Spider Desert

by Ernst Vlcek

  We stopped to rest. Fratulon had come upon another matterprojection curtain, behind which was a spherical cave that offered us ample room. While Sawbones looked to the wounds of the girl, Ice Claw scouted a way to the surface. In order not to go astray, he utilized a “coldstic?” to mark the way. This instrument left no trace that was optically noticeable, yet the marks could be easily followed by Ice Claw because of the cold they radiated.

  The girl had regained consciousness, and after Fratulon had treated her she rapidly regained her strength, as well. She willingly answered our questions.

  “What is your name?”

  “Azhira.”

  “Azhira?” I asked her, “how did you come to be in the labyrinths?”

  “Vafron, that monster!” she cried hatefully. “He handed me over to the Zagors!”

  “And who is Vafron?”

  “He and 4 other men came in contact with us two days ago?” she answered. “I hated him from the first moment I saw him, and the others didn’t like him either.”

  I raised a hand to interrupt her, and I smiled. “Why don’t you tell it to me in sequence? I’m also interested in knowing where all this took place, and to whom you belong.”

  She swept a strand of red hair from her brow and smiled apologetically. “You’ll have to excuse me if I don’t make much sense. It’s just that I’m still pretty mixed up and confused. What those lizard creatures did to me isn’t easy to forget.” She shuddered.

  “You don’t have to tell us anything if you’re not up to it?” I said.

  She shook her head. “I have nothing to be silent about?” she said, and then suddenly grasped my hand. “Will you take me back to my father?”

  When I promised to do so, she told her story.

  She and her father had joined a group of treasure hunters who had set up their camp in the Marauthanian ruins. There were still other groups who were constantly competing with each other. Not infrequently there were acts of violence and even bloody fights between these outfits.

  I interrupted her again. “I’m familiar with the situation at the site of the ruins. You can boil it down to just the details concerning your own personal story.”

  She told us how Vafron and his 4 companions had shown up in the ruins two days before. After negotiating with the other camps in the area, these men came to make contact with her father. Vafron proposed an organization and merger of all treasure hunters who were camped in the ruins—naturally with him claiming the command position.

  Azhira’s father was more archaeologically inclined toward tracing the original inhabitants of Gortavor and was no soldier of fortune. After ascertaining that the other members of his party were not interested in any merger either, he had chased Vafron away.

  But on the following day when her father was away from camp with a majority of the other men, Vafron made a forced raid on their little stronghold and stole her away. Then while they were en route to another ruin site they were attacked by Zagors. One of Vafron’s men could parley with the Zagors, and when it was learned they were demanding a human sacrifice victim Vafron had handed Azhira over to them.

  It was not an unusual tale. Incidents of this nature were more or less a daily part of life at the Marauthanian ruins. Of course it had been rather irresponsible of her father to take her along on the expedition, but I didn’t say so out loud.

  “Will you take me back there?” she asked.

  “We’re headed that way?” I told her. “In Tarkihl we picked up a distress call which may have come from those ruins.”

  She clung suddenly to my arm. “I hope nothing’s happened to my father!”

  “You shouldn’t jump right away to the worst conclusions?” I said, hoping to reassure her.

  “But Vafron…”

  “Every other man in those ruins is another Vafron. It’s not likely that the emergency call was connected with the incident you described. It’s more probable that your father might have sent out a call for help because he’s worried about you.”

  I could see she thought that probability to be even less plausible. Fortunately, however, I was saved from having to think up any further words of consolation. Ice Claw had returned.

  “I’ve found a way out?” he reported.

  * * * *

  We started to fear that Ice Claw wouldn’t be able to find the exit he was talking about. At any rate he gave us a nervous time of it when he maintained that the air temperature had warmed up his cold marks so that he couldn’t find the trail he had made.

  “We’ll never find our way out of here!” wailed Azhira.

  As I saw her tremble in her fear I wondered how she expected to bear up under the rough life in the ruins She didn’t impress one as the kind of girl who would easily accustom herself to the raw life and customs of this wild planet. But she was beautiful, and maybe she thought that with her looks she could twist any tough tunnelbuster in the Spider Desert around her little finger.

  “We’re on the right course?” declared Ice Claw as he led the way.

  We turned off our flashlights and saw that the passage we were in opened upon a long chamber which was illuminated by a dim source of light. The ground was an inch thick with sand dust which must have been blown in here from the surface through an opening somewhere. It was now only a matter of moments before we would find the exit.

  “Daylight!” cried Fratulon, pointing ahead.

  Then I also made out the narrow ray of light that slanted steeply into the cavern. The opening in the ceiling was wide enough for two men to get through it at the same time. A sand drift reached from the floor practically to the hole. There was a fairly strong draft of air that caused the sand to swirl about and get into our noses and mouths.

  Azhira coughed. I drew her to me instinctively to protect her, and she buried her face against my chest.

  Fratulon gave the drift a light fanning with his energy beam so as to melt in a fairly resistive crust and hold the loose sand together. Otherwise we'd have just kept sinking back in the fine grit without ever getting to the opening.

  “It wouldn’t be at all wise to hike in the desert now?” remarked Ice Claw.

  “Why is that?” I asked, wonderingly. “The storm seems to have calmed down to where it’s bearable.”

  “I’ll grant you that, but up there it’s still hot—in fact it’ll be intolerable until the sun goes down.”

  Fratulon laughed and reached into his medical bag. He handed Ice Claw one of his “coldsticks”. “If you can’t stand the heat, rub some of this into you.”

  Before we left the labyrinth, we all had a few swallows of water. When I reached the surface I saw the ruins at once. They towered beyond the web into an early twilight sky.

  “We’ve made it!” I shouted in relief as I helped Azhira to climb through the opening. “The ruins are close at hand. We should be able to reach them before sundown!”

  Azhira gazed through the openings in the silvery net overhead at the halfcrumbled buildings, which were in the typical funnelshaped design of the Arkonides. When she spoke, her lips trembled slightly. “They are very eerie looking from here. Those structures seem to be part of a ghost city, but they are inhabited by criminals of all kinds.”

  “If you have such a low opinion of treasure hunters?” I asked, “why have you chosen their company?”

  “I didn’t want to leave my father alone?” she answered gently. “He’s so… vulnerable, so ignorant of the world. He needs someone to take care of him. Besides, how could I know that there were men who were capable of such low criminality?”

  “That’s all right, Azhira?” said Fratulon as he glanced at me reprovingly. “Atlan didn’t mean to lean on you.”

  I felt like asking him what I had said to her to suddenly make him so protective, but I refrained from doing so. When women were involved, one never knew where he stood with old Sawbones. I strode away swiftly, raising the dust behind me. I took no further heed of Azhira. From here on, I thought, Fratulon could take charge of
her.

  Ice Claw caught up with me. “It’s hot!” he groaned He kept rubbing himself incessantly with the coldstick. “I hope the Zagors don’t track us here. I wouldn’t be much good in a fight—not in this heat!”

  “We are almost there?” I said, trying to console him.

  Fratulon remained a slight distance behind us and kept up a lively conversation with Azhira. I tried not to eavesdrop but couldn’t help catching a few fragments that reached my ears. What I heard was enough to explain Fratulon’s actions a little more clearly. I grinned secretly to myself. Old chubby Sawbones had taken a fancy to the girl, himself!

  “I’m melting!” cried Ice Claw tormentedly.

  “That comes from too much chatter?” I retorted. “When your mouth flaps, you know, it loads up your bodily crystals with more heatenergy.”

  “If that’s supposed to be humour, Atlan, it’s pretty flat?” commented Ice Claw, somewhat surprised at my tone.

  Suddenly, however, he stopped and placed at hand on my forearm. The coldness of his taloned grip was enough of a shock to bring me to an abrupt halt. I reached automatically for my weapon, but then I realized there was no need for it.

  About 20 paces ahead of us was one of the rare tiepoints of the spider web. Countless silvery strands converged here, forming a sort of platform where the bleached corpses of three humanoid creatures were to be seen. They were humans of Arkonide descent. Their once silvery hair was now shoulder long and dull grey, and it did not move in the wind.

  I heard Azhira make an outcry behind me.

  “Don’t look at them?” Fratulon told her.

  “What do you make of them, Sawbones?” I asked. “It’s fairly obvious they’re victims of the Zagors.”

  “A sacrificial offering of the Zagors to their singing god of the silver web?” said Fratulon with conviction. He frowned pensively as he shook his head. “I don’t like that. Whenever the Zagors go on a warpath to get sacrifice victims for their gruesome rites, a discharge of forces from the web is imminent.”

  I nodded comprehendingly. Fratulon had told me often enough about the fact that there was an upsurge of vibrations and hypnotic humming in the silvery net from time to time, whenever the Zagors made an unusual number of human offerings to their god. It was suspected that the reptilian creatures had some way of sensing the approach of any rise in web activity.

  I turned to the girl. “Do you know any of those men, Azhira?”

  Sobbing in her revulsion, she pressed closer to Fratulon. “I can’t look at them!” she exclaimed.

  “It could be possible, though?” said Fratulon, “that they are treasure hunters you might know. Just take a peek at them—you can stand that much, I’m sure.”

  Fearfully, Azhira lifted her head and barely opened her eyes to peer upward at the three bleached and mummified deadmen. She fixed her gaze upon them as one hypnotized, seemingly unable to turn away.

  “Yes?” she murmured softly. “I know them… at least one of them, anyway. He belonged to Lay Manos’ outfit. He was an unscrupulous wretch and murderer .

  “Let’s go on?” urged Fratulon. As we moved forward he put his arm around the girl’s shoulders.

  It wasn’t long before we reached the ruins. They consisted mainly of 8 funnelshaped edifices, the largest of which was about 100 meters high. A predecessor of Armanck Declanter, the Tatto Marauthan, had ordered them to be built here long ago in the hopes of founding an Arkonide colony. But the attempt to create another bulwark of Arkonide civilization had been shattered by the victorious power of the Spider Desert.

  At present the coneshaped structures were mostly deteriorated. But the signs of decay and destruction could not be attributed alone to the effects of wind and storm. The greatest amount of deterioration had been caused by the Zagors and the treasure hunters who persisted in haunting the place and dwelling in it. The endless battles for control or advantage had been waged with every means available. The scars of this warfare were visible everywhere.

  And yet, life flourished in the ruins.

  It was a miserable existence, continuously overshadowed by the imminence of death yet spurred on by the illusive dream of incalculable riches. The men and women who came into the Spider Desert usually had a poorly formed concept of what they were looking for. They didn’t commit themselves to any fixed line of procedure. It was immaterial to them whether they stumbled upon treasures of a longlost culture in the labyrinths of Zagooth or uncovered a mother lode vein of precious metal or discovered in the ruins the treasure chamber of the Tatto Marauthan, himself. They hoped for riches in any form.

  But only the dreams of very few people were ever realized. Only a very small number of these adventurers ever returned—and fewer still came back with anything to show for it. For most of them, the desert itself became their fate.

  Such were the Marauthanian ruins: a small oasis of stranded souls whose strivings led nowhere and whose longings remained unfulfilled.

  The separate buildings were connected in many places by structures fashioned of synthetic materials, and by suspension bridges. From some of the cross-supports hung smaller structures in the shape of baskets and crates which served as shelters for the treasure hunters. Other seekers of a hardier kind had used every variety of materials to erect veritable strongholds on the more inaccessible slopes or in the more defendable declivities of the ruins. In the course of time the most bizarre types of improvised structures had emerged out of the fallen masonry, like a growth of ulcers. Many of these fantastic looking places were stoutly defended and hotly contested.

  At the moment, however, the ruined city looked dead and extinct. There was only a howling of wind to be heard among the looming walls of masonry, but no sign of life was to be seen.

  Fratulon took in the ruins with a narrowed gaze. “Azhira?” he asked, “where is the shelter or hiding place of your father’s group?”

  “We’re on the highest level of that building that has only a part of its outer wall still standing,?” she replied, while indicating the direction with her hand.

  The structure she had pointed out loomed 50 meters into the air like the skeleton of some prehistoric monster. Where one of the best preserved portions of the outflaring main wall still remained, there on the highest level was a clumsy looking structure that appeared to consist of the most variegated kinds of materials.

  “An easily defended stronghold?” observed Fratulon. He furrowed his brow and added thoughtfully: “But the way that leads to it goes through other ruins where we would be easy targets for rival outfits.”

  I agreed with Sawbones. Of course we were a neutral party, but the fact that Azhira was with us could mislead her father’s enemies and make them regard us as some new form of opposition.

  I sighed. “We’ll have to chance fighting our way through to Azhira’s father. After that we can try to find out who sent the distress call.”

  “There is somebody!” exclaimed Ice Claw. He pointed to the base of the nearest ruin, which was hardly more than 100 paces from us.

  A quasihumanoid creature with green skin had appeared there and was beckoning to us with all four of his arms. I realized that it was one of the dwarflike Manolians who was dressed in the singlepiece hooded cloak of one of the desert dwellers.

  When he ventured a few steps from the protection of the ruins, the desert in front of us suddenly came to life. In various places the sand showed movement, and Zagors emerged into view. They must have crept up to the ruined city under cover of night and then burrowed themselves into the sand so that they could lie here in wait for unsuspecting treasure hunters.

  At sight of the reptiles, the Manolian turned to flee, but before he could duck between the protective walls behind him, a spear plunged into his back.

  I caught a last glimpse of the greenskinned creature as he collapsed, but I was now forced to concentrate on the Zagors, who faced us ready for a fight.

  6/ IN THE PIRATES’ LAIR

  Impatiently, Fratulon looked forward
to the day when his silence would be at an end.

  Although he had believed that Atlan was not able to betray himself because of his ignorance of his parentage, there was one thing he had overlooked: namely, Atlan’s childhood memories. They were dim and blurred and only seemed to occur feebly to him in his dreams. But also Atlan often had an association of ideas during conversations with certain aristocrats whose circle of activity revolved about Arkon and the Crystal Palace.

  One day it turned out that some of these sporadic memory fragments almost proved fatal. Atlan related to a nobleman how he sometimes had certain mental impressions of Arkon and the Crystal Palace, although he had never been there before. The court sycophant and favourite of Orbanoshol immediately became suspicious, but before he could transmit his information, Fratulon had managed to silence him.

  Atlan was the only witness to the deed. He asked him why he had killed this man in whom he had a blind trust and to whom he had given his friendship. At the time, Fratulon had been very close to revealing the truth to the boy, but he again restrained himself.

  Reason had won the battle, and now Fratulon anxiously awaited the day when he could break his long silence…

  * * * *

  In the next moment there were only six Zagors left out of eight. Fratulon had killed two of them, and immediately thereafter two more were credited to me. I felled them with a sustained jolt from my hand beamer. And then the rest of them were upon us.

  I couldn’t bring another shot to bear but I was able to dodge a Zagor who was making a thrust at me with his spear. The force of his charge carried him past me and I struck him on the back of the head with the barrel of my weapon. Although the blow didn’t knock him out, it staggered him enough to slow his reactions down. I was after him so quickly that he didn’t have time to even make a defensive movement before I clipped him across his throat with the edge of my hand. I heard his death rattle as he collapsed.