Astounding Science Fiction Stories Vol 1

by Anthology

  Glaudot let it pass. There was no hurry. He was thinking about the future, though. If Purcell opposed him, as Purcell would, and managed to escape in the exploration ship, Glaudot would need a ship to leave this world ...

  "Why not?" he asked, his voice quite calm now, the mania which had seized him under control now, and only his iron purpose motivating him.

  "I--I don't know. You have one spaceship. I guess that's why. What do you need another one for?"

  "It was just a thought," said Glaudot. "It doesn't matter." He kneeled near the heaps of sun-dazzled jewels. He let them trickle through his fingers. No, the desire wasn't gone yet. It was still fighting with his will. And, since he knew his will could win at any time, it pleased him to give his desire free rein.

  He scooped up a handful of jewels. He found a necklace and came close to Robin and dropped it over her head. The pearls were very white against her sun-tanned skin. The pearl pendant hung almost to the start of the dusky valley which cleaved her breasts delightfully and disappeared with the tanned swell of flesh on either side into the gold-mesh halter. Glaudot fingered the pendant. His fingers touched flesh. Abruptly he drew the surprised Robin to him and kissed her lips hungrily.

  For a moment she remained passive. She neither returned his ardor nor fought it. But when his hands began to stroke her back she pulled away from him and stood there looking at him. She took the necklace off and threw it at his feet.

  "I don't want that any more," she said. "Why did you do--what you did?"

  * * * * *

  He felt the fire in his veins. He willed it to subside. He needed his control now. All of it. But this girl, in the full flower of her youth ... No, she was not a girl, not to Glaudot. He must not think of her as a girl. She was power. Power. The power was his--if he didn't alienate the girl.

  "We do such as that on my world," he said. "It is a kind of homage to loveliness. I hope you didn't mind."

  "I--it was strange. With Charlie sometimes I hope--but with Charlie it is ... different. Please don't touch me again. Please promise me that."

  Glaudot shrugged. "If you wish, my dear child, if you wish...."

  The dual desire was gone now, truly gone. He knew that. For his will had been threatened, more by his own foolish desire than by this innocent girl. He had to think. Clearly. More clearly than he had ever thought before. He needed the girl as an ally. Not as a slave. She had to be willing. She had to co-operate. Give her a warped picture of the rest of the galaxy? Convince her its governments were evil, totalitarian, when in reality they were democratic? Convince her that he alone, given unlimited power, could right the wrongs of a thousand worlds? She was naive enough for that sort of approach, he thought. Besides, it would strike her as something like creation--moral creation, perhaps. And creation she would understand. Then, with her as his partner, he could quickly build a war machine which the combined might of the galaxy couldn't stand against. And that, he suddenly realized, would even include an unlimited number of soldiers for occupation and policing duties. This power would be unparalleled.

  "I have something I want to tell you about," he said. "It will take a long time and we must be undisturbed, which is why I asked you to bring me here."

  "What is it you want to tell me?"

  Before Glaudot could answer, they heard a crashing, rending sound not too far off in the woods. It sounded to Glaudot exactly as if trees were being uprooted, boulders strewn carelessly.

  "Cyclopes!" Robin screamed in terror, and began to run.

  Glaudot ran after her, stumbling, picking himself up, hurtling in pursuit. He couldn't let her get away. He had to follow her ...

  Nothing living, he told himself as he ran, could uproot those huge trees. Of course, there were the saplings, but even the saplings were the size of full-grown oaks and maples on far Earth.

  Something roared behind him. The sound was pitched almost too low for human ears. He whirled. The earth shook, great clods of it flying. Bare tree roots suddenly appeared, and a young tree the size of a towering oak was lifted skyward.

  Behind it, brandishing it and then hurling it away, was a naked man whose head towered impossibly a hundred and fifty feet into the air. Trembling, awestruck, Glaudot looked up at the great savage face. Wild hair streaming, filthy beard matted with dirt and tree-branches, it was the most ferocious face Glaudot had ever seen.

  And it had only one eye, one enormous eye in the middle of its head. But an eye three feet across!

  "A Cyclops!" Robin screamed again.

  A moment later the creature stooped and with a scooping motion of its great right hand picked up the two tiny creatures on the forest floor beneath it. Then it ran, uprooting oak-sized saplings, back toward the rocky hillside where it dwelled, after the Cyclopes of old on which Robin and Charlie had naively patterned it, in a cave overlooking the sea.

  * * * * *

  "Where, man? Where?" Captain Purcell demanded.

  "I don't know," Charlie said. "I really don't think she would. You see, she always threatened she'd go there if we ever had a fight, but she was usually half-joking. She knows it's dangerous--"

  "But where? Don't you know a drowning man has to grasp at straws? Haven't I gotten it across to you--the whole galaxy may be in danger!"

  Charlie sighed. "I don't understand much of your galaxy. Robin knows the encyclopedia--she would understand. And I--I only want to know Robin is safe." He took a deep breath and said: "She always threatened to go to the Land of the Cyclopes."

  "Then take us there at once," Captain Purcell said....

  * * * * *

  If he shouted and cried now, he would go insane. He knew that. He tried to hold his fear in check. He was being swung pendulum-like in an enormous hand as the one-eyed giant loped along. Robin shared the clenched-fist prison with him. Her hair streamed in the wind as the huge arm swung the huge hand in time with the giant's enormous strides.

  "Does it eat people?" he managed to ask Robin. He had to shout because the wind created by the creature's movement was considerable. The ground spun giddily far, far below them, whirling patches of green, of yellow, of brown.

  "We made them to eat people. Like in the book. We were just children. It seemed--it seemed so thrilling."

  The Cyclops loped along, uprooting saplings. After a while it began to climb a rocky slope and from the heights Glaudot could see the shores of an unknown sea. Then the Cyclops reached a cave entrance and rolled aside a huge boulder and took his prisoners within.

  Glaudot heard the bleating of sheep.

  * * * * *

  "Why, it's a fortune in jewels!" Captain Purcell exclaimed. They had found the glade in the forest, where Robin had created a king's ransom for Glaudot. The men gathered around, many of them struck dumb by the sight of all this wealth.

  Charlie said: "Captain, look."

  Purcell went over to him and saw the wide swathe cut through the forest and curving out of sight. "What went through there?" he gasped.

  "A Cyclops," Charlie said grimly. "A Cyclops has them. Captain, we've got to hurry. Listen, there are two horses now. I could create horses for all of us, but all these men coming up would probably be seen by the Cyclops. You come on foot with your men. Let one of them come with me on the stallions." As he spoke Charlie unslung the Mannlicher and put it down.

  "Oh, you want our more modern weapons?" Purcell asked.

  Charlie shook his head. "For fun, Robin and I made the Cyclopes invulnerable to any kind of attack except the kind mentioned in the encyclopedia--putting out their single eye with a stake. To protect all the other people we created, we made the Cyclopes so they'd never want to leave their homeland. So if we can get Robin and your man Glaudot free, they'll be safe. Now, who's the volunteer?"

  "I'm already on horseback," Chandler said. Charlie nodded and mounted the second roan stallion.

  "My men will be coming as fast as they can march," Captain Purcell said.

  Charlie nodded. He did not bother to tell the captain that
a Cyclops could cover in a few minutes ground a marching party could not hope to cover in as many hours. He set off at a swift gallop with Chandler.

  * * * * *

  "Will he eat us now?" said Glaudot. Strangely, he was not afraid. The unexpected nature of their impending demise he almost found amusing.

  Robin shook her head. "I don't think so. He'll probably drink himself to sleep. We made the Cyclopes great drunkards."

  The Cyclops, his tree-trunk sized walking stick leaning against the wall, was reclining and drinking from a huge bowl of wine. The cave was torchlit. Seventy or eighty sheep milled about, settling for the night after three of their number had supplied a meal for the giant, who had eaten them raw.

  "Isn't there anything we can do?" demanded Glaudot, whose dreams of galactic conquest were fading before the spectre of being eaten alive.

  "Reserve your strength until he sleeps," Robin said. "Of course there's something we can do."

  "Yes? What?"

  "His walking stick. You see the end comes almost to a point? We harden it in the fire--and put his eye out. Then, in the morning, when he unrolls the stone from the cave-entrance and blindly leads his flock out, we hide among the sheep and make our escape. At least that's how it happens in the encyclopedia."

  Glaudot swallowed hard. He had never had a great deal of physical courage....

  Just then they heard a great fluttering, groaning sound. Robin said: "You see, he's asleep. He's snoring."

  "I--I don't think I could possibly--"

  "He's liable to want us for breakfast. Come on."

  They got up swiftly and silently, and crept to the walking stick. It was the size of a young tree. It would be heavy, perhaps too heavy for them to handle.

  "Easy now," Robin said. She nimbly climbed the ledges on the cave-wall and tipped the great walking stick, then leaped down and grabbed the front end as Glaudot got a grip on the rear of the big pole.

  "Heavy," Glaudot said.

  "But not too heavy, I--I think."

  "Try to lift it," said Glaudot.

  They tried. Together they could barely get it overhead.

  "Try to poke it at something," Glaudot said.

  They could not. Robin sighed. They put it down slowly, quietly. It would take more than the two of them. It would take them and two or three more men to do the job.

  "We wait," Glaudot said bleakly.

  Robin stared up in frustration at the smoke hole, through which smoke from the Cyclops's fire poured out into the gathering night. It was hopelessly over their head, although help could reach them through it from the outside. But how could they possibly expect help to come...?

  "We wait," Glaudot said again, hopelessly.

  "For breakfast," Robin said.

  Glaudot broke suddenly. "I don't want to die!" he cried. "I don't want to die ..."

  * * * * *

  The feeblest of Crimson's three suns came over the horizon, lighting the landscape with the illumination of three or four full moons on Earth.

  "I told you I smelled smoke!" Charlie cried, pointing triumphantly at the thin tendril of smoke that rose through the cooling air against the weak sunlight.

  "Is it a campfire?" Chandler asked.

  "Chimney hole, probably. Come on."

  They left the two stallions grazing at the base of the rocky escarpment. They began to climb. Once Chandler stumbled and went sliding down the rocky slope, but Charlie caught his arm, all but wrenching it from the socket. Charlie thought: we have to hurry. Their lives may depend on it. Already we may be too late....

  The smoke from the chimney hole was acrid. It was very strong now. Suddenly Charlie could feel the slightly increased slope of the rocks. The slope was precipitous now, almost perpendicular.

  "I can't--can't go much further!" Chandler groaned.

  "We've got to, man. We've got to."

  * * * * *

  "He's waking," said Robin.

  Glaudot had broken completely. The confident would-be conqueror was reduced to trembling and whining now. "M-maybe he's hungry. Oh, God, maybe he's hungry ..."

  But the Cyclops only turned over in its sleep and began to snore again. The fire had burned low. The sheep were resting. Robin thought of Charlie, probably many miles away. There would be a late moonrise tonight, she thought. They often spoke of the feeblest of Crimson's three suns as the moon, although it really wasn't. Then dawn would come. If the Cyclops were hungry and wanted a change in diet ...

  * * * * *

  "But you'll choke to death going down there," Chandler protested.

  "It's only a chimney hole. Nobody's going to choke to death."

  "Can you see down it?"

  "No. Too much smoke."

  "Then how do you know how far we'll have to fall?"

  "I don't. I'll have to take the chance. You don't have to, though."

  "I'll go where you go. That's what I volunteered for."

  "Good. It's almost morning, so the fire's probably almost burned down from now. If you land in the embers, jump aside quickly. You understand?"

  "Yes," Chandler said.

  Without another word, Charlie suddenly lowered himself into the smoke and let go.

  * * * * *

  Dim fiery light lit the cave. He alighted in embers and quickly jumped clear. Embers flew. A ram bleated. Charlie saw the enormous sleeping bulk of the Cyclops against one wall of the cave. He heard something behind him, and whirled. It was Chandler. More sparks flew. The sheep bleated again, louder this time.

  Robin and a spaceman who was probably Glaudot came toward them. There was amazement on Robin's face. Glaudot looked like a child in the grip of terror he couldn't quite understand.

  Charlie held Robin close for a moment. "Quiet," he whispered. "Listen."

  The slight disturbance had bothered the Cyclops. He was half awake. He made noises with his lips. One great arm lifted and fell. It could have crushed the four of them.

  "There's a stake," Robin said. "Just like in the book."

  They got it and took it to the embers of the fire between them. Glaudot, who brought up the rear, dragged his end, the wood scraping on the rocky floor.

  "Lift it up," Charlie said.

  Glaudot giggled and then began to cry. He was hysterical. "The three of us?" Charlie asked.

  "I don't know," Robin said.

  Glaudot laughed hysterically. The Cyclops stirred. That made up Charlie's mind. He placed his end of the stake carefully on the floor and went back to Glaudot. He struck Glaudot neatly and precisely on the point of the jaw and Glaudot collapsed in his arms.

  Then they returned with the stake to the fire. Charlie scraped and pushed the embers together with a charcoal log. They began to toast the point of the stake.

  "We've got to hurry," Robin said.

  "The skin of his eyelid is like armor plate," Charlie told her. "We've got to make sure it doesn't turn the point aside."

  The flock stirred and began to grow more lively. It was now dawn outside. The Cyclops yawned in his sleep and stretched out an arm the size of an oak tree.

  "Hurry!" Robin said urgently.

  The Cyclops rolled over, its face to the wall.

  "The eye!" Charlie groaned. "We'll never be able to reach the eye now."

  They kept at their work, though. There was nothing else they could do. The surface wood of the big stake was taking on a dull cherry-red color. Finally Charlie said: "That's enough, I guess."

  The Cyclops rolled over again. They were in luck, Charlie thought, but changed his mind immediately. The Cyclops sat up, its eye blinking sleepily. It yawned and stretched mightily, then stared stupidly for a few moments at the flock of sheep. Charlie and the others stood frozen, not daring to move. The Cyclops brushed at the sheep with its hand, and two of them crashed with bone-crushing thuds and death-rattle bleats against the wall. The Cyclops glared stupidly about, its one great eye squinting. Clearly, it was looking for something else to eat. Not sheep. People ...

  It got down on hand
s and knees and groped on the floor. The arm swept out. The hand flashed ponderously by, missing Robin by only a few feet. The Cyclops advanced on its knees, searching, its mouth slavering now. It was hungry and soon it would eat ...

  The hand swept by again, caught a sheep. The hand lifted, the sheep bleated, the jaws crunched once and the sheep disappeared. The Cyclops wiped a trace of blood from its lips. The hand came down again, closer ...

  * * * * *

  "The stake!" Charlie whispered fiercely.

  They brought it up horizontally. Charlie stood just behind the point, Robin behind him, Chandler in the rear. They jabbed with the stake as the Cyclops's hand swept along the floor again. The Cyclops roared with pain and rage and beat both mighty hands on the rocky floor, attempting to crush its tormentors.

  Just then Glaudot regained consciousness and stood up groggily. "Don't move!" Charlie warned, taking the chance of revealing their own position in an attempt to save Glaudot's life.

  But Glaudot, seeing the huge creature so close, began to run. It was like running on a treadmill. He ran and he ran and after a while the Cyclops reached down and plucked him off the floor. He screamed thinly. There was the same crunching as before--and no Glaudot ...

  Now the Cyclops, its appetite whetted, searched the floor in a frenzy of earnest on hands and knees. The great head swung low, close to the floor, the single eye stared myopically. Once the huge hand clubbed the rock so close to them that Charlie could feel the floor shaking. They retreated slowly toward the far wall of the cave, the monster following relentlessly. They still held the heavy stake between them but had not yet gathered either the strength or the courage for their one try. If they failed--

  They had backed up as far as they could. The wall was behind them. The monster came on, its head low, its nose practically scraping the ground. It swept the floor with a giant hand, a fingertip barely touching Charlie and almost knocking him senseless. He shook his head and took deep breaths until his strength returned.

  "Now," he said, as the hand began its swinging arc again.

  * * * * *

  They ran forward toward the creature's single eye with the stake.

  Charlie barely remembered the contact, or the bath of eye-fluid and blood which followed, or the wild roaring of the brute creature, or its frantic charging back and forth, blinded, across the cave, while the flock bleated and stampeded. After a while the crazed Cyclops ran to the cave entrance and shouldered the great door-rock aside, rushing out into the day.