E.C.Tubb - The Temble of Truth

"Karlene?" Dumarest stepped toward her. "Karlene?"

"It's no good, Earl." Ellen drew him back as the woman made no response. "She can't hear you. She's locked in a world of her own. Her talent drove her to it."

"The Temple?"

"It dominated her when young and stayed with her all her life. She knew what was going to happen. She knew it! It kept coming closer and in the end she had to run from it. But it was always there and Rauch, the fool, had to bring her back. She couldn't rest. All the time you were away I kept her under sedation but it wasn't enough. When the Temple blew-Earl, can you guess how she must have felt?"

An entire community of men and women-how many he could only guess. All dying in a furious blast of ravening energy, seared, blinded, torn, broken-death had been fast but thought would have been faster. Each victim would have had a fraction of time to know the shock and fear of extinction.

The scent which had blasted Karlene's mind.

"She could only escape into the past," explained Ellen. "But, for her, the past was never a happy time. So she kept regressing until she went back into the womb. Catatonia. I may be able to do something with her eventually but she'll never be the woman you remember."

Another ghost to add to the rest. One who had smiled and held out her arms and embraced him with a fierce and demanding passion. A woman who had led him to the place where he had found the secret for which he had searched for so long.

The golden figures incised on the grey, metallic walls of the Holy Place.

Figures which he knew beyond question were the coordinates of Earth.

Soon, now, he would be home.