Collected Short Fiction, page 171
The forest glittered. The jagged blades of its uncanny growths shimmered as if formed of frozen pale light. They were like sharp crystals condensed from some fluid of pure cold; ice-blue and chill violet.
Even as Fal-Kar steered the frail sky-sled toward it, slanting upward to avoid its glistening spears, the forest altered. It grew.
Keen bright crystalline blades stabbed with startling abruptness from parent stalks. Thin arrows of frozen radiance, violet-blue, broke from the spiked tangle, darted away above the luminous mass, endued with incomprehensible powers of motion.
Fal-Kar watched one shimmering crystal arrow that plunged down athwart his path and drove into the dark soil below. For a moment it stood there unchanged, a shaft of pale, icy radiance, itself a hundred feet in height.
Then it grew like a plant taking root in the frozen planet. Sword-like branches were thrust out from it, abruptly, at fantastic angles. Soon it was a veritable tree of weird shimmering blades; its development was uncannily, incredibly swift.
This, Fal-Kar knew, was the invading life from the moon; the life of cold and darkness, whose incomprehensible advance could be checked only by the new sun of atomic energy that the Kars had labored so long to create above the mountain. Its development on earth must have begun when some such shaft struck the planet after a flight across the interplanetary void.
He was staggered by the vastness and strangeness of the alien forest, by the weird and unsuspected powers of the invaders. His mind shrank from thought of the obstacles yet to be overcome before the new atomic sun could stop the advance of this astounding lunar life.
Numbed with dread as much as with the pitiless cold that was creeping even into the sealed hull of the sky-sled, Fal-Kar drove upward at a higher angle, accelerating the rocket-feed until the song of the motors was a deafening bellow.
Then the invading entities from the moon demonstrated their awareness and their enmity.
Fal-Kar had been flying amply high to clear the forest. Now a new towering wall of palely shimmering glass-like spears was thrust suddenly up before him.
Desperately he fought to avoid them, but an ice-blue, glistening spike was driven with savage force against the frail hull of the sky-sled. Its thin metal was caved in; a crystal panel shattered.
Fal-Kar flung the vehicle up; he cleared the menacing wall. But already he was shivering before the blast of frigid air that poured through the broken panel.
In moments he was beyond the spiked bright forest.
Before him lay the frosty deserts and smooth ice-plains that stretched away to unseen Zen. The spreading area covered by the invading life was behind. But he had not escaped.
Bright arrows came after him.
Hissing in easy flight, like living, sportive javelins shaped of blue-violet flame frozen into needle-shaped crystals, they pursued him, darted curiously about the crippled sky-sled, drove toward it menacingly.
Even with the rocket-motors open to the full, Fal-Kar could not distance them. Easily they kept pace, arching in smooth flight above him, racing with him challengingly.
Half frozen by the blast of cold through the shattered window, he saw that he must play at the deadly game of the invaders.
When the next keen blue lance darted at him, he dived to meet it until collision appeared unavoidable, then cut in his forward rocket battery, in the nose of the sky-sled. Bright golden flame roared out ahead of him; the plunging dive was abruptly checked, and yellow fire wrapped the thin lance of cold.
The blue arrow was consumed. Like an icicle thrust into a furnace, it dissolved in a wraith of dissipating vapor.
Clenching his chattering teeth, Fal-Kar crouched his trembling body over the controls and drove at another of his weird pursuers. It swerved, fled from him with a speed the sky-sled could not equal. The invaders had learned his power. With the heat of the flaming rocket-blast he could protect himself; but plainly he was helpless to inflict any further injury upon the enemy.
He turned again and flew toward Zen.
The glittering arrows followed, cut daringly near him, arched tantalizingly above him, plainly mocking him, tempting him to pursue them, yet never again venturing within range of his incandescent rocket-jets.
Intense cold invaded the slender hull. His breath swirled out in clouds of ice crystals, freezing on his thin golden fur, frosting the observation panels so that he could hardly see. The numbing ache of cold crept up his limbs; his stiff hands could scarcely move the controls.
Ever the fleeting arrows of chill-blue crystal came mockingly nearer—keen bright blades of frozen light. He knew they were laughing at him, waiting for him to freeze and die.
“The phantoms of the frost,” he muttered through stiff cold lips. “They laugh, and wait. But they wait in vain. The Kars never fail.”
Still he drove on, until the bright Zone above Zen rose like the limb of a warm green sun above the dead ice-fields, against a black, star-dusted sky.
The bright arrows made a final taunting plunge at his crippled flyer, and then hung safely back beyond the Zone, mocking, waiting. . . .
4. When the Zone Fell
FAL-KAR could never recall how he drove the sky-sled through the green insulating ray-screens of the Zone and landed it safely in the gardens of Zen. His memory held nothing from the turning back of the enigmatic flying arrows to his awakening on a couch in the roof-gardens of Zen.
He sat up, beneath a gay light awning, and looked upon the brilliant wonders of Zen, last outpost of a dwindling humanity.
Warm air breathed about him, fragrant with the scent of blooms. Green masses of hypertrophied shrubs and vines surrounded his couch, riotous with vivid flowers and heavy with huge ripening fruits, red and golden.
Beyond the garden railing he saw the towers of Zen, graceful slim spires of white metal and many-hued crystal, terraced and crowned with brilliant gardens.
All above was the shimmering green of the Zone, flooding the dark sky with supernal light, the city’s only shield against universal cold. A frail thing, the Zone looked, so sheer that the chill bright stars shone through it. Yet, Fal-Kar knew, for many ages that thin dome of vibration was all that had kept the fair slender towers and vivid gardens of Zen beyond the hungry talons of eternal winter.
A few moments he sat there, memory slowly returning. He had no sense of ill-being; his mighty body, with its marvelous capacity for recuperation, had recovered from the exhaustion and exposure of his flight to Zen; he was conscious that he had slept long, far more deeply than usual.
A few moments he sat there; then he was on his feet in abrupt alarm.
This glory of Zen faced deadly peril! Unthinkable, incredible invaders from the moon menaced it with the alien energies of their life of cold. Upon him rested the burden of saving it. And he had been asleep! Vital time was gone!
Every muscle tense in the magnificent body beneath his sleek, golden-brown fur, he ran across the roof-garden, peered anxiously over the bright metal railing into the street below.
And his first illusion of the quiet peace of Zen was shattered.
Of white metal and gayly colored crystal, the walls of the building fell beneath him for many stories, to broad garden-spaces. Those gardens, so bright with bloom and ripening fruit when Fal-Kar last had seen them, were now torn and trampled by panic-stricken multitudes.
Shouting thousands were streaming across them, blind, aimless, mad with the desperation of terror. Behind the fugitives, vivid vegetation was a trampled ruin. Their cries reached Fal-Kar’s ears, mingled in a ragged wail of fear.
“What—what has happened?” he muttered, leaning over the rail in motionless surprize and alarm. “Already——”
“It is a frozen horror, come out of the dark wastes to destroy us.”
THERE was no panic, no terror in the cool, familiar voice that spoke beside him. Fal-Kar turned, in glad surprize, and saw Del-Ara.
She was standing close to him, staring down at the terrorized throngs, her small strong hands unconsciously tearing the petals from a huge red flower. Not so tall as mighty Fal-Kar, she was lithely slender. The smooth velvet fur on her body was snow-white; against it the long hair of her head fell in a golden cascade. The eyes in her white, clear face, sober, sorrowful as she looked slowly up again at Fal-Kar, were warmly brown.
“Del-Ara!” he gasped. And he whispered again, “Del-Ara!”
He strode to her and picked her up in his golden mighty arms. Her white arms went clingingly around his great shoulders; for a little time the two were pressed heart to heart. Then she slipped quickly away from him.
“I came to wake you, Fal-Kar.” Something strange and new was in her voice. “Your sleep was so peaceful . . . I did not like to disturb it with such dreadful tidings. . . . You had been very cold and tired. . . . But the need is urgent!” She smiled seriously, and patted his great shoulder. He tried to take her back into his arms, but she held herself away.
“Wait until I have told you!” she gasped. “Zen is attacked—beleaguered by strange invaders. A wall of shining spears—a weird, incredible forest of them—has grown up while you slept, outside the Zone. The things—the invaders—are attacking the Zone!”
“Attacking the Zone!” Fal-Kar stepped back in amazement. “How?”
“No one knows. A new life has risen against us, a life of strange and mighty energies. Some force it commands that is tearing down the Zone. We can do nothing to stop it. I told the Six that you might save us. None in Zen can equal the learning of the Kars.”
She smiled at him proudly.
“You must come with me to the generators of the Zone. Perhaps you can understand the weapon our enemies are using. I know you can!
“The case is desperate, Fal-Kar. Already our generators are strained to the limit of their power; they must soon bum out unless we slow them down. And the attacking forces, whatever they may be, are growing steadily stronger. Very soon, unless you will aid us, the Zone must fall.
“Here is your sky-sled. I have repaired it for you. Come with me!”
“But I can’t!” cried Fal-Kar. “I must lose no time; already I have been delayed too long. I came for a radium cell. The ancient work of the Kars is done, but for power to set flaming the new sun of atomic energy. I came to get one of the great radium cells that maintain the Zone; I must take it to my father.”
“You can’t do that,” insisted Del-Ara. “You can’t leave Zen. The city is walled with living spears, guarded by flying crystals of the new cold life. Nor will the Six let you take one of the precious cells. Every one is required to maintain the Zone against the attack of the invaders. And you must help!”
“Very well; I shall try. But I must soon obtain a cell and take it to our tower. My father is waiting there, alone.”
“This way. The sky-sled.”
Eagerly Del-Ara took his arm.
The bright torpedo-shape of the rocket-vehicle, repaired, lay on the roof behind a copse of shrubbery. They slipped into its glistening hull. Fal-Kar stepped again to the familiar controls; screaming motors jetted golden flame and the trim flyer lifted above the roof-garden.
“That way.” Del-Ara pointed with a smooth white arm. “The Tower of the Zone. The generators are on its roof.” The lofty, many-hued buildings and the broad bright gardens of Zen dropped beneath them, as the sky-sled soared toward the arching green rays of the shimmering Zone. Cold stars burned through the frail, supernal wonder of it; the dark rocks and snow-fields of the ice world beyond were visible through it, weirdly tinged with green.
Now Fal-Kar could see the invaders. He let the sky-sled drift aimlessly while he stared at them.
A towering wall of crystal swords rimmed the city, safely back from the Zone. A tangled forest of colossal keen blades, violet and ice-blue, rising in an impenetrable barrier. A thick mass of gleaming, frosty crystalline spokes, moving, advancing, thrusting out new blades with uncanny abruptness.
Above that titanic luminescent jungle flew radiant arrows of violet-blue, darting, wheeling, spinning. They dived at the fragile Zone, arched swiftly above it, sportive, mocking, waiting. . . . The invading new life triumphant, but waiting for the inevitable death of the old.
“Phantoms . . . phantoms of the forest . . . waiting for the last of us to die. . . .”
Fal-Kar breathed the words through clenched teeth, and shuddered as he stood at the steering-dial.
Del-Ara cried out suddenly; her small fingers dug into his shoulder.
“The Zone! The Zone! You are too late, Fal-Kar. The Zone has failed!”
Fal-Kar saw that the splendid dome of green radiance above the city appeared suddenly unstable. It was flickering. Great rents came in it, irregular patches of black, that widened and closed and opened again, ever more frequent, ever larger.
SETTING the nose of the flyer toward the central great tower, Fal-Kar opened the rockets wide. Golden fire shrieked back from the exhausts; the sky-sled plunged toward the generators of the Zone.
“Hurry!” urged Del-Ara, strong small fingers sunk into his shoulder. “The invaders are piercing the Zone.”
Before them the green wall flickered, faded. From the black sky the stars burst through with new brilliance. The wall of blue-violet spiked forest marched closer across the ghostly ice-plains without. Fal-Kar saw cold, shimmering lances diving at the momentary opening. Then the green dome was whole again; the diving lances of frosty crystal wheeled and darted back, waiting. . . .
“They are generating an interfering wave,” muttered Fal-Kar. “When synchronized with the vibrations of the Zone it annihilates them, tears down the barrier. If we are in time, if the generators could be retuned——”
The Zone flickered again.
Moving patches of black came in it, spread. Cold, immutable, the far stars shone through. The bright, spiked forest again crept forward, thrusting out new titanic blades toward the doomed city. And again the flying arrows dived.
A moment the Zone grew stronger. Then it flickered, vanished; mangled ribbons of green light came back, went out. And the Zone was gone.
With a groan of despair, Fal-Kar shut off the driving motors, let the sky-sled wheel above the fallen city.
Cruel cold stars leered down upon naked Zen from a sky gone utterly black. The icy fingers of ultimate winter closed upon the last outpost of man. White snow was frozen from the humid air that had been prisoned under the Zone; its flurries wrapped the darkened necropolis in ghostly shrouds.
The frozen blue-violet wall of the invaders tightened again, an inexorable ring of shimmering, crystal death.
Down upon defenseless gardens rained the flying arrows. They stabbed into the soil, remained standing for moments as titanic, monolithic shafts of chill radiance. Then sharp bright crystalline blades stabbed out from them with crashing abruptness; they grew crazily into fantastic trees of insane and alien life.
Shuddering with horror, Fal-Kar watched the people of Zen, huddling together against the sudden blast of descending cold, crowding vainly into buildings. Bright lances impaled them. Strange blades grew twistedly into buildings after them. . . .
Buildings collapsed before the advancing forest, pushed over by its inexorable mass, their ruins buried under shimmering, spiky tangles.
Zen was overcome with incredible swiftness. For a little time Fal-Kar and Del-Ara watched the movements of the panic-stricken people, struggling desperately, madly, pitifully, to escape a universal doom. But the Zone had been the whole defense of Zen; with it had gone all hope.
Very soon human movement ceased. The lunar life had spread over the city like the flood of a shimmering dark sea; only the shattered wrecks of a few buildings rose above it, like lonely vaults of the departed human race.
Del-Ara’s hand relaxed its hard grasp upon Fal-Kar’s shoulder.
“The Zone is gone!” she whispered, in strange, shrill tones. “And Zen is dead, for ever. The invaders and the cold have won.”
She burst into sobbing, hysterical laughter.
“We are the last alive! The last of man!”
5. Darkness of Doom
FAL-KAR drove the sky-sled once more toward the Tower of the Zone. It was a mighty building of metal and bright crystal. Gigantic mechanisms loomed upon its roof, under the dark sky—the generators of the Zone. They were deserted, now, still for ever. Frost had already touched them with ghostly white.
Beside the building had stabbed down one of the blue-violet arrows. From it a tree of mad frozen life had sprung up, shooting out jagged keen blades, palely radiant. And the tide of the crystal sea had flowed against it; the great tower rose dark and lonely above the eldritch radiance of the lunar jungle.
“The radium cells?” Fal-Kar demanded. “They are in the tower?”
Beside him Del-Ara was laughing wildly, helplessly; she ignored his question.
“Tell me,” he repeated. “Where are the radium cells?”
“Why think—why think about them?” she gasped through sobbing laughter. “The cells can do us no good. Zen is gone. The invaders have won. We are the last—the last!”
“Stop laughing, Del-Ara! Tell me!”
She was shaking again with hysteria. He seized her slender white shoulder with one great hand, shook her.
“Tell me! You must tell me. Zen is gone, but the work of the Kars can yet be finished. I am going to take the cell to our tower, and set the new sun to flaming above the mountain. I am going to end the darkness and the cold and these monsters from the moon.”
She looked at him. Madness and fear faded out of her eyes; they were clear again, warmly brown. The trembling of her white body ceased and she drew closer against him.
“Yes,” she whispered, “the work of the Kars will yet be finished. And hope for mankind is not gone, while we are alive.”
He smiled at her, drew her slim form close as he stood at the controls.
“Brave Del-Ara! We are not conquered. Hope is slender enough, but we shall fight. Where is the cell?”
“In the vault beneath the tower’s foundation,” she whispered, and added softly, “We shall fight—together. And together we shall die—or live—for mankind!”
