"No, Barihorn, the Stone can never strike at Malgarth, unless we arrive to aid it."
Red stars followed us again—the repulsors of pursuing robot ships. But Kel Aran, singing a gay new song of the return of Barihorn and the vengeance of the old Dondara Stone, drove our tiny ship through a dark asteroid cluster. The ponderous cruisers of the fleet were delayed in finding safe passage through those black hurtling islands of space. We gained a little margin of time. And then, with Verel for a guide, Jeron turned the Barihorn toward the secret world of Malgarth's lair.
It was toward the great Horse's Head nebula in Orion that she directed us, that strange ink-black silhouette against the stars that had so puzzled the astronomers of my own day. Twice again we evaded the red stars that pursued. And at last the girl guided us into the dark peril of the stellar cloud.
Vast beyond comprehension, it was a lightless cosmic desert of drifting dust and hurtling rocks and plunging planetary bodies. On all the space charts it was marked, dangerous, impenetrable; all shipping was warned to keep two light years clear of its dark fringes.
But Malgarth, it seemed, had found a safe path through its perils, half a million years ago. With Verel's aid, we found that path, and followed it. And all the stars were lost in that cloud of universal darkness—even the crimson stars that had pressed so close behind us.
"I think we have left them," said Verel Erin. "For even the most of the robots do not know the dark way we go.—But there are others enough, waiting for us. Mystoon is guarded well."
That was a strange passage. There was no light, not even any glow of rare nebulium. There was only the pattern of unseen magnetic fields to guide us, only fancy to picture the dark walls of death beside us.
Once a frightful hail of meteoric fragments, penetrating even the deflector fields, battered the tiny ship deafeningly. The guiding field-potentials had shifted since she passed, Verel said despairingly. We were lost in that sea of darkness.
But Kel Aran took the controls, and brought us safely out of the meteor swarm. And the pale anxious girl, studying the dials, presently found her bearings again. The Barihorn slipped ahead down that unseen passage. And at last there was light ahead!
A dull-red, ominous glow.