by C. L. Moore
Crockett ran. He shot along the tunnel like a bullet. The tropism guided him, but he was terrified lest he reach a dead end. The clamor from behind grew louder. If Crockett hadn't known better, he would have imagined that an army of gnomes pursued him.
Faster! Faster! But now Podrang was in sight. His roars shook the very walls. Crockett sprinted, rounded a corner, and saw a wall of flaming light—a circle of it, in the distance. It was daylight, as it appeared to gnomic eyes.
He could not reach it in time. Podrang was too close. A few more seconds, and those gnarled, terrible hands would close on Crockett's throat.
Then Crockett remembered the Cockatrice Egg. If he transformed himself into a man now, Podrang would not dare touch him. And he was almost at the tunnel's mouth.
He stopped, whirling and lifted the jewel. Simultaneously the Emperor, seeing his intention, reached out with both hands, and snatched six or seven of the crystals out of the air. He threw them directly at Crockett, a fusillade of rainbow colors.
But Crockett had already slammed the red gem down on the rock at his feet. There was an ear-splitting crash. Jewels seemed to burst all around Crockett—but the red one had been broken first.
The roof fell in.
-
A SHORT WHILE later, Crockett dragged himself painfully from the debris. A glance showed him that the way to the outer world was still open. And—thank heaven!—daylight looked normal again, not that flaming blaze of eye-searing white.
He looked toward the depths of the tunnel, and froze. Podrang was emerging, with some difficulty, from a mound of rubble. His low curses had lost none of their fire.
Crockett turned to run, stumbled over a rock, and fell flat. As he sprang up, he saw that Podrang had seen him.
The gnome stood transfixed for a moment. Then he yelled, spun on his heel, and fled into the darkness. He was gone. The sound of his rapid footfalls died.
Crockett swallowed with difficulty. Gnomes are afraid of men—whew! That had been a close squeak. But now.
He was more relieved than he had thought. Subconsciously he must have been wondering whether the spell would work, since Podrang had flung six or seven Cockatrice Eggs at him. But he had smashed the red one first. Even the strange, silvery gnome-light was gone. The depths of the cave were utterly black—and silent.
Crockett headed for the entrance. He pulled himself out, luxuriating in the warmth of the afternoon sun. He was near the foot of Dornsef Mountain, in a patch of brambles. A hundred feet away a farmer was plowing one terrace of a field.
Crockett stumbled toward him. As he approached, the man turned. He stood transfixed for a moment. Then he yelled, spun on his heel, and fled.
His shrieks drifted back up the mountain as Crockett, remembering the Cockatrice Eggs, forced himself to look down at his own body.
Then he screamed too. But the sound was not one that could ever have emerged from a human throat.
Still, that was natural enough—under the circumstances—
The End
THERE SHALL BE DARKNESS
Astounding Science-Fiction - February 1942
Earth Empire was crumbling—and the captain knew it as he was ordered back, with the last of the troops stationed on Venus. The last civilization of the Solar System was falling into eternal darkness, as Mars and Jupiter had before it. And Venus could not be roused—
-
Blue Venusian twilight filled the room where Quanna sat combing her hair before the glass. It was very quiet here. Quanna drew the long, pale strands through her comb with a somnolent rhythm, meeting her own eyes in the mirror. Reflected there she could see the windows behind her, blowing curtains that veiled the tremendous blue peaks which walled in Darva from the world. From far away a thunderous echo of avalanche shook the evening air a little and rumbled into silence.
No one—not even another Venusian—could have guessed what was going on behind the pale, translucent oval of Quanna's face, the unchanging dark eyes. She wore a blue-green robe the color of the evening sky over Darva, and in the blue dusk her hair took on a faintly greenish cast. She was thinking of murder.
Behind her the door creaked. A man in uniform came into the room wearily, running his fingers through his black hair. The green star of Earth glittered on his tunic. He grinned at Quanna.
"Give me a drink, will you?" he asked her in English. "Lord, how tired I am!"
Quanna was on her feet in a rustle of satin and a cloud of faint perfume. Her green-blond hair was so fine it seemed to float upon the air as she turned. If ever there was any betrayal of feeling upon Quanna's pale Venusian face, it showed tenderness when she looked at James Douglas, commander of the last Terrestrial Patrol left on Venus.
"Come and lie down," she said in her gentlest voice. Her English was almost as easy as his own. "You do need a drink, poor darling. You've been working late again, Jamie?"
He nodded, letting her draw him to the deep couch below the windows which opened upon the high blue mountains and the roofs of Darva. She stood for a moment watching his face as he relaxed with a sigh upon the cushions. The couch creaked a little beneath him, for Douglas was a big man, built in the tradition of his Scottish ancestors upon another world, almost a giant among the slim Venusians. He was barrel-chested, thick through the shoulders; and his heavy black hair had gone frosty at the temples quite definitely in the last few months. Jamie Douglas had had much to think about, in solitude, since the last dispatches from Base came in.
He buried his crooked nose in the glass Quanna brought and drank thirstily, letting the cool, watered whiskey go burning down his throat.
"Nothing like segir," he grinned up at the girl. "I'll miss it when—" he caught himself—"if I'm ever recalled to Earth."
Quanna's eyes veiled. An Earth woman would have pounced upon the implication in that remark and dragged it into daylight. The Venusian girl waited. They both knew she would weave it into conversation perhaps hours later, worming the forbidden information out of him irresistibly, imperceptibly, as she had so often done in the past. Douglas cursed himself silently and gulped segir again.
Quanna's gaze lingered on his face as he drank. Twenty years under the flowing cloud-tides of Venus had not bleached his dark skin to pallor, but they had set their own marks upon his face. The broken nose was a memory of a mountain ambush in his subaltern days, and the long, fading scar above one ear an insignia of the fight in which he had won his captaincy. Even as long ago as that Imperial Earth had begun to feel her fingers slip upon her colonial worlds, and there had been fierce fighting in the mountains of Venus. There still was, but it would not last much longer—
Douglas held out his emptied glass. "Another," he said, and loosened his tunic collar. "I'm tired."
Quanna laid a long, cool hand upon his forehead in a gesture of reticent tenderness before she turned away to the little pantry where the ice and the segir was. The long folds of her robe hid what she was doing, but she did not drop a tablet into the drink this time. There had been enough in the first, and besides—besides she had information to draw out of him before she went away.
She pulled up a hassock and took her monochord harp from the wall after he had begun on the second drink, and began to pluck a plaintive melody from the single string, stopping it against its movable bridges with an intricate fingering. Douglas nodded in time with the music and began to hum, smiling at her.
"Funny," he mused. "You're a cosmopolitan, my dea, even if you've never stepped a foot off Venus. Scottish ballad on a Martian harp, transposed to Venusian melody. What an old song it is, Quanna." He began to sing the worlds softly, his voice unmusical:
-
"The Otterburn's bonny burn,
It's pleasant there to be
But there is naught on Otterburn
To feed my men and me—"
-
He shook himself a little and quieted. Quanna saw something dark and unhappy move across his face, and she struck one of two quivering notes from the st
ring and said in a voice pitched to the music, so that it scarcely broke the silence at all:
"I'd like to see Earth, Jamie. Could I go back with you?"
"I wish you could," he answered in a low voice. "It won't be easy my dear—I'll miss so much on Venus. I—" He sat up suddenly and scowled at her under black brows. "That wasn't fair, Quanna! You wouldn't catch me like that if I weren't tired. Oh, yes, damn it, I suppose you'll have to know soon, anyhow. Orders came today. We're going back."
"The last of the Patrols," murmured Quanna, still stroking the harp to faint music. "Venus will be free again, Jamie?"
His heavy brows drew down again above the crooked nose. "Free?" he said bitterly. "Oh, yes, free for Vastari and his cutthroats, if that's what you're thinking of. There'll be no more safety anywhere on Venus, if that's what freedom means to you. All this culture we've tried to build up in our three hundred years will crash in—oh, three hundred days, or less, once the protection of the Patrol fails. You'll have barbarism back again, my sweet. Is that what freedom means to a Venusian?"
She smiled at him, her face pale in the gathering twilight.
"Jamie, Jamie," she rebuked him gently. "Our ways were good enough before the Earthmen came. And you'll be going home—"
He sat down his glass half emptied, as if the thought had closed his throat. Looking out between the long, swaying draperies, he said heavily: "Oh, sure—I was born there, forty-odd years ago. I suppose it's home. But—I'll miss Venus, Quanna." He reached out for her hand. "I'll miss you—I ... I'm sleepy, Quanna. Play 'Otterburn' again, will you, my dear? I think I'll have a nap before dinner."
-
When Douglas was breathing evenly, Quanna put a pillow straighter under his black head, pulled a light coverlet over him and hung the harp away. In her bedroom she took down a velvet cloak of deep emerald-green and changed her sandals to riding boots of soft leather.
With the dark cloak hooding her, she paused by the door and touched a panel that slid inward without a sound. Not even the Earthman who designed the house knew about that panel, or about many other secret things which the Venusian workmen had built into the headquarters of the Terrestrial Patrol.
Quanna took a pistol from a shelf inside the panel and buckled it about her waist over the satin gown she wore. Her fingers lingered on a long, flat box on the shelf and she drew it out hesitantly, glancing over her shoulder around the empty room.
Inside the box, bedded in velvet, lay a dagger with a silver haft and a long glass blade. Quanna took it out of its nest and tilted the crystal to the light. Venusian characters were traced in water colors on the blade. On one side they declared in crimson, "Vastari Shall Be King," and on the other were the simple characters that spelled a name, "James Douglas." By a coincidence, the Venusian name for Douglas had the same meaning as his Scottish patronym in the ancient Gaelic—Dhu Glas. Both meant "the dark man."
The dagger Quanna held was a ceremonial weapon, that could be used only once. It had never been used—yet. The crimson lettering would wash off at the first touch of any moisture. And the blade would splinter in its wound. It was meant to splinter. It had been given to Quanna six months past, with great ceremony. She should have used it long ago.
She laid it back in its box and closed the panel quickly. She woke in the blue night sometimes, trembling, out of dreams about that glass dagger.
She drew the green cloak about her and went out swiftly. No one but the Venusian servants saw her pass, and they made furtive obeisance and looked after her with reverent eyes. So did the grooms in the stable where her saddled horse stood waiting. One of them said, "The waterfall cave, lady, up toward Thunder Range," and gave her the grave salute due Venusian rank. Quanna nodded and took the reins.
The Earth officer on duty at the outer gate never saw her pass. His men drew his attention away just long enough for the cloaked figure on the padding dark horse to slip like a shadow out of the gate, and the young Earthman could have sworn afterward that no one had gone that way.
The horse took to the rising trail outside Darva with its padded gait that has a rocking-chair smoothness. Even the horses of Venus go furtively, on silent feet. This one climbed steadily up the twisting trail through the blue dusk which passes for night in the zone where Darva lies.
Night and day have only rough equivalent terms in the Venusian tongues, but there is a slow rhythm of thermals over a broad belt of Dayside, caused by the libration of the planet, that gives something corresponding to them. There are periods of dim-blue chill, and periods of opalescent noons when the sun is a liquid blaze behind high mists. The intervals are months long in some parts of Dayside, but here the tremendous mountains create air currents of their own, and the cloud-tides have a much briefer rhythm, though still too varied to make Venusians clearly understand night and day.
-
The great blue mountains loomed purple and violet in the dusk as Quanna rode up the trail. She could hear countless waterfalls tinkling and trickling away like music all around her, a background to the slow, far-off thunder of a rockslide that shook the cliffs with its echoes.
The lifting crags that rushed straight up thousand feet into the clouds were shocking to Earth eyes even after a lifetime on Venus, but Quanna scarecely noticed the familiar sheer cliffs of purple rock hanging like doom itself above her as she climbed. She had been born among these cliffs, but she did not mean to die here. If she had her way, she would die on another planet and be buried under the smooth green soil of Earth, where sunlight and starlight and moonlight changed in a clear sky she could not quite imagine, for all the tales she had heard.
The cavern she was seeking lay two hours high in the towering peaks above Darva. No one but a Venusian could have found it in less than days. Both Quanna and her horse knew the path well enough, but it was a difficult climb even for them, and when they came out into the cathedral-walled canyon where a thin waterfall swayed like smoke, the horse's sides were heaving with the steepness of the climb.
In these narrow walls the waterfall made a thunderous music. Quanna drew her cloak over her face and rode straight through the smoking veil of water, into the Gothic arch of the cavern beyond. She whistled three clear, liquid notes as she came, and heard answering music from the walls, piercing the roar of the waterfall.
Around two bends firelight flickered. Quanna slid off the horse into the waiting arms of servants, and went down a sparkling sandy slope toward the fire. Light danced bewilderingly upon a fairyland of crystalline columns which slow centuries had built of dripping water here. It was an Aladdin cave of flashing jewels in the firelight.
Of the group by the fire, all but one man rose as Quanna came forward, her scarlet boots showing and fading with delicate precision beneath her emerald cloak. Quanna had been trained meticulously in every rite that befits a Venusian woman, and ceremonious behavior was not the least of her knowledge. Even her gait was traditional as she approached the men before the fire.
They had risen—all but the hooded old one—not in deference to her rank or her womanhood, for women are not held highly on Venus, but because she was an important emissary bringing news of the enemy. And had they had reason to think her news would be bad or her prestige in the enemy camp lowered, they would not have risen. Under the elaborate ceremony of Venusian courts is a basis of dog-eat-dog which shocks Earthmen. Venusians scorn the unsuccessful and toady to the strong with a certain courtliness which ingratiates even as it repels.
The richly colored robes of the men made points of jewel colors dance along the crystalline walls as they moved. A young man pushed impatiently out among them and came forward, his crimson cloak swinging from supple shoulders, his long fair hair swinging, too, as he came to meet the girl. The two of them were as alike in looks as blood relation can make man and woman.
Quanna took both his hands with the exact degree of deference which was due from her temporary man-status as important spy. Vastari's face blazed with impatient eagerness as Quanna exchanged the p
roper ceremonious greetings with the group of tribe leaders around the fire. It amused her a little to let her royal brother wait upon her. She met the fierce stares of the other men composedly, too accustomed all her life to seeing that avid hope for disaster in every face to notice it much now. No Venusian rises to influence without knowing very well the eager, searching stare of rivals hungry for a sign of weakness.
Last of all she smiled at the hooded figure by the fire, who gave her back a greeting in a harsh, hissing voice that was very pleasant to her ears.
"Well?" demanded Vastari, pulling her to a seat upon the cushions by the fire as the last ceremonies fell silent and the leaders grouped wolfishly around to listen. "Well, how goes it, sister? Is the glass knife broken yet?"
"Not yet," said Quanna, making her voice low and confident. "The Earthmen have a fable about a goose that laid golden eggs. It's still too soon to kill ours, brother. The Dark Man gave me great news only a few hours ago." She used a Venusian term of time measurement which is so complex that few Earthmen ever master it. Watching the avid eyes fixed upon her all around the fire, she went on: "The last Patrol is leaving Venus. The orders came in today."
Vastari smacked his ringed hands together and cried out something exultant in a voice too choked for articulation. The fire always smoldering behind his eyes blazed up with all but perceptible violence.
"Leaving!" he cried. "So they've come to it at last. Do you hear, all of you? That means freedom! Venus under Venusian rule, after three hundred years of Earth tyranny! Is it true, Quanna?"
"True enough, surely," said a harsh voice behind him. They all turned. The cloaked figure at the fireside had thrown back his hood from a crest of white hair and was smiling at them sadly now, horny lids drooping over his eyes. "I've seen it coming all my life, children. Mars was great once, too, you see." He lifted bony shoulders in a shrug.
