Adventures in the Far Future & Tales of Outer Space — page 280: what you’re looking at

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

for ten million years. Only—the Erai had Known about it. And they had had the weapons, too. In the end, Vwyrdda went under, her fleets broken and her armies reeling in retreat over ten thousand scorched planets. The triumphant Erai had roared in to make an end of the mother world, and nothing in all the mighty Imperial arsenals could stop them now. Theirs was an unstable culture, it could not endure as that of Vwyrdda had. In ten thousand years or so, they would be gone, and the Galaxy would not have even a memory of that which had been. Which was small help to us, thought Laird grimly, and realized with an icy shock that it had been the thought of Daryesh. The Vwyrddan’s mental tone was, suddenly, almost conversational, and Laird realized what an immensity of trained effort it must have taken to’ overcome that loneliness of a million years. “See here, Laird, we are apparently doomed to occupy the same body till one of us gets rid of the other, and it is a body which the Janyards seem to want. Rather than fight each other, which would leave the body helpless, we’d better cooperate.” “But—Lord, man! What do you think | am? Do you think | want a vampire like you up there in my brain?” The answer was fierce and cold. “What of me, Laird? l, who was Daryesh of Tollogh, lord of a thousand suns and lover of Iloma the Fair, immortalized noble of the greatest empire the universe has ever seen—l am now trapped in the half-evolved body of a hunted alien, a million years after the death of all which mattered. Better be glad I’m here, Laird. | can handle those weapons, you know.” The eyes looked out over the bleak windy hills cape, and the double mind watched’ distance-dwarfed forms clambering in the rocks, searching for a trail. “A hell of a lot of good that does us now,” said Laird. “Besides, | can hear CORniclooo SS CO