Everywhere the lightning burned and crashed. The whole world seemed filled with the noise of crashing trees and screaming elements.
He arose shakily to his knees. His legs were weak and numb. But his eyes were starting to focus again. At least he could see now. He half rose, sank back to one knee, and rose again. His head felt terribly heavy and unanchored.
Finally he stood erect.
And he walked.
The storm raged about him. Lightning struck and struck again, but his courage did not desert him.
Soon he came back to the cave.
Thought: You are a god! This I believe. But the Lord of the Heaven has sent his Essence-Stealers. They, too, are mighty, and Lad-nar will lose his Essence if he walks there.
“No, Lad-nar. I will show you how to protect yourself.” Kettridge was sweating and weak from his walk, and the numbness extended through his entire body. He could hear nothing, but the words came clearly to him.
Very deliberately he began to unseal the form-fitting suit. In a few minutes he had it off, and it had shrunk back to a pocket-sized replica of the full-sized garment. The storm had lowered the temperature almost to freezing point.
“Lad-nar, take this,” Kettridge said. “Here, give me your hand.”
The creature looked at him with huge, uncomprehending eyes. The Earthman felt closer, somehow, to this strange creature than to anyone he had ever known in all the lonely years of his exile. Kettridge pulled his glove on tighter and reached for Lad-nar’s seven-taloned hand. He pulled at the arm of the form-fit suit, and it elastically expanded, stretching to twice its original width.
After much stretching and fitting, the creature was encased in the insulating metal-plastic.
Kettridge had an impulse to laugh at the bunched fur and awkward stance of the massive animal. But again, the laughter would not come.
“Now, Lad-nar, put on the gloves. Never take them off, except when the storms are gone. You must always put this suit on when the Essence-Stealers scream. Then you will be safe.”
Thought: Now I can walk in the night?
“Yes, come.” They moved together toward the cave’s mouth. “Now you can get a cat litter for yourself. I did not bring one, because I knew you would believe me and get your own. Come, Lad-nar.” He motioned him forward.
Thought: How will you walk without the suit?
Kettridge ran a seamed hand through his white hair. He was glad Lad-nar had thought the question. The multiple flashes of a many-stroked blast filled the air with glare and noise.
Kettridge could not hear the noise.
“I have brothers who wait for me in the Great House from across the Skies that will take me back to the heaven Home. They will hurry to me, and they will protect me.”
He did not bother to tell Lad-nar that his search tune was almost up and that the Jeremy Bentham’s flitter would home in on his suit beam.
“Go! Walk, Lad-nar!” he said, throwing his arms out. “And tell your brothers you have screamed at the Essence-Stealers!”
Thought: I have done this.
Lad-nar stepped cautiously toward the rocky ledge, fearful and hesitant. Then he bunched his huge muscles and leaped out into the full agony of the storm which crashed in futility about his massive form.
“One day Man will come and make friends with you, Lad-nar,” said Kettridge softly. “He will come down out of the sky and show you how to live on this world of yours so that you won’t have to hide.”
Kettridge sank down against the inner wall of the cave, suddenly too exhausted to stand.
He had won. He had redeemed himself—if only in his own mind. He had helped take away life from a race, but now—he had given life to a race.
He closed his eyes peacefully. Even the great blasts of blind lightning did not bother him as he rested. He knew Lad-nar had told his brothers.
He knew the ship would be coming for him.
Lad-nar came up the incline and saw the flitter streaking down, with lightning playing along its sides in phosphorescent glimmers.
Thought: Your brothers come for you!
He bounded across the scarred and seared rocks toward the cave.
Kettridge rose and stepped out into the rain and wind.
He ran a few steps, waving his arms in a signaling gesture. The flitter altered its course and headed for him, its speed increasing with great rapidity.
The lightning struck.
It seemed as though the bolt knew its target. It raced the flitter, sizzling and burning as it came. In a roar of light and fire it tore at Kettridge, lifting him high into the air and carrying him far from Lad-nar.
His body landed just outside the cave, blistered and charred but still struggling.
Thought: You have fallen! Rise, rise, rise! The Essence-Stealers…
The thoughts were hysterical, tearful, torn, and wanting. Had Lad-nar been able to shed tears, Kettridge knew he would have wept unashamedly. The old man lay sightless, his eyes gone, his senses altogether torn from him. The Essence ebbed.
He thought: Lad-nar. Others will come. They will come to you, and you must think to them. You must think these words, Lad-nar. Think to them, SHOW ME A STAR. Do you hear me, Lad-nar? Do you…
Even as Lad-nar watched, the Essence flickered and died. In the creature’s mind there was a lack, an abyss of emptiness. Yet there was also contentment, a strange peace. And Lad-nar knew the Essence of the God Who Walked in the Night was strong and unafraid at Ending.
The aborigine stood on the rocks below the cave and watched the flitter sink to the stone ledge. He watched as the other Gods from the Skies emerged and ran to the charred body on the stones.
Through his head, like the blind lightning streaking everywhere, the words remained, and repeated…
Thought: Show me a star.