Judy started suddenly as if a strange memory had taken her by surprise. Her eyes, now wide open, seemed to express a desperate hope. Before she could stop herself she blurted out:

"He said he would set me free!"

Immediately the Pain swept back, more horrible than ever before, racking every nerve in her body. FitzRoy had twisted the dial to its limit. Above the terrible Pain she heard his voice, harsh and tense:

"That's not what he said at all -- is it?"

No! No! NO!" screamed the girl.

Then the Pain was gone; all was silence, darkness and soft, restful oblivion. . . .

But soon Judy felt her body being massaged, her face being gently slapped, and realized despairingly that FitzRoy was bringing her back to consciousness. When she opened her eyes she saw that FitzRoy's face still wore the same passionless expression of intellectual brutality.

"Your problem, Judy," he said, "is one of hallucinations. There never was any stranger at all -- you merely imagined him. You got up from the rubble by yourself, you ran away by yourself, and you stole the truck on your own. Do you understand?"

"Yes," said Judy.

FitzRoy began pacing the floor again. "The missile did it," he continued. "You were struck on the head -- by a brick or a beam, perhaps. But now you can remember what really happened."

"Yes."

"You got up, you ran, you stole a truck. Then you drove alone to the wood, and you sat alone in the clearing and imagined things. You must have imagined many things." FitzRoy paused in his stride and bent over the girl, his face huge and coarse in its nearness. "You had been to that clearing before -- hadn't you, Judy? You must have been there before in order to have known about it. Isn't that right?"

"Yes . . ."

"There's only one reason you could have returned to that place. I know the reason, Judy. You do, too. You must have remembered things that took place there -- things that must not be remembered -- things that never really happened." A light of madness suddenly gleamed in FitzRoy's eyes and his voice sank to a harsh hiss. "You remembered Franklyn, didn't you!"

"No!" cried the girl impulsively.

Again the Pain seared her nerves -- but this time briefly, and then it was gone.

"You must never lie," said FitzRoy. "I thought you had learned that long ago."

"I'm sorry!" Judy sobbed. "I couldn't help it. . . ."

FitzRoy resumed pacing the floor. "It's all back again, isn't it -- the memories, the desires, the vile thoughts." He paused and leaned over the girl once more. "Yes, it's all back. I can see it in your eyes -- the knowledge, the lust for men. It's too bad, Judy -- it will all have to be purged away again."

"It wasn't my fault," sobbed the girl. "I couldn't help it -- it just came back. I couldn't help it! I couldn't!"

"I'm sorry, Judy," said FitzRoy quietly. "I know it's not your fault. It's just a relapse. We cured you once; we can cure you again. But --" his voice became suddenly severe "-- you realize it's not just a question of memories this time. It's a question of very deep emotions, and it will take very deep Pain to cure that. Do you understand me?"

Judy's eyes grew wide. "No!" she gasped. "Please -- no . . ."

"Yes." FitzRoy's face was expressionless, devoid of feeling. "From here there is nothing for you but to go back to Reeducation."

"No!" Judy strained frantically at the straps that bound her to the cot. Her voice was a hoarse scream. "Not back there! PIease! Anything else! Turn the pain on -- leave it on -- but don't make me go back there!"

FitzRoy was smiling grimly, mirthlessly. He placed a finely sculpted hand on Judy's shoulder, firmly and authoritatively. The girl became silent, trembling, staring up at him with helpless awe.

"It's best we get this over with," he said, unbuckling the canvas straps and helping Judy to a sitting position. She wept soundlessly, burying her face in her hands, wishing only for death but knowing it would never come. . . .

And, then, the earth shook.

The sudden jolt flung FitzRoy to the floor. Judy cried out and gripped the bed as her legs were wrenched in the straps that still bound them. A muffled thunder rolled and reverberated down the hall outside, then ceased. FitzRoy rose to his feet.

"A missile!" he muttered. He walked over to the television and began to adjust the dials beneath it. Judy watched as the picture gradually changed. Its outlines sharpened and she realized she was looking down the main hall of the Department of Persuasion toward the outer gates. The great steel portals lay smashed on the concrete, warped and rent and seemingly half-molten, while the white dust of pulverized concrete hung thick in the air. Beyond the gates sprawled the junky remnants of an armored truck and the tangled remains of wire fences. Charcoal-black objects vaguely suggesting the human form lay here and there. . . .

Then, through the haze of dust and smoke, vague shapes came striding -- shapes like giant, hooded executioners with lurid eyes and high, bullet-like heads -- shapes too towering and massive to be the shapes of men. Judy saw them advance, their hands gripping strange weapons that spat shafts of glaring brilliance, their belt-clasps glowing with an inner radiance. They swarmed into the hall, the smoke swirling about them -- and then, suddenly, the screen went blank.

"The power's gone!" Judy had never before heard FitzRoy speak so tensely. "Something's happening -- that was no missile --"

"They're coming!" The girl's voice was a hoarse whisper. "Forty-eight hours -- the metal ball. . . . They're coming!"

FitzRoy scowled down at her. "What are you saying, Judy? What do you know about this?"

The corridor outside suddenly echoed with frantic, reverberating screams. There was a sound of roaring thunder.

"Who's coming, Judy?" FitzRoy's voice was menacing, yet half-frightened. "Who told you this would happen?"

"I don't know -- I can't remember. But I swallowed a metal ball -- yes! They're coming for the metal ball!"

There were footsteps in the corridor outside -- not the footsteps of booted guards but the measured, powerful tread of things alien and unknown. There were no more human cries from the distance -- only the ponderous tramp of monstrous feet drawing closer and closer. . . .

Tramp! Tramp! Tramp! The beat was inside Judy's head, drawing back into her memory the lines of a forgotten poem. Tramp! Tramp! Tramp! "Here comes a candle to light you to bed. . . ."

"Who's coming , Judy? Tell me! Tell me!"

"It's the chopper," cried Judy, "to chop off your head!"

There was a metallic clash -- a shrill grating of rending steel -- and then the door crashed inward and hung crazily, shattered and half molten, on its hinges. Smoke billowed into the room.

A man stood framed in the smoldering doorway, indistinct in the smoke and the dim blue aura that surrounded him. Behind him towered alien shapes that glared into the room with luminous eyes.

FitzRoy snatched an automatic pistol from his black uniform. Twice it thundered deafeningly in that narrow room -- but the dark figures in the doorway did not waver. The man in the doorway deliberately raised his arm. . . .

A blinding beam of blue-white light knifed the chamber -- a brief blast of heat and thunder filled the room. Then Judy heard FitzRoy shrieking, saw him writhing on the concrete floor clutching at the charred stump of his right arm. . . .

"He's harmless," said the man in the doorway to someone behind him. "Take him if you want him."

Judy froze in fear as two human-sized, lobster-like creatures with eyeless, spindle-shaped heads scuttled into the room. They fastened onto the shrieking FitzRoy with long, insectile appendages and began to drag his struggling, mutilated form across the floor. The man's charred arm-stump left a wide crimson streak as the unhuman things dragged him across the concrete and through the door into the corridor; Judy heard his screams fade away into the distance. . . .

Now the newcomer was standing beside her, scowling down at her in apparent surprise. Like FitzRoy, he wore dark-rimmed spectacles and black clothes, but here the resemblance stopped. His apparel bore no similarity to the black uniform of the Nazirites or the Sons of Light. He was lean and his brown hair was close-cropped; his face, clean-shaven, was somehow hard in its severe lineaments, and his blue eyes glared with a strange intensity. The bulky pistol in his right hand seemed startlingly familiar -- so did the glowing belt about his waist -- but Judy couldn't remember when or where she had ever seen such objects. In the man's upturned left palm was a small, intricate device that hummed strangely and glowed with a dim blue radiance.

"You did come!" Judy's voice quavered. "I'd given up all hope -- but you did come!"

"What's going on?" demanded the stranger. "Who are you?"

"Judy . . . Judy . . . I can't remember any more. Just Judy."

"Where's Taggart?" said the stranger in black. "And what are you doing with the metal sphere? Where is it?"

"I swallowed it. It was in my hand and I knew the Sons of Light would take it away from me if they caught me, so I swallowed it. Somehow it gave me hope. . . ."

The stranger glared at her for a moment. Abruptly, he pressed a spot of light on the clasp of his belt, and the dim blue radiance surrounding him vanished. At the same time the mechanism in his left hand ceased to glow and he thrust it into his pocket. Finally, holstering his bulky pistol, he unstrapped Judy's legs and helped her to her feet. Though he was as dispassionately deliberate and unconcerned about her well-being as the Sons of Light, he obviously felt no need to be unnecessarily brutal either, being as he was gentler than they would have been.

"We'll solve all this later," he said. "Come with me."

But Judy put her face in her hands and began to sob.

"You've come to set me free," she cried brokenly -- and wondered how she knew. "Someone told me you'd come --"

"Someone? Who?"

"I . . . I don't know. . . ."

"Was it Taggart -- the man who gave you the sphere?"

Judy felt a sudden pang of fright. "There was no man," she said. "I was alone. No one gave me the sphere."

The stranger scowled more intently. "We'll talk later," he said finally. "Come on!"

Judy found she could hardly walk, so weak was she from hunger and tension, as the stranger ushered her out of the room and down the corridor. She saw a number of monstrous blue beings striding down the hall ahead of them, but accepted their presence as she would have accepted the content of a dream.

They traversed many corridors and descended many stairs, occasionally passing charred, mangled forms that lay oozing amid the tattered remnants of black uniforms. Sometimes they saw heaps of blackened bones or dark, sticky blotches where the plaster had flaked from the walls as if from intense heat. Once Judy glimpsed the upper half of a man leaning upright in a corner, his white laboratory smock spotlessly clean above the charred mass of his lower limbs mingled with what seemed to be the half-molten remnants of a sub-machine gun. Another time she glimpsed a human head glaring up from the floor, and was vaguely surprised to recognize the fear-contorted features of Constantine. She felt no horror, however, only a dreamlike numbness. . . .

We'll search every room till we find him.

The statement rang out in Judy's mind rather than against her eardrums, and somehow she knew it had come in some strange, non-verbal fashion from one of the inhuman blue giants. The fact failed to interest her, however -- a sea of weariness seemed about to engulf her, and she was ready to die gratefully in its warm embrace. . . .

Suddenly she saw the light of day through shattered steel portals ahead and the sleek form of a great, gleaming aircraft looming beyond. Then Judy's knees gave way, and her mind spun down into the dark, welcome gulfs of oblivion.

Strange visions coalescing into being in the black immensities of space . . . clouds of glowing stars pinwheeling against an infinitely vast sable backdrop . . . inhuman blue giants with high, domed heads striding powerfully down tremendous corridors of blue steel . . . and somewhere, far out beyond intergalactic spaces, an entire planet covered with black, living slime, endlessly circling a huge blue sun, sending imperious thought-commands of incredible power across the stupendous gulfs. . . .

At first Judy could not be sure these impressions were her own; rather, they seemed incursions from mighty, alien minds. As she became more and more aware of her own existence, however, the visions faded away and finally dissolved from her awareness altogether.

Her muscles felt relaxed and she realized they had given her drugs. They always did before they returned her to her cell. Yet, when she opened her eyes, she did not recognize her surroundings. She lay in the middle of a large, high room illuminated by a diffuse blue light that seemed to have no source. It was a restful light, yet strangely alien. Beneath her was the hard, slightly resilient surface of a fabric-covered platform.

A Fear that the fading effects of the drug could not hold back stabbed through her, weakening her limbs. She was to be tortured in some new way. . . .

"I see you are awake," said a voice at her side.

Judy turned to see a man in black regarding her. His garb was unlike the black coveralls of the Nazirites—their fabric seemed of a smoother, softer type. He seemed vaguely familiar somehow.

"Can you sit up?" he asked.

Judy noticed with surprise that her arms and legs were not strapped down. But she did not attempt to rise.

"I want to ask you some questions," the man continued. Then, as Judy involuntarily tensed, his rigid scowl grew more intent and he asked: "What are you afraid of?"

The girl looked at him blankly, searching for an answer. The question held no meaning for her. A pang of Fear shot through her -- every question had to be answered, or the Pain would come. . . .

"You needn't be afraid," said the stranger, adjusting his spectacles with a gesture almost identical to FitzRoy's, though more abrupt. "I just want some information. Tell me -- how did you get hold of the metal sphere?"

Judy felt a premonition of impending Pain. Her thoughts fled from it obliquely, and she believed her words when she replied:

"There was no sphere."

Again the stranger's scowl intensified. Save for that expression, his features were as rigidly expressionless as an iron mask. Now Judy knew she had seen that face before and associated strange, frightening things with it. A mental picture of Constantine's head lying on a concrete floor, charred black about the neck, flashed before her mind's eye. . . .

"You must remember," said the man, nervously brushing his lean hand back across his short-cropped brown hair. "A man named Taggart gave you the sphere. John Taggart. Do you remember now?"

"No," said Judy.

The stranger sat down on the low platform where Judy lay, near her feet, and leaned forward, elbows on his knees, the tips of his spidery fingers touching one another. "Why don't you remember?" he asked.

"Because it never happened."

The man scowled at her in silence. Judy grew tense, expecting the pain any instant. She wished she were back in the small white cell with FitzRoy -- there she would at least know what to expect. It was difficult to answer this stranger's meaningless questions. . . .

"I'll try once more," said the man presently. He rose and walked to a metal cupboard set into the wall. Judy noticed that he was taller than FitzRoy but somewhat stouter. Then he returned, holding two strange objects in his hands.

"This is a Zarrian blaster," he said, holding up a bulky pistol-like object, "and this is a force-belt. The man who gave you the sphere to swallow was wearing both. Do you remember him now?"

For an instant a familiar face, brown-bearded and dark-eyed, flashed across the girl's mind, together with the memory of a Son of Light sprawling in a welter of crimson gore. . . . Then came the premonition of Pain, the slanting thought-paths and the automatic answer:

"No -- I can't remember."

The stranger approached and bent over her; his scowling blue eyes seemed very close.

"You're afraid of me," he said quietly. "Why?"

Judy's mind whirled. She could make no sense out of the question. Frantically she searched for the right answer, but there was none. The Pain was impending . . .

"No!" she cried. "Don't, please -- I can't remember. I can't! I can't!"

The man drew back. He walked to the metal locker once again, then returned with a small object in his hand. It was a round cylinder with a small sphere at the opposite end.

"I'm not going to hurt you," said the stranger. "This will calm your nerves -- it won't even put you to sleep this time. Don't be afraid. . . ."

As he spoke, evenly and matter-of-factly, he sat down beside the girl once more, rolled up the sleeve on her forearm, and began to swab her skin with a cool cotton pad. At his actions, Julia sighed with immense relief. As the man placed the sphere against her arm Judy wondered why he should think she might fear it. A soothing restfulness began to steal over her. . . .

The stranger replaced the object in the cabinet, then returned and sat down in a huge, chair-like framework of metal, facing her. Despite his tallness, he seemed small in the device.

"Wouldn't you rather sit up?" he asked.

Judy did so as if obeying an order. She saw that her bed was a rectangular platform about four by ten feet, raised perhaps three feet from the floor and covered with metallic-blue fabric. The walls were of blue metal and the floor seemed almost black.

"Would you like something to eat or drink?"

Judy stared at the man, uncomprehending.

"Look," the stranger said, leaning forward, "what is it you're afraid of?"

"The Pain," said Judy tonelessly.

"And what causes the pain?"

"The dial."

"The dial? And what does the dial do?"

"I . . . I don't know. It causes the Pain."

"I see," said the stranger. "Who turns the dial, then?"

"FitzRoy," said Judy.

"Is he the man who was with you when you first saw me?"

Judy tried to think. She visualized FitzRoy's princely handsome face contorted with fear -- a beam of blinding violet light lancing out from clouds of coiling smoke . . . her heart beat faster.

"Yes," she breathed.

"You can remember that now?"

"Yes -- yes!"

"And can you remember anything else?"

Something about the man's words put Judy on her guard. Suddenly FitzRoy's face was back, hideously close, and the awful light was in his eyes. She heard his voice saying: You must have remembered things . . . things that must not be remembered. . . . You remembered Franklyn, didn't you!

"No!" shrieked Judy, her terror shattering the effects of the drug. "Not that. Not Reeducation -- oh, please, please! Not back there! . . ."

The stranger had jumped up and was gripping her by her shoulders. She did not struggle but sagged listlessly in his grip.

"Not back there," she sobbed brokenly; "please -- anything else -- but not back there! . . ."

A metal door suddenly opened in the far wall with a soft hiss as of escaping air. Judy felt a faint pressure in her ears and detected the scents of a rarified, alien atmosphere. . . . Then her Fear gave way to a strange awe as a monstrous being entered the room. It loomed eight feet in height and was roughly humanoid in shape, but its skin-tone was a deep, unearthly blue. Its chest was massive and its powerful arms terminated in thick, four-fingered hands; its stocky, unjointed legs, short in proportion to its massive torso, ended in broad pads rather than feet. A dozen slit-like mouths were arranged ladder-like up the central ridge of its high, domed head, while its two round eyes glowed down as with an inner luminosity. Above the thing's eyes a metal disc, held against its brow by a band of woven metal, gleamed with a dim blue radiance.

What have you learned?

Judy's mind whirled. She knew the question was addressed to the stranger -- and, unaccountably, she suddenly knew many more things, she knew not how. The question seemed only the core of a vast thought-continuum. She knew the stranger's name was Pitts, and wondered how she knew. And she remembered Pitts and monstrous blue beings similar to this one coming to take her away from FitzRoy and the Department of Persuasion. . . .

Then the thought-voice faded, and Judy's memories did also.

"I've learned little," said the man called Pitts. "I think this woman has been severely brainwashed."

The great being strode forward, gripped the girl's trembling shoulders and peered down into her eyes. Alien tendrils of thought seemed to probe her mind. She opened her mouth and tried to scream but, as in a nightmare, no sound came forth. . . .

Then, unaccountably, her fear vanished and gave place to sheer awe. For a moment her mind held the vision of a universe vast beyond anything she had ever tried to imagine. She seemed in that instant to comprehend thoughts of super-human power and complexity. The envisioning of light-years of space and whirling galaxies comprised of billions of suns and planets seemed childishly simple; the chemistry of life itself was a clear, visible fact that was casually observed and taken for granted. . . .

Then the alien mental-force withdrew, leaving the girl's mind a near blank by contrast. She leaned trembling against the rectangular dais as the monstrous being turned to face Pitts.

"Can her mind be restored?" asked the man.

Yes -- but the process will be long and difficult.

"We need to find Taggart quickly. She knows something about him. Surely something will make her recall the information -- drugs, hypnosis --"

There is no time. A Galactic has just arrived. It wishes to speak with Taggart.

Pitts started. "That's impossible! How could it already know that we -- ?"

It knows. Now it wants to know why we destroyed part of the city you call London.

Pitts fingered the handle of his blaster. "What do you think it plans to do?"

I do not know -- a Galactic's mind is unreadable, said the creature dispassionately. We will know soon. Come.

Pitts hesitated, glanced at Judy, then suddenly asked, "May I bring her along?"

The blue titan stood motionless for a moment, the blue disc on its brow glowing strangely as it glared down at the girl. Once again Judy felt the stirring of alien thoughts in her brain. . . .

Yes, said the being presently, it will be best. Bring her.

The giant turned and strode from the room. Pitts helped Judy to her feet and they hurried after it.

They strode rapidly down a vast hall of blue, mirror-smooth metal that seemed to vanish away without any visible ending. Judy sensed the deep throbbings of what seemed to be mighty engines somewhere far, far away -- not so much a sound as a dim but powerful vibration that conveyed itself through the dark, tractionable substance of the floor. . . .

Abruptly they turned aside and entered a high, rectangular aperture that let into a tubular hall of corrugated metal and, presently, emerged into a vast domed space. Here the light changed from blue to a soft green and the metal of the walls and ceiling, though smooth, were dull and unreflecting. The floor was divided into huge squares like an enormous grid, while all around its circular rim stood massive machines of dizzying complexity.

Suddenly Judy gasped and cringed back. In the center of that huge chamber clustered a group of fantastic creatures that seemed to be watching her entry. There were two yellow, squat, dwarfish bipeds with needle-like horns on their broad, flat heads; two huge, brown, many-tentacled spheroids with eyes like expression-less pools of liquid blackness; two lobster-like abominations with ciliated, spindle-shaped heads and many jointed, insect-like appendages; and, finally, several more of the dome-headed blue giants with their many mouths and round, staring eyes.

But dwarfing and dominating all these was a great metallic figure, vaguely humanoid, looming nearly ten feet in height and possessing no features save two points of light that gleamed like eyes peering out from a black, horizontal slit in the front of its domed head.

The metal titan strode forward and stared down at Pitts with its expressionless, glowing eyes; despite its massiveness it moved with an easy, fluid stride that denoted great power. When it ceased moving, it became motionless as a metal statue.

Pitts clenched and unclenched his fingers nervously. "We are trying to find and rescue Taggart," he said, "but so far we have been unsuccessful."

I SEE IN YOUR MIND THAT YOU AND THE ZARR HAVE KILLED MANY. The Galactic's voice, though low, seemed to fill all of space. YOU SHOULD NOT HAVE DONE THAT -- YOU HAVE DOUBTLESS ALTERED YOUR RACE'S HISTORY. YOU MUST FIND THE ONE CALLED TAGGART WITHOUT FURTHER DESTRUCTION OR KILLING.

Pitts scowled more intently. "Perhaps you can help us find him, then. I'm sure this woman's mind contains information as to his whereabouts. . . ."

The luminous eyes of the Galactic did not waver. YOU WERE NOT TO COLLECT SPECIMENS, EITHER. YOU MUST TAKE HER BACK, TOGETHER WITH THE OTHERS YOU CAPTURED AND BROUGHT HERE. MOREOVER, BEFORE YOU RETURN AND RELEASE THEM, YOU MUST ERASE ALL KNOWLEDGE OF OUR EXISTENCE FROM THEIR MINDS.

"Very well," said Pitts, "but what about Taggart? We've lost him, and I think he's been captured. You'll have to help us re-locate him if you want his report."

Without answering, the metallic giant turned toward Judy. Its eyes seemed to glow more intensely from the dark slit in its domed head, and Judy felt that they were burning into the fibers of her brain. Fantastically complex images flashed before her mind's eye. It was like when the Zarrian had looked into her eyes -- only this time she felt the presence of an even greater power, godlike and invincible. . . .

The world dissolved away -- vivid vistas of a boundless universe whirled into being. All time and space seemed one compact yet infinite mass governed by laws of startling simplicity. Stars like motes of dust, countless in their profusion, whirled and coalesced into vast spiraling clouds. The pageant of Earth's past, and the pasts of a billion other worlds, seemed laid out in detail across a dimensionless background. In that instant, Judy comprehended the empire of the Galactics, comprising the hundred-billion suns of the galaxy in which Earth was but a tiny mote, and also the empire of the Zarr, equally vast and extending its first tendrils of conquest across the black intergalactic gulfs. In one flash she was able to sense the salient points in the histories of both these tremendous stellar empires, both spanning nearly twenty million earthly years from their origins, each on one small planet in their respective galaxies, to their present lordships over the worlds of countless suns.

And for an instant Judith's own past, too, was clear. There was not one incident, not even the most insignificant action or impression of her life, that was inaccessible to her memory -- from the present moment back to when she was a scarcely differentiated blastoid organism in the womb. She saw herself simultaneously as a crying infant, as a puzzled child, as an adolescent venting her suppressed emotions in the excitement of government-sponsored hate-holidays and victory rallies, as a young woman member of the anti-sex league, as a propaganda-worker for the anti-pornography division of the Department of Information and, finally, as a female being struggling desperately for some kind of fulfillment in her illicit relations with Franklyn and the other men who had been before him. Even the tortures of FitzRoy and the Sons of Light, strung out in a near-endless array of coarse brutalities and refined sadism, she saw with clarity and detachment, without Pain or Fear -- even that ultimate, degrading horror that had happened in Reeducation, with the razor blades being applied to the skin of her arms and wrists. . . .

And back of it all she sensed a surging, cosmic panorama vast beyond anything she had ever been taught to conceive. Her mind's eye glimpsed metallic armies marching from horizon to horizon across expanses too great to be the plains of any earth-sized world -- ships miles long that blasted their way across curved space on arcs of glaring flame -- forests of gleaming towers that bore down on cowering cities, hurling lightning-like shafts of violet energy before them, while the alien-architectured buildings shook to their ponderous advance -- stars that pulsed grandly in vast explosion, destroying whole systems of worlds in their leisurely, irresistible expansion -- legions of winged, lobster-bodied beings that swept across inconceivable immensities of space-time, bearing glittering metal canisters in their jointed claws. She sensed the awful presence of beings even mightier than the Galactics or the Zarr -- monstrous, mental pulsings here and there amid the cosmos suggesting the existence of living-things too terrific and alien to be humanly comprehended. One was near the center of the Andromeda nebula -- a black, slime-covered planet that hurled its thought-messages from the gravitational focus of a hundred billion swirling stars; others were much nearer, within the very galaxy to which Earth belonged. And out beyond all else, beyond the outmost bournes of stars and worlds, galaxies and quasars, there churned a boundless Force: the mindless, sentient Chaos that seethes at the focus of all existence and gives birth to all things. . . .

And everywhere there was power, unbelievable power, power beyond measure -- power that made the Earth seem a mere grain of microbe-inhabited dust, that revealed humanity as an ephemeral micro-phenomenon without true thought or will, that reduced the State to utter, absurd meaninglessness. . . .

Suddenly the visions were gone. Judy found herself back in the green-lit room, standing before the great, metal Galactic.

The visions were gone -- but the memories were not.

"Did you learn Taggart's whereabouts?" she heard Pitts asking.

NO, said the Galactic in ponderous thought-tones, BUT WHAT I HAVE SEEN IN THIS CREATURE'S MIND CONVINCES ME THAT YOUR RACE SHOULD BE DESTROYED. It then turned and faced the group of alien beings in the center of the chamber.

YOU ARE ALL FREE, it said, TO EXPLOIT THIS PLANET IN ANY WAY YOU WISH.

The aliens stirred and filed from the domed room without any sign of triumph or even acknowledgement. But Pitts's eyes glittered with a strange intensity.

"So many years I've waited," he muttered to himself, his voice low but tense. "So many years!"

"What are you going to do?" asked Judith. It did not feel in the least bit unnatural to think of herself as "Judith" again. "Judy" was what the State wanted her to be, a helpless child totally dependent upon it and at its non-existent mercy. Now she was her own person again, and despite the strangeness of the feeling she accepted it without question.

Pitts faced her. For an instant he seemed surprised. Then, with tension barely suppressing the triumph in his voice, he said: "I'm going to destroy the human race."

The man's features were rigid and expressionless, but his lean fingers trembled slightly at his sides and Judith sensed hate in the icy glitter of his eyes -- a mad hate surpassing anything she had ever encountered even in that world of fear and torture in which she had grown. Yet, now that her mind had been restored to her, and she had become the person she would have been but for the State, she began to feel some small bit of that hate herself.

"But the State can never be des --"

She stopped speaking, realizing that she no longer believed what she had been conditioned to say. The State could be destroyed -- more, it had been destroyed, this very moment, by the decision of an intelligence and a power vast beyond its ability to comprehend.

Pitts was scrutinizing the girl's face. "You have changed," he said.

"Yes." Judith was surprised at the level calm of her own voice. "Something happened -- when that being looked into my mind. . . ."

"I see. But you still don't remember what happened to Taggart?"

"No. The Sons of Light captured both of us at the same time -- but I haven't seen him since."

"Do you know where they might have taken him?"

"No. But FitzRoy might know, if he's still alive. . . ."

"FitzRoy?"

"The man who -- who was interrogating me when you first saw me, I can remember it all now. You wounded him severely, and then . . . oh God! Then two horrible things dragged him away. . . ."

"Ah -- yes." Pitts rubbed his lean hands together. "The Yuggoth-spawn took him. I imagine he's still alive. Come with me. I'll see if we may question this FitzRoy."

"He's hard," said Judith. "I doubt you'll get him to talk."

"He will talk," said Pitts.

They walked out of the domed green chamber, down the corrugated tubular corridor and back into the great hall of blue metal. Judith stared about her in amazement for the first time.

"What is this place?" she asked.

"The starship of the Zarr. We just left the Galactic ship, which will soon detach itself and return to the center of the galaxy. We're circling the earth in an orbit about two thousand miles up."

"It's so hard to believe," said Judith quietly. "And, yet, I can believe it. My mind . . . everything's so changed!"

"You're tired." For the first time Judith sensed a slight decrease in the rigidity of Pitts's manner. "Go back to your room if you wish. I'll send along a robot with some food."

"No!" Judith startled herself with the suddenness of her reply. "I want to go with you."

"Why?"

"I've got to see FitzRoy."

Pitts regarded her in silence.

"It's hard to explain," Judith went on, "but I've got to see him. If you could only know what he's done to me -- month after month after month . . ." A sudden memory made her tense and clutch her arms with her hands, her eyes clamping shut as her face contorted, her stomach muscles contracting painfully. Even now she could not objectively face the memory of what had happened in Reeducation. . . . When she looked up again, there was a hate in her eyes that rivaled that of Pitts's.

"I've got to watch what you do to him," she said evenly.

Pitts shrugged. "Very well, then -- come along. But I'm not going to torture him. All I want is some information."

"He'll never give it to you."

"He will. I'll simply offer him the choice between life or death."

"You don't know FitzRoy."

"We'll see," said Pitts.

They continued down the great, blue-lit corridor. Occasionally they met and passed monstrous alien beings who paid them no attention. Once they entered an elevator that carried them down several levels to a similar great hall. Everywhere glowed the dim blue light whose source could not be determined; everything seemed to be made of the same smooth, featureless blue metal.

At last they entered a room where several of the winged, lobster-bodied creatures stood about transparent machines through which dark fluids bubbled and percolated. Judith felt a shock at the sight of them and sensed a strange, sub-auditory buzzing or vibration filling the room, like the menacing drone of a nest of giant hornets. She hung back as Pitts approached one of the beings, extended his arms, and began to twitch his lean fingers strangely. The creature responded by wriggling the numerous fleshy cilia that sprouted from its eyeless, spindle-shaped head. After a moment or two of this, Pitts turned and walked back to Judith.

"What were you doing?" she asked.

"The thing says we can have FitzRoy," replied Pitts. "Follow me."

They passed into a large, adjacent room. A mixed smell of chemicals and decaying organic matter fouled the air, formerly so sharp and clean. A number of metal slabs protruded from the walls, some stained with a dark fluid that dripped from the edges or rilled sluggishly down the blue steel to the floor. On one lay a naked, headless human body with one arm drooping over the edge.

"He's not here," muttered Pitts. "Perhaps he's already in storage."

He conducted the girl into a smaller room where the air was clean and smelled of something like antiseptic. One wall was filled completely with tiers of steel shelves on which were ranked hundreds of squat cylinders of mirror-bright metal. Each cylinder bore a dark label marked with strange hieroglyphics.

"This is the collection they brought up from London," Pitts remarked. For several moments he scrutinized the rows of canisters. Judith, wondering what all this meant, gazed about the room in puzzlement. A black pile of clothing in one corner caught her attention, and she was startled to recognize that clothing as uniforms of the type worn by the Sons of Light and the Nazirites.

Presently Pitts selected a cylinder and carried it over to a silvery machine that rested on a metal table near the opposite wall. He placed the cylinder into a wire cradle that seemed made to accommodate it, then plugged three cords from the machine into a triangular socket below the hieroglyphed label. Finally he flicked a switch, and two lenses near the top of the machine began to glow dimly.

"Can you hear me?" said Pitts.

"Yes," replied the machine in a metallic voice, "where am I? I feel strange. . . ."

"I want to ask you a question."

"What's happening? Am I being conditioned? I've done nothing against the State. . . . What's going on here?"

"I'll ask the questions," said Pitts.

"I feel numb all over. . . . I've had the strangest dream! Who are you? I'll tell you all I know -- I've always been loyal to the Nationalist Evangelicals and Pan-Occidentia. You've got to believe me!"

"This has nothing to do with all that. I want to know about a prisoner named Taggart. Have you seen him?"

"Sure -- I rode with him to the Department from Constantine's office. He asked too many questions so I made him shut up. What's wrong with my eyes? Everything looks blue . . ."

"You say you accompanied Taggart?"

"Yes. But why -- ?"

"Where is he now?"

"How should I know? I don't keep track of these bloody prisoners -- you'll have to ask Constantine or FitzRoy. Lord, what's wrong with me? I feel so --"

Created: October 28, 2006