We ran on, and then suddenly I realized that we had emerged into that huge underground space where first we had met the Great Mind. Taro ran toward a wall, found some hidden mechanism. I saw, in the crimson radiance, that by the wall a hundred yards or so away, a big slide had opened. A small, gleaming, pot-bellied cylinder was standing there. It came automatically out on rollers, and stopped in the open—a little thirty foot Space-flyer. And over it, high up, the ceiling of the vast cavern seemed to have opened; the murky purple-red of the sky was up there.
All this I saw in those few seconds. But there was far more here. A turmoil of sounds and moving, milling figures. A scene of weird, ghastly horror so that for a moment I stood swaying with the limp body of Mack slung over my shoulders and my companions clustered around me. Down the slope where the little Lei village stood under the trees in the red gloom, a crowd of Lei were struggling. And everywhere among them, squat grey shapes of Radaks were plunging.... Radaks with knives and scimitar-like swords, and some with rock-chunks and bludgeons ... Radaks screaming, running amok. I saw one lunge with a knife at a Lei woman. The knife went into her and she fell; and the Radak kept on going until he crashed into a tree.
The Great Mind was dead. Ratan, who might have taken his place, was dead. The Mental Force of all this little Radak world was gone. The Lei themselves had not been under its control. For generations they had been cowed, terrified into sullen obedience, but that was all. With the Radaks it was different. They were born, bred and trained to be automatons. To think what they were told to think. Mentally dominated, controlled so that the very essence of their mind was shaped and held together by their leader.
And now they had no leader! For them, there was nothing left but mental chaos, so that gibbering with the insanity of minds unhinged, they were plunging here in wild, unreasoning chaos, obeying their instinct to kill.
"My people—I must help them!" Taro's unutterable horror at last found voice. He would have plunged down the slope with his young wife after him. But Vivian seized Tahn, clung to her. I shouted at Shorty,
"Hold him! Don't let him go!"
Shorty hung on to him. "No, you don't!"
"You can't help them!" I protested. "And we can't operate the space-ship! You want Earth-people to help your world—got to get back there, we—"
The words died in my throat. We all saw that none of us could get to the Lei now, even if we had tried. A group of a hundred or more of the screaming, gibbering Radaks had swept between us and the Lei village. But the way to the space-ship still seemed open. We ran for it. One of the Radaks, by chance perhaps, turned toward us; and all the ones near him, like sheep followed him. A horde of grey, maniac Things charging us....