The Sinners of Erspia

SEVEN Moon of Doom

“That was fantastic!” Histrina exclaimed. “Even better than the orchids!”

“I must admit I enjoyed it too,” Laedo agreed. “But it’s still manipulation.”

They were in the projector station’s living quarters. Their return from the ‘Festival of Light’ had left them still somewhat aroused, and they had continued erotic practices with one another for a while. Then they had fallen asleep.

It was now the following day. Laedo was considering what to do next. He was half convinced that ‘Voluptus’ was in fact Klystar, and that Erspia-5’s moon was his dwelling place.

Of course, he only had the word of the Guardians of Ormazd that there was a being called Klystar at all.

But someone had fashioned the Erspia worlds. Whoever it was possessed a technology in advance of mankind’s.

What kept the Erspia worlds together as a group, for instance? They were in interstellar space and should have drifted apart. Artificial inertial fields—those known to human technology, at any rate—acted over short distances only. Yet the planetoids were thousands of miles apart, and had remained grouped together for a century at least.

Would the projector station head for the moon if he again asked it to take him to Klystar? Perhaps, but perhaps not. If he wanted to see the moon, a better bet would be to use his own cargo ship.

Should he be thinking of visiting the moon at all? Should he not get down to gaining control of the projector station’s drive? There was no guarantee of success there either. While the station seemed fairly simple technically, ‘Klystar’ had very likely made sure the human Guardians of Ormazd could not seize control of it prematurely. For that matter, he didn’t know if the station really could reach a human-inhabited world as ‘Klystar’ had promised.

If only he had a forming machine and the right grade of steel, he could probably make a transductor for his cargo ship himself…

But in the end he had to admit that getting home was no longer his sole motive. He had seen five experiments in social engineering where human beings were treated as though they were ants in a formicarium.

He wanted to know what it was all about.

“All right, Histrina,” he said, “do you want to visit the Heavenly Mansion?”

Eagerly she agreed. “If the Festival of Light was so good, think what the Mansion of Pleasure must be like!”

“Don’t count on it,” he told her. “That was a bribe, one good enough to persuade people to give up their children—with some religious propaganda thrown in.”

The first problem was to secure the projector station during their absence, though he imagined the villagers would be too polite to enter it uninvited. The portal had no manual locking mechanism on the outside. Instead, as he had ascertained during his first encounter, it responded to a radio code. He and Histrina transferred to the cargo ship. He lifted from the surface of the station, descended until the hatch came in view, and transmitted a brief burst. The hatch obediently closed.

Laedo again touched the controls. The cargo ship ascended into the sky on its manoeuvring engine, quickly traversing the atmosphere. The stars appeared and the tiny sun blazed hard without the softening effect of the air blanket. The moon, which on take-off had been heading for the horizon, lay ahead, glowing in the light of the sun and three quarters gibbous, a mellow, yellow-white globe.

Still using the manoeuvring engine, Laedo flew close to the tiny world. Its atmosphere, visible as a radiant nimbus, appeared to be deeper than the atmospheres of the Erspia worlds themselves, but then he realized that this was an illusion produced by the moon’s smaller diameter. The air had to be deep enough to have a breathable density at ground level.

“The Mansion of Heavenly Pleasure,” Histrina breathed, her eyes shining. “I can’t wait!”

“I told you not to anticipate things, Histrina,” Laedo rebuked. “Whatever’s down there won’t be what you expect. Haven’t you learned that by now?”

“Oh, you always want to spoil things.”

They entered the atmosphere and descended in a shallow dive. A curved landscape showed itself.

Features appeared: low rolling hills, isolated valleys and canyons. Mostly, though, the moon consisted of a level plain, dull yellow in colour. Laedo got the impression it was coated with yellow moss.

Oddly, he saw no open water. No rivers, lakes or seas. Cloud was rare, a few wispy streaks. Neither did he see any growing crops or herds of animals. If there was any sizeable population it did not appear to support itself by farming or hunting.

There was a population, however. The cargo ship came in sight of what could only be described as a set of fabulous palaces. Histrina oohed and aahed as they circled the complex from the air. Pavilions, domes, classical frontages, all sparkled in the air.

Then Laedo spotted something which had been hidden from him at first, partly by the curvature of the landscape and also because it was concealed in a declivity. It was an enormous long shape lying on its side. Steering so as to hover over the object, Laedo was startled. Though old, battered and dented, its metal skin scored, stained and pitted, the structure was still recognisable.

It was an interstellar passenger liner. But how old? One century? Two? Dropping lower, Laedo managed to read the worn, patchy name on the liner’s flank.

IFS Excelsior.

It took him a few moments to remember where he had heard the name. “The Excelsior, ” he murmured.

“Didn’t a ship of that name disappear en route , early last century? They never did find her, did they?”

He shook his head in irritation with himself. He was absent-mindedly asking Histrina questions she knew nothing about. She was gazing blankly at the image of the liner. After the wonders she had seen lately it made little impression on her.

Even though, if Laedo was guessing correctly, her ancestors were among the Excelsior’s passengers and crew. A vital question had been answered.

The missing starliner must be the source of Klystar’s original human stock.

He was about to move off when a slight movement caught his attention. A figure had emerged from the hulk and was waving frantically up at the cargo ship.

Laedo immediately took his vessel down and landed a short distance away. “Wait here,” he said. “I’m going outside.”

In seconds he was standing on the surface of Erspia-5’s moon. The air smelled fresh, with a faint tang of lemon. As he had thought, a springy yellow moss was underfoot, but there was no time to examine it more closely. The man from the starliner ran up to him.

“Thank God you’ve come at last!”

Laedo stared at the stranger, who like himself wore a dark-coloured utility suit. He was stocky, with intense brown eyes, his broad face fringed with black hair and a black spade beard. His demeanour was agitated. It struck Laedo that his cast of face was not at all like that of Erspians generally.

Narrow yellow stripes adorned the shoulders of his suit. A badge of rank, most likely.

“My name’s Garo,” he gasped. “I’m the Excelsior’s purser. How many others are coming? Is there a warship on the way? Tell me, for God’s sake!”

Laedo swallowed. “Calm yourself,” he mumbled. Then he cleared his throat and spoke up.

“I’m sorry, but no one else is coming. I am a Class CCC cargo carrier, but I am stranded, like you. My main drive has a cracked transductor.”

The other’s shoulders sagged. He groaned and turned aside. “Will rescue never come?”

Laedo had a question. “Did you say you are the ship’s purser? Excuse me, but the Excelsior vanished long ago. How are you still alive?”

“That’s simple enough. I’ve spent the time in a stasis cabinet. I’m the only one to have escaped Klystar’s clutches.”

“Then there is a Klystar?” Laedo’s eyes widened.

“Oh, there’s a Klystar all right,” Garo confirmed bitterly. “You’ll find that out. He took all the others and used them for breeding stock. I spent five days hiding in a sewer conduit. When the ship was empty I came out and took to the cabinet. He knows I’m here but he leaves me alone—after all, I’m almost never around. I come out and take a look every few years, and I’ve an alarm rigged to detect any ship that arrives. Rescue must come some day.”

Laedo considered this. A stasis cabinet was a by-product of the star drive. It could slow down time within it. The past century and a half could have been only weeks or days to Garo. Events of long ago would seem of recent occurrence to him.

“Is Klystar here?” he asked. “On this moon?”

Garo reacted nervously to the question. “Yes, he’s here.”

“Can’t you use the Excelsior to get home?”

“No, Klystar saw to that. He junked the star drive and pretty well everything else. I’ve enough power to run some lighting and the stasis cabinet. And I’ve food to last. But that’s all.”

“Tell me about Klystar.”

“What is there to tell? He’s a monster! But you’ll see for yourself. There’s nowhere for you to go.”

Garo shot a sudden glance over Laedo’s shoulder. He went pale. “Here he comes now. I’d better make myself scarce.”

Laedo turned to look. A tall ‘something’ had appeared over the nearby horizon. It walked on two long, thin legs, themselves as tall as a man. The body was stubby, the head cylindrical.

Garo was running for the Excelsior. Laedo hesitated. Should he return to his ship and stick with Histrina?

But that would avail little against the almost omnipotent Klystar. Laedo wanted more information. He decided to follow Garo. Scrambling through a service hatch in pursuit of the ex-purser, he found himself in a dimly lit corridor. Looking back, Garo saw him, but shrugged and went on.

The Excelsior was a ghost ship. Corridors and salons boomed to the sound of their footsteps. The air smelled stale. Eventually Garo descended a companionway to a store room in which lay rows of cargo containers. One of them had been opened. What it had contained stood alongside: a cabinet or chamber with a transparent front. And visible within it, a straight-backed chair.

This was the stasis cabinet. The chief use of such a device was to preserve a mortally injured person until medical help could arrive. Occasionally someone would use it to transfer himself to a future century, a less risky procedure than cryogenic freezing. Garo had been lucky to find one among the ship’s cargo.

“Look,” said Garo, turning to Laedo, “this is the only stasis cabinet on the ship, and you can see there’s only room for one in it. If you get your ship working, please come and get me. I assume you’ll do that, with your ethical rating. Otherwise I suggest you make your way to one of the pleasure palaces. They’ll look after you there.”

“What happens in these palaces?” Laedo asked.

Garo looked at him for a moment. “The people there are servants of Klystar. They just sort of keep things running. The young children who arrive are mostly assigned to sexual duties with the older servants.

Paedophilia is a way of life here, I don’t know why. Later they learn general duties.”

He paused before continuing in a sombre tone. “Those are the lucky ones. Others are assigned to Klystar’s special project.” He shuddered slightly as he turned to enter the cabinet. “I don’t want to talk about that. I told you he’s a monster.”

Laedo put a hand on his arm to detain him. “Wait. Tell me more. What exactly happened to the Excelsior?”

“Klystar seized her, of course, what do you think? Don’t ask me how he did it. He gained remote control and brought her here, then took everybody off and put them on the worlds he made. It’s some kind of experiment of his. Then he wrecked the engines and nearly everything else.”

“How many Erspia worlds are there?”

“I’m not sure. About ten, I think, not counting this moon.”

“What keeps them so close together?”

“Are you stupid? They’re in a Trojan orbit. There are two brown dwarfs, orbiting half a light year apart, one bigger than the other. The Erspia group forms an equilateral triangle with them.”

Laedo nodded. It was a much simpler explanation than he had imagined. Like the Trojan asteroids sharing the orbit of Jupiter, the Erspia worlds would be prevented from drifting away by the combined attractions of the two brown dwarfs, drawn back whenever they began to deviate. It was the only stable fixed configuration of three bodies permissible under gravitational influence.

He had not been aware of the presence of the brown dwarfs, which would be invisible to the eye. But his ship’s navigator had probably spotted them and made a course correction.

“The Erspians don’t seem to know anything about their origins,” he commented.

“Of course not!” The remark exasperated Garo. “It would spoil the experiment if they did, wouldn’t it? Do you suppose Klystar isn’t able to fix that?”

Garo was becoming increasingly nervous, glancing frequently at the stasis cabinet. He seemed to feel he was only safe when inside it.

Which was silly. Klystar would be able to turn it off at any time. Even Laedo would be able to, if it came to that.

“Anything else you want to know!” Garo shouted.

When Laedo didn’t answer, he opened the door of the cabinet and stepped inside.

It was fascinating to watch the relativistic time dilation effect take hold. The instant Garo closed the door behind him his movements began to slow. They continued to slow progressively, until by the time he had seated himself on the straight-backed chair he was virtually immobile.

Laedo turned away. It was time to face Klystar.

Cautiously he emerged from the Excelsior and was shocked to find Klystar confronting him only a few yards away.

The alien loomed over the Harkio man. The spindly legs stood as high as Laedo’s shoulders. The earlier impression of a squat torso was confirmed. There were four arms, which were also long and spindly. The head was a turret, with a row of five eyes.

Klystar wore no clothing or artificial covering that Laedo could see. His body was yellow and slightly shiny. There was no sign of genitals. Then was Klystar a robot? No, Laedo decided, he was of organic origin. The shiny integument was a chitin-like substance.

After everything he had seen of Klystar’s handiwork, Laedo found that he was awed and unable to speak or act.

The turret head rotated with deliberation, in little jerks. Each eye regarded Laedo in turn. Using immaculate Argot Galactica, though in a rather reedy voice, Klystar spoke.

“Were you talking with Garo?”

“Yes.”

“He can’t help you. He is like a mite living in the wall, who comes out to eat flakes of dead skin.”

Klystar’s head rotated again. He was examining the cargo ship.

Then he strode away, on the same course he had been following when Garo first sighted him. Soon he had disappeared over the horizon, as though walking down a stairway and out of sight.

Laedo made up his mind. He would call Klystar to account, superhuman though his technology might be.

He scurried after the enigmatic alien.

On reaching the point where Klystar had vanished, he found himself looking down into a broad, shallow valley ringed by an almost continuous ridge, like a ring crater. In the ridge was a gap opening on to a sloping path, and down this Klystar was walking.

The valley contained signs of habitation. There were swathes given over to the cultivation of grain crops—a feature absent on the rest of the moon—and rows of barrack-like dwellings.

More prominent, and distinctly puzzling to Laedo’s mind, was that scattered about the crater were piled-up heaps of tumbled masonry, apparently the collapsed ruins of grand monuments. At the sound of Laedo’s steps, Klystar stopped. His cylindrical head rotated a hundred and eighty degrees, like an owl’s.

The middle one of his five eyes regarded Laedo, who walked closer and stared up at the unhuman face in challenge.

“Why do you carry out experiments on human beings?” he demanded in as loud a voice as he could manage. “Don’t you know it’s wrong?”

Klystar’s head turned slightly, bringing the second eye from the left into line with Laedo. Another turn, and the second eye from the right regarded him. Then the extreme left eye, followed by the extreme right eye.

Laedo was intrigued. Did Klystar’s perceptions alter according to the order in which he used his eyes?

“Wrong?” Klystar echoed, his tone heavy with scepticism. “What is the meaning of ‘wrong’?”

“Ethically wrong. Surely you know what ethical means. It is not right to use intelligent beings for your own ends, without their knowledge or consent.”

Klystar gave vent to a sigh. Laedo wondered where his voice was coming from. He could see no mouth.

“First of all, your species is not intelligent in the proper meaning of the word,” Klystar said. “An intelligent being has control over his consciousness. He forms his own thoughts and does not allow others to form them for him. His mental state is not at the disposal of others. This is not so in your case, is it?”

“We are a social species,” Laedo argued. “We don’t live in isolation. We interact with one another.”

“Yes, I am familiar with your social organisation. It is a feature of the lower orders of life. You are the mammalian parallel of the social insects—ants, bees and termites, to name those that occur on your original Earth. The only difference is that where you are concerned the social phenomenon incorporates a mild degree of intellectual functioning. But no human being would have any intellectual functioning at all were he raised outside human society.”

“And you would?” Laedo asked in amazement.

“One of my kind, if born and left to develop without any company or education, would grow up fully conscious and with full reasoning ability. That is the case with all the intelligent species which I-Klystar have encountered, with the sole exception of yours. That is why I-Klystar took the trouble to study you.

You are a curiosity. You are a species which can think, to some extent, and yet which lacks inner determination.”

Klystar’s eyes shifted again. “The condition can be attributed to your species having evolved too quickly.

Your native biosphere is less than four billion years old. Ten billion years is the normative time frame in which to evolve an intelligent species. A series of accidents on the Earth home world would appear to be responsible for this premature development. Your scientists must have wondered why your galaxy rarely contains anything higher than animal life.”

“Yes, they have,” Laedo admitted thoughtfully. Klystar was right. The galaxy abounded with life, but nowhere did it get any further than the equivalent of a mouse or a horse or a lizard, or a fish or even a bacterium. And yet many of the biospheres examined were much older than Earth’s.

Astronomers had come up with an explanation which tended to agree with Klystar’s assertion. The planets and moons of the solar system were heavily cratered as a result of long-term bombardment by asteroids and meteorites. It came as a surprise to discover that the same had not happened to other planetary systems, which had known more peaceful and orderly histories. Something unusual must have happened to the solar system early on. It was now accepted that there really had once been a planet between Mars and Jupiter, and that it had disintegrated, filling the system with dangerous debris. While evolution elsewhere proceeded at a sedate pace, on Earth it had been forced to cope with recurrent catastrophes—mass extinctions from asteroid strikes which sometimes had nearly extinguished the biosphere altogether. The repeated twists and turns of fate had accelerated evolutionary change.

What could have shattered a planet? Collision between neighbouring worlds, while possible, would not have scattered the fragments far and wide, as had happened. They would have slumped back together by self-gravitation. Something more energetic was needed, and for that one had to look outside the solar system. The current hypothesis was that an interstellar intruder, zipping through the solar system with enormous velocity from high above the ecliptic plane, was the culprit.

Collision was more plausible if a cluster of interstellar transients was involved. Another might have struck Uranus a glancing blow, tilting its axis to its present unusual alignment nearly parallel to its orbital plane.

So far so good. But for the accident to have resulted in a premature and half finished mankind, flawed, inadequate, below the cosmic standard, was a new and unwelcome idea.

“Come with me,” Klystar said. “I-Klystar will show you what I mean.”

He resumed striding down the rubble-strewn slope. Laedo followed. Once they neared the valley floor, the crater’s panorama vanished. The horizon intervened, leaving only the lip of the crater wall visible to the eye.

Klystar’s approach had been noticed. A crowd of people poured from the barracks and fields to welcome him. They reminded Laedo of primitives on some island paradise, naked except for a simple piece of white cloth worn around the waist, by both men and women. They fell to their knees before Klystar, placing their hands together in an attitude of prayer.

A hoarse, windy voice arose from one of the older men.

“We have buried our dead, O Klystar! How have we failed?”

In a stentorian voice, completely different from the one he had used when speaking to Laedo, Klystar answered.

“YOU HAVE NOT HAD ENOUGH FAITH! BEGIN AGAIN! HAVE MORE FAITH! YOU MUST BEGIN A NEW TOWER TOMORROW!”

A chant grew from the crowd. “We will have faith! We will begin again!”

The crowd melted away as the people returned from whence they had come.

“Look at those idiots,” Klystar said quietly. With one of his four thin lank arms he pointed to the nearest pile of ruins on the horizon. It appeared to be the base of a tower, surrounded by tumbled stone. “For generations I-Klystar have been telling them to build a tower twenty miles high so that they can climb up it to heaven. It is manifestly impossible to build a tower that high with the materials available. On reaching a certain height it collapses and kills large numbers of the builders. Yet do they ever lose faith in me? Do they tell themselves that I-Klystar might be lying and perhaps am not even a god, as they think? No, they do not. They begin again. And simply because my personality is stronger than theirs.”

Such cynicism appalled Laedo. But he was also puzzled. Why should the mighty Klystar, whose deeds were so awesome, come to resemble a corny Jehova?

At the same time there was something odd in the way the alien being referred to himself as ‘I-Klystar’. Or was it ‘I/Klystar’?

An inspired thought came to him. He blurted it out immediately.

“You’re not Klystar at all, are you? What are you? A robot proxy? Or a biological one, perhaps?”

‘Klystar’ paused, before he answered, his tone neutral and matter-of-fact. “You have acuity, for a member of an inferior race,” he congratulated. “No, I-Klystar am not a proxy. I am a relic. To be exact, I am Klystar’s body. Klystar himself, that is to say his mind, or essence, is away journeying. Methods for moving material objects, such as those used by your starships, are not fast enough for his requirements.

He uses a technique which abstracts the individual from his corporeal form and expresses him as a pattern of consciousness and thought. This can be instantaneously transferred to an immense distance.”

“How?”

“By a means known as Immediacy of Thought. It would be tiresome to explain.”

“What happens at the other end?”

“A replacement body is needed as an instrument of action. Klystar forms one from available materials where this is possible. Or he may arrange for one to be constructed beforehand.”

“How?”

“Again, it would be tiresome to explain.”

“Isn’t this a risky process? What if he can’t get a body?”

“Then he is unable to return. You are right, there is a degree of uncertainty, but Klystar has no fear of destruction. Better to die than to desist from the search for knowledge. Besides, Klystar has lived for over a million years as you measure time, and he has learned to survive most accidental events.”

Laedo thought over everything he had been told. “You say you are just a body, without Klystar’s mind.

But you talk, walk about, appear to be a rational being.”

“That is because Klystar’s body has remanent intelligence of its own, just as yours does. Were it otherwise, Klystar and yourself would personally have to supervise bodily functions like digestion.”

Laedo laughed. “Then you are no different from me! You are inferior too!”

“If you like, but that is exactly the point. Klystar’s discarded integument still has more intelligence than does your entire species. In any case, I have been a part of Klystar. That makes a difference.”

“And the religious cult you have in this crater? Is that your work?”

“It is my own little experiment in human gullibility.”

“I thought so. To be frank, it lacks the grandeur of Klystar’s set-ups. You probably didn’t even need to use thought-beams. Human prophets aplenty have made people discard their reason, using nothing more than persuasion and charisma.”

“I-Klystar am sure you are right. But what a pity your species is so amenable to these ploys.”

Laedo changed the subject. “What happens when Klystar comes back? Will you be reunited with him?”

“No, this body is worn out. A new body will have to be prepared for Klystar’s return.”

“So what will happen to you?”

“Either Klystar will destroy me or I will simply be left to age and die.”

“And when is he coming back?”

“He has been overdue for some time now. Perhaps he has found something of unusual interest, or perhaps he no longer wishes to review the results of his social experiments. There could be many reasons for his lateness.”

“Where has he gone?”

“To another galaxy, I believe. I do not know which one.”

Laedo was impressed. “Is he native to this galaxy?”

“His kind evolved on a planet of an intergalactic star. Most intelligent beings have a similar origin.

Galaxies are generally too young to have produced intelligent life.”

Again Laedo paused for thought. “What if Klystar never comes back?”

“The experiments will continue until the suns run out of power. That will be in about three hundred years time.”

“Why don’t you act on your own initiative?” Laedo challenged. “You could bring this nonsense to an end now.”

“You proposal does not make sense. I-Klystar am an aspect of Klystar. Klystar’s wishes are law. Would your hand disobey you?”

‘Klystar’ started back up the slope. Laedo hurried to keep up with him.

“If Klystar meets members of his own species, does he talk to them?” he asked. “Or to members of other fully intelligent species?”

“The latter is more likely since his own species is scattered after so much time. When intelligent beings meet they usually trade knowledge. They have little social interest in one another apart from that.”

Laedo reflected that according to what ‘Klystar’ had said, intelligence must currently be a rare occurrence in the universe, confined to those stars which happened to be older than the galaxies. Yet the time would come when the galaxies themselves burgeoned with intelligence. The older generation would then be eclipsed.

He was reminded of the overthrow of the ancient Titans by the younger gods in Greek myth.

“I wonder if you would do something for me,” he said. My ship needs a repair. The replacement of a part which can be manufactured quite easily. Will you help me? Then I can continue my journey and return home.”

“I’m afraid I cannot allow you to leave the Erspia worlds,” ‘Klystar’ told him apologetically. “You would summon help and jeopardise the experiment. You will have to spend your remaining days here. Join the staff of one of the pleasure palaces. The time should pass enjoyably enough.”

It was the reply Laedo had expected, but it still annoyed him. “Klystar shouldn’t have carried out the experiment in the first place!” he retorted. “You should study the doctrine of karmayoga. I’ll explain it to you. There is a law of nature which applies to our actions, like the law of action and reaction in physics except that it takes longer to work. Everything you do to another being, good or bad, rebounds on you.

If you act towards another in a way which is hurtful or harmful, then at some time in the future the consequences of that action will strike you too. Think of the bad karma Klystar is bringing on himself with these experiments!”

“I am already familiar with the karmayoga doctrine,” ‘Klystar’ replied. “It involves two errors. Firstly, if the universe is indeed an ethical construct, then the law of karma can apply only to fully self-directed beings such as Klystar. Human beings lack inner unity, have only flickering consciousness, and do not control their actions, and therefore cannot be held responsible for those actions. They are ethical blanks.”

“All right, but where does that leave Klystar?” Laedo pressed earnestly. “He is self-directed!”

“Secondly, the universe is not an ethical construct, anyway, ‘Klystar’ continued implacably. “There is no law of karma. There is no cosmic retribution. It is one of countless myths the human race has invented in order to delude itself.”

Laedo’s annoyance turned to anger. “Well, as you’re so clever I suppose you must be right, but it’s still the law I live by! Perhaps there’s something you don’t know. Perhaps the universe itself evolves by producing conscious creatures. You say Klystar belongs to the first generation of such creatures, spawned between the galaxies from the earliest stars. Perhaps that generation is deficient, primitive in some way, a first attempt. Perhaps the second generation will be better. Perhaps even we poor human beings have qualities which Klystar’s kind don’t. The law of karma might make its appearance in future ages.”

‘Klystar’ stopped walking, gazing at Laedo, shifting his head to use yet another sequential combination of his five eyes.

“Are you sure that you live according to the philosophy of karmayoga ?” he enquired politely. “I-Klystar have been aware of your travels. The projector station which you appropriated has been reporting its movements to me. So I-Klystar know that you disengaged the Ormazdian thought beam, leaving only the Ahrimanic beam to irradiate the world below it. Do you realize what horrors you have inflicted on thousands of helpless people by so doing, simply in order to further your own ends? Where is ‘right action’ in that?”

‘Klystar’ strode on, but this time Laedo did not follow him. He just stood where he was.

He was stunned.