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Azard slowly tensed his muscles as the woman went to the eld case, stooped
above it to inspect the pattern of dials inside. There was no hesitancy in her
manner did she understand what she saw?
She said, He s selected a specific psyche for transfer to the body. Let me
see . . . She turned to the container, opened it, bent over the zombie. Her
shoulders moved. Azard couldn t see what she was doing, but he could assume
she was checking its condition on the various instruments. She straightened
again presently, looked at Odun. Total capacity, she said. We can effect
the transfer.
Azard made a straining effort to arise. But they were watchful; the
paralyzer s pressure increased instantly he could not move, and now he
discovered he had also become unable to speak. A wave of dizziness passed
through him, his vision blurred. He became aware next that Griliom and Sashien
were moving about him; then clear sight gradually returned.
He found himself still immobilized in the chair, looking out into the room
through something like a thin veil of darkness. He guessed it was an energy
field of some kind. Odun stood in the center of the room. Some twenty feet
from him the zombie body Azard had prepared lay on its back, on the floor.
Azard realized then that Sashien and Griliom stood on either side of his
chair, a little behind him.
The body stirred, opened its eyes, sat up.
It looked about the room but seemed unable to see Azard and the two on his
right and left. The energy veil evidently blocked vision from that side. Its
gaze fastened on Odun, who stood watching it with the face of Azard. It came
to its feet.
There had been no uncertainty in any of its motions. This was a powerful eld,
instantly capable of impressing its intentions on the full range of the
zombie s physical and mental response patterns. Azard should have been able to
sense its presence in the room, but he could force no eld contact through the
energy barrier. There was no way to transmit a warning.
Dom belke anda grom, Azard! the body addressed Odun. It was a strong,
self-assured voice.
Gelan ra Azard, Odun said. Ra diriog Federation. Sellen ra Raceel.
The body moved instantly. It sprang sideways to a table standing ten feet
away. And Azard saw only now what it must have noted in its sweeping glance
about the room the gun which lay on the table. The body snatched it up,
pointed the muzzle at Odun, pulled the trigger.
And dropped limply back to the floor, the gun spinning from its hand.
This was a test, Odun told Azard. He no longer wore Azard s face; the false
skin or whatever it was had been removed. You heard what I said to him. I
identified myself as a human of the Federation and told him he was a Raceel.
He immediately attempted to destroy me. The weapon, of course, was rigged. If
the trigger was pressed, it would kill the user.
Azard did not reply.
So you are Raceels, Odun went on. And you d kill any of us any human
being as readily as you destroyed the people of Malatlo. We should like to
know how this came about. Are you willing to talk?
Yes. I ll tell you whatever you want to know. Azard made his voice dull, his
expression listless and resigned. But there was savage anger in him and the
longer he held these three in talk, the more certain their death and eventual
Raceel victory became. The thirty elds he d released had been a select group
of superb fighters, and they must be searching the ship by now, in strong new
bodies and with weapons in their hands. The demonstration here confirmed that
they d know very quickly how to put those bodies to full use.
We were desperate, he said, and went on, knowing the statement had gained
him their full attention. Before the Malatlo settlers contacted it, Tiurs had
faced the problem of a population constantly on the verge of expanding beyond
the ability of the planet to support it, and had no adequate techniques of
space travel, which might have helped alleviate the problem. A temporary and
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unsatisfactory solution had been the development of methods of preserving a
conscious personality indefinitely without the support of a physical
body. . . .
So it was you and not Malatlo, said Sashien, who originated the eld
sciences.
They were investigating the subject, Azard told him. But we accomplished
the eld separation a century before they began to make significant progress in
that direction
The Malatlo Followers did not push their contacts with Tiurs, believing it
best to let the relationship develop gradually and in a manner which would be
satisfactory to the Raceels. And the Raceels, though hungry for the
information they might get from the humans, remained equally cautious. For
them the situation held both great promise and a great threat. There were
means of practical interstellar space travel, and there were worlds upon
worlds among the stars to which their kind might spread. That was the promise.
The threat was the prospect of encountering competitors in space more
formidable than themselves. The Followers were harmless, but from what they
had told the Raceels of the species to which they belonged, the species
certainly was not. Evidently it already controlled an enormous sector of
space. Further, there might be other species equally dangerous to those weaker
than they.
The logical approach was to remain unnoticed until one became strong enough to
meet any opposition.
The Raceels immersed themselves in research on many levels, including lines
long since abandoned as being too immediately dangerous to themselves.
Somewhat to their surprise, they found Malatlo completely willing to supply
them with spaceships for study when they indicated an interest in them.
Unfortunately, these craft were not designed to accomplish interstellar
flights, but they advanced the scientists of Tiurs a long step in that
direction. The Raceels kept this as well as their other hopes and fears a
careful secret from Malatlo.
They were a race which had a naturally high rate of reproduction and which
throughout a war-studded history had made a fetish of the expansion of its
kind. That drive became a liability when Tiurs was united at last into a
single rigidly controlled society confined to the surface of its planet. Now
suddenly it might be turned into an asset again. When they burst upon the
stars, it would be in no timid and tentative colonial probes, but in many
thousands of ships, each capable of peopling a world in a single generation.
They worked towards that end with feverish determination. From Malatlo they
learned of the eld-less zombie bodies Federation science knew how to produce
in theoretically limitless quantities, and they took up that line of
investigation. The disembodied elds in the storage vaults, for whom there had
been no room for normal existence on Tiurs, would come to life again in new
bodies on new worlds. Dormant fertile germ cells of selected strains were
stockpiled by the millions. Weaponry research moved quickly forwards. The full
interstellar drive seemed almost within reach.
And then
Malatlo Followers informed us they had become aware of our plans and were
horrified by them, Azard said. Apparently they believed they could persuade
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