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.Four of them died before the Guardians could assemble in sufficient numbers to nullify Belzor’s power.From that time onwards, until he boarded the Quicksilver, Marmorc was protected continuously by a ring of Dorrinian supertelepaths.There was a brief period when it was even hoped that Belzor himself might be destroyed, because he could not attack again without betraying his own position, and by then many Guardians were mobilized and ready to go against him.He was, however, too wary to make that mistake.Instead, he resorted for a time to the tactic he has employed against Guardians in the past—random, widely-separated attacks, often involving the use of conventional weapons, against Dorrinians, especially those who were important to the CryoCare organization.He then ceased his activities and dropped out of sight, and it was assumed that he was gathering his resources for a final onslaught, centred either on Marmorc when he returned to Earth or on the CryoCare base in the Antarctic.It was also assumed that while Marmorc was on his interplanetary voyage he could not be harmed by the Prince, because of the supposed impossibility of focusing a kald lens on a small, remote, invisible and rapidly moving object.That was the biggest and most disastrous error the Guardians have ever made in their dealings with the Prince.We now realize that he has been refining his powers, developing capabilities which even the most advanced Dorrinian telepaths can scarcely comprehend.At this very instant—in spite of the astronomical distance which separates them—he is dissipating Marmorc’s kald, siphoning away his life energies, and unless he can be stopped Marmorc will die and the Thabbren may never reach Earth.The attack on Marmorc is as directional as the previous one, but in this case the needle cone is being directed upwards from the surface of the Earth—which means that it cannot be intercepted or used to pinpoint Belzor’s position.We believe that he must be in a location from which he can maintain uninterrupted line-of-sight contact with Mercury/Dorrin for many hours, which indicates—as it is now summer in the Earth’s southern hemisphere—somewhere in Antarctica.Many Dorrinians have gone there in search of him, prepared for a fight to the death, but it is a large continent, and the time left to us is very short.The future of our entire race hangs by the slenderest thread……SO BE SILENT AND BE STILL!Jerome was only dimly aware of having folded at the knees, of having been helped back to his chair by Conforden.He had learned earlier that telepathy was partly a physical process, involving the teleportation of electrical charges into the receiver’s brain, which accounted for the stunning effect of the fleeting mental contact with the Guardian.But there had also been a devastating emotional component superimposed on the informational content of the transfer.For a single instant he had felt what the Dorrinians were feeling, had shared their agonies as the millennia-long racial dream was suddenly threatened with dissolution, had seen himself as a blundering and sacrilegious intruder.He sat back in the chair, breathing deeply and trying to regain his equilibrium.There had been callousness in the way the Guardian had treated him, but he consoled himself with the reflection that on Earth lesser men would have killed him for the same kind of interference in an infinitely lesser crisis.The Guardians were still standing in a tight group, motionless as statues, and he could only speculate about the telepathic conflict in which they were engaged.Were they, by means he would never understand, endeavouring to shield the Dorrinian on board the spacecraft? Were they in communication with their agents in the distant snowfields of Antarctica? Or were they striving to forge their kald lenses into a single insubstantial spear which could stab down through the Earth’s atmosphere and transfix the renegade Prince? Was there a possibility that Belzor could strike back at them with his incredible powers, destabilizing their needle cones of mental energy into oscillating spheres which encompassed the Sun? Might the psi gladiators suddenly burst into flame?Awed by the sheer scope of the silent conflict, chastened by his inability to penetrate its mysteries, Jerome lapsed into a kind of gloomy watchfulness.The group of Dorrinian technicians to his right appeared to be similarly subdued.There was little activity among them and even the whispered conversations had died out.All eyes were fixed on the screen’s unchanging image of the Mercurian surface, on the white speck of the Thabbren, and the atmosphere in the chamber was one of intense, brooding apprehension.In the absence of movement, the viscosity of time seemed to increase, insensibly thickening around the watchers, smothering them in its cold clear amber.This is never going to end, Jerome thought.We’ll be here for ever…The Quicksilver came down so rapidly that Jerome almost believed it was out of control.He leaped to his feet, mouth agape in readiness to shout a futile warning, then he saw the dust clouds which told him the ship’s landing jets were in operation.The flat billows, lacking air to buoy up their separate particles, dropped in an instant like heavy blankets—and, magically, the spacecraft from Earth had arrived.It sat on the Mercurian plain, an angular edifice on a landing tripod, harshly illuminated from one side, reminding Jerome of an etched illustration in a 19th century scientific romance.The launching from Earth orbit, coupled with the use of high-efficiency, state-of-the-art engines, had enabled the mission planners to forget the astronaut’s nightmare of orbital rendezvous at destination.It had not been necessary to have a mother ship dispatch a landing module to the planetary surface.Instead, the Quicksilver itself—big as a truck, bristling with antennae, exuding the confidence of reserve power—had taken up a solid stance on the surface of an alien planet.It had touched down about a hundred metres away from the Dorrinian sensor, squarely in the flat and boulder-free area which had led to the selection of the decoy site.Looking at the ship, Jerome was overwhelmed by a surge of pride and homesickness which simultaneously closed his throat and blurred his vision.He took a single step, a lover’s faltering step, towards the image on the screen, then it came to him that nobody else in the chamber had moved or acknowledged the momentous event in any way.The Guardians were a statuary group of six on his left; the other Dorrinians were dispersed among the vehicles, dimly-seen mannikins, seemingly devoid of life.Marmorc must be all right, Jerome told himself.If the worst had happened, if he had died, the Guardians would have known about it, and I would have seen some reaction from somebody.Either way—they should be responding to my beautiful ship.Damn them, they should be wringing their hands, or ringing their bells.Jerome turned his eyes back to the screen, baffled and embarrassed, and felt a tingle of surprise as he saw that, although not more than a minute had elapsed since touchdown, a hatch in the Quicksilver’s side was swinging open.He had expected the astronauts to spend many hours on checks and tests before they took the major step of unsealing the ship.Was this an emergency procedure? Under Jerome’s mesmerized gaze, a telescopic ladder was extended from the dark square of the hatch.As soon as it had reached the ground a figure in a white spacesuit appeared at the top.One of the Guardians near Jerome gave a low gasp.That’s Marmorc, Jerome thought as the astronaut slid down the ladder, keeping his feet clear of the rungs.His knees buckled as he impacted with the ground
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