Beltran began to outline, again, his plans to make Darkover independent, self-sufficient and capable of star-travel. I listened again, falling for the last time under the sway of that dream. I wished—all the gods there ever were know how I wished—that his plans might work. And they might. If Danilo could help us uncover enough telepaths, if Beltran’s own latent powers could be wakened. If, if, if!And, above all, if we had some source of power other than the impossible Sharra …

Beltran concluded, and I knew our thoughts ran for the moment at least along the same track: “We have reached a point where we are dependent on your help, Danilo. You are a catalyst telepath; that is the rarest of all psi powers, and if it is in our service, our chances of success are enormously raised. It goes without saying that you will be rewarded beyond your dreams. You will help us, will you not?”

Danilo met the ingratiating smile with a slight frown of puzzlement. “If what you are doing is so just and righteous, Lord Aldaran, why did you resort to violence? Why not seek me out, explain this to me, ask my aid?”

“Come, come,” said Beltran good-naturedly, “can’t you forgive me for that?”

“I forgive you readily, sir. Indeed, I am a little grateful. Otherwise I might have been charmed into doing what you wish without really thinking about it. Now I am not nearly so sure. I’ve had too much experience with people who speak fine words, but will do whatever they think justified to get what they want. If your cause is as good as you say, I should think any telepath would be glad to help you. If I am made sure of that by someone I can trust, and if my lord gives me leave”—he turned and made Regis a formal bow—“then I am at your service. But I must first be wholly assured that your motives and your methods are as good as you say”—he looked Beltran straight in the eyes, and I gasped aloud at his audacity—“and not just fine words to cover a will to power and personal ambition.”

Beltran turned as red as a turkey-cock. He was not used to being crossed, and for this shabby nobody to read him a lesson in ethics was more than be could face. I thought for a moment that he would strike the boy. Probably he remembered that Danilo was the only catalyst telepath known to be adult and fully functioning, for he controlled himself, although I could see the signs of his inward wrath. He said, “Will you trust Lew Alton’s judgment?”

“I have no reason not to trust it, but … ” And he turned to Regis. I knew he had reached the end of his own defiance.

I knew Regis was as frightened as Danilo, but just as resolute. He said, “I will trust no man’s judgment until I have heard what he has to say.”

Kadarin said shortly, “Will you two boys, who know nothing of matrix mechanics, presume to sit in judgment upon a trained Arilinn telepath about matters of his own competence?”

Regis gave me a pleading look. After a long pause, during which I could almost feel him searching for the right words, he said, “To judge his competence—no. To judge whether I can conscientiously support his … his means and motives—for that I can trust no man’s judgment but my own. I will listen to what he has to say.”

Beltran said, ‘Tell them, then, Lew, that we must do this if Darkover is to survive as an independent world, not a slave colony of the Empire!”

All their eyes were suddenly on me. This was the moment of truth, and a moment of great temptation. I opened my mouth to speak. Darkover’s future was a cause justifying all things, and we needed Dani.

But did I serve Darkover or my own private ends? Before the boy whose career was ruined by a misuse of power, I discovered I could not lie. I could not give Danilo the reassurance it would take to enlist his aid, then frantically try to find some way to make the lie true.

I said, “Beltran, your aims are good and I trust them. But we cannot do it with the matrix we have to work with. Not with Sharra, Beltran. It is impossible, completely impossible.”

Kadarin swung around. I had seen his rage only once before, turned on Beltran. Now it was turned on me, and it struck me like a blow. “What folly is this, Lew? You told me Sharra has all the power we could possibly need!”

I tried to barrier that assault and hold my own wrath firmly under control. The unleashed anger of an Alton can kill, and this man was my dear friend. I said, “Power, yes, all the power we could ever need, for this work or any. But it’s essentially uncontrollable. It’s been used as a weapon and now it’s unfit for anything but a weapon. It is—” I hesitated, trying to formulate my vague impressions. “It’s hungry for power and destruction.”

“Comyn superstition again!” Thyra flung at me. “A matrix is a machine. No more and no less.”

“Most matrices, perhaps,” I said, “though I am beginning to think that even at Arilinn we know far too little of them to use them as recklessly as we do. But this one is more.” I hesitated again, struggling for words for a knowledge, an experiencewhich was basically beyond words. “It brings something into our world which is not of this world at all. It belongs to other dimensions, other places or spaces. It’s a gateway, and once it’s opened, it’s impossible to shut completely.” I looked from face to face. “Can’t you see what it’s doingto us?” I pleaded. “It’s rousing recklessness, a failure of caution, a lust for power—” I had felt it myself, the temptation to lie ruthlessly to Regis and Danilo, just to enlist their aid. “Thyra, you know what you did under its impulse, and your foster-father lies dead. I’ll never believe you would have done that, knowingly, on your own! It’s so much stronger than we are, it’s playing with us like toys!”

Kadarin said, “Desideria used it with none of this fuss.”

“But she used it as a weapon,” I said, “and in a righteous cause. She had no wish for personal power, so that it could not take her and corrupt her, as it has done with us; she gave it over to the forge-folk, to lie unused and harmless on their altars.”

Beltran said harshly, “Are you saying it has corrupted me?”

I looked squarely at him and said, “Yes. Even your father’s death has not made you see reason.”

Kadarin said, “You talk like a fool, Lew. I hadn’t expected this sort of whining cant from you. If we have the power to give Darkover its place in the Empire, how can we shrink from anything we must do?”

“My friend,” I pleaded, “listen to me. We cannot use Sharra’s matrix for the kind of controlled power you wish to show the Terrans. It cannot be used to power a spaceship; I would not trust it even to control the helicopter now. It is a weapon, only a weapon, and it is not weapons we need. It is technology.”

Kadarin’s smile was fierce. “But if a weapon is all we have, then we will use that weapon to get what we must from the Terrans! Once we show them what we can do with it—”

My spine iced over with a deadly cold. I saw again the vision: flames rising from Caer Donn, the great form of fire bending down with a finger of destruction …

“No!” I almost shouted. “I’ll have nothing to do with it!”

I rose and looked around the circle, saying desperately, “Can’t you see how this has corrupted us? Was it for war, for murder, for violence, blackmail, ruin, that we forged our link in such love and harmony? Was this your dream, Beltran, when we spoke together of a better world?”

He said savagely, “If we must fight, it will be the fault of the Terrans for denying us our rights! I would rather do it peacefully, but if they force us to fight them—”

Kadarin, coming and laying his hands on my shoulders with real affection said, “Lew, you’re foolishly squeamish. Once they know what we can do, there will certainly be no need to do it. But it places us in a position of equal power with the Terrans for once. Can’t you see? Even if we never use it, we must have the power, simply in order to control the situation and not be forced to submit!”