It had to issue from the Imaget upon her breast. It fell upon each of the dancers as each passed into and through it in his and her circuit. It made each of them glow as if each had swallowed a giant firefly. Or a saint's halo. Their lights paled the darkness among them. Despite the suddenness of this, they hesitated for only a second and then resumed their whirling and their forward progress.
Scarcely had Jack cried out than he did so again.
Now a ray shot out from each dancer into the black storm and toward the crater wall. The beams angled slightly upward.
If the Gaol commander knew of this, she must be whistling the equivalent of a human screeching into her communicator. "Destroy them! Destroy them!"
Now the dancers were whirling faster and had also speeded up their passage over the circles described in the mud by their feet. Somehow, despite the energy output that should have made them short of breath, they were still chanting. And their gourds were rattling even more furiously.
The thunder and the lightning had raced past the group. The rain quit as quickly as if a giant stagehand had cut it off. Though the clouds were still black above, the storm had quit for now. A few minutes later, the clouds took their darkness over the eastern wall. The sun sprang out as if from ambush.
But the sphere of light and the ray emanating from the Imaget and the rays shooting from the dancers were easily visible.
Jack saw that the beams from the dancers were impinging upon the images and the symbols on the crater-wall ring. He did not know until then that he had unconsciously expected this.
He cried out a third time.
The figures on the ring flashed as each passed through a ray. The ring was moving much faster. Though it was at least twenty-five miles from him and the figures were gigantic, they could be seen now only as almost unrecognizable smears. While he stood astonished, he saw them become even more blurred.
The outer rings, the two concealed within the crater wall, must also be rotating at an incredible velocity.
The Gaol spaceships were truly colossal now. They were poised halfway between the throne and the wall. Poised! Not moving!
He turned to look westward. The storm had hidden the fleet in that direction, but now he saw that it was also hovering halfway to the ritualists. In fact, the entire array of vessels formed a circle around them.
The Integrator blew a very loud and long blast. After a sustained single honk, the dancers became silent. They stopped their frenzied motion and turned to face the wall. Quickly, they broke up the circles and rearranged themselves in a long line facing the western wall. Their work was done, the wheels no longer needed them to spin them, and they were going to watch the results.
The ray from the Imaget had ceased. But the glow from Tappy spread out and sped across the plain until it filled the crater. Its brilliance was not diminished by being diluted. It was not, however, a photonic light. Glaring as it was, it did not make Jack close his eyes. Like the glare in that other world reached via the death-shadow, it seemed to fill every cell in his body. But this light did not hurt or blind. That other light had done so because he and Tappy were in a place where they should not be.
Soundlessly, lubricated by an unknown substance or field, the ring spun until the blur of the images and symbols became a single dark streak. The air near the ring was agitated, however. It quivered and shimmered. Vague figures flew around in it as if they were birds in a mirage.
"No!" Jack said aloud.
He realized suddenly that he had been mistaken. First, he had thought that the weapon which left a shadow like a bad aftertaste in Death's mouth was what Tappy had talked about in her dreams. "Alien menace... only chance is to use the radiator," she had muttered. Then, he had suspected that it was not the weapon but the Imaget. But now... he knew the truth.
The radiator— the Radiator!— was the crater-wall ring. The three rings, rather. They were pouring out radiations of empathy, the empathy which would conquer the Gaol. No, not just them. The entire universe of sentient beings. All, Gaol, honkers, humans, the multitude of language-speaking species which must be scattered throughout the single world made of many worlds.
If there was anything faster than light, it would be the empathy waves. These were infraphysical. At least, he assumed that they would be if they were going to affect a significant number of sapients.
Also, there were the gates such as the boulder-gate he and Tappy had passed through from Earth to this planet. There must be many throughout the cosmos. And the gates on this planet would be transmitting the waves to Earth and to gates on Earth which led to other worlds and to gates on this planet which led to other planets. The effect would spread much more quickly through them.
Was it already affecting the people of Earth? God knows that that planet needed it. But then every planet probably did.
The end of wars and of murder and of viciousness? The lessening of hate and greed and ruthlessness? The growth of love and compassion?
The spaceships had stopped in their advance toward the Imago and its host. He did not know, but he was sure that the Gaol in them had been overcome by an onslaught of empathy far more powerful than anything Tappy had radiated before the real Radiator, what the honkers called the Generator, had started to function. Its waves had reached up to the fleet in orbit and stunned the Gaol in it. And the waves were on their way, directly or through gates, to the rest of the empire and beyond it.
He got a flash of something. Then it was gone. But it would be back. For a second or two, he had been in a Gaol. Or, maybe, in every Gaol. He had been in the mind of a Gaol. In that fraction of a second of full comprehension and actually being a Gaol, he had been as frightened as he had ever been. But now he also understood what drove them. Despite their repulsive appearance and behavior, they were not unlike human beings. What was ugly in them (and also what was ugly in humans) would change into beauty.
He was surprised that he had not had this feeling before now. After all, he was standing in the very center of the radiation. But his location was similar to being in the eye of a hurricane. All around him was a gigantic surge of the force that had been, as it were, born and slain many times before it could get anywhere near full fruition. Now it was the mightiest force in the many universes. Compared to the combined energies of a trillion trillion stars, the Imago was a sun beside a candle.
He, however, was in a null area. Comparatively null, that is. Once he went to where he would be in the full force of the empathy, he would be as filled with it as the Gaol now were.
The rays from Tappy's breast and from the Imaget were fading now. Their work had been done, though they still lived and would again become as bright as angels if they were needed.
Jack hoped that they would never have to be invoked again, that their force would endure. Surely, they would not have to be used in Tappy's lifetime.
But he could see on Tappy's face a golden aura, faint but still evident. Evident to him, anyway. It was probably his imagination. No one else could see it, though he would ask others if they detected it. It was an afterimage of the holy light. Yes, the holy light. Though Jack was an agnostic and would have felt uncomfortable calling anything "holy," he now would think of the aura as, if not holy, the echo of holiness.
Tappy would be something to be worshipped by him.
Would that interfere with the union of their flesh? Would he always be inhibited somewhat when they made love or— a mundane thought but valid and realistic— when they argued about the budget or when they disagreed about disciplining their children? Would he always give in, even when he knew he was right?