Raf lay on his back, cushioned in the sand, his face turned up to the
sky. Moisture smarted in his eyes, trickled down his cheeks as he
tried to will himself to _see_! The yellow haze which had been his day
had faded into grayness and now to the dark he feared so much that he
dared not even speak of it. Somewhere over him the stars were icy
points of light--but he could not see them. They were very far away,
but no farther than he was from safety, from comfort (now the spacer
seemed a haven of ease), from the expert treatment which might save,
save his sight!
He supposed he should be thankful to that other one who was a slow
voice speaking out of the mist, a thought now and then when his inner
panic brought him almost to the breaking point. In some manner he had
been carried out of the reach of the aliens, treated for his searing
wounds, and now he was led along, fed, tended--Why didn't they go away
and leave him alone! He had no chance of reaching the spacer--
It was so easy to remember those mountains, the heights over which he
had lifted the flitter. There wasn't one chance in a million of his
winning over those and across the miles of empty plains beyond to
where the _RS 10_ stood waiting, ready to rise again. The crew must
believe him dead. His fists clenched upon sand, and it gritted between
his fingers, sifted away. Why wasn't he dead! Why had that barbarian
dragged him here, continued to coax him, put food into his hands,
those hands which were only vague shapes when he held them just before
his straining, aching eyes.
"It is not as bad as you think," the words came again out of the fog,
spoken with a gentleness which rasped Raf's nerves. "Healing is not
done in a second, or even in a day. You cannot force the return of
strength--"
A hand, warm, vibrant with life, pressed on his forehead--a human,
flesh-covered hand, not one of the cool, scaled paws of the furred
people. Though those hands, too, had been laid upon him enough during
the past few days, steadying him, leading him, guiding him to food and
water. Now, under that firm, knowing touch he felt some of the
ever-present fear subside, felt a relaxation.
"My ship--They will take off without me!" He could not help but voice
that plaint, as he had so many times before during that foggy,
nightmare journey.
"They have not done so yet."
He struggled up, flung off that calming hand, turned angrily toward
where he thought the other was. "How can you be sure?"
"Word has come. The ship is still there, though the small flyer has
returned to it."
This assurance was something new. Raf's suspicions could not stand up
against the note of certainty in the other's voice. He got awkwardly
to his feet. If the ship was still here, then they must still think
him alive--They might come back! He had a chance--a real chance!
"Then they are waiting for me--They'll come!"
He could not see the soberness with which Dalgard listened to that.
The star ship had not lifted, that message had found its way south,
passed along by hopper and merman. But the scout doubted if the
explorers were waiting for the return of Raf. He believed that they
would not have left the city had they not thought the pilot already
dead.
As to going north now--His picture of the land ahead had been built up
from reports gained from the sea people. It could be done, but with
Raf to be nursed and guided, lacking even the outrigger Dalgard had
used in home waters, it would take days--weeks, probably--to cover
the territory which lay between them and the plains where the star
ship had planeted.
But he owed Raf a great deal, and it was summer, the season of warm
calms. So far he had not been able to work out any plan for a return
to his own land. It might be that they were both doomed to exile. But
it was not necessary to face that drear future yet, not until they had
expended every possible effort. So now he said willingly enough, "We
are going north."
Raf sat down again in the sand. He wanted to run, to push on until his
feet were too tired to carry him any farther. But now he fought that
impulse, lay down once more. Though he doubted if he could sleep.
Dalgard watched the stars, sketched out a map of action for the
morning. They must follow the shore line where they could keep in
touch with the mermen, though along this coast the sea people did not
come to land with the freedom their fellows showed on the eastern
continent--they had lived too long in fear of Those Others.
But since the war party had reached the coast, there had been no sign
of any retaliation, and as several days passed, Dalgard had begun to
believe that they had little to fear. Perhaps the blow they had struck
at the heart of the citadel had been more drastic than they had hoped.
He had listened since that hour in the gorge for the shrilling of one
of the air hounds. And when it did not come the thought that maybe it
was the last of its kind had been heartening.
At last the scout lay down beside the off-world man, listening to the
soft hiss of waves on sand, the distant cluttering of night insects.
And his last waking thought was a wish for his bow.
There was another day of patient plodding; two, three. Raf, led by the
hand, helped over rocks and obstacles which were only dark blurs to
his watering eyes, raged inwardly and sometimes outwardly, against the
slowness of their advance, his own helplessness. His fear grew until
he refused to credit the fact that the blurs were sharpening in
outline, that he could now count five fingers on the hand he sometimes
waved despairingly before his face.
When he spoke of the future, he never said "if we reach the ship" but
always "when," refusing to admit that perhaps they would not be in
time. And Dalgard by his anxiety, tried to get more news from the
north.
"When we get there, will you come back to earth with us?" the pilot
asked suddenly on the fifth day.
It was a question Dalgard had once asked himself. But now he knew the
answer; there was only one he dared give.
"We are not ready--"
"I don't understand what you mean." Raf was almost querulous. "It is
your home world. Pax is gone; the Federation would welcome you
eagerly. Just think what it would mean--a Terran colony among the
stars!"
"A Terran colony." Dalgard put out a hand, steadied Raf over a stretch
of rough shingle. "Yes, once we were a Terran colony. But--can you now
truthfully swear that I am a Terran like yourself?"
Raf faced the misty figure, trying to force his memory to put features
there, to sharpen outlines. The scout was of middle height, a little
shorter in stature than the crewmen with whom the pilot had lived so
long. His hair was fair, as was his skin under its sun tan. He was
unusually light on his feet and possessed a wiry strength Raf could
testify to. But there was that disconcerting habit of mind reading and
other elusive differences.
Dalgard smiled, though the other could not see that.
"You see," deliberately he used the mind touch as if to accent those
differences the more, "once our roots were the same, but now from
these roots different plants have grown. And we must be left to
ourselves a space before we mingle once more. My father's father's
father's father was a Terran, but I am--what? We have something that
you have not, just as you have developed during centuries of
separation qualities of mind and body we do not know. You live with
machines. And, since we could not keep machines in this world, having
no power to repair or rebuild, we have been forced to turn in other
directions. To go back to the old ways now would be throwing away
clues to mysteries we have not yet fully explored, turning aside from
discoveries ready to be made. To you I am a barbarian, hardly higher
in the scale of civilization than the mermen--"
Raf flushed, would have given a quick and polite denial, had he not
known that his thoughts had been read. Dalgard laughed. His amusement
was not directed against the pilot, rather it invited him to share the
joke. And reluctantly, Raf's peeling lips relaxed in a smile.
"But," he offered one argument the other had not cited, "what if you
do go down this other path of yours so far that we no longer have any
common meeting ground?" He had forgotten his own problem in the
other's.
"I do not believe that will ever happen. Perhaps our bodies may
change; climate, food, ways of life can all influence the body. Our
minds may change; already my people with each new generation are
better equipped to use the mind touch, can communicate more clearly
with the animals and the mermen. But those who were in the beginning
born of Terra shall always have a common heritage. There are and will
be other lost colonies among the stars. We could not have been the
only outlaws who broke forth during the rule of Pax, and before the
blight of that dictatorship, there were at least two expeditions that
went forth on Galactic explorations.
"A thousand years from now stranger will meet with stranger, but when
they make the sign of peace and sit down with one another, they shall
find that words come more easily, though one may seem outwardly
monstrous to the other. Only, _now_ we must go our own way. We are
youths setting forth on our journey of testing, while the Elders wish
us well but stand aside."
"You don't want what we have to offer?" This was a new idea to Raf.
"Did you truly want what the city people had to offer?"
That caught the pilot up. He could remember with unusual distinctness
how he had disliked, somehow feared the things they had brought from
the city storehouse, how he had privately hoped that Hobart and Lablet
would be content to let well enough alone and not bring that knowledge
of an alien race back with them. If he had not secretly known that
aversion, he would not have been able to destroy the globe and the
treasures piled about it.
"But"--his protest was hot, angry--"we are not _them_! We can do much
for you."
"Can you?" The calm question sank into his mind as might a stone into
a troubled pool, and the ripples of its passing changed an idea or
two. "I wish that you might see Homeport. Perhaps then it would be
easier for you to understand. No, your knowledge is not corrupt, it
would not carry with it the same seeds of disaster as that of Those
Others. But it would be too easy for us to accept, to walk a softer
road, to forget what we have so far won. Just give us time--"
Raf cupped his palms over his watering eyes. He wanted badly to see
clearly the other's face, to be able to read his expression. Yet it
seemed that somehow he _was_ able to see that sober face, as sincere
as the words in his mind.
"You will come again," Dalgard said with certainty. "And we shall be
waiting because you, Raf Kurbi, made it possible." There was something
so solemn about that that Raf looked up in surprise.
"When you destroyed the core of Those Other's holding, you gave us our
chance. For had you not done that we, the mermen, the other harmless,
happy creatures of this world, would have been wiped out. There would
be no new beginning here, only a dark and horrible end."
Raf blinked; to his surprise that other figure standing in the direct
sunlight did not waver, and beyond the proudly held head was a stretch
of turquoise sky. He could see the color!
"Yes, you shall see with your eyes--and with your mind," now Dalgard
spoke aloud. "And if the Spirit which rules all space is kind, you
shall return to your own people. For you have served His cause well."
Then, as if he were embarrassed by his own solemnity, Dalgard ended
with a most prosaic inquiry: "Would you like shellfish for eating?"
Moments later, wading out into the water-swirled sand, his boots
kicked off, his toes feeling for the elusive shelled creatures no one
could see, Raf felt happier, freer than he could ever remember having
been before. It was going to be all right. He could _see_! He would
find the ship! He laughed aloud at nothing and heard an answering
chuckle and then a whoop of triumph from the scout stooping to claw
one of their prey out of hiding.
It was after they had eaten that Dalgard asked another question, one
which did not seem important to Raf. "You have a close friend among
the crew of your ship?"
Raf hesitated. Now that he was obliged to consider the point, did he
have any friends--let alone a close one--among the crew of the _RS
10_? Certainly he did not claim Wonstead who had shared his
quarters--he honestly did not care if he never saw him again. The
officers, the experts such as Lablet--quickly face and character of
each swept through his mind and was as swiftly discarded. There was
Soriki--He could not claim the com-tech as any special friend, but at
least during their period together among the aliens he had come to
know him better.
Now, as if Dalgard had read his mind--and he probably had, thought
Raf with a flash of the old resentment--he had another question.
"And what was he--is he like?"
Though the pilot could see little reason for this he answered as best
he could, trying to build first a physical picture of the com-tech and
then doing a little guessing as to what lay under the other's
space-burned skin.
Dalgard lay on his back, gazing up into the blue-green sky. Yet Raf
knew that he was intent on every word. A merman padded up, settled
down cross-legged beside the scout, as if he too were enthralled by
the pilot's halting description of a man he might never see again.
Then a second of the sea people came and a third, until Raf felt that
some sort of a noiseless council was in progress. His words trailed
away, and then Dalgard offered an explanation.
"It will take us many, many days to reach the place where your ship
is. And before we are able to complete that journey your friends may
be gone. So we shall try something else--with your aid."
Raf fingered the little bundle of his possessions. Even his helmet
with its com phone was missing.
"No," again Dalgard read his mind. "Your machines are of no use to you
now. We shall try _our_ way."
"How?" Wild thoughts of a big signal fire--But how could that be
sighted across a mountain range. Of some sort of an improvised com
unit--
"I said _our_ way." There was a smile on Dalgard's face, visible to
Raf's slowly clearing vision. "We shall provide another kind of
machine, and these"--he waved at the mermen--"will give us the power,
or so we hope. Lie here," he gestured to the sand beside him, "and
think only of your friend in the ship, in his natural surroundings.
Try to hold that picture constant in your mind, letting no other
thought trouble it."
"Do you mean--send a message to him mentally!" Raf's reply was half
protest.
"Did I not so reach you when we were in the city--even before I knew
of you as an individual?" the scout reminded him. "And such messages
are doubly possible when they are sent from friend to friend."
"But we were close then."
"That is why--" again Dalgard indicated the mermen. "For them this is
the natural means of communication. They will pick up your reaching
thought, amplify it with their power, beam it north. Since your friend
deals with matters of communication, let us hope that he will be
sensitive to this method."
Raf was only half convinced that it might work. But he remembered how
Dalgard had established contact with him, before, as the scout had
pointed out, they had met. It was that voiceless cry for aid which had
pulled him into this adventure in the first place. It was only fitting
that something of the same process give _him_ help in return.
Obediently he stretched out on the sand and closed his dim eyes,
trying to picture Soriki in the small cabin which held the com,
slouched in his bucket seat, his deceptive posture that of a lax
idler, as he had seen him so many times. Soriki--his broad face with
its flat cheekbones, its wide cheerful mouth, its heavy-lidded eyes.
And having fixed Soriki's face, he tried to believe that he was now
confronting the com-tech, speaking directly to him.
"Come--come and get me--south--seashore--Soriki come and get me!" The
words formed a kind of chant, a chant aimed at that familiar face in
its familiar surroundings. "South--come and get me--" Raf struggled to
think only of that, to allow nothing to break through that chant or
disturb his picture of the scene he had called from memory.
How long that attempt at communication lasted the pilot could not
tell, for somehow he slipped from the deep concentration into sleep,
dreamless and untroubled, from which he awoke with the befogged
feeling that something important had happened. But had he gotten
through?
The ring of mermen was gone, and it was dawn, gray, chill with the
forewarnings of rain in the air. He was reassured because he was
certain that in spite of the gloom his sight was a fraction clearer
than it had been the day before. But had they gotten through? As he
arose, brushing the sand from him, he saw the scout splashing out of
the sea, a fish impaled on his spear.
"Did we get through?" Raf blurted out.
"Since your friend cannot reply with the mind touch, we do not know.
But later we shall try again." To Raf's peering gaze Dalgard's face
had a drawn, gaunt look as if he had been at hard labor during the
hours just past. He walked up the beach slowly, without the springing
step Raf had come to associate with him. As he settled down to gut the
fish with one of the bone knives, the scout repeated, "We can try
again--!"
Half an hour later, as the rain swept in from the sea, Raf knew that
they would not have to try. His head went up, his face eager. He had
known that sound too long and too well ever to mistake it--the drone
of a flitter motor cutting through the swish of the falling water.
Some trick of the cliffs behind them must be magnifying and projecting
the sound, for he could not sight the machine. But it was coming. He
whirled to Dalgard, only to see that the other was on his feet and had
taken up his spear.
"It is the flitter! Soriki heard--they're coming!" Raf hastened to
assure him.
For the last time he saw Dalgard's slow, warm smile, clearer than he
had ever seen it before. Then the scout turned and trotted away,
toward a fringing rock wall. Before he dropped out of sight behind
that barrier he raised the spear in salute.
"Swift and fortunate voyaging!" He gave the farewell of Homeport.
Then Raf understood. The colonist meant just what he had said: he
wanted no contact with the space ship. To Raf he had owed a debt and
now that was paid. But the time was not yet when the men of Astra and
the men of Terra should meet. A hundred years from now perhaps--or a
thousand--but not yet. And remembering what had summoned the flitter
winging toward him, Raf drew a deep breath. What would the men of
Astra accomplish in a hundred years? What could those of Terra do to
match them in knowledge? It was a challenge, and he alone knew just
how much of a challenge. Homeport must remain his own secret. He had
been guided to this place, saved by the mermen alone. Dalgard and his
people must not exist as far as the crew of the _RS 10_ were
concerned.
For the last time he experienced the intimacy of the mind touch. "That
is it--brother!" Then the sensation was gone as the black blot of the
flitter buzzed out of the clouds.
From behind the rocks Dalgard watched the pilot enter the strange
machine. For a single moment he had an impulse to shout, to run
forward, to surrender to his desire to see the others, the ship which
had brought them through space and would, they confidently believed,
take them back to the Terra he knew only as a legend of the past. But
he mastered that desire. He had been right. The road had already
forked and there was no going back. He must carry this secret all the
rest of his life--he must be strong-willed enough so that Homeport
would never know. Time--give them time to be what they could be. Then
in a hundred years--or a thousand--But not yet!
* * * * *
"Nobody today is telling better stories of straight-forward interstellar
adventure."
--_New York Herald-Tribune_
When Raf Kurbi's Terran spaceship burst into unexplored skies
of the far planet Astra and was immediately made welcome by
the natives of a once-mighty metropolis, Kurbi was unaware of
three vital things:
One was that Astra already harbored an Earth
colony--descended from refugees from the world of the
previous century.
Two was that these men and women were facing the greatest
danger of their existence from a new outburst of the inhuman
fiends who had once tyrannized Astra.
Three was that the natives who were buying Kurbi's science
know-how were those very fiends--and their intentions were
implacably deadly for all humans, whether Earth born or STAR
BORN.
_It's an Andre Norton space adventure--and therefore the tops
in its field!_
* * * * *
Quotes from the reviews:
"All science-fiction fans will thrill to these new adventures created by
Andre Norton.... All who enjoy a good adventure about the unknown parts
of our galaxy will find this an enchanting story."
--_Jackson _(_Tenn._) _Sun_
"Superb science-fiction."
--_Montgomery Advertiser_
"Andre Norton adds another star to her literary laurels."
--_Cleveland Press_
"A good, clearly thought-out story."
--_New York Times_
"Exciting and adventure-laden."
--_Library Journal_
"Suspense and excitement.... A storyteller of the first class, this is
one of her best."
--_Fantasy & Science Fiction_
* * * * *