again, and the Og, screaming, went flying forward. The
goblet fell from his grip and rolled out through a doorway
which was collapsing.
Cold wet mud lifted Forry and carried him as if he were
on a rubber raft through the doorway just before it closed
in on itself. He shot out through another room as if he were
a cake of soap slipping out of the wet hands of a bather.
The goblet appeared before him riding upside down on a
wave of mud. Forry reached out and grabbed it and held
it to his chest even through his terror and his screaming.
Then he was turned upside down. Mud covered him
and filled his nostrils and mouth. He choked and fought
against the wet heavy stuff killing him.
Something struck the side of his head, and he fell into a
darkness and silence blacker and quieter than the mud.
43
Partly stunned when he hit the wall at the first turning of
the corridor, Childe was hurled down the next hall, spun
off lightly at the second turning, turned aside by a great
curling wave, and shot down another hall. At its end it
opened onto the front door and, on the side, to a large
room. The waters split here, one torrent shooting through
the doorway after having broken down the door, and the
other torrent spilling into the room.
The parting of the flood greatly diminished its force and
its level. Childe scraped his knees and hands on the lintel
as he went through the front door and was deposited at the
foot of the steps at the bottom of the porch. Staggering
because of the water that was falling on his back, he
crawled away and then got to his feet. He took two steps
and screamed as he fell outwards and down. The mud of
a very steep bank took him, and he slid face down for
some distance before plunging up to his shoulders into the
sticky stuff. He fought his way out and then lay on his
back, staring upwards.
Light was streaming out through the open door and sev-
eral other windows. He was lying on top of the cave-in.
And if he did not get out of the way soon, he would be
crushed by the entire weight of the mansion. It was groan-
ing and swaying, and the slides of mud around him her-
alded a greater slide.
Though he would have liked to stay there and rest,
he turned over and slipped and slid to his feet and sludged
away from the building looming above him as fast as he
could go. Once he tripped over a solid object, which he
would have thought a small boulder if it had not moaned.
He got down on his knees and felt the roundness, which
was the head of a woman buried up to her neck.
"Who is it?" he said.
"It's me," the woman said.
"Who?"
"Diana Rumbow. Who're you?" And then, "Help me!"
Mud abruptly covered his legs to the ankles. He looked
up but could not see much except that the house seemed
to be tilting a little more. Suddenly, the lights went out,
and a great grinding noise came from the house.
He went on as swiftly as he could. It would take him
a long time to dig her out, and the house was surely
coming down on them at any minute. Besides, he owed
an Og nothing except death.
When he had gotten to one side, far enough out of
danger from the house, though not from the slippage of
the hill beneath him, he turned. Just as he did, the great
Structure screamed and toppled down the steep slope.
Though it was so dark, he could still see that it had
turned over on its side, so swiftly had the earth beneath
it fallen in.
He wanted to make for the ruins as fast as he could,
but he was too emptied and shaken. He sat down in the
mud and wished that he could cry. After a while, he got
up and sludged through the mud, sinking to his knees
with every step. He went even more slowly than the
effort accounted for, because he was never sure that he
would not keep on sinking.
The first body he found was Forry Ackerman's. It was
lying on top of the mud, though sinking very slowly. He
was on his back, his face covered with mud but his
road below showed him palely to Childe.
"Forry?" he said.
The mud-covered lips parted to show mud-covered
teeth.
"Yeees?"
"You're alive!" Childe said. And then, "How in hell
did you get here? What's been going on?"
"Help me up," Forry said.
Childe hauled him up, but Forry got down on his knees
and started groping around. The headlights of the car came
up over the top of the road below them, and Childe could
see much better. But he could see nothing that Forry
might be groping for.
"I had it! I had it!" Forry groaned.
"What?"
"The Grail! The Grail!"
"You had it? How? Forry, tell me, what's going on?"
Forry, feeling into the mud and uttering curses which
were completely out of character for him, told him.
Childe pulled him to his feet. "Listen, you'll never find
it in this mess. We better go into the house, if we can
get into that mess, and look for our friends. If they are
our friends."
Forry raised his head sharply. "What do you mean,
if they are our friends?"
"How much do you and I really know about the
Tocs?" Childe said. "They've been nice to us, but then
they have a reason to be so. Even the Ogs became better
after they had a reason to get my cooperation. So …"
"I have to find that Grail," Forry said. "I want to go
to the planet of the Tocs. It'll be the only chance I'll ever
have!"
"All right, Forry," Childe said. "We'll get it somehow.
I'd like to have it, too, so I could settle this thing once and
for all! But we'd better see who we can save. After all,
Toc or Og, human or not, they feel pain, and they're
going to need help."
The car had approached as closely as its driver dared.
Four people got out and walked through the mud to them.
It took a few minutes of questioning by both parties
before it was established that the newcomers were Tocs.
They had been summoned from the other side of the
world and had just managed to get here.
"I wouldn't worry about finding it, Captain," the leader,
Tish, said. "You can concentrate on it, and it will glow.
The glow will come up even through tons of mud."
44
The Tocs and the Ogs had hired a hall.
Over two-thirds of the big dance floor of the American
Legion post had been marked off in squares. The re-
maining third was given over to the hundred or so
surviving members of both groups. And to Childe, the
Captain, the Grail and its pedestal. And to Forry Acker-
man, who sat on one side to observe. He would participate
in the ceremony but only as one caught in the sidewash of
radiation. When the time came for the voyaging, he would
move into the direct influence of the power and, if all
went well, travel with the others to the stars.
Childe sat in a chair before the Grail. Beyond him the
Tocs and Ogs stood in ranks of twelve abreast. They
were naked. Everybody in the hall was naked.
They were here because Childe had ordered it. He
had told them that if both groups did not declare, and
keep, a truce, he would destroy the Grail and would
refuse to act as their Captain. If they agreed to keep the
peace" and to participate together, he would transport
both groups to their home planets.
They did not take long in reaching an agreement.
Childe was still dubious about his ability to move them
across intergalactic spaces and pinpoint the exact world
for each. But he hoped that it would work. It meant
ridding the Earth of a number of monsters and potential
monsters. He wished that he could also do this with
others than the Tocs and the Ogs.
Hindarf and Pao had died under some heavy timbers
and several tons of mud. Tish had been elected master of
ceremonies. It was he who had arranged that the authori-
ties did not investigate the ruins. With the spending of
much money, he had kept the police and others out of the
area, and the Tocs and the Ogs who survived had se-
cretly buried the dead.
Now Tish called up the couples, one by one, to begin
the ceremony. These were male and female with each
couple composed of a Toc and an Og. There were about
four females left over, and these were also to couple in
the beginning.
Male and female, they approached Childe and knelt
before him. They touched his genitals and kissed his penis
and then rose. He stared at the Grail while his cock be-
came bigger with each kiss until it had reached its utmost
rigidity. The Grail began to glow and to pulse. Its glow
waxed and waned as the throbbings of his dong built up.
One by one they knelt and kissed or sucked his cock.
Then they returned to their stations to wait, hand in hand,
or hand on cock or cunt, for the last couple to return.
The light from the Grail grew brighter and brighter until
it could not be looked at directly by anybody but Childe.
The light filled his eyes and his skull, but he could still
see the Grail and the people beyond.
Finally, Tish approached Childe and knelt and stroked
his balls and cock and then kissed the glistening glans.
Childe's body from behind his naval to his knees had
turned to ice, and the peter was giving little jerks while
the fluid moved more swiftly towards its exit. He beck-
oned to an exquisite Thai woman, a Toc, and she ran
to him and bent over to take his cock into her mouth.
Immediately, the man who had been her partner came
up behind her, got down between her legs, and buried his
face in her cunt. Another woman got down on all fours
and began sucking his dong; a man went down on her;
a woman crawled between his legs and sucked on his
peter; a man thrust his tongue up her slit; a woman got
under him and started to work on the head of his penis
with her mouth; and so forth. The result was a daisy
chain with the woman on the end lying on her back
blowing a man and nobody on her cunt.
Tish walked down the line of the grunting, moaning,
smacking, writhing men and women. He straddled the
last woman and let himself down, not too easily, into her
slit.
But even while he was pumping away, Tish called out
in a strange language. He chanted, and Childe understood
the words, though he was not able later to translate them.
Childe sat still and let the woman mouth his glans and
run her tongue over his prick while the ecstasy mounted
and mounted and mounted. Suddenly, he gave a little
scream and spurted. The Grail seemed to burn; it shot
out a pulsing light that drove away every shadow in the
hall. Tish continued to chant. Apparently, he had not
come yet. And then, as Childe's peter gave its final jerk
and spurt, Tish cried out.
The air over the squares darkened. Little clouds
formed. The air became very cold, chilling the hot and
sweating bodies. There was a wind, as if the air was
moving towards the clots of duskiness over each square.
At first, the air moved gently, but within a minute it
was whistling from every corner of the hall and rattling
the windows. Dust from the floor rose up and whirled in
small cyclones.
The Grail continued to pulse dazzlingly, though Childe
had ceased to ejaculate. It did not obliterate the shadows
above the squares; it seemed to make them darker.
The first one that Childe recognized was Igescu, the
Toc whom he had killed in his oak-log coffin by thrusting
a sword through his heart. Afterwards, the body had
been burned to ashes in the fire of the great house.
Childe had never expected to see that long lean face
with the high forehead, thick eyebrows, high cheekbones,
and large eyes, nor the very long and skinny dick.
And there was Magda Holyani, the beautiful blonde
weresnake.
And there was Hindarf and beside him was Pao.
They were all naked and all in their human form.
And where was Dolores del Osorojo, the beautiful
California-Spanish "ghost" who had literally fucked her-
self back into a materialization of flesh and blood and
bone, only to be killed and skinned by the Ogs?
He saw her in a square in the middle of the crowd.
She was smiling at him, and her hips were rotating as if
she were relishing the memory of their times together.
The air warmed up, and the wind ceased.
The hall was filled with many voices. The living and
the recently dead were chattering, yelling, laughing.
Tish waited for five minutes and then shouted for
silence.
It came slowly and reluctantly, because the Tocs and
the Ogs were human in that they had to express their
emotions.
"Now for the voyaging!" Tish shouted.
They all faced him expectantly. Childe noted, out of
the corner of his eye, Forry sitting on his chair. His eyes
were bulging out, and he was covered with sweat. Childe
did not know whether this reaction was caused by the
ceremony he had just seen or the thought of the trip.
It was up to him whether or not he went along. If he
decided to go, he just had to move from the side of the
hall to the middle of the floor, and he would be taken
along automatically.
Tish had not liked the idea that Forry was not partici-
pating in the ceremony, but he admitted that his non-
involvement would reduce the effect of the Grail by only
a negligible amount.
Tish indicated that a woman should bring up a bowl
with a dark liquid in it. She took a position by Childe
after kissing his penis and the second ceremony began
immediately. She sprinkled
his genitals with a few drops
of the dark liquid before each person kissed his peter.
Tish stood on the other side and every third person dipped
his finger into the bowl and passed it over Childe's lips.
The stuff tasted like honey with a trace of rancid cottage
cheese. When the bowl was empty, Tish signaled for it to
be refilled, and the ceremony went on.
The Grail kept on pulsing brightly. Its white light
was beginning to affect Childe. He did not become blind
or any less able to see what was going on around him.
But he was receiving flashes of strange scenes. Usually
these were seen as if he was standing on the surface of a
planet, but several times he whizzed by a star burning
redly, greenly, or amberly. He seemed to be no more than
a hundred thousand miles from the great luminaries.
Despite the brightness and nearness, he felt no heat, only
a bone-crystallizing cold.
Tish began to chant in the foreign language. Childe
beckoned to Dolores, who ran gladly towards him, her
big shapely breasts bouncing with the impact of her feet.
She got down on her knees and buried her face in his
crotch and wept. Then she took the end of his half-limp
organ and began to suck on it. It rose as if she were
blowing air into it, became hard and throbbing, and gave
him that first warming under his belly button.
The Grail pulsed faster, and the flickers of alien
topographies and brilliantly colored stars increased in
number and variety.
Dolores sucked harder and moved her head back and
forth. Igescu came up behind her then and lifted her up
so that she was standing up but with her knees bent. He
rammed his dick into her asshole and began pumping.
Plugger got down on his knees behind Igescu's lean but-
tocks, spread them, and thrust his tongue up Igescu's ass-
hole. His body rocked back and forth as he rode the
vampire's ass with his face.
Even through the woman and the man, Childe could
feel the shock of Plugger's tongue. He hoped that the
others would form the daisy chain quickly, because if
they didn't they were going to get caught short. He was
going to come soon. This would require starting the
voyage ceremony over again, because the chain had to be