by Earl
“I cannot,” he said wearily. “I’ve tried before. All of us at the slave village have tried before. We cannot break that horrible power the Beasts have over our minds.” He turned to the girl. “Mara, run! You are of the fortunate ones who can resist. Run for the forest. I think I can resist my master’s mental command long enough to let you escape. Hurry!”
HE gave her a push. But the girl turned back, and flung her arms around his neck.
“I can’t. I still love you, Mantar. I will give you what happiness I can. I will go with you.”
“No, Mara. It means slavery. Go, please.”
But the girl clung to him. Then it was too late. The Beast left its ghoulish feast and advanced. Arm in arm, the pair walked toward it, to return with it to the slave village. On their young faces was written the bitterness of their chained lives under this dome lighted by an alien Cepheid sun.
York turned away as if from an unreal drama on some dream stage. Tears of helpless rage misted his eyes. Two thousand years of travel and observation among many civilizations had not made him callous to the fundamental decencies of life.
“It’s awful, Vera,” he said dully. “If I were in my own Universe, I’d blast down this dome on the spot and wipe those Beasts out to the last cell. Here I’m helpless even to get in.” A determined note rang in his psychic tone. “But I will get in. I’ll come back to the ship and conquer this universe’s science laws, no matter how long it takes. And then—”
He was interrupted.
Over the bulge of the glass dome appeared a small ovoid ship. It swept down swiftly, darting back and forth as though searching. Instantly wary, York stood stock-still. Movement would betray him.
But the occupant of the craft seemed to spy him. It dropped down lightly and landed a dozen yards away. A hatch opened and a figure stepped out. In its hand glinted what could only be a weapon.
“Tony, what’s wrong?”
“Silence, Vera,” shot back York. “Don’t contact me again unless you get my signal. On your life!”
Obediently no telepathic sound came from Vera.
York transferred his attention to the visitor. He was a travesty of a man, with spindly legs and arms, thin flat-chested body, and delicate tentacular fingers. Sharp, shrewd features peered inquisitively. Wearing no space-suit, he seemed perfectly at home in the bitter cold that York could not have survived for a minute. He breathed the hydrocarbonous air without discomfort. The forehead was low, topped by feathery hair, but the cranium in back bulged grotesquely. Intellect supreme reposed there.
“Who are you?” he demanded, in the universal language of telepathy. He answered himself. “You are obviously one of the J-X-Seventy-seven creatures. Earthmen, you are called. I was up in the conditioning apparatus when I thought I heard a powerful telepathic shout, and came to investigate. How did you get out of the dome?”
THE being’s canny eyes looked at York suspiciously.
“Or did you come from Earth? A ship from Earth was recently intercepted. I thought I heard you exchange a telepathic message with someone. Have you an accomplice? Where is your ship?”
Staccato, peremptory questions, they were just like those shot at the Three Eternals, before they were destroyed.
York faced a dilemma, greater than any before. If he revealed the true story, the ship would be found, Vera captured. Both would then be helpless. York would have no chance to piece out the new science of this universe. He would have no future chance to face them, armed and powerful. These thoughts that flashed through his mind, he willed in a closed circuit, so the alien would not hear. There was only one solution.
“I have no ship,” he returned in broadcast telepathy, knowing Vera would also hear. “I was in the dome. I built this space-suit, hoping to escape. Somehow, a few minutes ago, the dome wall where I sought an opening suddenly weakened and I fell through. I don’t understand it. It simply happened.” York held his breath. Only one thing made the thin story plausible. The dome must be an energy shell, not a matter shell. This York knew from the fact that his telepathy had not penetrated it. Matter was utterly transparent to thought. Therefore, if at times the energy shell could conceivably weaken in spots, one might fall through.
The being eyed him closely, suspiciously, but also with a certain disdain. It was not worth his continued attention.
“Come,” he said. “Back you go. You won’t be lucky enough to fall out a second time.”
He extracted a queer, flaring-ended instrument from his belt and trained it on the section of the dome wall nearest them. Some force sprayed out in a six-foot circle, neutralizing the dome force. A push sent York through, along with a rush of hydrocarbonous air.
When he turned, he saw only a dull gray wall, blocking off all view of the outside world.
CHAPTER V
Battle with the Beast
HE turned. He was within the dome, in the transplanted patch of Earth. He knew no more than before of the scheme behind it all. But some of the people here might furnish clues.
He stepped forward eagerly. Only one thing bothered him—his completely severed connection with Vera. Within himself he prayed that she would not foolishly wander from the ship and into danger.
For now he knew that danger supreme lurked behind all this.
He walked a hundred feet before he thought of removing his suit. He slung it over his shoulder and went on. He drew in deep lungfuls of air that had all the peculiar tang and sweetness of Earth’s atmosphere. The builder-scientists had done a remarkable job of duplicating the Earth environment. It was pleasantly warm.
For awhile, wandering through a cool forest in which birds sang and squirrels chattered, York lost himself in a pleasant sense of well being, after the irksome period in the clumsy space-suit.
The sleep that he had long denied himself conquered him. He lay down in a soft patch of grass, passing off into restful slumber.
He awoke at a soft touch on his cheek.
Startled, he looked up into the face of a girl. It was a lovely face whose blue eyes and warm smile seemed meant only for him. The girl sat beside him, apparently having been there for quite awhile.
“What is your name?” she asked. “I am Leela. I watched you sleeping. You are good to look at.”
York understood, though the words were a form of English queerly slurred.
“Anton York,” he returned, trying to ease his archaic accent to something approaching hers.
The name that would have made any contemporary citizen of Earth freeze into awe and incredulous wonder failed to bring more than a welcoming smile to the girl’s lips.
“An-ton Y-york,” she repeated. “Anton York. I like it. And you are nice. I love you!”
Without another word she threw her arms around his neck, kissing him. York gasped at the girl’s directness and pushed her away gently.
“Just a minute,” he objected, and for perhaps the first time in centuries, he stammered a little. Fleetingly he felt glad that the wall of force kept Vera from knowing about the kiss. “Certainly you don’t mean what you say—”
“But I do,” insisted the girl softly, kissing him again. “Don’t you want me to love you?”
York had to think for a moment. And for a moment he glanced around dizzily, aware that the girl’s presence made the setting seem almost a paradise. Then his eyes caught a glint of pink skin a dozen yards away, behind leafy bushes.
INSTANTLY the camouflage that had made the place seem so wonderful vanished. It was in reality a hell, in which the hypno-beasts not only played man against man, but woman against man!
York pushed the girl away. The monster, divining that it had been seen, lumbered forward. Over York swayed the serpentine neck and gleaming eyes of the Beast, reminding him of all the tragedies he had seen, in this dome and the others.
York sprang erect. Their eyes locked. York’s first impulse was to dash at the monster and twist its thin neck. But when he tried, he had the sensation of plunging into an invisible flood of
force that tore at him and beat him back. It came from those glittering saucer eyes—the hypnotic force!
York tried to wrench his eyes from the Medusa stare that turned him to helpless stone, but failed. He fought the intangible force for a stubborn minute before he eased back.
Still he could not tear his eyes away. Now the force changed. Like a resistless gravity, it pulled him forward, but at the same time locked his arm muscles. He fought to strain backward against the ghostly hands that seemed to draw him forward. One step—two steps—He advanced like a bird caught in the spell of a snake.
The dome, trees, grass, girl—all had vanished. York saw only two enormous, deadly, compelling eyes that seemed to grow and fill the whole universe. He did not even see the quivering tentacle that stretched in anticipation for his throat.
But all the while, within York, something had been working. His subconscious mind gave the call of alarm. His immortality radiogens, stored with cosmic energy that constantly battled the poisons of old age and the raids of deadly germs, released a tide of power to his brain.
York stopped, stiffening, fighting the invisible force with renewed strength. The hypnotic force gave one final tug. York swayed, straining, and then took a step backward.
The spell snapped like the twang of a bowstring. York had won.
He leaped forward, but now in command of himself. The Beast bleated in fear, trying to run. York easily overtook it, grasped the neck and wrung it like that of a chicken. The head drooped on its broken neck. The hellish eyes glazed. The body thrashed wildly for several minutes before it finally lay still in death.
York stared at it with hands on hips, panting more in loathing and rage than exertion. Never in all his exploits had he felt more completely satisfied. He had destroyed a fleet of powerful ships once, and moved worlds, and wielded a godlike science. But here with his bare hands he had killed a repulsive beast. That was his supreme achievement!
AFTER awhile, he smiled in detached calm at the strange contrast between this event and the others in-his stirring career. His thoughts were terminated by a pair of soft arms that stole about his neck.
“You have saved me—freed me!” Leela murmured. “Now I truly love you. Take me with you.”
York disengaged himself firmly.
“Leela, I have a wife. I’ve had her for a long, long time and wouldn’t change now!” He wondered what she would say if he told her he was two thousand years old. He decided not to, for the present.
“You have a—mate?”
“Yes.” York was relieved, for she did not press her attention. “Now tell me about this beast, and you.” To himself he mused: “Beauty and the Beast.”
“The master brought me here, where the Free Ones often come. If we found a young man—as we did you—I was to lure him with me, away from any others. It was a hateful duty, please believe that. Then the Beast would either kill him or bring him back to be a slave. The Beasts use all sorts of means to reduce the numbers of the Free Ones. They are trying to kill off all those of the Free Ones who are too mind-powerful to become slaves.”
“You mean there are certain ones here who can resist the Beasts’ spell, like myself?”
The girl looked at him, puzzled.
“Surely you know that. Why do you ask questions as though you have never been here before?”
“I haven’t,” York said. “I came from outside the dome wall.”
She stared at him in sudden astonishment, at his strange clothes, at his oddly glowing eyes, the sign of immortality. After a moment, shrugging helplessly, she answered his questions.
“Yes, many can resist the spell. And each generation there are more.”
“Generation!” gasped York. “You’ve never heard of me, Anton York? You’ve never been on Earth?”
“Earth? You mean the Original World, which our forefathers came from, they say. No, of course not. I was born here.”
“And how many generations have there been, according to that story?”
“One hundred.”
ONE hundred generations! At least two thousand years! For twenty centuries Earth people bad been under this great dome, living and dying, in some gigantic experiment carried out by the dome builders. York shook his head. More and more it loomed as something vital and far reaching—and sinister.
“Do you know why this was done?” he pursued. “Why your forefathers were taken from the Original World and brought here? Or where the hypno-beasts came from?”
“I know little,” vouched the girl. “But perhaps at the village of the Free Ones some of the learned men know. Come, I’ll lead you there.”
Glancing at him in growing wonder, she turned. York followed.
The way led out of the small forest, into open land. There were more grazing lands for cattle and beyond lay a checkerboard of tilled fields with ripening crops. Nut-browned men labored among them and waved greetings. They all had rifles and looked cautiously behind York and Leela to make sure they were not slaves of the hypno-beasts, on some sinister errand.
The village two miles ahead struck a chord of ancient memory in York’s mind. It was a stockaded camp, surrounded by a wall of high wooden posts with here and there a lookout station. Within were log cabins and horse-drawn wagons and buckskin garbed people. It was a setting that had vanished from Earth’s history since the nineteenth century. It was here, reincarnated and apparently jelled. Why?
York’s mind bristled with unanswered questions. He was impatient when an elderly woman spied them. She dropped an armload of kindling wood and hugged Leela.
“My child, my child!” she cried, yet with a stoic lack of tears in her motherly joy. “You are back. I thought I’d never see you again. It’s been a year. Leela, my baby—”
“He rescued me.” Leela pointed to York. An eager crowd formed around, shouting greetings to the girl who had miraculously returned from the slavehood of the Beasts. “He killed my Beast master with his bare hands!” She told the story.
The crowd gaped at York in awe. As much, York mused, as the peoples of the thirty-first century had gaped at him for moving worlds. Here he had done nothing more than wring a Beast’s neck. He hadn’t used a single scientific principle except that a broken spine caused death.
York made an impatient gesture and the girl understood. She led him to the center of the village where a two-storied cabin stood, guarded by two long-haired stalwarts with rifles. One of them started and greeted Leela with a hug and kiss. York smiled at her hungry response. It relieved him entirely of his role as hero-rescuer, with which she had girlishly surrounded him.
THE young man stuck out his hand, after the story, and wrung York’s hand with a grip of steel. No weaklings, these men. Then he spoke hesitantly.
“According to custom, Leela is yours.”
“But I have a mate,” York returned quickly. “She is outside the dome will.” He began to explain. Seeing their blank stares, he asked again for an audience with those in authority.
“You mean the Congress.” The young guard went in and returned after a moment, nodding. “They will see you.”
The Congress proved to be a group of ten elderly, gray-haired men, past the days of physical activity but wise in years and experience. They listened as Leela once again gave the details.
“It is a strange story,” said Robar, the head of the council. “Who are you, Anton York? I have never heard the name York among our people.” There was suspicion in his voice, and in all their stares. “You may be from the Beast village, sent as a spy! The Beasts try all sorts of tricks in their attempt to subdue us.”
The atmosphere became tense, and the young guard even raised his gun threateningly.
“No!” It was Leela who sprang to York’s defense. “Don’t forget I was in the Beast village for a year. The name is not known there, either. If he is a spy, so am I, for I came from the Beasts.”
The impassioned words served to heighten the tension, included the girl in their suspicions. York stepped forward wi
th determination.
“Listen to me. I have lived for two thousand years. I was born on what you know as the Original World, in the twentieth century. In the year seventeen-seventy-six, thirteen colonies in a land called America declared their independence from a land across the Atlantic Ocean. They formed a Congress. Your Congress comes from that. In the following century, the thirteen colonies grew, pushing westward against redmen called Indians. Eventually the land stretched from ocean to ocean. There was a Civil War, the assassination of a great man named Lincoln. Then an industrial empire arose, oil was found, gold. A steam railroad spanned the continent. Buffalo herds were exterminated.”
Excitement grew in the men’s faces.
“It fits in with our legends,” whispered Robar. “The thirteen American tribes—the redmen—the Big War—buffalo vanishing.” He looked at York with sudden awe. “We believe you, Anton York. You have come from the Original World to help us?”
“If I can,” York nodded. “But first I must know all I can. What do your legends tell of coming here?”
ROBAR pondered, as though searching misty impressions handed down from father to son.
“Little. Until eighteen-eighty-eight, our forefathers lived on the Original World, in a village like this, called Fort Mojave. They fought the redmen at times. But one day strange flying ships appeared, against which their guns were useless. The whole village of a thousand men, women and children was forcibly taken here. At first there were no Beasts. They lived with little trouble, though sad at being taken for their home world. Then the Beasts appeared suddenly, and life became a constant battle against them. So it has been for generations.”
“But why were they brought here?” York queried. “And why were the hypno-beasts introduced into this bit of transplanted Earth?”