Collected Short Fiction, page 207
Aladoree lay still beside him, on the black sand, sleeping. Looking at her slight, defenseless form, breathing so slowly and so quietly, he felt a queer throb in his chest. How many times, he wondered, as they had lain there, had death passed by on the yellow river, or stared at their uncertain shelter from the wall of thorns, had eyed them, unarmed, sleeping—and spared them, and AKKA, that meant humanity’s chance to carry on!
He tried to sit up, sank back with a gasp of pain. Every individual muscle in his body was stiffly painful, protesting movement with agonizing stabs. Yet he forced himself up, rubbed his limbs until some flexibility returned to them, got unsteadily to his feet.
First he picked Aladoree up in his arms, still sleeping, and carried her higher on the bar, beyond the unseen peril that might strike from the shallows. He made a flimsy little screen of driftwood, to hide them, and found a heavy club, and waited by her, to watch until she woke.
With wary glance he scanned the river’s tawny flood, flowing away until the farther dark jungle wall was dim in red haze. He eyed the bare waste of somber sand; the grim barrier of thorn jungle behind it; the mighty ebon ramparts of the Medusae’s city, miles upriver, just visible above the jungle. But it was out of the crimson sky that danger came, gliding on silent wings.
The creature was low when he saw it, diving at the sleeping girl behind her little screen of branches. Somewhat it resembled a dragon fly grown to monstrous size. It had four thin wings, spreading twenty feet; its slender body, sinisterly graceful, was large as a man’s. It was, he saw, like the creature that Giles Habibula had once battled for his bottle of wine.
Beautiful, it was. Strangely and savagely beautiful. The frail wings were blue, blue of a singular, vivid intensity. They were translucent; they glittered like thin sheets of dark sapphire. Ribs of scarlet veined them. The slim, graceful body was black, oddly and strikingly patched with bright yellow. The one enormous eye was like a jewel of polished jet.
A single pair of limbs stiffened under it, cruel yellow talons spread to clutch the girl’s body. And its tail, a thin yellow whip, scorpionlike, armed with a keen black barb, arched forward to sting.
John Star leaped straight in the path of it, swung his club for the jet-black eye. But the brilliant wings tilted a little, the creature swerved up, striking at him in place of the girl. His blow missed the great, solitary eye; the thin, pitiless lance of its curving sting was driven straight at him.
He flung his body down, twisting his blow to fend away the stabbing barb. He felt the impact as the club struck the slender, whipping tail; the venomed point was driven aside, yet it grazed his shoulder with a flash of blinding pain.
Scrambling instantly back to his feet, in spite of the searing pain from the sting, he saw the creature rise and turn and glide back toward him, ineffably graceful upon translucent blue-and-scarlet wings. Again it dived, talons set. This time, he saw, the barbed tail was hanging at a sharp angle; his club, he realized, had broken it.
Staggered with agony, he aimed his blow again at the bright jet disk of the eye. And this time the creature did not swerve. It plunged straight at him, merciless yellow talons grasping. In the last instant, dizzy and half blind with pain from its venom, he realized that the talons would strike his body with the full force of its dive.
Fiercely, he sought to steady his reeling world, put every ounce of his strength behind the heavy piece of driftwood, felt it crush solidly home against the huge black glittering disk. Then his sensations dissolved in the acid of pain.
Half dazed, he was presently dimly aware that it had not carried him away, but was floundering spasmodically about on the sand, dragging his helpless body still fastened in its locked talons. His last blow, he vaguely realized, had been fatal.
Presently the death struggles ceased, the furry body collapsed upon him. The pitiless yellow talons, even in death, were still set in his arm and shoulder. One by one, when the pain from the sting began to ebb a little, he strained his fingers to open them; he staggered at last to his feet, faint, sick, bleeding somewhat.
Even dead, the thing was beautiful. Narrow wings, lying unbroken on the black sand; glistening, luminous sheets of sapphire, ruby-veined. Slender, curving body, covered with short, soft fur, patterned in yellow and black. Only the bloody talons and the broken sting were hideous—and the head of it, pulped under his last blow.
Weakly, he reeled away from it, too faint even to pick up his club. He sank down beside Aladoree, still quietly breathing in the dead sleep of exhaustion, peacefully unaware of the death that had been so near.
SUNK IN listless, hopeless apathy of fatigue and suffering, at first John Star did not even move when he saw three tiny figures toiling along the edge of the sand bar. They must be, he realized dimly, at last, Jay Kalam and Hal Samdu and Giles Habibula, come alive, by some miracle of courage and endurance, through the drains and out of the yellow river. But he was too deep in exhaustion to feel any hope or interest.
He sat there, by the sleeping girl and the brilliant dead thing, aimlessly watching them come wearily over the black sand, out of hazy red distance.
Three strange, haggard men, each with a few tattered bits of cloth still clinging to a worn, exposure-browned body. Bearded men, long-haired, shaggily unkempt. They walked close together. Each of them carried a club or a thorn spear. Their sunken, gleaming eyes looked ever about, with unending wariness. They were like three primitive savages, hunting in the shadow of some primordial jungle; three elemental beasts, cautious and alert.
It was strange to think of them as survivors of the crushed, betrayed legion of space, splendid fighting body of a far-spread, civilized system, battling to defend it from the age-old science of an alien star. Could these shaggy animals decide an interstellar war?
John Star at last found spirit to stand, wave at them. They saw him, hurried to him over the bar.
Hal Samdu, he saw as they came near, still carried the black mechanism from the tripod, slung about his great shoulders by its connecting wires. He had dived into the drains, burdened with it; swam with it out of the yellow river.
“Aladoree?” he rasped, hoarse, weary, anxious, stalking up ahead of the others.
“Asleep.” John Star found energy for the one word, the gesture.
The giant dropped beside her, eagerly solicitous, a smile of relief on his haggard, red-bearded face.
“You carried her out?” he rasped. “And killed—that?”
John Star could only nod. His eyes closed, but he knew that Jay Kalam and Giles Habibula were coming up, heard the latter wheezing weakly.
“Ah, mortal me! Washed through the sewers like a blessed bit of garbage, and flung to die amid the precious horrors of the mortal yellow river. Ah, poor old Giles Habibula! It was a mortal evil day——”
His voice changed.
“Ah, the lass! The lass has not been harmed. And this blessed, glittering monster! John must have killed it. Ah, old Giles knows how you feel, lad! A mortal bitter time, we’ve all been through!”
His voice brightened again.
“This creature—the flesh of it would be good to eat! It is like the one with which I once battled so mortal hard for my bottle of wine—that I never got to taste! We must have a fire. I’m precious weak from starvation. Ah, mortal hungry!”
John Star drifted away, then, a second time, into blissful oblivion.
It was colder, still, when he woke. His body was numb and stiff, though a sheltered fire of driftwood blazed beside him. Dread night was coming apace; the sun’s angry disk completely gone, the sky a low dome of baleful crimson twilight. Bitter wind blew across the river, toward the jungle.
Giles Habibula was by the fire, grilling meat he had cut from the dead flying thing. John Star was gnawingly hungry; it must have been the fragrance of the roast, he realized, that had awakened him. But he did not eat at once.
Jay Kalam and Hal Samdu were beside Aladoree, beyond the fire. The little mechanism that the giant had carried so far, they had taken apart. The pieces of it were spread out before them, on a flat slab of driftwood; coils of wire and curious little bits of metal.
He stood up, hastily, despite the stiffness of his body, went to them. In their absorption, they did not look up. Before Aladoree was an odd little device, assembled from the black metal parts, from rudely carved fragments of wood. She was fingering the remaining bits of metal, anxiously, one by one, rejecting each with a little hopeless shake of her head.
“You’re setting it up?” John Star whispered eagerly. “AKKA?”
“Trying to,” breathed Jay Kalam abstractedly.
John Star glanced across the black jungle top, toward the towers and the fantastic mechanisms of the Medusae’s, unearthly city, looming ominously, in the far distance, against red twilight. It was sheer impossibility, he felt, that the crude little device on the sand should ever do injury to those colossal walls.
“I must have iron,” said Aladoree. “A tiny bit of it, the size of a nail, would do. But I must have it for the magnetic element. But for that, there’s everything I need. But I can’t find any iron. There’s none here.”
She laid the little mechanism down hopelessly.
“We must find ore, then,” said John Star. “Build a furnace, smelt it.”
Jay Kalam shook his head gravely, wearily.
“Can’t do that. No iron on the planet. The Medusae, you know, were first going to conquer our system for the Purples, just for a little iron. In all our wanderings, I saw no trace of iron deposits.”
“We can’t build the weapon, then,” Aladoree said slowly. “Not here. If we could get back to the system——”
“The ship is lying wrecked, somewhere on the bottom of the ocean.”
A little hopeless group, they stood there, shivering in the chill wind that rose in the darkening crimson twilight, bitter with its threat of the long fearful night. Across the dark, hostile jungle they stared, at the somber walls and towers and unguessable mechanisms of the Medusae’s stronghold, alien, ominous, colossal, looming portentously against fatal gloom.
From walls and towers, abruptly, flared eerie green flames. They saw titanic forms rising, the strange huge shapes of the Medusae’s interstellar fliers. In a vast black swarm they ascended, like monstrous insects, as the far thunder of the green flames rolled over the jungle and the river; and vanished at last in the blood-red sky.
“Their fleet!” whispered Aladoree. “Flying away to the system, with their fearful hordes, to occupy our planets as they destroy humanity. Their fleet, already gone! If we had found a bit of iron——But it’s too late. We’ve already failed.”
To be concluded next month.
The Legion of Space
The conclusion of the epic of the musketeers of space
UP TO NOW:
In the thirtieth century, John Star—then John Ulnar—receiving his commission in the legion of space, joins the guard of Aladoree Anthar, a lovely, mysterious girl, keeper of AKKA—the secret weapon of humanity, so terrific that the specifications for building it are intrusted to only one person in the system.
She is at once kidnaped by the “Purples,” a faction led by Adam Ulnar, wealthy, traitorous commander of the legion, who plots to crush the democratic Green Hall Council, make his weak nephew, Eric Ulnar, emperor of the system. Eric carries her across space to the planet of his weird, monstrous, but highly scientific allies, the Medusae.
John Star, to rescue her and recover AKKA, follows with three loyal legionaries, Jay Kalam, Hal Samdu, and Giles Habibula, crossing space in the “Purple Dream,” space cruiser of Adam Ulnar, which they capture. The ship falls wrecked into an ocean, and they leave it, with Adam Ulnar on board. He has learned that the Purples have been tricked by the Medusae, who plan to conquer the system for themselves, migrate to it with their monstrous hordes, wiping out humanity with a deadly red gas.
Entering the colossal city of the Medusae, the four rescue Aladoree and escape with her, through the flood drains, into a great river. They reach the shore. John Star kills a flying monster that attacks the girl.
Aladoree tries to set up the weapon, finds that her materials include no iron, that element not occurring on the planet. Helpless, without that necessary bit of metal, they watch the black fleet sail off into space, carrying unearthly hordes to the doomed system.
The planet’s bitter, week-long night is upon them; they are unarmed, without shelter, in the edge of a savage jungle of thorns.
XXVI.
“ALL FOR the want of a mortal nail!” commented Giles Habibula, in a voice that might have softened the cast-iron heart of a statue of the same material.
“Ah, me! That the lack of a blessed nail could mean so much!”
He was huddled on the black sand, a heap of dejection, carelessly holding a smoking piece of meat on a stick, above the sheltered driftwood fire.
“Poor old Giles Habibula! Better—ah, life knows, far better—that he should have died as a blessed babe! Better that the law should have taken its cruel, pitiless course, that time on Venus!
“A fearful reward it is, in life’s name, mortal fearful, for twenty years of loyal service in the legion. Accused for a precious pirate. Imprisoned and starved and tortured! Ah, yes, driven out of his own native system, to this hideous world of horror!
“Poisoned by the very mortal air, doomed to blessed insanity and death by green leprosy. Hunted by a million mortal monsters. Forced to scuttle like a rat through the blessed black city. Driven like a rat to drown in the sewers. Now face to face with a fearful death, in the cold of the night. And the one bottle of wine on the whole continent smashed before he’d had a taste of it!
“Mortal me! It’s more than a man can endure. Too mortal much, in life’s name, for a poor old soldier of the legion, sick and lame and feeble, with his wine spilled under his very eyes!
“And now, for the want of a nail, the blessed system is lost. Ah, me, for the want of one precious bit of iron, all humanity doomed to die before the invasion of the mortal Medusae! Ah, life knows, it’s a mortal time! A mortal bitter time! Giles Habibula——”
There was a crackling sound from the driftwood fire, a whiff of acrid smoke. He stirred himself abruptly, rose with a final doleful wail:
“Ah, me! Misfortunes never come alone. Now the mortal meat is burned!” And he went back to the brightwinged thing that John Star had killed, to cut another steak from its furry body.
By the glittering, sapphire-and-ruby wings, that lay forlornly on the black sand, the others were standing in a dispirited little group, shivering in the increasing cold wind that blew out of the deepening crimson twilight.
From the river bar they were staring, hopelessly, at the Cyclopean walls and weird, gigantic towers of the black metal city, looming strangely ominous against the darkening scarlet sky, above the sinister dark barrier of the thorn jungle.
Overwhelming sense of failure, of despair, of inevitable doom overtaking them and all humanity, rested oppressively upon them, held them in dead silence.
The keen blue eyes that peered above Hal Samdu’s red beard caught a black space flier—one of the Medusae’s unearthly, colossal ships—moving toward the somber walls above the river. He pointed, silently followed it.
“Is that——” John Star began, with a sudden, painful leap of his heart. “Beneath it—could it be——”
“It is,” Jay Kalam said gravely, “the Purple Dream!”
“Your ship?” cried Aladoree.
“Our ship. We left it wrecked, under the yellow sea, with Adam Ulnar on board.”
“Adam Ulnar!” Her voice was edged with scorn. “Then he has gone back to his allies.”
She looked at John Star oddly.
“It looks,” he admitted, “as if he had. He could communicate with the Medusae by radio. He must have called them, got them to raise the ship and help repair it.”
They watched the Purple Dream, flying under the vast black vanes of the Medusae’s flier, its tiny torpedo shape no more than a silver mote. Blue flame burst from its rockets as it approached the black city, and it slanted down athwart the red sky, the other huge machine hanging near above it, on thundering wings of eerie green fire. It slowed, came at last to rest on a tower of the black wall, in view of them. The black ship landed close beside it.
For a few minutes, they all stared at it, silent with the intensity of their desires.
“We must get that ship!” Jay Kalam whispered, at last.
“It would take us to the system,” breathed Aladoree, voiceless. “We could find iron. We could set up AKKA. Save at least a remnant of humanity.”
“We could try,” agreed Jay Kalam. “They would follow us from here, of course, with their weapons that throw flaming suns! And the Belt of Peril is still above; we’d have to pass its zone of disintegration again. And all their fleet will be guarding our system, now. And the hordes of them, in the fortress on the Moon——But,” he whispered, “we could try.”
“But how?” rasped Hal Samdu hoarsely.
“That’s the first question. It’s miles to where the ship is, across the jungle. On top of a sheer wall, a mile high. Nothing could reach it but a flying thing. And that black flier is beside it, apparently to guard it. How?”
His eyes fell, then, on John Star, who was staring fixedly at the wings of the creature he had killed, glittering beside them on the black sand.
“What is it, John?” he demanded, his low voice strangely tense. “You look——”
“Nothing could reach the top of that wall except a flying thing,” John Star said slowly, absently. “But I think—I think I see a way.”
“You mean—to fly?”
Jay Kalam searched his intent, haggard face, looked at the long, splendid wings at which he stared, sheets of sapphire, veined with red.
“Yes. I used to fly,” said John Star. “At the legion academy—gliding. One year I was gliding champion of the academy.”
