The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Man the Sun-Gods Made, by Gardner F. Fox This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Title: The Man the Sun-Gods Made Author: Gardner F. Fox Release Date: November 20, 2020 [EBook #63824] Language: English Character set encoding: ASCII *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MAN THE SUN-GODS MADE *** Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net THE MAN THE SUN GODS MADE By GARDNER F. FOX They called him a god and worshipped him. He neither ate nor drank, nor breathed the wild free air, yet he was mighty beyond belief. But grief bowed those superbly-muscled shoulders, for he knew he was human. [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Winter 1946. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Tyr stood on the warm white sands and stretched. The hot yellow rays of the sun played across his ribbed chest and the muscles in his long legs and thick arms. Tyr smiled. It was good to be alive, even if he was a god. He wondered when they would come to worship him again, sending the bittersweet keening of the suota-horns out across the silver deserts and blue lakes of Lyallar. He hoped it would be soon, for he had, despite himself, grown to like sitting on the ruby throne. From where he stood, looking across the groined vastness of the Lord Chamber, he could see the upturned faces of his people. Even the rat-face of Otho he liked at moments like those, for the wondrously beautiful face of Fay smiled red-lipped at him. Tyr gave many gifts to Fay from the treasures that the Lyallar heaped upon him. And always it seemed she was eager for more, her brown eyes flickering like those of a greedy child. Tyr spread his arms, feeling millions of tiny nerve-ends in his skin open to drink in the energy pouring from the titanic orb of fire in the heavens that was sun to the planet Lyallar. Tyr ate no food, and breathed no air. All that he needed for his existence he got from the sun. As the energy flooded into him, making him tingle in every fibre of his being, Tyr felt again the effect of that energy on his brain. It was as though the power he fed on was so great that it opened the deeper spaces of his mind so that any problem was no problem at all—while the moment lasted. He had found the stone tower in a moment like that. Seen it at first miles away, standing lone and stark on the silver sand. Built of brownish rock, round as the bole of a tree, it was something new to him who had explored all the strange places of this planet. Tyr had run to it, testing his swift feet. He could have distanced a dozen cheetahs, one after another, could Tyr. He was more than swift. He was inhuman. The lock was easy to break with all that energy flooding him. He merely took it in his big hands and his muscles writhed and bulged, and the flaky red metal of the lock snapped. With the flat of a hand he pushed open the door and went within. It was dim and cool inside, and at first Tyr did not like it. There were queer objects all about him, some of glass, some of metal. Here were curves and cones and vibrating rods of the thickness of a man's little finger. And books! Even the libraries of the Trylla contained no books such as these. He lifted one down and browsed, and found that his mind was understanding it, knowing what those terms and symbols meant, without thinking. His mind frightened Tyr at times. It was almost not a part of him. It was as though all the men and women who had been his forebears had left a little something of themselves in his makeup, so that their knowledge and experience could guide their descendant. Many hours Tyr spent in that odd place. It was a change from the deserts and the ruby throne. Gradually, through the years, he found that he was amassing an education from the books and the glass and metal objects— Suu-ohhh-taaaa! The clarion notes rang sweet and clear. They brought Tyr erect, the peculiar ring chained to his neck bouncing on his chest. He looked toward the dim horizon, where stood Yawarta, city of the ruby throne. This was the call to the god of the Lyallar. Tyr ran easily, like a perfect machine that never tired. Across the white sands, and through the eerie forest in which all the trees resembled frost-flakes, silver-white in the sun. Deep in the heart of the forest lay an azure pool, its blueness contrasting startlingly with the silver of the forest. The towers of Yawarta were slim and dark beyond the grassy fields. Like drops of blood on a satin pillow they brooded, reminding the Tryllan race that they were slaves to the ardth who dwelt far beyond the nearest star. A girl was standing before a golden door set flush with the hillside. "Fay!" "Speak not, on your life!" she whimpered. They stood silent, breathing softly. Tyr heard the voices then, harsh voices, where the Tryllans spoke in musical syllables. "The ardth! They have returned?" "Yes. They swear to kill you, Tyr. They are hunting you now, along the tunnels to the door." Tyr bent and swung the girl high on his chest, grinning. "They will never catch Tyr." Tyr began to run. His legs blurred with the speed of his motion. He stepped out along the grassy slope, and down it, and then was running free on the plains. He heard Fay's gasp as she grew aware of his pace. She buried her head against his shoulder to breathe, and her yellow hair whipped and stung his face as the wind tossed it. For four hours Tyr ran, not needing to breathe. When he swung the girl down, he was as composed as though he had moved ten feet. Fay stared up at him with warm brown eyes. "Truly you are a god, Tyr. Only a god could run without effort." "No god. Only—only—" He halted. He had no word to describe himself. Neither did the Trylla, except "god." So god he had become, unwillingly; yet he was dimly aware that he was unique among men, that he stood alone. "We are far from the Old Ones, the ardth, here," he said. "It would be easy to dwell here on the deserts until they have left." Fay stirred restlessly, saying, "I do not want to stay on the deserts. They are bare places. No people, no laughter." "I don't blame you. There must be something I can do." He rubbed his hands on the soft white fur that clasped his hips. A hot anger was beating up inside him, making his nostrils flare. The Old Ones! They had come back to Lyallar, where Tyr ruled! The masters of planets and the far reaches of space had come back. He was one, and the ardth were many. Individually, nothing could ever defeat him. But one against a race! He shook his head. "You could fight them, Tyr. You are a god. What can the Old Ones do to you? There is no way of killing you. Sometimes an assassin has tried, while you sat on the ruby throne. But no one has ever succeeded." That was true. Yet he did not tell her that his own uncanny speed saved him. There was no sense in testing fate, by letting a weapon strike him. He had a subtle knowledge that he might be immune to certain types of missiles, but he was not sure. "You could walk into Yawarta and slay them all, Tyr," the girl said softly, watching him carefully with her brown eyes. "Then we could go back to the old days. You could give me that emerald necklace I want." Tyr wondered at the greed in the brown eyes. It disturbed him. But it did not disturb him as much as the thoughts of the Old Ones. Thought of them brought a yearning for battle that rose red and mist-like inside his great chest. How to tell of that hotness within him, where his guts ought to be, but were not, that made his heart pump with fury? Yet, despite his rage, he was alert and careful as a stalking cat. He could not tell this to Fay; she wanted him to walk unarmed into Yawarta and blast the ardth with some sort of supernatural power. He walked around on the white sand, brooding at his moving feet. He looked into his mind for the words, stumbling and halting. "Fay, the Trylla have made of me a god. Now I know I am no god. I am not such a god as the legends of the Tryllan cults tell of, at any rate. I am only a man. A human being, who is something of a freak." There was a patient smile on the girl's red mouth. She shook her head and the soft yellow hair tumbled around her bare shoulders. "We have spoken of this before, Tyr. Always you say that you are not a god, and then you turn around and do what only a god can do." Tyr sighed. "Maybe I am a god. Maybe I expect a god to be too much. But that is not exactly the point. It is this: the Trylla call me god, no matter what I call myself. Therefore I must act like a god, for their sake." Fay nodded, brown eyes fastened on him. Tyr said slowly, "A god would not let oppressors molest his people, would he, Fay?" "That is just what I have said. You must go into Yawarta and slay and slay—" "No. No, I do not think that is what a god would do." Fay frowned slightly. She kicked at a lump of sand and watched it fly apart. She ran a finger into her thick yellow hair and twirled it. "Of course you may be right," she said tartly. "I am not versed in the way of gods." "Nor am I," scowled Tyr. "But, in the heart of me, something says there is another way. That, if I can convince the ardth that I could defeat them, smash them in some way—then what would be the triumph of a god." "That might take a long time. I would like very much to have that emerald necklace. Otho said it was worn by Queen Yatha-sath two thousand years ago. Please, Tyr?" She came close to him, perfumed warmth and soft white skin. Her mouth was very red. But Tyr looked away, frowning. "The Old Ones derive their powers from a thing called science," he said slowly. "It says so in a book in the Tower. If I could learn that science, I might defeat them with their own weapons. But that would take a long time. Many years." He stared up into the sun and smiled gently, feeling its hot rays lave his chest and arms and thighs. Like bubbles of air surging up through water, he felt the dormant strength of his muscles. He had strength. A strong man can fight with his hands and with his legs. He would fight. He turned sharply to Fay and asked, "What is the Barrow that the Trylla often mention? Where is it?" "The Barrow is the pride of the Trylla. Without it there would be no hope." "Yes, yes. I know. But what is it?" "It is the hidden place where all the wartime secrets of the race are stored. When the last invasion of the Old Ones took place, nearly a hundred years ago, all the accumulated knowledge of the conquered Tryllans was locked away lest the Old Ones destroy it." "Could you find the Barrow?" Fay shuddered. Tyr looked at her, saw her fingers move through her yellow hair, watched with gentle smile as white teeth nibbled at red lip. He put out his big hands and held her arms. "It is for the Trylla that I ask." "I—I know. I can find the Barrow." Her chin lifted defiantly. "Of what use are old legends if they make those who hear them weaklings and cowards? Better to—to die bravely than to hole up like the tabbug at the first cry of the hunting- cat!" Tyr grinned at her, wondering if she believed in her own words. She was so lovely, so childishly greedy for pretty things, so—he frowned at the idea—so unconsciously selfish, wrapped in her own interests, that abstract terms like bravery and cowardice seemed alien to her tongue. Her brown eyes flirted up at him from under their long lashes, and caught his warm grin. She muttered sullenly, "The Barrow is five days' journey from the Desert of the Dead, and that lies two days' travelling from here." "So near?" "Much of the journey is across terrible deserts, and the rest is over insurmountable mountain barriers. The Barrow is atop the tallest mountain on all the planet." "That makes it so much harder for the Old Ones to find it," Tyr said. "The Old Ones can fly. The Trylla must walk. Our monorails run only in the cities. Oh, Tyr, the only way you can win is to go into the chambers of Yawarta and destroy the leading ardth. You can do it no other way!" "If Harl the Ancient still lives," Tyr dreamed, "he could help me fight. He was the greatest of the Tryllan warriors. There are rumors he does live, in the Barrow. That is why I must find it. I need Harl." The girl nibbled at her red mouth sullenly, saying, "I don't see why you don't do as I say. In that way, you'd get to power faster. We wouldn't have to share the glory with Harl." "The ardth aren't bowling pins to fall at the sway of an arm, Fay. They are dangerous men. Wise men with enough savagery in their blood to make them vicious." Tyr knew he could never hope to walk into the secret chambers of the ardth alive. He knew his limitations. He was human, after a fashion. He bled when cut, and he ached when bruised. And the ardth— The ardth were a strange race. They were nomads who swept across the trails of the stars in great vessels that spanned a bridge of space from planet to planet. Never happy for long, they were eaten by a cancerous unrest that drove them on and on, to the outermost rims of the galaxies, hunting always. They had home planets, too, but they were seldom at home. Instead they chose to lock themselves in ships of metal and fling themselves out between the suns. Instead of green grass and trees, their windows looked on blackness relieved only by twinkling dots that were stars, and steadily glowing pinpricks that were unexplored planets. Five hundred years ago they had come to Lyallar. The Tryllans, then a great race, had fought them bitterly and had driven them off. Three hundred years later, they came again; this time they came for war. That war lasted seventy-two years and, at its end, the Tryllans were a broken race. And that time the Old Ones stayed, or, rather, their cities stayed —and the Glow. No one really knew what the Glow was. It made the Old Ones powerful, and was as closely guarded by them as was the Barrow by the Trylla. Without the Glow, the ardth were naught. They hid the Glow deep in their biggest city, that they named Mart. "If we could go to Mart and find this Glow," said Tyr abruptly, out of his deep thought. Fay laughed bitterly, "The Barrow one can find by rolling downhill, compared to finding the Glow and using it." Tyr grunted. It was hard, being a god. Sometimes he wished he were like other men, for then he would have no people to protect, no Old Ones to battle for a race that looked to him for guidance. Often he had thought that the Old Ones might be gods, but he knew that none of them could do what he could do. His godship prodded him into saying, "Let us find the Barrow, and Harl." "Harl is old, very old," replied the girl. "He is so old that he must be a doddering gaffer now." "But his brain would be young," Tyr argued. "And it is the brain that is trained in war from which I seek aid." The girl sat on a rock and undid a sandal and shook sand from it. She shrugged petulantly and fastened her sandal. "Must we go now? It is almost night." Tyr looked at the sun low on the horizon. Tyr did not like to travel by night. He preferred the hot day, when the sunrays beat with insistent heat about his tanned chest and shoulders. But there was need for hurry. The Old Ones did not stop for darkness, and neither would he. "Come," he said shortly. The way was easy, at first. In the red light of the dying sun, they saw the sand before them, each rise and dip moulded into graceful curves by the winds that whipped the barrens night and day. They went lightly, swiftly. Slowly the stars loomed in the darkening sky above them. And, as is the way with travellers the worlds over, they grew silent and more intimate in unspoken thought. Once or twice Fay's hand brushed Tyr's, and he helped her across the higher dunes. On a hard swirl of sand, they stood close. Fay whispered, "All those stars, Tyr. You would think the Old Ones would be satisfied with so many. They might leave Lyallar alone!" Tyr felt surprise at the emotion within him. It was almost a sympathy with the nomad oppressors. "They have curiosity. I have it myself. I have lived on every desert that Lyallar can boast, yet I am ever searching for a bigger and a hotter one. Maybe the Old Ones are like that." He looked down at the girl, smiling wistfully at the pale loveliness of her hair, at the warm brown of her eyes. He shivered, watching her. He wanted so much to take Fay and go out into the desert with her, away from everything that smacked of godhood. They could go to the Tower, and live there safely. The ardth would not find him there. There would be none to say him yea or nay. If—he was a god! Tyr sighed and turned from Fay's red mouth and looked out across the unending dunes. An inner voice whispered, The Trylla need you, Tyr. You are their god, and a god does not run away. When is a god needed more than in time of trouble? You cannot leave them, for they are as children. You must fight. He nodded in the darkness, grimly. Side by side they went on through the night. And now they went apart from each other, as though the decision were a final parting. Words were unnecessary. The Trylla needed Tyr. It was dawn when they saw the others trudging wearily across a far bank of sand. Tyr shouted and waved, summoning them. Dragging deadened limbs they came, in torn clothes and with smears and streaks of dirt on gaunt faces. They stood before him, and in their eyes was the dull glaze of despair and in their voices the sullen acceptance of their fate. "We fled after seeing the ardth ships come." "They will find us, though. We want just a few more days of freedom." "All of Yawarta is captive to them. They have made Otho governor, and thrown Zarman, whom you appointed ruler, into the cells." "And they have sent out commands that you be returned to them at once. They have offered rewards." Tyr grinned mirthlessly, shaking his tawny head. A return meant torture, possibly death. If the Old Ones thought enough of him, they might feed him to the Glow. He said, "Fay and I are bound for the Barrow. We will find Harl and call him to lead new armies against the ardth. Join with us. We shall win." "We cannot win ... alone." They looked at him out of dull eyes in which tiny flames of hope sprang alive and flickered, and then died. They shuffled their feet. They looked tired enough to fall, and the bare soles of several bled red drops into the sands. "Sleep," said Tyr gently. "You need rest. Dawn is coming up, and I can go on in the sunlight to survey the path before us." He drew Fay with him, over the crest of a dune. His fingers rose to touch the circlet of dull gold that gleamed from the chain about his neck. Slowly he unfastened it as Fay watched, staring. The ring was a part of him, for he had worn it ever since he could remember. Now he wanted Fay to wear it. It bruised his ribs when he ran, or bounced on his back and against his jaw. But more than that, every Tryllan knew that ring. It would be a symbol of power in Fay's hands. "Use it well," he said, closing her white fingers about it. Her brown eyes were wide, looking up at him. Tyr put out his hands and caught her arms above her elbows. He held her like that, just looking at her beauty, for a long moment. And then he turned and ran swiftly, lest the muffled thunder of his blood should smash the resolutions his brain had welded so firmly. II Sand slipped away in back of him, as wind passes the arrow in its flight. Air was cool on his chest and on the powerful thighs that rippled with muscles as he ran. The sun beat at him, leaving him in its warmth. He grew strong and powerful as the cells of his skin sucked in energy. Run, Tyr. Run faster and yet faster, that the thoughts teeming in your brain may be left behind. You are a god, and a girl named Fay is not for you. You have only the ardth-men, Tyr. They are your enemies, and they must be vanquished! But how? But how? His brain howled in desperation. They are so many. They know sciences, and they have weapons. You have two bare hands and a strong body, a strange body, a body that frightens you at times, it is so different. Something dug into the sand ahead of him and exploded. Tyr swerved like a frightened faun and came to a stop. Something else blew up a little closer to him. Hard granules of sand stung his flesh. He saw them, then, in the sky. Three sleek aircraft with stubby wings and a long fuselage out of which shot tiny glints of red. The ardth! Tyr drew his hands down his ribs, lips twisted. By the god that he was supposed to be! He'd show them a race, even if they could fly and he could only run. The sun was hot and searing. Good! It was his ally, that immense orb. While it shone, they could not catch him. Tyr ran. His pace was a blurred thing. His flight was that of the kala-bird whistling before the hawk. He swerved and he darted, and he made fools of the men in the shiny things above and behind him. It was an incredible thing that he did, but Tyr was an incredible being. The rules were not made for him, for who made the rules knew nothing of Tyr. He outran those aircraft. All day long, while the sun beat upon him, Tyr flew. Vaguely he realized that he was a living, functioning thing of energy —not pure energy, but energy translated into human power. Yet he was human, and the fliers were machines. He lost them among the rocks, but the aircraft spread in widening circles and one of them found him again. And so Tyr ran on. Once or twice he stumbled, toward the end of the day. The thunder of the jet planes was loud in his ears. They swooped low, casting long shadows before them. There were no more explosions. Those had stopped once he began his mad race. He thought, 'At least, Fay and the others are safe. I've led the ardth a long way from them.' The muscles in his legs were hardening, knotting. They grew heavy and inert. Tyr staggered. The planes had landed, and the men were coming for him. The stars-and-bars on their jackets loomed bigger and bigger as he stood and waited. His chest rippled with sweat, and his long arms hung limp on either side of his giant frame. He could fight and die here, with the moon starting its rise in front of him, and the wilderness of his run behind him. His body was pouring the energy through his system again, and his muscles grew less heavy. "By Kagan!" swore the first ardth-man, staring at him with round eyes over the muzzle of a lifted gun. "Who are you, man? What are you?" "He's their god," rasped another, appraising Tyr with knowing eyes. "No wonder," grunted the third, holstering his weapon. "A god such as he would find me among his worshippers! They'll never believe us on Rigel-7!" "Do you yield?" asked the first. They did not seem so frightening, close up. They were like Tyr. They were men, smaller than he, but men. He could kill them all, here and now, but— He owned a desire to see more of these ardth. Perhaps he could reason with their commander, make some sort of compromise. He would do anything to save the Trylla. Fay and the others were safe. Let them go to the Barrow. He would know where to find them when he escaped from the ardth. And he would escape. There was no prison made that could hold Tyr. He said slowly, "I yield. I will go with you." Dully, despite all his hopes and plans, he knew himself a complete and total failure as a god. Her hair was black as the tip of a raven's wing, parted in the middle, and drawn back over tiny ears. She had black eyes and a wide, crimson mouth that kept smiling at him, gently. She stood in the midst of the cloaked ardth-men who stared at him as they listened to the voices of the airmen who had captured him. Tyr grew uncomfortable under her steady gaze. He shifted his feet, feeling silly, looming so big above the smaller pilots. He felt that they all were laughing at him. What a god he was! No wonder they laughed at him secretly. A god who was the protector of his race, allowing capture by three pilots he could have killed with three blows of his big hands. The eyes and the mockery of the men he did not mind, but the steady eyes of the woman— Forget her, and look about you, Tyr. This is a room of the Old Ones, with its silver and black-glass windows arching a hundred feet up along the wall, and the hooded eagle design carven into the stone and wood. A highbacked chair stood empty on a rostrum as the man who usually filled it stood with the others, watching him. This was wealth, from the priceless red damask drapes at the windows to the hand-laid tiles beneath his feet. It was no use. Her dark eyes were too steady. "A lie," said one of the Old Ones calmly. "No man could do what he did." "He is no man, sire. He is the one the Trylla worship. He is—Tyr!" They started at that. The pilot had told his story cleverly. He grinned with self-appreciation as the murmurs and the cries rewarded him. Tyr knew the closer scrutiny of the eyes beneath drawn brows. They ate him up, those eyes. Especially the eyes of the woman. A lean man with a bald head and iron-grey mustache stepped forward and walked around Tyr, his glittering eyes probing. Shaking his head dubiously, he said, "Katha, you're our biochemical expert. Can it be?" The woman with the black hair came toward him, swaying gracefully. "I must make tests, Space Commander," she said, and Tyr liked the hoarse vibrancy of her voice. It sent tingles down his spine. But maybe that was the black eyes of her that smiled up at him as she asked, "Is it true, what he says?" "Yes, it's true. I outran their planes. I could have killed them, but I did not choose to." "Then why didn't you?" she smiled. "Because I—show me to your commander. I want to treat with him. That is why I suffered capture. I will offer peace for peace. All I ask—" The lean man with the bald head came around in front of Tyr and stared at him with cold eyes. "I am Space Commander Ronald Mason," he said flatly. "I am in charge of Expeditionary Space Force to the Fornax Cluster. You will offer peace? But there is no war." Tyr held the snarl in his throat as he replied, "But there will be war, unless the ardth are willing to deal with me for the liberty of the Trylla." Mason smiled, but Tyr saw the flecks of passion deep in his ice-blue eyes. "The Trylla are a free race." Tyr said patiently, "The Trylla worship me. They think I am a god. I know, and you know, that I am nothing of the sort. Yet I would help them, if I could. You cannot keep me here, if I seek to escape. I can plunge this planet into the bloodiest war you ever saw. But I do not want to do that. I seek only peace. Peace, and some sort of pride for the Trylla, that they may once again hold up their heads—" Mason interposed, "A laudable desire. But the Trylla are quite content. Otho tells me they will make no trouble. As for your idle boast of escaping—" Space Commander Mason gestured and turned away with, "Test him, Katha. See why his responses vary so far from the norm." Red anger beat up in Tyr in mounting pulsings. He bit into his lip and eased up to the tips of his toes. His muscles writhed. He— A cool hand touched his forearm. The black eyes were there again, and the red mouth was smiling at him. "The tests? Please?" Tyr licked his lips, confused. He looked at the ardth, and down at the girl, whose eyes were sapping the mad rage in his heart. He said, "Yes, the tests." "Follow me." The room was big and white, and fantastically clean. Chrome and plasticine gleamed and shone under the bluish-white ceiling that diffused soft brightness into every corner. A fluoroscope machine stood against the north wall. On tables were set scalpels and needles and rolls of cotton. Electronic ray-machines, microscopes and cyclotroncancereas peered beyond them. This was the biochemical science of the Old Ones inside four walls. Katha closed the door behind her and loosed her black cloak. She was garbed in black blouse with a star-and-bar in silver threaded into the material. Tight trousers, white, gave her a streamlined look. "Be comfortable, please. This will not hurt, what I am about to do." Tyr watched her roll a big machine out, saw her thrust a needle with a handle into a jar of white liquid. She saw him watching her, and laughed softly. "You are like a caged animal. You do not like walls, do you?" "No. I prefer the desert." "You have spent all your life on the desert?" "All. Ever since I was small." She turned from a wad of cotton that she was unrolling to regard him thoughtfully from under long black lashes. "A boy. What of your parents?" "I don't remember them, if there were any to remember. The first thing I recall is sand under my feet, and running. The sun was always my friend. I love the sun. It feeds me. I need nothing to exist, other than the sun." Her left hand was warm where it caught his wrist. The damp cotton was swept across his flesh swiftly. "I remember a lot of things about my youth. Unconnected things, like the first day I found the blue lake and the silver forest. The day I killed a panth with my bare hands. The first night I saw the stars, and recognized them for what they were." Katha held his hand in hers and said, "I am going to draw blood. It will hurt—a little." As the ruby liquid oozed from his wrist, the woman went on speaking. "And you cannot recall anything beyond that? Only that you were a boy, and that you grew up?" "Only that. It was many years before I saw another ... human. The Trylla are not desert-dwellers. They like their cities. But I saw a caravan, and came close to examine it, and when the guards saw me, I ran so swiftly they started rumors." Her mouth smiled in amusement as she walked across the room. "No wonder. A man who can outrun three aircraft is quite a runner." "From that began the tales about me. A hunter would shoot and miss. That started my invincibility legend. After many years, during which I found the Tower, they sent a delegation to me, to ask me to be their god, to take the ruby throne." "How did you learn to speak, if you never knew other men and women?" Tyr paused. Some of his education he had gotten from the books in the Tower. His other knowledge, and it was vast, he secured from eavesdropping in the narrow alleys of Yawarta. But he said, "Oh, I just picked it up." "The tower you mention. What is that?" "An old building I broke into. It stands by itself on the Desert of the Whipping Wind." "Can you read?" "No," he lied. She was sliding a splinter of glass under a frosted screen, and depressing a button, and bending. Tyr watched, wondering what she sought. "That is too bad," she murmured. "For if you—you—you—ohh!" Her face whitened as she stared at him. "What is it?" "Your blood ... if it is blood. It is so—so different!" Katha put out a white hand and deflected a switch on the wall. A section of panelling slid back, disclosing a screen on which stood the three-dimensional images of the black-cloaked men in the throne room. "Space Commander, I must see you. Already the preliminary test has disclosed revolutionary reactions." Her voice was excited. It made the bald, lean man jump a little. Tyr saw him stride toward him, loom larger and larger, walk out of the screen and—disappear. A moment later, the laboratory door opened and Mason entered. "What is it, Katha?" he said coolly. "His blood. It is not blood that we know, that carries food and oxygen, and the toxics. It is alien. The cell structure is apparently designed to transmit—this is going to sound silly, and I haven't the opportunity of checking my first impressions, to make sure—but the cells appear constructed to transmit pure energy in the form of sheer heat." "But the tissues, girl! In a normal man the food becomes energy in the tissues. How—?" "I don't know. Look for yourself." She stood away from the microscope, gesturing toward it. Space Commander Mason bent to the screen. His right hand raised the electronic power a hundred units. He stood like that for many minutes, frowning, scarcely breathing. When he straightened, he looked at Tyr for a long time, breathing harshly. He said, "It seems to be a blood that carries nothing but radiating heat pulses. That means he intakes his energy pure. The efficiency rate is perfect. Katha, he isn't a man. Not a man such as we know men." Katha took Tyr by the arm and led him behind a fluoroscope machine, saying, "Stand here, please." Mason was eyeing him steadily as he walked in front of the screen. Tyr grinned to himself. They were in for a shock, if this machine did what he thought it did. The room darkened. A pale green glow came and pulsed. The plate before him seemed to hum softly. The dark blobs of shadow that were the Commander and Katha moved suddenly and grew still. Deadly still. "The machine is wrong!" croaked Commander Mason. "The machine is wrong!" croaked Commander Mason. "It was tested yesterday. Commander. Besides, he has a heart, and a blood stream." "No stomach! No lungs! No intestines!" he breathed. "And in place of them, strange organs that we know nothing of. Commander, let me take him to the home planet for study! What an experience. A mutant that—" Light grew from the ceiling, slowly. Mason stood beside the switch, staring at Tyr. His eyes were wild, having seen a miracle. He shuddered and drew his cloak tighter about him. "A mutant! And what a mutant!" Katha said reflectively, "He has organs in place of digestive tracts that are designed for some purpose. But what purpose?" Tyr slid away from the fluoroscope machine. He flexed his muscles. Long enough now had he rested and played their games with them. Now he was going into action. "Commander, about my offer—" "Quiet, man. Quiet! I need to think. A long time ago I knew a man who said—but no! What I am thinking is incredible. It could not be. And yet—and yet—" Tyr picked up a bar of steel and balanced it lightly in his palms. Slowly his fingers closed around it. Muscles lifted on arms and back. The bar bent into a circle. "My muscles may be different, too," he said. "About my offer. Is it peace or war? All I want—" Space Commander Mason moved his right hand swiftly downwards. It came up from beneath his cloak with a gun. He smiled grimly, "You're big and you're powerful as a bullock, and you're different. I don't want to test your skin with a shower of light photons, but—" Katha came up to Tyr. There was a hungry look in her eyes and about her mouth. She whispered, "Be sensible, god of the Trylla! You are a long time dead. Come with me. Later you can meet the Space Commander, when his surprise has worn off." Across the black sheen of her coiled hair he looked at the bald man and read a pride as great as his own in the blue eyes. Dimly he knew that Commander Mason was possessed of a will of steel and power as great as his own, among his people. Tyr nodded. "I will come with you." Katha lifted her black cloak and threw it around her slender shoulders. She cast a red-lipped smile at him and tucked her arm through his. "Come along to my apartment," she laughed. "I want you to tell me more about yourself." The alleys were dark and deserted. Underfoot the rounded edges of the calanian cobblestones bit into their thin sandals. The cyclopean stone structures towered black and forbidding against the pale greyness of the night sky. Like spiderwebs of giant structure, great space-vox antennae were flung from tower to tower. They walked slowly through the warm night, and others walked faster. It was Tyr who heard the clanking of a guard's accoutrements, the thup of a holstered ray-gun smiting a trousered thigh, the harsh rattle-clang of manacles and chains. His wrist dragged her against him, and back with him into the shadows of a recessed door. Many men were coming down the street. There were a lot of chains, too. A sliver of moonlight touched the leading man who walked stooped with iron and the pain of open whipcuts. "Zarman!" breathed Tyr. His brain raced. Zarman was the governor appointed by Tyr. The ardth had taken him and flogged him. It was a sign of their power over Tyr. The people needed a sign from their god. If he were to free Zarman and send him back to the people— Tyr was across the cobblestones and his right fist was coming up in a short arc. A startled guard did not have time to open his mouth before the back of his head touched his spine and his neck cracked under that blow. Tyr lowered him with his left hand in the small of his back, as he snatched up the heatgun from the holster. "Tyr!" sobbed Zarman, straightening. The others knew him too, and in place of the blind pain and despair, came the laugh of hope to snap their backs straight and their chins forward. "Beware," they whispered. "There are more of them." Tyr moved into the shadows, saying, "Keep marching. Turn at the corner—and wait." The guards came on unsuspecting, but this time there were three of them, talking and jesting. Tyr came out of the shadows with naked hands and he hit so fast that one guard writhed on the stone street before the others had their guns out. Another dropped with splintered ribs. The third opened his mouth to scream. Two big hands took his throat and vised on it. Tyr dropped the guard and nodded to the prisoners, "Keep moving. Zarman waits for me around the corner." There were only two more guards. Tyr charged low. His fists pumped. Tyr shook himself, standing alone in the alley, with the moon above beaming down at him, bathing him in silver. The street was deserted except for a white face above a dark cloak, and Tyr. The girl had a gun in her hand. "Shoot," Tyr said, tensing himself. "Goose," whispered the girl, and bent her head to watch her hand holster her weapon. "Why do you not shoot?" "Oh, I don't know. I always was a sucker for an underdog." But there was another explanation in her dark eyes looking up at him that made Tyr blink. He caught her elbow and walked with her around the corner. Zarman and the others were ranged along the wall in darkness. Zarman came forward and looked at the girl, and whispered, "She is an ardth." "Forget her. Tell me of yourself." "The Old Ones caught us easily. Otho blabbed with his traitorous mouth. They came and took us, though we fought." "If I set you free, what can you do for your freedom?" "We can fight, god Tyr. We can burrow like the mole, and battle like a cornered rat. Try us!" Katha went around the corner for the key to the manacles. She searched the implementa of the guards and brought it back proudly. The men lowered the chains and manacles into a hole they dug beneath the cobblestones. They reset the stones and kicked the dirt into crevices between them. One of them took the gun Tyr handed him. Zarman made a motion to the men, and they faded out of sight. "We go underground. Into the old tunnels dug during the war with the ardth. Only the Trylla know those labyrinths." "Good. I shall get word to you." Katha sighed when Zarman was out of sight. Tyr asked dryly as they walked, "Why did you not shoot me? You had your gun out." "That was for the guards—in case your fists were not enough." "But you are an ardth!" The girl sighed and said, "It is such a nice moon. And we are almost at my rooms." She laughed softly, and Tyr wondered why. III Tyr had never seen such sybaritic luxury as was revealed when he let the goldthread drapes rustle across the arched doorway behind him. Strewn cushions, plump and fat, with red-and-white worked in thin curves across their surfaces; the blue tinted walls that radiated warmth; the richly toned murals and the hidden lights bespoke limitless wealth. Low bookcases crammed the walls. Perfume pervaded the cool air. It was a feminine scent, cloying, lingering. Katha lifted a scarlet jug and poured cool white liquid into two crystal hemispheres. One she handed to Tyr, the other she raised in her white, red-nailed hand. "To freedom," she laughed softly, and drank. The white wine was rich and heady, and it warmed his throat going down. Tyr sipped again, and again. He looked around the room with unveiled eyes. This was just one apartment of one girl. She ranked high in the councils of the ardth, but this was a planet far from home. And all the luxury before him! Why, one of those pillows with the red-and-white curves would make Fay's eyes bulge in jealousy. And he was pitting himself against a race that could give a woman this, for herself! He grimaced. What could one man—even such as Tyr—do against such a race? He should quit now and enjoy himself with this woman who looked at him with those steady black eyes. He told himself all that, hating the truth of it. A cool hand snuggled into his palm. "Tell me about you," Katha smiled. "There isn't anything to tell." "You have strength and incredible speed. But what are your other powers, Tyr? You are a mutant, a changeling. You know that. But why, Tyr? Why? Nature doesn't try changes unless she is fitting a being for something." Katha was very close to him. She was perfumed and she was womanly, and Tyr was used to neither. She was as subtle and complex as some rare drug, where Fay was as transparent, in her childish hungers, as plate glass. It may have been the white wine, he thought afterward, but all he saw now was her red mouth and the mocking amusement swimming in her black eyes. He kissed her, holding her close in his arms. "We're straying from the subject," she smiled up at him from his arms. It was then that the cough sounded, from the golden drapes of the door. Otho stood smirking in the opening, eyes leering. From head to toe he glistened in a rainbowed silk that bellied and sank about his form with a sensitiveness to air currents that made it seem alive. He had a gun in his hand and it was levelled at Tyr. "I am sorry to interrupt your—amusements—" Tyr did not think he moved fast, but he was in front of Otho even as the eyes of the other were commencing to widen in fright. Tyr hit the gun upward, slamming it against Otho's sneering mouth where it made a wide gash. The gun fell to the rug, and Tyr put out his hands and took hold of the sleazy silk and lifted. Otho dangled a foot off the floor. "I could break your spine," Tyr whispered. Otho was white. He dared not speak. "I could put the fingers of one hand around your fat neck and snap it." Otho closed his eyes and shuddered. Tyr dropped him and Otho fell loosely to the floor and rolled over and came to his hands and knees. The big brown god of the Trylla loomed vast and massive above his crouching form. "You do not show respect to your god, Otho," Tyr grinned dangerously. "Nor to a woman. At least, you might be courteous, if you are not religious." Tyr listened to the mumble that came from the man's mouth, watched him crawl away. He turned to Katha, "That is the governor Mason gave the Trylla." Katha let her hip rest against the onyx tabletop as her white fingers sought for an hydroette. The end came greenly alive at her first intake of breath. Blowing green smoke from between her red lips she leaned back and laughed softly. "You know, you are a god in some ways. Your very bigness, the titanic strength and speed of you. If you swore allegiance to the ardth, you would rise fast. You would be a space commander in a few years." "Is that a promotion over being a god?" "Tyr, listen to me. Be sensible. Use that brain of yours. You have a brain, and a good one. It is untutored, but it sops up knowledge as a Venusian sponge does water! I saw your eyes moving in that laboratory of mine. You deduced the uses of the fluoroscope, the electronic microscope. You needed only to see them in action—" She caught her breath. The skin around her lips showed white, as her mouth tightened. "Perhaps you could even duplicate them, given time and the materials, just from seeing them. Could you, Tyr?" Tyr wondered, himself. His mind held a confused jumble of plates and wires, and remembrances of diagrams he had seen in books in the Tower. Left alone, he rather imagined he could do what Katha hinted. Especially if he worked in sunlight. For the sun would open the facets of his mind, make his brain as keen and alive as his body, give it that subconscious awareness of knowledge that awed him. "It may be racial memories," he said slowly. "In most men those are buried too deeply for practical use. But with me it may be different. I do know that things do not long remain a mystery with me, once I ponder on them." Katha walked across the room, staring at the cushions that she kicked idly aside. Her thin brows were puckered. "I said you could be a Space Commander, Tyr. You could be more than that. You could be Presider itself, if—if what I think about you is true. "The Trylla think the ardth a heartless crew. Oh, I know. But what the Trylla, and the other inhabitants of the planets we have taken over do not know is this: We ardth are facing a fight against extinction. It won't come for centuries, but it is coming, as surely as you live. "The Glows are dying! "And when that happens, all our cities and all our spaceships—you might say our lives as well—will come to a stop. If you—" Men came through the doorway, and Space Commander Mason was in front of them. Otho poked his fat and sneering face between two ardth and laughed at Tyr. The men splayed out and Mason walked toward them, a grim smile on his lips. "You've left quite a trail behind you tonight, Tyr," he said. "Those guards, then Otho. I tried to treat with you as an equal. Your word means much with the Trylla. But I made a mistake." Katha ran before the Commander and said swiftly, "Katha reporting on mutant Tyr of the planet Lyallar. From observations, my conclusions are that he is an advanced form of life, requiring no food but taking his energy directly from another source. That his strength is phenomenal. That his brain is superhuman. That he must be tested further. My recommendation is—" Mason put her aside and gestured to his men. "—that he be shipped to the home planet for study." Tyr shook his head and said, "No," but he never took his eyes away from the man with the bald head. Mason lifted his hand suddenly. And Tyr moved. He went fast, so fast that his arms were mere blurs lifting Mason off his feet and flinging him. He swung up over a table and drove both heels into a man's chest. He hit another splat on the jaw just as the man's finger tightened on the trigger and a bolt of fire went toward the high ceiling. Now their guns were aiming and shooting yellow bolts at him. He caught three of them on his chest. Those yellow fires burned momentarily, before his pores could suck their ravening power into his system. But they filled him with a wild, savage elation. His throat keened as he charged the men by the entrance, who knelt and fired as their eyes widened, seeing him come, growing bigger and bigger before them. He did not stop. He ran over the men, and left them broken on the floor. Tyr chuckled grimly, his feet treading a rug. His big right fist held a solargun that he had wrenched from a falling soldier. A weapon for the Trylla! His shoulder splintered a door with two hundred pounds of energy behind it. The lock went through the wood and Tyr was onto the cobblestones. The street was dark and empty. He ran with the wind, dodging around corners and leaping along straight streets. Far behind him there came shouts and the dull thumping of pounding feet. The cyclopean walls of Yawarta rose before him. Here and there hung the great nets of the fishermen, hung out to dry on stout wooden pegs. Up then he went, his arms lifting his massive body with ease. From bastion to ledge he went up the wall like a scurrying spider. Now he stood on the broad top, beneath the stars. He raised an arm and waved it at the city, and went over the other side. He ran free, away from Yawarta. Behind him he could hear the phffft-phffft of the jet planes rising to pursue him, leaping upwards like hounds from the racing barriers. Tyr grinned and stretched his long legs out so that the ground sped by eerily. They could not catch him under the stars, not with this weapon in his hand. Wind whistled past his ears. He headed for the silver forests he could see in the dim distance. He would be under their shelter soon. Beams of light showered the ground, hunting him. They slid all around, missing him as he dodged gracefully, swerving from their pale radiance. Soon he would be beneath those trees. Nothing on all Lyallar could catch him then. Tyr swung the solar gun upward, put the cold muzzle to his naked chest, and pulled the trigger. Sunlight tinted the bluffs a pale amber, spreading a gossamer gold across the shelving stone ledges. It made dark shadows undulate in rock crevices, and sent tiny cascades of brilliant red and yellow from veins of quartz. The cliffs towered high above a rolling countryside where hummocks of grass grew in clustered greenness. Tyr stood erect on the jagged tongue of rock, staring down at a file of men and women walking across the hills. He was naked but for the white cloth at his middle into which the butt of the solar gun protruded at a rakish angle. Towering huge in the morning sun, he looked the god, by every inch of him, that the Trylla thought him to be. He grinned and patted the walnut handle of the weapon. That blast of power had given him needed energy last night, when the sun was on the other side of the planet. His follicles had drunk it in, and his strange organs filtered it throughout his body. All night long had he run, yet he was fresh and strong. Now he looked across...