Adventures in the Far Future & Tales of Outer Space — page 275: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

am Captain Joana Rostov of the Janyard Fleet. Conduct your- ‘self accordingly.” Daryesh looked around him. This wasn’t good. He hadn’t the chance now to search Laird’s memories in detail, but it was clear enough that this was a force of enemies. The rights and wrongs of a quarrel ages after death of all that had been Vwyrdda meant nothing to him, but he had to learn more of the situation, and be free to act as he chose. Especially since Laird would presently be reviving and start to resist. The familiar sight of the machines was at once steadying and unnerving. There were powers here which could smash planets! It looked barbaric, this successor culture, and in any event the decision as to the use of this leashed hell had to be his. His head lifted in unconscious arrogance. His! For he was the last man of Vwyrdda, and they had wrought the machines, and the heritage was his. He had to escape. Joana Rostov was looking at him with an odd blend of hard suspicion and _ half-frightened puzzlement. “There’s something wrong about you, Lieutenant,” she said. “You don’t behave like a man whose project has just gone to smash. What was that helmet for?” Daryesh shrugged. “Part of a control device,” he said easily. “In my excitement | failed to adjust it properly. No matter. There are plenty of other machines here.” “What use to you?” “Oh—all sorts of uses. For instance, that one over there iS a nucleonic disintegrator, and this is a shield projector, and—” “You're lying. You can’t know any more about this than we do.” “Shall | prove it?” “Certainly not. Come back from there!” CORniclooo SS CO