by John Norman
"No," said the large man.
The large man stepped behind me. "Shall we go to the ship?" he asked. I did not move.
I turned to face him.
"Hurry!" called the man in the black tunic, from within the large ship. "Dawn in two Ehn!"
"Who are you? What do you want?" I begged.
"Curiosity," he said, " is not becoming in a Kajira."
I stared at him.
"You might be beaten for it," he said.
"Hurry! Hurry!" cried the man in the black tunic. "We must make rendezvous!" "Please," invited the large man, gesturing to the ship with one hand. Numbly I turned and preceded him to the ship. At the foot of the ramp I trembled.
"Hurry, Kajira," said he, gently.
I ascended the steel ramp. I turned. He was standing back on the grass. "In your time," he said, "dawn occurs at this meridian and latitude, on this day, at six sixteen."
I saw the sun's rim at the edge of my world, rising, touching it. In the east there was dawn. It was the first dawn I had ever seen. It was not that I had not stayed up all night, even many times. It was only that I had never watched a sunrise.
"Farewell, Kajira," said the man.
I cried out and extended my arms. The steel ramp swung upward and locked in place, shutting me in the ship. A sealing door then slid across the closed ramp, it, too, locking in place. I pounded on its plates, wildly, sobbing. Strong hands seized me from behind, one of the men in a black tunic. There was a tiny, three-pronged scar on his right cheekbone. I was dragged weeping and kicking through the ship, between tiers of piping and plating.
Then I was in a curved area, where, fixed in racks on the wall, sloping to the floor, were several large, transparent cylinders, perhaps of heavy plastic. In these were the girls I had seen, those who had been taken from the truck.
One tube was empty.
Another man, clad as the first, unscrewed one end of the empty tube. I could see that there were two small hoses, one at each end, fixed in each tube. They led into a machine fixed in the wall.
I struggled wildly, but the two men, one at my ankles, the other holding me under the arms, forced me into the tube. My prison was perhaps eighteen inches in diameter. The lid to the tube was screwed shut. I screamed and screamed, pushing and kicking at the cylinder. I turned on my side. I pressed my hands against the walls of the tube. The men did not seem to notice me.
Then I began to feel faint. It was hard to breathe.
One of the men attached a small hose to a tiny opening in the tube, above my head.
I lifted my head.
Oxygen streamed into the tube.
Another hose was attached at the other end of the tube, above my feet. There was a tiny, almost inaudible noise, as of air being withdrawn.
I could breathe.
The two men then seemed to brace themselves, by holding onto some rails, part of the racking of the piping. I suddenly felt as though I were in an elevator, and for the moment could not breathe. I knew then we were ascending. From the feeling of my body, pressing against the tube, I thought we must be ascending vertically, or nearly vertically. There was no peculiarly, powerful stresses, and very little unpleasantness. It was swift, and frightening, but not painful. I heard no sound of motors, or engines.
After perhaps a minute the two men, holding to the railing, moved from the room. The strange sensation continued for some time. Then, after a time, I seemed pressed against the side of the tube, rather cruelly, for perhaps several minutes. Then, suddenly, no forces seemed to play upon me, and, to my horror, I drifted to the other side of the tube. Then, after a moment of this, a very gently force seemed to bring me back to the side of the tube on my right. Oddly enough, I now thought of this as down. Shortly thereafter one of the men in a black tunic, wearing sandals with metal plates on the bottoms, stepped carefully, step by step, across the steel plating. It had been the floor, but now it seemed as though it were a wall at my left, and he moved strangely on the wall.
He went to the machine into which the hoses from the tubes led, and moved a small dial.
In a moment I sensed something different in the air being conducted into my tube.
There were several similar dials, beneath various switches, doubtless one for each of the containers.
I tried to attract his attention. I called out. Apparently he could not hear me. Or was not interested in doing so.
I was vaguely aware that now the gentle force seemed to draw my body against the tube differently. I was vaguely aware that now the ceiling and floor seemed as they should be. I saw, not fully conscious of it, the man leave the room. I looked out through the plastic. I pressed my hands against the heavy, curved, transparent walls of my small prison.
The proud Elinor Brinton had not escaped.
She was a prisoner.
I fell unconscious.
5 Three Moons
It is difficult for me to conjecture what happened.
I did not know how long I was unconscious.
I know only that I awakened, stunned, bewildered, lying on my stomach, head turned to the side, on grass. My fingers tore down at the roots. I wanted to scream. But I did not move. The events of the August afternoon and night flashed through my memory. I shut my eyes. I must go back to sleep. I must awaken again, between the white satin sheets in my penthouse. But the pressing of fresh grass against my cheek told me I was no longer in the penthouse, in surroundings with which I was familiar.
I got up to my hands and knees.
I squinted toward the sun. Somehow it seemed not the same to me. I moved my hand. I pressed my foot against the earth.
I threw up with horror.
I knew I was no longer on my world, on the world I knew. It was another world, a different world, one I did not know, one strange to me.
And yet the air seemed beautifully clear and clean. I could not remember such air. The grass was wet with dew, and rich and green. I was in a field of some sort, but there were trees, tall and dark, in the distance. A small yellow flower grew near me. I looked at it, puzzled. I had never seen such a flower before. In the distance, away from the forest, I could see a yellowish thicket, it, too, of trees, but not green, but bright and yellow. I heard a brook nearby. I was afraid. I cried out as I saw a bird, tiny and purple, flash past overhead. In the distance, near the yellowish thicket, I saw a small, yellowish animal moving, delicately. It was far off and I could not see it well. I thought it might be a deer or gazelle. It disappeared into the thicket.
I looked about myself.
Some hundred yards or so from me I saw a mass of torn metal, a ruptured structure of black steel, half buried in the grass.
It was the ship.
I noted that I no longer wore the anklet on my left ankle. It had been removed. I still wore the clothing in which I had been captured, the tan slacks, the black, bare-midriff blouse. My sandals I had lost in the woods on Earth, while fleeing from the ship.
I felt like running from the ship, as far as I might. But there seemed to be no sign of life about it.
I was terribly hungry.
I crawled in the direction of the brook, and, lying on my stomach before it, scooped water into my mouth.
What I thought was a petaled flower underneath the swift, cold surface of the brook suddenly broke apart, becoming a school of tiny yellow fish.
I was startled.
I slaked my thirst.
I wanted to run from the ship. Somewhere there might be the men.
But the ship seemed still. I saw some small birds flying about it.
There might be food on the ship.
Slowly, frightened, I approached the ship, step by step.
I heard a singing bird.
At last, about twenty yards from the ship, I circled I fearfully.
It was torn open, the steel plating split and bent, scorched and blistered. There was no sign of life.
I then approached the ship, half buried in the grass. I looked inside, trough one of the great r
ents in the steel. Its edges seemed to have melted and hardened. In places there were frozen rivulets of steel, as though heavy trickles of paint had run from a brush and then hardened. The inside of the ship was black and scorched. The piping, in several places, was ruptured. Panels were split apart, revealing a complex, blackened circuitry within. The heavy glass, or quartz or plastic, in the ports was, in many places, broken through. Barefoot, on the steel plating, buckled under my feet, the bolts broken, I entered the ship, holding my breath.
There seemed no one there.
The interior of the ship was compactly organized, with often only small spaces between tiers of tubing, piping and meters. Sometimes these small passages were half closed with bent pipes and tangles of wire erupted from the sides, but I managed to crawl where I wished to.
I found what seemed to be a control room, with two chairs and a large port before them. In this room there were also chairs about the side, four of them, before masses of dials, gauges and switches. There was no engine room that I could find. Whatever force drove the ship must have been beneath it, reached perhaps through the floor plating. The engines of the ship, and its weapons, if weapons it had, must have been operated from the control room. I found the area where the heavy plastic tubes had been kept, in one of which I had been confined. The tubes had all been opened. They were empty.
I heard a sound behind me and I screamed.
A small, furred animal scurried past me, its claws scrabbling on the steel plating. It had six legs. I leaned against a rack of piping, to catch my breath. But now I was afraid.
I had found no one in the ship.
But where could they be? There had been a crash. But there were no bodies. But if there had been survivors, where had they gone? Might they return soon? I returned to the main portion of the ship, and looked again at the great rents in the steel. It did not seem likely to me that they had been caused simply by the crash. There were four of them. One, rather on the bottom of the ship, was about five foot square. Two, on the left side, were the smallest. The rent through which I had entered the ship was the largest. It was, at the point at which I had entered, as the metal had been torn open, like steel petals, more than nine feet in height, a vast gash which, irregularly, on the left, tapered downward to a tear in the steel of only some four inches in height. There were, of course, numerous other points of damage on the ship, both interiorly and exteriorly, pitted, buckled plating and such. Much of the buckled plating I supposed, might have been done when the ship impacted. I looked once more at the great rents. It did not seem unlikely to me that the ship had been attacked. Frightened, I ran through the ship, wanting to find food or weapons. I found the crew's quarters. There were lockers there, and six cots, three on a side, mounted one over the other on the two walls, a mirror. The lockers had been split open and were emptied. I found blood on one side of one of the cots. I hurried from the room.
I found the tiny galley. In one corner, hunched over, nibbling, I saw an animal, about the size of a small dog. It lifted its snout and hissed at me, the hair about its neck and on its back suddenly bristling out with a crackle. I screamed.
It seemed twice the size it had been.
It crouched over a metallic container, round, not unlike a covered plate, that had been sprung open.
The animal was silken. Its eyes blazed. It was mottled and tawny. It opened its mouth and hissed again. I saw it had three rows of needlelike teeth. It had only four legs, unlike the small animal I had seen earlier. Two hornlike tusks protruded from its jaw. Another two hornlike projections emerged from its head, just over its black, gleaming, wicked eyes.
I was wild with hunger. I opened a cabinet. It was empty, save for some cups. I screamed and began to throw the cups, which were metal, at the animal, hysterically. It snarled and, the cups banging behind it on the metal of the wall, darted past me. Its silken body struck my leg as it ran from the galley. It had a long, whipping, hairless tail.
I shut the door of the galley, crying.
I opened all the cabinets, all the drawers and boxes. Everything edible, it seemed, had been taken. I would have to starve.
Then I sat down on the floor of the steel galley and wept. When I had cried, I went to the flat, metal container, that sprung open and exposed, that from which the ugly, terrible, silken animal had been feeding.
Choking, almost vomiting, I fed myself.
It was meat. It was thick, grainy, something like beef, but it was not beef. With my hands and fingers I scratched and scraped every particle of food from the container. There was not enough. I devoured it. I sucked even my fingers, for every last bit of juice.
I stood up, refreshed and stronger. I looked about, dismally. In my search for found I had found some utensils, but no knives, nothing to use as a weapon. Then it seemed to me that I had remained too long at the ship. I had not found bodies, though I had found, in one place, on a cot, a stain of blood. If there had been survivors, they might return. I became frightened. I had forgotten everything in my search for food, and my eating.
I opened the galley door.
I heard a bird twittering.
It was a small bird, about the size of a sparrow, but it looked a bit like a tiny owl, with tufts over its eyes. It was purplish. It looked at me quizzically. It was perched on some split piping.
It looked at me for a moment, and then, with a flurry of wings, darted out of the ship.
I, too, fled the ship.
Outside, everything was calm. I stopped. The dark forest was behind the ship, in the distance. The fields extended to the right. Somewhat more to the left, in the distance, in the fields was the yellowish thicket I had seen earlier. The sun's position had altered, and the shadows were longer. I judged it to be in the afternoon, on this world. It was not cold. If this world had seasons, as I supposed it must, I would have guessed it was in the spring of the year. I wondered how long the year might be.
Outside, looking about more closely, I found some trampled grass, as though things had been placed there, perhaps earlier in the morning, boxes and such. In one place, I found some strands of woman's hair. in another, there was a dark, reddish-brown stain on the grass.
I must get away!
I turned toward the forest, but its darkness frightened me.
Suddenly, from it, through the clear air, from far off, there was drifted a roar, as of some large animal.
I turned away from the forest and began to run across the field, blindly toward the horizon, over the grass.
I had not run far when I stopped, for, in the sky, in the distance, I saw a swift, silverish, disklike object. It was moving rapidly and in my direction. I threw myself down in the grass. I covered my head with my hands.
In moments nothing happened. I lifted my head.
The silverish disk had now landed near the rent, half buried black ship. The black ship itself glowed redly, but, in a few seconds, the glow faded. Then hatches opened on the silverish ship and men leaped out. They carried tubes, or wands, of some sort, perhaps weapons. They, like the men of the black ship, wore tunics but these were of some shimmering, purplish material. Their heads were shaved. Some of the men deployed themselves about the ship' others, carrying their weapons, entered.
Then, to my horror, a large, golden creature, six-legged, supporting itself on its four long back legs, almost upright, stepped from the ship. It had large eyes, and, I thought, antennae. It moved swiftly, delicately, almost daintily, toward the ship and, bending down, disappeared inside. Some of the men followed it in.
In perhaps less than a minute the creature, and the men, emerged from the ship' they, together with their fellows, then swiftly re-entered the silverish ship. The hatches slid shut and the ship, almost simultaneously, lifted itself, silently, some hundred feet from the grass. Then it moved above the wreck of the black ship. There was a sudden, bluish flash, and a blast of almost incandescent heat. I put my head down. When I raised my head the silverish, disklike ship was gone. And so, too, was the wreck of the
black ship. When I dared I went back to the site of the wreck. The depression in which it had lain, and the earth around, for some tens of feet, was scorched. But I could find nothing of the ship, not a bolt or a bit of quartz, not a thread of metal or a scrap of wire.
From the distant forest I heard again the roar of some great animal. Once more I turned and fled.
When I came to the small stream, at which I had drunk earlier, I waded. The water was waist deep.
Something struck, stinging my ankle. I screamed and splashed ashore. Then I was running again.
I must have run, and walked, and stumbled on for hours.
Once I stopped to rest. I lay, panting on the grass. My eyes were closed. I heard a rustle. I turned my head and opened my eyes. I watched it in terror. It was vinelike, and tendriled, leaved. A blind, split, podlike head was moving toward me, lifting itself slightly from the ground, moving from side to side. Inside the pod I could see, fastened in the upper surface, too long, curved, thornlike fangs. I screamed, leaping to my feet. The thing suddenly struck at me. It tore through the fabric of the slacks on my right leg. I pulled my leg away, tearing away the cloth. It struck again and again, as though sensing me by smell or heat, but it was rooted, and I was beyond its reach. I threw back my head, my hands to the sides of my head, and screamed. I heard another rustle, near me. I looked about, wildly, I saw the other plant, and then two others, too. And then another. Sweating, picking my way, I fled from the area. Then I was into the open grass again. I continued running, and walking, for hours. At last it grew cool, and dark.
I could go no further.
I dropped to the grass.
It was a dark, beautiful, windy night. There were some white clouds scudding across the sky. I looked up at the stars. Never before had I seen stars look so beautiful, as bright and burning in the blackness of the night. "How beautiful is this world," I said to myself, "how beautiful!" I lay on my back and looked up at the stars, and the moons.
There were three moons.
I slept.