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pyramid's top, separating the east and west sides. The width of the opening was perhaps
twenty feet, its length, forty, which was the width of the room itself. Starlight flooded the
interior, to mingle with "starlight" from another source. For the room's interior was as an
inverted bowl, reflecting the night sky of an alien universe, as seen from an alien world.
Strange constellations glowed in diamond colors. Stars. Clusters. Island galaxies; all were
depicted. The effect of the alien universe upon the hemispheric dome was startling. Indeed,
it was the single thing the Dark One had ever created that smacked of feeling-a bit of home,
as it were.
At the room's center was a dais. Upon it was a bank of instruments, control panels
and the like. Each stud and button glowed with a small light of its own. To the right and left of
the controls were two great machines of a design I'd never seen before. The very lines of
their contours wavered, became vague with a kaleidoscopic quality if one tried to trace
them, to see them in their totality. They had one thing in common: each focused upon some
given point in the true space that lay outside.
The instrument on the left controlled the power load, the right, its' use. Both load and
use-the instantaneous release of one at the exact point of accumulation by the other, was
controlled by a single bar above a three-dimensional grid wherein I saw the tracery of
Fregis-Camelot's magnetic lines, the faint connection to far Fomathaut II, and the
conjunctive, linear alignments of the small moons, Ripple and Capil....
They were, or so it seemed, in conjunction now. But I knew they weren't. There were
still two minutes!
'Well!" I said to the small, basketball-headed figure with fuzzy ears who stood quite
casually before the control bank. "So this is it-the end of our bloody road." I'd switched my
sword to my left hand.
"All things must end," Hooli replied in cliche. "Let's just be glad it did so in our favor.
What do you think of this?" His accompanying gesture encompassed the control panel, the
instruments, and the hemispheric projection. His voice, usually so intimate, was stilted now,
reserved.
"Fantastic! But how's about the big blast? I figure less than two minutes to total
alignment"
"Wrong, Collin. It's already over. Zero point was just before you entered."
"What happened?"
"Nothing. I stopped it, before."
"Then I'm off by three minutes."
"Apparently.... " "Where is he-it?"
Hooli grinned. "You saw it die."
I frowned, uncomprehending. "That thing? That was the Dark One? It's hard to
believe."
"Why not?" Hooli glanced down to the 3-D grid, moved even closer if possible, to the
panel.
"That he would be there, below, in his supposed moment of victory."
"Supposed?"
Etched by the starlight, he stood statue-still against the instrument panel. I stared at
him hard. Then I asked softly, "Hey, Hooli? How many whores did the Ripper actually kill?"
"The Ripper?"
Just before I pressed the laser stone a faint light shimmered, took form before him-a
silvered shadow of the Grail!
Then both Hooli and the Grail were gone in a burst of light from a simple miniature
laser power-pack disguised as an agate stone to embellish the beauty of a Terran
Adjuster's medieval sword belt.
It took me exactly five seconds to mount the dais, slap the control bar, press buttons
to right and left-and to then witness, gridwise, the actual conjunction of Capil, Ripple, and
Fomalhaut II.
Nothing happened!
Seconds later my held breath exploded from my lungs. I shook my head, staring
hypnotically at the puddled wetness on the stones before the grid. He'd played it cool.
Indeed, he'd almost won! But with all his power, he'd not once been able to organize it
properly; to concentrate it in the right place at the right time. He just wasn't smart.
Moreover, like so many humanoids his very arrogance was a bar to thinking things out
I sighed, breathed deeply of the fresh night air from the opened arc above. I could
scarce take my eyes from the stars of our own universe. My feeling of euphoria was laced
with the solid knowledge that now, at this very moment, in Hish, and outside, in all the towns
and villages, and in Glagmaron, Gheese, Ferlach, Kelb, Great Ortmund, it was
finished-kaput!
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