_In the Black Pools he found the
50,000-year-lost wisdom of the Ancients.
For a day Red Angus held victory in his
sword-hand. But it was too short a glimpse,
too elusive a thought to bolster the
star-rabble against the Citadel's iron guard._
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories March 1952.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
_The pools were like the gaping mouth of space itself, dark and
fathomless, extending into bottomless wells, the depths of which the
people of Karr could only guess. Some said the god Stasor dwelt in the
glistening black depths. Others claimed the emptiness was the hollow
interior of the planet. None of them was right._
_All men feared the pools. Only a man fifty thousand years old knew
their incredible secret, and he lived in an invisible city...._
* * * * *
Red Angus fled like a frightened hound through the twisted alleys of
the Lower City. Dim lamplight from the towering white walls of the
Citadel threw glowing brilliance across his naked chest, glinted on the
metal studs of his broad leather belt, and on the rippling muscles of
his long legs. He skidded on a patch of slops, righted himself and dove
for the darkness of an arched doorway. He drew back in the shadows,
barely feeling the burn of the new brand on his shoulder that stamped
him as a pirate.
Faintly, he heard the shouts and drumming feet of the Diktor's police
as they ravened in the streets, hunting him. His heart thudded swiftly
under the high arch of his ribcase. Red Angus smiled wryly.
He was a hunted space pirate, just free of the cell blocks below the
palace. But he was more than that to the Diktor of Karr. He was a
Karrvan noble who had gone bad, who had fled into space and established
an eyrie on a wandering asteroid, who had set himself up as a one-man
crusade against Stal Tay, ruler of Karr by the grace of the god Stasor.
"I'll find a way," the pirate swore in the shadows, listening to the
shouts and running of the guards, the sharp, barking blasts of their
heatguns.
There was a faint sound behind the thick oaken door. Angus moved
his naked back, still welt and scarred, away from the damp wood. He
clenched a big fist and stood silent, waiting.
He was a tall man, lean in the belly and wide about the shoulders. His
mouth was thin but curved at the corners as though used to smiling.
Close-cropped reddish hair gave his hard, tanned face a fiery look.
Dark blue eyes glistened in the half-squint of the habitual spaceman.
The oaken door swung open. A cowled form stood in the darkness of the
archway putting out a thin, old hand toward him. Where the cowl hung
there was only a faint white dimness for a face.
"The Hierarch will see you, and save you, Red Angus," said the old man.
"Come in. He hopes you'll listen to reason."
"The Hierarch?" snorted the lean man in disbelief. "He's hand in arm
with Stal Tay. He'd land me back with my ankles in a manacle chain."
The cowled man shook his head and whispered, "Hurry, hurry. There's no
time to argue!"
A shout from a street less than sixty feet away decided the half-naked,
winded Angus. He moved his shoulders in a bitter shrug and slid inside
the door. The latch clicked on the door and a hand caught his. A voice,
gentle with age, said softly, "Follow me."
* * * * *
Two hundred feet from the door the walls began to glow. Angus looked
at his guide and saw an old man, a member of the Hierarchy, a priestly
cult of scientists who were honored and protected by the Diktor. Thirty
years before, when the people of the Lower City had been ravaged by
disease, they had stormed the block of buildings where the scientists
worked.
They had wrecked machines and killed men.
The people of the Lower City were no better than savages and the pagan
superstitions they boasted were encouraged by Stal Tay. It pleased the
Diktor to believe that science was something only the rich deserved. So
Stal Tay stepped in. He withdrew the scientists from the world of men
and gave them a little world of their own that was called the Citadel.
Red Angus and the scientist went through corridors that bent and
twisted in subtle fashion. It was quiet in this underground tunnel.
Once Angus heard the subterranean rush of a hidden river seeking an
outlet in the great Car Carolan Sea. Water condensed in oozing droplets
on the cold stone walls.
Then they were going up handhewn stone steps toward an archway in which
a thick, soot-blackened door was opening. Lights glared beyond the
doorway in a large room with a high, groined ceiling.
He saw Tandor first, standing big and massive among the cowled priests,
the wall light glinting from his bald head. They had had a time taking
him from the Lower City, Angus saw. There were cut marks on him, and
the blood here and there on his rough wool tunic had dried.
A tall man in a white cowl that was bordered with purple came toward
them. He said, "I saved your man from the Diktor's torturers. Money
will do much in the Citadel. Even a pirate's first captain is not as
valuable as a handful of _sestelins_."