by Don Wilcox
“I’ve flown above it,” I said. “From my first glimpse I determined to look down into it. It’s like a deep ocean of fire within walls that drop straight down for miles before they’re lost in red flames.”
Stone Jaw studied me, wondering why I should be interested.
“It’s a strange thing,” I continued. “The vultures never fly over it. That seems to be their one taboo. But I flew out over it and returned unharmed.”
“Did the vultures threaten you for violating a taboo?”
“On the contrary, my boldness, together with my flying ability, seemed to meet with their favor. I can outfly any of them. You see, I fought against the heavy gravity of Karloora when I was young, and consequently developed superior muscles.”
“You stand a good chance to be a leader,” said Stone Jaw.
Breath of Clover, who had sauntered back to us, still in a reverie, observed dreamily, “Fire Jump, you should lead the vultures and father should lead the Clankolites. Then all our wars would be ended.”
Stone Jaw and I exchanged smiles. We both knew that this conflict sprang from a caprice of nature which no leader could change. The vultures must have mothers for their children—or they must die.
CHAPTER XVI
Above the river trail wings were being blown along like huge dead leaves. Vulture wings—but no vultures.
Those disint guns were horrible things. The first four great battles had taken place along this trail, and they had been disasters for my side.
Rarely would the disint fire fail to kill. And yet there were a few freak shots that took the body and left the wings. Other chance shots melted a single wing—or both wings—off a vulture’s back, but let him live. And so, in the wake of the beaten vultures, retreating on wing, there followed a few mutilated creatures who hiked homeward on their talons.
On my flights back into the purple mountains I frequently picked up a wingless straggler and carried him back.
On such occasions I was careful to talk only in the same blunt terse squawks that all vultures used. But my efforts to mingle anonymously were not successful. My flying was too good. My curiosity about all vulture matters was too evident.
This undue attention from the piercing eyes of my fellows—not to mention that of their captive females—became disturbing. The prediction that Breath of Clover had made was not entirely absurd. I was already being singled out as a sort of leader. My hints and suggestions carried weight.
The name Fire Jump fascinated the vultures. Along one particular stretch of mountainside that I frequented, they would squawk my name from their perches whenever I passed. Their own names conformed to a monotonous pattern; Kup, Kut, or Kaut, or something similar. Kawk was a favorite. From White Tooth Point, where I had built a shelter and adopted a lofty observation post, I could fly past the perches of a score of vultures in as many strokes. Three-fourths of them were called Kawk.
Some of these Kawks and Kuts and Karks wanted to follow me when I made my second trip out over the Lake of Fire. But they grew faint-hearted and turned back, so I flew alone.
This time I made it all the way across. For a reason. I was exploring for a vulture refuge.
What I found was a blue crater region—an eagle man’s paradise—uninhabited.
The thrill of my first breathtaking glimpse of this Blue Moon came back to me in full force. Here were higher mountains and more rugged forests than any I had seen before. The land abounded with game. It was ideally protected from any invasion of wingless men. The vast blue basalt ridges and precipices, the deep pits and craters, were an invitation to eagle men. But not to men. Travel would be too difficult.
It seemed incredible that the vultures hadn’t claimed this land before.
Or had they?
Here and there were signs of old sunken vulture houses. I followed around the rim of the lake of fire for several miles, and the signs of earlier vulture settlements were still to be seen. As I flew through a long arc in a northwesterly direction I was convinced that those evidences looked less ancient. This part of the land had been inhabited a little more recently. Still, it must have been deserted many generations ago.
Why?
As I flew back across the Lake of Fire my ponderings brought an answer. It was simply a case of gradual migration. Game may have been found slightly more plentiful in the region just ahead. And so, during successive generations, the whole vulture population had continued its circling movement. To the west. To the north. On around. Ever to the right. So that now the entire settlement lay in the purple mountains north of the Lake of Fire.
The vultures may have been unconscious of the fact that they were slowly migrating.
If this were true, what of the taboo against crossing the Lake of Fire?
Had it been in existence long ago when the vultures lived on the opposite side of the lake? Perhaps that would never be known. The vultures had no memories for sagas of the past.
Of one thing I was certain. I had discovered the ideal refuge for those vultures who would dare to make the crossing . . .
I succeeded in getting forty families to move. I flew across with them. Each vulture made two or three flights to bring his mate, his offspring, and a few possessions.
Thus the beginning of a refuge colony was established in the Blue Crater Region. Forty families were safe from the deadly disint guns. I reminded them of this, before I left them, and it was good to see those young Clankolite mothers cooing to little winged fellows in their arms. Here was safety and security. They were happy.
Five minutes later, as I winged off toward the rim of the Lake of Fire I saw the white space ship.
It lay three or four miles to the west, bright against the blue mountains.
It was a small ship, resting on a narrow stretch of level rock. I winged toward it at full speed—in time to see its four passengers get aboard.
There were two men, two women. All were Karloorans, dressed for mountain climbing. But from my distance I had been unable to form any other impressions. I watched the ship take off and float away, high above the Lake of Fire.
When I reached the spot where the ship had rested I searched for clues as to the motive of their visit. Was this a scouting party for a coming attack? Could Karloora be so interested in seeing the Clankolites defeat us that they would lend space ships?
I found nothing to prove or disprove this theory. The one discovery I made only lent mystery to the situation. Some of the ancient vulture huts had been broken into. Here and there some excavating had been done.
Before I crossed that lake I swept back to the new colony to make sure the settlers weren’t in a panic over approaching danger. But they hadn’t seen the ship. They were all at work building new houses, and the women were singing high-spirited Clankolite songs.
The panic was across on the other side.
The moment I reached White Tooth Point I found my vulture neighbors and their wives in an uproar. The white ship had come and gone. It had stayed only long enough for its four passengers to get out and look around and ask a few questions. Then they had boarded and sailed away.
“Which way?”
“Into the sky—toward Karloora.”
“What information did they ask?”
“About you. Where you lived. Where you had gone. When you would be back. But we couldn’t say how soon because no one knows where you go or how fast you fly.”
“They were trying to trap me,” I said. “What else did they say?”
“The white-haired man asked if there were ever any girl vultures.”
“Yes. Go on.”
“The girl asked whether you had captured and married a Clankolite.”
“A girl asked?”
“We told her you hadn’t. Then she left something at your nest.”
I took three swift leaps to land at the foot of the big white tower of rock. On the shelf of stone where I kept a few possessions was a slab of clay. It was round like a cookie, a trifle wider than the palm of my hand.
There was an imprint on it. It was the symbol of an eagle—my eagle.
To make sure, I removed the adornment from my hip and fitted it into the clay. The fit was perfect.
The other item was a cardboard box containing an exceedingly old skeleton—the skeleton of a vulture.
One wing of the skeleton, cupped conspicuously within the box, contained another slab of clay. A crude picture had been sketched on it with a stylus. The picture was a female figure—with wings.
I looked from the clay picture to the pile of bones. Suddenly I realized that this was a skeleton of an eagle woman.
For hours I flew around aimlessly, muttering all the oaths I knew.
That skeleton was an impossibility. It couldn’t be. And yet there it was.
Since I couldn’t deny it, all I could do was try to ignore it. Ignore it until some explanation came. In my feverish confusion the word “freak” kept pounding through my head.
Once I had thought I was an impossibility—and that word “freak” had been my only answer. Then the curtains had lifted and I had seen that the mischief of Nature somehow accounted for me and thousands more like me. But a female vulture—
I fled from these baffled ponderings and turned my attention to the mystery which seemed more nearly within reach—the clay imprint of my eagle symbol.
The symbol I carried was one of two identical souvenirs purchased by Bendetti while traveling in some far-off planet. That anyone else in this corner of the universe should have a duplicate for those twin emblems was too unlikely.
That anyone had snatched mine from me while I slept and made an imprint of it was incredible. I never slept that soundly. Besides there would be no reason—
No, it was impossible. It didn’t make sense. Leaving a clay disc was the sort of stunt that Tangles would—Tangles! Tangles! Could it be—
Hadn’t I once talked to her about a great man named Bendetti? Was it possible that she had gone to him when she arrived at Karloora—and that she now possessed the other souvenir?
It was, of course. She had come back—in that ship. That had been she, dressed in her Karloora garments. She was one of them, now.
Why had she returned?
How could I know? I never even knew why she went. But one thing was plain. She hadn’t brushed this Blue Moon out of her mind. It still had a hold on her. Either she had come back to act as a guide for that party of archeologists—if such they were—or she had persuaded them to bring her—for some game of her own.
For many days and nights that followed I almost forsook sleeping in favor of keeping watch, hoping the ship would return.
But it had gone back to Karloora. There was no use watching for it.
Meanwhile the war went on.
I continued with the job of urging vulture families to fly to safety.
The camp of Clankolite warriors was moving closer to the purple mountains. The disastrous battles were only a foretaste of the complete annihilation that seemed to be in store.
For more than a year the stubborn vultures kept on, all the while fighting losing battles.
I was with them in these struggles. I joined in the pitch-dark expeditions that made a few successful raids on the Clankolite store of guns. Whenever we could add disint guns to our advantage of wings, we could stage desperate counter attacks.
But the guns were never as effective for us as for our enemy, owing to their claytung armor. They were protected. We weren’t. True, we might have stolen part of their armor, but we would have had to re-make it, to accommodate our wings. And then our flying speed would have been reduced.
Our strongest defenses were discovered to be the lightning attacks that we could make on sleeping warriors. The few vultures with distint guns would shower fire on the obstreperous growsers. Others of us would drop a hailstorm of stones on the sleeping camp from as low a distance as we dared swoop. Whenever we heard a loud clank of metal we knew we had scored.
But the disint guns had gained in range in recent seasons. After every new shipment from Karloora we were caught by fire that sprayed up through our levels of safety.
For more than a year I found no time to go back across the Lake of Fire. The Blue Crater colony was almost forgotten. Although several more families had gone to join the colony, there was no communication back and forth between the old world and the new.
I was still convinced, however, that the Blue Crater Region would be our salvation. My voice worked overtime.
I had ceased to talk in the simple one-word squawks of my fellow-vultures. I opened up with ideas that could be expressed only in chains of words.
My early admonitions were, “Fly over fire!”
Now I cried, to the amazement of my listeners: “Our war will devour us. It is because we steal women. The men will kill us all.”
Such words, hurled from my perch on White Tooth Point would cause a restless shiver of wings among thousands of stout-hearted vultures gathered around me.
“See how fast they kill. Many of us go to each fight. Few of us come back. The ravines are drifted full with wings of our dead. What can we do?”
Low mutterings would spread over the winged multitude.
“What—do?” they would echo. “There is one answer,” I would cry. “Cross the Lake of Fire. Live there. Never steal more Clankolite women.”
The low mutterings would become a sullen roar of protest.
After each disastrous loss those rumblings of objections came back at me stronger, not weaker.
“Not steal?” they would snarl at me. “No babies . . . We die.”
“Cross the lake. Live your lives to the end,” I would thunder back at them. “If you don’t, the guns will kill you.” In their crude halting words they shot arguments back at me. The Clankolites might pursue anyway. They might find their way around the Lake of Fire and continue to slaughter to the last vulture.
“If you will cross,” I challenged, taking a long shot in the dark. “If you will steal no more, I will make the guns quit shooting.”
“Do!” they squawked. “Do! Do!” It was gruesome, watching them as they seized upon my suggestion. Several thousands of beaks snapped the single word at me over and over. It was like seeing hungry birds crying for food.
“Do—Do—Do!” I sensed a wave of mob violence in their battle cry. I had made my boast. They wanted to see me fulfill it.
In a fever of perspiration I flew up and down the rock-veined mountainside appealing to the captive women as I had appealed to the vultures. But it was futile to hope I could make the bulk of the population move before I put an end to the shooting. The ubiquitous slogan of “Do!” was an unmistakable warning. I must make the guns quit shooting.
I flew north to find Stone Jaw, in hope that by some miracle I might do!
CHAPTER XVII
It was almost dawn—a dawn synonymous with death.
I trudged the ridge silently, stealthily, hugging the shadows.
Many day had passed since I went forth to do—but this day might be the last. I was about to meet Flint Fingers.
According to our arrangement, Flint Fingers would come here for a decisive “conference” this morning. Our meeting was timed to the first ray of morning light when the first of the three suns poped into sight on the mountain horizon.
I clutched a disint gun—a new one—a gift.
The gray grew lighter. My eagle eyes watched everywhere.
Here was the highest crest of the ridge, the appointed place. It was only twenty yards above these shadows where I lurked. My tense muscles urged me to climb those remaining yards, my eyes craved a glimpse of the enemy I knew was waiting just beyond that crest.
Sounds reached me from the other side.
“Haaaaaah!”
I knew that coarse breathy noise. It was the yawn of a growser. The dumb beast could yawn at a time like this! But wait until it caught sight of my wings.
Flint Fingers might have brought a herd of growsers, for all I knew. I wasn’t expecti
ng a fair fight. I had come to know him too well. He would be there, but he would have protection, I was sure.
“Haaaaaaah!” The growser was some distance back of me, now. I could barely hear it, tramping over the rocks. Whoever they were that made up Flint Fingers’ party, I knew they had explored both sides of this ridge to get the lay of the land. I could smell the sickeningly sweet odor of growser saliva in the motionless air that clung to these rocks.
Sunrise was only seconds away. At last the plan I had hurled at the vultures as a substitute for slaughter was due to win or lose. It bid fair to lose.
In recent days I had got my message through to the Clankolites, directing my appeal to Stone Jaw himelf. He had done everything in his power to bring about an agreement. But once more he had been branded a traitor by Flint, because of his dealings with me.
My proposition was simple. We vultures wanted to strike a bargain. Not because we were defeated. Rather because we had the principle to face the fact—that our stealing wasn’t justifiable.
We would quit. We would go across the Lake of Fire. But you, the Clankolites, must also quit. Then the war would be ended. And finally both sides must agree that we would never have any further traffic with Karloora arms.
That was it. And after a heartbreaking effort I had succeeded in winning the support of several vulture leaders. And therein came the tragedy. Seven out of ten of them gave their lives for it.
Those ten leaders had agreed to fly to a given place of meeting. Flint Fingers had insisted that a representative body of leaders from each side should be there. In good faith the vultures went.
Then the Clankolites played their merciless advantage. In cold blood they shot all but three of the ten vultures.
Such treachery would never have been approved by the bulk of the Clankolites; but Flint Fingers managed to cover it. Then, with a stroke of diplomacy as smooth as jagged lightning—and as gentle—he decided to repeat his treachery. This time he meant to catch me alone.
At least that was my interpretation, when the news filtered through to me that he was ready to meet me in a private conference.
