Warlord of Kor

Horng sat opposite the tiny, fragile creature who held a microphone, its wires attached to an interpreting machine. He blinked his huge eyes slowly, his stiff mouth fumblingly forming words of a language his race had not used for thirty thousand years.

"Kor was ... is ... God ... Knowledge." He had tried to convey this to the small creatures who had invaded his world, but they did not heed. Their ill-equipped brains were trying futilely to comprehend the ancient race memory of his people.

Now they would attempt further to discover the forbidden directives of Kor. Horng remembered, somewhere far back in the fossil layers of his thoughts, a warning. They must be stopped! If he had to, he would stamp out these creatures who were called "humans."

CAST OF CHARACTERS

Rynason

His mental quest led him too close to a dangerous secret.

Manning

His ideas for colonizing that world didn't include survival for its native beings.

Malhomme

This ruffian-preacher could be the one man that everyone might have to trust.

Mara

She wanted to save the aliens, but did they want to be saved?

Horng

In the recesses of his brain was the key to a dead civilization--or a live menace....

Kor

Was it a legend, a king, a thing, or a trap from another galaxy?

WARLORD OF KOR

by

TERRY CARR

Ace Books, Inc. 1120 Avenue of the Americas New York 36, N.Y. Copyright ©, 1963, by Ace Books, Inc.

ONE

Lee Rynason sat forward on the faded red-stone seat, watching the stylus of the interpreter as the massive grey being in front of him spoke, its dry, leathery mouth slowly and stumblingly forming the words of a spoken language its race had not used for over thirty thousand years. The stylus made no sound in the thin air of Hirlaj as it passed over the plasticene notepaper; the only sounds in the ancient building were those of the alien's surprisingly high and thin voice coming at intervals and Rynason's own slightly labored breathing.

He did not listen to the alien's voice--by now he had heard it often enough so that it was merely irritating in its thin dryness, like old parchments being rubbed together. He watched the stylus as it jumped along sporadically:

TEBRON MARL WAS OUR ... PRIEST KING HERO. NOT PRIEST BUT ONE WHO KNEW ... THAT IS PRIEST.

Rynason was a slender, sandy-haired man in his late twenties. A sharp scar from a knife cut left a line across his forehead over his right eyebrow. His eyes, perhaps brown, perhaps green--the light on Hirlaj was sometimes deceptive--were soft, but narrowed with an intent alertness. He raised the interpreter's mike and said, "How long ago?"

The stylus recorded the Earthman's question too, but Rynason did not watch it. He looked up at the bulk of the alien, watching for the slow closing of its eyes, so slow that it could not be called a blink, that would show it had understood the question. The interpreter could feed the question direct to the telepathic alien, but there was no guarantee that it would be understood.

The eyes, resting steadily on him, closed and opened and in a few moments came the Hirlaji's dry voice.

THE GREAT AGE WAS IN THE EIGHTEENTH GENERATION PAST ... SEVEN THOUSAND YEARS AGO.

Rynason calculated quickly. Translating that to about 8200 Earth-standard years and subtracting, that would make it about the seventeenth century. About the time of the Restoration in England, when the western hemisphere of Earth was still being colonized. Eighteen generations ago on Hirlaj. He read the date into the mike for the stylus to record, and sat back and stretched.