The ship came down with unbelievable rapidity. The man on the sand had taken only a few steps from the prism when a black shadow overhauled him. He had no time even to turn his head.
There was an explosion that ripped metal apart, that tore gaping holes in the smooth facets of the golden prism, that sent geysers of desert sand upward in dry showers. When the sands came down, there was only scattered wreckage.
Like a twisted, broken toy, the spaceship lay on the sand, partially obscuring the prism. Gaunt girders stuck up through the opened hull. Smoke swirling from the ship's insides mixed with the falling sand.
Somewhere in the wreckage, a voice wailed in agony and despair.
I
The machine stood in the domed end of the dark temple, gleaming dully. Above it a hemisphere of translucent metal filtered pale moonbeams that drew flashes of silvered fire from the great metal bulk. Against the black basalt walls, the Machine brooded sullenly. It was great, was the Machine. It was worshipped. It held power of life and death over all Klarn. It possessed all power. It was god.
And yet, the Machine was—dead.
A figure slipped forward from the shadows that ringed the marble floor. From pillar to ivory pillar he crept, a hand ever on the stained leather hilt of his sword. Moonlight flicked over the close-cropped black hair and the tight uniform of the dulars that moulded his chest, and sheathed his long, lean thighs. Emblazoned on the chest of his jacket was the resurgent red dragon with fire spouting between its fangs, symbolic of his rank. A broad belt suspended his scabbard and blade, and sweeping upward from his shoulders were the metal epaulettes that bespoke his connection with royalty.
Flane looked around him, grinning.