The Ship held an ancient secret that meant
life to the dying cast-aways of the void.
Then Wes Kirk revealed the secret to his
people's enemies--and found that his betrayal
meant the death of the girl he loved.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Fall 1943.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Wes Kirk shut his teeth together, hard. He turned his back on Ma Kirk
and the five younger ones huddled around the box of heat-stones and
went to the doorway, padding soft and tight with the anger in him.
He shoved the curtain of little skins aside and crouched there with his
thick shoulders fitted into the angle of the jamb, staring out, cold
wind threading in across his splayed and naked feet.
The hackles rose golden and stiff across Kirk's back. He said carefully,
"I would like to kill the Captain and the First Officer and the Second
Officer and all the little Officers, and the Engineers, and all their
families."
His voice carried inside on the wind eddies. Ma Kirk yelled,
"Wes! You come here and let that curtain down! You want us all to
freeze?" Her dark-furred shoulders moved rhythmically over the rocking
child. She added sharply, "Besides, that's fool's talk, Jakk Randl's
talk, and only gets the sucking-plant."
"Who's to hear it?" Kirk raised his heavy overlids and let his pupils
widen, huge liquid drops spreading black across his eyeballs, sucking
the dim grey light into themselves, forcing line and shape out of
blurred nothingness. He made no move to drop the curtain.
The same landscape he had stared at since he was able to crawl by
himself away from the box of heat-stones. Flat grey plain running
right and left to the little curve of the horizon. Rocks on it, and
edible moss. Wind-made gullies with grey shrubs thick in their bottoms,
guarding their sour white berries with thorns and sacs of poisoned dust
that burst when touched.
Between the fields and the gullies there were huts like his own, sunk
into the earth and sodded tight. A lot of huts, but not as many as
there had been, the old ones said. The Hans died, and the huts were
empty, and the wind and the earth took them back again.
Kirk raised his shaggy head. The light of the yellow star they called
Sun caught in the huge luminous blackness of his eyes.
Beyond the Hansquarter, just where the flat plain began to rise, were
the Engineers. Not many of them any more. You could see the dusty lumps
where the huts had been, the tumbled heaps of metal that might have
meant something once, a longer time ago than anyone could remember. But
there were still plenty of huts standing. Two hands and one hand and
a thumb of them, full of Engineers who said how the furrows should be
laid for the planting but did nothing about the tilling of them.
And beyond the Engineers--the Officers.
The baby cried. Ma Kirk shrilled at her son, and two of the younger
ones fought over a bone with no meat on it, rolling and snapping on the
dirt floor. Kirk shifted his head forward to shut out the sound of them
and followed the line of the plain upward with sullen, glowing eyes.
The huts of the Engineers were larger than those in the Hansquarter.
The huts of the Officers were not much larger than the Engineers', but
there were more of them and they climbed higher up the grey slope.
Five, nearly six hands of them, with the Captain's metal-roofed place
highest of all.
Highest and nearest, right under the titanic shape lifting jagged
against the icy stars from the crest of the ridge.
The Ship.
Kirk's voice was soft in his thick throat. "I would like to kill them,"
he said. "I would like to kill them all."
"Yah!" cried a shrill voice over his shoulder. "All but the Captain's
yellow daughter!"
* * * * *
Kirk spun angrily around. Lil, next below himself, danced back out of
reach, her kilt of little skins flying around her thin hips.
"Yah!" she said again, and wrinkled her flat nose. "I've seen you
looking at her. All yellow from head to foot and beautiful pink lids to
her eyes. You wouldn't kill _her_, I bet!"
"I bet I'll half kill you if you don't shut up!"
Lil stuck out her tongue. Kirk aimed a cuff at her. She danced behind
his arm and jerked the curtain down and shot away again, making two
jumps over the brawling young ones and the box of heat-stones.
She squatted demurely beside Ma Kirk and said, as though nothing had
happened, "Ma says will you please not let so much heat out."
Kirk didn't say anything. He started to walk around the heat box. Lil
yelled, "Ma!"
The young ones stopped fighting, scuttling out of reach and watching
with bright moist eyes, grinning. The baby had reached the hiccoughing
stage.