Part 2 (2/2)

_And Earth was no longer what Men had built!_

Then the horror in his head was gone, and he felt an awful pressure on each side of it. His hands ... he had been pressing with insane strength at both sides of his skull as if to crush it with his bare hands.... His face was wet, and he was breathing, choking, in strangling gulps.

A scanner alarm clanged.

He forced his eyes to focus on the center screen.

”Earthman! Emergency! There has been a flaw discovered in the repair of your s.h.i.+p! Do not blast off! Do not....”

The other image caught him as his arm was in mid-flight toward the control bank. Sweet and warm ... the fertile plains mounting their golden fruits to a mellowed sun, and beyond the distant gently-rolling hills spread the resplendent city, and there were other cities....

But his arm kept going, its muscles loose, and it fell. Heavily.

Squarely on the stud-complex toward which its fist had been aimed a split-second before.

The engines roared, and the s.h.i.+p lurched upward from the red sand.

_The command flicked into the Captain's brain like a lash of ice._

”_Slaazar! Converge, sheaf!_”

”_Converging, sir....” It would be no use, of course. If the high bra.s.s had been content to rely on the beams rather than on their own subtlety in the first place, the Earthman would never have fallen prey to the Nomads, even for a second. But they had wanted to be as forthright as possible--force, they said, would only arouse suspicion. Psibeam units only as a last resort.... The lowliest Patrol Lancer could have told them the folly of that!_

_Hastily, Slaazar issued orders to his battery crews tracking the ascending s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p, their units already nearing overload potential. But the desert-sc.u.m would see some real psi-power now! They'd see it wasted completely if they saw it at all.... Because they'd outmaneuvered the bra.s.s again!_

”_Convergence impossible, sir._”

_As he had expected._

”_Colonel Truul, this is Captain Slaazar. Target has pa.s.sed critical planetary curvature. Convergence impossible. Standing by, sir._”

_For several moments after that, the thin atmosphere of Mars was warmed a little...._

Acceleration blackout had not been total; leaving Mars was even easier than leaving the surface of Earth for the orbits of the Stations. But there was a period of no-thought, no-time, no-being. And then full consciousness seeped back slowly. But not as it was supposed to.

Johnny Love knew he had come to because he could see the banked instruments glowing palely before him; because he could realize from reading them that his s.h.i.+p was doing its job to perfection. Almost ready to complete the blast-off ogee, and--

Angrily he belted the scanner switches off and the dull red sphere faded from the viewplates.

And he could feel the sweat start again all over his body. No, the returning consciousness was all wrong.... All wrong, and the image wouldn't go away....

Red desert he had seen before, yet had not seen. There were dark ridges of brown-green at its horizon; oddly-formed crater-places that might once have held placid lakes. And on all the vast surface there was no hint of the Patrol tracks, no sign of--anything.

But he had to descend to the place.

He did not know how to locate it, but the image told him that it did not matter. The image said merely that he must begin cutting his power.

<script>