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Title: Exile From Venus

Author: E. Hoffmann Price

Illustrator: Herman B. Vestal

Release date: January 2, 2021 [eBook #64199]

Language: English

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


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EXILE FROM VENUS ***




                           EXILE FROM VENUS

                          By E. HOFFMAN PRICE

             Earth was a world of murdering savages; bleak
          and desolate; contaminated by deadly radioactivity.
           Only Craig Verrill's atavistic stubbornness--and
           a rash promise, made in fury--could have brought
            him back to that perilous birthplace of Man....

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
                       Planet Stories May 1951.
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]


The solicitude of Linda's voice, the seductiveness of her perfume,
her very presence as they sat in the artificial twilight of the Domes
of Venus, tempted him to abandon his plan to sail at once for Terra,
venture among the savage Terrestrians, and get possession of that
enormous ruby they called the Fire of Skanderbek.

Linda was long legged and supple waisted, with dark eyes and
gold-bronze hair, and very white skin. Her cheek bones were just
sufficiently prominent to keep her face from being too regular; and
there was a perceptible dusting of tiny freckles which accented the
irregularity, adding a piquant touch. These were natural, and a
rarity that had existed only in fable for the past six-hundred years,
for the glow-lamps and the occlusive Venusian atmosphere seemed to
combine to make the freckle almost impossible. However, though the
cosmeticians had driven the Board of Science frantic until they had
devised a process for artificially imitating Linda's unique flaw, this
distinction had not spoiled her.

"Never mind what I said, last night," Linda pleaded. "We were all
angry, you and Gil and I. No sense at all!"

"But I promised," Verrill said stubbornly. Which helped--a little--to
sustain himself against backing down from the rash venture for which he
had not a bit of taste.

He had an angular face, narrowish, with the bony structure well
accented. His nose was prominent; his hazel eyes were intent and
impatient. He was lean, muscular, and all in all, just the sort of
Venusian to go on such a crazy venture--yet he didn't like the idea at
all, now that he had had time to consider.

"Let's forget it all, Craig! Rubies aren't important enough. The one
Gil brought me from that trading-post of Terra isn't--wasn't--"

Verrill said sourly: "That's what makes me feel so foolish about it. He
brought you a souvenir, and I grabbed it from you, flung it into the
lake, and pasted him. What for?"

"Oh, Craig, who _cares_! Gil was lording it over you. I was too smug
and pleased with the gift to realize how far he was going. Oh, all
right, of _course_ you were wrong! But what of it?"

Verrill shook his head. "I fairly shouted myself into it."

"I don't want you to go."

"I know you don't. But too many of our friends were within sight and
hearing of the whole mess. Sooner or later their attitude would make
you unhappy about a man who talked big, and then backed down."

       *       *       *       *       *

His insistence widened Linda's eyes. The civilized Venusians were
always ready to take the sensible, the expedient way. Had they been
otherwise, had they not been the descendants of sensible Terrestrian
ancestors, they would have been included in the devastation which had
left all but small and widely scattered patches of Terra uninhabitable
for the past seven-hundred years. Rather, those who today were
Venusians would have been struggling savages, scraping out a living in
some uncontaminated area.

Verrill's was an almost Terrestrian stubbornness; something primitive
and atavistic, very much like that queer quirk which made some
Venusians return to their native Earth to set up trading-posts, where
they bartered with the barbarian tribesmen for tobacco and wines,
spices and jewels and perfumes, all manner of luxuries which Venus did
not offer.

Linda made her final appeal: "Leaving all this, to scramble around in
that terrible waste and desolation--oh, do be sensible!"

Her voice, and the kiss that followed it, made Verrill at once aware of
what generations of Venusians had taken for granted. He looked across
the gardens and the lake, and up at the prodigious span of girders.
The original purpose of the structure had been to house a military
outpost that was to have outflanked a comparable one on Luna. In the
years just before The War, engineers and scientists had been sent from
Terra to build those enormous domes, plastic-sheathed and air-tight,
to exclude the raging dust-storms and the overwhelming concentration
of formaldehyde which made up most of the natural Venusian atmosphere.
Rather than rely on any system depending upon chemically prepared
oxygen, they had established gardens, orchards, fields of plant-life
which liberated sufficient oxygen to maintain the required balance.

This was to have been simply a garrison. According to plan, it would
have played a decisive part in the final clash for Terrestrian
supremacy. Meanwhile, there had come to be little difference between
the rival dictatorships, except in the wording of their slogans.
The Anglo-Capitalist Bloc had borrowed all the kinds and twists of
regimentation of the rival bloc. The difference finally became one of
flavor rather than principle.

A cool-headed few, in command of the Venusian garrison, had seen that
neither side could win; that there would be only mutual and total
destruction. The warfare became more and more atrocious; and the
Anglo-Capitalist Bloc drifted further and further from the sort of
organization that the Venus garrison, in no immediate danger, could
contemplate defending with enthusiasm. Thus, when one day the Lunar
Base radio complained of attack by suicide-ships and then went abruptly
silent, the Venusian Base, which might have been expected to cry
"Geronimo!" and leap into the holocaust, instead underwent a short and
violent revolution in which the ardently military were disposed of.
Then, stubbornly intending to survive chaos and idiocy, the Venus Base
folded its hands and sat out the fatal clash that ended The War and
virtually the whole of Terrestrian civilization with it....

After several centuries, the Venus Council risked an exploration
party to Terra to see whether the globe was becoming fit for human
habitation again. Large areas had, of course, through natural
processes become decontaminated; there were scattered colonies of
survivors--farmers, herdsmen, hunters, armed with clubs, spears, and
other primitive weapons. Contact was made, communication struck up,
trade--of considerable importance to both--established; and, after the
ten years which this took, the Venusians were left with very little
inclination to colonize Terra. Life under the domes was comfortable,
with controlled climate, law and order, science and art. Comfortable,
civilized, and sensible. While Terra--

"_Be a sensible Venusian_," was what Linda meant. "_Don't go looking
for trouble when you can do better without. Don't be a typical
Terrestrian!_"

The whole clash of the previous night had been silly. Irritated by
Gil Dawson's giving Linda a ruby as a souvenir of his official
inspection-tour of the Council-controlled Terrestrian trading-posts,
Verrill had flung the trinket into the lake. After a brisk fracas in
which Dawson had finally wearied of getting up, only to be knocked down
again, Verrill had shouted to Linda and to most of Venus that he'd
get her a man's-sized ruby, the Fire of Skanderbek. She, thoroughly
outraged, had told him and Dawson that by Heaven she'd not be the
prize, either of a brawl or a souvenir-finding contest. To make it
good, she had concluded by telling Verrill that he'd be far better
occupied if he got the Venus Council to assign him to one of the
committees for improving the living-standards of the Terrestrians, and
won the Fire of Skanderbek as a token of their gratitude.

But however earnestly she besought him to forget it all, Verrill was
just as unhappily determined to go through with it. "I can't back down.
Dawson will surely take a crack at stealing the Fire himself--and that
would make it tough for me. And for you."

"Oh, let the fool try!" she cried, desperately. "He'd never come back
from the territory of those wildmen."

Verrill shook his head. "He might come back. Even though I did give him
a trouncing, he's anything but a clown. You wouldn't accept the Fire
of Skanderbek if he offered it--but he'd give it to someone else, and
then--well, a lot of women do dislike you! There's nothing I can do,
except to beat him to it."

And so, Verrill went to do as he had to do.

       *       *       *       *       *

The space-freighter veered from her course only a little; instead of
landing in the sun-blasted plain at the foot of the mountains into
which Verrill was to go, she launched a crew-boat which took him to the
trading-post at the foot of barren limestone bulwarks.

Dawson was not at the post. But while a head start was a happy omen,
Verrill knew that it had its limits, since his plan to ingratiate
himself with the barbarians until he could seize the fetish-ruby and
return to the post involved so much time that the gain of hours or days
meant little.

Ingratiate himself--steal the Fire of Skanderbek--and get
out--infinitely simpler than Linda's suggestion, probably an utterly
impossible one, of deserving it finally as a gift. His first look at
the bearded mountaineers convinced him that no amount of do-gooding
could ever move them to gratitude.

Those lounging in the compound of the fortified trading-post wore
homespun pants and sheepskin jackets. They fairly clanked with trade
daggers, trade pistols, and trade hatchets; some carried trade muskets,
and some had the new repeating rifles. Their tanned and hairy faces and
bitter eyes made it plain that looting and robbing, brawling and mayhem
and murder were their very breath of life.

They spoke the international language which had developed sufficiently
to come into common use around 2200 A.D. English, while a nightmare of
contradictions to baffle a foreigner, had offered these advantages:
next to Chinese, no other language was so free of inflections; and it
could so readily assimilate all manner of foreign words. Thus, since
the tone-deaf Occidental had not been able to master the simplicities
of Chinese or other Mongolian tongues, the Asiatics had taken up
English, with which had been blended Arabic, Urdu, Malay, and a good
deal of Western European; and, while seven centuries of Venusian
isolation had made the speech of the people of the Domes diverge from
the original international Terrestrian, Verrill had not too much
difficulty in making himself understood.

"This black bag," he told a group of the caravan men, "will interest
Ardelan--that's your chief's name, isn't it? Let me go into the
mountains with you to talk to him."

"You're crazy," a craggy faced fellow with drooping moustaches and hard
blue eyes told him, levelly. "You think I'm crazy."

Verrill laid out three daggers. He picked one up, jabbed it into the
top of a table cluttered with heaps of goatskins, dried apricots,
raisins, and bags of coriander seed. He bent the weapon until the grip
touched the table top. He released it. It snapped straight up, with a
fine, high pitched _spang_. He plucked a dagger from the mountaineer's
belt, drew the other weapon from the table, and slashed them edge to
edge.

He cut shavings from the mountaineer's weapon. Then he stropped his own
blade on the palm of his hand for a couple of strokes, and next ran it
along his arm. The hairs toppled as he cut them free; there was no drag
at all, the edge was so keen.

"Mine are not trade daggers," he said. "Bet you the three that Ardelan
will listen to me, and not throw me out."

The Terrestrian's eyes gleamed. "What do I put up for a bet?"

"A pair of those boots you're wearing. Put my knives in your belt now.
If I lose my bet, they're yours. If I win, you're welcome to them
anyway."

So the caravan men fitted him out with garments and boots like their
own; and Verrill went into the mountains with them.


                                  II

The trail snaked along precipices and wound past narrow, hidden
valleys. At the foot of a cliff lay the shell of a space-cruiser which
had been telescoped from its original six-hundred feet to a bare
two-hundred, though much of the nose had melted from the impact against
the rocks. Gnarled oaks and junipers reached up from a riven seam of
the shell. The metal had not rusted. It was merely tarnished to a slate
gray. It was a mine of such metal as could have furnished all manner of
implements for the Terrestrians--but they did not know how to exploit
it.

Finally, Verrill was looking down into narrow, upland meadows where
sheep grazed. There were barley patches. His eyes felt as though they
were full of sand. The snow-white glare from cliffs, and the dust which
rose in yellow puffs at every step, made the way a torment for one
accustomed to the paradisiacal clime of the Venusian Domes.

Each day's march brought the donkey-caravan within sight of alternate
trails, guarded by mud-brick towers, where armed men were stationed
to watch the moves of hostile neighbors. The return, even without
pursuit, would be dangerous.

At last they came to Ardelan's mud-walled houses, huddled on a rocky
shelf which overhung a fertile valley. The settlement was surrounded
by a wall of earth and stone, and had escaped contamination because no
one would have bombed a 12,000 foot range of limestone peaks except by
mistake.

When the trading convoy filed into the tangle of flat-roofed houses
which surrounded a hard-packed central square, women, children, and
dogs came out, each in full voice. The procession kept straight on
toward the entrance of a two-storeyed building. Half the ground-level
was a stable; the rest, a courtyard where Ardelan and a handful of
armed companions lolled under an awning of black goat-hair.

Terrestrian faces were no novelty to Verrill; but this time, being
a stranger among them--instead of merely a spectator seeing a
handful of them, half defiant and half uneasy in the strangeness
of a trading-post--he saw what he had never before noticed. They
tended toward height and ranginess, prominence of nose, angularity
of face; yet behind this likeness was a shadow-pattern of racial
differentiation. There were differences of flavor, rather than of
outright form. The flare of a nostril, the shape of an eye, the
fullness or thinness of lip--a thick necked one, here and there,
suggested that, generations back, there had been among his ancestors a
blocky Mongol from Central Asia.

The guards, instead of presenting Verrill, explained him as though he
had been some trade article. Ardelan, listening, studied his visitor
with entire impersonality, as he might have scrutinized a basket of
fresh ripe apricots to see how they had endured being hauled so far.

"What's in the bag?" he demanded, abruptly.

"Medicine. I am a doctor."

"What for? People die anyway."

"A doctor," Verrill explained, concealing his dismay, "is not to keep
people from dying. He is to make it more agreeable for them until they
finally have to die."

Ardelan addressed his henchmen. The answers summed up to this: that if
nothing much ailed a man, he'd get well by himself, and if something
really incapacitated him, it would of course be something so serious
that he could not last long at the best.

Ardelan digested this wisdom, then asked, "Verrill, can you make knives
like these you gave that man?"

"I am a doctor, not a blacksmith."

"Can you make guns or cartridges?"

"No."

"Can you fight?"

Verrill glanced uneasily about, as though Ardelan might be on the point
of selecting an opponent to test the stranger's claims. And, having
read Verrill's face, Ardelan snorted, and not waiting for a reply,
demanded, "Then what are you good for?"

"To treat the sick," Verrill repeated, with growing sense of futility.
"To bind wounds. To set broken bones."

"Look at us. We've done very well."

"I can do better."

"Can't work, can't fight! Good for nothing but doctoring. Bad as a
priest! Lock him up; I want to think this over."

The guard hustled Verrill and his medical case into an empty granary.
They slammed the door and rolled a boulder against it. It made no
difference whether or not he could shove the door open; there was
nowhere to go if he did get out. He could not find his way back to the
trading-post except over the way which his escort had brought him: a
guarded way.

       *       *       *       *       *

In the half-gloom, Verrill noted that the wall had been cracked by
earthquakes. These cracks gave him hand and toe holds, to climb up
until he could catch the rough-hewn timber which supported the roof
of brush and clay. Lying on the crown of the wall, he could look out
through rifts in the roof.

Herdsmen were driving their flocks in from distant slopes. Others drove
donkeys laden with brush. Verrill was appalled by the ever present
evidence that Terrestrian life was a matter of digging, scratching,
and enduring the elements. The stark emptiness of the sky worried him;
he was accustomed to the perpetual twilight and impenetrable clouds of
Venus.

Well away from the settlement, and outside the wall, was a small,
squatty cube with a small tower at each corner. The structure was
backed up against an overhanging cliff, and was unapproachable except
from the walled town. The precipitous ending of the shelf guarded the
whitewashed cube more surely than if it had been within the town wall.

The open doorway was so large in proportion to the structure itself
that surmise made Verrill's pulse hammer. That must be the shrine where
the Fire of Skanderbek was kept.

Toward dusk, drums rumbled and trumpets of ram's horns bawled hoarsely.
Men carrying tightly bound bundles of brush marched in procession
toward the whitewashed cube, and chanted as they went. When they came
to the place, they filed in, each coming out with his faggots ablaze.

They returned to their houses. Before long, Verrill's captors brought
him a bowl of mutton stew, and leathery cakes of bread. "They couldn't
have cooked this stuff so soon," he reasoned. "It must have been
cooking all the while, on fires already lighted. That procession was
fire worship."

He sat there a long time after he had licked the gravy from his
fingers. A shocking business: meat so plentiful that it was fed to a
prisoner, and yet the barbarians knew nothing at all about cookery.

The town swarmed with flies. Vultures perched on the walls and
watch-towers, waiting to clean up the garbage and offal flung from the
houses. The community well had a nasty taint from surface drainage from
the stables. Verrill, after a bad night's sleep, spent the morning
deciding that when pestilence did break out, he would need his medical
supplies for himself.

The women, shapely and graceful, gathered about the well to fill the
earthenware jugs they carried balanced on their heads. They chattered
mainly about the outsider, giving most emphasis to his looks, though
devoting certain speculation to his possible usefulness, and probable
destination.

"Kwangtan," they all agreed, "wants him killed or sent away."

From what he could piece together from the various relays of women
he overheard, Verrill concluded that Kwangtan was the keeper of the
shrine; and that medical practice was the monopoly of old women, who
cooked up herbs. These potions, plus Kwangtan's incantations, kept the
community in health.

The drowsy silence of midafternoon was broken by an hysterical
screeching and screaming. Before Verrill could arouse himself from the
stupor of half suffocation, the door was jerked open and several men
pounced for him.

"You, with the medicine! Work for you. Bring the black box!"

       *       *       *       *       *

They hustled him to a house where several old women were shaking and
back-slapping a boy of three or four. The kid's mother, one of the
few redheads in the colony, was wailing at a pitch that made Verrill
shiver. A beetle-browed young man with a wiry beard squatted on the
floor, looking helpless. All he did was repeat, "Get Kwangtan!" And no
one paid him any heed at all.

At the sight of Verrill, one of the old women laid the child on a
sheepskin spread on the floor. The child's face was gray. His lips were
bluish. His eyes bugged out. He wheezed agonizingly. It made Verrill's
skin twitch, just to see the little fellow's losing battle for breath.
He was slowly choking. With all voices suddenly stilled at Verrill's
approach, the sound became all the more ominous.

In his utter perplexity and dismay, Verrill hoped that what he heard
was the death-rattle which would relieve him of the task about to be
forced upon him. The absence of Kwangtan, the holy man, told him the
story: that wise fellow was not going to lose any prestige by tackling
something he could not handle.

"What's wrong?" Verrill asked, with a show of assurance.

"You're a doctor," the kid's father snarled. "Do something."

"He swallowed an apricot seed," the child's redhaired mother said.
"It's stuck, we can't shake it out, he's choking. Get it out, you
blinking fool!"

The kid's father drew and cocked his pistol. The dry click chilled
Verrill to the heart. He remembered an old story of an emergency
operation at a trading-post. The yarn had given the Venusians quite a
thrill.

Ardelan stalked in. He nodded his approval of the man who had a pistol
trained on the doctor. "Stranger, do not make any mistakes. Kwangtan
has warned us."

Verrill had a raft of Venusian specifics for just about every known
ailment; he had counted, however, on nothing of the sort which now
confronted him--had looked forward simply to giving the savages pills,
and swabbing them with antiseptics. As he knelt, he fumbled helplessly
with the instruments in the case.

"Do this right," Ardelan said. "Or he shoots."

Verrill loaded a hypo with a local anaesthetic. The glint of metal,
and the sudden end of the child's gagging as the injection stilled his
struggles, nearly cost Verrill his life. Ardelan's big hand knocked the
pistol out of line as it blazed, and the slug scorched Verrill's cheek
and pounded a chunk out of the wall.

"He's not dead," the chief said, "Not yet."

A splash of antiseptic.

Then, nerving himself, Verrill made a slit in the throat. There was not
much blood. He got the apricot seed free. With haggling jabs, he took a
couple of stitches. He taped and bandaged.

Then, shoulders sagging, he settled back, trying to keep from toppling
to the floor. The kid's lips were no longer bluish. He was breathing
freely. At last he blinked, cried out, and reached for his throat.

"He's brought him back to life!" the redhead cried, and snatched up the
boy.

       *       *       *       *       *

Verrill crumpled. He toppled, and sprawled. He was, however, conscious,
and when he heard what the mountaineers were saying he realized that
had he done it intentionally, he could not have done better than
collapse.

One said, "He's left his body for awhile to fight off the devils, so
they won't come back to hurt the kid."

Verrill muttered and mumbled until, satisfied that his act had been up
to their expectation, he sat up. Again, he faced a pistol, but this
time it was presented butt foremost.

"Take it, doctor. It's yours," the kid's father said.

And now Kwangtan, the fire priest, joined the group.

His deep-set eyes blazed fiercely. His face was sunken. His hands
were like parchment drawn over bones. He wore white pants and a white
shirt. His beard and his shoulder-length hair were white. For a moment,
Verrill thought that the old fellow was a veteran of The War. His age
made him fantastic in a colony where men over forty were scarce, and
those over fifty, rarities; though old women were more than plentiful.

Verrill declined the gift of the pistol. "Give it to the holy man," he
said. "I did not come here for pay."

Then he went with Ardelan to sit under the black awning where the chief
settled disputes, and planned raids on neighboring tribes.

"Excellency," Verrill pointed out, "holding a pistol at a doctor's head
is no way of making sure he'll help the patient."

"You are a stranger. You might have killed him with a curse."

"He was already nearly dead."

"But he was still alive, and you might have finished him."

"He must have known I'd do my best."

"Still, if the boy had died, that clan would have lost a fighting man,
so your clan had to lose. That is our law."

"Is that why Kwangtan wouldn't help?"

"Not at all. He's not a stranger. And if the women who were working on
the boy had kept at it until he choked to death, no one would have hurt
them. They're not strangers."

"The quicker I get out of here, the better!"

Ardelan permitted himself to smile. "Once you are no longer a stranger,
doctoring will not be so dangerous."


                                  III

As Ardelan's reserve thawed out, Verrill pressed him with questions.
"Your men talk about nothing but raids on your neighbors' flocks, and
about feuds. Haven't you enough sheep?"

"Doctor, you know how to save lives, but you know nothing at all about
living."

Ardelan pointed toward the gateway, which opened from courtyard to
the square. Half a dozen women, high-breasted and long-limbed, were
gossiping at the well. Their wild gracefulness was blood-stirring.
Verrill contrasted them with the studiedly elegant ladies of Venus, and
with Linda particularly.

"We have enough sheep, and enough women," the chief explained. "The
sheep don't make trouble. The women do. If my men are not to cut each
other's throats, they must have outside enemies to keep them busy. Or
the jealousies of their wives would prod them to too much competition
with each other."

Thinking back to his quarrel with Gil Dawson, Verrill had to concede
Ardelan's point and principle. And then he got back to the perils of
being a stranger. The following day, he proposed, "Let me take part in
the fire ceremony of an evening. In that way, I won't be a stranger so
long."

The chief got up, presently, and clapped his hands. A retainer came
forward with two horses. They were hammer-headed, shaggy, Roman-nosed,
and with fierce eyes. The saddles were sheepskin pads. There were no
stirrups.

Verrill said, "Excellency, you ride. I'll walk."

They set out for the shrine. Meanwhile, half a dozen horsemen came in
from the other end of the shelf. One, overtaking Verrill and the chief,
slowed down enough to exchange a hail, and then pressed on. Before they
came to the shrine, the rider had finished his business with Kwangtan,
and was leaving.

He circled wide, to avoid an encounter. This made Verrill uneasy. The
man was dust-caked, sweat-drenched, and sagging.

Ardelan frowned. "More trouble! That's one of the outpost guards. I
wish I could have just the right amount of raiding, and no more."

"He might have told you what it was about."

"He will, at the sunset council. But Kwangtan has to dip his long nose
into everything first, or he makes trouble."

They got the news in a hurry.

Standing in the entrance of the shrine, Kwangtan cursed his chief and
the doctor as well. "Get that fellow out of here! He's come to steal
the Fire of Skanderbek. And you're a fool for allowing him around here!"

Ardelan endured the cursing until he had a chance to ask, "Have you had
another vision, Holy One?"

"The man who just rode up told me what I had already learned from the
fire gods. This Verrill has promised the ruby to one of his women."

"Who said that?" Verrill demanded.

"One of your own people who fly down from heaven. One called Dawson.
At the trading-post. Dawson talked about you to our men, and to our
neighbors."

"You stick to your own business," Ardelan interposed, quietly. "He
will stick to his. He is an outlaw from his own people. Naturally, his
enemies try to harm him."

The snarling saint listened. He and Ardelan eyed each other. What
unspoken thought passed between them was beyond Verrill's guessing; yet
it must have had force, for Kwangtan offered no objection when Ardelan
said, "Verrill, come in with me and bow to the flame."

       *       *       *       *       *

The interior of the shrine was much larger than the front had
suggested. This was because of a grotto in the overhang of the cliff.
From a rift in the natural shelf of rock came hissing jets of fire.
They wavered, varied, blending into each other and separating again.

Behind the low barrier of flames was a monstrous ruby, uncut, yet a
perfect hexagonal crystal, with edges clean and sharp. This was not
from any alluvial deposit, else the faces would have been dulled and
the edges chipped.

Whether or not the stone had been polished, Verrill could not even
surmise. At all events, this was a ruby that had come from the original
matrix, the rocky birthplace of gems. It collected all the wavering
light, transformed it, and poured it back again, transmuted into living
red. The crystal seemed to pulsate with a life of its own.

The beauty and the splendor made Verrill picture the Fire of
Skanderbek against Linda's white skin--and the wonder of it must have
showed in his face, rather than the resolve to have the gem at any
cost, for Kwangtan's radiant hostility softened perceptibly. Verrill
imitated Ardelan's gesture and bow: and the two withdrew from the
shrine.

"I don't doubt," said Ardelan, once he was in the saddle, and Verrill
tramping alongside, "that you'd steal it if you could get out of here
with it. Don't try it. Maybe I could--but probably I could not--save
your life."

"You'd not try any too hard."

"You are wrong," the chief countered, earnestly. "Slitting that kid's
gullet and not hurting him was something I'd never heard about. Maybe
you can be useful around here."

"Not with what Kwangtan thinks of me."

"It really depends on the women--though quite a few of the men believe
in the fire god."

"You don't," Verrill said, boldly. "Though you do wonder a lot about
fire that comes out of a rock, with no fuel."

"I don't wonder as much as you think. There's a place, far away from
here, where a blaze like that comes from the ground sometimes when a
camp fire is built too near it. But the wind whisks the flames out and
then there's nothing but a smell."

Verrill had by now revised somewhat his notions on savages. "Then why
do you put up with that wild-eyed fanatic?"

Ardelan smiled indulgently. "You people from the outside know many
strange things. How to come down from the stars. How to make guns. But
the few of you I've talked to are dog-ignorant when it comes to people.
The fire god is something our neighbors don't have. It makes us stick
together better, and keeps us from fighting among ourselves. Aren't any
of your people smart enough to have gods?"

Verrill answered, with feigned humility, "I came to teach you people a
few things but it seems I can learn something. Then it will be a fair
exchange."

The next day, he had Ardelan send a courier to the trading-post. The
man carried an order for a consignment of medical supplies to be
sent from the Venusian Domes via the next freighter. There was also a
letter for Linda, telling of the success of his first operation, and
of Dawson's first move to make trouble. "_But Gil was a bit late_,"
he wrote. "_I'd already got in pretty solid. That won't keep him from
trying something else. He must have talked a good deal before he left.
If you hear any gossip as to what he planned to do or how he intended
to do it, be sure and write me the details. From all I've seen of
Terra so far, they should have bombed it even more than they did. One
well-organized Dome is worth a dozen Earths. But the natives don't seem
to mind a bit...._"

       *       *       *       *       *

Knife and gunshot wounds and fractures, Verrill reasoned, would
make up most of his practice: surgery, that is, in its engineering
aspect, rather than as a corrective of ailments. And the centuries,
fortunately, had worked to keep his task from being utterly beyond
a well-educated layman. Whereas in the twentieth century, there had
not been more than two or three specifics, there were now ten times
as many. It was a matter of taking the proper bottle, just as, in
ancient times, one had reached automatically for quinine, the primitive
specific against malaria.

Meanwhile, what had been his prison became his home and his dispensary.
During his wait for the shipment from Venus, he instituted a
garbage-disposal program. He condemned the shallow well, and had them
build a wooden flume from a spring high up on the mountainside. Each
radical move, however, had to wait until a cure he had effected assured
him of sufficient momentary popularity to enable him to kick an ancient
unsanitary practice overboard.

Then one night came a furtive sound at his door, as though someone were
trying to enter by stealth. A cold shiver trickled down his spine.
Though he doubted that the fire priest was coming to dispose of him,
there was all too much chance that Kwangtan had convinced one of the
tribe that carving the stranger would in the long run be beneficial.
Despite the warning, and Verrill's readiness for whatever might be
creeping up, he had his moment of terror. However well he handled
himself, he could not win--for if he killed an intruder, there would be
a blood feud.

Groping in the dark, he found a length of firewood. He had to end the
matter by knocking the other out before he could come to grips to make
it a finish fight. Stealthily, he skirted the wall. He heard the soft
mumble of the leather-hinged door as it dragged the hard earth. A
sliver of moonlight reached into the darkness. Barefooted, Verrill made
no sound as he evaded the widening streak of light. A patch of shadow
broke it. A dark shape edged into the gloom. Verrill measured the
distance. He gathered himself.

He had to make sure whether there was only that one, or whether others
had joined. He held his breath until his pulse hammered in his ears.
The motion at the door had stopped. He was afraid to exhale--

And then he breathed again.

The one who approached had long hair which mirrored red glints. She
had shifted enough for the moonlight to outline the curve of cheek and
throat, and hint at the smoothness of shoulder and ripeness of breast.
The arms were white and slender. Her stalking motion was beautiful even
in the obscurity.

There was a whisper of sandals, and of breath. She was then of a sudden
close against him, and seemingly not at all surprised. It was as though
she had expected him to be precisely where they met in the darkness.
He must have dropped the cudgel, for at the first touch of her, he was
stroking the sleek red hair, and with the other hand tracing the curve
of waist and back.

She snuggled closer, and he said, "Falana!" as though touch and taste
and smell had identified the girl as surely as sight. She was Falana,
the aunt of his first patient. She wore the shapeless, crude garments
of the tribe, yet it was as though there were neither homespun nor even
a wisp of air between them.

Falana had no words to waste as she found his mouth in the darkness.
There was nothing to explain. When he stepped back and further into
the gloom, she was close as ever; and, as if seeing in the darkness,
she seemed to know exactly where he spread his sheepskin mat--

She did know. Or else he must have remembered.

When Falana finally got around to talking with words, she did not tell
him how she had admired him from first sight, or that his surgery had
been marvelous. She said, "I'll bring my things over in the morning,"
and yawned contentedly, and snuggled closer.

       *       *       *       *       *

Verrill spent a restless night, being intensely occupied in telling
himself, over and over again, that Venus was a long way off, and that
whatever happened on Terra did not really count, unless as a result he
became embroiled in feuds on Falana's account and to such an extent
that he would be unable to make off with the Fire of Skanderbek.

Well before dawn, Falana went to the door to get a small bundle she had
left lying at the jamb. Before Verrill knew what was happening, he got
his first whiff of breakfast cooked in his own home.

"Eating with neighbors," Falana observed, "must have been awful. And
you never know who might poison you."

Watching Falana patting oat cakes into shape, and baking them on a hot
rock, he began to see her as a very pleasant reality, though he could
not help but go long-faced when he considered how he had without doubt
inherited a few dangerous animosities as well.

She must have read his thought, for she said, "It's much better this
way, Verrill. You haven't more than maybe one-two-three enemies on my
account. But as long as you lived alone, doctoring all day while most
of the men are out with the flocks, they'd all be suspecting and hating
you."

There was nothing to explain to Ardelan. The chief seemed to have
been expecting something of the sort. "Falana," he said to Verrill,
"probably didn't get around to telling you this, but you can either
send her home, or else take her to the fire temple to get Kwangtan's
blessing. Then you won't be a stranger anymore, and you'll get along
better."

That very day, Falana and Verrill knelt before the altar of living
flame and passed their joined hands quickly through the fire. This
time, Verrill got a good look at the shrine as Kwangtan blessed them.

He likewise got a look at the surroundings. He noted Kwangtan's cell,
hewn out of the limestone cliff. He noted the cairns of rock raised
above the grave of each of Kwangtan's predecessors. Having sized up the
situation, he decided that his next move would be to ride a circuit of
Ardelan's territory, to treat those tribesmen who rarely if ever got
to town. By becoming acquainted with all the trails, he would have a
better chance of escaping with the Fire of Skanderbek.

Too bad he could not take Falana along. She would be a sensation, back
home. The most skilled cosmeticians of the Venusian Domes could not
begin to duplicate Falana's glowing red-bronze hair.


                                  IV

By the time medical supplies and equipment arrived--and also a message
from Linda, who was thrilled from having heard of his good work among
the barbarians--Ardelan's mountaineers had begun to accept Verrill as
a man, and not a mere medico. His efforts to ride their half-tamed
horses, time and again picking himself up from where they had thrown
him, to mount and try again, amused them enormously, and gave them a
comfortable feeling of superiority--and evoked a degree of respect.

To make his escape with the Fire of Skanderbek, he would have to ride
on a few cattle- and sheep-stealing raids and so acquire sufficient
skill for getting away with his loot.

It was Falana who explained the monstrous ruby's status as a tribal
fetish. "Ages ago," she said, "the gods destroyed the world with fire,
and after the flames had gone, the ghosts of the dead flames danced
over the earth, and killed whoever came near. They killed without
burning. The ghosts of the fire lived in the earth and air and water.
And there were only small patches where men could live.

"And there was Skanderbek, a wise man who talked to the ghosts. Maybe
he smelled them. Maybe he could see what others could not. Others say
that he had a talisman that talked to him, and warned him where not to
go. There are many stories.

"Skanderbek led his people to these mountains in time to keep them
from starving or being poisoned. He made fire come out of the rock.
Everlasting fire. Over it he hung the fire stone you now see. He taught
us to bow to the fire and serve it, so that when the fire gods stopped
hating mankind, the ghosts of the dead flames would go away. The years
passed, and there was always further range for our animals. Other
people came, and then of course there was looting and war.

"But Skanderbek talked with gods and devils, and so no one could drive
us out of here. One day Skanderbek said, 'I am going back to the gods.
Let such and such a one take my place; I have taught him what to do and
what to say to the holy flame, so that fire will never again destroy
the earth. And one day, wearing a new body, I will come back.' All this
was a long time ago, long before your people came out of the sky with
knives of steel, and with guns, to trade with us.

"And now tell me about your gods, Verrill."

There was very little to tell Falana, except that Science had become,
had from the beginning been the god of Venus. He was quite too busy
reflecting that Skanderbek, a man like himself, had undoubtedly used a
Geiger counter and some imagination, and had as a result become a god.

He was thinking also of Linda's letter. She had not been able to give
him much gossip about Dawson's plans to oppose him, since Dawson had
left without having done much talking. But he inferred from what she
did write, and from stories Ardelan's tribesmen brought from the
disputed frontier, that a Venusian was living with the neighboring
tribe, giving them rifles to take the place of their trade muskets.
This suggested that Dawson was taking the simple and direct approach:
coaching his protectors in the art of more efficient fighting, so that
as the climax of an eventual raid into Ardelan's almost inaccessible
fortress, Dawson could seize the Fire of Skanderbek and make off with
it in the confusion.

Whatever Verrill intended to do, he would have to do it quickly.

       *       *       *       *       *

He went to the shrine and asked, "Kwangtan, where is the grave of
Skanderbek?"

"Skanderbek," the priest said, contemptuous of ignorance, "is not
buried. He went back to the gods. Now go, and stay away."

"I have heard a story like _that_," Verrill retorted. "Among my own
people, there are old books, ancient before Skanderbek was even dreamed
of. And it is written always how one leader or another went back to the
gods, not dying as other men died. But we know better. A man dies, and
his bones remain."

Kwangtan's eyes sharpened and changed. He seemed to be asking himself
whether this might not be one of those times when the wise thing was to
make an ally of an enemy. And Verrill was at the same time thinking,
"_Lies are the foundation of all priestcraft, and I've got this one
searching the foundations._"

Verrill said, "If a man found the bones of Skanderbek, he could build a
shrine there for the gods of death. Men serve most what they fear most."

"Which of us fears death?" the priest challenged. "We are fighting-men."

"My patients act otherwise," Verrill blandly countered. Then:
"Skanderbek had no wings. His bones can not be far from here. The
bones of Skanderbek will give a light like a glow-worm or a fire-fly.
Wherever they are lying, they will be easily recognized. Any herdsman
would know if he found them."

Verrill was gambling on the probability that Skanderbek, leading a
group of Terrestrians to safety, had exposed himself overmuch to the
deadly radioactivity, more so than any of those he led. Whether there
had been sufficient to make his bones radioactive until they would
glow, either then or now, was an open question. But Kwangtan was of
the line of priests who create and maintain a tradition: the blend
of knowledge and falsehood that keeps their craft alive and their
privilege secure. Kwangtan would surely have enough of that blend to
set him wondering, and in his own interests.

It was time to leave; and, nodding contentedly, Verrill left, rightly
assured that the old devil would lose no time hunting the bones of
Skanderbek, lest someone else find them first and set up a rival
shrine. He would have to hunt by night, and alone. The nights were
cold, and the trails dangerous.

A few nights later, Verrill went out, high on the rimrock, to lurk in
a perilous perch overhanging the shrine. He saw Kwangtan momentarily
outlined by the light that came from the grotto. The priest was making
for the spring, and then climbing higher. Apparently he was going out
by a secret way, for a concealed purpose. Well satisfied, Verrill
climbed down out of the bitter cold wind which whined eternally about
the limestone buttresses. Unobserved, he went down again into the
shelter of the ledge, and to the house where Falana was asleep.

She no more perceived his return than she had his departure.

       *       *       *       *       *

Before many days had passed, Verrill was busily probing for bullets,
suturing sword slashes, and setting bones. When the fighting-men he had
salvaged were well enough to be about and looking for more trouble,
Ardelan confessed that he had entirely revised his notions on doctors.
And that gave Verrill his chance to say, "I'll go along the next time
there's a raid. I could have saved that one who died on the way."

Ardelan shook his head. "There is a personal enemy of yours among our
neighbors. I can't take any chance of your being killed or captured."

"You're making a priest of me!" Verrill said, mockingly. "Living on the
fat of the land, and taking none of the risks."

"You've made that for yourself," Ardelan retorted. "And speaking of
priests, you'll have one for a patient."

"How's that?"

"Kwangtan is coughing a lot. He's failing rapidly. We had always
thought he would live forever."

Verrill shrugged. "He's old, so old he hasn't much time left. He'd
rather die a little sooner than admit that there is anything I could
possibly do for him. Letting me treat him would be casting serious
reflections on the fire god. How was the raid--did it pay?"

"Pretty well, all around."

"A few more sheep, and some more work for me!"

"More than that," Ardelan corrected. "There's a nice looking valley,
but it's always been deadly. Poisonous from the beginning. We've never
used it. That stranger, that Dawson, must have found out that the curse
is no longer on the soil. They've been using it for their flocks. Well,
it's ours, it always has been, so we ran them out."

"They'll come back?"

"Of course they will; but with enough raids, we'll discourage them, and
then we can send some of our own people to hold it permanently. Build a
settlement."

Verrill had heard talk of all this, but not in such clear terms; now,
having got it from the chief, he could take notice, and he was prepared.

"Your oldest son will live there," Verrill surmised, "to represent you?"

Ardelan nodded. "Good experience for him against the day of my death,
when he will rule the tribe."

"That's been worrying you."

Ardelan's brows bristled and his eyes went fierce. "Worrying about the
day of my death--what do you mean?"

"I meant, worrying about your son's taking an exposed outpost."

"It's good experience for him."

"It's worrying you. The next son is six years younger."

The chief grimaced. "He's a reckless young fool and a show-off. Like I
was at his age. And I don't think he has my luck."

"Next time there's a raid," Verrill promised, "I'll go. It will be good
for all your men, not just for him in case he is wounded. It won't look
as though you're favoring your son."

Ardelan grumbled something midway between throat and beard, and gave
Verrill a gesture of dismissal. Verrill knew when to stop pressing a
point; and he knew also that further words had not been needed.

In this he was right. He rode out with others who went to reconnoiter
the dangerous valley, and there was no objection. He rode well. His
presence was good for the morale of the raiders. And while he caught
no sight of Dawson, he won prestige from supposedly having come to the
frontier camps to get a shot at his enemy. Actually, he rather hoped
that he would not have any such chance to settle the feud ... it would
be much more satisfactory to have Dawson witness his return to Venus
with the Fire of Skanderbek.

And of an evening, when he was at home with Falana, she would sit
with him as he watched Venus hanging low over the rimrock, white and
splendid; she was finishing her term as evening star. And the sight
of that far-off globe made him more than homesick. It accentuated his
feeling of remoteness and of exile, and at the same time made him
uneasy and uncomfortable, as though he and his Terrestrian redhead were
somehow under Linda's eyes.

And he was afraid lest Falana read his thoughts. The longer he stayed,
the harder it would be to leave; for in spite of his having come with
fraudulent intent, he had done enough good to these barbarians to have
become attached to them.

Meanwhile, the sooner Venus became the morning star, the better he
would like it.


                                   V

At last came the night when he felt sure that Kwangtan's search for the
bones of Skanderbek had become such a fixed habit that the priest would
be ranging further and further afield, leaving the shrine unguarded for
an ever-lengthening period. The length of Kwangtan's absence was the
measure of Verrill's head start.

As he set out for his goal, he said to himself, "When the old devil
misses the ruby, and then hears I'm gone, he'll likely play foxy and
cook up a yarn about my having taken it back to the gods. He couldn't
be so dumb as to admit he was out wandering when he should have been
guarding the shrine.... I've done a reasonable number of other miracles
since I brought Falana's nephew back from the dead ... so if he's
smart, he'll invent another miracle, and that will make it nice for
Falana...."

And so, all at ease, he rode boldly from the walled enclosure. The
guards, assuming he was going out on a case, settled back after
greeting him, and drew their sheepskin coats closer about them.

Nearing the shrine, he left his horse in the shadow of a limestone
ledge, to proceed afoot. He had to make sure that Kwangtan was actually
away.

Stealthily, he made the most of rocks and shadows to cover his advance.
The gurgling overflow of the spring combined with the whining of the
wind to make a curtain of sound. He was quite near the spot from which,
unseen, he could look in and see if Kwangtan was there, when he heard a
disturbance which gave him all the answer he needed.

Kwangtan was not abroad, hunting a dead man's bones. He was instead
choking, gasping for breath; in his struggle, he knocked down some
pottery, judging from the clatter.

The sounds, and the way the old man had been scrambling about by night,
exploring ravines and caverns, exposing and overtaxing himself, told
the story. He had come to the end of his crooked rope.

This was perfect. It had worked far better than Verrill had
anticipated. Just sit and wait for silence and the finish.

But another ingredient took effect. Verrill's own long-sustained
pretense of being a doctor drove him forward against his best
interest. After two paces taken in a helpless daze, he was no longer
compulsion-driven and bewildered; he ran, and with his kit. He had
brought it with him, from force of habit as much as for making a show
for the benefit of whomsoever he might encounter along the way to the
border.

As he knelt beside his patient, Verrill concluded that Kwangtan's heart
had been cutting up tricks; though with exposure and worry, other
complications might have set in. He got his vials and his hypo and set
to work.

Of a sudden, he knew that he was not alone with his patient. Startled,
he glanced about.

       *       *       *       *       *

Falana was in the doorway, and with her two of the guards. They held
her by the arms. She had a bundle of something wrapped up in a shawl.
Her face showed only impatience and annoyance at their stupidity.
Their faces were still changing; the growth of understanding and the
accepting of a new idea had not yet erased suspicion.

The sight of the trio gave Verrill the story, before any could speak:
Falana, sensing what he planned, had packed up a bundle and had set out
after him; and the guards, even though not getting the entire point,
had suspected that the doctor was up to the very trick of which he had
been accused. Falana had from the start been a hostage, at least a bond
sufficiently strong to guarantee his good behavior. Thus the sight of
her apparently preparing to follow him into the night had aroused all
the suspicions which his work had lulled.

Falana said, "The poor fellow's half starved, Verrill! And shivering
from cold! Let go of me, you blockheads--he's busy and I've got to give
him a hand."

She plopped her bundle on the floor, brought out a small pot, and set
to work heating water over the sacred flame.

"If you don't like it, get some brush," she told the guards, "and I'll
stop the sacrilege."

Blinking owlishly, they obeyed.

When they returned to kindle a fire on the floor, she had dried meat in
the pot. "Here, hold this!" she directed, and taking a heavy cape from
the bundle, she blanketed the patient. Next she drew the shawl about
his head and shoulders. Whatever else she may have had in the bundle,
Verrill did not know, for she had very deftly wadded the odds and ends
into a shirt and had tucked the lot under the priest's head, for a
pillow.

When Kwangtan responded to treatment and regained consciousness, he did
not have any idea as to what had happened, or why people were gathered
about him. But he swallowed some of the broth Falana offered him.

The guards explained, "The doctor knew you were in trouble."

Falana nodded. "He awakened suddenly and told me to follow when I had
this and that gathered together. The gods talk to him. Now that you've
had your fill of snooping, suppose you go on about your business!"

They went, leaving Verrill and Falana to sit up with the priest until
he was out of danger.

Within the hour, Verrill could have ridden off with the Fire of
Skanderbek. Instead, he made apologies to himself; he could not rob a
patient, or even collect his fee before he had really earned it.

       *       *       *       *       *

Several days passed, and word of Verrill's having heard the voice of
the gods and so having gone to the shrine in time to save Kwangtan
gave him an enormous boost in prestige. He had the priest at least
halfway on the road to recovery when a courier brought news of another
outbreak on the border. He hesitated to leave his patient, and decided
to wait until the warring tribesmen made actual contact. As nearly as
he could analyze the report, both sides were still scouting, skulking,
maneuvering into positions suitable for the seizure of, or the defense
of, the valley that Ardelan claimed as his own.

There would not be a serious clash until both sides had completed
their infiltration whereby each planned to catch the other off guard,
and so precipitate a panic the result of which would be relatively
few casualties and a great deal of loot in the form of stampeded or
abandoned or lost animals.

These barbarians, Verrill told himself, had a warfare far more
civilized than had been that of The War, and also, a lot more
sensible--there was a result to show for the effort exerted, and a
profit instead of a mutual loss.

He decided to stay with his patient, and then by dint of hard riding
join Ardelan's son when there was immediately impending need.

Falana said, "You're making a mistake. Now is your chance."

Just that way: with no build up at all. And she was right, for he
needed no explanation of her meaning. He knew all of a sudden that she
had tuned in on all his unspoken debates with himself. He and Kwangtan
were supposed to be able to talk with the gods. That was pure nonsense.
The gift was largely a feminine monopoly. Falana undoubtedly knew all
about Linda, instead of merely about the Venusian Domes.

Verrill answered, "I can't rob a patient. If he dies or gets well, then
it will be different...."

Falana shrugged, and for no apparent reason, moved a bundle wrapped up
in a cape. "Suit yourself, Verrill, but you are letting your luck wear
thin. If you want it this way, though, I'll be ready whenever you are."

"You were all ready the other night?"

"Of course. And when the guardsmen caught me, I was scared silly. I
don't know what would have happened if that old devil hadn't been at
death's door. Now is your chance.... It won't ever be better."

Falana was right, so very right, yet Verrill balked. He mounted up,
with his medical kit, and with a pair of pistols thrust into his sash.

He was worried, and worn down. Tending to Kwangtan, and within reaching
distance of the ruby, had been difficult. Worse yet, there was the
problem created by Falana. Whenever he convinced himself that once
back in the Venusian Domes, he would forget the Terrestrian girl, his
argument went into reverse: and he knew that regardless of distance,
the bond could not be broken in fact. Then, pursuing the endless debate
from its other alternative, neither could he remain an exile from
Venus, and stay away from Linda by any choice of his own.

And all this went with him, oppressing him as he rode toward the new
valley which would so enrich Ardelan's people.


                                  VI

Verrill was still well short of his destination when he heard a rider
behind him: a horse blowing and wheezing, ridden nearly to death, yet
carrying on. He wheeled about. It was Falana who had overtaken him.

"You little idiot, go back home!"

"I won't."

"You will, and now."

"Yes, if you carry me back."

"What's the idea? You know I'm coming back, and you know there's a lot
of trouble ahead, where I'm bound for."

"I'm going anyway."

And then her horse collapsed. Verrill had no magic to restore it to
life. "Now I can't go back," she announced, contentedly, as though she
had foreseen this decisive detail.

She mounted up and rode behind him.

From time to time, Verrill halted, and cocked an ear. Thus far, he had
heard no firing. He had seen no signal fires on the crests that were
dark against the stars. The way became harder, and until moon-rise,
difficult to pick.

When the first half-glow whitened the limestone slopes and the high
snowcaps, the mountain world became a maze of illusion and shifting
glamour.

Finally, Verrill's horse sniffed the air, and would have whinnied,
had he not checked him in time. As he paused, he wondered whether
Falana's presence, the night he had saved Kwangtan, would be sufficient
precedent for her accompanying him into the field; or whether instead
suspicion would be aroused.

He had reined in at the edge of a deep shadow. Before he could make up
his mind, Falana said, "Turn around and see--I've got it."

As he twisted about, the horse shifted, moving out of the shadow and
into light strong enough for him to see the ruby she had in her hand.
It collected enough of the glow to pulse and flame as though in its own
right. One good look he got, and then she had knotted it again into the
end of her scarf and thrust it securely between her breasts.

"I'm going with you to the home of the gods," Falana said, "and if
they, your people, don't like me, they can do what they want with me.
But I'm going."

However she had made away with the gem, there would be the devil to pay
when Kwangtan missed it. His exclamation of dismay made her add, "He
won't make any trouble. He smothered under his sheepskin robe."

Verrill preferred not to ask whether she meant that the invalid had
himself done this, accidentally, or whether, aroused by her prowling,
his protest had been stifled, quickly and silently, by a solid armful
of a woman who knew precisely what she had to do to save herself.
Instead of being horrified by a very logical suspicion, he dismissed
the query: for in either event, he had no longer any choice concerning
Falana. She had made the bond so strong that wherever he went, he would
take her. There was no more clash between him and Dawson. The bond
that had attached him to Linda had been cut. Whether by smothering the
fire priest, or merely robbing the fire god, Falana had done well for
herself.

After a silence, he said, "There's someone just ahead. My horse scented
them. Whoever they are, they may have caught some sign of us. You get
down and wait. The sight of you is likely to make the outposts think
I'm leaving the tribe. And now is no time for suspicion!"

"I know another way around, and out," Falana said. "A hard trail, but
we can make it."

"Whoever's ahead, up there, might start wondering. All I have to do is
go ahead and identify myself, and then go my way."

"You can make some excuse for coming back this way," she said, and
slipped to the ground. "I'll wait."

       *       *       *       *       *

He rode on, at a walk. Ten to one, Falana had smothered Kwangtan, not
out of malice, but simply because he would have kept her from following
Verrill. Since Verrill could not reject her, he had to accept the act
as his own, however heavy the burden. He shrank from the very suspicion
of the deed, and at the same time, his eyes were tear-blinded from
realization of her devotion, so much more reckless than any Venusian
woman's could have been.

A horse whinnied. Verrill's mount answered. And before Verrill could
hail the dimly-discerned rider, revealed when he rounded a sharp curve,
he knew that this was an ambush; the recognition between horses had
come because the animals ahead had been stolen from Ardelan's herd.

Despite his disadvantage, knowledge came before he had made himself too
good a target.

That split-second sensing gave him a chance with his pistol. He spurred
in, shooting. A wild shot grazed him. The enemy stampeded, as though
from the sudden fear that they had tricked themselves; it was as though
his boldness had convinced them that he had a large party at his back.

[Illustration: Verrill spurred in, shooting....]

In half a dozen hoofbeats, he was through. One horse was down, and
struggling. Something thumped into the ravine, far below. There was a
brief shower of rocks, and the diminishing clatter of hoofs.

Only two had lain in wait: and one was bound for home.

Verrill reined in sharply, and called to Falana. She answered, and
knowing it was all over, came toward him at a walk.

Verrill was badly shaken. Falana, knowing that he would be, was giving
him a welcome moment to himself. This was his first taste of combat.

The enemy, sprawled among the rocks, groaned and cursed, as though
shock had until that moment held him unable to make a sound. This was
something familiar to Verrill, for in his way, he was now a doctor in
fact--a man was a man, whether friend or enemy. And this one, being a
man he had wounded, evoked his response more readily than had Kwangtan.

Verrill dismounted. The man in the shadows mumbled and choked; the
man's horse lay dead; and approaching his own handiwork shook Verrill's
composure. Worse yet, he should not dally. No telling who might have
heard the shots, who might be hurrying to the scene. But he could not
abandon a patient, though this might become a dangerous business, with
the Fire of Skanderbek taken from the shrine--

Three sounds blended. Verrill understood each, but too late.

"Now see if you'll get the ruby!" the patient challenged, triumphantly,
and fired.

Venusian accent and intonation; pistol blast; and then, as Dawson,
unwounded, bound up to take Verrill's horse, came the third sound:
Falana's cry.

Her approach, afoot, had tricked Dawson. She was on him from the rear
before he sensed his danger. He swayed, he choked, and he would have
flung her aside, but for the knife with which she finished him. Stab
and slash; and he was dead before she could crawl free of him to go to
Verrill.

Dawson, living with the enemy tribe, had learned raiding tricks,
and had known how to tempt an enemy by offering hope of plunder.
By feigning a mortal wound, he had played the game as his brothers
in raiding would have played it: and at the most he could not have
hoped for more than a horse, and the weapons of the supposedly greedy
and reckless one whose loot hunger had driven out ordinary caution.
Moonlight on Verrill's face had given Dawson his moment of triumphant
recognition--and then, sudden death which he might otherwise have
avoided.

The irony of all this passed through Verrill's mind during the moments
which elapsed before he could recover sufficiently from shock to speak.
Teeth chattering from the deadly chill which took hold of him, he said,
"Physician, heal thyself."

He knew he was beyond mending. He knew also that he had long drawn-out
hours of agony ahead of him. Falana knew, without being told, that she
would soon be alone; that she would never board the long gleaming shell
on the take-off ramp of the trading-post to go with him to the home of
the gods. Since he was shivering, she wrapped a shawl about him, and
waited for him to tell her what else to do.

       *       *       *       *       *

The shift of the moon thinned the shadows that had tricked first one
and then another of those who had met in that rocky angle. Verrill
pointed to the kit, and told her how to load the hypo. He had done this
himself, many times, for those he knew he could not save. They lasted
just as long, but avoided consciousness and pain. This had won him
esteem. And now he was to learn how good his work had been.

His vision began to play tricks, and his memory also, but he was sure
that the white orb shimmering, rising from behind a distant crest,
was Venus, beginning her term as morning star. Seen through that thin
mountain air, Venus was an expanding splendor, and memories danced:
memories of Linda, blurred with the memories of all other Venusian
women, perfumed and sleek and all bejewelled. They were shapes of the
mind, rather than a semblance to the eye; for at the same time, he saw
clearly where he was, and who was beside him. And he was glad that it
was Falana.

Falana peeled off her jacket and blouse. She cut a long strand of hair,
and despite the biting wind that lashed her from shoulder to hip, she
shaped a loop, using two long hairs to suspend the Fire of Skanderbek
from about her throat.

She knelt, posed by sure instinct, head flung back, and the monstrous
ruby all ablaze against her white skin. The lower end of the six-sided
crystal barely dipped into the shadow of her breasts.

The Venusian images of memory were blotted out, and with them, the
great white orb as well. Falana became all women in one, yet remaining
all the while wholly herself.

Verrill's face, or her own instinct, told her when to end the tableau.
She slipped into her jacket and went into the shadow beside him. She
caught him in her arms, to pillow him better than had the rocks and the
saddle-bags that had softened them. And then Verrill went on his long
road, and entirely content, for he had in his way done with the Fire of
Skanderbek as he had planned.

Not long after sunrise, a handful of Ardelan's men came along from the
new valley. They had routed the raiders. Somewhere, they told Falana,
there had been several shots, which had alerted them.

"The shots Verrill fired," they concluded, having seen and understood
from the face of things.

She gave them no time to wonder about her presence. "He was going to
stay for days and days with the people Ardelan was sending into the new
valley. I made him take me with him. So I was here when he killed his
enemy, the one with whom he had a feud."

Despite their grief at losing their doctor, the mountaineers forgot
none of their ways. Methodically, they took the gear from the dead
horse, and stripped the dead enemy, leaving nothing but vulture
bait. And among the things they found in his clothes was the Fire of
Skanderbek.

"The gods told Verrill," Falana said. "But not all, and not in time.
Only enough to send him where he would meet the thief."

They studied his face, and one said, "It is clear that the gods
welcomed him when he took their road."

Later, Ardelan himself joined them. He heard, he saw, and then he said,
"We will bury Verrill by those others who have guarded the Fire of
Skanderbek. He saved many lives for us, as Skanderbek did in the old
days."

And this was done, with no one wondering at Kwangtan's death. Some
said that the spirit of the priest had guided Verrill to overtake the
looter. Falana heard the legend grow, and could not tell what Ardelan
really thought. Whatever his thought, the chief kept it to himself,
until, days later, he said to Falana, "Verrill's son will be a great
man among us, to watch the Fire of Skanderbek, and teach us the way of
the gods."

Which seemed reasonable enough to Falana, who had command of more
miracles than any man.



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