Beautiful, impossibly savage, Prince Ilon loved
her madly. For her he would almost dare the blackest
secret of the cosmos. Almost—but not quite....
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Fall 1947.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
A silver sphere swam in vague depths. The surrounding frame ofintricate mechanism gave off a soft phosphorescence that strengthenedand faded by turns. A young man, robed in gossamer vitri of richesthue, leaned over, watching keenly.
His fingers moved controls at the bottom of the machine. The silversphere leaped upward in the vision plate, swelling like a balloon.Continents and seas were now visible. Then one area swelled over thevisor-plate. Gradually a small spot became a city, a strange sprawlingcity. He found a certain street, a certain house, a certain room.
She was walking around on the floor of the room, dressed in the scantcostume of the period of that silver sphere. She never left the floor.Her body was singularly graceful, her face angelic. Strangely, itseemed, she had no control over gravity, and was forced to walk or beconveyed across the surface of her planet.
"Oh beautiful, primitive girl!" he whispered chokingly, gripping hisfingers tight on the control board before him. "Savage girl of lostages!"
The girl smiled. She seemed to turn directly toward him, and her blueeyes were filled with a dreamy, half-yearning promise, as if she hadheard his words and had answered.
Yet she had never seen him. She didn't even know he existed. Shecouldn't even imagine the wonders of flashing through interstellarworlds by use of thought-force, nor picture a means of existingentirely on basic radiation, sucked from the atoms themselves. Thisyoung man, slender and well-proportioned, was a product of endlessevolution and progression. She was a retrograde current of atavism thathad persisted somehow on one outlaw world.
Savage, yes! But there was no mistaking the light in Ilon Karth's eyesas he followed every movement of her little graceful body.
Suddenly an awareness of someone approaching burst into his mentality.He wheeled, an expression of annoyance on his face. With an abruptmovement of his hand he struck a switch that caused the glowing of themachine to die. The sphere, and the lovely girl of that alien globe,vanished utterly.
Now the surrounding walls, glowing with light of their own, flickered.An ovoid opening in solidity appeared, forced by the mental-push of theapproaching person. The figure of an old man, venerable of appearance,stooped and robed in the gold-mesh-cloth of the Galax-Mentor, floatedinto the room. The wisdom of ages lay imprinted on the face that waslike wrinkled parchment beneath the blue emerald set in a foreheadband, denoting his rank in the Supreme Council of Seven. The face lostits strain of menta-portation, and the old man landed gently at hisside.
"Greeting, Ilon," greeted Nyo Karth, his eyes darting intelligentlyabout the room.
"Er—Greeting, dad," said Ilon Karth, hiding his irritation. As theopening had been menta-forced into the room, his hand had dartedinstinctively toward a hidden compartment in the machine. Now he triedto hide the movement of his hand and what it contained as it spedtoward the secret pocket again. But the keen eyes of his father sawand grew narrow and steely with surprise and suspicion. The older manreached out and grabbed his wrist. In Ilon's open palm lay a needle-rayweapon of defense.
"What is it you fear, son?" he demanded sternly. "W