A tip of the sun showed on the horizon. "My name is Nhoj," said
Sim's enemy, casually fingering up a handful of pebbles and stones,
weighing them. Sim did likewise. He was hungry. He had not eaten
for many minutes. Hunger was the curse of this planet's peoples--a
perpetual demanding of empty stomachs for more, more food. His blood
flushed weakly, shot tinglingly through veins in jolting throbs of
heat and pressure, his ribcase shoved out, went in, shoved out again,
impatiently.
"Now!" roared the three hundred watchers from the cliffs. "Now!" they
clamored, the men and women and children balanced, in turmoil on the
ledges. "Now! Begin!"
As if at a cue, the sun leaped high. It smote them a blow as with a
flat, sizzling stone. The two men staggered under the molten impact,
sweat broke from their naked thighs and loins, under their arms and on
their faces was a glaze like fine glass.
Nhoj shifted his huge weight and looked at the sun as if in no hurry to
fight. Then, silently, with no warning, he kanurcked out a pebble with
a startling trigger-flick of thumb and forefinger. It caught Sim flat
on the cheek, staggered him back, so that a rocket of unbearable pain
climbed up his crippled foot and burst into nervous explosion at the
pit of his stomach. He tasted blood from his bleeding cheek.
Nhoj moved serenely. Three more flickers of his magical hands and three
tiny, seemingly harmless bits of stone flew like whistling birds.
Each of them found a target, slammed it. The nerve centers of Sim's
body! One hit his stomach so that ten hours' eating almost slid up his
throat. A second got his forehead, a third his neck. He collapsed to
the boiling sand. His knee made a wrenching sound on the hard earth.
His face was colorless and his eyes, squeezed tight, were pushing tears
out from the hot, quivering lids. But even as he had fallen he had let
loose, with wild force, his handful of stones!
The stones purred in the air. One of them, and only one, struck Nhoj.
Upon the left eyeball. Nhoj moaned and laid his hands in the next
instant to his shattered eye.
Sim choked out a bitter, sighing laugh. This much triumph he had. The
eye of his opponent. It would give him ... Time. Oh, gods, he thought,
his stomach retching sickly, fighting for breath, this is a world of
time. Give me a little more, just a trifle!
Nhoj, one-eyed, weaving with pain, pelted the writhing body of Sim, but
his aim was off now, the stones flew to one side or if they struck at
all they were weak and spent and lifeless.
Sim forced himself half erect. From the corners of his eyes he
saw Lyte, waiting, staring at him, her lips breathing words of
encouragement and hope. He was bathed in sweat, as if a rain spray had
showered him down.
* * * * *
The sun was now fully over the horizon. You could smell it. Stones
glinted like mirrors, the sand began to roil and bubble. Illusions
sprang up everywhere in the valley. Instead of one warrior Nhoj he was
confronted by a dozen, each in an upright position, preparing to launch
another missile. A dozen irregular warriors who shimmered in the golden
menace of day, like bronze gongs smitten, quivered in one vision!
Sim was breathing desperately. His nostrils flared and sucked and his
mouth drank thirstily of flame instead of oxygen. His lungs took fire
like silk torches and his body was consumed. The sweat spilled from
his pores to be instantly evaporated. He felt himself shriveling,
shriveling in on himself, he imagined himself looking like his father,
old, sunken, slight, withered! Where was the sand? Could he move? Yes.
The world wriggled under him, but now he was on his feet.
There would be no more fighting.
A murmur from the cliff told this. The sunburnt faces of the high
audience gaped and jeered and shouted encouragement to their warrior.
"Stand straight, Nhoj, save your strength now! Stand tall and
perspire!" they urged him. And Nhoj stood, swaying lightly, swaying
slowly, a pendulum in an incandescent fiery breath from the skyline.
"Don't move, Nhoj, save your heart, save your power!"
"The Test, The Test!" said the people on the heights. "The test of the
sun."
And this was the worst part of the fight. Sim squinted painfully at the
distorted illusion of cliff. He thought he saw his parents; father with
his defeated face, his green eyes burning, mother with her hair blowing
like a cloud of grey smoke in the fire wind. He must get up to them,
live for and with them!
Behind him, Sim heard Lyte whimper softly. There was a whisper of flesh
against sand. She had fallen. He did not dare turn. The strength of
turning would bring him thundering down in pain and darkness.
His knees bent. If I fall, he thought, I'll lie here and become ashes.
Where was Nhoj? Nhoj was there, a few yards from him, standing bent,
slick with perspiration, looking as if he were being hit over the spine
with great hammers of destruction.
"Fall, Nhoj! Fall!" screamed Sim, mentally. "Fall, fall! Fall and die
so I can take your place!"
But Nhoj did not fall. One by one the pebbles in his half-loose left
hand plummeted to the broiling sands and Nhoj's lips peeled back, the
saliva burned away from his lips and his eyes glazed. But he did not
fall. The will to live was strong in him. He hung as if by a wire.
Sim fell to one knee!
"Ahh!" wailed the knowing voices from the cliff. They were watching
death. Sim jerked his head up, smiling mechanically, foolishly as if
caught in the act of doing something silly. "No, no," he insisted
drowsily, and got back up again. There was so much pain he was all one
ringing numbness. A whirring, buzzing, frying sound filled the land.
High up, an avalanche came down like a curtain on a drama, making no
noise. Everything was quiet except for a steady humming. He saw fifty
images of Nhoj now, dressed in armours of sweat, eyes puffed with
torture, cheeks sunken, lips peeled back like the rind of a drying
fruit. But the wire still held him.
"Now," muttered Sim, sluggishly, with a thick, baked tongue between his
blazing teeth. "Now I'll fall and lie and dream." He said it with slow,
thoughtful pleasure. He planned it. He knew how it must be done. He
would do it accurately. He lifted his head to see if the audience was
watching.
They were gone!
The sun had driven them back in. All save one or two brave ones. Sim
laughed drunkenly and watched the sweat gather on his dead hands,
hesitate, drop off, plunge down toward sand and turn to steam half way
there.
Nhoj fell.
The wire was cut. Nhoj fell flat upon his stomach, a gout of blood
kicked from his mouth. His eyes rolled back into a white, senseless
insanity.
Nhoj fell. So did his fifty duplicate illusions.
All across the valley the winds sang and moaned and Sim saw a blue lake
with a blue river feeding it and low white houses near the river with
people going and coming in the houses and among the tall green trees.
Trees taller than seven men, beside the river mirage.
"Now," explained Sim to himself at last, "Now I can fall.
Right--into--that--lake."
He fell forward.
He was shocked when he felt the hands eagerly stop him in mid-plunge,
lift him, hurry him off, high in the hungry air, like a torch held and
waved, ablaze.
"How strange is death," he thought, and blackness took him.
* * * * *
He wakened to the flow of cool water on his cheeks.
He opened his eyes fearfully. Lyte held his head upon her lap, her
fingers were moving food to his mouth. He was tremendously hungry
and tired, but fear squeezed both of these things away. He struggled
upward, seeing the strange cave contours overhead.
"What time is it?" he demanded.
"The same day as the contest. Be quiet," she said.
"The same day!"
She nodded amusedly. "You've lost nothing of your life. This is Nhoj's
cave. We are inside the black cliff. We will live three extra days.
Satisfied? Lie down."
"Nhoj is dead?" He fell back, panting, his heart slamming his ribs. He
relaxed slowly. "I won. Gods, I won," he breathed.
"Nhoj is dead. So were we, almost. They carried us in from outside only
in time."
He ate ravenously. "We have no time to waste. We must get strong. My
leg--" He looked at it, tested it. There was a swathe of long yellow
grasses around it and the ache had died away. Even as he watched
the terrific pulsings of his body went to work and cured away the
impurities under the bandages. It _has_ to be strong by sunset, he
thought. It _has_ to be.
He got up and limped around the cave like a captured animal. He felt
Lyte's eyes upon him. He could not meet her gaze. Finally, helplessly,
he turned.
She interrupted him. "You want to go on to the ship?" she asked,
softly. "Tonight? When the sun goes down?"