Collected Tales (Jerry eBooks)

by Leslie F Stone

  Someone muttered behind his back, another began to curse this unnatural world. Beale demanded silence. Tomorrow, he promised, he would confer with Rafel about the mines.

  IN a world abounding with the heavier metals, the Tolis were a race possessed of little science. They used stone knives and hatchets, stone-headed spears and arrows. They knew fire, but nothing of smelting ores. Cosmicite was found in nuggets, and these they fashioned by laborious hammering. They had nothing that might be considered luxuries. Because of the nature of the planet they had no need for clothing. Everything beyond their limited comprehension was magic, every tree and bush had its god. The sun that lighted their day was the Great Leader. The spirit of the cosmicite, or dasie as it was known to them, was their second-best god, considered superior in many ways.

  An arrow or spear-head tipped with a pellet of dasie went true to its mark regardless of the aim. The archer who failed to kill his enemy was impure of heart, therefore undeserving of the fidelity of the god! The same was true of food eaten from plates of dasie. If the food poisoned the diner, his unclean touch had vitiated the power of the god’s strength.

  True to his word, Captain Beale addressed Rafel the next morning. He managed to convey to the chieftain in the mongrel dialect the Earthmen were using to make themselves understood, the fact that there was a shortage of dasie in the land of the sun. He explained that he and his men might easily have taken as much dasie as they desired without the men of Tolis being the wiser, but the ways of the Gods were not thus. The dasie belonged to the Tolis by right of virtue, and therefore the Gods instead of taking what they wished by force were asking as a favor, an adequate supply of the precious “stone.” The three baskets Rafel had so open-heartedly given were but a drop to their real need.

  As he spoke Beale was watching Rafel narrowly. He saw the frown that came into the chieftain’s face and knew he was treading delicate ground. The coming of the Gods to the fox-men was a great event in their lives, an unprecedented break in the monotony of the jungle, and thus far had cost merely three baskets of dasie. This demand for more dasie was different, and Rafel wisely knew it was a demand. Rafel had been witness to the target practice of the Gods on the third day of their coming, and he was intelligent enough to know that what had been done to birds and trees could be accomplished on man.

  Beale said a little more, but knew he had already won his point. Magnanimously he gave Rafel until the following morning for his answer, knowing well enough what the answer would be!

  And sure enough the first hint of the rising sun brought Rafel into the clearing. He began the ceremony with flowery protestation of undying goodwill, exhorting the captain to carry to the Great Leader word of his worthiness. Then he was waving to his fellows who came bearing between them on its cloth the little statue they had seen the first day.

  When the figurine was borne away Rafel gave his second signal. Only ten days before the coming of the “sunboat” Rafel had been to the mines. And here came twenty men bearing on their heads well-filled baskets of white metal. The eyes of the crew of the Adventure glittered at the sight. Nuggets ranged from the size of peas to double the size of a man’s fist. This meant vast fortune for them all, even after Wendell had taken his lion’s share!

  Forgotten were the mines, the possibility of even greater wealth, but not so Wendell. He could not forget.

  Afraid the sight of the metal had robbed Beale of his reason, Wendell took the fore. He scarcely glanced at the baskets. Then he cried. “No, no, take it away!”

  Rafel’s surprise was no greater than that of Beale and Jimson. The men staring out the windows of the Adventure did not grasp what Wendell was doing. Beale and Jimson wanted to protest, but Wendell flung them both an eloquent glance from his heavy brows. Rafel was protesting, unable to comprehend. Not enough? He paused but a moment, waved again to his men and they went off—to return with twenty more baskets. Rafel looked to Wendell for approbation. The eyes of the others were starting from their heads, unbelieving.

  And all Wendell did was to shake his head. “Take it away, all of it,” he told Rafel.

  Rafel struggled between two emotions, one of joy that the dasie was not to be accepted after all, the other . . . fear for the same reason. Beale and Jimson murmured protest behind Wendell, but he did not appear to hear them.

  Instead he stood by stoically waiting until every basket had been carted away. In the Adventure men cursed, cried against Wendell, but unknown to them . . . he had securely locked the heavy porte of the ship from the outside!

  Now he gave his full attention to Rafel, to explain through the poor medium of the savage tongue what the trouble was . . . That the Great Leader would consider it a great sin if his messengers deprived the fox-men of their precious stone.

  In answer Rafel grinned. Surely, he thought, the Great Leader would know that there was more dasie to be had, that it was but a five-sun walk to the mines. He and his men could replenish their stores quickly enough. The Tolis gave with willing heart. Let the men bring back their burdens!

  Still Wendell shook his head. He sought again to make Rafel understand. The dasie of the Tolis was of no use to the Gods. It was, as all other “stone,” useless. The Gods could not dare accept that which had come to them from other hands. Just as the dasie of the Tolis was contaminated if touched by alien hands, so was the dasie defiled that had been handled by any but the Gods themselves!

  AND this time Rafel comprehended it. He was abject in his misery. In his generosity he had not considered this contingency. He was only glad the Gods had not struck him down in their anger. He must go now to discover when the spirit of the dasie would concede it propitious for a new expedition to start for the mines, when he and his fellows might lead the way.

  Wendell had to be agreeable to that, and Rafel went away with a promise to be back on the morrow. Now he had to placate the men of the Adventure for his refusal of the forty baskets of dasie, pointing out that if he had his way there would be forty times forty baskets to be had. more than the Adventure could hold if they but listened to him.

  The next day Rafel came to advise them they must wait two days before they could start for the mines; for so his spiritual aides had decreed.

  The men grumbled, but otherwise were quiet. They strolled about the village watching the preparations taking place for the march, particularly those of Rafel who had something in a pot that boiled without fire. And the chieftain was eating cosmicite. An open dish in the center of his burrow held a pebbly dust of it, and whenever he thought of it he would take out a small crumb and placidly chew and swallow it.

  At last Rafel was ready to announce the start. To the men of the Adventure it did not look like much of an expedition. There were ten natives in the party—Rafel, the six tucos and three youngsters, sons of two of the tucos. In small sacks of woven grass each man carried a supply of sun-dried meat, and except for two of the boys carrying heavy stone knives to cut their path through the jungle, they were otherwise unarmed. Rafel carried several implements of his trade, one tuco carried a bowl of what turned out to be holy water. Their drinking water and supplementary diet of fruit would be found on the way.

  Beale had expected to go with his men in the Adventure to take the natives with them to point out the way, but Rafel piously vetoed such a suggestion. First, he declared, the trek to the mines must be made in a spirit of humility, the “sun-boat” made too much racket, and the spirits demanded silence; second there was no clearing large enough to contain the Adventure within many walks of the fields! No, they must go afoot as his forebears had gone afoot for a hundred generations.

  This put a different complexion on things. It meant five days of marching in heavy leaden suits under the burning sun, the matter of carrying enough food tablets and water to last the entire trip, beside their mining implements. Beale tried to argue. The Adventure could make its own clearing a day’s march from the mine, but in this Rafel proved adamantine.

  There was a short conference in th
e Adventure. There would be no need for all to go. At most six men could do the work. They would locate the mine, take its position by sun and stars as well as landmarks, and bring away only samples, a small supply that each man could carry comfortably. Later when the natives thought they had returned to the sun, they would drop upon the mine, blast a clearing for the ship and load it with all it could carry.

  It was decided Beale would stay with his ship. Jimson would take charge of the expedition. Five were chosen to accompany him: Arth, Morgan, Talbot, Ware and Petrie, the youngest and heartiest of the crew.

  The trip would consume ten days of travel, and with a day stop-over at the mine it would mean eleven days in all. Against accident they would carry food in the shape of tablets and water in airtight canteens, each man his own share, a twelve-day supply. In addition to other things, Jimson carried a tiny wireless to keep in touch with Beale once they reached the mine.

  It was noon before they could start and Rafel was impatient at the delay. The men’s packs were hastily packed, but at the first stop that night they would straighten them out. Each man carried his revolver against unforseen dangers. It was with much misgivings that Beale saw them go weighted down like deep-sea divers. Did he have a premonition of disaster? He managed to shake off his forebodings to wave cheerily as they disappeared into the trees.

  Their direction lay opposite to the village, but for half an hour the men could still glimpse the towering outline of the Adventure through the trees. Then they dropped into a low valley, and it was gone from sight. They were now entirely dependent upon Rafel and his garishly-tinted crew.

  After a few hours under the brilliant sun, Jimson wished they might make the march in the cool of the night, but the fox-men feared the night with its ghostly shapes. The eerie appearance of the luminous vegetation coupled with the fact that the yal, a catlike creature, roved the night, forbade them stirring from camp with the setting of the sun. Instead they must travel beneath the hot sun; and there was little shade to be had amid that forest of narrow trees with their sharp, spiny blades of leaves.

  The natives, naturally, were not discommoded by the heat. Whatever it was in their blood or chemical structure that permitted them to eat freely of the radium-impregnated food, also made the terrific heat of this world as nothing to them. The three youths cutting the path through the thick jungle seemed scarcely wearied after a day of wielding the machetes with which Beale had provided them to replace their own heavy stone knives.

  CHAPTER IV

  The Lure of the Planet

  UNDER Jimson’s vigilant eye his men husbanded their water carefully, drinking only four times during the day and then sparingly. At each meal (the natives ate four times during the nine-hour day) they ate two of their food lozenges. Health sustaining though they were, however, they were none too appetizing and had to be taken with water to wash them down. All in all it was grueling work to push through the fetid jungle; but these men were accustomed to work of this sort. They had chosen this life in preference to sitting behind a stuffy desk in their own stuffy world, and this was not their first experience in an alien jungle. The new thing was the terrific furnace heat.

  Heads down, eyes turned to the ground, sweating under heavy suits, averting eyes from the luscious fruit that hung invitingly everywhere in clusters from the trees and vines, the men pushed on. They turned their backs, perforce, upon the water when camp was made beside some creek, river or small lake. They talked among themselves of other things when the strange drilling of the webe bird, a creature like a woodpecker, became too nerve-wracking, and they counted themselves lucky that the swarms of insects rising at every step from the rich mold underfoot could not find them through their heavy garments. Balm in Gilead! They slept deeply, and oftimes on the march broke out into gay song. So have men of the past given chase to elusive fortune, and so will they in the future.

  Rafel, following on the heels of Jimson, listened reverently to the chatter of the Tellurians. His heart swelled at the sound of their song. Since the spirits had been agreeable concerning the coming of the Gods to the abode of the dasie, he knew no qualms. He appreciated the fact that he was deeply honored in that the Gods had sought him out to be their guide and friend. The Tolis never lifted their voices in song, but by the time the party reached the mines the fox-men could repeat the words and hum the tune of Jimson’s favorite song, “When you and I were young, Maggie!”

  It was on the noon of the fourth day that it was discovered that Ware had only brought one canteen of water with him! In the excitement he had left the others prepared for him. It was a blow to all six, for it meant the rest would have to share their precious store with him. They managed to laugh it off and make ribald jokes for the benefit of the culprit. But Jimson worried. An accident like that could cripple the whole expedition. Lucky they carried an extra day’s supply.

  Then they came to the mine. The “mine” was situated in a cave of an underground river. The cave’s entrance was cleverly hidden, but before it could be opened Rafel and his fellows had to perform rites to propitiate the god. This solemn ceremony included a soundless dance, the sprinkling of holy water around the surrounding territory, and a long silent prayer in which all nine shiny men squatted in a row, heads touching their knees for three hours. Using this time to their own advantage Jimson and his men crept over the ground, carefully taking their position by the sun, studying landmarks and the lay of the land. They explained their absence as to having to do with their own rituals.

  At last, to the satisfaction of everyone, the cave was opened. They went within, stopping every few feet while Rafel said prayers and supplicated the spirit residing herein. The cave was almost as brilliant as day, due to radium salts imbedded in the walls and ceiling, and by its light they saw they were on a shelving beach of a subterranean river. Its banks for several hundred yards in both directions was strewn with nuggets of cosmicite, nuggets of every size, many as large as a man’s head. They could see the metal shining on the shallow bottom of the river, lying in full sight, waiting for the picking!

  Jimson and his men were filled with boundless joy. Because of the double curve of the river at this point they could see but a small portion, and could only guess what lay the full length of the river, and at its source. It was unbelieveable. They wanted to fill their sacks immediately, to rush back to Beale with their news. But Rafel was not through with his rites. It was dark outside when he finished, and that meant they must eat, sleep and await the new day before they might gather the metal. It was really four days before Rafel was ready to return to the village!

  A different prayer had to be said over each nugget as it was plucked from its bed. Then Rafel insisted that each man take away in his knapsack as much as he could carry! He stood by while each bag was filled, making careful estimate of the weight of each man in proportion to how much he could rightfully bear on his back. With each man laden down there was more prayer, and the ceremony of putting the lid back upon the cave’s mouth. This took a full day for Rafel had to be satisfied that the cave entrance was safe from detection. And another full day of prayer before they could dare take their departure!

  Jimson was beside himself with chagrin long before that. And he was deeply worried. His men were already on short rations. Prepared at the most for twelve days, they had been out nine days already and the return trip still to be made! He could not believe Rafel had purposely not mentioned this enforced stay-over. On being asked how long the journey would take he had truthfully told them five days each way. The natives did not care how long the entire trip consumed. Was there not food and water in plenty all along the way?

  A ND there was the matter of water. Ware’s shortage made their predicament worse. Water inadequate for five had to be divided among six. And to make matters worse Jimson could not communicate with Beale. The wireless was useless, there was too much interference. All he could raise was static; the radioactivity of the planet made wireless impossible. The men waved aside his fears. “We
can do on four lozenges a day instead of eight, and we’ll go easy with the water. Don’t worry, Bill, we can’t lose out now . . .They had known times as bad as this before.

  At night Jimson lost good hours of sleep tinkering with the radio. If only he could reach the Adventure . . . it could meet them halfway. But he was without success. Then they were ready for the return. Some of the men surreptitiously dumped a portion of the cosmicite from their knapsacks, but the others were more greedy. Beale had promised they could keep all they brought with them without counting it among what was to be taken aboard later.

  During the first day of the march they showed no sign of fatigue. They sang and joked as they strode along behind the machete wielders. They were not returning the way they had come. Rafel explained that to do so would mark their path too plainly for lurking enemies; other tribesmen were always on the lookout for new dasie mines. Hence they struck off on a slightly changed course, and on the second day arrived at an impassable river!

  It meant building a bridge to cross it. The fox-men had become highly excited at the sight of the vicious river. They claimed the gods of the river was angry and had to be pacified before they could cross!

  Half a day was spent in prayers before trees were felled to make the bridge. That in turn had to be tossed into the river once they were across. Here the Tellurians suffered their third misfortune. As they crossed the rude bridge Talbot fell! Losing his balance he was gone before the others could come to his aid. He toppled into the torrent and was swept from sight immediately, drawn down into the whirlpools, broken on the ragged rocks a quarter of a mile below.

  Jimson placated Rafel with the explanation that Talbot had suddenly decided to return to his heavenly abode in the sun via the river. The Great Leader had recalled him. Eager to believe, Rafel accepted the story. He was awed beyond measure to have been witness to the passing of a god!