HEROES, MONSTERS AND MARVELS OF FARAWAY WORLDS

Yes, he had gone into the Moonfire—but not far enough. He was no god; he could only summon the shadows of his lost love. He had been unable to endure the agony of that terrible force, which could make a man superhuman.

But now he was returning to that strange sea of light that had torn at his body atom by atom, that none had ever come out of alive. This time he was going to make it to the center of the Moonfire, and face whatever fate might await him. But what was the penalty for man seeking the power of the gods?

The Moon That Vanished by Leigh Brackett is only one of the thrill-packed tales in this collection of stories about courageous men daring adventure on unknown worlds, of SWORDSMEN IN THE SKY.

DONALD A. WOLLHEIM, probably one of the best known names in the science-fiction field, is professionally the editor of Ace Books. But he is also one of the leading anthologists of fantasy fiction with a string of books to his credit. As a writer, he is the author of a number of best-selling juvenile novels including the Mike Mars, Astronaut series published by Doubleday, and such oft-reprinted books as The Secret of the Ninth Planet, published by Holt, Rinehart & Winston. He has had short stories published in most of the leading s-f magazines, and books of his have been translated into many languages including German, Spanish, Japanese, Italian, French, Dutch, Swedish, etc.

A Resident of Greater New York City, he is married and the father of a daughter. His in-print anthologies available from Ace Books include:

THE MACABRE READER (D-353)

THE HIDDEN PLANET (D-354)

ADVENTURES ON OTHER PLANETS (D-490)

MORE MACABRE (D-508)

MORE ADVENTURES ON OTHER PLANETS

(F-178)

SWORDSMEN INTHE SKY

Editedby

Donald A. Wollheim

ACE BOOKS, INC. 1120 Avenue of the Americas New York, N.Y. 10036

SWORDSMEN IN THE SKY

Copyright ©, 1964, by Ace Books, Inc. All Rights Reserved

COPYRIGHT ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Kaldar, World of Antares, copyright, 1933, by Popular Fiction Publishing Co., 1961, by Edmond Hamilton. Swordsman of Lost Terra, copyright, 1951, by Love Romances Publishing Co., Inc.

Both the above stories appear by arrangement with the Scott Meredith Literary Agency. Inc.

A Vision of Venus, copyright, 1933, by Teck Publications,

Inc.By arrangement with the Author's Estate.

The Moon That Vanished, copyright, 1948, by Standard

Magazines, Inc. By arrangement with the author and Lurton

Blassingame.

People of the Crater, copyright, 1947, by Fantasy Publishing Co., Inc.By arrangement with the author.

Cover by Frank Frazetta Interior illustrations by Jack Gaughan

CONTENTS

SWORDSMAN OF LOST TERRA                 6

by Poul Anderson

PEOPLE OF THE CRATER                            57

by Andre Norton

THE MOON THAT VANISHED                  99

by Leigh Bracket?

A VISION OF VENUS                                  146

by Otis Adelbert Kline

KALDAR, WORLD OF ANTARES            153

by Edmond Hamilton

SWORDSMAN OF LOST TERRA by Poul Anderson

I

The third book of the Story of the Men of Killorn. How Red Bram fought the Ganasthi from the lands of darkness, and Kery son of Rhiach was angered, and the pipe of the gods spoke once more.

Now it must be told of those who fared forth south under Bram the Red. This was the smallest of the parties that left Killorn, being from three clans only—Broina, Dagh, and Heor-ran. That made some thousand warriors, mostly men with some women archers and slingers. But the pipe of the gods had always been with Clan Broina, and so it followed the Broina on this trek. He was Rhiach son of Glyndwyrr, and his son was Kery.

Bram was a Heorran, a man huge of height and thew, with eyes like blue ice and hair and beard like a torch. He was curt of speech and had no close friends, but men agreed that his brain and his spirit made him the best leader for a

journey like this, though some thought that he paid too little respect to the gods and their priests.

For some five years these men of Killorn marched south. They went over strange hills and windy moors, through ice-blinking clefts in gaunt-cragged mountains and over brawling rivers chill with the cold of the Dark Lands.

They hunted and robbed to live, or reaped the gain of foreigners, and cheerfully cut down any who sought to gainsay them. Now and again Bram dickered with the chiefs of some or other city and hired himself and his wild men out to fight against another town. Then there would be hard battle and rich booty and flames red against the twilight sky.

Men died and some grew weary of roving and fighting. There was a sick hunger within them for rest and a hearth-fire and the eternal sunset over the Lake of Killorn. These took a house and a woman and stayed by the road. In such ways did Bram's army shrink. On the other hand most of his warriors finally took some or other woman along on the march and she would demand more for herself and the babies then a roof of clouds and wind. So there came to be tents and wagons, with children playing between the turning wheels. Bram grumbled about this, it made his army slower and clumsier, but there was little he could do to prevent it.

Those who were boys when the trek began became men with the years and the battles and the many miles. Among these was the Kery of whom we speak. He grew tall and lithe and slender, with the fair skin and slant blue eyes and long ash-blond hair of the Broina, broad of forehead and cheekbones, straight-nosed, beardless like most of his clan.

He was swift and deadly with sword, spear, or bow, merry with his comrades over ale and campfire, clever to play harp or pipe and make verses—not much different from the others, save that he came of the Broina and would one day carry the pipe of the gods. And while the legends of Killorn said that all men are the offspring of a goddess whom a warrior devil once bore off to his lair, it was held that the Broina had a little more demon blood in them than most.

Always Kery bore within his heart a dream. He was still a stripling when they wandered from home. He had reached young manhood among hoofs and wheels and dusty roads, battle and roaming and the glimmer of campfires, but he never forgot Killorn of the purple hills and the far thundering sea and the lake where it was forever sunset. For there had been a girl of the Dagh sept, and she had stayed behind. But then the warriors came to Ryvan and their doom.

It was a broad fair country into which they had come. Trending south and east, away from the sun, they were on the darker edge of the Twilight Lands and the day was no longer visible at all. Only the deep silver-blue dusk lay around them and above, with black night and glittering stars to the east and a few high clouds lit by unseen sunbeams to the west. But it was still light enough for Twilight Landers' eyes to reach the horizon—to' see fields and woods and rolling hills and the far metal gleam of a river. They were well into the territory of Ryvan city.

Rumor ran before them on frightened feet, and peasants often fled as they advanced. But never had they met such emptiness as now. They had passed deserted houses, gutted farmsteads, and the bones of the newly slain, and had shifted their course eastward to get into wilder country where there should at least be game. But such talk as they had heard of the invaders of Ryvan made them march warily. And when one of their scouts galloped back to tell of an army advancing out of the darkness against them, the great horns screamed and the wagons were drawn together.

For a while, there was chaos, running and yelling men, crying children, bawling cattle, and tramping hests. Then the carts were drawn into a defensive ring atop a high steep ridge and the warriors waited outside. They made a brave sight, the men of Killorn, tall barbarians in the colorful kilts of their septs with plundered ornaments shining around corded throat or sinewy arm.

Most of them still bore the equipment of their homeland-horned helmets, gleaming ring-bymies, round shields, ax and bow and spear and broadsword, worn and dusty with use but ready for more. The greater number went afoot, through some rode the small shaggy hests of the north. Their women and children crouched behind the wagons, with bows and slings ready and the old battle banners of Killorn floating overhead.

Kery came running to the place where the chiefs stood.

He wore only a helmet and a light leather corselet, and carried sword and spear and a bow slung over his shoulders. "Father," he called. "Father, who are they?"

Rhiach of Broina stood near Bram with the great bagpipes of the gods under one arm—old beyond memory, those pipes, worn and battered, but terror and death and the avenging furies crouched in them, power so great that only one man could ever know the secret of their use. A light breeze stirred the warlock's long gray hair about his gaunt face, and his eyes brooded on the eastern darkness.

The scout who had brought word turned to greet Kery. He was panting with the weariness of his hard ride. An arrow had wounded him, and he shivered as the cold wind from the Dark Lands brushed his sweat-streaked body. "A horde," he said. "An army marching out of the east toward us, not Ryvan but such a folk as I never knew of. Their outriders saw me and barely did I get away. Most likely they will move against us, and swiftly."

"A host at least as great as ours," added Bram. "It must be a part oi the invading Dark Landers who are laying Ryvan waste. It will be a hard fight, though I doubt not that with our good sword-arms and the pipe of the gods we will throw them back."

"I know not." Rhiach spoke slowly. His deep eyes were somber on Kery. "I have had ill dreams of late. If I fell in this battle, before we won ... I did wrong, son. I should have told you how to use the pipe."

"The law says you can only do that when you are so old that you are ready to give up your chiefship to your first born," said Bram. "It is a good law. A whole clan knowing how to wield such power would soon be at odds with all Killorn."

"But we are not in Killorn now," said Rhiach. "We have come far from home, among alien and enemy peoples, and the lake where it is forever sunset is a ghost to us." His hard face softened. "If I fall, Kery, my own spirit, I think, will wander back thither. I will wait for you at the border of the lake, I will be on the windy heaths and by the high tarns, they will hear me piping in the night and know I have come home . . . but seek your place, son, and all the gods be with you.

Kery gulped and wrung his father's hand. The warlock had ever been a stranger to him. His mother was dead these many years and Rhiach had grown grim and silent. And yet the old warlock was dearer to him than any save Morna who waited for his return.

He turned and sped to his own post, with the tyrs.

The cows of the great horned tyrs from Killorn were for meat and milk and leather, and trudged meekly enough behind the wagons. But the huge black bulls were wicked and had gored more than one man to death. Still Kery had gotten the idea of using them in battle. He had made iron plates for their chests and shoulders. He had polished their cruel horns and taught them to charge when he gave the word. "No other man in the army dared go near them, but Kery could guide them with a whistle. For the men of Broina were warlocks.

They snorted in the twilight as he neared them, stamping restlessly and shaking their mighty heads. He laughed in a sudden reckless drunkenness of power and moved up to his big lovely Gorwain and scratched the bull behind the ears.

"Softly, softly," he whispered, standing in the dusk among the crowding black bulks. "Patient, my beauty, wait but a little and I'll slip you, O wait, my Gorwain."

Spears blinked in the shadowy light and voices rumbled quietly. The bulls and the hests snorted, stamping and shivering in the thin chill wind flowing from the lands of night. They waited.

Presently they heard, faint and far, the skirling of war pipes. But it was not the wild joyous music of Killorn, it was a thin shrill note which ran along the nerves, jagged as a saw, and the thump of drums and the clangor of gongs came with it. Kery sprang up on the broad shoulders of Gorwain the tyr and strained into the gloom to see.

Over the rolling land came marching the invaders. It was an army of a thousand or so, he guessed with a shiver of tension, moving in closer ranks and with tighter discipline than the barbarians. He had seen many armies, from the naked yelling savages of the upper Norlan hills to the armored files of civilized towns, yet never one like this.

Dark Landers! he thought bleakly. Out of the cold and the night that never ends, out of the mystery and the frightened legends of a thousand years, here at last are the men of the Dark Lands, spilling into the Twilight like their own icy winds, and have we anything that can stand against them?

They were tall, as tall as the northerners, but gaunt, with a stringy toughness born of hardship and suffering and bitter chill. Their skins were white, not with the ruddy whiteness of the northern Twilight Landers but dead-white, blank and bare, and the long hair and beards were the color of silver.

Their eyes were the least human thing about them, huge and round and golden, the eyes of a bird of prey, deep sunken in the narrow skulls. Their faces seemed strangely immobile, as if the muscles for laughter and weeping were alike frozen. As they moved up, the only sound was the tramp of their feet and the demon whine of their pipes and the clash of drum and gong.

They were well equipped, Kery judged, they wore close-fitting garments of fur-trimmed leather, trousers and boots and hooded tunics. Underneath he glimpsed mail, helmets, shields, and they carried all the weapons he knew—no cavalry, but they marched with a sure tread. Overhead floated a strange banner, a black standard with a jagged golden streak across it.

Kery's muscles and nerves tightened to thrumming alertness. He crouched by his lead bull, one hand gripping the hump and the other white-knuckled around his spearshaft. And there was a great hush on the ranks of Killorn as they waited.

Closer came the strangers, until they were in bowshot. Kery heard the snap of tautening strings. Will Bram never give the signal? Gods, is he waiting for them to walk up and kiss us?

A trumpet brayed from the enemy ranks, and Kery saw the cloud of arrows rise whistling against the sky. At the same time Bram winded his horn and the air grew loud with war shouts and the roar of arrow flocks.

Then the strangers locked shields and charged.

II

THE MEN of Killorn stood their ground, shoulder to shoulder, pikes braced and swords aloft. They had the advantage of high ground and meant to use it. From behind their ranks' came a steady hail of arrows and stones, whistling through the air to crack among the enemy ranks and tumble men to earth—yet still the Dark Landers came, leaping and bounding and running with strange precision. They did not yell, and their faces were blank as white stone, but behind them the rapid thud of their drums rose to a pulse-shaking roar. "Hai-ahl" bellowed Red Bram. "Sunder them!" The great long-shafted ax shrieked in his hands, belled on an enemy helmet and crashed through into skull and brain and shattering jawbone. Again he smote, sideways, and a head leaped from its shoulders.

A Dark Land warrior thrust for his belly. He kicked one booted foot out and sent the man lurching back into his own ranks. Whirling, he hewed down one who engaged the Killor-ner beside him. A foeman sprang against him as he turned, chopping at his leg. With a roar that lifted over the clashing racket of battle, Bram turned, the ax already flying in his hands, and cut the stranger down.

His red beard blazed like a torch over the struggle as it swayed back and forth. His streaming ax was a lighting bolt that rose and fell and rose again, and the thunder of metal on breaking metal rolled between the hills.

Kery stood by his tyrs, bow in hand, shooting and shooting into the masses that roiled about him. None came too close, and he could not leave his post lest the unchained bulls stampede. He shuddered with the black fury of battle. When would Bram call the charge. How long? Zip, zip, gray-feathered death winging into the tide that rolled up to the wagons and fell back and resurged over its corpses.

The men of Killorn were yelling and cursing as they fought, but the Dark Landers made never a sound save for the hoarse gasping of breath and the muted groans of the wounded. It was like fighting demons, yellow-eyed and silver-bearded and with no soul in their bony faces. The northerners shivered and trembled and hewed with a desperate fury of loathing.

Back and forth the battle swayed, roar of axes and whine of arrows and harsh iron laughter of swords. Kery stood firing and firing, the need to fight was a bitter catch in his throat. How long to wait, how long, how long?

Why didn't Rhiach blow the skirl of death on the pipes? Why not fling them back with the horror of disintegration in their bones, and then rush out to finish them?

Kery knew well that the war-song of the gods was only to be played in time of direst need, for it hurt friend almost as much as foe—but even so, even sol A few shaking bars, to drive the enemy back in death and panic, and then the sortie to end them!

Of a sudden he saw a dozen Dark Landers break from the main battle by the wagons and approach the spot where he stood. He shot two swift arrows, threw his spear, and pulled out his sword with a savage laughter in his heart, the demoniac battle joy of the Broina. Ha, let them cornel

The first sprang with downward-whistling blade. Kery twisted aside, letting speed and skill be his shield, his long glaive flickered out and the enemy screamed as it took off his arm. Whirling, Kery spitted the second through the throat. The third was on him before he could withdraw his blade, and a fourth from the other side, raking for his vitals. He sprang back.

"Gorwain!" he shouted. "Gorwain!"

The huge black bull heard. His fellows snorted and shivered, but stayed at their place—Kery didn't know how long they would wait, he prayed they would stay a moment more. The lead tyr ran up beside his master, and the ground trembled under his cloven hoofs.

The white foemen shrank back, still dead of face but with fear plain in their bodies. Gorwain snorted, an explosion of thunder, and charged them.

There was an instant of flying bodies, tattered flesh ripped by the horns, and ribs snapping underfoot. The Dark Landers thrust with their spears, the points glanced off the armor plating and Gorwain turned and slew them.

"Here!" cried Kery sharply. "Back, Gorwain! Here!"

The tyr snorted and circled, rolling his eyes. The killing madness was coming over him, if he were not stopped now he might charge friend or foe.

"Gorwain!" screamed Kery.

Slowly, trembling under his shining black hide, the bull returned.

And now Rhiach the warlock stood up behind the ranks of Killom. Tall and steely gray, he went out between them, the pipes in his arms and the mouthpieces at his lips. For an instant the Dark Landers wavered, hesitating to shoot at him, and then he blew.

It was like the snarling music of any bagpipe, and yet there was more in it. There was a boiling tide of horror riding the notes, men's hearts faltered and weakness turned their muscles watery. Higher rose the music, and stronger and louder, screaming in the dales, and before men's eyes the world grew unreal, shivering beneath them, the rocks faded to mist and the trees groaned and the sky shook. They fell toward the ground, holding their ears, half blind with unreasoning fear and with the pain of the giant hand that gripped their bones and shook them, shook them.

The Dark Landers reeled back, falling, staggering, and many of those who toppled were dead before they hit the earth. Others milled in panic, the army was becoming a mob. The world groaned and trembled and tried to dance to the demon music.

Rhiach stopped. Bram shook his bull head to clear the ringing and the fog in it. "At them!" he roared. "Charge!"

Sanity came back. The land was real and solid again, and men who were used to the terrible drone of the pipes could force strength back into shuddering bodies. With a great shout, the warriors of Killorn formed ranks and moved forward.

Kery leaped up on the back of Gorwain, straddling the armored chine and gripping his knees into the mighty flanks. His sword blazed in the air. "Now kill them, my beauties!" he howled.

In a great wedge, with Gorwain at their lead, the tyrs rushed out on the foe. Earth shook under the rolling thunder of their feet. Their bellowing filled the land and clamored at the gates of the sky. They poured like a black tide down on the Dark Land host and hit it.

"Hoo-ah!" cried Kery.

He felt the shock of running into that mass of men and he clung tighter, holding on with one hand while his sword whistled in the other. Bodies fountained before the rush of the bulls, horns tossed men into the heavens and hoofs pounded them into the earth. Kery swung at dimly glimpsed heads, the hits shivered along his arm but he could not see if he killed anyone, there wasn't time.

Through and through the Dark Land army the bulls plowed, goring a lane down its middle while the Killorners fell on it from the front. Blood and thunder and erupting violence, death reaping the foe, and Kery rode onward.

"Oh, my beauties, my black sweethearts, horn them, stamp them into the ground. Oh, lovely, lovely, push them on, my Gorwain, knock them down to hell, best of bulls!"

The tyrs came out on the other side of the broken host and thundered on down the ridge. Kery fought to stop them. He yelled and whistled, but he knew such a charge could not expend itself in a moment.

As they rushed on, he heard the high brazen call of a trumpet, and then another and another, and a new war-cry rising behind him. What was that? What had happened?

They were down in a rocky swale before he had halted the charge. The bulls stood shivering then, foam and blood streaked their heaving sides. Slowly, with many curses and blows, he got them turned, but they would only walk back up  the  long  hill.

As he neared the battle again he saw that another force had attacked the Dark Landers from behind. It must have come through the long ravine to the west, which would have concealed its approach from those fighting Southern Twilight Landers, Kery saw, well trained and equipped though they seemed to fight wearily. But between men of north and south, the easterners were being cut down in swathes. Before he could get back the remnants of their host was in full fight. Bram was too busy with the newcomers to pursue and they soon were lost in the eastern darkness.

Kery dismounted and led his bulls to the wagons to tie them up. They went through a field of corpses, heaped and piled on the blood-soaked earth, but most of the dead were enemies. Here and there the wounded cried out in the twilight, and the women of Killorn were going about succoring their own hurt. Carrion birds hovered above on darkling wings.

"Who are those others?" asked Kery of Bram's wife Eiyla.

She was a big raw-boned woman, somewhat of a scold but stouthearted and the mother of tall sons. She stood leaning on an unstrung bow and looking over the suddenly hushed landscape.

"Ryvanians, I think," she replied absently. Then, "Kery— Kery, I have ill news for you."

His heart stumbled and there was a sudden coldness within him. Mutely, he waited.

"Rhiach is dead, Kery," she said gently. "An arrow took him in the throat even as the Dark Landers fled."

His voice seemed thick and clumsy. "Where is he?"

She led him inside the laager of wagons. A fire had been lit to boil water, and its red glow danced over the white faces of women and children and wounded men where they lay. To one side the dead had been stretched, and white-headed Lochly of Dagh stood above them with his bagpipes couched in his arms.

Kery knelt over Rhiach. The warlock's bleak features had softened a little in death, he seemed gentle now. But quiet, so pale and quiet. And soon the earth will open to receive you, you will be laid to rest here in an alien land where the life slipped from your hands, and the high windy tarns of Killorn will not know you ever again, O Rhiach the Piper.

Farewell, farewell, my father. Sleep well, goodnight, goodnight!

Slowly, Kery brushed the gray hair back from Rhiach's forehead, and knelt and kissed him on the brow. They had laid the god-pipe beside him, and he took this up and stood numbly, wondering what he would do with this thing in his hands.

Old Lochly gave him a somber stare. His voice came so soft you could scarce hear it over the thin whispering wind.

"Now you are the Broina, Kery, and thus the Piper of Killorn."

"I know," he said dully.

"But you know not how to blow the pipes, do you? No, no man does that. Since Broina himself had them, from Llugan Longsword in heaven, there has been one who knew their use, and he was the shield of all Killorn. But now that is ended, and we are alone among strangers and enemies."

"It is not good. But we must do what we can."

"Oh, aye.Tis scarcely your fault, Kery. But I fear none of us will ever drink the still waters of the lake where it is forever sunset  again."

Lochly put his own pipes to his lips and the wild despair of the old coronach wailed forth over the hushed camp.

Kery slung the god-pipes over his back and wandered out of the laager toward Bram and the Ryvanians.

Ill

THE SOUTHERN folk were more civilized, with cities and books and strange arts, though the northerners thought it spiritless of them to knuckle under to their kings as abjectly as they did. Hereabouts the people were dark of hair and eyes, though still light of skin like all Twilight Landers, and shorter and stockier than in the north. These soldiers made a brave showing with polished cuirass and plumed helmet and oblong shields, and they had a strong cavalry mounted on tall hests, and trumpeters and standard bearers and engineers. They outnumbered the Killorners by a good three to one, and stood in close, suspicious ranks.

Approaching them, Kery thought that his people were, after all, invaders of Ryvan themselves. If this new army decided to fall on the tired and disorganized barbarians, whose strongest weapon had just been taken from them, it could be slaughter. He stiffened himself, thrusting thought of Rhiach far back into his mind, and strode boldly forward.

As he neared he saw that however well armed and trained the Ryvanians were they were also weary and dusty, and they had many hurt among them. Beneath their taut bearing was a hollowness. They had the look of beaten men.

Bram and the Dagh, tall gray Nessa, were parleying with the Ryvanian general, who had ridden forward and sat looking coldly down on them. The Heorran carried his huge ax over one mailed shoulder, but had the other hand lifted in sign of peace. At Kery's approach, he turned briefly and nodded.

"Well you came," he said. "This is a matter for the heads of all three clans, and you are the Broina now. I grieve for

Rhiach, and still more do I grieve for poor Killorn, but we must put a bold face on it lest they fall on us."

Kery nodded, gravely as fitted an elder. The incongruity of it was like a blow. Why, he was a boy—there were men of Broina in the train twice and thrice his age—and he held leadership over them!

But Rhiach was dead, and Kery was the last living of his sons. Hunger and war and the coughing sickness had taken all the others, and so now he spoke for his clan.

He turned a blue gaze up toward the Ryvanian general. This was a tall man, big as a northerner but quiet and graceful in his movements, and the inbred haughtiness of generations was stiff within him. A torn purple cloak and a gilt helmet were his only special signs of rank, otherwise he wore the plain armor of a mounted man, but he wore it like a king. His face was dark for a Twilight Lander, lean and strong and deeply lined, with a proud high-bridged nose and a long hard jaw and close-cropped black hair finely streaked with gray. He alone in that army seemed utterly undaunted by whatever it was that had broken their spirits.

"This is Kery son of Rhiach, chief of the third of our clans," Bram introduced him. He used the widespread Aluardian language of the southlands, which was also the tongue of Ryvan and which most of the Killomers had picked up in the course of their wanderings. "And Kery, he says he is Jonan, commander under Queen Sathi of the army of Ryvan, and that his is a force sent out from the city which became aware of the battle we were having and took the opportunity of killing a few more Dark Landers."

Nessa of Dagh looked keenly at the southerners. "Methinks there's more to it than that," he said, half to his fellows and half to Jonan. "You've been in a stiff battle and come off second best, if looks tell aught. Were I to make a further venture, it would be that while you fought clear of the army that beat you and are well ahead of pursuit, it's still on your tail and you have to reach the city fast."

"That will do," snapped Jonan. "We have heard of you plundering bandits from the north, and have no intention of permitting you on Ryvanian soil. If you turn back at once, you may go in peace, but otherwise . . ."

Casting a glance behind him, Bram saw that his men were swiftly reforming their own lines. If the worst came to the worst, they'd give a fearsome account of themselves. And it was plain that Jonan knew it.

"We are wanderers, yes," said the chief steadily, "but we are not highwaymen save when necessity drives us to it. It would better fit you to let us, who have just broken a fair-sized host of your deadly enemies, proceed in peace. We do not wish to fight you, but if we must it will be all the worse for you."

"Ill-armed barbarians, a third of our number, threatening us?" asked Jonan scornfully.

"Well, now, suppose you can overcome us," said Nessa with a glacial cheerfulness. "I doubt it, but just suppose so. We will not account for less than one man apiece of yours, you know, and you can hardly spare so many with Dark Landers ravaging all your country. Furthermore, a battle with us could well last so long that those who follow you will catch up, and there is an end to all of us."

Kery took a breath and added flatly, "You must have felt the piping we can muster at need. Well for you that we only played it a short while. If we chose to play you a good long dirge . . ."

Bram cast him an approving glance, nodded, and said stiffly, "So you see, General Jonan, we mean to go on our way, and it would best suit you to bid us a friendly good-bye."

The Byvanian scowled blackly and sat for a moment in thought. The wind stirred his hest's mane and tail and the scarlet plume on his helmet. Finally he asked them in a bitter voice, "What do you want here, anyway? Why did you come south?"

"It is a long story, and this is no place to talk," said Bram. "Suffice it that we seek land. Not much land, nor for too many years, but a place to live in peace till we can return to Killorn."

"Hm." Jonan frowned again. "It is a hard position for me. I cannot simply let a band famous for robbery go loose. Yet it is true enough that I would not welcome a long and difficult fight just now. What shall I do with you?"

"You will just have to let us go," grinned Nessa.

"Nol I think you have lied to me on several counts, barbarians. Half of what you say is bluff, and I could wipe you out if I had to."

"Methinks somewhat more than half of your words are bluff," murmured Kery.

Jonan gave him an angry look, then suddenly whirled on Bram. "Look here. Neither of us can well afford a battle, yet neither trusts the other out of its sight. There is only one answer. We must proceed together to Ryvan city."

"Eh? Are you crazy, man? Why, as soon as we were in sight of your town, you could summon all its garrison out against us."

"You must simply trust me not to do that. If you have heard anything about Queen Sathi, you will know that she would never permit it. Nor can we spare too many forces. Frankly, the city is going to be under siege very soon."

"Is it that bad?" asked Bram.

"Worse," said Jonan gloomily.

Nessa nodded his shrewd gray head. "I've heard some tales of Sathi," he agreed. "They do say she's honorable."

"And I have heard that you people have served as mercenaries before now," said Jonan quickly,, "and we need warriors so cruelly that I am sure some arrangement can be made here. It could even include the land you want, if we are victorious, for the Ganasthi have wasted whole territories. So this is my proposal—march with us to Ryvan, in peace, and there discuss terms with her majesty for taking service under her flag." His harsh dark features grew suddenly cold. "Or, if you refuse, bearing in mind that Ryvan has very little to lose after all, I will fall on you this instant."

Bram scratched his red beard, and looked over the southern ranks and especially the engines. Flame-throwing ballistae could make ruin of the laager. Jonan galled him, and yet-well—however they might bluff about it, the fact remained that they had very little choice.

And anyway, the suggestion about payment in land sounded good And if these—Ganasthi—had really overrun the Ry-vanian empire, then there was little chance in any case of the Killorners getting much further south.

"Well," said Bram mildly, "we can at least talk about it— at the city."

Now the wagons, which the barbarians would not abandon in spite of Jonan's threats, were swiftly hitched again and the long train started its creaking way over the hills. Erelong they came on one of the paved imperial roads, a broad empty way that ran straight as a spearshaft southwestward to Ryvan city. Then they made rapid progress.

In truth, thought Kery, they went through a wasted land. Broad fields were blackened with Ere, corpses sprawled in the embers of farmsteads, villages were deserted and gutted— everywhere folk had fled before the hordes of Ganasth. Twice they saw red glows on the southern horizon and white-lipped soldiers told Kery that those were burning cities.

As they marched west the sky lightened before them until at last a clear white glow betokened that the sun was just below the curve of the world. It was a fair land of rolling plains and low hills, fields and groves and villages, but empty —empty. Now and again a few homeless peasants stared with frightened eyes at their passage, or trailed along in their wake, but otherwise there was only the wind and the rain and the hollow thudding of their feet.

Slowly Kery got the tale of Ryvan. The city had spread itself far in earlier days, conquering many others, but its rule was just. The conquered became citizens themselves and the strong armies protected all. The young queen Sathi was nearly worshipped by her folk. But then the Ganasthi came.

"About a year ago it was," said one man. "They came out of the darkness in the east, a horde of them, twice as many as we could muster. We've always had some trouble with Dark Landers on our eastern border, you know, miserable barbarians making forays which we beat off without too much trouble. And most of them told of pressure from some power-forcing them to fall on us. But we never thought too much of it. Not before it was too late.

"We don't know much about Ganasth. It seems to be a f;iirly civilized state, somewhere out there in the cold and the dark. How they ever became civilized with nothing but howling savages around them I'll never imagine. But they've built up a power like Ryvan's, only bigger. It seems to include conscripts from many Dark Land tribes who're only too glad to leave their miserable frozen wastes and move into our territory. Their armies aire as well trained and equipped as our own, and they fight like demons. Those war-gongs, and those dead faces . . ." He shuddered.

"The prisoners we've taken say they aim to take over all the Twilight Lands. They're starting with Ryvan—it's the strongest state, and once they've knocked us over the rest will be easy. We've appealed for help to other nations but they're all too afraid, too busy raising their own silly defenses, to do anything. So for the past year the war's been raging up and down our empire." He waved a hand, wearily, at the blasted landscape. "You see what that's meant. Famine and plague are starting to hit us now—"

"And you could never stand before them?" asked Kery.

"Oh, yes, we had our victories and they had theirs. But when we won a battle they'd just retreat and sack some other area. They've been living off the country—our country —the devils!" The soldier's face twisted. "My own little sister was in Aquilaea when they took that. When I think of those white-haired fiends—

"Well about a month ago, the great battle was fought. Jonan led the massed forces of Ryvan out and caught the main body of Ganasthi at Seven Rivers, in the Donam Hills. I was there. The fight lasted, oh, four sleeps maybe, and nobody gave quarter or asked- it. We outnumbered them a little, but they finally won. They slaughtered us like driven cattle. Jonan was lucky to pull half his forces out of there. The rest left their bones at Seven Rivers. Since then we've been a broken nation.

"We're pulling all we have left back toward Ryvan in the hope of holding it till a miracle happens. Do you have any miracles for sale, Northman?" The soldier laughed bitterly.

"What about this army here?" asked Kery.

"We still make sorties, you know. This one went out from Ryvan city a few sleeps past to the relief of Tusca, which our scouts said the Ganasthi were besieging with only a small force. But an ememy army intercepted us on the way. We cut our way out and shook them, but they're on our tail in all likelihood. When we chanced to hear the noise of your fight with the invaders we took the opportunity . . . Almighty Dyuus, it was good to hack them down and see them run!"

The soldier shrugged. "But what good did it do, really?

What chance have we got? That was a good magic you had at the fight. I thought my heart was going to stop when that demon music started. But can you pipe your way out of hell barbarian? Can you?"

rv

RYVAN WAS a fair city, with terraced gardens' and high shining towers to be seen over the white walls, and it lay among wide fields not yet ravaged by the enemy. But around it, under its walls, spilling out over the land, huddled the miserable shacks and tents of those who had fled hither and could find no room within the town till the foe came over the horizon—the broken folk, the ragged horror-ridden peasants who stared mutely at the defeated army as it streamed through the gates.

The men of Killorn made camp under one wall and soon their fires smudged the deep silver-blue sky and their warriors stood guard against the Ryvanians. They did not trust even these comrades in woe, for they came of the fat southlands and the wide highways and the iron legions, and not of Killorn and its harsh windy loneliness.

Before long word came that the barbarian leaders were expected at the palace. So Bram, Nessa, and Kery put on their polished byrnies, and over them tunics and cloaks of their best plunder. They slung their swords over their shoulders and mounted their hests and rode between two squads of Ryvanian guardsmen through the gates and into the city.

It was packed and roiling with those who had fled. Crowds surged aimlessly around the broad avenues and spilled into the colonnaded temples and the looming apartments and even the gardens and villas of the nobility.

There was the dusty, bearded peasant, clinging to his wife and his children and looking on the world with frightened eyes. Gaily decked noble, riding through the mob with patrician hauteur and fear underneath it. Fat merchant and shaven priest, glowering at the refugees who came in penniless to throng the city and must, by the queen's orders, be fed and housed. Patrolling soldiers, striving to keep order in the mindless whirlpool of man, their young faces drawn and their shoulders stooped beneath their mail. Jugglers, mountebanks, thieves, harlots, tavern-keepers, plying their trades in the feverish gaiety of doom; a human storm foaming off into strange half-glimpsed faces in darkened alleys and eddying crowds, the unaccountable aliens who flit through all great cities—the world seemed gathered at Ryvan, and huddling before the wrath that came.

Fear rode the city, Kery could feel it, he breathed and the air was dank with terror, he bristled animal-like and laid a hand to his sword. For an instant he remembered Killorn, the wide lake rose before him and he stood at its edge, watching the breeze ruffle it and hearing the whisper of reeds and the chuckle of water on a pebbled shore. Miles about lay the hills and the moors, the clean strong smell of ling was a drunkenness in his nostrils. It was silent save for the small cool wind that ruffled Moma's hair. And in the west it was sunset, the mighty sun-disc lay just below the horizon and a shifting, drifting riot of colors, flame of red and green and molten gold, burned in the twilit heavens.

He shook his head, feeling his longing as a sharp clear pain, and urged his hest through the crowds. Presently they reached the palace.

It was long and low and gracious, crowded now since all the nobles and their households had moved into it and, under protest, turned their own villas over to the homeless. Dismounting, the northerners walked between files of guardsmen, through fragrant gardens and up the broad marble steps of the building—through long corridors and richly furnished rooms, and finally into the audience chamber of Queen Sathi.

It was like a chalice of white stone, wrought in loveliness and brimming with twilight and stillness. That deep blue dusk lay cool and mysterious between the high slim pillars, and somewhere came the rippling of a harp and the singing of birds and fountains. Kery felt suddenly aware of his uncouth garments and manners and accent. His tongue thickened and he did not know what to do with his hands. Awkwardly he took off his helmet.

"Lord Bram of Killorn, your majesty," said the chamberlain.

"Greeting, and welcome," said Sathi.

Word had spread far about Ryvan's young queen but Kery thought dazedly that the gossips had spoken less of her than was truth. She was tall and lithe and sweetly formed, with strength slumbering deep under the wide soft mouth and the lovely curves of cheeks and forehead. Blood of the Sun Lands darkened her hair to a glowing blue-black and tinted her skin with gold, there was fire from the sun within her. Like other southern women, she dressed more boldly than the girls of Killorn, a sheer gown falling from waist to ankles, a thin veil over the shoulders, little jewelry. She needed no ornament.

She could not be very much older than he, if at all, thought Kery. He caught her great dark eyes on him and felt a slow hot flush go up his face. With an effort he checked himself and stood very straight, with his strange blue eyes like cold flames.

Beside Sathi sat the general, Jonan, and there were a couple of older men who seemed to be official advisors. But it soon was clear that only the queen and the soldier had much to say in this court.

Bram's voice boomed out, shattering the peace of the blue dusk. For all his great size and ruddy beard he seemed lost in the ancient grace of the chamber. He spoke too loudly. He stood too stiff. "Thank you, my lady. But I am no lord, I simply head this group of the men of Killorn." He waved clumsily at his fellows. "These are Nessa of Dagh and Kery of Broina."

"Be seated, then, and welcome again." Sathi's voice was low and musical. She signaled her servants to bring wine.

"We have heard of great wanderings in the north," she went on, when they had drunk. "But those lands are little known to us. What brought you so far from home?"

Nessa, who had the readiest tongue, answered. "There was famine in the land, your majesty. For three years drought and cold lay like iron over Killom. We hungered and the coughing sickness came over many of us. Not all our magics and sacrifices availed to end our misery, they seemed only to raise great storms that destroyed what little we had kept.

"Then the weather smiled again, but as often happens the gray blight came in the wake of the hard years. It reaped our grain before we could, the stalks withered and crumbled before our eyes, and wild beasts came in hunger-driven swarms to raid our dwindling flocks. There was scarce food enough for a quarter of our starving folk. We knew, from what had happened in other lands, that the gray blight will waste a country for years, five or ten, leaving only perhaps a third part of the crop alive at each harvest. Then it passes away and does not come again. But meanwhile the land will not bear many folk.

"So in the end the clans decided that most must move away leaving only the few who could keep alive through the niggard years to hold the country for us. Hearts broke in twain, your majesty, for the hills and the moors and the lake where it is forever sunset were part of us. We are of that land and if we die away from it our ghosts will wander home. But go we must, lest all die."

"Yes, go on," said Jonan impatiently when he paused.

Bram gave him an angry look and took up the story. "Four hosts were to wander out of the land and see what would befall. If they found a place to stay they would abide there till the evil time was over. Otherwise they would live however they could. It lay with the gods, my lady, and we have traveled far from the realms of our gods.

"One host went eastward, into the great forest of Norla. One got ships and sailed west, out into the Day Lands where some of our adventurers had already explored a little way. One followed the coast southwestward, through country beyond our ken. And ours marched due south. And so we have wandered for five years."

"Homeless," whispered Sathi, and Kery thought her eyes grew bright with tears.

"Barbarian robbers!" snapped Jonan. "I know of the havoc they have wrought on their way."

"And what would you have done," growled Bram. Jonan gave him a stiff glare, but he rushed on. "Your majesty, we have taken only what we needed . . ."

And whatever else struck our fancy, thought Kery in a moment's wryness.

"—and much of our fighting has been done for honest pay. We want only a place to live a few years, land to farm as free yoemen, and we will defend the country which shelters us as long as we are in it. We are too few to take that land and hold it against a whole nation—that is why we have not settled down ere this—but on the march we will scatter any army in the world or leave our corpses for carrion birds. The men of Killorn keep faith with friends and foes alike, help to the one and harm to the other.

"Now we saw many fair fields in Ryvan where we could be at home. The Ganasthi have cleared off the owners for us and we may be able to make friends with the Dark Landers instead. For friends we must have."

"You see?'" snarled Jonan. "He threatens banditry."

"No, no, you are too hasty," replied Sathi. "He is simply telling the honest truth. And the gods know we need warriors."

"This general was anxious enough for our help out there in the eastern marches," said Kery suddenly.

"Enough, barbarian," said Jonan with ice in his tones.

Color flared in Sathi's cheeks. "Enough of you, Jonan. These are brave and honest men, and our guests, and our sorely needed allies. We will draw up the treaty at once."

The general shrugged, insolently. Kery was puzzled. There was anger here, crackling under a hard-held surface, but it seemed new and strange. Why?

They haggled for a while over terms, Nessa doing most of the talking for Killorn. He and Bram would not agree that clansmen would owe fealty or even respect to any noble of Ryvan save the queen herself. Also they should have the right to go home whenever they heard the famine was over. Sathi was willing enough to concede it but Jonan had to be almost beaten down. Finally he gave grudging assent and the queen had her scribes draw the treaty up on parchment.

"That is not how we do it in Killorn," said Bram. "A tyr must be sacrificed and vows made on the ring of LIugan and the pipes of the gods."

Sathi smiled. "Very well, Red One," she nodded. "We will make the pledge thusly too, if you wish." With a sudden flame of bitterness, "What difference does it make? What difference does anything make now?"

Now THE armies of Ganasth moved against Ryvan city itself. From all the plundered empire they streamed in, to ring the town in a living wall and hem the defenders with a fence of spears. And when the whole host was gathered, which took about ten sleeps from the time the Killorners arrived, they stormed the city.

Up the long slope of the hills on which Ryvan stood they came, running, bounding, holding up shields against the steady hail of missiles from the walls. Forward, silent and blank-faced, no noise in them save the crashing of thousands of feet and the high demon-music of their warmaking—dying, strewing the ground with their corpses, but leaping over the fallen and raging against the walls.

Up ladders! Rams thundering at the gates! Men springing to the top of" walls and toppling before the defenders and more of them snarling behind!

Back and forth the battle raged, now the Ryvanians driven back to the streets and rooftops, now the Dark Landers pressed to the edge of the walls and pitchforked over. Houses began to burn, here and there, and it was Sathi who made fire brigades out of those who could not fight. Kery had a glimpse of her from afar, as he battled on the outer parapets, a swift and golden loveliness against the leaping red.

After long and vicious fighting the northern gate went down. But Bram had forseen this. He had pulled most of his barbarians thither, with Kery's bulls in their lead. He planted them well back and had a small stout troop on either side of the great buckling doors. When the barrier sagged on its hinges, the Ganasthi roared in unopposed, streaming through the entrance and down the broad bloody avenue.

Then the Killorners thrust from the side, pinching off the several hundred who had entered. They threw great jars of oil on the broken gates and set them ablaze, a barrier of flame which none could cross. And then Kery rode his bulls against the enemy, and behind him came the might of Killom.

It was raw slaughter. Erelong they were hunting the foe up and down the streets and spearing them like wild animals. Meanwhile Bram got some engineers from Jonan's force who put up a temporary barricade in the now open gateway and stood guard over it.

The storm faded, grumbled away in surges of blood and whistling arrows. Shaken by their heavy losses, the Dark Landers pulled back out of missile range, ranged the city with their watchfires, and prepared to lay siege.

There was jubilation in Ryvan. Men shouted and beat their dented shields with nicked and blunted swords. They tossed their javelins in the air, emptied wineskins, and kissed the first and best girl who came to hand. Weary, bleeding, reft of many good comrades, and given at best a reprieve, the folk still snatched at what laughter remained.

Bram came striding to meet the queen. He was a huge and terrible figure stiff with dried blood, the ax blinking on his shoulder and the other hairy paw clamped on the neck of a tall Dark Lander whom he helped along with an occasional kick. Yet Sathi's dark eyes trailed to the slim form of Kery, following in the chief's wake and too exhausted to say much.

"I caught this fellow in the streets, my lady," said Bram merrily, "and since he seemed to be a leader I thought I'd better hang on to him for a while."

The invader stood motionless, regarding them with a chill yellow stare in which they lay an iron pride. He was tall and well-built, his black mail silver-trimmed, a silver star on the battered black helmet. The snowy hair and beard stirred faintly in the breeze.

"An aristocrat, I would say," nodded Sathi. She herself seemed almost too tired to stand. She was smudged with smoke and her dress was torn and her small hands bleeding from their recent burdens. But she pulled herself erect and fought to speak steadily. "Yes, he may well be of value to us. That was good work. Aye, you men of Killom fought nobly, without you we might well have lost the city. It was a good month when you came."

"It was no way to fight," snapped Jonan. He was tired and wounded himself, but there was no comradeship in the look he gave the northerners. "The risk of it—why, if you hadn't been able to seal the gate behind them, Ryvan would have fallen then and there."

"I did not see you doing much of anything when the gate was splintering before them," answered Bram curtly. "As it is, my lady, we've inflicted such heavy losses on them that I doubt they'll consider another attempt at storming. Which gives us, at least, time to try something else." He yawned mightily. "Time to sleep!"

Jonan stepped up close to the prisoner and they exchanged a long look. There was no way to read the Dark Lander's thoughts but Kery thought he saw a tension under the general's hard-held features.

"I don't know what value a food-eating prisoner is to us when he can't even speak our language," said the Ryvan. "However, I can take him in charge if you wish."

"Do," she nodded dully,

"Odd if he couldn't talk any Aluardian at all," said Kery. "Wanderers through alien lands almost have to learn. The leaders of invading armies ought to know the tongue of their enemy, or at least have interpreters." He grinned with the cold savagery of the Broina. "Let the women of Killorn, the ones who've lost husbands today, have him for a while. I daresay he'll soon discover he knows your speech—whatever is left of him."

"No," said Jonan flatly. He signalled to a squad of his men. "Take this fellow down to the palace dungeons and give him something to eat. I'll be along later."

Kery started to protest but Sathi laid a hand on his arm. He felt how it was still bleeding a little and grew silent.

"Let Jonan take care of it," she said, her voice flat with weariness. "We all need rest now—O gods, to sleep!"

The Killorners had moved their wagons into the great forum and camped there, much to the disgust of the aristocrats and to the pleasure of whatever tavern keepers and unattached young women lived nearby. But Sathi had insisted that their three chiefs should be honored guests at the palace and it pleased them well enough to have private chambers and plenty of servants and the best of wine.

Kery woke in his bed and lay for a long while, drowsing and thinking the wanderous thoughts of half-asleep. When he got up he groaned for he was stiff with his wounds and the long fury of battle. A slave came in and rubbed him with oil and brought him a barbarian-sized meal, after which he felt better.

But now he was restless. He felt the letdown which is the aftermath of high striving. It was hard to fight back the misery and loneliness that rose in him. He prowled the room unhappily, pacing under the glowing cressets, flinging himself on a couch and then springing to his feet again. The walls were a cage.

The city was a cage, a trap, he was caught like a snared beast and never again would he walk the moors of Killom. Sharply as a knife thrust, he remembered hunting once out in the heath. He had gone alone, with spear and bow and a shaggy half-wild cynor loping at his heels, out after antlered prey somewhere beyond the little village. Long had they roamed, he and his beast, until they were far from sight of man and only the great gray and purple and gold of the moors were around them.

The carpet under his bare feet seemed again to be the' springy, pungent ling of Killom. It was as if he smelled the sharp wild fragrance of it and felt the leaves brushing his ankles. It had been gray and windy, clouds rushed out of the west on a mounting gale. There was rain in the air and high overhead a single bird of prey had wheeled and looped on lonely wings. O almighty gods, how the wind had sung and cried to him, chilled his body with raw wet gusts and skirled in the dales and roared beneath the darkening heavens! And he had come down a long rocky slope into a wooded glen, a waterfall rushed and foamed along his path, white and green and angry black. He had sheltered in a mossy cave, lain and listened to the wind and the rain and the crystal, ringing waterfall, and when the weather cleared he had gotten up and gone home. There had been no quarry, but by Morna of Dagh, that failure meant more to him than all his victories since!

He picked up the pipe of the gods, where it lay with his armor, and turned it over and over in his hands. Old it was, d;irk with age, the pipes were of some nameless iron-like wood and the bag of a leather such as was never seen now. It was worn with the uncounted generations of Broinas who had hud it, men made hard and stern by their frightful trust.

It had scattered the legions of the southerners who came conquering a hundred years ago and it had quelled the raiding savages from Norla and it had gone with one-eyed

Alrigh and shouted down the walls of a city. And more than once, on this last dreadful march, it had saved the men of Killom.

Now it was dead. The Piper of Killom had fallen and the secret had perished with him and the folk it had warded were trapped like animals to die of hunger and pestilence in a strange land—O Rhiach, Rhiach my father, come back from the dead, come back and put the pipe to your cold lips and play the war-song of Killorn!

Kery blew in it for the hundredth time and only a hollow whistling sounded in the belly of the instrument. Not even a decent tune, he thought bitterly.

He couldn't stay indoors, he had to get out under the sky again or go mad. Slinging the pipe over his shoulder he went out the door and up a long stairway to the palace roof gardens.

They slept all around him, sleep and silence were heavy in the long corridors, it was as if he were the last man alive and walked alone through the ruins of the world. He came out on the roof and went over to the parapet and stood looking out.

The moon was near the zenith which meant, at this longitude, that it was somewhat less than half full and would dwindle as it sank westward. It rode serene in the dusky sky adding its pale glow to the diffused light which filled all the Twilight Lands and to the white pyre of the hidden sun. The city lay dark and silent under the sky, sleeping heavily, only the muted tramp of sentries and their ringing calls drifted up to Kery. Beyond the town burned the ominous red circle of the Ganasthi fires and he could see their tents and the black forms of their warriors.

They were settling down to a patient death watch. All the land had become silent waiting for Ryvan to die. It did not seem right that he should stand here among fragrant gardens and feel the warm western breeze on his face, not when steadfast Lluwynn and Boroda the Strong and gay young Kormak his comrade were ashen corpses with the women of Killorn keening over them. O Killorn, Killorn, and the lake of sunset, have their ghosts gone home to you? Greet Morna for me, Kormak, whisper in the wind that I love her, tell her not to grieve.

He grew aware that someone else was approaching, and turned with annoyance. But his mood lightened when he saw that it was Sathi. She was very fair as she walked toward him, young and lithe and beautiful, with the dark unbound hair floating about her.

"Are you up, KeryP" she asked, sitting down on the parapet beside him.

"Of course, my lady, or else you are dreaming," he smiled with a tired humor.

"Stupid question wasn't it?" She smiled back with a curving of closed lips that was lovely to behold. "But I am not feeling very bright just now."

"None of us are, my lady."

"Oh, forget that sort of address, Kery. I am too lonely as it is, sitting on a throne above all the world. Call me by my name, at least."

"You are very kind—Sathi."

"That is better." She smiled again, wistfully. "How you fought todayl How you reaped them! What sort of a warrior are you, Kery, to ride wild bulls as if they were hests?"

"We of clan Broina have tricks. We feel things that other men do not seem to." Kery sat down beside her feeling the frozenness within him ease a little. "Aye, it can be lonely to wield power and you wonder if you are fit for it, not so? My father died in our first battle with the Ganasthi, and now I am the Broina, but who am I to lead my clan? I cannot even perform the first duty of my post."

"And what is that?" she asked.

He told her about the god-pipe. He showed it to her and gave her the tales of its singing. "You feel your flesh shiver and your bones begin to crumble, rocks dance and mountains groan and the gates of hell open before you but now the pipes are forever silent, Sathi. No man knows how to play them."

"I heard of your music at that battle," she nodded gravely, "and wondered why it was not sounded again this time." Awe and fear were in her eyes, the hand that touched the scarred sack trembled a little. "And this is the pipe of Killorn! You cannot play it again? You cannot find out how? It would be the saving of Ryvan and of your own folk and perhaps of all the Twilight Lands, Kery."

"I know. But what can I do? Who can understand the powers of heaven or unlock the doors of hell save Llugan Longsword himself?"

"I do not know. But Kery—I wonder. This pipe ... Do you really think that gods-and not men wrought it?"

"Who but a god could make such a thing, Sathi?"

"I do not know, I say. And yet—Tell me, have you any idea of what the world is like in Killom? Do you think it a flat plain with the sun hanging above, forever fixed in one spot?"

"Why I suppose so. Though we have met men in the southlands who claimed the world was a round ball and went about the sun in such a manner as always to turn the same face to it."

"Yes, the wise men of Ryvan tell us that that must be the case. They have learned it by studying the fixed stars and those which wander. Those others are worlds like our own, they say, and the fixed stars are suns a very long ways off. And we have a very dim legend of a time once, long and long and long ago, when this world did not eternally face the sun either. It spun like a top so that each side of it had light and dark alternately."

Kery knitted his brows trying to see that for himself. At last he nodded. "Well, it may have been. What of it?"

"The barbarians all think the world was born in flame and thunder many ages ago. But some of our thinkers believe that this creation was a catastrophe which destroyed that older world I speak of. There are dim legends and here and there we find very ancient ruins, cities greater than any we know today but buried and broken so long ago that even their building stones are almost weathered away. These thinkers believe that man grew mighty on this forgotten world which spun about itself, that his powers were like those we today call divine.

"Then something happened. We cannot imagine what, though a wise man once told me he believed all things attract each other—that is the reason why they fall to the ground he said—and that another world swept so close to ours that its pull stopped the spinning and yanked the moon closer than it had been."

Kery clenched his fists. "It could be," he murmured. "It could well be. For what happens to an unskillful rider when his hest stops all at once? He goes flying over its head, right? Even so, this braking of the world would have brought earthquakes greater than we can imagine, quakes that levelled everything!"

'Tou have a quick wit. That is what this man told me. At any rate, only a very few people and animals lived and nothing remained of their great works save legends. In the course of many ages, man and beasts alike changed, the beasts more than man who can make his own surroundings to suit. Life spread from the Day Lands through the Twilight Zone. Plants got so they could use what little light we have here. Finally even the Dark Lands were invaded by the pallid growths which can live there. Animals followed and man came after the animals until today things are as you see."

She turned wide and serious eyes on him. "Could not this pipe have been made in the early days by a man who knew some few of the ancient secrets? No god but a man even as you, Kery. And what one man can make another can understand!"

Hope rose in him and sagged again. "How?" he asked dully. And then, seeing the tears glimmer in her eyes: "Oh, it may all be true. I will try my best. But I do not even know where to begin."

"Try," she whispered. "Try!"

"But do not tell anyone that the pipe is silent, Sathi. Perhaps I should not even have told you."

"Why not? I am your friend and the friend of your folk. I would we had all the tribes of Killorn here."

"Jonan is not," he said grimly.

"Jonan—he is a harsh man, yes. But . .

"He does not like us. I do not know why but he doesn't."

"He is a strange one," she admitted. "He is not even of Ryvanian birth, he is from Guria, a city which we conquered long ago, though of course its people have long been full citizens of the empire. He wants to marry me, did you know?" She smiled. "I could not help laughing for he is so stiff. One would as soon wed an iron cuirass."

"Aye—wed—" Kery fell silent, and there was a dream in his gaze as he looked over the hills.

"What are you thinking of?" she asked after a while.

"Oh—home," he said. "I was wondering if I would ever see Killom again."

She leaned over closer to him. One long black lock brushed his hand and he caught the faint fragrance of her. "Is it so fair a land?" she asked softly.

"No," he said. "It is harsh and gray and lonely. Storm winds sweep in and the sea roars on rocky beaches and men grow gnarled with wrestling life from the stubborn soil. But there is space and sky and freedom, there are the little huts and the great halls, the chase and the games and the old songs around leaping fires, and—well—" His voice trailed off.

"You left a woman behind, didn't you?" she murmured gently.

He nodded. "Morna of Dagh, she of the sun-bright tresses and the fair young form and the laughter that was like rain showering on thirsty ground. We were very much in love."

"But she did not come too?"

"No. So many wanted to come that the unwed had to draw lots and she lost. Nor could I stay behind for I was heir to the Broina and the god-pipes would be mine someday." He laughed, a harsh sound like breaking iron. "You see how much good that has done me!"

"But even so—you could have married her before leaving?"

"No. Such hasty marriage is against clan law and Moma would not break it." Kery shrugged. "So we wandered out of the land, and I have not seen her since. But she will wait for me and I for her. We'll wait till—till—" He had half raised his hand but as he saw again the camp of the besiegers it fell helplessly to his lap.

"And you would not stay?" Sathi's tones were so low he had to bend his head close to hear. "Even if somehow Ryvan threw back its foes and valiant men were badly needed and could rise to the highest honors of the empire, you would not stay here?"

For a moment Kery sat motionless, wrapping himself about his innermost being. He had some knowledge of women.

There had been enough of them along the dusty way, brief encounters and a fading memory.

His soul had room only for the bright image of one un-forgotten girl. It was plain enough what this woman, who was young and beautiful and a queen, was saying and he would not ordinarily have hung back.

Especially when the folk of Killorn were still strangers in a camp of allies who did not trust them very far, when Killorn needed every friend it could find. And the Broina were an elvish clan who had never let overly many scruples hold them.

Only—only he liked Sathi as a human being. She was brave and generous and wise and she was, really, so pitiably young. She had had so little chance to learn the hard truths of living in the loneliness of the imperium and only a scoundrel would hurt her.

She sighed, ever so faintly, and moved back a little. Kery thought he saw her stiffening. One does not reject the offer of a  queen.

"Sathi," he said, "for you, perhaps, even a man of Killorn might forget his home."

She half turned to him, hesitating, unsure of herself and him. He took her in his arms and kissed her.

"Kery, Kery, Kery—" she whispered, and her lips stole back toward his.

He felt rather than heard a footfall and turned with the animal alertness of the barbarian. Jonan stood watching them.

"Pardon me," said the general harshly. His countenance was strained. Then suddenly, "Your majesty! This savage mauling you . . ."

Sathi lifted a proud dark head. "This is the prince consort of Imperial Ryvan," she said haughtily. "Conduct yourself accordingly. You may go."

Jonan snarled and lifted an arm. Kery saw the armed men step from behind the tall flowering hedges and his sword came out with a rasp of steel.

"Guards!" screamed Sathi.

The men closed in. Kery's blade whistled against one shield.

Another came from each side. Pikeshafts thudded against his

bare head-He fell, toppling into a roaring darkness while they clubbed

him again. Down and down and down, whirling into a chasm of night. Dimly, just before blankness came, he saw the white beard and the mask-like face of the prince from Ganasth.

VI

IT WAS a long and hard ride before they stopped and Kery almost fell from the hest to which they had bound him.

"I should have thought that you would soon awake," said the man from Ganasth. He had a soft voice and spoke Aluardian well enough. "I am sorry. It is no way to treat a man, carrying him like a sack of meal. Here . . ." He poured a glass of wine and handed it to the barbarian. "From now on you shall ride erect."

Kery gulped thirstily and felt a measure of strength flowing back. He looked around him.

They had gone steadily eastward and were now camped near a ruined farmhouse. A fire was crackling and one of the score or so of enemy warriors was roasting a haunch of meat over it. The rest stood leaning on their weapons and their cold amber eyes never left the two prisoners.

Sathi stood near bleak-faced Jonan and her great dark eyes never left Kery. He smiled at her shakily and with a little sob she took a step toward him. Jonan pulled her back roughly.

"Kery," she whispered. "Kery, are you well?"

"As well as could be expected," he said wryly. Then to the Ganasthian prince, "What is this, anyway? I woke up to find myself joggling eastward and that is all I know. What is your purpose?"

"We have several," answered the alien. He sat down near the fire pulling his cloak around him against the chill that blew out of the glooming east. His impassive face watched the dance of flames as if they told him something.

Kery sat down as well, stretching his long legs easily. He might as well relax he thought. They had taken his sword and his pipes and they were watching him like hungry beasts. There was never a chance to fight.

"Come, Sathi," he waved to the girl. "Come over here by me."

"No!" snapped Jonan.

"Yes, if she wants to," said the Ganasthian mildly. "But that filthy barbarian . . ."

"None of its have washed recently." The gentle tones were suddenly like steel. "Do not forget, General, that I am Mongku of Ganasth and heir apparent to the throne."

"And I rescued you from the city," snapped the man. "If it weren't for me you might well be dead at the hands of that red savage "

"That will do," said Mongku. "Come over here and sit by us, Sathi."

His guardsmen stirred, unacquainted with the Ryvanian tongue but sensing the clash of wills. Jonan shrugged sullenly and stalked over to sit opposite them. Sathi fled to Kery and huddled against him. He comforted her awkwardly. Over her shoulder he directed a questioning look at Mongku.

"I suppose you deserve some explanation," said the Dark Lander. "Certainly Sathi must know the facts." He leaned back on one elbow and began to speak in an almost dreamy tone.

"When Ryvan conquered Guria, many generations ago, some of its leaders were proscribed. They fled eastward and so eventually wandered into the Dark Lands and came to Ganasth. It was then merely a barbarian town but the Gurians became advisors to the king and began teaching the people all the arts of civilization. It was their hope one day to lead the hosts of Ganasth against Ryvan, partly for revenge and partly for the wealth and easier living to be found in the Twilight Lands. Life is hard and bitter in the eternal night, Sathi. It is ever a struggle merely to keep alive. Can you wonder so very much that we are spilling into your gentler climate and your richer soil?

"Descendants of the Gurians have remained aristocrats in Ganasth. But Jonan's father conceived the idea of moving back with a few of his friends to work from within against the day of conquest. At that time we were bringing our neighbors under our heal and looked already to the time when we should move against the Twilight Lands. At any rate he did this and nobody suspected that he was aught but a newcomer from another part of Ryvan's empire. His son, Jonan, entered the army and, being shrewd and strong and able, finally reached the high post which you yourself bestowed on him, Sathi."

"Oh, no—Jonan—" She shuddered against Kery.

"Naturally when we invaded at last he had to fight against us, and for fear of prisoners revealing his purpose very few Ganasthians know who he really is. A risk was involved, yes. But it is convenient to have a general of the enemy on your side! Jonan is one of the major reasons for our success.

"Now we come to myself, a story which is very simply told. I was captured and it was Jonan's duty as a citizen of Ganasth to rescue his prince—quite apart from the fact that I do know his identity and torture might have loosened my tongue. He might have effected my escape easily enough without attracting notice, but other factors intervened. For one thing, there was this barbarian alliance, and especially that very dangerous new weapon they had which he had observed in use We clearly could not risk its being turned on us. Indeed we almost had to capture it. Then, too, Jonan is desirous of marrying you, Sathi, and I must say that it seems a good idea. With you as a hostage Ryvan will be more amenable. Later you can return as nominal ruler of your city, a vassal of Ganasth, and that will make our conquest easier to administer. Though not too easy, I fear. The Twilight Landers will not much like being transported into the Dark Lands to make room for us."

Sathi began to cry, softly and hopelessly. Kery stroked her hair and said nothing.

Mongku sat up and reached for the chunk of meat his soldier handed him. "So Jonan and his few trusty men let me out of prison and we went up to the palace roof after you, who had been seen going that way shortly before. Listening a little while to your conversation we saw that we had had the good luck to get that hell-pipe of the north, too. So we took you. Jonan was for killing you, Kery my friend, but I pointed out that you could be useful in many ways such as a means for making Sathi listen, to reason. Threats against you will move her more than against herself, I think."

"You crawling louse," said Kery tonelessly. Mongku shrugged. "I'm not such a bad sort but war is war and I have seen the folk of Ganasth hungering too long to have much sympathy for a bunch of fat Twilight Landers.

"At any rate, we slipped out of the city unobserved. Jonan could not remain for when the queen and I were both missing, and he responsible for both, it would be plain to many whom to accuse. Moreover, Sathi's future husband is too valuable to lose in a fight. And I myself would like to report to my father the king as to how well the war has gone.

"So we are bound for Ganasth."

There was a long silence while the fire leaped and crackled and the stars blinked far overhead. Finally Sathi shook herself and sat erect and said in a small hard voice, "Jonan, I swear you will die if you wed me. I promise you that."

The officer did not reply. He sat brooding into the dusk with a look of frozen contempt and weariness on his face.

Sathi huddled back against Kery's side and soon she slept.

On and on.

They were out of the Twilight Lands altogether now. Night had fallen on them and still they rode eastward. They were tough, these Ganasthi, they stopped only for sleep and quickly gulped food and a change of mounts and the miles reeled away  behind  them.

Little was said on the trail. They were too tired at the halts and seemingly in too much of a hurry while riding. With Sathi there could only be a brief exchange of looks, a squeeze of hands, and a few whispered words with the glowing-eyed men of Ganasth looking on. She was a gallant girl, thought Kery. The cruel trek told heavily on her but she rode without complaint—she was still queen of Ryvan!

Ryvan, Ry^an, how long could it hold out now in the despair of its loss? Kery thought that Red Bram might be able to seize the mastery and whip the city into fighting pitch but warfare by starvation was not to the barbarians' stomachs. They could not endure a long siege.

But what lay ahead for him and her and the captured weapon of the gods?

Never had he been in so grim a country. It was dark, eternally dark, night and cold and the brilliant frosty stars lay over the land, shadows and snow and a whining wind that ate and ate and gnawed its way through furs and flesh down to the bone. The moon got fuller here than it ever did over the Twilight Belt, its chill white radiance spilled on reaching snowfields and glittered like a million pinpoint stars fallen frozen to earth.

He saw icy plains and tumbled black chasms and fanged crags sheathed in glaciers. The ground rang with cold. Cramped and shuddering in his sleeping bag, he heard the thunder of frost-split rocks, the sullen boom and rumble/ of avalanches, now and again the faint far despairing howl of prowling wild beasts of prey.

"How can anyone live here?" he asked Mongku once. "The land is dead. It froze to death ten thousand years ago."

"It is a little warmer in the region of Ganasth," said the prince. "Volcanoes and hot springs. And there is a great sea which has never frozen over. It has fish, and animals that live off them, and men that live off the animals. But in truth only the broken and hunted of man can ever have come here. We are the disinherited and we are claiming no more than our rightful share of life in returning to the Twilight Lands."

He added thoughtfully: "I have been looking at that weapon of yours, Kery. I think I know the principle of its working. Sound does many strange things and there are even sounds too low or too high for the human ear to catch. A singer who holds the right note long enough can make a wine glass vibrate in sympathy until it shatters. We built a bridge once, over Thunder Gorge near Ganasth, but the wind blowing between the rock walls seemed to make it shake in a certain ryhthm that finally broke it. Oh, yes, if the proper sympathetic notes can be found much may be done.

"I don't know what hell's music that pipe is supposed to sound. But I found that the reeds can be tautened or loosened and that the shape of the bag can be subtly altered by holding it in the right way. Find the proper combination and I can well believe that even the small noise made with one man's breath can kill and break and crumble."

He nodded his gaunt half-human face in the ruddy blaze of fire. "Aye, I'll find the notes, Kery, and then the pipe will play for Ganasth."

The barbarian shuddered with more than the cold, searching wind. Gods, gods, if he did—if the pipes should sound the final dirge of Killornl

For a moment he had a wild desire to fling himself on Mongku, rip out the prince's throat and kill the score of enemy soldiers with his hands. But no—no—it wouldn't do. He would die before he had well started and Sathi would be alone in the Dark Lands.

He looked at her, sitting very quiet near the fire. The wavering light seemed to wash her fair young form in blood. She gave him a tired and hopeless smile.

Brave girl, brave girl, wife for a warrior in all truth. But there was the pipe and there was Killorn and there was Moma waiting for him to come home.

They were nearing Canasth, he knew. They had ridden past springs that seethed and bubbled in the snow, seen the red glare of volcanos on the jagged horizon, passed fields of white fungus-growths which the Dark Landers cultivated. Soon the iron gates would clash shut on him and what hope would there be then?

He lay back in his sleeping bag trying to think. He had to escape. Somehow he must escape with the pipe of the gods. Hut if he tried and went down with a dozen spears in him there was an end of all hope.

The wind blew, drifting snow across the sleepers. Two men stood guard and their strangely glowing eyes never left the captives. They could see in this realm of shadows where he was half blind. They could hunt him down like an animal.

What to do? What to do?

On the road he went with his hands tied behind him, his ankles lashed to the stirrups, and his hest's bridle tied to the pommel of another man's saddle. No chance of escape there. Hut one must get up after sleep.

He rolled close to Sathi's quiet form as if he were merely turning over in slumber. His lips brushed against the leather bag and he wished it were her face.

"Sathi," he whispered as quietly as he could. "Sathi, don't move, but listen to me."

"Aye," her voice drifted back under the wind and the cold. "Aye, darling."

"I am going to make a break for it when we get up. Help ine if you can but don't risk getting hurt. I don't think we can both get away but wait for me in GanasthI"

She lay silent for a long while. Then, "As you will, Kery. And whatever comes, I love you."

He should have replied but the words stuck in his throat. He rolled back and, quite simply, went to sleep.

A spear butt prodding his side awoke him. He yawned mightily and sat up, loosening his bag around him, tensing every muscle in his body.

"The end of this ride will see us in the city," Mongku said.

Kery rose slowly, gauging distances. A guardsman stood beside him, spear loose in one hand. The rest were scattered around the camp or huddled close to the fire. The hests were a darker shadow bunched on the fringes.

Kery wrenched the spear of the nearest man loose, swinging one booted foot into his belly. He brought the weapon around in a smashing arc, cracking the heavy butt into another's jaw and rammed the head into the throat of a third. Even as he stabbed he was plunging into motion.

A Ganasthian yelled and thrust at him. Sathi threw herself on the shaft, pulling it down. Kery leaped for the hests.

There were two men on guard there. One drew a sword and hewed at the northerner. The keen blade slashed through heavy tunic and undergarments, cutting his shoulder—but not too badly. He came under the fellow's guard and smashed a fist into his jaw. Seizing the weapon he whirled and hacked at the other Dark Lander beating down the soldier's ax and cutting him across the face.

The rest of the camp was charging at him. Kery bent and cut the hobbles of the hest beside him. A shower of flung spears rained about him as he sprang to the saddleless back. Twisting his left hand into the long mane he kicked the frightened beast in the flanks and plunged free.

Two Ganasthi quartered across his trail. He bent low over the hest's back, spurring the mount with the point of his sword. As he rode down on them he hewed at one and saw him fall with a scream. The other stumbled out of the path of his reckless charge.

"Hai-ahl" shouted Kery.

He clattered away over the stony ice fields toward the shelter of the dark hills looming to the north. Spears and arrows whistled on his trail and he heard, dimly, the shouts of men and the thud of pursuing hoofs.

He was alone in a land of foes, a land of freezing cold where he could scarce see half a mile before him, a land of hunger and swords. They were after him and it would take all the hunter's skill he had learned in Killorn and all the warrior's craftiness taught by the march to evade them. And after that—Ganasthl

VII

THE CITY loomed dark before him reaching with stony fingers for the ever-glittering stars. Of black stone it was, mountainous walls ringing in the narrow streets and the high gaunt houses. A city of night, city of darkness. Kery shivered.

Behind the city rose a mountain, a deeper shadow against the frosty dark of heaven. It was a volcano and from its mouth a red flame flapped in the keening wind. Sparks and smoke streamed over Ganasth. There was a hot smell of sulphur in the bitter air. The fire added a faint blood-like tinge to the cold glitter of moonlight and starlight on the snowfields.

There was a highway leading through the great main gates and the glowing-eyed people of the Dark Lands were trafficking along it. Kery strode directly on his way, through the crowds and ever closer to the city.

He wore the ordinary fur and leather dress of the country that he had stolen from an outlying house. The parka hood was drawn low to shadow his, alien features. He went armed, us most men did, sword belted to his waist, and because he went quietly and steadily nobody paid any attention to him.

But if he were discovered and the hue and cry went up that would be the end of his quest.

A dozen sleeps of running and hiding in the wild hills, shivering with cold and hunger, hunting animals which could see where he was blind, and ever the men of Ganasth on his I rail—it would all go for naught. He would die and Sathi would be bound to a hateful pledge and Killom would in time be the home of strangers.

He must finally have shaken off pursuit, he thought. Ranging through the hills he had found no sign of the warriors who had scoured them before. So he had proceeded toward the city on his wild and hopeless mission.

To find a woman and a weapon in the innermost citadel of a foe whose language even was unknown to him—truly the gods must be laughing!

He was close to the gates now. They loomed over him like giants, and the passage through the city wall was a tunnel. Soldiers stood on guard and Kery lowered his head.

Traffic streamed through. No one gave him any heed But it was black as hell in the tunnel and only a Ganasthian could find his way. Blindly Kery walked ahead, bumping into people, praying that none of the angry glances he got would unmask his pretense.

When he came out into the street the breath was sobbing in his lungs. He pushed on down its shadowy length feeling the wind that howled between the buildings cold on his cheeks.

But where to go now, where to go?

Blindly he struck out toward the heart of town. Most rulers preferred to live at the center.

The Ganasthi were a silent folk. Men stole past in the gloom, noiseless save for the thin snow scrunching under their feet. Crowds eddied dumbly through the great market squares, buying and selling with a gesture or a whispered syllable. City of half-seen ghosts . . . Kery felt more than half a ghost himself, shade of a madman flitting hopelessly to the citadel of the king of hell.

He found the place at last, more by blind blundering through the narrow twisting streets than anything else. Drawing himself into the shadow of a building across the way he stood looking at it, weighing his chances.

There was a high wall around the palace. He could only see its roof but it seemed to be set well back. He spied a gate not too far off, apparently a secondary entrance for it was small and only one sentry guarded it.

Now! By all the gods, now! ,

For a moment his courage failed him, and he stood sweating and shivering and licking dry lips. It wasn't fear of death. He had lived too long with the dark gods as comrade—he had but little hope of escaping alive from these nighted hills. But he thought of the task before him, and the immensity of it and the ruin that lay in his failure, and his heartbeat nearly broke through his ribs.

What, after all, could he hope to do? What was his plan, anyway? He had come to Ganasth on a wild and hopeless journey, scarcely thinking one sleep ahead of his death-dogged passage. Only now—now he must reach a decision, and he couldn't.

With a snarl, Kery started across the street.

No one else was in sight, there was little traffic in this part of town, but at any moment someone might round either of the corners about which the way twisted and see what he was doing. He had to be fast.

He walked up to the sentry who gave him a haughty glance. There was little suspicion in it for what had anyone to fear in the hearth of Ganasth the mighty?

Kery drew his sword and lunged.

The sentry yelled and brought down his pike. Kery batted the shaft aside even as he went by it. His sword flashed, slabbing for the other man's throat. With a dreadful gurgling the guard stumbled and went clattering to earth.

Now quickly!

Kery took the man's helmet and put it on. His own long locks were fair enough to pass for Ganasthian at a casual glance, and the visor would hide his eyes. Shedding his parka he slipped on the blood-stained tunic and the cloak over that. Taking the pike in hand he went through the gate.

Someone cried out and feet clattered in the street and along the garden paths before him. The noise had been heard. Kery looked wildly around at the pale bushes of fungus that grew here under the moon. He crawled between the fleshy fronds of the nearest big one and crouched behind it.

Guardsmen ran down the path. The moonlight blinked like cold silver on their spearheads. Kery wriggled on his stomach through the garden of fungus, away from the trail but toward the black palace.

Lying under a growth at the edge of a frost-silvered expanse of open ground he scouted the place he must next attack. The building was long and rambling, seemingly four stories high, built of polished black marble. There were two guards in sight, standing warily near a door. The rest must have run off to investigate the alarm. Two—

Kery rose, catching his stride even as he did, and dashed from the garden toward them. The familiar helmet and tunic might assure them for the instant he needed but he had to run lest they notice.

"Vashtung!" shouted one of the men.

His meaning was plain enough. Kery launched his pike at the other who still looked a bit uncertain. It was an awkward throwing weapon. It brought him down wounded in a clatter of metal. The other roared and stepped forth to meet the assault.

Kery's sword was out and whirring. He chopped at' the pikeshaft that jabbed at him, caught his blade in the tough wood and pushed the weapon aside. As he came up face to face he kneed the Ganasthian with savage precision.

The other man reached up and grabbed his ankle and pulled him down. Kery snarled, the rage of battle rising in him. It was as if the pipes of Broina skirled in his head. Fear and indecision were gone. He got his hands on the soldier's neck and wrenched. Even as the spine snapped he was rising again to his feet.

He picked up sword and pike and ran up the stairs and through the door. Now—Sathi! He had one ally in this house of hell.

A long and silent corridor, lit by dim red cressets, stretched before him. He raced down it and his boots woke hollow echoes that paced him through its black length.

Two men in the dress of servants stood in the room into which he burst. They stared wildly at him. He stabbed one but the other fled screaming. He'd give the alarm but there was no time to chase. No timel

A staircase wound up toward the second story and Kery took it, flying up three steps at a time. Dimly, below him, he heard the frantic tattoo of a giant gong, the alarm signal, but the demon fury was fire and ice in his blood.

Another servant gaped at him. Kery seized him with a rough hand and held the sword at his throat.

"Sathi," he snarled. "Sathi—Ryvan—Sathi!"

The Ganasthian gibbered in a panic that seemed weird with his frozen face. Kery grinned viciously and pinked him with the blade. "Sathi!" he said urgently. "Sathi of Ryvanl"

Shaking, the servant led the way, Kery urging him un-gently to greater speed. They went up another flight of stairs and down a hallway richly hung with furs and tapestries. Passing lackeys gaped at them and some ran. Gods, they'd bring all Ganasth down on his neckl

Before a closed door stood a guardsman. Kery slugged the servant when he pointed at that entrance and ran to meet this next barrier. The guard yelled and threw up his pike.

Kery's own long-shafted weapon clashed forth. They stabbed at each other, seeking the vitals. The guardsman had a cuirass and Kery's point grazed off the metal. He took a ripping slash in his left arm. The Ganasthian bored in, wielding his pike with skill, beating aside Kery's guard.

VIII

THE TWILIGHT Lander dropped his own weapon, seized the other shaft in both hands, and wrenched. Grimly the Ganasthian hung on. Kery worked his way in closer. Suddenly he released the shaft, almost fell against his enemy, and drew the Dark Lander's sword. The short blade flashed and the sentry  fell.

The door was barred. He beat on it frantically, hearing the clatter of feet coming up the stairs, knowing that a thunderstorm of hurled weapons was on its way. "Sathi!" he cried. "Sathi, it is Kery, let me in!"

The first soldiers appeared down at the end of the corridor. Kery threw himself against the door. It opened, and he plunged through and slammed down the bolt.

Sathi stood there and wonder was in her eyes. "Oh, Kery," she breathed, "Kery, you came . . ."

"No time," he rasped. "Where is the pipe of KillomP"

She fought for calmness. "Mongku has it," she said. "His chambers are on the next floor, above these—"

The door banged and groaned as men threw their weight against it.

Sathi took his hand and led him into the next room. A fire burned low in the hearth. "I thought it out, against the time you might come," she said. "The only way out is up that chimney. It should take us to the roof and thence we can go down again."

"Oh, well done, lass!" With a sweep of the poker Kery scattered the logs and coals out on the carpet while Sathi barred the door into the next room. Drawing a deep breath the Killorner went into the fireplace, braced feet and back against the sides of the flue and began to clumb up.

Smoke swirled in the chimney. He gasped for breath and his lungs seemed on fire. Night in here, utter dark and choking of fouled air. His heart roared and his strength ebbed from him. Up and up and up, hitch yourself still further up.

"Kery." Her voice came low, broken with coughing. "Kery —I can't. I'm slipping—"

"Hang on!" he gasped. "Here. Reach up. My belt—"

He felt the dragging weight catch at him, there in the smoke-thickened dark, and drew a grim breath and edged himself further, up and up and up.

And out!

He crawled from the chimney and fell to the roof with the world reeling about him and a rushing of darkness in his head. His tormented lungs sucked the bitter air. He sobbed and the tears washed the soot from his eyes. He stood up and helped Sathi to her feet.

She leaned against him, shuddering with strain and with the wind that cried up here under the flickering stars. He looked about, seeking a way down again. Yes, over there, a doorway opening on a small terrace. Quickly now.

They crawled over the slanting, ice-slippery roof, helping each other where they could, fighting a way to the battlement until Kery's grasping fingers closed on its edge and he heaved both of them up onto it.

"Come on!" he snapped. "They'll be behind us any moment now."

"What to do?" she murmured. "What to do?"

"Get the pipes!" he growled, and the demon blood of Broina began to boil in him again, "Get the pipes and destroy them if we can do nothing else."

They went through the door and down a narrow staircase and came to the fourth floor of the palace.

Sathi looked up and down the long empty hallway. "I have been up here before," she said with a coolness that was good to hear. "Let me see—yes, this way, I think—" As they I rotted down the hollow length of corridor she said further: "They treated me fairly well here, indeed with honor though I was a prisoner. But oh, Kery, it was like sunlight to see you againl"

He stopped and kissed her, briefly, wondering if he would ever have a chance to do it properly. Most likely not but she would be a good companion on heil-road. ■

They came into a great antechamber. Kery had his sword out, the only weapon left to him, but no one was in sight. All the royal guards must be out hunting him. He grinned wolfishly and stepped to the farther door.

"Kery—" Sathi huddled close against him. "Kery, do we dare? It may be death—"

"It will be like that anyway," he said curtly and swung the door open.

A great, richly furnished suite of chambers, dark and still, lay before him. He padded through the first, looking right and left like a questing animal, and into the next.

Two men stood there, talking—Jonan and Mongku.

They saw him and froze for he was a terrible sight, bloody, black with smoke, fury cold and bitter-blue in his eyes. He grinned, a white flash of teeth in his sooted face, and drew his sword and stalked forward.

"So you have come," said Mongku quietly.

"Aye," said Kery. "Where is the pipe of KillomP"

Jonan thrust forward, drawing the sword at his belt. "I will hold him, prince," he said. "I will carve him into very bits for you."

Kery met his advance in a clash of steel. They circled, stiff-logged and wary, looking for an opening. There was death here. Sathi knew starkly that only one of those two would leave this room.

Jonan lunged in, stabbing, and Kery skipped back. The officer was better in handling these shortswords than he who was used to the longer blades of the north. He brought his own weapon down sharply, deflecting the thrust. Jonan parried, and then it was bang and crash, thrust and leap and hack with steel clamoring and sparking. The glaives hissed and screamed, the fighters breathed hoarsely and there was murder in their eyes.

Jonan ripped off his cloak with his free hand and flapped it in Kery's face. The northerner hacked out, blinded, and Jonan whipped the cloth around to tangle his blade. Then he rushed in, stabbing. Kery fell to one knee and took the thrust on his helmet, letting it glide off. Reaching up he got Jonan around the waist and pulled the man down on him.

They rolled over, growling and biting and gouging. Jonan clung to his sword and Kery to that wrist. They crashed into a wall and struggled there.

Kery got one leg around Jonan's waist and pulled himself up on the man's chest. He got a two-handed grasp on the enemy's sword arm, slipped the crook of one elbow around, and broke the bone.

Jonan screamed. Kery reached over. He took the sword from his loosening fingers and buried it in Jonan's breast.

He stood up then, trembling with fury, and looked at the pipes of Killorn.

It was almost as if Mongku's expressionless face smiled. The Ganasthian held the weapon cradled in his arms, the mouthpiece near his lips. He nodded. "I got it to working," he said. "In truth it is a terrible thing. Who holds it might well hold the world someday."

Kery stood waiting, the sword hanging limp in one hand.

"Yes," said Mongku. "I am going to play it."

Kery started across the floor—and Mongku blew.

The sound roared forth, wild, cruel, seizing him and shaking him, ripping at nerve and sinew. Bone danced in his skull and night shouted in his brain. He fell to the ground, feeling the horrible jerking of his muscles, seeing the world swim and blur before him.

The pipes screamed. Goodnight, Kery, goodnight, goodnight! It is the dirge of the world he is playing, the coronach of Killorn, it is the end of all things skirling in your body—

Sathi crept forth. She was behind the player, the hell-tune did not strike her so deeply, but even as his senses blurred toward death Kery saw how she fought for every step, how the bronze lamp almost fell from her hand. Mongku had forgotten her. He was playing doom, watching Kery die and noting how the music worked.

Sathi struck him from behind. He fell, dropping the pipes, and turned dazed eyes up to her. She struck him again and again.

Then she fled over to Kery and cradled his head in her ,'irms and sobbed with the horror of it and with the need lor haste. "Oh, quickly, quickly, beloved, we have to flee, I hey will be here now—I hear them in the hallway, come—"

Kery sat up. His head was ringing and thumping, his muscles burned and weakness was like an iron hand on him. But there was that which had to be done and it gave him strength from some forgotten wellspring. He rose on shaky legs and went over and picked up the bagpipe of the gods.

"No," he said.

"Kery . . ."

"We will not flee," he said. "I have a song to play."

She saw the cold remote mask of his face. He was not Kery now of the ready laugh and the reckless bravery and I he wistful memories of a lost homestead. He had become something else with the pipe in his hands, something which stood stern and somber and apart from man. There seemed lo be ghosts in the vast shadowy room, the blood of his fathers who had been Pipers of Killorn, and he was the guardian now. She shrank against him for protection. There was a small charmed circle which the music did not enter hut it was a stranger she stood beside.

Carefully Kery lifted the mouthpiece to his lips and blew. Fie felt the vibration tremble under his feet. The walls wavered before his eyes as unheard notes shivered the air. He himself heard no more than the barbarian screaming of the war-music he had always known but he saw death riding out.

A troop of guardsmen burst through the door—halted, stared at the tall piper, and then howled in terror and pain.

Kery played. And as he played Killorn rose before him. lie saw the reach of gray windswept moors, light glimmering on high colds tarns, birds winging in a sky of riven clouds. Space and loneliness and freedom, a hard open land of stem and bitter beauty, the rocks which had shaped his bones and the soil which had nourished his flesh. He stood by the great lake of sunset, storms swept in over it, rain and lightning, the waves dashed themselves to angry death on a beach of grinding stones.

He strode forward, playing, and the soldiers of Ganasth died before him. The walls of the palace trembled, hangings fell to the shuddering floor, the building groaned as the demon music sought and found resonance.

He played them a song of the chase, the long wild hunt over the heath, breath gasping in hot lungs and blood shouting in the ears, running drunk with wind after the prey that fled and soared. He played them fire and comradeship and the little huts crouched low under the mighty sky. And the walls cracked around him. Pillars trembled and broke. The roof began to cave in and everywhere they died about him.

He played war, the skirl of pipes and the shout of men, clamor of metal, tramp of feet and hoofs, and the fierce blink of light on weapons. He sang them up an army that rode over the rim of the world with swords aflame and arrows like rain and the whole building tumbled to rubble even as he walked out of it.

Tenderly, dreamily, he played of Morna the fair, Morna who had stood with him on the edge of the lake where it is forever sunset, listening to the chuckle of small wavelets and looking west to the pyre of red and gold and dusky purple, the eyes and the lips and the hair of Moma and what she and he had whispered to each other on that quiet shore. But there was death in that song.

The ground began to shake under Ganasth. There is but little strength in the lungs of one man and yet when that strikes just the right notes, and those small pushes touch off something else far down in the depths of the earth, the world will tremble. The Dark Landers rioted in a more than human fear, in the blind panic which the pipes sang to them.

The gates were closed before him, but Kery played them down. Then he turned and faced the city and played it a song of the wrath of the gods. He played them up rain and cold and scouring wind, glaciers marching from the north in a blind whirl of snow, lightning aflame in the heavens and cities ground to dust. He played them a world gone crazy, sundering continents and tidal waves marching over the shores and mountains flaming into a sky of rain and fire. He played ihem whirlwinds and dust storms and the relentless sleety blast from the north. He sang them ruin and death and the sun burning out to darkness.

When he ceased, and he and Sathi left the half-shattered city, none stirred to follow. None dared who were still alive. It seemed to the two of them, as they struck out over the snowy plains, that the volcano behind was beginning to grumble and throw its flames a little higher.

IV

HE STOOD alone in the gardens of Ryvan's palace looking out over the city. Perhaps he thought of the hard journey back from the Dark Lands. Perhaps he thought of the triumphant day when they had sneaked back into the fastness and then gone out again, the Piper of Killorn and Red Bram roaring in his wake to smash the siege and scatter the armies of Ganasth and send the broken remnants fleeing homeward. Perhaps he thought of the future—who knew? Sathi approached him quiedy, wondering what to say.

He turned and smiled at her, the old merry smile she knew but with something else behind it. He had been the war-god of Killom and that left its mark on a man.

"So it all turned out well," he said.

"Thanks to you, Kery," she answered softly.

"Oh, not so well at that," he decided. "There were too many good men who fell, too much laid waste. It will take a hundred years before all this misery is forgotten."

"But we reached what we strove for," she said. "Ryvan is safe, all the Twilight Lands are. You folk of Killom have the land you needed. Isn't that enough to achieve?"

"I suppose so." Kery stirred restlessly. "I wonder how it stands in Killom now?"

"And you still want to return?" She tried to hold back the tears. "This is a fair land, and you are great in it, all you people from the north. You would go back to—that?"

"Indeed," he said. "All you say is true. We would be fools to return." He scowled. "It may well be that in the time we yet have to wait most of us will find life better here and decide to stay. But not I, Sathi. I am just that kind of fool."

"This land needs you, Kery. I do."

He tilted her chin, smiling half sorrowfully into her eyes. "Best you forget, dear," he said. "I will not stay here once the chance comes to return."

She shook her head blindly, drew a deep breath, and said with a catch in her voice, "Then stay as long as you can, Kery."

"Do you really mean that?" he asked slowly. She nodded.

"You are a fool too," he said. "But a very lovely fool." He took her in his arms.

Presently she laughed a little and said, not without hope, "I'll have a while to change your mind, Kery. And I'll try to do it. I'll tryl"

PEOPLE OF THE CRATER by Andre Norton

I

Six MONTHS and three days after the Peace of Shanghai wai signed and the great War of 1965-1970 declared at an end by an exhausted world, a young man huddled on a park bench in New York, staring miserably at the gravel beneath his badly worn shoes. He had been trained to fill the pilot's seat in the control cabin of a fighting plane and for nothing else. The search for a niche in civilian life had cost him both health  and  ambition.

A newcomer dropped down on the other end of the bench. The flyer studied him bitterly. He had decent shoes, a warm coat, and that air of satisfaction with the world which is the result of economic security. Although he was well into middle age, the man had a compact grace of movement and an air of alertness.

"Aren't you Captain Garin Featherstone?"

Startled, the flyer nodded dumbly.

From a plump billfold the man drew a clipping and waved it toward his seat mate. Two years before Captain Garin Featherstone of the United Democratic Forces had led a

perilous bombing raid into the wilds of Siberia to wipe out the vast expeditionary army secretly gathering there. It had been a spectacular affair and had brought the survivors some fleeting fame.

"You're the sort of chap I've been looking for," the stranger folded the clipping again, "a flyer with courage, initiative and brains. The man who led that raid is worth investing in."

"What's the proposition?" asked Featherstone wearily. He no longer believed in luck.

"I'm Gregory Farson," the other returned as if that should answer the question.

"The Antarctic manl"

"Just so. As you have probably heard, I was halted on the eve of my last expedition by the sudden spread of war to this country. Now I am preparing to sail south again."

"But I don't see—"

"How you can help me? Very simple, Captain Feather-stone. I need pilots. Unfortunately the war has disposed of most of them. I'm lucky to contact one such as yourself."

And it was as simple as that. But Garin didn't really believe that it was more than a dream until they touched the glacial shores of the polar continent some months later. As they brought ashore the three large planes he began to wonder at the driving motive behind Farson's vague plans.

When the supply ship sailed, not to return for a year, Farson called them together. Three of the company were pilots, all war veterans, and two were engineers who spent most of their waking hours engrossed in the maps Farson produced.

"Tomorrow," the leader glanced from face to face, "we start inland. Here—" On a map spread before him he indicated a line marked in purple.

"Ten years ago I was a member of the Verdane expedition. Once, when flying due south, our plane was caught by some freakish air current and drawn off its course. When we were totally off our map, we saw in the distance a thick bluish haze. It seemed to rise in a straight line from the ice plain to the sky. Unfortunately our fuel was low and we dared not risk a closer investigation. So we fought our way back to the

base.

"Verdane, however, had little interest in our report and we did not investigate it. Three years ago that Kattack expedition hunting oil deposits by the order of the Dictator reported seeing the same haze. This time we are going to explore  it!"

"Why," Garin asked curiously, "are you so eager to penetrate this haze?—I gather that's what we're to do—"

Farson hesitated before answering. "It has often been suggested that beneath the ice sheeting of this continent may be hidden mineral wealth. I believe that the haze is caused by some form of volcanic activity, and perhaps a break in the crust."

Garin frowned at the map. He wasn't so sure about that explanation, but Farson was paying the bills. The flyer shrugged away his uneasiness. Much could be forgiven a man who allowed one to eat regularly again.

Four days later they set out. Helmly, one of the engineers, Hawlson, a pilot, and Farson occupied the first plane. The other engineer and pilot were in the second and Garin, with the extra supplies, was alone in the third.

He was content to be alone as they took off across the blue-white waste. His ship, because of its load, was loggy, so he did not attempt to follow the other two into the higher lane. They were in communication by radio and Garin, as he snapped on his earphones, remembered something l''arson had said that morning:

"The haze affects radio. On our trip near it the static was very bad. Almost," with a laugh, "like speech in some foreign tongue."

As they roared over the ice Garin wondered if it might have been speech—from, perhaps, a secret enemy expedition, such as the Kattack one.

In his sealed cockpit he did not feel the bite of the frost :md the ship rode smoothly. With a little sigh of content lie settled back against the cushions, keeping to the course set by the planes ahead and above him.

Some five hours after they left the base, Garin caught sight of a dark shadow far ahead. At the same time Farson's voice chattered in his earphones.

"That's it. Set course straight ahead."

The shadow grew until it became a wall of purple-blue from earth to sky. The first plane was quite close to it, diving down into the vapor. Suddenly the ship rocked violently and swung earthward as if out of control. Then it straightened and turned back. Garin could hear Farson demanding to know what was the matter. But from the first plane there was no reply.

As Farson's plane kept going Garin throttled down. The actions of the first ship indicated trouble. What if that haze were a toxic gas?

"Close up, Featherstonel" barked Farson suddenly.

He obediently drew ahead until they flew wing to wing. The haze was just before them and now Garin could see movement in it, oily, impenetrable billows. The motors bit into it. There was clammy, foggy moisture on the windows.

Abruptly Garin sensed that he was no longer alone. Somewhere in the empty cabin behind him was another intelligence, a measuring power. He fought furiously against it— against the very idea of it. But, after a long, terrifying moment while it seemed to study him, it took control. His hands and feet still manipulated the ship, but it flew!

On the ship hurtled through the thickening mist. He lost sight of Farson's plane. And, though he was still fighting against the will which over-rode his, his struggles grew weaker. Then came the order to dive into the dark heart of the purple mists.

Down they whirled. Once, as the haze opened, Garin caught a glimpse of tortured gray rock seamed with yellow. Farson had been right; here the ice crust was broken.

Down and down. If his instruments were correct the plane was below sea level now. The haze thinned and was gone. Below spread a plain cloaked in vivid green. Here and there reared clumps of what might be trees. He saw, too, the waters of a yellow stream.

But there was something terrifyingly alien about that landscape. Even as he circled above it, Garin wrested to break the grip of the will that had brought him there. There came a crackle of sound in his earphones and at that moment the Presence withdrew.

The nose of the plane went up in obedience to his own desire. Frantically he climbed away from the green land. Again the haze absorbed him. He watched the moisture bead on the windows. Another hundred feet or so and he would be free of it—and that unbelievable world beneath.

Then, with an ominous sputter, the port engine conked out. The plane lurched and slipped into a dive. Down it whirled again into the steady light of the green land.

Trees came out of the ground, huge fern-like plants with crimson scaled trunks. Toward a clump of these the plane swooped.

Frantically Garin fought the controls. The ship steadied, the dive became a fast glide. He looked for an open space to land. The he felt the landing gear scrape some surface. Directly ahead loomed one of the fern trees. The plane sped toward the long fronds. There came a ripping crash, the splintering of metal and wood. The scarlet cloud gathering before Garin's eyes turned black.

II

GARIN returned to consciousness through a red mist of pain. He was pinned in the crumpled mass of metal which had once been the cabin. Through a rent in the wall close to his head thrust a long spike of green, shredded leaves still clinging to it. He lay and watched it, not daring to move lest the pain prove more than he could bear.

It was then that he heard the pattering sound outside. It seemed as if soft hands were pushing and pulling at the wreck. The tree branch shook and a portion of the cabin wall dropped away with a clang.

Garin turned his head slowly. Through the aperture was clambering a goblin figure.

It stood about five feet tall, and it walked upon its hind legs in human fashion, but the legs were short and stumpy, ending in feet with five toes of equal length. Slender, shapely arms possessed small hands with only four digets. The creature had a high, well-rounded forehead but no chin, the face being distinctly lizard-like in contour. The skin was a dull black, with a velvety surface. About its loins it wore a short kilt of metalic cloth, the garment being supported by a jeweled belt of exquisite workmanship.

For a long moment the apparition eyed Garin. And it was those golden eyes, fixed unwinkingly on his, which banished the flyer's fear. There was nothing but great pity in their depths.

The lizard-man stooped and brushed the sweat-dampened hair from Garin's forehead. Then he fingered the bonds of metal which held the flyer, as if estimating their strength. Having done so, he turned to the opening and apparently gave an order, returning again to squat by Garin.

Two more of his kind appeared to tear away the ruins of the cockpit. Though they were very careful, Garin fainted twice before they had freed him. He was placed on a litter swung between two clumsy beasts which might have been small elephants, except that they lacked trunks and possessed four tusks  each.

They crossed the plain to the towering mouth of a huge cavern where the litter was taken up by four of the lizard-folk. The flyer lay staring up at the roof of the cavern. In the black stone had been carved fronds and flowers in bewildering profusion. Shining motes, giving off faint light, sifted through the air. At times as they advanced these gathered in clusters and the fight grew brighter.

Midway down a long corridor the bearers halted while their leader pulled upon a knob on the wall. An oval door swung back and the party passed through.

They came into a round room, the walls of which had been fashioned of creamy quartz veined with violet. At the highest point in the ceiling a large globe of the motes hung, furnishing soft light below.

Two lizard-men, clad in long robes, conferred with the leader of the flyer's party before coming to stand over Garin. One of the robed ones shook his head at the sight of the flyer's twisted body and waved the litter on into an inner chamber.

Here the walls were dull blue and in the exact center was a long block of quartz. By this the Litter was put down and the bearers disappeared. With sharp knives the robed men cut away furs and leather to expose Garin's broken body.

They lifted him to the quartz table and there made him fast with metal bonds. Then one of them went to the wall mid pulled a gleaming rod. From the dome of the roof shot an eerie blue light to beat upon Garin's helpless body. There followed a tingling through every muscle and joint, a prickling sensation in his skin, but soon his pain vanished as if it had never been.

The light flashed off and the three lizard-men gathered around him. He was wrapped in a soft robe and carried to another room. This, too, was circular, shaped like the half of a giant bubble. The floor sloped toward the center where there was a depression filled with cushions. There they laid Garin. At the top of the bubble, a pinkish cloud formed. He watched it drowsily until he fell asleep.

Something warm stirred against his bare shoulder. He opened his eyes, for a moment unable to remember where he was. Then there was a plucking at the robe twisted about him and he looked down.

If the lizard-folk had been goblin in their grotesqueness this visitor was elfin. It was about three feet high, its monkeylike body completely covered with silky white hair. The tiny hands were human in shape and hairless, but its feet were much like a cat's paws. From either side of the small round head branched large fan-shaped ears. The face was furred and boasted stiff cat whiskers on the upper lip. These Anas, as Garin learned later, were happy little creatures, each one choosing some mistress or master among the Folk, as this one had come to him. They were content to follow Iheir big protector, speechless with delight at trifling gifts. Loyal and brave, they could do simple tasks or carry written messages for their chosen friend, and they remained with him until death. They were neither beast nor human, but rumored to be the result of some experiment carried out eons ago by the Ancient  Ones,

After patting Garin's shoulder the Ana touched the flyer's 11 air wonderingly, comparing the bronze lengths with its own white fur. Since the Folk were hairless, hair was a strange sight in the Caverns. With a contented purr, it rubbed its head  against his hand.

With a sudden click a door in the wall opened. The Ana got to its feet and ran to greet the newcomers. The chieftain of the Folk, he who had first discovered Garin, entered, followed by several of his fellows.

The flyer sat up. Not only was the pain gone but he felt stronger and younger than he had for weary months. Exultingly he stretched wide his arms and grinned at the lizard-being who murmured happily in return.

Lizard-men busied themselves about Garin, girding on him the short kilt and jewel-set belt which were the only clothing of the Caverns. When they were finished, the chieftain took his hand and drew him to the door.

They traversed a hallway whose walls were carved and inlaid with glittering stones and metal work, coming, at last, into a huge cavern, the outer walls of which were hidden by shadows. On a dais stood three tall thrones and Garin was conducted to the foot of these.

The highest throne was of rose crystal. On its right was one of green jade, worn smooth by centuries of time. At the left was the third, carved of a single block of jet. The rose throne and that of jet were unoccupied, but in the seat of jade reposed one of the Folk. He was taller than his fellows, and in his eyes, as he stared at Garin, was wisdom—and a brooding sadness.

"It is well!" The words resounded in the flyer's head. "We have chosen wisely. This youth is fit to mate with the Daughter. But he will be tried, as fire tries metal. He must win the Daughter forth and strive with Kepta—"

A hissing murmur echoed through the hall. Garin guessed that hundreds of the Folk must be gathered there.

"Urgl" the being on the throne commanded.

The chieftain moved a step toward the dais.

"Do you take this youth and instruct him. And then will I speak with him again. For—" sadness colored the words now— "We would have the rose throne filled again and the black one blasted into dust. Time moves swiftly."

The Chieftain led a wondering Garin away.

Ill

URG BROUGHT the flyer into one of the bubble-shaped rooms which contained a low, cushioned bench facing a metal screen—and here they seated themselves.

What followed was a language lesson. On the screen appeared objects which Urg would name, to have his siblant uttering repeated by Garin. As the American later learned, the ray treatment he had undergone had quickened his mental powers, and in an incredibly short time he had a working vocabulary.

Judging by the pictures the lizard folk were the rulers of the crater world, although there were other forms of life there. The elephant-like Tand was a beast of burden, the squirrel-like Eron lived underground and carried on a crude agriculture in small clearings, coming shyly twice a year to exchange grain for a liquid rubber produced by the Folk.

Then there was the Gibi, a monstrous bee, also friendly to the lizard people. It supplied the cavern dwellers with wax, and in return the Folk gave the Gibi colonies shelter during the unhealthful times of the Great Mists.

Highly civilized were the Folk. They did no work by hand, except the finer kinds of jewel setting and carving. Machines wove their metal cloth, machines prepared their food, harvested their fields, hollowed out new dwellings.

Freed from manual labor they had turned to acquiring knowledge. Urg projected on the screen pictures of vast laboratories and great libraries of scientific lore. But all they knew in the beginning, they had learned from the Ancient Ones, a race unlike themselves, which had preceded them in sovereignty over Too. Even the Folk themselves were the result of constant forced evolution and experimentation carried on by these Ancient Ones.

All this wisdom was guarded most carefully, but against what or whom, Urg could not tell, although he insisted that the danger was very real. There was something within the blue wall of the crater which disputed the Folk's rule.

As Garin tried to probe further a gong sounded. Urg arose.

"It is the hour of eating," he announced. "Let us go."

They came to a large room where a heavy table of white stone stretched along three walls, benches before it. Urg seated himself and pressed a knob on the table, motioning (,;irin to do likewise. The wall facing them opened and two 11 ays slid out. There was a platter of hot meat covered with rich sauce, a stone bowl of grain porridge and a cluster of fruit, still fastened to a leafy branch. This the Ana eyed so wistfully that Carin gave it to the creature.

The Folk ate silently and arose quietly when they had finished, their trays vanishing back through the wall. Garin noticed only males in the room and recalled that he had, as yet, seen no females among the Folk. He ventured a question.

Urg chuckled. "So, you think there are no women in the Caverns? Well, we shall go to the Hall of Women that you may see."

To the Hall of Women they went. It was breath-taking in its richness, stones worth a nation's ransom sparkling from its domed roof and painted walls. Here were the matrons and maidens of the Folk, their black forms veiled in robes of silver net, each cross strand of which was set with a tiny gem, so that they appeared to be wrapped in glittering scales.

There were not many of them—a hundred perhaps. And a few led by the hand smaller editions of themselves who stared at Garin with round yellow eyes and chewed black finger  tips   shyly.

The women were intrusted with the finest jewel work, and with pride they showed the stranger their handiwork. At the far end of the hall was a wonderous thing in the making. One of the silver nets which were the foundations of their robes was fastened there and three of the women were putting small rose jewels into each microscopic setting. Here and there they had varied the pattern with tiny emeralds or flaming opals so that the finished portion was a rainbow.

One of the workers smoothed the robe and glanced up at Garin, a gentle teasing in her voice as she explained:

"This is for the Daughter when she comes to her throne."

The Daughter! What had the Lord of the Folk said? "This youth is fit to mate with the Daughter." But Urg had said that the Ancient Ones had gone from Tav.

"Who is the Daughter?" he demanded.

"Thrala of the Light."

"Where is she?"

The women shivered and there was fear in her eyes. "Thrala lies in the Caves of Darkness."

"The Caves of Darkness!" Did she mean Thrala was dead? Was he, Garin Featherstone, to be the victim of some rite of sacrifice which was designed to unite him with the dead?

Urg touched his arm. "Not so. Thrala has not yet entered the Place of Ancesters." "You know my thoughts?"

Urg laughed. "Thoughts are easy to read. Thrala lives. Sera served the Daughter as handmaiden while she was yet among us. Sera, do you show us Thrala as she was."

The woman crossed to a wall where there was a mirror such as Urg had used for his language lesson. She gazed into it and then beckoned the flyer to stand beside her.

The mirror misted and then he was looking, as if through a window, into a room with walls and ceiling of rose quartz. On the floor were thick rugs of silver rose. And a great heap of cushions made a low couch in the center.

"The inner chamber of the Daughter," Sera announced.

A circular panel in the wall opened and a woman slipped through. She was very young, little more than a girl. There were happy curves in her full crimson lips, joyous lights in her violet eyes.

She was human of shape, but her beauty was unearthly. Her skin was pearl white and other colors seemed to play faintly upon it, so that it reminded Garin of mother-of-pearl with its lights and shadows. The hair, which veiled her as a cloud, was blue-black and reached below her knees. She was robed in the silver net of the Folk and there was a heavy girdle of rose shaded jewels about her slender waist.

"That was Thrala before the Black Ones took her," said Sera.

Garin uttered a cry of disappointment as the picture vanished.  Urg laughed.

"What care you for shadows when the Daughter herself waits for you? You have but to bring her from the Caves of Darkness—"

"Where are these Caves—" Garin's question was interrupted by the pealing of the Cavern gong. Sera cried out: "The Black Ones!"

Urg shrugged. "When they spared not the Ancient Ones how could we hope to escape? Come, we must go to the Hall of Thrones."

Before the jade throne of the Lord of the FoLk stood a small group of the lizard-men beside two litters. As Garin entered the Lord spoke.

"Let the outlander come hither that he may see the work of the Black Ones."

Garin advanced unwillingly, coming to stand by those struggling things which gasped their message between moans and screams of agony. They were men of the Folk but their black skins were green with rot.

The Lord leaned forward on his throne. "It is well," he said. "You may depart."

As if obeying his command, the tortured things let go of the life to which they had clung and were still.

"Look upon the work of the Black Ones," the ruler said to Garin. "Jiv and Betv were captured while on a mission to the Gibi of the Cliff. It seems that the Black Ones needed material for their laboratories. They seek even to give the Daughter to their workers of horrorl"

A terrible cry of hatred arose from the hall, and Garin's jaw set. To give that fair vision he had just seen to such a death as  this—!

"Jiv and Betv were imprisoned close to the Daughter and they heard the threats of Kepta. Our brothers, stricken with foul disease, were sent forth to carry the plague to us, but they swam through the pool of boiling mud. They have died, but the evil died with them. And I think that while we breed such as they, the Black Ones shall not rest easy. Listen now, outlander, to the story of the Black Ones and the Caves of Darkness, of how the Ancient Ones brought the Folk up from the slime of a long dried sea and made them great, and of how the Ancient Ones at last went down to their destruction."

"In the days before the lands of the outer world were born of the sea, before even the Land of the Sun (Mu) and the Land of the Sea (Atlantis) arose from molten rock and sand, there was land here in the far south. A sere land of rock plains, and swamps where slimy life mated, lived and died.

"Then came the Ancient Ones from beyond the stars. Their race was already older than this earth. Their wise men had watched its birth-rending from the sun. And when their world perished, taking most of their blood into nothingness, a handful fled hither.

"But when they climbed from their space ship it was into hell. For they had gained, in place of their loved home, bare rock and stinking slime.

"They blasted out this Tav and entered into it with the treasures of their flying ships and also certain living creatures captured in the swamps. From these, they produced the Folk, the Gibi, the Tand, and the land-tending Eron.

"Among these, the Folk were eager for wisdom and climbed high. But still the learning of the Ancient Ones remained beyond their grasp.

"During the eons the Ancient Ones dwelt within their protecting wall of haze the outer world changed. Cold came to the north and south; the Land of Sun and the Land of Sea arose to bear the foot of true man. On their mirrors of seeing the Ancient Ones watched man-life spread across the world. They had the power of prolonging life, but still the race was dying. From without must come new blood. So certain men were summoned from the Land of Sun. Then the race flourished for a space.

"The Ancient Ones decided to leave Tav for the outer world. But the sea swallowed the Land of Sun. Again in the time of the Land of Sea the stock within Tav was replenished and the Ancient Ones prepared for exodus; again the sea cheated them.

"Those men left in the outer world reverted to savagery. Since the Ancient Ones would not mingle their blood with that of almost beasts, they built the haze wall stronger and remained. But a handful of them were attracted by the forbidden, and secretly they summoned the beast men. Of that monstrous mating came the Black Ones. They live but for the evil they may do, and the power which they acquired is debased and used to forward cruelty.

"At first their sin was not discovered. When it was, the others would have slain the offspring but for the law which lorbids them to kill. They must use their power for good or it departs from them. So they drove the Black Ones to the southern end of Tav and gave them the Caves of Darkness. Never were the Black Ones to come north of the River of C old—nor were the Ancient Ones to go south of it.

"For perhaps two thousand years the Black Ones kept the law. But they worked, building powers of destruction. While matters rested thus, the Ancient Ones searched the world, seeking men by whom they could renew the race. Once there came men from an island far to the north. Six lived to penetrate the mists and take wives among the Daughters. Again, they called the yellow-haired men of another breed, great sea rovers.

"But the Black Ones called too. As the Ancient Ones searched for the best, the Black Ones brought in great workers of evil. And, at last, they succeeded in shutting off the channels of sending thought so that the Ancient Ones could call no more.

"Then did the Black Ones cross the River of Gold and enter the land of the Ancient Ones. Thran, Dweller in the Light and Lord of the Caverns, summoned the Folk to him.

'There will come one to aid you,' he told us. 'Try the summoning again after the Black Ones have seemed to win. Thrala, daughter of the Light, will not enter into the room of Pleasant Death with the rest of the women, but will give herself into the hands of the Black Ones, that they may think themselves truly victorious. You of the Folk withdraw into the Place of Reptiles until the Black Ones are gone. Nor will all the Ancient Ones perish—more will be saved, but the manner of their preservation I dare not tell. When the sun-haired youth comes from the outer world, send him into the Caves of Darkness to rescue Thrala and put an end to evil.'

"And then the Lady Thrala arose and said softly. 'As the Lord Thran has said, so let it be. I shall deliver myself into the hands of the Black Ones that their doom may come upon them.'

"Lord Thran smiled upon her as he said: 'So will happiness be your portion. After the Great Mists, does not light come again?'

"The women of the Ancient Ones then took their leave and passed into the place of pleasant death while the men made ready for battle with the Black Ones. For three days they fought, but a new weapon of the Black Ones won the day, and the chief of the Black Ones set up his throne of jet as proof of his power. Since, however, the Black

Ones were not happy in the Caverns, longing for the darkness of their caves, they soon withdrew and we, the Folk, came forth again.

"But now the time has come when the dark ones will sacrifice the Daughter to their evil. If you can win her free, outlander, they shall perish as if they had not been."

"What of the Ancient Ones?" asked Garin—"those others Thran said would be saved?"

"Of those we know nothing save that when we bore the bodies of the fallen to the Place of Ancestors there were some missing. That you may see the truth of this story, Urg will take you to the gallery above the Room of Pleasant Death and you may look upon those who sleep there."

Urg guiding, Garin climbed a steep ramp leading from the Hall of Thrones. This led to a narrow balcony, one side of which was clear crystal. Urg pointed down.

They were above a long room whose walls were tinted jade green. On the polished floor were scattered piles of cushions. Each was occupied by a sleeping woman and several of these clasped a child in their arms. Their long hair rippled to the floor, their curved lashes made dark shadows on pale faces.

"But they are sleepingl" protested Garin.

Urg shook his head. "It is the sleep of death. Twice each ten hours vapours rise from the floor. Those breathing them do not wake again, and if they are undisturbed they will he thus for a thousand years. Look there—"

He pointed to the closed double doors of the room. There lay the first men of the Ancient Ones Garin had seen. They, loo, seemed but asleep, their handsome heads pillowed on (heir arms.

"Thran ordered those who remained after the last battle in the Hall of Thrones to enter the Room of Pleasant Death that the Black Ones might not torture them for their beastly pleasures. Thran himself remained behind to close the door, and so died."

There were no aged among the sleepers. None of the men seemed to count more than thirty years and many of them appeared younger. Garin remarked upon this.

"The Ancient Ones appeared thus until the day of then-death, though many lived twice a hundred years. The light rays kept them so. Even we of the Folk can hold back age. But come now, our Lord Trar would speak with you again."

IV

AGAIN GABIN stood before the jade throne of Trar and heard the stirring of the multitude of the Folk in the shadows. Trar was turning a small rod of glittering, greenish metal around in his soft hands.

"Listen well, outlander," he began, "for little time remains to us. Within seven days the Great Mists will be upon us. Then no living thing may venture forth from shelter and escape death. And before that time Thrala must be out of the Caves. This rod will be your weapon; the Black Ones have not its secret. Watch."

Two of the Folk dragged an ingot of metal before him. He touched it with the rod. Great flakes of rust appeared, to spread across the entire surface. It crumpled away and one of the Folk trod upon the pile of dust where it had been.

"Thrala lies in the heart of the Caves but Kepta's men have grown careless with the years. Enter boldly and trust to fortune. They know nothing of your coming or of Thran's words concerning you."

Urg stood forward and held out his hands in appeal.

"What would you, Urg?"

"Lord, I would go with the outlander. He knows nothing of the Forest of the Morgels or of the Pool of Mud. It is easy to go astray in the woodland—"

Trar shook his head. "That may not be. He must go alone, even as Thran said."

The Ana, which had followed in Garin's shadow all day, whistled shrilly and stood on tiptoe to tug at his hand. Trar smiled. "That one may go, its eyes may serve you well. Urg will guide you to the outer portal of the Place of Ancestors and set you upon the road to the Caves. Farewell, outlander, and may the spirits of the Ancient Ones be with you."

Garin bowed to the ruler of the Folk and turned to follow Urg. Near the door stood a small group of women. Sera pressed forward from them, holding out a small bag.

"Outlander," she said hurriedly, "when you look upon the Daughter speak to her of Sera, for I have awaited her many years."

He smiled. "That I will."

"If you remember, outlander. I am a great lady among the Folk and have my share of suitors, yet I think I could envy the Daughter. Nay, I shall not explain that," she laughed mockingly. "You will understand in due time. Here is a packet of food. Now go swiftly that we may have you among us again before the Mists."

So a woman's farewell sped them on their way. Urg chose a ramp which led downward. At its foot was a niche in the rock, above which a rose light burned dimly. Urg reached within the hollow and drew out a pair of high buskins which he aided Garin to lace on. They were a good fit, having been fashioned for a man of the Ancient Ones.

The passage before them was narrow and crooked. There was a thick carpet of dust underfoot, patterned by the prints of the Folk. They rounded a corner and a tall door loomed out of the gloom. Urg pressed the surface, there was a click and the stone rolled back.

"This is the Place of Ancestors," he announced as he stepped within.

They were at the end of a colossal hall whose domed roof disappeared into shadows. Thick pillars of gleaming crystal divided it into aisles all leading inward to a raised dais of oval shape. Filling the aisles were couches and each soft nest held its sleeper. Near to the door lay the men and women of the Folk, but closer to the dais were the Ancient Ones. Here and there a couch bore a double burden, upon the shoulder of a man was pillowed the drooping head of a woman. Urg stopped beside such a one.

"See, outlander, here was one who was called from your world. Marena of the House of Light looked with favor upon him and their days of happiness were many."

The man on the couch had red-gold hair and on his upper arm was a heavy band of gold whose mate Garin had once seen in a museum. A son of pre-Norman Ireland. Urg traced with a crooked finger the archaic lettering carved upon the stone base of the couch.

"Lovers in the Light sleep sweetly. The Light returns on the appointed day."

"Who lies there?" Garin motioned to the dais. "The first Ancient Ones. Come, look upon those who made this Tav."

On the dais the couches were arranged in two rows and between them, in the center, was a single couch raised above the others. Fifty men and women lay as if but resting for the hour, smiles on their peaceful faces but weary shadows beneath their eyes. There was an un-human quality about them which was lacking in their descendents.

Urg advanced to the high couch and beckoned Garin to join him. A man and a woman lay there, the woman's head upon the man's breast. There was that in their faces which made Garin turn away. He felt as if he had intruded roughly where no man should go.

"Here lies Thran, Son of Light, first Lord of the Caverns, and his lady Thrala, Dweller in the Light. So have they lain a thousand thousand years, and so will they lie until this planet rots to dust beneath them. They led the Folk out of the slime and made Tav. Such as they we shall never see again."

They passed silently down the aisles of the dead. Once Garin caught sight of another fair haired man, perhaps another outlander, since the Ancient Ones were all dark of hair. Urg paused once more before they left the hall. He stood by the couch of a man, wrapped in a long robe, whose face was ravaged with marks of agony.

Urg spoke a single name: "Thran."

So this was the last lord of the Caverns. Garin leaned closer to study the dead face but Urg seemed to have lost his patience. He hurried his charge on to a panel door.

"This is the southern portal of the Caverns," he explained. "Trust to the Ana to guide you and beware of the boiling mud. Should the morgels scent you, kill quickly, they are the servants of the Black Ones. May fortune favor you, outlander."

The door was open and Garin looked out upon Tav. The soft blue light was as strong as it had been when he had first seen it. With the Ana perched on his shoulder, the green rod and the bag of food in his hands, he stepped out onto the moss sod.

Urg raised his hand in salute and the door clicked into place. Garin stood alone, pledged to bring the Daughter out of the Caves of Darkness.

There is no night or day in Tav since the blue light is Meady. But the Folk divide their time by artificial means. However Garin, being newly come from the rays of healing, felt no fatigue. As he hesitated the Ana chattered and pointed   confidently   ahead.

Before them was a dense wood of fern trees. It was quiet In the forest as Garin made his way into its gloom and for I lie first time he noted a peculiarity of Tav. There were no birds.

The portion of the woodland they had to traverse was but a spur of the forest to the west. After an hour of travel they came out upon the bank of a sluggish river. The turbid waters of the stream were a dull saffron color. This, thought Garin, must be the River of Gold, the boundary of the lands of the Black Ones.

He rounded a bend to come upon a bridge, so old that time itself had worn its stone angles into curves. The bridge Unve on a wide plain where tall grass grew sere and yellow. To the left was a hissing and bubbling, and a huge wave of boiling mud arose in the air. Garin choked in a wind, thick with chemicals, which blew from it. He smelled and tasted the sulpher-tainted air all across the plain.

And he was glad enough to plunge into a small fern grove which half-concealed a spring. There he bathed his head and arms while the Ana pulled open Sera's food bag.

Together they ate the cakes of grain and the dried fruit. When they were done the Ana tugged at Garin's hand and pointed on.

Cautiously Garin wormed his way through the thick underbrush until, at last, he looked out into a clearing and nt its edge the entrance of the Black Ones' Caves. Two lull pillars, carved into the likeness of foul monsters guarded a rough edged hole. A fine greenish mist whirled and danced  in  its  mouth.

The flyer studied the entrance. There was no life to be seen. He gripped the destroying rod and inched forward. Ilefore the green mist he braced himself and then stepped within.

The green mist enveloped Garin. He drew into his lungs hot moist air faintly tinged with a scent of sickly sweetness as from some hidden corruption. Green motes in the air gave forth little light and seemed to cling to the intruder.

With the Ana pattering before him, the American started down a steep ramp, the soft soles of his buskins making no sound. At regular intervals along the wall, niches held small statues. And about each perverted figure was a crown of green motes.

The Ana stopped, its large ears outspread as if to catch the faintest murmur of sound. From somewhere under the earth came the howls of a maddened dog. The Ana shivered, creeping closer to Garin.

Down led the ramp, growing narrower and steeper. And louder sounded the insane, coughing howls of the dog. Then the passage was abruptly barred by a grill of black stone. Garin peered through its bars at a flight of stairs leading down into a pit. From the pit arose snarling laughter.

Padding back and forth were things which might have been conceived by demons. They were sleek, rat-like creatures, hairless, and large as ponies. Red saliva dripped from the corners of their sharp jaws. But in the eyes, which they raised now and then toward the grill, there was intelligence. These were the morgels, watch dogs and slaves of the Black Ones.

From a second pair of stairs directly across the pit arose a moaning call. A door opened and two men came down the steps. The morgels surged forward, but fell back when whips were cracked over their heads.

The masters of the morgels were human in appearance. Black loin cloths were twisted about them and long, wing shaped clocks hung from their shoulders. On their heads, completely masking their hair, were cloth caps which bore ragged crests not unlike cockscombs. As far as Garin could see they were unarmed except for their whips.

A second party was coming down the steps. Between two of the Black Ones struggled a prisoner. He made a desperate and hopeless fight of it, but they dragged him to the edge of the pit before they halted. The morgels, intent upon their promised prey, crouched before them.

Five steps above were two figures to whom the guards looked for instructions. One was a man of their race, of slender, handsome body and evil, beautiful face. His hands lay possessively upon the arm of his companion.

It was Thrala who stood beside him, her head proudly erect. The laughter curves were gone from her lips; there was only sorrow and resignation to be read there now. But her spirit burned like a white flame in her eyes.

"Look!" Her warder ordered. "Does not Kepta keep his promises? Shall we give Dandtan into the jaws of our slaves, or will you unsay certain words of yours, Lady Thrala?"

The prisoner answered for her. "Kepta, son of vileness, Thrala is not for you. Remember, beloved one," he spoke to the Daughter, "the day of deliverance is at hand—"

Garin felt a sudden emptiness. The prisoner had called Thrala "beloved" with the ease of one who had the right.

"I await Thrala's answer," Kepta returned evenly. And her answer he got.

"Beast among beasts, you may send Dandtan to his death, you may heap all manner of insult and evil upon me, but still I say the Daughter is not for your touch. Rather will I cut the line of life with my own hands, taking upon me the punishment of the Elder Ones. To Dandtan," she smiled down upon the prisoner, "I say farewell. We shall meet again beyond the Curtain of Time." She held out her hands to him.

"Thrala, dear one—1" One of his guards slapped a hand over the prisoner's mouth putting an end to his words.

But now Thrala was looking beyond him, straight at the grill which sheltered Garin. Kepta pulled at her arm to gain her attention. "Watch! Thus do my enemies die. To the pit with him!"

The guards twisted their prisoner around and the mor-gels crept closer, their eyes fixed upon that young, writhing body. Garin knew that he must take a hand in the game. The Ana was tugging him to the right and there was an open archway leading to a balcony running around the side of the pit.

Those below were too entranced by the coming sport to notice the invader. But Thrala glanced up and Garin thought that she sighted him. Something in her attitude attracted

Kepta, he too looked up. For a moment he stared in stark amazement, and then he thrust the Daughter through the door behind him.

"Ho, outlanderl Welcome to the Caves. So the Folk have meddled—"

"Greeting, Kepta," Garin hardly knew whence came the words which fell so easily from his tongue. "I have come as was promised, to remain until the Black Throne is no more."

"Not even the morgels boast before their prey lies limp in their jaws," flashed Kepta; "What manner of beast are you?"

"A clean beast, Kepta, which you are not. Bid your two-legged morgels loose the youth, lest I grow impatient." The flyer swung the green rod into view.

Kepta's eyes narrowed but his smile did not fade. "I have heard of old that the Ancient Ones do not destroy—"

"As an outlander I am not bound by their limits," returned Garin, "as you will learn if you do not call off your stinking pack."

The master of the Caves laughed. "You are as the Tand, a fool without a brain. Never shall you see the Caverns again—"

"You shall own me master yet, Kepta."

The Black Chief seemed to consider. Then he waved to his men. "Release him," he ordered. "Outlander, you are braver than I thought. We might bargain—"

"Thrala goes forth from the Caves and the black throne is dust, those are the terms of the Caverns."

"And if we do not accept?"

"Then Thrala goes forth, the throne is dust and Tav shall have a day of judging such as it has never seen before." "You challenge me?"

Again words, which seemed to Garin to have their origin elsewhere, came to him. "As in Yu-lac, I shall take—"

Before Kepta could reply there was trouble in the pit. Dandtan, freed by his guards, was crossing the floor in running leaps. Garin threw himself belly down on the balcony and dropped the jeweled strap of his belt over the lip.

A moment later it snapped taut and he stiffened to an upward pull. Already Dandtan's heels were above the snapping jaws of a morgel. The flyer caught the youth around the shoulders and heaved. They rolled together against the wall.

"They are gonel All of them!" Dandtan cried, as he regained his feet. He was right; the morgels howled below, but Kepta and his men had vanished.

"Thrala!" Garin exclaimed.

Dandtan nodded. "They have taken her back to the cells. They believe her safe there."

"Then they think wrong," Garin stooped to pick up the green rod. His companion laughed.

"We'd best start before they get prepared for us."

Garin picked up the Ana. "Which way?"

Dandtan showed him a passage leading from behind the other door. Then he dodged into a side chamber to return with two of the wing cloaks and cloth hoods, so that they might pass as Black Ones.

They went by the mouths of three { side tunnels, all deserted. None disputed their going. All the Black Ones had withdrawn from this part of the Caves.

Dandtan sniffed uneasily. "All is not well. I fear a trap."

"While we can pass, let us."

The passage curved to the right and they came into an oval room. Again Dandtan shook his head but ventured no protest. Instead he flung open a door and hurried down a short hall.

It seemed to Garin that there were strange rustlings and squeakings in the dark corners. Then Dandtan stopped so short that the flyer ran into him.

"Here is the guard room—and it is empty!"

Garin looked over his shoulder into a large room. Racks of strange weapons hung on the walls and the sleeping pallets of the guards were stacked evenly, but the men were nowhere to be seen.

They crossed the room and passed beneath an archway.

"Even the bars are not down," observed Dandtan. He pointed overhead. There hung a portcullis of stone. Garin studied it apprehensively. But Dantan drew him on into a narrow corridor where were barred doors.

"The cells," he explained, and withdrew a bar across one door. The portal swung back and they pushed within.

Thrala arose to face them. Forgetting the disguise he wore, Garin drew back, chilled by her icy demeanor. But Dandtan sprang forward and caught her in his arms. She struggled madly until she saw the face beneath her captor's hood, and then she gave a cry of delight and her arms were about his neck.

"Dandtan!"

He smiled. "Even so. But it is the outlander's doing."

She came to the American, studying his face. "Outlander? So cold a name is not for you, when you have served us so." She offered him her hands and he raised them to his lips.

"And how are you named?"

Dandtan laughed. "Thus the eternal curiosity of women!" "Garin."

"Garin," she repeated. "How like—" A faint rose glowed beneath her pearl flesh.

Dandtan's hand fell lightly upon his rescuer's shoulder. "Indeed he is like him. From this day let him bear that other's name. Garan, son of light."

"Why not?" she returned calmly. "After all—"

"The reward which might have been Garan's may be his? Tell him the story of his namesake when we are again in the Caverns—"

Dandtan was interrupted by a frightened squeak from the Ana. Then came a mocking voice.

"So the prey has entered the trap of his own will. How many hunters may boast the same?"

Kepta leaned against the door, the light of vicious mischief dancing in his eyes. Garin dropped his cloak to the floor, but Dandtan must have read what was in the flyer's mind, for he caught him by the arm.

"On your life, touch him not!"

"So you have learned that much wisdom while you have dwelt among us, Dandtan? Would that Thrala had done the same. But fair women find me weak." He eyed her proud body in a way that would have sent Garin at his throat had Dandtan not held him. "So shall Thrala have a second chance. How would you like to see these men in the Room of Instruments, Lady?"

"I do not fear you," she returned. "Thran once made a prophecy, and he never spoke idly. We shall win free—"

"That will be as fate would have it. Meanwhile, I leave you to each other." He whipped around the door and slammed it behind him. They heard the grating of the bar lie slid into place. Then his footsteps died away.

"There goes evil," murmured Thrala softly. "Perhaps it would have been better if Garin had killed him as he thought to do. We must get away. . . ."

Garin drew the rod from his belt. The green light motes gathered and clung about its polished length.

"Touch not the door," Thrala advised; "only its hinges."

Beneath the tip of the rod the stone became spongy and flaked away. Dandtan and the flyer caught the door and cased it to the floor. With one quick movement Thrala caught up Gariri's cloak and swirled it about her, hiding the glitter of her gem encrusted robe.

There was a curious cold lifelessness about the air of the corridor, the light-bearing motes vanishing as if blown out.

"Hurry!" the Daughter urged. "Kepta is withdrawing the living light, so that we will have to wander in the dark."

When they reached the end of the hall the light was quite gone, and Garin bruised his hands against the stone portcullis which had been lowered. From somewhere on the other side of the barrier came rippling laughter.

"Oh, outlander," called Kepta mockingly, "you will get through easily enough when you remember your weapon. But the dark you can not conquer so easily, nor that which runs the halls."

Garin was already busy with the rod. Within five minutes their way was clear again. But Thrala stopped them when they would have gone through. "Kepta has loosed the hunters."

"The hunters?"

"The morgels and—others," explained Dandtan. "The Black Ones have withdrawn and only death comes this way. And the morgels see in the dark. . . ."

"So does the Ana."

"Well thought of," agreed the son of the Ancient Ones. "It will lead us out."

As if in answer, there came a tug at Garin's belt. Reaching back, he caught Thrala's hand and knew that she had taken Dandtan's. So linked they crossed the guard room. Then the Ana paused for a long time, as if listening. There was nothing to see but the darkness which hung about them like the smothering folds of a curtain.

"Something follows us," whispered Dandtan.

"Nothing to fear," stated Thrala. "It dare not attack. It is, I think, of Kepta's fashioning. And that which has not true life dreads death above all things. It is going—"

There came sounds of something crawling slowly away.

"Kepta will not try that again," continued the Daughter, disdainfully. "He knew that his monstrosities would not attack. Only in the light are they to be dreaded—and then only because of the horror of their forms."

Again the Ana tugged at its master's belt. They shuffled into the narrow passage beyond. But there remained the sense of things about them in the dark, things which Thrala continued to insist were harmless and yet which filled Garin with loathing.

Then they entered the far corridor into which led the three halls and which ended in the morgel pit. Here, Garin believed, was the greatest danger from the morgels.

The Ana stopped short, dropping back against Garin's thigh. In the blackness appeared two yellow disks, sparks of saffron in their depths. Garin thrust the rod into Thrala's hands.

"What do you?" she demanded.

"I'm going to clear the way. It's too dark to use the rod against moving creatures. . . ." He flung the words over his shoulder as he moved toward the unwinking eyes.

V

KEEPING HIS eyes upon those soulless yellow disks, Garin snatched off his hood, wadding it into a ball. Then he sprang. His fingers slipped on smooth hide, sharp fangs ripped his forearm, blunt nails scraped his ribs. A foul breath puffed into his face and warm slaver trickled down his neck and chest. But his plan succeeded.

The cap was wedged into the morgel's throat and the beast was slowly choking. Blood dripped from the flyer's torn flesh, but he held on grimly until he saw the light fade from those yellow eyes. The dying morgel made a last mad plunge for freedom, dragging his attacker along the rock floor. Then Garin felt the heaving body rest limply against his own. He staggered against the wall, panting.

"Garin!" cried Thrala. Her questing hand touched his shoulder and crept to his face. "It is well with you?"

"Yes," he panted, "let us go on."

Thrala's fingers had lingered on his arm and now she walked beside him, her cloak making whispering sounds as it brushed against the wall and floor.

"Wait," she cautioned suddenly. "The morgel pit. . . ."

Dandtan slipped by them. "I will try the door."

In a moment he was back. "It is open," he whispered.

"Kepta believes," mused Thrala, "that we will go through the pit. The morgels will be gone to better hunting grounds."

Through the pit they went. A choking stench arose from underfoot and they trod very carefully. They climbed the stairs on the far side unchallenged, Dandtan leading.

"The rod here, Garin," he called; "this door is barred."

Garin pressed the weapon into the other's hand and leaned against the rock. He was sick and dizzy. The long, deep wounds on his arm and shoulder were stiffening and ached with a biting throb.

When they went on he panted with effort. They still moved in darkness and his distress passed unnoticed.

"This is wrong," he muttered, half to himself. "We go too easily—"

And he was answered out of the blackness. "Well noted, outlander. But you go free for the moment, as does Thrala and Dandtan. Our full accounting is not yet. And now, farewell, until we meet again in the Hall of Thrones. I could find it in me to applaud your courage, outlander. Perhaps you will come to serve me yet."

Garin turned and threw himself toward the voice, bringing up with brushing force against rock wall. Kepta laughed.

"Not with the skill of the bull Tand will you capture me."

His second laugh was cut cleanly off, as if a door had been closed. In silence the three hurried up the ramp. Then, as through a curtain, they came into the fight of Tav.

Thrala let fall her dark cloak, stood with arms outstretched in the crater land. Her sparkling robe sheathed her in glory and she sang softly, rapt in her own delight. Then Dandtan put his arm about her; she clung to him, staring about as might a beauty-bewildered child.

Garin wondered dully how he would be able to make the journey back to the Caverns when his arm and shoulder were eaten with a consuming fire. The Ana crept closer to him, peering into his white face.

They were aroused by a howl from the Caves. Thrala cried out and Dandtan answered her unspoken question. "They have set the morgels on our trail!"

The howl from the Caves was echoed from the forest. Morgels before and behind them! Garin might set himself against one, Dandtan another, and Thrala could defend herself with the rod, but in the end the pack would kill them.

"We shall claim protection from the Gibi of the cliff. By the law they must give us aid," said Thrala, as, turning up her long robe, she began to run lightly. Garin picked up her cloak and drew it across his shoulder to hide his welts. When he could no longer hold her pace she must not guess the reason for his falling behind.

Of that flight through the forest the flyer afterward remembered little. At last the gurgle of water broke upon his pounding ears, as he stumbled along a good ten lengths behind his companions. They had come to the edge of the wood along the banks of the river.

Without hesitation Thrala and Dandtan plunged into the oily flood, swimming easily for the other side. Garin dropped the cloak, wondering if, once he stepped into the yellow stream, he would ever be able to struggle out again. Already the Ana was in, paddling in circles near the shore and pleading with him to follow. Wearily Garin waded out.

The water, which washed the blood and sweat from his aching body, was faintly brackish and stung his wounds to life. He could not fight the sluggish current and it bore him downstream, well away from where the others landed.

But at last he managed to win free, crawling out near where a smaller stream joined the river. There he lay panting, face down upon the moss. And there they found him, water dripping from his bedraggled finery, the Ana stroking his muddied hair. Thrala cried out with concern and pillowed his head on her knees while Danatan examined his wounds.

"Why did you not tell us?" demanded Thrala.

He did not try to answer, content to lie there, her arms supporting him. Dandtan disappeared into the forest, returning soon, his hands filled with a mass of crushed leaves. With these he plastered Garin's wounds.

"You'd better go on," Garin warned.

Dandtan shook his head. "The morgels can not swim. If they cross, they must go to the bridge, and that is half the crater away."

The Ana dropped into their midst, its small hands filled with clusters of purple fruit. And so they feasted, Garin at ease on a fem couch, accepting food from Thrala's hand.

There seemed to be some virtue in Dandtan's leaf plaster for, after a short rest, Garin was able to get to his feet with no more than a twinge or two in his wounds. But they started on at a more sober pace. Through mossy glens and sunlit glades where strange flowers made perfume, the trail led. The stream they followed branched twice before, on the edge of meadow land, they struck away from the guiding water toward the crater wall.

Suddenly Thrala threw back her head and gave a shrill, sweet whistle. Out of the air dropped a yellow and black insect, as large as a hawk. Twice it circled her head and then perched itself on her outstretched wrist.

Its swollen body was jet black, its curving legs, three to a side, chrome yellow. The round head ended in a sharp beak and it had large, many faceted eyes. The wings, which lazily tested the air, were black and touched with gold.

Thrala rubbed the round head while the insect nuzzled affectionately at her cheek. Then she held out her wrist again and it was gone.

"We shall be expected now and may pass unmolested."

Shortly they became aware of a murmuring sound. The crater wall loomed ahead, dwarfing the trees at its base.

"There is the city of the Gibi," remarked Dandtan.

Clinging to the rock were the towers and turrets of many eight-sided cells.

"They are preaparing for the Mists," observed Thrala. "We shall have company on our journey to the Caverns."

They passed the trees and reached the foot of the wax skyscrappers which towered dizzily above their heads. A great cloud of the Gibi hovered about them. Garin felt the soft brush of their wings against his body. And they crowded each other jealously to be near Thrala.

The soft hush-hush of their wings filled the clearing as one large Gibe of outstanding beauty approached. The commoners fluttered off and Thrala greeted the Queen of the cells as an equal. Then she turned to her companions with the information the Gibi Queen had to offer.

"We are just in time. Tomorrow the Gibi leave. The morgels have crossed the river and are out of control. Instead of hunting us they have gone to ravage the forest lands. All Tav has been warned against them. But they may be caught by the Mist and so destroyed. We are to rest in the cliff hollows, and one shall come for us when it is time to leave."

The Gibi withdrew to the cell-combs after conducting their guests to the rock-hollows.

Garin was awakened by a loud murmuring. Dandtan knelt beside him.

"We must go. Even now the Gibi seal the last of the cells.

They ate hurriedly of cakes of grain and honey, and, as they feasted, the Queen again visited them. The first of the swarm were already winging eastward.

With the Gibi nation hanging like a storm cloud above them, the three started off across the meadow. The purple-blue haze was thickening, and, here and there, curious formations, like the dust devils of the desert arose and danced and disappeared again. The tropic heat of Tav increased; it was as if the ground itself were steaming.

"The Mists draw close; we must hurry," panted Dandtan.

They traversed the tongue of forest which bordered the meadow and came to the central plain of Tav. There was a brooding stillness there. The Ana, perched on Garin's shoulder, shivered.

Their walk became a trot; the Gibi bunched together. Once Thrala caught her breath in a half sob.

"They are flying slowly because of us. And it's so far—"

"Look!" Dandtan pointed at the plain. "The morgels!"

The morgel pack, driven by fear, ran in leaping bounds. They passed within a hundred yards of the three, yet did not turn from their course, though several snarled at them.

"They are already dead," observed Dandtan. "There is no time for them to reach the shelter of the Caves."

Splashing through a shallow brook, the three began to run. For the first time Thrala faltered and broke pace. Garin thrust the Ana into Dandtan's arms and, before she could protest, swept the girl into his arms.

The haze was denser now, settling upon them as a curtain. Black hair, finer than silk, whipped across Garin's throat. Thrala's head was on his shoulder, her heaving breasts arched as she gasped the sultry air.

"They—keep—watch. . . .!" shouted Dandtan.

Piercing the gloom were pin-points of light. A dark shape grazed Garin's head—one of the Gibi Queen's guards.

Then abruptly they stumbled into a throng of the Folk, one of whom reached for Thrala with a crooning cry. It was Sera welcoming her mistress.

Thrala was borne away by the women, leaving Garin with a feeling of desolation.

"The Mists, Outlander." It was Urg, pointing toward the Cavern mouth. Two of the Folk swung their weight on a lever. Across the opening a sheet of crystal clicked into place. The Caverns were sealed.

The haze was now inky black outside and billows of it beat against the protecting barrier. It might have been midnight of the blackest, starless night. "

"So will it be for forty days. What is without—dies," said Urg.

"Then we have forty days in which to prepare," Garin spoke his thought aloud. Dandtan's keen face lightened.

"Well said, Garin. Forty days before Kepta may seek us. And we have much to do. But first, our respects to the Lord of the Folk."

Together they went to the Hall of Thrones where, when lie saw Dandtan, Trar arose and held out his jade-tipped rod of office. The son of the Ancient Ones touched it.

"Hail! Dweller in the Light, and Outlander who has fulfilled the promise of Thran. Thrala is once more within the Caverns. Now send you to dust this black throne . .."

Garin, nothing loath, drew the destroying rod from his belt, but Dandtan shook his head. "The time is not yet, Trar. Kepta must finish the pattern he began. Forty days have we and then the Black Ones come."

Thar considered thoughtfully. "So that be the way of it. Thran did not see another war. . . ."

"But he saw an end to Kepta!"

Trar straightened as if some burden had rolled from his thin shoulders. "Well do you speak, Lord. When there is one to sit upon the Rose Throne, what have we to fear? Listen, oh ye Folk, the Light has returned to the Caverns!"

His cry was echoed by the gathering of the Folk.

"And now, Lord—" he turned to Dandtan with deference —"what are your commands?"

"For the space of one sleep I shall enter the Chamber of Renewing with this outlander, who is no longer an out-lander but one, Garin, accepted by the Daughter according to the Law. And while we rest let all be made ready. . . ."

"The Dweller in the Light has spoken!" Trar himself escorted them from the Hall.

They came, through many winding passages, to a deep pool of water, in the depths of which lurked odd purple shadows. Dandtan stripped and plunged in, Garin following his example. The water was tinglingly alive and they did not linger in it long. From it they went to a bubble room such as the one Garin had rested in after the bath of light rays, and on the cushions in its center stretched their tired bodies.

When Garin awoke he experienced the same exultation he had felt before. Dandtan regarded him with a smile. "Now to work," he said, as he reached out to press a knob set in the wall.

Two of the Folk appeared, bringing with them clean trappings. After they dressed and broke their fast, Dandtan started for the laboratories. Garin would have gone with him, but Sera intercepted them.

"There is one would speak with Lord Garin. . . ."

Dantan laughed. "Go," he ordered the American. "Thra-la's commands may not be slighted."

The Hall of Women was deserted. And the corridor beyond, roofed and walled with slabs of rose-shot crystal, was as empty. Sera drew aside a golden curtain and they were in the audience chamber of the Daughter.

A semi-circular dais of the clearest crystal, heaped with rose and gold cushions, faced them. Before it, a fountain, in the form of a flower nodding on a curved stem, sent a spray of water into a shallow basin. The walls of the room were divided into alcoves by marble pillars, each one curved in semblance of a fern frond.

From the domed ceiling, on chains of twisted gold, seven lamps, each wrought from a single yellow sapphire, gave soft light. The floor was a mosaic of gold and crystal.

Two small Anas, who had been playing among the cushions, pattered up to exchange greetings with Garin's. But of the mistress of the chamber there was no sign. Garin turned to Sera, but before he could phrase his question, she asked mockingly:

"Who is the Lord Garin that he can not wait with patience?" But she left in search of the Daughter.

Garin glanced uneasily about the room. This jeweled chamber was no place for him. He had started toward the door when Thrala stepped within.

"Greetings to the Daughter." His voice sounded formal and cold, even to himself.

Her hands, which had been outheld in welcome, dropped to her sides. A ghost of a frown dimmed her beauty.

"Greetings, Garin," she returned slowly.

"You sent for me—" he prompted, eager to escape from this jewel box and the unattainable treasure it held.

"Yes," the coldness of her tone was an order of exile. "I would know how you fared and whether your wounds yet troubled you."

He looked down at his own smooth flesh, cleanly healed by the wisdom of the Folk. "I am myself again and eager to be at such work as Dandtan can find for me. . . ."

Her robe seemed to hiss across the floor as she turned upon him. "Then go!" she ordered. "Go quicklyl"

And blindly he obeyed. She had spoke as if to a servant, one whom she could summon and dismiss by whim. Even if Dandtan held her love, she might have extended him her friendship. But he knew within him that friendship would be a poor crumb beside the feast his pulses pounded for.

There was a pattering of feet behind him. So, she would call him back! His pride sent him on. But it was Sera. Her head thrust forward until she truly resembled a reptile.

"Fool! Morgel!" she spat. "Even the Black Ones did not treat her so. Get you out of the Place of Women lest they divide your skin among them!"

Garin broke free, not heeding her torrent of reproach. Then he seized upon one of the Folk as a guide and sought the laboratories. Far beneath the surface of Tav, where the light-motes shone ghostly in the gloom, they came into a place of ceaseless activity, where there were tables crowded with instruments, coils of glass and metal tubing, and other equipment and supplies. These were the focusing point for ceaseless streams of the Folk. On a platform at the far end, Garin saw the tall son of the Ancient Ones working on a framework of metal and shining crystal.

He glanced up as Garin joined him. "You are late," he accused. "But your excuse is a good one. Now get you to work. Hold this here—and here—while I fasten these clamps."

So Garin became extra hands and feet for Dandtan, and they worked feverishly to build against the lifting of the mists. There was no day or night in the laboratories. They worked steadily without rest, and without feeling fatigue.

Twice they went to the Chamber of Renewing, but except for these trips to the upper ways they were not out of the laboratories through all those days. Of Thrala there was no sign, nor did any one speak of her.

The Cavern dwellers were depending upon two defenses: an evil green liquid, to be thrown in frail glass globes, and a screen charged with energy. Shortly before the lifting of the Mists, these arms were transported to the entrance and installed there. Dandtan and Garin made a last inspection.

"Kepta makes the mistake of under-rating his enemies," Dandtan reflected, feeling the edge of the screen caressingly. "When I was captured, on the day my people died, I was sent to the Black Ones laboratories so that their seekers after knowledge might learn the secrets of the Ancient Ones. But I proved a better pupil than teacher and I discovered the defense against the Black Fire. After I had learned that, Kepta grew impatient with my supposed stupidity and tried to use me to force Thrala to his will. For that, as for other things, shall he pay—and the paying will not be in coin of his own striking. Let us think of that . . ." He turned to greet Urg and Trar and the other leaders of the Folk, who had approached unnoticed.

Among them stood Thrala, her gaze fixed upon the crystal wall between them and the thinning Mist. She noticed Garin no more than she did the Anas playing with her train and the women whispering behind her. But Garin stepped back into the shadows—and what he saw was not weapons of war, but cloudy black hair and graceful white limbs veiled in splendor.

Urg and one of the other chieftains bore down upon the door lever. With a protesting squeak, the glass wall disappeared into the rock. The green of Tav beckoned them out to walk in its freshness; it was renewed with lusty life. But in all that expanse of meadow and forest there was a strange stillness.

"Post sentries," ordered Dandtan. "The Black Ones will come  soon."

He beckoned Garin forward as he spoke to Thrala:

"Let us go to the Hall of Thrones."

But the Daughter did not answer his smile. "It is not meet that we should spend time in idle talk. Let us go instead to call upon the help of those who have gone before us." So speaking, she darted a glance at Garin as chill as the arctic lands beyond the lip of Tav, and then swept away with Sera bearing her train.

Dandtan stared at Garin. "What has happened between you two?"

The flyer shook his head. "I don't know. No man is born with an understanding of women—"

"But she is angered with you. What has happened?"

For a moment Garin was tempted to tell the truth: tha* he dared not break any barrier she chose to raise, lest he seized what in honor was none of his. But he shook his head mutely. Neither of them saw Thrala again until Death entered the Caverns.

GARIN STOOD with Dandtan looking out into the plain of Tav. Some distance away were two slender, steel tipped towers, which were, in reality, but hollow tubes filled with the Black Fire. Before these dark clad figures were busy.

"They seem to believe us already defeated. Let them think so," commented Dandtan, touching the screen they had erected before the Cavern entrance.

As he spoke Kepta swaggered through the tall grass to call  a  greeting:

"Ho, rock dweller, I would speak with you—" Dandtan edged around the screen, Garin a pace behind. "I see you Kepta."

"Good. I trust that your ears will serve you as well as your eyes. These aré my terms: Give Thrala to me to dwell in my chamber and the outlander to provide sport for my captains. Make no resistance but throw open the Caverns so that I may take my rightful place in the Hall of Thrones. Do this and we shall be at peace. . . ."

"And this is our reply:"—Dandtan stood unmovingly before the screen—"Return to the Caves; break down the bridge between your land and ours. Let no Black One come hither again, ever. . . ."

Kepta laughed. "So, that be the way of it! Then this shall we do: take Thrala, to be mine for a space, and then to go to my captains—"

Garin hurled himself forward, felt Kepta's lips mash beneath his fist; his fingers were closing about the other's throat as Dandtan, who was trying to pull him away from his prey, shouted a warning: "Watch out!"

A morgel had leaped from the grass, its teeth snapping about Garin's wrist, forcing him to drop Kepta. Then Dandtan laid it senseless by a sharp blow with his belt.

On hands and knees Kepta crawled back to his men. The lower part of his face was a red and dripping smear. He screamed an order with savage fury.

Dandtan drew the still raging flyer behind the screen. "Be a little prudent," he panted. "Kepta can be dealt with in other ways than with bare hands."

The towers were swinging their tips toward the entrance. Dandtan ordered the screen wedged tightly into place.

Outside, the morgel Dandtan had stunned got groggily to its feet. When it had limped half the distance back to its master, Kepta gave the order to fire. The broad beam of black light from the tip of the nearest tower caught the beast head on. There was a chilling scream of agony, and where the morgel had stood gray ashes drifted on the wind.

A hideous crackling arose as the black beam struck the screen. Green grass beneath seared away, leaving only parched earth and naked blue soil. Those within the Caverns crouched behind their frail protection, half blinded by the light from the seared grass, coughing from the chemical-ridden fumes which curled about the cracks of the rock.

Then the beam faded out. Thin smoke plumed from the tips of the towers, steam arose from the blackened ground. Dandtan drew a deep breath.

"It held!" he cried, betraying at last the fear which had ridden him.

Men of the Folk dragged engines of tubing before the screen, while others brought forth the globes of green liquid. Dandtan stood aside, as if this matter were the business of the Folk alone, and Garin recalled that the Ancient Ones were opposed to the taking of life.

Trar was in command now. At his orders the globes were posed on spoon-shaped holders. Loopholes in the screen clicked open. Trar brought down his hand in signal. The globes arose lazily, sliding through the loopholes arid floating out toward the towers.

One, aimed short, struck the ground where the fire had burned it bare, and broke. The liquid came forth, slug-glishly, forming a gray-green gas as the air struck it. Another spiral of gas arose almost at the foot of one of the towers—and then another . . . and another.

There quickly followed a tortured screaming, which soon dwindled to a weak yammering. They could see shapes, no longer human or animal, staggering about in the fog.

Dandtan turned away, his face white with horror. Garin's hands were over his ears to shut out that crying.

At last it was quiet; there was no more movement by the towers. Urg placed a sphere of rosy light upon the nearest machine and flipped it out into the camp of the enemy. As if it were a magnet it drew the green tendrils of gas, to leave the air clear. Here and there lay shrunken, livid shapes, the towers brooding over them.

One of the Folk burst into their midst, a women of Thrala's following.

"Haste!" She clawed at Garin. "Kepta takes Thrala!"

She ran wildly back the way she had come, with the American pounding at her heels. They burst into the Hall of Thrones and saw a struggling group before the dais.

Garin heard someone howl like an animal, became aware the sound came from his own throat. For the second time his fist found its mark on Kepta's face. With a shriek of rage the Black One threw Thrala from him and sprang at Garin, his nails tearing gashes in the flyers face. Twice the American twisted free and sent bone-crushing blows into the other's ribs. Then he got the grip he wanted, and his fingers closed around Kepta's throat. In spite of the Black One's struggles he held on until a limp body rolled beneath him.

Panting, the American pulled himself up from the bloodstained floor and grabbed the arm of the Jade Throne for support.

"Garin!" Thrala's arms were about him, her pitying fingers on his wounds. And in that moment he forgot Dandtan, forgot everything he had steeled himself to remember. She was in his arms and his mouth sought hers possessively. Nor was she unresponsive, but yielded, as a flower yields to the wind.

"Garin!" she whispered softly. Then, almost shyly, she broke from his hold.

Beyond her stood Dandtan, his face white, his mouth tight. Garin remembered. And, a little mad with pain and longing, he dropped his eyes, trying not to see the loveliness which was Thrala.

"So, Outlander, Thrala flies to your arms—"

Garin whirled about. Kepta was hunched on the broad seat of the jet throne.

"No, I am not dead, Outlander—nor shall you kill me, as you think to do. I go now, but I shall return. We have met and hated, fought and died before—you and I. You were a certain Garan, Marshall of the air fleet of Yu-lac on a vanished world, and I was Lord of Koom. That was in the days before the Ancient Ones pioneered space. You and I and Thrala, we are bound together and even fate can not break those bonds. Farewell, Garin. And do you, Thrala, remember the ending of that other Garan. It was not an easy one."

With a last malicious chuckle, he leaned back in the throne. His battered body slumped. Then the sharp lines of the throne blurred; it shimmered in the light. Abruptly then both it and its occupant were gone. They were staring at empty space, above which loomed the rose throne of the Ancient Ones.

"He spoke true," murmured Thrala. "We have had other lives, other meetings—so will we meet again. But for the present he returns to the darkness which sent him forth. It is finished."

Without warning, a low rumbling filled the Cavern; the walls rocked and swayed. Lizard and human, they huddled together until the swaying stopped. Finally a runner appeared with news that one of the Gibi had ventured forth and discovered that the Caves of Darkness had been sealed by an underground quake. The menace of the Black Ones was definitely at an end.

Although there were falls of rock within the Caverns and some of the passages were closed, few of the Folk suffered injury. Gibi scouts reported that the land about the entrance to the Caves had sunk, and that the River of Gold, thrown out of its bed, was fast filling this basin to form a lake.

As far as they could discover, none of the Black Ones had survived the battle and the sealing of the Caves. But they could not be sure that there was not a handful of outlaws somewhere within the confines of Tav.

The Crater itself was changed. A series of raw hills had appeared in the central plain. The pool of boiling mud had vanished and trees in the forest lay flat, as if cut by a giant scythe.

Upon their return to the cliff city, the Gibi found most of their wax skyscrapers in ruins, but they set about rebuilding without complaint. The squirrel-fanners emerged from their burrows and were again busy in the fields.

Garin felt out of place in all the activity that filled the Caverns. More than ever he was the outlander with no true roots in Tav. Restlessly, he explored the Caverns, spending many hours in the Place of Ancestors, where he studied those men of the outer world who had preceded him into this weird land.

One night when he came back to his chamber he found Dandtan and Trar awaiting him there. There was a curious hardness in Dandtan's attitude, a somber sobriety in Trar's carriage.

"Have you sought the Hall of Women since the battle?" demanded the son of the Ancient One abruptly.

"No," retorted Garin shortly. Did Dandtan accuse him of double dealing?

"Have you sent a message to Thrala?"

Garin held back his rising temper. "I have not ventured where I can not."

Dandtan nodded to Trar as if his suspicions. had been confirmed. "You see how it stands, Trar."

Trar shook his head slowly. "But never has the summoning  been  at  fault—"

"You forget," Dandtan reminded him sharply. "It was once—and the penalty was exacted. So shall it be again."

Garin looked from one to the other, confused. Dandtan seemed possessed of a certain ruthless anger, but Trar was manifestly unhappy.

"It must come after council, the Daughter willing," the

Lord of the Folk said.                                                                  _

Dandtan strode toward the door. "Thrala is not to know. Assemble the Council tonight. Meanwhile, see that he," he jerked his thumb toward Garin, "does not leave this room."

Thus Garin became a prisoner under the guard of the Folk, unable to discover of what Dandtan accused him, or how he had aroused the hatred of the Cavern ruler. Unless Dandtan's jealousy had been aroused and he was determined to rid himself of a rival.

Believing this, the flyer went willingly to the chamber where the judges waited. Dandtan sat at the head of a long table, Trar at his right hand and lesser nobles of the Folk beyond.

"You know the charge," Dandtan's words were tipped with venom as Garin came to stand before him. "Out of his own mouth has this outlander condemned himself. Therefore I ask that you decree for him the fate of that outlander of the second calling who rebelled against the summoning."

"The outlander has admitted his fault?" questioned one of the Folk.

Trar inclined his head sadly. "He did."

As Garin opened his mouth to demand a stating of the charge against him, Dandtan spoke again:

"What say you, Lords?"

For a long moment they sat in silence and then they bobbed their lizard heads in assent. "Do as you desire, Dweller in the Light."

Dandtan smiled without mirth. "Look, outlander." He passed his hand over the glass of the seeing mirror set in the table top. "This is the fate of him who rebels—"

In the shining surface Garin saw pictured a break in Tav's wall. At its foot stood a group of men of the Ancient Ones, and in their midst struggled a prisoner. They were forcing him to climb the crater wall. Garin watched him reach the Up and crawl over, to stagger across the steaming rock, dodging the scalding vapor of hot springs, until he pitched face down in the slimy mud.

"Such was his ending, and so will you end—"

The calm brutality of that statement aroused Garin's anger. "Rather would I die that way than linger in this den," he cried hotly. "You, who owe your life to me, would send me to such a death without even telling me of what I am accused. Little is there to choose between you and Kepta, after all—except that he was an open enemy!"

Dandtan sprang to his feet, but Trar caught his arm.

"He speaks fairly. Ask him why he will not fulfill the summoning."

While Dandtan hesitated, Garin leaned across the table, flinging his words, weapon-like, straight into that cold face.

"I'll admit that I love Thrala—have loved her since that moment when I' saw her on the steps of the morgel pit in the caves. Since when has it become a crime to love that which may not be yours—if you do not try to take it?"

Trar released Dandtan, his golden eyes gleaming.

"If you love her, claim her. It is your right.

"Do I not know," Garin turned to him, "that she is Dandtan's. Thran had no idea of Dandtan's survival when he laid his will upon her. Shall I stoop to holding her to an unwelcome bargain? Let her go to the one she loves . . ."

Dandtan's face was livid, and his hands, resting on the table, trembled. One by one the lords of the Folk slipped away, leaving the two face to face.

"And I thought to order you to your death." Dandtan's whisper was husky as it emerged between dry lips. "Garin, we thought you knew—and, knowing, had refused her."

"Knew what?"

"That I am Thran's son—and Thrala's brother."

The floor swung beneath Garin's unsteady feet. Dandtan's hands were warm on his shoulders.

"I am a fool," said the American slowly.

Dandtan smiled. "A very honorable fooll Now get you to Thrala, who deserves to hear the full of this tangle."

So it was that, with Dandtan by his side, Garin walked for the second time down that hallway, to pass the golden curtains and stand in the presence of the Daughter. She came straight from her cushions into his arms when she read what was in his face. They needed no words.

And in that hour began Garin's life in Tav.

THE MOON THAT VANISHED by Leigh Brackett

I

DOWN TO THE DARKLING SEA

THE STRANGEH was talking about him—the tall stranger who was a long way from his native uplands, who wore plain leather and did not belong in this swamp-coast village. He was asking questions, talking, watching. • David Heath knew that, in the same detached way in which he realized that he was in Kalruna's dingy Palace of All Possible Delights, that he was very drunk but not nearly drunk enough, that he would never be drunk enough and that presently, when he passed out, he would be tossed over the back railing into the mud, where he might drown or sleep it off as he pleased.

Heath did not care. The dead and the mad do not care. He lay without moving on the native hide-frame cot, the leather mask covering the lower part of his face, and breathed the warm golden vapor that bubbled in a narghil-like bowl beside him. Breathed, and tried to sleep, and could not. He did not close his eyes. Only when he became unconscious would  he  do  that.

There would be a moment he could not avoid, just before his drugged brain slipped over the edge into oblivion, when he would no longer be able to see anything but the haunted darkness of his own mind, and that moment would seem like all eternity. But afterward, for a few hours, he would find peace.

Until then he would watch, from his dark corner, the life that went on in the Palace of All Possible Delights.

Heath rolled his head slightly. By his shoulder, clinging with its hooked claws to the cot frame, a little bright-scaled dragon crouched and met his glance with jewel-red eyes in which there were peculiar sympathy and intelligence. Heath smiled and settled back. A nervous spasm shook him but the drug had relaxed him so that it was not severe and passed off quickly.

No one came near him except the emerald-skinned girl from the deep swamps who replenished his bowl. She was not human and therefore did not mind that he was David Heath. It was as though there were a wall around him beyond which no man stepped or looked.

Except, of course, the stranger.

Heath let his gaze wander. Past the long low bar where the common seamen lay on cushions of moss and skins, drinking the cheap fiery thul. Past the tables, where the captains and the mates sat, playing their endless and complicated dice games. Past the Nahali girl who danced naked in the torchlight, her body glimmering with tiny scales and as sinuous and silent in motion as the body of a snake.

The single huge room was open on three sides to the steaming night. It was there that Heath's gaze went at last. Outside, to the darkness and the sea, because they had been his life and he loved them.

Darkness on Venus is not like the darkness of Earth or Mars. The planet is hungry for light and will not let it go. The face of Venus never sees the sun but even at night the hope and the memory of it are there, trapped in the eternal clouds.

The air is the colour of indigo and it carries its own pale glow. Heath lay watching how the slow hot wind made drifts of light among the liha-ttees, touched the muddy harbour beaches with a wavering gleam and blended into the restless phosphorescence of the Sea of Morning Opals. Half a mile south the river Omaz flowed silently down, still tainted with the reek of the Deep Swamps.

Sea and sky—the life of David Heath and his destruction.

The heavy vapor swirled in Heath's brain. His breathing slowed and deepened. His lids grew heavy.

Heath closed his eyes.

An expression of excitement, of yearning, crossed his face, mingled with <a vague unease. His muscles tensed. He began to whimper, very softly, the sound muffled by the leather mask.

The little dragon cocked its head and watched, still as a carven image.

Heath's body, half naked in a native kilt, began to twitch, then to move in spasmodic jerks. The expression of unease deepened, changed gradually to one of pure horror. The cords in his throat stood out like wires as he tried to cry out and could not. Sweat gathered in great beads on his skin.

Suddenly the little dragon raised its wings and voiced a hissing scream.

Heath's nightmare world rocked around him, riven with loud sounds. He was mad with fear, he was dying, vast striding shapes thronged toward him out of a shining mist. His body was shaken, cracking, frail bones bursting into powder, his heart tearing out of him, his brain a part of the mist, shining burning. He tore the mask from his face and cried out a name, Ethne!, and sat up—and his eyes were wide open, blind and deep.

Somewhere far off, he heard thunder. The thunder spoke. It called his name. A new face pushed in past the phantoms of his dream. It swelled and blotted out the others. The face of the stranger from the High Plateaus. He saw every line of it, painted in fire upon his brain.

The square jaw, hard mouth, nose curved like a falcon's beak, the scars wealed white against white skin, eyes like moonstones, only hot, bright—the long silver hair piled high in the intricate tribal knot and secured with a warrior's golden chains.

Hands shook him, slapped his face. The little dragon went on screaming and flapping, tethered by a short thong to the head of Heath's cot so that it could not tear out the eyes of the stranger.

Heath caught his breath in a long shuddering sob and sprang.

He would have killed the man who had robbed him of his little time of peace. He tried, in deadly silence, while the seamen and the masters and the mates and the dancing girls watched, not moving, sidelong out of their frightened, hateful eyes. But the Uplander was a big man, bigger than Heath in his best days had even been. And presently Heath lay panting on the cot, a sick man, a man who was slowly dying and had no strength left.

The stranger spoke. "It is said that you found the Moonfire."

Heath stared at him with his dazed, drugged eyes and did not answer.

"It is said that you are David Heath the Earthman, captain of the Ethne."

Still Heath did not answer. The rusty torchlight flickered over him, painting highlight and shadow. He had always been a lean, wiry man. Now he was emaciated, the bones of his face showing terribly ridged and curved under the drawn skin. His black hair and unkempt beard were shot through with white.

The Uplander studied Heath deliberately, contemptuously. He said, "I think they he."

Heath laughed. It was not a nice laugh.

"Few men have ever reached the Moonfire," the Venusian said. "They were the strong ones, the men without fear."

After a long while Heath whispered, "They were fools."

He was not speaking to the Uplander. He had forgotten him. His dark mad gaze was fixed on something only he could see.

"Their ships are rotting in the weed beds of the Upper Seas. The little dragons have picked their bones." Heath's voice was slow, harsh and toneless, wandering. "Beyond the Sea of Morning Opals, beyond the weeds and the Guardians, through the Dragon's Throat and still beyond—I've seen it, rising out of the mists, out of the Ocean-That-Is-Not-Water."

A tremor shook him, twisting the gaunt bones of his body. He lifted his head, like a man straining to breathe, and the running torchlight brought his face clear of the shadows. In all the huge room there was not a sound, not a rustle, except for a small sharp gasp that ran through every mouth and then was silent.

"The gods know where they are now, the strong brave men who went through the Moonfire. The gods know what they are now. Not human if they live at all."

He stopped. A deep slow shudder went through him. He dropped his head. "I was only in the fringe of it. Only a little way."

In the utter quiet the Uplander laughed. He said, "I think you  lie."

Heath did not raise his head nor move.

The Venusian leaned over him, speaking loudly, so that even across the distance of drugs and madness the Earthman should hear.

"You're like the others, the few who have come back. But they never lived a season out. They died or killed themselves. How long have you lived?"

Presently he grasped the Earthman's shoulder and shook it roughly. "How long have you lived?" he shouted and the little dragon screamed, struggling against its thong.

Heath moaned. "Through all hell," he whispered. "Forever."

"Three seasons," said the Venusian. "Three seasons, and part of a fourth." He took his hand away from Heath and stepped back. "You never saw the Moonfire. You knew the custom, how the men who break the tabu must be treated until the punishment of the gods is finished."

He kicked the bowl, breaking it, and the bubbling golden fluid spilled out across the floor in a pool of heady fragrance. "You wanted that, and you knew how to get it, for the rest of your sodden life."

A low growl of anger rose in the Palace of All Possible Delights.

Heath's blurred vision made out the squat fat bulk of Kahuna approaching. Even in the depths of his agony he laughed, weakly. For more than three seasons Kalruna had obeyed the traditional law. He had fed and made drunk the pariah who was sacred to the anger of the gods—the gods who guarded so jealously the secret of the Moonfire. Now Kalruna was full of doubt and very angry.

Heath began to laugh aloud. The effects of his uncompleted jag were making him reckless and hysterical. He sat up on the cot and laughed in their faces.

"I was only in the fringe," he said. "I'm not a god. I'm not even a man any more. But I can show you if you want to be shown."

He pulled himself to his feet, and as he did so, in a motion as automatic as breathing, he loosed the little dragon and set it on his naked shoulder. He stood swaying a moment and then began to walk out across the room, slowly, uncertainly, but with his head stubbornly erect. The crowd drew apart to make a path for him and he walked along it in the silence, clothed in his few sad rags of dignity, until he came to the railing and stopped.

"Put out the torches," he said. "All but one."

Kalruna said hesitantly, "There's no need. I believe you."

There was fear in the place now—fear, and fascination. Every man glanced sideways, looking for escape, but no one went away.

Heath said again, "Put out the torches."

The tall stranger reached out and doused the nearest one in its bucket, and presently in all that vast room there was darkness, except for one torch far in the back.

Heath stood braced against the rail, staring out into the hot indigo night.

The mists rose thick from the Sea of Morning Opals. They crept up out of the mud, and breathed in clouds from the swamps. The slow wind pushed them in long rolling drifts, blue-white and glimmering against the darker night.

Heath looked hungrily into the mists. His head was thrown back, his whole body strained upward and presently he raised his arms in a gesture of terrible longing.

"Ethne," he whispered. "Ethne."

Almost imperceptibly, a change came over him. The weakness, the look of the sodden wreck, left him. He stood firm and straight, and the muscles rose coiled and beautiful on the long lean frame of his bones, alive with the tension of strength.

His face had altered even more. There was a look of power on it. The dark eyes burned with deep fires, glowing with a light that was more than human, until it seemed that his whole head was crowned with a strange nimbus.

For one short moment, the face of David Heath was the face of a god.

"Ethne," he said.

And she came.

Out of the blue darkness, out of the mist, drifting tenuous^1 and lovely toward the Earthman. Her body was made from the glowing air, the soft drops of the mist, shaped and colored by the force that was in Heath. She was young, not more than nineteen, with the rosy tint of Earth's sun still in her cheeks, her eyes wide and bright as a child's, her body slim with the sweet angularity of youth.

The first time I saw her, when she stepped down the loading ramp for her first look at Venus and. the wind took her hair and played with it and she walked light and eager as a colt on a spring morning. Light and merry always, even walking to her death.

The shadowy figure smiled and held out her arms. Her face was the face of a woman who has found love and all the world along with it.

Closer and closer she drifted to Heath and the Earthman stretched out his hands to touch her.

And in one swift instant, she was gone.

Heath fell forward against the rail. He stayed there a long time. There was no god in him now, no strength. He was like a flame suddenly bumed out and dead, the ashes collapsing upon themselves. His eyes were closed and tears ran out from under the lashes.

In the steaming darkness of the room no one moved.

Heath spoke once, "I couldn't go far enough," he said,' "into the Moonfire."

He dragged himself upright after a while and went toward the steps, supporting himself against the rail, feeling his way like a blind man. He went down the four steps of hewn logs and the mud of the path rose warm around his ankles. He passed between the rows of mud-and-wattle huts, a broken scarecrow of a man plodding through the night of an alien world.

He turned, down the side path that led to the anchorage. His feet slipped into the deeper mud at the side and he fell, face down. He tried once to get up, then lay still, already sinking into the black, rich ooze. The little dragon rode on his shoulder, pecking at him, screaming, but he did not hear.

He did not know it when the tall stranger from the High Plateaus picked him out of the mud a few seconds later, dragon and all, and carried him away, down to the darkling sea.

II

THE EMERALD SAIL

A WOMAN'S voice said, "Give me the cup."

Heath felt his head being lifted, and then the black, stinging taste of Venusian coffee slid like liquid fire down his throat. He made his usual waking fight against fear and reality, gasped and opened his eyes.

He lay in his own bunk, in his own cabin, aboard the Ethne. Across from him, crouched on a carven chest, the tall Venusian sat, his head bowed under the low scarlet arch of the deck above. Beside Heath, looking down at him, was a woman.

It was still night. The mud that clung to Heath's body was still wet. They must have worked hard, he thought, to bring him to.

The little dragon flopped down to his perch on Heath's shoulder. He stroked its scaly neck and lay watching his visitors.

The man said, "Can you talk now?"

Heath shrugged. His eyes were on the woman. She was tall but not too tall, young but not too young. Her body was everything a woman's body ought tc be, of its type, which was wide-shouldered and leggy, and she had a fine free way of moving it. She wore a short tunic of undyed spider silk, which exactly matched the soft curling hair that fell down her back—a bright, true silver with little peacock glints of colour in it.

Her face was one that no man would forget in a hurry. It was a face shaped warmly and generously for all the womanly things—passion and laughter and tenderness. But something had happened to it. Something had given it a bitter sulky look. There were resentment in it and deep anger and hardness—and yet, with all that, it was somehow a pathetically eager face with lost and frightened eyes.

Heath remembered vaguely a day when he would have liked to solve the riddle of that contradictory face. A day long ago, before Ethne came.

He said, speaking to both of them, "Who are you and what do you want with me?"

He looked now directly at the man and it was a look of sheer black hatred. "Didn't you have enough fun with me at Kalruna's?"

"I had to be sure of you," the stranger said. "Sure that you had not lied about the Moonfire."

He leaned forward, his eyes narrowed and piercing. He did not sit easily. His body was curved like a bent bow. In the light of the hanging lantern his scarred, handsome face showed a ripple of little muscles under the skin. A man in a hurry, Heath thought, a man with a sharp goad pricking his flanks.

"And what was that to you?" said Heath.

It was a foolish question. Already Heath knew what was coming. His whole being drew in upon itself, retreated.

The stranger did not answer directly. Instead he said, "You knew the cult that calls itself guardian of the Mysteries of the Moon."

"The oldest cult on Venus and one of the strongest. One of the strangest, too, on a moonless planet," Heath said slowly to no one in particular. "The Moonfire is their symbol of godhead."

The woman laughed without mirth. "Although," she said, "they've never seen it.

The stranger went on, "AH Venus knows about you, David Heath. The word travels. The priests know too—the Children of the Moon. They have a special interest in you."

Heath waited. He did not speak.

"You belong to the gods for their own vengeance," the stranger said. "But the vengeance hasn't come. Perhaps because you're an Earthman and therefore less obedient to the gods of Venus. Anyway, the Children of the Moon are tired of waiting. The longer you live the more men may be tempted to blasphemy, the less faith there will be in the ability of the gods to punish men for their sins." His voice had a biting edge of sarcasm. "So," he finished, "the Children of the Moon are coming to see to it that you die."

Heath smiled. "Do the priests tell you their secrets?"

The man turned his head and said, "Alor."

The woman stepped in front of Heath and loosed her tunic at the shoulder. 'There," she said furiously. "Look!"

Her anger was not with Heath. It was with what he saw. The tattoo branded beween her white breasts—the round rayed symbol of the Moon.

Heath caught his breath and let it out in a long sigh. "A handmaiden of the temple," he said and looked again at her face. Her eyes met his, silvery-cold, level, daring him to say more.

"We are sold out of our cradles," she said. "We have no choice. And our families are very proud to have a daughter chosen for the temple."

Bitterness and pride and the smouldering anger of the slave.

She said, "Broca tells the truth."

Heath's body seemed to tighten in upon itself. He glanced from one to the other and back again, not saying anything, and his heart beat fast and hard, knocking against his ribs.

Alor said, "They will kill you and it won't be easy dying. I know. I've heard men screaming sometimes for many nights and their sin was less than yours."

Heath said out of a dry mouth, "A runaway girl from the temple gardens and a thrower of spears. Their sin is great too. They didn't come halfway across Venus just to warn me. I think they lie. I think the priests are after them."

"We're all three proscribed," said Broca, "but Alor and I could get away. You they'll hunt down no matter where you go—except one place."

And Heath said, "What is that?" "The Moonfire."

After a long while Heath uttered a harsh grating sound that might have been a laugh.

"Get out," he said. "Get away from me."

He got to his feet, shaking with weakness and fury. "You lie, both of you—because I'm the only living man who has seen the Moonfire and you want me to take you there. You believe the legends. You think the Moonfire will change you into gods. You're mad, like all the other fools, for the power and the glory you think you'll have. Well, I can tell you this—the Moonfire will give you nothing but suffering and  death."

His voice rose. "Go lie to someone else. Frighten the Guardians of the Upper Seas. Bribe the gods themselves to take you there. But get away from me!"

The Venusian rose slowly. The cabin was small for him, the deck beams riding his shoulders. He swept the little dragon aside. He took Heath in his two hands and he said, "I will reach the Moonfire, and you will take me there."

Heath struck him across the face.

Sheer astonishment held Broca still for a moment and Heath said, "You're not a god yet."

The Venusian opened his mouth in a snarling grin. His hands shifted and tightened.

The woman said sharply, "Broca!" She stepped in close, wrenching at Broca's wrists. "Don't kill him, you fool!"

Broca let his breath out hard between his teeth. Gradually

his hands relaxed. Heath's face was suffused with dark

blood. He would have fallen if the woman had not caught

him.                                                         "~

She said to Broca, "Strike him—but not too hard."

Broca raised his fist and struck Heath carefully on the point of his-jaw.

It could not have been more than two of the long Venusian hours before Heath came to. He did that slowly as always —progressing from a vast vague wretchedness to an acute awareness of everything that was the matter with him. His head felt as though it had been cleft in two with an axe from the jaw upward.

He could not understand why he should have wakened. The drug alone should have been good for hours of heavy sleep. The sky beyond the cabin port had changed. The night was almost over. He lay for a moment, wondering whether or not he was going to be sick, and then suddenly he realized what had wakened him in spite of everything.

The Ethne was under way.

His anger choked him so that he could not even swear. He dragged himself to his feet and crossed the cabin, feeling even then that she was not going right, that the dawn wind was strong and she was rolling to it, yawing.

He kicked open the door and came out on deck.

The great lateen sail of golden spider silk, ghostly in the blue air, slatted and spilled wind, shaking against loose yards. Heath turned and made for the raised poop, finding strength in his fear for the ship. Broca was up there, braced against the loom of the stern sweep. The wake lay white on the black water, twisting like a snake.

The woman Alor stood at the rail, staring at the low land that lay behind them.

Broca made no protest as Heath knocked him aside and took the sweep. Alor turned and watched but did not speak.

The Ethne was small and the simple rig was such that one man could handle it. Heath trimmed the sail and in a few seconds she was stepping light and dainty as her namesake, her wake straight as a ruled line.

When that was done Heath turned upon them and cursed them in a fury greater than that of a woman whose child has been stolen.

Broca ignored him. He stood watching the land and the lightening sky. When Heath was all though the woman said, "We had to go. It may .already be too late. And you weren't going to help."

Heath didn't say anything more. There weren't any words. He swung the helm hard over.

Broca was beside him in one step, his hand raised and then suddenly Alor cried out, "Watt!"

Something in her voice brought both men around to look at her. She stood at the rail, facing into the wind, her hair flying, the short skirt of her tunic whipped back against her thighs. Her arm was raised in a pointing gesture. It was dawn now.

For a moment Heath lost all sense of time. The deck lifting lightly under his feet, the low mist and dawn over the Sea of Morning Opals, the dawn that gave the sea its name. It seemed that there had never been a Moonfire, never been a past or a future, but only David Heath and his ship and the light coming over the water.

It came slowly, sifting down like a rain of jewels through the miles of pearl-grey cloud. Cool and slow at first, then warming and spreading, turning the misty air to drops of rosy fire, opaline, glowing, low to the water, so that the little ship seemed to be drifting through the heart of a fire-opal as vast as the universe.

The sea turned colour, from black to indigo streaked with milky bands. Flights of the small bright dragons rose flashing from the weed-beds that lay scattered on the surface in careless patterns of purple and ochre and cinnabar and the weed itself stirred with dim sentient life, lifting its tendrils to the light.

For one short moment David Heath was completely happy.

Then he saw that Broca had caught up a bow from under the taffrail. Heath realized that they must have fetched all their traps coolly aboard while he was in Kalruna's. It was one of the great longbows of the Upland barbarians and Broca bent its massive arc as though it had been a twig and laid across it a bone-barbed shaft.

A ship was coming toward them, a slender shape of pearl flying through the softly burning veils of mist. Her sail was emerald green. She was a long way off but she had the wind behind her and she was coming down with it like a swooping  dragon.

"That's the Lahal," said Heath. "What does Johor think he's   doing?"

Then he saw, with a start of incredulous horror, that on the prow of the oncoming ship the great spiked ram had been lowered into place.

During the moment when Heath's brain struggled to understand why Johor, ordinary trading skipper of an ordinary ship, should wish to sink him, Alor said five words.

"The Children of the Moon."

Now, on the Lahal's foredeck, Heath could distinguish four tiny figures dressed in black.

The long shining ram dipped and glittered in the dawn.

Heath flung himself against the stern sweep. The Ethne's golden sail cracked taut. She headed up into the wind. Heath measured his • distance grimly and settled down.

Broca turned on him furiously. "Are you mad? They'll run us down! Go the other way."

Heath said, "There is no other way. They've got me pinned on a lee shore." He was suddenly full of a blind rage against Johor and the four black-clad priests.

There was nothing to do but wait—wait and sail the heart out of his ship and hope that enough of David Heath still lived to get them through. And if not, Heath thought, I'll take the Lahal down with me!

Broca and Alor stood by the rail together, watching the racing green sail. They did not speak. There was nothing to say. Heath saw that now and again the woman turned to study him.

The wakes of the two ships lay white on the water, two legs of a triangle rushing toward their apex.

Heath could see Johor now, manning the sweep. He could see the crew crouching in the waist, frightened sailors rounded up to do the bidding of the priests. They were armed and standing by with grapnels.

Now, on the foredeck, he could see the Children of the Moon.

They were tall men. They wore tunics of black link mail with the rayed symbol of the Moon" blazed in jewels on their breasts. They rode the pitching deck, their silver hair flying loose in the wind, and their bodies were as the bodies of wolves that run down their prey and devour it.

Heath fought the stern sweep, fought the straining ship, fought with wind and distance to cheat them of their will.

And the woman Alor kept watching David Heath with her bitter challenging eyes and Heath hated her as he did the priests, with a deadly hatred, because he knew what he must look like with his beaked bony face and wasted body, swaying and shivering over the loom of the sweep.

Closer and closer swept the emerald sail, rounded and gleaming like a peacock's breast in the light. Pearl white and emerald, purple and gold, on a dark blue sea, the spiked ram glittering—two bright dragons racing toward marriage, toward death.

Close, very close. The rayed symbols blazed fire on the breasts of the Children of the Moon.

The woman Alor lifted her head high into the wind and cried out—a long harsh ringing cry like the scream of an eagle. It ended in a name, and she spoke it like a curse.

"Vakor!"

One of the priests wore the jeweled fillet that marked him leader. He flung up his arms, and the words of his malediction came hot and bitter down the wind.

Broca's bowstring thrummed like a great harp. The shaft fell short and Vakor laughed.

The priests went aft to be safe from buckling timbers and the faces of the seamen were full of fear.

Heath cried out a warning. He saw Alor and Broca drop flat to the deck. He saw their faces. They were the faces of a man and a woman who were on the point of death and did not like it but were not afraid. Broca reached out and braced the woman's body with his own.

Heath shoved Ethne's nose fair into the wind and let her jibe.

The Lahal went thundering by not three yards away, helpless to do anything about it.

The kicking sweep had knocked Heath into the scuppers, half dazed. He heard the booming sail slat over, felt the wrenching shudder that shook the Ethne down to her last spike and prayed that the mast would stay in her. As he dragged himself back he saw that the priest Vakor had leaped onto the Lahafs high stern. He was close enough for Heath to see his face.

They looked into each other's eyes and the eyes of Vakor were brilliant and wild, the eyes of a fanatic. He was not old. His body was virile and strong, his face cut in fine sweeping lines, the mouth full and sensuous and proud. He was tense with cheated fury and his voice rang against the wind like the howling of a beast.

"We will follow! We will follow, and the gods will slay!"

As the rush of the Lahal carried him away, Heath heard the last echo of his cry. "Alor!"

With all the strength he had left Heath quieted his outraged ship and let her fill away on the starboard tack. Broca and Alor got slowly to their feet. Broca said, "I thought you'd wrecked her."

"They had the wind of me," Heath said. "I couldn't come about like a Christian."

Alor walked to the stern and watched where the Lahal wallowed and staggered as she tried to stop her headlong rush. "Vakor!" she whispered, and spat into the sea.

Broca said, "They will follow us. Alor told me—they have a chart, the only one, that shows the way to the Moonfire."

Heath shrugged. He was too weary now to care. He pointed off to the right.

"There's a strong ocean current runs there, like a river in the sea. Most skippers are afraid of it but their ships aren't like the Ethne. We'll ride it. After that we'll have to trust to luck."

Alor swung around sharply. "Then you will go to the

Moonfire."

"I didn't say that. Broca, get me the bottle out of my cabin locker."

But it was the woman who fetched it to him and watched him drink, then said, "Are you all right?"

"I'm dying, and she asks me that," said Heath.

She looked a moment steadily into his eyes and oddly enough there was no mockery in her voice when she spoke, only respect.

"You won't die," she said and went away.

In a few moments the current took the Ethne and swept her away northward. The Lahal vanished into the mists behind them. She was cranky in close handling and Heath knew that Johor would not dare the swirling current.

For nearly three hours he stayed at his post and took the ship through. When the ocean stream curved east he rode out of it into still water. Then he fell down on the deck and slept.

Once again the tall barbarian lifted him like a child and laid him in his bunk.

All through the rest of that day and the long Venusian night, while Broca steered, Heath lay in bitter sleep. Alor sat beside him, watching the nightmare shadows that crossed his face, listening as he moaned and talked, soothing his worst tremors.

He repeated the name of Ethne over and over again and a puzzled strangely wistful look came in the eyes of Alor.

When it was dawn again Heath awoke and went on deck. Broca said with barbarian bluntness, "Have you decided?"

Heath did not answer and Alor said, "Vakor will hunt you down. The word has gone out all over Venus, wherever there are men. They'll be no refuge for you—except one."

Heath smiled, a mirthless baring of the teeth. "And that's the Moonfire. You make it all so simple."

And yet he knew she spoke the truth. The Children of the Moon would never leave his track. He was a rat in a maze and every passage led to death.

But there were different deaths. If he had to die it would not be as Vakor willed but with Ethne—an Ethne more real than a shadow—in his arms again.

He realized now that deep in his mind he had always known, all these three seasons and more that he had clung to a life not worth living. He had known that someday he must go back again.

"We'll go to the Moonfire," he said, "and perhaps we shall all be gods."

Broca said, "You are weak, Earthman. You didn't have the courage."

Heath said one word. "Wait."

Ill

OVER THE BAR

THE DAYS and the nights went by, and the Ethne fled north across the Sea of Morning Opals, north toward the equator. They were far out of the trade lanes. All these vast upper reaches were wilderness. There were not even fishing villages along the coast. The great cliSs rose sheer from the water and nothing could find a foothold there. And beyond, past the Dragon's Throat, lay only the barren death-trap of the Upper Seas.

. The Ethne ran as sweetly as though she joyed to be free again, free of the muddy harbour and the chains. And a change came over Heath. He was a man again. He stood shaved and clean and erect on his own deck and there was no decision to be made anymore, no doubt. The long dread, the long delay, were over and he too, in his own bitter way, was happy.

They had seen nothing more of the Lahal but Heath knew quite well that she was there somewhere, following. She was not as fleet as the Ethne but she was sound and Johor was a good sailor. Moreover, the priest Vakor was there and he would drive the Lahal over the Mountains of White Cloud if he had to—to catch them.

He said once to Alor, "Vakor seems to have a special hatred for you."

Her face twisted with revulsion and remembered shame. "He is a beast," she said. "He is a serpent, a lizard that walks like a king." She added, "We've made it easy for him, the three of us together like this."

From where he sat steering Heath looked at her with a remote curiosity. She stood, long legged, bold-mouthed, looking back with sombre smoky eyes at the white wake unrolling behind them.

He said, "You must have loved Broca to break your vows for him. Considering what it means if they catch you."

Alor looked at him, then laughed, a brief sound that had no humor in it.

"I'd have gone with any man strong enough to take me out of the temple," she said. "And Broca is strong and he worships me."

Heath was genuinely astonished. "You don't love him?"

She shrugged. "He is good to look at. He is a chief of warriors and he is a man and not a priest. But love—"

She asked suddenly, "What is it like—to love as you loved your Ethne?"

Heath started. "What do you know about Ethne?" he asked harshly.

"You have talked of her in sleep. And Broca told me how you called her shadow in Kalruna's place. You dared the Moonfire to gain her back."

She glanced at the ivory figurehead on the high curving bow, the image of a woman, young and slim and smiling.

"I think you are a fool," she said abruptly. "I think only a fool would love a shadow."

She had left him and gone down into the cabin before he could gather words, before he could take her white neck between his hands and break it.

Ethne—Ethne!

He cursed the woman of the temple gardens.

He was still in a brooding fury when Broca came up out of the cabin to relieve him at the sweep.

"I'll steer a while yet," Heath told him curtly. "I think the weather's going to break."

Clouds were boiling up in the south as the night closed down. The sea was running in long easy swells as it had done for all these days but there was a difference, a pulse and a stir that quivered all through the ship's keel.

Broca, stretching huge shoulders, looked away to the south and then down at Heath.

"I think you talk too much to my woman," he said.

Before Heath could answer the other laid his hand lightly on the Earthman's shoulder. A light grip but with strength enough behind it to crack Heath's bones.

He said, "Do not talk so much to Alor."

"I haven't sought her out," Heath snapped savagely. "She's your woman—you worry about her."

"I am not worried about her," Broca answered calmly. "Not about her and you."

He was looking down at Heath as he spoke and Heath knew the contrast they made—his own lean body and gaunt face against the big barbarian's magnificent strength.

"But she is always with you on the deck, listening to your stories of the sea," said Broca. "Do not talk to her so much," he repeated and this time there was an edge to his voice.

"For heaven's sake!" said Heath jeeringly. "If I'm a fool what are you? A man mad enough to look for power in the Moonfire and faithfulness in a temple wenchl And now you're jealous."

He hated both Broca and Alor bitterly in this moment and out of his hate he spoke.

"Wait until the Moonfire touches you. It will break your strength and your pride. After that you won't care who your woman talks to or where."

Broca gave him a stare of unmoved contempt. Then he turned his back and settled down to look out across the darkening sea.

After a while, the amusing side of the whole thing struck Heath, and he began to laugh.

They were, all three of them, going to die. Somewhere out there to the south, Vakor came like a black shepherd, driving them toward death. Dreams of empire, dreams of glory and a voyage that tempted the vengeance of the gods—and at such a time the barbarian chief could be jealous.

With sudden shock he realized just how much time Alor had spent with him. Out of habit and custom as old as the sea he had helped to while away the long hard hours with a sailor's yams. Looking back he could see Alor's face, strangely young and eager as she listened, could remember how she asked questions and wanted to learn the ways and the working of the ship.

He could remember now how beautiful she looked with the wind in her hair, her firm strong body holding the Ethne steady in a quartering sea.

The storm brewed over the hours and at last it broke.

Heath had known that the Sea of Morning Opals would not let him go without a struggle. It had tried him with shallows, with shifting reefs, with dead calms and booming solar tides and all the devices of current, fog and drifting weed. He had beaten all of them. Now he was almost within sight of the Dragon's Throat, the gateway to the Upper Seas and it was a murderous moment for a storm out of the south.

The night had turned black. The sea burned with white phosphorescence, a boiling cauldron of witch-fire. The wind was frightening. The Ethne plunged and staggered, driving under a bare pole, and for once Heath was glad of Broca's strength as they fought the sweep together.

He became aware that someone was beside him and knew that it was Alor.

"Go below!" he yelled and caught only the echo of her answer. She did not go but threw her weight too against the sweep.

Lightning-bolts as broad as comet's tails came streaking down with a rush and a fury as though they had started their run from another star and gathered speed across half the galaxy. They lit the Sea of Morning Opals with a purple glare until the thunder brought the darkness crashing down again. Then the rain fell like a river rolling down the belts of cloud.

Heath groaned inwardly. The wind and the following sea had taken the little ship between them and were hurling her forward. At the speed she was making now she would hit the Dragon's Throat at dawn. She would hit it full tilt and helpless as a drifting chip.

The lightning showed him the barbarian's great straining body, gleaming wet, his long hair torn loose from its knots and chains, streaming with wind and water. It showed him Alor too. Their hands and their shoulders touched, straining together. .

It seemed that they struggled on that way for centuries and then, abruptly, the rain stopped, the wind slackened, and there was a period of eerie silence. Alor's voice sounded loud in Heath's ears, crying, "Is it over?"

"No," he answered. "Listen!"

They heard a deep and steady booming, distant in the north—the boom of surf. The storm began again.

Dawn came, hardly lighter than the night. Through the flying wrack Heath could see cliffs on either side where the mountain ranges narrowed in, tunneling the Sea of Morning Opals into the strait of the Dragon's Throat. The driven sea ran high between them, bursting white against the black rock.

The Ethne was carried headlong, a leaf in a millrace.

The cliffs drew in and in until there was a gap of no more than a mile between them. Black brooding titans and the space below a fury of white water, torn and shredded by fang-like rocks.

The Dragon's Throat.

When he had made the passage before Heath had had fair weather and men for the oars. Even then it had not been easy. Now he tried to remember where the channel lay, tried to force the ship toward what seemed to be an open lane among the rocks.

The Ethne gathered speed and shot forward into the Dragon's Throat.

She fled through a blind insanity of spray and wind and sound. Time and again Heath saw the loom of a towering rock before him and wrenched the ship aside or fought to keep away from death that was hidden just under the boiling surface. Twice, three times, the Ethne gave a grating shudder and he thought she was gone.

Once, toward the last, when it seemed that there was no hope, he felt Alor's hand close over his.

The high water saved them, catching them in its own rush down the channel, carrying them over the rocks and finally over the bar at the end of the gut. The Ethne came staggering out into the relative quiet of the Upper Seas, where the pounding waves seemed gentle and it was all done so quickly, over so soon. For a long time the three of them stood sagging over the sweep, not able to realize that it was over and they still lived.

The storm spent itself. The wind settled to a steady blow. Heath got a rag of sail up. Then he sat down by the tiller and bowed his head over his knees and thought about how Alor had caught his hand when she believed she was going to die.

rv

"I WILL WAIT!"

EVEN THIS early it was hot. The Upper Seas sprawled along the equator, shallow landlocked waters choked with weed and fouled with shifting reefs of mud, cut into a maze of lakes and blind channels by the jutting headlands of the mountains.

The wind dropped to a flat calm. They left the open water behind them, where it was swept clean by the tides from the Sea of Morning Opals. The floating weed thickened around them, a blotched ochre plain that stirred with its own dim mindless life. The air smelled rotten.

Under Heath's direction they swung the weed-knife into place, the great braced blade that fitted over the prow. Then, using the heavy sweep as a sculling oar, they began to push the Ethne forward by the strength of their sweating backs.

Clouds of the little bright-scaled dragons rose with hissing screams, disturbed by the ship. This was their breeding ground. They fought and nested in the weed and the steaming air was full of the sound of their wings. They perched on the rail and in the rigging, watching with their red eyes. The creature that rode Heath's shoulder emitted harsh cries of excitement. Heath tossed him into the air and he flew away to join his mates.

There was life under the weed, spawning in the hot stagnant waters, multiform and formless, swarming, endlessly hungry. Small reptilian creatures flopped and slithered through the weed, eating the dragon's eggs, and here and there a flat dark head would break through with a snap and a crunch, and it would watch the Ethne with incurious eyes while it chewed and swallowed.

Constantly Heath kept watch.

The sun rose high above the eternal clouds. The heat seeped down and gathered. The scull moved back and forth, the knife bit, the weed dragged against the hull and behind them the cut closed slowly as the stuff wrapped and  coiled  upon itself.

Heath's eyes kept turning to Alor.

He did not want to look at her. He did not wish to remember the touch of her hand on his. He wished only to remember Ethne, to remember the agony of the Moonfire and to think of the reward that lay beyond it if he could endure. What could a temple wench mean to him beside that?

But he kept looking at her covertly. Her white limbs glistened with sweat and her red mouth was sullen with weariness and even so there was a strange wild beauty about her. Time and again her gaze would meet his, a quick hungry glance from under her lashes, and her eyes were not the eyes of a temple wench. Heath cursed Broca in his heart for making him think of Alor and he cursed himself because now he could not stop thinking of her.

They toiled until they could not stand. Then they sprawled on the deck in the breathless heat to rest. Broca pulled Alor  to  him.

"Soon this will all be over," he said. "Soon we will reach the Moonfire. You will like that, Alor—to be mated to a god!"

She lay unresponsive in the circle of his arm, her head turned away. She did not answer.

Broca laughed. "God and goddess. Two of a kind as we are now. We'll build our thrones so high the sun can see them." He rolled her head on his shoulder, looking down intently into her face. "Power, Alor. Strength. We will have them together." He covered her mouth with his, and his free hand caressed her, deliberate, possessive.

She thrust him away. "Don't," she said angrily. "It's too hot and I'm too tired." She got up and walked to the side, standing with her back to Broca.

Broca looked at her. Then he turned and looked at Heath. A dark flush reddened his skin. He said slowly, "Too hot and too tired—and besides, the Earthman is watching."

He sprang up and caught Alor and swung her around, one huge hand tangled in her hair, holding her. As soon as he touched her Heath also sprang up and said harshly, "Let her alone!"

Broca said, "She is my mate but I may not touch her." He glared down into Alor's blazing eyes and said, "She is my mate—or isn't she?"

He flung her away. He turned his head from side to side, half blind with rage.

"Do you think I didn't see you?" he asked thickly. "All day, looking at each other."

Heath said, "You're crazy."

"Yes," answered Broca, "I am." He took two steps toward Heath and added, "Crazy enough to kill you."

Alor said, "If you do you'll never reach the Moonfire," Broca paused, trapped for one moment between his passion and his dream. He was facing the stern. Something caused his gaze to waver from Heath and then, gradually, his expression changed. Heath swung around and Alor gave a smothered cry.

Far behind them, vague in the steaming air, was an emerald  sail.

The Lahal must have come through the Dragon's Throat as soon as the storm was over. With men to man the rowing benches she had gained on the Ethne during the calm. Now she too was in the weed, and the oars were useless but there were men to scull her. She would move faster dian the Ethne and without pause.

There would be little rest for Heath and Broca and the woman.

They swayed at the sculling oar all the stifling afternoon and all the breathless night, falling into the dull, half-hypnotized rhythm of beasts who walk forever around a water-wheel. Two of them working always, while the third slept, and llroca never took his eyes from Alor. With his tremendous vitality it seemed that he never slept and during the periods when Heath and Alor were alone at the oar together they exchanged neither words nor glances.

At dawn they saw that the Lahal was closer.

Broca crouched on the deck. He lifted his head and looked at the green sail. Heath saw that his eyes were very bright and that he shivered in spite of the brooding heat.

Heath's heart sank. The Upper Seas were rank with fever, and it looked as though the big barbarian was in for a bad go of it. Heath himself was pretty well immune to it but Broca was used to the clean air of the High Plateaus and I lie poison was working in his blood.

He measured the speed of the two ships and said, "It's no use. We must stand and fight."

Heath said savagely, "I thought you wanted to find the Moonfire. I thought you were the strong man who could win through it where everybody else had failed. I thought you were going to be a god."

Broca got to his feet. "With fever or without it I'm a better man than you."

"Then work! If we can just keep ahead of them until we clear the weed—"

Broca said, "The Moonfire?"

"Yes/'

"We will keep ahead."

He bent his back to the scull and the Ethne crept forward through the weed. Her golden sail hung from the yard with a terrible stillness. The heat pressed down upon the Upper Seas as though the sun itself were falling through the haze. Astern the Lahal moved steadily on.

Broca's fever mounted. He turned from time to time to curse Vakor, shouting at the emerald sail.

"You'll never catch us, priest!" he would cry. "I am Broca of the tribe of Sarn and I will beat you—and I will beat the Moonfire. You will lie on your belly, priest, and lick my sandals before you die."

Then he would turn to Alor, his eyes shining. "You know the legends, Alor! The man who can bathe in the heart of the Moonfire has the power of the High Ones. He can build a world to suit himself, he can be king and lord and master. He can give his woman-god a palace of diamonds with a floor of gold. That is true, Alor. You have heard the priests say it in the temple."

Alor answered, "It is true." "A new world, Alor. A world of our own." He made the great sweep swing in a frenzy of strength and once again the mystery of the Moonfire swept over Heath. Why, since the priests knew the way there, did they not themselves become gods. Why had no man ever come out of it with godhead—only a few, a handful like himself, who had not had the valor to go all the way in.

And yet there was godhead there. He knew because within himself there was the shadow of it.

The endless day wore on. The emerald sail came closer.

Toward mid-afternoon there was a sudden clattering flight of the little dragons and all life stopped still in the weed. The reptilian creatures lay motionless with dragon's eggs unbroken in their jaws. No head broke the surface to feed. The dragons flew away in a hissing cloud. There was utter silence.

Heath flung himself against the sweep and stopped it.

"Be quiet," he said. "Look. Out there."

They followed his gesture. Far away over the port bow, flowing toward them, was a ripple in the weed. A ripple as though the very bed of the Upper Seas was in motion.

"What is it?" whispered Alor, and saw Heath's face, and was silent.

Sluggishly, yet with frightened speed, the "ripple came toward them. Heath got a harpoon out of the stem locker. He watched the motion of the weed, saw it gradually slow and stop in a puzzled way. Then he threw the harpoon as far away from the ship as he could with all his strength and more.

The ripple began again. It swerved and sped toward where the harpoon had fallen.

"They'll attack anything that moves," said Heath. "It lost us because we stopped. Watch."

The weed heaved and burst open, its meshes snapping across a scaled and titanic back. There seemed to be no shape to the creature, no distinguishable head. It was simply a vast and hungry blackness that spread upward and outward and the luckless brutes that cowered near it hissed and thrashed in their efforts to escape, and were engulfed and vanished.

Again Alor whispered, "What is it?"

"One of the Guardians," Heath answered. "The Guardians of the Upper Seas. They will crush a moving ship to splinters and eat the crew."

He glanced back at the Lahal. She, too, had come to a dead stop. The canny Vakor had scented the danger also.

"We'll have to wait," said Heath, "until it goes away."

They waited. The huge shape of darkness sucked and foundered in the weed and was in no hurry to go.

Broca sat staring at Heath. He was deep in fever and his eyes were not sane. He began to mutter to himself, incoherent ramblings in which only the name Alor and the word Moon-fire were distinguishable.

Suddenly, with startling clarity, he said, "The Moonfire is nothing without Alor."

He repeated "NothingI" several times, beating his huge fists on his knees each time he said it. Then he turned his head blindly from side to side as though looking for something. "She's gone. Alor's gone. She's gone to the Earthman."

Alor spoke to him, touched him, but he shook her off. In his fever-mad brain there was only one truth. He rose and went toward David Heath.

Heath got up. "Broca!" he said. "Alor is there beside you. She hasn't gone!"

Broca did not hear. He did not stop. Alor cried out, "Broca!"

"No," said Broca. "You love him. You're not mine anymore. When you look at me I am nothing. Your lips have no warmth in them." He reached out toward David Heath and he was blind and deaf to everything but the life that was in him to be torn out and trampled upon and destroyed.

In the cramped space of the afterdeck there was not much room to move. Heath did not want to fight. He tried to dodge the sick giant but Broca pinned him against the rail. Fever or no fever, Heath had to fight him and it was not much use. Broca was beyond feeling pain.

His sheer weight crushed Heath against the rail, bent his spine almost to breaking and his hands found Heath's throat. Heath struck and struck again and wondered if he had come all this way to die in a senseless quarrel over a woman.

Abruptly he realized that Broca was letting go, was sliding down against him to the deck. Through a swimming haze he saw Alor standing there with a belaying pin in her hand. He began to tremble, partly with reaction but mostly with fury that he should have needed a woman's help to save his life. Broca lay still, breathing heavily.

"Thanks," said Heath curtly. "Too bad you had to hit him. He didn't know what he was doing."

Alor said levelly, "Didn't he?"

Heath did not answer. He started to turn away and she caught him, forcing him to look at her.

"Very likely I will die in the Moonfire," she said. "I haven't the faith in my strength that Broca has. So I'm going to say this now—I love you, David Heath. I don't care what you think or what you do about it but I love you."

Her eyes searched his face, as though she wanted to remember every line and plane of it. Then she kissed him and her mouth was tender and very sweet.

She stepped back and said quietly, "I think the Guardian has gone. The Lahal is under way again."

Heath followed her without a word to the sweep. Her kiss burned in him like sweet fire. He was shaken and utterly confused.

They toiled together while Broca slept. They dared not pause. Heath could distinguish the men now aboard the Lahal, little bent figures sculling, sculling, and there were always fresh ones. He could see the black tunics of the Children of the Moon who stood upon the foredeck and waited.

The Ethne moved more and more slowly as the hours passed and the gap between the two ships grew steadily smaller. Night came and through the darkness they could hear the voice of Vakor howling after them.

Toward midnight Broca roused. The fever had left him but he was morose and silent. He thrust Alor roughly aside and took the sweep and the Ethne gathered speed.

"How much farther?" he asked. And Heath panted, "Not far now."

Dawn came and still they were not clear of the weed. The Lahdl was so near them now that Heath could see the jeweled fillet on Vakor's brow. He stood alone, high on the upper brace of the weed-knife, and he watched them, laughing.

"Work!" he shouted at them. "Toil and sweat! You, Alor— woman of the gardens! This is better than the Temple. Broca —thief and breaker of the Law—strain your muscles there! And you, Earthman. For the second time you defy the gods!" He leaned out over the weed as though he would reach ahead and grasp the Ethne in his bare hands and drag her back.

"Sweat and strain, you dogs! You can't escape!"

And they did sweat and strain and fresh relays of men worked at the sweep of the Lahal, breaking their hearts to go faster and ever faster. Vakor laughed from his high perch and it seemed futile for the Ethne to go on any longer with this lost race.

But Heath looked ahead with burning sunken eyes. He saw how the mists rose and gathered to the north, how the color of the weed changed, and he urged the others on. There was a fury in him now. It blazed brighter and harder than Broca's, this iron fury that would not, by the gods themselves, be balked of the Moonfire.

They kept ahead—so little ahead that the Lahal was almost within arrow-shot of them. Then the weed thinned and the Eihne began to gain a little and suddenly, before they realized it, they were in open water.

Like mad creatures they worked the scull and Heath steered the Eihne where he remembered the northern current ran, drawn by The-Ocean-That-Is-Not-Water. After the terrible labour of the weed it seemed that they were flying. But as the mists began to wreath about them the Lahal too had freed herself and was racing toward them with every man on the rowing benches.

The mists thickened around them. The black water began to have a rare occasional hint of gold, like shooting sparks beneath the surface. There began to be islands, low and small, rank with queer vegetation. The flying dragons did not come here nor the Guardians nor the little reptiles. It was very hot and very still.

Through the stillness the voice of Vakor rose in a harsh wild screaming as he cursed the rowers on.

The current grew more swift and the danging flecks of gold brightened in the water. Heath's face bore a strange unhuman look. The oars of the Lahal beat and churned and bowmen stood now on the foredeck, ready to shoot when they came within range.

Then, incredibly, Vakor gave one long high scream and flung up his hand and the oars stopped. Vakor stretched both arms above his head, his fists clenched, and he hurled after them one terrible word of malediction.

"I will wait, blasphemers! If so be you live I will be here —waiting!"

The emerald sail dwindled in the Ethne's wake, faded and was lost in the mist.

Broca said, "They had us. Why did they stop?"

Heath pointed. Up ahead the whole misty north was touched with a breath of burning gold.

"The Moonfire!"

INTO THE MOONFIRE

THIS WAS the dream that had driven Heath to madness, the nightmare that had haunted him, the memory that had drawn him back in spite of terror and the certainty of destruction. Now it was reality and he could not separate it from the dream.

Once again he watched the sea change until the Ethne drifted not on water but on a golden liquid that lapped her hull with soft rippling fire. Once again the mist enwrapped him, shining, glowing.

The first faint tingling thrill moved in his blood and he knew how it would be—the lying pleasure that mounted through ecstasy to unendurable pain. He saw the dim islands, low and black, a maze through which a ship might wander forever without finding the source that poured out this wonder of living light.

He saw the bones of ships that had died searching. They lay on the island beaches and the mist made them a bright shroud. There were not many of them. Some were so old that the race that built them had vanished out of the memory of Venus.

The hushed unearthly beauty wrenched Heath's heart and he was afraid unto dying and yet filled with lust, with a terrible hunger.

Broca drew the air deep into his lungs as though he would suck the power out of the Moonfire.

"Can you find it again?" he asked. "The heart of it."

"I can find it."

Alor stood silent and unmoving. She was all silver in tbid light, dusted with golden motes.

Heath said, "Are you afraid, breaking the tabu?"

"Habit is hard to break." She turned to him and asked, "What is the Moonfire?"

"Haven't the priests told you?"

"They say that Venus once had a moon. It rode in the clouds like a disc of fire and the god who dwelt within it was supreme over all the other gods. He watched the surface of the planet and all that was done upon it. But the lesser gods were jealous, and one day they were able to destroy the palace of the Moon-god.

"All the sky of Venus was lighted by that destruction. Mountains fell and seas poured out of their beds and whole nations died. The moon-god was slain and his shining body fell like a meteor through the clouds.

"But a god cannot really die. He only sleeps and waits. The golden mist is the cloud of his breathing, and the shining of his body is the Moonfire. A man may gain divinity from the heart of the sleeping god but all the gods of Venus will curse him if he tries because man has no right to steal their powers."

"And you don't believe that story," said Heath.

Alor shrugged. "You have seen the Moonfire. The priests have not."

"I didn't get to the heart of it," Heath said. "I only saw the edge of the crater and the light that comes up out of it, the lovely hellish light."

He stopped, shuddering, and brooded as he had so many times before on the truth behind the mystery of the Moonfire. Presently he said slowly, "There was a moon, of course, or there could be no conception of one in folklore. I believe it was radioactive, some element that hasn't been found yet or doesn't exist at all on Earth or Mars."

"I don't understand," said Alor. "What is 'radioactive'?" She used the Terran word, as Heath had, because there was no term for it in Venusian.

"It's a strange sort of fire that burns in certain elements. It eats them away, feeding on its own atoms, and the radiation from this fire is very powerful." He was silent for a moment, his eyes half closed. "Can't you feel it?" he asked. "The first little fire that burns in your own blood?"

"Yes," Alor whispered. "I feel it."

And Broca said, "It is like wine."

Heath went on, putting the old, old thoughts into words. "The moon was destroyed. Not by jealous gods but by collision with another body, perhaps an asteriod. Or maybe it was burst apart by its own blazing energy. I think that a fragment of it survived and fell here and that its radiation permeated and changed the sea and the air around it.

"It changes men in the same way. It seems to alter the whole electrical set-up of the brain, to amplify its power far beyond anything human. It gives the mind a force of will strong enough to control the free electrons in the air—to create . . ."

He paused, then finished quietly, "In my case, only shadows. And when that mutation occurs a man doesn't need the gods of Venus to curse him. I got only a little of it but that was enough."

Broca said, "It is worth bearing pain to become a god. You had no strength."

Heath smiled crookedly. "How many gods have come out of the Moonfire?"

Broca answered, "There will be one soon." Then he caught Alor by the shoulders and pulled her to him, looking down into her face. "No," he said. "Not one. Two."

"Perhaps," said Heath, "there will be three."

Broca turned and gave him a chill and level look. "I do not think," he said, "that your strength is any greater now."

After that, for a long while, they did not speak. The Ethne drifted on, gliding on the slow currents that moved between the islands. Sometimes they sculled, the great blade of the sweep hidden in a froth of flame. The golden glow brightened and grew and with it grew the singing fire in their blood.

Heath stood erect and strong at the helm, the old Heath who had sailed the Straits of Lhiva in the teeth of a summer gale and laughed about it. All weariness, all pain, all weakness, were swept away. It was the same with the others. Alor's head was high and Broca leaped up beside the figurehead and gave a great ringing shout, a challenge to all the gods there were to stop him.

Heath found himself looking into Alor's eyes. She smiled, an aching thing of tears and tenderness and farewell.

"I think none of us will live," she whispered. "May you find your shadow, David, before you die."

Then Broca had turned toward them once more and the moment was gone.

Within the veil of the Moonfire there was no day nor night nor time. Heath had no idea how long the Ethne's purple hull rode the golden current. The tingling force spread through his whole body and pulsed and strengthened until he was drunk with the pleasure of it and the islands slipped by, and there was no sound or movement but their own in all that solemn sea.

And at last he saw ahead of him the supernal brightness that poured from the heart of the Moonfire, the living core of all the brightness of the mist. He siw the land, lifting dark and vague, drowned in tne burning haze, and he steered toward it along the remembered way. There was no fear in him now. He was beyond fear.

Broca cried out suddenly, "A ship!"

Heath nodded. "It was there before. It will be there when the next man finds his way here."

Two long arms of the island reached out to form a ragged bay. The Ethne entered it. They passed the derelict, floating patiently, untouched here by wind or tide or ocean rot. Her blue sail was furled, her rigging all neat and ready. She waited to begin the voyage home. She would wait a long, long time.

As they neared the land they sighted other ships. They had not moved nor changed since Heath had seen them last, three years ago.

A scant few they were, that had lived to find the Dragon's Throat and pass it, that had survived the Upper Seas and the island maze of the Moonfire and had found their goal at last. Some of them floated still where their crews had left them, their sad sails drooping from the yards.

Others lay on their sides on the beach, as though in sleep. There were strange old keels that had not been seen on the seas of Venus for a thousand years. The golden mist preserved them and they waited like a pack of faithful dogs for their masters to return.

Heath brought the Ethne into shore at the same spot where he had beached her before. She grounded gently and he led the way over the side. He remembered the queer crumbling texture of the dark earth under his feet. He was shaken with the force that throbbed in his flesh. As before it hovered now on the edge of pain.

He led the way inland and no one spoke.

The mist thickened around them, filled with dancing sparks of light. The bay was lost behind its wreathing curtain. They walked forward and the ground began to rise under their feet slowly. They moved as in a dream and the light and the silence crushed them with a great awe. They came upon a dead man.

He iay upon his face, his arms stretched out toward the mystery that lay beyond, his hands still yearning toward the glory he had never reached. They did not disturb him.

Mist, heavier, the glow brightening, the golden motes whirling and flickering in a madder dance. Heath listened to the voice of pain that spoke within him, rising with every step he took toward a soundless scream.

1 remember, I remember! The bones, the flesh, the brain, each atom of them a separate flame, bursting, tearing to be free. I cannot go on, 1 cannot bear it! Soon I shall waken, safe in the mud behind Kahuna's.

But he did not wake and the ground rose steadily under his feet and there was a madness on him, a passion and a suffering that were beyond man's strength to endure. Yet he endured.

The swirling motes began to shape themselves into vague figures, formless giants that towered and strode around them. Heath heard Alor's moan of terror and forced himself to say, "They're nothing. Shadows out of our own minds. The beginning of the power."

Farther they went and farther still, and then at last Heath stopped and flung up his arm to point, looking at Broca.

"Your godhead lies there. Go and take it!"

The eyes of the barbarian were dazed and wild, fixed on the dark dim line of the crater that showed in the distance, fixed on the incredible glory that shone there.

"It beats," he whispered, "like the beating of a heart."

Alor drew back, away from him, staring at the light. "I am afraid," she said. "I will not go." Heath saw that her tace was agonized, her body shaken like his own. Her voice rose in a wail. "I can't go! I can't stand it. I'm dying!" Suddenly she caught Heath's hands. "David, take me back. Take me back!"

Before he could think or speak Broca had torn Alor away from him and struck him a great swinging blow. Heath fell to the ground and the last thing he heard was Alor's voice crying his name.

VI

END OF THE DREAM

HEATH WAS not unconscious long, for when he lifted his head again he could still see the others in the distance. Broca was running like a madman up the slope of the crater, carrying Alor in his arms. Ghostly and indistinct, he stood for an instant on the edge. Then he leaped over and was gone. Heath was alone.

He lay still, fighting to keep his mind steady, struggling against the torture of his flesh.

"Ethne, Ethne," he whispered. "This is the end of the dream."

He began to crawl, inch by bitter inch; toward the heart of the Moonfire.

He was closer to it now than he had been before. The strange rough earth cut his hands and his bare knees. The blood ran but the pain of it was less than a pinprick against the cosmic agony of the Moonfire. Broca must have suffered too, yet he had gone running to his fate. Perhaps his nervous system was duller, more resistant to shock. Or perhaps it was simply that his lust for power carried him on.

Heath had no wish for power. He did not wish to be a god. He wished only to die and he knew that he was going to very soon. But before he died he would do what he had failed to do before. He would bring Ethne back. He would hear her voice again and look into her eyes and they would wait together for the final dark.

Her image would vanish with his death, for then mind and memory would be gone. But he would not see the life go out of her as he had all those years ago by the Sea of Morning Opals. She would be with him until the end, sweet and loving and merry, as she had always been.

He said her name over and over again as he crawled. He tried to think of nothing else, so that he might forget the terrible unhuman things that were happening within him.

"Ethne, Ethne," he whispered. His hands clawed the earth and his knees scraped it and the brilliance of the Moonfire wrapped him in golden banner of mist. Yet he would not stop, though the soul was shaken out of him.

He reached the edge of the crater and looked down upon the heart of the Moonfire.

The whole vast crater was a sea of glowing vapor, so dense that it moved in little rippling waves, tipped with a sparkling froth. There was an island in that sea, a shape like a fallen mountain that burned with a blinding intensity, so great that only the eyes of a god could bear to look at it.

It rode in the clouds like a disc of fire.

Heath knew that his guess was right. It did not matter. Body of a sleeping god or scrap of a fallen moon—it would bring Ethne back to him and for that was all he cared.

He dragged himself over the edge and let himself go, down the farther slope. He screamed once when the vapor closed over him.

After that there was a period of utter strangeness.

It seemed that some force separated the atoms that composed the organism called David Heath and reshuffled them into a different pattern. There was a wrench, an agony beyond anything he had known before and then, abruptly, the pain was gone. His body felt well and whole, his mind was awake, alert and clear with a dawning awareness of new power.

He looked down at himself, ran his hands over his face. He had not changed. And yet he knew that he was different. He had taken the full force of the radiation this time and apparently it had completed the change begun three years ago. He was not the same David Heath, perhaps, but he was no longer trapped in the no-man's-land between the old and the new.

He no longer felt that he was going to die and he no longer wished to. He was filled with a great strength and a great joy. He could bring his Ethne back now and they could live on together here in the golden garden of the Moonfire.

It would have to be here. He was sure of that. He had only been into the fringe of the Moonfire before, but he did not believe that that was the whole reason why he could create nothing but shadows. There was not a sufficient concentration of the raw energy upon which the mind's telekine-tic power worked.

Probably, even in the outer mists of the Moonfire, there were not enough free electrons. But here, close to the source, the air was raging with them. Raw stuff of matter, to be shaped and formed.

David Heath rose to his feet. He lifted his head and his arms reached out longingly. Straight and shining and strong he stood in the living light and his dark face was the face of a happy god.

"Ethne," he whispered. "Ethne." This is not the end of the dream, but the beginning!

And she came.

By the power, the exultant strength that was in him, Heath brought her out of the Moonfire. Ethne, slim and smiling, indistinct at first, a shadow in the mist, but growing clearer, coming toward him. He could see her white limbs, the pale flame of her hair, her red mouth bold and sweet, her wistful eyes.

Heath recoiled with a cry. It was not Ethne who stood before him. It was Alor.

For a time he could not move but stared at what he had created. The apparition smiled at him and her face was the face of a woman who has found love and with it the whole world.

"No," he said. "It isn't you I want. It's Ethne!" He struck the thought of Alor from his mind and the image faded and once again he called Ethne to him.

And when she came it was not Ethne but Alor.

He destroyed the vision. Rage and disappointment almost too great to bear drove him to wander in the fog. Alor, Alor! Why did that wench of the temple gardens haunt him now?

He hated her, yet her name sang in his heart and would not be silenced. He could not forget how she had kissed him and how her eyes had looked then and how her last desperate cry had been for him.

He could not forget that his own heart had shaped her image while only his mind, his conscious mind, had said the name of Ethne.

He sat down and bent his head over his knees and wept, because he knew now that this was the end of the dream. He had lost the old love forever without knowing it. It was a cruel thing, but it was true. He had to make his peace with it.

And already Alor might be dead.

That thought cut short his grieving for what was gone. He leaped up, filled with dread. He stood for a moment, looking wildly about, and the vapor was like golden water so that he could see only a few feet away. Then he began to run, shouting her name.

For what might have been centuries in that timeless place he ran, searching for her. There was no answer to his cries. Sometimes he would see a dim figure crouching in the mist, and he would think that he had found her but each time it was the body of a man, dead for God knew how long. They were all alike. They were emaciated, as though they had died of starvation and they were all smiling. There seemed to be lost visions still in their open eyes.

These were the gods of the Moonfire—the handful of men through all the ages who had fought their way through to the ultimate goal.

Heath saw the cruelty of the jest. A man could find godhead in the golden lake. He could create his own world within it. But he could never leave it unless he were willing to leave also the world in which he was king. They would have learned that, these men, as they started back toward the harbor, away from the source.

Or perhaps there was more to it. Perhaps they never tried to leave.

Heath went on through the beautiful unchanging mist, calling Alor's name, and there was no answer. He realized that it was becoming more difficult for him to keep his mind on his quest. Half-formed images flickered vaguely around him. He grew excited and there was an urgency in him to stop and bring the visions clear, to build and create.

He fought off the temptation but there came a time when he had to stop because he was too tired to go on. He sank down and the hopelessness of his search came over him.

Alor was gone and he could never find her. In utter dejection he crouched there, his face buried in his hands, thinking of her, and all at once he heard her voice speaking his name. He started up and she was there, holding out her hands to him.

He caught her to him and stroked her hair and kissed her, half sobbing with joy at having found her. Then a sudden thought came to him. He drew back and said, "Are you really Alor or only the shadow of my mind?"

She did not answer but only held up her mouth to be kissed again.

Heath turned away, too weary and hopeless even to destroy the vision. And then he thought, "Why should I destroy it? If the woman is lost to me why shouldn't I keep the dream?"

He looked at her again and she was Alor, clothed in warm flesh, eager-eyed.

The temptation swept over him again and this time he did not fight it. He was a god, whether he wished it or not. He would create.

He threw the whole force of his mind against the golden mist, and the intoxication of sheer power made him drunk and mad with joy.

The glowing cloud drew back to become a horizon and a sky. Under Heath's feet an island grew, warm sweet earth, rich with grass and rioting with flowers, a paradise lost in a dreaming sea. Wavelets whispered on the wide beaches, the drooping fronds of the Hha-tiees stirred lazily in the wind and bright birds darted, singing. Snug in the little cove a ship floated, a lovely thing that angels might have built.

Perfection, the unattainable wish of the soul. And Alor was with him to share it.

He knew now why no one had ever come out of the Moonfire.

He took the vision of Alor by the hand. He wandered with it along the beaches and presently he was aware of something missing. He smiled, and once again the little dragon rode his shoulder and he stroked it and there was no least flaw in this Elysium. David Heath had found his godhead.

But some stubborn corner of his heart betrayed him. It said, This is all a lie and Alor waits for you. If you tarry you and she will he as those others, who are dead and smiling in the Moonflre.

He did not want to listen. He was happy. But something made him listen and he knew that as long as the real Alor lived he could not really be content with a dream. He knew that he must destroy this paradise before it destroyed him. He knew that the Moonfire was a deadly thing and that men could not be given the power of gods and continue sane.

And yet he could not destroy the island. He could not!

Horror overcame him that he had so far succumbed, that he could no longer control his own will. And he destroyed the island and the sea and the lovely ship and it was harder than if he had tom his own flesh from the bones.

And he destroyed the vision of Alor.

He knew that if he wished to escape the madness and the death of the Moonfire he must not again create so much as a blade of grass. Nothing. Because he would never again have the strength to resist the unholy joy of creation.

VII

TO WALK DIVINE

ONCE MORE he ran shouting through the golden fog. And it might have been a year or only a moment later that he heard Alor's voice very faintly in the distance, calling his name.

He followed the sound, crying out more loudly, but he did not hear her again. Then, looming in shadowy grandeur through the mist, he saw a castle. It was a typical Upland stronghold but it was larger than the castle of any barbarian king and it was built out of one huge crimson jewel of the sort called Dragon's Blood.

Heath knew that he was seeing part of Broca's dream.

Steps of beaten gold led up to a greater door. Two tall warriors, harness blazing with gems, stood guard. Heath went between them and they caught and held him fast. Broca's hatred for the Earthman was implicit in the beings his mind created.

Heath tried to tear himself free but their strength was more than human. They took him down fantastic corridors, over floors of pearl and crystal and precious metals. The walls were lined with open chests, full of every sort of treasure the barbarian mind could conceive. Slaves went silent-footed on their errands and the air was heavy with perfume and spices. Heath thought how strange it was to walk through the halls of another man's dream.

He was brought into a vast room where many people feasted. There were harpists and singers and dancing girls and throngs of slaves, men who wrestled and men who fought and danced with swords. The men and women at the long tables looked like chieftains and their wives but they wore plain leather and tunics without decoration, so that Broca's guardsmen and even his slaves were more resplendent than they.

Above the shouting and the revelry Broca sat, high on a throne-chair that was made like a silver dragon with its jeweled wings spread wide. He wore magnificent harness and a carved diamond that only a high king may wear hung between his eyebrows. He drank wine out of a golden cup and watched the feasting with eyes that had in them no smallest flicker of humanity. God or demon, Broca was no longer a man.

Alor sat beside him. She wore the robes of a queen but her face was hidden in her hands and her body was still as death.

Heath's cry carried across all the noise of the feast. Broca leaped to his feet and an abrupt silence fell. Everyone, guards, chieftains and slaves, turned to watch as Heath was led toward the throne—and they all hated him as Broca hated.

Alor raised her head and looked into his eyes. And she asked, in his own words, "Are you really David or only the shadow of my mind?"

"I am David," he told her and was glad he had destroyed his paradise.

Broca's mad gaze fixed on Heath. "I didn't think you had the strength," he said, and then he laughed. "But you're not a godl You stand there captive and you have no power."

Heath knew that he could fight Broca on his own grounds but he did not dare. One taste of that ecstasy had almost destroyed him. If he tried it again he knew that he and the barbarian would hurl their shadow-armies against each other as long as they lived and he would be as mad as Broca.

He looked about him at the hostile creatures who were solid and real enough to kill him at Broca's word. Then he said to Alor, "Do you wish to stay here now?"

"I wish to go out of the Moonfire with you, David, if I can. If not I wish to die."

The poison had not touched her yet. She had come without desire. Though she had bathed in the Moonfire she was still sane.

Heath turned to Broca. "You see, she isn't worthy of you."

Broca's face was dark with fury. He took Alor between his great hands and said, "You will stay with me. You're part of me. Listen, Alor. There's nothing I can't give you. I'll build other castles, other tribes, and I'll subdue them and put them in your lap. God and goddess together, Alorl We'll reign in glory-"

"I'm no goddess," Alor said. "Let me go."

And Broca said, "I'll kill you first." His gaze lowered on Heath. "I'll kill you both."

Heath said, "Do the high gods stoop to tread on ants and worms? We don't deserve such honor, she and I. We're weak and even the Moonfire can't give us strength."

He saw the flicker of thought in Broca's face and went on. "You're all-powerful, there's nothing you can't do. Why burden yourself with a mate too weak to worship you? Create another Alor, Broca! Create a goddess worthy of you!"

After a moment Alor said, "Create a woman who can love you, Broca, and let us go."

For a time there was silence in the place. The feasters and the dancers and the slaves stood without moving and their eyes glittered in the eerie light. And then Broca nodded.

"It is well," he said. "Stand up, Alor."

She stood. The look of power came into the face of the tall barbarian, the wild joy of molding heart's desire out of nothingness. Out of the golden air he shaped another Alor. She was not a woman but a thing of snow and flame and wonder, so that beside her the reality appeared drab and beautiless. She mounted the throne and sat beside her creator and put her hand in his and smiled.

Broca willed the guardsmen to let Heath free. He went to Alor and Broca said contemptuously. "Get out of my sight."

They went together across the crowded place, toward the archway through which Heath had entered. Still there was silence and no one moved.

As they reached the archway it vanished, becoming solid wall. Behind them Broca laughed and suddenly the company burst also into wild jeering laughter.

Heath caught Alor tighter by the hand and led her toward another door. It, too, disappeared and the mocking laughter screamed and echoed from the vault.

Broca shouted, "Did you think that I would let you go— you two who betrayed me when I was a man? Even a god can remember!"

Heath saw that the guardsmen and the others were closing in, and he saw how their eyes gleamed. He was filled with a black fear and he put Alor behind him.

Broca cried, "Weakling! Even to save your life, you can't create!"

It was true. He dared not. The shadow-people drew in upon him with their soulless eyes and their faces that were mirrors of the urge to kill.

And then, suddenly, the answer came. Heath's answer rang back. "I will not create—four J will destroy!"

Once again he threw the strength of his mind against the Moonfire but this time there was no unhealthy lure to what he did. There was no desire in him but his love for Alor and the need to keep her safe.

The hands of the shadow-people reached out and dragged him away from Alor. He heard her scream and he knew that if he failed they would both be torn to pieces. He summoned all the force that was in him, all the love.

He saw the faces of the shadow-people grow distorted and blurred. He felt their grip weaken and suddenly they were only shadows, a dim multitude in a crumbling castle of dreams.

Broca's goddess faded with the dragon throne and Broca's

kingly harness was only a web of memories half-seen above the plain leather.

Broca leaped to his feet with a wild, hoarse cry.

Heath could feel how their two minds locked and swayed on that strange battleground. And as Broca fought to hold his vision, willing the particles of energy into the semblance of matter, so Heath fought to tear them down, to disperse them. For a time the shadows held in that half-world between existence and nothingness.

Then the walls of the castle wavered and ran like red water and were gone. The goddess Alor, the dancers and the slaves and the chieftains, all were gone, and there were only the golden fog and a tall barbarian, stripped of his dreams, and the man Heath and the woman Alor.

Heath looked at Broca and said, "I am stronger than you, because I threw away my godhead."

Broca panted, "I will build again!"

Heath said, "Build."

And he did, his eyes blazing, his massive body shaken with the force of his will.

It was all there again, the castle and the multitude of feasters and the jewels.

Broca screamed to his shadow-people. "Kill!"

But again, as their hands reached out to destroy, they began to weaken and fade.

Heath cried, "If you want your kingdom, Broca, let us go!"

The castle was now no more than a ghostly outline. Broca's face was beaded with sweat. His hands clawed the air. He swayed with his terrible effort but Heath's dark eyes were bleak and stern. If he had now the look of a god it was a god as ruthless and unshakeable as fate.

The vision crumbled and vanished.

Broca's head dropped. He would not look at them from the bitterness of his defeat. "Get out," he whispered. "Go and let Vakor greet you."

Heath said, "It will be a cleaner death than this."

Alor took his hand and they walked away together through the golden mist. They turned once to look back and already the castle walls were built again, towering magnificent.

"He'll be happy," Heath said, "until he dies."

Alor shuddered. "Let us go."

They went together, away from the pulsing heart of the Moonfire, past the slopes of the crater and down the long way to the harbor. Finally they were aboard the Ethne once again.'

As they found their slow way out through the island maze Heath held Alor in his arms. They did not speak. Their lips met often with the poignancy of kisses that will not be for long. The golden mists thinned and the fire faded in their blood and the heady sense of power was gone but they did not know nor care.

They came at last out of the veil of the Moonfire and saw ahead the green sail of the Lahal, where Vakor waited.

Alor whispered, "Good bye, my love, my David!" and left the bitterness of her tears upon his mouth.

The two ships lay side by side in the still water. Vakor was waiting as Heath and Alor came aboard with the other Children of the Moon beside him. He motioned to the seamen who stood there also and said, "Seize them."

Heath saw their faces and wondered. Then, as he looked at Alor, he realized that she was not as she had been before. There was something clean and shining about her now, a new depth and a new calm strength, and in her eyes a strange new beauty. He knew that he himself had changed. They were no longer gods, he and Alor, but they had bathed in the Moonfire and they would never again be quite the same.

He met Vakor's gaze and was not afraid. The cruel, wolfish face of the priest lost some of its assurance. A queer look of doubt crossed over it. He said, "Where is Broca?"

"We left him there, building empires in the mist."

"At the heart of the Moonfire?"

"Yes."

"You lie!" cried Vakor. "You could not have come back yourselves, from the heart of the sleeping god. No one ever has." But still the doubt was there.

Heath shrugged. "It doesn't really matter," he said, "whether you believe or not."

There was a long, strange silence. Then the four tall priests in their black tunics said to Vakor, "We must believe. Look into their eyes."

With a solemn ritual gesture they stepped back and left Vakor alone.

Vakor whispered, "It can't be true. The law, the tabu is built on that rock. Men will come out of the fringe as you did, Heath, wrecked and crushed by their blasphemy. But not from the Moonfire itself. Never! That is why the law was made, lest all of Venus die in dreams."

Alor said quietly, "All those others wanted power. We wanted only love. We needed nothing else."

Again there was silence while Vakor stared at them and struggled with himself. Then, very slowly, he said, "You are beyond my power. The sleeping god received you and has chosen to let you go unscathed. I am only a Child of the Moon. I may not judge."

He covered his face and turned away.

One of the lesser priests spoke to Johor. "Let them be given men for their oars."

And Heath and Alor understood that they were free.

Weeks later, Heath and Alor stood at dawn on the shore of the Sea of Morning Opals. The breeze was strong off the land. It filled the golden sail of the Ethne, so that she strained at her mooring lines, eager to be free.

Heath bent and cast them off.

They stood together silently and watched as the little ship gathered speed, going lightly, sweetly and alone into the glory of the morning. The ivory image that was her figurehead lifted its arms to the dawn and smiled and Heath waited there until the last bright gleam of the sail was lost and with it the last of his old life, his memories and his dreams.

Alor touched him gently. He turned and took her in his arms, and they walked away under the liha-txees, while the young day brightened in the sky. And they thought how the light of the sun they never saw was more beautiful and full of promise than all the naked wonder of the Moonfire that they had held within their hands.

A VISION OF VENUS by Otis Adelbert Kline

DR. MORGAN, scientist and psychologist, stared fixedly into the crystal globe before him, as he sat in the study of his strange mountain observatory.

For many years, he had been communicating with people on Mars and Venus by means of telepathy, and recording these communications.

Just now, he had established rapport with Lotan, a young plant hunter for the Imperial Government of Olba, the only nation on Venus which had aircraft. He was seeing with Lotan's eyes, hearing with his ears, precisely as if this earthly scientist were Lotan the Olban. The electrodes of his audio-photo thought recorder were clamped to his temples, and every thought, every sense impression of Lotan's was, for the time, Dr. Morgan's.

Lotan's little one-man flier was behaving badly. He had just come through a terrific storm in which he had lost his bearings. His navigating instruments were out of commission and his power mechanism was growing weaker. It would be necessary for him to land and make repairs, soon.

For many months he had sought the kadkor, that rare and valuable food fungus which had once been cultivated in

Olba, but bad been wiped out by a parasite. His sovereign had offered him the purple of nobility and a thousand kantols of land, if he would but bring him as many kadkor spores as would cover his thumb nail. But so far his quest had been fruitless.

Far below him the Ropok Ocean stretched its blue-green waters for miles in all directions—a vast expanse of sea and sky that teemed with life of a thousand varieties. There were creatures of striking fantastic beauty and of terrifying ugliness. A number of large, white birds, with red-tipped wings and long, sharply curved beaks, skimmed the water in search of food. Hideous flying reptiles, some with wing-spreads of more than sixty feet, soared quite near the flier, eyeing it curiously as if half minded to attack. They would scan the water until they saw such quarry as suited them, then, folding their webbed wings and dropping head first with terrific speed, would plunge beneath the waves, to emerge with their struggling prey and leisurely flap away.

The sea itself was even more crowded with life. And mightiest of all its creatures was the great ordzook, so immense that it could easily crush a large battleship with a single crunch of its huge jaws.

But these sights were no novelty to Lotan, the botanist. What he hoped to see, and that quickly, was land. Failing in this, he knew by the way the power mechanism was acting, that he would soon be compelled to settle to the surface of the Ropok probably to be devoured, ship and all, by some fearful marine monster.

Presently he caught sight of a tiny islet, and toward this he directed his limping ship with all the force of his will. For his little craft, which looked much like a small metal duck boat with a glass globe over the cockpit, was raised, lowered, or moved in any direction by a mechanism which amplified the power of telekinesis, that mysterious force emanating from the subjective mind, which enables earthly mediums to levitate ponderable objects without physical contact. It had no wings, rudder, propeller or gas chambers, and its only flying equipment, other than this remarkable mechanism, were two fore-and-aft safety parachutes, which would lower it gently in case the telekinetic power failed.

Normally the little craft could travel at a speed of five hundred miles an hour in the upper atmosphere, but now it glided very slowly, and moreover was settling toward the water alarmingly. Lotan exerted every iota of his mind power, and barely made the sloping, sandy beach when the mecha-anism failed altogether.

As he sprang out of his little craft, Lotan's first care was for his' power-mechanism. Fortunately the splicing of a wire which had snapped repaired the damage.

He looked about him. At his feet the sea was casting up bits of wreckage. It was evident that a ship had gone to pieces on the reef—the work of the recent storm. The body of a drowned sailor came in on a comber. But it did not reach the shore, for a huge pair of jaws emerged from the water, snapped, and it was gone. In the brief interval he recognized the naval uniform of Tyrhana, the most powerful maritime nation of Venus.

Then his attention was attracted by something else—tracks, freshly made, leading from a large piece of wreckage across the soft sand and into the riotous tangle of vegetation that clothed the interior. They were small—undoubtedly the tracks of a woman or boy.

Lotan followed, resolved to try to rescue this marooned fellow-being, before taking off.

He plunged into a jungle that would have appeared grotesque to earthly eyes. The primitive plants of Venus, which bear no fruits, flowers nor seeds, but reproduce solely by subdivision, spores or spawn, assume many strange and unusual forms and colors. Pushing through a fringe of jointed, reed-like growths that rattled like skeletons as he passed, he entered a dense fern-forest. Immense tree-ferns with rough trunks and palm-like leaf crowns, some of which were more than seventy feet in height, towered above many bushy varieties that were gigantic compared to the largest ferns of earthly jungles. Climbing ferns hung everywhere, like lianas. Creeping ferns made bright green patches on the ground. And dwarf, low-growing kinds barely raised their fronds above the violet-colored moss which carpeted the forest floor.

The trail was plain enough, as the little feet had sunk deeply into the moss and leaf-mould. It led over a fernclothed rise to lower marshy ground, where fungus growths predominated. There were colossal toadstools, some of which reared their heads more than fifty feet above ground, tremendous morels like titanic spear heads projecting from the earth, squat puff-balb that burst when touched, scattering clouds of tiny black spores, and grotesque funguses shaped like candelabra,- corkscrews, organ pipes, stars, fluted funnels and upraised human hands.

But Lotan gave no heed to these. To him they were quite commonplace.

As he hurried along the trail, there suddenly came from the tangle ahead a horrible peal of demoniacal laughter. It was quickly echoed by a dozen others coming from various points in the fungoid forest. He dashed forward, gripping his weapons, for he recognized the cry of the hahoe, that terrible carnivore of the Venerian jungles. It had discovered a victim and was summoning its fellows.

Like all Venerian gentlemen, Lotan wore a tork and scarbo belted to his waist. The tork was a rapid-fire weapon about two feet long, of blued steel. It was shaped much like a carpenter's level, and fired by means of explosive gas, discharging needle-like glass projectiles filled with a potent poison that would instantly paralyze man or beast. The scarbo was a cutting, thrusting weapon with a blade like that of a scimitar and basket hilt.

As he abruptly emerged into a little clearing, he saw a slender, golden-haired girl who wore the silver and purple of nobility, clinging to the cap of a tall fungus. Below her, snarling, snapping and leaping upward, were a half dozen hahoes, huge brutes somewhat like hyenas, but twice as large as any hyena that ever walked the earth, and far more hideous. They had no hair, but were covered with rough scales of a black color, and mottled and spots of golden orange. Each beast had three horns, one projecting from either temple and one standing out between the eyes. Two of them were gnawing at the stem of the fungus, and had made such headway that it seemed likely to topple at any moment.

With a reassuring shout to the frightened girl, Lotan whipped out his scarbo, and elevating the muzzle of his tork, pressed the firing button. Horrid death-yells from the hahoes followed the spitting of the tork, as the deadly glass projectiles did their work. In less than a minute four of the brutes lay dead at the foot of the fungus, and the other two had fled.

But during that time, brief as it was, another flesh-eater of Venus, far more fearful than the hahoes, had seen the girl and marked her for its prey.

As Lotan looked upward, about to speak to the girl, she screamed in deadly terror, for a man-eating gnarsh had suddenly swooped downward from the clouds. Seizing her in its huge talons, it flapped swiftly away.

Lotan raised his tork, then lowered it with a cry of despair. For even though he might succeed in killing the flying monster without striking the girl, a fall from that dizzy height would mean sure death for her.

There was the bare possibility, however, that the gnarsh would not eat her until it reached its eyrie, which would be situated on some inaccessible mountain crag. As there were no mountains on the island, the monster would probably head for the mainland, and he could follow in his flier.

He accordingly turned, and dashed back to where his airship lay. Leaping into the cabin, he slammed the door. The little craft shot swiftly upward to a height of more than two thousand feet. Already the gnarsh was more than a mile away, flapping swiftly westward with its victim dangling limply.

Like an avenging arrow, the tiny craft hurtled after the flying monster. As he came up behind it, Lotan drew his scarbo, and opening the cabin door, leaned out.

Almost before the gnarsh knew of his presence, the botanist had flung an arm around the girl's slender waist. With two deft slashes of his keen blade, he cut the tendons that controlled the mighty talons. They relaxed, and with a choking cry of relief, he dragged her into the cabin. Turning his craft, he aimed his tork and sent a stream of deadly projectiles into the flying monster. Its membraneous wings crumpled, and it fell into the sea.

Unconscious of what he was doing, the plant-hunter kept his arm around the girl's waist—held her close. He slammed the door, and turning, looked into her eyes. In them he read gratitude—and something more that thrilled him immea-sureably. With that brief look went the heart of Lotan. He was drawing her nearer, crushing her to him, unresisting, while the ship hurtled forward, when he remembered that she was of the nobility, and he only a botanist. The jewels that glittered on her garments would have ransomed a rogo". And he was a poor man. He released her. "You are of Tyrhana?" he asked.

"I am Mirim, daughter of Zand, Romojak** of the Fleets of Tyrhana," he replied. "And you, my brave rescuer?"

"Lotan, plant hunter for His Imperial Majesty, Zinlo of Olba," he replied. "My navigating instruments are out of commission, but when we strike the shore line, which we are sure to do by proceeding westward, I can find the way to Tyrhana and take you home."

"Home," she said, and there was a sob in her voice. "I have no home, now. My mother died when I was bom. My father went down with his ship in the great storm that cast me on that terrible island. Now I return to the loneliness of a great castle filled with slaves." Burying her face in her hands, she burst into tears.

His arm encircled her grief-shaken body, and his hand stroked her soft, golden hair.

"Mirim, I—" he began, then stopped resolutely. The gulf between them was too great. Now if he had but found the kadkor and won the reward, he would be her equal—could ask her hand in marriage. He gasped, as that which had been in the back of his mind, endeavoring to fight its way into his objective consciousness, suddenly occurred to him. He had seen the kadkor. It had been a kadkor that Mirim had climbed to escape from the hahoes. But in the excitement of the moment his mind had only registered the fact subjectively. Back there on that tiny islet, now several hundred kants away, was the object of his quest. But he did not know

"King. "Admiral.

its bearings, and had not even a compass to guide him. He might search a lifetime and not find that islet again.

Presently the girl ceased her sobbing, sat up and began to adjust her disheveled garments. She detached her belt pouch and handed it to him.

"Will you empty this for me, please?" she asked. ""It came open and got filled with some horrid gray spores."

Lotan looked at the spores, and his heart gave a great leap of joy, for they were the spores of the kadkor, scraped from the gills of the fungus by her open belt pouch as the girl had been dragged aloft.

"I'll keep these, if you don't mind," he said, "for to me they are worth the purple, and a thousand kantols of land. Moreover, they give me the courage to say that which has lain in my heart since first I looked into your eyes. I love you, Mirim. Will you be my wife?"

"Take me, Lotan," was all she said, but her lips against his told him all.

KALDAR, WORLD OF ANTARES by Edmond Hamilton

1 :   THE START

"You WILL find yourself, if you accept, on another world!"

Stuart Merrick half rose from his chair in amazement at the statement, but the nine men who faced him across the long table did not move. He searched their faces as though to discover some sign that they were joking, but found none. All were men of middle age or over, of serious, scholastic type, and the one who had spoken was an elderly man with iron-gray hair and eyes like swordpoints.

They were all watching Merrick intently. He was perhaps half their average age, a rather shabbily dressed dark-haired young man whose deceptively lean figure held muscles that only the broad shoulders hinted. His dark eyes were the eyes of a dreamer, but in the tanned face and set of the cleft chin strength was evident.

"On another world," the speaker repeated. "If that statement frightens you, say so now and save our time."

"It doesn't," Merrick answered evenly, "but it interests me a great deal."

"Very well," the other said crisply. "You possess the qualifications which our advertisement mentioned?"

"I think I do," Merrick answered. "Adventurous disposition, education, lack of family connections, indigence—yes, you have them all in me, especially the indigence."

"So much the better," the other calmly told him. "It is unnecessary that you learn our names, but I may say that we nine are probably the nine greatest astronomers and astrophysicists now living. Our advertisement was inserted because we need the help of some younger and more adventurous person to aid us in an investigation we have planned for some years. That is nothing less than the personal exploration of a world of one of the fixed stars!

"That may possibly seem to you an insane statement. It is not. Five years ago we nine determined upon it. Astronomers know almost all there is to know about the planets of our own sun, our own solar system. We know their temperatures, have mapped their surfaces, have charted their orbits. But what of the other suns, the unthinkably distant fixed stars? Around them too revolve great worlds, more calculated to be the abode of fife than our own neighbor-planets.

"The telescope and spectroscope can show us but little of the distant stars, save that they exist. The only way in which we will ever gain knowledge concerning any of these worlds is for a man to visit it. Of course no rocket or projectile that we could devise could ever cross the gulf to the nearest of the stars. But we have worked for five years on the problem and have found a way of bridging that gulf, of sending a living man across the void to one of the stars and of bringing him back.

"Briefly, our way is to split up the body of the chosen man into the electrons that compose it, and of using a terrific vibratory beam to drive those electrons together out toward the star or world decided on. An electron, a mere tiny particle of electricity, can travel faster than anything in the universe, with sufficent force behind it. Our projector's force-beam drives the dissembled electrons of that man out to the world of any star in moments only. On reaching that world, the projector's force halting, the electrons will combine instantly again into the living man.

"In the same way, if the projector's force were reversed, and if the man were to stay in the same spot on that distant world, the beam would reach across the gulf and in an instant decompose his body into electrons, draw those electrons back through the void to earth in a moment, and there recompose them instantly into the man again. Thus our projector can send a man without harm out to the farthest star and can reach out to bring him back again.

"We have chosen a world of the great red star Antares to investigate first. Antares is technically a red giant among stars, a huge sun of great age. Around it revolves at least one great world our telescopes and spectroscopes have glimpsed, and it is of that world that we want first to leam, whether it is habitable and whether it holds intelligent life.

"We are all too old and unfitted for such a venture as this, however, and the death of any of us would be, all modesty aside, a loss to science. You, however, are young and adventurous and seem to answer all requirements. We will project you out to this world of Antares in the way that I have described, and when we draw you back to earth if you can give any information on conditions there we will pay you one hundred thousand dollars. The risks of it are self-evident. Do you accept?"

Merrick drew a long breath. "Another world—another star! But where on that world would I find myself when your projector sent me there?"

"There is no way of knowing," was the calm answer. "You might find yourself in the center of an ocean or in the pit of a volcano or even on an airless world where you would be instantly asphyxiated. It is a great gamble, for we know nothing more about that world than that it exists. It is to know more that we want to send someone to it."

"And when would I return?"

"In three days. If you survived on reaching this world you would note the exact spot where you found yourself and in three days at the same hour would take that position. Our projector, stabbing its beam across the gulf to that spot with reversed force, would draw you back as dissembled electrons to the earth."

Merrick considered silently. The room was still, the ticking of a clock unnaturally loud. A faint murmur of noise came from the night activities of the city outside.

Suddenly Merrick rose to his feet. "I accept," he said quickly. "But with one condition."

"And that is?" asked the other anxiously.

"That I start tonight-now!"

The nine scientists showed their astonishment. "Now?"

There was a grin on Merrick's tanned face. "Now or never. If I sit around thinking this thing over it's a thousand to one I'll back out on it. You can send me out tonight?"

"We can, yes," the spokesman of the nine answered, "though we hadn't expected to do so. The condensers have been charging for weeks and all is ready. But you'll want to take equipment with you—that will take time to gather."

Merrick shook his head. "Nothing but an automatic, enough food for the week, and different clothes than these. Other equipment would be useless; for if I couldn't live on that world three days without it, it's ten to one I couldn't live there with it either."

"He is right," one of the scientists interjected.

"Then we can have the things you mention ready at once," the spokesman of the nine said.

He turned, gave quick orders, and in a moment the nine had snapped into activity, disappearing into the rear and lower parts of the building, hurrying excitedly.

Merrick heard the clash and rumble of great objects being moved, caught the whine of dynamos or motors from somewhere beneath. The building that had been so silent was suddenly alive, a buzz of excited voices and rush of hurrying steps echoing through it.

Merrick heard other heavy objects being shifted, voices calling directions. A moment later the elderly spokesman of the scientists brought in to him a suit of rough khaki clothing, a heavy automatic, and a small knapsack that held concentrated foods. Merrick donned these quickly. He felt his spirits rising as he did so, the feel of the weapon and rough clothing familiar to him. A synchronized watch completed the outfit.

When he had them on, Merrick stepped with a sudden whim to one of the room's windows and raised a blind.

Outside and beneath in the darkness lay a city street, its curb-lights a double lane of white luminescence through which rolled a golden stream of auto headlamps. Crowds of evening pleasure-seekers jammed the walks. Merrick stared thoughtfully.

The hand of the scientists' leader on his shoulder brought him around.

"All is ready," the other said. "You start at two exactly."

Merrick nodded and followed him through a door into the rear portion of the building. It was a long white-lit laboratory whose roof had been slid aside in some way; only the black night sky was overhead. Masses of unfamiliar apparatus were in the room, but most prominent was the object at its center, a low square platform of metal resting on squat concrete piers. From its sides led heavy, black-cased cables.

These wound through bewildering tangles of wiring to the massed apparatus. One whole wall was occupied by huge condensers resting in a metal rack. There was other apparatus beyond Merrick's recognition, coils and enigmatic cases. Guarding rails of black insulation circled the apparatus everywhere, protecting from its terrific electrical force. On one wall was a large switch-panel.

His guide touched a switch and the lights in the room died. As darkness engulfed them, Merrick saw for the first time that the black sky overhead was gemmed with countless burning stars. Some were calm green and others golden-yellow, others still with the blue of living sapphires. But southwestward from the zenith swung one that was fiery red, a great crimson eye winking and twinkling across the void.

"Antares," said the other quietly. "In moments, if all goes well, you will be upon its world."

Merrick gazed. "What's waiting up there for me—I wonder—"

The other motioned to the platform. The projector," he said simply. "It is almost two."

"I just stand on the platform?" Merrick inquired, and the other nodded.

"Yes, and at exactly two the force-beam will project you outward. You ought to find yourself almost instantly on that world of Antares. Three days from now at two exactly you must be again at the same spot there, so that the projector's beam can draw you back across the void. Good-bye, and good luck."

Merrick shook the hand extended, then turned and stepped onto the low platform. Through the room's darkness he could see the other's dark figure at the switchpanel, could hear him calling directions to the others as they changed connections quickly. The throb of the dynamos had become terrific and Merrick, his thoughts kaleidoscopic, wondered if they were not audible in the street outside.

His eyes were on the dark figure at the switch-panel. Merrick saw him jerk over three switches in quick succession, then shift a rheostat arm. He was just turning to look upward when another switch clicked at the panel. As it did so Merrick felt incredible forces flooding through him, shaking him in every atom, and with a thunder in his ears the dark laboratory passed from around him and he was hurled into blackness.

II :   KALDAR, WORLD OF ANTARES

THROUGH that black unconsciousness Merrick seemed to flash but for instants before out of the blackness there sprang again light. There was a sharp shock that jarred him through, the thunder in his ears receded, and then, staggering, he was looking about him in stupefaction.

From above a blaze of light and heat beat upon him and as he raised his eyes he could have cried out. For in the sky above there burned such a sun as Merrick never had imagined, not the familiar golden sun of earth but a colossal crimson sun whose arc filled a third of the heavens and whose dazzling brilliance half blinded him! Antares, that mighty sun, and he was upon its world!

He lowered his eyes, looked about him. His brain reeled.

Around him there stretched the looming buildings of a mighty city. Giant pyramids of black metal they were, sky-storming structures with terraced sides. Far around him lay the mighty city's mass, broken by wide black streets and a single great circular plaza. At the plaza's center rose a small round dais of black metal and on it Merrick was standing.

And crowded in the plaza around the dais were thousands on thousands of awe-struck, silent people!

They were people such as Merrick had never seen before. They were tall and dark of hair and white of skin, though with a ruddy tint that the red sunlight explained. Each of them, men and women alike, wore a short flexible garment of black metal woven like chainmail, reaching from shoulders to knees. Each of the men wore in a belt around this a sheathed sword of long, rapier-like design and a short metal tube with a bulging handle or stock.

Merrick stared stupefiedly at them from the central dais on which he alone stood, and for a moment utter silence held the vast throng. Then from them there burst suddenly a tremendous shout.

They were pointing up to him in the wildest excitement and crying to each other. Merrick, half stunned by his transition to this strange world and strange city, caught of their cries the one word "Chan! Chan!" repeated over and over. The place was a wild bedlam of maddest excitement. Merrick, dazed by the wild uproar his sudden appearance on this world had created, was hardly aware of more than that he had reached his goal.

Out of the madly shouting throng there sprang toward the dais a single man, great and black-bearded, fury on his face. He jerked from his sheath a long, slender sword of metal as he leaped, and the sword shone with white light all along its blade the moment after he drew it. With the shining sword in hand he was charging toward the dais when others caught him and held him back. Merrick's automatic was in his hand by then and he remained on the dais despite the incomprehensible uproar.

Suddenly out of the throng another figure pushed close to the dais, a single one that he saw was a girl. Tall almost as himself she was, her slim figure sheated from shoulders to knees by the black metal garment. Her piled hair was as black as the metal, and beneath it her dark eyes were wide with amazement as she stared up at Merrick. She turned from him then, flung up a hand, and the huge throng quickly quieted.

She spoke quickly to the throng. The black-bearded man interrupted, pointing to Merrick and seeming to urge something, but the girl shook her head decisively and haughtily. Merrick saw her pointing up to him on the dais and repeating the word "Chan." When she ended he was stunned, for there flashed up into the air thousands of shining swords and these rolled toward him a shattering shout of "Chan!"

Merrick waited tensely for developments. He saw by now that he had been flung into some strange situation among these people of Antares' world. A double file of sword-armed men approached the dais and he stiffened.

The girl seemed to comprehend his doubt. She came forward, extended a hand as though motioning him down beside her. Merrick met her eyes, then stepped unhesitatingly down to her side. She said something to him in her low, musical voice, but seeing that he still did not understand, pointed simply toward one of the great pyramids at the plaza's edge, one that seemed greatest of all in the city.

They started toward it, the double file of armed men on either side. Merrick's eyes clashed with those of the black-bearded man for a moment as they passed. The guards pushed a way through the wildly shouting throng that surged on all sides about them. The whole thing seemed still an unconnected sequence of unreal events to the astounded Merrick.

As they neared the high portal of the great black pyramid, Merrick looked in awe about him. Far along the city's streets he could glimpse hastening throngs, and overhead flying-craft of some kind came and went. It was all incredible, unreal—this city of looming, terraced black pyramids beneath the huge red sun. But they were passing into the great structure that was their goal.

They were entering a huge square hall, ranks of armed guards drawn up about it. The girl gave an order and the guards dropped back. She and Merrick entered a small metal chamber in which was one man. This one touched a plate on the wall, and the door clicked shut behind them. Another touch and they seemed crushed to the floor by infinite forces for an instant; then the door opened again. As they stepped out Merrick saw that the small chamber was a super-elevator of some sort, for they were no longer in the lower hall of the pyramid.

They were in a big room that was at the tip of the same building, he saw. Great windows let in the crimson sunlight and gave a glimpse of the far-reaching city outside. The girl came toward Merrick, and now with her were two men bearing a complicated apparatus. Its main feature was a small generator of some kind with intricate controls, from which led leads ending in tiny electrodes. The two scientists, for they obviously were, motioned for Merrick to he down on the metal bench beside him.

Merrick went cold. Until then the sheer strangeness of events had carried him forward, but now he halted. What was the apparatus? Was he to be used as some strange animal for-vivisection?

The girl seemed again to comprehend his doubt, laid a hand on his arm and spoke reassuringly. The words meant nothing but the tone of them was reassuring, and Merrick found himself thrilling to the touch of the girl's soft hand. He mustered a grin, nodded amicably to the two scientists, and lay face down upon the bench. The two made quick incisions in the back of his neck, painlessly, and inserted the tiny electrodes.

Then they turned and Merrick heard the soft humming of the apparatus. At the same moment he experienced a strange whirling of his thoughts. It seemed to him that all his knowledge and memories and speculations, everything in his mind, was being changed and turned over and crowded in chaotic fashion. The mechanism hummed on while the two fingered its controls. When at last they turned it off and undid the connections and withdrew, Merrick's brain ceased its chaotic whirl.

The girl came forward eagerly as he rose. "You understand our tongue now, O Chan?" she asked. The fact stunned Merrick. The girl was speaking in her own tongue still, yet he understood her perfectly!

"But how—how is it that I can understand now?" he asked, and was aware that the strange tongue rose to his lips as easily as his own.

"It is that apparatus, the brainchanger," the girl told him. "It implants knowledge artificially into the brain. All knowledge, you know, is received by the brain as impulses through the sense-nerves, and that apparatus duplicates those impulses and sends them through the nerves into the brain artificially, received there as knowledge, giving you knowledge of our language as though you had studied it for years. On all Kaldar there are no teachers, only brainchangers."

"Convenient," muttered Merrick. "Kaldar—that is this world?"

The girl was wide-eyed. "Of course. Kaldar is the only one of our sun's worlds that is habitable, as far as we know. Surely you know that, O Chan!"

"Chan?" Merrick repeated. "They were calling me that before—what does it mean? And what is your own name?"

"I am Narna," she answered. "But surely you understand that you are Chan—Chan of Corla?"

"Corla—what's that?" Merrick asked, bewildered.

"Is it possible that you do not know?" said Narna, astonished. "Come—"

She led the way to one of the high windows. Merrick followed, looked forth upon a breath-taking scene.

From the tip of this great pyramid, a thousand feet in the air, they could look out far across the mighty city of black pyramids. Far away in all directions it stretched. Men and women thronged the streets below andf jammed the great plaza, the one clear spot upon it being the round little dais at its center. Over the excited throngs and the city black, projectile-like flying-craft were rushing and dipping.

Here and there the city's black mass was laced with crimson where were parks and gardens, all filled with blood-red vegetation. Out beyond the city's edge Merrick glimpsed in the distance crimson fields, and forests or jungles. Beyond these, walling the horizon on all sides, there rose a titanic circular range of black mountains that was like a colossal, awful wall around the city and surrounding crimson country. Overhead flamed the huge crimson sun, casting its weird red light down on the whole strange scene.

"The city of Corla," said Narna. "All within the ring of the mountains we hold, against our enemies."

Merrick's dazed eyes took in the amazing scene. "Corla," he whispered. "But what then does Chan mean?"

The girl's eyes held amazement. "Do not you know, you who came out of the unknown to be Chan? It means king, lord, master! You are the Chan of Corla—the supreme ruler of this landl"

MERBICK, stunned, could not speak for a moment. "I—ruler?" he managed to cry at last.

"Of course," said Narna. "One month ago the last Chan of Corla, who was my father, died. After waiting until the established month had passed, the nobles and people of Corla assembled today in the great plaza to choose a new Chan as is the custom. The dais at the plaza's center is the dais of the Chan, upon which none other than he may ever step under pain of death.

"All were sure that Jhalan would be chosen as the new Chan today, for though many think him cruel and ruthless, he is a great fighter and our land is so sore pressed by its enemies that it needs such a ruler. In moments more he would have been selected, indeed, and would have ascended the dais as Chan. But there came a sudden thunder and you appeared suddenly on the dais. By your strange appearance and unfamiliar garb it was evident that you had come out of the unknown, and since it was on the dais of the Chan that you appeared it was evident that destiny had sent you to us as a new ruler. Hence you were acclaimed as Chan of Corla, and are now its ruler."

Merrick was stunned. He sought to grasp the reality of it. A day—an hour—before, he had been Stuart Merrick, penniless adventurer on earth. And now he had been hurled to another world at the one spot where his appearance had made him automatically Chan of Corla, supreme king of a great landl

His mind began to work. "Then that black-bearded man who tried to rush me on the dais—"

"That was Jhalan. He was mad with rage when you appeared, for if you had not done so he would have been chosen Chan in moments. He is furious, therefore, to lose the rulership of Corla and also to lose me."

"To lose you?" Merrick asked, and Narna smiled.

"Yes, for only the new Chan may wed the daughter of the last one. Jhalan has long desired me and that was one reason why he wanted to be Chan."

Merrick's eyes searched her face. "But it seemed to me

you were espousing my cause down there rather than his?"

Narna colored. "I do not like bearded men," she said irrelevantly, then sobered. "But Jhalan will be here tonight with the rest of the Council of Twelve, the great nobles of Corla, to pledge allegiance to you as new Chan. I would try to placate him as much as possible if I were you—he is very angry and would make a very bad enemy."

Something in Merrick hardened. "If I am Chan I will rule as Chan," he answered, a strange new sense of power flooding him like wine.

Narna's eyes were steady on his. "I think that you will and Corla needs a strong Chan now if ever it has needed one," she said. Then, as she turned toward the lift-chamber: "The Council of Twelve will be here an hour after night falls."

"And you'll come too?" Merrick pursued.

"As daughter of the last Chan I too must pledge allegiance," she rejoined, laughing, and disappeared into the lift-chamber.

The next few hours passed in a whirl of strangeness for Merrick. Servants came, respectful and low-voiced, apparently regarding their new Chan as something of a divinity, almost. He was led through the great chambers that were his as Chan, at the pyramid's tip, to a huge bath with walls of varicolored metals. When he emerged from its steamy perfumes Corlan clothing was awaiting him, a soft undersuit of some silken material, black metal sandals, and one of the black metal tunics.

It was like all the others he had seen save that on its breast was a brilliant small red sun-disk. The red sun-disk was repeated on the walls around him, and was evidently the insignia of the Chan.

With the tunic went a belt in which were a sword and tube such as he had noticed. Merrick examined these weapons of the Corlans carefully. The sword seemed at first glance a simple long rapier of metal. But he found that when his grip tightened on the hilt it pressed a catch which released a terrific force stored in the hilt into the blade, making it shine with light. When anything was touched by this shining blade, he found, the force of the blade annihilated it instantly. He learned that the weapon was called a light-sword, due to the shining of the blade when charged, and saw that it was truly a deadly weapon, its touch alone meaning annihilation to any living thing.

The tube proved a stubby gun that shot small charges of shining force, called for a similar reason the light-gun. Its accurate range was no more than a few thousand feet, though extremely accurate within that distance. Merrick was later to leam that light-guns of cannon-size had been developed, however, with far greater range and destructive power. As it was, he reflected, any one armed with light-sword and light-gun would make a tough foe, able to fight at a distance or at close quarters with equally deadly effects.

Merrick ate the meal the servants brought, of simple cooked herbs and strong yellow wine, at a metal table beside one of the great windows. As he ate he could look out and see the huge crimson circle of Antares sinking westward, as on earth, behind the black rampart of the distant mountains, and could see the stars twinkling forth in the violet sky. They were brilliant but in strange groups and constellations, and though he recognized some of the greater stars at once, it was only after some search of the changed groups that he located the tiny yellow star that he knew to be the sun of his own solar system. With something of awe he looked at it as the darkness deepened.

Soft lights were shining out by then over the clustered pyramids of Corla around and beneath. Merrick saw lit flying-craft coming and going, saw that they and the great crowds still beneath were drawn by his own building, thousands gazing up toward his window. He realized anew the strangeness of the destiny that had cast him into this position of power. Could he sustain his part as Chan, as ruler, into which he had been so strangely hurled?

He turned to find the great rooms softly illuminated and a servant bowing. "The Council of Twelve is here, O Chan," he announced.

Merrick summoned his resolution and stepped back into the great central room. A group of a dozen or more black-garbed figures were coming toward him from the lift-chamber. They were led by a fine-faced, white-bearded oldster, and behind him among the others, Merrick glimpsed the ironical dark eyes of Jhalan and the figure of the girl Narna. The group halted and the oldster stepped forward.

"We bring our allegiance, O Chan," he said, bowing. "We know not how or from what world you have come to us but we know that only destiny could have placed you on the dais of the Chan."

The unfamiliar new sense of power flared again in Merrick. "Since you have so chosen me Chan I accept your allegiance as such," he said. "It is from another world— another star—that I come, yes, one far different from this. In that world my name was Merrick."

"Merrick," repeated the other with an odd twist. "It is well, Chan Merrick. I am Murnal, and these the others of our Council of Twelve—"

They came forward, bowing and naming themselves, while Merrick inclined his head to each. Most of the twelve were over middle age, like Mumal. Exceptions were Hoik, a great grizzled warrior topping the others by a head, and Jural, a quiet, slender figure whom Merrick was to know later as one of the most deadly fighters of the Corlan race. Last of the twelve councillors was Jhalan. All watched closely as he stepped forward.

But the great black-hearded Corlan bowed gravely enough. Merrick saw in his black eyes as he straightened, though, a sardonic amusement, as though at some secret joke. He found his hand tight on the hilt of his light-sword as Jhalan stepped back. He relaxed as Narna followed the twelve, her eyes on his own as she too gravely bowed.

Merrick motioned the twelve to a long table beside one of the great windows. When he had taken his place at its head they too sat, the white-bearded Murnal at his right. Far away outside their window stretched the black, fight-gemmed mass of Corla, illumined now by the weird light of two crimson moons that had swung up eastward.

"Since it is from another world that you have come to us, O Chan Merrick," Murnal began, "would you know more of this world or is it known to you?"

"It may be that I know, but I will hear you," said Merrick diplomatically.

"Then hear," said Murnal. "Kaldar, this world of ours, is of great size, how great indeed we do not really know. It revolves around our mighty sun at a medium distance, and around Kaldar in turn revolve our five moons. Of these four are crimson like our sun, but the fifth as you will see, is green, the five moving in a chain around our world at different speeds.

"Of this world of Kaldar, we humans hold only the land within the circle of the great black mountains. This land t nd city of ours, Corla, lies almost across the equator of Kaldar. We are, so far as our recorded knowledge teaches, the only humans upon this world. And we know little more of Kaldar than what lies within our mountain circle, since, outside it there are great and unhuman races as ancient and intelligent and powerful as our own, who have been our enemies always.

"Of all Kaldar's strange races and lands we have but rumors, indeed, for our airboats seldom venture across the mountains. But nearest to us of the other races are the Cosps, the great spider-men. Their great city lies far south from ours, beyond the mountains and strange forests, and from the beginning of time they have been the worst enemies of us of Corla.

"These Cosps, who are much like huge spiders in shape but with intelligence and science, have airboats as good as our own. They do not use light-swords or light-guns for weapons, but have poison-sprays that are as deadly. They have also mechanisms that project darkness wherever they wish, and these have always given them the advantage over us. For ever and again great Cosp raiding parties attack our city, and though we defend ourselves with the great light-guns on the city's pyramids, their darkness mechanisms give them always an unchangeable advantage.

"By them the Cosps are enabled to carry away great numbers of captives and loot for their distant city. Lately their attacks have become more and more frequent and Corla has come to be in terror of them. It is because of that that you have been welcomed so wildly by our people as the new Chan from the unknown, since all hope that as Chan you will be able to halt these terrible Cosp attacks."

Merrick considered. "Your own air-boats make no attempt to meet the Cosp raiders in midair?" he asked.

Murnal spread his hands. "It would be useless, O Chan. With the darkness-projectors our boats would be at the mercy of the Cosps and none could escape."

"Then some way of overcoming the darkness-projectors must be found, if Cosp and Corlan are to fight on equal terms," Merrick stated.

Jhalan spoke from the table's end. "Surely it will be nothing for you to find such a way, O Chan from the unknown?" he asked cynically.

Merrick gave him a level glance. "Whether inside it or outside, Corla's enemies are my own," he said evenly. He hardly knew what prompted the answer, but saw Jhalan looking at him with knitted brows when he had made it'.

"Spoken like a Chan!" exclaimed the great Hoik. "If I had my way we'd load all our light-guns on the airboats and sail south to give the Cosps some of their own medicine!"

As the talk went on, veering from the Cosps to other problems of Corla, Merrick learned much concerning the race into whose kingship he had been so strangely projected. He was beginning to realize that the Corlans, though they had attained super-science in some few things, were essentially a feudal, medieval-like race. He caught Jhalan's eyes sardonically on him, Narna's with approval in them.

Through the great window beside them he could see the moons swinging up from behind the mountains. Three of crimson hung like seals of blood across the sky and a fourth one of brilliant green was rising over Corla. Merrick, watching them, saw suddenly a long dark mass that moved across one of the crimson moons, high above the city. He was turning back to Murnal and the others when a wild, screaming signal sounded deafeningly across the city, waking it instantly to a wild babel of cries, a confused, rising uproar. And at the same moment there shot down upon Corla a great fleet of dark airboats from the upper night.

The others sprang to their feet with him. "An attack!" cried Murnal. "It's the Cosps—the spider-men—they're raiding the city!"

IV :   SPIDER-MEN AND POISON-SPRAY

"HOLK!JURUL!" Murnal shouted. "Order all our light-guns into action—they've caught us by surprise!"

But already the two Corlans and the others of the Council were facing toward the lift-chamber, Murnal and the girl Narna and Jhalan alone remaining in the great room. And already across the great city the light-guns were firing up at the dark craft of the invaders. The guns were soundless but Merrick could see the shining charges of deadly force flashing up from them all across the city.

Here and there invading airboats were hit and blasted by the shining charges, but the others dived unheedingly downward upon Corla's pyramids. From long tubes they rained down a fine spray and as it struck men on the pyramids and streets they fell into withered, distorted heaps. The light-guns, though were vomiting shining charges upward with increased intensity, the whole terrific battle being almost soundless save for the wild babel of cries.

Merrick, stunned by the transformation of the quiet city into this field of terrific battle, saw the Cosp airboats diving recklessly in all directions. As one shot past their window he glimpsed its occupants and shuddered as he saw them. In shape they were hke huge six-foot spiders, but with a near-human head set upon their bulbous central bodies. Clinging to the deck of the long airboat, they were directing their poison-sprays, one of their number guiding the craft from the prow.

In that first moment the battle had been almost even between Cosp and Corlan, light-gun and poison-spray striking up and down with equally deadly effect. But now from the swooping ships great fields of darkness were suddenly projected here and there over the city, areas of absolute light-lessness into which the Cosp ships unhesitatingly dived.

"The darkness-projectors!" Murnal cried. "It is always the same—we can not fight against them and the Cosps overcome us, being able in some way to see in the darkness!"

"But order all your light-guns to fire straight upward, then!" Merrick cried. "If they do that the Cosp ships can't land on the pyramids whether in darkness or not!"

Murnal's eyes fit. "We will try it, O Chan!" He sprang toward the lift-chamber.

Merrick, Narna beside him, looked out now across a scene that seemed out of nightmare, the spectacle of Corla struggling with the raiding spider-men. The huge city of black pyramids was a wild chaos of flashing light-guns and down-swooping Cosp airboats, blotted out here and there by the lightless areas of the darkness-projectors. Over it all swung the four great moons, three of crimson and one of vivid gTeen.

Cosp ships were swooping into the darkness-areas, a few already rising laden with captives and loot. But abruptly the tenor of the battle changed. Wreckage of Cosp airboats drifted in masses out of the dark areas, and other craft of the spider-men that tried to dive into the darkness they created beneath them were met by up-bursting hails of charges from the light-guns. The darkness-areas were vanishing, the Cosp ships recoiling—

"They're beaten!" Merrick cried. "They're rising!"

"Truly they rise!" Narna exclaimed. "Your order has repulsed them, O Chan!"

"Beaten!" Merrick exulted. "And once we find a way to neutralize those darkness-projectors—"

"Chan Merrick! Jhalan signals to the Cosps!"

At Narna's cry Merrick whirled. He had forgotten Jhalan and now saw that the big black-bearded Corlan, at one of the other great windows, had pointed his fight-gun up and fired four shining charges up into the darkness. In answer to them a Cosp airboat was racing down toward them. Jhalan signalling to the Cosps—it crashed to Merrick's brain that this attack was no fortuitous one but had been arranged with the Cosps in some way by Jhalan in the depths of his hate for the earth-man!

Merrick leapt toward the other, jerking the long light-sword from his sheath more by instinct than by design. Jhalan, his light-gun sheathed, whipped his own sword out in time to meet him. The two blades glowed as one with white light as the deadly force of the hilts was released into them. Then Merrick felt his blade click against his enemy's as they closed. He knew that the charged blades could not harm each other but that a touch of either meant death to the person touched.

Jhalan handled his deadly weapon like a master, its shining length cleaving the air around the earth-man. But Merrick was for the moment his equal, old fencing lore coming swiftly back to him in this strange duel where a touch was death. Up and down—right and left—back and forth—the two shining fight-swords wove like twin shuttles of death as the two rushed, stabbed, pained.

Over the white heat of battle Merrick heard a cry from

Narna, and as he whirled he saw something that froze the blood in his veins. The Cosp ship had swooped to hang level with the room's windows and a half-dozen great spider-men poured into the room. Jhalan called something to them and Merrick in a glance saw that they had seized the girl Narna and were hurrying her onto their craft's deck!

Maddened by the sight, Merrick flung himself with desperate recklessness upon Jhalan, but the Corlan had called again and Cosps were rushing toward them. Poison-sprays were lifted toward Merrick, but there came a sudden interruption. Men were pouring up out of the lift-chamber with light-swords in hand, Murnal and Hoik and Jurul and others! Jhalan leapt back and as Merrick sprang after him a whirled tube in the grasp of one of the Cosps struck his head and sent him reeling back. Jhalan was on the air-boat with the spider-men, and with Narna held upon it it darted rocket-like up into the night.

Merrick rushed to the window with Hoik and Jurul. The whole fleet of the Cosp raiders was moving southward, recoiling from the attack and vanishing swiftly in the weird moonlight, leaving the city in wild uproar behind them.

"Narna!" cried Merrick. "Jhalan has her—he and the Cosps!"

"Jhalan a traitor!" Murnal exclaimed. "To think that any Corlan should ever join forces with the Cosps as he has done, from jealousy and rage! He must have been in communication with them, and arranged this attack that he might carry away Narna!"

"But I'll find him—I'll bring her back!" Merrick swore.

Murnal shook his head sadly. "Impossible, O Chan Merrick. Jhalan has taken her with the Cosps southward, to the great Cosp city far beyond the mountains. None on Kaldar has ever entered that great city of the spider-men and returned."

"But I'll enter—and return!" Merrick asserted. A cold purpose was replacing his first wild rage. "And not for Narna alone but for Jhalan. If he lives to aid the Cosps their attacks will be strengthened by all the information he can give them, and they will end by destroying Corla."

"It is true," Murnal said, and the others murmured assent. "But why go yourself, O Chan? Why not send some of your warriors to attempt this venture?"

"Because this lies now between Jhalan and myself," Merrick answered. "Also, would I be fit Chan of Corla if I sent others where I dared not go mvself?"

The eyes of Hoik lit. "Truly you are Chan!" the big veteran exclaimed. "And I for one follow when you start for the Cosp city! Jurul here, too, though he's too shy to say so. Why, a dozen of us can fight our way into the spider-men's city and out again, if need be!"

The next hours passed for Merrick in a whirl of activity. While the fifth moon of Kaldar still hung in the west like a crimson wafer, the huge red sun was rising eastward to look down on a Corla different far from that of the day before. Already the Corlans were repairing their city's injuries, recovering quickly from the night attack of the spider-men. Murnal reported to Merrick that while the city was joyful over its repulse of the Cosps, it was saddened by the news of Jhalan*s treachery and the abduction of their last Chan's daughter.

Merrick had decided that for his venture to the Cosp city a single airboat would hold the necessary party. No large force that he could take could battle successfully the overwhelming forces of the Cosps, and by limiting his companions to a dozen and taking but one craft their chances of reaching and penetrating the Cosp city were far greater, it being by stealth only that they could reach their goal.

He inspected the airboats and on the recommendation of Hoik and Jurul chose one of fifteen-man size and of unequalled swiftness among the ships of Corla. It was the first close glimpse of the craft that Merrick had had, and he found the airboats simple in design, long, tapering metal craft like racing-shells, but broader of beam, decked, and with low surrounding rail. They moved in the air by projecting ahead of them a shaft of the annihilating force of the light-swords and light-guns, which ceaselessly destroyed the air just in front of the craft and thus forced it on by the pressure of the air behind. The changing of this invisible force-shaft's direction controlled the boat's direction of flight, and the changing of its intensity regulated speed.

The simple controls were at the prow, while at the stern and along the sides were light-guns of medium size mounted on swivels.

For the remainder of that day, while the airboat was being made ready, Merrick slept, exhausted. When he woke he found awaiting him Murnal, who was to act with the remainder of the Council of Twelve as ruler of Corla during the absence of its Chan. It was night again, and on one of the great pyramid's upper terraces the chosen airboat waited, the ten Corlans of its crew ready in it. Hoik and Jurul were waiting with Murnal beside him.

Murnal pointed down to the thronged streets as Merrick buckled on light-sword and light-gun.

"The people wait to see you go, O Chan," he said. "They know now that you are truly Chan and they are sad to see you start to what seems certain death."

"Certain death for Jhalan, perhaps," Merrick answered grimly. "As for me, I'll be back with Narna. While I am gone see that the scientists try that way of neutralizing the darkness-projectors I mentioned to you. Those projectors give off light-damping vibrations of some sort and could be neutralized and made ineffective by the proper opposing vibrations."

"We will try," Mumal nodded, "and it may be that your way will give us victory again. Until you return, then, Chan Merrick."

Merrick rested his hand for a moment on the other's shoulder, then strode out with Hoik and Jurul onto the terrace. Night lay over Corla, and in its streets great throngs watched in death-like silence as the three stepped onto their airboat and it shot up over the city. In moments the mighty black pyramids of the city had dropped behind and beneath, and Merrick and his companions were gazing ahead into the darkness as their craft shot southward through the night toward the distant stronghold of the Cosps.

V :   OVER THE FUNGUS FOREST

As THEIR craft flew southward Merrick crouched with HoBc and Jurul at its prow, the latter having the controls in his grasp. The airboat flew almost soundlessly, with only a low purring from the squat mechanism at the stern that produced the force-shaft which moved them onward. The ten

Corlans of their crew crouched and lay along the craft's sides.

Merrick, peering ahead, could make out in the distance the dim black rampart of the great mountain-ring toward which they were flying. It grew rapidly colder about them as Jurul slanted the airboat upward as they approached the huge mountain wall. At last in freezing cold air they were racing over the huge range, gazing down in awe upon it.

Merrick could see in the light of the two risen red moons that the giant peaks of the range were of a height unknown on earth, and that the great range itself was surprisingly regular in is circular shape. In the clefts between the mountains was white snow, but there was none on the great peaks, for they and the gigantic chasms and cliffs gleamed as though glassy-smooth, black and awesome masses.

"They look as if they were of black metal," Merrick commented to the men beside him, and was amazed at Hoik's answer.

"They are metal, O Chan. That black metal exists in tremendous masses in Kaldar's interior, and crops out here and there as huge mountain ranges or ledges. We and the Cosps and all other races use it for our airboats and buildings and almost all else."

"Metal mountains!" marvelled the earth-man. By the time that the great range dropped behind, all five of Kaldar's moons were in the night heavens, bunched together in seeming for the time as they followed their separate orbits around their wold. The sight of the stupendous, lonely black metal mountains in the light of the red and green moons was one that remained long in Merrick's mind.

As the metal mountains receded behind them Jurul slanted the craft downward and the air grew warmer again about them. They flew on at smooth, unchanging speed, noting below them the lower hills and scarps of the great metal range. Beyond these the moonlight disclosed smooth and rolling plains, over which they flew for hours. At last these gave way to a dark mass of vegetation that extended ahead and to either side as far as the eye could reach.

As they arrowed above this, Merrick tried to estimate the length of the day and night of Kaldar, coming to the conelusion that they were not greatly different from those of earth. The period of Kaldar's rotation, as he was later to learn, was some twenty earth-hours, so that he was not far wrong in the estimate he made when the huge crimson sun lifted from the horizon to their left.

The coming of day disclosed the extraordinary nature of the forest over which they were flying.

It was a vast fungus forest. As far as the eye could reach in all directions stretched the mass of great crimson growths, most of them twenty feet or more in height. They were monstrous of form, great central trunks with projecting arms, quite leafless, which gave them a grotesque appearance. They were crowded together in an unending sea swept by tides and currents of movement. Merrick thought at first that the things were swaying in a wind, but closer inspection showed him that the great growths were rootless and actually moving, crawling to and fro by their great groping arms, brushing and crowding against each other.

From Hoik and Turul he learned that this fungus forest was of vast extent and feared by all on Kaldar. For the great growths did not, like ordinary fungi, prey upon other plants, but upon animals. Any luckless Cosp or Corlan or living thing of any kind that fell into the forest was doomed, since before he could move the great growths would have grasped him, suffocating and crushing him, and battening upon his body as ordinary fungi do upon plants.

For all of that day their craft flew steadily south over the unending, crawling crimson masses of this forest of horror. His companions assured Merrick that it extended to the very edge of the city of the Cosps, and was one reason why that city of the spider-men was never attacked by land, and almost never by air, few venturing over the fungus forest, a fall into which meant death. Night closed down with the limitless expanse of fungi still beneath them.

At reduced speed they flew on through the night, Merrick and his companions peering intently ahead.

"We must be near the Cosp city now, I think," Hoik declared. "But it may be that we have missed it—we Corlans know little of its location because few of us have ever reached it and returned."

"Well reach it," Merrick said, his jaw setting. "And we'll—"

Jurul's cry stabbed their ears. "A Cosp airboat—attacking!"

At the moment he cried out Jurul had whirled their craft over, and as it heeled dizzily in midair there shot soundlessly down past it a long craft on which were a score of the hideous spider-monsters, the Cosps! Their poison-sprays were belching the fine rain of death that had missed the Corlan craft only because of its lightning turn.

"The light-guns!" Merrick cried. "Get it before it can reach us again!"

The Corlans of their crew leapt to the guns, and as Jurul sent their craft on a slant toward the other a half-dozen shining charges of force clove soundlessly toward it. But the Cosp craft had whirled upward in a turn as quick as their own and was rushing back on a level with them, the long tubes of its poison-sprays outstretched toward them.

The thing was instantly a wild, whirling duel of the two craft, Cosp and Corlan airboats grappling in the night with light-gun and poison-spray, with three of Kaldar's great crimsons moons looking down from above and with the fungus forest below. The two airboats circled like fighting falcons, evading each other's sprays and charges and striving for an advantageous position. Had the Cosp craft one of the darkness projectors they would have had short shrift, Merrick knew, but even as it was, the darting, deadly sprays of the spider-men were each instant harder to evade.

The wild duel seemed endless to the earth-man, but in reality it was over in moments. Jurul, seeing that the poison-sprays were certain to catch them in a moment more, shot their craft downward as though to a lower level to escape, and as the Cosp airboat dived hawk-like he slanted it up in a giddy curve, giving their gunners a momentary chance at the craft beneath. Down hailed the shining charges, two striking the Cosp craft near its stern, blasting the metal there into a distorted and twisted blackened mass, sending the craft whirling downward.

Merrick saw it crash in the fungus masses a thousand feet beneath, and in the clear moonlight could see the Cosps leaping forth. But as the great spider-men did so they were caught by groping arms and disappeared from view beneath the huge fungi, which were crawling from all directions toward them as though informed by some instinct what had happened. Merrick felt sick as their own craft whirled up and onward.

"A Cosp patrol-boat!" Hoik was exclaiming. "That means there must be others out, too!"

Jurul nodded quietly. "We'll have to fly higher," he said. "That ought to take us past the Cosp patrols—the spider-men don't like the cold of the upper air."

"Always passing up a fight," the great Hoik grumbled. "For anyone who fights like you, avoiding a battle is a waste of talent."

"Jurul is right, " Merrick declared. "We've no time for these encounters—our only objective is the Cosp city."

"And when we get there?" asked Hoik. "I suppose you know that there isn't a chance in a thousand of getting out of there once we enter."

Merrick smiled. "Leave that to take care of itself," he said. "Jhalan is in there—and Nama. Once I find them it'll be time enough to worry about getting out."

Hoik grinned his approval. "Jhalan has always been thought one of the greatest fighters on Kaldar," he said, "but I think it will be interesting when you and he meet again."

While they talked the airboat had been flying steadily southward, carrying up to a greater height. Soon the wind was cold again about them and the fungus forest a dark plain far beneath. In the west two red moons were setting while eastward the green moon rose. Made tense by their recent battle, Merrick and Hoik and Jurul watched alertly for Cosp craft. But in the next hour they saw none, evading them by their greater altitude if any others were actually near.

Hoik stared ahead, his weather-beaten face a mask in the mixed light, Jurul watching as silently as ever at the controls. It was Jurul who gave word at last that they were Hearing their goal.

"Look!" he said simply, pointing ahead and downward.

"The city—the city of the Cosps!" Hoik exclaimed.

Merrick peered with narrowed eyes. At first he saw only a darker bulk against the dark fungus forest far ahead, one that glinted in the moonlight at points. It was only when after minutes of onward flight the dark bulk slowly grew that he appreciated its enormous size. Fascinated he watched.

It largened slowly arid Merrick almost forgot their errand in the wonder of the sight. The Cosp city lay before them! And it was a city of but a single structure—a gigantic, irregular-shaped mass of metal with countless flat smooth sides, miles upon miles in extent. And it was as bored with tunnel-openings and honey-combed passages as some colossal black metal cheese. Around its giant metal mass rose a metal wall hundreds of feet in height, against which the crawling fungus forest pressed and crept.

"The city of the Cosps!" Hoik repeated. "Long ago the spider-men found here that giant outcrop of solid metal, and hollowed out in it their cells and tunnels until now it holds all their countless hordes. The wall around it keeps out the great crawling fungi of the forest that surrounds it."

"Then those tunnel-passages—" Merrick began.

"Run through the whole huge city in a labyrinth," the other answered. "Somewhere down in that mighty honeycombed mass lies the hall of the Cospal, the ruler of the Cosp race. It is near there, I think, that Jhalan would be with Narna, but how are we to reach it?"

"There's but one way," Merrick said decisively. "The city seems sleeping, and two of us might penetrate into it and get back, where all of us would inevitably be discovered. You will land Jural and me between the wall and city and well try it. You can hover high over the city, and if we get out again we'll fire our light-guns as signal to drop for us."

"And leave Jural to have the fun of it while I lie up in the cold?" Hoik asked belligerently. Jurul was laughing softly. "Yes. As Chan I order it," Merrick told him. "You'll have fighting enough before we get out of this, Hoik."

"In that case, well enough," Hoik grinned.

He took the controls and while Merrick and Jural looked to their weapons sent the airboat downward. Some of the tunnel openings were fit, and there were what seemed lit guard-towers on the great wall, but no air boats were in sight, and silently as some ship of the dead their craft sank toward the sleeping city of the spider-men.

VI :   IN THE COSP CITY

MEBWCK expected each instant a challenge or alarm from the guard-towers on the great wall, but none came. Long ages of immunity from attack had made the Cosps negligent in their guard, and without accident the Corlan craft came to rest on the black metal plain that lay between the surrounding wall and the city's huge honeycombed mass.

At once Merrick and Jurul were leaping from it. "Hold her high above," Merrick whispered to Hoik, "and when you see our light-guns firing down here drop like lightning for us."

"If it's firing you can't keep me from it," Hoik grinned, and set the craft darting up again into the darkness.

Merrick and Jurul, their hands on the hilts of their light-swords, set off instantly toward the looming bulk of the city whose honeycombed metal cliffs towered a half-mile away. The metal floor over which they hastened gleamed in the light of the moons. No Cosps were in sight, though they saw dark spider-forms against a few of the dim-lit tunnel-openings from time to time.

They headed toward one of the openings on a level with the floor, the upper ones being reached by projecting holds in the cliffs unusable by any but the many-limbed spider-men. Merrick had in mind the suggestion of Hoik that it was only deep down toward the center of the great city, where the Cosp ruler was, that Jhalan and Narna would most likely be found. He realized the slenderness of their chance of finding them, but was carried on by the very unreality of the adventure and by a strong memory of the Corlan girl.

They slowed as they neared the tunnel opening, and peered stealthily into it. Dim-lit by feebly glowing plates inset in the walls, it curved out of sight before them, quite unoccupied. Merrick and Jurul stepped cautiously into it, stooping because of its low height. They passed doors as they went on in" it, opening one or two and finding beyond them storerooms filled with unused mechanisms and weapons.

They went on and soon found that other tunnels crossed their own. Merrick took the first one leading downward and inward. Its downward slant was steep and the metal floor slippery to their feet. They shrank back once as a sound of oddly hissing voices came to them and two spider-men crossed their tunnel just ahead. The two great Cosps, hideous spider-bodies made more ghastly by their hairless and human-like heads and features, were discussing some matter, talking in the tongue Merrick had learned was common to almost all Kaldar's races. They passed and Merrick and Jurul crept on.

They found themselves passing other doors and when they peered through one found the room inside full of sleeping Cosps, each resting on a square raised platform. They crept quietly past these, following their tunnel that wound ever downward. Moving around one of its sharp turns, they ran squarely into three Cosps coming around the turn. Before the spider-men could recover from their surprise, Merrick and Jurul had their light-swords out of their sheaths and had sprung forward. Merrick's shining sword touched one of the great spider-men and before he could realize it the Cosp was a scorched and distorted lifeless heap, blasted by the sword's terrible force. Jurul accounted for a second in the same instant, and as the third spider-man turned to flee Jurul's blade touched and blasted him also, the light-swords being automatically recharged from the hilt at each release of their force.

For a moment Merrick and Jurul stood, panting and wild of eye, shining swords ready, but no more of the Cosps appeared for the moment.

"We can't stay here long," Merrick whispered. "Some of them are sure to stumble upon us."

"Back, Chan," warned Jurul. "I hear others now—"

They shrank back into the darkness of one of the transverse tunnels, more dimly lit than their own, dragging the three twisted forms of the slain spider-men with them. Five Cosps were approaching along the tunnel they had been following, and as they came around the turn Merrick saw that they were armed with black-tubed poison-sprays. He heard them talking as they came on.

"—and why he should receive him so I can not guess.

There has never been anything but war to the death between Cosp and Corlan and there never will be. Why, then, should this one be received in honor with his prisoner?"

"You forget," another answered, "that this Corlan hates his people now as much as we do. This Jhalan can help "us to make a final conquest of Corla."

"Also," a third spider-man put in, "the Cospal will know how to deal with him when we have conquered his race."

"It may be so," the first replied, "but in the meantime it irritates me to see him a guest in the chambers of the Cospal himself."

Merrick, listening, hardly realized their danger in his interest until the five Cosps came level with the cross-tunnel in which they crouched. Were they to turn down it discovery was inevitable, but fortune favored the two and the spider-men went on along the brighter-lighted way. When their voices had receded Merrick plucked at Jurul's arm.

"You heard?" he asked excitedly. "Hoik was right—Jhalan and Narna are in the Cospal's chambersl"

"But how to get into them?" Jurul said doubtfully. "They'll be guarded, remember."

"This lighted tunnel must lead to them, for those five were apparently just coming from the Cospal's chambers," Merrick pointed out. "And once we find them we'll find some way of getting in."

They started along the lighted way again, made more cautious by their two narrow escapes, shining light-swords in their hands. It came to Merrick as they crept forward how vast must be the sleeping honeycombed Cosp city that lay around and above and beneath them, a limitless labyrinth of tunneled ways holding in its cells and chambers all the countless sleeping spider-men. He crept on with Jurul.

They crossed other tunnels, but the lighted one led surely onward and downward. At last they were brought up short as they rounded a curve in it by glimpsing ahead a portal-like door across it, guarded by four spider-men with poison-sprays. At sight of the Cosp guards the two shrank back.

"Guards of the Cospal," Jural whispered. "We're near— but how to pass them?"

"Our light-guns?" Merrick asked, and the other thought

and nodded.

"Our only chance, it seems. Before we could get near them with swords they'd kill us with the sprays."

Sheathing their swords, therefore, the two drew their stubby light-guns and crept silently to the curve's edge. Then, raising them, they pressed the inset firing-plates on the stocks. Merrick was aiming at the Cosp on the extreme right and saw him fall in a blasted heap as the shining charge flashed soundlessly from the gun and struck him. One on the left had fallen at the same instant beneath Jurul's fire, and as the two remaining Cosps darted forward with poison-sprays upraised they were met by two more charges that cut off their rising cries of alarm by instant death.

Merrick and Jurul, trembling with excitement, dragged the slain guards back into another of the transverse tunnels and then went on through the portal. Along the tunnel now were designs worked in white metal on the black metal walls, showing Cosps battling with Corlans and also with beings unlike any Merrick had ever seen, that he realized must have been inhabitants of some part of Kaldar.

But the pictured walls meant little to Merrick in the excitement that now urged him on. He had not realized how much his quest for Narna meant to him until now when he came within reach of the Corlan girl. He and Jurul glimpsed far along lit corridors spider-guards here and there, but were able by following branching ways to avoid them. They were in a great maze of guarded corridors and ante-rooms that must surround the inner retreat of the Cospal, he knew, and he halted at last in doubt.

He was turning to Jurul, when from both came whispered exclamations. Some one was following the transverse tunnel some distance ahead, and as he crossed their own they saw that it was the great figure of Jhalanl

Merrick almost leapt forward as he saw him but checked himself in time. His heart pounded madly as they watched the great Corlan cross ahead. Black-bearded and still in his black metal garment, Jhalan still wore his light-sword and light-gun, and his possession of weapons in this city of the Cosps was in itself ample proof of his treachery. They crept silently after him, and as they followed him down the dim-lit cross-tunnel saw him pass two spider-guards, exchanging a word with the Cosps as he did so. Merrick and Jurul made a quick detour through divergent tunnels to avoid the guards and again a moment later were dogging the traitor Corlan's heels.

In both their minds, as they followed like stalking beasts of prey, was the same thought, that by following Jhalan most surely would they be led to Narna.

They dared not keep too close to their unconscious quarry, though, for ever and again he cast a glance around and behind him. So it was that after trailing him through several tunnels in which, luckily for them, were no more guards, they saw Jhalan turn a curve ahead. Before they reached it they heard the clang of a door and when they hastened around the curve found the corridor beyond it empty. Along it were a dozen doors, through any of which the Corlan might have gone. They halted, tense, Merrick sick with doubt.

"We'll have to try all these rooms," he whispered. "He must have gone into one of them."

Jurul shook his head. "Suicide to do that," he declared. "There may be a half-hundred Cosp guards or even the Cospal himself in those rooms, even if Jhalan is in one."

Merrick saw all the force of the other's words and stood for a moment in despair. Their whole venture seemed black, when from the second door there came out a sound that startled them. The scream of a girl!

VII :   FLIGHT AND BATTLE

"NARNA!" CRIED Merrick as the scream struck his ears. He leapt to the door.

"Wait!" Jurul exclaimed. "There may be Cosps inside too!"

But Merrick was for the moment beyond control of reason. He tugged fruitlessly at the handle of the locked door and then whipped out his light-sword and drew its shining blade around the handle. Beneath the sword's force the metal of the door twisted and melted instantly, and as the door gave before him Merrick burst inside, shining rapier in his hand.

The scene inside was one that fanned his quick rage to flame. The room was a small one, with strange metal furnishings, and at one side of it Narna was struggling in the grasp of Jhalan. No fear, but loathing, was in her eyes, and they lit instantly as she and Jhalan turned and saw Merrick burst in.

"Chan Merrick!" cried the girl.

"One side, Narna— quick!" Merrick exclaimed.

For Jhalan, behind the girl, had recognized Merrick and had instantly whipped out and levelled his light-gun. Instead of springing aside, though, Narna struck up the weapon and the charge that flew from it blasted the wall over Merrick's head. Rather than waste time Jhalan dropped the weapon and ripped out his light-sword. Merrick's weapon clashed against it as he leapt forward, and then the interrupted battle they had fought in Corla was resumed.

Again the shining slender blades clicked against each other like needles of death as Merrick and Jhalan circled each other in the chamber. Once Jhalan raised his voice in a hissing cry, but Jurul had closed the door to prevent the fight from arousing the spider-men. Merrick knew as he stabbed and feinted that his ally dared not use his light-gun in the little room lest he annihilate friend and foe alike.

Whatever Jhalan was, he was a supreme swordsman. But the long slender light-sword in Merrick's hand was so like a fencing-foil in weight that it was as though he were engaged in a friendly bout rather than in one where a touch was the end. He pressed Jhalan fiercely forward, but as the Corlan gave way slipped suddenly. Instantly the other's blade leapt toward him but Merrick threw himself aside in time, was on his feet again. A cold rage filled him now and he pressed Jhalan irresistbly.

The Corlan was maneuvering around the room and in a moment more his plan made itself evident. For as he neared the door he flung it open with a swift motion of his left hand, and as he leapt for the opening hurled his light-sword in Merrick's face!

The sword, as it left Jhalan's grasp, went dead and forceless, and Merrick's own blade, striking it in his instinctive parry, sent the weapon flying back to strike the head of Jhalan just as he leapt through the door-opening. Without a sound the great black-bearded Corlan sank to the floor, stunned by the blow.

Merrick, panting, stepped to the unconscious man and extended his shining blade toward him, then suddenly drew it back.

"I can't do itl" he panted. "In fight, yes, but I can't kill an unconscious man."

"Then I wilU" Jurul declared. His light-sword leapt forth, but Narna interposed.

"No, the Chan Merrick is right. No Corlan strikes a prostrate foe." Jurul drew back and the girl turned to Merrick.

"Did they capture you also, O Chan?" she asked. "Have you escaped them?"

"They never captured me," Merrick told her. "I came with Hoik and Jurul and others to find you—our airboat waits above."

"You came—for me?" she marvelled. "Why, scarce a Corlan in history has ever dared approach this Cosp city. Truly you are our Chan, when for a single one of your subjects you dare what no Corlan has ever dared before!"

"It was not that," Merrick began, feeling in some way clumsy in expressing himself, but Jurul interposed.

"If we're to get back up to the surface we'd best be going," he warned. "It must be near day now and all this Cosp city will be waking soon."

They left the unconscious Jhalan where he lay and started back through the corridors they had followed in coming. Nama, though, showed them another way which she declared was a shorter route to the surface, being the one by which she had been brought down captive by Jhalan and the Cosps, and running past the inmost hall of the Cospal.

They followed it as hastily as possible, detouring through adjacent tunnels now and then to avoid guards, knowing that a single cry would bring the sleeping hordes of spider-men around them into wakefulness. Soon they were following a wider tunnel, one side of which was open, giving view of a great dim-lit hall along whose side high up their passage led like a balcony. Merrick peered down into the hall as they crept onward.

It was of enormous size and he could see drawn up around it rank on rank of armed Cosps, great spider-men standing as motionless as though carven. In a cuplike depression at the hall's center rested a single Cosp at least three times as large as any Merrick had seen, a huge spider-monster twenty feet across with enormous, bulging head. It was the Cospal, he knew, the strange ruler of the spider-race. It seemed sleeping, perhaps only thinking, but motionless as the guards around it. The strangeness of the sight remained with Merrick long after they had crept past the hall and on up the tunnel.

They moved onward, upward, sometimes in dark tunnels where only Narna's soft grasp of his wrist told that his companions were beside him. Hope rose in Merrick as they climbed steadily up and outward through the Cosp city's vast labyrinthine mass. At last the dim-lit tunnel ended in a dark circle ahead, dotted with stars. Merrick turned with a whisper of exultation on his lips, but as he did so a single long, rising, hissing cry trembled up from deep in the city's mass behind them, taken up and repeated by dozens of similar voices instantly.

"Jhalan!" cried Jurul. "He's come to and given the alarm! I knew it was wrong to let him live!"

"We can still make it if Hoik is watching!" Merrick cried, all effort at stealth gone now as the city woke around them. They raced up toward the star-dotted mouth of the tunnel.

"Cosps ahead, O Chan!" Nama cried suddenly, but Merrick had seen the dark spider-shapes appearing in the opening ahead.

As one he and Jurul aimed their light-guns in racing forward, and as the shining charges flicked and flashed from them the Cosps ahead reeled back and down in scorched heaps. In all the tunnels behind and around them, though, Cosps were crying to each other, searching through the ways toward them as up from beneath poured pursuing guards. They burst out of the tunnel's mouth onto the black metal plain and Jurul's light-gun shot its charges rocket-like up through the night in shining signal. From the wall ahead and from the city's mass behind Cosps were pouring, poison-sprays in their graps.

Merrick yelled, stopped with Jurul and Narna. A great shape was swooping like a dark hawk out of the night, an airboat whose guns were hailing charges on the rushing Cosps. As they recoiled from its unlooked-for attack the craft swept low and Narna and Jural leapt to its deck, Merrick felt Hoik's great arms pulling him after them as the craft darted upward again.

"Out of here!" Merrick cried. "There'll be a hundred airboats after us in a minute!"

The craft shot like a thing alive up into the night with great poison-sprays from wall and city wheeling to dart their deadly jets toward it. Behind, they glimpsed Cosp ships beginning to rise from the city's top and the metal around it. But the whole panorama of the aroused city of the spider-men vanished behind them as their craft shot at immense speed northward through the darkness.

"We have escaped!" Narna cried. "The first Corlans ever to win clear of the Cosp city once they had entered itl"

"Yes, but I thought there was going to be some fighting to it!" Hoik complained. "All my life I've been hoping for a raid down here and when I finally get here all I do is wait up there in the cold like some bird!"

Narna and Jural laughed at him, but Merrick, who had been peering back as they flew on, dawn beginning to rift the darkness eastward, turned an anxious face to them.

"You may have your fighting yet, Hoik," he said. "Look back there—what are those?"

A wide string of dark dots was becoming visible far behind, extending across the reddening dawn sky and moving after them. Hoik gazed, Narna looking back anxiously at Merrick's side, and then the big veteran nodded grimly.

"Cosp airboats! They're not going to let us get away so easily, it seems."

"It is Jhalan," murmured Narna. "He will never see me escape."

"I begin to think that Jurul was right about killing Jhalan," said Merrick grimly. "Well, they'll not catch us without a chase—head straight north for Corla."

When the huge crimson sun flamed up eastward it disclosed the fact that the Cosp craft far behind were massing more closely and had settled down to a relentless chase. They seemed of no greater speed than the Corlan craft, though as the next hours passed it seemed that some of them were drawing closer.

For all of that day, while the great sun wheeled across the sky, the Corlan craft and its pursuers fled on high over the vast fungus forest. By sunset it was plain to all that the Cosp craft were much closer, though whether they could overtake their prey before reaching Corla remained doubtful. They would pursue, Merrick knew, to the city itself, being more than a hundred strong and no doubt having their great darkness-projectors on some of their craft.

With the coming of night, the great moons of Kaldar lifting one by one as though to view the chase, the Cosps drew still closer. Through the night as through the day the pursuit held grimly after them. And when Merrick woke from an hour's exhausted sleep on the airboat's deck to find dawn blood-red in the east, it was to find the spider-men's ships a bare half-mile behind. Ahead by then loomed the great wall of the black mountains, beyond which Corla lay, but rapidly now the Cosps were drawing closer.

Merrick could make out the erect figure of Jhalan on one of the foremost airboats and he cursed his squeamishness in sparing the traitor. At the same time he was aware that he would do the same again in like case, and as he caught Narna's eyes he saw her smile bravely at him.

He waited until the Cosp ships were hardly more than a thousand feet behind before ordering the Corlans of his crew to open fire. With Hoik directing them, Jural at the controls, they poured back for a few moments a deadly fire of shining charges that confused and slowed the Cosp pursuit, sending a half-dozen craft whirling down. The others then split into two portions, long fines, one of which swept to either side to pass and surround the fleeing Corlan ship and hold it in their circle. They were passing over the great mountains by then, low over the giant metal peaks, and Merrick saw at last the two lines of Cosp craft joining ahead, a great circle of them holding the fugitive Corlan ship.

"They've got us," Merrick said quietly to Narna. "We have brought you from the Cosp city only to death, it seems— better had our rescue failed."

She shook her head quietly. "Better here with you, O Chan," she said.

Merrick turned to Hoik and Jurul. "Hold all our charges until they close in on us," he told them. "Just before they get into range with the poison-sprays let them have it—I just want to get Jhalan before they end us."

They were still flying forward, the circle of the Cosp ships contracting now upon them. They might destroy a dozen of the spider-men's craft, Merrick knew, but the others would in that time have their deadly sprays in range. It seemed a strange end—Nama's calm eyes and the tense figures of Hoik and Jurul and the others, and the black range beneath and huge red Antares above, a kaleidoscope of impressions as the moment approached. The Cosp ships were nearer, poison-tubes raising, and he had on his lips the order to fire when from Hoik burst an inhuman, exultant yell.

Airboats in a great mass were rushing toward them from ahead, and instandy their guns were raining deadly charges on the ring of Cosp ships I

"Corlan ships!" Merrick cried. "They may save us yet!"

Jurul shook his head sadly. "They can not fight the darkness-projectors of the Cosps," he said. "See—I"

For the Corlan airboats, rushing fiercely upon the craft of the spider-men, had so surprised them that for a moment the battle had been a mere wild chaos of struggling craft in which deadly sprays and shining charges thronged thick the air. Outnumbered, the Cosp ships were blasted in dozens in that first shock of battle, but in a moment had recovered from their surprise and darting back and brought their darkness-projectors into play. Great areas of black lightlessness engulfed the Corlan craft, the spider-men turning their sprays upon these instantly.

But, astoundingly, after that first instant of darkness the lightless areas seemed to waver, to be broken by darting rays, and then to vanish! And as the Corlans again swooped toward their enemies, the Cosps, astounded at the failure of the weapon that for ages had given them supremacy, became a confused, stunned mass of ships into which the others poured a deadly fire. Merrick glimpsed the craft of Jhalan at the center of that terrific inferno of blasting death, saw it whirl down with dozens around it. Then the remainder of the shattered Cosp fleet had turned, was racing away in mad flight southward, half the Corlan ships in hot pursuit.

"Beaten!" Hoik bellowed. "The first time in history that Corlan has met Cosp on equal terms, and we've beaten them!"

Narna's eyes were shining. "Look, Mumal's airboat coming toward us!" she cried.

Merrick saw the craft driving level with their own, and then from it the white-bearded Murnal stepped to their own. His face flamed with the victory, and as he saw Narna beside Merrick his eyes widened.

"The victory is yours, Chan Merrick!" he cried. "Your suggestion for neutralizing the darkness-projectors worked perfectly, and with some airboats equipped with neutralizers we were starting south to see if we might find you.

"Corla will be mad with joy," the old noble added, "not only that we have shattered the supremacy of the Cosps, but that its Chan has returned safely and brought with him her for whom he went."

In moments the Corlan ships, their own in the van, were flying back over the metal mountains, swift scout-boats going ahead to give to the people of Corla the great news. When at last their fleet dipped down over the city of mighty black pyramids they found streets and terraces jammed with madly rejoicing throngs. The great plaza was packed solid with hoarse-voiced humanity, and it was down among them and beside the dais of the Chan that their airboat landed.

A deafening thunder of voices greeted them when Merrick and Narna stepped from the airboat, Hoik and Jurul and Mumal behind them. And when Merrick stepped up onto the dais there was an intensifying of the deafening storm of acclamation. Merrick, with Narna's shining eyes upon his, raised his hand and the massed humanity about him grew silent.

"People and nobles of Corla," he told them, "for ages have Cosp and Corlan battled, but never until today on equal terms, the spider-men having always the advantage. But today, with that advantage gone, we have fought them and have beaten them, have sent their shattered fleet reeling back to their city in defeat and have broken their power for ever! And what we have done to the Cosps today we can do again. We can meet and beat our enemies until on all Kaldar no race shall dare attack Corla and its people. Chan of Corla, I say it!"

There was silence still for a moment, and then out from the countless masses about him there crashed up to him a terrific shout of "Chan!"

But as it sounded there was a thunderous roaring in Merrick's ears and he seemed shaken in every atom by awful force. As swift memory came to him in that moment he cried out and saw Narna, white-faced, run with Hoik and Jurul and Mumal toward the dais. But for the merest instant only he saw them, since in the next they and the city around him and the huge red sun above vanished from around him as he was whirled into lightless blackness.

VIII:   EPILOGUE

MEHBICK whirled out of that black unconsciousness of instants to find himself staggering suddenly in a room, a long, white-lit, roofless room at whose center upon a square metal platform he stood. Dynamos and other apparatus were throbbing about him and elderly men were crowding excitedly toward him. He stood dazed for the moment, a strange figure among them in his black metal tunic with light-sword and light-gun swinging still at his side.

"You made it!" they were crying. "What did you find there?"

"Three days!" The cry broke from Merrick as he remembered. "Three days!"

"Yes," they nodded excitedly, "the three days are up, and at two exactly we turned on the projector's force and drew you back across to earth."

Merrick was stunned. In the wild rush of events on Kaldar, his strange kingship, Nama and Jhalan and the attack of the Cosps, his venture to the spider-city and desperate flight from it, he had forgotten wholly his agreement to return to earth in three days. And chance had made him take his place on the dais where first he had found himself on Kaldar, at the exact moment when the projector's force stabbed across the void to that one spot to draw him back to earthl

"I've got to go back!" he cried. "I never meant to return to earth—it was only accident. I tell you I have a people out there—you've got to send me back now!"

They were astounded. "Impossible," said their spokesman. "It will take weeks to charge the condensers again with enough force to operate the projector."

Merrick was dazed, the nine scientists bewildered. "But we can send you back then if you want to return," they told him.

"You'll send me back, then?" Merrick cried.

"If you want to go, surely. But where did you get those things?—what is that world like that you reached?—what did you find there?"

Merrick for the moment did not answer their excited questions. He was gazing up through the room's open top to where among the brilliant stars great Antares swung. His mind, travelling back out across the gulf toward the huge sun, seemed to have before it again its world of Kaldar. Kaldar— with Corla and its people, his people—with Hoik and Jurul and Murnal, with Nama—Narna—with all Kaldar's great unhuman races and unending war and strange monsters, with all its mystery and horror and unearthly beauty. The men around Merrick saw him smile.

"I found—my world," he said.'

SWORDSMEN IN THE SKY

The millions of readers who have discovered in the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs the fascination of sword-and-wonder adventures on distant planets among exotic peoples have called forth an insistent demand for more! It is to meet this demand that this new anthology, SWORDSMEN IN THE SKY, was created.

Here are a selected group of terrific novelettes by the expert writers of interplanetary derring-do. Here are adventure, peril, and marvel mixed by the master hands of POULANDERSON EDMONDHAMILTON LEIGH BRACKETT ANDRE NORTON OTIS ADELBERT KLINE

Definitely as bold a band of galactic adventurers as you would want to accompany on the conquest of a half dozen worlds!