The Sixth Science Fiction Megapack

by Arthur C. Clarke

  Not one looked up. Frozen motionless as stone, they stood there in the pit—waiting.

  Again the laughter crashed out. The redbeard was watching Stuart.

  “His courage flags,” the great voice boomed. “Speak the truth, Earthman. Have you courage to face the gods?”

  Stuart stubbornly refused to answer. He had an odd, reasonless impression that this was part of some deep game, that behind the mocking byplay lay a more serious purpose.

  “He has courage now,” a giant said. “But did he always have courage? Has there never been a time in his life when courage failed him? Answer, Earthman!”

  Stuart was listening to another voice, a quiet, infinitely distant voice within his brain that whispered: Do not answer them!

  “Let him pass our testing,” the redbeard commanded. “If he fails, there is an end. If he does not fail—he goes into the pit to walk the Long Orbit.”

  The giant leaned forward.

  “Will you match skill—and courage—with us, Earthling?”

  Still Stuart did not answer. More than ever now he sensed the violent, hidden undercurrents surging beneath the surface of this byplay. More than he knew swung in the balance here.

  He nodded.

  “He has courage,” a giant repeated. “But did he always have courage?”

  “We shall see…” the redbeard said.

  The air shimmered before Stuart. Through its shaking, his senses played him false. He knew quite well who he was and where he stood, in what deadly peril—but in that shimmer which bewildered the eyes and the mind he was a boy again, seeing a certain hillside he had not seen except through his boyhood’s eyes. And he saw a black horse standing above him on the slope, pawing the ground and looking at him with red eyes. And an old, old terror came flooding over him that he had not remembered for a quarter of a century. A boy’s acute and sudden terror.…

  Who had opened the doors of his mind and laid this secret bare? He himself had long forgotten—and who upon this alien world could look back through space and time to remind him of that long-ago day when the vicious black horse had thrown an inexperienced boy rider and planted a seed of terror in his mind which he had been years outgrowing? But the fear was long gone now, long gone.… Wasn’t it?

  Then whence had come this monstrous black stallion that pawed the floor of the hall, glaring down red-eyed at him and showing teeth like fangs? No horse, but a monster in the shape of a horse, a monster ten feet high at the shoulder, wearing the shape of his boyhood nightmare that woke in Stuart even now the old, unreasoning horror.…

  It was stamping down upon him, shaking its bridled head, snorting, lifting its lip above the impossible teeth. He saw the reins hanging loose, he saw the saddle and the swinging stirrups. He knew that the only safety in this hall for him was paradoxically upon the nightmare’s back, where the hoofs and fangs could not reach him. But the terror and revulsion which the boy bad buried long ago came welling up from founts deep-buried in the man’s subconscious mind.…

  Now it was rushing him, head like a snake’s, outthrust, hissing like a snake, reins flying like Medusa-locks as it stretched to seize him. For one instant he stood there paralyzed. He had faced dangers on many worlds to which this nightmare was nothing, but he had never since boyhood felt the paralysis of horror that gripped him now. It was a child’s horror, resurrected from the caves of sleep to ruin him.…

  With a superhuman effort he broke that frozen fear, snatching for the flying reins, whirling as the monstrous thing swept past against his thighs, and it was a smooth, pouring cold of many alien muscles working powerfully together in a way no mammal knows. He looked down.

  He was riding a monstrous snake that twisted its head to look at him in the moment he realized what had happened. Its great diamond-shaped head towered high and came looping down toward him, wide-mouthed, tongue like a flame flickering.…

  It laid its cold, smooth cheek against his with a hideous caressing motion, sliding around his neck, sliding down his arm and side, laying a loop of cold, scaly strength around him and pressing, pressing.…

  His hands closed around the thickness of its throat, futilely—and the throat melted in his grasp and was hairy with a hairiness no mammal ever knew. The motion of the body he bestrode changed again and was incredibly springy and light.

  He rode a monstrous spider. His hands were sunk wrist-deep in loathsome coarse hair, and his eyes stared into great cold faceted eyes that mirrored his own face a thousandfold. He saw his own distorted features looking back at him in countless miniatures, but behind the faces, in the great eyes of the spider, he saw no consciousness regarding him. The cold multiple eyes were not aware of Derek Stuart. Behind the shield of its terrible face, the spider shut away its own arachnid thoughts and the memories of the red fields of Mars that were its home. With dreadful, impersonal aloofness, its mandibles gaped forward toward its prey.

  Loathing ran in waves of weakness through Stuart’s whole body, but he shut his eyes and blindly struck out at the nearer of those great mirroring eyes, feeling wetness shatter against his fist as—as—

  As the horror shifted and vanished, while rippling waves of green light darkened all about him. Now they coagulated, drew together into a meadow, cool with Earthly grass, bordered by familiar trees far away. Primroses gleamed here and there. Above him was the blue sky and the warm bright sun that shone only upon the hills of Earth.

  But what he felt was horror.

  Twenty feet from him was a rank, rounded patch of weeds. His gaze was drawn inexorably to that spot. And it was from there that the crawling dread reached out to him.

  Faintly he heard laughter…of the gods…of the Aesir. The Aesir? Who—what—were they? How had he, Derek Stuart, ever heard of them except as a name whispered in fear as the spaceships streaked through the clouds above that Dakota farmstead.…

  Derek Stuart…a boy of eleven.…

  But—but—that was wrong, somehow. He wasn’t a child any more. He had matured, become a spaceman.

  Dreams. The dreams of an eleven-year old.

  Yet the hollow, dreadful laughter throbbed somewhere, in the vaults of the blue overhead, in the solidity of the very ground beneath him.

  This had happened before. It had happened to a boy in South Dakota—a boy who had not known what lay concealed in that verdant clump of weeds.

  But now, somehow—and very strangely—Stuart knew what he would find there.

  He was afraid. Horribly, sickeningly afraid. Cold nausea crawled up his spine and the calves of his legs. He wanted to turn and run to the farmhouse half a mile away. He almost turned, and then paused as the distant laughter grew louder.

  They wanted him to run. They were trying to scare him—and, once the defenses of his courage had broken, he would be lost. Stuart knew that with an icy certainty.

  Somewhere, very far away, he sensed a man standing in a cyclopean hall—a man in ragged spaceman’s garb, hard-faced, thin-lipped, angry-eyed. A familiar figure. The man was urging him on—telling him to go on toward that clump of weeds.

  Derek Stuart obeyed the voiceless command. His throat dry, his heart pumping, he forced himself across the meadow till he stood at his goal and looked down at the bloody, twisted corpse of the tramp who had been knifed by another hobo, twenty years before, on that Dakota farm. The old nausea of shocked horror took him by the throat and strangled him.

  He fought it down. This time he didn’t run screaming back to the farmhouse.…

  And suddenly the laughter of the gods was stilled. Derek Stuart, a man once more in mind, stood again in the tower of the Aesir. The thrones between the monstrous pillars were vacant.

  The Aesir were gone.

  Stuart let out his breath in a long sigh. He had no illusions about the vanishment of the Aesir; he knew he had not conquered those mighty beings. It would take more than human powers to do that. But at least he had a respite. All but the most stolid spacemen develop hypertension, and there seems to be a curious mathem
atical rule about that; it increases according to the distance from the Sun. Which may be explained by the fact that environmental differences also increase as the outer planets are reached—and alien environments breed alien creatures. A great many men have gone insane on Pluto.…

  This was not Pluto; it was nearer Sunward than Jupiter, but the utter alienage that brooded over Asgard was almost palpable. Even the solidity under Stuart’s feet, the very stones of the planetoid, were artifically created, by a science a million years beyond that of his own time. And the Aesir—

  Unexpectedly his deep chest shook with laughter. The inexplicable self-confidence that had first come to him in the Asgard forests had not waned; it seemed to have grown even stronger since his meeting with the Aesir giants; Now he stared around the colossal hall, his eyes straining toward the spot of light far above where those incredible columns converged. His own insignificance by comparison did not trouble him.

  Whether or not he could have the slightest hope of winning this game—at least he was giving his enemies a run for their money!

  III

  A sound from the pit roused him. Turning, he walked warily toward its edge.

  The dozen motionless figures were still there, fifty feet below, and among them was one he had not noticed before—an Earthgirl, he thought, with curling dark hair framing a white face as she tilted up her chin and stared at him.

  At this distance he could make out few details; she wore a close-fitting green suit which left slender arms and legs bare.

  “Earthman—” she said, in a clear, carrying voice. “Earthman! Quick! The Aesir will be back—go now! Leave their temple before they—”

  “Don’t waste your breath,” Stuart said. “This is Asgard.” Whoever the girl was, she should know the impossibility of leaving the taboo world. “If I can find a rope—”

  She said quickly, “You won’t find one. Not here, in the temple.”

  “How can I get you out of there? And the others?”

  “You’re mad,” the girl said. “What good would it do.…” She shook her head. “Better to die at once.”

  Stuart narrowed his eyes at the dozen frozen figures. “I don’t think so. Fourteen of us can put up a better fight than one. If your friends wake up—”

  The girl said, “On your left, between the pillars, there’s a tapestry showing Perseus and the Gorgon. Touch the helm of Perseus and the hand of Andromeda. Then go carefully—there may be traps.”

  “What is it?”

  “It will lead you down here. You can free us. If you hurry—oh, but it’s hopeless! The Aesir—”

  “Damn the Aesir,” Stuart snarled. “Wake up the others!” He whirled and ran toward the distant wall, where he could see the Perseus tapestry, brown and gold, a huge curtain between two columns. If the Aesir saw, they made no move…

  Stuart’s lips twisted in a bitter smile. The crazy confidence had not left him, but he was conscious of a reassuring warmth; at least he was no longer completely alone. That would help. Between the worlds, and on the desolate planets that swing along the edge of the System, loneliness is the lurking terror, more horrible than the most exotic monster ever spawned by the radioactive Plutonian earth. He touched the tapestry twice; it swept away from him, and a staircase was visible, leading down through stone or metal—he could not tell which. Stuart fought back the impulse that urged him to race down those curving spiral steps. The girl had spoken of traps.

  He went warily, testing each tread before he put his weight upon it. Though he did not think that the snares of the Aesir would be so simple.

  At the bottom, he emerged into a vaulted chamber, tiny by comparison with the one he had left. It was oval, domed ceiling and walls and floor shining with a milky radiance—except at one spot.

  There he saw a door—transparent. Through it he looked into the pit. He was on a level with the floor of that shaft now; he could see the dozen figures still standing motionless in a huddled group, and a few feet beyond the glassy pane was the Earthgirl. She was looking directly at him, but her dark eyes had a blind seeking, as though the door was opaque from her side.

  Stuart paused, his hand on the complicated mechanism that, he guessed, would open the portal. His hard, dark face was impassive, but he was conscious of an unfamiliar stirring deep within him. From above, he had not seen the girl’s beauty.

  He saw it now.

  She couldn’t be an Earthgirl—entirely.

  She must be one of those disturbingly lovely interplanetary halfbreeds. Earth-blood she had, of course, and predominantly, but there was something more, the pure essence of beauty that blazed through her like a flame kindled in a lamp of crystal. In all his wanderings between the worlds, Stuart had never seen a girl as breathtakingly lovely as this one.

  His hand moved on the controls; the door slid silently open. The girl’s eyes brightened. She gave a little gasp and ran toward him. Without question she sought refuge in his arms, and for a moment Stuart held her—not unwillingly.

  He thrust her away gently.

  “The others?”

  She said, “It’s useless. The paralysis—”

  Stuart scowled and stepped across the threshold into the pit. Uneasiness crawled along his spine as he did so. The Aesir might be watching from above, or—or—

  There was nothing. Only dead silence, and the uneven breathing of the girl as she stood in the doorway watching. Stuart stopped before the leather-clad Earthman and tested a burly arm. The man stood frozen, his flesh cold and hard as stone, his eyes staring glassily. He was not even breathing.

  So with the others. Stuart grimaced and shrugged. He turned back toward the girl and felt a pulse of relief when he stepped into the shining chamber. He might be no safer here, but at least he wasn’t so conscious of inhuman eyes that might be watching from above. Not that solid stone might be any barrier to the Aesir’s probing gaze…

  The girl touched the mechanism; the door slid silently shut. “It’s no use,” she said. “The paralysis holds all the others. Only I could battle it—a little. And that was because—”

  “Save it,” Stuart said. He turned toward the door by which he had entered, but an urgent hand gripped his wrist.

  “Let me talk,” the quiet voice said. “We’re as safe here as anywhere. And there may be a way—now that I can think clearly again.”

  “A way out? A safe way?”

  There was a haunted look in her dark eyes. “I don’t know. I’ve lived here for a long time. The others—” she pointed toward the door of the pit. “The sacrifices were brought to Asgard only yesterday. But I’ve been here many moons. The Aesir kept me alive for a bit, to amuse them. Then they tired, and I was thrown in with the others. But I learned a little. I—I—no one can dwell here in the Aesir stronghold without—changing a little. That’s why the paralysis didn’t hold me as long as it holds the others.”

  “Can we save them?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, with a small, helpless shrug. “I don’t even know if we can save ourselves. It’s been so long since I was brought to Asgard that I—I scarcely remember my life before that. But I have learned a little of the Aesir, and that may help us now.”

  Stuart watched her. She tried to smile, but not successfully.

  She said, “I’m Kari. The rest—I’ve forgotten. You’re—”

  “Derek Stuart.”

  “Tell me what happened.”

  “We haven’t time,” Stuart said impatiently, but Kari shook her head.

  “We’ll need weapons, and I must know—first—if you can use them. Tell me!”

  Well, she was right. She had knowledge that Stuart needed. So he told her, very briefly, what he remembered.

  She stared at him. “Voices—in your mind?”

  “Something like that. I don’t know—”

  “Telepathy?”

  “No. No. Or—wait—” He tried to focus his thoughts upon a far, faint calling that came from infinite distances. His name. An urgent summons.
<
br />   It faded and was gone.

  “There’s nothing,” Stuart said finally, and Kari moved her shoulders uneasily.

  “No help there, then.”

  “Tell me one thing. What’s the Aesir’s power? Hypnotism?”

  “No,” Kari said, “or not entirely. They can make thoughts into real things. They are—what the race of man will evolve into in a million years. And they have changed, into beings utterly alien to humans.”

  “They looked human—giants, though.”

  “They can assume any shape,” Kari told him. “Their real form is unimaginable. Beings of pure energy…mental force…matrixes of electronic power. They were striking at you through your mind.”

  Stuart said, “I wondered why they didn’t set some of their Watchers on me.”

  “I don’t know why they didn’t,” Kari frowned. “Instead, they hammered at your weaknesses—old fears that hung on to you for years. Experiences that frightened you in the past. They sent your mind back into that past—but you were too strong for them.”

  “Too strong—?”

  “Then. They have other powers, Stuart—incredible powers. You can’t fight them alone. And you must fight them. In a thousand years no one has dared—”

  Stuart remembered something. “Two dared—once.” He nodded. “I know. I know the legends, anyway. About John Starr and Lorna. The great rebels who first defied the Aesir when the tyranny began. But they may have been only legendary figures. Even if they were real—they failed.”

  “Yes, they failed. And they’re a thousand years dead. But it shows something…to me at least. Man wasn’t meant to be a slave to these monsters. Rebellion—”

  Kari watched him. Stuart’s eyes were shadowed.

  “John Starr and Lorna,” he continued in a whisper. “I wonder what their world was like, a thousand years ago? We’ve got all the worlds now, all the planets of the System from Jupiter to the smallest asteroid. But we don’t rule them, as men owned their own Earth in those days. We’re slaves to the Aesir.”

  “The Aesir are—are gods.”

  “John Starr didn’t think so,” Stuart said. “Neither do I. And at worst I can always die, as he did. Listen, Kari.” He gripped her arms. “Think. You’ve lived here for a while. Is there any weapon against those devils?”