"We'll need weapons, and I must know--first--if you can use them. Tell me!"
Well, she was right. She had knowledge that Stuart needed. So he told her, very briefly, what he remembered.
She stared at him. "Voices--in your mind?"
"No. No. Or--wait--" He tried to focus his thoughts upon a far, faint calling that came from infinite distances. His name. An urgent summons--
"There's nothing," Stuart said finally, and Kari moved her shoulders uneasily.
"Tell me one thing. What's the Aesir's power? Hypnotism?"
"No," Kari said, "or not entirely. They can make thoughts into real things. They are--what the race of man will evolve into in a million years. And they have changed, into beings utterly alien to humans."
"They can assume any shape," Kari told him. "Their real form is unimaginable. Being of pure energy ... mental force ... matrixes of electronic power. They were striking at you through your mind."
Stuart said, "I wondered why they didn't set some of their Watchers on me."
"I don't know why they didn't," Kari frowned. "Instead, they hammered at your weaknesses--old fears that hung on to you for years. Experiences that frightened you in the past. They sent your mind back into that past--but you were too strong for them."
"Then. They have other powers, Stuart--incredible powers. You can't fight them alone. And you _must_ fight them. In a thousand years no one has dared--"
Stuart remembered something. "Two dared--once."
Kari nodded. "I know. I know the legends, anyway. About John Starr and Lorna. The great rebels who first defied the Aesir when the tyranny began. But they may have been only legendary figures. Even if they were real--they failed."
"Yes, they failed. And they're a thousand years dead. But it shows something--to me at least. Man wasn't meant to be a slave to these monsters. Rebellion--"
Kari watched him. Stuart's eyes were shadowed.
"John Starr and Lorna," he whispered. "I wonder what their world was like, a thousand years ago? We've got all the worlds now, all the planets of the System from Jupiter to the smallest asteroid. But we don't rule them, as men owned their own Earth in those days. We're slaves to the Aesir."
"John Starr didn't think so," Stuart said. "Neither do I. And at worst I can always die, as he did. Listen, Kari." He gripped her arms. "Think. You've lived here for a while. Is there any weapon against those devils?"