Chapter 6

Two days later, Underwood received a call from Phyfe, asking for an appointment. It was urgent; that was all Phyfe would tell him.

The archeologist had not heard of the demands of the Disciples. He was surprised to see the construction under way in the great central hall where the restoration equipment was installed.

He found Underwood with Illia in the laboratory examining films of the protoplasmic growth.

“What are you building out there?” he asked. “I thought you had all the equipment in.”

“A monument to human stupidity,” Underwood growled. Then he told Phyfe of the orders he had received. “We’re putting in a balcony so that the faithful can look down upon their Great One. Boarder says we’ll have to put up with this nonsense for six months.”

“Why six months?”

“Demarzule will be revived by then or else we’ll have failed. In either case, the Disciples will have come to an end.”

“Why?”

Underwood glanced up in irritation. “If he’s dead, they won’t have anything to worship. And if he lives, he certainly won’t have anything to do with them.”

“I could ask another ‘why, ‘“ said Phyfe, “but I’ll put it this way. You know nothing of how he will act if he lives. And if he dies he’ll probably be a martyr that will establish a new worldwide religion--with those of us who have had to do with this experiment and its failure being burned at the stake.”

Underwood laid down the sheaf of films. Out among the asteroids he had learned to respect the old archeologist’s opinions but Dreyer had already laid more of a burden upon him than he felt he should bear.

“The technological aspects of this problem are more than you say you have found?”

“Fortunately for us, certain Stroid records were small metallic plates whose molecular structure was altered according to script or vocal patterns. Some of the boys in the lab have developed a device for listening to the audio records. We have actually heard the voices of the Stroids! At least there are sounds that resemble a spoken language. But it is what we have found on the written records that brought me here.

“More than eighty-five years ago, the most fortunate find previous to the discovery of the repository was made. An extensive cache of historical records was uncovered by Dickens, one of the early workers in the field. They were almost fused together, and the molecular alteration was barely traceable due to exposure to terrific heat. But we’ve succeeded in separating the plates and transferring their records in amplified form to new sheets. And we can read them. We have a remarkably complete section of Stroid history just before their extermination, and, if we are reading it correctly, there’s a surprising fact about them.”

“What is that?”

“They were not native to this Solar System. They were extra-galactic refugees whose home world had been destroyed in something completely revolting in an intellect that would foresee the doom of a world and set about to assure its own preservation.”

“But that is only your own subjective extension,” Illia answered. “There is no such semantic concept in the idea.”

“Isn’t there? The egotism, the absolute lack of concern for a creature’s fellows--those are semantically contained in it. And that is why I’m more than a little afraid of what we shall find if we do succeed in reviving this creature. How is it developing?”

“It seems to be going through a sort of conventional embryonic growth,” Illia answered. “It’s already passed a pseudo-blastic stage. So far, it has generally mammalian characteristics; more than that is impossible to say. But what about this new evidence enough for my mental capacity. I can’t and won’t give a damn about any other aspects.”

“You must!” Phyfe’s eyes were suddenly afire, demanding, unyielding. “We have new evidence--Terry may have been right when he asked to have the protoplasm destroyed.”

Illia froze. “What evidence?”

“What type of mentality would attempt to preserve itself through a planetary catastrophe that destroyed all its contemporaries?” asked Phyfe. “I find some great interstellar conflict and whose enemies eventually traced them and destroyed for the second time the world on which they lived. Out of all that ancient people, destroyed as completely as was Carthage, only this single individual remained.

“Do you see the significance of that? If he lives, he will live again with the same war-born hate and lust for revenge that filled him as he saw his own world fall!”

“It won’t survive the knowledge that all that he fought for disappeared geologic ages past,” objected Underwood. “Besides, you are contradicting yourself. If he was so unconcerned about his own world, perhaps he had no interest in the conflict. Maybe he was the supreme genius of his day and wanted only to escape from a useless carnage that he could not stop.”

“No, there is no contradiction,” said Phyfe earnestly. “That is typical of the war leader who has brought his people to destruction. At the moment when disaster overwhelms them, he thinks only of himself. The specimen we have here is a supreme example of what such egocentric desires for self-preservation lead to.”

Phyfe abruptly rose from the chair and tossed a sheaf of papers on the laboratory bench. “Here it is. Read it for yourself. It’s a pretty free translation of the story we found on Dickens’ records.”

He left abruptly. Illia and Underwood turned to the short script he had left behind and began reading.

The hundred mighty vessels of the Sirenian Empire flung themselves across space that was made tangible by their velocity. The impregnable heart of the fleet was deep in the hull of the flagship, Hebrian, where the Sirenian Hetrarra, Demarzule, slumped sullenly before the complex panel that reported all the workings of his vast fleet.

Beside him was the old but sinewy figure of Toshmere, the genius who had saved this remnant of the once mighty empire that could have put a million vessels like these into space at one time.

Toshmere said, “Further flight is useless. Our instruments show that the Dragbora are gaining. Their fleet outnumbers us ten to one. Even with my protective screens, we can’t hope to resist long. They’ve got the one weapon we can’t withstand. They’re determined to wipe out the last of the Sirenian Empire.”

“And I’m determined to wipe out the last of the Dragbora!” Demarzule snapped in sudden fury. He rose out of the chair and paced the room. “I shall live! I shall live to see their world blasted to energy and the last Dragbor dead. Is the repository nearly ready?”

Toshmere nodded.

“And you are certain of your method?”

“Yes. Would you care to see our final results?”

Demarzule nodded and Toshmere led the way through the door and down the long corridor to the laboratory where lay Demarzule’s hopes of spanning the eons and escaping the enemy who had sworn no quarter.

The Sirenian Hetrarra watched impassively as the scientist put a small animal into a bowl-like chamber. He backed away behind a shield and pressed a switch. Instantly, the animal was bathed in a flood of orange glow and a terrible look of pain crossed the animal’s face while hideous cries came from its throat.

“It is not pleasant,” observed Demarzule.

“No,” said Toshmere. “But it is necessary that it be done with full consciousness of mind. Otherwise, proper restoration cannot be made.”

The ruler was impassive as the animal’s cries slowly died while its body melted under the glow of the beam--literally melted until it flowed into a pool at the bottom of the bowl where it quivered with residual life forces.

“Pure protoplasm,” explained Toshmere. “It can be frozen to absolute zero and the remaining metabolism will be undetectable, yet life will remain, perhaps for a thousand ela, long enough for new worlds to form and old ones die.”

“Long enough for the last Dragbor to die--while I, Demarzule, Hetrarra of Sirenia, live on in glory and triumph.”