The Golden Age Of Science Fiction Vol Iv Part 82

"Uglik is a mighty warrior," said Invar doubtfully.

"So is Anak," was the reply. "Further, I have a plan."

"Then are Uglik's days numbered," replied Invar with delight. "Tell me what I am to do to aid you."

"When we get to the cave, you may cut off my hair and beard."

Invar started back aghast.

"Your strength will go with it," he protested. "The glory of the warrior is his beard."

"I do not believe it," said Anak. "By cutting it, I will rob Uglik of a handhold he could use to my downfall. Fear not, I know what I am doing."

With a flint knife, Invar slowly and painfully hacked off Anak's long hair and beard. When the operation was over, Anak smeared himself plentifully with the fat of a wild pig which had fallen to one of Invar's spears the day before. When he was ready, he threw himself down to sleep. When he had dropped off to slumber, Una rose. She took the liver of the pig from the back of the cave and approached the doorway.

"Where go you, Una?" demanded Invar.

"I take this to the Father that he may strengthen himself for the rannag," she said enigmatically. "Should not the best be given to the Father?"

Invar's hand tightened on his throwing-spear.

"Minded am I to slay you," he said darkly.

"And fight to the death with Anak when he awakens? Listen, oh, fool, if the Father eats greatly, he will be slow and Anak may slay him with ease."

A light of admiration flashed into Invar's eyes.

"It is well thought," he said.

With a swift glance around, Una took from her girdle a tiny skin packet. She opened it and displayed a brown powder.

"This, Esle gave me," she whispered. "She said that Uglik had threatened her death and she wished Anak to kill him. If I give Anak this, Degar Astok would make him strong."

"Why did you not do so?"

"Because I am a woman, and I know a woman's heart. It would have the opposite effect. I will rub it into the liver I give to Uglik."

With the aid of the women, Esle laid out a rough oval on the ground where the two combatants were to meet. Throwing-stones and spears were not allowed in rannag, the two combatants fighting their duel with smiting-stones and flint knives only. At the appointed hour, the two combatants appeared, stripped to their loin-clothes only. The Father was hideous with streaks of paint, red, yellow, white, and black. Anak glistened from his coat of grease, but his skin was bare of ornament.

The two combatants took their places, while around the fighting ground gathered the hunters and youths, throwing-spears in hand. Their privilege and duty it was to slay either of the fighters who fled or who was forced out of the ring. Esle intoned a long prayer to Degar Astok. The word for combat was given. The two men approached each other cautiously. The Father confident in his strength, but he felt heavy and lethargic. Anak was clear-eyed and alert, ready to take advantage of any opening offered him.

The two men circled, wary as great jungle cats. Anak, suddenly ducked his head and rubbed his eyes. With a roar of triumph, Uglik charged.

Outside the ring, there was a commotion. A woman's scream, rent the air. Invar leaped to Una's side, to find her wrestling with Esle.

"Kill her, Invar!" shrieked the girl. "She tried to cast a spell on Anak."

The young hunter forced open the High Priestess' hand. In it was grasped a bit of shiny quartz with which she had reflected the sun into the hunter's eyes. With upraised hand, he struck her to the ground.

"She shall be judged after the rannag," he said. "Take you this spear, Una, and drive it through her if she moves."

The girl took the spear. Invar returned to watch the fight. Anak had sidestepped the first rush of the Father and his smiting-stone had bit heavily into Uglik's shoulder. Uglik had whirled and charged again. Anak made as if to leap to one side. As Uglik changed his direction to meet him, Anak swayed back. Again his smiting-stone bit heavily into the Father's side. With a cry of pain, Uglik paused and changed his tactics. He approached cautiously, ready to leap to either side. Farther and farther Anak retreated until the hunters at the end of the oval raised their spears in antic.i.p.ation. Then Anak charged.

Uglik was taken by surprise. His blow glanced off Anak's upraised stone while an upward sweep of the weapon took him in the neck. He dropped his stone and threw his arms around Anak's body. Well had Anak planned when he greased his body, for Uglik's grip failed. Anak shook him loose and struck again. Once more Uglik grasped him, and this time threw him heavily to the ground. Again the grease made his hold slip. Anak struggled to his feet, but it was evident that the fall had hurt him.

Uglik followed up his advantage. He warded off the blow of the hunter's stone and again flung him to earth. Anak dropped his stone.

Uglik's hands fastened on the hunter's throat, and mercilessly he banged Anak's head on the rocky ground. Anak wound his mighty legs about the Father's middle. Silently they put forth their strength. Uglik's hold was the more deadly, and slowly the hunter weakened.

"The Father kills!" screamed Esle.

She strove to rise to her feet, but Una had her orders from Invar. She pressed home the spear. With a sob, Esle fell back.

Anak's tongue began to protrude from his mouth and his eyes swelled. An expression of triumph spread over Uglik's face, which suddenly changed to one of amazement, and then to pain and fear.

As they rolled over, Anak had felt something pierce his leg. The pain was nothing, but it persisted. As his consciousness slipped away, only that one feeling remained. He reached down to his leg. Thrust deep into his thigh was a knife-like sliver of flint. With a supreme effort, he rallied his failing consciousness and grasped it. The Father's chest was directly over him. With his last conscious effort, he thrust upward with the fragment of flint. His aim was true. Uglik suddenly released his hold and raised himself to his knees, his hands plucking at his chest. For a moment he swayed forward and back. Then, with a cry, he pitched forward, blood gushing from his chest over the unconscious hunter.

Anak recovered consciousness to find his opponent lying dead before him, the sliver of flint buried in his heart. He staggered to his feet and tried to speak. His vocal cords refused to act and he ma.s.saged his throat gently.

"I am Father of the tribe of Ugar by right of rannag," he said hoa.r.s.ely. "Do any challenge the right?"

There was no answer. Anak stepped to Una's side.

"Uglik spoke truth when he said that Una would be High Priestess of Degar Astok," he said. "This I now proclaim her. You, Esle, stripped of your office, shall do menial tasks for all who will until death claims you. If your homage wavers, death will not be long.

"Lo, I make a new law for the tribe. No longer shall all the women belong to the Father, but to those to whom the Father awards them. To each hunter, I now give one woman. He shall take her to his cave and hunt for her. She shall obey him and no other. The others shall live in a woman's cave, and shall be tabu until they are chosen by one who has no woman, or until a hunter desires more than one woman to chip his flints and dress his skins. Hunters, choose your women and take up caves. Here stays the tribe of Ugar forever, and we will allow no others in the valley."

Followed by Una he strode toward the Father's cave. Below the hunters and the women eyed one another a trifle fearfully. At last Invar stepped forward and grasped one of them by the arm.

"Come to my cave!" he ordered.

The woman followed him submissively.

Contents

ALL CATS ARE GRAY.

By Andre Norton

Steena of the s.p.a.ceways--that sounds just like a corny t.i.tle for one of the Stellar-Vedo spreads. I ought to know, I've tried my hand at writing enough of them. Only this Steena was no glamour babe. She was as colorless as a Lunar plant--even the hair netted down to her skull had a sort of grayish cast and I never saw her but once draped in anything but a shapeless and baggy gray s.p.a.ce-all.

Steena was strictly background stuff and that is where she mostly spent her free hours--in the smelly smoky background corners of any stellar-port dive frequented by free s.p.a.cers. If you really looked for her you could spot her--just sitting there listening to the talk--listening and remembering. She didn't open her own mouth often. But when she did s.p.a.cers had learned to listen. And the lucky few who heard her rare spoken words--these will never forget Steena.

She drifted from port to port. Being an expert operator on the big calculators she found jobs wherever she cared to stay for a time. And she came to be something like the master-minded machines she tended--smooth, gray, without much personality of her own.

But it was Steena who told Bub Nelson about the Jovan moon-rites--and her warning saved Bub's life six months later. It was Steena who identified the piece of stone Keene Clark was pa.s.sing around a table one night, rightly calling it unworked Slit.i.te. That started a rush which made ten fortunes overnight for men who were down to their last jets. And, last of all, she cracked the case of the Empress of Mars.

All the boys who had profited by her queer store of knowledge and her photographic memory tried at one time or another to balance the scales. But she wouldn't take so much as a cup of Ca.n.a.l water at their expense, let alone the credits they tried to push on her. Bub Nelson was the only one who got around her refusal. It was he who brought her Bat.

About a year after the Jovan affair he walked into the Free Fall one night and dumped Bat down on her table. Bat looked at Steena and growled. She looked calmly back at him and nodded once. From then on they traveled together--the thin gray woman and the big gray tom-cat. Bat learned to know the inside of more stellar bars than even most s.p.a.cers visit in their lifetimes. He developed a liking for Vernal juice, drank it neat and quick, right out of a gla.s.s. And he was always at home on any table where Steena elected to drop him.

This is really the story of Steena, Bat, Cliff Moran and the Empress of Mars, a story which is already a legend of the s.p.a.ceways. And it's a d.a.m.n good story too. I ought to know, having framed the first version of it myself.

For I was there, right in the Rigel Royal, when it all began on the night that Cliff Moran blew in, looking lower than an antman's belly and twice as nasty. He'd had a spell of luck foul enough to twist a man into a slug-snake and we all knew that there was an attachment out for his ship. Cliff had fought his way up from the back courts of Venaport. Lose his ship and he'd slip back there--to rot. He was at the snarling stage that night when he picked out a table for himself and set out to drink away his troubles.

However, just as the first bottle arrived, so did a visitor. Steena came out of her corner, Bat curled around her shoulders stole-wise, his favorite mode of travel. She crossed over and dropped down without invitation at Cliff's side. That shook him out of his sulks. Because Steena never chose company when she could be alone. If one of the man-stones on Ganymede had come stumping in, it wouldn't have made more of us look out of the corners of our eyes.

She stretched out one long-fingered hand and set aside the bottle he had ordered and said only one thing, "It's about time for the Empress of Mars to appear again."

Cliff scowled and bit his lip. He was tough, tough as jet lining--you have to be granite inside and out to struggle up from Venaport to a ship command. But we could guess what was running through his mind at that moment. The Empress of Mars was just about the biggest prize a s.p.a.cer could aim for. But in the fifty years she had been following her queer derelict orbit through s.p.a.ce many men had tried to bring her in--and none had succeeded.

A pleasure-ship carrying untold wealth, she had been mysteriously abandoned in s.p.a.ce by pa.s.sengers and crew, none of whom had ever been seen or heard of again. At intervals thereafter she had been sighted, even boarded. Those who ventured into her either vanished or returned swiftly without any believable explanation of what they had seen--wanting only to get away from her as quickly as possible. But the man who could bring her in--or even strip her clean in s.p.a.ce--that man would win the jackpot.

"All right!" Cliff slammed his fist down on the table. "I'll try even that!"

Steena looked at him, much as she must have looked at Bat the day Bub Nelson brought him to her, and nodded. That was all I saw. The rest of the story came to me in pieces, months later and in another port half the System away.

Cliff took off that night. He was afraid to risk waiting--with a writ out that could pull the ship from under him. And it wasn't until he was in s.p.a.ce that he discovered his pa.s.sengers--Steena and Bat. We'll never know what happened then. I'm betting that Steena made no explanation at all. She wouldn't.

It was the first time she had decided to cash in on her own tip and she was there--that was all. Maybe that point weighed with Cliff, maybe he just didn't care. Anyway the three were together when they sighted the Empress riding, her dead-lights gleaming, a ghost ship in night s.p.a.ce.

She must have been an eerie sight because her other lights were on too, in addition to the red warnings at her nose. She seemed alive, a Flying Dutchman of s.p.a.ce. Cliff worked his ship skillfully alongside and had no trouble in snapping magnetic lines to her lock. Some minutes later the three of them pa.s.sed into her. There was still air in her cabins and corridors. Air that bore a faint corrupt taint which set Bat to sniffing greedily and could be picked up even by the less sensitive human nostrils.

Cliff headed straight for the control cabin but Steena and Bat went prowling. Closed doors were a challenge to both of them and Steena opened each as she pa.s.sed, taking a quick look at what lay within. The fifth door opened on a room which no woman could leave without further investigation.

I don't know who had been housed there when the Empress left port on her last lengthy cruise. Anyone really curious can check back on the old photo-reg cards. But there was a lavish display of silks trailing out of two travel kits on the floor, a dressing table crowded with crystal and jeweled containers, along with other lures for the female which drew Steena in. She was standing in front of the dressing table when she glanced into the mirror--glanced into it and froze.

Over her right shoulder she could see the spider-silk cover on the bed. Right in the middle of that sheer, gossamer expanse was a sparkling heap of gems, the dumped contents of some jewel case. Bat had jumped to the foot of the bed and flattened out as cats will, watching those gems, watching them and--something else!

Steena put out her hand blindly and caught up the nearest bottle. As she unstoppered it she watched the mirrored bed. A gemmed bracelet rose from the pile, rose in the air and tinkled its siren song. It was as if an idle hand played.... Bat spat almost noiselessly. But he did not retreat. Bat had not yet decided his course.

She put down the bottle. Then she did something which perhaps few of the men she had listened to through the years could have done. She moved without hurry or sign of disturbance on a tour about the room. And, although she approached the bed she did not touch the jewels. She could not force herself to that. It took her five minutes to play out her innocence and unconcern. Then it was Bat who decided the issue.

He leaped from the bed and escorted something to the door, remaining a careful distance behind. Then he mewed loudly twice. Steena followed him and opened the door wider.

Bat went straight on down the corridor, as intent as a hound on the warmest of scents. Steena strolled behind him, holding her pace to the unhurried gait of an explorer. What sped before them both was invisible to her but Bat was never baffled by it.

They must have gone into the control cabin almost on the heels of the unseen--if the unseen had heels, which there was good reason to doubt--for Bat crouched just within the doorway and refused to move on. Steena looked down the length of the instrument panels and officers' station-seats to where Cliff Moran worked. On the heavy carpet her boots made no sound and he did not glance up but sat humming through set teeth as he tested the tardy and reluctant responses to b.u.t.tons which had not been pushed in years.

To human eyes they were alone in the cabin. But Bat still followed a moving something with his gaze. And it was something which he had at last made up his mind to distrust and dislike. For now he took a step or two forward and spat--his loathing made plain by every raised hair along his spine. And in that same moment Steena saw a flicker--a flicker of vague outline against Cliff's hunched shoulders as if the invisible one had crossed the s.p.a.ce between them.

But why had it been revealed against Cliff and not against the back of one of the seats or against the panels, the walls of the corridor or the cover of the bed where it had reclined and played with its loot? What could Bat see?

The storehouse memory that had served Steena so well through the years clicked open a half-forgotten door. With one swift motion she tore loose her s.p.a.ceall and flung the baggy garment across the back of the nearest seat.

Bat was snarling now, emitting the throaty rising cry that was his hunting song. But he was edging back, back toward Steena's feet, shrinking from something he could not fight but which he faced defiantly. If he could draw it after him, past that dangling s.p.a.ceall.... He had to--it was their only chance.

"What the...." Cliff had come out of his seat and was staring at them.

What he saw must have been weird enough. Steena, bare-armed and shouldered, her usually stiffly-netted hair falling wildly down her back, Steena watching empty s.p.a.ce with narrowed eyes and set mouth, calculating a single wild chance. Bat, crouched on his belly, retreating from thin air step by step and wailing like a demon.

"Toss me your blaster." Steena gave the order calmly--as if they still sat at their table in the Rigel Royal.

And as quietly Cliff obeyed. She caught the small weapon out of the air with a steady hand--caught and leveled it.

"Stay just where you are!" she warned. "Back, Bat, bring it back!"

With a last throat-splitting screech of rage and hate, Bat twisted to safety between her boots. She pressed with thumb and forefinger, firing at the s.p.a.cealls. The material turned to powdery flakes of ash--except for certain bits which still flapped from the scorched seat--as if something had protected them from the force of the blast. Bat sprang straight up in the air with a scream that tore their ears.

"What...?" began Cliff again.

Steena made a warning motion with her left hand. "Wait!"

She was still tense, still watching Bat. The cat dashed madly around the cabin twice, running crazily with white-ringed eyes and flecks of foam on his muzzle. Then he stopped abruptly in the doorway, stopped and looked back over his shoulder for a long silent moment. He sniffed delicately.

Steena and Cliff could smell it too now, a thick oily stench which was not the usual odor left by an exploding blaster-sh.e.l.l.

Bat came back, treading daintily across the carpet, almost on the tips of his paws. He raised his head as he pa.s.sed Steena and then he went confidently beyond to sniff, to sniff and spit twice at the unburned strips of the s.p.a.ceall. Having thus paid his respects to the late enemy he sat down calmly and set to washing his fur with deliberation. Steena sighed once and dropped into the navigator's seat.

"Maybe now you'll tell me what in the h.e.l.l's happened?" Cliff exploded as he took the blaster out of her hand.

"Gray," she said dazedly, "it must have been gray--or I couldn't have seen it like that. I'm colorblind, you see. I can see only shades of gray--my whole world is gray. Like Bat's--his world is gray too--all gray. But he's been compensated for he can see above and below our range of color vibrations and--apparently--so can I!"

Her voice quavered and she raised her chin with a new air Cliff had never seen before--a sort of proud acceptance. She pushed back her wandering hair, but she made no move to imprison it under the heavy net again.

"That is why I saw the thing when it crossed between us. Against your s.p.a.ceall it was another shade of gray--an outline. So I put out mine and waited for it to show against that--it was our only chance, Cliff.

"It was curious at first, I think, and it knew we couldn't see it--which is why it waited to attack. But when Bat's actions gave it away it moved. So I waited to see that flicker against the s.p.a.ceall and then I let him have it. It's really very simple...."

Cliff laughed a bit shakily. "But what was this gray thing? I don't get it."

"I think it was what made the Empress a derelict. Something out of s.p.a.ce, maybe, or from another world somewhere." She waved her hands. "It's invisible because it's a color beyond our range of sight. It must have stayed in here all these years. And it kills--it must--when its curiosity is satisfied." Swiftly she described the scene in the cabin and the strange behavior of the gem pile which had betrayed the creature to her.

Cliff did not return his blaster to its holder. "Any more of them on board, d'you think?" He didn't look pleased at the prospect.

Steena turned to Bat. He was paying particular attention to the s.p.a.ce between two front toes in the process of a complete bath. "I don't think so. But Bat will tell us if there are. He can see them clearly, I believe."