The Return of Sathanas | Page 4

was slightly
depressing. He was too dark. Not the bronze darkness of a heavy space
tan but the darkness of the sky just before a storm on Mother Mu. He
made no effort to be friendly, just greeted us with stock phrases as
though impatient to meet people more his equal. His impatience and
boredom were further emphasized by the way he kept prancing on his
cloven hooves--his heritage from some variform ancestor--and by the
nervous way he kept drumming his fingers on the jeweled clasp of his
weapon belt. Nothing about him pleased me, particularly the
swaggering way he kept his long dark cape in motion. I thought to
myself, 'What's he afraid of--that we'll contaminate his precious cloak?'
I looked him full in the face--that handsome cynical face with the blue
eyes of his Angle family, icily and incongruously staring back at me
with the disdain ill-befitting a Ruler of Nor. That struck me as odd and
jarring, here in this usually solemn hall(and my nostrils twitched with
the scent of the evil, sulphurous odor about him, no doubt from some
ingredient of his nutrient vapors.
I should have known then, or at least have been suspicious, but, in the
hallowed halls of the Council of Nor one does not suspect one's equals.
But he was a dero [*4]--I know that now.
There was a time, once, when the peoples of Mu and the other Sun
planets were unaware that there could be such a thing as a dero. But
that was when the Sun and Earth were young--before the Sun burned
hot and deadly. But as the Sun burned down through its layers of
carbon, it eventually reached the heavier substances near its core--the
"de"--producing radio-active metals. It is the deadly emanations given
off by burning radio-actives that produce in life, a dero--a detrimental
energy from the Sun that so motivates life that they are like that which

is robot--controlled by these "de", or detrimental energy
emanations--evil completely.
We didn't find that out until later, though. His family, foolishly
indulgent, had concealed all the signs of his deroism. They didn't know
enough of science to realize what a dread thing a dero can be.
They had paid for their indulgence and their ignorance with their
lives--lives that should have been immortal--for the first of Sathanas
crimes had been the summary and permanent removal of all the heirs
above his rank in the family blocking his mad rise to power.
'Something has happened to Sathanas', people said. In a way, they were
right, but they didn't know in what way or they would have removed
him. I know from similar cases that his character was a long time
growing.
Sathanas had been born on the planet Mu (Earth) in one of the older
cities and the mech of that city was condemned not long after Sathanas
had left Mu to become the satellite Ruler of one of the planets under the
Elders of Nor.
His was pretty much the same background, in many ways, as that of
Ex-Elder Zeit whose antecedents I had studied long ago, as I had been
curious as to how an apparently intelligent man had become such an
unthinking monster.
I thought--and experiments of the Elder scientists subsequently
proved--that aging mech has produced many a criminal. I think that
their subjection to the infected energy from the wornout pleasure mech
was the cause of this as it formed their inner polarization--their very
soul--along dis-inductive lines. Hence, as long as stars blaze in space,
such characters will induct that will to Evil from the stars' mighty
destructive fields. And unfortunately there is absolutely no way to
prevent these creations.
The whole group connected with Sathanas had fallen into some evil
and dissipated habits, had formed a cult of great power, and had built

secret hideouts where they could indulge their perverted tastes in safety.
They did not relish being deterred by Nor laws protecting the rights of
every individual to safety of person. All this evil they had kept
concealed behind many a barrier of sub-officials. And all went along
smoothly for the Gods of Space know only how many years.
But finally, a very beautiful young Nor maiden had wheedled and
vamped her way out of their unholy clutches and exposed the whole
rotten mess.
Their use of girls for wall ornaments, [*5] living in stimmed nutrient,
the whole depraved business of torture for pleasure and profit--the
horrible circuses where captive men were forced to fight for their lives
against beasts from the unsettled sun-planets--all this disgusting blight
on the rule and culture of the Nor Empire had finally been dragged out
into the open. What Sathanas had thought was a corner on illegal
entertainment had turned into a trap from which he was now just