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<p><span class='pagenumber'><a name="front_cover">front cover</a></span></p>

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<img src="https://brian.carnell.com/wiki/_media/etext:t:tom-godwin-space-prison-pyramid_blue_logo.png" width="20" height="25" alt="Pyramid Books logo" title="Pyramid Books logo" />
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<p style="text-align: center"><small>PYRAMID<br />BOOKS<br />F-774<br /></small></p>

<p style="text-align: center">40c</p>

<p style="text-align: center"><b>One of the truly <i>unusual</i> novels of
science-fiction&mdash;a vivid portrayal of
the deadliest planet ever discovered!</b></p>

<div style="text-align: center">
<img src="https://brian.carnell.com/wiki/_media/etext:t:tom-godwin-space-prison-space_prison_logo.png" width="600" height="447" alt="Space Prison logo" title="Space Prison logo" />
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<p style="text-align: center"><small>(original title: THE SURVIVORS)</small></p>

<h2>Tom Godwin</h2>


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<br />

<br />

<p><span class='pagenumber'><a name="p001">p.&nbsp;1</a></span></p>

<h2>AFTER TWO CENTURIES....</h2>

<p style="text-align: right"><b>The sound came swiftly nearer,
rising in pitch and swelling in
volume. Then it broke through
the clouds, tall and black and
beautifully deadly&mdash;the Gern battle
cruiser, come to seek them out and
destroy them.</b></p>

<p style="text-align: right"><b>Humbolt dropped inside the stockade,
exulting. For two hundred years his
people had been waiting for the chance
to fight the mighty Gern Empire ...</b></p>

<p style="text-align: right"><b>... with bows and arrows against
blasters and bombs!</b></p>

<br />

<p><span class='pagenumber'><a name="p002">p.&nbsp;2</a></span></p>

<br />

<br />

<br />

<p><span class='pagenumber'><a name="p003">p.&nbsp;3</a></span></p>

<h1>Space Prison</h1>

<h4>(original title: The Survivors)</h4>

<h3>a science-fiction adventure by</h3>

<h2>TOM GODWIN</h2>

<br />

<p style="text-align: center"><span style="font-variant: small-caps;"><b>pyramid books
<img src="https://brian.carnell.com/wiki/_media/etext:t:tom-godwin-space-prison-pyramid_logo.png" width="19" height="25" alt="Pyramid Books logo" title="Pyramid Books logo" />
new york</b></span></p>

<br />

<br />

<p><span class='pagenumber'><a name="p004">p.&nbsp;4</a></span></p>

<p style="text-align: center">To</p>

<p style="text-align: center">JOE AND BLANCHE KOLARIK,<br />
whose friendship and encouragement in
the years gone by will never be forgotten.</p>

<br />

<p style="text-align: center"><small>SPACE PRISON<br />
(original title: <i>The Survivors</i>)</small></p>

<p style="text-align: center"><small><span style="font-variant: small-caps;">A Pyramid Book</span><br />
published by <ins class="typo" title="Transcriber's Note: 'arangement' in the original text.">arrangement</ins> with
Gnome Press, Inc.</small></p>

<p style="text-align: center"><small><span style="font-variant: small-caps;">printing history</span><br />
Gnome Press edition published 1958<br />
Pyramid edition published February 1960<br />
Second printing: September 1962</small></p>

<p style="text-align: center"><small>This book is fiction. No resemblance is intended
between any character herein and any person, living
or dead; any such resemblance is purely coincidental.</small></p>

<p><small>Printed in the United States of America</small></p>

<p style="text-align: center"><span style="font-variant: small-caps;">Pyramid Books</span> <i>are published by Pyramid Publications, Inc.
444 Madison Avenue, New York 22, New York, U.S.A.</i></p>

<br />

<br />

<p><span class='pagenumber'><a name="p005">p.&nbsp;5</a></span></p>

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<h2>PART <span style="font-size: 225%;">1</span></h2>

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<br />

<p>For seven weeks the <i>Constellation</i> had been plunging
through hyperspace with her eight thousand colonists;
fleeing like a hunted thing with her communicators
silenced and her drives moaning and thundering. Up in
the control room, Irene had been told, the needles of the
dials danced against the red danger lines day and night.</p>

<p>She lay in bed and listened to the muffled, ceaseless
roar of the drives and felt the singing vibration of the
hull. <i>We should be almost safe by now</i>, she thought.
<i>Athena is only forty days away.</i></p>

<p>Thinking of the new life awaiting them all made her
too restless to lie still any longer. She got up, to sit on
the edge of the bed and switch on the light. Dale was
gone&mdash;he had been summoned to adjust one of the
machines in the ship's X-ray room&mdash;and Billy was asleep,
nothing showing of him above the covers but a crop
of brown hair and the furry nose of his ragged teddy bear.</p>

<p>She reached out to straighten the covers, gently, so
as not to awaken him. It happened then, the thing they
had all feared.</p>

<p>From the stern of the ship came a jarring, deafening
explosion. The ship lurched violently, girders screamed, and
the light flicked out.</p>

<p>In the darkness she heard a rapid-fire <i>thunk-thunk-thunk</i>
as the automatic guard system slid inter-compartment
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p006">p.&nbsp;6</a></span>
doors shut against sections of the ship suddenly
airless. The doors were still thudding shut when another
explosion came, from toward the bow. Then there was
silence; a feeling of utter quiet and motionlessness.</p>

<p>The fingers of fear enclosed her and her mind said to
her, like the cold, unpassionate voice of a stranger: <i>The
Gerns have found us.</i></p>

<p>The light came on again, a feeble glow, and there was
the soft, muffled sound of questioning voices in the other
compartments. She dressed, her fingers shaking and
clumsy, wishing that Dale would come to reassure her;
to tell her that nothing really serious had happened,
that it had not been the Gerns.</p>

<p>It was very still in the little compartment&mdash;strangely
so. She had finished dressing when she realized the
reason: the air circulation system had stopped working.</p>

<p>That meant the power failure was so great that the air
regenerators, themselves, were dead. And there were
eight thousand people on the <i>Constellation</i> who would
have to have air to live....</p>

<p>The <i>Attention</i> buzzer sounded shrilly from the public
address system speakers that were scattered down the
ship's corridors. A voice she recognized as that of Lieutenant
Commander Lake spoke:</p>

<p>"War was declared upon Earth by the Gern Empire
ten days ago. Two Gern cruisers have attacked us and
their blasters have destroyed the stern and bow of the
ship. We are without a drive and without power but for
a few emergency batteries. I am the <i>Constellation</i>'s only
surviving officer and the Gern commander is boarding us
to give me the surrender terms.</p>

<p>"None of you will leave your compartments until ordered
to do so. Wherever you may be, remain there.
This is necessary to avoid confusion and to have as many
as possible in known locations for future instructions. I
repeat: you will not leave your compartments."</p>

<p>The speaker cut off. She stood without moving and
heard again the words: <i>I am the</i> Constellation's <i>only surviving
officer....</i></p>

<p>The Gerns had killed her father.</p>

<p>He had been second-in-command of the Dunbar expedition
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p007">p.&nbsp;7</a></span>
that had discovered the world of Athena and
his knowledge of Athena was valuable to the colonization
plans. He had been quartered among the ship's officers&mdash;and
the Gern blast had destroyed that section of the ship.</p>

<p>She sat down on the edge of the bed again and tried
to reorient herself; to accept the fact that her life and
the lives of all the others had abruptly, irrevocably, been
changed.</p>

<p>The Athena Colonization Plan was ended. They had
known such a thing might happen&mdash;that was why the
<i>Constellation</i> had been made ready for the voyage in
secret and had waited for months for the chance to slip
through the ring of Gern spy ships; that was why she
had raced at full speed, with her communicators silenced
so there would be no radiations for the Gerns to find
her by. Only forty days more would have brought them
to the green and virgin world of Athena, four hundred
light-years beyond the outermost boundary of the Gern
Empire. There they should have been safe from Gern
detection for many years to come; for long enough to
build planetary defenses against attack. And there they
would have used Athena's rich resources to make ships
and weapons to defend mineral-depleted Earth against
the inexorably increasing inclosure of the mighty, coldly
calculating colossus that was the Gern Empire.</p>

<p>Success or failure of the Athena Plan had meant
ultimate life or death for Earth. They had taken every
precaution possible but the Gern spy system had somehow
learned of Athena and the <i>Constellation</i>. Now, the cold
war was no longer cold and the Plan was dust....</p>

<hr />

<p>Billy sighed and stirred in the little-boy sleep that had
not been broken by the blasts that had altered the lives
of eight thousand people and the fate of a world.</p>

<p>She shook his shoulder and said, "Billy."</p>

<p>He raised up, so small and young to her eyes that
the question in her mind was like an anguished prayer:
<i>Dear God&mdash;what do Gerns do to five-year-old boys?</i></p>

<p>He saw her face, and the dim light, and the sleepiness
was suddenly gone from him. "What's wrong, Mama?
And why are you scared?"</p>

<p><span class='pagenumber'><a name="p008">p.&nbsp;8</a></span></p>

<p>There was no reason to lie to him.</p>

<p>"The Gerns found us and stopped us."</p>

<p>"Oh," he said. In his manner was the grave thoughtfulness
of a boy twice his age, as there always was. "Will
they&mdash;will they kill us?"</p>

<p>"Get dressed, honey," she said. "Hurry, so we'll be
ready when they let Daddy come back to tell us what to
do."</p>

<hr />

<p>They were both ready when the <i>Attention</i> buzzer
sounded again in the corridors. Lake spoke, his tone grim
and bitter:</p>

<p>"There is no power for the air regenerators and within
twenty hours we will start smothering to death. Under
these circumstances I could not do other than accept
the survival terms the Gern commander offered us.</p>

<p>"He will speak to you now and you will obey his
orders without protest. Death is the only alternative."</p>

<p>Then the voice of the Gern commander came, quick and
harsh and brittle:</p>

<p>"This section of space, together with planet Athena,
is an extension of the Gern Empire. This ship has deliberately
invaded Gern territory in time of war with intent
to seize and exploit a Gern world. We are willing, however,
to offer a leniency not required by the circumstances.
Terran technicians and skilled workers in certain
fields can be used in the factories we shall build on
Athena. The others will not be needed and there is not
room on the cruisers to take them.</p>

<p>"Your occupation records will be used to divide you
into two groups: the Acceptables and the Rejects. The
Rejects will be taken by the cruisers to an Earth-type
planet near here and left, together with the personal possessions
in their compartments and additional, and ample,
supplies. The Acceptables will then be taken on to Athena
and at a later date the cruisers will return the Rejects
to Earth.</p>

<p>"This division will split families but there will be no
resistance to it. Gern guards will be sent immediately
to make this division and you will wait in your compartments
for them. You will obey their orders promptly
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p009">p.&nbsp;9</a></span>
and without annoying them with questions. At the first
instance of resistance or rebellion this offer will be withdrawn
and the cruisers will go their way again."</p>

<hr />

<p>In the silence following the ultimatum she could hear
the soft, wordless murmur from the other compartments,
the undertone of anxiety like a dark thread through it.
In every compartment parents and children, brothers
and sisters, were seeing one another for the last time....</p>

<p>The corridor outside rang to the tramp of feet; the
sound of a dozen Gerns walking with swift military
precision. She held her breath, her heart racing, but they
went past her door and on to the corridor's end.</p>

<p>There she could faintly hear them entering
compartments, demanding names, and saying, <i>"Out&mdash;out!"</i> Once
she heard a Gern say, "Acceptables will remain inside
until further notice. Do not open your doors after the
Rejects have been taken out."</p>

<p>Billy touched her on the hand. "Isn't Daddy going
to come?"</p>

<p>"He&mdash;he can't right now. We'll see him pretty soon."</p>

<p>She remembered what the Gern commander had said
about the Rejects being permitted to take their personal
possessions. She had very little time in which to get
together what she could carry....</p>

<p>There were two small bags in the compartment and
she hurried to pack them with things she and Dale and
Billy might need, not able to know which of them, if
any, would be Rejects. Nor could she know whether she
should put in clothes for a cold world or a hot one. The
Gern commander had said the Rejects would be left on
an Earth-type planet but where could it be? The Dunbar
Expedition had explored across five hundred light-years
of space and had found only one Earth-type world:
Athena.</p>

<p>The Gerns were almost to her door when she had
finished and she heard them enter the compartments
across from her own. There came the hard, curt questions
and the command: "Outside&mdash;hurry!" A woman said
something in pleading question and there was the soft
thud of a blow and the words: "Outside&mdash;do not ask
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p010">p.&nbsp;10</a></span>
questions!" A moment later she heard the woman going
down the corridor, trying to hold back her crying.</p>

<p>Then the Gerns were at her own door.</p>

<p>She held Billy's hand and waited for them with her
heart hammering. She held her head high and composed
herself with all the determination she could muster so
that the arrogant Gerns would not see that she was
afraid. Billy stood beside her as tall as his five years
would permit, his teddy bear under his arm, and only
the way his hand held to hers showed that he, too, was
scared.</p>

<p>The door was flung open and two Gerns strode in.</p>

<p>The were big, dark men, with powerful, bulging muscles.
They surveyed her and the room with a quick sweep
of eyes that were like glittering obsidian, their mouths
thin, cruel slashes in the flat, brutal planes of their faces.</p>

<p>"Your name?" snapped the one who carried a sheaf of
occupation records.</p>

<p>"It's"&mdash;she tried to swallow the quaver in her voice and
make it cool and unfrightened&mdash;"Irene Lois Humbolt&mdash;Mrs.
Dale Humbolt."</p>

<p>The Gern glanced at the papers. "Where is your husband?"</p>

<p>"He was in the X-ray room at&mdash;"</p>

<p>"You are a Reject. Out&mdash;down the corridor with the
others."</p>

<p>"My husband&mdash;will he be a&mdash;"</p>

<p><i>"Outside!"</i></p>

<p>It was the tone of voice that had preceded the blow
in the other compartment and the Gern took a quick step
toward her. She seized the two bags in one hand, not
wanting to release Billy, and swung back to hurry out
into the corridor. The other Gern jerked one of the bags
from her hand and flung it to the floor. "Only one bag
per person," he said, and gave her an impatient shove
that sent her and Billy stumbling through the doorway.</p>

<p>She became part of the Rejects who were being herded
like sheep down the corridors and into the port airlock.
There were many children among them, the young ones
frightened and crying, and often with only one parent or
an older brother or sister to take care of them. And there
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p011">p.&nbsp;11</a></span>
were many young ones who had no one at all and were
dependent upon strangers to take their hands and tell
them what they must do.</p>

<p>When she was passing the corridor that led to the
X-ray room she saw a group of Rejects being herded up
it. Dale was not among them and she knew, then, that
she and Billy would never see him again.</p>

<hr />

<p><i>"Out from the ship&mdash;faster&mdash;faster&mdash;&mdash;"</i></p>

<p>The commands of the Gern guards snapped like whips
around them as she and the other Rejects crowded and
stumbled down the boarding ramp and out onto the
rocky ground. There was the pull of a terrible gravity
such as she had never experienced and they were in a
bleak, barren valley, a cold wind moaning down it and
whipping the alkali dust in bitter clouds. Around the
valley stood ragged hills, their white tops laying out
streamers of wind-driven snow, and the sky was dark with
sunset.</p>

<p><i>"Out from the ship&mdash;faster&mdash;&mdash;"</i></p>

<p>It was hard to walk fast in the high gravity, carrying
the bag in one hand and holding up all of Billy's weight
she could with the other.</p>

<p>"They lied to us!" a man beside her said to someone.
"Let's turn and fight. Let's take&mdash;&mdash;"</p>

<p>A Gern blaster cracked with a vivid blue flash and the
man plunged lifelessly to the ground. She flinched instinctively
and fell over an unseen rock, the bag of
precious clothes flying from her hand. She scrambled up
again, her left knee half numb, and turned to retrieve it.</p>

<p>The Gern guard was already upon her, his blaster still
in his hand. "Out from the ship&mdash;faster."</p>

<p>The barrel of his blaster lashed across the side of her
head. "Move on&mdash;move on!"</p>

<p>She staggered in a blinding blaze of pain and then
hurried on, holding tight to Billy's hand, the wind cutting
like knives of ice through her thin clothes and blood
running in a trickle down her cheek.</p>

<p>"He hit you," Billy said. "He hurt you." Then he
called the Gern a name that five-year-old boys were not
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p012">p.&nbsp;12</a></span>
supposed to know, with a savagery that five-year-old boys
were not supposed to possess.</p>

<p>When she stopped at the outer fringe of Rejects she
saw that all of them were out of the cruiser and the
guards were going back into it. A half mile down the
valley the other cruiser stood, the Rejects out from it and
its boarding ramps already withdrawn.</p>

<p>When she had buttoned Billy's blouse tighter and
wiped the blood from her face the first blast of the drives
came from the farther cruiser. The nearer one blasted a
moment later and they lifted together, their roaring filling
the valley. They climbed faster and faster, dwindling as
they went. Then they disappeared in the black sky, their
roaring faded away, and there was left only the moaning
of the wind around her and somewhere a child crying.</p>

<p>And somewhere a voice asking, "Where are we? In the
name of God&mdash;what have they done to us?"</p>

<p>She looked at the snow streaming from the ragged hills,
felt the hard pull of the gravity, and knew where they
were. They were on Ragnarok, the hell-world of 1.5 gravity
and fierce beasts and raging fevers where men could not
survive. The name came from an old Teutonic myth and
meant: <i>The last day for gods and men</i>. The Dunbar
Expedition had discovered Ragnarok and her father had
told her of it, of how it had killed six of the eight men
who had left the ship and would have killed all of them
if they had remained any longer.</p>

<p>She knew where they were and she knew the Gerns
had lied to them and would never send a ship to take
them to Earth. Their abandonment there had been intended
as a death sentence for all of them.</p>

<p>And Dale was gone and she and Billy would die helpless
and alone....</p>

<p>"It will be dark&mdash;so soon." Billy's voice shook with
the cold. "If Daddy can't find us in the dark, what will
we do?"</p>

<p>"I don't know," she said. "There's no one to help us
and how can I know&mdash;what we should do&mdash;&mdash;"</p>

<p>She was from the city. How could she know what to
do on an alien, hostile world where armed explorers had
died? She had tried to be brave before the Gerns but
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p013">p.&nbsp;13</a></span>
now&mdash;now night was at hand and out of it would come
terror and death for herself and Billy. They would never
see Dale again, never see Athena or Earth or even the
dawn on the world that had killed them....</p>

<p>She tried not to cry, and failed. Billy's cold little hand
touched her own, trying to reassure her.</p>

<p>"Don't cry, Mama. I guess&mdash;I guess everybody else
is scared, too."</p>

<p><i>Everyone else....</i></p>

<p>She was not alone. How could she have thought she was
alone? All around her were others, as helpless and uncertain
as she. Her story was only one out of four
thousand.</p>

<p>"I guess they are, Billy," she said. "I never thought
of that, before."</p>

<p>She knelt to put her arms around him, thinking: <i>Tears
and fear are futile weapons; they can never bring us any
tomorrows. We'll have to fight whatever comes to kill
us no matter how scared we are. For ourselves and for
our children. Above all else, for our children....</i></p>

<p>"I'm going back to find our clothes," she said. "You
wait here for me, in the shelter of that rock, and I won't
be gone long."</p>

<p>Then she told him what he would be too young to
really understand.</p>

<p>"I'm not going to cry any more and I know, now, what
I must do. I'm going to make sure that there is a tomorrow
for you, always, to the last breath of my life."</p>

<hr />

<p>The bright blue star dimmed and the others faded
away. Dawn touched the sky, bringing with it a coldness
that frosted the steel of the rifle in John Prentiss's
hands and formed beads of ice on his gray mustache.
There was a stirring in the area behind him as the weary
Rejects prepared to face the new day and the sound of
a child whimpering from the cold. There had been no
time the evening before to gather wood for fires&mdash;&mdash;</p>

<p><i>"Prowlers!"</i></p>

<p>The warning cry came from an outer guard and black
shadows were suddenly sweeping out of the dark dawn.</p>

<p>They were things that might have been half wolf,
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p014">p.&nbsp;14</a></span>
half tiger; each of them three hundred pounds of incredible
ferocity with eyes blazing like yellow fire in their
white-fanged tiger-wolf faces. They came like the wind,
in a flowing black wave, and ripped through the outer
guard line as though it had not existed. The inner guards
fired in a chattering roll of gunshots, trying to turn
them, and Prentiss's rifle licked out pale tongues of
flame as he added his own fire. The prowlers came on,
breaking through, but part of them went down and the
others were swerved by the fire so that they struck only
the outer edge of the area where the Rejects were
grouped.</p>

<p>At that distance they blended into the dark ground
so that he could not find them in the sights of his rifle.
He could only watch helplessly and see a dark-haired
woman caught in their path, trying to run with a child
in her arms and already knowing it was too late. A man
was running toward her, slow in the high gravity, an axe
in his hands and his cursing a raging, savage snarl. For
a moment her white face was turned in helpless appeal
to him and the others; then the prowlers were upon her
and she fell, deliberately, going to the ground with her
child hugged in her arms beneath her so that her body
would protect it.</p>

<p>The prowlers passed over her, pausing for an instant
to slash the life from her, and raced on again. They
vanished back into the outer darkness, the farther guards
firing futilely, and there was a silence but for the distant,
hysterical sobbing of a woman.</p>

<p>It had happened within seconds; the fifth prowler
attack that night and the mildest.</p>

<hr />

<p>Full dawn had come by the time he replaced the
guards killed by the last attack and made the rounds
of the other guard lines. He came back by the place
where the prowlers had killed the woman, walking
wearily against the pull of gravity. She lay with her dark
hair tumbled and stained with blood, her white face
turned up to the reddening sky, and he saw her clearly
for the first time.</p>

<p>It was Irene.</p>

<p><span class='pagenumber'><a name="p015">p.&nbsp;15</a></span></p>

<p>He stopped, gripping the cold steel of the rifle and
not feeling the rear sight as it cut into his hand.</p>

<p>Irene.... He had not known she was on Ragnarok.
He had not seen her in the darkness of the night and
he had hoped she and Billy were safe among the
Acceptables with Dale.</p>

<p>There was the sound of footsteps and a bold-faced
girl in a red skirt stopped beside him, her glance going
over him curiously.</p>

<p>"The little boy," he asked, "do you know if he's all
right?"</p>

<p>"The prowlers cut up his face but he'll be all right,"
she said. "I came back after his clothes."</p>

<p>"Are you going to look after him?"</p>

<p>"Someone has to and"&mdash;she shrugged her shoulders&mdash;"I
guess I was soft enough to elect myself for the job.
Why&mdash;was his mother a friend of yours?"</p>

<p>"She was my daughter," he said.</p>

<p>"Oh." For a moment the bold, brassy look was gone
from her face, like a mask that had slipped. "I'm sorry.
And I'll take care of Billy."</p>

<hr />

<p>The first objection to his assumption of leadership
occurred an hour later. The prowlers had withdrawn with
the coming of full daylight and wood had been carried
from the trees to build fires. Mary, one of the volunteer
cooks, was asking two men to carry her some water when
he approached. The smaller man picked up one of the
clumsy containers, hastily improvised from canvas, and
started toward the creek. The other, a big, thick-chested
man, did not move.</p>

<p>"We'll have to have water," Mary said. "People are
hungry and cold and sick."</p>

<p>The man continued to squat by the fire, his hands
extended to its warmth. "Name someone else," he said.</p>

<p>"But&mdash;&mdash;"</p>

<p>She looked at Prentiss in uncertainty. He went to the
thick-chested man, knowing there would be violence and
welcoming it as something to help drive away the vision
of Irene's pale, cold face under the red sky.</p>

<p>"She asked you to get her some water," he said. "Get it."</p>

<p><span class='pagenumber'><a name="p016">p.&nbsp;16</a></span></p>

<p>The man looked up at him, studying him with deliberate
insolence, then he got to his feet, his heavy shoulders
hunched challengingly.</p>

<p>"I'll have to set you straight, old timer," he said. "No
one has appointed you the head cheese around here. Now,
there's the container you want filled and over there"&mdash;he
made a small motion with one hand&mdash;"is the creek. Do
you know what to do?"</p>

<p>"Yes," he said. "I know what to do."</p>

<p>He brought the butt of the rifle smashing up. It struck
the man under the chin and there was a sharp cracking
sound as his jawbone snapped. For a fraction of a second
there was an expression of stupefied amazement on his
face then his eyes glazed and he slumped to the ground
with his broken jaw setting askew.</p>

<p>"All right," he said to Mary. "Now you go ahead and
name somebody else."</p>

<hr />

<p>He found that the prowlers had killed seventy during
the night. One hundred more had died from the Hell
Fever that often followed exposure and killed within an
hour.</p>

<p>He went the half mile to the group that had arrived on
the second cruiser as soon as he had eaten a delayed
breakfast. He saw, before he had quite reached the other
group, that the <i>Constellation</i>'s Lieutenant Commander,
Vincent Lake, was in charge of it.</p>

<p>Lake, a tall, hard-jawed man with pale blue eyes under
pale brows, walked forth to meet him as soon as he recognized
him.</p>

<p>"Glad to see you're still alive," Lake greeted him. "I
thought that second Gern blast got you along with the
others."</p>

<p>"I was visiting midship and wasn't home when it happened,"
he said.</p>

<p>He looked at Lake's group of Rejects, in their misery
and uncertainty so much like his own, and asked, "How
was it last night?"</p>

<p>"Bad&mdash;damned bad," Lake said. "Prowlers and Hell
Fever, and no wood for fires. Two hundred died last
night."</p>

<p><span class='pagenumber'><a name="p017">p.&nbsp;17</a></span></p>

<p>"I came down to see if anyone was in charge here
and to tell them that we'll have to move into the woods
at once&mdash;today. We'll have plenty of wood for the fires
there, some protection from the wind, and by combining
our defenses we can stand off the prowlers better."</p>

<p>Lake agreed. When the brief discussion of plans was
finished he asked, "How much do you know about
Ragnarok?"</p>

<p>"Not much," Prentiss answered. "We didn't stay to
study it very long. There are no heavy metals on
Ragnarok's other sun. Its position in the advance of the
resources of any value. We gave Ragnarok a quick
survey and when the sixth man died we marked it on the
chart as uninhabitable and went on our way.</p>

<p>"As you probably know, that bright blue star is
Ragnarok's other sun. It's position in the advance of the
yellow sun shows the season to be early spring. When
summer comes Ragnarok will swing between the two
suns and the heat will be something no human has ever
endured. Nor the cold, when winter comes.</p>

<p>"I know of no edible plants, although there might be
some. There are a few species of rodent-like animals&mdash;they're
scavengers&mdash;and a herbivore we called the woods
goat. The prowlers are the dominant form of life on
Ragnarok and I suspect their intelligence is a good deal
higher than we would like it to be. There will be a
constant battle for survival with them.</p>

<p>"There's another animal, not as intelligent as the
prowlers but just as dangerous&mdash;the unicorn. The unicorns are
big and fast and they travel in herds. I haven't seen any
here so far&mdash;I hope we don't. At the lower elevations are
the swamp crawlers. They're unadulterated nightmares.
I hope they don't go to these higher elevations in the
summer. The prowlers and the Hell Fever, the gravity
and heat and cold and starvation, will be enough for us
to have to fight."</p>

<p>"I see," Lake said. He smiled, a smile that was as bleak
as moonlight on an arctic glacier. "Earth-type&mdash;remember
the promise the Gerns made the Rejects?" He looked
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p018">p.&nbsp;18</a></span>
out across the camp, at the snow whipping from the
frosty hills, at the dead and the dying, and a little girl
trying vainly to awaken her brother.</p>

<p>"They were condemned, without reason, without a
chance to live," he said. "So many of them are so young
... and when you're young it's too soon to have to die."</p>

<hr />

<p>Prentiss returned to his own group. The dead were
buried in shallow graves and inventory was taken of the
promised "ample supplies." These were only the few
personal possessions the Rejects had been permitted to take
plus a small amount of food the Gerns had taken from
the <i>Constellation</i>'s stores. The Gerns had been forced to
provide the Rejects with at least a little food&mdash;had they
openly left them to starve, the Acceptables, whose
families were among the Rejects, might have rebelled.</p>

<p>Inventory of the firearms and ammunition showed the
total to be discouragingly small. They would have to learn
how to make and use bows and arrows as soon as possible.</p>

<p>With the first party of guards and workmen following
him, Prentiss went to the tributary valley that emptied
into the central valley a mile to the north. It was as good
a camp site as could be hoped for; wide and thickly
spotted with groves of trees, a creek running down its
center.</p>

<p>The workmen began the construction of shelters and
he climbed up the side of the nearer hill. He reached its
top, his breath coming fast in the gravity that was the
equivalent of a burden half his own weight, and saw what
the surrounding terrain was like.</p>

<p>To the south, beyond the barren valley, the land could
be seen dropping in its long sweep to the southern
lowlands where the unicorns and swamp crawlers lived. To
the north the hills climbed gently for miles, then ended
under the steeply sloping face of an immense plateau. The
plateau reached from western to eastern horizon, still
white with the snows of winter and looming so high above
the world below that the clouds brushed it and half
obscured it.</p>

<p>He went back down the hill as Lake's men appeared.
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p019">p.&nbsp;19</a></span>
They started work on what would be a continuation of
his own camp and he told Lake what he had seen from
the hill.</p>

<p>"We're between the lowlands and the highlands," he
said. "This will be as near to a temperate altitude as
Ragnarok has. We survive here&mdash;or else. There's no other
place for us to go."</p>

<p>An overcast darkened the sky at noon and the wind
died down to almost nothing. There was a feeling of
waiting tension in the air and he went back to the Rejects,
to speed their move into the woods. They were
already going in scattered groups, accompanied by prowler
guards, but there was no organization and it would be
too long before the last of them were safely in the new
camp.</p>

<p>He could not be two places at once&mdash;he needed a subleader
to oversee the move of the Rejects and their possessions
into the woods and their placement after they
got there.</p>

<p>He found the man he wanted already helping the Rejects
get started: a thin, quiet man named Henry Anders
who had fought well against the prowlers the night before,
even though his determination had been greater than his
marksmanship. He was the type people instinctively liked
and trusted; a good choice for the subleader whose job
it would be to handle the multitude of details in camp
while he, Prentiss, and a second subleader he would
select, handled the defense of the camp and the hunting.</p>

<p>"I don't like this overcast," he told Anders. "Something's
brewing. Get everyone moved and at work helping
build shelters as soon as you can."</p>

<p>"I can have most of them there within an hour or two,"
Anders said. "Some of the older people, though, will have
to take it slow. This gravity&mdash;it's already getting the hearts
of some of them."</p>

<p>"How are the children taking the gravity?" he asked.</p>

<p>"The babies and the very young&mdash;it's hard to tell about
them yet. But the children from about four on up get
tired quickly, go to sleep, and when they wake up they've
sort of bounced back out of it."</p>

<p>"Maybe they can adapt to some extent to this gravity."
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p020">p.&nbsp;20</a></span>
He thought of what Lake had said that morning: <i>So
many of them are so young ... and when you're young
it's too soon to have to die.</i> "Maybe the Gerns made a
mistake&mdash;maybe Terran children aren't as easy to kill as
they thought. It's your job and mine and others to give
the children the chance to prove the Gerns wrong."</p>

<p>He went his way again to pass by the place where Julia,
the girl who had become Billy's foster-mother, was
preparing to go to the new camp.</p>

<p>It was the second time for him to see Billy that
morning. The first time Billy had still been stunned with
grief, and at the sight of his grandfather he had been
unable to keep from breaking.</p>

<p>"The Gern hit her," he had sobbed, his torn face bleeding
anew as it twisted in crying. "He hurt her, and Daddy
was gone and then&mdash;and then the other things killed
her&mdash;&mdash;"</p>

<p>But now he had had a little time to accept what had
happened and he was changed. He was someone much
older, almost a man, trapped for a while in the body of
a five-year-old boy.</p>

<p>"I guess this is all, Billy," Julia was saying as she
gathered up her scanty possessions and Irene's bag. "Get your
teddy bear and we'll go."</p>

<p>Billy went to his teddy bear and knelt down to pick
it up. Then he stopped and said something that sounded
like <i>"No."</i> He laid the teddy bear back down, wiping a
little dust from its face as in a last gesture of farewell, and
stood up to face Julia empty-handed.</p>

<p>"I don't think I'll want to play with my teddy bear any
more," he said. "I don't think I'll ever want to play at all
anymore."</p>

<p>Then he went to walk beside her, leaving his teddy
bear lying on the ground behind him and with it leaving
forever the tears and laughter of childhood.</p>

<hr />

<p>The overcast deepened, and at midafternoon dark storm
clouds came driving in from the west. Efforts were
intensified to complete the move before the storm broke,
both in his section of the camp and in Lake's. The shelters
would be of critical importance and they were being built
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p021">p.&nbsp;21</a></span>
of the materials most quickly available; dead limbs,
brush, and the limited amount of canvas and blankets
the Rejects had. They would be inadequate protection but
there was no time to build anything better.</p>

<p>It seemed only a few minutes until the black clouds
were overhead, rolling and racing at an incredible velocity.
With them came the deep roar of the high wind that
drove them and the wind on the ground began to stir
restlessly in response, like some monster awakening to
the call of its kind.</p>

<p>Prentiss knew already who he wanted as his other
subleader. He found him hard at work helping build
shelters; Howard Craig, a powerfully muscled man with
a face as hard and grim as a cliff of granite. It had been
Craig who had tried to save Irene from the prowlers that
morning with only an axe as a weapon.</p>

<p>Prentiss knew him slightly&mdash;and Craig still did not know
Irene had been his daughter. Craig had been one of the
field engineers for what would have been the Athena
Geological Survey. He had had a wife, a frail, blonde girl
who had been the first of all to die of Hell Fever the
night before, and he still had their three small children.</p>

<p>"We'll stop with the shelters we already have built,"
he told Craig. "It will take all the time left to us to reinforce
them against the wind. I need someone to help
me, in addition to Anders. You're the one I want.</p>

<p>"Send some young and fast-moving men back to last
night's camp to cut all the strips of prowler skins they can
get. Everything about the shelters will have to be lashed
down to something solid. See if you can find some experienced
outdoorsmen to help you check the jobs.</p>

<p>"And tell Anders that women and children only will
be placed in the shelters. There will be no room for anyone
else and if any man, no matter what the excuse,
crowds out a woman or child I'll personally kill him."</p>

<p>"You needn't bother," Craig said. He smiled with
savage mirthlessness. "I'll be glad to take care of any
such incidents."</p>

<p>Prentiss saw to it that the piles of wood for the guard
fires were ready to be lighted when the time came. He
ordered all guards to their stations, there to get what rest
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p022">p.&nbsp;22</a></span>
they could. They would have no rest at all after darkness
came.</p>

<p>He met Lake at the north end of his own group's
camp, where it merged with Lake's group and no guard
line was needed. Lake told him that his camp would be as
well prepared as possible under the circumstances within
another hour. By then the wind in the trees was growing
swiftly stronger, slapping harder and harder at the
shelters, and it seemed doubtful that the storm would hold
off for an hour.</p>

<p>But Lake was given his hour, plus half of another. Then
deep dusk came, although it was not quite sundown.
Prentiss ordered all the guard fires lighted and all the
women and children into the shelters<ins class="typo" title="Transcriber's Note: ',' in the original text.">.</ins> Fifteen minutes
later the storm finally broke.</p>

<p>It came as a roaring downpour of cold rain. Complete
darkness came with it and the wind rose to a velocity that
made the trees lean. An hour went by and the wind increased,
smashing at the shelters with a violence they had
not been built to withstand. The prowler skin lashings
held but the canvas and blankets were ripped into
streamers that cracked like rifle shots in the wind before they
were torn completely loose and flung into the night.</p>

<p>One by one the guard fires went out and the rain
continued, growing colder and driven in almost horizontal
sheets by the wind. The women and children huddled in
chilled misery in what meager protection the torn shelters
still gave and there was nothing that could be done to
help them.</p>

<p>The rain turned to snow at midnight, a howling blizzard
through which Prentiss's light could penetrate but a few
feet as he made his rounds. He walked with slogging
weariness, forcing himself on. He was no longer young&mdash;he was
fifty&mdash;and he had had little rest.</p>

<p>He had known, of course, that successful leadership
would involve more sacrifice on his part than on the part
of those he led. He could have shunned responsibility
and his personal welfare would have <ins class="typo" title="Transcriber's Note: 'benefitted' in the original text.">benefited</ins>. He had
lived on alien worlds almost half his life; with a rifle and
a knife he could have lived, until Ragnarok finally killed
him, with much less effort than that required of him as
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p023">p.&nbsp;23</a></span>
leader. But such an action had been repugnant to him,
unthinkable. What he knew of survival on hostile worlds
might help the others to survive.</p>

<p>So he had assumed command, tolerating no objections
and disregarding the fact that he would be shortening
his already short time to live on Ragnarok. It was, he
supposed, some old instinct that forbade the individual to
stand aside and let the group die.</p>

<p>The snow stopped an hour later and the wind died to
a frigid moaning. The clouds thinned, broke apart, and
the giant star looked down upon the land with its cold,
blue light.</p>

<p>The prowlers came then.</p>

<p>They feinted against the east and west guard lines, then
hit the south line in massed, ferocious attack. Twenty got
through, past the slaughtered south guards, and charged
into the interior of the camp. As they did so the call, prearranged
by him in case of such an event, went up the
guard lines:</p>

<p>"Emergency guards, east and west&mdash;<i>close in!</i>"</p>

<p>In the camp, above the triumphant, demoniac yammering
of the prowlers, came the screams of women, the thinner
cries of children, and the shouting and cursing of men
as they tried to fight the prowlers with knives and clubs.
Then the emergency guards&mdash;every third man from the
east and west lines&mdash;came plunging through the snow,
firing as they came.</p>

<p>The prowlers launched themselves away from their
victims and toward the guards, leaving a woman to stagger
aimlessly with blood spurting from a severed artery
and splashing dark in the starlight on the blue-white
snow. The air was filled with the cracking of gunfire and
the deep, savage snarling of the prowlers. Half of the
prowlers broke through, leaving seven dead guards behind
them. The others lay in the snow where they had
fallen and the surviving emergency guards turned to hurry
back to their stations, reloading as they went.</p>

<p>The wounded woman had crumpled down in the snow
and a first aid man knelt over her. He straightened, shaking
his head, and joined the others as they searched for
injured among the prowlers' victims.</p>

<p><span class='pagenumber'><a name="p024">p.&nbsp;24</a></span></p>

<p>They found no injured; only the dead. The prowlers
killed with grim efficiency.</p>

<hr />

<p>"John&mdash;&mdash;"</p>

<p>John Chiara, the young doctor, hurried toward him.
His dark eyes were worried behind his frosted glasses and
his eyebrows were coated with ice.</p>

<p>"The wood is soaked," he said. "It's going to be some
time before we can get fires going. There are babies that
will freeze to death before then."</p>

<p>Prentiss looked at the prowlers lying in the snow and
motioned toward them. "They're warm. Have their guts
and lungs taken out."</p>

<p>"What&mdash;&mdash;"</p>

<p>Then Chiara's eyes lighted with comprehension and
he hurried away without further questions.</p>

<p>Prentiss went on, to make the rounds of the guards.
When he returned he saw that his order had been obeyed.</p>

<p>The prowlers lay in the snow as before, their savage
faces still twisted in their dying snarls, but snug and warm
inside them babies slept.</p>

<hr />

<p>The prowlers attacked again and again and when the
wan sun lifted to shine down on the white, frozen land
there were five hundred dead in Prentiss's camp: three
hundred by Hell Fever and two hundred by prowler attacks.</p>

<p>Five hundred&mdash;and that had been only one night on
Ragnarok.</p>

<p>Lake reported over six hundred dead. "I hope," he
said with bitter hatred, "that the Gerns slept comfortably
last night."</p>

<p>"We'll have to build a wall around the camp to hold
out the prowlers," Prentiss said. "We don't dare keep
using up what little ammunition we have at the rate we've
used it the last two nights."</p>

<p>"That will be a big job in this gravity," Lake said.
"We'll have to crowd both groups in together to let its
circumference be as small as possible."</p>

<p>It was the way Prentiss had planned to do it. One
thing would have to be settled with Lake: there could not
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p025">p.&nbsp;25</a></span>
be two independent leaders over the merged groups.</p>

<p>Lake, watching him, said, "I think we can get along.
Alien worlds are your specialty rather than mine. And
according to the Ragnarok law of averages, there will be
only one of us pretty soon, anyway."</p>

<p>All were moved to the center of the camp area that day
and when the prowlers came that night they found a ring
of guards and fires through which they could penetrate
only with heavy sacrifices.</p>

<p>There was warmth to the sun the next morning and
the snow began to melt. Work was commenced on the
stockade wall. It would have to be twelve feet high so
the prowlers could not jump over it and, since the prowlers
had the sharp claws and climbing ability of cats, its top
would have to be surmounted with a row of sharp outward-and-downward
projecting stakes. These would be
set in sockets in the top rail and tied down with strips of
prowler skin.</p>

<p>The trees east of camp were festooned for a great distance
with the remnants of canvas and cloth the wind had
left there. A party of boys, protected by the usual prowler
guards, was sent out to climb the trees and recover it.
All of it, down to the smallest fragment, was turned over
to the women who were physically incapable of helping
work on the stockade wall. They began patiently sewing
the rags and tatters back into usable form again.</p>

<p>The first hunting party went out and returned with
six of the tawny-yellow sharp-horned woods goats, each
as large as an Earth deer. The hunters reported the woods
goats to be hard to stalk and dangerous when cornered.
One hunter was killed and another injured because of
not knowing that.</p>

<p>They also brought in a few of the rabbit-sized scavenger
animals. They were all legs and teeth and bristly fur,
the meat almost inedible. It would be a waste of the
limited ammunition to shoot any more of them.</p>

<p>There was a black barked tree which the Dunbar Expedition
had called the lance tree because of its slender,
straightly outthrust limbs. Its wood was as hard as hickory
and as springy as cedar. Prentiss found two amateur
archers who were sure they could make efficient bows
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p026">p.&nbsp;26</a></span>
and arrows out of the lance tree limbs. He gave them the
job, together with helpers.</p>

<p>The days turned suddenly hot, with nights that still
went below freezing. The Hell Fever took a constant,
relentless toll. They needed adequate shelters&mdash;but the
dwindling supply of ammunition and the nightly prowler
attacks made the need for a stockade wall even more imperative.
The shelters would have to wait.</p>

<p>He went looking for Dr. Chiara one evening and found
him just leaving one of the makeshift shelters.</p>

<p>A boy lay inside it, his face flushed with Hell Fever
and his eyes too bright and too dark as he looked up into
the face of his mother who sat beside him. She was dry-eyed
and silent as she looked down at him but she was
holding his hand in hers, tightly, desperately, as though
she might that way somehow keep him from leaving her.</p>

<p>Prentiss walked beside Chiara and when the shelter
was behind them he asked, "There's no hope?"</p>

<p>"None," Chiara said. "There never is with Hell Fever."</p>

<p>Chiara had changed. He was no longer the stocky,
cheerful man he had been on the <i>Constellation</i>, whose
brown eyes had smiled at the world through thick glasses
and who had laughed and joked as he assured his patients
that all would soon be well with them. He was thin and
his face was haggard with worry. He had, in his quiet
way, been fully as valiant as any of those who had fought
the prowlers. He had worked day and night to fight a
form of death he could not see and against which he had
no weapon.</p>

<p>"The boy is dying," Chiara said. "He knows it and his
mother knows it. I told them the medicine I gave him
might help. It was a lie, to try to make it a little easier
for both of them before the end comes. The medicine I
gave him was a salt tablet&mdash;that's all I have."</p>

<p>And then, with the first bitterness Prentiss had ever
seen him display, Chiara said, "You call me 'Doctor.'
Everyone does. I'm not&mdash;I'm only a first-year intern. I do
the best I know how to do but it isn't enough&mdash;it will
never be enough."</p>

<p>"What you have to learn here is something no Earth
doctor knows or could teach you," he said. "You have to
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p027">p.&nbsp;27</a></span>
have time to learn&mdash;and you need equipment and drugs."</p>

<p>"If I could have antibiotics and other drugs ... I
wanted to get a supply from the dispensary but the Gerns
wouldn't let me go."</p>

<p>"Some of the Ragnarok plants might be of value if a
person could find the right ones. I just came from a talk
with Anders about that. He'll provide you with anything
possible in the way of equipment and supplies for research&mdash;anything
in the camp you need to try to save lives. He'll
be at your shelter tonight to see what you want. Do you
want to try it?"</p>

<p>"Yes&mdash;of course." Chiara's eyes lighted with new hope.
"It might take a long time to find a cure&mdash;maybe we
never would&mdash;but I'd like to have help so I could try.
I'd like to be able, some day once again, to say to a scared
kid, 'Take this medicine and in the morning you'll be
better,' and know I told the truth."</p>

<p>The nightly prowler attacks continued and the supply
of ammunition diminished. It would be some time before
men were skilled in the use of the bows and arrows that
were being made; and work on the wall was pushed ahead
with all speed possible. No one was exempt from labor
on it who could as much as carry the pointed stakes.
Children down to the youngest worked alongside the men and
women.</p>

<p>The work was made many times more exhausting by
the 1.5 gravity. People moved heavily at their jobs and
even at night there was no surcease from the gravity.
They could only go into a coma-like sleep in which there
was no real rest and from which they awoke tired and
aching. Each morning there would be some who did not
awaken at all, though their hearts had been sound enough
for working on Earth or Athena.</p>

<p>The killing labor was recognized as necessary, however,
and there were no complaints until the morning he was
accosted by Peter Bemmon.</p>

<p>He had seen Bemmon several times on the <i>Constellation</i>;
a big, soft-faced man who had attached much
importance to his role as a minor member of the Athena
Planning Board. But even on the <i>Constellation</i> Bemmon
had felt he merited a still higher position, and his ingratiating
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p028">p.&nbsp;28</a></span>
attitude when before his superiors had become
one of fault-finding insinuations concerning their ability
as compared with his when their backs were turned.</p>

<p>This resentment had taken new form on Ragnarok,
where his former position was of utterly no importance to
anyone and his lack of any skills or outdoor experience
made him only one worker among others.</p>

<p>The sun was shining mercilessly hot the day Bemmon
chose to challenge Prentiss's wisdom as leader. Bemmon
was cutting and sharpening stakes, a job the sometimes-too-lenient
Anders had given him when Bemmon had
insisted his heart was on the verge of failure from doing
heavier work. Prentiss was in a hurry and would have
gone on past him but Bemmon halted him with a sharp
command:</p>

<p>"You&mdash;wait a minute!"</p>

<p>Bemmon had a hatchet in his hand, but only one stake
lay on the ground; and his face was red with anger, not
exertion. Prentiss stopped, wondering if Bemmon was going
to ask for a broken jaw, and Bemmon came to him.</p>

<p>"How long," Bemmon asked, anger making his voice
a little thick, "do you think I'll tolerate this absurd situation?"</p>

<p>"What situation?" Prentiss asked.</p>

<p>"This stupid insistence upon confining me to manual
labor. I'm the single member on Ragnarok of the Athena
Planning Board and surely you can see that this bumbling
confusion of these people"&mdash;Bemmon indicated the hurrying,
laboring men, women and children around them&mdash;"can
be transformed into efficient, organized effort only
through proper supervision. Yet my abilities along such
lines are ignored and I've been forced to work as a common
laborer&mdash;a wood chopper!"</p>

<p>He flung the hatchet down viciously, into the rocks at
his feet, breathing heavily with resentment and challenge.
"I demand the respect to which I'm entitled."</p>

<p>"Look," Prentiss said.</p>

<p>He pointed to the group just then going past them. A
sixteen-year-old girl was bent almost double under the
weight of the pole she was carrying, her once pretty face
flushed and sweating. Behind her two twelve-year-old
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p029">p.&nbsp;29</a></span>
boys were dragging a still larger pole. Behind them came
several small children, each of them carrying as many of
the pointed stakes as he or she could walk under, no
matter if it was only one. All of them were trying to
hurry, to accomplish as much as possible, and no one
was complaining even though they were already staggering
with weariness.</p>

<p>"So you think you're entitled to more respect?" Prentiss
asked. "Those kids would work harder if you were
giving them orders from under the shade of a tree&mdash;is
that what you want?"</p>

<p>Bemmon's lips thinned and hatred was like a sheen on
his face. Prentiss looked from the single stake Bemmon
had cut that morning to Bemmon's white, unblistered
hands. He looked at the hatchet that Bemmon had thrown
down in the rocks and at the V notch broken in its keen-edged
blade. It had been the best of the very few hatchets
they had....</p>

<p>"The next time you even nick that hatchet I'm going
to split your skull with it," he said. "Pick it up and get
back to work. I mean <i>work</i>. You'll have broken blisters
on every finger tonight or you'll go on the log-carrying
force tomorrow. Now, move!"</p>

<p>What Bemmon had thought to be his wrath deserted
him before Prentiss's fury. He stooped to obey the order
but the hatred remained on his face and when the hatchet
was in his hands he made a last attempt to bluster:</p>

<p>"The day may come when we'll refuse to tolerate any
longer your sadistic displays of authority."</p>

<p>"Good," Prentiss said. "Anyone who doesn't like my
style is welcome to try to change it&mdash;or to try to replace
me. With knives or clubs, rifles or broken hatchets, Bemmon&mdash;any
way you want it and any time you want it."</p>

<p>"I&mdash;&mdash;" Bemmon's eyes went from the hatchet in his
half raised hand to the long knife in Prentiss's belt. He
swallowed with a convulsive jerk of his Adam's apple
and his hatchet-bearing arm suddenly wilted. "I don't
want to fight&mdash;to replace you&mdash;&mdash;"</p>

<p>He swallowed again and his face forced itself into a
sickly attempt at an ingratiating smile. "I didn't mean
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p030">p.&nbsp;30</a></span>
to imply any disrespect for you or the good job you're
doing. I'm very sorry."</p>

<p>Then he hurried away, like a man glad to escape, and
began to chop stakes with amazing speed.</p>

<p>But the sullen hatred had not been concealed by the
ingratiating smile; and Prentiss knew Bemmon was a man
who would always be his enemy.</p>

<hr />

<p>The days dragged by in the weary routine, but overworked
muscles slowly strengthened and people moved
with a little less laborious effort. On the twentieth day
the wall was finally completed and the camp was prowler
proof.</p>

<p>But the spring weather was a mad succession of heat
and cold and storm that caused the Hell Fever to take
its toll each day and there was no relaxation from the
grueling labor. Weatherproof shelters had to be built as
rapidly as possible.</p>

<p>So the work of constructing them began; wearily, sometimes
almost hopelessly, but without complaint other
than to hate and curse the Gerns more than ever.</p>

<p>There was no more trouble from Bemmon; Prentiss
had almost forgotten him when he was publicly challenged
one night by a burly, threatening man named Haggar.</p>

<p>"You've bragged that you'll fight any man who dares
disagree with you," Haggar said loudly. "Well, here I
am. We'll use knives and before they even have time
to bury you tonight I'm goin' to have your stooges kicked
out and replaced with men who'll give us competent
leadership instead of blunderin' authoritarianism."</p>

<p>Prentiss noticed that Haggar seemed to have a little
difficulty pronouncing the last word, as though he had
learned it only recently.</p>

<p>"I'll be glad to accommodate you," Prentiss said mildly.
"Go get yourself a knife."</p>

<p>Haggar already had one, a long-bladed butcher knife,
and the duel began. Haggar was surprisingly adept with
his knife but he had never had the training and experience
in combat that interstellar explorers such as Prentiss
had. Haggar was good, but considerably far from
good enough.</p>

<p><span class='pagenumber'><a name="p031">p.&nbsp;31</a></span></p>

<p>Prentiss did not kill him. He had no compunctions
about doing such a thing, but it would have been an
unnecessary waste of needed manpower. He gave Haggar
a carefully painful and bloody lesson that thoroughly
banished all his lust for conflict without seriously injuring
him. The duel was over within a minute after it began.</p>

<p>Bemmon, who had witnessed the challenge with keen
interest and then watched Haggar's defeat with agitation,
became excessively friendly and flattering toward Prentiss
afterward. Prentiss felt sure, although he had no proof,
that it had been Bemmon who had spurred the simple-minded
Haggar into challenging him to a duel.</p>

<p>If so, the sight of what had happened to Haggar must
have effectively dampened Bemmon's desire for revenge
because he became almost a model worker.</p>

<hr />

<p>As Lake had predicted, he and Prentiss worked together
well. Lake calmly took a secondary role, not at
all interested in possession of authority but only in the
survival of the Rejects. He spoke of the surrender of the
<i>Constellation</i> only once, to say:</p>

<p>"I knew there could be only Ragnarok in this section
of space. I had to order four thousand people to go like
sheep to what was to be their place of execution so that
four thousand more could live as slaves. That was my last
act as an officer."</p>

<p>Prentiss suspected that Lake found it impossible not
to blame himself subconsciously for what circumstances
had forced him to do. It was irrational&mdash;but conscientious
men were quite often a little irrational in their sense of
responsibility.</p>

<p>Lake had two subleaders: a genial, red-haired man
named Ben Barber, who would have been a farmer on
Athena but who made a good subleader on Ragnarok;
and a lithe, cat-like man named Karl Schroeder.</p>

<p>Schroeder claimed to be twenty-four but not even the
scars on his face could make him look more than twenty-one.
He smiled often, a little too often. Prentiss had seen
smiles like that before. Schroeder was the type who could
smile while he killed a man&mdash;and he probably had.</p>

<p>But, if Schroeder was a born fighter and perhaps killer,
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p032">p.&nbsp;32</a></span>
they were characteristics that he expended entirely upon
the prowlers. He was Lake's right hand man; a deadly
marksman and utterly without fear.</p>

<p>One evening, when Lake had given Schroeder some
instructions concerning the next day's activities, Schroeder
answered him with the half-mocking smile and the words,
"I'll see that it's done, Commander."</p>

<p>"Not 'Commander,'" Lake said. "I&mdash;all of us&mdash;left our
ranks, titles and honors on the <i>Constellation</i>. The past
is dead for us."</p>

<p>"I see," Schroeder said. The smile faded away and he
looked into Lake's eyes as he asked, "And what about
our past dishonors, disgraces and such?"</p>

<p>"They were left on the <i>Constellation</i>, too," Lake said.
"If anyone wants dishonor he'll have to earn it all over
again."</p>

<p>"That sounds fair," Schroeder said. "That sounds as fair
as anyone could ever ask for."</p>

<p>He turned away and Prentiss saw what he had noticed
before: Schroeder's black hair was coming out light
brown at the roots. It was a color that would better
match his light complexion and it was the color of hair
that a man named Schrader, wanted by the police on
Venus, had had.</p>

<p>Hair could be dyed, identification cards could be forged&mdash;but
it was all something Prentiss did not care to pry
into until and if Schroeder gave him reason to. Schroeder
was a hard and dangerous man, despite his youth, and
sometimes men of that type, when the chips were down,
exhibited a higher sense of duty than the soft men who
spoke piously of respect for Society&mdash;and then were afraid
to face danger to protect the society and the people they
claimed to respect.</p>

<hr />

<p>A lone prowler came on the eleventh night following
the wall's completion. It came silently, in the dead of
night, and it learned how to reach in and tear apart the
leather lashings that held the pointed stakes in place and
then jerk the stakes out of their sockets. It was seen as
it was removing the third stake&mdash;which would have made
a large enough opening for it to come through&mdash;and shot.
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p033">p.&nbsp;33</a></span>
It fell back and managed to escape into the woods, although
staggering and bleeding.</p>

<p>The next night the stockade was attacked by dozens
of prowlers who simultaneously began removing the
pointed stakes in the same manner employed by the
prowler of the night before. Their attack was turned back
with heavy losses on both sides and with a dismayingly
large expenditure of precious ammunition.</p>

<p>There could be no doubt about how the band of prowlers
had learned to remove the stakes: the prowler of the
night before had told them before it died. It was doubtful
that the prowlers had a spoken language, but they had
some means of communication. They worked together
and they were highly intelligent, probably about halfway
between dog and man.</p>

<p>The prowlers were going to be an enemy even more
formidable than Prentiss had thought.</p>

<p>The missing stakes were replaced the next day and
the others were tied down more securely. Once again
the camp was prowler proof&mdash;but only for so long as
armed guards patrolled inside the walls to kill attacking
prowlers during the short time it would take them to
remove the stakes.</p>

<p>The hunting parties suffered unusually heavy losses
from prowler attacks that day and that evening, as the
guards patrolled inside the walls, Lake said to Prentiss:</p>

<p>"The prowlers are so damnably persistent. It isn't that
they're hungry&mdash;they don't kill us to eat us. They don't
have any reason to kill us&mdash;they just hate us."</p>

<p>"They have a reason," Prentiss said. "They're doing the
same thing we're doing: fighting for survival."</p>

<p>Lake's pale brows lifted in question.</p>

<p>"The prowlers are the rulers of Ragnarok," Prentiss
said. "They fought their way up here, as men did on
Earth, until they're master of every creature on their
world. Even of the unicorns and swamp crawlers. But
now we've come and they're intelligent enough to know
that we're accustomed to being the dominant species,
ourselves.</p>

<p>"There can't be two dominant species on the same
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p034">p.&nbsp;34</a></span>
world&mdash;and they know it. Men or prowlers&mdash;in the end
one is going to have to go down before the other."</p>

<p>"I suppose you're right," Lake said. He looked at the
guards, a fourth of them already reduced to bows and
arrows that they had not yet had time to learn how to
use. "If we win the battle for supremacy it will be a long
fight, maybe over a period of centuries. And if the prowlers
win&mdash;it may all be over within a year or two."</p>

<hr />

<p>The giant blue star that was the other component of
Ragnarok's binary grew swiftly in size as it preceded the
yellow sun farther each morning. When summer came
the blue star would be a sun as hot as the yellow sun
and Ragnarok would be between them. The yellow sun
would burn the land by day and the blue sun would sear
it by the night that would not be night. Then would come
the brief fall, followed by the long, frozen winter when
the yellow sun would shine pale and cold, far to the south,
and the blue sun would be a star again, two hundred
and fifty million miles away and invisible behind the cold
yellow sun.</p>

<p>The Hell Fever lessened with the completion of the
shelters but it still killed each day. Chiara and his helpers
worked with unfaltering determination to find a cure for
it but the cure, if there was one, eluded them. The graves
in the cemetery were forty long by forty wide and more
were added each day. To all the fact became grimly obvious:
they were swiftly dying out and they had yet to
face Ragnarok at its worst.</p>

<p>The old survival instincts asserted themselves and there
were marriages among the younger ones. One of the
first to marry was Julia.</p>

<p>She stopped to talk to Prentiss one evening. She still
wore the red skirt, now faded and patched, but her face
was tired and thoughtful and no longer bold.</p>

<p>"Is it true, John," she asked, "that only a few of us
might be able to have children here and that most of us
who tried to have children in this gravity would die for
it?"</p>

<p>"It's true," he said. "But you already knew that when
you married."</p>

<p>"Yes ... I knew it." There was a little silence. "All
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p035">p.&nbsp;35</a></span>
my life I've had fun and done as I pleased. The human
race didn't need me and we both knew it. But now&mdash;none
of us can be apart from the others or be afraid of anything.
If we're selfish and afraid there will come a time when
the last of us will die and there will be nothing on
Ragnarok to show we were ever here.</p>

<p>"I don't want it to end like that. I want there to be
children, to live after we're gone. So I'm going to try to
have a child. I'm not afraid and I won't be."</p>

<p>When he did not reply at once she said, almost self-consciously,
"Coming from me that all sounds a little
silly, I suppose."</p>

<p>"It sounds wise and splendid, Julia," he said, "and it's
what I thought you were going to say."</p>

<hr />

<p>Full spring came and the vegetation burst into leaf and
bud and bloom, quickly, for its growth instincts knew
in their mindless way how short was the time to grow
and reproduce before the brown death of summer came.
The prowlers were suddenly gone one day, to follow the
spring north, and for a week men could walk and work
outside the stockade without the protection of armed
guards.</p>

<p>Then the new peril appeared, the one they had not
expected: the unicorns.</p>

<p>The stockade wall was a blue-black rectangle behind
them and the blue star burned with the brilliance of a
dozen moons, lighting the woods in blue shadow and
azure light. Prentiss and the hunter walked a little in
front of the two riflemen, winding to keep in the starlit
glades.</p>

<p>"It was on the other side of the next grove of trees,"
the hunter said in a low voice. "Fred was getting ready
to bring in the rest of the woods goat. He shouldn't have
been more than ten minutes behind me&mdash;and it's been
over an hour."</p>

<p>They rounded the grove of trees. At first it seemed
there was nothing before them but the empty, grassy
glade. Then they saw it lying on the ground no more
than twenty feet in front of them.</p>

<p>It was&mdash;it had been&mdash;a man. He was broken and stamped
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p036">p.&nbsp;36</a></span>
into hideous shapelessness and something had torn off
his arms.</p>

<p>For a moment there was dead silence, then the hunter
whispered, <i>"What did that?"</i></p>

<p>The answer came in a savage, squealing scream and
the pound of cloven hooves. A formless shadow beside
the trees materialized into a monstrous charging bulk; a
thing like a gigantic gray bull, eight feet tall at the shoulders,
with the tusked, snarling head of a boar and the
starlight glinting along the curving, vicious length of its
single horn.</p>

<p><i>"Unicorn!"</i> Prentiss said, and jerked up his rifle.</p>

<p>The rifles cracked in a ragged volley. The unicorn
squealed in fury and struck the hunter, catching him on
its horn and hurling him thirty feet. One of the riflemen
went down under the unicorn's hooves, his cry ending
almost as soon as it began.</p>

<p>The unicorn ripped the sod in deep furrows as it
whirled back to Prentiss and the remaining rifleman; not
turning in the manner of four-footed beasts of Earth but
rearing and spinning on its hind feet. It towered above
them as it whirled, the tip of its horn fifteen feet above
the ground and its hooves swinging around like great
clubs.</p>

<p>Prentiss shot again, his sights on what he hoped would
be a vital area, and the rifleman shot an instant later.</p>

<p>The shots went true. The unicorn's swing brought it
on around but it collapsed, falling to the ground with
jarring heaviness.</p>

<p>"We got it!" the rifleman said. "We&mdash;&mdash;"</p>

<p>It half scrambled to its feet and made a noise; a call
that went out through the night like the blast of a mighty
trumpet. Then it dropped back to the ground, to die
while its call was still echoing from the nearer hills.</p>

<p>From the east came an answering trumpet blast; a
trumpeting that was sounded again from the south and
from the north. Then there came a low and muffled
drumming, like the pounding of thousands of hooves.</p>

<p>The rifleman's face was blue-white in the starlight.
"The others are coming&mdash;we'll have to run for it!"</p>

<p><span class='pagenumber'><a name="p037">p.&nbsp;37</a></span></p>

<p>He turned, and began to run toward the distant bulk
of the stockade.</p>

<p>"No!" Prentiss commanded, quick and harsh. "Not the
stockade!"</p>

<p>The rifleman kept running, seeming not to hear him
in his panic. Prentiss called to him once more:</p>

<p>"Not the stockade&mdash;<i>you'll lead the unicorns into it!</i>"</p>

<p>Again the rifleman seemed not to hear him.</p>

<p>The unicorns were coming in sight, converging in from
the north and east and south, the rumble of their hooves
swelling to a thunder that filled the night. The rifleman
would reach the stockade only a little ahead of them and
they would go through the wall as though it had been
made of paper.</p>

<p>For a little while the area inside the stockade would
be filled with dust, with the squealing of the swirling,
charging unicorns and the screams of the dying. Those inside
the stockade would have no chance whatever of escaping.
Within two minutes it would be over, the last
child would have been found among the shattered shelters
and trampled into lifeless shapelessness in the bloody
ground.</p>

<p>Within two minutes all human life on Ragnarok would
be gone.</p>

<p>There was only one thing for him to do.</p>

<p>He dropped to one knee so his aim would be steady
and the sights of his rifle caught the running man's back.
He pressed the trigger and the rifle cracked viciously as
it bucked against his shoulder.</p>

<p>The man spun and fell hard to the ground. He twisted,
to raise himself up a little and look back, his face white
and accusing and unbelieving.</p>

<p><i>"You shot me!"</i></p>

<p>Then he fell forward and lay without moving.</p>

<p>Prentiss turned back to face the unicorns and to look
at the trees in the nearby grove. He saw what he already
knew, they were young trees and too small to offer any
escape for him. There was no place to run, no place to
hide.</p>

<p>There was nothing he could do but wait; nothing he
could do but stand in the blue starlight and watch the
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p038">p.&nbsp;38</a></span>
devil's herd pound toward him and think, in the last moments
of his life, how swiftly and unexpectedly death
could come to man on Ragnarok.</p>

<hr />

<p>The unicorns held the Rejects prisoners in their stockade
the rest of the night and all the next day. Lake had
seen the shooting of the rifleman and had watched the
unicorn herd kill John Prentiss and then trample the
dead rifleman.</p>

<p>He had already given the order to build a quick series
of fires around the inside of the stockade walls when the
unicorns paused to tear their victims to pieces; grunting
and squealing in triumph as bones crushed between their
teeth and they flung the pieces to one side.</p>

<p>The fires were started and green wood was thrown on
them, to make them smoulder and smoke for as long as
possible. Then the unicorns were coming on to the stockade
and every person inside it went into the concealment
of the shelters.</p>

<p>Lake had already given his last order: There would be
absolute quiet until and if the unicorns left; a quiet that
would be enforced with fist or club wherever necessary.</p>

<p>The unicorns were still outside when morning came.
The fires could not be refueled; the sight of a man moving
inside the stockade would bring the entire herd
charging through. The hours dragged by, the smoke from
the dying fires dwindled to thin streamers. The unicorns
grew increasingly bolder and suspicious, crowding closer
to the walls and peering through the openings between
the rails.</p>

<p>The sun was setting when one of the unicorns trumpeted;
a sound different from that of the call to battle. The
others threw up their heads to listen, then they turned
and drifted away. Within minutes the entire herd was
gone out of sight through the woods, toward the north.</p>

<p>Lake waited and watched until he was sure the unicorns
were gone for good. Then he ordered the All Clear given
and hurried to the south wall, to look down across the
barren valley and hope he would not see what he expected
to see.</p>

<p>Barber came up behind him, to sigh with relief. "That
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p039">p.&nbsp;39</a></span>
was close. It's hard to make so many people stay absolutely
quiet for hour after hour. Especially the children&mdash;they
don't understand."</p>

<p>"We'll have to leave," Lake said.</p>

<p>"Leave?" Barber asked. "We can make this stockade
strong enough to hold out unicorns."</p>

<p>"Look to the south," Lake told him.</p>

<p>Barber did so and saw what Lake had already seen;
a broad, low cloud of dust moving slowly toward them.</p>

<p>"Another herd of unicorns," Lake said. "John didn't
know they migrated&mdash;the Dunbar Expedition wasn't here
long enough to learn that. There'll be herd after herd
coming through and no time for us to strengthen the
walls. We'll have to leave tonight."</p>

<hr />

<p>Preparations were made for the departure; preparations
that consisted mainly of providing each person with as
much in the way of food or supplies as he or she could
carry. In the 1.5 gravity, that was not much.</p>

<p>They left when the blue star rose. They filed out
through the northern gate and the rear guard closed it
behind them. There was almost no conversation among
them. Some of them turned to take a last look at what
had been the only home they had ever known on Ragnarok,
then they all faced forward again, to the northwest,
where the foothills of the plateau might offer them sanctuary.</p>

<p>They found their sanctuary on the second day; a limestone
ridge honey-combed with caves. Men were sent back
at once to carry the food and supplies left in the stockade
to the new home.</p>

<p>They returned, to report that the second herd of unicorns
had broken down the walls and ripped the interior
of the stockade into wreckage. Much of the food and
supplies had been totally destroyed.</p>

<p>Lake sent them back twice more to bring everything,
down to the last piece of bent metal or torn cloth. They
would find uses for all of it in the future.</p>

<hr />

<p>The cave system was extensive, containing room for
several times their number. The deeper portions of the
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p040">p.&nbsp;40</a></span>
caves could not be lived in until ventilation ducts were
made, but the outer caves were more than sufficient in
number. Work was begun to clear them of fallen rubble,
to pry down all loose material overhead and to level the
floors. A spring came out of the ridge not far from the
caves and the approach to the caves was so narrow and
steep that unicorns could scramble up it only with difficulty
and one at a time. And should they ever reach the
natural terrace in front of the caves they would be too
large to enter and could do no more than stand outside
and make targets of themselves for the bowmen within.</p>

<p>Anders was in charge of making the caves livable, his
working force restricted almost entirely to women and
children. Lake sent Barber out, with a small detachment
of men, to observe the woods goats and learn what plants
they ate. And then learn, by experimenting, if such plants
could be safely eaten by humans.</p>

<p>The need for salt would be tremendously increased
when summer came. Having once experienced a saltless
two weeks in the desert Lake doubted that any of them
could survive without it. All hunting parties, as well as
Barber's party, were ordered to investigate all deposits
that might contain salt as well as any stream or pond
that was white along the banks.</p>

<p>The hunting parties were of paramount importance and
they were kept out to the limits of their endurance. Every
man physically able to do so accompanied them. Those
who could not kill game could carry it back to the caves.
There was no time to spare; already the unicorns were
decreasing in numbers and the woods goats were ranging
farther and farther north.</p>

<p>At the end of twenty days Lake went in search of
Barber and his party, worried about them. Their mission
was one that could be as dangerous as any hunting trip.
There was no proof that humans and Ragnarok creatures
were so similar as to guarantee that food for one might
not be poison for the other. It was a very necessary mission,
however; dried meat, alone, would bring grave deficiency
diseases during the summer which dried herbs and
fruits would help prevent.</p>

<p>When he located Barber's party he found Barber lying
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p041">p.&nbsp;41</a></span>
under a tree, pale and weak from his latest experiment
but recovering.</p>

<p>"I was the guinea pig yesterday," Barber said. "Some
little purple berries that the woods goats nibble at sometimes,
maybe to get a touch of some certain vitamin or
something. I ate too many, I guess, because they hit my
heart like the kick of a mule."</p>

<p>"Did you find anything at all encouraging?" Lake
asked.</p>

<p>"We found four different herbs that are the most violent
cathartics you ever dreamed of. And a little silvery
fern that tastes like vanilla flavored candy and paralyzes
you stiff as a board on the third swallow. It's an hour before
you come back out of it.</p>

<p>"But on the good side we found three different kinds
of herbs that seem to be all right. We've been digging
them up and hanging them in the trees to dry."</p>

<p>Lake tried the edible herbs and found them to be
something like spinach in taste. There was a chance they
might contain the vitamins and minerals needed. Since
the hunting parties were living exclusively on meat he
would have to point out the edible herbs to all of them
so they would know what to eat should any of them feel
the effects of diet deficiency.</p>

<p>He traveled alone as he visited the various hunting
parties, finding such travel to be safer each day as the
dwindling of the unicorns neared the vanishing point. It
was a safety he did not welcome; it meant the last of the
game would be gone north long before sufficient meat
was taken.</p>

<p>None of the hunting parties could report good luck.
The woods goats, swift and elusive at best, were vanishing
with the unicorns. The last cartridge had been fired and
the bowmen, while improving all the time, were far from
expert. The unicorns, which should have been their major
source of meat, were invulnerable to arrows unless shot
at short range in the side of the neck just behind the
head. And at short range the unicorns invariably charged
and presented no such target.</p>

<p>He made the long, hard climb up the plateau's southern
face, to stand at last on top. It was treeless, a flat, green
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p042">p.&nbsp;42</a></span>
table that stretched to the north for as far as he could
see. A mountain range, still capped with snow, lay perhaps
a hundred miles to the northwest; in the distance
it looked like a white, low-lying cloud on the horizon.
No other mountains or hills marred the endless sweep of
the high plain.</p>

<p>The grass was thick and here and there were little
streams of water produced by the recently melted snow.
It was a paradise land for the herbivores of Ragnarok but
for men it was a harsh, forbidding place. At that elevation
the air was so thin that only a moderate amount of
exertion made the heart and lungs labor painfully. Hard
and prolonged exertion would be impossible.</p>

<p>It seemed unlikely that men could hunt and dare unicorn
attacks at such an elevation but two hunting parties
were ahead of him; one under the grim Craig and one
under the reckless Schroeder, both parties stripped down
to the youngest, strongest men among all the Rejects.</p>

<p>He found Schroeder early one morning, leading his
hunters toward a small band of woods goats. Two unicorns
were grazing in between and the hunters were
swinging downwind from them. Schroeder saw him coming
and walked back a little way to meet him.</p>

<p>"Welcome to our breathtaking land," Schroeder greeted
him. "How are things going with the rest of the hunting
parties?"</p>

<p>Schroeder was gaunt and there was weariness beneath
his still lithe movements. His whiskers were an untamed
sorrel bristling and across his cheekbone was the ugly
scar of a half healed wound. Another gash was ripped in
his arm and something had battered one ear. He reminded
Lake of a battle-scarred, indomitable tomcat who would
never, for as long as he lived, want to relinquish the joy
of conflict and danger.</p>

<p>"So far," he answered, "you and Craig are the only
parties to manage to tackle the plateau."</p>

<p>He asked about Schroeder's luck and learned it had
been much better than that of the others due to killing
three unicorns by a method Schroeder had thought of.</p>

<p>"Since the bowmen have to be to one side of the unicorns
to kill them," Schroeder said, "it only calls for a
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p043">p.&nbsp;43</a></span>
man to be the decoy and let the unicorns chase him between
the hidden bowmen. If there's no more than one
or two unicorns and if the decoy doesn't have to run
very far and if the bowmen don't miss it works well."</p>

<p>"Judging from your beat-up condition," Lake said,
"you must have been the decoy every time."</p>

<p>"Well&mdash;&mdash;" Schroeder shrugged his shoulders. "It was
my idea."</p>

<p>"I've been wondering about another way to get in shots
at close range," Lake said. "Take the skin of a woods
goat, give it the original shape as near as possible, and
a bowman inside it might be able to fake a grazing woods
goat until he got the shot he wanted.</p>

<p>"The unicorns might never suspect where the arrows
came from," he concluded. "And then, of course, they
might."</p>

<p>"I'll try it before the day is over, on those two unicorns
over there," Schroeder said. "At this elevation and in
this gravity my own method is just a little bit rough on a
man."</p>

<hr />

<p>Lake found Craig and his men several miles to the
west, all of them gaunt and bearded as Schroeder had
been.</p>

<p>"We've had hell," Craig said. "It seems that every
time we spot a few woods goats there will be a dozen
unicorns in between. If only we had rifles for the unicorns...."</p>

<p>Lake told him of the plan to hide under woods goats'
skins and of the decoy system used by Schroeder.</p>

<p>"Maybe we won't have to use Schroeder's method,"
he said. "We'll see if the other works&mdash;I'll give it the
first try."</p>

<p>This he was not to do. Less than an hour later one
of the men who helped dry the meat and carry it to the
caves returned to report the camp stricken by a strange,
sudden malady that was killing a hundred a day. Dr.
Chiara, who had collapsed while driving himself on to
care for the sick, was sure it was a deficiency disease.
Anders was down with it, helpless, and Bemmon had
assumed command; setting up daily work quotas for those
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p044">p.&nbsp;44</a></span>
still on their feet and refusing to heed Chiara's requests
concerning treatment of the disease.</p>

<p>Lake made the trip back to the caves in a fraction of
the length of time it had taken him to reach the plateau,
walking until he was ready to drop and then pausing
only for an hour or two of rest. He spotted Barber's
camp when coming down off the plateau and he swung
to one side, to tell Barber to have a supply of the herbs
sent to the caves at once.</p>

<p>He reached the caves, to find half the camp in bed
and the other half dragging about listlessly at the tasks
given them by Bemmon. Anders was in grave condition,
too weak to rise, and Dr. Chiara was dying.</p>

<p>He squatted down beside Chiara's pallet and knew
there could be no hope for him. On Chiara's pale face
and in his eyes was the shadow of his own foreknowledge.</p>

<p>"I finally saw what it was"&mdash;Chiara's words were very
low, hard to hear&mdash;"and I told Bemmon what to do. It's
a deficiency disease, complicated by the gravity into some
form not known on Earth."</p>

<p>He stopped to rest and Lake waited.</p>

<p>"Beri-beri&mdash;pellagra&mdash;we had deficiency diseases on
Earth. But none so fatal&mdash;so quickly. I told Bemmon&mdash;ration
out fruits and vegetables to everybody. Hurry&mdash;or
it will be too late."</p>

<p>Again he stopped to rest, the last vestige of color gone
from his face.</p>

<p>"And you?" Lake asked, already knowing the answer.</p>

<p>"For me&mdash;too late. I kept thinking of viruses&mdash;should
have seen the obvious sooner. Just like&mdash;&mdash;"</p>

<p>His lips turned up a little at the corners and the Chiara
of the dead past smiled for the last time at Lake.</p>

<p>"Just like a damned fool intern...."</p>

<p>That was all, then, and the chamber was suddenly
very quiet. Lake stood up to leave, and to speak the words
that Chiara could never hear:</p>

<p>"We're going to need you and miss you&mdash;Doctor."</p>

<hr />

<p>He found Bemmon in the food storage cavern, supervising
the work of two teen-age boys with critical officiousness
although he was making no move to help
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p045">p.&nbsp;45</a></span>
them. At sight of Lake he hurried forward, the ingratiating
smile sliding across his face.</p>

<p>"I'm glad you're back," he said. "I had to take charge
when Anders got sick and he had everything in such a
mess. I've been working day and night to undo his mistakes
and get the work properly under way again."</p>

<p>Lake looked at the two thin-faced boys who had taken
advantage of the opportunity to rest. They leaned wearily
against the heavy pole table Bemmon had had them moving,
their eyes already dull with the incipient sickness
and watching him in mute appeal.</p>

<p>"Have you obeyed Chiara's order?" he asked.</p>

<p>"Ah&mdash;no," Bemmon said. "I felt it best to ignore it."</p>

<p>"Why?" Lake asked.</p>

<p>"It would be a senseless waste of our small supply of
fruit and vegetable foods to give them to people already
dying. I'm afraid"&mdash;the ingratiating smile came again&mdash;"we've
been letting him exercise an authority he isn't entitled
to. He's really hardly more than a medical student
and his diagnoses are only guesses."</p>

<p>"He's dead," Lake said flatly. "His last order will be
carried out."</p>

<p>He looked from the two tired boys to Bemmon, contrasting
their thinness and weariness with the way Bemmon's
paunch still bulged outward and his jowls still
sagged with their load of fat.</p>

<p>"I'll send West down to take over in here," he said to
Bemmon. "You come with me. You and I seem to be the
only two in good health here and there's plenty of work
for us to do."</p>

<p>The fawning expression vanished from Bemmon's face.
"I see," he said. "Now that I've turned Anders's muddle
into organization, you'll hand my authority over to another
of your favorites and demote me back to common
labor?"</p>

<p>"Setting up work quotas for sick and dying people isn't
organization," Lake said. He spoke to the two boys, "Both
of you go lie down. West will find someone else." Then
to Bemmon, "Come with me. We're both going to work
at common labor."</p>

<p>They passed by the cave where Bemmon slept. Two
boys were just going into it, carrying armloads of dried
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p046">p.&nbsp;46</a></span>
grass to make a mattress under Bemmon's pallet. They
moved slowly, heavily. Like the two boys in the food
storage cave they were dull-eyed with the beginning of
the sickness.</p>

<p>Lake stopped, to look more closely into the cave and
verify something else he thought he had seen: Bemmon
had discarded the prowler skins on his bed and in their
place were soft wool blankets; perhaps the only unpatched
blankets the Rejects possessed.</p>

<p>"Go back to your caves," he said to the boys. "Go to
bed and rest."</p>

<p>He looked at Bemmon. Bemmon's eyes flickered away,
refusing to meet his.</p>

<p>"What few blankets we have are for babies and the
very youngest children," he said. His tone was coldly
unemotional but he could not keep his fists from clenching
at his sides. "You will return them at once and sleep
on animal skins, as all the men and women do. And if
you want grass for a mattress you will carry it yourself,
as even the young children do."</p>

<p>Bemmon made no answer, his face a sullen red and
hatred shining in the eyes that still refused to meet Lake's.</p>

<p>"Gather up the blankets and return them," Lake said.
"Then come on up to the central cave. We have a lot of
work to do."</p>

<p>He could feel Bemmon's gaze burning against his back
as he turned away and he thought of what John Prentiss
had once said:</p>

<p>"I know he's no good but he never has guts enough to
go quite far enough to give me an excuse to whittle him
down."</p>

<hr />

<p>Barber's men arrived the next day, burdened with dried
herbs. These were given to the seriously ill as a supplement
to the ration of fruit and vegetable foods and were
given, alone, to those not yet sick. Then came the period
of waiting; of hoping that it was all not too late and
too little.</p>

<p>A noticeable change for the better began on the second
day. A week went by and the sick were slowly, steadily,
improving. The not-quite-sick were already back to normal
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p047">p.&nbsp;47</a></span>
health. There was no longer any doubt: the Ragnarok
herbs would prevent a recurrence of the disease.</p>

<p>It was, Lake thought, all so simple once you knew
what to do. Hundreds had died, Chiara among them,
because they did not have a common herb that grew at
a slightly higher elevation. Not a single life would have
been lost if he could have looked a week into the future
and had the herbs found and taken to the caves that
much sooner.</p>

<p>But the disease had given no warning of its coming.
Nothing, on Ragnarok, ever seemed to give warning before
it killed.</p>

<p>Another week went by and hunters began to trickle
in, gaunt and exhausted, to report all the game going
north up the plateau and not a single creature left below.
They were the ones who had tried and failed to withstand
the high elevation of the plateau. Only two out of
three hunters returned among those who had challenged
the plateau. They had tried, all of them, to the best of
their ability and the limits of their endurance.</p>

<p>The blue star was by then a small sun and the yellow
sun blazed hotter each day. Grass began to brown and
wither on the hillsides as the days went by and Lake
knew summer was very near. The last hunting party,
but for Craig's and Schroeder's, returned. They had very
little meat but they brought with them a large quantity
of something almost as important: salt.</p>

<p>They had found a deposit of it in an almost inaccessible
region of cliffs and canyons. "Not even the woods goats
can get in there," Stevens, the leader of that party, said.
"If the salt was in an accessible place there would have
been a salt lick there and goats in plenty."</p>

<p>"If woods goats care for salt the way Earth animals do,"
Lake said. "When fall comes we'll make a salt lick and
find out."</p>

<p>Two more weeks went by and Craig and Schroeder
returned with their surviving hunters. They had followed
the game to the eastern end of the snow-capped mountain
range but there the migration had drawn away from them,
traveling farther each day than they could travel. They
had almost waited too long before turning back: the
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p048">p.&nbsp;48</a></span>
grass at the southern end of the plateau was turning
brown and the streams were dry. They got enough water,
barely, by digging seep holes in the dry stream beds.</p>

<p>Lake's method of stalking unicorns under the concealment
of a woods goat skin had worked well only a
few times. After that the unicorns learned to swing downwind
from any lone woods goats. If they smelled a man
inside the goat skin they charged him and killed him.</p>

<p>With the return of the last hunters everything was done
that could be done in preparation for summer. Inventory
was taken of the total food supply and it was even smaller
than Lake had feared. It would be far from enough to
last until fall brought the game back from the north and
he instituted rationing much stricter than before.</p>

<p>The heat increased as the yellow sun blazed hotter
and the blue sun grew larger. Each day the vegetation
was browner and a morning came when Lake could see
no green wherever he looked.</p>

<p>They numbered eleven hundred and ten that morning,
out of what had so recently been four thousand. Eleven
hundred and ten thin, hungry scarecrows who, already,
could do nothing more than sit listlessly in the shade and
wait for the hell that was coming. He thought of the food
supply, so pitifully small, and of the months it would
have to last. He saw the grim, inescapable future for his
charges: famine. There was nothing he could do to
prevent it. He could only try to forestall complete starvation
for all by cutting rations to the bare existence level.</p>

<p>And that would be bare existence for the stronger of
them. The weaker were already doomed.</p>

<p>He had them all gather in front of the caves that
evening when the terrace was in the shadow of the ridge.
He stood before them and spoke to them:</p>

<p>"All of you know we have only a fraction of the
amount of food we need to see us through the summer.
Tomorrow the present ration will be cut in half. That
will be enough to live on, just barely. If that cut isn't
made the food supply will be gone long before fall and
all of us will die.</p>

<p>"If anyone has any food of any kind it must be turned
in to be added to the total supply. Some of you may
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p049">p.&nbsp;49</a></span>
have thought of your children and kept a little hidden
for them. I can understand why you should do that&mdash;but
you must turn it in. There may possibly be some
who hid food for themselves, personally. If so, I give them
the first and last warning: turn it in tonight. If any hidden
cache of food is found in the future the one who hid it
will be regarded as a traitor and murderer.</p>

<p>"All of you, but for the children, will go into the
chamber next to the one where the food is stored. Each
of you&mdash;and there will be no exceptions regardless of
how innocent you are&mdash;will carry a bulkily folded cloth
or garment. Each of you will go into the chamber alone.
There will be no one in there. You will leave the food
you have folded in the cloth, if any, and go out the
other exit and back to your caves. No one will ever know
whether the cloth you carried contained food or not. No
one will ever ask.</p>

<p>"Our survival on this world, if we are to survive at all,
can be only by working and sacrificing together. There
can be no selfishness. What any of you may have done
in the past is of no consequence. Tonight we start anew.
From now on we trust one another without reserve.</p>

<p>"There will be one punishment for any who betray that
trust&mdash;death."</p>

<hr />

<p>Anders set the example by being the first to carry a
folded cloth into the cave. Of them all, Lake heard later,
only Bemmon voiced any real indignation; warning all
those in his section of the line that the order was the
first step toward outright dictatorship and a police-and-spy
system in which Lake and the other leaders would
deprive them all of freedom and dignity. Bemmon insisted
upon exhibiting the emptiness of the cloth he carried;
an action that, had he succeeded in persuading the
others to follow his example, would have mercilessly exposed
those who did have food they were returning.</p>

<p>But no one followed Bemmon's example and no harm
was done. As for Lake, he had worries on his mind of
much greater importance than Bemmon's enmity.</p>

<hr />

<p>The weeks dragged by, each longer and more terrible
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p050">p.&nbsp;50</a></span>
to endure than the one before it as the heat steadily increased.
Summer solstice arrived and there was no escape
from the heat, even in the deepest caves. There was no
night; the blue sun rose in the east as the yellow sun
set in the west. There was no life of any kind to be seen,
not even an insect. Nothing moved across the burned
land but the swirling dust devils and shimmering, distorted
mirages.</p>

<p>The death rate increased with appalling swiftness. The
small supply of canned and dehydrated milk, fruit and
vegetables was reserved exclusively for the children but
it was far insufficient in quantity. The Ragnarok herbs
prevented any recurrence of the fatal deficiency disease
but they provided virtually no nourishment to help fight
the heat and gravity. The stronger of the children lay
wasted and listless on their pallets while the ones not so
strong died each day.</p>

<p>Each day thin and hollow-eyed mothers would come
to plead with him to save their children. "... it would
take so little to save his life.... Please&mdash;before it's too
late...."</p>

<p>But there was so little food left and the time was yet
so long until fall would bring relief from the famine that
he could only answer each of them with a grim and
final "No."</p>

<p>And watch the last hope flicker and die in their eyes
and watch them turn away, to go and sit for the last
hours beside their children.</p>

<p>Bemmon became increasingly irritable and complaining
as the rationing and heat made existence a misery;
insisting that Lake and the others were to blame for the
food shortage, that their hunting efforts had been bungling
and faint-hearted. And he implied, without actually
saying so, that Lake and the others had forbidden
him to go near the food chamber because they did not
want a competent, honest man to check up on what they
were doing.</p>

<p>There were six hundred and three of them the blazing
afternoon when the girl, Julia, could stand his constant,
vindictive, fault-finding no longer. Lake heard about it
shortly afterward, the way she had turned on Bemmon
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p051">p.&nbsp;51</a></span>
in a flare of temper she could control no longer and said:</p>

<p>"Whenever your mouth is still you can hear the children
who are dying today&mdash;but you don't care. All you
can think of is yourself. You claim Lake and the others
were cowards&mdash;but you didn't dare hunt with them. You
keep insinuating that they're cheating us and eating
more than we are&mdash;but your belly is the only one that has
any fat left on it&mdash;&mdash;"</p>

<p>She never completed the sentence. Bemmon's face
turned livid in sudden, wild fury and he struck her,
knocking her against the rock wall so hard that she
slumped unconscious to the ground.</p>

<p>"She's a liar!" he panted, glaring at the others. "She's
a rotten liar and anybody who repeats what she said will
get what she got!"</p>

<p>When Lake learned of what had happened he did not
send for Bemmon at once. He wondered why Bemmon's
reaction had been so quick and violent and there seemed
to be only one answer:</p>

<p>Bemmon's belly was still a little fat. There could be
but one way he could have kept it so.</p>

<p>He summoned Craig, Schroeder, Barber and Anders.
They went to the chamber where Bemmon slept and
there, almost at once, they found his cache. He had it
buried under his pallet and hidden in cavities along the
walls; dried meat, dried fruits and milk, canned vegetables.
It was an amount amazingly large and many of
the items had presumably been exhausted during the
deficiency disease attack.</p>

<p>"It looks," Schroeder said, "like he didn't waste any
time feathering his nest when he made himself leader."</p>

<p>The others said nothing but stood with grim, frozen
faces, waiting for Lake's next action.</p>

<p>"Bring Bemmon," Lake said to Craig.</p>

<p>Craig returned with him two minutes later. Bemmon
stiffened at the sight of his unearthed cache and color
drained away from his face.</p>

<p>"Well?" Lake asked.</p>

<p>"I didn't"&mdash;Bemmon swallowed&mdash;"I didn't know it was
there." And then quickly, "You can't prove I put it there.
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p052">p.&nbsp;52</a></span>
You can't prove you didn't just now bring it in yourselves
to frame me."</p>

<p>Lake stared at Bemmon, waiting. The others watched
Bemmon as Lake was doing and no one spoke. The
silence deepened and Bemmon began to sweat as he tried
to avoid their eyes. He looked again at the damning evidence
and his defiance broke.</p>

<p>"It&mdash;if I hadn't taken it it would have been wasted
on people who were dying," he said. He wiped at his
sweating face. "I won't ever do it again&mdash;I swear I won't."</p>

<p>Lake spoke to Craig. "You and Barber take him to the
lookout point."</p>

<p>"What&mdash;&mdash;" Bemmon's protest was cut off as Craig and
Barber took him by the arms and walked him swiftly
away.</p>

<p>Lake turned to Anders. "Get a rope," he ordered.</p>

<p>Anders paled a little. "A&mdash;rope?"</p>

<p>"What else does he deserve?"</p>

<p>"Nothing," Anders said. "Not&mdash;not after what he did."</p>

<p>On the way out they passed the place where Julia lay.
Bemmon had knocked her against the wall with such
force that a sharp projection of rock had cut a deep
gash in her forehead. A woman was wiping the blood
from her face and she lay limply, still unconscious; a
frail shadow of the bold girl she had once been with the
new life she would try to give them an almost unnoticeable
little bulge in her starved thinness.</p>

<hr />

<p>The lookout point was an outjutting spur of the ridge,
six hundred feet from the caves and in full view of them.
A lone tree stood there, its dead limbs thrust like white
arms through the brown foliage of the limbs that still
lived. Craig and Barber waited under the tree, Bemmon
between them. The lowering sun shone hot and bright
on Bemmon's face as he squinted back toward the caves
at the approach of Lake and the other two.</p>

<p>He twisted to look at Barber. "What is it&mdash;why did
you bring me here?" There was the tremor of fear in his
voice. "What are you going to do to me?"</p>

<p>Barber did not answer and Bemmon turned back toward
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p053">p.&nbsp;53</a></span>
Lake. He saw the rope in Anders' hand and his
face went white with comprehension.</p>

<p>"No!"</p>

<p>He threw himself back with a violence that almost
tore him loose. <i>"No&mdash;no!"</i></p>

<p>Schroeder stepped forward to help hold him and Lake
took the rope from Anders. He fashioned a noose in it
while Bemmon struggled and made panting, animal
sounds, his eyes fixed in horrified fascination on the rope.</p>

<p>When the noose was finished he threw the free end
of the rope over the white limb above Bemmon. He released
the noose and Barber caught it, to draw it snug
around Bemmon's neck.</p>

<p>Bemmon stopped struggling then and sagged weakly.
For a moment it appeared that he would faint. Then
he worked his mouth soundlessly until words came:</p>

<p>"You won't&mdash;you can't&mdash;really hang me?"</p>

<p>Lake spoke to him:</p>

<p>"We're going to hang you. What you stole would
have saved the lives of ten children. You've watched the
children cry because they were so hungry and you've
watched them become too weak to cry or care any more.
You've watched them die each day and each night you've
secretly eaten the food that was supposed to be theirs.</p>

<p>"We're going to hang you, for the murder of children
and the betrayal of our trust in you. If you have anything
to say, say <ins class="typo" title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'it it'">it</ins> now."</p>

<p>"You can't! I had a right to live&mdash;to eat what would
have been wasted on dying people!" Bemmon twisted to
appeal to the ones who held him, his words quick and
ragged with hysteria. "You can't hang me&mdash;I don't want
to die!"</p>

<p>Craig answered him, with a smile that was like the
thin snarl of a wolf:</p>

<p>"Neither did two of my children."</p>

<p>Lake nodded to Craig and Schroeder, not waiting any
longer. They stepped back to seize the free end of the
rope and Bemmon screamed at what was coming, tearing
loose from the grip of Barber.</p>

<p>Then his scream was abruptly cut off as he was jerked
into the air. There was a cracking sound and he kicked
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p054">p.&nbsp;54</a></span>
spasmodically, his head setting grotesquely to one side.</p>

<p>Craig and Schroeder and Barber watched him with
hard, expressionless faces but Anders turned quickly away,
to be suddenly and violently sick.</p>

<p>"He was the first to betray us," Lake said. "Snub the
rope and leave him to swing there. If there are any others
like him, they'll know what to expect."</p>

<p>The blue sun rose as they went back to the caves.
Behind them Bemmon swung and twirled aimlessly on
the end of the rope. Two long, pale shadows swung and
twirled with him; a yellow one to the west and a blue
one to the east.</p>

<p>Bemmon was buried the next day. Someone cursed his
name and someone spit on his grave and then he was
part of the dead past as they faced the suffering ahead
of them.</p>

<p>Julia recovered, although she would always wear a
ragged scar on her forehead. Anders, who had worked
closely with Chiara and was trying to take his place,
quieted her fears by assuring her that the baby she carried
was still too small for there to be much danger of the
fall causing her to lose it.</p>

<p>Three times during the next month the wind came
roaring down out of the northwest, bringing a gray dust
that filled the sky and enveloped the land in a hot, smothering
gloom through which the suns could not be seen.</p>

<p>Once black clouds gathered in the distance, to pour out
a cloudburst. The 1.5 gravity gave the wall of water that
swept down the canyon a far greater force and velocity
than it would have had on Earth and boulders the size
of small houses were tossed into the air and shattered
into fragments. But all the rain fell upon the one small
area and not a drop fell at the caves.</p>

<p>One single factor was in their favor and but for it
they could not have survived such intense, continual
heat: there was no humidity. Water evaporated quickly
in the hot, dry air and sweat glands operated at the
highest possible degree of efficiency. As a result they
drank enormous quantities of water&mdash;the average adult
needed five gallons a day. All canvas had been converted
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p055">p.&nbsp;55</a></span>
into water bags and the same principle of cooling-by-evaporation
gave them water that was only warm instead
of sickeningly hot as it would otherwise have been.</p>

<p>But despite the lack of humidity the heat was still far
more intense than any on Earth. It never ceased, day or
night, never let them have a moment's relief. There was
a limit to how long human flesh could bear up under it,
no matter how valiant the will. Each day the toll of
those who had reached that limit was greater, like a
swiftly rising tide.</p>

<p>There were three hundred and forty of them, when
the first rain came; the rain that meant the end of
summer. The yellow sun moved southward and the blue
sun shrank steadily. Grass grew again and the woods
goats returned, with them the young that had been born
in the north, already half the size of their mothers.</p>

<p>For a while there was meat, and green herbs. Then the
prowlers came, to make hunting dangerous. Females with
pups were seen but always at a great distance as though
the prowlers, like humans, took no chances with the lives
of their children.</p>

<p>The unicorns came close behind the first prowlers,
their young amazingly large and already weaned. Hunting
became doubly dangerous then but the bowmen,
through necessity, were learning how to use their bows
with increasing skill and deadliness.</p>

<p>A salt lick for the woods goats was hopefully tried,
although Lake felt dubious about it. They learned that
salt was something the woods goats could either take
or leave alone. And when hunters were in the vicinity
they left it alone.</p>

<p>The game was followed for many miles to the south.
The hunters returned the day the first blizzard came roaring
and screaming down over the edge of the plateau;
the blizzard that marked the beginning of the long, frigid
winter. By then they were prepared as best they could
be. Wood had been carried in great quantities and the
caves fitted with crude doors and a ventilation system.
And they had meat&mdash;not as much as they would need
but enough to prevent starvation.</p>

<p><span class='pagenumber'><a name="p056">p.&nbsp;56</a></span></p>

<p>Lake took inventory of the food supply when the last
hunters returned and held check-up inventories at irregular
and unannounced intervals. He found no shortages.
He had expected none&mdash;Bemmon's grave had long since
been obliterated by drifting snow but the rope still hung
from the dead limb, the noose swinging and turning in
the wind.</p>

<hr />

<p>Anders had made a Ragnarok calendar that spring,
from data given him by John Prentiss, and he had marked
the corresponding Earth dates on it. By a coincidence,
Christmas came near the middle of the winter. There
would be the same rationing of food on Christmas day
but little brown trees had been cut for the children and
decorated with such ornaments as could be made from
the materials at hand.</p>

<p>There was another blizzard roaring down off the plateau
Christmas morning; a white death that thundered and
howled outside the caves at a temperature of more than
eighty degrees below zero. But inside the caves it was
warm by the fires and under the little brown trees were
toys that had been patiently whittled from wood or sewn
from scraps of cloth and animal skins while the children
slept. They were crude and humble toys but the pale,
thin faces of the children were bright with delight when
they beheld them.</p>

<p>There was the laughter of children at play, a sound
that had not been heard for many months, and someone
singing the old, old songs. For a few fleeting hours that
day, for the first and last time on Ragnarok, there was
the magic of an Earth Christmas.</p>

<p>That night a child was born to Julia, on a pallet of
dried grass and prowler skins. She asked for her baby
before she died and they let her have it.</p>

<p>"I wasn't afraid, was I?" she asked. "But I wish it
wasn't so dark&mdash;I wish I could see my baby before I go."</p>

<p>They took the baby from her arms when she was gone
and removed from it the blanket that had kept her from
learning that her child was still-born.</p>

<p><span class='pagenumber'><a name="p057">p.&nbsp;57</a></span></p>

<p>There were two hundred and fifty of them when the
first violent storms of spring came. By then eighteen children
had been born. Sixteen were still-born, eight of them
deformed by the gravity, but two were like any normal
babies on Earth. There was only one difference: the 1.5
gravity did not seem to affect them as much as it had the
Earth-born babies.</p>

<p>Lake, himself, married that spring; a tall, gray-eyed
girl who had fought alongside the men the night of the
storm when the prowlers broke into John Prentiss's camp.
And Schroeder married, the last of them all to do so.</p>

<p>That spring Lake sent out two classes of bowmen:
those who would use the ordinary short bow and those
who would use the longbows he had had made that
winter. According to history the English longbowmen of
medieval times had been without equal in the range and
accuracy of their arrows and such extra-powerful weapons
should eliminate close range stalking of woods goats and
afford better protection from unicorns.</p>

<p>The longbows worked so well that by mid-spring he
could detach Craig and three others from the hunting
and send them on a prospecting expedition. Prentiss had
said Ragnarok was devoid of metals but there was the
hope of finding small veins the Dunbar Expedition's instruments
had not detected. They would have to find
metal or else, in the end, they would go back into a flint
axe stage.</p>

<p>Craig and his men returned when the blue star was a
sun again and the heat was more than men could walk
and work in. They had traveled hundreds of miles in
their circuit and found no metals.</p>

<p>"I want to look to the south when fall comes," Craig
said. "Maybe it will be different down there."</p>

<p>They did not face famine that summer as they had
the first summer. The diet of meat and dried herbs was
rough and plain but there was enough of it.</p>

<p>Full summer came and the land was again burned
and lifeless. There was nothing to do but sit wearily in
the shade and endure the heat, drawing what psychological
comfort they could from the fact that summer
solstice was past and the suns were creeping south again
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p058">p.&nbsp;58</a></span>
even though it would be many weeks before there was
any lessening of the heat.</p>

<p>It was then, and by accident, that Lake discovered
there was something wrong about the southward movement
of the suns.</p>

<p>He was returning from the lookout that day and
he realized it was exactly a year since he and the others
had walked back to the caves while Bemmon swung on
the limb behind them.</p>

<p>It was even the same time of day; the blue sun rising in
the east behind him and the yellow sun bright in his
face as it touched the western horizon before him. He
remembered how the yellow sun had been like the front
sight of a rifle, set in the deepest V notch of the western
hills&mdash;</p>

<p>But now, exactly a year later, it was not in the V notch.
It was on the north side of the notch.</p>

<p>He looked to the east, at the blue sun. It seemed to
him that it, too, was farther north than it had been although
with it he had no landmark to check by.</p>

<p>But there was no doubt about the yellow sun: it was
going south, as it should at that time of year, but it was
lagging behind schedule. The only explanation Lake
could think of was one that would mean still another
threat to their survival; perhaps greater than all the others
combined.</p>

<p>The yellow sun dropped completely behind the north
slope of the V notch and he went on to the caves. He
found Craig and Anders, the only two who might know
anything about Ragnarok's axial tilts, and told them
what he had seen.</p>

<p>"I made the calendar from the data John gave me,"
Anders said. "The Dunbar men made observations and
computed the length of Ragnarok's year&mdash;I don't think
they would have made any mistakes."</p>

<p>"If they didn't," Lake said, "we're in for something."</p>

<p>Craig was watching him, closely, thoughtfully. "Like
the Ice Ages of Earth?" he asked.</p>

<p>Lake nodded and Anders said, "I don't understand."</p>

<p>"Each year the north pole tilts toward the sun to give
us summer and away from it to give us winter," Lake
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p059">p.&nbsp;59</a></span>
said. "Which, of course, you know. But there can be still
another kind of axial tilt. On Earth it occurs at intervals
of thousands of years. The tilting that produces the summers
and winters goes on as usual but as the centuries
go by the summer tilt toward the sun grows less, the
winter tilt away from it greater. The north pole leans
farther and farther from the sun and ice sheets come
down out of the north&mdash;an Ice Age. Then the north pole's
progression away from the sun stops and the ice sheets
recede as it tilts back toward the sun."</p>

<p>"I see," Anders said. "And if the same thing is happening
here, we're going away from an ice age but at a
rate thousands of times faster than on Earth."</p>

<p>"I don't know whether it's Ragnarok's tilt, alone, or if
the orbits of the suns around each other add effects of
their own over a period of years," Lake said. "The Dunbar
Expedition wasn't here long enough to check up on
anything like that."</p>

<p>"It seemed to me it was hotter this summer than last,"
Craig said. "Maybe only my imagination&mdash;but it won't
be imagination in a few years if the tilt toward the sun
continues."</p>

<p>"The time would come when we'd have to leave here,"
Lake said. "We'd have to go north up the plateau each
spring. There's no timber there&mdash;nothing but grass and
wind and thin air. We'd have to migrate south each fall."</p>

<p>"Yes ... migrate." Anders's face was old and weary in
the harsh reflected light of the blue sun and his hair
had turned almost white in the past year. "Only the
young ones could ever adapt enough to go up the plateau
to its north portion. The rest of us ... but we haven't
many years, anyway. Ragnarok is for the young&mdash;and if
they have to migrate back and forth like animals just to
stay alive they will never have time to accomplish anything
or be more than stone age nomads."</p>

<p>"I wish we could know how long the Big Summer will
be that we're going into," Craig said. "And how long
and cold the Big Winter, when Ragnarok tilts away from
the sun. It wouldn't change anything&mdash;but I'd like to
know."</p>

<p>"We'll start making and recording daily observations,"
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p060">p.&nbsp;60</a></span>
Lake said. "Maybe the tilt will start back the other way
before it's too late."</p>

<hr />

<p>Fall seemed to come a little later that year. Craig
went to the south as soon as the weather permitted but
there were no minerals there; only the metal-barren hills
dwindling in size until they became a prairie that sloped
down and down toward the southern lowlands where all
the creatures of Ragnarok spent the winter.</p>

<p>"I'll try again to the north when spring comes," Craig
said. "Maybe that mountain on the plateau will have
something."</p>

<p>Winter came, and Elaine died in giving him a son.
The loss of Elaine was an unexpected blow; hurting more
than he would ever have thought possible.</p>

<p>But he had a son ... and it was his responsibility
to do whatever he could to insure the survival of his son
and of the sons and daughters of all the others.</p>

<p>His outlook altered and he began to think of the future,
not in terms of years to come but in terms of generations
to come. Someday one of the young ones would
succeed him as leader but the young ones would have
only childhood memories of Earth. He was the last leader
who had known Earth and the civilization of Earth as
a grown man. What he did while he was leader would
incline the destiny of a new race.</p>

<p>He would have to do whatever was possible for him
to do and he would have to begin at once. The years left
to him could not be many.</p>

<p>He was not alone; others in the caves had the same
thoughts he had regarding the future even though none
of them had any plan for accomplishing what they spoke
of. West, who had held degrees in philosophy on Earth,
said to Lake one night as they sat together by the fire:</p>

<p>"Have you noticed the way the children listen when
the talk turns to what used to be on Earth, what might
have been on Athena, and what would be if only we
could find a way to escape from Ragnarok?"</p>

<p>"I've noticed," he said.</p>

<p>"These stories already contain the goal for the future
generations," West went on. "Someday, somehow, they
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p061">p.&nbsp;61</a></span>
will go to Athena, to kill the Gerns there and free the
Terran slaves and reclaim Athena as their own."</p>

<p>He had listened to them talk of the interstellar flight
to Athena as they sat by their fires and worked at making
bows and arrows. It was only a dream they held, yet
without that dream there would be nothing before them
but the vision of generation after generation living and
dying on a world that could never give them more than
existence.</p>

<p>The dream was needed. But it, alone, was not enough.
How long, on Earth, had it been from the Neolithic age
to advanced civilization&mdash;how long from the time men
were ready to leave their caves until they were ready to
go to the stars?</p>

<p>Twelve thousand years.</p>

<p>There were men and women among the Rejects who
had been specialists in various fields. There were a few
books that had survived the trampling of the unicorns
and others could be written with ink made from the
black lance tree bark upon parchment made from the
thin inner skin of unicorn hides.</p>

<p>The knowledge contained in the books and the learning
of the Rejects still living should be preserved for the
future generations. With the help of that learning perhaps
they really could, someday, somehow, escape from
their prison and make Athena their own.</p>

<p>He told West of what he had been thinking. "We'll
have to start a school," he said. "This winter&mdash;tomorrow."</p>

<p>West nodded in agreement. "And the writings should
be commenced as soon as possible. Some of the textbooks
will require more time to write than Ragnarok will give
the authors."</p>

<p>A school for the children was started the next day and
the writing of the books began. The parchment books
would serve two purposes. One would be to teach the
future generations things that would not only help them
survive but would help them create a culture of their
own as advanced as the harsh environment and scanty
resources of Ragnarok permitted. The other would be
to warn them of the danger of a return of the Gerns and
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p062">p.&nbsp;62</a></span>
to teach them all that was known about Gerns and their
weapons.</p>

<p>Lake's main contribution would be a lengthy book:
<span style="font-variant: small-caps;">terran spaceships; types and operation</span>. He postponed
its writing, however, to first produce a much smaller
book but one that might well be more important: <span style="font-variant: small-caps;">interior
features of a gern cruiser</span>. Terran Intelligence knew a
little about Gern cruisers and as second-in-command of
the <i>Constellation</i> he had seen and studied a copy of that
report. He had an excellent memory for such things,
almost photographic, and he wrote the text and drew a
multitude of sketches.</p>

<p>He shook his head ruefully at the result. The text was
good but, for clarity, the accompanying illustrations
should be accurate and in perspective. And he was definitely
not an artist.</p>

<p>He discovered that Craig could take a pen in his
scarred, powerful hand and draw with the neat precision
of a professional artist. He turned the sketches over to
him, together with the mass of specifications. Since it
might someday be of such vital importance, he would
make four copies of it. The text was given to a teen-age
girl, who would make three more copies of it....</p>

<p>Four days later Schroeder handed Lake a text with
some rough sketches. The title was: <span style="font-variant: small-caps;">operation of gern
blasters</span>.</p>

<p>Not even Intelligence had ever been able to examine
a Gern hand blaster. But a man named Schrader, on
Venus, had killed a Gern with his own blaster and then
disappeared with both infuriated Gerns and Gern-intimidated
Venusian police in pursuit. There had been a high
reward for his capture....</p>

<p>He looked it over and said, "I was counting on you
giving us this."</p>

<p>Only the barest trace of surprise showed on Schroeder's
face but his eyes were intently watching Lake. "So you
knew all the time who I was?"</p>

<p>"I knew."</p>

<p>"Did anyone else on the <i>Constellation</i> know?"</p>

<p>"You were recognized by one of the ship's officers. You
would have been tried in two more days."</p>

<p><span class='pagenumber'><a name="p063">p.&nbsp;63</a></span></p>

<p>"I see," Schroeder said. "And since I was guilty and
couldn't be returned to Earth or Venus I'd have been
executed on the <i>Constellation</i>." He smiled sardonically.
"And you, as second-in-command, would have been my
execution's master of ceremonies."</p>

<p>Lake put the parchment sheets back together in their
proper order. "Sometimes," he said, "a ship's officer has
to do things that are contrary to all his own wishes."</p>

<p>Schroeder drew a deep breath, his face sombre with the
memories he had kept to himself.</p>

<p>"It was two years ago when the Gerns were still talking
friendship to the Earth government while they shoved
the colonists around on Venus. This Gern ... there was
a girl there and he thought he could do what he wanted
to her because he was a mighty Gern and she was nothing.
He did. That's why I killed him. I had to kill two
Venusian police to get away&mdash;that's where I put the rope
around my neck."</p>

<p>"It's not what we did but what we do that we'll live
or die by on Ragnarok," Lake said. He handed Schroeder
the sheets of parchment. "Tell Craig to make at least
four copies of this. Someday our knowledge of Gern
blasters may be something else we'll live or die by."</p>

<hr />

<p>The school and writing were interrupted by the spring
hunting. Craig made his journey to the Plateau's snow-capped
mountain but he was unable to keep his promise
to prospect it. The plateau was perhaps ten thousand
feet in elevation and the mountain rose another ten
thousand feet above the plateau. No human could climb
such a mountain in a 1.5 gravity.</p>

<p>"I tried," he told Lake wearily when he came back.
"Damn it, I never tried harder at anything in my life. It
was just too much for me. Maybe some of the young ones
will be better adapted and can do it when they grow up."</p>

<p>Craig brought back several sheets of unusually transparent
mica, each sheet a foot in diameter, and a dozen
large water-clear quartz crystals.</p>

<p>"Float, from higher up on the mountain," he said. "The
mica and crystals are in place up there if we could only
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p064">p.&nbsp;64</a></span>
reach them. Other minerals, too&mdash;I panned traces in the
canyon bottoms. But no iron."</p>

<p>Lake examined the sheets of mica. "We could make
windows for the outer caves of these," he said. "Have
them double thickness with a wide air space between,
for insulation. As for the quartz crystals...."</p>

<p>"Optical instruments," Craig said. "Binoculars, microscopes&mdash;it
would take us a long time to learn how to make
glass as clear and flawless as those crystals. But we have
no way of cutting and grinding them."</p>

<p>Craig went to the east that fall and to the west the
next spring. He returned from the trip to the west with
a twisted knee that would never let him go prospecting
again.</p>

<p>"It will take years to find the metals we need," he said.
"The indications are that we never will but I wanted
to keep on trying. Now, my damned knee has me chained
to these caves...."</p>

<p>He reconciled himself to his lameness and confinement
as best he could and finished his textbook: <span style="font-variant: small-caps;">geology and
mineral identification</span>.</p>

<p>He also taught a geology class during the winters. It
was in the winter of the year four on Ragnarok that a
nine-year-old boy entered his class; the silent, scar-faced
Billy Humbolt.</p>

<p>He was by far the youngest of Craig's students, and
the most attentive. Lake was present one day when Craig
asked, curiously:</p>

<p>"It's not often a boy your age is so interested in mineralogy
and geology, Billy. Is there something more than
just interest?"</p>

<p>"I have to learn all about minerals," Billy said with
matter-of-fact seriousness, "so that when I'm grown I
can find the metals for us to make a ship."</p>

<p>"And then?" Craig asked.</p>

<p>"And then we'd go to Athena, to kill the Gerns who
caused my mother to die, and my grandfather, and Julia,
and all the others. And to free my father and the other
slaves if they're still alive."</p>

<p>"I see," Craig said.</p>

<p>He did not smile. His face was shadowed and old as
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p065">p.&nbsp;65</a></span>
he looked at the boy and beyond him; seeing again, perhaps,
the frail blonde girl and the two children that the
first quick, violent months had taken from him.</p>

<p>"I hope you succeed," he said. "I wish I was young so
I could dream of the same thing. But I'm not ... so
let's get back to the identification of the ores that will be
needed to make a ship to go to Athena and to make
blasters to kill Gerns after you get there."</p>

<p>Lake had a corral built early the following spring,
with camouflaged wings, to trap some of the woods goats
when they came. It would be an immense forward step
toward conquering their new environment if they could
domesticate the goats and have goat herds near the caves
all through the year. Gathering enough grass to last a herd
of goats through the winter would be a problem&mdash;but
first, before they worried about that, they would have to
see if the goats could survive the summer and winter
extremes of heat and cold.</p>

<p>They trapped ten goats that spring. They built them
brush sunshades&mdash;before summer was over the winds
would have stripped the trees of most of their dry, brown
leaves&mdash;and a stream of water was diverted through the
corral.</p>

<p>It was all work in vain. The goats died from the heat
in early summer, together with the young that had been
born.</p>

<p>When fall came they trapped six more goats. They built
them shelters that would be as warm as possible and
carried them a large supply of the tall grass from along
the creek banks; enough to last them through the winter.
But the cold was too much for the goats and the second
blizzard killed them all.</p>

<p>The next spring and fall, and with much more difficulty,
they tried the experiment with pairs of unicorns.
The results were the same.</p>

<p>Which meant they would remain a race of hunters.
Ragnarok would not permit them to be herdsmen.</p>

<hr />

<p>The years went by, each much like the one before it
but for the rapid aging of the Old Ones, as Lake and the
others called themselves, and the growing up of the
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p066">p.&nbsp;66</a></span>
Young Ones. No woman among the Old Ones could any
longer have children, but six more normal, healthy children
had been born. Like the first two, they were not
affected by the gravity as Earth-born babies had been.</p>

<p>Among the Young Ones, Lake saw, was a distinguishable
difference. Those who had been very young the day
the Gerns left them to die had adapted better than those
who had been a few years older.</p>

<p>The environment of Ragnarok had struck at the very
young with merciless savagery. It had subjected them to
a test of survival that was without precedent on Earth.
It had killed them by the hundreds but among them had
been those whose young flesh and blood and organs had
resisted death by adapting to the greatest extent possible.</p>

<p>The day of the Old Ones was almost done and the
future would soon be in the hands of the Young Ones.
They were the ninety unconquerables out of what had
been four thousand Rejects; the first generation of what
would be a new race.</p>

<p>It seemed to Lake that the years came and went ever
faster as the Old Ones dwindled in numbers at an accelerating
rate. Anders had died in the sixth year, his heart
failing him one night as he worked patiently in his crude
little laboratory at carrying on the work started by Chiara
to find a cure for the Hell Fever. Barber, trying to develop
a strain of herbs that would grow in the lower
elevation of the caves, was killed by a unicorn as he
worked in his test plot below the caves. Craig went limping
out one spring day on the eighth year to look at a
new mineral a hunter had found a mile from the caves.
A sudden cold rain blew up, chilling him before he could
return, and he died of Hell Fever the same day.</p>

<p>Schroeder was killed by prowlers the same year, dying
with his back to a tree and a bloody knife in his hand.
It was the way he would have wanted to go&mdash;once he
had said to Lake:</p>

<p>"When my times comes I would rather it be against
the prowlers. They fight hard and kill quick and then
they're through with you. They don't tear you up after
you're dead and slobber and gloat over the pieces, the
way the unicorns do."</p>

<p><span class='pagenumber'><a name="p067">p.&nbsp;67</a></span></p>

<p>The springs came a little earlier each year, the falls a
little later, and the observations showed the suns progressing
steadily northward. But the winters, though
shorter, were seemingly as cold as ever. The long summers
reached such a degree of heat on the ninth year that
Lake knew they could endure no more than two or three
years more of the increasing heat.</p>

<p>Then, in the summer of the tenth year, the tilting of
Ragnarok&mdash;the apparent northward progress of the suns&mdash;stopped.
They were in the middle of what Craig had
called Big Summer and they could endure it&mdash;just barely.
They would not have to leave the caves.</p>

<p>The suns started their drift southward. The observations
were continued and carefully recorded. Big Fall
was coming and behind it would be Big Winter.</p>

<p>Big Winter ... the threat of it worried Lake. How
far to the south would the suns go&mdash;how long would they
stay? Would the time come when the plateau would be
buried under hundreds of feet of snow and the caves
enclosed in glacial ice?</p>

<p>There was no way he could ever know or even guess.
Only those of the future would ever know.</p>

<p>On the twelfth year only Lake and West were left of
the Old Ones. By then there were eighty-three left of
the Young Ones, eight Ragnarok-born children of the
Old Ones and four Ragnarok-born children of the Young
Ones. Not counting himself and West, there were ninety-five
of them.</p>

<p>It was not many to be the beginnings of a race that
would face an ice age of unknown proportions and have
over them, always, the threat of a chance return of the
Gerns.</p>

<p>The winter of the fifteenth year came and he was truly
alone, the last of the Old Ones. White-haired and aged
far beyond his years, he was still leader. But that winter
he could do little other than sit by his fire and feel the
gravity dragging at his heart. He knew, long before spring,
that it was time he chose his successor.</p>

<p>He had hoped to live to see his son take his place&mdash;but
Jim was only thirteen. Among the others was one
he had been watching since the day he told Craig he
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p068">p.&nbsp;68</a></span>
would find metals to build a ship and kill the Gerns: Bill
Humbolt.</p>

<p>Bill Humbolt was not the oldest among those who
would make leaders but he was the most versatile of
them all, the most thoughtful and stubbornly determined.
He reminded Lake of that fierce old man who had been
his grandfather and had it not been for the scars that
twisted his face into grim ugliness he would have looked
much like him.</p>

<p>A violent storm was roaring outside the caves the
night he told the others that he wanted Bill Humbolt to
be his successor. There were no objections and, without
ceremony and with few words, he terminated his fifteen
years of leadership.</p>

<p>He left the others, his son among them, and went back
to the cave where he slept. His fire was low, down to
dying embers, but he was too tired to build it up again.
He lay down on his pallet and saw, with neither surprise
nor fear, that his time was much nearer than he
had thought. It was already at hand.</p>

<p>He lay back and let the lassitude enclose him, not
fighting it. He had done the best he could for the others
and now the weary journey was over.</p>

<p>His thoughts dissolved into the memory of the day
fifteen years before. The roaring of the storm became
the thunder of the Gern cruisers as they disappeared into
the gray sky. Four thousand Rejects stood in the cold
wind and watched them go, the children not yet understanding
that they had been condemned to die. Somehow,
his own son was among them&mdash;&mdash;</p>

<p>He tried feebly to rise. There was work to do&mdash;a lot
of work to do....</p>

<br />

<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p069">p.&nbsp;69</a></span>

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</div>

<h2>PART <span style="font-size: 225%;">2</span></h2>

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</div>

<br />

<p>It was early morning as Bill Humbolt sat by the
fire in his cave and studied the map Craig had made
of the plateau's mountain. Craig had left the mountain
nameless and he dipped his pen in ink to write: <i>Craig
Mountains</i>.</p>

<p>"Bill&mdash;&mdash;"</p>

<p>Delmont Anders entered very quietly, what he had to
tell already evident on his face.</p>

<p>"He died last night, Bill."</p>

<p>It was something he had been expecting to come at any
time but the lack of surprise did not diminish the sense
of loss. Lake had been the last of the Old Ones, the last
of those who had worked and fought and shortened the
years of their lives that the Young Ones might have a
chance to live. Now he was gone&mdash;now a brief era was
ended, a valiant, bloody chapter written and finished.</p>

<p>And he was the new leader who would decree how the
next chapter should be written, only four years older than
the boy who was looking at him with an unconscious appeal
for reassurance on his face....</p>

<p>"You'd better tell Jim," he said. "Then, a little later,
I want to talk to everyone about the things we'll start
doing as soon as spring comes."</p>

<p>"You mean, the hunting?" Delmont asked.</p>

<p>"No&mdash;more than just the hunting."</p>

<p>He sat for a while after Delmont left, looking back
down the years that had preceded that day, back to that
first morning on Ragnarok.</p>

<p><span class='pagenumber'><a name="p070">p.&nbsp;70</a></span></p>

<p>He had set a goal for himself that morning when he
left his toy bear in the dust behind him and walked beside
Julia into the new and perilous way of life. He had
promised himself that some day he would watch the
Gerns die and beg for mercy as they died and he would
give them the same mercy they had given his mother.</p>

<p>As he grew older he realized that his hatred, alone,
was a futile thing. There would have to be a way of
leaving Ragnarok and there would have to be weapons
with which to fight the Gerns. These would be things
impossible and beyond his reach unless he had the help
of all the others in united, coordinated effort.</p>

<p>To make certain of that united effort he would have
to be their leader. So for eleven years he had studied
and trained until there was no one who could use a bow
or spear quite as well as he could, no one who could travel
as far in a day or spot a unicorn ambush as quickly. And
there was no one, with the exception of George Ord, who
had studied as many textbooks as he had.</p>

<p>He had reached his first goal&mdash;he was leader. For all
of them there existed the second goal: the hope of someday
leaving Ragnarok and taking Athena from the Gerns.
For many of them, perhaps, it was only wishful dreaming
but for him it was the prime driving force of his life.</p>

<p>There was so much for them to do and their lives were
so short in which to do it. For so long as he was leader
they would not waste a day in idle wishing....</p>

<hr />

<p>When the others were gathered to hear what he had to
say he spoke to them:</p>

<p>"We're going to continue where the Old Ones had to
leave off. We're better adapted than they were and we're
going to find metals to make a ship if there are any to be
found.</p>

<p>"Somewhere on Ragnarok, on the northwest side of a
range similar to the Craig Mountains on the plateau, is
a deep valley that the Dunbar Expedition called the
Chasm. They didn't investigate it closely since their instruments
showed no metals there but they saw strata in
one place that was red; an iron discoloration. Maybe we
can find a vein there that was too small for them to have
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p071">p.&nbsp;71</a></span>
paid any attention to. So we'll go over the Craigs as soon
as the snow melts from them."</p>

<p>"That will be in early summer," George Ord said, his
black eyes thoughtful. "Whoever goes will have to time
their return for either just before the prowlers and unicorns
come back from the north or wait until they've all
migrated down off the plateau."</p>

<p>It was something Humbolt had been thinking about and
wishing they could remedy. Men could elude unicorn
attacks wherever there were trees large enough to offer
safety and even prowler attacks could be warded off
wherever there were trees for refuge; spears holding
back the prowlers who would climb the trees while arrows
picked off the ones on the ground. But there were no
trees on the plateau, and to be caught by a band of
prowlers or unicorns there was certain death for any
small party of two or three. For that reason no small
parties had ever gone up on the plateau except when the
unicorns and prowlers were gone or nearly so. It was an
inconvenience and it would continue for as long as their
weapons were the slow-to-reload bows.</p>

<p>"You're supposed to be our combination inventor-craftsman,"
he said to George. "No one else can compare
with you in that respect. Besides, you're not exactly enthusiastic
about such hard work as mountain climbing.
So from now on you'll do the kind of work you're best
fitted for. Your first job is to make us a better bow. Make
it like a crossbow, with a sliding action to draw and cock
the string and with a magazine of arrows mounted on
top of it."</p>

<p>George studied the idea thoughtfully. "The general
principle is simple," he said. "I'll see what I can do.</p>"

<p>"How many of us will go over the Craig Mountains,
Bill?" Dan Barber asked.</p>

<p>"You and I," Humbolt answered. "A three-man party
under Bob Craig will go into the Western Hills and another
party under Johnny Stevens will go into the Eastern
Hills."</p>

<p>He looked toward the adjoining cave where the guns
had been stored for so long, coated with unicorn tallow to
protect them from rust.</p>

<p><span class='pagenumber'><a name="p072">p.&nbsp;72</a></span></p>

<p>"We could make gun powder if we could find a deposit
of saltpeter. We already know where there's a little sulphur.
The guns would have to be converted to flintlocks,
though, since we don't have what we need for cartridge
priming material. Worse, we'd have to use ceramic bullets.
They would be inefficient&mdash;too light, and destructive to
the bores. But we would need powder for mining if we
ever found any iron. And, if we can't have metal bullets
to shoot the Gerns, we can have bombs to blast them
with."</p>

<p>"Suppose," Johnny Stevens said, "that we never do
find the metals to make a ship. How will we ever leave
Ragnarok if that happens?"</p>

<p>"There's another way&mdash;a possible way&mdash;of leaving here
without a ship of our own. If there are no metals we'll
have to try it."</p>

<p>"Why wait?" Bob Craig demanded. "Why not try it
now?"</p>

<p>"Because the odds would be about ten thousand to one
in favor of the Gerns. But we'll try it if everything else
fails."</p>

<hr />

<p>George made, altered, and rejected four different types
of crossbows before he perfected a reloading bow that
met his critical approval. He brought it to where Humbolt
stood outside the caves early one spring day when
the grass was sending up the first green shoots on the
southern hillsides and the long winter was finally dying.</p>

<p>"Here it is," he said, handing Humbolt the bow. "Try
it."</p>

<p>He took it, noting the fine balance of it. Projecting
down from the center of the bow, at right angles to it,
was a stock shaped to fit the grip of the left hand. Under
the crossbar was a sliding stock for the right hand, shaped
like the butt of a pistol and fitted with a trigger. Mounted
slightly above and to one side of the crossbar was a
magazine containing ten short arrows.</p>

<p>The pistol grip was in position near the forestock. He
pulled it back the length of the crossbar and it brought
the string with it, stretching it taut. There was a click
as the trigger mechanism locked the bowstring in place
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p073">p.&nbsp;73</a></span>
and at the same time a concealed spring arrangement
shoved an arrow into place against the string.</p>

<p>He took quick aim at a distant tree and pressed the
trigger. There was a twang as the arrow was ejected. He
jerked the sliding pistol grip forward and back to reload,
pressing the trigger an instant later. Another arrow went
its way.</p>

<p>By the time he had fired the tenth arrow in the magazine
he was shooting at the rate of one arrow per second.
On the trunk of the distant tree, like a bristle of stiff
whiskers, the ten arrows were driven deep into the wood
in an area no larger than the chest of a prowler or head
of a unicorn.</p>

<p>"This is better than I hoped for," he said to George.
"One man with one of these would equal six men with
ordinary bows."</p>

<p>"I'm going to add another feature," George said. "Bundles
of arrows, ten to the bundle in special holders, to
carry in the quivers. To reload the magazine you'd just
slap down a new bundle of arrows, in no more time than
it would take to put one arrow in an ordinary bow. I figured
that with practice a man should be able to get off
forty arrows in not much more than twenty seconds."</p>

<p>George took the bow and went back in the cave to add
his new feature. Humbolt stared after him, thinking, <i>If
he can make something like that out of wood and unicorn
gut, what would he be able to give us if he could have
metal?</i></p>

<p>Perhaps George would never have the opportunity to
show what he could do with metal. But Humbolt already
felt sure that George's genius would, if it ever became
necessary, make possible the alternate plan for leaving
Ragnarok.</p>

<hr />

<p>The weeks dragged into months and at last enough
snow was gone from the Craigs that Humbolt and Dan
Barber could start. They met no opposition. The prowlers
had long since disappeared into the north and the unicorns
were very scarce. They had no occasion to test
the effectiveness of the new automatic crossbows in combat;
a lack of opportunity that irked Barber.</p>

<p><span class='pagenumber'><a name="p074">p.&nbsp;74</a></span></p>

<p>"Any other time, if we had ordinary bows," he complained,
"the unicorns would be popping up to charge
us from all directions."</p>

<p>"Don't fret," Humbolt consoled him. "This fall, when
we come back, they will be."</p>

<p>They reached the mountain and stopped near its foot
where a creek came down, its water high and muddy
with melting snows. There they hunted until they had
obtained all the meat they could carry. They would see
no more game when they went up the mountain's canyons.
A poisonous weed replaced most of the grass in all
the canyons and the animals of Ragnarok had learned
long before to shun the mountain.</p>

<p>They found the canyon that Craig and his men had
tried to explore and started up it. It was there that Craig
had discovered the quartz and mica and so far as he had
been able to tell the head of that canyon would be the
lowest of all the passes over the mountain.</p>

<p>The canyon went up the mountain diagonally so that
the climb was not steep although it was constant. They
began to see mica and quartz crystals in the creek bed
and at noon on the second day they passed the last
stunted tree. Nothing grew higher than that point but
the thorny poison weeds and they were scarce.</p>

<p>The air was noticeably thinner there and their burdens
heavier. A short distance beyond they came to a small
rock monument; Craig's turn-back point.</p>

<p>The next day they found the quartz crystals in place.
A mile farther was the vein the mica had come from. Of
the other minerals Craig had hoped to find, however,
there were only traces.</p>

<p>The fourth day was an eternity of struggling up the
now-steeper canyon under loads that seemed to weigh
hundreds of pounds; forcing their protesting legs to carry
them fifty steps at a time, at the end of which they would
stop to rest while their lungs labored to suck in the thin
air in quick, panting breaths.</p>

<p>It would have been much easier to have gone around
the mountain. But the Chasm was supposed to be like a
huge cavity scooped out of the plateau beyond the mountain,
rimmed with sheer cliffs a mile high. Only on the
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p075">p.&nbsp;75</a></span>
side next to the mountain was there a slope leading
down into it.</p>

<p>They stopped for the night where the creek ended in
a small spring. There the snow still clung to the canyon's
walls and there the canyon curved, offering them the
promise of the summit just around the bend as it had
been doing all day.</p>

<p>The sun was hot and bright the next morning as they
made their slow way on again. The canyon straightened,
the steep walls of it flattening out to make a pair of
ragged shoulders with a saddle between them.</p>

<p>They climbed to the summit of the saddle and there,
suddenly before them, was the other side of the world&mdash;and
the Chasm.</p>

<p>Far below them was a plateau, stretching endlessly
like the one they had left behind them. But the chasm
dominated all else. It was a gigantic, sheer-walled valley,
a hundred miles long by forty miles wide, sunk deep
in the plateau with the tops of its mile-high walls level
with the floor of the plateau. The mountain under them
dropped swiftly away, sloping down and down to the
level of the plateau and then on, down and down again,
to the bottom of the chasm that was so deep its floor
was half hidden by the morning shadows.</p>

<p>"My God!" Barber said. "It must be over three miles
under us to the bottom, on the vertical. Ten miles of
thirty-three per cent grade&mdash;if we go down we'll never
get out again."</p>

<p>"You can turn back here if you want to," Humbolt
said.</p>

<p>"Turn back?" Barber's red whiskers seemed to bristle.
"Who in hell said anything about turning back?"</p>

<p>"Nobody," Humbolt said, smiling a little at Barber's
quick flash of anger.</p>

<p>He studied the chasm, wishing that they could have
some way of cutting the quartz crystals and making
binoculars. It was a long way to look with the naked
eye....</p>

<p>Here and there the chasm thrust out arms into the
plateau. All the arms were short, however, and even at
their heads the cliffs were vertical. The morning shadows
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p076">p.&nbsp;76</a></span>
prevented a clear view of much of the chasm and he
could see no sign of the red-stained strata that they were
searching for.</p>

<p>In the southwest corner of the chasm, far away and
almost imperceptible, he saw a faint cloud rising up from
the chasm's floor. It was impossible to tell what it was
and it faded away as he watched.</p>

<p>Barber saw it, too, and said, "It looked like smoke. Do
you suppose there could be people&mdash;or some kind of intelligent
things&mdash;living down there?"</p>

<p>"It might have been the vapor from hot springs, condensed
by the cool morning air," he said. "Whatever it
was, we'll look into it when we get there."</p>

<p>The climb down the steep slope into the chasm was
swifter than that up the canyon but no more pleasant.
Carrying a heavy pack down such a grade exerted a torturous
strain upon the backs of the legs.</p>

<p>The heat increased steadily as they descended. They
reached the floor of the valley the next day and the
noonday heat was so great that Humbolt wondered if
they might not have trapped themselves into what the
summer would soon transform into a monstrous oven
where no life at all could exist. There could never be any
choice, of course&mdash;the mountains were passable only when
the weather was hot.</p>

<p>The floor of the valley was silt, sand and gravel&mdash;they
would find nothing there. They set out on a circuit of
the chasm's walls, following along close to the base.</p>

<p>In many places the mile-high walls were without a
single ledge to break their vertical faces. When they
came to the first such place they saw that the ground
near the base was riddled with queer little pits, like tiny
craters of the moon. As they looked there was a crack
like a cannon shot and the ground beside them erupted
into an explosion of sand and gravel. When the dust had
cleared away there was a new crater where none had
been before.</p>

<p>Humbolt wiped the blood from his face where a flying
fragment had cut it and said, "The heat of the sun loosens
rocks up on the rim. When one falls a mile in a one point
five gravity, it's traveling like a meteor."</p>

<p><span class='pagenumber'><a name="p077">p.&nbsp;77</a></span></p>

<p>They went on, through the danger zone. As with the
peril of the chasm's heat, there was no choice. Only by
observing the material that littered the base of the cliffs
could they know what minerals, if any, might be above
them.</p>

<p>On the fifteenth day they saw the red-stained stratum.
Humbolt quickened his pace, hurrying forward in advance
of Barber. The stratum was too high up on the wall
to be reached but it was not necessary to examine it in
place&mdash;the base of the cliff was piled thick with fragments
from it.</p>

<p>He felt the first touch of discouragement as he looked
at them. They were a sandstone, light in weight. The iron
present was only what the Dunbar Expedition had
thought it to be; a mere discoloration.</p>

<p>They made their way slowly along the foot of the cliff,
examining piece after piece in the hope of finding something
more than iron stains. There was no variation, however,
and a mile farther on they came to the end of the
red stratum. Beyond that point the rocks were gray, without
a vestige of iron.</p>

<p>"So that," Barber said, looking back the way they had
come, "is what we were going to build a ship out of&mdash;iron
stains!"</p>

<p>Humbolt did not answer. For him it was more than
a disappointment. It was the death of a dream he had
held since the year he was nine and had heard that the
Dunbar Expedition had seen iron-stained rock in a deep
chasm&mdash;the only iron-stained rock on the face of Ragnarok.
Surely, he had thought, there would be enough
iron there to build a small ship. For eleven years he
had worked toward the day when he would find it. Now,
he had found it&mdash;and it was nothing. The ship was as
far away as ever....</p>

<p>But discouragement was as useless as iron-stained sandstone.
He shook it off and turned to Barber.</p>

<p>"Let's go," he said. "Maybe we'll find something by
the time we circle the chasm."</p>

<p>For seven days they risked the danger of death from
downward plunging rocks and found nothing. On the
eighth day they found the treasure that was not treasure.</p>

<p><span class='pagenumber'><a name="p078">p.&nbsp;78</a></span></p>

<p>They stopped for the evening just within the mouth
of one of the chasm's tributaries. Humbolt went out to
get a drink where a trickle of water ran through the
sand and as he knelt down he saw the flash of something
red under him, almost buried in the sand.</p>

<p>He lifted it out. It was a stone half the size of his
hand; darkly translucent and glowing in the light of
the setting sun like blood.</p>

<p>It was a ruby.</p>

<p>He looked, and saw another gleam a little farther up
the stream. It was another ruby, almost as large as the
first one. Near it was a flawless blue sapphire. Scattered
here and there were smaller rubies and sapphires, down
to the size of grains of sand.</p>

<p>He went farther upstream and saw specimens of still
another stone. They were colorless but burning with internal
fires. He rubbed one of them hard across the ruby
he still carried and there was a gritting sound as it cut
a deep scratch in the ruby.</p>

<p>"I'll be damned," he said aloud.</p>

<p>There was only one stone hard enough to cut a ruby&mdash;the
diamond.</p>

<hr />

<p>It was almost dark when he returned to where Barber
was resting beside their packs.</p>

<p>"What did you find to keep you out so late?" Barber
asked curiously.</p>

<p>He dropped a double handful of rubies, sapphires and
diamonds at Barber's feet.</p>

<p>"Take a look," he said. "On a civilized world what
you see there would buy us a ship without our having
to lift a finger. Here they're just pretty rocks.</p>

<p>"Except the diamonds," he added "At least we now
have something to cut those quartz crystals with."</p>

<hr />

<p>They took only a few of the rubies and sapphires the
next morning but they gathered more of the diamonds,
looking in particular for the gray-black and ugly but very
hard and tough carbonado variety. Then they resumed
their circling of the chasm's walls.</p>

<p>The heat continued its steady increase as the days
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p079">p.&nbsp;79</a></span>
went by. Only at night was there any relief from it and
the nights were growing swiftly shorter as the blue sun
rose earlier each morning. When the yellow sun rose
the chasm became a blazing furnace around the edge
of which they crept like ants in some gigantic oven.</p>

<p>There was no life in any form to be seen; no animal or
bush or blade of grass. There was only the barren floor
of the chasm, made a harsh green shade by the two suns
and writhing and undulating with heat waves like a
nightmare sea, while above them the towering cliffs
shimmered, too, and sometimes seemed to be leaning
far out over their heads and already falling down upon
them.</p>

<p>They found no more minerals of any kind and they
came at last to the place where they had seen the smoke
or vapor.</p>

<hr />

<p>There the walls of the chasm drew back to form a
little valley a mile long by half a mile wide. The walls
did not drop vertically to the floor there but sloped out
at the base into a fantastic formation of natural roofs
and arches that reached almost to the center of the valley
from each side. Green things grew in the shade under
the arches and sparkling waterfalls cascaded down over
many of them. A small creek carried the water out of the
valley, going out into the chasm a little way before the
hot sands absorbed it.</p>

<p>They stood and watched for some time, but there was no
movement in the valley other than the waving of the
green plants as a breeze stirred them. Once the breeze
shifted to bring them the fresh, sweet scent of growing
things and urge them to come closer.</p>

<p>"A place like that doesn't belong here," Barber said in
a low voice. "But it's there. I wonder what else is there?"</p>

<p>"Shade and cool water," Humbolt said. "And maybe
things that don't like strangers. Let's go find out."</p>

<p>They watched warily as they walked, their crossbows
in their hands. At the closer range they saw that the
roofs and arches were the outer remains of a system of
natural caves that went back into the valley's walls. The
green vegetation grew wherever the roofs gave part-time
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p080">p.&nbsp;80</a></span>
shade, consisting mainly of a holly-leafed bush with
purple flowers and a tall plant resembling corn.</p>

<p>Under some of the roofs the corn was mature, the
orange colored grains visible. Under others it was no
more than half grown. He saw the reason and said to
Barber:</p>

<p>"There are both warm and cold springs here. The
plants watered by the warm springs would grow almost
the year around; the ones watered by the cold springs
only in the summer. And what we saw from the mountain
top would have been vapor rising from the warm
springs."</p>

<p>They passed under arch after arch without seeing any
life. When they came to the valley's upper end and still
had seen nothing it seemed evident that there was little
danger of an encounter with any intelligent-and-hostile
creatures. Apparently nothing at all lived in the little
valley.</p>

<p>Humbolt stopped under a broad arch where the breeze
was made cool and moist by the spray of water it had
come through. Barber went on, to look under the adjoining
arch.</p>

<p>Caves led into the wall from both arches and as he
stood there Humbolt saw something lying in the mouth
of the nearest cave. It was a little mound of orange
corn; lying in a neat pile as though whatever had left
it there had intended to come back after it.</p>

<p>He looked toward the other arch but Barber was somewhere
out of sight. He doubted that whatever had left
the corn could be much of a menace&mdash;dangerous animals
were more apt to eat flesh than corn&mdash;but he went to
the cave with his crossbow ready.</p>

<p>He stopped at the mouth of the cave to let his eyes
become accustomed to the darkness inside it. As he did
so the things inside came out to meet him.</p>

<p>They emerged into full view; six little animals the size
of squirrels, each of them a different color. They walked
on short hind legs like miniature bears and the dark
eyes in the bear-chipmunk faces were fixed on him with
intense interest. They stopped five feet in front of him,
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p081">p.&nbsp;81</a></span>
there to stand in a neat row and continue the fascinated
staring up at him.</p>

<p>The yellow one in the center scratched absently at its
stomach with a furry paw and he lowered the bow, feeling
a little foolish at having bothered to raise it against
animals so small and harmless.</p>

<p>Then he half brought it up again as the yellow one
opened its mouth and said in a tone that held distinct
anticipation:</p>

<p>"I think we'll eat you for supper."</p>

<p>He darted glances to right and left but there was
nothing near him except the six little animals. The yellow
one, having spoken, was staring silently at him
with only curiosity on its furry face. He wondered if
some miasma or some scent from the vegetation in the
valley had warped his mind into sudden insanity and
asked:</p>

<p>"You think you'll do what?"</p>

<p>It opened its mouth again, to stutter, "I&mdash;I&mdash;&mdash;" Then,
with a note of alarm, <i>"Hey...."</i></p>

<p>It said no more and the next sound was that of Barber
hurrying toward him and calling, "Hey&mdash;Bill&mdash;where
are you?"</p>

<p>"Here," he answered, and he was already sure that he
knew why the little animal had spoken to him.</p>

<p>Barber came up and saw the six chipmunk-bears. "Six
of them!" he exclaimed. "There's one in the next cave&mdash;the
damned thing spoke to me!"</p>

<p>"I thought so," he replied. "You told it we'd have it
for supper and then it said, 'You think you'll do what?'
didn't it?"</p>

<p>Barber's face showed surprise. "How did you know
that?"</p>

<p>"They're telepathic between one another," he said.
"The yellow one there repeated what the one you spoke
to heard you say and it repeated what the yellow one
heard me say. It has to be telepathy between them."</p>

<p>"Telepathy&mdash;&mdash;" Barber stared at the six little animals,
who stared back with their fascinated curiosity undiminished.
"But why should they want to repeat aloud what
they receive telepathically?"</p>

<p><span class='pagenumber'><a name="p082">p.&nbsp;82</a></span></p>

<p>"I don't know. Maybe at some stage in their evolution
only part of them were telepaths and the telepaths broadcasted
danger warnings to the others that way. So far
as that goes, why does a parrot repeat what it hears?"</p>

<p>There was a scurry of movement behind Barber and
another of the little animals, a white one, hurried past
them. It went to the yellow one and they stood close
together as they stared up. Apparently they were
mates....</p>

<p>"That's the other one&mdash;those are the two that mocked
us," Barber said, and thereby gave them the name by
which they would be known: mockers.</p>

<hr />

<p>The mockers were fresh meat&mdash;but they accepted the
humans with such friendliness and trust that Barber lost
all his desire to have one for supper or for any other time.
They had a limited supply of dried meat and there would
be plenty of orange corn. They would not go hungry.</p>

<p>They discovered that the mockers had living quarters
in both the cool caves and the ones warmed by the hot
springs. There was evidence that they hibernated during
the winters in the warm caves.</p>

<p>There were no minerals in the mockers' valley and
they set out to continue their circuit of the chasm. They
did not get far until the heat had become so great that
the chasm's tributaries began going dry. They turned
back then, to wait in the little valley until the fall rains
came.</p>

<hr />

<p>When the long summer was ended by the first rain
they resumed their journey. They took a supply of the
orange corn and two of the mockers; the yellow one
and its mate. The other mockers watched them leave,
standing silent and solemn in front of their caves as
though they feared they might never see their two fellows
or the humans again.</p>

<p>The two mockers were pleasant company, riding on
their shoulders and chattering any nonsense that came
to mind. And sometimes saying things that were not at
all nonsense, making Humbolt wonder if mockers could
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p083">p.&nbsp;83</a></span>
partly read human minds and dimly understand the
meaning of some of the things they said.</p>

<p>They found a place where saltpeter was very thinly
and erratically distributed. They scraped off all the films
of it that were visible and procured a small amount.
They completed their circuit and reached the foot of
the long, steep slope of the Craigs without finding anything
more.</p>

<p>It was an awesome climb that lay before them; up a
grade so steep and barred with so many low ledges that
when their legs refused to carry them farther they
crawled. The heat was still very serious and there would
be no water until they came to the spring beyond the
mountain's summit. A burning wind, born on the blazing
floor of the chasm, followed them up the mountain
all day. Their leather canteens were almost dry when
night came and they were no more than a third of the
way to the top.</p>

<p>The mockers had become silent as the elevation increased
and when they stopped for the night Humbolt
saw that they would never live to cross the mountain.
They were breathing fast, their hearts racing, as they
tried to extract enough oxygen from the thin air. They
drank a few drops of water but they would not touch
the corn he offered them.</p>

<p>The white mocker died at midmorning the next day
as they stopped for a rest. The yellow one crawled feebly
to her side and died a few minutes later.</p>

<p>"So that's that," Humbolt said, looking down at them.
"The only things on Ragnarok that ever trusted us and
wanted to be our friends&mdash;and we killed them."</p>

<p>They drank the last of their water and went on. They
made dry camp that night and dreams of cold streams of
water tormented their exhausted sleep. The next day
was a hellish eternity in which they walked and fell and
crawled and walked and fell again.</p>

<p>Barber weakened steadily, his breathing growing to a
rattling panting. He spoke once that afternoon, to try to
smile with dry, swollen lips and say between his panting
gasps, "It would be hell&mdash;to have to die&mdash;so thirsty like
this."</p>

<p><span class='pagenumber'><a name="p084">p.&nbsp;84</a></span></p>

<p>After that he fell with increasing frequency, each time
slower and weaker in getting up again. Half a mile short
of the summit he fell for the last time. He tried to get
up, failed, and tried to crawl. He failed at that, too, and
collapsed face down in the rocky soil.</p>

<p>Humbolt went to him and said between his own labored
intakes of breath, "Wait, Dan&mdash;I'll go on&mdash;bring
you back water."</p>

<p>Barber raised himself with a great effort and looked
up. "No use," he said. "My heart&mdash;too much&mdash;&mdash;"</p>

<p>He fell forward again and that time he was very still,
his desperate panting no more.</p>

<hr />

<p>It seemed to Humbolt that it was half a lifetime later
that he finally reached the spring and the cold, clear
water. He drank, the most ecstatic pleasure he had ever
experienced in his life. Then the pleasure drained away
as he seemed to see Dan Barber trying to smile and
seemed to hear him say, "It would be hell&mdash;to have to
die&mdash;so thirsty like this."</p>

<p>He rested for two days before he was in condition to
continue on his way. He reached the plateau and saw
that the woods goats had been migrating south for some
time. On the second morning he climbed up a gentle
roll in the plain and met three unicorns face to face.</p>

<p>They charged at once, squealing with anticipation.
Had he been equipped with an ordinary bow he would
have been killed within seconds. But the automatic
crossbow poured a rain of arrows into the faces of the
unicorns that caused them to swing aside in pain and
enraged astonishment. The moment they had swung
enough to expose the area just behind their heads the
arrows became fatal.</p>

<p>One unicorn escaped, three arrows bristling in its face.
It watched him from a distance for a little while, squealing
and shaking its head in baffled fury. Then it turned
and disappeared over a swell in the plain, running like
a deer.</p>

<p>He resumed his southward march, hurrying faster than
before. The unicorn had headed north and that could
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p085">p.&nbsp;85</a></span>
be for but one purpose: to bring enough reinforcements
to finish the job.</p>

<hr />

<p>He reached the caves at night. No one was up but
George Ord, working late in his combination workshop-laboratory.</p>

<p>George looked up at the sound of his entrance and
saw that he was alone. "So Dan didn't make it?" he asked.</p>

<p>"The chasm got him," he answered. And then, wearily,
"The chasm&mdash;we found the damned thing."</p>

<p>"The red stratum&mdash;&mdash;"</p>

<p>"It was only iron stains."</p>

<p>"I made a little pilot smelter while you were gone,"
George said. "I was hoping the red stratum would be ore.
The other prospecting parties&mdash;none of them found anything."</p>

<p>"We'll try again next spring," he said. "We'll find it
somewhere, no matter how long it takes."</p>

<p>"Our time may not be so long. The observations show
the sun to be farther south than ever."</p>

<p>"Then we'll make double use of the time we do have.
We'll cut the hunting parties to the limit and send out
more prospecting parties. We're going to have a ship to
meet the Gerns again."</p>

<p>"Sometimes," George said, his black eyes studying him
thoughtfully, "I think that's all you live for, Bill: for the
day when you can kill Gerns."</p>

<p>George said it as a statement of a fact, without censure,
but Humbolt could not keep an edge of harshness
out of his voice as he answered:</p>

<p>"For as long as I'm leader that's all we're all going
to live for."</p>

<p>He followed the game south that fall, taking with him
Bob Craig and young Anders. Hundreds of miles south
of the caves they came to the lowlands; a land of much
water and vegetation and vast herds of unicorns and
woods goats. It was an exceedingly dangerous country,
due to the concentration of unicorns and prowlers, and
only the automatic crossbows combined with never ceasing
vigilance enabled them to survive.</p>

<p>There they saw the crawlers; hideous things that
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p086">p.&nbsp;86</a></span>
crawled on multiple legs like three-ton centipedes, their
mouths set with six mandibles and dripping a stinking
saliva. The bite of a crawler was poisonous, instantly
paralyzing even to a unicorn, though not instantly killing
them. The crawlers ate their victims at once, however,
ripping the helpless and still living flesh from its
bones.</p>

<p>Although the unicorns feared the crawlers, the prowlers
hated them with a fanatical intensity and made use
of their superior quickness to kill every crawler they
found; ripping at the crawler until the crawler, in an
insanity of rage, bit itself and died of its own poison.</p>

<p>They had taken one of the powerful longbows with
them, in addition to their crossbows, and they killed a
crawler with it one day. As they did so a band of twenty
prowlers came suddenly upon them.</p>

<p>Twenty prowlers, with the advantage of surprise at
short range, could have slaughtered them. Instead, the
prowlers continued on their way without as much as a
challenging snarl.</p>

<p>"Now why," Bob Craig wondered, "did they do that?"</p>

<p>"They saw we had just killed a crawler," Humbolt said.
"The crawlers are their enemies and I guess letting us live
was their way of showing appreciation."</p>

<p>Their further explorations of the lowlands revealed no
minerals&mdash;nothing but alluvial material of unknown depth&mdash;and
there was no reason to stay longer except that return
to the caves was impossible until spring came. They
built attack-proof shelters in the trees and settled down
to wait out the winter.</p>

<p>They started north with the first wave of woods goats,
nothing but lack of success to show for their months of
time and effort.</p>

<p>When they were almost to the caves they came to the
barren valley where the Gerns had herded the Rejects
out of the cruisers and to the place where the stockade
had been. It was a lonely place, the stockade walls fallen
and scattered and the graves of Humbolt's mother and
all the others long since obliterated by the hooves of the
unicorn legions. Bitter memories were reawakened, tinged
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p087">p.&nbsp;87</a></span>
by the years with nostalgia, and the stockade was far
behind them before the dark mood left him.</p>

<p>The orange corn was planted that spring and the number
of prospecting parties was doubled.</p>

<p>The corn sprouted, grew feebly, and died before maturity.
The prospecting parties returned one by one,
each to report no success. He decided, that fall, that time
was too precious to waste&mdash;they would have to use the
alternate plan he had spoken of.</p>

<p>He went to George Ord and asked him if it would be
possible to build a hyperspace transmitter with the materials
they had.</p>

<p>"It's the one way we could have a chance to leave here
without a ship of our own," he said. "By luring a Gern
cruiser here and then taking it away from them."</p>

<p>George shook his head. "A hyperspace transmitter
<i>might</i> be built, given enough years of time. But it would
be useless without power. It would take a generator of
such size that we'd have to melt down every gun, knife,
axe, every piece of steel and iron we have. And then
we'd be five hundred pounds short. On top of that, we'd
have to have at least three hundred pounds more of copper
for additional wire."</p>

<p>"I didn't realize it would take such a large generator,"
he said after a silence. "I was sure we could have a
transmitter."</p>

<p>"Get me the metal and we can," George said. He sighed
restlessly and there was almost hatred in his eyes as he
looked at the inclosing walls of the cave. "You're not the
only one who would like to leave our prison. Get me
eight hundred pounds of copper and iron and I'll make
the transmitter, some way."</p>

<p>Eight hundred pounds of metal.... On Ragnarok that
was like asking for the sun.</p>

<p>The years went by and each year there was the same
determined effort, the same lack of success. And each
year the suns were farther south, marking the coming of
the end of any efforts other than the one to survive.</p>

<p>In the year thirty, when fall came earlier than ever
before, he was forced to admit to himself the bleak and
bitter fact: he and the others were not of the generation
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p088">p.&nbsp;88</a></span>
that would escape from Ragnarok. They were Earth-born&mdash;they
were not adapted to Ragnarok and could not
scour a world of 1.5 gravity for metals that might not
exist.</p>

<p>And vengeance was a luxury he could not have.</p>

<p>A question grew in his mind where there had been
only his hatred for the Gerns before. <i>What would become
of the future generations on Ragnarok?</i></p>

<p>With the question a scene from his childhood kept
coming back to him; a late summer evening in the first
year on Ragnarok and Julia sitting beside him in the
warm starlight....</p>

<p>"You're my son, Billy," she had said. "The first I ever
had. Now, before so very long, maybe I'll have another
one."</p>

<p>Hesitantly, not wanting to believe, he had asked,
"What some of them said about how you might die then&mdash;it
won't really happen, will it, Julia?"</p>

<p>"It ... might." Then her arm had gone around him
and she had said, "If I do I'll leave in my place a life
that's more important than mine ever was.</p>

<p>"Remember me, Billy, and this evening, and what I said
to you, if you should ever be leader. Remember that it's
only through the children that we can ever survive and
whip this world. Protect them while they're small and
helpless and teach them to fight and be afraid of nothing
when they're a little older. Never, never let them forget
how they came to be on Ragnarok. Someday, even if
it's a hundred years from now, the Gerns will come
again and they must be ready to fight, for their freedom
and for their lives."</p>

<p>He had been too young then to understand how truly
she had spoken and when he was old enough his hatred
for the Gerns had blinded him to everything but his
own desires. Now, he could see....</p>

<p>The children of each generation would be better
adapted to Ragnarok and full adaptation would eventually
come. But all the generations of the future would
be potential slaves of the Gern Empire, free only so long
as they remained unnoticed.</p>

<p>It was inconceivable that the Gerns should never pass
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p089">p.&nbsp;89</a></span>
by Ragnarok through all time to come. And when they
finally came the slow, uneventful progression of decades
and centuries might have brought a false sense of security
to the people of Ragnarok, might have turned the
stories of what the Gerns did to the Rejects into legends
and then into myths that no one any longer believed.</p>

<p>The Gerns would have to be brought to Ragnarok
before that could happen.</p>

<hr />

<p>He went to George Ord again and said:</p>

<p>"There's one kind of transmitter we could make a generator
for&mdash;a plain normal-space transmitter, dot-dash,
without a receiver."</p>

<p>George laid down the diamond cutting wheel he had
been working on.</p>

<p>"It would take two hundred years for the signal to
get to Athena at the speed of light," he said. "Then,
forty days after it got there, a Gern cruiser would come
hell-bent to investigate."</p>

<p>"I want the ones of the future to know that the Gerns
will be here no later than two hundred years from now.
And with always the chance that a Gern cruiser in
space might pick up the signal at any time before then."</p>

<p>"I see," George said. "The sword of Damocles hanging
over their heads, to make them remember."</p>

<p>"You know what would happen to them if they ever
forgot. You're as old as I am&mdash;you know what the Gerns
did to us."</p>

<p>"I'm older than you are," George said. "I was nine
when the Gerns left us here. They kept my father and
mother and my sister was only three. I tried to keep her
warm by holding her but the Hell Fever got her that
first night. She was too young to understand why I
couldn't help her more...."</p>

<p>Hatred burned in his eyes at the memory, like some
fire that had been banked but had never died. "Yes, I
remember the Gerns and what they did. I wouldn't want
it to have to happen to others&mdash;the transmitter will be
made so that it won't."</p>

<hr />

<p>The guns were melted down, together with other items
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p090">p.&nbsp;90</a></span>
of iron and steel, to make the castings for the generator.
Ceramic pipes were made to carry water from the spring
to a waterwheel. The long, slow job of converting the
miscellany of electronic devices, many of them broken,
into the components of a transmitter proceeded.</p>

<p>It was five years before the transmitter was ready for
testing. It was early fall of the year thirty-five then, and
the water that gushed from the pipe splashed in cold
drops against Humbolt as the waterwheel was set in
motion.</p>

<p>The generator began to hum and George observed the
output of it and the transmitter as registered by the various
meters he had made.</p>

<p>"Weak, but it will reach the Gern monitor station on
Athena," he said, "It's ready to send&mdash;what do you want
to say?"</p>

<p>"Make it something short," he said. "Make it, <i>'Ragnarok calling.'</i>"</p>

<p>George poised his finger over the transmitting key.
"This will set forces in motion that can never be recalled.
What we do here this morning is going to cause a lot of
Gerns&mdash;or Ragnarok people&mdash;to die."</p>

<p>"It will be the Gerns who die," he said. "Send the
signal."</p>

<p>"Like you, I believe the same thing," George said. "I
have to believe it because that's the way I want it to
be. I hope we're right. It's something we'll never know."</p>

<p>He began depressing the key.</p>

<hr />

<p>A boy was given the job of operating the key and the
signal went out daily until the freezing of winter stopped
the waterwheel that powered the generator.</p>

<p>The sending of the signals was resumed when spring
came and the prospecting parties continued their vain
search for metals.</p>

<p>The suns continued moving south and each year the
springs came later, the falls earlier. In the spring of forty-five
he saw that he would have to make his final decision.</p>

<p>By then they had dwindled until they numbered only
sixty-eight; the Young Ones gray and rapidly growing
old. There was no longer any use to continue the prospecting&mdash;if
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p091">p.&nbsp;91</a></span>
any metals were to be found they were at the
north end of the plateau where the snow no longer melted
during the summer. They were too few to do more than
prepare for what the Old Ones had feared they might
have to face&mdash;Big Winter. That would require the work
of all of them.</p>

<p>Sheets of mica were brought down from the Craigs,
the summits of which were deeply buried under snow
even in midsummer. Stoves were made of fireclay and
mica, which would give both heat and light and would
be more efficient than the open fireplaces. The innermost
caves were prepared for occupation, with multiple doors
to hold out the cold and with laboriously excavated ventilation
ducts and smoke outlets.</p>

<p>There were sixty of them in the fall of fifty, when
all had been done that could be done to prepare for
what might come.</p>

<hr />

<p>"There aren't many of the Earth-born left now," Bob
Craig said to him one night as they sat in the flickering
light of a stove. "And there hasn't been time for there
to be many of the Ragnarok-born. The Gerns wouldn't
get many slaves if they should come now."</p>

<p>"They could use however many they found," he answered.
"The younger ones, who are the best adapted to
this gravity, would be exceptionally strong and quick on
a one-gravity world. There are dangerous jobs where a
strong, quick slave is a lot more efficient and expendable
than complex, expensive machines."</p>

<p>"And they would want some specimens for scientific
study," Jim Lake said. "They would want to cut into
the young ones and see how they're built that they're
adapted to this one and a half gravity world."</p>

<p>He smiled with the cold mirthlessness that always reminded
Humbolt of his father&mdash;of the Lake who had
been the <i>Constellation</i>'s lieutenant commander. "According
to the books the Gerns never did try to make it a
secret that when a Gern doctor or biologist cuts into the
muscles or organs of a non-Gern to see what makes them
tick, he wants them to be still alive and ticking as he
does so."</p>

<p><span class='pagenumber'><a name="p092">p.&nbsp;92</a></span></p>

<p>Seventeen-year-old Don Chiara spoke, to say slowly,
thoughtfully:</p>

<p>"Slavery and vivisection.... If the Gerns should come
now when there are so few of us, and if we should fight
the best we could and lose, it would be better for whoever
was the last of us left to put a knife in the hearts
of the women and children than to let the Gerns have
them."</p>

<p>No one made any answer. There was no answer to
make, no alternative to suggest.</p>

<p>"In the future there will be more of us and it will be
different," he said at last. "On Earth the Gerns were
always stronger and faster than humans but when the
Gerns come to Ragnarok they're going to find a race that
isn't really human any more. They're going to find a
race before which they'll be like woods goats before
prowlers."</p>

<p>"If only they don't come too soon," Craig said.</p>

<p>"That was the chance that had to be taken," he replied.</p>

<p>He wondered again as he spoke, as he had wondered
so often in the past years, if he had given them all their
death sentence when he ordered the transmitter built.
Yet, the future generations could not be permitted to
forget ... and steel could not be tempered without first
thrusting it into the fire.</p>

<hr />

<p>He was the last of the Young Ones when he awoke
one night in the fall of fifty-six and found himself burning
with the Hell Fever. He did not summon any of the
others. They could do nothing for him and he had already
done all he could for them.</p>

<p>He had done all he could for them ... and now he
would leave forty-nine men, women and children to face
the unknown forces of Big Winter while over them hung
the sword he had forged; the increasing danger of detection
by the Gerns.</p>

<p>The question came again, sharp with the knowledge
that it was far too late for him to change any of it. <i>Did
I arrange the execution of my people?</i></p>

<p>Then, through the red haze of the fever, Julia spoke
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p093">p.&nbsp;93</a></span>
to him out of the past; sitting again beside him in the
summer twilight and saying:</p>

<p><i>Remember me, Billy, and this evening, and what I
said to you ... teach them to fight and be afraid of
nothing ... never let them forget how they came to be
on Ragnarok....</i></p>

<p>She seemed very near and real and the doubt faded
and was gone. <i>Teach them to fight ... never let them
forget....</i> The men of Ragnarok were only fur-clad
hunters who crouched in caves but they would grow in
numbers as time went by. Each generation would be
stronger than the generation before it and he had set
forces in motion that would bring the last generation the
trial of combat and the opportunity for freedom. How
well they fought on that day would determine their
destiny but he was certain, once again, what that destiny
would be.</p>

<p>It would be to walk as conquerors before beaten and
humbled Gerns.</p>

<hr />

<p>It was winter of the year eighty-five and the temperature
was one hundred and six degrees below zero. Walter
Humbolt stood in front of the ice tunnel that led back
through the glacier to the caves and looked up into the
sky.</p>

<p>It was noon but there was no sun in the starlit sky.
Many weeks before the sun had slipped below the
southern horizon. For a little while a dim halo had
marked its passage each day; then that, too, had faded
away. But now it was time for the halo to appear again,
to herald the sun's returning.</p>

<p>Frost filled the sky, making the stars flicker as it
swirled endlessly downward. He blinked against it, his
eyelashes trying to freeze to his lower eyelids at the
movement, and turned to look at the north.</p>

<p>There the northern lights were a gigantic curtain that
filled a third of the sky, rippling and waving in folds that
pulsated in red and green, rose and lavender and violet.
Their reflection gleamed on the glacier that sloped down
from the caves and glowed softly on the other glacier;
the one that covered the transmitter station. The transmitter
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p094">p.&nbsp;94</a></span>
had long ago been taken into the caves but the
generator and waterwheel were still there, frozen in a
tomb of ice.</p>

<p>For three years the glacier had been growing before
the caves and the plateau's southern face had been buried
under snow for ten years. Only a few woods goats ever
came as far north as the country south of the caves and
they stayed only during the brief period between the
last snow of spring and the first snow of fall. Their
winter home was somewhere down near the equator.
What had been called the Southern Lowlands was a
frozen, lifeless waste.</p>

<p>Once they had thought about going to the valley in
the chasm where the mockers would be hibernating in
their warm caves. But even if they could have gone up
the plateau and performed the incredible feat of crossing
the glacier-covered, blizzard-ripped Craigs, they
would have found no food in the mockers' valley&mdash;only a
little corn the mockers had stored away, which would
soon have been exhausted.</p>

<p>There was no place for them to live but in the caves
or as nomads migrating with the animals. And if they
migrated to the equator each year they would have to
leave behind them all the books and tools and everything
that might someday have given them a civilized
way of life and might someday have shown them how to
escape from their prison.</p>

<p>He looked again to the south where the halo should
be, thinking: <i>They should have made their decision in
there by now. I'm their leader&mdash;but I can't force them
to stay here against their will. I could only ask them to
consider what it would mean if we left here.</i></p>

<p>Snow creaked underfoot as he moved restlessly. He saw
something lying under the blanket of frost and went to
it. It was an arrow that someone had dropped. He picked
it up, carefully, because the intense cold had made the
shaft as brittle as glass. It would regain its normal
strength when taken into the caves&mdash;&mdash;</p>

<p>There was the sound of steps and Fred Schroeder came
out of the tunnel, dressed as he was dressed in bulky
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p095">p.&nbsp;95</a></span>
furs. Schroeder looked to the south and said, "It seems
to be starting to get a little lighter there."</p>

<p>He saw that it was; a small, faint paling of the black
sky.</p>

<p>"They talked over what you and I told them,"
Schroeder said. "And about how we've struggled to stay
here this long and how, even if the sun should stop drifting
south this year, it will be years of ice and cold at the
caves before Big Spring comes."</p>

<p>"If we leave here the glacier will cover the caves and
fill them with ice," he said. "All we ever had will be
buried back in there and all we'll have left will be our
bows and arrows and animal skins. We'll be taking a
one-way road back into the stone age, for ourselves and
our children and their children."</p>

<p>"They know that," Schroeder said. "We both told
them."</p>

<p>He paused. They watched the sky to the south turn
lighter. The northern lights flamed unnoticed behind
them as the pale halo of the invisible sun slowly brightened
to its maximum. Their faces were white with near-freezing
then and they turned to go back into the caves.
"They had made their decision," Schroeder went on.
"I guess you and I did them an injustice when we thought
they had lost their determination, when we thought they
might want to hand their children a flint axe and say,
'Here&mdash;take this and let it be the symbol of all you are
or all you will ever be.'</p>

<p>"Their decision was unanimous&mdash;we'll stay for as long
as it's possible for us to survive here."</p>

<hr />

<p>Howard Lake listened to Teacher Morgan West read
from the diary of Walter Humbolt, written during the
terrible winter of thirty-five years before:</p>

<p><i>"Each morning the light to the south was brighter. On
the seventh morning we saw the sun&mdash;and it was not due
until the eighth morning!</i></p>

<p><i>"It will be years before we can stop fighting the enclosure
of the glacier but we have reached and passed
the dead of Big Winter. We have reached the bottom
and the only direction we can go in the future is up.</i></p>

<p><span class='pagenumber'><a name="p096">p.&nbsp;96</a></span></p>

<p>"And so," West said, closing the book, "we are here
in the caves tonight because of the stubbornness of Humbolt
and Schroeder and all the others. Had they thought
only of their own welfare, had they conceded defeat and
gone into the migratory way of life, we would be sitting
beside grass campfires somewhere to the south tonight,
our way of life containing no plans or aspirations greater
than to follow the game back and forth through the
years.</p>

<p>"Now, let's go outside to finish tonight's lesson."</p>

<p>Teacher West led the way into the starlit night just
outside the caves, Howard Lake and the other children
following him. West pointed to the sky where the star
group they called the Athena Constellation blazed like a
huge arrowhead high in the east.</p>

<p>"There," he said, "beyond the top of the arrowhead,
is where we were going when the Gerns stopped us a
hundred and twenty years ago and left us to die on
Ragnarok. It's so far that Athena's sun can't be seen from
here, so far that it will be another hundred and fifteen
years before our first signal gets there. Why is it, then,
that you and all the other groups of children have to
learn such things as history, physics, the Gern language,
and the way to fire a Gern blaster?"</p>

<p>The hand of every child went up. West selected eight-year-old
Clifton Humbolt. "Tell us, Clifton," he said.</p>

<p>"Because," Clifton answered, "a Gern cruiser might pass
by a few light-years out at any time and pick up our signals.
So we have to know all we can about them and how
to fight them because there aren't very many of us yet."</p>

<p>"The Gerns will come to kill us," little Marie Chiara
said, her dark eyes large and earnest. "They'll come to
kill us and to make slaves out of the ones they don't kill,
like they did with the others a long time ago. They're
awful mean and awful smart and we have to be smarter
than they are."</p>

<p>Howard looked again at the Athena constellation, thinking,
<i>I hope they come just as soon as I'm old enough to
fight them, or even tonight....</i></p>

<p>"Teacher," he asked, "how would a Gern cruiser look
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p097">p.&nbsp;97</a></span>
if it came tonight? Would it come from the Athena
arrowhead?"</p>

<p>"It probably would," West answered. "You would see
its rocket blast, like a bright trail of fire&mdash;&mdash;"</p>

<p>A bright trail of fire burst suddenly into being, coming
from the constellation of Athena and lighting up the
woods and hills and their startled faces as it arced down
toward them.</p>

<p><i>"It's them!"</i> a treble voice exclaimed and there was a
quick flurry of movement as Howard and the other older
children shoved the younger children behind them.</p>

<p>Then the light vanished, leaving a dimming glow
where it had been.</p>

<p>"Only a meteor," West said. He looked at the line of
older children who were standing protectingly in front
of the younger ones, rocks in their hands with which to
ward off the Gerns, and he smiled in the way he had
when he was pleased with them.</p>

<p>Howard watched the meteor trail fade swiftly into
invisibility and felt his heartbeats slow from the first wild
thrill to gray disappointment. Only a meteor....</p>

<p>But someday he might be leader and by then, surely,
the Gerns would come. If not, he would find some way
to make them come.</p>

<hr />

<p>Ten years later Howard Lake was leader. There were
three hundred and fifty of them then and Big Spring
was on its way to becoming Big Summer. The snow
was gone from the southern end of the plateau and once
again game migrated up the valleys east of the caves.</p>

<p>There were many things to be done now that Big
Winter was past and they could have the chance to do
them. They needed a larger pottery kiln, a larger workshop
with a wooden lathe, more diamonds to make cutting
wheels, more quartz crystals to make binoculars
and microscopes. They could again explore the field of
inorganic chemistry, even though results in the past had
produced nothing of value, and they could, within a few
years, resume the metal prospecting up the plateau&mdash;the
most important project of all.</p>

<p>Their weapons seemed to be as perfect as was possible
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p098">p.&nbsp;98</a></span>
but when the Gerns came they would need some
quick and certain means of communication between the
various units that would fight the Gerns. A leader who
could not communicate with his forces and coordinate
their actions would be helpless. And they had on Ragnarok
a form of communication, if trained, that the Gerns
could not detect or interfere with electronically: the
mockers.</p>

<p>The Craigs were still white and impassable with snow
that summer but the snow was receding higher each
year. Five years later, in the summer of one hundred and
thirty-five, the Craigs were passable for a few weeks.</p>

<p>Lake led a party of eight over them and down into the
chasm. They took with them two small cages, constructed
of wood and glass and made airtight with the strong
medusabush glue. Each cage was equipped with a simple
air pump and a pressure gauge.</p>

<p>They brought back two pairs of mockers as interested
and trusting captives, together with a supply of the
orange corn and a large amount of diamonds. The
mockers, in their pressure-maintained cages, were not
even aware of the increase in elevation as they were carried
over the high summit of the Craigs.</p>

<p>To Lake and the men with him the climb back up
the long, steep slope of the mountain was a stiff climb
to make in one day but no more than that. It was hard
to believe that it had taken Humbolt and Barber almost
three days to climb it and that Barber had died in the
attempt. It reminded him of the old crossbows that
Humbolt and the others had used. They were thin, with
a light pull, such as the present generation boys used.
It must have required courage for the old ones to dare
unicorn attacks with bows so thin that only the small
area behind the unicorn's jaws was vulnerable to their
arrows....</p>

<hr />

<p>When the caves were reached, a very gradual reduction
of pressure in the mocker cages was started; one
that would cover a period of weeks. One pair of mockers
survived and had two young ones that fall. The young
mockers, like the first generation of Ragnarok-born children
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p099">p.&nbsp;99</a></span>
of many years before, were more adapted to their
environment than their parents were.</p>

<p>The orange corn was planted, using an adaptation
method somewhat similar to that used with the mockers.
It might have worked had the orange corn not required
such a long period of time in which to reach maturity.
When winter came only a few grains had formed.</p>

<p>They were saved for next year's seeds, to continue the
slow adaptation process.</p>

<p>By the fifth year the youngest generation of mockers
was well adapted to the elevation of the caves but for a
susceptibility to a quickly fatal form of pneumonia which
made it necessary to keep them from exposing themselves
to the cold or to any sudden changes of temperature.</p>

<p>Their intelligence was surprising and they seemed to
be partially receptive to human thoughts, as Bill Humbolt
had written. By the end of the fifteenth year their
training had reached such a stage of perfection that a
mocker would transmit or not transmit with only the
unspoken thought of its master to tell it which it should
be. In addition, they would transmit the message to
whichever mocker their master's thought directed. Presumably
all mockers received the message but only the
mocker to whom it was addressed would repeat it aloud.</p>

<p>They had their method of communication. They had
their automatic crossbows for quick, close fighting, and
their long range longbows. They were fully adapted to
the 1.5 gravity and their reflexes were almost like those
of prowlers&mdash;Ragnarok had long ago separated the quick
from the dead.</p>

<p>There were eight hundred and nineteen of them that
year, in the early spring of one hundred and fifty, and
they were ready and impatient for the coming of the
Gerns.</p>

<p>Then the transmitter, which had been in operation
again for many years, failed one day.</p>

<p>George Craig had finished checking it when Lake arrived.
He looked up from his instruments, remarkably
similar in appearance to a sketch of the old George Ord&mdash;a
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p100">p.&nbsp;100</a></span>
resemblance that had been passed down to him by
his mother&mdash;and said:</p>

<p>"The entire circuit is either gone or ready to go. It's
already operated for a lot longer than it should have."</p>

<p>"It doesn't matter," Lake said. "It's served its purpose.
We won't rebuild it.</p>"

<p>George watched him questioningly.</p>

<p>"It's served its purpose," he said again. "It didn't let
us forget that the Gerns will come again. But that isn't
enough, now. The first signal won't reach Athena until
the year two thirty-five. It will be the dead of Big Winter
again then. They'll have to fight the Gerns with bows
and arrows that the cold will make as brittle as glass.
They won't have a chance."</p>

<p>"No," George said. "They won't have a chance. But
what can we do to change it?"</p>

<p>"It's something I've been thinking about," he said.
"We'll build a hyperspace transmitter and bring the
Gerns before Big Winter comes."</p>

<p>"We will?" George asked, lifting his dark eyebrows.
"And what do we use for the three hundred pounds of
copper and five hundred pounds of iron we would have
to have to make the generator?"</p>

<p>"Surely we can find five hundred pounds of iron somewhere
on Ragnarok. The north end of the plateau might
be the best bet. As for the copper&mdash;I doubt that we'll
ever find it. But there are seams of a bauxite-like clay
in the Western hills&mdash;they're certain to contain aluminum
to at least some extent. So we'll make the wires of aluminum."</p>

<p>"The ore would have to be refined to pure aluminum
oxide before it could be smelted," George said. "And
you can't smelt aluminum ore in an ordinary furnace&mdash;only
in an electric furnace with a generator that can
supply a high amperage. And we would have to have
cryolite ore to serve as the solvent in the smelting process."</p>

<p>"There's a seam of cryolite in the Eastern Hills, according
to the old maps," said Lake. "We could make a
larger generator by melting down everything we have.
It wouldn't be big enough to power the hyperspace
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p101">p.&nbsp;101</a></span>
transmitter but it should be big enough to smelt aluminum
ore."</p>

<p>George considered the idea. "I think we can do it."</p>

<p>"How long until we can send the signal?" he asked.</p>

<p>"Given the extra metal we need, the building of the
generator is a simple job. The transmitter is what will
take years&mdash;maybe as long as fifty."</p>

<p><i>Fifty years....</i></p>

<p>"Can't anything be done to make it sooner?" he asked.</p>

<p>"I know," George said. "You would like for the Gerns
to come while you're still here. So would every man on
Ragnarok. But even on Earth the building of a hyperspace
transmitter was a long, slow job, with all the materials
they needed and all the special tools and equipment.
Here we'll have to do everything by hand and for
materials we have only broken and burned-out odds and
ends. It will take about fifty years&mdash;it can't be helped."</p>

<p>Fifty years ... but that would bring the Gerns before
Big Winter came again. And there was the rapidly increasing
chance that a Gern cruiser would at any day
intercept the first signals. They were already more than
halfway to Athena.</p>

<p>"Melt down the generator," he said. "Start making
a bigger one. Tomorrow men will go out after bauxite
and cryolite and four of us will go up the plateau to
look for iron."</p>

<hr />

<p>Lake selected Gene Taylor, Tony Chiara and Steve
Schroeder to go with him. They were well on their way
by daylight the next morning, on the shoulder of each of
them a mocker which observed the activity and new
scenes with bright, interested eyes.</p>

<p>They traveled light, since they would have fresh meat
all the way, and carried herbs and corn only for the
mockers. Once, generations before, it had been necessary
for men to eat herbs to prevent deficiency diseases
but now the deficiency diseases, like Hell Fever, were
unknown to them.</p>

<p>They carried no compasses since the radiations of the
two suns constantly created magnetic storms that caused
compass needles to swing as much as twenty degrees
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p102">p.&nbsp;102</a></span>
within an hour. Each of them carried a pair of powerful
binoculars, however; binoculars that had been diamond-carved
from the ivory-like black unicorn horn and set
with lenses and prisms of diamond-cut quartz.</p>

<p>The foremost bands of woods goats followed the advance
of spring up the plateau and they followed the
woods goats. They could not go ahead of the goats&mdash;the
goats were already pressing close behind the melting of
the snow. No hills or ridges were seen as the weeks went
by and it seemed to Lake that they would walk forever
across the endless rolling floor of the plain.</p>

<p>Early summer came and they walked across a land that
was green and pleasantly cool at a time when the vegetation
around the caves would be burned brown and lifeless.
The woods goats grew less in number then as some of
them stopped for the rest of the summer in their chosen
latitudes.</p>

<p>They continued on and at last they saw, far to the
north, what seemed to be an almost infinitesimal bulge
on the horizon. They reached it two days later; a land of
rolling green hills, scarred here and there with ragged
outcroppings of rock, and a land that climbed slowly
and steadily higher as it went into the north.</p>

<p>They camped that night in a little vale. The floor of
it was white with the bones of woods goats that had
tarried too long the fall before and got caught by an
early blizzard. There was still flesh on the bones and
scavenger rodents scuttled among the carcasses, feasting.</p>

<p>"We'll split up now," he told the others the next
morning.</p>

<p>He assigned each of them his position; Steve Schroeder
to parallel his course thirty miles to his right, Gene Taylor
to go thirty miles to his left, and Tony Chiara to go
thirty miles to the left of Taylor.</p>

<p>"We'll try to hold those distances," he said. "We can't
look over the country in detail that way but it will give
us a good general survey of it. We don't have too much
time left by now and we'll make as many miles into the
north as we can each day. The woods goats will tell us
when it's time for us to turn back."</p>

<p>They parted company with casual farewells but for
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p103">p.&nbsp;103</a></span>
Steve Schroeder, who smiled sardonically at the bones of
the woods goats in the vale and asked:</p>

<p>"Who's supposed to tell the woods goats?"</p>

<hr />

<p>Tip, the black, white-nosed mocker on Lake's shoulder,
kept twisting his neck to watch the departure of
the others until he had crossed the next hill and the others
were hidden from view.</p>

<p>"All right, Tip," he said then. "You can unwind your
neck now."</p>

<p>"Unwind&mdash;all right&mdash;all right," Tip said. Then, with a
sudden burst of energy which was characteristic of mockers,
he began to jiggle up and down and chant in time
with his movements, "All right all right all right all
right&mdash;&mdash;"</p>

<p>"Shut up!" he commanded. "If you want to talk nonsense
I don't care&mdash;but don't say 'all right' any more."</p>

<p>"All right," Tip agreed amiably, settling down. "Shut
up if you want to talk nonsense. I don't care."</p>

<p>"And don't slaughter the punctuation like that. You
change the meaning entirely."</p>

<p>"But don't say all right any more," Tip went on, ignoring
him. "You change the meaning entirely."</p>

<p>Then, with another surge of animation, Tip began to
fish in his jacket pocket with little hand-like paws. "Tip
hungry&mdash;Tip hungry."</p>

<p>Lake unbuttoned the pocket and gave Tip a herb leaf.
"I notice there's no nonsensical chatter when you want
to ask for something to eat."</p>

<p>Tip took the herb leaf but he spoke again before he
began to eat; slowly, as though trying seriously to express
a thought:</p>

<p>"Tip hungry&mdash;no nonsensical."</p>

<p>"Sometimes," he said, turning his head to look at Tip,
"you mockers give me the peculiar feeling that you're
right on the edge of becoming a new and intelligent
race and no fooling."</p>

<p>Tip wiggled his whiskers and bit into the herb leaf.
"No fooling," he agreed.</p>

<hr />

<p>He stopped for the night in a steep-walled hollow and
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p104">p.&nbsp;104</a></span>
built a small fire of dead moss and grass to ward off the
chill that came with dark. He called the others, thinking
first of Schroeder so that Tip would transmit to Schroeder's
mocker:</p>

<p>"Steve?"</p>

<p>"Here," Tip answered, in a detectable imitation of
Schroeder's voice. "No luck."</p>

<p>He thought of Gene Taylor and called, "Gene?"</p>

<p>There was no answer and he called Chiara. "Tony&mdash;could
you see any of Gene's route today?"</p>

<p>"Part of it," Chiara answered. "I saw a herd of unicorns
over that way. Why&mdash;doesn't he answer?"</p>

<p>"No."</p>

<p>"Then," Chiara said, "they must have got him."</p>

<p>"Did you find anything today, Tony?" he asked.</p>

<p>"Nothing but pure andesite. Not even an iron stain."</p>

<p>It was the same kind of barren formation that he,
himself, had been walking over all day. But he had not
expected success so soon....</p>

<p>He tried once again to call Gene Taylor:</p>

<p>"Gene ... Gene ... are you there, Gene?"</p>

<p>There was no answer. He knew there would never be.</p>

<hr />

<p>The days became weeks with dismaying swiftness as
they penetrated farther into the north. The hills became
more rugged and there were intrusions of granite and
other formations to promise a chance of finding metal;
a promise that urged them on faster as their time grew
shorter.</p>

<p>Twice he saw something white in the distance. Once
it was the bones of another band of woods goats that had
huddled together and frozen to death in some early blizzard
of the past and once it was the bones of a dozen
unicorns.</p>

<p>The nights grew chillier and the suns moved faster and
faster to the south. The animals began to migrate, an
almost imperceptible movement in the beginning but
one that increased each day. The first frost came and
the migration began in earnest. By the third day it was
a hurrying tide.</p>

<p>Tip was strangely silent that day. He did not speak
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p105">p.&nbsp;105</a></span>
until the noon sun had cleared the cold, heavy mists of
morning. When he spoke it was to give a message from
Chiara:</p>

<p>"Howard ... last report ... Goldie is dying ...
pneumonia...."</p>

<p>Goldie was Chiara's mocker, his only means of communication&mdash;and
there would be no way to tell him
when they were turning back.</p>

<p>"Turn back today, Tony," he said. "Steve and I will
go on for a few days more."</p>

<p>There was no answer and he said quickly, "Turn back&mdash;turn
back! Acknowledge that, Tony."</p>

<p>"Turning back ..." the <ins class="typo" title="Transcriber's Note: 'acknowledgement' in the original text.">acknowledgment</ins> came.
"... tried to save her...."</p>

<p>The message stopped and there was a silence that
Chiara's mocker would never break again. He walked
on, with Tip sitting very small and quiet on his shoulder.
He had crossed another hill before Tip moved, to
press up close to him the way mockers did when they
were lonely and to hold tightly to him.</p>

<p>"What is it, Tip?" he asked.</p>

<p>"Goldie is dying," Tip said. And then again, like a
soft, sad whisper, "Goldie is dying...."</p>

<p>"She was your mate.... I'm sorry."</p>

<p>Tip made a little whimpering sound, and the man
reached up to stroke his silky side.</p>

<p>"I'm sorry," he said again. "I'm sorry as hell, little
fellow."</p>

<hr />

<p>For two days Tip sat lonely and silent on his shoulder,
no longer interested in the new scenes nor any longer
relieving the monotony with his chatter. He refused to
eat until the morning of the third day.</p>

<p>By then the exodus of woods goats and unicorns had
dwindled to almost nothing; the sky a leaden gray through
which the sun could not be seen. That evening he saw
what he was sure would be the last band of woods goats
and shot one of them.</p>

<p>When he went to it he was almost afraid to believe
what he saw.</p>

<p><span class='pagenumber'><a name="p106">p.&nbsp;106</a></span></p>

<p>The hair above its feet was red, discolored with the
stain of iron-bearing clay.</p>

<p>He examined it more closely and saw that the goat
had apparently watered at a spring where the mud was
material washed down from an iron-bearing vein or formation.
It had done so fairly recently&mdash;there were still tiny
particles of clay adhering to the hair.</p>

<p>The wind stirred, cold and damp with its warning of
an approaching storm. He looked to the north, where
the evening had turned the gray clouds black, and called
Schroeder:</p>

<p>"Steve&mdash;any luck?"</p>

<p>"None," Schroeder answered.</p>

<p>"I just killed a goat," he said. "It has iron stains on
its legs it got at some spring farther north. I'm going
on to try to find it. You can turn back in the morning."</p>

<p>"No," Schroeder objected. "I can angle over and catch
up with you in a couple of days."</p>

<p>"You'll turn back in the morning," he said. "I'm going
to try to find this iron. But if I get caught by a blizzard
it will be up to you to tell them at the caves that I found
iron and to tell them where it is&mdash;you know the mockers
can't transmit that far."</p>

<p>There was a short silence; then Schroeder said, "All
right&mdash;I see. I'll head south in the morning."</p>

<p>Lake took a route the next day that would most likely
be the one the woods goats had come down, stopping
on each ridge top to study the country ahead of him
through his binoculars. It was cloudy all day but at sunset
the sun appeared very briefly, to send its last rays
across the hills and redden them in mockery of the iron
he sought.</p>

<p>Far ahead of him, small even through the glasses and
made visible only because of the position of the sun,
was a spot at the base of a hill that was redder than the
sunset had made the other hills.</p>

<p>He was confident it would be the red clay he was
searching for and he hurried on, not stopping until darkness
made further progress impossible.</p>

<p>Tip slept inside his jacket, curled up against his chest,
while the wind blew raw and cold all through the night.
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p107">p.&nbsp;107</a></span>
He was on his way again at the first touch of daylight,
the sky darker than ever and the wind spinning random
flakes of snow before him.</p>

<p>He stopped to look back to the south once, thinking,
<i>If I turn back now I might get out before the blizzard
hits.</i></p>

<p>Then the other thought came: <i>These hills all look the
same. It I don't go to the iron while I'm this close and
know where it is, it might be years before I or anyone
else could find it again.</i></p>

<p>He went on and did not look back again for the rest
of the day.</p>

<p>By midafternoon the higher hills around him were
hidden under the clouds and the snow was coming harder
and faster as the wind drove the flakes against his face.
It began to snow with a heaviness that brought a half
darkness when he came finally to the hill he had seen
through the glasses.</p>

<p>A spring was at the base of it, bubbling out of red
clay. Above it the red dirt led a hundred feet to a dike
of granite and stopped. He hurried up the hillside that was
rapidly whitening with snow and saw the vein.</p>

<p>It set against the dike, short and narrow but red-black
with the iron it contained. He picked up a piece
and felt the weight of it. It was heavy&mdash;it was pure iron
oxide.</p>

<p>He called Schroeder and asked, "Are you down out
of the high hills, Steve?"</p>

<p>"I'm in the lower ones," Schroeder answered, the words
coming a little muffled from where Tip lay inside his
jacket. "It looks black as hell up your way."</p>

<p>"I found the iron, Steve. Listen&mdash;these are the nearest
to landmarks I can give you...."</p>

<p>When he had finished he said, "That's the best I can
do. You can't see the red clay except when the sun is
low in the southwest but I'm going to build a monument
on top of the hill to find it by."</p>

<p>"About you, Howard," Steve asked, "what are your
chances?"</p>

<p>The wind was rising to a high moaning around the
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p108">p.&nbsp;108</a></span>
ledges of the granite dike and the vein was already invisible
under the snow.</p>

<p>"It doesn't look like they're very good," he answered.
"You'll probably be leader when you come back next
spring&mdash;I told the council I wanted that if anything happened
to me. Keep things going the way I would have.
Now&mdash;I'll have to hurry to get the monument built in
time."</p>

<p>"All right," Schroeder said. "So long, Howard ...
good luck."</p>

<p>He climbed to the top of the hill and saw boulders
there he could use to build the monument. They were
large&mdash;he might crush Tip against his chest in picking
them up&mdash;and he took off his jacket, to wrap it around
Tip and leave him lying on the ground.</p>

<p>He worked until he was panting for breath, the wind
driving the snow harder and harder against him until
the cold seemed to have penetrated to the bone. He
worked until the monument was too high for his numb
hands to lift any more boulders to its top. By then it
was tall enough that it should serve its purpose.</p>

<p>He went back to look for Tip, the ground already four
inches deep in snow and the darkness almost complete.</p>

<p>"Tip," he called. "Tip&mdash;Tip&mdash;&mdash;" He walked back and
forth across the hillside in the area where he thought
he had left him, stumbling over rocks buried in the
snow and invisible in the darkness, calling against the
wind and thinking, <i>I can't leave him to die alone here.</i></p>

<p>Then, from a bulge he had not seen in the snow under
him, there came a frightened, lonely wail:</p>

<p><i>"Tip cold&mdash;Tip cold&mdash;&mdash;"</i></p>

<p>He raked the snow off his jacket and unwrapped Tip,
to put him inside his shirt next to his bare skin. Tip's
paws were like ice and he was shivering violently, the
first symptom of the pneumonia that killed mockers so
quickly.</p>

<p>Tip coughed, a wrenching, rattling little sound, and
whimpered, "Hurt&mdash;hurt&mdash;&mdash;"</p>

<p>"I know," he said. "Your lungs hurt&mdash;damn it to hell,
I wish I could have let you go home with Steve."</p>

<p>He put on the cold jacket and went down the hill.
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p109">p.&nbsp;109</a></span>
There was nothing with which he could make a fire&mdash;only
the short half-green grass, already buried under the snow.
He turned south at the bottom of the hill, determining
the direction by the wind, and began the stubborn march
southward that could have but one ending.</p>

<p>He walked until his cold-numbed legs would carry him
no farther. The snow was warm when he fell for the last
time; warm and soft as it drifted over him, and his mind
was clouded with a pleasant drowsiness.</p>

<p><i>This isn't so bad</i>, he thought, and there was something
like surprise through the drowsiness. <i>I can't regret doing
what I had to do&mdash;doing it the best I could....</i></p>

<p>Tip was no longer coughing and the thought of Tip
was the only one that was tinged with regret: <i>I hope he
wasn't still hurting when he died.</i></p>

<p>He felt Tip still very feebly against his chest then,
and he did not know if it was his imagination or if in
that last dreamlike state it was Tip's thought that came to
him; warm and close and reassuring him:</p>

<p><i>No hurt no cold now&mdash;all right now&mdash;we sleep now....</i></p>

<br />

<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p110">p.&nbsp;110</a></span>

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</div>

<h2>PART <span style="font-size: 225%;">3</span></h2>

<div style="text-align: center">
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</div>

<br />

<p>When spring came Steve Schroeder was leader, as
Lake had wanted. It was a duty and a responsibility that
would be under circumstances different from those of any
of the leaders before him. The grim fight was over for a
while. They were adapted and increasing in number; going
into Big Summer and into a renascence that would last
for fifty years. They would have half a century in which
to develop their environment to its fullest extent. Then
Big Fall would come, to destroy all they had accomplished,
and the Gerns would come, to destroy them.</p>

<p>It was his job to make certain that by then they would
be stronger than either.</p>

<hr />

<p>He went north with nine men as soon as the weather
permitted. It was hard to retrace the route of the summer
before, without compasses, among the hills which
looked all the same as far as their binoculars could reach,
and it was summer when they saw the hill with the monument.
They found Lake's bones a few miles south of it,
scattered by the scavengers as were the little bones of his
mocker. They buried them together, man and mocker,
and went silently on toward the hill.</p>

<p>They had brought a little hand-cranked diamond drill
with them to bore holes in the hard granite and black
powder for blasting. They mined the vein, sorting out
the ore from the waste and saving every particle.</p>

<p>The vein was narrow at the surface and pinched very
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p111">p.&nbsp;111</a></span>
rapidly. At a depth of six feet it was a knife-blade seam;
at ten feet it was only a red discoloration in the bottom
of their shaft.</p>

<p>"That seems to be all of it," he said to the others.
"We'll send men up here next year to go deeper and farther
along its course but I have an idea we've just mined
all of the only iron vein on Ragnarok. It will be enough
for our purpose."</p>

<p>They sewed the ore in strong rawhide sacks and then
prospected, without success, until it was time for the last
unicorn band to pass by on its way south. They trapped
ten unicorns and hobbled their legs, with other ropes
reaching from horn to hind leg on each side to prevent
them from swinging back their heads or even lifting them
high.</p>

<p>They had expected the capture and hobbling of the
unicorns to be a difficult and dangerous job and it was.
But when they were finished the unicorns were helpless.
They could move awkwardly about to graze but they
could not charge. They could only stand with lowered
heads and fume and rumble.</p>

<p>The ore sacks were tied on one frosty morning and
the men mounted. The horn-leg ropes were loosened so
the unicorns could travel, and the unicorns went into a
frenzy of bucking and rearing, squealing with rage as
they tried to impale their riders.</p>

<p>The short spears, stabbing at the sensitive spot behind
the jawbones of the unicorns, thwarted the backward
flung heads and the unicorns were slowly forced into submission.
The last one conceded temporary defeat and
the long journey to the south started, the unicorns going
in the run that they could maintain hour after hour.</p>

<p>Each day they pushed the unicorns until they were
too weary to fight at night. Each morning, rested, the
unicorns resumed the battle. It became an expected routine
for both unicorns and men.</p>

<p>The unicorns were released when the ore was unloaded
at the foot of the hill before the caves and Schroeder
went to the new waterwheel, where the new generator
was already in place. There George Craig told him of
the unexpected obstacle that had appeared.</p>

<p><span class='pagenumber'><a name="p112">p.&nbsp;112</a></span></p>

<p>"We're stuck," George said. "The aluminum ore isn't
what we thought it would be. It's scarce and very low
grade, of such a complex nature that we can't refine it to
the oxide with what we have to work with on Ragnarok."</p>

<p>"Have you produced any aluminum oxide at all?"
Schroeder asked.</p>

<p>"A little. We might have enough for the wire in a
hundred years if we kept at it hard enough."</p>

<p>"What else do you need&mdash;was there enough cryolite?"
he asked.</p>

<p>"Not much of it, but enough. We have the generator
set up, the smelting box built and the carbon lining and
rods ready. We have everything we need to smelt aluminum
ore&mdash;except the aluminum ore."</p>

<p>"Go ahead and finish up the details, such as installing
the lining," he said. "We didn't get this far to be stopped
now."</p>

<p>But the prospecting parties, making full use of the time
left them before winter closed down, returned late that
fall to report no sign of the ore they needed.</p>

<p>Spring came and he was determined they would be
smelting aluminum before the summer was over even
though he had no idea where the ore would be found.
They needed aluminum ore of a grade high enough that
they could extract the pure aluminum oxide. Specifically,
they needed aluminum oxide....</p>

<p>Then he saw the answer to their problem, so obvious
that all of them had overlooked it.</p>

<p>He passed by four children playing a game in front of
the caves that day; some kind of a checker-like game
in which differently colored rocks represented the different
children. One boy was using red stones; some of
the rubies that had been brought back as curios from the
chasm. Rubies were of no use or value on Ragnarok; only
pretty rocks for children to play with....</p>

<p>Only pretty rocks?&mdash;<i>rubies and sapphires were corundum,
were pure aluminum oxide!</i></p>

<p>He went to tell George and to arrange for a party of
men to go into the chasm after all the rubies and sapphires
they could find. The last obstacle had been surmounted.</p>

<p><span class='pagenumber'><a name="p113">p.&nbsp;113</a></span></p>

<p>The summer sun was hot the day the generator hummed
into life. The carbon-lined smelting box was ready and
the current flowed between the heavy carbon rods suspended
in the cryolite and the lining, transforming the
cryolite into a liquid. The crushed rubies and sapphires
were fed into the box, glowing and glittering in blood-red
and sky-blue scintillations of light, to be deprived
by the current of their life and fire and be changed into
something entirely different.</p>

<p>When the time came to draw off some of the metal
they opened the orifice in the lower corner of the box.
Molten aluminum flowed out into the ingot mold in a
little stream; more beautiful to them than any gems could
ever be, bright and gleaming in its promise that more than
six generations of imprisonment would soon be ended.</p>

<hr />

<p>The aluminum smelting continued until the supply of
rubies and sapphires in the chasm had been exhausted but
for small and scattered fragments. It was enough, with
some aluminum above the amount needed for the wire.</p>

<p>It was the year one hundred and fifty-two when they
smelted the aluminum. In eight more years they would
reach the middle of Big Summer; the suns would start
their long drift southward, not to return for one hundred
and fifty years. Time was passing swiftly by for them and
there was none of it to waste....</p>

<p>The making of ceramics was developed to an art, as
was the making of different types of glass. Looms were
built to spin thread and cloth from woods goat wool, and
vegetable dyes were discovered. Exploration parties crossed
the continent to the eastern and western seas: salty and
lifeless seas that were bordered by immense deserts. No
trees of any kind grew along their shores and ships could
not be built to cross them.</p>

<p>Efforts were continued to develop an inorganic field
of chemistry, with discouraging results, but in one hundred
and fifty-nine the orange corn was successfully
adapted to the elevation and climate of the caves.</p>

<p>There was enough that year to feed the mockers all
winter, supply next year's seeds, and leave enough that
it could be ground and baked into bread for all to taste.</p>

<p><span class='pagenumber'><a name="p114">p.&nbsp;114</a></span></p>

<p>It tasted strange, but good. It was, Schroeder thought,
symbolic of a great forward step. It was the first time in
generations that any of them had known any food but
meat. The corn would make them less dependent upon
hunting and, of paramount importance, it was the type
of food to which they would have to become accustomed
in the future&mdash;they could not carry herds of woods goats
and unicorns with them on Gern battle cruisers.</p>

<p>The lack of metals hindered them wherever they turned
in their efforts to build even the simplest machines or
weapons. Despite its dubious prospects, however, they
made a rifle-like gun.</p>

<p>The barrel of it was thick, of the hardest, toughest
ceramic material they could produce. It was a cumbersome,
heavy thing, firing with a flintlock action, and it
could not be loaded with much powder lest the charge
burst the barrel.</p>

<p>The flintlock ignition was not instantaneous, the lightweight
porcelain bullet had far less penetrating power
than an arrow, and the thing boomed and belched out
a cloud of smoke that would have shown the Gerns exactly
where the shooter was located.</p>

<p>It was an interesting curio and the firing of it was
something spectacular to behold but it was a weapon
apt to be much more dangerous to the man behind it than
to the Gern it was aimed at. Automatic crossbows were
far better.</p>

<p>Woods goats had been trapped and housed during the
summers in shelters where sprays of water maintained
a temperature cool enough for them to survive. Only the
young were kept when fall came, to be sheltered through
the winter in one of the caves. Each new generation was
subjected to more heat in the summer and more cold in
the winter than the generation before it and by the year
one hundred and sixty the woods goats were well on
their way toward adaptation.</p>

<p>The next year they trapped two unicorns, to begin the
job of adapting and taming future generations of them.
If they succeeded they would have utilized the resources
of Ragnarok to the limit&mdash;except for what should be their
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p115">p.&nbsp;115</a></span>
most valuable ally with which to fight the Gerns: the
prowlers.</p>

<p>For twenty years prowlers had observed a truce wherein
they would not go hunting for men if men would stay
away from their routes of travel. But it was a truce only
and there was no indication that it could ever evolve into
friendship.</p>

<p>Three times in the past, half-grown prowlers had been
captured and caged in the hope of taming them. Each
time they had paced their cages, looking longingly into
the distance, refusing to eat and defiant until they died.</p>

<p>To prowlers, as to some men, freedom was more precious
than life. And each time a prowler had been captured
the free ones had retaliated with a resurgence of
savage attacks.</p>

<p>There seemed no way that men and prowlers could ever
meet on common ground. They were alien to one another,
separated by the gulf of an origin on worlds two
hundred and fifty light-years apart. Their only common
heritage was the will of each to battle.</p>

<p>But in the spring of one hundred and sixty-one, for
a little while one day, the gulf was bridged.</p>

<hr />

<p>Schroeder was returning from a trip he had taken alone
to the east, coming down the long canyon that led from
the high face of the plateau to the country near the
caves. He hurried, glancing back at the black clouds that
had gathered so quickly on the mountain behind him.
Thunder rumbled from within them, an almost continuous
roll of it as the clouds poured down their deluge of
water.</p>

<p>A cloudburst was coming and the sheer-walled canyon
down which he hurried had suddenly become a death
trap, its sunlit quiet soon to be transformed into roaring
destruction. There was only one place along its nine-mile
length where he might climb out and the time was already
short in which to reach it.</p>

<p>He had increased his pace to a trot when he came to
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p116">p.&nbsp;116</a></span>
it, a talus of broken rock that sloped up steeply for thirty
feet to a shelf. A ledge eleven feet high stood over
the shelf and other, lower, ledges set back from it like
climbing steps.</p>

<p>At the foot of the talus he stopped to listen, wondering
how close behind him the water might be. He heard it
coming, a sound like the roaring of a high wind up the
canyon, and he scrambled up the talus of loose rock to
the shelf at its top. The shelf was not high enough above
the canyon's floor&mdash;he would be killed there&mdash;and he followed
it fifty feet around a sharp bend. There it narrowed
abruptly, to merge into the sheer wall of the canyon.
Blind alley....</p>

<p>He ran back to the top of the talus where the edge of
the ledge, ragged with projections of rock, was unreachably
far above him. As he did so the roaring was suddenly
a crashing, booming thunder and he saw the water coming.</p>

<p>It swept around the bend at perhaps a hundred miles
an hour, stretching from wall to wall of the canyon, the
crest of it seething and slashing and towering forty sheer
feet above the canyon's floor.</p>

<p>A prowler was running in front of it, running for its
life and losing.</p>

<p>There was no time to watch. He leaped upward, as
high as possible, his crossbow in his hand. He caught the
end of the bow over one of the sharp projections of rock
on the ledge's rim and began to pull himself up, afraid
to hurry lest the rock cut the bowstring in two and drop
him back.</p>

<p>It held and he stood on the ledge, safe, as the prowler
flashed up the talus below.</p>

<p>It darted around the blind-alley shelf and was back
a moment later. It saw that its only chance would be to
leap up on the ledge where he stood and it tried, handicapped
by the steep, loose slope it had to jump from.</p>

<p>It failed and fell back. It tried again, hurling itself
upward with all its strength, and its claws caught fleetingly
on the rough rock a foot below the rim. It began
to slide back, with no time left it for a third try.</p>

<p>It looked up at the rim of safety that it had not quite
reached and then on up at him, its eyes bright and cold
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p117">p.&nbsp;117</a></span>
with the knowledge that it was going to die and its
enemy would watch it.</p>

<p>Schroeder dropped flat on his stomach and reached
down, past the massive black head, to seize the prowler
by the back of the neck. He pulled up with all his strength
and the claws of the prowler tore at the rocks as it
climbed.</p>

<p>When it was coming up over the ledge, safe, he rolled
back from it and came to his feet in one swift, wary motion,
his eyes on it and his knife already in his hand. As
he did so the water went past below them with a thunder
that deafened. Logs and trees shot past, boulders crashed
together, and things could be seen surging in the brown
depths; shapeless things that had once been woods goats
and the battered gray bulk of a unicorn. He saw it all
with a sideward glance, his attention on the prowler.</p>

<p>It stepped back from the rim of the ledge and looked
at him; warily, as he looked at it. With the wariness was
something like question, and almost disbelief.</p>

<p>The ledge they stood on was narrow but it led out of
the canyon and to the open land beyond. He motioned to
the prowler to precede him and, hesitating a moment, it
did so.</p>

<p>They climbed out of the canyon and out onto the
grassy slope of the mountainside. The roar of the water
was a distant rumble there and he stopped. The prowler
did the same and they watched each other again, each
of them trying to understand what the thoughts of the
other might be. It was something they could not know&mdash;they
were too alien to each other and had been enemies
too long.</p>

<p>Then a gust of wind swept across them, bending and
rippling the tall grass, and the prowler swung away to
go with it and leave him standing alone.</p>

<p>His route was such that it diverged gradually from
that taken by the prowler. He went through a grove
of trees and emerged into an open glade on the other
side. Up on the ridge to his right he saw something black
for a moment, already far away.</p>

<p>He was thirty feet from the next grove of trees when
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p118">p.&nbsp;118</a></span>
he saw the gray shadow waiting silently for his coming
within them.</p>

<p>Unicorn!</p>

<p>His crossbow rattled as he jerked back the pistol grip.
The unicorn charged, the underbrush crackling as it tore
through it and a vine whipping like a rope from its
lowered horn.</p>

<p>His first arrow went into its chest. It lurched, fatally
wounded but still coming, and he jerked back on the pistol
grip for the quick shot that would stop it.</p>

<p>The rock-frayed bow string broke with a singing sound
and the bow ends snapped harmlessly forward.</p>

<p>He had counted on the bow and its failure came a fraction
of a second too late for him to dodge far enough.
His sideward leap was short, and the horn caught him in
midair, ripping across his ribs and breaking them, shattering
the bone of his left arm and tearing the flesh. He
was hurled fifteen feet and he struck the ground with a
stunning impact, pain washing over him in a blinding
wave.</p>

<p>Through it, dimly, he saw the unicorn fall and heard
its dying trumpet blast as it called to another. He heard
an answering call somewhere in the distance and then the
faraway drumming of hooves.</p>

<p>He fought back the blindness and used his good arm
to lift himself up. His bow was useless, his spear lay
broken under the unicorn, and his knife was gone. His
left arm swung helplessly and he could not climb the
limbless lower trunk of a lance tree with only one arm.</p>

<p>He went forward, limping, trying to hurry to find his
knife while the drumming of hooves raced toward him.
It would be a battle already lost that he would make with
the short knife but he would have blood for his going....</p>

<p>The grass grew tall and thick, hiding the knife until he
could hear the unicorn crashing through the trees. He
saw it ten feet ahead of him as the unicorn tore out from
the edge of the woods thirty feet away.</p>

<p>It squealed, shrill with triumph, and the horn swept
up to impale him. There was no time left to reach the
knife, no time left for anything but the last fleeting sight
of sunshine and glade and arching blue sky&mdash;&mdash;</p>

<p><span class='pagenumber'><a name="p119">p.&nbsp;119</a></span></p>

<p>Something from behind him shot past and up at the
unicorn's throat, a thing that was snarling black savagery
with yellow eyes blazing and white fangs slashing&mdash;the
prowler!</p>

<p>It ripped at the unicorn's throat, swerving its charge,
and the unicorn plunged past him. The unicorn swung
back, all the triumph gone from its squeal, and the
prowler struck again. They became a swirling blur, the
horn of the unicorn swinging and stabbing and the attacks
of the prowler like the swift, relentless thrusting of
a rapier.</p>

<p>He went to his knife and when he turned back with it
in his hand the battle was already over.</p>

<p>The unicorn fell and the prowler turned away from it.
One foreleg was bathed in blood and its chest was heaving
with a panting so fast that it could not have been caused
by the fight with the unicorn.</p>

<p><i>It must have been watching me</i>, he thought, with a
strange feeling of wonder. <i>It was watching from the ridge
and it ran all the way.</i></p>

<p>Its yellow eyes flickered to the knife in his hand. He
dropped the knife in the grass and walked forward, unarmed,
wanting the prowler to know that he understood;
that for them in that moment the gulf of two hundred
and fifty light-years did not exist.</p>

<p>He stopped near it and squatted in the grass to begin
binding up his broken arm so the bones would not grate
together. It watched him, then it began to lick at its
bloody shoulder; standing so close to him that he could
have reached out and touched it.</p>

<p>Again he felt the sense of wonder. They were alone
together in the glade, he and a prowler, each caring for
his hurts. There was a bond between them that for a
little while made them like brothers. There was a bridge
for a little while across the gulf that had never been
bridged before....</p>

<p>When he had finished with his arm and the prowler
had lessened the bleeding of its shoulder it took a step
back toward the ridge. He stood up, knowing it was going
to leave.</p>

<p>"I suppose the score is even now," he said to it, "and
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p120">p.&nbsp;120</a></span>
we'll never see each other again. So good hunting&mdash;and
thanks."</p>

<p>It made a sound in its throat; a queer sound that was
neither bark nor growl, and he had the feeling it was
trying to tell him something. Then it turned and was gone
like a black shadow across the grass and he was alone
again.</p>

<p>He picked up his knife and bow and began the long,
painful journey back to the caves, looking again and again
at the ridge behind him and thinking: <i>They have a code
of ethics. They fight for their survival&mdash;but they pay their
debts.</i></p>

<p>Ragnarok was big enough for both men and prowlers.
They could live together in friendship as men and dogs
of Earth lived together. It might take a long time to win
the trust of the prowlers but surely it could be done.</p>

<p>He came to the rocky trail that led to the caves and
there he took a last look at the ridge behind him; feeling
a poignant sense of loss and wondering if he would ever
see the prowler again or ever again know the strange,
wild companionship he had known that day.</p>

<p>Perhaps he never would ... but the time would come
on Ragnarok when children would play in the grass with
prowler pups and the time would come when men and
prowlers, side by side, would face the Gerns.</p>

<hr />

<p>In the year that followed there were two incidents
when a prowler had the opportunity to kill a hunter on
prowler territory and did not do so. There was no way
of knowing if the prowler in each case had been the one
he had saved from the cloudburst or if the prowlers, as a
whole, were respecting what a human had done for one
of them.</p>

<p>Schroeder thought of again trying to capture prowler
pups&mdash;very young ones&mdash;and decided it would be a stupid
plan. Such an act would destroy all that had been done
toward winning the trust of the prowlers. It would be
better to wait, even though time was growing short, and
find some other way.</p>

<p>The fall of one hundred and sixty-three came and the
suns were noticeably moving south. That was the fall
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p121">p.&nbsp;121</a></span>
that his third child, a girl, was born. She was named Julia,
after the Julia of long ago, and she was of the last generation
that would be born in the caves.</p>

<p>Plans were already under way to build a town in the
valley a mile from the caves. The unicorn-proof stockade
wall that would enclose it was already under construction,
being made of stone blocks. The houses would be of
diamond-sawed stone, thick-walled, with dead-air spaces
between the double walls to insulate against heat and cold.
Tall, wide canopies of lance tree poles and the palm-like
medusabush leaves would be built over all the houses
to supply additional shade.</p>

<p>The woods goats were fully adapted that year and
domesticated to such an extent that they had no desire to
migrate with the wild goats. There was a small herd of
them then, enough to supply a limited amount of milk,
cheese and wool.</p>

<p>The adaptation of the unicorns proceeded in the following
years, but not their domestication. It was their
nature to be ill-tempered and treacherous and only the
threat of the spears in the hands of their drivers forced
them to work; work that they could have done easily
had they not diverted so much effort each day to trying
to turn on their masters and kill them. Each night they
were put in a massive-walled corral, for they were almost
as dangerous as wild unicorns.</p>

<p>The slow, painstaking work on the transmitter continued
while the suns moved farther south each year.
The move from the caves to the new town was made in
one hundred and seventy-nine, the year that Schroeder's
wife died.</p>

<p>His two sons were grown and married and Julia, at
sixteen, was a woman by Ragnarok standards; blue-eyed
and black-haired as her mother, a Craig, had been, and
strikingly pretty in a wild, reckless way. She married Will
Humbolt that spring, leaving her father alone in the new
house in the new town.</p>

<p>Four months later she came to him to announce with
pride and excitement:</p>

<p>"I'm going to have a baby in only six months! If it's a
boy he'll be the right age to be leader when the Gerns
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p122">p.&nbsp;122</a></span>
come and we're going to name him John, after the John
who was the first leader we ever had on Ragnarok."</p>

<p>Her words brought to his mind a question and he
thought of what old Dale Craig, the leader who had
preceded Lake, had written:</p>

<p><i>We have survived, the generations that the Gerns
thought would never be born. But we must never forget
the characteristics that insured that survival: an unswerving
loyalty of every individual to all the others and the
courage to fight, and die if necessary.</i></p>

<p><i>In any year, now, the Gerns will come. There will be
no one to help us. Those on Athena are slaves and it is
probable that Earth has been enslaved by now. We will
stand or fall alone. But if we of today could know that
the ones who meet the Gerns will still have the courage
and loyalty that made our survival possible, then we would
know that the Gerns are already defeated....</i></p>

<p>The era of danger and violence was over for a little
while. The younger generation had grown up during a
time of peaceful development of their environment. It
was a peace that the coming of the Gerns would shatter&mdash;but
had it softened the courage and loyalty of the
younger generation?</p>

<p>A week later he was given his answer.</p>

<p>He was climbing up the hill that morning, high above
the town below, when he saw the blue of Julia's wool
blouse in the distance. She was sitting up on a hillside,
an open book in her lap and her short spear lying beside
her.</p>

<p>He frowned at the sight. The main southward migration
of unicorns was over but there were often lone stragglers
who might appear at any time. He had warned her
that someday a unicorn would kill her&mdash;but she was reckless
by nature and given to restless moods in which she
could not stand the confinement of the town.</p>

<p>She jerked up her head as he watched, as though at
a faint sound, and he saw the first movement within the
trees behind her&mdash;a unicorn.</p>

<p>It lunged forward, its stealth abandoned as she heard
it, and she came to her feet in a swift, smooth movement;
the spear in her hand and the book spilling to the ground.</p>

<p><span class='pagenumber'><a name="p123">p.&nbsp;123</a></span></p>

<p>The unicorn's squeal rang out and she whirled to face
it, with two seconds to live. He reached for his bow,
knowing his help would come too late.</p>

<p>She did the only thing possible that might enable her
to survive: she shifted her balance to take advantage of
the fact that a human could jump to one side a little
more quickly than a four-footed beast in headlong charge.
As she did so she brought up the spear for the thrust into
the vulnerable area just behind the jawbone.</p>

<p>It seemed the needle point of the black horn was no
more than an arm's length from her stomach when she
jumped aside with the lithe quickness of a prowler, swinging
as she jumped and thrusting the spear with all her
strength into the unicorn's neck.</p>

<p>The thrust was true and the spear went deep. She released
it and flung herself backward to dodge the flying
hooves. The force of the unicorn's charge took it past
her but its legs collapsed under it and it crashed to the
ground, sliding a little way before it stopped. It kicked
once and lay still.</p>

<p>She went to it, to retrieve her spear, and even from the
distance there was an air of pride about her as she walked
past her bulky victim.</p>

<p>Then she saw the book, knocked to one side by the
unicorn's hooves. Tatters of its pages were blowing in the
wind and she stiffened, her face growing pale. She ran
to it to pick it up, the unicorn forgotten.</p>

<p>She was trying to smooth the torn leaves when he
reached her. It had been one of the old textbooks, printed
on real paper, and it was fragile with age. She had been
trusted by the librarian to take good care of it. Now,
page after page was torn and unreadable....</p>

<p>She looked up at him, shame and misery on her face.</p>

<p>"Father," she said. "The book&mdash;I&mdash;&mdash;"</p>

<p>He saw that the unicorn was a bull considerably larger
than the average. Men had in the past killed unicorns with
spears but never, before, had a sixteen-year-old girl done
so....</p>

<p>He looked back at her, keeping his face emotionless,
and asked sternly, "You what?"</p>

<p><span class='pagenumber'><a name="p124">p.&nbsp;124</a></span></p>

<p>"I guess&mdash;I guess I didn't have any right to take the
book out of town. I wish I hadn't...."</p>

<p>"You promised to take good care of it," he told her
coldly. "Your promise was believed and you were trusted
to keep it."</p>

<p>"But&mdash;but I didn't mean to damage it&mdash;I didn't mean
to!" She was suddenly very near to tears. "I'm not a&mdash;a
<i>bemmon</i>!"</p>

<p>"Go back to town," he ordered. "Tonight bring the
book to the town hall and tell the council what happened
to it."</p>

<p>She swallowed and said in a faint voice, "Yes, father."</p>

<p>She turned and started slowly back down the hill, not
seeing the unicorn as she passed it, the bloody spear trailing
disconsolately behind her and her head hanging in
shame.</p>

<p>He watched her go and it was safe for him to smile.
When night came and she stood before the council,
ashamed to lift her eyes to look at them, he would have
to be grim and stern as he told her how she had been
trusted and how she had betrayed that trust. But now,
as he watched her go down the hill, he could smile with
his pride in her and know that his question was answered;
that the younger generation had lost neither
courage nor loyalty.</p>

<hr />

<p>Julia saved a child's life that spring and almost lost
her own. The child was playing under a half-completed
canopy when a sudden, violent wind struck it and transformed
it into a death-trap of cracking, falling timbers.
She reached him in time to fling him to safety but the
collapsing roof caught her before she could make her
own escape.</p>

<p>Her chest and throat were torn by the jagged ends
of the broken poles and for a day and a night her life was
a feebly flickering spark. She began to rally on the second
night and on the third morning she was able to speak
for the first time, her eyes dark and tortured with her
fear:</p>

<p>"My baby&mdash;what did it do to him?"</p>

<p>She convalesced slowly, haunted by the fear. Her son
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p125">p.&nbsp;125</a></span>
was born five weeks later and her fears proved to have
been groundless. He was perfectly normal and healthy.</p>

<p>And hungry&mdash;and her slowly healing breasts would
be dry for weeks to come.</p>

<p>By a coincidence that had never happened before and
could never happen again there was not a single feeding-time
foster-mother available for the baby. There were
many expectant mothers but only three women had
young babies&mdash;and each of the three had twins to feed.</p>

<p>But there was a small supply of frozen goat milk in
the ice house, enough to see young Johnny through until
it was time for the goat herd to give milk. He would
have to live on short rations until then but it could not
be helped.</p>

<hr />

<p>Johnny was a month old when the opportunity came
for the men of Ragnarok to have their ultimate ally.</p>

<p>The last of the unicorns were going north and the
prowlers had long since gone. The blue star was lighting
the night like a small sun when the breeze coming
through Schroeder's window brought the distant squealing
of unicorns.</p>

<p>He listened, wondering. It was a sound that did not
belong. Everyone was safely in the town, most of them
in bed, and there should be nothing outside the stockade
for the unicorns to fight.</p>

<p>He armed himself with spear and crossbow and went
outside. He let himself out through the east gate and
went toward the sounds of battle. They grew louder as
he approached, more furious, as though the battle was
reaching its climax.</p>

<p>He crossed the creek and went through the trees beyond.
There, in a small clearing no more than half a
mile from the town, he came upon the scene.</p>

<p>A lone prowler was making a stand against two unicorns.
Two other unicorns lay on the ground, dead, and
behind the prowler was the dark shape of its mate lying
lifelessly in the grass. There was blood on the prowler,
purple in the blue starlight, and gloating rang in the
squeals of the unicorns as they lunged at it. The leaps
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p126">p.&nbsp;126</a></span>
of the prowler were faltering as it fought them, the last
desperate defiance of an animal already dying.</p>

<p>He brought up the bow and sent a volley of arrows
into the unicorns. Their gloating squeals died and they
fell. The prowler staggered and fell beside them.</p>

<p>It was breathing its last when he reached it but in the
way it looked up at him he had the feeling that it wanted
to tell him something, that it was trying hard to live
long enough to do so. It died with the strange appeal
in its eyes and not until then did he see the scar on its
shoulder; a scar such as might have been made long ago
by the rip of a unicorn's horn.</p>

<p>It was the prowler he had known nineteen years before.</p>

<p>The ground was trampled all around by the unicorns,
showing that the prowlers had been besieged all day. He
went to the other prowler and saw it was a female. Her
breasts showed that she had had pups recently but she
had been dead at least two days. Her hind legs had
been broken sometime that spring and they were still
only half healed, twisted and almost useless.</p>

<p>Then, that was why the two of them were so far
behind the other prowlers. Prowlers, like the wolves,
coyotes and foxes of Earth, mated for life and the male
helped take care of the young. She had been injured
somewhere to the south, perhaps in a fight with unicorns,
and her mate had stayed with her as she hobbled her
slow way along and killed game for her. The pups had
been born and they had had to stop. Then the unicorns
had found them and the female had been too crippled
to fight....</p>

<p>He looked for the pups, expecting to find them trampled
and dead. But they were alive, hidden under the
roots of a small tree near their mother.</p>

<p>Prowler pups&mdash;<i>alive!</i></p>

<p>They were very young, small and blind and helpless.
He picked them up and his elation drained away as he
looked at them. They made little sounds of hunger, almost
inaudible, and they moved feebly, trying to find
their mother's breasts and already so weak that they
could not lift their heads.</p>

<p>Small chunks of fresh meat had been left beside the
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p127">p.&nbsp;127</a></span>
pups and he thought of what the prowler's emotions
must have been as his mate lay dead on the ground
and he carried meat to their young, knowing they were
too small to eat it but helpless to do anything else for
them.</p>

<p>And he knew why there had been the appeal in the
eyes of the prowler as it died and what it had tried to
tell him: <i>Save them ... as you once saved me.</i></p>

<p>He carried the pups back past the prowler and looked
down at it in passing. "I'll do my best," he said.</p>

<p>When he reached his house he laid the pups on his
bed and built a fire. There was no milk to give them&mdash;the
goats would not have young for at least another two
weeks&mdash;but perhaps they could eat a soup of some kind.
He put water on to boil and began shredding meat to
make them a rich broth.</p>

<p>One of them was a male, the other a female, and if he
could save them they would fight beside the men of Ragnarok
when the Gerns came. He thought of what he would
name them as he worked. He would name the female
Sigyn, after Loki's faithful wife who went with him when
the gods condemned him to Hel, the Teutonic underworld.
And he would name the male Fenrir, after the
monster wolf who would fight beside Loki when Loki
led the forces of Hel in the final battle on the day of
Ragnarok.</p>

<p>But when the broth was prepared, and cooled enough,
the pups could not eat it. He tried making it weaker,
tried it mixed with corn and herb soup, tried corn and
herb soups alone. They could eat nothing he prepared
for them.</p>

<p>When gray daylight entered the room he had tried
everything possible and had failed. He sat wearily in his
chair and watched them, defeated. They were no longer
crying in their hunger and when he touched them they
did not move as they had done before.</p>

<p>They would be dead before the day was over and the
only chance men had ever had to have prowlers as their
friends and allies would be gone.</p>

<p>The first rays of sunrise were coming into the room,
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p128">p.&nbsp;128</a></span>
revealing fully the frail thinness of the pups, when there
was a step outside and Julia's voice:</p>

<p>"Father?"</p>

<p>"Come in, Julia," he said, not moving.</p>

<p>She entered, still a pale shadow of the reckless girl
who had fought a unicorn, even though she was slowly
regaining her normal health. She carried young Johnny
in one arm, in her other hand his little bottle of milk.
Johnny was hungry&mdash;there was never quite enough milk
for him&mdash;but he was not crying. Ragnarok children did
not cry....</p>

<p>She saw the pups and her eyes went wide.</p>

<p>"Prowlers&mdash;baby prowlers! Where did you get them?"</p>

He told her and she went to them, to look down at
<p>them and say, "If you and their father hadn't helped
each other that day they wouldn't be here, nor you, nor
I, nor Johnny&mdash;none of us in this room."</p>

<p>"They won't live out the day," he said. "They have to
have milk&mdash;and there isn't any."</p>

<p>She reached down to touch them and they seemed
to sense that she was someone different. They stirred,
making tiny whimpering sounds and trying to move their
heads to nuzzle at her fingers.</p>

<p>Compassion came to her face, like a soft light.</p>

<p>"They're so young," she said. "So terribly young to
have to die...."</p>

<p>She looked at Johnny and at the little bottle that held
his too-small morning ration of milk.</p>

<p>"Johnny&mdash;Johnny&mdash;&mdash;" Her words were almost a whisper.
"You're hungry&mdash;but we can't let them die. And
someday, for this, they will fight for your life."</p>

<p>She sat on the bed and placed the pups in her lap
beside Johnny. She lifted a little black head with gentle
fingers and a little pink mouth ceased whimpering as it
found the nipple of Johnny's bottle.</p>

<p>Johnny's gray eyes darkened with the storm of approaching
protest. Then the other pup touched his hand,
crying in its hunger, and the protest faded as surprise and
something like sudden understanding came into his eyes.</p>

<p>Julia withdrew the bottle from the first pup and transferred
it to the second one. Its crying ceased and Johnny
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p129">p.&nbsp;129</a></span>
leaned forward to touch it again, and the one beside it.</p>

<p>He made his decision with an approving sound and
leaned back against his mother's shoulder, patiently awaiting
his own turn and their presence accepted as though
they had been born his brother and sister.</p>

<hr />

<p>The golden light of the new day shone on them, on
his daughter and grandson and the prowler pups, and in
it he saw the bright omen for the future.</p>

<p>His own role was nearing its end but he had seen the
people of Ragnarok conquer their environment in so far
as Big Winter would ever let it be conquered. The last
generation was being born, the generation that would meet
the Gerns, and now they would have their final ally.
Perhaps it would be Johnny who led them on that day,
as the omen seemed to prophesy.</p>

<p>He was the son of a line of leaders, born to a mother
who had fought and killed a unicorn. He had gone hungry
to share what little he had with the young of Ragnarok's
most proud and savage species and Fenrir and Sigyn
would fight beside him on the day he led the forces
of the hell-world in the battle with the Gerns who thought
they were gods.</p>

<p>Could the Gerns hope to have a leader to match?</p>

<br />

<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p130">p.&nbsp;130</a></span>




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</div>

<h2>PART <span style="font-size: 225%;">4</span></h2>

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</div>

<br />


<p>John Humbolt, leader, stood on the wide stockade
wall and watched the lowering sun touch the western
horizon&mdash;far south of where it had set when he was a child.
Big Summer was over and now, in the year two hundred,
they were already three years into Big Fall. The Craigs
had been impassable with snow for five years and the
country at the north end of the plateau, where the iron
had been found, had been buried under never-melting
snow and growing glaciers for twenty years.</p>

<p>There came the soft tinkling of ceramic bells as the
herd of milk goats came down off the hills. Two children
were following and six prowlers walked with them, to
protect them from wild unicorns.</p>

<p>There were not many of the goats. Each year the winters
were longer, requiring the stocking of a larger supply of
hay. The time would come when the summers would be
so short and the winters so long that they could not keep
goats at all. And by then, when Big Winter had closed
in on them, the summer seasons would be too short for
the growing of the orange corn. They would have nothing
left but the hunting.</p>

<p>They had, he knew, reached and passed the zenith of
the development of their environment. From a low of
forty-nine men, women and children in dark caves they
had risen to a town of six thousand. For a few years they
had had a way of life that was almost a civilization but the
inevitable decline was already under way. The years of
frozen sterility of Big Winter were coming and no amount
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p131">p.&nbsp;131</a></span>
of determination or ingenuity could alter them. Six thousand
would have to live by hunting&mdash;and one hundred,
in the first Big Winter, had found barely enough game.</p>

<p>They would have to migrate in one of two different
ways: they could go to the south as nomad hunters&mdash;or
they could go to other, fairer, worlds in ships they took
from the Gerns.</p>

<p>The choice was very easy to make and they were almost
ready.</p>

<p>In the workshop at the farther edge of town the hyperspace
transmitter was nearing completion. The little
smelter was waiting to receive the lathe and other iron
and steel and turn them into the castings for the generator.
Their weapons were ready, the mockers were
trained, the prowlers were waiting. And in the massive
corral beyond town forty half-tame unicorns trampled the
ground and hated the world, wanting to kill something.
They had learned to be afraid of Ragnarok men but they
would not be afraid to kill Gerns....</p>

<p>The children with the goats reached the stockade and
two of the prowlers, Fenrir and Sigyn, turned to see him
standing on the wall. He made a little motion with his
hand and they came running, to leap up beside him on
the ten-foot-high wall.</p>

<p>"So you've been checking up on how well the young
ones guard the children?" he asked.</p>

<p>Sigyn lolled out her tongue and her white teeth grinned
at him in answer. Fenrir, always the grimmer of the
two, made a sound in his throat in reply.</p>

<p>Prowlers developed something like a telepathic rapport
with their masters and could sense their thoughts and
understand relatively complex instructions. Their intelligence
was greater, and of a far more mature order, than
that of the little mockers but their vocal cords were not
capable of making the sounds necessary for speech.</p>

<p>He rested his hands on their shoulders, where their
ebony fur was frosted with gray. Age had not yet affected
their quick, flowing movement but they were getting
old&mdash;they were only a few weeks short of his own age.
He could not remember when they had not been with
him....</p>

<p><span class='pagenumber'><a name="p132">p.&nbsp;132</a></span></p>

<p>Sometimes it seemed to him he could remember those
hungry days when he and Fenrir and Sigyn shared together
in his mother's lap&mdash;but it was probably only his
imagination from having heard the story told so often.
But he could remember for certain when he was learning
to walk and Fenrir and Sigyn, full grown then, walked
tall and black beside him. He could remember playing
with Sigyn's pups and he could remember Sigyn watching
over them all, sometimes giving her pups a bath and
his face a washing with equal disregard for their and
his protests. Above all he could remember the times when
he was almost grown; the wild, free days when he and
Fenrir and Sigyn had roamed the mountains together.
With a bow and a knife and two prowlers beside him
he had felt that there was nothing on Ragnarok that
they could not conquer; that there was nothing in the
universe they could not defy together....</p>

<hr />

<p>There was a flicker of black movement and a young
messenger prowler came running from the direction of
the council hall, a speckle-faced mocker clinging to its
back. It leaped up on the wall beside him and the mocker,
one that had been trained to remember and repeat messages
verbatim, took a breath so deep that its cheeks
bulged out. It spoke, in a quick rush like a child that is
afraid it might forget some of the words:</p>

<p>"You will please come to the council hall to lead the
discussion regarding the last preparations for the meeting
with the Gerns. The transmitter is completed."</p>

<hr />

<p>The lathe was torn down the next day and the smelter
began to roar with its forced draft. Excitement and anticipation
ran through the town like a fever. It would
take perhaps twenty days to build the generator, working
day and night so that not an hour of time would be
lost, forty days for the signal to reach Athena, and forty
days for the Gern cruiser to reach Ragnarok&mdash;&mdash;</p>

<p>In one hundred days the Gerns would be there!</p>

<p>The men who would engage in the fight for the cruiser
quit trimming their beards. Later, when it was time for
the Gerns to appear, they would discard their woolen
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p133">p.&nbsp;133</a></span>
garments for ones of goat skin. The Gerns would regard
them as primitive inferiors at best and it might be of
advantage to heighten the impression. It would make
the awakening of the Gerns a little more shocking.</p>

<p>An underground passage, leading from the town to
the concealment of the woods in the distance, had long
ago been dug. Through it the women and children would
go when the Gerns arrived.</p>

<p>There was a level area of ground, just beyond the
south wall of town, where the cruiser would be almost
certain to land. The town had been built with that thought
in mind. Woods were not far from both sides of the
landing site and unicorn corrals were hidden in them.
From the corrals would come the rear flanking attack
against the Gerns.</p>

<p>The prowlers, of course, would be scattered among
all the forces.</p>

<hr />

<p>The generator was completed and installed on the nineteenth
night. Charley Craig, a giant of a man whose
red beard gave him a genially murderous appearance,
opened the valve of the water pipe. The new wooden
turbine stirred and belts and pulleys began to spin. The
generator hummed, the needles of the dials climbed,
flickered, and steadied.</p>

<p>Norman Lake looked from them to Humbolt, his pale
gray eyes coldly satisfied. "Full output," he said. "We
have the power we need this time."</p>

<p>Jim Chiara was at the transmitter and they waited
while he threw switches and studied dials. Every component
of the transmitter had been tested but they had
not had the power to test the complete assembly.</p>

<p>"That's it," he said at last, looking up at them. "She's
ready, after almost two hundred years of wanting her."</p>

<p>Humbolt wondered what the signal should be and saw
no reason why it should not be the same one that had
been sent out with such hope a hundred and sixty-five
years ago.</p>

<p>"All right, Jim," he said. "Let the Gerns know we're
waiting for them&mdash;make it 'Ragnarok calling' again."</p>

<p>The transmitter key rattled and the all-wave signal
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p134">p.&nbsp;134</a></span>
that the Gerns could not fail to receive went out at a
velocity of five <ins class="typo" title="Transcriber's Note: 'lightyears' in the original text.">light-years</ins> a day:</p>

<p><i>Ragnarok calling&mdash;Ragnarok calling&mdash;Ragnarok calling&mdash;</i></p>

<p>It was the longest summer Humbolt had ever experienced.
He was not alone in his impatience&mdash;among all of
them the restlessness flamed higher as the slow days
dragged by, making it almost impossible to go about their
routine duties. The gentle mockers sensed the anticipation
of their masters for the coming battle and they became
nervous and apprehensive. The prowlers sensed it and they
paced about the town in the dark of night; watching,
listening, on ceaseless guard against the mysterious enemy
their masters waited for. Even the unicorns seemed to
sense what was coming and they rumbled and squealed in
their corrals at night, red-eyed with the lust for blood
and sometimes attacking the log walls with blows that
shook the ground.</p>

<p>The interminable days went their slow succession and
summer gave way to fall. The hundredth day dawned,
cold and gray with the approach of winter; the day of
the Gerns.</p>

<p>But no cruiser came that day, nor the next.
He stood again on the stockade wall in the evening
of the third day, Fenrir and Sigyn beside him. He listened
for the first dim, distant sound of the Gern cruiser
and heard only the moaning of the wind around him.</p>

<p>Winter was coming. Always, on Ragnarok, winter was
coming or the brown death of summer. Ragnarok was a
harsh and barren prison, and no amount of desire could
ever make it otherwise. Only the coming of a Gern
cruiser could ever offer them the bloody, violent opportunity
to regain their freedom.</p>

<p>But what if the cruiser never came?</p>

<p>It was a thought too dark and hopeless to be held.
They were not asking a large favor of fate, after two
hundred years of striving for it; only the chance to challenge
the Gern Empire with bows and knives....</p>

<p>Fenrir stiffened, the fur lifting on his shoulders and a
muted growl coming from him. Then Humbolt heard the
first whisper of sound; a faint, faraway roaring that was
not the wind.</p>

<p><span class='pagenumber'><a name="p135">p.&nbsp;135</a></span></p>

<p>He watched and listened and the sound came swiftly
nearer, rising in pitch and swelling in volume. Then it
broke through the clouds, tall and black and beautifully
deadly. It rode down on its rockets of flame, filling the
valley with its thunder, and his heart hammered with
exultation.</p>

<p>It had come&mdash;the cruiser had come!</p>

<p>He turned and dropped the ten feet to the ground inside
the stockade. The warning signal was being sounded
from the center of town; a unicorn horn that gave out
the call they had used in the practice alarms. Already
the women and children would be hurrying along the
tunnels that led to the temporary safety of the woods
beyond town. The Gerns might use their turret blasters
to destroy the town and all in it before the night was
over. There was no way of knowing what might happen
before it ended. But whatever it was, it would be the action
they had all been wanting.</p>

<p>He ran to where the others would be gathering, Fenrir
and Sigyn loping beside him and the horn ringing wild
and savage and triumphant as it announced the end of
two centuries of waiting.</p>

<hr />

<p>The cruiser settled to earth in the area where it had
been expected to land, towering high above the town
with its turret blasters looking down upon the houses.</p>

<p>Charley Craig and Norman Lake were waiting for him
on the high steps of his own house in the center of town
where the elevation gave them a good view of the ship
yet where the fringes of the canopy would conceal them
from the ship's scanners. They were heavily armed, their
prowlers beside them and their mockers on their shoulders.</p>

<p>Elsewhere, under the connected rows of concealing
canopies, armed men were hurrying to their prearranged
stations. Most of them were accompanied by prowlers,
bristling and snarling as they looked at the alien ship.
A few men were deliberately making themselves visible
not far away, going about unimportant tasks with only
occasional and carefully disinterested glances toward the
ship. They were the bait, to lure the first detachment
into the center of town....</p>

<p><span class='pagenumber'><a name="p136">p.&nbsp;136</a></span></p>

<p>"Well?" Norman Lake asked, his pale eyes restless with
his hunger for violence. "There's our ship&mdash;when do we
take her?"</p>

<p>"Just as soon as we get them outside it," he said. "We'll
use the plan we first had&mdash;wait until they send a full force
to rescue the first detachment and then hit them with
everything we have."</p>

<p>His black, white-nosed mocker was standing in the
open doorway and watching the hurrying men and prowlers
with worried interest: Tip, the great-great-great-great
grandson of the mocker that had died with Howard Lake
north of the plateau. He reached down to pick him up
and set him on his shoulder, and said:</p>

<p>"Jim?"</p>

<p>"The longbows are ready," Tip's treble imitation of Jim
Chiara's voice answered. "We'll black out their searchlights
when the time comes."</p>

<p>"Andy?" he asked.</p>

<p>"The last of us for this section are coming in now,"
Andy Taylor answered.</p>

<p>He made his check of all the subleaders, then looked
up to the roof to ask, "All set, Jimmy?"</p>

<p>Jimmy Stevens' grinning face appeared over the edge.
"Ten crossbows are cocked and waiting up here. Bring
us our targets."</p>

<p>They waited, while the evening deepened into near-dusk.
Then the airlock of the cruiser slid open and thirteen
Gerns emerged, the one leading them wearing the resplendent
uniform of a subcommander.</p>

<p>"There they come," he said to Lake and Craig. "It
looks like we'll be able to trap them in here and force
the commander to send out a full-sized force. We'll all
attack at the sound of the horn and if you can hit their
rear flanks hard enough with the unicorns to give us a
chance to split them from this end some of us should
make it to the ship before they realize up in the control
room that they should close the airlocks.</p>

<p>"Now"&mdash;he looked at the Gerns who were coming
straight toward the stockade wall, ignoring the gate to
their right&mdash;"you'd better be on your way. We'll meet
again before long in the ship."</p>

<p><span class='pagenumber'><a name="p137">p.&nbsp;137</a></span></p>

<p>Fenrir and Sigyn looked from the advancing Gerns to
him with question in their eyes after Lake and Craig
were gone, Fenrir growling restlessly.</p>

<p>"Pretty soon," he said to them. "Right now it would be
better if they didn't see you. Wait inside, both of you."
They went reluctantly inside, to merge with the darkness
of the interior. Only an occasional yellow gleam of
their eyes showed that they were crouched to spring just
inside the doorway.</p>

<p>He called to the nearest unarmed man, not loud enough
to be heard by the Gerns:</p>

<p>"Cliff&mdash;you and Sam Anders come here. Tell the rest
to fade out of sight and get armed."</p>

<p>Cliff Schroeder passed the command along and he and
Sam Anders approached. He looked back at the Gerns
and saw they were within a hundred feet of the&mdash;for them&mdash;unscalable
wall of the stockade. They were coming
without hesitation&mdash;&mdash;</p>

<p>A pale blue beam lashed down from one of the cruiser's
turrets and a fifty foot section of the wall erupted
into dust with a sound like thunder. The wind swept the
dust aside in a gigantic cloud and the Gerns came through
the gap, looking neither to right nor left.</p>

<p>"That, I suppose," Sam Anders said from beside him,
"was Lesson Number One for degenerate savages like
us: Gerns, like gods, are not to be hindered by man-made
barriers."</p>

<p>The Gerns walked with a peculiar gait that puzzled
him until he saw what it was. They were trying to come
with the arrogant military stride affected by the Gerns
and in the 1.5 gravity they were succeeding in achieving
only a heavy clumping.</p>

<p>They advanced steadily and as they drew closer he
saw that in the right hand of each Gern soldier was a
blaster while in the left hand of each could be seen the
metallic glitter of chains.</p>

<p>Schroeder smiled thinly. "It looks like they want to
subject about a dozen of us to some painful questioning."</p>

<p>No one else was any longer in sight and the Gerns
came straight toward the three on the steps. They stopped
forty feet away at a word of command from the officer
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p138">p.&nbsp;138</a></span>
and Gerns and Ragnarok men exchanged silent stares;
the faces of the Ragnarok men bearded and expressionless,
the faces of the Gerns hairless and reflecting a contemptuous
curiosity.</p>

<p>"Narth!" The communicator on the Gern officer's belt
spoke with metallic authority. "What do they look like?
Did we come two hundred light-years to view some animated
vegetables?"</p>

<p>"No, Commander," Narth answered. "I think the discard
of the Rejects two hundred years ago has produced
for us an unexpected reward. There are three natives
under the canopy before me and their physical perfection
and complete adaptation to this hellish gravity is
astonishing."</p>

<p>"They could be used to replace expensive machines on
some of the outer world mines," the commander said,
"providing their intelligence isn't too abysmally low. What
about that?"</p>

<p>"They can surely be taught to perform simple manual
labor," Narth answered.</p>

<p>"Get on with your job," the commander said. "Try to
pick some of the most intelligent looking ones for questioning&mdash;I
can't believe these cattle sent that message
and they're going to tell us who did. And pick some
young, strong ones for the medical staff to examine&mdash;ones
that won't curl up and die after the first few cuts
of the knife."</p>

<p>"We'll chain these three first," Narth said. He lifted
his hand in an imperious gesture to Humbolt and the
other two and ordered in accented Terran: "Come here!"</p>

<p>No one moved and he said again, sharply, <i>"Come here!"</i></p>

<p>Again no one moved and the minor officer beside Narth
said, "Apparently they can't even understand Terran
now."</p>

<p>"Then we'll give them some action they can understand,"
Narth snapped, his face flushing with irritation.
"We'll drag them out by their heels!"</p>

<p>The Gerns advanced purposefully, three of them holstering
their blasters to make their chains ready. When
they had passed under the canopy and could not be seen
from the ship Humbolt spoke:</p>

<p><span class='pagenumber'><a name="p139">p.&nbsp;139</a></span></p>

<p>"All right, Jimmy."</p>

<p>The Gerns froze in midstride, suspicion flashing across
their faces.</p>

<p>"Look up on the roof," he said in Gern.</p>

<p>They looked, and the suspicion became gaping dismay.</p>

<p>"You can be our prisoners or you can be corpses," he
said. "We don't care which."</p>

<p>The urgent hiss of Narth's command broke their indecision:</p>

<p><i>"Kill them!"</i></p>

<p>Six of them tried to obey, bringing up their blasters
in movements that seemed curiously heavy and slow, as
though the gravity of Ragnarok had turned their arms
to wood. Three of them almost lifted their blasters high
enough to fire at the steps in front of them before arrows
went through their throats. The other three did
not get that far.</p>

<p>Narth and the remaining six went rigidly motionless
and he said to them:</p>

<p>"Drop your blasters&mdash;quick!"</p>

<p>Their blasters thumped to the ground and Jimmy
Stevens and his bowmen slid off the roof. Within a minute
the Gerns were bound with their own chains, but for the
officer, and the blasters were in the hands of the Ragnarok
men.</p>

<p>Jimmy looked down the row of Gerns and shook his
head. "So these are Gerns?" he said. "It was like trapping
a band of woods goats."</p>

<p>"Young ones," Schroeder amended. "And almost as
dangerous."</p>

<p>Narth's face flushed at the words and his eyes went
to the ship. The sight of it seemed to restore his courage
and his lips drew back in a snarl.</p>

<p>"You fools&mdash;you stupid, megalomaniac dung-heaps&mdash;do
you think you can kill Gerns and live to boast about it?"</p>

<p>"Keep quiet," Humbolt ordered, studying him with
curiosity. Narth, like all the Gerns, was different from
what they had expected. It was true the Gerns had strode
into their town with an attempt at arrogance but they
were harmless in appearance, soft of face and belly, and
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p140">p.&nbsp;140</a></span>
the snarling of the red-faced Narth was like the bluster
of a cornered scavenger-rodent.</p>

<p>"I promise you this," Narth was saying viciously, "if
you don't release us and return our weapons this instant
I'll personally oversee the extermination of you and every
savage in this village with the most painful death science
can contrive and I'll&mdash;&mdash;"</p>

<p>Humbolt reached out his hand and flicked Narth under
the chin. Narth's teeth cracked loudly together and his
face twisted with the pain of a bitten tongue.</p>

<p>"Tie him up, Jess," he said to a man near him. "If he
opens his mouth again, shove your foot in it."</p>

<p>He spoke to Schroeder. "We'll keep three of the blasters
and send two to each of the other front groups. Have
that done."</p>

<p>Dusk was deepening into darkness and he called Chiara
again. "They'll turn on their searchlights any minute and
make the town as light as day," he said. "If you can keep
them blacked out until some of us have reached the ship,
I think we'll have won."</p>

<p>"They'll be kept blacked out," Chiara said. "With some
flint-headed arrows left over for the Gerns."</p>

<p>He called Lake and Craig, to be told they were ready
and waiting.</p>

<p>"But we're having hell keeping the unicorns quiet,"
Craig said. "They want to get to killing something."</p>

<p>He pressed the switch of the communicator but it was
dead. They had, of course, transferred to some other wave
length so he could not hear the commands. It was something
he had already anticipated....</p>

<p>Fenrir and Sigyn were still obediently inside the doorway,
almost frantic with desire to rejoin him. He spoke
to them and they bounded out, snarling at three Gerns
in passing and causing them to blanch to a dead-white
color.</p>

<p>He set Tip on Sigyn's shoulders and said, "Sigyn,
there's a job for you and Tip to do. A dangerous job.
Listen&mdash;both of you...."</p>

<p>The yellow eyes of Sigyn and the dark eyes of the little
mocker looked into his as he spoke to them and accompanied
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p141">p.&nbsp;141</a></span>
his words with the strongest, clearest mental images
he could project:</p>

<p>"Sigyn, take Tip to the not-men thing. Leave him hidden
in the grass to one side of the big hole in it. Tip,
you wait there. When the not-men come out you listen,
and tell what they say.</p>

<p>"Now, do you both understand?"</p>

<p>Sigyn made a sound that meant she did but Tip
clutched at his wrist with little paws suddenly gone cold
and wailed, "<i>No!</i> Scared&mdash;scared&mdash;&mdash;"</p>

<p>"You have to go, Tip," he said, gently disengaging his
wrist. "And Sigyn will hide near to you and watch over
you." He spoke to Sigyn. "When the horn calls you run
back with him."</p>

<p>Again she made the sound signifying understanding and
he touched them both in what he hoped would not be
the last farewell.</p>

<p>"All right, Sigyn&mdash;go now."</p>

<p>She vanished into the gloom of coming night, Tip
hanging tightly to her. Fenrir stood with the fur lifted
on his shoulders and a half snarl on his face as he watched
her go and watched the place where the not-men would
appear.</p>

<p>"Where's Freckles?" he asked Jimmy.</p>

<p>"Here," someone said, and came forward with Tip's
mate.</p>

<p>He set Freckles on his shoulder and the first searchlight
came on, shining down from high up on the cruiser. It
lighted up the area around them in harsh white brilliance,
its reflection revealing the black shadow that was Sigyn
just vanishing behind the ship.</p>

<p>Two more searchlights came on, to illuminate the town.
Then the Gerns came.</p>

<p>They poured out through the airlock and down the
ramp, there to form in columns that marched forward as
still more Gerns hurried down the ramp behind them.
The searchlights gleamed on their battle helmets and
on the blades of the bayonets affixed to their rifle-like long
range blasters. Hand blasters and grenades hung from
their belts, together with stubby flame guns.</p>

<p>They were a solid mass reaching halfway to the stockade
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p142">p.&nbsp;142</a></span>
before the last of them, the commanding officers,
appeared. One of them stopped at the foot of the ramp
to watch the advance of the punitive force and give the
frightened but faithful Tip the first words to transmit to
Freckles:</p>

<p>"The full force is on its way, Commander."</p>

<p>A reply came, in Freckles' simulation of the metallic
tones of a communicator:</p>

<p>"The key numbers of the confiscated blasters have been
checked and the disturbance rays of the master integrator
set. You'll probably have few natives left alive to take
as prisoners after those thirteen charges explode but continue
with a mopping up job that the survivors will never
forget."</p>

<p><i>So the Gerns could, by remote control, set the total
charges of stolen blasters to explode upon touching the
firing stud?</i> It was something new since the days of the
Old Ones....</p>

<p>He called Chiara and the other groups, quickly, to tell
them what he had learned. "We'll get more blasters&mdash;ones
they can't know the numbers of&mdash;when we attack," he
finished.</p>

<p>He took the blaster from his belt and laid it on the
ground. The front ranks of the Gerns were almost to the
wall by then, a column wider than the gap that had been
blasted through it, coming with silent purposefulness.</p>

<p>Two blaster beams lanced down from the turrets, to
smash at the wall. Dust billowed and thunder rumbled
as they swept along. A full three hundred feet of the
wall had been destroyed when they stopped and the dust
hid the ship and made dim glows of the searchlights.</p>

<p>It had no doubt been intended to impress them with
the might of the Gerns but in doing so it hid the Ragnarok
forces from the advancing Gerns for a few seconds.</p>

<p>"Jim&mdash;black out their lights before the dust clears," he
called. "Joe&mdash;the horn! We attack now!"</p>

<p>The first longbow arrow struck a searchlight and its
glow grew dimmer as the arrow's burden&mdash;a thin tube of
thick lance tree ink&mdash;splattered against it. Another followed&mdash;&mdash;</p>

<p>Then the horn rang out, harsh and commanding, and
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p143">p.&nbsp;143</a></span>
in the distance a unicorn screamed in answer. The savage
cry of a prowler came, like a sound to match, and the
attack was on.</p>

<p>He ran with Fenrir beside him and to his left and right
ran the others with their prowlers. The lead groups converged
as they went through the wide gap in the wall.
They ran on, into the dust cloud, and the shadowy forms
of the Gerns were suddenly before them.</p>

<p>A blaster beam cut into them and a Gern shouted,
<i>"The natives!"</i> Other beams sprang into life, winking
like pale blue eyes through the dust and killing all they
touched. The beams dropped as the first volley of arrows
tore through the massed front ranks, to be replaced by
others.</p>

<p>They charged on, into the blue winking of the blasters
and the red lances of the flame guns with the crossbows
rattling and strumming in answer. The prowlers lunged
and fought beside them and ahead of them; black hell-creatures
that struck the Gerns too swiftly for blasters
to find before throats were torn out; the sound of battle
turned into a confusion of raging snarls, frantic shouts
and dying screams.</p>

<p>A prowler shot past him to join Fenrir&mdash;Sigyn&mdash;and
he felt Tip dart up to his shoulder. She made a sound of
greeting in passing, a sound that was gone as her jaws
closed on a Gern.</p>

<p>The dust cloud cleared a little and the searchlights
looked down on the scene; no longer brilliantly white
but shining through the red-black lance tree ink as a
blood red glow. A searchlight turret slid shut and opened
a moment later, the light wiped clean. The longbows
immediately transformed it into a red glow.</p>

<p>The beam of one of the turret blasters stabbed down,
to blaze a trail of death through the battle. It ceased as
its own light revealed to the Gern commander that the
Ragnarok forces were so intermixed with the Gern forces
that he was killing more Gerns than Ragnarok men.</p>

<p>By then the fighting was so hand to hand that knives
were better than crossbows. The Gerns fell like harvested
corn; too slow and awkward to use their bayonets against
the faster Ragnarok men and killing as many of one another
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p144">p.&nbsp;144</a></span>
as men when they tried to use their blasters and
flame guns. From the rear there came the command of
a Gern officer, shouted high and thin above the sound
of battle:</p>

<p>"Back to the ship&mdash;leave the natives for the ship's
blasters to kill!"</p>

<p>The unicorns arrived then, to cut off their retreat.</p>

<p>They came twenty from the east and twenty from the
west in a thunder of hooves, squealing and screaming in
their blood lust, with prowlers a black wave going before
them. They struck the Gerns; the prowlers slashing
lanes through them while the unicorns charged behind,
trampling them, ripping into them with their horns and
smashing them down with their hooves as they vented
the pent up rage of their years of confinement. On the
back of each was a rider whose long spear flicked and
stabbed into the throats and bellies of Gerns.</p>

<p>The retreat was halted and transformed into milling
confusion. He led his own groups in the final charge, the
prearranged wedge attack, and they split the Gern force
in two.</p>

<p>The ship was suddenly just beyond them.</p>

<p>He gave the last command to Lake and Craig: "<i>Now</i>&mdash;into
the ship!"</p>

<p>He scooped up a blaster from beside a fallen Gern and
ran toward it. A Gern officer was already in the airlock,
his face pale and strained as he looked back and his hand
on the closing switch. He shot him and ran up the ramp
as the officer's body rolled down it.</p>

<p>Unicorn hooves pounded behind him and twenty of
them swept past, their riders leaping from their backs to
the ramp. Twenty men and fifteen prowlers charged up
the ramp as a warning siren shrieked somewhere inside the
ship. At the same time the airlocks, operated from
the control room, began to slide swiftly shut.</p>

<p>He was through first, with Fenrir and Sigyn. Lake
and Craig, together with six men and four prowlers,
squeezed through barely in time. Then the airlocks were
closed and they were sealed in the ship.</p>

<p>Alarm bells added their sound to the shrieking of the
siren and from the multiple-compartments shafts came
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p145">p.&nbsp;145</a></span>
the whir of elevators dropping with Gern forces to kill
the humans trapped inside the ship.</p>

<p>They ran past the elevator shafts without pausing,
light and swift in the artificial gravity that was only
two-thirds that of Ragnarok. They split forces as long
ago planned; three men and four prowlers going with
Charley Craig in the attempt to take the drive room,
Lake and the other three men going with him in the
attempt to take the control room.</p>

<p>They found the manway ladder and began to climb,
Fenrir and Sigyn impatiently crowding their heels.</p>

<p>There was nothing on the control room level and they
ran down the short corridor that their maps had showed.
They turned left, into the corridor that had the control
room at its end, and into the concentrated fire of nine
waiting Gerns.</p>

<p>Fenrir and Sigyn went into the Gerns, under their fire
before they could drop the muzzles of their blasters,
with an attack so vicious and unexpected that what would
have been a certain and lethal trap for the humans was
suddenly a fighting chance.</p>

<p>The corridor became an inferno of blaster beams that
cracked and hissed as they met and crossed, throwing
little chips of metal from the walls with snapping sounds
and going through flesh with sounds like soft tappings.
It was over within seconds, the last Gern down and one
man still standing beside him, the blond and nerveless
Lake.</p>

<p>Thomsen and Barber were dead and Billy West was
bracing himself against the wall with a blaster hole
through his stomach, trying to say something and sliding
to the floor before it was ever spoken.</p>

<p>And Sigyn was down, blood welling and bubbling from
a wound in her chest, while Fenrir stood over her with
his snarling a raging scream as he swung his head in
search of a still-living Gern.</p>

<p>Humbolt and Lake ran on, Fenrir raging beside them,
and into the control room.</p>

<p>Six officers, one wearing the uniform of a commander,
were gaping in astonishment and bringing up their blasters
in the way that seemed so curiously slow to Humbolt.
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p146">p.&nbsp;146</a></span>
Fenrir, in his fury, killed two of them as Lake's
blaster and his own killed three more.</p>

<p>The commander was suddenly alone, his blaster half
lifted. Fenrir leaped at his throat and Humbolt shouted
the quick command: <i>"Disarm!"</i></p>

<p>It was something the prowlers had been taught in their
training and Fenrir's teeth clicked short of the commander's
throat while his paw sent the blaster spinning
across the room.</p>

<p>The commander stared at them with his swarthy face
a dark gray and his mouth still gaping.</p>

<p>"How&mdash;how did you do it?" he asked in heavily accented
Terran. "Only two of you&mdash;&mdash;"</p>

<p>"Don't talk until you're asked a question," Lake said.</p>

<p>"Only two of you...." The thought seemed to restore his
courage, as sight of the ship had restored Narth's
that night, and his tone became threatening. "There are
only two of you and more guards will be here to kill
you within a minute. Surrender to me and I'll let you
go free&mdash;&mdash;"</p>

<p>Lake slapped him across the mouth with a backhanded
blow that snapped his head back on his shoulders and
split his lip.</p>

<p>"Don't talk," he ordered again. "And never lie to us."</p>

<p>The commander spit out a tooth and held his hand to
his bleeding mouth. He did not speak again.</p>

<p>Tip and Freckles were holding tightly to his shoulder
and each other, the racing of their hearts like a vibration,
and he touched them reassuringly.</p>

<p>"All right now&mdash;all safe now," he said.</p>

<p>He called Charley Craig. "Charley&mdash;did you make it?"</p>

<p>"We made it to the drive room&mdash;two of us and one
prowler," Charley answered. "What about you?"</p>

<p>"Norman and I have the control room. Cut their drives,
to play safe. I'll let you know as soon as the entire ship
is ours."</p>

<p>He went to the viewscreen and saw that the battle
was over. Chiara was letting the searchlight burn again
and prowlers were being used to drive back the unicorns
from the surrendering Gerns.</p>

<p>"I guess we won," he said to Lake.</p>

<p><span class='pagenumber'><a name="p147">p.&nbsp;147</a></span></p>

<p>But there was no feeling of victory, none of the elation
he had thought he would have. Sigyn was dying
alone in the alien corridor outside. Sigyn, who had nursed
beside him and fought beside him and laid down her
life for him....</p>

<p>"I want to look at her," he said to Lake.</p>

<p>Fenrir went with him. She was still alive, waiting for
them to come back to her. She lifted her head and
touched his hand with her tongue as he examined the
wound.</p>

<p>It was not fatal&mdash;it need not be fatal. He worked
swiftly, gently, to stop the bleeding that had been draining
her life away. She would have to lie quietly for weeks
but she would recover.</p>

<p>When he was done he pressed her head back to the
floor and said, "Lie still, Sigyn girl, until we can come
to move you. Wait for us and Fenrir will stay here with
you."</p>

<p>She obeyed and he left them, the feeling of victory
and elation coming to him in full then.</p>

<p>Lake looked at him questioningly as he entered the
control room and he said, "She'll live."</p>

<p>He turned to the Gern commander. "First, I want to
know how the war is going?"</p>

<p>"I&mdash;&mdash;" The commander looked uncertainly at Lake.</p>

<p>"Just tell the truth," Lake said. "Whether you think
we'll like it or not."</p>

<p>"We have all the planets but Earth, itself," the commander
said. "We'll have it, soon."</p>

<p>"And the Terrans on Athena?"</p>

<p>"They're still&mdash;working for us there."</p>

<p>"Now," he said, "you will order every Gern in this ship
to go to his sleeping quarters. They will leave their
weapons in the corridors outside and they will not resist
the men who will come to take charge of the ship."</p>

<p>The commander made an effort toward defiance:</p>

<p><i>"And if I refuse?"</i></p>

<p>Lake answered, smiling at him with the smile of his
that was no more than a quick showing of teeth and with
the savage eagerness in his eyes.</p>

<p>"If you refuse I'll start with your fingers and break
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p148">p.&nbsp;148</a></span>
every bone to your shoulders. If that isn't enough I'll
start with your toes and go to your hips. And then I'll
break your back."</p>

<p>The commander hesitated, sweat filming his face as he
looked at them. Then he reached out to switch on the
all-stations communicator and say into it:</p>

<p>"Attention, all personnel: You will return to your quarters
at once, leaving your weapons in the corridors. You are
ordered to make no resistance when the natives come...."</p>

<p>There was a silence when he had finished and Humbolt
and Lake looked at each other, bearded and clad in animal
skins but standing at last in the control room of a
ship that was theirs: in a ship that could take them to
Athena, to Earth, to the ends of the galaxy.</p>

<p>The commander watched them, on his face the blankness
of unwillingness to believe.</p>

<p>"The airlocks&mdash;" he said. "We didn't close them in
time. We never thought you would dare try to take
the ship&mdash;not savages in animal skins."</p>

<p>"I know," Humbolt answered. "We were counting on
you to think that way."</p>

<p>"No one expected any of you to survive here." The
commander wiped at his swollen lips, wincing, and an
almost child-like petulance came into his tone. "You
weren't supposed to survive."</p>

<p>"I know," he said again. "We've made it a point to
remember that."</p>

<p>"The gravity, the heat and cold and fever, the animals&mdash;why
didn't they kill you?"</p>

<p>"They tried," he said. "But we fought back. And we
had a goal&mdash;to meet you Gerns again. You left us on a
world that had no resources. Only enemies who would
kill us&mdash;the gravity, the prowlers, the unicorns. So we
made them our resources. We adapted to the gravity that
was supposed to kill us and became stronger and quicker
than Gerns. We made allies of the prowlers and unicorns
who were supposed to be our executioners and used
them tonight to help us kill Gerns. So now we have
your ship."</p>

<p>"Yes ... you have our ship." Through the unwillingness
to believe on the commander's face and the petulance
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p149">p.&nbsp;149</a></span>
there came the triumph of vindictive anticipation.
"The savages of Ragnarok have a Gern cruiser&mdash;but what
can they do with it?"</p>

<p>"What can we do with it?" he asked, almost kindly.
"We've planned for two hundred years what we can do
with it. We have the cruiser and sixty days from now
we'll have Athena. That will be only the beginning and
you Gerns are going to help us do it."</p>

<hr />

<p>For six days the ship was a scene of ceaseless activity.
Men crowded it, asking questions of the Gern officers
and crew and calmly breaking the bones of those who
refused to answer or who gave answers that were not
true. Prowlers stalked the corridors, their cold yellow
eyes watching every move the Gerns made. The little
mockers began roaming the ship at will, unable any
longer to restrain their curiosity and confident that the
men and prowlers would not let the Gerns harm them.</p>

<p>One mocker was killed then; the speckle-faced mocker
that could repeat messages verbatim. It wandered into a
storage cubicle where a Gern was working alone and
gave him the opportunity to safely vent his hatred of
everything associated with the men of Ragnarok. He
broke its back with a steel bar and threw it, screaming,
into the disposal chute that led to the matter converter.
A prowler heard the scream and an instant later the
Gern screamed; a sound that died in its making as the
prowler tore his throat out. No more mockers were
harmed.</p>

<p>One Ragnarok boy was killed. Three fanatical Gern
officers stole knives from the galley and held the boy as
hostage for their freedom. When their demands were
refused they cut his heart out. Lake cornered them a
few minutes later and, without touching his blaster,
disemboweled them with their own knives. He smiled
down upon them as they writhed and moaned on the
floor and their moans were heard for a long time by the
other Gerns in the ship before they died. No more
humans were harmed.</p>

<p>They discovered that operation of the cruiser was
relatively simple, basically similar to the operation of
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p150">p.&nbsp;150</a></span>
Terran ships as described in the text book the original
Lake had written. Most of the operations were performed
by robot mechanisms and the manual operations, geared
to the slower reflexes of the Gerns, were easily mastered.</p>

<p>They could spend the forty-day voyage to Athena in
further learning and practice so on the sixth day they
prepared to depart. The unicorns had been given the
freedom they had fought so well for and reconnaissance
vehicles were loaned from the cruiser to take their place.
Later there would be machinery and supplies of all kinds
brought in by freighter ships from Athena.</p>

<p>Time was precious and there was a long, long job
ahead of them. They blasted up from Ragnarok on the
morning of the seventh day and went into the black sea
of hyperspace.</p>

<p>By then the Gern commander was no longer of any
value to them. His unwillingness to believe that savages
had wrested his ship from him had increased until his
compartment became his control room to him and he
spent the hours laughing and giggling before an imaginary
viewscreen whereon the cruiser's blasters were destroying,
over and over, the Ragnarok town and all the
humans in it.</p>

<p>But Narth, who had wanted to have them tortured to
death for daring to resist capture, became very cooperative.
In the control room his cooperation was especially
eager. On the twentieth day of the voyage they let him
have what he had been trying to gain by subterfuge:
access to the transmitter when no men were within
hearing distance.</p>

<p>After that his manner abruptly changed. Each day his
hatred for them and his secret anticipation became more
evident.</p>

<p>The thirty-fifth day came, with Athena five days ahead
of them&mdash;the day of the execution they had let him arrange
for them.</p>

<hr />

<p>Stars filled the transdimensional viewscreen, the sun
of Athena in the center. Humbolt watched the space to
the lower left and the flicker came again; a tiny red dot
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p151">p.&nbsp;151</a></span>
that was gone again within a microsecond, so quickly
that Narth in the seat beside him did not see it.</p>

<p>It was the quick peek of another ship; a ship that was
running invisible with its detector screens up but which
had had to drop them for an instant to look out at the
cruiser. Not even the Gerns had ever been able to devise
a polarized detector screen.</p>

<p>He changed the course and speed of the cruiser,
creating an increase in gravity which seemed very slight
to him but which caused Narth to slew heavily in his
seat. Narth straightened and he said to him:</p>

<p>"Within a few minutes we'll engage the ship you sent
for."</p>

<p>Narth's jaw dropped, then came back up. "So you
spied on me?"</p>

<p>"One of our Ragnarok allies did&mdash;the little animal that
was sitting near the transmitter. They're our means of
communication. We learned that you had arranged for
a ship, en route to Athena, to intercept us and capture
us."</p>

<p>"So you know?" Narth asked. He smiled, an unpleasant
twisting of his mouth. "Do you think that knowing will
help you any?"</p>

<p>"We expect it to," he answered.</p>

<p>"It's a battleship," Narth said. "It's three times the size
of this cruiser, the newest and most powerful battleship
in the Gern fleet. How does that sound to you?"</p>

<p>"It sounds good," he said. "We'll make it our flagship."</p>

<p>"Your flagship&mdash;your <i>'flagship'</i>!" The last trace of pretense
left Narth and he let his full and rankling hatred
come through. "You got this cruiser by trickery and
learned how to operate it after a fashion because of an
animal-like reflex abnormality. For forty-two days you
accidental mutants have given orders to your superiors
and thought you were our equals. Now, your fool's
paradise is going to end."</p>

<p>The red dot came again, closer, and he once more
altered the ship's course. He had turned on the course
analyzer and it clicked as the battleship's position was
correlated with that of its previous appearance. A short
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p152">p.&nbsp;152</a></span>
yellow line appeared on the screen to forecast its course
for the immediate future.</p>

<p>"And then?" he asked curiously, turning back to Narth.</p>

<p>"And then we'll take all of you left alive back to your
village. The scenes of what we do to you and your village
will be televised to all Gern-held worlds. It will be
a valuable reminder for any who have forgotten the
penalty for resisting Gerns."</p>

<p>The red dot came again. He punched the <span style="font-variant: small-caps;">battle
stations</span> button and the board responded with a row
of <span style="font-variant: small-caps;">ready</span> lights.</p>

<p>"All the other Gerns are by now in their acceleration
couches," he said. "Strap yourself in for high acceleration
maneuvers&mdash;we'll make contact with the battleship within
two minutes."</p>

<p>Narth did so, taking his time as though it was something
of little importance. "There will be no maneuvers.
They'll blast the stern and destroy your drive immediately
upon attack."</p>

<p>He fastened the last strap and smiled, taunting assurance
in the twisted unpleasantness of it. "The appearance
of this battleship has very much disrupted your plans to
strut like conquering heroes among the slaves on Athena,
hasn't it?"</p>

<p>"Not exactly," Humbolt replied. "Our plans are a little
broader in scope than that. There are two new cruisers
on Athena, ready to leave the shops ten days from now.
We'll turn control of Athena over to the humans there,
of course, then we'll take the three cruisers and the
battleship back by way of Ragnarok. There we'll pick
up all the Ragnarok men who are neither too old nor
too young and go on to Earth. They will be given training
en route in the handling of ships. We expect to find
no difficulty in breaking through the Gern lines around
Earth and then, with the addition of the Earth ships, we
can easily capture all the Gern ships in the solar system."</p>

<p>"'Easily'!" Narth made a contemptuous sneer of the
word. "Were you actually so stupid as to think that you
biological freaks could equal Gern officers who have
made a career of space warfare?"</p>

<p>"We'll far exceed them," he said. "A space battle is
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p153">p.&nbsp;153</a></span>
one of trying to keep your blaster beams long enough on
one area of the enemy ship to break through its blaster
shields at that point. And at the same time try to move
and dodge fast enough to keep the enemy from doing
the same thing to you. The ships are capable of accelerations
up to fifty gravities or more but the acceleration
limitator is the safeguard that prevents the ship from
going into such a high degree of acceleration or into such
a sudden change of direction that it would kill the crew.</p>

<p>"We from Ragnarok are accustomed to a one point
five gravity and can withstand much higher degrees of
acceleration than Gerns or any other race from a one
gravity world. To enable us to take advantage of that
fact we have had the acceleration limitator on this cruiser
disconnected."</p>

<p><i>"Disconnected?"</i> Narth's contemptuous regard vanished
in frantic consternation. "You fool&mdash;you don't know what
that means&mdash;<i>you'll move the acceleration lever too far
and kill us all!</i>"</p>

<p>The red dot flicked on the viewscreen, trembled, and
was suddenly a gigantic battleship in full view. He
touched the acceleration control and Narth's next words
were cut off as his diaphragm sagged. He swung the
cruiser in a curve and Narth was slammed sideways, the
straps cutting into him and the flesh of his face pulled
lopsided by the gravity. His eyes, bulging, went blank
with unconsciousness.</p>

<p>The powerful blasters of the battleship blossomed like
a row of pale blue flowers, concentrating on the stern of
the cruiser. A warning siren screeched as they started
breaking through the cruiser's shields. He dropped the
detector screen that would shield the cruiser from sight,
but not from the blaster beams, and tightened the curve
until the gravity dragged heavily at his own body.</p>

<p>The warning siren stopped as the blaster beams of the
battleship went harmlessly into space, continuing to follow
the probability course plotted from the cruiser's last
visible position and course by the battleship's robot
target tracers.</p>

<p>He lifted the detector screen, to find the battleship
almost exactly where the cruiser's course analyzers had
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p154">p.&nbsp;154</a></span>
predicted it would be. The blasters of the battleship were
blazing their full concentration of firepower into an area
behind and to one side of the cruiser.</p>

<p>They blinked out at sight of the cruiser in its new
position and blazed again a moment later, boring into
the stern. He dropped the detector screen and swung the
cruiser in another curve, spiraling in the opposite direction.
As before, the screech of the alarm siren died as
the battleship's blasters followed the course given them
by course analyzers and target tracers that were built to
presume that all enemy ships were acceleration-limitator
equipped.</p>

<p>The cruiser could have destroyed the battleship at
any time&mdash;but they wanted to capture their flagship unharmed.
The maneuvering continued, the cruiser drawing
closer to the battleship. The battleship, in desperation,
began using the same hide-and-jump tactics the cruiser
used but it was of little avail&mdash;the battleship moved at
known acceleration limits and the cruiser's course analyzers
predicted each new position with sufficient accuracy.</p>

<p>The cruiser made its final dash in a tightening spiral,
its detector screen flickering on and off. It struck the
battleship at a matched speed, with a thump and ringing
of metal as the magnetic grapples fastened the cruiser
like a leech to the battleship's side.</p>

<p>In that position neither the forward nor stern blasters
of the battleship could touch it. There remained only to
convince the commander of the battleship that further
resistance was futile.</p>

<p>This he did with a simple ultimatum to the commander:</p>

<p>"This cruiser is firmly attached to your ship, its acceleration
limitator disconnected. Its drives are of sufficient
power to thrust both ships forward at a much
higher degree of acceleration than persons from one-gravity
worlds can endure. You will surrender at once
or we shall be forced to put these two ships into a curve
of such short radius and at an acceleration so great that
all of you will be killed."</p>

<p>Then he added, "If you surrender we'll do somewhat
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p155">p.&nbsp;155</a></span>
better by you than you did with the humans two hundred
years ago&mdash;we'll take all of you on to Athena."</p>

<p>The commander, already sick from an acceleration that
would have been negligible to Ragnarok men, had no
choice.</p>

<p>His reply came, choked with acceleration sickness and
the greater sickness of defeat:</p>

<p>"We will surrender."</p>

<hr />

<p>Narth regained consciousness. He saw Humbolt sitting
beside him as before, with no Gern rescuers crowding
into the control room with shouted commands and
drawn blasters.</p>

<p>"Where are they?" he asked. "Where is the battleship?"</p>

<p>"We captured it," he said.</p>

<p>"You captured&mdash;a Gern battleship?"</p>

<p>"It wasn't hard," he said. "It would have been easier
if only Ragnarok men had been on the cruiser. We didn't
want to accelerate to any higher gravities than absolutely
necessary because of the Gerns on it."</p>

<p>"You did it&mdash;you captured the battleship," Narth said,
his tone like one dazed.</p>

<p>He wet his lips, staring, as he contemplated the unpleasant
implications of it.</p>

<p>"You're freak mutants who can capture a battleship.
Maybe you will take Athena and Earth from us. But"&mdash;the
animation of hatred returned to his face&mdash;"What good
will it do you? Did you ever think about that?"</p>

<p>"Yes," he said. "We've thought about it."</p>

<p>"Have you?" Narth leaned forward, his face shining
with the malice of his gloating. "You can never escape
the consequences of what you have done. The Gern Empire
has the resources of dozens of worlds. The Empire
will build a fleet of special ships, a force against which
your own will be nothing, and send them to Earth and
Athena and Ragnarok. The Empire will smash you for
what you have done and if there are any survivors of
your race left they will cringe before Gerns for a hundred
generations to come.</p>

<p>"Remember that while you're posturing in your little
hour of glory on Athena and Earth."</p>

<p><span class='pagenumber'><a name="p156">p.&nbsp;156</a></span></p>

<p>"You insist in thinking we'll do as Gerns would do,"
he said. "We won't delay to do any posturing. We'll have
a large fleet when we leave Earth and we'll go at once to
engage the Gern home fleet. I thought you knew we
were going to do that. We're going to cripple and capture
your fleet and then we're going to destroy your
empire."</p>

<p>"Destroy the Empire&mdash;<i>now</i>?" Narth stared again, all
the gloating gone as he saw, at last, the quick and inexorable
end. "Now&mdash;before we can stop you&mdash;before we
can have a chance?"</p>

<p>"When a race has been condemned to die by another
race and it fights and struggles and manages somehow to
survive, it learns a lesson. It learns it must never again
let the other race be in position to destroy it. So this is
the harvest you reap from the seeds you sowed on Ragnarok
two hundred years ago.</p>

<p>"You understand, don't you?" he asked, almost gently.
"For two hundred years the Gern Empire has been a
menace to our survival as a race. Now, the time has come
when we shall remove it."</p>

<hr />

<p>He stood in the control room of the battleship and
watched Athena's sun in the viewscreen, blazing like a
white flame. Sigyn, fully recovered, was stretched out on
the floor near him; twitching and snarling a little in her
sleep as she fought again the battle with the Gerns.
Fenrir was pacing the floor, swinging his black, massive
head restlessly, while Tip and Freckles were examining
with fascinated curiosity the collection of bright medals
that had been cleaned out of the Gern commander's desk.</p>

<p>Lake and Craig left their stations, as impatient as
Fenrir, and came over to watch the viewscreen with him.</p>

<p>"One day more," Craig said. "We're two hundred years
late but we're coming in to the world that was to have
been our home."</p>

<p>"It can never be, now," he said. "Have any of us ever
thought of that&mdash;that we're different to humans and
there's no human world we could ever call home?"</p>

<p>"I've thought of it," Lake said. "Ragnarok made us different
physically and different in the way we think. We
<span class='pagenumber'><a name="p157">p.&nbsp;157</a></span>
could live on human worlds&mdash;but we would always be a
race apart and never really belong there."</p>

<p>"I suppose we've all thought about it," Craig said.
"And wondered what we'll do when we're finished with
the Gerns. Not settle down on Athena or Earth, in a
little cottage with a fenced-in lawn where it would be
adventure to watch the Three-D shows after each day at
some safe, routine job."</p>

<p>"Not back to Ragnarok," Lake said. "With metals and
supplies from other worlds they'll be able to do a lot
there but the battle is already won. There will be left
only the peaceful development&mdash;building a town at the
equator for Big Winter, leveling land, planting crops.
We could never be satisfied with that kind of a life."</p>

<p>"No," he said, and felt his own restlessness stir in protest
at the thought of settling down in some safe and
secure environment. "Not Athena or Earth or Ragnarok&mdash;not
any world we know."</p>

<p>"How long until we're finished with the Gerns?" Lake
asked. "Ten years? We'll still be young then. Where will
we go&mdash;all of us who fought the Gerns and all of the
ones in the future who won't want to live out their lives
on Ragnarok? Where is there a place for us&mdash;a world of
our own?"</p>

<p>"Where do we find a world of our own?" he asked,
and watched the star clouds creep toward them in the
viewscreen; tumbled and blazing and immense beyond
conception.</p>

<p>"There's a galaxy for us to explore," he said. "There
are millions of suns and thousands of worlds waiting for
us. Maybe there are races out there like the Gerns&mdash;and
maybe there are races such as we were a hundred years
ago who need our help. And maybe there are worlds out
there with things on them such as no man ever imagined.</p>

<p>"We'll go, to see what's there. Our women will go with
us and there will be some worlds on which some of us
will want to stay. And, always, there will be more restless
ones coming from Ragnarok. Out there are the
worlds and the homes for all of us."</p>

<p>"Of course," Lake said. "Beyond the space frontier ...
where else would we ever belong?"</p>

<p><span class='pagenumber'><a name="p158">p.&nbsp;158</a></span></p>

<p>It was all settled, then, and there was a silence as the
battleship plunged through hyperspace, the cruiser running
beside her and their drives moaning and thundering
as had the drives of the <i>Constellation</i> two hundred
years before.</p>

<p>A voyage had been interrupted then, and a new race
had been born. Now they were going on again, to Athena,
to Earth, to the farthest reaches of the Gern Empire.
And on, to the wild, unknown regions of space beyond.</p>

<p>There awaited their worlds and there awaited their
destiny; to be a race scattered across a hundred thousand
light-years of suns, to be an empire such as the galaxy
had never known.</p>

<p>They, the restless ones, the unwanted and forgotten, the
survivors.</p>

<p style="text-align: center"><span style="font-variant: small-caps;">The End</span></p>

<br />

<br />

<p><span class='pagenumber'><a name="p159">p.&nbsp;159</a></span></p>

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<p><span class='pagenumber'><a name="p160">p.&nbsp;160</a></span></p>

<p style="text-align: center">Now available in paperback</p>

<h1>INSIDE<br />
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<h1>DOOMED</h1>

<p><b>Crushing gravity&mdash;thin air&mdash;winters of unimaginable cold&mdash;searing
summers under two suns&mdash;a deadly wasteland teeming
with monsters and killing fever&mdash;</b></p>

<p><b>That was Ragnarok, the most dreaded planet yet discovered.
And Ragnarok was where a thousand untrained Earthmen&mdash;and
women and children&mdash;were brutally marooned by a
sadistic enemy.</b></p>

<p><b>Two hundred died the first night.</b></p>

<p><b>In the morning, the survivors knew what they must live for&mdash;revenge!</b></p>

<div style="text-align: center">
<img src="https://brian.carnell.com/wiki/_media/etext:t:tom-godwin-space-prison-back_cover_bottom.jpg" width="600" height="435" alt="back cover illustration" title="back cover illustration" />
</div>

<p>A PYRAMID BOOK 40c</p>

<p>Cover: Ralph Brillhart <br />
Printed in U.S.A.</p>

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