Flane patted the violet-gun in his hands.
"With this we can make a killing ourselves!"
Over a zeethis-wood table, Harth planned his strategy. They would go over Moornal, displaying banners to tell the people below that they were visiting Darkside to raise an army. High in the air, the last of the magniships could survey an endless countryside. At the signs of the gathered Darksider host, the ship could swing into position, and Flane could sweep their ranks with his weapon. Then the army would attack.
Flane protested, as a thought came to him, "But must we kill these Darksiders, if they are as ourselves? Perhaps we could reason with them, teach them our culture, make them as we are."
Harth was horrified, and said so. But Flane felt a sneaking liking for the nomads; he himself had been one for uncounted months, on the desert. Besides, he was not a Klarnvan, and neither were the Darksiders. Without a race, Flane thought momentarily of adopting the outsiders as his own.
"We could teach them our knowledge," Flane continued stubbornly. "Their lances and arrows would make good trading material for them. We need good arrows and spears for hunting. Our ceramics and cities would be good bartering stuff. If we could instill in them a love for beauty, art to decorate their homes—"
"Tents!" sniffed Harth.
"Those rumored cities of theirs," said Flane, "will need ornament. Besides, were we to unite Klarnva and Darksiders, we might build a race that would develop its own science, so that the Machine would not be such a necessity."
Aevlyn let her red-brown eyes survey him tenderly. Her ripe mouth curved into a smile. She said to Flane, "You want to be the giant of the prophecy, who comes to unite all on Klarn beneath one banner!"
"I am no giant who carries stars in his hands," said Flane soberly, "but I try to think of the Darksiders. This was their planet. The Klarnva took it from them, ages ago. The Darksiders have rights."