lared back at him with such hatred and
such evil that for an instant he almost faltered. But the Ryzga's
efforts, as he strove to free himself from the neural hold, were as
misdirected and unavailing as those of a child who has not learned to
wrestle with the mind.

Var had guessed right. When Neena in her terror had flung a dream
monster into the Ryzga's way--a mere child's bogey out of a fairy
tale--the Ryzga had not recognized it as such, but had taken it for a
real being. Var laughed aloud, and with great care, as one communicates
with an infant, he projected his thoughts into the other's mind. "There
will be no new beginning for you in _our_ world, Ryzga! In two thousand
years, we've learned some new things. Now at last I understand why you
built so many machines, such complicated arrangements of matter and
energy to do simple tasks--it was because you knew no other way."

Behind the hate-filled eyes the cold brain tried to reason still.
"Barbarians...? Our party was wrong after all. After us the machine
civilization could never rise again, because it was a fire that consumed
its fuel. After us _man_ could not survive on the Earth, because the
conditions that made him great were gone. The survivors must be
something else--capacities undeveloped by our science--after us the end
of man, the beginning.... But those of us who chose to die were right."

The tide of hate and sick desire rose up to drown all coherence. The
Ryzga made a savage, wholly futile effort to lift the weapon in his
paralyzed hand. Then his eyes rolled upward, and abruptly he went limp
and fell in a heap, like a mechanical doll whose motive power has
failed.

Var felt Neena beside him, and drew her close. As she sobbed her relief,
he continued to look down absently at the dead man. When at last he
raised his head, he saw that the drama's end had had a further audience.
In the outer doorway, backed by his clansmen, stood Groz, gazing first
in stupefaction at the fallen Ryzga, then with something like awe at
Var.

Var eyed him for a long moment; then he smiled, and asked, "Well, Groz?
Is our feud finished, or does your ambition for a worthy son-in-law go
beyond the conqueror of the Ryzgas?"

End of Project Gutenberg's When the Mountain Shook, by Robert Abernathy

*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHEN THE MOUNTAIN SHOOK ***

***** This file should be named 32836.txt or 32836.zip *****
This and all associated files of various fo