still? He had not for an instant lost control of that!-at the ready. “What in Japnonk’s
rankest hell was that?”
“X-plosive shell,” Seaton said, his voice as hard as his eyes. “This time I came loaded
for bear. Now we’ll mop up and find out what’s been going on. I gather, sir, that your two
platoon leaders were in on it?”
“Yes. It’s a shame I had to kill ’em without asking ’em a few questions.” He did not
explain that he had had neither the time in which nor the weapon with which merely to
wound them seriously enough so that neither of them could fight back with any sort of
weapon. There was no need.
“That won’t make too much difference.” Seaton looked around; first at his own crew and
then at the guards, half of whom were down. Medics and first-aid men were rushing in
to work on them. He looked again, more closely, at his people and at Prenk and Kay-
Lee. Not one of them, apparently, had even been scratched.
That, however, was logical. The mercenaries were hardtrained fighting men, shooting
`was their business. Hence the attackers’ orders had been to shoot the guards first, and
there had been no time to evaluate the actual situation and to change the plan of
attack. Hence, as far as anyone knew, not a single bullet had been aimed at the far end
of the room.
Seaton took a pair of headsets out of his pocket and applied one of them, first to one of
the two lieutenants’ heads, then to the other.
“Uh-huh,” he grunted then. “That ape didn’t know too much, but this one was going to
be the new captain-general. I suppose you’ve got a recorder, Ree-Toe?”
“I’ll get it, sir!” Kay-Lee exclaimed; and Prenk, eyes bulging, gasped:
“Don’t tell me you can read a dead brain, sir!”
“Oh, yes. They keep their charges, sometimes for days.’
Kay-Lee handed Seaton a microphone then, and he spoke into it for ten minutes the
while three Rayseenian faces went through gamuts of emotion; each culminating in the
same expression of joyous satisfaction.
When Seaton paused for breath Prenk said in awe, “That machine is certainly a
something . . . I don’t suppose . . .” He stopped.
“I do suppose, yes. I’ll give you a few sets, with blueprints, and show you how they
work,” and Seaton went on with his reading.
A few minutes later he cut off the mike and said, “That ape over there,” he pointed, “is
one of the Big Wheels. Have someone latch onto him, Ree-Toe; we’ll read him next.
He’s one you’ll be really interested in, so I’ll hook you up in parallel with me so you can
get everything he knows into your own brain.” He took a third headset from his pocket
and began to adjust its settings, going on, “It takes a different set-up . . . so . . . and
goes on your head so.”
“That ape” was a fattish, sallow-faced man of fifty, who had been directing operations
from outside the room and had intended to stay outside it until everything was secure
within. He had been blown into the room and halfway along its length by the force of the
blasts. He was pretty badly smashed up, but he was beginning to regain consciousness
and was weakly trying to get to his feet.
This unlucky wight was a mine of information indeed, but Prenk stopped the mining
operation after only a couple of minutes of digging.
“Sy-By,” he said. “Two more of your officers you can shoot.” He gave two names. “Then
come back here with some men you think you can trust and we’ll test ’em to make sure.
By that time I’ll have a list of people for you to round up and bring in for examination.”
There is no need to follow any farther the Premier’s progress in cleaning up his planet.
In fact, only one more incident that occurred there is of interest here-one that occurred
while Seaton and Dorothy were getting ready for bed in one of the suites of honor. She
put both arms around him suddenly; he pressed her close.
“Dick, I belonged there. Beside you. Every fiber of my being belonged there. That was
exactly where I belonged.”
“I know you did, sweet. I’ll have to admit it. But . . .”
She put her hand over his mouth. “But nothing, my dearest. No buts. I’ve killed rats and
rattlesnakes, and that wasn’t any different. Not a bit different in any way.”
Of the more than five thousand Fenachrone who had left their noisome home planet in
Sleemet’s flagship, almost seven hundred had died and more were dying.
It was not that the Llurdi were physically cruel to them or abused them in any way. They
didn’t. Nor were they kind; they were conspicuously and insultingly neutral and
indifferent to them. Conspicuous and insulting, that is, to the hypersensitive minds of
the captives. In their own minds, the Llurdi were acting strictly according to logic. Every
item of the subjects’ environment duplicated precisely its twin on the subjects’ home
world. What more could logically be done? Nothing.
The Llurdi observed the mental anguish of the Fenachrone, of course, and recorded
their emotions quite accurately, but with no emotional reactions whatever of their own.
Practically all emotions were either illogical or unsane, or both.
To the illogical and unsane Fenachrone, however-physically, mentally, intellectually and
psychologically-the situation was intolerable; one that simply could not be endured.
They were proud, haughty, intolerant; their race had always been so. Since time
immemorial it had been bred into their innermost consciousnesses that they were the
RACE SUPREME-destined unquestionably to be the absolute rulers of all things living
or yet to live throughout all the transfinite reaches of the Cosmic All.
Holding this belief with every fiber of their beings, they had been plunged instantly into a
condition of complete, utter helplessness.
Their vessel could not fight. While it was intact except for its tail-section and its power-
pods, its every offensive projector was burned out; useless. Nor could they fight
personally, either physically or mentally. Their physical strength, enormous as it was,
was of no avail against the completely logical, completely matter-of-fact minds of the
Llurdi.
Most galling condition of all, the Fenachrone were not treated as enemies; nor as
menaces or threats; nor even as intelligent entities whose knowledges and abilities
might be worthy of notice. These things were observed and recorded, to be sure, but
only as component parts of a newly discovered class of objects, the Fenachrone; a
class of objects that happened to be alive. The Fenachrone were neither more nor less
noteworthy than were birds or barnacles.
Sleemet, no longer young and perhaps the proudest and most intractable and most
intransigent of the lot, could not endure that treatment very long; but he did -not bend.
The old adage “Where there’s life there’s hope,” simply is not true where such as the
Llurdi and the Fenachrone are concerned. Sleemet lost all hope and broke; broke
almost completely down.
He stopped eating. That did not bother the Llurdi in any way. Why should it? They were
neither squeamish nor humane, any more than they were cruel or vindictive. The fact
that certain of these creatures stopped taking nourishment under certain conditions was
merely a datum to be observed and recorded.
But since Sleemet was big and strong, even for a Fenachrone, and had previously
eaten very well indeed, it took him a long time to die. And as he weakened-as the
bindings between flesh and spirit loosened more and ever more -he regressed more
and ever more back into the youth of his race. Back and back. Still farther back; back
into its very childhood; back to a time when his remote ancestors ate their meat alive
and communicated with each other, sometimes by grunts and gestures, but more often
by means of a purely mental faculty that was later to evolve into the power of ocular
hypnosis.
Half conscious or less of his surroundings but knowing well that death was very near,
Sleemet half-consciously sent out his race’s ages-old mental message-in-extremity of
the dying.
Marc C: DuQuesne knew vastly more about the Fenachrone than did any other man
alive, not excluding Richard Seaton. He and Seaton were, as far as is known, the only
two men ever to meet Fenachrone mind to mind and live through the experience; but
DuQuesne had been in thoughthelmet contact with a Fenachrone much longer and
much more intimately and very much more interestedly than Seaton ever had-because
of the tremendous intrinsic differences between the personalities of the two men.
Seaton, after having crippled a war-vessel of the Fenachrone, had pinned its captain
against a wall with so many beams of force that he could not move his head and could
scarcely move any other part of his monstrous body. Then, by means of a pair of