THE CATERPILLARS QUESTION

The storm was coming closer. The dark clouds overhead, foreru

He turned back to watch Tappy. He caught his breath.

She was shining!

The glow was bright, about the strength of a dozen 100-watt light bulbs. But it was becoming brighter, spreading out from her as if the windows of her flesh were slowly opening.

That glow came from deep within her.

He shouted, "The Imago!"

And then he cried out again but uttered no words.

The fleet above the eastern wall was moving slowly toward the center of the crater.

ABRUPTLY, the row of spaceships was veiled as rain struck. A few seconds later, the vessels faded away entirely. The downpour slashed into the center of the plain, drenching the area around the throne. The thunder boomed loudly as if it were a vast boulder rolling down a mountain. A lightning bolt like the flaming crooked cane of a blind god slammed into the earth nearby. A tree cracked into two parts, one of which toppled over.

Despite the drenching, the thunder, and the lightning, the honkers kept on dancing and chanting. Jack had jumped when the bolt had hit the tree, but he had been looking at Tappy's back when it happened. She had not moved. Nor did she seem affected by the rain and the cold. Her brownish hair had turned black with the water; that was the only change.

The light emanating from her was as bright as before the full rage of the storm. It pushed back the darkness brought by the clouds and the deluge.

Although he was shivering with fright and cold, Jack felt a tiny warrrth deep inside him. The Integrator had done it! Somehow, he had evoked the Imago. But he could not have done it until Tappy had matured. Just when that had taken place, he did not know. Nor did he know the definition of "maturity." Somewhere along the line of time, she had passed from girlhood into full womanhood.

It had happened very recently. Otherwise, the Integrator would have performed this ritual before now. He had been waiting for the unseen moment to occur. In fact, he must have been very nervous because he knew that the Gaol would be down on them like a lioness leaping on a zebra.

Maturity had come to her as silently and as unseen as the moment when a peach ripened and was ready for eating. Yet, the Integrator had felt it. Or had he been so desperate that he had started the ritual but had not known if she was ready for it?

It did not matter now. She had passed from human chrysalis into human imago just as the Imago-which had really been a chrysalis-was now an imago.

Jack, the eternal questioner, could not help wondering who had made the Imago. It seemed to him that the Makers had done it.

They seemed to have been able to cross the bridge from the physical to the superphysical or the supernatural.

The intraphysical?

The death-shadow caused by the action of the radiator indicated that. Had the Makers been trying to find a gate into other worlds which were not physical worlds as Earthpeople defined such? And had they accidentally opened a gate into the afterlife itself.? A gate they could not use.

Had this experimental project also revealed that the Makers could construct an entity such as the Imago? Though it was artificial, it was immortal. And it could be used only under certain conditions.

Either the Imago had been made because of the challenge of the Gaol or it been made before the Gaol had risen like the temperature of a malignant fever to spread through the universe. The latter event seemed more reasonable. Whatever the chronology, the Makers, despite their vast knowledge, had made the Imago a little bit too late. They had been vanquished. Not, however, before they had created a heritage that threatened the Gaol empire.

That heritage had been preserved by the Latest, the seemingly primitive species whom the Gaol did not fear. They had passed on this heritage-part of it, anyway-to a few human beings. And to who knew how many other species?

The honkers may have made the gates among many worlds so that the plot against the Gaol could spread. Or they may simply have used what they found in the Makers' burial chambers. The chamber which Jack and Tappy had seen was not the only one in the underground complex.

Lightning smashed the ground nearby again, though it was not as close as the tree-living bolt. Its flash seemed to light up a previously hidden thought in Jack.

The prophetic paintings in that burial chamber had been recentIy repainted. The Integrator had told him that. But what if the Integrator had not repainted the ancient images? What if the walls had been blank or he had brushed over old works? Then he had painted the images which the two humans saw? They had been a pious fraud, a device to stimulate Tappy into a state where the Imago would manifest itself.

It was not so much physical maturity that had opened the gate in Tappy and allowed the Imago to be summoned. It was a maturity of the psyche.

He could get the answers to his questions later. If, that is, Tappy and he and the others survived. Just now the Gaol dreadnoughts were moving toward them through the storm. Why? He could only guess. But the commander must have been astonished to see them performing a savage's ritual when they should have been conferring about her demands. She may have decided that the four hours' grace was a waste of time for the Gaol. Had she given the order to move in and capture the Imago's host while they were deeply involved in their ritual? Or had she ordered the ships just to come closer to the group because the vast chaotic energies of the lightning were disrupting her observation capabilities?

But if she had seen the light issuing from Tappy, she must have known that the Imago was about to manifest itself.

Jack groaned, and the tiny hot coal of hope inside him darkened.

All the commander had to do to stop the Imago was to order that all within the crater walls be destroyed at once.

He prayed to the God in whom he did not believe.

Then he cried out in wonder, though he had expected more wonders.

The brightness was a sphere extending from Tappy to about ten feet from her. It included himself, Candy, Garth, and the Integrator. It did not touch the people in the three circles, the honkers whose feet now struck the earth rapidly turning into mud with a mighty squishing sound. But, as suddenly as if someone had pushed a button, the sphere shot out many thin rays. At first, Jack thought that the sphere was doing it. But a much more intense ray was shooting out, laser bright, from Tappy's left breast through the bright sphere.

It had to issue from the Imaget upon her breast. It fell upon each of the dancers as each passed into and through it in his and her circuit. It made each of them glow as if each had swallowed a giant firefly. Or a saint's halo. Their lights paled the darkness among them. Despite the sudde

Scarcely had Jack cried out than he did so again Now a ray shot out from each dancer into the black storm and toward the crater wall. The beams angled slightly upward.

If the Gaol commander knew of this, she must be whistling the equivalent of a human screeching into her communicator.

"Destroy them! Destroy them!"

Now the dancers were whirling faster and had also speeded up their passage over the circles described in the mud by their feet.