Their world was dark. Their Machine-God
was dead. Savage hordes threatened to overrun
them, smash them. What, then, was Flane doing
out in the desert, alone with the wreck of a
spaceship--and a strangely-wrought sword?
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Spring 1947.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The spaceship fled like a silver bullet across black nothingness. Rows
of round windows stared outward from its curved sides. Beyond the
windows whirled clouds of interstellar dust. An occasional lump of
meteoric rock rebounded from the metal hull.
To port shone the triple stars of a constellation utterly foreign to
those in the ship. To starboard gleamed the strangely altered pattern
of the constellation Hercules. Straight ahead lay the great star Deneb,
and circling around it, giant orbs shimmering in its light, were the
planets it held in its awful grip.
Closer and closer swept the ship, trailing billows of spacedust. Over
one of the planets that closely resembled the voyager's home planet in
size and density, the vessel thundered. It rocketed downward, sweeping
sidewise into the gravitational pull of the planet. It dropped into
swirling clouds, swept into sunlighted sky, roaring gustily.
Inside the ship a voice cried hysterically, "Calling captain! Calling
captain!"
"Captain responding. Over to forward jet ports."
"The forward jets are shot, sir! Unused for too long. Ever since we
left Earth, they've remained untested. Can't fix them now. No time.
Inside gravity of planet. Over."
* * * * *
The man in the captain's uniform bowed his head, eyes tightly shut.
There was bitterness in his heart, but no despair. Six hundred light
years from Earth, farther out among the stars than any man had ever
trespassed, and now, this! A hand squeezed his shoulder. He glanced
up, found the blue eyes of his wife smiling at him, heard her voice
whisper, "At least we'll go together, darling."
He patted her hand.
Through the compressed quartz panels they stared at the world unfolding
beneath them. Rolling plains covered with long grasses that swayed
gracefully before the wind bordered high, black mountains that cupped
mounds of snow at their peaks. In the distance was the blue of a sea.
"A lovely world," he whispered.
"You were right, Jon. Your calculations proved the habitability of
Deneb's planets. You would have been famous."
He chuckled, "This is one consolation, darling. But I'd hoped for so
much more than that ... a land to bring the restless spirits, where
they could dwell apart from the regimented ones, to form a new country
to call their own...."
He broke off. The ship was quivering, shuddering in the mad pace of its
unchecked flight. Thunder rolled like monumental cannonfire behind it,
as the air was displaced and rolled together.
The captain worked the controls feverishly. His hands sought by their
swiftness, by their strength, to fire those frontal jets, to stop this
deadly dash through planetal atmosphere. He bit his lips and shook his
head, whispering, "No use--no use!"
There was desert under the silvered belly of the ship. Heat waves
glimmered up from the hot sands, distorting everything. Far in the
distance lay a round yellow thing. The spaceship headed toward it, as
though at the bullseye of a target.
"We're going to hit it," said the man.
"What is it, Jon?"
Yellow and glittering, it lay like a giant's plaything, half buried in
the sand. It was a prism with clean, straight facets fitted together
that seemed to stretch out at every angle to gather in the heat from
the desert. Like a yellow diamond, it coruscated in the sunlight.
"I don't know," the man said softly. "It could be something that
dropped from the skies to bury itself in this spot, or it could be
the--the work of intelligent creatures!"
Their trajectory of flight shortened. The nose of the ship fell lower,
aimed at the prism. The noise of its passage startled two white birds
that ran on the sand. The birds ran faster, blurring along on the amber
desert.
From behind the amber prism a two-legged thing came running. In his
hand there was a flash and glitter.
"It's a man!" the woman shrieked, a red-nailed hand to her lips. "And
he has a sword in his hand."
"Poor devil," sighed the captain. "We're heading right at him. He can't
get away."
The ship came down with unbelievable rapidity. The man on the sand had
taken only a few steps from the prism when a black shadow overhauled
him. He had no time even to turn his head.
There was an explosion that ripped metal apart, that tore gaping holes
in the smooth facets of the golden prism, that sent geysers of desert
sand upward in dry showers. When the sands came down, there was only
scattered wreckage.
Like a twisted, broken toy, the spaceship lay on the sand, partially
obscuring the prism. Gaunt girders stuck up through the opened hull.
Smoke swirling from the ship's insides mixed with the falling sand.
Somewhere in the wreckage, a voice wailed in agony and despair.
I
The machine stood in the domed end of the dark temple, gleaming dully.
Above it a hemisphere of translucent metal filtered pale moonbeams that
drew flashes of silvered fire from the great metal bulk. Against the
black basalt walls, the Machine brooded sullenly. It was great, was the
Machine. It was worshipped. It held power of life and death over all
Klarn. It possessed all power. It was god.
And yet, the Machine was--dead.
A figure slipped forward from the shadows that ringed the marble floor.
From pillar to ivory pillar he crept, a hand ever on the stained
leather hilt of his sword. Moonlight flicked over the close-cropped
black hair and the tight uniform of the _dulars_ that moulded his
chest, and sheathed his long, lean thighs. Emblazoned on the chest of
his jacket was the resurgent red dragon with fire spouting between its
fangs, symbolic of his rank. A broad belt suspended his scabbard and
blade, and sweeping upward from his shoulders were the metal epaulettes
that bespoke his connection with royalty.
Flane looked around him, grinning.
He had eluded the _mekniks_. He could keep his appointment with Vawdar,
unless the _mekniks_ got to him first. Most of the _mekniks_ were
celebrating the death of his mother, the Princess Gleya. There would
be rich liqueurs and much singing, and temple harlots to dance on the
planked tabletops, sodden with the lees of spilled wine.
Flane was bitter, and savage. There was a fire in his heart that made
him lust to kill. The _mekniks_ were glad that his mother was dead,
for she was all that held the _mekniks_ and the _dulars_ together. Now
the _mekniks_ would rule Klarn, with the aid of the Darksiders. Only
Vawdar had a chance of keeping peace among the factions. And Vawdar was
a hunted man, even as was Flane.
He came and knelt before the Machine, and touched his forehead to the
cold marble floor. This was the ritual insisted upon by the _mekniks_,
who insisted that the Machine was a deity, and there was enough shrewd
caution in Flane to bow before it, just on the off chance that they
might be right.
Then he rose and went to the grilled metal girdle that kept the Machine
enclosed in its niche. He took out a strangely-wrought key and dangled
it in his hand.
Engraven on the sides of the Machine were a series of symbols.
Diamond-shaped, they were, with the tracery of a star surrounding each
diamond. One of those diamonds was the lock that would restore to life
the dead Machine. Flane hoped that the key he held would unlock the
slumbering power of the Machine. If not--well, Vawdar and he were as
good as dead, themselves.
He inserted the key in the slit-like hole of one of the diamonds and
tried to turn it.
He whispered curses, attempting to move the key by sheer force.
Another failure, he thought bitterly. Just one of the hundreds that
had failed since that day, over a quarter of a century ago, when the
Machine had hummed madly, and stopped. Those others had not mattered;
every _dular_ and _meknik_ who thought he knew the answer had tried it.
There was no penalty for failure. But now, with the _mekniks_ hot after
Vawdar who might still hold _mekniks_ and _dulars_ together, failure
meant death if they should catch him.
Flane ran his fingers over the tiny hole. He saw the star pattern
bordering the lock, like a frieze ornamenting it. He sighed. All the
diamonds had holes.
Sound came to him as he stood before the machine, in the light of
Klarn's three moons seeping in from the dome. He whirled, and half-drew
his sword. Voices floated to him, riotous with laughter and derision.
"Vawdar! They got him at last. As he was trying to get out the Dragon
Gate."
"Good news. Now if we could get the Princess' whelp, Flane!"
The man in the shadows showed his white teeth in a silent snarl of pure
hate. His knuckles tensed on the sword-hilt until they threatened to
burst the tightened skin.
"The _dulars_ would be leaderless, then. They'd have to obey us, or
we'd pull in the Darksiders--let them loot!"
One of the men grumbled, "If we have Vawdar, what use for us to miss
the celebration? Why stand guard at the Temple here?"
"The council thinks Flane might try once more to make the Machine work.
If he succeeded--well, that would mean that Klarn will spring to life.
The Darksiders, though they outnumber us all, will never dare attack.
They remember too well the weapons of the Klarnva."
Flane stirred himself, stepped forward into the shadows, stalking
toward the temple entrance where the guards talked. There were only
two of them, and Flane had a great deal of confidence in his sword-arm,
confidence that had been justified again and again.
He leaped from the darkness, his blade a thing of lightning in his
hand. The guards came around on their heels, yanking out their weapons,
laughing gutturally.
"Flane! We have him, too!" rasped one of them.
"Pig bird!" whispered Flane.
His blade drove in like a beam of light, twirled the blade of the
nearest guard in a circular envelopment, wresting it from his fingers
to send it flashing high in the air. Sidestepping the lunge of the
other guard, Flane slithered his blade through his opponent's neck,
watched him gargle blood in his throat as he plunged.
In a moment the second guard lay beside his fellows, lifeless. Flane
stepped across their still legs, out into the cool night air. Above his
head the three moons of Klarn whirled high in the heavens, flooding the
court with light.
"The Dragon Gate," Flane whispered, and ran.
* * * * *
As his feet pounded on back streets and alleys, he dwelt on the threat
of the Darksiders. They were like the Klarn, yet they possessed none
of their scientific ability. Centuries ago, so many that the Klarnva
had lost count of them, the Darksiders ruled all of Klarn. Then had
come the Klarnva, who consisted of the _dulars_ and the _mekniks_, in
ships of the sky, from somewhere beyond the triple moons of Klarn. From
where, had been lost in the shrouding veils of antiquity.
Their leader had been Norda, a thin genius with a mind as curious as a
question. It was Norda who put the machine together, who directed that
the people should live in walled city-states against the inroads of the
vast numbers of barbaric Darksiders. In the machine Norda had stored
power, endless quanta of it. That power gave the Klarnva their lights,
their heat, their luxuries. They grew used to it. The Machine even
furnished them with weapons, so far superior to those of the Darksiders
that the latter looked on them with awe.
When the Machine went dead twenty-five years ago, the city-states of
the Klarnva went dead, too. There was no light, no heat. Gone were the
power-driven vehicles, the entertaining-screens. People groped upward
as from a fog, seeking the source of that power. They recalled that
the Keeper of the Machine had disappeared around the same time as the
Machine stopped. Moreover, the vast prism in the desert was smashed.
Something from outer space had crushed it.
All knew that there was a key to the Machine that would start it into
motion. Many of them had tried to move it, from the Princess Gleya down
to Flane. None of them were successful.
"Neither was Vawdar," grated Flane, racing beneath a balcony, skidding
on restless feet around a corner.
There was clamour ahead of him. Hearing the hoarse cries of men
fighting, the rasp of blades meeting and falling away, Flane went
forward like the arrow from the bow. His blade was naked in the night,
a length of glittering steel. He could see the Dragon Gates now: tall
red blocks of stone hewn into the royal emblem of Klarn, red dragons,
with real flame spurting from between their teeth to light the gateway
below.
In the crimson glare, men struggled. As Flane shot into the mass of
men, he saw Vawdar, bound at wrist and ankle, leaning against the wall
of a building.
"For Gleya!" snarled Flane, and ran his blade through a _meknik's_
heart.
Now the hands of men were all around him, and their shoulders, smelly
with sweat. He heard curses rasped in his ears, caught the glitter of a
dagger raised to smite. Flane went in low on steel-thewed legs, lurched
a shoulder to catch a _meknik_ off balance and send him reeling into
others with the keen edge of Flane's sword across his throat, severing
his jugular vein.
The sword in his hand sang a strident song as it slithered around steel
and drank from the heart of men. The blade danced and leaped. The best
steel in Klarn was in that sword, and the finest hand for a hilt was
wielding it. The _mekniks_ gave stubbornly, but the dripping point that
sprang out of the night for throat and chest would not be denied.
[Illustration: _In the crimson glare, Flane's sword sang a strident
song as it slithered around steel and drank from the heart of men._]
Flane sliced a dagger across Vawdar's bonds, heard his swift, "They
fight with strangers whom I do not know. Be swift, Flane, that we may
escape!"
For the first time, the swordsman beheld his allies. They were Klarnva,
all of them; muffled in long black cloaks from which only their arms
that held their blades appeared. Klarnva, but unfamiliar to him.
In the press of battle, groups of cursing, fighting men swirled around
Flane and Vawdar as they sought to back away. Five _mekniks_ glimpsed
his lean face beneath the black hair and howled, "Flane! Flane!" to the
starry, three-mooned sky.
Now the _dular_ fought for his life. With his spine to a wooden door,
he snarled softly, green eyes following the points that faced him,
his longsword alive to each thrust. Parry, lunge, recover. Riposte
and thrust. He fought five men in that doorway, and one stepped out
untouched. Over five fallen bodies the swordsman leaped, to keep death
from the throat of Vawdar.
The black-cloaked men reformed their ranks, swept around them as a
shield. There was one of them who did not fight, who stood, still and
silent, looking on. Flane went for him, crying, "Who are you? Why do
you make our fight your fight?"
* * * * *
The arm he held in his powerful hand was soft and slender. The hood
fell back, and in the moonlight Flane gazed into a white face in which
red-brown eyes stared back at him. Massy coils of red hair that blew in
the breeze came loose, and flicked across his face. He breathed in the
faint perfume of the girl, and looked at her full, red mouth.
All red, she seemed, and the smooth sheen of her skin was like the
satin-stuffs that came from distant Yeelya. Flane grinned at her.
"Girl," he whispered, "you walk with death tonight!" and drew her with
him out of the path of a thrown knife that clanked against a brick wall
behind where they stood.
"Fall back!" a tall stranger cried to him, and Flane drew the girl and
Vawdar with him into an alleyway.
"We have mounts beyond the Dragon Gate," she said hurriedly, stumbling
along. "We came for Vawdar, knowing the rebellion that threatens his
life."
Flane turned to Vawdar, seeing his face redden in the crimson light of
the flambeau inset in the wall overhead.
"The key you gave me," he said hurriedly. "It didn't work."
"I know. I've learned the real key in the meantime--"
The girl whispered swiftly, "Can you use it? Turn the machine on
tonight? That's why we came, knowing that any hope of using the machine
depends on you, Vawdar!"
The man shook his head. A laugh sat in his throat, almost evil in his
bitterness. Against the background of clashing blades and grated oaths,
and the rasping breathing of men fighting in the street, it was hollow
in despair.
"Tonight? No. And not for many nights after this, and perhaps never.
Because, you see--"
A shout hurtled upwards from the throat of a man who was turning into
their alley. Men raced behind him, shouting. With his naked left arm,
Flane swept the girl behind him, grinning, whispering, "Now they've
caught us. Between two gangs, in this alley."
"Can't we reach that gate with the dragons?" said the girl. "We have
_megathon_ stallions waiting there. We could go across the desert
together, all of us--"
Flane disengaged his blade from the sword of the first _meknik_, and
lunged beneath his guard. As the man fell, Flane shoved him back into
the others, working his blade, butchering calmly. In the closeness of
the mob who rushed him, there was no room for finesse. He shortened his
blade, and stabbed.
"_Megathons_," Flane whispered to the night. "They are native to the
southern regions. One-horned horses."
There was only one city-state of the Klarnva in the south: Moornal. Yet
Moornal was remote from Klarn; so remote that, since the Machine went
dead, it was looked upon almost as a myth.
"Yes," said the girl in answer to Flane's quick questions. "From
Moornal. We, too, have felt the bite of want without the Machine to
feed us. We are desperate."
The last man fell in front of Flane. He whirled and raced toward the
blue-coated men who were fighting at the alley's entrance.
"To the gate!" he shouted, and broke the ring of _mekniks_ and was
in the clear, his redly-dripping blade like the darting tongue of a
swamp-snake.
Flane fought like a man gone mad. His feet danced the _incartata_,
even as his bare left hand swept aside point and blade; with lunge
and _caricado_ he played his blade in the torchlight, engaging the
_mekniks_. They cursed, but in their breath was the fright of grim
death. These men had seen Flane fight before; they knew his reputation,
and the magnificent steel of his sword. They broke slowly, but when
they finally did, they ran.
The girl was staring at Flane with dark moons for eyes, standing
solitary under the stone lintel of the gate. He shot toward her, put
out an arm and swept her up against him, racing beyond the gate.
The hooves of the _megathons_ were stamping on the stone causeway as
they came into the open. Flane saw Vawdar already high in an ornate
saddle, gesturing. A horse reared against a moon, fore-hooves pawing
wildly. A Moornalian shouted something, swinging his mount's head
toward the gate.
But Flane only saw and heard these things dimly. For the girl that
was in the crook of his arm, pressed soft against him, was working a
strange magic on him. He saw her face framed by the wild red hair, and
the dark, mysterious eyes, and the generous mouth. Under moonlight she
was enchantment come to life.
He bent and kissed her.
Dimly, he realized that he was mad to stand kissing this girl while men
shouted and horses whinnied, but he put the thought from him.
The storm broke, then.
There were men with swords all around them, shouting triumph. Shoulders
bumped them, drove them against a horse. Flane heard Vawdar yell, saw
him bend from the saddle and stretch an arm toward them.
"I tried to warn you. The _mekniks_ have come in force. Man, move
yourself!"
Flane threw the girl high in the air, across a saddle. With the flat of
his hand, he slapped the rump of the plunging _megathon_. Then Flane
was leaping, grasping reins with sure hands, his foot feeling for the
carven stirrup.
"We'll divide," Flane yelled to a Moornalian. "The _mekniks_ want us
most of all!"
They were off in a clatter of hooves striking sparks from the
cobblestoned driveway, leaning forward over the necks of the
_megathons_, reins loose. Flane looked at Vawdar, positive that he
grunted, but Vawdar waved a hand, and they went on.
For once in his life, Flane was glad that the Machine was dead. If it
were alive, the _mekniks_ could have swept their group with guns that
would have turned them into drifting powder. But now only a few arrows
fell and bounced on the stones behind them.
They were going away from the Moornalians now. Flane saw them, bobbing
shadows moving into the night. He flung up an arm, and waved. There was
red hair blowing free in the wind, over there, and Flane felt as though
he watched his life ebbing from him, staring across at her.
The _megathons_ were swift. Flane thought with surprise that they
were even faster than the horses of the Klarn. Then he saw the thin
horn protruding up from the forehead of the beast. It was filed to a
fine point, and coated with metal. He grinned. This was a fighting
_megathon_, spawned and bred for a special job. He gave the animal its
head, and let him run into the night.
* * * * *
After many hours, Flane became aware that Vawdar rode too silently. He
himself was full of the flame of the red-haired girl, but Vawdar should
be talking, revealing the secret of the key to the Machine.
He turned--and then cursed softly.
Vawdar lay across the neck of his mount. In the moons' light, Flane
could see the haft of a dagger distending from the middle of his back.
Up and down he bobbed, arms interwoven with the reins to prevent his
falling.
With gentle hands Flane drew him down; made him easy on the sands, with
cloak at his neck, and a flagon of wine at his lips.
Vawdar whispered, "They got me in front of the gate, just as we were
clearing them. Someone threw a dagger."