The man manipulating the screen on which it had been visible lost sight of it for a few seconds. When he brought it into focus again, it was ten miles nearer the ground, and still falling.
It struck the ground with a curious effect. The soil did not seem solid, but acted as a liquid might. The ship went into it for about a third of its length.
That was their only indication of how tremendous the impact had been.
The weapon officers were cheering wildly. Clane said nothing. He was trembling, but mass enthusiasm was something in which he was constitutionally incapable ofjoining. He caught a movement out of the corner of one eye. He turned. It was Guylan.
The Outlander had a hurt expression on his face. "You didn't play fair," he said, as soon as he could make himself heard. "I thought this was supposed to be an attempt to be friendly."
It was a moment for guilt feelings, a time to think of abandoned ideals. Clane shook his head. He felt sorry for the Outlander, but he was not apologetic. "We had to be prepared for an attack," he said. "You can't fool with beings who bombed Earth cities."
"But it was you who attacked," Guylan protested. "The moment I put your men aboard each one ran for some machine, and exploded something."
"The Riss have other ships," said Clane diplomatically. "Thousands of them. We have only this one. To make them talk to us, we have to get them where they can't get away."
"But they're all dead," Guylan said plaintively. "The fall killed everybody aboard."
Clane tried to hold down his feeling of triumph. "It did strike the ground rather hard," he admitted.
He realized that the conversation was getting nowhere. "See here, Guylan, this whole business is deadly, and you're looking at it from too narrow a viewpoint. We want to make contact with the Riss. So far, they haven't let us. If you'll look into my mind, you'll see that that's true."
Guylan said unhappily after a moment, "I guess that's so all right, but I didn't realize before what you were going to do. There was something in your mind but—"
Clane could understand a part of the other's dilemma. All his life Guylan had taken for granted that he knew what was going on in other people's minds. But he had not been able to grasp the notion that thirty men could attack a gigantic battleship with tens of thousands of powerful beings aboard. And that that small number of individuals would set off booby traps which the Riss had designed to protect their secrets in the event a ship ever fell into the possession of an enemy. The concept involved mechanical understanding. Accordingly, it was beyond Guylan and his fellows. Lacking the knowledge, lacking the complex associations, their mind-reading ability was of no use to them in this situation.
Clane saw that the man was genuinely dispirited. He said quickly: "Look, Guylan, I want to show you something."
Guylan said glumly: "I think I'd better go home."
"This is important," said Clane. He tugged gently at the other's sleeve. Guylan allowed himself to be led to the "protector" instrument. Clane indicated the main switch. "Did you see one of our men shut this off by pushing it like this?" He grasped the instrument, and plunged it deep into its socket. It locked into position.
Guylan shook his head. "No, I don't remember."
Clane said earnestly: "We've got to make sure of that." He explained how the "protector" worked, and that any Outlander who wandered near the ship would die. "You've got to go aboard, Guylan, and shut that off."
Guylan said in surprise: "Is this the thing that they guarded me against, and the others who were allowed aboard?"
"This is it. It kills everything in a two and a half mile range."
Guylan frowned. "Why didn't it kill the men I took aboard?"
Clane swallowed hard. "Guylan," he said gently, "have you ever seen a man burned alive?"
"I've heard of it."
"Did he die right away?"
"No. He ran around madly."
"Exactly," said Clane grimly. "Guylan, those volunteers started to burn all through their bodies the moment they got aboard. But they didn't die right away. They gambled on getting that machine shut off in time."