Donovan halted in the airlock. Valduma was there, her fiery head whirling in the rush of black-clad warriors. He leaned over and grabbed a spaceman’s arm. “Ben Ali, go in and help start this crate. I have to stay here.”
“But—”
Donovan shoved him in, stood beside Takahashi, and braced himself to meet the Arzunian charge.
They rushed in, knowing that they had to kill the humans before there was an escape, swinging their weapons and howling. The shock of the assault threw men back, pressed them to the ship and jammed weapons close to breasts. The Terrans cursed and began to use fists and feet, clearing a space to fight in.
Donovan’s sword clashed against a shield, drove off another blade, stabbed for a face, and then it was all lost in the crazed maelstrom, hack and thrust and take the blows they give, hew, sword, hew!
They raged against Wocha, careless now of their lives, thundering blows against his shield, slashing and stabbing and using their last wizard strength to fill the air with blades. He roared and stood his ground, the sword leaped in his hand, metal clove in thunder. The shield was crumpled, falling apart—he tossed it with rib-cracking force against the nearest Arzunian. His nicked and blunted sword burst against a helmet, and he drew the other.
The ship trembled, thutter of engines warming up, the eager promise of sky and stars and green Terra again. “Get in!” bawled Donovan. “Get in! We’ll hold them!”
He stood by Wocha as the last crewmen entered, stood barring the airlock with a wall of blood and iron. Through a blurring vision, he saw Valduma approach.
She smiled at him, one slim hand running through the copper hair, the other held out in sign of peace. Tall and gracious and lovely beyond his knowing, she moved up toward Donovan, and her clear voice rang in his darkening mind.
Basil—you, at least, could stay. You could guide us out to the stars.
“You go away,” groaned Wocha.
The devil’s rage flamed in her face. She yelled, and a lance whistled from the sky and buried itself in the great breast.
“Wocha!” yelled Donovan.
The Donarrian snarled and snapped off the shaft that stood between his ribs. He whirled it over his head, and Valduma’s green eyes widened in fear.
“Donovan!” roared Wocha, and let it fly.
It smashed home, and the Ansan dropped his sword and swayed on his feet. He couldn’t look on the broken thing which had been Valduma.
“Boss, you go home now.”
Wocha laid him in the airlock and slammed the outer valve shut. Turning, he faced the Arzunians. He couldn’t see very well—one eye was gone, and there was a ragged darkness before the other. The sword felt heavy in his hand. But—
“Hooo!” he roared and charged them.
He spitted one and trampled another and tossed a third into the air. Whirling, he clove a head and smashed a rib-cage with his fist and chopped another across. His sword broke, and he grabbed two Arzunians and cracked their skulls together.
They ran, then turned and fled from him. And he stood watching them go and laughed. His laughter filled the city, rolling from its walls, drowning the whistle of the ship’s takeoff and bringing blood to his lips. He wiped his mouth with the back of one hand, spat, and lay down.
“We’re clear, Basil.” Helena clung to him, shivering in his arms, and he didn’t know if it was a laugh or a sob in her throat. “We’re away, safe, we’ll carry word back to Sol and they’ll clear the Black Nebula for good.”
“Yeah.” He rubbed his eyes. “Though I doubt the Navy will find anything. If those Arzunians have any sense, they’ll project to various fringe planets, scatter, and try to pass as harmless humanoids. But it doesn’t matter, I suppose. Their power is broken.”
“And we’ll go back to your home, Basil, and bring Ansa and Terra together and have a dozen children and—”
He nodded. “Sure. Sure.”
But he wouldn’t forget. In the winter nights, when the stars were sharp and cold in a sky of ringing crystal black, he would—go out and watch them? Or pull his roof over him and wait for dawn? He didn’t know yet.
Still—even if this was a long ways from being the best of all possible universes, it had enough in it to make a man glad of his day.
He whistled softly, feeling the words ran through his head:
Lift your glasses high,
kiss the girls good-bye,
(Live well, my friend, live well, live you well)
for we’re riding,
for we’re riding,
for we’re riding out to Terran sky! Terran sky! Terran sky!
The thought came all at once that it could be a song of comradeship, too.
THE SWORDSMEN OF VARNIS, by Geoffrey Cobbe
The twin moons brooded over the red deserts of Mars and the ruined city of Khua-Loanis. The night wind sighed around the fragile spires and whispered at the fretted lattice windows of the empty temples, and the red dust made it like a city of copper.
It was close to midnight when the distant rumble of racing hooves reached the city, and soon the riders thundered in under the ancient gateway. Tharn, Warrior Lord of Loanis, leading his persuers by a scant twenty yards, realised wearily that his lead was shortening, and raked the scaly flanks of his six-legged vorkl with cruel spurs. The faithful beast gave a low cry of despair as it tried to obey and failed.
In front of Tharn in the big double saddle sat Lehni-tal-Loanis, Royal Lady of Mars, riding the ungainly animal with easy grace, leaning forward along its arching neck to murmur swift words of encouragement into its flattened ears. Then she lay back against Tharn’s mailed chest and turned her lovely face up to his, flushed and vivid with the excitement of the chase, amber eyes aflame with love for her strange hero from beyond time and space.
“We shall win this race yet, my Tharn,” she cried. “Yonder through that archway lies the Temple of the Living Vapour, and once there we can defy all the hordes of Varnis!” Looking down at the unearthly beauty of her, at the subtle curve of throat and breast and thigh, revealed as the wind tore at her scanty garments, Tharn knew that even if the Swordsmen of Varnis struck him down his strange odyssey would not have been in vain.
But the girl had judged the distance correctly and Tharn brought their snorting vorkl to a sliding, rearing halt at the great doors of the Temple, just as the Swordsmen reached the outer archway and jammed there in a struggling, cursing mass. In seconds they had sorted themselves out and came streaming across the courtyard, but the delay had given Tharn time to dismount and take his stand in one of the great doorways. He knew that if he could hold it for a few moments while Lehni-tal-Loanis got the door open, then the secret of the Living Vapour would be theirs, and with it the mastery of all the lands of Loanis.
The Swordsmen tried first to ride him down, but the doorway was so narrow and deep that Tharn had only to drive his swordpoint upwards into the first vorkl’s throat and leap backwards as the dying beast fell. Its rider was stunned by the fall, and Thorn bounded up onto the dead animal and beheaded the unfortunate Swordsman without compunction. There were ten of his enemies left and they came at him now on foot, but the confining doorway prevented them from attacking more than four abreast, and Tharn’s elevated position upon the huge carcass gave him the advantage he needed. The fire of battle was in his veins now, and he bared his teeth and laughed in their faces, and his reddened sword wove a pattern of cold death which none could pass.
Lehni-tal-Loanis, running quick cool fingers over the pitted bronze of the door, found the radiation lock and pressed her glowing opalescent thumb-ring into the socket, gave a little sob of relief as she heard hidden tumblers falling. With agonising slowness the ancient mechanism began to open the door; soon Tharn heard the girl’s clear voice call above the clashing steel, “Inside, my Tharn, the secret of the Living Vapour is ours!”
But Tharn, with four of his foes dead now, and seven to go, could not retreat from his position on top of the dead vorkl without grave risk of bein
g cut down, and Lehni-tal-Loanis, quickly realising this, sprang up beside him, drawing her own blade and crying, “Aie, my love! I will be your left arm!”
Now the cold hand of defeat gripped the hearts of the Swordsmen of Varnis: two, three, four more of them mingled their blood with the red dust of the courtyard as Tharn and his fighting princess swung their merciless blades in perfect unison. It seemed that nothing could prevent them now from winning the mysterious secret of the Living Vapour, but they reckoned without the treachery of one of the remaining Swordsmen. Leaping backwards out of the conflict he flung his sword on the ground in disgust. “Aw, the Hell with it!” he grunted, and unclipping a proton gun from his belt, he blasted Lehni-tal-Loanis and her Warrior Lord out of existence with a searing energy beam.
MOON DOG, by Arthur C. Clarke
When I heard Laika’s frantic barking, my first reaction was one of annoyance. I turned over in my bunk and murmured sleepily “Shut up, you silly bitch.” That dreamy interlude lasted only a fraction of a second. Then consciousness returned—and with it, fear. Fear of loneliness, and fear of madness.
For a moment I dared not open my eyes. I was afraid of what I might see. Reason told me that no dog had ever set foot upon this world, that Laika was separated from me by a quarter of a million miles of space—and, far more irrevocably, by five years of time.
“You’ve been dreaming,” I told myself angrily. “Stop being a fool—open your eyes! You won’t see anything except the glow of the wall-paint.”
That was right, of course. The tiny cabin was empty, the door tightly closed. I was alone with my memories, overwhelmed by the transcendental sadness that often comes when some bright dream fades into drab reality. The sense of loss was so desolating that I longed to return to sleep.
It was well that I failed to do so, for at that moment sleep would have been death. But I did not know this for another five seconds, and during that eternity I was back on Earth, seeking what comfort I could from the unforgotten past.
* * * *
No one ever discovered Laika’s origin, though the Observatory staff made a few inquiries and I inserted several advertisements in the Pasadena newspapers. I found her, a lost and lonely ball of fluff, huddled by the roadside one summer evening when I was driving up to Palomar. Though I have never liked dogs, or indeed any animals, it was impossible to leave this helpless little creature to the mercy of the passing cars. With some qualms, wishing that I had a pair of gloves, I picked her up and dumped her in the baggage compartment. I was not going to hazard the upholstery of my new ’92 Vik, and felt that she could do little damage there. In this, I was not altogether correct.
When I had parked the car at the Monastery—the astronomers’ residential quarters, where I’d be living for the next week—I inspected my find without much enthusiasm. I had intended to hand the puppy over to the janitor. But then it whimpered and opened its eyes. There was such an expression of helpless trust in them that—well, I kept it.
Sometimes I regretted that decision. But never for long.
I had no idea how much trouble a growing dog could cause, deliberately and otherwise. My cleaning and repair bills soared. I could never be sure of finding an unravaged pair of socks or an unchewed copy of the Astrophysical Journal. But eventually Laika was both house-trained and Observatory-trained; she must have been the only dog ever to be allowed inside the 200-inch dome. She would lie there quietly in the shadows for hours, while I was up in the cage making adjustments, quite content if she could hear my voice from time to time. The other astronomers became equally fond of her (it was old Dr. Anderson who suggested her name) but from the beginning she was my dog. She would obey no one else. Not that she would always obey me.
She was a beautiful animal, about 95% Alsatian. It was that missing 5%, I imagine, that led to her being abandoned. (I still feel a surge of anger when I think of it, but as I shall never know the facts I may be jumping to false conclusions.) Apart from two dark patches over the eyes, most of her body was a smoky gray. Her coat was soft as silk. When her ears were pricked up, she looked incredibly intelligent and alert. Sometimes I would be discussing spectral types or stellar evolution with my colleagues, and it would be hard to believe that she was not understanding us.
Even now, I cannot understand why she became so attached to me, for I have made very few friends among human beings. Yet when I returned to the Observatory after an absence, she would go almost frantic with delight, bouncing round on her hindlegs and putting her paws on my shoulders—which she could reach quite easily—all the while uttering small squeaks of joy which seemed highly inappropriate from so large a dog. I hated to leave her for more than a few days at a time. I could not take her with me on overseas trips, but she accompanied me on most of my shorter journeys.
She was with me when I drove north to attend that ill-fated seminar at Berkeley.
* * * *
She had been very good company on the long drive.
We were staying with university acquaintances on Telegraph Hill; they had been polite about it, but obviously did not look forward to having a monster in the house. However, I assured them that Laika never gave the slightest trouble. Rather reluctantly, they let her sleep in the living room. “You needn’t worry about burglars tonight,” I said.
“We don’t have any in Berkeley,” they answered, rather coldly.
In the middle of the night it seemed that they were wrong.
I was awakened by an hysterical, high-pitched barking from Laika which I had heard only once before—when she had first seen a cow, and did not know what on earth to make of it. Cursing, I threw off the sheets and stumbled out into the darkness of the unfamiliar house. My main thought was to silence Laika before she roused my hosts—assuming that this was not already far too late. If there had been an intruder, he would certainly have taken flight by now. Indeed, I rather hoped that he had.
For a moment I stood beside the switch at the top of the stairs, wondering whether to throw it. Then I growled, “Shut up, Laika!” and irritably flooded the place with light.
She was scratching frantically at the door, pausing from time to time to give that hysterical yelp. “If you want out,” I said angrily, “there’s no need for all that fuss.” I went down and shot the bolt. She took off into the night like a rocket.
It was very calm and still, with a waning moon struggling to pierce the San Francisco fog. I stood in the luminous haze, looking out across the water to the lights of the city, waiting for Laika to come back so that I could chastise her suitably. I was still waiting when, for the second time in the Twentieth Century, the San Andreas Fault woke from its sleep.
Oddly enough, I was not frightened—at first.
I can remember that two thoughts passed through my mind, in the moment before I realized the danger. Surely, I told myself, the geophysicists could have given us some warning. And then I found myself thinking, with great surprise, “I’d no idea that earthquakes make so much noise!”
It was about then that I knew that this was no ordinary quake.
What happened afterward I would prefer to forget. The Red Cross did not take me off until quite late the next morning, because I refused to leave Laika. As I looked at the shattered house containing the bodies of my friends, I knew that I owed my life to her; but the helicopter pilots could not be expected to understand that, and I cannot blame them for thinking that I was crazy, like so many of the others they had found wandering among the fires and the debris.
* * * *
After that, I do not suppose we were ever apart for more than a few hours. I have been told—and I can well believe it—that I became less and less interested in human company, without being actively unsocial or misanthropic. Between them, the stars and Laika filled all my needs. We used to go for long walks together over the mountains; it was the happiest time I have ever known.
There was only one flaw. I knew, though Laika could not, how soon it must end.
We had been planning the
move for more than a decade. As far back as the 1960’s, it was realized that Earth was no place for an astronomical observatory. Even the small pilot instruments on the Moon had far out-performed all the telescopes peering through the murk and haze of the terrestrial atmosphere. The story of Mount Wilson, Palomar, Greenwich and the other great names was coming to an end. They would still be used for training purposes, but the research frontier must move out into space.
I had to move with it. Indeed, I had already been offered the post of Deputy Director, Farside Observatory. In a few months, I could hope to solve problems I had been working on for years. Beyond the atmosphere, I would be like a blind man who had suddenly been given sight.
It was utterly impossible, of course, to take Laika with me. The only animals on the Moon were those needed for experimental purposes. It might be another generation before pets were allowed, and even then it would cost a fortune to carry them there and to keep them alive. Providing Laika with her usual two pounds of meat a day would take several times my quite comfortable salary.
The choice was simple and straightforward. I could stay on Earth and abandon my career. Or I could go to the Moon and abandon Laika.
After all, she was only a dog.
In a dozen years, she would be dead, while I should be reaching the peak of my profession. No sane man would have hesitated over the matter. Yet I did hesitate, and if by now you do not understand why, no further words of mine can help.
In the end, I let matters go by default. Up to the very week I was due to leave, I had still made no plans for Laika. When Dr. Anderson volunteered to look after her, I accepted numbly, with scarcely a word of thanks. The old physicist and his wife had always been fond of her, and I am afraid that they considered me indifferent and heartless. The truth was just the opposite.
We went for one more walk together over the hills; then I delivered her silently to the Andersons, and did not see her again.
The Seventh Science Fiction Megapack Page 13
