INFERNO

They found no sign of Norden as they approached the factory. Several times they had to take cover in ditches and weeds as whispering spheres floated overhead in search of prey. But they escaped the electrical feelers which stirred the grass and brush around them.

Pember recovered his Garand rifle, which had been left near the sentry box during the retreat.

Taylor led the group into the tunnel, with Masters following and Pember bringing up the rear.

The din of the slaughter in the town and the shrill whistle of the spheres was blotted out underground. They reached the far end, where the ladder led upward to the sphere-haunted factory.

Taylor ascended. He could hear the shrill whistle of spheres dinning through the bleak building. He peeped into the forge room. The first flush of dawn was streaming through the windows.

Norden was there, creeping along the barrels of some naval guns toward the casting room.

Norden halted at the door. He took a deep breath. From his lips came a shrill, whispering whistle, a close imitation of the call of the spheres.

An orange light was reflected from the room beyond.

Still whistling, Norden stepped back a few paces. Through the door, floating toward the spy came an orange sphere.

Taylor watched, expecting to see a bolt of heat lash out toward the spy. But the sphere pulsed slowly, as if half pleased by the sound Norden made with his lips.

So this is how Orkins escaped from the plant, Taylor thought. Orkins had imitated the creatures. They had spared him as a pet, like a man keeps a talking parrot.

Norden stood very still, whistling while the sphere approached. A little tentacle of flame reached out toward him.

Taylor expected to see Norden disappear in a flash of fire, but the flame seemed to caress. A soft glow seemed to diffuse from the man’s clothing and body.

The sphere, too, seemed to change, growing softer and more mellow. It wasn’t a tangible substance, but something ethereal, like the flicker of flame over an open hearth. Some tremendous force seemed to hold the sphere in globular shape.

Taylor could see the chimerical eyes peering through the surface of the sphere. He looked into the depths of those eyes and still could not be sure they were not an illusion. The intensity of the creatures’ intelligence seemed to shine from within, giving the impression of staring, haunting eyes. They were not organs of sight, but they were the windows of the mind. They were the source of those tenuous flames that seemed to caress Norden.

As Taylor looked at the eyes he felt plunged into the pathless depths of a vast, powerful brain. He was in contact with an infinity of intelligence far beyond limits of human comprehension. It was a surging intelligence of energy, abysmal, vaporous and limitless, transcending the dimensions, out-reaching boundless time, overshadowing matter.

The eyes made Taylor forget he was a man. His own mind seemed merged in the intellectual energy floating among the monster machines of the forge room. Dimly, he was conscious that this power was not directed at him, but at Norden who stood, still whistling, in front of the globe.

The sphere was whistling, too, and the sound transformed itself into music of the stars.

A discordant note rose in the song from Norden’s imitation of the voice. Norden was shrieking hatred for Taylor’s nation, for all those who opposed the self-designated supermen of the world.

“My race must be preserved!”

The thought was Norden’s, reflected to Taylor from the shoreless depths of the energy brain.

“All other peoples are evil, decadent, and are doomed to slavery under the man of the future. The future man will be a child of my race. My race is superior. From it the uberman will rise. You must help. Prey on these inferior peoples. They do not deserve to live.”

The sphere’s hues changed, reddish, then yellow, back to orange.

“Is this Norden a man?” came the sphere’s questioning thought. “Why doesn’t he flee? Why doesn’t he scream in terror? He’s different from the others. Perhaps he is, as he claims, a superior being. There was one, who called himself Orkins, who talked with us. But when Orkins saw us slay he ran away in terror. This Norden begs us to kill.”

“It is only through destruction of the weak that the strongest survive,” Norden answered. “Man is a cruel, but noble creature. Those who fail to kill are weak.”

The sphere’s whistle grew thunderous.

“You speak the philosophy of my world!” it said.

From the depths of the sphere a rhythm of thought arose. A whispered epic sang through the fibres of Taylor’s mind, telling of a world of energy, whipped into a storm of war. Spheres of energy, overwhelmed a weaker race made up of gaseous clouds of atoms.

In the midst of this titanic battle a huge disc appeared, carried by the gaseous clouds. It was a concave lens, like some powerful optical instrument. But instead of focusing beams of light, it reflected, not only light but all forms of energy. As the spheres attacked they were shattered into spores and shot away through space.

The whispered song told of the flight through space. Behind lay a world, unlike the earth, which the spheres called home. It was a gaseous, flaming world where matter and energy mingled as one substance. It was mottled with spots of cold gases which warred with the whispering spheres. It was the sun.

The sun was power, yet a ceaseless struggle between energy and matter. But neither energy nor matter was in control. Should matter control, the sun would cool. If energy triumphed, the sun would explode. It was war, like the wars of the earth, where one philosophy was based on power, and the other seeking justice. A victory for might would make a ruthless world. Justice was worthless without injustice. The ideals were mutually dependent, yet always at war.

“The cold gases tricked us,” whispered the sphere. “The weak have no right to outwit the strong. The weak has no right to survive. Justice is an unnatural condition. Progress means nothing, except on the road to glory. Your race, sharing our philosophy, can build another great energy reflector to send us back. We can aid our people in triumphing over these inferior beings who claim rights in a world of might.”

“We can built what you wish,” Norden promised.

It was a promise like other promises Norden had made, Taylor thought. Norden once had promised to help Taylor fight the spheres.

“I will call the others!”

The sphere floated upward toward the hole in the roof. It circled the factory and moved away, toward the town, where a score of other majestic, glowing globes floated like bubbles of fire.

Norden watched, a smile cracking his jutting jaw.

There was still a whispering sound. A single shrill hiss came from the casting room.

“Why do you claim superiority, Norden?” Taylor spoke.

The spy turned. For the first time he saw Taylor.

“Himmel!”

Norden’s eyes looked beyond Taylor and rested on Masters, who was emerging from the tunnel.

“Is it because you pose the doctrine of slavery and destruction? Is it because your cultural contributions are keyed to military conquest? Is it because of your lies and broken promises? Is it because you are more skillful in butchery? It is because you have refined the art of terrorism?”

Taylor was advancing, half crouching, toward Norden.

Norden’s arm swished in a swift motion. He drew an automatic pistol from his pocket and leveled it at Taylor and Masters.

“Because I am the stronger!” Norden said.

Taylor had not expected Norden to be armed. He had overlooked the possibility that the spy might have an extra weapon hidden in the tunnel.