The agony flamed up again in Garth's brain, consuming, terrible. The huge robot body of the dais swayed, caught itself, and the chant thundered out again through the great cavern.
"If I take the wings of the morning; and remain in the uttermost parts of the sea; even there also shall thy hand lead me...."
The distant, harsh clangor of a bell sounded. Garth had heard it before, when he had crossed the threshold of the black temple in the forest. At the sound the Zarno stirred, and a few of them sprang up.
Garth thrust out his hand, fighting back the pain that tore at him like white flame.
His voice held them—
"The floods are risen, O Lord, the floods have lifted up their voices; the floods lift up their waves.... The waves of the sea are mighty, and rage horribly: but yet the Lord, who dwelleth on high, is mightier—"
He held them. He held them, speaking a tongue they did not know, while his mind shook under the impact of sanity-destroying pain. A slow, sick bitterness crept into his soul. Was this the end—death here, prisoned on an alien world, so far from his home planet?
Death—and for what?
He closed his mind to the thought. Mentally he paced Doc and the others through the tunnel, from the black temple to the hangar. Surely they must have reached it by now! Paula—
That first glimpse he had had of the girl, in Tolomo's drinking-hell—Moira, he had thought then, for an incredible instant. Yes, she had been like Moira. If the paths of destiny had led elsewhere than to the Black Forest of Ganymede, the result might have been far distant. He would not be dying here alone, horribly alone. Moira—Paula—