They were the Amnesiacs. Deprived of the hypnotic drug, partly in possession of their faculties and their memories, they remembered! And remembering, they paid back for the torture of a lifetime!
Assailed from every side, the crack Inner Circle battalion of Intermediates split into two halves and strove to meet both fronts. But Guerlan with a cry that would have done credit to a Venusian Calamar, snatched the sword from a fallen technician and raced to where the Amnesiacs were tangled in a death struggle. With the electro-flash in his left hand, he stabbed and hacked at exposed limbs and through shattered crysto-plast. And the battle turned slowly, increasing in tempo until it was a rout that pressed the remaining Intermediates into a demoralized race of life. But they were not to escape. Out of all control, all semblance of humanity now, the remaining Amnesiacs were a screaming horror that pursued the quarry and pulled it down like the giant Calamar of Venus pulls down its prey in the virgin forests, until only the moaning wounded and the dead remained on the blood-drenched plastic flooring of the titanic grotto.
Guerlan never knew when the battle was finally over. His tunic was a crimson stain from top to bottom; a long slash across his ribs to the center of his powerful chest, had left a shallow gash that dripped a slow gout of blood. His shoulder was seared by a slanting atomic-blast that would have taken half of him had it come any nearer. He became aware of the ghastly silence only when Perlac's marvelously slender hand was pressed to his cheek, and her melodious voice was repeating: "Guerlan, Guerlan, my dear!" He turned and saw her eyes were aswim with unshed tears.
He took her hand in his powerful ones without a word, and held it caressingly, while all about them was a shambles of death and wreckage.
"My initiation," he said slowly, huskily, with a hint of a smile in his long, green eyes.
"I knew I was not wrong in choosing you," Perlac replied and bravely essayed a smile, too; but she had reached the end of her physical resources and with a whispered, "Oh, my dear," she wilted unconscious in his arms.
Guerlan lifted her fragile form as if she were a precious doll and walked toward the super-spacer; a group of scientists who had emerged from its interior, watched his approach with a hint of anxiety as they motioned for him to hurry. Among them, a tall, elderly scientist of the second order, whose white mane was like an aureole about the pale, sharp-featured face, hurried forward as if unable to contain himself.
"Is Perlac wounded?" He inquired with a world of worry in his voice. "Tell me, man! Hurry!"
"Peace," Guerlan answered wearily. "She's not harmed, just fainted ... the miracle is that she's been able to stand as much as she has. Have you restoratives?"
"Bring her into the plane, we have everything needed, stranger. Praised be the Ultimate Power she has not been harmed!" Then he drew himself erect as he and Guerlan came abreast of each other, and said with quiet dignity: