When the Mountain Shook Page 4

command; yet it was lined by a deeplyingrained weariness, the signs of premature age--denied, overridden bythe driving will they had sensed a moment earlier. It was a sick man'sface.

  The Ryzga's final thought clicked into place: _Decision!_ He turnedtoward the switchboard behind him, reaching with practised certainty forone spot upon it.

  Neena screamed.

  Between the Ryzga and the control panel a nightmare shape reared upseven feet tall, flapping black amorphous limbs and flashing red eyesand white fangs. The Ryzga recoiled, and the weapon in his hand came up.There was an instantaneous glare like heat lightning, and the monstercrumpled in on itself, twitched briefly and vanished.

  But in that moment a light of inspiration had flashed upon Var, and itremained. As the Ryzga stretched out his hand again, Var acted. TheRyzga froze, teetering off balance and almost falling, as a numbing gripclosed down on all his motor nerves.

  Holding that grip, Var strode across the floor and looked straight intothe Ryzga's frantic eyes. They glared back at him with such hatred andsuch evil that for an instant he almost faltered. But the Ryzga'sefforts, as he strove to free himself from the neural hold, were asmisdirected and unavailing as those of a child who has not learned towrestle with the mind.

  Var had guessed right. When Neena in her terror had flung a dreammonster into the Ryzga's way--a mere child's bogey out of a fairytale--the Ryzga had not recognized it as such, but had taken it for areal being. Var laughed aloud, and with great care, as one communicateswith an infant, he projected his thoughts into the other's mind. "Therewill be no new beginning for you in _our_ world, Ryzga! In two thousandyears, we've learned some new things. Now at last I understand why youbuilt so many machines, such complicated arrangements of matter andenergy to do simple tasks--it was because you knew no other way."

  Behind the hate-filled eyes the cold brain tried to reason still."Barbarians...? Our party was wrong after all. After us the machinecivilization could never rise again, because it was a fire that consumedits fuel. After us _man_ could not survive on the Earth, because theconditions that made him great were gone. The survivors must besomething else--capacities undeveloped by our science--after us the endof man, the beginning.... But those of us who chose to die were right."

  The tide of hate and sick desire rose up to drown all coherence. TheRyzga made a savage, wholly futile effort to lift the weapon in hisparalyzed hand. Then his eyes rolled upward, and abruptly he went limpand fell in a heap, like a mechanical doll whose motive power hasfailed.

  Var felt Neena beside him, and drew her close. As she sobbed her relief,he continued to look down absently at the dead man. When at last heraised his head, he saw that the drama's end had had a further audience.In the outer doorway, backed by his clansmen, stood Groz, gazing firstin stupefaction at the fallen Ryzga, then with something like awe atVar.

  Var eyed him for a long moment; then he smiled, and asked, "Well, Groz?Is our feud finished, or does your ambition for a worthy son-in-law gobeyond the conqueror of the Ryzgas?"