Astounding Science Fiction Stories Vol 1

by Anthology

  "Where are they?" Marna asked fearfully. There was loathing in the glance she threw at Glendyn's body. "There are many more. Where are they?"

  "Up above," Gaar told her. "This one and another were left to watch you."

  "Good. They won't be coming back for a long time. Now they are busy preparing the sacrifices to Be'al." Marna shuddered. "It is the feast of Beltane."

  Gaar spoke quickly. "What sort of men are they?"

  "They are not men. They are devils. A long time ago they came out of the sky in strange ships. They brought strange powers and a strange god who demanded human sacrifices. My people were driven out, killed. I am the only one left."

  "But why did they save you?"

  "As a hostage, at first. And later because it pleased them to keep me as a symbol of the race they had vanquished. Every year I have awakened and they have used me as a mock sacrifice. And then they have put me to sleep again for another year."

  "And today again?"

  "For the last time. They have lost their power to act at a distance. And they grow afraid that I may call someone they cannot defeat. Their power is great now on only this one day when the sun comes directly between the two stones they brought with them from their mother world."

  She started suddenly and Gaar stared at her. "What is it?" he demanded.

  "I feel something. I feel danger."

  * * * * *

  There was no time to ask questions. Gaar knew she would not be wrong. This daughter of a lost people had a knowledge he could not fathom. He lifted her out of the sarcophagus and set her on her feet.

  "We've got to get out of here. Once we reach my men and set back for the coast they'll never stop us."

  They were running now, back along the corridor down which Gaar had come. Half way they went, and then they heard the voices and the feet that came toward them from above.

  Gaar listened intently. There were too many. One or two he would have fought, maybe even a half-dozen. But this was the tramp of many feet. They must have found the body at the head of the Stairs. Gaar cursed his luck.

  "We'll have to go back. Is there another way out?"

  "No none. It was the burial place for the kings of my people before the Druids came."

  And it looked like it would be his burial place as well, Gaar thought. But he had to go back anyway. He couldn't take a chance on the girl being hurt in a fight in the dark. Besides, that fellow he had killed had a knife. It would be better than no weapon at all.

  The feet were close behind them as they ran. The girl was too slow. Gaar scooped her up and ran with her under his arm. But still not swiftly enough. They had been overheard.

  He had barely time to swing Marna behind the sarcophagus and out of immediate danger. He bent and tore the knife from Glendyn's loose grasp. And then they were on him, a flood of black-robed figures.

  Blood spurted as the knife in Gaar's hand flashed. A man screamed, and then another as Gaar's fist made pulp of flesh and bone. His hands struck blows like Thor's hammer. He made them pay dearly for every backward step he took. But they came on still.

  They were too many for him. They forced him back until a cold wall stopped him. Then, by the sheer force of numbers they overwhelmed him. He went down under a torrent of blows that drove everything from his mind but the thought that he had failed Marna.

  * * * * *

  Daylight, and Gaar's head ached as consciousness returned. He seemed to be a single aching bruise from head to foot. After a while he realized that Marna lay beside him at the bottom of the stairs that led to the cavern mouth.

  Light came down strongly, too strongly. It was long after dawn. A stray thought flashed across Gaar's mind: his men would be well on their way to the ship: Yet there was no use castigating himself. Marna would have died before they could have reached her if they had come in a body.

  "I'm sorry," Gaar said, and tried to turn toward Marna. Leather thongs bound him tightly but he rocked back and forth until he tipped onto his side.

  "Not as sorry as I," she said, her eyes soft on his face. "If I had not called you would never have come."

  "The only thing a Norseman fears is that he should die in bed," Gaar told her.

  But he wasn't ready to die yet. If he could only get a little play into these thongs! His muscles bulged with the strain as he threw his strength into the effort. Then a scream filtered down and sent a shiver along his spine.

  "The sacrifices have started," Marna said. "It will not be long now. They will be coming for us soon."

  "Can't you do anything?" Gaar asked. "Can't you fight them with their own weapons?"

  "Not while I am awake. When I sleep my soul is in communion with my people who have gone and I draw strength from them. But this is the feast of Beltane. While the sun comes directly between the two great stones the magic of the Druids is at its most potent. And mine is waning."

  As her voice faded there came again the scream of a soul in mortal fear. The scream died quickly, merging into a rising paean from the Druids. Then there was a patter of sandal-clad feet and the light from above was blocked by the figure of Cyngled, the high priest.

  In Cyngled's hand the great sacrificial knife dripped blood. Be'al would drink well this day, Be'al would be appeased. Behind Cyngled came other priests, lesser ones whose faces revealed unholy joy as they came down the stairs.

  Two of them lifted Marna but it took four to carry Gaar. Strong light made him blink as they emerged from the mouth of the cave. Shock forced his eyes to remain open as they entered the charmed circle.

  Blood-red came the sun between the two monoliths to fall upon the great Cromlech that was redder still with human gore. A wave of nausea swept up from Gaar's stomach. He fought it down.

  Then the strength filtered out of him as he was carried into the circle. Now he was a child in their hands. He felt himself being lifted, felt his back touch the slippery stone. Beside him Marna was laid, the black robe she had worn ripped from her body.

  Cyngled's chant rose above them, the knife came up and hovered at Gaar's throat. The knife was coming down. And then it stopped! It stopped as the air was split by the battle cry of the Norsemen!

  * * * * *

  Gaar twisted his head and saw them come out of the woods beyond the circle. Like madmen they raged across the clearing. But nobody rushed to oppose them! Instead, the Druid priests drew back, gathered about Cyngled. As the Norsemen came into the circle the high priest's hands drew the magic symbols in the air.

  And the Norsemen stopped! Like men of stone they were, a tableau of arrested motion.

  There was no hope. The bitterness of gall was in Gaar's mouth as he turned his head from the scene. He looked at Marna. Her eyes were bright, burning into his own. No hopelessness there. Her eyes were speaking to him.

  They were willing him, willing him to strength! Gaar felt it come back to him. Her magic was stronger than she knew. He felt the strength come back in a surge that would not be denied.

  This was only leather that held him. The leather could bite into his flesh as he strained. But it could not hurt him. His great chest filled with air and the thongs gave, stretched. And burst!

  In a single leap he was off the altar. He wanted to rage into the Druid priests, to tear them apart with his bare hands. But there were too many. And Marna's will was telling him that there was something else he must do.

  He knew what it was. He had to strike at the source of their power. They were turning to meet his charge, setting themselves solidly.

  Gaar wheeled, spurted around them and then around the Cromlech. They guessed his purpose and leaped to stop him. They had to prevent him from reaching the two great stones. Gaar battered them aside and went through them.

  His back was against one of the monoliths, his feet against the other. He climbed that way, ignoring the knives that slashed at his back. Then he was above the reach of their arms. The sun was full in his face. His shadow blocked the altar. His back was on stone, his feet were on stone. Two gr
eat pillars, rooted in the earth, and against them the strength of one man.

  * * * * *

  But that man was Gaar. Slowly his legs straightened, his shoulders went back. All the power that was in his mighty frame went into the thrust. It was a power that would not be denied.

  A pillar swayed, tottered, and was ripped out of the earth. Gaar felt himself falling and twisted catlike in the air to land on his feet.

  He whirled to meet the charge of the Druids. Cyngled's hands still traced the air but his power was gone. The Norsemen exploded into life again, their swords whirring a song of death. Only Cyngled did not lose his head. Defeated the Druids were, and defeated forever, but he could snatch some measure of victory from the defeat. He was at Marna's side when Gaar reached him.

  One great hand on Cyngled's throat, another at his waist. Gaar lifted him high and hurled him earthward. Cyngled twitched once and was still. The stone knife was in his hand but it would never be used again. The day of the Druids was over.

  Marna was smiling at Gaar as he cut the thongs that bound her. This time her lips came up to meet his. For Elgen and Asgar and the rest there was no treasure. But they had no complaints. It had been a good fight. For Gaar there was the greatest treasure of all.

  The hint of sorrow was out of Marna's eyes. The past was gone, and there was nothing here for her now. She was the daughter of a once great people. She would be the mother of a greater one. Her arm was linked with Gaar's as they took the first steps back toward the ship which would take them northward.

  * * *

  Contents

  THE THING FROM  OUTSIDE

  By George Allen England

  They sat about their camp-fire, that little party of Americans retreating southward from Hudson Bay before the on-coming menace of the great cold. Sat there, stolid under the awe of the North, under the uneasiness that the day's trek had laid upon their souls. The three men smoked. The two women huddled close to each other. Fireglow picked their faces from the gloom of night among the dwarf firs. A splashing murmur told of the Albany River's haste to escape from the wilderness, and reach the Bay.

  "I don't see what there was in a mere circular print on a rock-ledge to make our guides desert," said Professor Thorburn. His voice was as dry as his whole personality. "Most extraordinary."

  "They knew what it was, all right," answered Jandron, geologist of the party. "So do I." He rubbed his cropped mustache. His eyes glinted grayly. I've seen prints like that before. That was on the Labrador. And I've seen things happen, where they were."

  "Something surely happened to our guides, before they'd got a mile into the bush," put in the Professor's wife; while Vivian, her sister, gazed into the fire that revealed her as a beauty, not to be spoiled even by a tam and a rough-knit sweater. "Men don't shoot wildly, and scream like that, unless—"

  "They're all three dead now, anyhow," put in Jandron. "So they're out of harm's way. While we—well, we're two hundred and fifty wicked miles from the C. P. R. rails."

  "Forget it, Jandy!" said Marr, the journalist. "We're just suffering from an attack of nerves, that's all. Give me a fill of 'baccy. Thanks. We'll all be better in the morning. Ho-hum! Now, speaking of spooks and such—"

  He launched into an account of how he had once exposed a fraudulent spiritualist, thus proving—to his own satisfaction—that nothing existed beyond the scope of mankind's everyday life. But nobody gave him much heed. And silence fell upon the little night-encampment in the wilds; a silence that was ominous.

  Pale, cold stars watched down from spaces infinitely far beyond man's trivial world.

  Next day, stopping for chow on a ledge miles upstream, Jandron discovered another of the prints. He cautiously summoned the other two men. They examined the print, while the women-folk were busy by the fire. A harmless thing the marking seemed; only a ring about four inches in diameter, a kind of cup-shaped depression with a raised center. A sort of glaze coated it, as if the granite had been fused by heat.

  Jandron knelt, a well-knit figure in bright mackinaw and canvas leggings, and with a shaking finger explored the smooth curve of the print in the rock. His brows contracted as he studied it.

  "We'd better get along out of this as quick as we can," said he in an unnatural voice. "You've got your wife to protect, Thorburn, and I,—well, I've got Vivian. And—"

  "You have?" nipped Marr. The light of an evil jealously gleamed in his heavy-lidded look. "What you need is an alienist."

  "Really, Jandron," the Professor admonished, "you mustn't let your imagination run away with you."

  "I suppose it's imagination that keeps this print cold!" the geologist retorted. His breath made faint, swirling coils of vapor above it.

  "Nothing but a pot-hole," judged Thorburn, bending his spare, angular body to examine the print. The Professor's vitality all seemed centered in his big-bulged skull that sheltered a marvellous thinking machine. Now he put his lean hand to the base of his brain, rubbing the back of his head as if it ached. Then, under what seemed some powerful compulsion, he ran his bony finger around the print in the rock.

  "By Jove, but it is cold!" he admitted. "And looks as if it had been stamped right out of the stone. Extraordinary!"

  "Dissolved out, you mean," corrected the geologist. "By cold."

  The journalist laughed mockingly.

  "Wait till I write this up!" he sneered. "'Noted Geologist Declares Frigid Ghost Dissolves Granite!'"

  Jandron ignored him. He fetched a little water from the river and poured it into the print.

  "Ice!" ejaculated the Professor. "Solid ice!"

  "Frozen in a second," added Jandron, while Marr frankly stared. "And it'll never melt, either. I tell you, I've seen some of these rings before; and every time, horrible things have happened. Incredible things! Something burned this ring out of the stone—burned it out with the cold interstellar space. Something that can import cold as a permanent quality of matter. Something that can kill matter, and totally remove it."

  "Of course that's all sheer poppycock," the journalist tried to laugh, but his brain felt numb.

  "This something, this Thing," continued Jandron, "is a Thing that can't be killed by bullets. It's what caught our guides on the barrens, as they ran away—poor fools!"

  A shadow fell across the print in the rock. Mrs. Thorburn had come up, was standing there. She had overheard a little of what Jandron had been saying.

  "Nonsense!" she tried to exclaim, but she was shivering so she could hardly speak.

  That night, after a long afternoon of paddling and portaging—laboring against inhibitions like those in a nightmare—they camped on shelving rocks that slanted to the river.

  "After all," said the Professor, when supper was done, "we mustn't get into a panic. I know extraordinary things are reported from the wilderness, and more than one man has come out, raving. But we, by Jove! with our superior brains—we aren't going to let Nature play us any tricks!"

  "And of course," added his wife, her arm about Vivian, "everything in the universe is a natural force. There's really no super-natural, at all."

  "Admitted," Jandron replied. "But how about things outside the universe?"

  "And they call you a scientist?" gibed Marr; but the Professor leaned forward, his brows knit.

  "Hm!" he grunted. A little silence fell.

  "You don't mean, really," asked Vivian, "that you think there's life and intelligence—Outside?"

  Jandron looked at the girl. Her beauty, haloed with ruddy gold from the firelight, was a pain to him as he answered:

  "Yes, I do. And dangerous life, too. I know what I've seen, in the North Country. I know what I've seen!"

  Silence again, save for the crepitation of the flames, the fall of an ember, the murmur of the current. Darkness narrowed the wilderness to just that circle of flickering light ringed by the forest and the river, brooded over by the pale stars.

  "Of course you can't expect a scientific man to take you seriously," commented the Prof
essor. "I know what I've seen! I tell you there's Something entirely outside man's knowledge."

  "Poor fellow!" scoffed the journalist; but even as he spoke his hand pressed his forehead.

  "There are Things at work," Jandron affirmed, with dogged persistence. He lighted his pipe with a blazing twig. Its flame revealed his face drawn, lined. "Things. Things that reckon with us no more than we do with ants. Less, perhaps."

  The flame of the twig died. Night stood closer, watching.

  "Suppose there are?" the girl asked. "What's that got to do with these prints in the rock?"

  "They," answered Jandran, "are marks left by one of those Things. Footprints, maybe. That Thing is near us, here and now!"

  Marr's laugh broke a long stillness.

  "And you," he exclaimed, "with an A. M. and a B. S. to write after your name,"

  "If you knew more," retorted Jandron, "you'd know a devilish sight less. It's only ignorance that's cock-sure."

  "But," dogmatized the Professor, "no scientist of any standing has ever admitted any outside interference with this planet."

  "No, and for thousands of years nobody ever admitted that the world was round, either. What I've seen, I know."

  "Well, what have you seen?" asked Mrs. Thorburn, shivering.

  "You'll excuse me, please, for not going into that just now."

  "You mean," the Professor demanded, dryly, "if the—hm!—this suppositious Thing wants to—?"

  "It'll do any infernal thing it takes a fancy to, yes! If it happens to want us—"

  "But what could Things like that want of us? Why should They come here, at all?"

  "Oh, for various reasons. For inanimate objects, at times, and then again for living beings. They've come here lots of times, I tell you," Jandron asserted with strange irritation, "and got what They wanted, and then gone away to—Somewhere. If one of Them happens to want us, for any reason, It will take us, that's all. If It doesn't want us, It will ignore us, as we'd ignore gorillas in Africa if we were looking for gold. But if it was gorilla-fur we wanted, that would be different for the gorillas, wouldn't it?"