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"Well?"
"I didn't want to queer the pitch, but " His voice lowered " you forgot one thing. I can't
remember what Parror dragged out of my mind. He forced it out with his gadget, but I was
in a trance. I don't remember now.v
Janissa had overheard even Craddock's soft whisper.
"It is well you didn't mention that to Darum," she said. "But I think the problem can be
solved. I don't know what device Parror used. Nevertheless, when a gate has b6en opened
once, it opens more easily the next time. I have some knowledge of the mind, Craddock,
and possibly we can succeed."
"We'll get it out of you," Raft said. "If it means a course in psychonamics!"
It did, almost. Raft had used medical hypnosis himself, and could help Janissa, who
otherwise might have been hindered by the alienage of minds, the more than racial
difference be-
tween Craddock's thought-patterns and her own. But with Raft as mentor, the secret
wisdom was slowly, painfully pulled into the light. i
They did not sleep. Some drug like benzedrine, Raft guessed, kept them alert and
stimulated for their long sessions. There was technical equipment in the castle, and there
were scientists as well, though their knowledge lay chiefly in the realm of the psychic.
Many allied sciences were represented among the cat-people. Surgery was, highly
developed, as was biology.
It was Craddock's subconscious they were probing, and it was like fishing in a teeming
pool. Too often they caught the wrong fish, till they learned the right sort of bait to use. But
finally symbols began to take form on the pad that was always ready to Craddock's hand.
He scribbled a line hesitated, corrected himself and, step by step, pieced out the record
he had read only once, thirty years before, but which his subconscious mind had never
forgotten.
"If Parror hadn't opened the way, we'd never be able to do this," Janissa said later as she
was standing on a balcony with Raft, taking a well-earned breathing-space after a
particularly arduous session. Before them the slow cloud of mist hung like an enormous
tower.
Raft looked at her. He remembered his half-mocking question of long ago, whether two
species could mingle. But logic did not seem so important now. The warm, living presence
of Janissa was more vital.
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r r
Till lately he had not known her, really. She had been a paradoxical, fascinating girl who
had revealed few of the traits that make humanity human. But now, since they had been
working together, he had come to understand her more, and to know that he would never
be able to understand her fully.
That sweetly curved, softly malicious little face, with its hint of diablerie, its lovely, feline
strangeness, was more attractive than he dared admit to himself. The aquamarine,
shadowed eyes were turned up to his... Eyes of Bast, whose velvet aloofness guards the
night of Egypt. Yet she could be playful too, gay as a kitten might be, and with the same
endearing charm.
Now as he stood there, something hidden and secret flashed between them. There was no
need for a physical embrace. It was subtler than that. But, briefly, it seemed as though a
veil
had been lifted, a veil that hung between two beings who had been alien.
His hand stole out and touched hers. They looked out across Doirada Gulf, to the colossal
columns of giant trees that supported the sky of Paititi.
He thought, Only here in this lost land beyond space and time, could I have found Janissa.
They were silent. Speech was not necessary. Hand jn hand they stood, lost in the warm,
comforting awareness of each other's presence, until Craddock's voice called them back to
the work of harnessing the Flame.
What could harness such a tremendous force, a power which burned in the heart of the
spiral nebulae and kindled giant suns? The chain that bound Fenris-wolf? What was the
Flame?
They did not know. But men do not know what electricity is, either. Yet they can tame it
with insulated wires. What was needed here was insulation, but not only that. There must
also be a means of stimulating the Flame. A safe way.
That was not easy to find. First the last fragments of the lost record had to be taken from
Craddock's mind. Time after time hypnosis probed into his memories, and gradually the
cryptic symbols made longer lines on the recording pad. Janissa could read those symbols
for her own language was founded upon it, as her own civilization was built on the earlier
culture of the vanished First Race. Also technicians were helpful.
For there were semantic difficulties. Raft knew the Indio dialect thoroughly, but he did not
know the intricacies of Jan-issa's more highly developed language. There were symbols
she could not explain to him. Then a chemist, perhaps, would sketch charts, electro-
chemical hookups, or atomic patterns, until the answer clicked in Raft's mind.
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He was no technician, though, and could not have built the device alone. Nor could
Janissa. But his different background of human science was invaluable in casting light
from another angle on the problem. There was the matter of the amulet, for example.
"When you turn the stone, it slows down metabolism," Raft pointed out. "That means the
radiation is blocked at a variable rate. What blocks it? Something opaque to the vibration,
eh?"
"The metal?" a physicist hazarded. "It's-an alloy of chrom-ite. Vanadium, perhaps. We'll
have it tested."
For, though the last secrets of the records in Craddock's memory had been discovered by
now, there were still gaps. In the days of the First Race, different elements had existed in
the valley, elements which were now exhausted.
They found that the truth lay not only in the material of the amulet's setting, but in the
intricate interlocking of alloys, a very tiny machine powered by the induced radiation of
the energy-source itself, the spark in the crystal. That crystal was simply quartz, but how
the radiant atom had been put into it Raft couldn't guess.
The secret, then, lay in a complicated arrangement of various alloys that seemed to block
the energy-output of the spark. Part of this knowledge they gleaned from Craddock's
hypnotically-stimulated memories; the rest they found by simple analysis. There was,
finally, a dead end.
For they knew what elements they needed, and some of them no longer existed in Paititi.
Then the practical value of an alien culture was demonstrated. Raft thought of the
possibility first. He had brought considerable equipment to Paititi in his rucksack, medical
supplies, concentrated food in little tins, and there were his personal belongings, as well as
Craddock's.
His watch yielded platinum, which was vital. There was tin to be found in the rucksack,
and the firearms were taken apart to provide a treasure of necessary metals.
The laboratories of the technicians swiftly analyzed the loot, broke it down, and formed
new alloys. Given the raw material, they could, at last, work out the equation.
The machine, when finished, was not large. Specifications had clearly indicated its
proportions. It stood on a tripod, coming approximately to Raft's chest, a surprisingly
simple device of crystal, metal, and hollow tubes.
The integral part of it was the fuse, which floated free in a mercury bath atop the gadget.
This was the safety, the innocuous-seeming footlong tube that had the power to control the
tremendous radiations the rest of the machine was built to stimulate.
"Parror's bound to fail," Raft said. "Those special alloys
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they don't exist in Paititi. He can't possibly make the safety control, and without it he'd
know the experiment would be too dangerous."
Janissa was less certain.
"Parror has a blind confidence in himself. He might try to substitute other materials. The
sooner we test this, Brian, the better I'll feel. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]