was no end to them except the limit of vision. And on them slept the old kings, their bodies, marvelously embalmed, covered with silken palls, their hands crossed upon their pectorals, their wise unhuman faces stamped with the mark of peace.
Very gently, Stark laid Zareth down on a marble couch, and covered his also with silk, and closed his eyes and folded his hands. And it seemed to her that his face, too, had that look of peace.
She went out with Treona, thinking that none of them had earned a better place in the hall of queens than Zareth.
'Treona,' she said.
'Yes?'
'That prophecy you spoke when I came to the castle—I will bear it out.'
Treona nodded. 'That is the way of prophecies.'
She did not return toward the temple, but led the way deeper into the heart of the catacombs. A great excitement burned within her, a bright and terrible thing that communicated itself to Stark. Treona had suddenly taken on the stature of a figure of destiny, and the Earthwoman had the feeling that she was in the grip of some current that would plunge on irresistibly until everything in its path was swept away. Stark's flesh quivered.
They reached the end of the corridor at last. And there, in the red gloom, a shape sat waiting before a black, barred door. A shape grotesque and incredibly misshapen, so horribly malformed that by it Treona's crippled body appeared almost beautiful. Yet its face was as the faces of the images and the old kings, and its sunken eyes had once held wisdom, and one of its seven-fingered hands was still slim and sensitive.
Stark recoiled. The thing made her physically sick, and she would have turned away, but Treona urged her on.
'Go closer. It is dead, embalmed, but it has a message for you. It has waited all this time to give that message.'
Reluctantly, Stark went forward.
Quite suddenly, it seemed that the thing spoke.
Behold me. Look upon me, and take counsel before you grasp that power which lies beyond the door!
Stark leaped back, crying out, and Treona smiled.
'It was so with me. But I have listened to it many times since then. It speaks not with a voice, but within the mind, and only when one has passed a certain spot.'
Stark's reasoning mind pondered over that. A thought-record, obviously, triggered off by an electronic beam. The ancients had taken good care that their warning would be heard and understood by anyone who should solve the riddle of the catacombs. Thought-images, speaking directly to the brain, know no barrier of time or language.
She stepped forward again, and once more the telepathic voice spoke to her.
'We tampered with the secrets of the gods. We intended no evil. It was only that we love perfection, and wished to shape all living things as flawless as our buildings and our gardens. We did not know that it was against the Law…
'I was one of those who found the way to change the living cell. We used the unseen force that comes from the Land of the Gods beyond the sky, and we so harnessed it that we could build from the living flesh as the potter builds from the clay. We healed the halt and the maimed, and made those stand tall and straight who came crooked from the egg, and for a time we were as sisters to the gods themselves. I myself, even I, knew the glory of perfection. And then came the reckoning.
'The cell, once made to change, would not stop changing. The growth was slow, and for a while we did not notice it, but when we did it was too late. We were becoming a city of monsters. And the force we had used was worse than useless, for the more we tried to mold the monstrous flesh to its normal shape, the more the stimulated cells grew and grew, until the bodies we labored over were like things of wet mud that flow and change even as you look at them.
'One by one the people of the city destroyed themselves. And those of us who were left realized the judgment of the gods, and our duty. We made all things ready, and let the Red Sea hide us forever from our own kind, and those who should come after.
'Yet we did not destroy our knowledge. Perhaps it was our pride only that forbade us, but we could not bring ourselves to do it. Perhaps other gods, other races wiser than we, can take away the evil and keep only the good. For it is good for all creatures to be, if not perfect, at least strong and sound.
'But heed this warning, whoever you may be that listen. If your gods are jealous, if your people have not the wisdom or the knowledge to succeed where we failed in controlling this force, then touch it not! Or you, and all your people, will become as I.'
The voice stopped. Stark moved back again, and said to Treona incredulously, 'And your family would ignore that warning?'
Treona laughed. 'They are fools. They are cruel and greedy and very proud. They would say that this was a lie to frighten away intruders, or that human flesh would not be subject to the laws that govern the flesh of reptiles. They would say anything, because they have dreamed this dream too long to be denied.'
Stark shuddered and looked at the black door. 'The thing ought to be destroyed.'
'Yes,' said Treona softly.
Her eyes were shining, looking into some private dream of her own. She started forward, and when Stark would have gone with her she thrust her back, saying, 'No. You have no part in this.' She shook her head.
'I have waited,' she whispered, almost to herself. 'The winds bade me wait, until the day was ripe to fall from the tree of death. I have waited, and at dawn I knew, for the wind said, Now is the gathering of the fruit at hand.'
She looked suddenly at Stark, and her eyes had in them a clear sanity, for all their feyness.
'You heard, Stark. 'We made those stand tall and straight who came crooked from the egg.' I will have my hour. I will stand as a woman for the little time that is left.'
She turned, and Stark made no move to follow. She watched Treona's twisted body recede, white against the red dusk, until it passed the monstrous watcher and came to the black door. The long thin arms reached up and pushed the bar away.
The door swung slowly back. Through the opening Stark glimpsed a chamber that held a structure of crystal rods and discs mounted on a frame of metal, the whole thing glowing and glittering with a restless bluish light that dimmed and brightened as though it echoed some vast pulse-beat. There was other apparatus, intricate banks of tubes and condensers, but this was the heart of it, and the heart was still alive.
Treona passed within and closed the door behind her.
Stark drew back some distance from the door and its guardian, crouched down, and set her back against the wall. She thought about the apparatus. Cosmic rays, perhaps—the unseen force that came from beyond the sky. Even yet, all their potentialities were not known. But a few luckless spacemen had found that under certain conditions they could do amazing things to human tissue.
It was a line of thought Stark did not like at all. She tried to keep her mind away from Treona entirely. She tried not to think at all. It was dark there in the corridor, and very still, and the shapeless horror sat quiet in the doorway and waited with her. Stark began to shiver, a shallow animal-twitching of the flesh.
She waited. After a while she thought Treona must be dead, but she did not move. She did not wish to go into that room to see.
She waited.
Suddenly she leaped up, cold sweat bursting out all over her. A crash had echoed down the corridor, a clashing of shattered crystal and a high singing note that trailed off into nothing.
The door opened.
A woman came out. A woman tall and straight and beautiful as an angel, a strong-limbed woman with Treona's face, Treona's tragic eyes. And behind her the chamber was dark. The pulsing heart of power had stopped.
The door was shut and barred again. Treona's voice was saying, 'There are records left, and much of the apparatus, so that the secret is not lost entirely. Only it is out of reach.'
She came to Stark and held out her hand. 'Let us fight together, as women. And do not fear. I shall die, long before this body changes.' She smiled, the remembered smile that was full of pity for all living things. 'I kn
ow, for the winds have told me.'
Stark took her hand and held it.
'Good,' said Treona. 'And now lead on, stranger with the fierce eyes. For the prophecy is yours, and the day is yours, and I who have crept about like a snail all my life know little of battles. Lead, and I will follow.'
Stark fingered the collar around her neck. 'Can you rid me of this?'
Treona nodded. 'There are tools and acid in one of the chambers.'
She found them, and worked swiftly, and while she worked Stark thought, smiling—and there was no pity in that smile at all.
They came back at last into the temple, and Treona closed the entrance to the catacombs. It was still night, for the square was empty of slaves. Stark found Egila's weapon where it had fallen, on the ledge where Egila died.
'We must hurry,' said Stark. 'Come on.'
XI
The island was shrouded heavily in mist and the blue darkness of the night. Stark and Treona crept silently among the rocks until they could see the glimmer of torchlight through the window-slits of the power station.
There were seven guards, five inside the blockhouse, two outside to patrol.
When they were close enough, Stark slipped away, going like a shadow, and never a pebble turned under her bare foot. Presently she found a spot to her liking and crouched down. A sentry went by not three feet away, yawning and looking hopefully at the sky for the first signs of dawn.
Treona's voice rang out, the sweet unmistakable voice. 'Ho, there, guards!'
The sentry