The rifleman kept running, seeming not to hear him in his panic.
Prentiss called to him once more:
"Not the stockade--_you'll lead the unicorns into it!_"
Again the rifleman seemed not to hear him.
The unicorns were coming in sight, converging in from the north and east
and south, the rumble of their hooves swelling to a thunder that filled
the night. The rifleman would reach the stockade only a little ahead of
them and they would go through the wall as though it had been made of
paper.
For a little while the area inside the stockade would be filled with
dust, with the squealing of the swirling, charging unicorns and the
screams of the dying. Those inside the stockade would have no chance
whatever of escaping. Within two minutes it would be over, the last
child would have been found among the shattered shelters and trampled
into lifeless shapelessness in the bloody ground.
Within two minutes all human life on Ragnarok would be gone.
There was only one thing for him to do.
He dropped to one knee so his aim would be steady and the sights of his
rifle caught the running man's back. He pressed the trigger and the
rifle cracked viciously as it bucked against his shoulder.
The man spun and fell hard to the ground. He twisted, to raise himself
up a little and look back, his face white and accusing and unbelieving.
_"You shot me!"_
Then he fell forward and lay without moving.
Prentiss turned back to face the unicorns and to look at the trees in
the nearby grove. He saw what he already knew, they were young trees and
too small to offer any escape for him. There was no place to run, no
place to hide.
There was nothing he could do but wait; nothing he could do but stand in
the blue starlight and watch the devil's herd pound toward him and
think, in the last moments of his life, how swiftly and unexpectedly
death could come to man on Ragnarok.
* * * * *
The unicorns held the Rejects prisoners in their stockade the rest of
the night and all the next day. Lake had seen the shooting of the
rifleman and had watched the unicorn herd kill John Prentiss and then
trample the dead rifleman.
He had already given the order to build a quick series of fires around
the inside of the stockade walls when the unicorns paused to tear their
victims to pieces; grunting and squealing in triumph as bones crushed
between their teeth and they flung the pieces to one side.
The fires were started and green wood was thrown on them, to make them
smoulder and smoke for as long as possible. Then the unicorns were
coming on to the stockade and every person inside it went into the
concealment of the shelters.
Lake had already given his last order: There would be absolute quiet
until and if the unicorns left; a quiet that would be enforced with fist
or club wherever necessary.
The unicorns were still outside when morning came. The fires could not
be refueled; the sight of a man moving inside the stockade would bring
the entire herd charging through. The hours dragged by, the smoke from
the dying fires dwindled to thin streamers. The unicorns grew
increasingly bolder and suspicious, crowding closer to the walls and
peering through the openings between the rails.
The sun was setting when one of the unicorns trumpeted; a sound
different from that of the call to battle. The others threw up their
heads to listen, then they turned and drifted away. Within minutes the
entire herd was gone out of sight through the woods, toward the north.
Lake waited and watched until he was sure the unicorns were gone for
good. Then he ordered the All Clear given and hurried to the south wall,
to look down across the barren valley and hope he would not see what he
expected to see.
Barber came up behind him, to sigh with relief. "That was close. It's
hard to make so many people stay absolutely quiet for hour after hour.
Especially the children--they don't understand."
"We'll have to leave," Lake said.
"Leave?" Barber asked. "We can make this stockade strong enough to hold
out unicorns."
"Look to the south," Lake told him.
Barber did so and saw what Lake had already seen; a broad, low cloud of
dust moving slowly toward them.
"Another herd of unicorns," Lake said. "John didn't know they
migrated--the Dunbar Expedition wasn't here long enough to learn that.
There'll be herd after herd coming through and no time for us to
strengthen the walls. We'll have to leave tonight."
* * * * *
Preparations were made for the departure; preparations that consisted
mainly of providing each person with as much in the way of food or
supplies as he or she could carry. In the 1.5 gravity, that was not
much.
They left when the blue star rose. They filed out through the northern
gate and the rear guard closed it behind them. There was almost no
conversation among them. Some of them turned to take a last look at what
had been the only home they had ever known on Ragnarok, then they all
faced forward again, to the northwest, where the foothills of the
plateau might offer them sanctuary.
They found their sanctuary on the second day; a limestone ridge
honey-combed with caves. Men were sent back at once to carry the food
and supplies left in the stockade to the new home.
They returned, to report that the second herd of unicorns had broken
down the walls and ripped the interior of the stockade into wreckage.
Much of the food and supplies had been totally destroyed.
Lake sent them back twice more to bring everything, down to the last
piece of bent metal or torn cloth. They would find uses for all of it in
the future.
* * * * *
The cave system was extensive, containing room for several times their
number. The deeper portions of the caves could not be lived in until
ventilation ducts were made, but the outer caves were more than
sufficient in number. Work was begun to clear them of fallen rubble, to
pry down all loose material overhead and to level the floors. A spring
came out of the ridge not far from the caves and the approach to the
caves was so narrow and steep that unicorns could scramble up it only
with difficulty and one at a time. And should they ever reach the
natural terrace in front of the caves they would be too large to enter
and could do no more than stand outside and make targets of themselves
for the bowmen within.
Anders was in charge of making the caves livable, his working force
restricted almost entirely to women and children. Lake sent Barber out,
with a small detachment of men, to observe the woods goats and learn
what plants they ate. And then learn, by experimenting, if such plants
could be safely eaten by humans.
The need for salt would be tremendously increased when summer came.
Having once experienced a saltless two weeks in the desert Lake doubted
that any of them could survive without it. All hunting parties, as well
as Barber's party, were ordered to investigate all deposits that might
contain salt as well as any stream or pond that was white along the
banks.
The hunting parties were of paramount importance and they were kept out
to the limits of their endurance. Every man physically able to do so
accompanied them. Those who could not kill game could carry it back to
the caves. There was no time to spare; already the unicorns were
decreasing in numbers and the woods goats were ranging farther and
farther north.
At the end of twenty days Lake went in search of Barber and his party,
worried about them. Their mission was one that could be as dangerous as
any hunting trip. There was no proof that humans and Ragnarok creatures
were so similar as to guarantee that food for one might not be poison
for the other. It was a very necessary mission, however; dried meat,
alone, would bring grave deficiency diseases during the summer which
dried herbs and fruits would help prevent.
When he located Barber's party he found Barber lying under a tree, pale
and weak from his latest experiment but recovering.
"I was the guinea pig yesterday," Barber said. "Some little purple
berries that the woods goats nibble at sometimes, maybe to get a touch
of some certain vitamin or something. I ate too many, I guess, because
they hit my heart like the kick of a mule."
"Did you find anything at all encouraging?" Lake asked.
"We found four different herbs that are the most violent cathartics you
ever dreamed of. And a little silvery fern that tastes like vanilla
flavored candy and paralyzes you stiff as a board on the third swallow.
It's an hour before you come back out of it.
"But on the good side we found three different kinds of herbs that seem
to be all right. We've been digging them up and hanging them in the
trees to dry."
Lake tried the edible herbs and found them to be something like spinach
in taste. There was a chance they might contain the vitamins and
minerals needed. Since the hunting parties were living exclusively on
meat he would have to point out the edible herbs to all of them so they
would know what to eat should any of them feel the effects of diet
deficiency.
He traveled alone as he visited the various hunting parties, finding
such travel to be safer each day as the dwindling of the unicorns neared
the vanishing point. It was a safety he did not welcome; it meant the
last of the game would be gone north long before sufficient meat was
taken.
None of the hunting parties could report good luck. The woods goats,
swift and elusive at best, were vanishing with the unicorns. The last
cartridge had been fired and the bowmen, while improving all the time,
were far from expert. The unicorns, which should have been their major
source of meat, were invulnerable to arrows unless shot at short range
in the side of the neck just behind the head. And at short range the
unicorns invariably charged and presented no such target.
He made the long, hard climb up the plateau's southern face, to stand at
last on top. It was treeless, a flat, green table that stretched to the
north for as far as he could see. A mountain range, still capped with
snow, lay perhaps a hundred miles to the northwest; in the distance it
looked like a white, low-lying cloud on the horizon. No other mountains
or hills marred the endless sweep of the high plain.
The grass was thick and here and there were little streams of water
produced by the recently melted snow. It was a paradise land for the
herbivores of Ragnarok but for men it was a harsh, forbidding place. At
that elevation the air was so thin that only a moderate amount of
exertion made the heart and lungs labor painfully. Hard and prolonged
exertion would be impossible.
It seemed unlikely that men could hunt and dare unicorn attacks at such
an elevation but two hunting parties were ahead of him; one under the
grim Craig and one under the reckless Schroeder, both parties stripped
down to the youngest, strongest men among all the Rejects.
He found Schroeder early one morning, leading his hunters toward a small
band of woods goats. Two unicorns were grazing in between and the
hunters were swinging downwind from them. Schroeder saw him coming and
walked back a little way to meet him.
"Welcome to our breathtaking land," Schroeder greeted him. "How are
things going with the rest of the hunting parties?"
Schroeder was gaunt and there was weariness beneath his still lithe
movements. His whiskers were an untamed sorrel bristling and across his
cheekbone was the ugly scar of a half healed wound. Another gash was
ripped in his arm and something had battered one ear. He reminded Lake
of a battle-scarred, indomitable tomcat who would never, for as long as
he lived, want to relinquish the joy of conflict and danger.
"So far," he answered, "you and Craig are the only parties to manage to
tackle the plateau."
He asked about Schroeder's luck and learned it had been much better than
that of the others due to killing three unicorns by a method Schroeder
had thought of.
"Since the bowmen have to be to one side of the unicorns to kill them,"
Schroeder said, "it only calls for a man to be the decoy and let the
unicorns chase him between the hidden bowmen. If there's no more than
one or two unicorns and if the decoy doesn't have to run very far and if
the bowmen don't miss it works well."
"Judging from your beat-up condition," Lake said, "you must have been
the decoy every time."
"Well----" Schroeder shrugged his shoulders. "It was my idea."
"I've been wondering about another way to get in shots at close range,"
Lake said. "Take the skin of a woods goat, give it the original shape as
near as possible, and a bowman inside it might be able to fake a grazing
woods goat until he got the shot he wanted.
"The unicorns might never suspect where the arrows came from," he
concluded. "And then, of course, they might."
"I'll try it before the day is over, on those two unicorns over there,"
Schroeder said. "At this elevation and in this gravity my own method is
just a little bit rough on a man."
* * * * *
Lake found Craig and his men several miles to the west, all of them
gaunt and bearded as Schroeder had been.
"We've had hell," Craig said. "It seems that every time we spot a few
woods goats there will be a dozen unicorns in between. If only we had
rifles for the unicorns...."
Lake told him of the plan to hide under woods goats' skins and of the
decoy system used by Schroeder.
"Maybe we won't have to use Schroeder's method," he said. "We'll see if
the other works--I'll give it the first try."
This he was not to do. Less than an hour later one of the men who helped
dry the meat and carry it to the caves returned to report the camp
stricken by a strange, sudden malady that was killing a hundred a day.
Dr. Chiara, who had collapsed while driving himself on to care for the
sick, was sure it was a deficiency disease. Anders was down with it,
helpless, and Bemmon had assumed command; setting up daily work quotas
for those still on their feet and refusing to heed Chiara's requests
concerning treatment of the disease.
Lake made the trip back to the caves in a fraction of the length of time
it had taken him to reach the plateau, walking until he was ready to
drop and then pausing only for an hour or two of rest. He spotted
Barber's camp when coming down off the plateau and he swung to one side,
to tell Barber to have a supply of the herbs sent to the caves at once.
He reached the caves, to find half the camp in bed and the other half
dragging about listlessly at the tasks given them by Bemmon. Anders was
in grave condition, too weak to rise, and Dr. Chiara was dying.
He squatted down beside Chiara's pallet and knew there could be no hope
for him. On Chiara's pale face and in his eyes was the shadow of his own
foreknowledge.
"I finally saw what it was"--Chiara's words were very low, hard to
hear--"and I told Bemmon what to do. It's a deficiency disease,
complicated by the gravity into some form not known on Earth."
He stopped to rest and Lake waited.
"Beri-beri--pellagra--we had deficiency diseases on Earth. But none so
fatal--so quickly. I told Bemmon--ration out fruits and vegetables to
everybody. Hurry--or it will be too late."
Again he stopped to rest, the last vestige of color gone from his face.
"And you?" Lake asked, already knowing the answer.
"For me--too late. I kept thinking of viruses--should have seen the
obvious sooner. Just like----"
His lips turned up a little at the corners and the Chiara of the dead
past smiled for the last time at Lake.
"Just like a damned fool intern...."
That was all, then, and the chamber was suddenly very quiet. Lake stood
up to leave, and to speak the words that Chiara could never hear:
"We're going to need you and miss you--Doctor."
* * * * *
He found Bemmon in the food storage cavern, supervising the work of two
teen-age boys with critical officiousness although he was making no move
to help them. At sight of Lake he hurried forward, the ingratiating
smile sliding across his face.
"I'm glad you're back," he said. "I had to take charge when Anders got
sick and he had everything in such a mess. I've been working day and
night to undo his mistakes and get the work properly under way again."
Lake looked at the two thin-faced boys who had taken advantage of the
opportunity to rest. They leaned wearily against the heavy pole table
Bemmon had had them moving, their eyes already dull with the incipient
sickness and watching him in mute appeal.
"Have you obeyed Chiara's order?" he asked.
"Ah--no," Bemmon said. "I felt it best to ignore it."
"Why?" Lake asked.
"It would be a senseless waste of our small supply of fruit and
vegetable foods to give them to people already dying. I'm afraid"--the
ingratiating smile came again--"we've been letting him exercise an
authority he isn't entitled to. He's really hardly more than a medical
student and his diagnoses are only guesses."
"He's dead," Lake said flatly. "His last order will be carried out."
He looked from the two tired boys to Bemmon, contrasting their thinness
and weariness with the way Bemmon's paunch still bulged outward and his
jowls still sagged with their load of fat.
"I'll send West down to take over in here," he said to Bemmon. "You come
with me. You and I seem to be the only two in good health here and
there's plenty of work for us to do."
The fawning expression vanished from Bemmon's face. "I see," he said.
"Now that I've turned Anders's muddle into organization, you'll hand my
authority over to another of your favorites and demote me back to common
labor?"
"Setting up work quotas for sick and dying people isn't organization,"
Lake said. He spoke to the two boys, "Both of you go lie down. West will
find someone else." Then to Bemmon, "Come with me. We're both going to
work at common labor."
They passed by the cave where Bemmon slept. Two boys were just going
into it, carrying armloads of dried grass to make a mattress under
Bemmon's pallet. They moved slowly, heavily. Like the two boys in the
food storage cave they were dull-eyed with the beginning of the
sickness.
Lake stopped, to look more closely into the cave and verify something
else he thought he had seen: Bemmon had discarded the prowler skins on
his bed and in their place were soft wool blankets; perhaps the only
unpatched blankets the Rejects possessed.
"Go back to your caves," he said to the boys. "Go to bed and rest."
He looked at Bemmon. Bemmon's eyes flickered away, refusing to meet his.
"What few blankets we have are for babies and the very youngest
children," he said. His tone was coldly unemotional but he could not
keep his fists from clenching at his sides. "You will return them at
once and sleep on animal skins, as all the men and women do. And if you
want grass for a mattress you will carry it yourself, as even the young
children do."
Bemmon made no answer, his face a sullen red and hatred shining in the
eyes that still refused to meet Lake's.
"Gather up the blankets and return them," Lake said. "Then come on up to
the central cave. We have a lot of work to do."
He could feel Bemmon's gaze burning against his back as he turned away
and he thought of what John Prentiss had once said:
"I know he's no good but he never has guts enough to go quite far enough
to give me an excuse to whittle him down."
* * * * *
Barber's men arrived the next day, burdened with dried herbs. These were
given to the seriously ill as a supplement to the ration of fruit and
vegetable foods and were given, alone, to those not yet sick. Then came
the period of waiting; of hoping that it was all not too late and too
little.
A noticeable change for the better began on the second day. A week went
by and the sick were slowly, steadily, improving. The not-quite-sick
were already back to normal health. There was no longer any doubt: the
Ragnarok herbs would prevent a recurrence of the disease.
It was, Lake thought, all so simple once you knew what to do. Hundreds
had died, Chiara among them, because they did not have a common herb
that grew at a slightly higher elevation. Not a single life would have
been lost if he could have looked a week into the future and had the
herbs found and taken to the caves that much sooner.
But the disease had given no warning of its coming. Nothing, on
Ragnarok, ever seemed to give warning before it killed.
Another week went by and hunters began to trickle in, gaunt and
exhausted, to report all the game going north up the plateau and not a
single creature left below. They were the ones who had tried and failed
to withstand the high elevation of the plateau. Only two out of three
hunters returned among those who had challenged the plateau. They had
tried, all of them, to the best of their ability and the limits of their
endurance.
The blue star was by then a small sun and the yellow sun blazed hotter
each day. Grass began to brown and wither on the hillsides as the days
went by and Lake knew summer was very near. The last hunting party, but
for Craig's and Schroeder's, returned. They had very little meat but
they brought with them a large quantity of something almost as
important: salt.
They had found a deposit of it in an almost inaccessible region of
cliffs and canyons. "Not even the woods goats can get in there,"
Stevens, the leader of that party, said. "If the salt was in an
accessible place there would have been a salt lick there and goats in
plenty."
"If woods goats care for salt the way Earth animals do," Lake said.
"When fall comes we'll make a salt lick and find out."
Two more weeks went by and Craig and Schroeder returned with their
surviving hunters. They had followed the game to the eastern end of the
snow-capped mountain range but there the migration had drawn away from
them, traveling farther each day than they could travel. They had almost
waited too long before turning back: the grass at the southern end of
the plateau was turning brown and the streams were dry. They got enough
water, barely, by digging seep holes in the dry stream beds.
Lake's method of stalking unicorns under the concealment of a woods goat
skin had worked well only a few times. After that the unicorns learned
to swing downwind from any lone woods goats. If they smelled a man
inside the goat skin they charged him and killed him.
With the return of the last hunters everything was done that could be
done in preparation for summer. Inventory was taken of the total food
supply and it was even smaller than Lake had feared. It would be far
from enough to last until fall brought the game back from the north and
he instituted rationing much stricter than before.
The heat increased as the yellow sun blazed hotter and the blue sun grew
larger. Each day the vegetation was browner and a morning came when Lake
could see no green wherever he looked.
They numbered eleven hundred and ten that morning, out of what had so
recently been four thousand. Eleven hundred and ten thin, hungry
scarecrows who, already, could do nothing more than sit listlessly in
the shade and wait for the hell that was coming. He thought of the food
supply, so pitifully small, and of the months it would have to last. He
saw the grim, inescapable future for his charges: famine. There was
nothing he could do to prevent it. He could only try to forestall
complete starvation for all by cutting rations to the bare existence
level.
And that would be bare existence for the stronger of them. The weaker
were already doomed.
He had them all gather in front of the caves that evening when the
terrace was in the shadow of the ridge. He stood before them and spoke
to them:
"All of you know we have only a fraction of the amount of food we need
to see us through the summer. Tomorrow the present ration will be cut in
half. That will be enough to live on, just barely. If that cut isn't
made the food supply will be gone long before fall and all of us will
die.
"If anyone has any food of any kind it must be turned in to be added to
the total supply. Some of you may have thought of your children and
kept a little hidden for them. I can understand why you should do
that--but you must turn it in. There may possibly be some who hid food
for themselves, personally. If so, I give them the first and last
warning: turn it in tonight. If any hidden cache of food is found in the
future the one who hid it will be regarded as a traitor and murderer.
"All of you, but for the children, will go into the chamber next to the
one where the food is stored. Each of you--and there will be no
exceptions regardless of how innocent you are--will carry a bulkily
folded cloth or garment. Each of you will go into the chamber alone.
There will be no one in there. You will leave the food you have folded
in the cloth, if any, and go out the other exit and back to your caves.
No one will ever know whether the cloth you carried contained food or
not. No one will ever ask.
"Our survival on this world, if we are to survive at all, can be only by
working and sacrificing together. There can be no selfishness. What any
of you may have done in the past is of no consequence. Tonight we start
anew. From now on we trust one another without reserve.
"There will be one punishment for any who betray that trust--death."
* * * * *
Anders set the example by being the first to carry a folded cloth into
the cave. Of them all, Lake heard later, only Bemmon voiced any real
indignation; warning all those in his section of the line that the order
was the first step toward outright dictatorship and a police-and-spy
system in which Lake and the other leaders would deprive them all of
freedom and dignity. Bemmon insisted upon exhibiting the emptiness of
the cloth he carried; an action that, had he succeeded in persuading the
others to follow his example, would have mercilessly exposed those who
did have food they were returning.
But no one followed Bemmon's example and no harm was done. As for Lake,
he had worries on his mind of much greater importance than Bemmon's
enmity.
* * * * *
The weeks dragged by, each longer and more terrible to endure than the
one before it as the heat steadily increased. Summer solstice arrived
and there was no escape from the heat, even in the deepest caves. There
was no night; the blue sun rose in the east as the yellow sun set in the
west. There was no life of any kind to be seen, not even an insect.
Nothing moved across the burned land but the swirling dust devils and
shimmering, distorted mirages.
The death rate increased with appalling swiftness. The small supply of
canned and dehydrated milk, fruit and vegetables was reserved
exclusively for the children but it was far insufficient in quantity.
The Ragnarok herbs prevented any recurrence of the fatal deficiency
disease but they provided virtually no nourishment to help fight the
heat and gravity. The stronger of the children lay wasted and listless
on their pallets while the ones not so strong died each day.
Each day thin and hollow-eyed mothers would come to plead with him to
save their children. "... it would take so little to save his life....
Please--before it's too late...."
But there was so little food left and the time was yet so long until
fall would bring relief from the famine that he could only answer each
of them with a grim and final "No."
And watch the last hope flicker and die in their eyes and watch them
turn away, to go and sit for the last hours beside their children.
Bemmon became increasingly irritable and complaining as the rationing
and heat made existence a misery; insisting that Lake and the others
were to blame for the food shortage, that their hunting efforts had been
bungling and faint-hearted. And he implied, without actually saying so,
that Lake and the others had forbidden him to go near the food chamber
because they did not want a competent, honest man to check up on what
they were doing.
There were six hundred and three of them the blazing afternoon when the
girl, Julia, could stand his constant, vindictive, fault-finding no
longer. Lake heard about it shortly afterward, the way she had turned on
Bemmon in a flare of temper she could control no longer and said:
"Whenever your mouth is still you can hear the children who are dying
today--but you don't care. All you can think of is yourself. You claim
Lake and the others were cowards--but you didn't dare hunt with them.
You keep insinuating that they're cheating us and eating more than we
are--but your belly is the only one that has any fat left on it----"
She never completed the sentence. Bemmon's face turned livid in sudden,
wild fury and he struck her, knocking her against the rock wall so hard
that she slumped unconscious to the ground.
"She's a liar!" he panted, glaring at the others. "She's a rotten liar
and anybody who repeats what she said will get what she got!"
When Lake learned of what had happened he did not send for Bemmon at
once. He wondered why Bemmon's reaction had been so quick and violent
and there seemed to be only one answer:
Bemmon's belly was still a little fat. There could be but one way he
could have kept it so.
He summoned Craig, Schroeder, Barber and Anders. They went to the
chamber where Bemmon slept and there, almost at once, they found his
cache. He had it buried under his pallet and hidden in cavities along
the walls; dried meat, dried fruits and milk, canned vegetables. It was
an amount amazingly large and many of the items had presumably been
exhausted during the deficiency disease attack.
"It looks," Schroeder said, "like he didn't waste any time feathering
his nest when he made himself leader."
The others said nothing but stood with grim, frozen faces, waiting for
Lake's next action.
"Bring Bemmon," Lake said to Craig.
Craig returned with him two minutes later. Bemmon stiffened at the sight
of his unearthed cache and color drained away from his face.
"Well?" Lake asked.
"I didn't"--Bemmon swallowed--"I didn't know it was there." And then
quickly, "You can't prove I put it there. You can't prove you didn't
just now bring it in yourselves to frame me."
Lake stared at Bemmon, waiting. The others watched Bemmon as Lake was
doing and no one spoke. The silence deepened and Bemmon began to sweat
as he tried to avoid their eyes. He looked again at the damning evidence
and his defiance broke.
"It--if I hadn't taken it it would have been wasted on people who were
dying," he said. He wiped at his sweating face. "I won't ever do it
again--I swear I won't."
Lake spoke to Craig. "You and Barber take him to the lookout point."
"What----" Bemmon's protest was cut off as Craig and Barber took him by
the arms and walked him swiftly away.
Lake turned to Anders. "Get a rope," he ordered.
Anders paled a little. "A--rope?"
"What else does he deserve?"
"Nothing," Anders said. "Not--not after what he did."
On the way out they passed the place where Julia lay. Bemmon had knocked
her against the wall with such force that a sharp projection of rock had
cut a deep gash in her forehead. A woman was wiping the blood from her
face and she lay limply, still unconscious; a frail shadow of the bold
girl she had once been with the new life she would try to give them an
almost unnoticeable little bulge in her starved thinness.
* * * * *
The lookout point was an outjutting spur of the ridge, six hundred feet
from the caves and in full view of them. A lone tree stood there, its
dead limbs thrust like white arms through the brown foliage of the limbs
that still lived. Craig and Barber waited under the tree, Bemmon between
them. The lowering sun shone hot and bright on Bemmon's face as he
squinted back toward the caves at the approach of Lake and the other
two.
He twisted to look at Barber. "What is it--why did you bring me here?"
There was the tremor of fear in his voice. "What are you going to do to
me?"
Barber did not answer and Bemmon turned back toward Lake. He saw the
rope in Anders' hand and his face went white with comprehension.
"No!"
He threw himself back with a violence that almost tore him loose.
_"No--no!"_
Schroeder stepped forward to help hold him and Lake took the rope from
Anders. He fashioned a noose in it while Bemmon struggled and made
panting, animal sounds, his eyes fixed in horrified fascination on the
rope.
When the noose was finished he threw the free end of the rope over the
white limb above Bemmon. He released the noose and Barber caught it, to
draw it snug around Bemmon's neck.
Bemmon stopped struggling then and sagged weakly. For a moment it
appeared that he would faint. Then he worked his mouth soundlessly until
words came:
"You won't--you can't--really hang me?"
Lake spoke to him:
"We're going to hang you. What you stole would have saved the lives of
ten children. You've watched the children cry because they were so
hungry and you've watched them become too weak to cry or care any more.
You've watched them die each day and each night you've secretly eaten
the food that was supposed to be theirs.
"We're going to hang you, for the murder of children and the betrayal of
our trust in you. If you have anything to say, say it now."
"You can't! I had a right to live--to eat what would have been wasted on
dying people!" Bemmon twisted to appeal to the ones who held him, his
words quick and ragged with hysteria. "You can't hang me--I don't want
to die!"
Craig answered him, with a smile that was like the thin snarl of a wolf:
"Neither did two of my children."
Lake nodded to Craig and Schroeder, not waiting any longer. They stepped
back to seize the free end of the rope and Bemmon screamed at what was
coming, tearing loose from the grip of Barber.
Then his scream was abruptly cut off as he was jerked into the air.
There was a cracking sound and he kicked spasmodically, his head
setting grotesquely to one side.
Craig and Schroeder and Barber watched him with hard, expressionless
faces but Anders turned quickly away, to be suddenly and violently sick.
"He was the first to betray us," Lake said. "Snub the rope and leave him
to swing there. If there are any others like him, they'll know what to
expect."
The blue sun rose as they went back to the caves. Behind them Bemmon
swung and twirled aimlessly on the end of the rope. Two long, pale
shadows swung and twirled with him; a yellow one to the west and a blue
one to the east.
Bemmon was buried the next day. Someone cursed his name and someone spit
on his grave and then he was part of the dead past as they faced the
suffering ahead of them.
Julia recovered, although she would always wear a ragged scar on her
forehead. Anders, who had worked closely with Chiara and was trying to
take his place, quieted her fears by assuring her that the baby she
carried was still too small for there to be much danger of the fall
causing her to lose it.
Three times during the next month the wind came roaring down out of the
northwest, bringing a gray dust that filled the sky and enveloped the
land in a hot, smothering gloom through which the suns could not be
seen.
Once black clouds gathered in the distance, to pour out a cloudburst.
The 1.5 gravity gave the wall of water that swept down the canyon a far
greater force and velocity than it would have had on Earth and boulders
the size of small houses were tossed into the air and shattered into
fragments. But all the rain fell upon the one small area and not a drop
fell at the caves.
One single factor was in their favor and but for it they could not have
survived such intense, continual heat: there was no humidity. Water
evaporated quickly in the hot, dry air and sweat glands operated at the
highest possible degree of efficiency. As a result they drank enormous
quantities of water--the average adult needed five gallons a day. All
canvas had been converted into water bags and the same principle of
cooling-by-evaporation gave them water that was only warm instead of
sickeningly hot as it would otherwise have been.
But despite the lack of humidity the heat was still far more intense
than any on Earth. It never ceased, day or night, never let them have a
moment's relief. There was a limit to how long human flesh could bear up
under it, no matter how valiant the will. Each day the toll of those who
had reached that limit was greater, like a swiftly rising tide.
There were three hundred and forty of them, when the first rain came;
the rain that meant the end of summer. The yellow sun moved southward
and the blue sun shrank steadily. Grass grew again and the woods goats
returned, with them the young that had been born in the north, already
half the size of their mothers.
For a while there was meat, and green herbs. Then the prowlers came, to
make hunting dangerous. Females with pups were seen but always at a
great distance as though the prowlers, like humans, took no chances with
the lives of their children.
The unicorns came close behind the first prowlers, their young amazingly
large and already weaned. Hunting became doubly dangerous then but the
bowmen, through necessity, were learning how to use their bows with
increasing skill and deadliness.
A salt lick for the woods goats was hopefully tried, although Lake felt
dubious about it. They learned that salt was something the woods goats
could either take or leave alone. And when hunters were in the vicinity
they left it alone.
The game was followed for many miles to the south. The hunters returned
the day the first blizzard came roaring and screaming down over the edge
of the plateau; the blizzard that marked the beginning of the long,
frigid winter. By then they were prepared as best they could be. Wood
had been carried in great quantities and the caves fitted with crude
doors and a ventilation system. And they had meat--not as much as they
would need but enough to prevent starvation.
Lake took inventory of the food supply when the last hunters returned
and held check-up inventories at irregular and unannounced intervals. He
found no shortages. He had expected none--Bemmon's grave had long since
been obliterated by drifting snow but the rope still hung from the dead
limb, the noose swinging and turning in the wind.
* * * * *
Anders had made a Ragnarok calendar that spring, from data given him by
John Prentiss, and he had marked the corresponding Earth dates on it. By
a coincidence, Christmas came near the middle of the winter. There would
be the same rationing of food on Christmas day but little brown trees
had been cut for the children and decorated with such ornaments as could
be made from the materials at hand.
There was another blizzard roaring down off the plateau Christmas
morning; a white death that thundered and howled outside the caves at a
temperature of more than eighty degrees below zero. But inside the caves
it was warm by the fires and under the little brown trees were toys that
had been patiently whittled from wood or sewn from scraps of cloth and
animal skins while the children slept. They were crude and humble toys
but the pale, thin faces of the children were bright with delight when
they beheld them.
There was the laughter of children at play, a sound that had not been
heard for many months, and someone singing the old, old songs. For a few
fleeting hours that day, for the first and last time on Ragnarok, there
was the magic of an Earth Christmas.
That night a child was born to Julia, on a pallet of dried grass and
prowler skins. She asked for her baby before she died and they let her
have it.
"I wasn't afraid, was I?" she asked. "But I wish it wasn't so dark--I
wish I could see my baby before I go."
They took the baby from her arms when she was gone and removed from it
the blanket that had kept her from learning that her child was
still-born.
There were two hundred and fifty of them when the first violent storms
of spring came. By then eighteen children had been born. Sixteen were
still-born, eight of them deformed by the gravity, but two were like any
normal babies on Earth. There was only one difference: the 1.5 gravity
did not seem to affect them as much as it had the Earth-born babies.
Lake, himself, married that spring; a tall, gray-eyed girl who had
fought alongside the men the night of the storm when the prowlers broke
into John Prentiss's camp. And Schroeder married, the last of them all
to do so.
That spring Lake sent out two classes of bowmen: those who would use the
ordinary short bow and those who would use the longbows he had had made
that winter. According to history the English longbowmen of medieval
times had been without equal in the range and accuracy of their arrows
and such extra-powerful weapons should eliminate close range stalking of
woods goats and afford better protection from unicorns.
The longbows worked so well that by mid-spring he could detach Craig and
three others from the hunting and send them on a prospecting expedition.
Prentiss had said Ragnarok was devoid of metals but there was the hope
of finding small veins the Dunbar Expedition's instruments had not
detected. They would have to find metal or else, in the end, they would
go back into a flint axe stage.
Craig and his men returned when the blue star was a sun again and the
heat was more than men could walk and work in. They had traveled
hundreds of miles in their circuit and found no metals.
"I want to look to the south when fall comes," Craig said. "Maybe it
will be different down there."
They did not face famine that summer as they had the first summer. The
diet of meat and dried herbs was rough and plain but there was enough of
it.
Full summer came and the land was again burned and lifeless. There was
nothing to do but sit wearily in the shade and endure the heat, drawing
what psychological comfort they could from the fact that summer solstice
was past and the suns were creeping south again even though it would be
many weeks before there was any lessening of the heat.
It was then, and by accident, that Lake discovered there was something
wrong about the southward movement of the suns.
He was returning from the lookout that day and he realized it was
exactly a year since he and the others had walked back to the caves
while Bemmon swung on the limb behind them.
It was even the same time of day; the blue sun rising in the east behind
him and the yellow sun bright in his face as it touched the western
horizon before him. He remembered how the yellow sun had been like the
front sight of a rifle, set in the deepest V notch of the western
hills--
But now, exactly a year later, it was not in the V notch. It was on the
north side of the notch.
He looked to the east, at the blue sun. It seemed to him that it, too,
was farther north than it had been although with it he had no landmark
to check by.
But there was no doubt about the yellow sun: it was going south, as it
should at that time of year, but it was lagging behind schedule. The
only explanation Lake could think of was one that would mean still
another threat to their survival; perhaps greater than all the others
combined.
The yellow sun dropped completely behind the north slope of the V notch
and he went on to the caves. He found Craig and Anders, the only two who
might know anything about Ragnarok's axial tilts, and told them what he
had seen.
"I made the calendar from the data John gave me," Anders said. "The
Dunbar men made observations and computed the length of Ragnarok's
year--I don't think they would have made any mistakes."
"If they didn't," Lake said, "we're in for something."
Craig was watching him, closely, thoughtfully. "Like the Ice Ages of
Earth?" he asked.
Lake nodded and Anders said, "I don't understand."
"Each year the north pole tilts toward the sun to give us summer and
away from it to give us winter," Lake said. "Which, of course, you
know. But there can be still another kind of axial tilt. On Earth it
occurs at intervals of thousands of years. The tilting that produces the
summers and winters goes on as usual but as the centuries go by the
summer tilt toward the sun grows less, the winter tilt away from it
greater. The north pole leans farther and farther from the sun and ice
sheets come down out of the north--an Ice Age. Then the north pole's
progression away from the sun stops and the ice sheets recede as it
tilts back toward the sun."
"I see," Anders said. "And if the same thing is happening here, we're
going away from an ice age but at a rate thousands of times faster than
on Earth."
"I don't know whether it's Ragnarok's tilt, alone, or if the orbits of
the suns around each other add effects of their own over a period of
years," Lake said. "The Dunbar Expedition wasn't here long enough to
check up on anything like that."
"It seemed to me it was hotter this summer than last," Craig said.
"Maybe only my imagination--but it won't be imagination in a few years
if the tilt toward the sun continues."
"The time would come when we'd have to leave here," Lake said. "We'd
have to go north up the plateau each spring. There's no timber
there--nothing but grass and wind and thin air. We'd have to migrate
south each fall."
"Yes ... migrate." Anders's face was old and weary in the harsh
reflected light of the blue sun and his hair had turned almost white in
the past year. "Only the young ones could ever adapt enough to go up the
plateau to its north portion. The rest of us ... but we haven't many
years, anyway. Ragnarok is for the young--and if they have to migrate
back and forth like animals just to stay alive they will never have time
to accomplish anything or be more than stone age nomads."
"I wish we could know how long the Big Summer will be that we're going
into," Craig said. "And how long and cold the Big Winter, when Ragnarok
tilts away from the sun. It wouldn't change anything--but I'd like to
know."
"We'll start making and recording daily observations," Lake said.
"Maybe the tilt will start back the other way before it's too late."
* * * * *
Fall seemed to come a little later that year. Craig went to the south as
soon as the weather permitted but there were no minerals there; only the
metal-barren hills dwindling in size until they became a prairie that
sloped down and down toward the southern lowlands where all the
creatures of Ragnarok spent the winter.
"I'll try again to the north when spring comes," Craig said. "Maybe that
mountain on the plateau will have something."
Winter came, and Elaine died in giving him a son. The loss of Elaine was
an unexpected blow; hurting more than he would ever have thought
possible.
But he had a son ... and it was his responsibility to do whatever he
could to insure the survival of his son and of the sons and daughters of
all the others.
His outlook altered and he began to think of the future, not in terms of
years to come but in terms of generations to come. Someday one of the
young ones would succeed him as leader but the young ones would have
only childhood memories of Earth. He was the last leader who had known
Earth and the civilization of Earth as a grown man. What he did while he
was leader would incline the destiny of a new race.
He would have to do whatever was possible for him to do and he would
have to begin at once. The years left to him could not be many.
He was not alone; others in the caves had the same thoughts he had
regarding the future even though none of them had any plan for
accomplishing what they spoke of. West, who had held degrees in
philosophy on Earth, said to Lake one night as they sat together by the
fire:
"Have you noticed the way the children listen when the talk turns to
what used to be on Earth, what might have been on Athena, and what would
be if only we could find a way to escape from Ragnarok?"
"I've noticed," he said.
"These stories already contain the goal for the future generations,"
West went on. "Someday, somehow, they will go to Athena, to kill the
Gerns there and free the Terran slaves and reclaim Athena as their own."
He had listened to them talk of the interstellar flight to Athena as
they sat by their fires and worked at making bows and arrows. It was
only a dream they held, yet without that dream there would be nothing
before them but the vision of generation after generation living and
dying on a world that could never give them more than existence.
The dream was needed. But it, alone, was not enough. How long, on Earth,
had it been from the Neolithic age to advanced civilization--how long
from the time men were ready to leave their caves until they were ready
to go to the stars?
Twelve thousand years.
There were men and women among the Rejects who had been specialists in
various fields. There were a few books that had survived the trampling
of the unicorns and others could be written with ink made from the black
lance tree bark upon parchment made from the thin inner skin of unicorn
hides.
The knowledge contained in the books and the learning of the Rejects
still living should be preserved for the future generations. With the
help of that learning perhaps they really could, someday, somehow,
escape from their prison and make Athena their own.
He told West of what he had been thinking. "We'll have to start a
school," he said. "This winter--tomorrow."
West nodded in agreement. "And the writings should be commenced as soon
as possible. Some of the textbooks will require more time to write than
Ragnarok will give the authors."
A school for the children was started the next day and the writing of
the books began. The parchment books would serve two purposes. One would
be to teach the future generations things that would not only help them
survive but would help them create a culture of their own as advanced as
the harsh environment and scanty resources of Ragnarok permitted. The
other would be to warn them of the danger of a return of the Gerns and
to teach them all that was known about Gerns and their weapons.
Lake's main contribution would be a lengthy book: TERRAN SPACESHIPS;
TYPES AND OPERATION. He postponed its writing, however, to first produce
a much smaller book but one that might well be more important: INTERIOR
FEATURES OF A GERN CRUISER. Terran Intelligence knew a little about Gern
cruisers and as second-in-command of the _Constellation_ he had seen and
studied a copy of that report. He had an excellent memory for such
things, almost photographic, and he wrote the text and drew a multitude
of sketches.
He shook his head ruefully at the result. The text was good but, for
clarity, the accompanying illustrations should be accurate and in
perspective. And he was definitely not an artist.
He discovered that Craig could take a pen in his scarred, powerful hand
and draw with the neat precision of a professional artist. He turned the
sketches over to him, together with the mass of specifications. Since it
might someday be of such vital importance, he would make four copies of
it. The text was given to a teen-age girl, who would make three more
copies of it....
Four days later Schroeder handed Lake a text with some rough sketches.
The title was: OPERATION OF GERN BLASTERS.
Not even Intelligence had ever been able to examine a Gern hand blaster.
But a man named Schrader, on Venus, had killed a Gern with his own
blaster and then disappeared with both infuriated Gerns and
Gern-intimidated Venusian police in pursuit. There had been a high
reward for his capture....
He looked it over and said, "I was counting on you giving us this."
Only the barest trace of surprise showed on Schroeder's face but his
eyes were intently watching Lake. "So you knew all the time who I was?"
"I knew."
"Did anyone else on the _Constellation_ know?"
"You were recognized by one of the ship's officers. You would have been
tried in two more days."
"I see," Schroeder said. "And since I was guilty and couldn't be
returned to Earth or Venus I'd have been executed on the _Constellation_."
He smiled sardonically. "And you, as second-in-command, would have been my
execution's master of ceremonies."
Lake put the parchment sheets back together in their proper order.
"Sometimes," he said, "a ship's officer has to do things that are
contrary to all his own wishes."
Schroeder drew a deep breath, his face sombre with the memories he had
kept to himself.
"It was two years ago when the Gerns were still talking friendship to
the Earth government while they shoved the colonists around on Venus.
This Gern ... there was a girl there and he thought he could do what he
wanted to her because he was a mighty Gern and she was nothing. He did.
That's why I killed him. I had to kill two Venusian police to get
away--that's where I put the rope around my neck."
"It's not what we did but what we do that we'll live or die by on
Ragnarok," Lake said. He handed Schroeder the sheets of parchment. "Tell
Craig to make at least four copies of this. Someday our knowledge of
Gern blasters may be something else we'll live or die by."
* * * * *
The school and writing were interrupted by the spring hunting. Craig
made his journey to the Plateau's snow-capped mountain but he was unable
to keep his promise to prospect it. The plateau was perhaps ten thousand
feet in elevation and the mountain rose another ten thousand feet above
the plateau. No human could climb such a mountain in a 1.5 gravity.
"I tried," he told Lake wearily when he came back. "Damn it, I never
tried harder at anything in my life. It was just too much for me. Maybe
some of the young ones will be better adapted and can do it when they
grow up."
Craig brought back several sheets of unusually transparent mica, each
sheet a foot in diameter, and a dozen large water-clear quartz crystals.
"Float, from higher up on the mountain," he said. "The mica and crystals
are in place up there if we could only reach them. Other minerals,
too--I panned traces in the canyon bottoms. But no iron."
Lake examined the sheets of mica. "We could make windows for the outer
caves of these," he said. "Have them double thickness with a wide air
space between, for insulation. As for the quartz crystals...."
"Optical instruments," Craig said. "Binoculars, microscopes--it would
take us a long time to learn how to make glass as clear and flawless as
those crystals. But we have no way of cutting and grinding them."
Craig went to the east that fall and to the west the next spring. He
returned from the trip to the west with a twisted knee that would never
let him go prospecting again.
"It will take years to find the metals we need," he said. "The
indications are that we never will but I wanted to keep on trying. Now,
my damned knee has me chained to these caves...."
He reconciled himself to his lameness and confinement as best he could
and finished his textbook: GEOLOGY AND MINERAL IDENTIFICATION.
He also taught a geology class during the winters. It was in the winter
of the year four on Ragnarok that a nine-year-old boy entered his class;
the silent, scar-faced Billy Humbolt.
He was by far the youngest of Craig's students, and the most attentive.
Lake was present one day when Craig asked, curiously:
"It's not often a boy your age is so interested in mineralogy and
geology, Billy. Is there something more than just interest?"
"I have to learn all about minerals," Billy said with matter-of-fact
seriousness, "so that when I'm grown I can find the metals for us to
make a ship."
"And then?" Craig asked.
"And then we'd go to Athena, to kill the Gerns who caused my mother to
die, and my grandfather, and Julia, and all the others. And to free my
father and the other slaves if they're still alive."
"I see," Craig said.
He did not smile. His face was shadowed and old as he looked at the boy
and beyond him; seeing again, perhaps, the frail blonde girl and the two
children that the first quick, violent months had taken from him.
"I hope you succeed," he said. "I wish I was young so I could dream of
the same thing. But I'm not ... so let's get back to the identification
of the ores that will be needed to make a ship to go to Athena and to
make blasters to kill Gerns after you get there."
Lake had a corral built early the following spring, with camouflaged
wings, to trap some of the woods goats when they came. It would be an
immense forward step toward conquering their new environment if they
could domesticate the goats and have goat herds near the caves all
through the year. Gathering enough grass to last a herd of goats through
the winter would be a problem--but first, before they worried about
that, they would have to see if the goats could survive the summer and
winter extremes of heat and cold.
They trapped ten goats that spring. They built them brush
sunshades--before summer was over the winds would have stripped the
trees of most of their dry, brown leaves--and a stream of water was
diverted through the corral.
It was all work in vain. The goats died from the heat in early summer,
together with the young that had been born.
When fall came they trapped six more goats. They built them shelters
that would be as warm as possible and carried them a large supply of the
tall grass from along the creek banks; enough to last them through the
winter. But the cold was too much for the goats and the second blizzard
killed them all.
The next spring and fall, and with much more difficulty, they tried the
experiment with pairs of unicorns. The results were the same.
Which meant they would remain a race of hunters. Ragnarok would not
permit them to be herdsmen.
* * * * *
The years went by, each much like the one before it but for the rapid
aging of the Old Ones, as Lake and the others called themselves, and the
growing up of the Young Ones. No woman among the Old Ones could any
longer have children, but six more normal, healthy children had been
born. Like the first two, they were not affected by the gravity as
Earth-born babies had been.
Among the Young Ones, Lake saw, was a distinguishable difference. Those
who had been very young the day the Gerns left them to die had adapted
better than those who had been a few years older.
The environment of Ragnarok had struck at the very young with merciless
savagery. It had subjected them to a test of survival that was without
precedent on Earth. It had killed them by the hundreds but among them
had been those whose young flesh and blood and organs had resisted death
by adapting to the greatest extent possible.
The day of the Old Ones was almost done and the future would soon be in
the hands of the Young Ones. They were the ninety unconquerables out of
what had been four thousand Rejects; the first generation of what would
be a new race.
It seemed to Lake that the years came and went ever faster as the Old
Ones dwindled in numbers at an accelerating rate. Anders had died in the
sixth year, his heart failing him one night as he worked patiently in
his crude little laboratory at carrying on the work started by Chiara to
find a cure for the Hell Fever. Barber, trying to develop a strain of
herbs that would grow in the lower elevation of the caves, was killed by
a unicorn as he worked in his test plot below the caves. Craig went
limping out one spring day on the eighth year to look at a new mineral a
hunter had found a mile from the caves. A sudden cold rain blew up,
chilling him before he could return, and he died of Hell Fever the same
day.
Schroeder was killed by prowlers the same year, dying with his back to a
tree and a bloody knife in his hand. It was the way he would have wanted
to go--once he had said to Lake:
"When my times comes I would rather it be against the prowlers. They
fight hard and kill quick and then they're through with you. They don't
tear you up after you're dead and slobber and gloat over the pieces, the
way the unicorns do."
The springs came a little earlier each year, the falls a little later,
and the observations showed the suns progressing steadily northward. But
the winters, though shorter, were seemingly as cold as ever. The long
summers reached such a degree of heat on the ninth year that Lake knew
they could endure no more than two or three years more of the increasing
heat.
Then, in the summer of the tenth year, the tilting of Ragnarok--the
apparent northward progress of the suns--stopped. They were in the
middle of what Craig had called Big Summer and they could endure
it--just barely. They would not have to leave the caves.
The suns started their drift southward. The observations were continued
and carefully recorded. Big Fall was coming and behind it would be Big
Winter.
Big Winter ... the threat of it worried Lake. How far to the south would
the suns go--how long would they stay? Would the time come when the
plateau would be buried under hundreds of feet of snow and the caves
enclosed in glacial ice?
There was no way he could ever know or even guess. Only those of the
future would ever know.
On the twelfth year only Lake and West were left of the Old Ones. By
then there were eighty-three left of the Young Ones, eight Ragnarok-born
children of the Old Ones and four Ragnarok-born children of the Young
Ones. Not counting himself and West, there were ninety-five of them.
It was not many to be the beginnings of a race that would face an ice
age of unknown proportions and have over them, always, the threat of a
chance return of the Gerns.
The winter of the fifteenth year came and he was truly alone, the last
of the Old Ones. White-haired and aged far beyond his years, he was
still leader. But that winter he could do little other than sit by his
fire and feel the gravity dragging at his heart. He knew, long before
spring, that it was time he chose his successor.
He had hoped to live to see his son take his place--but Jim was only
thirteen. Among the others was one he had been watching since the day he
told Craig he would find metals to build a ship and kill the Gerns:
Bill Humbolt.
Bill Humbolt was not the oldest among those who would make leaders but
he was the most versatile of them all, the most thoughtful and
stubbornly determined. He reminded Lake of that fierce old man who had
been his grandfather and had it not been for the scars that twisted his
face into grim ugliness he would have looked much like him.
A violent storm was roaring outside the caves the night he told the
others that he wanted Bill Humbolt to be his successor. There were no
objections and, without ceremony and with few words, he terminated his
fifteen years of leadership.
He left the others, his son among them, and went back to the cave where
he slept. His fire was low, down to dying embers, but he was too tired
to build it up again. He lay down on his pallet and saw, with neither
surprise nor fear, that his time was much nearer than he had thought. It
was already at hand.
He lay back and let the lassitude enclose him, not fighting it. He had
done the best he could for the others and now the weary journey was
over.
His thoughts dissolved into the memory of the day fifteen years before.
The roaring of the storm became the thunder of the Gern cruisers as they
disappeared into the gray sky. Four thousand Rejects stood in the cold
wind and watched them go, the children not yet understanding that they
had been condemned to die. Somehow, his own son was among them----
He tried feebly to rise. There was work to do--a lot of work to do....
* * * * *