She was above and beyond humanity. A great void opened between her and the man, the void of countless evolutionary cycles, and a million light-years of space. But across that gulf something reached and met and clung, and Arnsen's senses drowned in a soul-shaking longing for Circe.
It was her power. She could control emotion, as she could control the crystals, and the power of her mind reached into Arnsen and wrung sanity and self from it. Only in outer semblance was she even slightly human. Beside her Arnsen was an animal, and like an animal he could be controlled.
She blazed like a flame before him. He forgot O'Brien, forgot Hastings and Earth and his purpose. Her power clutched him and left him helpless.
The grip upon his mind relaxed. Circe, confident of her triumph, let her eyelids droop.
And Arnsen's mind came back in a long, slow cycle from the gulfs between the stars, drifted leisurely back into the crystalline cavern and the presence of the goddess—and woke.
Not wholly. He would never be whole again. But he felt the crowding vibrations of the countless prisoners in crystal who had gone the way his own feet were walking now, bewildered, drunken and drowning in emotions without name, sacrificing identity without knowing what they sacrificed. Flung into eternity at the whim of a careless goddess to whom all life-forms were one....
She was turning half away as realization came back to Arnsen. She had lifted one round white arm to let the crystals cascade along it. She did not even see him lurch forward.
What he did was without thought. The emotions she had called up in him drowned all thought. He only knew that he must do what he did—he could not yet think why.
The breath hissed between his lips as he stumbled forward and thrust Circe into the flame....