tally  submissive to  her powerful  stepmother, who ruled  the
family with a rod of iron in order to further its social influence.
     Dovol  Sirus, a sleek, almost bald Faetian with heavy features and thin
lips, took fright on meeting Vydum Polar.
     Usually genial, always ready to agree with the other person, he was the
personification  of prosperity, sufficiency and equanimity. But his peace of
mind had  now been shattered. His small eyes darted here and there almost in
dismay. When he heard  Vydum Polar's news, he  promptly  sent out a call for
the greenhouse nurserywoman, his wife Vlasta Sirus.
     Vydum Polar passionately tried to drive  his  point home to the station
chief.
     "I am prepared personally to take a ship to Deimo, and I am prepared to
take my wife  and  Mila Ur. Her husband  will stay behind  with  you to look
after  the  machinery.  Space  has  been   declared  peaceful.  The  war  of
disintegration that  has just broken out is our common misfortune:  we  must
share it with the personnel on Deimo."
     Dovol Sirus nodded his agreement,  glancing at  the door from  time  to
time.
     Sveta was his favourite.
     On the insistence of his vociferous wife  Vlasta, Dovol Sirus  had made
use on Faena of the  pre-war  jitters to acquire influence over Dobr  Mar in
Danjab. He  had even  obtained the rank of  general  from him. True, when  a
disintegration war became imminent, Vlasta  Sirus made General Sirus  get as
far away from Faena as possible  and become chief of a space station, taking
his stepdaughter with him and her luckless husband.
     "You'll  fly  from  here,  but  what  about  us?"   asked  Dovol  Sirus
uncertainly.
     "We'll  come  back as  soon  as  we've  discussed with our  unfortunate
brothers from Faena what's to be done next.."
     "What's the  meaning of all this gadding about?" came the fruity  voice
of Vlasta Sirus as  she entered the room. "I shall never let Sveta go. I  am
as a mother to her."
     "But, my dear-" objected the station chief.
     "What if the people on Deimo  take  our ship for a torpedo? They've got
defence rockets too, you know."
     "But, my dear..."
     "'My dear, my dear'!" mimicked Vlasta. "We have a daughter we love. She
must be rescued. By any possible means."
     Vlasta Sirus cast a withering glance at her husband  from under knitted
brows and compressed her thin lips.
     "But my  dear... I promise you. Our  ship  will surely fly  to  Station
Deimo. And you and I, you and I only, will appoint the crew members."
     Vlasta Sirus slapped the table with the flat of her hand.
     "Exactly-you and I. And  that  will be the most  reliable crew! We must
preserve our  lives!  Preserve them! In this  war, what matters  most  is to
survive!"  And she ran  a glare  of  hatred over  all  three  Faetians.  "To
survive!"


     Helplessly wringing his  hands. Brat  Lua was pacing up and down inside
the office that was now his prison.
     Tycho Veg was uncomplainingly  carrying out his assignment without even
giving a thought to the possibility that the  disintegration  warhead in the
spare cabin might  be inadequately screened and dangerous to any Faetian who
approached it.
     To get  to  the spare  cabin, he had to  float  all the  way  along the
greenhouse through the air-roots that  seemed to be trying to hold him back.
But he pulled his weightless body  forward by clutching  at  them  so as  to
carry out as quickly as possible the chief's order, which had been confirmed
by a nod from Ala Veg. He  tried not  to think about his children's fate, as
he tried not to think about anything at all: neither the Faetians on Station
Phobo, nor himself. In spite of himself, however, he was thinking that there
were only two spaceships at the station. Would six people be able to  fly to
their native planet in one ship? Of course not!  It was only a three-seater.
Evidently, they would have to wait for another ship from Faena.
     The  spare cabin, which resembled a conical  cap, was  floating not far
from the long cigar of the ship, to which it was attached by a cable.
     Tycho  Veg  put on his space-suit  and,  securing  himself with a line,
kicked  himself off  from the greenhouse  airlock and floated off  into  the
silvery darkness of space.
     He miscalculated and did not reach his goal straightway. He had to wind
himself back by pulling in the line hand over hand and then push off again.
     This  time, he propelled himself with one  leg only so  as  to give his
jump better direction.
     The  spare cabin looked rough to him, like a meteorite. Tycho Veg clung
to  it  and  crawled towards the base of the  cone,  where  the cable to the
spaceship was secured.
     He seized hold of the metal bracket outside the spare cabin and  taking
up  the cable  that ran to the  ship, began  pulling it towards him together
with the  cabin. After a short time, the cabin  came  into contact  with the
ship.  Tycho  Veg  had  steeled  himself  for  a  tough job.  To  his  great
astonishment,  however,  he  noticed that the  parts  of  the ship  had been
designed  for instant replacement. It only needed one contact with the joint
for the automatic machinery inside  to be activated and for the old cabin to
detach itself easily from this ship and sail away towards the stars. The new
cabin fitted itself into place with the same ease.
     Tycho Veg crawled inside to set the automatic pilot.
     Another  surprise awaited  him inside:  there was  no need  for him  to
readjust the settings.
     The impersonal voice of the automatic machine warned him about this the
moment he touched the control panel. All  he  had to do was to switch on the
automatic pilot and go back to the greenhouse.
     As soon  as he was there, he saw  the rocket's  nozzles begin  blazing;
after  making a precisely  calculated  turn, the ship headed for Phobo  on a
course that had been unerringly checked by the machines.
     Tycho Veg sighed. He had only been doing his duty. He never even gave a
thought to whether the warhead had been properly screened.
     When  he  emerged from the lift-cage into the station corridor, he  was
met by a pale and trembling Ala Veg.
     "What's happened, darling?" asked Tycho.
     "Our children... Children..." was all that she could say, and she burst
into tears.
     She was holding in her hands a tablet inscribed with the latest news by
electromagnetic communication. Tycho read it and swayed, resting his hand on
the lift-cage door.
     The news  was  that flocks of  disintegration torpedoes from Danjab had
descended on the continent of the Superiors. There had been devastation  and
casualties... But Yar Jupi foresaw victory and demanded rejoicing.
     Mrak Luton ran into the corridor, waving his arms.
     "The  Dictator  is alive! The Dictator is  alive! The Blood  Council is
continuing the struggle! To your stations! This is a space outpost!"
     "Can  our  observer be  in  her  place?" sneered  Nega  Luton, who  had
appeared  after him. "She should be worrying about her relatives, not  about
winning the war."
     Her eyes flashing, Ala Veg went into the observatory.
     Tycho  Veg  was left  standing in the  corridor. He just couldn't  make
sense of  what  was  happening; he just  couldn't believe  that  his  native
Pleasure City might be lying in ruins, and his children...
     He followed his wife into the observatory.
     "I can't keep watch because of my tears," said Ala Veg as she turned to
him. "Take my place  at the instrument.  A strange star has appeared in that
quarter."
     "Could it be our ship with the warhead?" "No, it's somewhere else."
     Tycho began helping his wife and they soon established that the unknown
star was not obeying the usual laws of celestial mechanics and seemed to  be
choosing its own flight trajectory.
     Summoned  by the alarm signal,  Mrak Luton rushed into  the observatory
and peered suspiciously at Tycho and Ala Veg.
     "News from  Faena? Orders from  the Dictator? An  instruction  from the
Blood Council?"
     "No," replied Ala  Veg. "Communications have broken down. We  have also
lost contact with Station Phobo."
     "With Phobo?" bellowed Mrak Luton. "Treachery? Who dared to communicate
with Phobo,  the enemy fortress in space?" He drew his pistol and brandished
it threateningly at them.
     "I am simply reporting  that communications with them do not exist. The
former channel has gone dead, as if something had happened there."
     "It  hasn't happened  yet! But it  soon  will!  Are  you  watching  our
torpedo's flight?"
     "It's flying dead on course, but..."
     "What else?"
     "It's being intercepted by an unidentified ship. Apparently from Phobo.
It  seems  to be heading  for us.  Is it possible that the station personnel
have packed and are flying to us?"
     Mrak Luton roared with laughter.
     "So as to surrender?  To dump themselves  on us? To  gobble up our food
supplies? To  breathe our oxygen?  Or  do they want  to escape  the punitive
torpedo?"
     "But they might not know we sent it."
     "But  I know their ship's  coming our way.  Engineer Tycho Veg, I order
you to fire a defence rocket. The approaching ship must be destroyed."
     "What d'you mean  'destroyed'?" protested  Ala Veg.  "Mightn't there be
living Faetians on board?"
     "Living Faetians?" jeered Mrak Luton. "As if there were living Faetians
flying in our ship with the warhead! I've issued my orders. Send out defence
rockets, knock it out, destroy it!" Mrak Luton stamped his foot  in a frenzy
and brandished his pistol.
     Tycho Veg left the observatory. He knew where the defence rockets were.
They  were not covered by the Agreement on Peace in Outer Space.  They  were
short-range missiles and could  not  reach another station,  but  they  were
capable of locating in space and destroying the target approaching Deimo.
     To activate these defence weapons,  Tycho Veg did not have  to  descend
into the greenhouse. It was enough to go to Station Deimo's Central Console.
     He  fired  the  defence  rockets when the ship  from  Station Phobo was
clearly distinguishable as a point glittering in Sol's rays.
     He  returned  to  his wife  in  the  observatory, looking  dejected and
drained of his strength. He felt he had done something dreadful.
     Ala Veg could not hold back her tears.
     "There are Faetians on board, there could be living Faetians on board,"
she kept repeating. "And no news from Faena."
     "Our children can't possibly have been killed," said Tycho Veg, who had
no grounds whatever for such a statement.
     He  squinted through the eyepiece and saw something  flare  up in space
like a nova. One of defence  rockets had exploded  on  encountering the ship
from Phobo.
     On the big screen displaying the  image,  the ship-star plunged steeply
after the explosion towards the surface of Mar. It  had been  knocked out of
orbit by the force of the blast, but not destroyed.
     All  the Faetians on the station assembled  in  the observatory, except
for the imprisoned Brat Lua.
     Mrak Luton personally came to fetch him.
     "Let him  watch!" he said, pushing Lua into the observatory and showing
him the mass of Mar in the porthole. "Let him watch with his own eyes!"
     "Are you so sure that'll knock some  sense into him?" asked  Nega Luton
quietly.
     Her husband grinned complacently.
     "I know the inner world of the Faetians too well to be wrong. Otherwise
I wouldn't be Supreme Officer of the Blood Guard."
     The six Faetians on Deimo saw another star flare up in space and go out
again.
     "They've knocked out our torpedo!" And Mrak Luton stamped his foot.
     Then, on the surface of Mar, two  disintegration explosions occurred in
succession. In  the russet  deserts,  the  trunks of fabulous trees could be
seen from space as they soared up into the sky, billowing  out into swirling
canopies.  The distinct  shadows  of first  one  and then  a second gigantic
mushroom lay across the sandy wilderness.
     "What did I tell you!" roared Mrak Luton. "They wanted to be the .first
to wipe us  out. Their ship with  its warhead  exploded first. But you  were
just whining, you were talking about living Faetians."
     "The station  chief is  right,"  sighed Tycho Veg. "He can see into the
Faetian soul."
     "Engineer Tycho Veg! Stop drivelling! I know what I'm worth! Go back to
the greenhouse at once and fit one more ship with a torpedo."
     "But  we won't have any more ships left," said Tycho in  an attempt  at
protest.
     "Victory! Victory at all costs! A ship will be sent for us as heroes of
the disintegration war from the triumphant continent of the Superiors."
     "To hear is to obey," said Tycho Veg with a covert glance at Ala Veg.
     But she sat with bowed head, her hands dangling down in despair.
     Tycho Veg left to set up another ship-torpedo.
     However, this second missile was also knocked out  by  defence  rockets
fired by the Culture Is on Phobo.
     A second volley of defence rockets  was launched from Deimo to beat off
yet another ship that  was glittering in the rays of Sol and might also have
been primed with a disintegration warhead.
     Both ships, the one  from Phobo and the one from Deimo, blew  up almost
side by side in the deserts of  Mar. First, monstrous mushrooms on stalks of
smoke rose up  on the site of the  explosions, and  then, when the smoke had
dispersed, it was  possible to see from above  craters in the deserts of Mar
which had not been there before.
     "How amazed the astronomers would be," said Ala Veg in a sinking voice,
"if they found craters like that on Mar."
     Tycho did  not react at all to these words. He  had  barely reached the
Central Console from which he  had been discharging the defence rockets.  He
was feeling  really  ill  this time. It  seemed  to him  that there had been
children flying to them in the ships and that they had been killed.

     Chapter Six

        JUDGEMENT

     Sheltering in  the deep  abandoned  mine-shaft, Kutsi Merc had survived
the disintegration blast. The thunder above had long since died away.
     It was damp underfoot. The  raindrops  were  falling  from  above as if
counting the  moments.  It seemed  to  Kutsi that they  were  measuring  out
infinite  time. He  sat there  without strength or thoughts, dozing or in  a
faint. Only hunger made him rise to his feet. But he was afraid to  see what
awaited him above; he was afraid even to imagine it.
     The  raindrops were falling noisily, the  only sounds to indicate  that
the  world still  existed.  The  world? What  world?  Dead puddles  and dead
raindrops?
     His ravenous  hunger drove Kutsi up  the slippery metal rungs.  Some of
them wobbled. Kutsi could fall to  the bottom of the well. And  it would all
be over. But the metal  rungs  held. There was a little  blue circle high up
above.  Strange!  The  Nepts'  cabin  had  been   built  directly  over  the
mine-shaft.
     The sky! With stars in it! Was it really night?
     Kutsi  climbed on upwards. The circle above  him was growing bigger and
brighter,  and  the  stars were gradually  disappearing.  But  certainly not
because  day was breaking.  It was simply the  effect of a darkened chimney,
when stars are visible from the  bottom  in the daytime. The circle overhead
was growing bigger while they were disappearing. Kutsi climbed out on to the
surface.
     Sol  was  at its  zenith. The  Nepts' cabin no  longer existed. It  had
evidently been blown away when the stones were falling on to his shoulders.
     The  Faetian looked round and was dumbfounded. Not only had  the Nepts'
cabin  disappeared,  not  a  single   roundhead  shack  was  left  standing.
Everything around  had  been  turned into an enormous refuse tip of garbage,
pathetic kitchen utensils,  smashed furniture and rubble. A jagged wall rose
at an angle in the distance.
     Kutsi  made his way over to  it. And  immediately stumbled on the first
corpses. The Faetians had been killed by the windstorm that had followed the
disintegration  explosion. Many were  buried  under the  wreckage  of  their
shacks, many had been carried through  the air and  dashed against any solid
object in their way.
     That  was what had  happened to the  old Nept  couple. Kutsi recognised
their mangled bodies by their clothes.
     A chill  ran up and  down Kutsi's spine. He had heard plenty about  the
disintegration  weapon, but had never imagined that it would look like  this
after an explosion.
     The wall he had  reached proved to be part of some huge  workshops in a
suburb of  Pleasure City. The  building had collapsed,  burying machines and
the Faetians who worked in it. In its place towered an ugly pile of rubble.
     Had no one survived at all?
     Kutsi Merc's two hearts were thudding painfully in his breast  and  his
temples throbbed accordingly. Why had the wounded one recovered?
     Himself not knowing  why, perhaps in the hope of meeting  at  least one
living Faetian,
     Kutsi began wandering round Pleasure City.
     His  hunger,  dulled  by the  initial horror,  made  itself felt again.
Kutsi's  mind  was in  shock, and  instinct was  forcing  him  to  look  for
something edible in the mass of rubble.
     Two mountainous ramparts rose like grey barkhans on either side of what
had been a street. In one place,  under the fused stones, he  thought he saw
food containers.  He began digging into the pile and came upon a  protruding
hand. He could  not force himself to dig any further and went on between the
dunes of ash-covered rubble.
     He  had the  feeling  that  he was wandering along an  enormous dump of
builders' rubble.
     Kutsi had never thought that  the devastation could be so  complete. It
was even impossible to  make out the shapes of former buildings. There could
be no thought of finding something to eat in this pile of rubble.
     Kutsi was  suffering  the torments  of hunger. And  this combination of
horror  with the  pangs of hunger was unnatural. He  was disgusting even  to
himself.
     However,  a more powerful emotion  was beginning  to get the  better of
Kutsi.
     Who  was  to  blame  for what  had been done?  Who  had  made a war  of
disintegration  the purpose of his doctrine? Who  had  turned  the continent
into such a wilderness strewn with ashes?
     Kutsi  was  overcome by a  frenzied  hatred  of Dictator Yar  Jupi;  it
flooded his whole being, it overshadowed everything that he had  known, even
the stipulations which the  Great Circle  of  the proprietors had made about
unleashing  a disintegration war and which he had once reported to Dobr Mar.
Kutsi  Merc had failed  to carry out  his  mission!  The  automatic  systems
console was intact. Yar Jupi had begun the disintegration war first!
     When he climbed  up the  cone of rubble, Kutsi saw the ocean. Its shore
was disfigured by a  gigantic crater, now flooded with sea water. A  torpedo
had  evidently  exploded in  the port. The  enormous  crater was ringed by a
rampart that had covered part of the ruins. Clouds of sand and ooze had been
thrown up from the seabed into the air  during  the  explosion  and had then
fallen as dry ash onto the ruins.
     Hatred, horror and the hopelessness of his position drove Kutsi further
on. The results of a shock wave are freakish. In  one place,  he stumbled on
the cross-section  of  a  rocky  hill with  window  openings  and  shapeless
patches. When he  went closer, Kutsi saw a pile of  scrap iron driven into a
wall.
     In front of him he saw the wreckage of a steamcar that had been passing
that way at the time of the explosion.
     Nearby,  on  the  fused  stone, shone  patches  vaguely  suggestive  of
Faetians.
     Kutsi shuddered:  "The  white shadows of  passers-by!" The  pedestrians
themselves had been vapourised by the incredible heat, but their shadows had
been  imprinted  by the  exploding  star right  there  on the wall where the
outlines, the mangled images of those who not long ago had been living human
beings now showed up as lighter, less fused areas on the wall...
     Kutsi could not bear it  any longer.  He ran  back.  His foot struck  a
stone that rolled over the slag  of the  roadway. A smashed jar of something
edible! He  picked it up.  It proved to  be carbon inside. The unprecedented
heat had coked the contents, converting it into a black, coagulated mass.
     Kutsi wanted to get to the central quarters of the city. But he already
knew what he was going to see there: shadows on the walls, if the stones had
not been piled into shapeless heaps, and endless ramparts of rubble...
     Then  Kutsi made a  decision. What he had  been through had clouded his
mind. Not a single Faetian in possession of his faculties would have decided
on the crazy plan that hatched out in Kutsi's inflamed brain.
     Kutsi  knew that he  was doomed:  the  deadly radiation  had long since
penetrated his body. It would soon begin to make itself felt. There was very
little time left. He had no hope of survival whatever! Nor had he any desire
to live among the dead.
     However, he considered himself under obligation to do his last duty.
     With his characteristic determination, he went back across the heaps of
rubble to the Great Shore where, not so long ago, a sea wave had brought Ave
and Mada together.
     The further away  he was from the site of  the explosion, the more hope
there was of finding something to eat. A house lizard with  charred skin was
lying under  a  wall  just like  the bodies of the Nepts.  The affectionate,
quick-moving, nimble lizard had, of course, been a general  favourite of the
dead couple.
     Kutsi  laughed bitterly. The Supreme Officer of the Blood Guard had met
him on the ship and  had called him  a carrion-eater. Had it occurred to the
man that he would prove to be right?
     Only at night  did Kutsi reach  the  Temple of Eternity, or rather  the
mountain of stones lying where it had once stood. If his "hump" had been the
cause  of the explosion,  then  it  might be possible to find a way into the
underground by way of the crater.
     Kutsi  was certain that the electric  power system had been put out  of
action and that the automatic doors would not be working.
     He proved right in one respect and wrong in the other.
     Only  in the  morning did he  manage  to  find  the way  into  the deep
corridor where  the  explosion had occurred. The gallery was less  cluttered
with stones than everything else around, since the gases had shot  out of it
as from a gun-barrel.
     Kutsi's frenzied will-power helped him to dig out the entrance into the
underground where he had been "killed" by Yar Alt.
     His  old  self again, Kutsi made his  way like a  spy along  the walls,
lighting his path with a  pocket  torch. But suddenly a bright light came on
of its  own accord.  Kutsi Merc was  overjoyed  at  this,  but  he  was also
frightened by it. If the supply to the underground rooms was  still working,
he would not  be able to  get through  the closed walls.  Yar Jupi was still
alive.  He was still sending  disintegration torpedoes against Danjab. Kutsi
Merc had no right to retreat.
     A  blank  wall rose up in front  of him. When Kutsi had crawled outside
from there,  the  walls had  been  divided,  which meant that  this  must be
another route leading to the Dictator's underground Lair.
     Kutsi Merc tried in  vain to separate the walls, driving into a chink a
piece of metal he had picked out on the surface.
     Beads of  cold sweat started up on  his brow. He could not back out, he
simply could not  do it! He fixed a  glare  full  of  hatred at  the  spiral
ornament on the accursed wall.
     The wall divided.
     Kutsi  was well versed  in  the  technology of automatic  machines that
could  memorise the  brain biocurrents. He instantly  realised that they had
been programmed  to  a particularly strong  character trait  of  the  chosen
Faetians. For Yar Jupi himself, whom all automatic machines had, of  course,
to obey,  the predominant  characteristic was hatred. It was answered by the
"blood doors", which were also tuned to Mada's kindly nature and that of her
nanny. But Kutsi's  hatred now was  evidently not inferior to  that  of  the
Dictator  himself.  And  so the  automatic machines  of the  Lair went  into
action.
     Kutsi ran along the illuminated corridor. Each time the wall barred his
way, Kutsi's glare of hatred opened it.
     After a steep downward slope, the corridor made a turn, emerging into a
spacious  apartment reminiscent of  a  palace hall with  a vaulted  ceiling.
There  was  no  furniture  in it  except for a  huge  cupboard  with shining
vertical slits.
     Two  enormous  robots with  cubic heads and  articulated tentacles came
rushing straight at him.
     Kutsi  guessed  that  he  must have  reached  his goal.  The Dictator's
bunker!
     Hatred  made  Kutsi Merc  invincible. He rushed at the robots, ordering
them  to follow him.  And the robots obeyed,  programmed to  respond to  the
Dictator's principal emotion.
     Kutsi Merc stopped  before the secretary-box, not admitting to  himself
that it might refuse to obey him.
     "Open the  study door!" he commanded, fixing his gaze on  the machine's
glowing slits.
     The  machinery of the Faetians was so  sophisticated that  it  detected
their moods. This height of development had its vulnerable side.
     The secretary-box, manufactured in Dan-jab, was simply a machine always
obedient  to  the  will  of its  owner, the Dictator  of Powermania. It  now
recognised this will in Kutsi and obeyed it.
     The door to Yar Jupi's study opened.
     Yar Jupi  jumped up from the table and stared  in  terror at the  burly
stranger with a wrestler's neck and a sneer on his face.
     "Who are you?" shouted the Dictator, shaking from head to foot.
     "Your judge," replied Kutsi coldly, advancing on him.
     If Yar Jupi  had not been in such  a panic fear of living  Faetians and
had not kept  them at  a distance, Kutsi's plan would  not  have worked. But
this time Kutsi was face to face with the Dictator in person.
     "Robots!  Security  robots!"  yelled Yar  Jupi in a  voice hoarse  with
terror.
     The robots ran in, ready for action.
     "Tie his hands together!"
     It  was not Yar Jupi, but Kutsi who  gave the order in a voice  full of
hatred.
     Yar Jupi  raged,  screamed and ordered the  robots to obey him, but his
brain was radiating terror, not the hatred so familiar to the robots.
     The robots unthinkingly bound the Dictator's hands.
     "You  are  the greatest criminal of  all  time!" announced  Kutsi Merc,
standing before the  helpless Dictator. He  considered himself the  only one
who had survived to act on behalf of all the  victims. "I bear within me the
hatred  of all the victims of your criminal doctrine,  whose goal  you  made
destruction and whose meaning was hatred. But there is a hatred greater than
yours.  I  bring that hatred down  on  you  in the name  of  the history  of
Reason!"
     "I pray you for mercy,"  whined the Dictator. "Not many are left  alive
on Faena. I shall  work humbly, like the last roundhead; I shall acknowledge
the  Doctrine  of Justice, I shall grow  flowers.  Just look at the beauty I
have  raised. Let us go  to the niche, let  us savour the fragrance of those
blossoms together."
     "Silence. I shall not let you  breathe the scent of  your own  flowers.
Prepare  yourself for the  most  shameful execution  of all.  I  am going to
switch on all  the monitor screens and before the eyes of your fellows /  am
going to hang you!"
     Kutsi Merc tore down  the curtains covering the screens.  The  monitors
lit up.
     The terrified military leaders and members of the Blood Council watched
helplessly from them.
     Kutsi deftly  pulled a cord out of the curtains, deftly  tied a  noose,
jumped onto the desk and attached the cord to the chandelier hook. The noose
dangled directly under the lamps. The table had to be moved aside.
     Then  Kutsi  stood  Yar  Jupi,  who was  shaking  with  terror,  on the
Dictator's chair as if he were no more than a will-less puppet.
     The  robots moved away, watching  the  proceedings  impassively.  Kutsi
noticed that on several screens the military leaders  had covered their eyes
with their hands, while on the others, the Faetians, with their cowls thrown
back, were watching the progress of the execution with malignant glee.
     "In the name of History," announced Kutsi Merc, and he kicked the chair
from under the Dictator's feet.
     Dobr  Mar only  came round  from  time to time,  half-recumbent in  the
Ruler's chair and in a far from comfortable position.
     All  the screens in the bunker were  dead. The  lamps of  the emergency
lighting glowed dully.
     The military  leaders  and the  anguished  Sister of  Health were still
fussing over the Ruler. Her  name was, Vera Fae. All her family had perished
up above: father, mother, husband,  three daughters-all except  her son, who
had flown to Terr with a  space  expedition. Vera  Fae was  in  despair. She
could find strength only in attending to the sick Ruler.
     Dobr Mar had lost the power of speech. His tongue, right hand and right
leg were paralysed. He could only communicate with his eyes. Vera Fae  alone
could understand him.
     Haggard, her hair turned white in the last few hours, with tear-stained
eyes,  she had  not lost the gentle touch and warm  voice  of the doctor-all
that the Ruler could respond to.
     There was no one  to take over from him. The  "Ruler's friend", who was
supposed  to do  so according to  the law, had  been killed  up above,  like
millions of other Faetians.
     The  military  leaders  announced  through  Vera Fae  that the  reserve
torpedoes had been expended. But barbarians' torpedoes were  still showering
down on their own continent, leaving a scene of total devastation.
     The Ruler made an attempt to move. The Sister of Health looked into his
eyes, trying to read his thoughts.
     The chief of the disintegration weapons came up. He had been  entrusted
with that terrible means of  aggression  because of  his known cowardice and
reluctance to make his own decisions. Even this time  he, too, wanted at all
costs  the  Ruler's  written  consent  to  the  detonation  of   the   last,
superpowerful  underwater  disintegration  device which  had  been delivered
under Kutsi Merc's supervision  to the Great Shore, almost to the very place
where Ave and Mada had once been surf-riding.
     Dobr Mar could not understand the showily overdressed general who,  his
voice  rising  to a falsetto,  tried to convince  the  Sister of  Health  by
saying,  "The  destruction of  the  Dictator's underground  Lair is our only
salvation. Such is the will of the Great Circle."
     Dobr Mar wearily closed his eyes.
     "He agrees! He agrees!" said the hunchbacked general delightedly.
     But Dobr Mar opened his eyes  again and, in an effort to say something,
stared at his desk.
     Vera Fae took some inscribed tablets off it and held  them  in front of
his eyes.
     On seeing one of them, Dobr Mar looked down.
     Vera Fae showed the tablet to the general.
     "I  know that!"  he screeched like  a cockerel.  "When he  invented the
disintegration weapon,  the honoured Elder Dm Sat wanted to restrict its use
and frightened the  Faetians with the apparent prospect of all the  planet's
oceans being blown up."
     Dobr Mar closed his eyes.
     "Does Ruler Dobr  Mar agree?" persisted the general. "Can the Sister of
Health sign  on  his behalf  a document authorising  the detonation  of  the
underwater disintegration device?"
     "How can I  do  that if the Ruler himself  has reminded us of the great
Elder's warning?"
     "A naive fabrication! As if all the waters of the oceans, in the  event
of  a  superpowerful explosion,  would  immediately  disintegrate, releasing
their  energy like a supernova.  And as if our whole planet  would be turned
into a tiny supernova."
     "Don't you find that terrifying?" asked the Sister of Health.
     "What  could be  more  terrifying  than  what's  already  happened? The
Dictator of Powermania must be stopped at all costs. An underwater explosion
by the Great Shore will start an earthquake; it will destroy his bunker down
there.  The oceanic tidal wave will  rise to the heavens, crash down on  the
Lair and flood  it. If the Sister of Health can convince the  Ruler, he will
agree.  His  written  order  is  needed  for  the  explosion.  He  alone  is
responsible for everything."
     The Sister of  Health looked  into  the  dim eyes of  the  sick man. He
closed them.
     "He agrees, at last he agrees!" howled the general, seizing the Ruler's
lifeless  hand  and  applying  it  to the  plate. "Explode it!" shouted  the
general  in  a thin voice  and, his leg dragging, he  ran out of the  study,
plate in hand.
     Dobr  Mar  watched  him  go with  a  frightened look. He wanted to  say
something, but was unable to.
     The Sister of Health came to her senses and  tried to stop the general,
but the Ruler felt worse and she had to help  him, wiping  his face that was
twisted in a grimace and was covered with beads of sweat.
     The general returned. The order had been passed on. The explosion would
take place...
     "I take no responsibility for anything!" he shouted.

     Chapter Seven

        THE STAR OF HATRED

     Every Sister of Health has something of the mother in her.
     Her desire  to help  a sick man, her maternal  attitude  to a suffering
person, now helpless as a child and therefore  as dear to her as if  he were
her  own,  were  struggling  in  Mada  with  a  keen,  unjustified,  as  she
considered, homesickness.
     Unable  to  understand  this  feeling  and  rejecting  it,  she  looked
devotedly after Um Sat, whose life was now fading...
     With his  large  beard, his piercing, yearning (for Faena, of  course!)
eyes,  he was lying motionless on  his couch. His illness was  delaying  the
return  of  Quest  and  intensifying  the  homesickness  that  Mada  and her
colleagues felt for Faena.
     As a Sister of Health,  however, she had to  rise  above  her  personal
sufferings and  she  looked after the Elder, trying to  cure  his mysterious
illness, since a speedy return might mean his salvation. But there could  be
no  thought of that with Um  Sat so  seriously  ill. Mada  looked after  him
devotedly; she  was not  only  a Sister of  Health to  him,  but a spiritual
confidante.  She  admitted  to him  her  yearning  for Faena and received in
return  the Elder's terrible confession that all the  oceans on Faena  might
blow up as  a result of a disintegration  war. Mada shuddered,  frowned  and
shook her head in protest.
     By shouldering  part of the Elder's  alarm,  she eased  his  condition,
affirming that  matters could not go as  far as such a  catastrophe and they
would surely go back to their Faena where they were so eagerly awaited.
     On Mada's  instructions,  Ave and Gor Terr went hunting in the  forest.
She would not let them touch the provisions intended for the return journey.
     Return journey! It was a goal, a dream, a passionate desire, and it was
not felt by Mada alone.
     She  told  Toni  Fae to  stay  by  the  electromagnetic  communications
apparatus which,  for  some  strange  reason,  had  gone  silent. The thread
linking Quest and their native planet  had  snapped. Mada reassured Toni Fae
that  the  atmosphere of  Terr  was  to  blame:  it  was blanketing off  the
electromagnetic waves from Faena and Mar.
     Toni  Fae was desperate to go home.  He could not  sleep. He would doze
off at  the apparatus, then wake up in a cold sweat, now hearing his mother,
Vera Fae, calling him,  now imagining that it was  Ala Veg laughing  at him.
But the apparatus remained silent. There were times when  Toni  Fae couldn't
bear it  any more. Then  Jvlada's gentle hand  would rest on  his  trembling
shoulder and her calm, soft voice would assure him that the state of  Terr's
atmosphere  would change;  they  need  only  wait,  and  he  would hear  the
longed-for signal.
     Um  Sat, however, was not so easily pacified. Mada knew what he thought
about a disintegration  war and how it  had been tormenting him even  before
they had left Faena.
     Ave was gloomy for the same reason.
     He was no longer the sensitive youth who had made such an impression on
Mada as he rode  the ocean waves.  He had changed  inwardly  and  outwardly.
After growing a moustache and a beard on Terr, he looked much older, calmer,
more self-assured and stronger.
     Mada knew that  by sending her  husband out hunting, she was subjecting
him  to  danger. But as she thought  about all the crew, she  could  not act
otherwise, for she had faith in his strength, agility and courage.
     Consequently, when, apart from a reindeer rescued from a beast of prey,
Ave brought back a spotted hide with its jaws fixed in a snarl, Mada was not
surprised, seeing it as only natural.
     Ave was morose. He  said nothing to Mada, but she knew  everything! And
she feared not so much the  something  terrible that could happen out there,
perhaps somewhere far away, as for her "children" whom she was looking after
here, although these children were Ave, Um Sat, Toni Fae and Gor Terr.
     The long-armed and stooping Faetian giant was missing his native planet
as badly as  everyone else. The primitive  mode of life which he and Ave, as
the  main providers, had to lead here was unpleasant and even offensive to a
skilled engineer.
     As he wandered  through  the  densely packed  tree-trunks  on the alien
planet,  Gor  Terr  never  ceased  making   grandiose  plans  for  technical
improvements that there was no one to implement on  Terr: there were neither
workshops, nor assistants, and  so  there  could  not  be  any  progress  or
civilisation.
     Around them lay the alien,  primeval  forest. From time  to time,  they
would glimpse antlers  or the  spotted hide of  a predator. Who was going to
win?
     Gor Terr stubbornly shook his  head. No! This life was not for him!  He
didn't  want to  be like  his ancestors  with  their  clubs  and stone axes,
however much he might resemble them physically.  He was not going to be like
the savages of the Stone Age. Let other Faetians colonise other planets, but
he was going to return to workshops, steamcars, rockets and skyscrapers!
     One  starry  night,  in  despair  of ever  hearing  a signal  over  the
electromagnetic communications, Ton! Fae began searching among the stars for
the faintly visible Faena, as if hoping to see a light signal.
     And then he saw one!
     The  young astronomer couldn't believe his eyes and rushed to  the star
map. Was he looking at the right place? No,  he hadn't made a mistake. Faena
should be passing through that particular constellation between Alt and Veg.
     The little star had evidently been swamped by the brilliant flare of  a
supernova. Somewhere immeasurably far away, beyond the fringe of the Galaxy,
the latest cosmic disaster had taken place and the light of a once exploding
star had  finally reached  Sol and its planets. And only by  chance had  the
supernova blotted out Faena.  He must now wait  until the planet, travelling
across the sky on a complex path  divergent from  that of the stars, emerged
from the  brilliant light of the supernova  and began to shine at a distance
with its usual faint, but so very dear and appealing light.
     The supernova, however, shining more brightly than all the other stars,
except for Sol in the daytime, seemed not to want Faena to  get away. It was
moving across the sky, not like a star, but like a planet...
     Ton! Fae  caught  his breath. He started  rousing  Gor Terr, who simply
wouldn't wake up and merely bellowed in his sleep.
     Ave Mar woke up and applied his eye to the eyepiece.
     Yes, an unusually bright  star was  blazing in  the night  sky.  It was
clearly  visible to  the naked eye;  it  was like a lantern  in the sky. But
there was something in its effulgence that made Ton! Fae's heart beat faster
in alarm.
     Ave understood everything at once. He had long  been keeping to himself
the  secret that Dm Sat had entrusted to him about the danger hidden  in the
oceans. And now out there...
     Mada came in from the big cabin in which Um Sat slept. She was as white
as a  sheet. She  had only been  suspecting it,  but  when she looked at her
husband, she understood everything.
     "My dear Toni  Fae," said  Mada.  "Prepare yourself for the worst. Tell
me, is your new star moving across the sky the way Faena should be moving?"
     "It doesn't make sense, but it's true."
     "Faena  doesn't exist a