The Sun Smasher

CHAPTER II

For a moment, too shocked even to move, Banning stared at the stranger. Then he caught his hand away.

"What are you doing?” he demanded, drawing back. “What is this? I don't know you. And I'm not — whatever name you called me. I'm Neil Banning."

The stranger smiled. In his dark, ruthless face there was something that frightened Banning more than open enmity would have done. It was affection, such as a man might have for a son, or younger brother. Deep affection, mingled oddly with respect.

"Neil Banning,” said the man who called himself Rolf. “Yes. It was the story of Neil Banning in the newspapers that led me here. You are a small sensation now, the man who was robbed of his past. He laughed softly. “It's a pity they can't know the truth."

A wild surge of hope went through Banning. “Then you do know it? You can tell me — you can tell them why this has been done?"

"I can tell you,” said Rolf, emphasizing the pronoun. “But not here, not now. Be patient a few more hours. I'll get you out of here tonight."

"If yon can arrange bail for me, I'll be grateful,” Banning said. “But I don't understand why you're doing this.” He looked searchingly at Rolf. “Perhaps: I should remember you. Did you know me as a child-?"

"Yes,” said Rolf. “I knew you as a child — and as a man. But you could not remember me.” A black look of anger crossed his face, and he said savagely, “The swine. Of all the evils they could have done you, this exile from the mind is—” He caught himself. “No. They might have done worse. They might have killed you."

Banning gaped. People whirled through his mind, old Wallace, Harkness, the red-faced woman. “Who might have killed me?"

Rolf said two names, very softly. They were strange names. “Tharanya.” And another. “Jommor."

He watched Banning closely.

Suddenly Banning understood. He backed well away from the door. “You,” he said, “are crazy as a hatter.” He was glad there were bars between them.

Rolf grinned. “It's natural you should think so — just as the good Sheriff thinks it of you. Don't be too hard on him, Kyle, it isn't his fault. He's quite right, you see. Neil Banning never existed."

He bent his bead in a curiously proud little bow, and turned away. “You will be free tonight. Trust me, even if you do not understand."

He was gone before Banning could think to yell for the deputy. Banning sat down on the bunk, utterly dejected. For a moment he had hoped, for a moment he had been sure that the big dark man knew the truth and could help him. It was that much harder to realize his mistake.

"I suppose,” he thought bitterly, “that every lunatic in the country will start calling me brother."

He didn't hear anything that evening about bail being arranged for him. He had not expected to.

Banning picked at the dinner they brought him. He was tired, in a sullen, ugly mood. He stretched out on the bunk, thinking the hell with them, thinking of the pleasure he would have in suing them all for false arrest. After a while he fell into an uneasy sleep.

The cold, iron sound of his cell door opening brought him up, wide awake. It was night now, and only the corridor lights were on. The big dark man stood in the open door, smiling.

"Come,” he said. “The way is clear."

Banning said, “How did you get in here? How did you get those keys?'

He looked past the dark man, to the end of the corridor. The deputy was leaning forward across his desk with his head on the blotter. One arm hung down, relaxed and boneless.

Banning cried out with sudden horror, “My God, what have you done, what have you got me into?” He flung himself on the cell door, trying to shut it again, to force the stranger out. “Get out, I won't have anything to do with it.” He began to yell.

With an expression of regret, Rolf opened his left hand to reveal a small egg-shaped thing of metal, with a lens in one end. He said, “Forgive me, Kyle. There's no time now to explain."

A brief pale flicker came out of the lens. Banning felt no pain, only a mild shock and then a dissolution as black and still as death. He did not even feel Rolf's arms catch him as he fell.

When he woke again he was in a car. He was in the back seat, and Rolf was beside him, sitting so that he could watch him. The car was going very fast along a prairie road, and it was still night. The driver was no more than a shadow against the dim glow of the dashboard lights, and outside there was only a vast darkness caught under a bowl of stars.

It was dark in the back seat, and Banning had not moved very much, nor spoken. He thought perhaps Rolf had not seen that he was conscious again. He thought that if he threw himself forward suddenly, he might catch the big dark man off guard.

He gathered himself, trying not to change even the rhythm of his breathing.

Rolf said, “I don't want to put you out again, Kyle. Don't make me."

Banning hesitated. He could see from the way Rolf was sitting that he was holding something in his hand. He remembered the metal egg, and decided that he would have to wait for a better chance. He was sorry. He would have liked to get his hands on Rolf.

"You killed that deputy,” he said. “Probably others, too. You're not only crazy, you're a killer."

With irritating patience, Rolf said, “You're not dead, are you?"

"No, but—"

"Neither is the deputy, nor anyone else. These people have no part in our affairs. It would be shameful to kill them.” He chuckled. “Tharanya would be surprised to hear me say that. She thinks of me as a man without a soul."

Banning sat up straight. “Who is Tharanya? What's that thing you knocked me out with? Where are you taking me — and what the hell is this all about?” His voice rose to a high pitch of fright and fury. He was no more than normally afraid of physical injury and death, but he had had a nerve-racking couple of days and he was not at his best. It seemed too much to ask for him to remain calm while being pushed over the nighted prairie at breakneck speed by a lunatic kidnapper and his accomplice.

"I suppose,” Rolf said, “it wouldn't do any good if I told you I'm your friend, your best and oldest friend, and that you have nothing to fear.'

"No. It wouldn't."

"I didn't think so.” Rolf sighed. “And I'm afraid the answers to your questions won't help either. Jommor did a damn good job on you — better than I'd have believed possible."

Banning took hold of the edge of the seat, trying to control himself. “And who is Jommor?"

"Tharanya's right-hand man. And Tharanya is sole and sovereign ruler of the New Empire… and you're Kyle Valkar, and I'm Rolf, who wiped your nose for you when you were—” He broke off, swearing in a language Banning did not understand. “What's the use?"

"New Empire,” said Banning. ‘Delusions of grandeur. You still haven't told me what that gadget is."

"Cerebro-shocker,” said Rolf, as one says “rattle” to a baby. He began to talk to the driver in that foreign and incomprehensible tongue, not taking his eyes off Banning. Presently there was silence again.

The road got worse. The car slowed down some, but not enough to suit Banning. After a while he realized that there wasn't any road at all. Banning began again to measure the distance between himself and Rolf. He also began to doubt the power of the metal egg. Cerebro-shocker, indeed. Something else must have hit him back there in the cell, something he hadn't seen, a believable thing like a gun barrel or brass knuckles. It was dark in there and the door had been open. The accomplice, the driver, could easily have got in, could have been standing behind him, ready to lower the boom when Rolf signaled him.

Ahead of them, a mile or so away across the flat prairie, there was a curious flare of light, and a great wind struck them, and was gone.

The driver spoke, and Rolf answered, with a note of relief.

Banning let himself roll with the motion of the car. He waited till it pitched in the right direction, and then he threw himself, fast and hard, at the big dark man.

He was wrong about the metal egg. It worked.

This time he did not go clear out. Apparently the degrees of shock could be controlled, and Rolf did not want him unconscious — only partly so. He could still see and hear and move, though not normally and what he saw and heard were like the impersonal shadow-shapes and unreal voices of a film, having no connection with himself.

He saw the prairie roll on past the car, black and empty under the stars. Then he felt the car go slower and slower until it stopped, and he heard Rolf's voice telling him gently to get out. He took Rolf's hand, as though he were a child and Rolf his father, and let himself be helped. His body moved, but it had ceased to be his own.

Outside there was a cold wind sweeping, and a sudden light that blotted out the stars. The light showed the car and the prairie grass. It showed the driver, and Rolf, and himself, laying their shadows long and black behind them. It showed a wall of metal, bright as a new mirror and straight for a hundred feet or so horizontally, but rising vertically in a convex curve.

There were openings in the wall. Windows, ports, a door, a hatchway, who knew the right words? It was not a wall. It was the side and flank of a ship.

Men came out of it. They wore strange clothing, and they spoke a strange tongue. They moved forward, and Rolf and the driver and Neil Banning walked to meet them. Presently they stopped in the full glare of the light. The strange men spoke to Rolf, and he answered them, and then Banning realized in a dim and distant way that the men were all looking at him and that in their faces was a reverence almost approaching superstition.

He heard them say, “The Valkar!” And as far off as he was, he felt a small, faint shiver touch him at the fierce and hopeful and wild and half-despairing tone in which they said it.

Rolf led him toward the open hatchway of the ship. He said quietly, “You asked me where I was taking you. Come aboard, Kyle — I'm taking you home."