Sunlight glinted on the flat surface of the Undying Sea. Near its sandy
shore, an almost naked man clambered wet and dripping from its waters.
In his right hand he carried a giant axe. In his left was a length of
clay tubing. He paused and tossed the tube into the water, watched the
ripples spread as it hit and sank.
Thor Masterson turned his face toward the black hulk of mountain far to
the west. Around his loins was wrapped a cloth fitted with strips of
toughened leather. Soft skin sandals protected his feet from the bite
and burn of hot sands and rocks.
He ran smoothly, easily as the American Indian, at a lope that
decimated distance. When sweat beaded his body, he found a pool and
lay in its cool waters until fit to go on. Hammering away at him was
the remembrance of the Outlaw settlement, of the androids storming the
walls, of the urns rolling forward and tilting. Once in a while a stone
from Yorg's crude catapults would overturn an urn, but the hits would
be scarce.
While the attack went on, he lay on a smooth table and disassociated
his astral self from his body. In spirit form he roamed the planet,
seeking Aava. Deep in the bowels of the black mountain he had finally
found him.
Thor dared not reveal his presence, or Aava would have lashed out with
that titanic power that was destructive even to his projected self.
Instead, he went down from the thin crust of rock over Aava, sinking
through the golden granules of what had once been a great desert, to
the fine crust of jewel-embedded rock that was the roof of Aava's cave.
Between jewels, hovering in rock and sand, Thor had looked down on the
Green Flame.
Aava was verdant brilliance in the red quartz oval, his inner fires
moving fluidly, pulsing, beating. He seemed to slumber, thoughts far
away. Thor knew where his thoughts were: at the Outlaw settlement.
Thor looked around him, studying the thin crust of rock, the jewels,
the over-hanging sands. Beneath the rock crust was a lip of stone
bridge, five feet down from the rock roof. Thor had grinned, and slid
back up through the sand and stone.
The rock cut into his feet as he climbed. Up sheer cliffsides, using
fingers to clutch at stone projections, digging holes with his toes
where no holds ought to be dug, hugging stone with his chest and belly,
he went. By inch and by foot he climbed.
Night came while he stood on a yard-wide natural path. Thor grunted,
eyeing it. Sleep was what he wanted, sleep was what his tired muscles
craved. But he went on.
Into the darkness, where a misstep would send him plummeting to jagged
rocks thousands of feet below, Thor crept. He crawled, vertically.
Above him he could see green light, faint tendrils of it.
That was the crevice, the entrance to the Cave of Aava.
* * * * *
And at the Outlaw settlement, Peter Gordon whistled arrows at the heads
of the androids surging through the break in the walls that had just
been blasted by the urns. But arrows and spears could not stay such
as the androids. With sword and axe they hewed their path above the
bleeding, dying corpses of the outlaws.
Karola shuddered beside him, handing him arrows. "Will Thor find Aava?
Will he be in time to help us?"
"Jove, I hope so. But it looks bad, Karola. Very bad."
The girl grimaced, and closed white fingers on the hilt of a slim
dagger. "They'll never take me back. Never!"
"Got the bounder!... No, I know. Aava hopes to breed a race of living
beings with artificial insemination. But he needs women for that, and
so far we've kept him from them--"
Below the balcony where they stood, they saw Slag and Yorg lead a
charge with club and sword. The red dwarf howled his oaths as he
slammed and battered at android skulls. Yorg, grunting and panting,
used his blade like a scalpel.
"They're holding, Karola. The jolly blighters are driving them back."
"No, no. There--another blast by Aava-in-the-urn. Another group!"
The fresh androids drove into Slag and Yorg's flank, wedged in the
screaming fighters, threw them back on themselves. A hairy red arm
wielded a club like a blackjack. A white-furred arm cut and stabbed
with a sword. But the androids came forward. They rolled over the
outlaws.
Gordon said sadly, "We'd best fall back, Karola. We can't hold them any
longer."
* * * * *
Here in the cave opening, Thor stood up and moved his axe, testing its
heft. Green light danced and flared on the broad blades. Thor grinned
wolfishly, and went forward.
Stepping carefully, using the shadows of the stalagmites to hide his
giant frame, Thor went deeper into the cave, closer to the green flame
that flared in the bowels of the mountain. It was warm here, for Aava
was a thing of fire.
On the skin sandals that gave no sound, he stepped forward. He walked
in the myriad light that the flame plucked from the gems and spread
throughout his cave.
He could see the bridge of rock that lifted its stone arc high to the
towering, shadowy roof of the cave. Up there, in the black shadows, he
could stand on that bridge and be close to the roof--close enough to
swing an axe.
Thor sped silently across the empty space between tumbled rock slabs.
He leaped for the bridge and ran up its curving back.
* * * * *
Slag and Yorg bled from a score of wounds as they fought their fight by
the settlement gate with club and sword. Side by side, two against an
army, they dug bleeding feet into stone streets, and fought like madmen.
They piled androids in front and to the sides. They made a funereal
mountain of wrecked, synthetic bodies.
Slag and Yorg would die here.
They knew it, yet they fought on. The others needed time to get to the
circular tower, to fight their last stand against Aava. So the club
and the sword stayed swinging, and the pile grew higher.
Now they could hear the trundling of the urn-wagons.