09 Lensman From Rigel by David A. Kyle

Author:David A. Kyle [Kyle, David A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-08-25T01:31:06.421000+00:00

Conspiracy on Kresh-kree

In the center of the domed room there blazed a sphere of great beauty. Its surface swirled with all the hues of the spectrum, brilliant and dull and intense and faded. Shimmering bands streamed in one direction, then in another. Sometimes the ball sparkled and revolved vertically, sometimes it flamed and turned horizontally. Fast, slow, pulsating, one moment as small as a human skull, another moment ten times as large, it sprayed dancing light from curved floor to ceiling. The sculptured crystal pendants, which hung like numberless clusters of stalactites, glistened, sometimes with streaks of color, sometimes with specks of light.

This was a force-ball, created out of pure thought by a mighty race of entities. Its simplest function, to which use it was now being put, was as an intra-galactic communicator.

Emanating from this sphere, which, ironically was as overwhelmingly gorgeous and pristine as the creature which created it was overwhelmingly ugly and evil, came a thought:

"Imperial Kalonians! Acknowledge your Master!"

On the floor, sitting in pairs to form a large circle, were six male and six female Kalonians, dressed in purple silken lounge suits. Only their styles of hair and their individual jeweled necklaces or strings of beads set them apart. The flecks of color passing across their bare arms and shoulders and faces accentuated the blue skin tones of their flesh. They were all beautiful, the features of the men strong and sharp, the bodies of the women soft and full. Physically, in fact, they were too perfect, smoothly, artificially prettified products of the wealth of aristocrats of the defunct Thrale-Onlonian Empire.

The voice from the sphere had an immediate effect. Each male grasped the coiffured hair of his mate and pulled her head back, exposing her bare, arched throat. Each male pulled from a scabbard at his belt a long knife and placed it against his mate's throat. The razor sharpness of the blades in two instances, slight though the pressure was, sliced the perfect skin so that purplish drops of blood began to trickle down.

One Kalonian male, marked by wearing two golden chained, bejeweled ornaments, said, "Say the word, Master, and we will each kill our favorite childbearer for you. Thus do you know we follow you without question."

"I hear you, Imperial Kalonians, I acknowledge your fealty. Shall I ask a token killing now? Six? Five? Four? I free you all. Three? Two? Shall I ask it of you, Two? Or should it be One? I free you, Two. Now as for One. You would enjoy killing! I free you, One."

The knives came down and the women lowered their bodies in front of their men, sprawled face upward. On the bare abdomens of their women, exposed by the cut-out panel of their clothes, the men laid their naked knives.

"Death to Lanion the Traitor!" the men spoke in unison. "Long life to the Master! Long life to the New Empire!"

"Bah!" said the mental thought. "I despise you all! Do you think the blood of your women will satisfy

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