Perilous Planets

by Brian Aldiss

  Erth was a world of beautiful strangeness to those two. They remembered what the Star-Beast had told them of the seas of Erth, and here they were in truth—seas, and deep blue lakes, and rivers that carved their way through mighty forested hills that raised snow-capped crests against the sky. To Thorana it was like opening the past, for all these things had been on Mur in ancient times. She begged Jim-Berk to leave these books behind, to show to the Searchers who knew about such things.

  ==========

  As the day passed, Korul was sure that Karak must have turned back or lost their trail. Autumn Night had come and gone: had the Change come with it? Were the Masters only an ugly memory now, on all the face of Mur, save only here in the Star-Beast’s lair where Thorana lived and regained her strength?

  They would know soon.

  Jim’s rokt had to be made ready for his return to Erth. With spades and powerful explosives they opened a pit under its base and toppled it in until the ship stood upright, its open hatchway at the level of the ground. Across the mountains, only a short distance away, was the second gorge. Now that the sluices had been opened there should be water there. While Korul and Thorana kept watch at the rokt, Jim-Berk set out across the plateau to the east. A day later he was back, flasks of water slung all around him with the news that the gorge-city was deserted.

  After six days Jim had enough water to fill his empty reservoirs. He would never let Korul or Thorana accompany him. What he found in the abandoned city he did not say, nor did they ask him.’

  The books from Erth were a never ending source of fascination to Thorana. Jim showed them the key to his written language: twenty-six symbols which stood for twenty-six sounds in the tongue his people spoke. The same symbols, he said, could be used to write down the languages of other peoples, though not always as exactly as they would like. Some of them had symbols of their own. He drew a few from memory that seemed no more and no less arbitrary than the ones in which the books were written.

  Thorona soon learned the sounds of these twenty-six symbols. She liked to sound out the words under the pictures, while Jim-Berk gave her the meanings in her own tongue. In a little time she was able to talk to him in his own rough Inglis.

  Korful felt much neglected during these little colloquies. He would see a broad grin creeping over Jim-Berk’s bearded face as he listened to Thorana stumbling through one of his uncouth phrases, then the Titan would burst into a great roar of laughter that rocked the ship and call her some outlandish name in his own tongue that brought the blood to the girl’s face in confusion. Or they would talk about him—Korul—both of them laughing, until he brought the fire to Thorana’s eyes and Jim-Berk’s thunderous laughter roaring through the ship by using the secret code-talk of the Elders.

  Thorana seemed content to ignore the revolt and what might be happening across the mountains and the desert, in the gorge cities of her people. Family ties meant very little to the Masters, except as an index of social position, and the girl had been a monster to most of her kind. Such children, Korul knew, were often killed at birth to save their parents from embarrassment when they grew up with legs and the other stigmata of atavism.

  It was a pleasant life, there in the Titan’s sky-ship, but it could not last. Berk and Thorana worked over the books and diagrams which told him when he must leave Mur. He brought out a small telescope, such as some of the Searchers had, and showed them Erin, his planet, a silvery, shadowed crescent against the night. Erth was Ulra—star and goddess of love to all the generations of Mur, Masters and Givers alike. To Korul it seemed an omen for good.

  When the Erth crescent was of such-and-such a thinness Jim-Berk must leave Mur, they decided. That would be very soon. And he knew, as they knew, that without his help they would never reach the pole alone.

  The books and instruments which he would not need were hidden in a crevice near the ship, where Korul could find them again. Food and water for five days were put into Berk’s big pack. He wanted the Murtas to carry no more than their own weight, or at most a little water. They would travel fastest that way, he assured Korul.

  A few days before they were to leave, he gave Thorana blood again. She objected, but Jim-Berk insisted. She would need all the strength her woman’s body could hold.

  ==========

  The Polar Sluices

  Jim-Berk seemed to know the way, and the going was easy after they left the hills. They went down to the nearer gorge, along the route he had followed in getting water. An ancient road followed the edge of the crevice from city to empty city, straight to the polar sluiceways. By common consent, they did not go down into the cities except at night, when they went far enough into the empty upper levels to protect themselves from the cold.

  ‘It’s an end to fighting that both our worlds need most, Korul,’ the Titan said wistfully one night. ‘With this trouble of yours done and over, and young men and thinkers making good laws to replace the bad old ones Mur can dig up what it has forgotten and fit it to the little bit of news that I’ve left you. You’ll be a great, wise planet as we’ve always dreamed of you’ back on Erth. Not that you’re not good enough for me as you are, but there’s a lot you can learn and be the better for it.

  ‘Then some day you’ll see us dropping out of the sky again—me or my sons or their sons—real men you can talk to, and trust like you do me. There’ll be the two of you here to spread the word about us, and I’ll do as much for you back on Erth. This time there’ll be no cages, and in no time at all there’ll be great ships coming and going like bees between us, carrying the richness and sweetness of the one world to the other.

  ‘Ah, the star-gazers I’ve known in my life that would give their souls and the taxpayers’ riches a dozen times over for one of your clear, bright nights—and there’ll be poets and painters among you who have longed down through the years for the rumble of the sea-waves on the rocks or the singing of the wind high up in the tall pines. Ah, there’s a thousand things will bring them flocking down out of the skies to you, and you to us! It’s the dream that was in my head all the years ago—and now I’m going back again, to see human faces and hear human voices, and to be under a blue sky with a bit of green under my feet.’

  ‘There will be someone waiting for you on Erth, Jim-Berk?’ Thorana asked gently.

  ‘After forty years? Small chance of that. I had a father and a mother there who thought me wild and a bit mad, and a girl who was sure I was touched in the head. For all that, they were mine and they’d wait and watch for me for a year, or maybe five—but then the days would come creeping on, and the hope in them would begin to fade.

  ‘The girl would go first, I’m thinking. She was a sensible piece, for all she’d taken up with me, and she could have her choice of the men once she’d made up her mind it was the thing to do. As for the others—well, what’s twenty of your years are close to forty back on Erth, and it’s not likely they’ll be alive. You’ve taken good care of me in your infernal cage and the years have laid a light hand on me here, but better than sixty years is good living for one of our race on Erth.

  ‘No, Thorana, there’ll be no one to welcome me as close as you two are, but they’ll be my own kind. I’ll see to them, and you see to your own breed here so that when my grandchildren and yours meet again out there in the desert, there’ll be no nonsense of Sky-Beasts and cages between them!’

  ==========

  As the days followed the nights, the road climbed above the rift-line and went winding through the low hills which closed in the polar basin. It came out at last high on a bare hillside, and there before them were the great dams and the ice.

  Only scattered white patches of upland snow were left where the polar cap had been lying across the dark hills like the clouds of Erth that were in Jim’s book. At their base was the dark network of swampland, green with new life, and far below where the waters reached the plain was the black line of the dam.

  When the ancients knew that water and air were leaving Mur, they buil
t their chain of dams at either pole to hold back the water of the melting frosts until, through the great sluices that run deep under the gorges, they could be pumped to every part of the dying planet. Korul remembered it as a place of solemn stillness, brooding with the lost wisdom of the past—but now the curving wall of the giant dam was swarming with the tiny black shapes of men, and steel flickered in the autumn sunlight. A dark wave surged up and broke against the breast of the dam, rose halfway to its crest, then dropped away as a net of shimmering silver wavered over it.

  It was war!

  Jim-Berk came out of his revery. ‘What’s happening?’ he demanded.

  Korul told him. “Torkul, who keeps the sluices, is my friend. We wanted to bring back the old ways gently, with the help of the Searchers—not by killing and hate. And Karak is no man to stand differences of opinion among his leaders.’

  ‘With Torkul holding the gates, Mur will go without water for half a year if he chooses,’ Thorana pointed out. ‘If Tatok is with him, in the South, and Karak cannot break their defense, they hold Mur in the hollow of their palm.’

  ‘If your Torkul has the men and the will, he can hold that wall against an army,’ the Titan said. ‘Korul—if you’re with him, and Karak knows it, there’ll be more of the fear of the Lord in his black heart. Have you been here? How does the land lie?’

  Korul pointed. ‘The plain is a maze of shallow gullies and ravines. You can see them as dark lines against the red, because the water follows them and plants grow there. They should give me cover enough to creep up in Karak’s rear, then run for the dam when he next attacks.’

  ‘And be picked off by Torkul’s best bowman, I have no doubt,’ the Titan said grimly. ‘Is there any signal that will let them know who you are?’

  ‘By the gods, there is! Torkul and I used a cry when we were boys together that made the levels ring. “Mur! Murata! Mur!” Gods, how the Masters hated it. He’ll know it still.’

  ‘Come on then,’ the giant rumbled. ‘Keep to cover, and when I shout, run for the dam.’

  Thorana seized his sleeve. ‘Wait!’ she cried. ‘You can’t go with us! We may be penned up there for days, and you have barely time to get back to your ship. We owe you enough now, Jim-Berk—go back to Erth while you still can. This is our affair.’

  He shook her gently off. ‘But for that little tussle with the ullas, I’ve not had a good fight for upward of forty years,’ he said grandly. ‘I owe your friend Karak something from all three of us, and I have a little toy here at my hip that may come as a surprise to him. If it’s the ship that’s bothering you, it’s well hidden and another year more or less won’t matter to it. I’d like to see what your scientists make of me, anyway, now they know what they’re looking at. Come on—if we wait much longer the sun will be down on us, and a day wasted is a day lost.’

  ==========

  The Titan

  The sun was well down in the west when they crept up through the scarred plain behind Karak’s camp. All day they had been hammering the wall with those savage attacks, trying by brute force to break through Torkul’s defense. Now they were gathering for what would be a last attack before night closed down and they took cover from the cold.

  Karak himself led them. Peering from behind a pinnacle of crumbling clay, Korul decided that he looked less omnipotent than on the day when he had begged for Thorana’s life. He was ranging back and forth among his men, bunching them into some sort of order. As the ranks took shape, his plan became evident. Swordsmen would charge under a barrage of arrows, and the bowmen would attack when the first wave fell back.

  And then—they.

  The gabble of Karak’s forces faded away into deathly stillness, then with a shout the big man leaped forward toward the dam. With the twang of steel cross-bows behind them and the whistle of bolts over their heads, his swordsmen sprang after him.

  It was as though two waves flowed together. Down from the top of the dam came Torkul’s men to meet the advancing swordsmen. A little above the center they met with a clang of steel. The thin line of defenders held, perched on the sheer face where Karak’s men must claw their way upward block by block. They held, then the attackers broke and fled—and at Karak’s shout, out of the gullies poured his bowmen, their squat bows hurling buzzing death at the men who stood in a huddled mass halfway up the face of the great dam.

  Up the black wall, striking a shower of fire from the stone, beat the hail of steel bolts, with Torkul’s line retreating slowly before it. Higher they were driven—higher—then with a shout the bowmen drew their swords, and at the same moment Torkul and his men fell flat against the rock-face, while over them hurtled a barrage of flickering steel from hidden archers at the crest.

  The black wave faltered—slowed—and tumbled back in wild confusion while Torkul and his swordsmen leaped behind them bringing quick death to the laggards. And at Jim-Berk’s cry the three sprang from their shelter and raced toward the milling host.

  One of the fugitives saw them, pounding through the half-light, and recognized the Titan’s giant shape.

  ‘The Beast!’ he screamed. The Beast!’

  A startled hush fell over the fighters; then out of it came the Titan’s roaring voice, thundering their battle-cry: ‘Mur!

  Murata! Mur!’

  Korul’s voice echoed it, and Thorana’s shrilled above them both. And from where Torkul’s men stood, puzzled, at the dam-front the answer came: ‘Mur!Mur!MUR!’

  Then they were at them.

  ==========

  In the Titan’s hand appeared a squat weapon of blued steel with a stubby muzzle. As Karak’s men turned on them, it roared with a battering death that tore into their bodies and sent them reeling out of the path. Into the gap raced the Titan, Korul behind him with Thorana close at his back. Then as Karak’s howl of rage went up, they closed in with ready swords on every side.

  There is a saying among the Givers: A dead man’s sword will make more dead men. Korul and Thorana armed themselves, and as the Titan’s weapon failed and he began to push new projectiles into its magazine, they raised a shield of darting steel behind him. Then the gun roared again over their heads, and Karak’s men fell back.

  They could not go far. The weight of rushing men behind them drove them on. Unable to retreat, they had to fight. With a shout of rage the Titan scooped up the two Murians, one under each arm, and plunged headlong at the line of steel that separated them from the dam.

  The utter fury of it took them through. Torkul’s defenders closed in around them, but hot on their heels pounded Karak’s howling, cursing host in one irresistible bolt of certain death.

  Over the din thundered the Star-Beast’s voice: ‘Run! Up the dam if you like your life!’

  And they ran, Jim-Berk clambering ponderously after them. They reached the line of the first stand, passed it, spilled over Torkul’s barricades into a clamoring host that at Torkul’s word sprang to their places and loosed a hail of steel on the attackers.

  Korul looked around him. The Titan was not there!

  His cry checked the bowmen and brought Torkul to his side at the top of the barricade. Halfway down the slope Jim-Berk was holding Karak’s wedge of steel.

  He had stopped behind the line of dead. Piling their bodies into a human breastwork, he loaded his weapon—then was up again, gigantic in the twilight, flame spitting from his roaring death-frail, crumpling them up in agony, choking the narrow ledges of the dam-face with lifeless bodies. Close-packed as through body after body, bringing them down in swaths.

  Three times he rose and drove them back. The fourth time his gun roared twice and stopped. He hurled it in their faces, then dropped on his haunches behind his wall of dead while over him sang the steel hail of Karak’s bows, sweeping the rock face and cutting off his retreat.

  There in the shelter of the dead Jim-Berk garnered a sheaf of swords. Again they rushed the dam, and as Karak’s barage lifted to let them through he sprang to his feet and with deadly accuracy hurled them
, one by one, into the faces of the attacking men. Ten men he brought down, spitted by ten swords: the last he kept, and with it charged down the dam-face at the climbing foe.

  ==========

  He was a giant, and his sword seemed to blaze with the white fire of Death itself, but they outnumbered him by hundreds. Thorana was screaming in his own strange tongue, and his own voice roared back in gleeful laughter. Snatching a sword Korul was over the top of the dam, Torkul at his side, the defenders screaming after them.

  They were too late. Streaming, panic-stricken, Karak’s men broke and fled from the attack of the Star-Thing, with the Titan, a bloody, grinning spectre of destruction at their heel.

  Behind them Karak stood with his bowmen, and as his swordsmen broke they swept the slope with a hail of death that beat fiercely about the giant figure of the Titan.

  They saw the blood spurt where the heavy bolts plowed into his body. They saw his massive frame quiver as each bolt struck. But still he laughed, and still the momentum of his charge carried him after the fleeing swordsmen, slashed at them with a sword that ran red to the hilt.

  Thorana screamed. The Titan’s charge had stopped. He stood towering over the frightened faces of Karak’s bowmen then slowly, like a falling monolith, he went down among them, dead.

  They ran. Korul and Torkul left them scattered over the plain, hiding like rats in the gullies, shivering in the deepening night. As the cold deepened they crept out, whimpering for mercy, and got it or the sword according to the humor of the guard whom they approached.

  Karak had escaped. His own men told how he had run from the last wild charge of the dying Star-Beast. They would help hunt him down. The fear of the Titan, and the memory of his awful laughter, lay on them like death.