Horn turned his eyes away from the monument and studied the area surrounding it. Only around the vast perimeter of the mesa were the ruins visible, and the other side was so distant it dwindled away grayly. Everywhere else the ruins had been sealed under a marble-smooth surface inlaid with murals.

"Sunport," Wu said softly. "They built it high and tall, on the ruins of a city called Denver, so that it would be nearer the stars. Like Eron, it ruled the known world. Legend says that a great barbarian leader sacked Sunport in its greatness. He led his nomad bands upon it, the legend says, and tore it down and gave it back to the sun, its might and its oppression."

"Eron, too, can be destroyed," Horn said.

"A straw man." Wu chuckled. "Legend is not to be trusted. Sunport was dead long before then. Created by a historic need, it died when its job was done. That tribal hero cremated a corpse."

Horn shrugged. There were immediate problems; he was intent upon the crowded surface of the sealed ruins.

Across giant doors in the black cube's face was a broad platform. Obviously temporary, it had the solidity of permanence. Like the broad steps that led up to it, the platform was gleaming, golden plastic. Emerging from under it and stretching far across the field were deep, metal-lined tracks. Facing the platform were concentric semicircles of bleachers, their tiers capable of seating many thousands.

Pavilions were a riot of color everywhere. Milling among them were the Golden Folk. Surely there were more of them here, Horn thought, than had ever been gathered together before. Below him was the aristocracy of Eron, the heirs of the universe, proud, powerful, arrogant-and effeminate. Not one of them could have done what he had done to get here.

The voices rose to Horn, their laughter, their gaiety, high-pitched, nervous. It sounded like the music for a last palsied dance before dissolution.

They were leeches, bloodsuckers. It would be pleasant to have the power to crush them all. The white, anemic worlds would bless him and grow strong again. But only one of them was to die. There would be time for only one.

The Golden Folk were no threat. Danger lay only in the strength they bought. Guards, sprinkled thickly, outnumbered their masters. They lined the perimeter of the paved mesa, alert and watchful. Units were posted in strategic spots. They cl.u.s.tered around the base of the black cube. They seemed unusually tall there, even at this distance. They were the Elite Guard, Horn realized, the three-meter Denebolan lancers.

It wasn't a question of being afraid of them. They were only a complication to be considered.

Monoliths ringed the edges of the mesa. They were the tall, black spires of battleships, their one-hundred-meter diameters and half-kilometer lengths dwarfed only by the monument. Two broad, golden bands, fore and aft, adapted them to pa.s.sage through the Tube. Nothing projected beyond them; it was understood that they kept the ship from touching the Tube's deadly walls.

There were nine of the monoliths, each one a sleek, efficient, ruthless fighting machine. Each one carried twelve thirty-inch rifles. The thrust of their unitron helices could throw twelve-ton projectiles at velocities sufficient to vaporize them on impact. One shot would have split apart a mountain.

Only the rifles, normally retracted into flat turrets in the N-iron hulls, were busy, roaming restlessly in search of targets in the pale sky or on the mountains beyond that seemed close but were actually kilometers away. They found nothing to stop their searching.

Other ships were in the sky and on the ground: cruisers, scoutships.... Eron guarded its rulers thoroughly.

One small pistol against the ma.s.sive power that had crushed a star cl.u.s.ter. It was not too uneven. Horn wasn't fighting with battleships, and brute power isn't efficient at swatting gnats. It takes only one small bullet to kill a man.

They thought eight hundred meters was an impossible range for a portable weapon. Horn smiled grimly. Eron didn't know its own devices.

Something whined above him. Instinctively, Horn threw himself down in the brush-covered hollow and turned his head to glance upward. The fantastic black ma.s.s of a battleship was poised above them, its hull rippling with iridescent color, betraying the infinitesimal power loss of the unitronic field that lifted and drove it.

Wu squalled and jumped to his feet. With one hand, Horn dumped him unceremoniously into the brush and held him there.

"Shut up and stay down!" he shouted above the whine.

Wu shivered helplessly, his face pressed into the dirt. "My ancestors, preserve me!"

Gently the giant stern lowered, pa.s.sed them not a hundred meters away, and slowed to a stop on the field below. Colossal, tripod landing skids unfolded and bit into the mountain. The ground quivered under them. From behind them came the rumble of falling rock. Horn thought of the tunnel and hoped, briefly, that it hadn't been blocked.

He raised his head above the wall, shaken now so that it was only half as high. He could still see the monument and the platform in front of it. The ship served him instead of Eron; it gave him a shield from casual observation.

He glanced upward at the black tower, and Lil fluttered across his vision. For the first time he realized that she had been gone.

"Guards are as thick as lice on a beggar's bed," she reported. "But that monster is nothing to worry about. A man in armor pays no attention to ants underneath his foot."

Wu groaned, unappeased. "Can't a man pick up a wretched handful of diamonds? Must the Company send ships enough to blow the whole planet into atoms?"

Horn unclipped the pistol from the cord around his shoulder. There was little to go wrong with it, but even that little was a chance that need not be taken.

With the quick efficiency of the Guard, he stripped it down. Out of the b.u.t.t he shook the small, flat dynode cell. Its molecule-thin films stored the energy of a ton of chemical explosives. The little magazine of fifty bullets was well oiled; the projectiles slid easily. The helix-wound barrel was clean and untarnished.

It was in perfect working order. When he pulled the trigger, a bullet, armored against atmospheric friction, would leave the gun with the velocity of an ancient cannon sh.e.l.l.

Wu looked at the dismantled gun and shuddered. "It seems as if all these precautions are for you," he said slowly. "I urge you: don't use that pistol! One man's death means nothing-except to himself. And the death that gun holds is yours."

Horn stared silently across the mesa toward the monument and thought again: Why am I here? To kill a man, he told himself, to do a job no one else could do.

"The man of violence," Lil said suddenly, "is a dangerous companion."

"You are right, Lil, as usual," Wu said.

Before Horn could stop him, the fat, old man had grabbed his suitcase and vaulted the little wall with surprising agility. As Horn listened to him slithering down the other side, his hands were busy snapping the pistol back together.

He pointed the pistol over the wall-and lowered it slowly. Wu and the parrot were already mingling with the throng below. A shot would accomplish nothing now but betrayal.

And yet- Horn indulged in a rare moment of self-reproach. This was the price of softness. It was obvious that the yellow man was going to sell him to save his own ancient skin.

Horn shrugged. There was nothing to do but wait.

THE HISTORY.

Secrets don't keep....

The facts of nature are written duplicate in atoms, which reveal them with the same phenomena everywhere, for intelligence to see. Intelligence can't be monopolized.

Yet one secret kept for a thousand years.

Men died to learn Eron's secret: scientists, spies, raiders. The theory, the mathematics, the technical details were all available in thick manuals and thicker textbooks. Captured technicians could build Terminals, but they couldn't link them together. One thing was missing: the imponderable, the unguessable. The secret.

Of the many ways to keep a secret, only one is perfect: tell n.o.body. But some secrets can't be allowed to die.

Someone had to know. Who? The Directors? The General Manager? At least one of them was always present when a new Tube was activated.

The secret. What was it? Who knew it? Eron guarded it well.

If all men could build bridges, who would pay toll?...

5.

a.s.sa.s.sIN.

The seconds pa.s.sed slowly, but they pa.s.sed without alarm. Horn's pulse began to slow. He risked another glance over the wall, his pistol clenched in a sweaty palm. No one was looking toward him. There were no guards in the crowd cl.u.s.tered around Wu and Lil.

Wu stood on his battered suitcase haranguing the curious Golden Folk in a surprisingly loud voice of bl.u.s.tery confidence. Some of the phrases even drifted to Horn.

"... s.p.a.ce-kings! Master-engineers of mighty Eron.... come to visit the mother-world. Pause a moment and see her latest wonder...."

Lil stretched her ragged wings on Wu's shoulder, her eye fixed on something in the crowd. The conquerors were tall and blond and proud. Even the men were gorgeously dressed with padded bosoms and femininely symmetrical legs covered with heavy synsilk and furs. And jewels. A huge diamond flashed prismatically from the throat of a bulky matron.

"... the bird with a human brain," Wu bellowed nasally. "... educated in the arts of calculation ... will give the correct answer to any mathematical problem you wish to ask...."

The purple-clad matron jabbed a jewel-studded cane at the parrot and said something Horn couldn't hear.

Lil flapped to Wu's outstretched finger and screamed, "Two and two are four. Four and four are eight. Eight and eight-"

Wu jerked his hand. Lil shut her beak.

A tall man pushed his way forward. On his tunic was the jeweled golden star of a retired s.p.a.ce-officer. "Here's a problem for you," he shouted drunkenly. "State the elements of the curve of synergy for a unitron vessel entering a G-sub-four type binary system at forty-six degrees to the ecliptic plane and preparing to land on a ma.s.s-18 planet in an E-3 orbit. Deceleration constant at 80 G. Planet 8 degrees past relative conjunction."

Wu turned away hastily and said something to the crowd, but Lil launched herself from Wu's finger and flew to the officer's shoulder, croaking in hoa.r.s.e imitation of his voice.

"You will find the synergic curve to be type y-18 times factor e/ plus G-field correction point oh oh nine four."

The man looked startled.

"Upon complete solution of your problem, however," Lil went on mockingly, "you will discover that such a landing would be unwise. An E-3 orbit for a ma.s.s-18 planet about a G-sub-four binary is radically unstable. In fact, within four hours after crossing the E-3 orbit, the planet in question will collide with the inferior sun."

The officer gasped. He pulled an astrogator's manual and a small calculator out of his pocket and started computing feverishly.

Lil flew back to Wu. Horn noticed that the white diamond was missing from the center of the s.p.a.ceman's golden star.

Trumpets snarled across the field. The vast, amoebic beast that was the crowd stopped flowing aimlessly and froze, their eyes turned toward Horn. Horn dropped behind the wall, his heart beating fast.

But there was no sound of a.s.sault, no firing of guns. There was only the snarling trumpets. Horn waited until waiting became unendurable. Irresistibly his head came up.

Guard companies had cleared five paths from battleships at the perimeter to the monument from across the field. A company of marching, Denebolan lancers led it, their two-meter strides covering the distance effortlessly. The brilliant enamel on their N-iron link armor was blue. Blue, too, were the plumes on their upright, ceremonial lances. Holstered at their sides were gray, unitron pistols.

The shimmering blue car that followed floated a meter above the ground. Its torpedo-shape came to rest at the foot of the steps leading to the platform. Horn raised the pistol to his eye and stared through its telescopic sight at the man who stepped out of the car. It was a young man. He climbed the stairs briskly, tall, his back lean at the waist and swelling to well-muscled shoulders. As he turned, applause beat against the hills.

It was a young man's face, golden with the pure blood of Eron, hard with confidence and pride. It was smiling now. Horn recognized the man: Ronholm, Director for Commerce.

Along a second lane, another procession was approaching. Its color was green. Green for Transport, Horn translated. Thin, aristocratic Fenelon mounted the steps without haste and turned his hatchet face to the crowd. His eyes were deep-set and powerful. They blazed imperiously at the crowd, demanding its homage. They dragged it out of the formless beast.

They came more swiftly. Orange was next. Matal, Director for Power, panting as he hoisted his short, fat body up the steps, smiling broadly, his yellow jowls shaking as he acknowledged the applause. But the gun sight brought that face close to Horn. Horn saw the eyes, almost concealed in puffy flesh, peering out calculatingly over the crowd and shifting to eye the men on either side of him. Greed, Horn thought, greed and gluttony.

Then black. Black for Security. Black for Duchane. There was no sleek, unitronic car for him. He came on the back of a black hound. The ma.s.sive beast, almost two meters tall at the shoulder, slavered on the steps as Duchane rode him up onto the platform.

Duchane swung down from the saddle and sent the monster to sit, mouth gaping, like a red-eyed shadow at the back of the platform. The crowd was silent, but that seemed applause enough for Duchane. The square, powerful face on the heavy body looked out over the heads of the people standing beyond the bleachers with a pleased half-smile.

His face was sallow. With his darker eyes and hair, he seemed atypical. But he was, Horn knew, one of the most powerful men of Eron. Certainly, he enjoyed it the most. Ruthless, cruel, l.u.s.tful, Duchane was the most hated man in the Empire. His agents were everywhere; his power was close to absolute.

Duchane had been staring almost directly at Horn. Horn dropped back. One finger stoppering the barrel, he dusted the gun carefully. When he returned to the wall, there was no chance of betrayal from a sudden reflection of sunlight.

Duchane's eyes had shifted a little. Horn saw what he had been staring at. A fifth procession had been making its way from the battleship beside him. It was halfway to the monument before it came into view. Its dominant color was gold. Gold for Communications.

Horn stared through the sight at the lone pa.s.senger of the car. The softly golden shoulders and red-gold hair shining down across them could only belong to Wendre Kohlnar. Was she as beautiful as her image in the five-kellon coin? It was impossible, Horn knew; no woman could be so beautiful.

As she climbed the steps, straight, slim, and proud, Horn's breath stuck in his throat. He waited for her to turn. She turned. Horn gasped as her face filled the gun sight. Here was a woman worth a galaxy, worthy of the name of Eron.

Her bare arm lifted to a thunder of applause; her head, crowned by the same fillet of white diamonds, bowed in recognition. When she looked up, her eyes seemed to look again into Horn's. Tawny eyes, wide and wise and clear.

Horn looked away.

The trumpets screamed a newer, more violent note. And then fell silent.

The silver of the General Manager was approaching the stand. The guards were silver; the car was silver. Silver, too, was Kohlnar's hair as he sat at the foot of the long steps, not stiff and red as it had been in the coin. He waited. Two giant lancers came forward and lifted him out of the car and helped him up the steps.

What was wrong with Kohlnar?

At the platform, he turned and grasped the railing and raised one hand to the thousands in front of him. It was a sign of victory. The Golden Folk exploded with shouts and cheers.

They couldn't see what Horn saw. He stared through the sight, unbelieving. The face was like an old woman's. The seamed, yellow skin hung in loose folds. The cheeks were heavily rouged. The lips were painted scarlet. The hairless eyebrows were penciled black. Flesh had shrunken from the nose; it left a thin, yellow beak.

It was a patient, cunning, ruthless face. It had all the powers of the other Directors, and it held them chained to an iron will. But the General Manager of the Company and through the Company, of Eron, and through Eron, of the Empire, was a dying man. He had spent his strength in a long drive for power and in the use of that power to conquer the Cl.u.s.ter.

Now, at the moment of his triumph here upon the ruins of the world from which the human race swept out into the stars, when Eron was truly the master of all the human-held galaxy, Kohlnar was dying.

While the Directors retired to seats at the back of the platform, Kohlnar clutched the railing with quivering yellow claws. Under the rouge, the lax folds of his skin were a sickly gray. Sweat stood out on his forehead. But when he began to speak, and amplifiers picked up his words and flung them to the far corners of the immense field, his voice was harsh and strong.

"Men of Eron," he grated. "Sons of Earth. We are here to celebrate not the victory of Eron but the victory of man. Nations, worlds, empires have won many battles. They have lost others. And in the end it did not matter whether they won or lost. The only victory that must be won is man's. And so we have come back to celebrate one more victory in the long, glorious sequence of man's conquest. We have come back to our origins, to Earth, to the mother-world. But let us go back even farther. Let us go back to beginnings."

He stopped. His breathing came in labored gasps as his fumbling finger found a b.u.t.ton. Against the blackness of the monument base behind him, a vast mosaic sprang out, colorful, almost three-dimensional in its reality.

In the background was the primordial universe, vast chaos churning with unborn life. Closer was the misty glory of a spiral nebula, its arms far-flung as it slowly turned. Against it flamed a curling row of suns ill.u.s.trating the sequence of stellar evolution. Red giants shrank. Planets condensed. At one corner of the scene was gentle Earth. At the other was harsh Eron.

"Out of chaos, order," Kohlnar said. "Out of order, life."

He pressed another b.u.t.ton. The scene flowed around the corner of the cube and was replaced by another.

This was Earth and the evolution of life. At the left of the broad panorama, something shapeless but alive crept out of a primal sea. Monsters fought in steamy jungles. A caveman kindled a fire against the sharp-toothed cold. Men hunted and planted and reaped and wheeled their produce to market in small villages that grew into empires with marching soldiers. The empires rose and fell but man went on, building higher and better, destroying himself and rising again until he built the towers of Sunport, reaching out toward the stars. At the right Roy Kellon-legendary father of the Golden Folk-stood at the Nova's valve ready to set out upon the first interstellar flight.

"For this, man built and suffered and labored, to claim his heritage-the stars."

Kohlnar pressed a b.u.t.ton. The scene on the black face of the cube gave way to another.

Eron. It gleamed cold and steel-gray like the great sphere overhead. Like it, the golden spikes radiated from it toward the far corners of the Empire. Only here they did not end in points. They connected everything to Eron, the near stars and the distant ones. All kinds of stars: giants and super-giants, dense white dwarfs and faint red ones, and the blue-white, white, and yellow of those between. Everywhere there was life and profit, the Tubes reached and siphoned them away to Eron. And one ma.s.sive Tube stabbed far across the galaxy into the heart of giant Canopus.

Eron. A fat gray spider, Horn thought, sitting in the center of its golden web, waiting the tremor that announced the capture of another victim.