Dancing fire, growing, growing, glinting on his flesh, darting through
his blood, his brain. It was not like this in the solariums, with their
pretty trees. It was pleasure there, tantalizing, heady pleasure. It
was exciting, and strange. But this....
His body began to move, to arch itself into strong writhing curves. He
thought he could not endure the lovely, lovely pain.
Kor Hal's voice boomed down some huge fateful distance. "The wise men
of Caer Dhu were not so wise. They found the secret of Shanga, and they
escaped their wars and their troubles by fleeing backward along the
path of evolution. Do you know what happened to them? They perished,
Earthman! In one generation, Caer Dhu vanished from the face of Mars."
It was getting hard to answer, hard to think. Winters said hoarsely,
"Did it matter? They were happy, while they lived."
"Are you happy, Earthman?"
"Yes!" he panted. "Yes!"
The words were only half articulate. Twisting, rolling on the hide
rugs, in the grip of such magnificent, unholy sensation as he had never
dreamed of before, Burk Winters was happy. The fire of Shanga blazed
down upon him like a wicked sun, and all his troubles were melting
away, and there was nothing left but joy.
Again, Kor Hal laughed.
* * * * *
After that, Winters was not sure of anything. His mind rocked, and
there were periods of darkness. When he was conscious, he knew only a
feeling of _strangeness_. But he carried one memory with him, at least
part way down that eerie road.
During a lucid period, a space of only a minute or two, he thought that
one of the stones had rolled back to reveal a quartzite screen, and
that through the screen a face looked at him, watching as he bathed
naked in the beautiful flame.
A woman's face. Martian, high-bred, with strong delicate bones and
arrogant brows, and a red mouth that would be like a bitter-sweet fruit
to kiss. Her eyes were golden as the fire, and as hot, and proud, and
scornful.
There must have been a microphone in the wall, for she spoke and he
heard her voice, full of a sweet cruel magic. She called his name. He
could not rise, but he managed to crawl toward her, and to his reeling
brain she was part of the unearthly force that played with him. A
destruction and a fascination, as irresistible as death.
To his alien eyes, she was not as lovely as Jill. But there was a power
in her. And her red mouth taunted him, and the curve of her bare
shoulders drove him to madness.
"You're strong," she said. "You will live, until the end. And that is
well, Burk Winters."
He tried to speak, but he could no longer form the words.
She smiled. "You have challenged me, Earthman. I know. You've
challenged Shanga. You're brave, and I like brave men. You're also
a fool, and I like fools, because they give me sport. I'm looking
forward, Earthman, to the moment when you reach the end of your search!"
He tried again to speak, and failed, and then the night and the silence
came to stay. He took the sound of her mocking laughter with him into
the dark.
* * * * *
He did not think of himself now as Captain Burk Winters, but only by
the short personal name of Burk. The stones upon which he lay were cold
and hard. It was pitch dark, but his eyes and ears were very keen. He
could tell by the sound of his breathing that he was in a closed space,
and he did not like it.
A low growl rumbled in his throat. The hairs stiffened at the back of
his neck. He tried to remember how he had come here. Something had
happened, something to do with fire, but he did not know what, or why.
Only one thing he knew. He was searching for something. It was gone,
and he wanted it back. The wanting was a pain in him. He could not
remember what the object was that he wanted, but the need for it was
greater than any obstacle short of death.
He rose and began to explore his prison.
Almost at once he found an opening. Cautious testing told him that
there was a passage beyond. He could see nothing, but the air that blew
in to him was very heavy with strange smells. Instinct told him that it
was a trap. He crouched irresolute, his hands opening and closing in
desire for a weapon. There was no weapon. Presently he went into the
passage, moving without sound.
He went a long way, his shoulders brushing stone on either side. Then
he saw light ahead, red and flickering, and the air brought him the
taint of smoke, and the smell of man.
Very, very slowly, the creature called Burk padded toward the light.
He came close to the end of the tunnel, and suddenly a barred gate
dropped behind him with a ringing clash. He could not go back.
He did not wish to go back. Enemies were in front of him, and he wished
to fight. He knew now that he could not come upon them secretly.
Flexing his great chest, he leaped out boldly from the tunnel mouth.
The tossing glare of torches dazzled his eyes, and a wild mob howl
deafened him. He stood alone on a great block--the old slave block of
Valkis, though he did not know that. Men and women thronged the square,
leaving a wide open space around the block. They stared up, jeering at
the Earthman who had tasted the forbidden fruit that even the soulless
men of the Low Canals would not touch.
The creature called Burk was still a man, but a man already shadowed by
the ape. During the hours he had bathed in the light of Shanga, he had
changed physically. Bone and flesh had altered under the accelerated
urging of glands and increased metabolism.
Already a big, powerful man, he had thickened and coarsened along
lines of brutish strength. His jaw and brow ridges jutted. Thick hair
covered his chest and limbs and extended in a rudimentary mane down the
back of his neck. His deep-set eyes had a hard and cunning gleam of
intelligence, but it was the intelligence of the primitive mind that
had learned to speak and make fire and weapons, and no more than that.
Half crouching, he glared down at the crowd. He did not know who these
men were, he hated them. They were of another tribe, and their very
smell was alien. They hated him, too. The air bristled with their
enmity.
His gaze fell on a man who stepped out lightly and proudly into the
empty space. He did not remember that this man's name was Kor Hal.
He did not notice that Kor Hal had shed the white tunic of the Trade
Cities for the kilt and girdle of the Low Canals, nor that he wore in
his ears the pierced gold rings of Barrakesh, and was now honestly
himself--a bandit, born and bred among a race of bandits who had been
civilized for so long that they could afford to forget it.
Burk knew only that this man was his particular enemy.
"Captain Burk Winters," said Kor Hal. "Man of the tribe of Terra--lords
of the spaceways, builders of the Trade Cities, masters of greed and
rapine."
His voice carried over the packed square, though he did not shout.
Burk watched him, his eyes like blinking red sparks in the torchlight,
weaving slightly on his feet, his hands swinging loose and hungry. He
did not understand the words, but they were threat and insult.
"Look at him, oh men of Valkis!" cried Kor Hal. "He is our master now.
His government kings it over the City-States of Mars. Our pride is
stripped, our wealth is gone. What have we left, oh children of a dying
world?"
The answer that rang from the walls of Valkis was soft and wordless,
the opening chord of a hymn written in hell.
Someone threw a stone.
* * * * *
Burk came down off the slave block in a great effortless spring and
sped across the square, straight for Kor Hal's throat.
A laugh went up, mirth that was half a cat-scream of sheer savagery.
Like one supple creature, the crowd moved. Torchlight flashed from
knife-blades and jewels and eyes of glittering green and topaz,
and the small chiming bells, and the points of the deadly spiked
knuckle-dusters. Long black tongues of whips licked out with a hiss and
a crack.
Kor Hal waited until Burk almost reached him. Then he bent and pivoted
in the graceful Martian savatte. His foot caught Burk under the chin
and sent him sprawling.
As he rolled half stunned, Kor Hal caught a whip from a man's hand.
"That's it, Earthman!" he cried out. "Grovel! Belly down, and lick the
stones that were here before the apes of Earth had learned to walk!"
The long lash sang and bit, lacing the hairy body with red weals, and
the harsh mob scream went up--_Drive him! Drive the beast of Shanga, as
the invading beasts of old were driven by our fore-fathers!_
And they drove him, with whip and knife and spike, through the streets
of Valkis under the racing moons. Jeering, they drove him.
He fought them. Mad with fury, he fought them, but he could not come to
grips with them. When he lunged they melted before him, and each way
he turned he was met by the lash and the blade and the crippling kick.
Blood ran, but it was all his own, and the high shrill laughter of
women pursued him as he went.
He wanted to kill. The lust of killing was more red and strong within
him than his blood. But he reeled under the pain of many blows, and his
sight was dim, and where his great hands closed on flesh to tear it,
he was himself torn and driven back, dragged down by the lashes curled
around his throat.
At last there was only fear and the desire to escape.
They let him run. Along the crumbling ways of Valkis, up and down the
twisting alleys that reeked of ancient crime, they let him run. But not
too far. They blocked him off from the canal and the freedom of the
sea bottom beyond. Again and again they headed the panting, shambling
creature that had been Burk Winters, captain of the _Starflight_, and
drove it higher up the slope.
Burk moved slowly now. He snarled and his head wove blindly from side
to side in a pathetic attempt at defiance. His blood dripped hot on the
stones. And always the insolent stinging lashes drove him on.
Up and up. Past the great looming docks, with the bollards and the
scars of moored ships still on them, and the dust of their own decay
lapping dry around their feet. Four levels above the canal. Four
harbours, four cities, four epochs written in fading characters of
stone. Even the dawn-man Burk was oppressed and frightened.
There was no life here. There had been no life for a long time, even in
the lowest level. The wind had scoured and polished the empty houses,
smoothing the corners to roundness, hollowing the doors and windows,
until the work of man was almost erased. Only strange things were left,
that looked as though the wind had made them by itself out of little
mountain tops.
The people of Valkis were silent now. They drove the beast, and their
hate had not abated, but was intensified.
They walked here upon the very bones of their world. Earth was a green
star, young and rich. Here the Martians passed the marble pier where
the Kings of Valkis had moored their galleys, and the very marble was
shattered under the heel of time.
High on the ridge above the oldest city the palace of the kings looked
down at the scourging of the interloper. And in all of Valkis now there
was no sound but the whispering of little bells that was like the sigh
of wind on another world, where the women ran on their small bare feet,
ankle deep in dust.
* * * * *
Burk climbed apelike up the history of Mars. His belly was cold with a
terror of these dark places that smelled of nothing, not even of death.
He passed a place where houses had been built within the curve of a
coral reef. He clambered over the reef, and saw above him a sloping
face of rock with gaping holes that the sea had made. He climbed that,
not knowing or caring what it was.
On the level space above he passed the broken quays that had once made
safe mooring in the bay, and stopped to look back.
They were still hunting him. His flanks heaved and his eyes were
desperate. He went on, scrambling up steep narrow streets where the
paving blocks had fallen out and the houses had come down in shapeless
heaps, and his hands and feet left red prints where he put them down.
Then, at last, he was at the top of the ridge.
The great bulk of the palace loomed above him against the sky.
Primitive wisdom told him the place was dangerous. He skirted the high
wall of marble that ringed it, and suddenly his twitching nostrils
caught the scent of water.
His tongue was swollen in his mouth, his throat choked with dust. His
need was so great, with the salt bleeding and the fever of his wounds,
that he forgot his enemies and the menace of the mountain-thing behind
the wall. Breaking into a ragged lope, he went forward along the cliff
top until he came to a gateway, and plunged through it, and suddenly
there was turf under his feet, soft and cool. There were shrubs, and
flowers pale in the moonlight, heavily sweet, and dark branches against
the sky.
The gate closed silently behind him. He did not see it. He ran down a
grassy ride between rows of trees trimmed into fantastic shapes, guided
by the smell of water. Here and there were strange gleams and glints
of statuary, wrought in marble and semi-precious stones. Burk's skin
crawled with an awareness of danger, but he was too weary and too mad
with thirst to care.
The ride ended. Beyond was an open space, and in the center of it was
a great sunken tank, carved and ornamented. The water in it was like
polished jet.
Nothing stirred in the open. A wing of the palace rose beyond the tank
like a black wall, and it seemed that nothing lived there, but Burk's
hair-trigger nerves told him otherwise. He stopped in the shelter of
the trees, sniffing the air and listening.
Nothing. Darkness and silence. Burk looked at the waiting water. It
filled all his senses. Suddenly he ran toward it.
He flung himself belly down on the slabs of turquoise that paved the
brink and buried his face in the icy water and drank. Then he lay there
panting, utterly spent.
Still nothing moved.
* * * * *
Then, all at once, a long howl rose on the night, from somewhere beyond
the palace wing. Burk stiffened. He got to his hands and knees, every
hair on his body bristling with fear.
The howl was answered by a strange reptilian scream.
Now that he had satisfied his thirst, the night wind brought him many
odours. They were too numerous and tangled to be identified, except
for a strong musky taint that made his flesh crawl with instinctive
loathing. He did not know what sort of creature gave off that taint,
but it filled him with horror, because it seemed that he _almost
knew_--and did not want to.
He wanted only to get away from that place, that was so full of secret
life and hidden menace and silence.
He began to move toward the trees, back the way he had come. Slowly,
because he was wounded and very weak. And then, quite suddenly, he saw
her.
She had come without sound into the open space, out of the shelter of
huge flowering shrubs. She stood not far away, in the shifting glow
of the little racing moons, watching him. She was shy and large-eyed,
poised for flight. The hair that hung down her back and the shining
down that covered her body were the colour of the moonlight.
Burk stopped. A tremor went through him. All his sense of loss and his
desperate searching came back to him, and with them a desire to be
closer to this slender she.