The Star Magicians

11. HAND OF THE GODDESS

BELLOWING AN OATH, Tonguth ripped his laser gun from its holster, pointing the weapon at the foremost figure. An aged, nearly naked man turned gravely humorous eyes upon him. With suddenly numb fingers, the Chieftain fought to beam the old man down … but the sparkling black eyes seemed to grow and grow until they filled Tonguth’s mind.

The pistol floated out of his lax grip and drifted up into dimness.

Nerves in his legs suddenly failing to respond to his will, Tonguth staggered—blundered—fell forward, cursing feebly.

“At them, you dogs! Ray them down!” Drask snarled—and a score of grim-faced Rover leaders surged forward, snatching at their weapons. But the Sages turned the full power of their amazing minds upon the Barbarians, and the scene became one of fantastic nightmare.

Some Rovers dropped unconscious, as if they had run head first into an invisible wall. Others suddenly lost control of their limbs, and flopped and floundered on the deck like men helpless in the grip of paralysis. One burly Barbarian went floating up into the air, black fur cloak flapping like vast shaggy wings. Another seemed to go mad and attacked his comrades. Steel rang against steel, as in a blind, cursing rage he sought to slaughter the men around him.

While the Sages were battling against the Rover chiefs, Calastor sprang across the room to seize the Warlord—but found himself face to face with a snarling tiger of ferocity. Shangkar faced him, Shangkar the lean cat-like berserker whom Calastor had nearly driven mad with illusions and horrors on the midnight battlements of Djormandark Keep.

In the red, seething furnace of his brain, Shangkar knew only that this was the tantalizing phantom whose mysterious spell had broken his spirit. He remembered the shadowy terrors of that awful night, and the bitter humiliations he had suffered through Calastor’s magic … how he had wept like a halfwitted child, and vomited his guts empty because of whispering shadows … and now his burning mind held only one wish: to hack to bloody ruin the laughing, mocking author of his humiliation.

He hurled himself at Calastor, howling with fury. From his belt he tore a long-handled double-bladed axe, tied to his wrist with a leathern thong. As he whirled it around his head the blade sang as it clove thin air.

Calastor was unarmed. But Lurn seized up a sword one of the fallen Rover chiefs had let fall and threw it towards him.

“Calastor-!”

He snatched it from the air, just in time to face Shangkar’s attack.

The axe grazed the upturned flat of Calastor’s blade and glanced away, ringing. But the impact of the blow drove Calastor to his knees. In a flash, Shangkar was upon him, axe raised above his helmed head, eyes flaring catlike with fury, blade whistling down to shatter the White Wizard’s skull.

One of Calastor’s booted legs shot out, thudding against Shungkar’s leg as the Barbarian straddled his prone figure. The warrior tumbled to one side, his whistling axe narrowly missing Calastor’s yellow thatch, clanging as it drove into the deck-plate.

Then Calastor sprang lithely to his feet. Panting, the two faced each other. They circled warily, cat-crimson eyes burning into keen eyes of cool gray. Then steel met—rebounded—met again, in a ringing iron music. Shangkar fought with great, smashing blows, the full, tigerish strength of his steely thews hurled into each blow. Calastor’s sword was thin but strong—made for nimble fencing, not for warding off axe-blows. If he met the full weight of the axe squarely it would shatter his blade into splinters of flying steel. So he fought to turn the axe with deft, adroit, glancing counter-blows that demanded his full attention.

He was blind and deaf to the maelstrom of screaming men that surged about him, as the shaggy Rovers fought against the immaterial magic of the Sages. For Calastor, the limits of the Universe had shrunk into a circle a few yards wide—bounded by the glittering wheel of Shangkar’s whirling axe. Again and again the furious, full-bodied strength of the Rover’s hammer-blows drove him to his knees, or forced him staggering back. For long, long moments of the duel he fought only on the defensive, struggling to hold his own. Curiously quixotic, it never occurred to him to use his magic mind-powers against the snarling, spitting warrior. This was man against man, steel-thewed body against body, keen steel against steel—a ritual older than civilization itself.

Then the tide turned. With a dancer’s supple grace, Calastor swayed back to elude one of Shangkar’s ferocious swinging blows—and while the snarling warrior was off-balance, the White Wizard’s blade snaked in and drew a red furrow along Shangkar’s shoulder.

“Stand still and fight like a man,” Shangkar spat, aiming another smashing sweep at the Wizard’s yellow head. But either fatigue was dulling the sharp edge of his speed, or the dripping shoulder-wound was eroding his timing, for Calastor again eluding the whistling blow—and etched a crimson gash across the warrior’s naked, heaving chest.

The next darting stroke of the slim sword laid open the tanned skin of Shangkar’s brow.

He swung the great axe again and again. Sometimes it was met and turned by an adroit, grazing blow of Calastor’s sword, in a hissing shower of sparks. And sometimes the lithe Wizard dodged the blow, striking with his steel fang at Shangkar’s unprotected cheek, or belly, or arm. Ere long the great brown tiger-body was smeared with gore. None of the wounds were crippling, but they were indeed painful, driving a hot needle of agony into Shangkar’s brain each time he strove with the axe. With every flex of straining muscles, the wounds tore open a bit more.

And he was tiring now. Sweat shone over his rippling arms and panting chest. And the blood from his slashed brow was dribbling blindingly into his eyes, blurring his vision. Somewhere deep within the seething chaos of his brain, Shangkar recalled a sun-drenched scene in the great arena of Argion City—a nude, heroic Argionid swordsman pitted against a giant thard—and how Shangkar, secure on the stone benches, had laughed as blood from a scratched brow had blinded the hero and brought him to an inevitable doom—

The end came suddenly.

Staggering off-balance, Shangkar swung suddenly with every screaming atom of his strength. The massive axe came down fully on a lifted blade—and Calastor’s sword shattered into glittering fragments, leaving only the handle and a long shard of broken blade in his hand.

Shangkar grinned, a feline baring of teeth.

“Now—”

Calastor, instead of springing back—sprang forward, closing with the giant form of the bloody warrior. And, for that one, fatal split second, Shangkar’s blurred vision failed him.

Calastor, with all his strength, drove the needle-sharp shard of his broken sword home, sheathing it in Shangkar’s heart.

For a long, gasping instant the Barbarian stared down at the sword’s cross-hilt, protruding from his breast. He plucked at it numbly, strength draining from his hands. Forgotten, the axe thudded to the deck. Then he opened his mouth to say something—whether curse or prayer none ever knew. But instead of words, a gout of scarlet blood issued from his lips. Eyes glazing, the dead man fell face-forward to the bloody deck.

“Move, Wizard, and she dies.”

The duel had seemed endless, but had only occupied a few minutes of time. And in that brief span, as Calastor had fought with Shangkar and the Sages had warred mentally against the Rovers, the Warlord had not failed to take advantage of these distractions. He had moved like a striking snake, seizing Lurn as she stood to one side, watching with frightened eyes and parted lips the duel of Wizard and warrior.

Drask’s iron arms had closed about the girl, holding her against his body, one hand suspending a dagger against her white throat. Now, protected by his living shield, Drask grinned with cold, ironic humor at Calastor.

“Tell your people to surrender,” he snarled, “or the girl dies. Fast— I’ll tear out her throat before your eyes if you don’t obey!”

Exhausted by the duel, numbed by Lurn’s peril, Calastor’s mind whirled, thinking furiously. Then—

“AIEEEEEEE!”

The full-throated terror in the cry arrested all attention. Staggering to his feet, Tonguth leveled a trembling finger at the mighty screen above their heads. All turned, to behold a sight beyond all thought or imagination.

Stupendous, dwarfing the stars, the Green Goddess looked down at them from space.

Millions of miles long, the body of the Green Woman floated in the void. Her form was that of a superbly beautiful woman, human save that Her flesh was like green jade. Her full-breasted, long-legged body was the epitome of incredible grace and beauty. From throat to heel, Her inconceivably vast body was swathed in drifting veils of emerald gauze … weightless draperies, vast as a nebula, that drifted in a cloud of dim emerald mist about Her. Her face was inhumanly godlike, eyes of dark emerald fire beneath level brows, the classic features of a sculptor’s dream of divinity. Her hair floated about Her mask-like face in a halo of emerald smoke, long coils of glittering green hair unfolding about Her like the tresses of a Medusa … a web of green magic, sparkling with a thousand minute points of light, as if half a galaxy of stars were caught in the floating haze of Her mane.

“Another illusion, like the dragons of space!” the fat shaman screamed, from the further wall where he had cowered to avoid the battle. “A trick of the mind—nothing more!”

But now the first fringe of the Rover fleet was almost upon the gigantic green figure. All within the control room stood motionless as the hurtling ships drove into the moon-sized illusion of one of Her outstretched hands—

Stars of atomic light flared within that vast palm, as seven ships exploded. Expanding clouds of incandescent gas lighted the void for an instant before dispersing.

That is no illusion!” Drask roared. “Gorm! command the fleet to break formation and avoid the thing—fire lasers at will!”

Taking advantage of his momentary distraction, Lurn broke from his grip and fled to Calastor. His strong arm protectingly encircled her waist.

Now the huge, scattered crescent of mile-long nomad ships broke into circling squads. Intense thread of white, eye-searing fire scorched space as laser after laser focused upon the body of the stupendous Woman.

A serene smile hovered on the lips of the Green Goddess. One giant hand floated out, crashing through a cloud of the Rover-vessels. Dazzling star-like explosions lit the moving hand as ship after ship disrupted upon contact.

Her mighty arm swung slowly through the heart of the Barbarian fleet, shattering a score of ships into flaming vapor. Between one heartbeat and the next, ten thousand Barbarians died in instantaneous novas of intolerable light.

Raging, sick fear gnawing at his heart, Drask strode to the control console.

“Evasive action, fools!”

“Master!” Tonguth rumbled. “The beams have no effect on Her!— Look!”

His sagging face the color of lead, Abdekiel’s cold voice soared above the panic-stricken hubbub.

“The form is solid. Your beams are being reflected—the gods alone know how!”

Calastor shot a swift glance at the arched vision screen above them. It was true! As the narrow beams slashed into the monstrous green limbs of the Woman, they exploded back upon themselves in eye-searing gouts of pyrotechnic fury. Inconceivable as it seemed, the million-mile-long body was solid flesh!

“Forward! Destroy Her!” Drask raged, white-lipped. But the fleet, nearly one-third of the ships utterly destroyed, was collapsing, swirling in chaotic disorder.

Gorm turned a frightened face to his Master. “They refuse to obey!”

“Look!” Tonguth clawed at Drask’s arm, drawing his attention to the screen. “They are running—back towards the Rift!”

It was true. Calastor felt a flush of triumph. His arm tightened about Lurn’s slim waist. In total revolt against the Warlord, their spirit broken, their morale wrecked, the scattered remnants of the once-mighty fleet were fleeing at top velocity back out of the Orion stars.

The Nucleus-world was safe!

The old Magister turned to the other Sages.

“Return to the Wolfhound and harry the broken fleet safely out into the free space of the Rift. Do not permit them to take refuge at Xulthoom, or Argion, or any other world. The Future Empire will not be fully secure until the last Barbarian has returned to the Rim.”

Bowing to the command of their senior, the six Adepts faded into thin air.

Now a wordless howl from one of the Chieftains summoned their attention to the giant form in the vision screen.

“She is—disintegrating!”

It was an uncanny sight: the million-mile-body of the Green Goddess drifted among the stars, slowly melting away even as they watched. Her purpose accomplished, Her great form was returning to the primal atoms of space from which the incomparable force of Her will had formed the titanic simulacrum. Portions of the limbs and torso had already evaporated. Before their startled gaze, more of Her body sloughed away into melting vapor.

Now only the enormous, classic face remained, ringed about with a vast, slowly-vanishing cloud of jade-green vapor. The inhumanly beautiful, inhumanly severe features smiled at them—then collapsed into roiling mists.

“Though all else fails me, I still have—revenge!” Drask grated with a metallic laugh. The ugly snout of his jeweled laser was aimed at Calastor and Lurn.

Swiftly thrusting Lurn behind him, Calastor swung into action—but suddenly an impenetrable, prisoning sphere of force snapped into being around him!

He was not alone. Similar globes flashed into existence about Drask, Abdekiel, Tonguth and the old Magister. Eyes flashing with astonishment, Calastor stretched out his hands to touch the orb of transparent energy that enclosed him.

Strange—and strange! Although his hands could not push through the glassy curve of impalpable force, neither could they touch the orb’s surface. It was (—his reeling mind struggled for a suitable comparison—) like stretching out your hands to the full reach of your arms: although nothing impedes your touch, you still cannot reach any further.

Then he turned, discovering that Lurn was also imprisoned with him in the mystery-sphere.

“Wh-what is it?” she whimpered.

“I don’t know. I—”

He, Lurn, and the sphere vanished.

As the astounded, shaken Barbarians stood numbly looking on, the five orbs of force snapped out of existence—taking with them the Warlord, the Chieftain, the shaman, and the Magister, as well as Lurn and Calastor.

Where they had stood but an instant before … was nothing.