"What about that door behind you?"
"There are no stones in there."
Kirk laughed. The laugh was not pleasant. He was thinking of the cold
huts of the Hans and the thin babies that cried, and Jakk Randl dying
on the pillbox wall, telling him what he'd seen.
"You lie. You bring the stones up out of the gorge and hide them here.
Jakk Randl saw your daughter doing it."
"There was only a tiny pipe of stones in the gorge. This is almost the
last of them. We used them rather than take from the community supply."
Samel smiled his lazy smile and started toward the barred door. His
eyes had a queer wild shine to them. The Captain cried out:
"Wait! Wait, and let me speak!"
Samel looked at the door and his breath made a little sob in his
throat. "All right," he said hoarsely. "I can wait."
He wasn't thinking about the heat-stones so much then. He was thinking
of the words of the legend, power and gold.
The Captain said quietly, "You can kill me, and go on. But I ask you
not to. I ask you to believe me. There are no heat-stones in that room.
The bar hasn't been lifted since the Crash. I ask you not to violate a
sacred trust."
Kirk scowled and looked at the bar. It didn't look as though it had
been lifted since the Crash. He began to be uneasy.
Samel spoke silkily. "Sacred trust, eh? Something that belongs to us,
the Piruts. Something we've waited for, longer than anyone knows."
The Captain nodded. He seemed very tired. "I should have remembered
that. The Legend grows a little hazy.... You Piruts caused the Crash.
You followed our Ship and attacked it, and in the battle your own ship
was destroyed. You made land somehow in little ships carried inside the
big one. After we crashed you tried again to take what is in the Ship,
and we drove you out into the gullies and kept you there."
"Ever since," answered Samel huskily. "Starving and freezing."
"We've starved and frozen, too, all of us--Officers and Hans alike. But
we had a sacred trust in this Ship. We've guarded it. I think at first
the Officers of that day thought that someone would come from--from
wherever the Ship came from, and take them back. No one ever did. And
in the struggle to live, everything has been lost. The only thing
left is the knowledge that we Officers had a duty, a trust, and we've
guarded this door night and day since the Crash."
"What's behind it?" asked Samel. "What's behind it?"
"Even that is lost."
Samel laughed and started forward. He caught the Captain's half-raised
spear in his hands and broke it and pushed him away with the yellow
girl. He took hold of the bar and lifted. Kirk and the packed mass of
Piruts swayed forward like one man.
It fought him. He heaved on the bar, and sweat ran dark on his red
body-hair and the veins stood like ropes on his forehead, but the rust
held. Samel struggled, crying like a child.
Kirk thought: "He told the truth, the Captain did. No heat-stones, and
I've let the Piruts in." He began to shiver. He started to shout--
The bar screamed like a man in torment and swung back in Samel's hands,
and the door was open.
* * * * *
The pale glow of the heat-stones filtered through the opening. Kirk
saw a box with black marks on it--DANGER. ATOBLAST HIGH EXPLOSIVE--and
above that a much smaller box made of metal, on a shelf. The black
marks on the first box didn't mean anything to anybody. The father of
the Captain's great-grandfather had remembered that there was such a
thing as reading.
Samel reached out and took the smaller box, which was at eye level,
and locked with a heavy lock, and sealed. He put it down and took the
Captain's broken spear and tore the lock away.
The Captain and his yellow daughter stood like dead things, watching.
Kirk's heart was pounding in his throat. The secret of the Ship, the
sacred thing, the gold and power that had caused the Crash--
Samel's big red hand pulled out a flat bundle of metal sheets, marked
with marks like the first box.
_Treaty of Alliance between the Sovereign Earth and the Union of
Jovian Moons, providing for Earthly colonization and development of the
said Moons, and mutual aid against Aggressor Worlds._
A single sheet fell out of the bundle. "... _have taken the precaution
of sending the treaty secretly in a ship of colonists, in care of the
captain who knows nothing of its nature. It has been rumored that our
mutual enemy, the Martio-Venusian Alliance, may try to intercept it,
possibly with the aid of hired pirates. This would, as you know, mean
war. It is my prayer that the treaty will safely_...."
Samel stared at the bundle. He shook it, his face looking dazed, like a
man just hit in the stomach. Then he threw it down and shook the box.
It was empty. In a black fury he turned on the larger box and ripped
the cover back, and there was nothing under it but thick transparent
bottles with heavy caps, holding a tiny bit of matter in oily liquid.
There was silence in the room, thick with the breathing of stunned and
angry men.
"Power," said Samel. "Power, and gold! Nothing! Nothing to make even a
spear-head!"
He picked up the empty box and the bundle and hurled them out through
the riven wall into the gorge. Then he caught up the larger box and
threw it after.
Kirk had time to see tears running out of Samel's eyes. After that
there was an agony of light and sound and motion, and then nothing.
The first thing he knew about was heat. More heat than he'd ever felt
in his life, pouring over him. He opened his eyes.
Men were piled against the walls, beginning to struggle back to life.
The Ship had changed position. Samel was crouched with his arms around
his knees, motionless, staring at nothing. The yellow girl was helping
her father out of a mound of Piruts. And it was hot.
There was light beating in through the broken wall. Kirk crawled over
and peered out, his pupils contracted to little points.
The bottom of the gorge was split open, and it was burning. The father
of the Captain's great-grandfather had remembered vaguely something
about radioactivity and crystalline rocks that harnessed it and made
heat. The father of _his_ great-grandfather had had great hopes for
the unique form of radiation and what it could be made to do. But all
his time was taken hunting meat and heat-stones, and growing moss.
The heavy heart of the little world was burning up through the crack,
and for the first time, Kirk was really warm.
Kirk put his hand on Samel's shoulder. "You got heat," he said. "That's
better than power and gold, whatever they are."
Samel shivered and closed his eyes. His hands went with blind speed to
Kirk's throat and closed, hard. His mouth was twisted, like a child
crying with pain.
* * * * *
Kirk clawed at his thumbs. "Don't be a fool!" he croaked. "There's heat
now. Heat for everybody. The kids won't cry any more. Samel, bring your
people in out of the gullies!"
"Heat," repeated Samel. "Yeah." He took his hands away slowly. "There's
that, isn't there? Heat."
The Captain echoed, "Heat." He went to the broken wall and blinked at
the light. "The heat-stones were almost gone. I thought we were going
to die. And now...." He shook his shoulders, like a man freed of a
burden. "Now there's no more need to guard the Ship. Perhaps that's
what we've been guarding it for, to save us in time of need."