| Transcriber's Note: |
| A list of repaired typographical errors will be found at the end of this e-book. |
Horng sat opposite the tiny, fragile creature who held a microphone, its wires attached to an interpreting machine. He blinked his huge eyes slowly, his stiff mouth fumblingly forming words of a language his race had not used for thirty thousand years.
“Kor was … is … God … Knowledge.” He had tried to convey this to the small creatures who had invaded his world, but they did not heed. Their ill-equipped brains were trying futilely to comprehend the ancient race memory of his people.
Now they would attempt further to discover the forbidden directives of Kor. Horng remembered, somewhere far back in the fossil layers of his thoughts, a warning. They must be stopped! If he had to, he would stamp out these creatures who were called “humans.”
Rynason
His mental quest led him too close to a dangerous secret.
Manning
His ideas for colonizing that world didn’t include survival for its native beings.
Malhomme
This ruffian-preacher could be the one man that everyone might have to trust.
Mara
She wanted to save the aliens, but did they want to be saved?
Horng
In the recesses of his brain was the key to a dead civilization—or a live menace….
Kor
Was it a legend, a king, a thing, or a trap from another galaxy?
by
ACE BOOKS, INC.
1120 Avenue of the Americas
New York 36, N.Y.
Copyright ©, 1963, by Ace Books, Inc.
Lee Rynason sat forward on the faded red-stone seat, watching the stylus of the interpreter as the massive grey being in front of him spoke, its dry, leathery mouth slowly and stumblingly forming the words of a spoken language its race had not used for over thirty thousand years. The stylus made no sound in the thin air of Hirlaj as it passed over the plasticene notepaper; the only sounds in the ancient building were those of the alien’s surprisingly high and thin voice coming at intervals and Rynason’s own slightly labored breathing.
He did not listen to the alien’s voice—by now he had heard it often enough so that it was merely irritating in its thin dryness, like old parchments being rubbed together. He watched the stylus as it jumped along sporadically:
TEBRON MARL WAS OUR … PRIEST KING HERO. NOT PRIEST BUT ONE WHO KNEW … THAT IS PRIEST.
Rynason was a slender, sandy-haired man in his late twenties. A sharp scar from a knife cut left a line across his forehead over his right eyebrow. His eyes, perhaps brown, perhaps green—the light on Hirlaj was sometimes deceptive—were soft, but narrowed with an intent alertness. He raised the interpreter’s mike and said, “How long ago?”
The stylus recorded the Earthman’s question too, but Rynason did not watch it. He looked up at the bulk of the alien, watching for the slow closing of its eyes, so slow that it could not be called a blink, that would show it had understood the questio