Robert Silverberg: Citadel of Darkness

Quickly I explained the course of events from the time Lanargon first had showed up in the mass detector to Karen’s kidnapping.

“I’ve heard about that,” he said. “I saw the girl and the ship arrive.”

“Where are they?” I asked immediately.

“The girl’s been taken to the Central Temple. I’m a slave there. The ship’s been brought into the dome too, and it’s not far from the Temple either. The Lanargon scientists want to study it and see if they’re missing any wrinkles.”

“What Temple? What are they going to do to Karen?”

The slave looked at me pityingly for a long moment. “The Temple is the place all the power of the dome comes from. The aliens worship it as a shrine. They’re going to sacrifice your wife to their god. Their god’s a pool of live radiation.”

“What?”

He nodded. “They do it every year, usually with a female slave. I heard them talking. I’m in the High Priest’s retinue, and I found about it. The ceremony’s scheduled to take place this afternoon.”

I gripped his hand. “Fellow, I don’t even know your name, but I love you. Can you get me there? We don’t have much time.” I didn’t know what I was going to do, but I was going to do something. I was sure of that.

He glanced uneasily up and down the street. “It’s worth a try,” he said. “This hellhole deserves to be blasted wide open. And I think I see the man who’s going to do it.”

He led me along at a rapid pace toward the heart of the city. After a while, I saw a huge conical building loom up before me. And—outside it—was my ship!

“There it is!” I said. “That must be the Temple.”

“That’s right. And your ship. Now, if there were only some way of finding your wife and getting clear—”

I looked at him. “Wait a minute,” I said. “There are thousands, maybe millions of you slaves on Lanargon. Innocent people. Suppose I do succeed? Suppose I blasted the dome down? You’d all die.”

The slave smiled bitterly. “Don’t get guilt-feelings over that,” he said. He lifted his arm and showed me a metallic bulge along his side. “See this? It’s a compact transistor wave-generator embedded in my flesh. Removing it means death. And if we get further than a dozen miles from the Dome, it kills us automatically. It’s very efficient—and it means that no slave can ever leave Lanargon alive.”

The enormity of it chilled me. “That helps to keep you in line neatly, doesn’t it?” I said.

He nodded. “They can also kill us within the city. If a slave steps out of line, it’s the easiest thing to raise the frequency generated by this device to a lethal pitch. They’ll allow a slave to go almost anywhere, because he can’t possibly do any harm—not when his life can be snuffed out by any master in an instant.”

A sudden burst of thought illuminated my mind. “If that’s true, I think I know how I can carry this thing off. Let’s go someplace where I can get out of all these spacesuits and into a slave’s loincloth!”

The slave—his name was Dave Andrews—took me to his quarters, a miserable room not far from the Temple. There, I stripped out of both spacesuits and donned one of his loincloths.

“You look a little pale,” he commented. “But otherwise I guess you can pass, if no one looks too closely for the generator that isn’t planted in your side.”

I looked ruefully at my discarded blaster. “I’m going to feel lonely without that thing on my hip.”

Andrews shrugged. “No slave would dare carry one. You’ll just have to do without until this is all over.”

“All right,” I said. “Let’s get going. The sacrifice should be starting soon, shouldn’t it?” The image of Karen’s body plummeting into a lake of neutrons drifted into my mind, and I winced.

“Within the hour,” he said.

Together we crossed the plaza that led to the massive Temple. No one seemed to notice us; apparently slaves were utterly beneath contempt in Lanargon. At the Temple door, a cross-hatched alien face confronted us, saw that we were slaves, and let us through.

“I’ll have to help out at the ceremony,” Andrews said. “You can come along. It’ll give you your chance of getting close to the High Priest. And remember the way you came. You’ll have to get out of here and into your ship later.”

“Don’t worry,” I said stolidly. “I’ll manage. I’ve never wanted to destroy anything so much before in my life.”

We entered an elevator which was already occupied by a gigantic alien in luminescent yellow robes. I saw Andrews bend and touch his forehead to the floor without a moment’s hesitation, and, much as it went against the grain, I did the same.

“The High Priest,” he explained softly.

I nodded. I had guessed as much.

We rode the elevator to the sixty-first floor. As we got out, the priest said, “Bring the sacrifice to the Hall of the God, slaves.”

We bowed again, and turned off down a long aisle. My heart leaped as Andrews entered a room guarded by two aliens and said, “High Priest requests delivery of the sacrifice to the Hall of the God.”

One of the aliens nodded curtly and pointed toward an inner door. Andrews opened it and said quickly, “Prisoner, we have come to take you to the God.” He stepped inside and clapped a hand over her mouth, stifling the cry than broke from her as she recognized me in the guise of a slave.

We closed the door, shutting out the alien guards.

“Karen,” I said.

Andrews turned away and I folded her in my arms. She was quivering from anxiety and terror, though I saw her making an effort to recover her nerves. She couldn’t. I didn’t blame her as she broke down and started to sob.

A gong sounded loudly.

Gently, Andrews said, “We’ll have to go.”

“Mike? Mike—are they going to do this thing to me?”

I looked at her. She was wearing what was probably the sacrificial gown, a clinging, translucent thing through which I could easily see her naked body beneath. “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll get us out of it.”

We led her along the hall, Andrews grasping one arm and I the other, while one of the alien guards walked before us and one behind. We walked for what seemed to be miles through the temple building, until we reached a door some twenty feet high. It swung open as we approached.

I gasped. We stood at the entrance to a great amphitheatre, with an immense dais and rows of seats stretching off into the misty distance. And—between the dais and the seats—there was an open pit that seemed to reach down into the bowels of the planet. I looked down and reeled dizzily at the sight of that bright lake of radiation hundreds of feet below—the lake into which Karen’s naked body was soon to be hurled.

“You lead her up there,” Andrews whispered to me. “Give her to the High Priest. From there it’s up to you. I’m going to go back and get an elevator ready in case you do get out of it alive. Move as fast as you can when you get away.”

I nodded imperceptibly and marched forward with Karen. The great hall was filled—packed with row on row of uncountable aliens, sitting in quiet anticipation of the sacrifice to be performed before their eyes. Television cameras blinked down like unmoving eyes, telling me that the rest of the aliens were undoubtedly watching too.

I saw the robed figure of the High Priest, stark and majestic on the dais. He was intoning prayers to which the aliens responded antiphonally. A gong sounded repeatedly somewhere in the distance, and flames licked up from the abyss below.

He gestured for the sacrifice to be brought forward. I tightened my grip on Karen’s arm and started to walk up the long row of steps that led to the dais. The chanting of the multitude rose to an agonizing volume, a savage beat of barbaric fury echoing round and round the great hall.