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Title: Calling World-4 of Kithgol

Author: H. B. Fyfe

Illustrator: Ed Valigursky

Release date: December 15, 2020 [eBook #64053]

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online
        Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CALLING WORLD-4 OF KITHGOL ***




Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net









                      Calling World-4 of Kithgol!

                             By H. B. FYFE

                  _Accidentally, Yorgh sent whirling
                  off into space a grim, 200-year-old
                   message ... and lived to see his
                 dead world meet the vibrant future._

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
                     Planet Stories January 1952.
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]


The Star was obscured by blowing sand, and Yorgh could not see much of
The World either. The wolly he rode snorted in panic at the howl of the
sandstorm. Finally, the big hunter swung down to the ground and dragged
the six-legged beast by the guide rope.

"Where are those trees I passed this morning?" he muttered.

He longed for a drink from the water-skin slung at his shoulder with
his rolled cloak, but there was so much sand in his short, golden
beard that he would probably choke himself.

The sand whipped against his gray pants of coarse wool and the dark
red tunic for which he had given the Sea People two dozen copper
arrowheads, and twirled loosely beneath his calf-high leather boots.
Yorgh squinted his eyes till they were mere gleams of bright blue among
the laughter wrinkles.

"And I didn't even find the copper rocks!" he growled. "I should have
stayed in the flatlands, hunting with the others."

He discovered that he was heading into a gully where the ripping winds
had scooped sand from between ridges of dark rocks. Yorgh was not sure
whether it offered shelter or the chance to be buried alive, but he
plunged ahead to investigate. Within fifty paces, the howl at his back
diminished.

"Not the rocks; it's a lull," he exclaimed, peering upward.

The sky was an ugly reddish brown, dark and menacing. He wondered
how soon more tons of sand would sweep down to refill the gully. As
he gazed upward, a round stone rolled under his foot and he sprawled
forward. Even as he dropped, it seemed that he was falling further than
he should be.

He brushed sand from his eyes and looked up. From the edge of a hollow
whirled from the floor of the gully by opposing winds, the wolly stared
down at him with an expression of scared idiocy. The ends of his horn
bow and copper-tipped lance thrust up beside the saddle.

As Yorgh scrambled up and his head came above ground level, he saw that
the hollow was at the junction of his gully with another. Sand was
already beginning to collect again as the wind shifted. Behind a worn
rock at his side, Yorgh glimpsed a glint of metal.

Copper? he wondered, stepping forward.

It was not copper, nor any other metal he had ever seen.

To judge from what protruded above the sand, the thing was shaped
slightly like the wagons the people of the Hunter tribe used in their
migrations. Every part of it was smoothly rounded, even the skeleton
sitting in the front seat.

Yorgh stared, feeling the prickle of rising hairs on his neck.

The moan of rising wind made him shiver. At least, he told himself it
was the wind. It sounded uncomfortably like a wailing spirit.

Any skins or leather padding on the seat had long since crumbled. Only
sand-scoured bones and metal remained. Except--

Something gleamed from the small deposit of sand remaining about the
feet of the skeleton. Yorgh reached out cautiously and touched the end
of a whitish metal cylinder as thick as his thumb. It was loose enough
to pull out. He did, and it lay in his palm, about six inches long.

Yorgh could see no mark of any kind on the surface. He wondered if it
would stand sharpening as a spearhead.

"Must have been one of the Old Ones," he muttered uneasily. "It is said
they had strange and wonderful powers. I wonder if this was one of the
wagons that skimmed over the ground with nothing pulling them, as are
told of in the legends."

He had been turning the cylinder over in his hands as he considered.
One end moved beneath his fingers and the opposite extreme abruptly
flashed a bluish green light at him.

"Gaaghk!" choked Yorgh, and flung the thing from him.

It arched over the edge of the hollow, and its flight was followed by
the thud of hooves as the wolly scampered away. The growing wind was
again raising stinging flurries of sand.

"Ho! Come back here, you knob-headed idiot!" roared the man, scrambling
up the side of the hole to give chase.

       *       *       *       *       *

The animal, stung by the flying sand, ran faster. Yorgh stooped,
groping for a stone to throw ahead of it, so as to turn it back in his
direction. His fingers grasped upon something hard, but the shape felt
wrong and he looked down.

It was the white metal cylinder.

I never should have touched it, he thought. Naturally, it would have a
curse on it. I must put it back!

Glancing over his shoulder, he saw there would be little time. Sand was
heaping up again all along the gully. But the wolly had disappeared up
a slope to the surface of the desert.

"I'll come right back!" said Yorgh aloud, with an uneasy feeling that
there just might be someone to hear him.

He thrust the object into the leather pouch on his belt beside his
bronze knife, and ran up the slope with long-legged strides, even in
the sliding sand. The wolly was out of sight.

The moan of wind rose to a shriek from the blackening sky.

Yorgh staggered blindly ahead. Once, peering between his fingers,
he thought he caught a glimpse of the animal, but a gust whirled him
around and he lost the direction. He floundered onward, wishing he had
stayed in the gully. Then he remembered the company he would have had,
and wondered if the Old One had been trapped by a similar false hope of
shelter there.

With fumbling fingers, Yorgh unslung the cloak that hung behind his
shoulder and wrapped it about his head. It gave some relief, and he
plodded forward, afraid to stop in one spot.

Something jarred his shoulder roughly. Yorgh reached out, but his wild
grab did not find the wooly fur of his mount.

"The trees!" he gasped in relief.

It was the only shelter this side of the hills that separated the
desert from the grassy plain. Yorgh pulled off his cloak, tied one
corner to the tree with the strap of his water-skin, and set about
making as good an imitation of a tent as possible. It might at least
give him breathing room till the storm ended.

The Star shone hotly at noon the next day before Yorgh tramped wearily
into the shade of the tree-lined creek that would lead him to his
people's camp on the plain. He was lured to this route partly by the
promised coolness and partly by the sight of a herd of kromp out on the
open flat. These were six-legged, like every animal on The World except
man. There were eighty or a hundred, and a few of the ill-tempered
bulls were already sniffing the air and aiming their four horns about.

Yorgh splashed water over his face and neck. He wished he could stop
for a swim, but he had walked all night after the sandstorm died down
to get through the hills and out of the desert. The only thing which
could have kept him from the camp, where he could hope for badly needed
sleep, was a chance to find the gully again. When the sand had settled,
however, he had found--not entirely to his surprise--that he had
completely lost the direction.

"It's like the old legends," he murmured, standing up and taking the
cylinder out of his pouch to look at it again. "Things like this always
happened to the ancient heroes. They even flew among the stars--huh!
That's a likely tale! But this...?"

Once again, as he had learned, he twisted the end of the cylinder. The
other end glowed with a blue-green light.

Yorgh shook his head in wonder, and returned the object to his pouch.
He went ahead at a relaxed but steady pace. In a few minutes, the sound
of voices through the undergrowth brought his head up sharply. He went
on, parting the bushes silently. Presently, he grinned as he peered out
at a wide pool.

Five of the younger women were swimming or splashing in the shallows.
Piles of wet clothing on the bank indicated the task that had brought
them to this sheltered eddy in the creek. Yorgh looked hopefully for
the red-gold tresses of Vaneen, the shapely--if too haughty--daughter
of Chief Tefior, but vainly.

Let me see, he pondered, shall I be a clumsy kromp snorting through the
trees, or a meat-eating ponadu?

Raising his hands to his mouth, he emitted a wailing cry that was the
trademark of the only prowling killer on The World large enough to hunt
a man. The splashing in the creek ceased immediately.

       *       *       *       *       *

Yorgh ducked his head lower and wailed again. For good measure, he
added a few guttural coughs, as if the animal had scented game. The
splashing resumed for a second amid low cries of alarm, then was
replaced by the hasty pat-pat-pat of bare feet along the bank. Yorgh
peered after the wetly gleaming figures, and doubled up with one hand
firmly across his mouth.

Taking time only to refill his water-skin, he followed the trail along
the creek at a good pace. Just as he sighted the outlines of tents
through the thinning trees, a handful of hunters ran pell-mell up the
trail toward him.

"Hold! What's this?" snapped Chief Tefior, raising his spear to halt
those trotting behind him. His gray-streaked beard bristled as he eyed
Yorgh suspiciously.

"Yorgh, your best hunter," answered Yorgh, casting his eyes modestly
downward. "I would have returned last night, had not my wolly run off
in a sandstorm."

"About you, I do not worry!" retorted Tefior, fingering the haft of
his spear. "The girls just ran into camp shrieking that a ponadu was
stalking the woods."

"Panting, wide-eyed, and in all the glory of their rather damp
tresses," added a dark young bowman named Kwint, hiding a grin behind
his hand as he examined Yorgh's innocent features.

"I thought I heard something," admitted the latter.

"Come then, Father!" half-grown Puko urked. "You'll help, won't you,
Yorgh? Here, take my spear!"

Yorgh was half-inclined to let them go. He liked the sort of joke that
brewed a while, gaining savor, like the time last spring when he had
the luck to knock a ponadu unconscious with the butt of his broken
spear. He still dreamed of having another such inspiration as that
which impelled him to tie a dead log to the creature's hind legs, and
then lead a group of young hunters into that part of the woods on the
way to their nightly courting.

They had been enraged at spending half the night up trees, not daring
to venture down in the dark with only their bronze knives. But they had
been unable to prove that Yorgh had done anything worse than run faster
than they, and he had enjoyed a unique evening being wined and fed and
listened to with respect due the only man present, while the others
waited for the disgruntled beast to free itself and slink unhappily off.

Yes, it would be good fun to let them go on, but Yorgh could not
think of a quick excuse to separate Puko from the band. The boy was
his favorite, perhaps because he so admired Yorgh's feats of fun and
strength, or perhaps because his brown eyes so resembled those of his
older sister.

"Well, truthfully," said Yorgh, "having only a knife in my belt, I
broke off a branch and yelled aloud to scare the slinking thing. I
distinctly heard it run off up the creek."

Some stared at him; other glanced sidelong at each other.

Yorgh grinned good-naturedly, until he saw Tefior's scowl.

"Well," growled the chief, "I think we are too late to catch whatever
it was, much as I would have liked to!"

Yorgh widened his eyes to their most innocent expression at the pointed
emphasis of the last phrase.

"You, Puko!" added Tefior. "Run back to camp ahead of us and find the
fathers of those silly wenches. Tell them I said two or three are to
go back with the girls to get the wash, and to smack their bottoms for
going so far without even small bows!"

The tramp back to camp was made in silence, save for subdued snickering
at the rear of the file, where Kwint and others whispered of the
winter camp. The Sea People there still told stories of sea monsters,
remembering the great, black, slippery thing that had been shot full of
arrows and hauled up on the river bank before it was seen to be a kromp
skin mounted on a frame of boughs. No one had admitted creating the
"monster," but Kwint thought he knew the maker.

Despite Tefior's disapproving glare when Yorgh appeared before the
chief's tent at suppertime, the customs of hospitality suffered no
greater breach than that the tribal leader stamped off to inspect the
picket line of wollies below the camp immediately after finishing his
bowl of stew. Yorgh allowed Puko to shame Vaneen into offering a fourth
helping, on grounds that he had not eaten during his desperate trek
through the burning sands. He watched her move about the fire.


                                  II

She wore a dress of blue wool, dyed and woven by the Sea People into
finer material than was made by the Hunter tribe. It tended to cling as
she moved; and once Yorgh considered complimenting her on the way it
revealed the curve of her breast, but decided she might not laugh like
some of the other girls.

"And then," he finished telling his story to Puko, "when the sand
stopped blowing, I pulled myself out and came home."

"And the Old One is still there in his gully!" exclaimed the wide-eyed
boy. "Will you take me out to see, Yorgh?"

"I doubt he will," said his sister, reaching out to place Yorgh's bowl
with the others. "Yorgh will do no riding till he earns a new wolly.
Moyt says he caught a saddled animal trotting out of the hills this
morning, and that it belongs to him now."

"That Moyt!" Puko sprang up indignantly. "Why do you let him come to
our fire, Vaneen? I have heard him say he courts you only because
Tefior is chief."

"Moyt is a good hunter," retorted Vaneen, frowning, "and more
trustworthy than some I could name. Maybe if Yorgh could borrow a bow,
he could bring down a kromp tomorrow and earn a new wolly."

"He can borrow mine," cried Puko, "and I'll help him. Then he can make
a new bow of the horns."

Vaneen laughed.

"Yorgh, naturally, would never have the bad luck to get a kromp without
perfect horns. Well, anyway, he would be safer out of camp. Ahnee and
some of the other girls are angry."

"With me?" demanded Yorgh. "I must stay and hear their complaints,
since Moyt has already given me back my things. As I pointed out, my
bow would be too strong for him to draw, especially with a broken arm."

"He has a broken arm?" cried Puko, leaping up in delight.

"Well, no. But he would have, had he not persuaded me to let go by
turning temporarily honest."

Yorgh's laugh trailed off when Vaneen gave no sign of being amused, but
Puko continued to crow for some minutes.

"Then we can go tomorrow," he said at last.

He sobered at the expression on Yorgh's face.

"Don't say it was just one of your stories, Yorgh! That the sand blew
in till it filled the gully again!"

The big hunter nodded sadly.

"This morning, on the crest of the hills, I even climbed a tree to look
back, but the sand is like waves of the sea."

The firelight glinted in Vaneen's hair as she laughed scornfully.

"You don't believe me?" he asked.

"There are over three hundred men, women, and children in the tribe,"
said the girl, stretching nonchalantly and smoothing the blue dress
over her hips, "and even the tiniest babes in their mothers' arms will
tell you that Yorgh seldom speaks in earnest!"

"That was unkind!" said Yorgh, pulling down the corners of his mouth.
"But you always were too proud to be considerate, as is common with
beautiful women. Will you bet a kiss that I lie?"

"A hundred!" Vaneen waved a hand contemptuously. "And that is a bet I
would not make lightly with an honest man!"

Yorgh fumbled in his pouch for the shiny metal stick and held it up.
Puko watched eagerly.

"Well?" challenged Vaneen, watching him warily.

"As I told you, I picked up the thing that lay shining between the feet
of the skeleton. After chasing the wolly, I found it still in my hand.
Here is my proof!"

Vaneen peered at it suspiciously, being careful not to come too close
to Yorgh.

"Where did you really get it?" she asked.

"Have you no ears, woman? I just now told you that--"

"It's one of your tricks," said Vaneen, putting the fire between them.

"Look, then!" said Yorgh. "Come around a little, so you can watch the
stick against the dark."

She moved reluctantly, and Yorgh twisted the end of the metal cylinder.
The other end suddenly glowed blue-green, bringing breathless
exclamations from Puko and Vaneen.

With an air of mastery, Yorgh turned the light off and on several
times before yielding to Puko's awed plea to be allowed to touch it.
Even when the boy, at Yorgh's instructions, also worked the light, his
sister remained dubious.

"Enough!" declared Yorgh, grinning in anticipation. "You questioned me
once too often, Vaneen. Come here!"

He reached out one huge arm and swept her to him, but it suddenly
seemed he had taken hold of an untamed wolly. A hard little elbow
thudded into his stomach and he let go. That was his second mistake, he
saw a second later as he staggered back with his left ear ringing from
a man-sized slap.

Vaneen, with a swirl of blue skirt about her tanned knees, reached for
the woodpile. Yorgh changed his mind about grabbing her again to exact
his "winnings" when he saw the billet of wood in her hand.

"Your sister is a poor loser," he told Puko, rubbing his ear tenderly.

"I don't know how you made it light up," snapped Vaneen, "but as far
as I'm concerned, you haven't proved anything yet!"

"Here, you try it!" offered Yorgh. "There is no trick."

"I don't want the thing. Put it back in your belt and go show it to the
simple-minded!"

"All right," said Yorgh, with dignity. "Here--you may keep it, until
you believe me."

He tossed the metal object to the ground at her feet.

"One hundred--remember!" he warned. "Or I'll tell every young hunter in
the tribe that you are a cheat!"

He loved the way her eyes flashed at that, but did not let the sight
bemuse him when the billet of wood came whipping across the fire at
his head. He reached up one big hand and plucked it out of the air, to
Puko's admiring grunt.

"Well, if that's the way you feel ..." said Yorgh. "I'll go see
just how angry Ahnee is with me. I believe you made that up, out of
jealousy!"

He tossed the wood airily into the fire and walked away as Vaneen
clenched her fists in wordless rage.

Which, in a woman, means she's really mad, he reflected.

He turned sharply into the shadows of the nearest tent, lest another
length of wood come spinning past his ear to ruin the dignified
impression he had left behind him. Then he made for the two-wheeled
carts shared by the unmarried men, located his own tent bundle among
the baggage, and made himself comfortable for the night.

       *       *       *       *       *

The next day, he rode out with Kwint, Puko, and two others. They headed
toward where the kromp herd had been reported, hoping for horn trophies
that might be traded to the Raydower tribe of the great mountains.
As with the Sea People, the Hunters relied largely upon wool from
their wollies for trading, but other items helped. The Raydowers were
sometimes difficult to get along with because of their bent toward
mysticism, but they made knives and buckles of hard bronze.

Toward noon, they brought down a loppa, a fleet animal smaller than
a wolly but excellent eating. Yorgh lost when they drew straws, and
stayed to do the skinning as the others hunted back along a brook
toward camp, having promised to send him the first cart. The plain
thereabouts was dotted by clumps of thick brush, and Yorgh decided to
have a steak after he had ridden over to the brook, two hundred yards
away, to wash up. He got out his sparking stones from the mountains and
made a fire.

He had just wiped his mouth on his wrist, careful not to soil the
sleeves of his prized crimson tunic, when a drumming thunder rolled
across the flatland. He leaped to his feet.

"Kromps!" he exclaimed.

It was the herd he had seen the day before. Something had aroused them,
and they pounded across the grassland in a black mass studded with
sweeping horns. They would go for miles, leaving a trail like a dozen
tribes on the march with all their wagons.

They're heading for the brook, Yorgh thought. If they don't cross, but
swing and follow it down to the creek and the camp--

He reached his grazing wolly in three bounds and vaulted into the
saddle. The animal protested bleatingly at the impact.

As Yorgh grabbed the end of the guide rope he saw the frenzied kromps
swerve away from the glint of water and turn parallel to the brook.

"Can't gain fast enough to ride ahead," he muttered. "Why in the name
of the Three Moons do they act so scary, when every other thing on The
World is scared of them?"

Reaching down from the saddle, he pulled up a handful of the long grass
already turning brown from the summer rays of The Star. When he held it
over the fire, it flared into ashes too quickly.

With one hand, Yorgh tore loose the cloak rolled at the back of his
saddle; with the other he unslung the spear hanging down beside his
mount's first pair of shoulders.

The cloak took fire and burned well as he forced the reluctant wolly
into a dash for the brook. With fifty yards to spare, he crossed in
front of the kromp herd and rode ahead of it.

Occasional branches of trees growing along the brook whipped across
his chest or face, but Yorgh hardly felt them. He was trying to judge
how long his cloak would last. He slowed the wolly, which now displayed
commendable willingness to run.

The kromp leading the side of the charge nearest the brook was a young
bull whose rear pair of horns had not yet grown to sweep out and
forward around the smaller pair. Yorgh hoped that he might not be as
stubborn as an older specimen.

He held the flaming cloak out on the head of his spear as the animals
came up with him.

The young bull snarled at him, almost like a ponadu. Kromps did not
bleat like the loppas and wollies they resembled in many other ways.

Too mean, decided Yorgh. He doesn't like this, though!

The young bull edged away from the flame. A branch snapped across
Yorgh's leading shoulder, and he almost lost his grip on the spear.
Then he missed the rustle of the bushes, and realized that the herd had
swerved very slightly away from the brook.

He waved his disintegrating cloak before the eyes of the young bull
again, and was sure the direction of the charge shifted a bit more. The
kromp rolled reddened eyes at him and snarled again.

Seeing that the last shreds of the cloak were slipping from the
spearhead, Yorgh wiped them off across the muzzle of the beast, and let
the kromp have a smart jab behind the second pair of legs as it passed
him.

He started to pull up, but suddenly saw that he was not entirely in the
clear. An old bull, lumbering among the dust to the rear, had veered
wide of the herd and was outside Yorgh. It panted up alongside, and the
hunter's wolly lost its head and tried to run with the kromp.

Yorgh gripped the point of the rough, battle-chipped horn that suddenly
appeared beside his ribs, and leaned his weight upon it in hopes of
guiding the bigger animal past. Then he caught a fleeting glimpse of a
dense clump of scrub growth thrusting out from the vegetation screening
the brook.

Before he could shift his weight, his wolly swerved to the right. Yorgh
found himself supported in the air by only a one-handed grip on the
kromp's horn.

He let his feet bounce against the ground once, reaching for the horn
with his other hand. Then the bull tossed his heavy head, and the man
sailed high into the air.

       *       *       *       *       *

Time hung motionless for an instant, during which there floated to his
ears the irritable sounds made by the kromp as it blundered at full
speed through the brush.

Then Yorgh crashed into the dense thicket on his back, with a ripping
and tearing of cloth and a loud yell as some thorny shrub raked his
ribs. He thudded straight through to the ground, but with his speed
fortunately reduced.

"By Kloto, by Lax, and by the seldom-seen Atropo of legend!" he swore.
"And if The World has any more moons, by them too! I had done better to
stand squarely in their path!"

He wiped blood from his left cheek and wriggled about until he thought
all his clothing was free. The dark red tunic was shredded, and the
heavier wool of his pants was gashed and torn.

He loosed a pronged burr from his beard, pulled out a long splinter
lodged in the back of his right thigh, and squirmed through the
undergrowth on hands and knees until he came to an open swath trampled
straight through the hundred-foot clump.

The kromp bull had not permitted a little jungle to hinder him.

Yorgh pulled himself to his feet and limped back along the freshly
made trail to the open. In the distance, he could hear the herd still
stampeding. He hoped he had turned it enough so that the kromps'
propensity for straight-line charges would cause them to miss the camp.

"Well, I'd better see to myself," he sighed. "Left on foot twice in
three days! Some will have a good time with me over that. Ouch! That
knee feels skinned."

He made his way to the brook, where he stripped and bathed. As the
water stung them, he discovered nicks and scratches he had not known he
had, but he felt better after dressing again.

He patched the worst slashes in his pants with a long thorn and a
bit of vine, but the proud crimson tunic was a tattered wreck. It
fluttered on his shoulders as he walked out into the open again.

On the ground, his sharp eye noticed trampled splinters of wood.

"The spear!" he muttered. "Funny--I can't even remember when I dropped
it."

He searched the area, and finally dug up the copper spearhead with
the toe of his boot. He put it in his belt and walked out to his fire
beside the carcass of the loppa, feeling fairly fit although he knew he
would be stiff and sore the next day. His fire still smouldered, and he
piled on some dry sticks.

As The Star drifted lower on the sky, he began to worry.

"Someone should have come for me by now," he told himself. "Unless--"

He finally banked the fire with turf and started out on foot for the
junction of the brook and the creek. Walking made it seem quite a
distance, and The Star was still lower, painting the eastern mountains
gold and red, before he came in sight of the camp.

"Ho! It's still there!" he exclaimed in relief.

Someone had seen him, for when he had gone a little way further, a
figure showed against the dark tents, walking toward Yorgh. He wondered
where all the carts were.

He was still a quarter of a mile from camp when the lone figure met
him. It was Kwint, and he had changed somewhat in the four hours or so
since they had parted. He wore a discolored swelling beneath his left
eye, over which he peered at Yorgh.

"You can't come back!" he said glumly.

"What?"

"Tefior sent me out to say they don't think your latest joke was funny.
They won't let you come back."

"Joke? What do you talk of, man?" demanded Yorgh.

"I suppose you meant just a little scare with that stampede, but it
passed right below camp--where the wollies were kept!"

Yorgh realized then why Kwint had walked out to meet him. The tribe's
animals must have run their best as soon as the picket line went down,
and it would take time to catch them.

He explained what had happened.

"Well ... seeing the condition of you," admitted Kwint, examining the
tattered giant before him, "I myself believe it was really that way.
But you know, Yorgh, it is said of you--"

"That I seldom speak in earnest," Yorgh finished for him. "But I did
what I could! Look at me! I am practically naked to the rays of The
Star!"

Kwint was silent.

"Well, say something!" roared Yorgh.

The other kicked at the ground with the toe of his boot.

"Even so," he murmured, "it would be best to stay out a few days, till
we can tell your side of it around. They wanted to kill you!"

"_Kill me!_" gasped Yorgh.

It was a rough life they led, with brawling and even wounds when
tribes mingled, but the one strict taboo was that no human might kill
another--at least, not completely. It was the law of all tribes, handed
down with legends that they had come to The World from the stars and
were once as numerous as the stars.

"I tried to quiet Moyt with my spear butt," said Kwint, "for he was
talking for hanging; but he is almost as big as you and knocked me
down, as you can see. Then the boy came charging out of his father's
tent and pushed the cooking pot over on Moyt, for which Tefior beat him
and tied him to the tent pole. And--this hurts me to say--the water
wasn't even hot!"

"And they all believed it of me?" said Yorgh despondently.

"Not all. Vaneen, I must say, tried to speak for you with others of us.
But we were few to the numbers whose saddles you have greased or whose
girls you have frightened out of swimming holes. Besides, we can't find
the wollies."

"So they sent you to tell me not to come back?"

"Yes. I tried to bring my bow and a quiver of arrows for you when I saw
how things were, but Tefior had them taken away."

Yorgh's face flushed, and he tugged angrily at his beard.

"I will go in and knock the old man's jaw loose from his head!" he
growled. "Even if it does lose me all hope of his daughter. He has no
right!"

In the end, however, Kwint dissuaded him. Yorgh was touched to find
that his friend had brought his own cloak together with a bag of salt
and a water-skin. They parted, and Yorgh trudged out to his fire again.
On the way, he cut a tall, straight sapling by the brook, about two
inches thick, which he trimmed with his knife as he walked.


                                  III

After uncovering the embers and building up the fire again, he rigged
sticks to roast as much meat as he thought he could carry, and carved
the end of the pole to fit his copper spearhead. The Star had set and
it was nearly dark by the time he got the metal tip fitted on and
secured with the narrow strip of leather that had bound Kwint's cloak.

With the alert senses of one who lives in the open, Yorgh looked up
before the girl came within a hundred yards.

He watched wonderingly as she plodded out of the dusk and up to his
fire. The flames put copper glints in her hair, like rays of The Star
on water, but her features were set in a harsh expression.

"You walked out?" asked Yorgh cautiously.

Vaneen curled her lip at him.

"Thanks to _you_!" she said, and the "you" was like a blow.

"Some meat?" invited Yorgh, trying not to show his hurt.

"No."

He considered. On the whole, even putting the best possible
interpretation on it, he did not think he could call the girl's visit
friendly.

"They didn't chase you out too, did they?" he asked mildly.

"My father sent me!" she all but spat at him. "He found me with
something of yours, and nothing would do but I must get the accursed
thing out of camp to fling in your face before nightfall!"

She took her hand from the belt of the blue dress, and Yorgh saw the
gleam of the metal stick from the desert.

"It's already dark," he said hastily.

Vaneen sneered and dropped the object at his feet. Yorgh showed no
resentment, thinking that she was beautiful even with a sneer. He could
think of any number of girls whose faces became twisted and ugly with
anger, but not Vaneen.

"Are you going back?" he asked.

"What do you think?"

"I think you ought to sit down and make yourself comfortable with a
steak."

Vaneen glared at him.

"I can't sit down and be comfortable, if you must know!"

"Why not?"

"My father took a stick to me when he found out that thing belonged to
you."

Yorgh peered at her, and saw that she did not joke.

"If Moyt hadn't been there to stop him, I probably couldn't have even
walked out here. You made a fine, merry day, Yorgh!"

The hunter rested his chin on his hand and looked down at the aimless
patterns he was tracing in the dust with the end of the metal cylinder.

Time had been, he reflected, that he would have thought it funny to
hear of Vaneen's being turned upside down and having some of the
haughtiness knocked out of her. Once, even, he might have felt sorry
for her afterward, or been enraged at the thought of Moyt's being there
to ogle--or, worse, to intercede.

At the moment, he merely felt weary and discouraged.

"As you like," he said, "but it's dark out there, and a long way back."

He drew a circle in the dust and sliced it into quarters. After a
moment, Vaneen turned back to the fire from staring across the dark
plain. The long grass looked light gray in the dim light of Kloto,
largest of The World's three moons. Lax would not rise till early
morning, and tiny Atropo was so seldom seen that walking in its "light"
was proverbial.

"Here," said Yorgh, "you can have my cloak for a cushion."

Vaneen stared expressionlessly at the tatters of his fine red tunic,
and he could not tell what she thought.

"I have my own," she said, and unslung it from the back of her belt.

She threw the cloak about her shoulders and eased herself to the
ground with just a hint of extra care.

Maybe the old fish did beat her, thought Yorgh. I'll pull his straggly
beard for him one of these days!

He cut off a portion of juicy loppa meat for her, and placed Kwint's
water-skin and salt between them. Then he went back to peeling the
remaining bark from his crude spear.

He caught Vaneen watching him with her hand close to the small knife in
her belt. Yorgh snorted.

"Go to sleep!" he said.

I can recall when she'd have needed a spear, Yorgh thought, but I just
don't have any spirit tonight.

He rolled himself in his cloak and stretched out. Something dug into
his ribs, and he found the metal cylinder under him.

       *       *       *       *       *

Yorgh held it up before his eyes a moment, and muttered a few
obscenities. He could remember nothing but bad luck since the moment he
had found it.

A twig snapping in the flames caught his attention. He hefted the metal
instrument in his palm, then tossed it into the fire.

He slept better than he expected. Once or twice, instinct awakened him
in time to replenish the fire.

The last time he awoke, he found himself already halfway to his feet
in the mist of dawn as Vaneen's scream was choked off by a hairy hand
slapped across her mouth.

Yorgh groped for his spear. All he could see, at first, were legs of
wollies surrounding the fire.

The spear was not where he had left it; it was in the hands of a slim,
black-bearded man in a fur cap who sat on the nearest wolly. He watched
Vaneen's writhings with amused admiration, but kept one eye on Yorgh.

The big hunter sensed men behind him, and leaped forward. The dark man
looked surprised, and slid backwards off his mount just in time to
escape the clutch of Yorgh's big hands on his leg. Two bodies thudded
into Yorgh from the rear, pinning him momentarily against the animal.

Then the wolly sidestepped and Yorgh reached around to grasp the men
holding him.

Raydowers from the mountains, he thought, and swung them off balance,
around in front of him, and together with a soggy crunch. Then he
dropped them.

The man in the fur cap was just bouncing to his feet, the wolly having
shuffled over his head. Yorgh snarled and drove at him, pulling out his
bronze knife. More men came from behind, not in time to stop him, but
in time for one to hang on his arm. The dark man swung the butt of the
spear, and it cracked on the side of Yorgh's skull.

When he came to, all he could see was long, oily wool. He squirmed, and
found that he was tied face down across a wolly. Someone was telling
someone else to be careful about kicking dirt over the fire.

Twisting his head, Yorgh found that he could see the fire, and some
of the mountain men sitting their wollies beyond it. Vaneen was among
them, not bound, but looking disheveled and resentful.

"Ah, coming around?" asked a voice.

The legs of a wolly moved into Yorgh's sight.

"I am Ueln, of the Raydower tribe," said the man in the fur cap. "I
didn't expect you back so soon. You have a hard head."

Yorgh looked up at him painfully and grunted.

"We are going over to the brook to water the wollies," said Ueln, "and
to attend to other things before we start for the mountains. If you
behave I will let you ride in the saddle."

"All right," said Yorgh, feeling he ought to make some answer to
disguise the fact that he was not yet thinking very clearly.

"You promise not to try to ride away?"

"Where would I ride to?" grumbled the hunter.

As soon as he realized the explanation _that_ remark would entail,
he wished he had remained silent. Further questioning, however, was
forestalled by a cry from the man at the fire.

He ran to Ueln, holding up a gleaming object.

"What's this?" asked the Raydower leader.

Yorgh grimaced, and let his head drop.

"Keep it," he said. "I make you a gift of it."

Ueln hesitated. He moved his wolly forward a pace to call to Vaneen.

"It's his good luck charm," said the girl sourly.

"So?" Ueln hefted the metal cylinder in his hand thoughtfully. "What
kind of luck has he been having?"

When no one answered him, Ueln leaned back, tossed a leg over the
wolly's front shoulders, and slid gracefully to the ground as if to
search the fire more thoroughly. Unfortunately, his foot landed upon a
thick piece of dust-covered fat discarded from the roast of the night
before.

Yorgh looked up to see the Raydower sitting on the ground with much the
same expression as when the hunter had lunged at him. This time, he
held the metal stick instead of Yorgh's spear.

After a moment, he climbed to his feet and looked around at his men.
None of them laughed.

The dark man stepped over to Yorgh, and the latter felt the metal
object thrust into the pouch on his belt before Ueln cut him loose so
he could sit astride the saddle.

"I'll let you keep your precious charm," said the Raydower. "I like my
questions answered by people, or things, I can see."

Although the mountains thrust far out into the grasslands at that
point, it took the better part of the day to pass through the
foothills. Yorgh soon found out why the band was in a hurry when Ueln
admitted to him that the long strings of wollies led at the rear had
been "found" on the plain.

"But what could we do?" asked the Raydower. "Jayn sent us out to see
what you had worth trading or stealing."

"Jayn?"

"She is our chief, since her father died and she will not marry lest
she lose the title to her husband."

"Couldn't you persuade her? You look like a man."

"I am her cousin," said Ueln stiffly.

"Oh," said Yorgh, and rode on in silence.

They rode out of a narrow pass to see cultivated fields in a long
valley. Yorgh's eyes was caught by the village nearby. It was built of
rock and had the most permanent look he had ever seen.

He dismounted stiffly when ordered, before one of the houses. Bruises
unnoticed after the kromp had tossed him had made themselves felt
during the ride. Two of Ueln's riders pushed Yorgh through the open
doorway on the heels of their leader.

They entered a hall evidently used for meals and other gatherings. From
the smell of the flambeaux on the stone walls, Yorgh judged that the
Raydowers traded with the Sea People for fish oil.

       *       *       *       *       *

Then he looked at the woman sitting in the big, carved chair on the
dais along one wall. She was attended by several men, armed, and a few
women who were very obviously chosen for being less beautiful.

She was dark of hair and eye, and bore a certain resemblance to Ueln.
Yorgh thought she must be a year or two older than himself. Then, as he
was led closer, he saw that it was more likely five.

Jayn swept Vaneen up and down with a cold glance, but let her frank
stare linger on Yorgh's broad shoulders and golden beard. Ueln fidgeted
impatiently.

"Is this what you were sent to get?" Jayn asked him.

Her voice was not as musical as Vaneen's, Yorgh reflected, but it had
a husky undertone that promised much. He saw that she took great care
with her person, as befitted her position. Her long robe was dark and
cleverly sewn to boast of every curve of her handsome body. It was
belted at the waist by a girdle of the polished, light-blue stones for
which the mountain people were famous. Yorgh wondered if her lips were
naturally as red as they appeared.

Ueln had been explaining why he had not liked to leave behind two who
might talk, especially as one was a hunter who could have trailed him.
Jayn shrugged.

"I will decide how well you have done, Ueln, when we have counted the
wollies. As for this pair, I am not entirely displeased."

She rose and walked across the dais to look down on them. Following
her glance, Yorgh saw that the blue dress which had looked so well on
Vaneen two nights ago was much the worse for rough treatment. Jayn
stared contemptuously at the rents in it.

"Well, girl," she asked, "what can you do to make yourself useful?"

Vaneen gave her back stare for stare, saying nothing. Jayn tapped a
small foot impatiently. Then she said something to make the men behind
her grin.

"Come, come!" she snapped. "Where would you earn your keep--in my
kitchen, or in one of the buildings housing our young men?"

Right there, Yorgh decided, was where he would have reached up and
struck her, had she been a man and speaking to him. Women, it seemed,
were wiser, especially in judging each other.

"Your kitchen," said Vaneen evenly, but Yorgh knew that the day might
come when Jayn would regret the affair.

So did the Raydower woman, apparently, for there was a hard look in her
eye as she watched the girl led away. Then it softened as she turned to
Yorgh.

"Untie him and clean him up, Ueln," she directed. "And get him
something to wear in place of that awful rag. You had no need to be so
rough with him."

Ueln bit his lip, glaring at the remnants of Yorgh's crimson tunic. He
turned on his heel and stalked toward the stairs flanking the entrance.

One of the riders touched Yorgh's elbow, and he followed, seething
undecidedly between the twin stings of being called ragged and of
having it implied that a man the size of Ueln could have been rough
with him.

He was led up one of the two flights of stone stairs which to him were
a wonder, and to a small room with a straw-covered wooden bed. Ueln
drew his knife and cut the cord on Yorgh's wrist.

"There's a pool along the trail a way," he said. "Tomorrow, you can
swim and clean up in the morning with the other riders. I'll see if I
can find a tunic big enough."

"I have nothing to give you for it," said Yorgh, unable to avoid
feeling sorry for the man at being received so casually after his hard
ride. "Unless you want to keep the knife you took from me as payment."

"Never mind," said Ueln. "You'll earn it before long, if I know Jayn."

"What do you mean?" asked Yorgh warily.

"She isn't a bad wench, in her way," Ueln muttered. "It's just that she
tries so hard to keep us all under her thumb because so many have been
at her to marry. She would rather continue to be chief."

"I should think," suggested Yorgh, recalling the black hair and
flashing eyes, "that one might be found who would wink at letting her
keep the power."

"Well, yes ... but she could never be sure," said Ueln. "Of course, if
she married a man of another tribe--like you, for instance--it would
make no difference. She would still rule, for he would be just a slave,
with less rights than even the kitchen flunkies."

"So?" murmured Yorgh. "Still ... just let her give me to choose between
the kitchen and a house of her young women, and you will see a notable
choice made, my friend!"

"Young women reside with their families," snapped Ueln.

He stared Yorgh up and down, his eyes black pools in the light cast by
the flambeaux he carried.

"I admire your attitude," he sneered with heavy sarcasm. "Enjoy it
while you can!"

He strode away down the hall, leaving Yorgh in the dark. The big hunter
thought fleetingly of creeping quietly to the stairs, but a saner
instinct convinced him that Ueln would not have left them unguarded.

He groped his way to the bed, found that a blanket had been left on
the straw, and wrapped himself in it against the night chill of the
mountains.

       *       *       *       *       *

The next three days he spent "enjoying his attitude," as Ueln had
bidden him. The Raydower gave him a tunic of dark blue which was only a
trifle snug, having belonged to the old chief, and pants of gray Hunter
wool. The tunic had a narrow fur collar. Bathed and refreshed, Yorgh
regained some of his good nature with the new clothes.

He did not see Vaneen anywhere when he was invited to sit at the great
table for meals and to entertain the black-haired Raydower ruler. With
unusual insight, he decided that Jayn would probably not be pleased to
hear him asking about the girl.

Instead, he told some of his stories, and at supper made bold to yank a
bench from under one of Jayn's discouraged suitors.


                                  IV

The roar of laughter died as the fellow scrambled up from the stone
floor with a snarl, but Jayn's husky voice cut across the silence to
avert trouble.

She keeps a tight guide rope, thought Yorgh, and tried to smooth things
over by telling one of his stories.

He thought the company about the table seemed impressed at the tale
of his latest adventure in the desert, but it might have been the
flickering light of the torches.

"I think you must have taken that from an old legend," said Ueln. "We,
too, have half-remembered stories of people who rode out from the
shrine in self-moving wagons, in the old days when there were more men
in The World."

"What shrine?" asked Yorgh, for it was a tale he had not heard,
although he knew it was widely told of the Raydowers that they held
mysterious beliefs.

"On the mountain top," said Ueln. "You might have seen it any morning
when you went with us to swim--"

He stopped abruptly, and Yorgh was aware of a peculiar hush around the
table. Then Jayn quickly asked him to describe again how the Hunters
made their powerful horn bows famous for their loud twang and swift
arrows, and how they got such strength without making them as long as
the wooden ones of the mountain people.

Yorgh answered sketchily, not failing to notice Ueln shrug defiantly
under the severe stares of several diners near him at the great table.

After the dinner, Jayn called upon some of her girls to sing. Since the
procedure had been much the same on previous nights, Yorgh deliberately
showed little enthusiasm until he found an opportunity to beg Jayn
herself to sing for them.

The Raydower with the neatly curled brown mustache who had paid her
this compliment on preceding evenings, as Yorgh had carefully noted,
glared and muttered something about "nomad upstarts." Jayn smiled at
Yorgh more warmly than he liked, but he had to admit to himself that
she sang well.

The next morning, returning from the small lake in which the men swam,
he asked Ueln for permission to walk about the village.

"Jayn didn't act as if she would mind my seeing something of it," he
jabbed the Raydower.

The latter grunted.

"I heard her whispering to you last night, after the singing, thank
you," he growled. "She can be nice when she likes. Oh, all right! But
don't let one of my riders catch you on the trail to the pass!"

Yorgh grinned and parted from the group to stroll through the narrow
paths between the stone houses and their small gardens. After half an
hour, by which time the heat of The Star was beginning to lend the
alleys the least touch of fragrance, he had the outline of the village
well in mind.

He strolled on casually, until he succeeded in coming up behind the
shrubbery bordering the space in back of Jayn's big house. There he
loitered for some time, until he saw a trio of kitchen maids carry out
wooden buckets of dirty water. One of them wore a soiled and bedraggled
blue dress.

Yorgh rustled the bushes hiding him. Vaneen looked sharply about, and
he parted the branches an instant.

The girl said something to the other wenches, and they went inside,
leaving her to empty the buckets. She carried one pair over toward
Yorgh as if to water the shrubbery.

When these were empty, she brought the next pair closer, and stepped
around the bush behind which he stood.

"How are you?" asked Yorgh, thinking that she looked like a
fish-cleaning woman among the Sea People.

She stared hard at his fine new clothes, and scowled.

"Some people know how to wheedle the best side of the tent for
themselves!" she said bitterly. "What did you do to get that pretty
tunic from her?"

"Not what you would be jealous to think about," retorted Yorgh.
"_Yet_," he added to tease her.

"You look funny in that fur collar," snapped Vaneen. "Does it have a
copper ring under the fur--with a place to fasten on the chain?"

"Ueln gave it to me," said Yorgh, deciding that it was time to smooth
things over. "Listen--it may soon be time to get out of here. Do they
lock you in at night?"

"No," said Vaneen. "They just told me what would happen to me if I went
out on the streets at night, so I don't."

"Could you sneak out here tonight ... say about the time Kloto sets?"

Vaneen peered hopefully at his expression, and nodded.

"I have thought of a place to run to," said Yorgh. "It might work."

The girl's brown eyes filled with sudden tears.

"Yorgh, if this is one of your stories--"

"Sssh!" he hushed her, slipping an arm about her shoulders. "You've
been out too long already. Meet me tonight, here!"

He slipped back into the pathway and hurried off. Vaneen's tears made
him uncomfortable and he tried hard not to feel guilty. She had been
having a miserable time, no doubt, but had he any choice but to make
himself pleasant to Jayn?

       *       *       *       *       *

That evening he was careful to let himself be seen with Jayn whispering
frequently in his ear during the story-telling. She was beginning to
hint that he might like to stay in the village for good, but Yorgh's
expressions suggested much more.

Later, after dark, he crept cautiously into the hall with a short
length of bed slat tucked in his belt. He had not been allowed a knife
except at meals. As he padded to the foot of the stone stairs, a shadow
detached itself from the wall near the main door. Yorgh sensed rather
than saw the spear that reached out a moment later to prod him just
below the ribs.

"Sssh! Quietly!" he whispered. "Jayn expects me."

The guard grunted, but lowered his spear as if far from surprised.
Before he could think the matter over further, Yorgh made a show of
enlisting his aid.

"She teased by not saying which is her room," he claimed, snickering
sheepishly. "She is having her joke with me because I said I would be
man enough to find it."

"Such a joke is only the beginning, friend," the guard assured him. "Up
the opposite stairs and to the end of the hall. Come, I will point the
way."

"Slowly," pleaded Yorgh. "I don't see as well in the dark as you
people."

He saw clearly enough, however, to note that the man wore only a woolen
cap, with no leather to protect his head. Yorgh struck him a chopping
blow with the piece of slat.

He caught the spear in one hand, though he almost fumbled it in the
dark, and dropped his weapon as quietly as possible to catch the
sagging body in his other arm.

I'd better store him out of the way, he thought, heaving the man onto
his shoulder.

He crept back up the stairs with his burden, having one nervous moment
when he opened the wrong door to the tune of several raucous snores.
The sweat itched on his forehead by the time he got the door quietly
closed and made sure the next was the one to his own room.

He left the guard comfortably bound, and gagged with a strip of
blanket, and traversed the stairway for the third time, wearing a good
bronze knife in his belt. Near the door, he groped about until he found
the spear and his club. The latter he thrust again into his waistband.

The door made little noise, though it sounded to Yorgh like the
bleating of a dozen wollies. Once in the dark street, he padded quickly
around the corner of the building, moving with assurance gained from
counting the steps in daylight. He left the spear in the grass there,
lest it embarrass him later by rattling against something.

A hiss from the bushes halted him in his tracks, until Vaneen whispered
his name.

"Good!" Yorgh whispered back, reaching out to touch her arm. "Are you
cold? Then, let's move. Be very quiet till we get out of the village!"

He led the way through some of the narrower alleyways and they sneaked
out of the sleeping village by way of someone's garden. When they had a
little distance, Yorgh returned to the trail.

"Where are we going?" asked Vaneen.

"I saw the trail this morning, a little beyond the pond. It must lead
to the shrine they talk of, up the mountain. I could see marks on the
cliff like steps, when I looked through the trees."

"Oh! They talked about that shrine in the kitchen when they thought I
wasn't listening," volunteered the girl. "They said Ueln was wrong to
mention it before you."

"Did they say what it is?"

"No, except that no one ever goes there, and the old stories say the
Raydowers were set here to guard it."

"So no one goes there! Good! That's what I hoped for."

Yorgh set off briskly along the path, intent upon not missing the
junction with the trail he wanted. Even so, in the dark, he would have
gone past, had not a voice spoken out sharply.

"Who's there?"

Yorgh froze, so promptly that Vaneen bumped into him.

"Ueln," he answered with the first name that came to him.

Then he saw a darker patch move among the bushes.

Who'd have thought they'd be strict enough to keep a sentry on the
trail? he thought.

"You lie!" charged the sentry, overcoming his hesitation. "You are
twice Ueln's size--ah, I know you now, Hunter! Ho--Kansi!"

Yorgh drew his club and hurled it at where he thought the man's head
would be. There was a smack of wood as the other instinctively raised
the shaft of his spear before his face.

       *       *       *       *       *

Then Yorgh was upon him, bearing him savagely to the ground. One big
hand seized the mountain man's throat. When he grabbed at it with both
of his own, Yorgh's other fist rose and fell like a hammer.

The hunter stood up, listening. Then, stooping swiftly, he groped at
the sentry's belt and handed the man's knife to Vaneen.

"We must move fast now," he warned her in an undertone. "I do not like
the idea of this 'Kansi' he called to knowing where we are."

"I think someone shouted from the village also," whispered the girl.

"Come, then!" said Yorgh, and plunged into the entrance of the trail to
the cliff.

Within a short distance, it became a steep grade. Yorgh prudently
slowed to save their legs for the real climb ahead. A moment later, he
congratulated himself for doing this, for they came upon the other
sentry leaning on his spear where the bushes opened to form a clearing
at the foot of a stone stairway.

"Stay here!" Yorgh breathed with his lips touching Vaneen's ear. "I'll
try to creep around behind him."

"I can do better than that," whispered the girl, pushing against his
arm to force him behind a shrub.

Yorgh swore luridly to himself when he discovered that the plant was
armed with sharp thorns the size of arrowheads, but it was too late to
protest.

"Kansi ..." called Vaneen softly.

The sentry straightened nervously and hissed, "Who is it?"

"Come and see," invited the girl, keeping her voice so low that it
might have been any girl.

Kansi strode over with quick, worried steps, the picture of a man torn
between opportunity and duty.

Yorgh's big fist shot out of the darkness to take him behind the ear
with a solid thunk! He went down without a sound.

Back in the village, there were symptoms of a growing hue and cry.
Torches began to move out along the trail.

"Hurry!" said Yorgh.

"What will you do when we reach the top?" asked Vaneen.

"That I will tell you when I see what is there. Perhaps, if we are
in possession of their precious shrine, they will think twice before
egging us on to destroy it!"

The steps led upward, then doubled back around a narrow turn to rise
further. They were on the fourth such flight and still almost directly
above the trail when the first Raydowers set up a howl of rage at
discovering the unconscious sentries.

"Yorgh!" shouted a voice that sounded like Ueln's. "Come down! This is
no joking matter!"

Yorgh reached back an arm to sweep Vaneen close to the rock out of
which the steps were cut, and kept climbing. He guessed that they were
more than a hundred feet up.

Then, they turned onto a flight that stretched upward without a landing
as far as they had already come, and curled past a corner of the cliff
out of sight.

Some bowman below, with the eyes of a night-roaming ponadu, caught
sight of the fleeing pair at a place where the stairway narrowed to
a mere two feet. It seemed to Yorgh that a section of rock must have
been broken away by a fall of stone from above, but he put aside his
speculation as an arrow hissed up from below and snapped against the
face of the cliff less than ten feet ahead.

"They're coming up the steps too!" Vaneen reported breathlessly.

"Hurry!" urged Yorgh, grabbing her hand. "They seem to think we're
breaking a greater taboo than killing!"

He heard more twanging of bows below, but only two more arrows came
close. Then they were past the narrow spot and protected by the bulge
of rock around which the steps curved.

Yorgh groaned when he looked ahead.

"Have they been guarding steps that lead only to a place to jump from?"

Then he saw the dark hole in the rock where the stone footway ended.

"A cave!" gasped Vaneen. "Yorgh, must we go in?"

Little liking the idea himself, he said nothing. His exploring fingers
found that the walls, near the entrance at least, were curiously
smooth. He edged into the blackness, groping ahead cautiously. Guiding
Vaneen's hand to a grip on his belt, he drew the bronze knife and held
it--blade upward and ready--in his right hand.

About thirty feet straight into the mountain, he tripped.

"May the Three Moons sink into the sea!" he growled as he felt about in
the dark. "More steps!"

"They're coming," said Vaneen.

"I know it," snapped Yorgh, wondering how patient a man had to be in
the face of eating a sheaf of arrows.

Then it occurred to him that it would probably be worse for the girl if
they were caught, and he decided that she was being reasonably patient
too.

There were three short flights of steps, leading to a short corridor
only a few feet wide. This ended in a blank wall, as Yorgh discovered
by bumping his head against it.

As his exploring hands reached out on all sides and confirmed that
the passage was squared off to a dead end, he growled a particularly
obscene oath he had heard among the Sea People. Then he hesitated.

"Vaneen," he whispered, "can you see anything?"

"Where?" came her whisper over his shoulder. Then he heard her gasp.
"Oh, Yorgh, it doesn't look solid! I can see shadows!"

"It must be some kind of door," Yorgh declared. "If I only had a light!
There's some kind of round bump but I can't find any handle."

He threw his weight against the smooth surface but it did not even
quiver.

"Well," said Yorgh, "I was tired of letting that rabble chase me
anyway."

It bothered him, however, not to know what had trapped him, what sort
of barrier it was.

I wonder if I could see by sparks from my fire stones? he thought.

He sheathed his knife and thrust a hand into the pouch at his belt. His
fingers touched something long and metallic.

Of course! he told himself. Although it probably won't work now that I
need it!

He pulled out the metal cylinder and twisted at the ends. As he located
the right one, the blue-green light flared out, brilliant to eyes
adjusted to the blackness.

"It is a door!" Vaneen breathed. "Look, Yorgh! You can see through--"

She stopped as the door slowly swung open.


                                   V

Yorgh held the light in his left hand and dropped the other to the hilt
of his knife, straining to see who or what was opening the door.

Then he decided to thrash that matter out on the inside and twisted the
light off to avoid making himself a target.

He stepped forward ... and smashed into the closing door.

At first, he thought someone had hit him. Then he heard the tiny click
as the door shut.

"There are torches below the steps!" Vaneen warned.

Yorgh twisted the light on again, and held it out so he could examine
the door closely. He saw the blue-green rays reflected from the small,
round bump on the portal, which immediately swung open again.

This time, Yorgh charged ahead without waiting. Vaneen was on his
heels. As they passed the door, and their bodies shielded the light in
his hand, it swung back and clicked shut again. They were alone in a
large, shadowy chamber.

"Look!" Vaneen said.

He turned and found he could see the rest of the corridor plainly
through the door, lit by the reflection of torches. It grew brighter as
a young Raydower thrust a light and his head cautiously above the level
of the floor.

Yorgh twisted the light off and drew Vaneen to one side.

"You know," he whispered, "when one follows a loppa trail to a
waterhole, and finds only ponadu tracks going away, one asks no
questions as to exactly how it came about. If they do not have a little
light like mine, I think they will not get past that door."

It turned out that he was right.

The voices outside were almost inaudible, but the torch light shone in
the corridor. Someone finally laid the palm of a sweating hand against
the door. When he found that he could not push it open he quickly
retreated.

After a while Yorgh peeped out in time to see the last of the pursuers
descending the steps. Then it was dark again.

"I can see the stars," murmured Vaneen.

Yorgh looked up. It was true.

"And, Yorgh...?"

"Yes?" he asked, feeling light of heart at having succeeded in escaping
the Raydowers for the time being.

"I ... am beginning to believe your story about finding the metal stick
in the desert. I'm sorry I said what I did."

Yorgh chuckled and reached out for her in the dark. He pulled her to
him and found her soft lips with his. After the first instant, she
slipped strong young arms about his waist and strained her body against
his.

"That's ninety-nine you owe me," said Yorgh, taking a deep breath.

Vaneen pretended to pull back from him, with a low laugh.

Abruptly, following a quiet click, the place was flooded by a white
glare that was like a blow on his eyes. When he could see again, they
were still the only ones there ... except for a skeleton on a couch
across the wide, cluttered chamber ... and another on the floor beside
a long table with many drawers.

"What is it?" gasped Yorgh.

"I don't know. My shoulder touched something on the wall beside the
door, and--"

The place was filled with strange furnishings. Some were wooden
and seemed to sag here and there; most were queer things of metal.
Overhead, a transparent roof offered a good view of the stars.

Cautiously, with Vaneen crowding close, Yorgh walked around the
chamber. There were other doors, and he tried his light at one of
them. It obediently swung open to reveal what must have been sleeping
quarters. Yorgh saw more bones, and let the door close again.

It was Vaneen who discovered the books. The writing and pictures on the
smooth, pliable pages put to shame the few parchment records they had
seen in the village of the Sea People.

Yorgh never remembered how many awed hours they spent looking at the
strange instruments and colored maps and other curiosities. The sky, he
did recall later, was showing light when he made his little mistake.

"This must be a place of the Old Ones of the legends," Vaneen was
murmuring as Yorgh fingered a series of little studs on one of the
machines.

Suddenly, there was whirring motion under his hand. He leaped back,
startled. A humming grew from nowhere, followed by a scratching sound
that culminated in a loud snap.

A tired voice spoke, sounding so near and natural that Yorgh dropped a
hand to his knife and looked about.

"World Four of the Kithgol planetary system reporting on the hundred
and sixty-first day of the plague. Urgently request the dropping of
medical supplies detailed in last report, but advise against any
attempt to land here. The plague is still uncontrollable, even animals,
with few exceptions, being wiped out.

"Little hope for survival of this colony. Personnel of this station
remain in strict quarantine, and will not venture out to mingle with
other colonists in hopes of maintaining communication to the last...."

There was more, but Yorgh was satisfied.

He backed away from the talking thing, and saw that Vaneen's face was
as white as his own felt.

"Let's go down again," he whispered through dry lips. "It's getting
light."

He would have accepted a look of scorn for such a weak excuse, but
the girl followed meekly. The door opened as soon as he got his light
within a yard of it, and they crept guiltily down the stairs cut out of
solid rock.

       *       *       *       *       *

There were no Raydowers about until Yorgh and Vaneen came wearily down
the last flight of steps on the face of the cliff. Jayn was waiting
there in the little clearing, with Ueln and a crowd of villagers,
spearmen prominently to the fore.

"The spirits let you return!" murmured Jayn, her face strained and pale.

There was a general air of shrinking back among the crowd, although
Yorgh did not see anyone actually move his feet.

"I swear," said Ueln, "that they must have been all the way inside the
shrine. I followed right to the Portal!"

"That is true enough," said Yorgh, waiting a few steps up to see what
they would do.

He wondered if he could impress them with his light. He held it in his
hands.

"Then, the sooner you go, the better!" said Jayn bitterly. "If the
spirits let you go, we may not touch you. But I do not care to keep you
around until you bring certain disaster upon the village."

An old woman whispered in her ear, and she looked sharply at Vaneen.

"And you took the girl with you?" she demanded.

"Of course," he replied. "And if you are really anxious to have us
gone, I think you should give us wollies to ride."

"You can have all the animals my cousin took from the flatland!" she
snapped. "But first, another matter!"

An old man was pushed to the forefront of the crowd. He smoothed his
white beard nervously and peered up at Yorgh and Vaneen with faded,
short-sighted eyes.

Abruptly, he found his voice, and rattled off a brief, chanting patter.
Then he stepped back behind a spearman who looked to Yorgh as if he
would be poor protection.

"What was that, a curse?" demanded the Hunter, having had difficulty
understanding the rapid words mumbled from the old man's toothless
mouth.

To force an answer, he twisted the metal cylinder to flash the light at
them.

"No," gulped Jayn, her eyes riveted upon the object in his hands.
"He married you. It's the only thing that might possibly lessen the
sacrilege. You were up there a long time."

She looked up at him bitterly.

"Oh, Yorgh! Why did you have to take that wench with you?"

Vaneen, who had been so quiet behind his shoulder, spoke at last.

"And I didn't even give him a tunic with a fur collar," she said.

Jayn flushed, then paled as she bit her red lower lip; and Yorgh saw
that the comment must have struck a deeper wound than could days of
kitchen drudgery.

He didn't know what to say; but his silence must have seemed
threatening, for Ueln spoke up.

"I will ride after him, and make plain to his people how we brought him
and the girl to the mountains," he offered.

"A good idea!" said Jayn, with an undertone in her voice that made
Yorgh think of a cornered ponadu. "Just to be safe, and to make sure
they take him back, we'll all go!"

Yorgh and Vaneen glanced at each other, but soon found that the
Raydowers were in earnest. Before noon, they found themselves leading
the hastily assembled column from the village out onto the grassy plain
beyond the foothills.

There, another surprise waited them.

The Hunters, mostly on foot, save for a dozen on half-tamed wollies,
met them at the first clump of trees, where some of their dark tents
were pitched.

"We were just about to follow your trail in," cried Kwint, riding up
to Yorgh with a grin splitting his features. "Do I see our run-away
wollies being herded along there?"

"You do," said Yorgh, conscious that Ueln had pulled up beside him,
looking glum. "This is Ueln of the Raydowers. He ... caught them for
us."

Kwint looked hard at both of them, but held his peace. Vaneen had
ridden straight to her father.

"I gave the metal stick to Yorgh as you told me, Father," she said,
staring him levelly between the eyes. "I hope you have no more such
errands."

She slipped down from her mount, and headed for their tent.

"She's tired," said Yorgh to Puko, whom he found at his knee.

Tefior looked about weakly, and finally thought to close his mouth.

"The least you could do," Yorgh told him, "is to offer our friends here
meat, to show there are no grudges."

Tefior licked his lips and began to give orders, but there was a
puzzled frown on his brow.

Anyone but me, thought Yorgh, grinning, he would ask, but he is timid
of the answers I might give him.

Things went very well after that. With the returned wollies, it was
easy to move back to the camp at the creek, where the Hunters had left
their carts and most of their baggage. The Raydowers willingly traveled
with them, and were loaned tents to set up a camp of their own.

For eleven days, the tribes camped there, exchanging feasts, hunting
together, and finding things to trade. Yorgh was gratified at how his
advice was accepted by both sides, even though in fear by one of them.
The Raydowers looked uneasy whenever he casually talked of traveling
back with them.

There was only one untoward incident, which was quickly hushed up. As
Yorgh was told the tale, Vaneen had taken Jayn to swim in the secluded
bend of the creek. Somehow or other it happened that only the Hunter
girl had dressed when she shrieked that she heard a ponadu in the woods.

Yorgh remembered the way Jayn's dark robes had fitted over the hips,
and wished he had been there to see. Then he thought of her kitchen in
the mountain village, and said no more on the subject.

When some of the Raydowers became friendly enough to talk, however,
the story of his escapade with Vaneen got around.

Yorgh caught people glancing askance at him every time he turned
around. He went to old Tefior.

"I suppose you have heard it all," he said. "If you do not think it
best, I won't come to your fire to see Vaneen."

The chief looked over Yorgh's shoulder.

"Perhaps ... for the time being...."

Don't know why I took that for an answer, thought Yorgh, staring across
the flatland the next morning at dawn. Suppose I tell him the Raydowers
call us married? Would he just say their law doesn't count? Vaneen
looks kindly at me from a distance, but she hasn't spoken.

He chewed moodily on a blade of grass, thinking that he heard a distant
herd of kromp moving.

Then his head jerked up as a great flame ripped across the sky.


                                  VI

There were shouts behind him in the camp, and he saw motion about the
borrowed tents of the Raydowers.

A huge, gleaming thing sank down to the plain on a cushion of smoke and
flame. The fires disappeared as it touched ground. A moment later, the
thunder died out.

Yorgh became aware of someone yanking his arm.

"Come on!" yelled little Puko. "I have a wolly for you. You can flee to
the mountains!"

Yorgh looked around, and most of the talk and bustle ceased. People,
finding themselves still alive, stopped to stare at Yorgh. He saw a
group hurrying over from the Raydower camp.

Why don't they look to Tefior or Jayn? he wondered peevishly.

The first words Jayn spoke when she panted up with Ueln and others of
her people were, "You were wrong to go up there!"

"I do not think well of it," Tefior agreed sadly.

"This is what comes of violating the shrine!" shouted one of the
Raydowers. "The spirits of the Old Ones have come to avenge themselves
upon us all!"

"No!" roared Yorgh.

He stared around at them, then out across the plain where the great,
gleaming thing stood upright with wisps of smoke curling up from the
grass at its base.

"I brought it upon us; I will go!"

Jayn and Ueln stared at him with pale, sorrowful faces. Kwint fingered
his bow, and seemed about to step forward. Puko did, but Tefior grabbed
him by the hair.

Yorgh turned and walked slowly away.

"Yorgh! Wait!"

Vaneen ran after him.

"We'll go together! I was there with you!"

"No!" he groaned. "Jayn, she went because I took her. Kwint! Ueln! Hold
her!"

He broke away and ran toward the thing on the plain, not thinking, not
even hoping. The voices behind him died away.

After he had covered a quarter of a mile, he noticed that the metal
thing was like the ships of the Sea People in some ways. It was
rounded, like a hull, and its upthrust bow--

To his amazement, there were four men standing under it when he
arrived. Yorgh gaped at their queer clothes.

"Well, look at him!" said one of them with a strange accent. "Is that
what's been sending out a repetitive message that's well over two
hundred years old? I thought the plague wiped this planet clean."

"Man!" exclaimed the one with the close-cropped red hair. "If we can
find out why not, maybe we can stop it wherever it still pops up in the
galaxy!"

It was late afternoon when Yorgh ambled back into camp.

A great sigh went up from the waiting groups when they saw that he was
smiling.

"They are men!" he shouted. "Sons of the Old Ones--as are we! Tefior,
Jayn, when I have told you, this will be a night for a feast!"

He told them of the strange men who said they came from the Terran
Colonial Patrol in answer to a message from The World, which had long
been shunned as a dead colony, dead of a plague still known among the
stars.

He told how the Terrans had taken blood from his arm and looked at it
in a queer machine, whereupon they had grown talkative and excited.

"They said they will send people to teach us the forgotten ways of the
Old Ones, because we are the first they have found who do not die of
the sickness," he concluded. "Just for bringing them kromps and other
animals to help cure the sickness, they will see that we have all we
need to stand beside them, as brothers."

And he told how one of the Terrans had knocked a kromp unconscious with
a small machine in his hand, to get some of its blood.

"I will show you," he grinned, thinking of a tremendous joke. "Where is
Moyt?"

The others pushed the tall, blond Moyt forward.

"Is there any reason why you would not like to marry Jayn, who is the
first of the Raydower women?" Yorgh asked.

"I--" began Moyt suspiciously, and stiffened as Yorgh pressed the
trigger of the Terran stunner he held inside his tunic.

Moyt got control of his knees and straightened up as Yorgh turned off
the power.

He started to open his mouth angrily, and Yorgh stunned him again. Moyt
slumped to his knees beside Jayn.

The Raydower woman's lips curved in a thoughtful smile, and she reached
out to run a finger through Moyt's hair. The man had changed his mind
about protesting by the time the second shock had worn off.

Then Yorgh sat down to answer question after question while
preparations for the night's feast went on. The men gathered and voted
that messengers should be sent to the Sea People to tell of what had
happened. Someone shouted Yorgh's name to be chief of the three tribes,
and the cry was taken up over his protests.

"Well, I'll take a walk and think about it," he said finally, and
strolled up the creek for a breather.

In the quiet of the trees, he shook his head to see if he would wake
from the dream, but the only result was that he heard voices.

He lengthened his stride and caught up with a group of the young women.

"Where are you going?" he asked amiably.

"We were going swimming before the feast," answered pert Ahnee, "but
if there is to be a ponadu named Yorgh in the woods--"

"I won't bother you," he grinned, "if you will tell me where Vaneen is."

"She went ahead alone when we stopped to hear what all the shouting was
for. She is anxious to try the new dress of white wool that Jayn gave
her."

"Oh," said Yorgh, wrinkling his brow. "Well, in that case, I must ask
you girls to find another part of the creek."

"What!" cried Ahnee. "Yorgh, you oughtn't!"

"The Raydower elder said a marriage spell over us, didn't he? Now, will
you go, or must I show you what happened to Moyt?"

"We'll go!" squealed Ahnee hastily, as the other girls faded back from
beside her. "But it was said that you did not mean to hold her to that
foreign ceremony."

"I must obey everyone's laws," said Yorgh, "now that I am to be chief
of all the tribes."

He thought he heard splashing a little way up the creek, and grinned to
himself at the vision in his mind.

"But it is well known that you told Tefior--"

"Argh!" said Yorgh. "It is well known that I seldom speak in earnest!"





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