Beneath Strange Stars

by Ralph E. Vaughan

  That same night, Tyiir deserted the caravan and headed for the Tarmarian Hills.

  We return again to the final days of planet Earth, this time to the quest of a young man named Red Nightkills. Even from the few stories in this volume you might get the idea that all of my characters are upon one kind of quest or another. Well, not all, but a great many, whether it is for a lost home, a peaceful sanctuary or a lost loved one. It’s a thread that runs though many of my series stories, but does not generally manifest itself in my novels. I had some trouble placing this story, mostly because of the title, which is the same as a 60s cult film, one I refused to change. Eventually, it found a home in one of the small press zines of the times. It fits into the “dying earth” genre, but also touches upon the dark forces that wander amongst the stars.

  Carnival of Souls

  A Tale of Cemetery Earth

  Watchfires were lit on the basalt walls of Nazak, feeble flickerings in the long night of Earth. The sun’s disc was gone from the sky, but fire still weaved among the brightening stars.

  Red Nightkills trod the road hard by the tideless sea, dust rising at every footfall. When he saw watchfires spring from the beetling walls, he quickened his pace. He had no wish to spend the next seventy hours outside the walls of Nazak, where wild beasts and wilder men gathered. He reached the sanctuary of the city just before the duraluminum gates thundered closed for the night.

  Would he find Ella Windfire here? The merchants of Nazak sometimes purchased captives from wasteland raiders, so it was not impossible that the Black Eel Warriors might have come here.

  People thronged the streets, and the crowds would swell larger as the night wore on.

  The last fires of the sun caught the Moonbow and tinged it with blood. The pale arch stretched from horizon to horizon.

  “Sample the pleasures of soft, pale flesh,” said a young girl clad in filthy fabrics.

  Red smiled and shook his head. Others enticed and were refused; he ignored the tappings against the panes of upper-story windows where ruddy lights flickered. There was no pleasure in the taking of a woman who would give herself for a mere coin, without love. He yearned for that which was lost.

  After traversing the Violet Desert, on the borders of the Lands of the Salt Lakes, he and Ella had camped near the ruins of a city. The Black Eel Warriors attacked in the waning night. Man and woman fought back to back, pitting their swords and percussion weapons against the war hammers and ionic scimitars of the Warriors. In the end, Ella was stolen and Red left for dead. And so he searched, had searched for a year.

  Red paused and listened. Night breezes brought strains of a wheezing organ playing a jittering tune. Red followed the music and came to the Carnival of Ras Algol.

  The carnival was situated in a corner of the bazaar, hard against a juncture of the city’s beetling walls, separated from the city by hanging tapestries and scowling sentries. A hawker at the entrance, beneath a crimson-scrawled banner, chanted of the wonders within. From the center of the carnival rose a shining obelisk. Multi-colored tents peaked around that central spire. Paper lanterns and naked torches burned gaily.

  “See the most beautiful woman in the universe.”

  Red veered toward the entrance and paid a copper for an hour’s diversion. The most beautiful woman in the universe. Red looked to the frosty stars and shuddered. Stories of the sons and daughters of Earth who had fled to the stars during the Dreamtime were still told around dung-fed campfires.

  Red played the carnival-goer seeking to forget the night. He toured the Gallery of Freaks, ate steaming sweetbreads on a stick, watched the Scientist perform his tricks of magic and technology, and let a dust-faced androgyne tell his future.

  “Death and abandonment,” it whispered.

  “A fate, not a prophecy,” Red countered.

  “Unnumbered days under the red sun, across violet-hazed vistas.” it said. “Accompanied by death and gigantic doom.”

  “Tell me not of these old friends,” Red told the androgyne. “Tell my future in a world with no future, where mankind lives as carrion beetles upon the corpse of the dead Earth. Tell me where I shall find what I seek, not what I already know.”

  The androgyne sighed, and Red entertained a vision of a south wind blowing across a sarcophagi-littered plain.

  “You will see her, the one you lost and now seek.”

  “I’ll find Ella? Tell me where!”

  “You will see her,” the androgyne said, “but will not find her.

  Disgusted Red returned to the midway. The most beautiful woman in the universe resided in an ebony-hung tent. He passed it often. Eventually he would surrender the required silver piece, but he was not ready to shatter the illusion yet. Later he would face the reality of perfume and perspiration, of bestial moans in the night.

  “See her,” urged a figure in the shadows.

  One hand strayed to the hilt of his sword, the other to the butt of his revolver. “Who are you?”

  “The carnival’s banner proclaims my name.” The man stepped from deep shadows to lesser shadows.

  “Ras Algol?”

  “At your service,” the carnival-master said, bowing low, smiling sardonically. “You are not Nazakian. What is your name?”

  “Red Nightkills.”

  “An odd name on a world where night rules.”

  “It is the name I have chosen.”

  “Welcome, Red Nightkills.” Ras Algol said. “Here, you will find desire fulfilled. You desire what all men desire—a first love or a lost love. Often they are one in the same. And, of course, escape.”

  Red laughed. “Do not promise what you cannot deliver. The best most people can manage is lust and oblivion.”

  Ras Algol smiled. “Go see the most beautiful woman in the universe.”

  “For the moment, I prefer illusion to…”

  “Thief!” A man leaped from between two tents.

  The carnival-master extended his heavy arm. Red could not tell whether Ras Algol actually touched the man, but the man stiffened and fell. The dagger in his upraised fist clattered away. Ras Algol clapped his hands imperiously and two servants appeared to drag the body away.

  Red saw the dead man’s eyes. He had seen death in all its myriad forms on a world where death was courted like a lover, but he shuddered at this sight. The man’s eyes were emptier than the gulfs between the stars, soulless as well as lifeless.

  “Find your heart’s desire...”

  Ras Algol made an intricate gesture with his left hand, seemed to pull a coin from the air, and flipped it to Red. The coin was heavy, but was not silver, gold or a transuranic alloy. One side showed the swirling Galaxy, the other a human eye. When Red looked up, Ras Algol was moving away, a shadow among shadows.

  Red clutched the token in his hand. The ebony tent loomed before him at the base of the silvery obelisk. The banner above the tent proclaimed its promises in jadeite and tarnished silver.

  Inside, stars gleamed in the void; diamond-lights hung from the walls and ceiling. Sweet, sad perfume rose around him. Unseen musicians piped mysterious tunes. As Red’s eyes became accustomed to the darkness, he discerned the forms of hung tapestries and sheening pillows.

  “Come to me, traveler,” a woman murmured.

  Red turned toward the voice, moved forward.

  The woman reclined on a low sofa. Her eyes were silver, Ella’s had been violet. She gestured with a hand so pale as to be almost luminous. She gazed at him with those eyes of stellar silver. Her hair held the sheen of spun platinum

  Red showed her the token.

  Her laughter was crystalline.

  She entwined her cool arms about his neck.

  He had been prepared to resist her, but his denial became as insubstantial as smoke. Unwonted passions overwhelmed his surprise and guilt.

  In the heights of fervor, Red Nightkills saw visions he could neither halt nor understand. Stars and galaxies hurtled through the void and alien vistas seared his soul. He felt all hi
s memories rushing upward.

  Opening his eyes, he saw the features of his lost Ella. The face was that of the woman he had loved and lost, but the eyes were frosty silver.

  At that moment, the memory of the dead man’s eyes returned to haunt him, penetrating the bliss and wonder of the moment.

  Reality crashed upon Red Nightkills.

  Red felt a tingling at the back of his head. He reached back and yanked the woman’s hand away. Fine wires protruded from her fingertips, glinting under the flares of the diamond-lamps. He felt a wetness at the back of his head and knew it was blood. He rolled away from her.

  The woman with Ella’s face lunged after him. Her silver eyes blazed with interrupted need. She came at him, her hands raised. Red grabbed her wrists and threw her back.

  “No,” she whispered. “Come to me, Red Nightkills.”

  Red scowled, his passion murdered. This creature looked like his lost love, but it possessed nothing of Ella’s spirit. He reached for his discarded belt and whipped his sword from its scabbard. The micro-honed blade whistled through the air and cut into the woman’s mid-section.

  She staggered back, her features melting, shifting, becoming those of a thousand women in the barest of moments. Lines of crackling energy split the air. Red was thrown across the tent, and he smelled ozone. The musicians fell to silence.

  Red sat up, sword still at the ready. The sudden darkness within the tent was lit by small flickerings from within the woman’s body. Not a woman at all, Red realized, but an artifice of science and alchemy. The puppet’s strings were cut, she was no longer a danger, but where was the puppet-master?

  “You barbaric fool!” Ras Algol shouted form the beaded doorway. “Just another moment and…”

  “And my soul would have been yours.” Red accused. “Get back, demon!”

  Ras Algol laughed bitterly. “Souls? Demons? No wonder the primitive psyches of you Old Worlders are so highly prized. You would not have known much difference in your life. Now you must join my other troublesome customer.”

  The carnival-master was fast, but Red was faster. Red rolled, grabbed his revolver and fired the hand-tooled weapon even as Ras Algol lifted his arm. The lead ball bored into the man’s skeletal arm. Ras Algol screamed and ran.

  Red pursued the man. He emerged from the tent to see Ras Algol running toward the obelisk. Red fired but missed.

  It seemed to Red that Ras Algol passed through the surface of the obelisk. Ghost or not, Red’s rage demanded retribution. He pummeled the tower’s solid surface. The spire began to throb, almost like a living thing. Gasses gushed outward. Red, thrown back, picked himself up and began to run.

  Tents aflame flew through the air.

  The obelisk lifted and soared upward on a column of light. For a brief moment, it seemed the sun of legend had returned to Nazak; men saw colors not seen in aeons. People were blinded and deafened. Red’s leather jacket smoked from the heat generated by the rising of the ship all had thought an obelisk. He stood and looked at where the Carnival of Ras Algol had stood.

  Few tents stood, burning brightly. Nothing at all remained of the ebony-hung tent. The dead, dying and wounded littered the cobbled streets. The city’s basalt walls were fused glassy.

  Red shielded his eyes and gazed upward. The light ship was already small among the stars. Silence and darkness surged back.

  That which had come from the stars to steal the souls of men had returned to the stars. And it carried a reminder in its arm that some of the men of Earth still lived, even it their world did not.

  Red strode into the swirling night. He reached into his pocket and his hand closed over something hard, the token Ras Algol had given him. He returned it to his pocket.

  Loneliness ached within him greater than ever.

  Dawn was sixty hours away.

  Red walked to the center of the city and made inquiries about any captives bought from wasteland raiders. He was disappointed, but not surprised. Later, he rented a high room and passed the night there alone, sitting at the window, looking over the tiny lights of the city, toward the blackness beyond.

  He did not gaze at the frosty and mocking stars.

  I wish Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had devoted as much effort to Professor Challenger as he did to Sherlock Holmes, but, then I wish he had devoted as much effort to Sherlock Holmes as he did to his historical novels…and that he had steered clear of spiritualism and fairies entirely. “Sigh.” I read about Professor Challenger in third grade, not in “The Lost World,” but in the stories “The Poison Belt” and “When the World Screamed.” I have included Professor Challenger in four stories. In one, he was a resident of Lovecraft’s Dreamlands, two were adventures with Sherlock Holmes, and the fourth is this one, with Challenger on Venus in the company of some other eminent Victorians.

  The Lost City of Venus

  A Story of Steampunk Venus

  Professor George Edward Challenger grabbed the two nearest lizard men, cracked their thick reptilian skulls together and threw their unconscious forms toward the seething pack which kept its distance. These raptor-like creatures of the Venusian swamplands possessed tough scaly hides and their flashing talons could easily savage soft human flesh, but they held back. The savage pack facing him across the swampy clearing between jungle and wine-dark sea, kept away from the bearded, barrel-chested monster of a man lest they join the other saurians prone among the reeds.

  “Come on, you blasted scaly blighters!” Challenger bellowed, always turning, never letting any of the dinosaurian savages get behind him. “Any of you! All of you!”

  One of the creatures lunged, attempting to snag the heavy rucksack slung across Challenger’s back, but quickly leaped out of reach of Challenger’s corded flailing arms. Though stronger and faster than their human prey, the reptilians held their distance, wary in the knowledge that the human they had cornered could easily snap their necks. He was a dangerous man, this blasphemer, but they all vowed he must pay for his transgressions. Time and numbers were on their side.

  “Cowards!” the giant human taunted. “Big as you are, you’d still be runts in Maple White Land!”

  Professor Challenger regarded his foes with a mixture of contempt and wariness, careful not to let them perceive even the slightest weakness in him. Murderous creatures they were, certainly, and all the more deadly because their natural viciousness was honed by animal cunning and a preternatural intelligence. Even so, what were these beings to him but annoyances after staring down a Tyrannosaurus Rex or slapping a saddle blanket across the broad back of a Brontosaurus? Unfortunately, they could wait him out and could depend upon warriors from nearby saurian villages. And, of course, they had no motivation to relent, he admitted to himself, not after he had stolen their the crystalline idol from its jungle temple.

  Well, Death, old friend, he thought, you might have your way with me after all. Then he smiled malevolently, baring his teeth and narrowing his menace-filled eyes. But not before I have my way with you, Old Nick.

  Challenger’s attention was so concentrated on his attackers that he at first did not notice the deep rhythmic throbbing sound from above. Only when he noticed his reptilian foes cringing and hissing in a fearful manner, gesticulating wildly with their sinewy scaly limbs, did he, too, lift his gaze upward.

  For a moment he saw naught but the roiling clouds that formed a perpetual barrier between the sun and Venus’ surface. Then a peculiar vessel emerged majestically through the cover, a vast cylindrical shape tapered at both ends, broad across the beam, the hull surmounted by a crystalline observation dome and a conning tower above that. Around the observation dome ran a fenced-off platform, and upon that structure stood a man and woman, the man garbed in safari khakis and a soft felt hat, armed with an elephant rifle aimed toward the saurian melee; the woman, in a sturdy travelling dress and a fashionable hat, held revolvers in each hand and in holsters upon her hips were energy weapons of gleaming brass and crystal.

  As the unlikely aerial vessel
fully descended from the turbulent clouds, a flare of fire and a cloud of smoke burst from the barrel of the rifle. Almost simultaneously, the swampy ground between Challenger and the saurian horde geysered upward. An ear-shattering concussion tossed the lizard men back, even as it did the same to Challenger.

  Almost as soon as he hit the ground Challenger was back on his feet, ready for a sudden onslaught, but through the smoke and vapour he saw his foes slithering back into the jungle. He turned his attention to the curious airship and its even more curious occupants.

  “Hello there!” shouted the man. “You had better come on board, old man! Those lizard chaps won’t be put off for long. Unless you’d rather stay of course.”

  “No, I appreciate the assistance!”

  The man turned and shouted into the craft: “Down ship to land, Murgatroyd!”

  “As you wish, M’Lord,” replied a voice from within.

  Slowly, majestically, the craft lowered to the Venusian swampland, coming to hover just a couple of feet above the marsh. Slinging his knapsack across his back, Challenger stamped through the water and the moss, splashing toward his unexpected rescuers. He grasped the railing.

  “Permission to come aboard.”

  “Delighted, my dear fellow,” the man replied. “Welcome aboard the Astronef.”

  “My goodness!” the woman cried excitedly. “You are Professor Challenger, are you not?”

  “At your service, Ma’am.”

  “I heard you speak at the Royal Academy last June,” she explained. “It was quite interesting, both your talk upon warm-blooded saurian biology and the melee that followed.”

  “Ah, yes, speaking of dinosaurs to a bunch of old fossils.”

  “I am Lady Zaidie Rettick Aubrey,” the woman said. “And this is my husband, the Earl of Redgrave, Rollo Lenox Smeaton Aubrey.”