"Yeah," drawled Phath lazily, sprawled on a silken couch amidst a nest of velvet cushions. He paused to take a gulp of luscious white wine from a silver cup and to bite into a ripe, delicious fruit. Munching, he paused to select a sweetmeat from the gold bowl at his elbow. "I could sure get used to this sort of living, all right! If this is how star gods live, chief, let's never let 'em know we aren't the genuine article!"
"A good thing for you our telepathic hosts are too considerate to read your mind, or you'd blow the game on your own," scoffed Star Pirate with a grin. Then, sobering, he turned to Zoar who was sampling some sliced cold fowl.
"What about this mind-reading stuff anyway, Doc? How come we seem to be able to do it, too?" he inquired.
The Martian dwarf shrugged, chewing the tender spiced meat. "I gather the ability to project and receive thoughts is common among the members of the human species, but that in order to exercise the faculty properly you need some sort of assistance."
"Those crystals they wear, you mean?" asked Star.
"Good thinking, boy!" grinned Zar, selecting one of the ripe fruits.
Star continued, "They seem to focus the thought-waves, as a lens focuses light-waves. The fellow guiding the bat-thing I was riding remarked, in response to my question, that he could receive my thoughts fuzzily, and that I really needed 'talismans.' It took me a minute or two to realize what he was referring to—"
"Hsst!" cried Phath, tensing suddenly. The faintest sound had come to his keen ears—the soft scuff of sandals and the creaking of hinges.
His comrades rose to their feet uncertainly, Star's hand going to the butt of his proton needle.
"Look, lad!" hissed Zoar, pointing.
A panel opened in the wall directly before them, revealing a black rectangle in which stood several robed and hooded figures. One of these in the forefront tossed back the cowl which obscured its features. It was the imperious young woman whose invitation Star had spurned—the high priestess, Zarga!
Seize them, she commanded. The robed figures flung themselves without warning upon the three visitors. Star tugged his weapon free, but an intruder touched his arm with a metal baton, and a stunning wave of force numbed him from shoulder to wrist. Paralyzed, his grip loosened and the needier fell from lax fingers to thud against the softly carpeted floor.
The numbing wave of force had come from the odd metallic batons Star had first noticed when the welcoming party had greeted them in the park. Then he had thought them merely ceremonial in nature; now he grimly understood that they were weapons of some queer sort.
"The batons conduct thought-force from the crystals!" cried Zoar. But by this time all three had been rendered helpless by the paralysis of the metal rods, which benumbed whichever part of the body they touched.
Working with swift, silent efficiency, the templer warriors bound Star and his companions, leaving their legs free but trussing their paralyzed arms behind their backs. Apparently, the numbing mind-force would soon wear off.
Hurry! Take them through the underground passage, commanded Zarga.
"A fine way to treat your gods, lady," complained the Venusian ruefully. She shot him a fierce glance from sparkling black eyes.
'Gods?' You are not gods—you have nostrils; your breast rises and falls when you breathe. What need have star gods to take breath? Is there air about the stars, fool? The gods—if gods in sooth there are!—are more like sapient energy-forms than aught else. They certainly are not flesh and blood. You are only men—men of a breed strange and unfamiliar to us, true—but men, for all that. Which does not mean that the temple cannot use you ...
"Just to set the record straight," said Star grimly, "we never claimed to be gods in the first place! That was entirely your own idea, remember?"
The priestess flushed, eyes flashing with resentment, and sank strong white teeth into her lush lower lip in vexation. But she made no reply, turning on her heel and stalking through the opening in the wall, leading the way. Her three captives were hustled along after her.
Just before the darkness of the unlit secret passage swallowed him up, Star Pirate had one glimpse of a face he recognized. It was that of the little novice, the girl called Sequin, as Prince Narba had told him—the child priestess Zarga had callously struck to the ground in her furious impatience, and whom he had helped to her feet.
Her hood had fallen back, baring her flower-like face and huge, troubled eyes that brimmed with unshed tears. Her soft lips trembled and she seemed almost on the point of speaking, of begging his pardon—
But then his captors thrust him head-first into the dark tunnel and the panel closed and locked behind him. And he was forced on into the blackness—a helpless, friendless captive on a planet of hostile strangers.
(Was not continued)