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Contents
Dawn for A Distant Earth
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
Chapter X
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Chapter XIII
Chapter XIV
Chapter XV
Chapter XVI
Chapter XVII
Chapter XVIII
Chapter XIX
Chapter XX
Chapter XXI
Chapter XXII
Chapter XXIII
Chapter XXIV
Chapter XXV
Chapter XXVI
Chapter XXVII
Chapter XXVIII
Chapter XXIX
Chapter XXX
Chapter XXXI
Chapter XXXII
Chapter XXXIII
Chapter XXXIV
Chapter XXXV
Chapter XXXVI
Chapter XXXVII
Chapter XXXVIII
Chapter XXXIX
Chapter XL
Chapter XLI
Chapter XLII
Chapter XLIII
Chapter XLIV
Chapter XLV
Chapter XLVI
Chapter XLVII
Chapter XLVIII
Chapter XLIX
Chapter L
Chapter LI
Chapter LII
Chapter LIII
Chapter LIV
Chapter LV
Chapter LVI
Chapter LVII
Chapter LVIII
Chapter LIX
Chapter LX
Chapter LXI
Chapter LXII
Chapter LXIII
Chapter LXIV
Chapter LXV
Chapter LXVI
Chapter LXVII
Chapter LXVIII
Chapter LXIX
Chapter LXX
Chapter LXXI
Chapter LXXII
Chapter LXXIII
Chapter LXXIV
The Silent Warrior
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
Chapter X
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Chapter XIII
Chapter XIV
Chapter XV
Chapter XVI
Chapter XVII
Chapter XVIII
Chapter XIX
Chapter XX
Chapter XXI
Chapter XXII
Chapter XXIII
Chapter XXIV
Chapter XXV
Chapter XXVI
Chapter XXVII
Chapter XXVIII
Chapter XXIX
Chapter XXX
Chapter XXXI
Chapter XXXII
Chapter XXXIII
Chapter XXXIV
Chapter XXXV
Chapter XXXVI
Chapter XXXVII
Chapter XXXVIII
Chapter XXXIX
Chapter XL
Chapter XLI
Chapter XLII
Chapter XLIII
Chapter XLIV
Chapter XLV
Chapter XLVI
Chapter XLVII
Chapter XLVIII
Chapter XLIX
Chapter L
Chapter LI
Chapter LII
Chapter LIII
Chapter LIV
Chapter LV
Chapter LVI
Chapter LVII
Chapter LVIII
Chapter LIX
Chapter LX
Chapter LXI
Chapter LXII
Chapter LXIII
Chapter LXIV
Chapter LXV
Chapter LXVI
Chapter LXVII
Chapter LXVIII
Chapter LXIX
Chapter LXX
Chapter LXXI
Chapter LXXII
In Endless Twilight
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
Chapter X
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Chapter XIII
Chapter XIV
Chapter XV
Chapter XVI
Chapter XVII
Chapter XVIII
Chapter XIX
Chapter XX
Chapter XXI
Chapter XXII
Chapter XXIII
Chapter XXIV
Chapter XXV
Chapter XXVI
Chapter XXVII
Chapter XXVIII
Chapter XXIX
Chapter XXX
Chapter XXXI
Chapter XXXII
Chapter XXXIII
Chapter XXXIV
Chapter XXXV
Chapter XXXVI
Chapter XXXVII
Chapter XXXVIII
Chapter XXXIX
Chapter XL
Chapter XLI
Chapter XLII
Chapter XLIII
Chapter XLIV
Chapter XLV
Chapter XLVI
Chapter XLVII
Chapter XLVIII
Chapter XLIX
Chapter L
Chapter LI
Chapter LII
Chapter LIII
Chapter LIV
Chapter LV
Chapter LVI
Chapter LVII
Chapter LVIII
Chapter LIX
Chapter LX
Chapter LXI
Chapter LXII
Chapter LXIII
Chapter LXIV
Chapter LXV
Chapter LXVI
Chapter LXVII
Chapter LXVIII
Chapter LXIX
Dawn for a Distant Earth
I
In the west wing of the tower of time, abandoned as it is by the keepers of the clock, lies an ancient key. Not an impressive long steel shaft is this key, but a small volume, a compendium of pages enameled against the ravages of the decades and the centuries.
The book has no title, no preface, no table of contents, nor any title embossed on its black spine, nor even printed pages evenly matched and marching end to end.
What is it, you ask?
That question must hold for another. The other question? What is the tower of time? For there are no towers left on Old Earth, only the rambling farms, the sweep of grass, the ramparts of the west mountains, and a few score towns nestled into their restored places in history. There is only a single shuttle field…without a tower.
This tower of time rears backward into history, not into the dark starred nights that are so cold to one used to the light-strewn nights on planets that once belonged to the Empire. Bac
kward into history, you say? How far?
Far enough. Back to the time when purple landspouts raged the high plains, back to the time when boulders fell like rain, and when the devilkids were the only beings who dared to run the hillocks outside the shambletowns….
Yes, that far. Back to the days of the captain….
The Myth of the Rebuilding
Alarde D’Lorina
New Augusta, 4539 N.E.C.
II
Step…pause…listen. Step…pause…listen.
The boy crept through the thin bushes and scattered patches of ground fog toward the shambletown wall. The leathers of his tunic were ripped, and the thonging where the skins were joined was loosening. The rain stung his skin, as the chill wind froze the droplets before they struck.
Overhead, the thick clouds were barely visible in the gloom that passed for twilight.
Most of the torches on the shambletown wall had blown out and would not be relighted until the wind and rain abated. That would not be long. Beneath the west mountains, on the high plains east of the shambletown, the rains seldom lasted. Nor did the purple furies of the landspouts usually penetrate into the hills and gullies.
A single torch by the gate flared back to light, and the boy ducked behind one of the few grubushes left near the walls, just below the outcropping of old brick, powderstone, and purpled clay on which the shambletown had been raised.
In the gloom downhill from the wall, he would not be seen. Even if a sharp-eyed guard did sight the small shadow created by the torches, that darkness would be blamed on a skulking coyote, or even a king rat scuttling for his hole.
The boy’s left leg hurt, still stiff from his encounter with the she-coyote. He needed food, better food than he could grub from the plains and the hills, food without the poisons that the wild plants springing from the sickly soil carried.
Most times he could eat the yuccas and needle pears, but the coyote wound and its infection had lowered his body’s ability to digest the wild food.
He froze behind a thicker grubush and peered through the scraggly leaves at the wall. Too high—more than twice his height, and even with a healthy leg, beyond his reach.
That meant the Maze. He had known that from the beginning, but had hoped…He shivered, but there was no escaping the need for the cleaner food that lay beyond the shambletown wall.
Tightening his grip on the jagged blade he carried in his left hand, he dropped farther down the hillside and edged eastward, bit by bit.
Slide…pause…listen. Slide…pause…listen.
The pattern was nearly automatic, his ears straining for the click and scrabble of the rats, or the pad and click of a foraging coyote seeking a shambletowner out alone after dark.
The scattered grubushes grew more thickly as he neared the tangled mass that comprised the Maze. While they never crowded closely enough to provide a thicket or a constant cover, their numbers and sharp leaves and twigs slowed his progress. He checked each before sliding toward it to insure that no rat lay concealed there, no female coyote on the prowl for hungry cubs.
At last, the Maze towered above him.
He stopped, letting his breathing smooth. He sniffed, the thin nostrils in the narrow nose dilating to catch the scents nearby, and those from the Maze.
Crouching by one hole, he edged away as he caught the pungent odor of rat, all too fresh. A second entrance he rejected for the musty smell that indicated neither rat nor the air circulation necessary for an access to the less closely guarded eastern wall of the shambletown.
A third and fourth hole were each rejected.
A fifth was too low and reeked of land poison.
Click, click, scrabble.
The blade flashed. The rat darted—but not quickly enough.
The rat’s purpled gray coat was scarred, streaked with silver.
The boy nodded. The rat, half the height to his knee, had been slow. Not sick, but old.
He left the carcass. While the hide might have been useful, only the shambletowners had the ability to turn it into leather. The meat was inedible, even for him.
Checking the hole from which the rat had emerged, he rejected it, and continued his slow movement along the Maze.
Deciding that none of the lower openings were likely to provide the access he needed, he switched his attention to the higher holes.
At last, he located a promising entrance, slightly above his head, but with easy handholds. He climbed to the left side, to avoid appearing in front of the dark opening. He let his nose test the scents, catching the mixture of free-flowing air, overlaid with the scent of shambletowners and their excrement, and the faint hint of omnipresent rat.
Blade in hand, he eased into the Maze, his hawk-eyes dilating farther to adjust to the gloom that was darker than the blackest of the clouded nights.
From behind him, he could hear the wind whistle as it shifted more to the north.
The passage branched, one dark pit stretching below, from where the scent of rat oozed upward, the other darkness twisting leftward, away from the shambletown. With the slump of his shoulders that passed for a sigh, he silently took the left opening, which, as he had hoped, again forked.
From his right came the definite smell of shambletown, although he could detect a gentle incline which bothered him. The last thing he wanted was to pop out high on the Maze wall in clear range of the shambletown guards and their slings.
Two more branches and he squatted just inside an exit overlooking the eastern wall of the shambles. He was higher than he would have liked—more than a body length above the wall and three body lengths above the uneven clay expanse between the Maze and the wall. His exit was to the north of the small eastern gate and the majority of the torches.
He shifted his weight to relieve the nagging ache and the pressure on his left leg and studied the wall. He would have to slip over the wall roughly opposite his vantage point. Unlike the northern wall, which was higher, the eastern wall, behind the bulk and protection of the Maze, also sloped outward as it dropped to its stone base. The slope might be just enough to let him make the climb quickly.
By now, it was as dark as it would get. The frozen rain pelted down in a desultory click, click, click that might cover any noise he made climbing down to the clay.
Only a single torch by the gate was lit, and the boy decided that the sooner he moved the better.
With a single fluid motion, he slid out of the hole and let his bare feet search for the outcroppings he knew were there, careful to let the bulk of his weight rest upon his good right leg. That brought him within two body lengths of the hard ground.
Ears, eyes, and nose all alert for rats, coyotes, or shambletown guards, he began easing himself down the Maze’s rough surface as quickly as he could.
The animals avoided the freezing rain when they could, as did the shambletown guards, and he reached a position under the wall without an alarm being raised.
Again…He stopped and listened, straining to hear, to see if he could sense anyone on the far side of the wall. Had he judged his position correctly, once over the clay bricks he would be opposite a narrow lane leading deeper into the lower shambletown.
No sound came from beyond the wall—just the click, click, click of the frozen droplets hitting the hard surface.
Flexing his fingers, toes, he sprang, scrambling quietly to the top, the abrasiveness of the sandpaint giving his extremities just enough purchase to support the effort.
He vaulted over—and down onto a covered clay barrel.
The Forever Hero Page 1