He swung into the dark, cool interior; was dimly aware of slender black onyx columns lifting a hundred feet toward a dark ceiling. Grim stopped. A voice reverberated in the Temple. "You have disobeyed, Althaya. You--" "Don't threaten me, Kohonnes! At this moment my people are coming. They will attack when I give the word. They will come in here and kill the girl and make you yield your secret to me. Then Althaya will have power unimaginable. Black Randolph--" "--is dead," said Grim. "He fell into the gorge." Grim stared upward. A black machine bulked huge and dark in the shadows. From a hundred facets, green bulb-lights glowed. Grim heard the machinery moving, saw the bulbs grow brighter as power poured into the thing. "Who are you, Kohonnes?" he cried out in space _patois_. "Eh? What's that? Who's out there?... It isn't--can't be! Grim Thorssen?" Grim laughed. He knew that voice anywhere. "You old spacedog! What're you trying to do--ruin the Unions Council?" "The Council? What have I to do with them?" "The force this machine applies escapes into space. It bends the Caravans and the Fleet cruisers. It smashes them--sends them flying on into the void like so many wrecked planets. They'll go on and on--until they find a planet to crash on or make an orbit around." There was a pause. Althaya cried out harshly; whirled and fled toward the mouthlike door where light filtered in in grey beams. The machine stopped humming. A door opened in it. A man with white hair and a smooth, shaven face stepped onto the floor of the temple. He grinned at the Viking, threw both arms high into the air. Grim said, "Jasper Jones! I knew you'd gone into retirement--but I never thought you'd set yourself up as a god." The old man laughed, keen blue eyes dancing. "I was always interested in sound, Grim. I had some theories, theories that my colleagues said were crazy, impractical. So when I retired I came to this little planet that I'd discovered a long time ago--and set myself up in comfort. "I took amnesiac men and women from the space hospitals and gave them a new life. I let them build a new civilization for themselves, a new life. Where they would have had to spend the rest of their useless lives in sanatoriums, I gave them freedom, fresh air and a new world. Was that wrong?" Grim said dryly, "Not the way you put it. But you could have established dams--something to keep that hellish force in place. And while we're on it--what in the name of the Empire is the thing?" Jasper Jones waved at the machine. "Let's go inside. I'll tell you about it as we go. Come, Tlokine. "I said I was interested in sound. Perhaps I should say, vibratory impulses. You know Tyndal's experiments--sand figures on a vibrating plate, the motion of the plate along a nodal line. The sand on the plate rearranges and groups itself into regular patterns. Some of them are beautiful."