She pointed to Peg.
I smiled. “The only thing as hard as a diamond is another diamond. The only thing that could resist Sharane’s womanly wiles would be another woman. Those diamonds were set up to trap men—and when a woman came through, Sharane here didn’t know what to do with her. She had never experienced a human woman.”
”I have now,” the alien said weakly. “I hope to never again.”
“How does this trap work?” Caldwell asked.
“The great diamond here is the focus,” Sharane said. “The smaller ones serve as transmitting poles, at the other end of the channel. We send them to Earth, and when men find them they are drawn in. I then tempt them to surrender themselves—and as soon as they do, I freeze them.” The alien broke into the alien equivalent of a sob. “Then the Llanar come, and take them away. They make them slaves, on their home worlds.”
The alien sat up, and rubbed itself. “But you have won your freedom from me,” it said. “You may return to your planet.”
“And you?”
“I must sit here,” the alien said. “I must continue to prey on Earth, or the Llanar will kill me.”
“We’ll close that damnable gateway, don’t worry,” muttered Caldwell, but I ignored him.
Suddenly all my hatred for Sharane had vanished. I saw the strange thing before us as a person, not a thing—a suffering, sensitive person. An alien, true, but very human under the to-me-grotesque exterior. In just those few minutes I learned a lesson: you don’t have to have arms and legs and two blue eyes to be a human being.
I saw the whole picture now. Sharane’s people were under the domination of still another alien race from deep in the galaxy—the dread Llanar. And the Llanar were forcing Sharane to operate this lonely trap on the edge of the universe, waiting like a spider to net the unfortunates who happened to find one of the treacherous diamonds she scattered.
“You can send us back to Earth?” I asked.
“Yes,” Sharane said. “But—”
Then she looked upward, and I saw the sky darken. Coming down, straight above us, was a gleaming golden-hulled spaceship!
Suddenly Sharane came to life. “The Llanar!” she cried. “Run into the jungle—hide, or they’ll carry you off! I’ll stay out here and get rid of them.”
Her form melted and coalesced weirdly, and once again I saw before me the woman-shape. She pointed toward the jungle, and I didn’t waste any time arguing. I seized Peg’s hand and we broke into a frantic trot, heading for the woods.
We got there breathless, and all six of the freed men came racing in right behind us. We squatted there, silently, watching the Llanar ship descend.
It came down in slow, graceful spirals, hovered overhead, finally settled to the ground—and the Llanar came out.
I won’t try to describe them. They were huge, thick-bodied, and I still shudder when I think of what they looked like. They were hideous, hateful, fearsome creatures. I imagined what a whole world of them would be like.
Three of them emerged from the ship, came out, walked up to Sharane. They stood around her, dwarfing her lovely body among them.
They talked for a long while; I heard the low, booming rumble of their voices come crackling over the ground to us. After an extensive discussion, they turned and left. Sharane stood alone.
I watched, quivering with revulsion, as they marched slowly back to their ship, got in, and a moment later a fiery jet-blast carried them aloft. We remained in the forest for a moment or two longer, waiting until the Llanar ship was completely out of sight. Then we dashed out.
Sharane was waiting for us at the base of the great diamond.
“They wanted to know where the new batch of captives was,” she said. Her breasts were heaving in obvious terror, and it was hard for me to remember, as I looked at her, that minutes before she had been a hideous alien being writhing on the ground. “I told them none had come through since their last pickup.”
“What did they say?”
“They were very angry that no new slaves were on hand. But I promised to have some soon, and they left.”
I looked at Peg in gratitude. “If it weren’t for you, I’d be on my way in that ship,” I said. “And all these other people too.”
“It’s lucky I came through when I did, darling.”
“It certainly is, Miss,” said one of the men. “We owe our lives to you.”
I turned to Sharane. “Can you send us back?”
“It is simple.” She reached up, pulled eight diamonds—small ones—from nowhere, and handed one to each of us. “Concentrate,” she said.
One by one, the men blinked out and vanished, until only Caldwell and Peg and myself were left. Caldwell looked at me.
“You know,” he said, “if you destroy that big diamond, I think it’ll close this hellish gateway forever. No one else on Earth will be trapped the way we were.”
“I know,” I said. “But I don’t intend to do it.”
His eyes blazed angrily. “Why not? Do you want the Llanar to carry off everyone? For all you know, you’d be a slave on some stinking planet now if your girl hadn’t shown up.”
“I know,” I said again. I turned to Sharane. “But I’m not going to close the gateway.”
“They would kill me if you did,” Sharane said.
“That’s not the reason.”
“What is, dear?” Peg asked.
“I’m leaving the gateway open so we can come back through. Someday we’ll return, when we’re ready—more of us, Sharane. And our people and your people together will end the Llanar tyranny.” I thought of those gigantic creatures again, and shivered.
“Do you mean that?” Sharane asked.
“I mean it,” I said firmly. “As soon as I get back to my world, to the Bureau, I’ll start getting things rolling for the counterattack.”
I smiled. This job was over; I had solved the mystery of where the sixty-six had gone. But a new job was beginning.
“I will be waiting for you,” Sharane said. “But in the meantime—I must stay here, preying on all who come through. The Llanar will only kill me and replace me with another I don’t.” There was a note of genuine regret in the alien’s voice.
“Go through,” I said bluntly to Caldwell. He frowned in concentration and vanished, leaving just Peg and myself facing Sharane. The great diamond formed a backdrop for the scene.
“I am glad you defeated me,” Sharane told Peg. “It may mean the beginning of a long friendship between our peoples.”
“Many friendships begin after a deadly battle,” I said. I turned to Peg. “Let’s go through,” I said.
“All right. Goodbye, Sharane.”
“Farewell.” The alien turned and walked away, slowly, toward the jungle.
We watched her go, standing there, watching that lovely false woman-form glide smoothly away. I was thinking, you never can tell. The normal thing would be to hate, to destroy the horrid alien thing that lurks in wait for unsuspecting Earthmen—but we couldn’t hate Sharane. She was a tool, serving powerful masters. She was not evil in herself.
The Llanar were powerful, all right—but not so powerful that they couldn’t be beaten. I took a last look at the gleaming diamond, and at Sharane’s retreating form—the lonely, pitiful guardian of the crystal gate.
Then she was at the very edge of the jungle, and waving to us. We waved back. Grasping our diamonds firmly and holding hands, Peg and I concentrated on returning to Earth.
The giant diamond slowly faded into the greyness that swept over us, as did Sharane. We were on our way back to Earth at last.