Norahn was crying, bitterly, hopelessly.
* * *
“I KILLED him,” my father said. “With my hands. But he died only one death.”
Breakers crashed beneath us in Thunder Fjord. The sky had grown light. Freya, the gerfalcon, hooded and asleep, stirred on Nils Esterling’s shoulder.
I looked out at the dark sea. “You couldn’t go back?”
“No. Those wings would never grow again. Only on the Black Planet could they ever have grown. Once withered—” he made a hopeless gesture—“Norahn and I were earthbound. It was the legendary curse that fell on any of her folk who left that world. And—and she had been born to flight.”
The sun’s rim loomed on the horizon.
Nils stared up into the burning rays.
“She wouldn’t let me take her back. The Black Planet is for those with wings. Not for the earthbound. I brought her to Earth, Arn. I brought her here. She died when you were born. Scarcely a year . . . We had happiness, but it was bitter-sweet. For we had known flight.”
Nils unhooded the gerfalcon. Freya moved, ruffling her feathers, blinking a golden eye.
“Flight,” my father said. “To stop flying is to die. Norahn died in a year. And for over forty years I have been chained here, remembering. Arn—” he slipped something from his arm and dropped it into my hand—“this is yours now. You’re going into space. Your heritage is out there, beyond the orbit of Pluto, where the isles of the winged folk drift on the bright tides of Norahn’s world. It’s your world as well. In you are the seeds of flight.”
He looked at the gerfalcon. “I have no words to tell you of your heritage, Arn. You will never know, till you have wings. And then—”
Nils Esterling stood up, casting the gerfalcon free. Freya screamed harshly. Her wings beat the air. She circled, mounted, climbing the winds.
My father’s gaze brooded on me as I slipped the golden bracelet on my arm. He dropped back into the chair, as though exhausted.
“That’s all, I suppose,” he said wearily. “It’s time for you to go. And—I’ll say good-by.”
I left him there. He did not watch me go. Once I turned, far down the path above Thunder Fjord, and Nils Esterling had not moved. He was looking up at Freya, wheeling in the blue.
The next time I looked, the outthrust of the crag hid the Hall. All I could see was the empty sky, and the gerfalcon circling there on splendid wings.
NIGHT OF GODS
The Tuatha Dé—the Sleeping Giants of Eire, men called them, and made black legends of their memory. Until the fateful day when they returned—to unlock the gate of dreadful reckoning!
CHAPTER ONE
March of the Titans
GLENN looked at me sidewise, his haggard young face tense with exhaustion, his hands automatically reaching toward the plane’s dual controls.
I didn’t recognize my voice when I said, “Lay off. You can’t fly this crate any farther than I can.”
He lit a cigarette and stuck it in my mouth.
“You’re crazy, Sean. You’ve got to sleep sometime.”
I grinned, nodding to the bullet-marred shield where gray fog was torn to pieces by the props as we thundered eastward, somewhere over the Pacific. “Bird-walking weather. Maybe we land up in Tokyo. God knows. Anyhow, we can’t try for a landing. What’s down there?”
Glenn followed my gesture. He made a wry grimace.
“Water, and lots of it—I know. But you’ve got to have relief, man!”
Relief! There wasn’t any. And I couldn’t tell Glenn why I didn’t dare let him take the controls—he’d think I’d blown my top. How could I say I was getting a message from—nowhere?
I was doped to the eyes. The Japs had been savagely strafing our island base for weeks, knocking down our planes one by one. We kept going up, of course, hoping for relief from Australia or the Pacific fleet. So few flyers! It got so I was dead on my feet, waiting for the signal to warm up and take off to meet the overwhelming air attacks. Thiamin helped, as well as other stimulants. I even tried a native drug, betel or something, to keep me going. My nerves were wire-edged. Physically exhausted, and mentally attuned to razor keenness.
That attack yesterday—
I cursed under my breath. Had the Japs taken the base? The radio had stopped, while we were up there in the fog, and then, suddenly, there was nothing in all the world except gray emptiness. The dogfight had carried us north. I tried to get back, but I missed the island, and we were alone, trying to pick signals out of the air, trying to find a landing place before the fuel was gone.
And the Japs jammed the air waves.
So we cruised around, feeling desperately hopeless, getting ready to die. There was a zero ceiling. I settled back into an alert sort of relaxation, my mind going blank for the first time in days. Physically I was tired. Mentally, stimulant drugs had, I think, done something to my mind.
I heard the—summons.
It came out of the fog and the darkness. It was wordless, inaudible, and alien to anything I had ever before experienced. There were no terms to describe the—the message.
Wordless, it called. As the magnetic pole draws a compass needle, with invisible lines of force, so my mind swung toward the south.
Like the fabulous lodestone mountain that draws iron ships to destruction on its rocky shores, so the call drew me southward.
Thrice before in my life I had heard it. But never so strong—never so compelling!
Once in the Florida Everglades, sick and racked with fever, nerves raw and jolting, I had heard it. And then once in the Andes, snowbound, my body filled with the tingling exhilaration of immense altitudes. It came from the east, or so I thought at the time.
A year ago the message had come while I was on a binge in a little port somewhere on the Burma coast. I was crazy drunk, on the way to delirium tremens. But the—summons—had been unmistakable.
Now, for the fourth time, that silent, incredible tocsin came ringing out of nowhere, finding a responsive chord deep in my brain, bringing forth a response that was almost intoxicating in its surge and pulse through my mind. It ebbed and mounted like a tide. My soul and body leaped up in answer to it.
It—called!
It called—me!
I thought of the lyre of Orpheus, that drew even the dead back from their tombs to listen. But this was not music; I did not even hear it.
Deep within me, some unknown sense hearkened to that summons—and was drunken with delight as it hearkened. Madness or sanity, dream or reality, I scarcely cared. My body was dead with exhaustion. I handled the plane’s controls automatically, by reflex action. Before me the instruments glowed in their panel. Gray tatters of fog flashed by the cowling. At my side Glenn Kirk smoked one cigarette after another, casting uneasy glances at the fuel gauge. There was enough and to spare; we still had the reserve tank to call on if necessary. But our destination was unknown.
Somewhere—out there in the fog—something called. What?
Something that had called me thrice before—and I had not answered. Now—“Sean.”
My tongue felt stiff. “Yeah?”
“Been trying the radio. Nothing. All wave-lengths jammed tight. I’ve lost my bearings completely.”
“Have a drink and forget it,” I said. “There’s brandy in my jacket.”
FROM the corner of my eye I watched Glenn lift the flask to his lips. In the last few months I’d come to know the boy as well as two men, facing death together, could know one another. He’d saved my life more than once, and I’d reciprocated.
Flying together forges a certain bond. I’d come to know a good deal about Glenn, the little Illinois village where he had lived, the mansion where the Kirks had been reared for generations, the college where Glenn had studied medicine. He had more to lose than I, who had knocked around the world from early youth. I had no kin. But I could understand what that village and the people in it meant to Glenn—a future in a place he knew and loved. He’d told me about it. Hun
ting trips in the autumn woods, firelight in warm cabins, with snow piling against the windows, all that sort of thing—out of my line, I suppose. Just the same—
“After this is over, you’re coming back with me,” Glenn had said. “You’ll like the folks and they’ll like you. Thanksgiving—you’ve never had turkey dressing the way Mom cooks it. And I want you to meet Paula, too.”
Thanksgiving. I’d celebrated it—yeah. In various ways. Fried monkey in the Amazon country, up the Orinoco. Steer steak on the pampas. Once, roasted dog in the Mexican mountains, where I was glad enough to get it. And lonely dinners in New York, London, Port Said . . . the hell with it. I could have landed on my feet; I’d inherited some money, and plenty of jobs were open. But a job wasn’t what I wanted. Wanderlust is one name for it. A restless longing for something that couldn’t be expressed, a blind, drunken searching for an unknown goal. . . .
My ancestors had wandered through the fens and mists of Ireland, in days long forgotten, before the kings of Tara rose to power—when men were fighters and minstrels both, their hands equally ready to reach for harp or sword. In me, Sean O’Mara, the old blood seemed to burn like fire. I could not rest. I—could not rest.
And now a soundless call beat out of the darkness—speaking to me, and to me alone.
Well—I grinned crookedly—I was answering that call. There was nothing else to do. Unless I cared to circle blindly in the fog, hoping it would lift. Sometimes these unexpected palls of cloud lasted for days. No, the O’Maras had always been gamblers, and, somehow, I trusted that summons.
But I could not tell Glenn. He was asleep now, looking impossibly young with his tired face relaxed in slumber. Dreaming, maybe, about the village in Illinois. And Paula, who wore the ring he’d given her and waited anxiously for news from our Pacific base.
My lips tightened. By this time, that base might have been blown to hell! I had friends there—
The prop bit furiously into the air, hurling the plane forward like a bullet. The sun rose swiftly, suddenly, as it does near the equator.
The fog cleared. Some freak thermal made a funnel of clear air. Beneath us I saw an islet.
There were no signs of human habitation. A low peak stood up sharply, and there were palms and a sprawling hook of a barrier reef.
Now!
Here!
In my mind the cry beat wordlessly, imperative. I banked and slid down the slopes of air, heading for the broad beach. Here, at any rate, we would be safe. We could rest, conserving our fuel, till Japs had stopped jamming the ether and we could get our bearings.
Glenn awoke as I made a good landing. He blinked around, puzzled, and then turned to stare at me. His red-rimmed eyes were questioning.
“Don’t ask me,” I said. “We had a break, that’s all. We hit the jackpot. Unless this is Crusoe’s island.”
“Natives? Mm-m.” Glenn slid a fresh clip into his gun. He yawned mightily. “Lord, I’m tired. I’m going to find a nice, friendly palm tree, lie down under it, and sleep for a week.”
I was already out of the plane, taking stock of the damage Jap bullets had done. Nothing serious, luckily. We were shot to hell, but I’d flown crates in far worse shape—and flown them into dogfights and out again. Yes, we could get back to a base, or some carrier, after we got our bearings.
Only—that message was still whispering inside my head.
Waves murmured quietly up the beach and receded in foam and blueness. Walls of fog banked us in, but diffused sunlight came down the shaft of clear air above the island—a thermal, caused by the release of heat the ground had absorbed during the day. The lagoon looked inviting. I thought of sharks and shrugged. We could take turns.
We did, one of us on guard with a gun while the other bathed in the cool water. Never in my life had I enjoyed the sensuous feel of water so much. My aching, exhausted muscles were soothed and rested. When I emerged on the sand, physical exhaustion hit me like a blow. I took a stinging gulp of brandy to clear my head.
“What now?” Glenn asked. “Never mind—I’m going to take a nap.”
“Get dressed first,” I told him, pulling on my trousers. “In case there should be natives here, we don’t want to be caught without guns. We may have to take off in a hurry. Some of the black fellows in these islands are tough customers.”
“Black fellows? Are we—”
“We may be closer to Australia than Suva,” I said grimly. “In fact, only God knows where we are. Get some sleep. I’ll stand guard.”
“Toss you for it.”
“Okay.” I took a shilling out of my pocket and tossed. “Heads.” That particular lucky piece had tails on both sides.
I let Glenn see which way she’d fallen on my palm and waved him away. “Pleasant dreams. I’ll wake you in a few hours and get some sleep myself.”
“You’re as dead tired as I am—more. You’ve been flying—”
“Oh, shut up,” I said, and tripped him, so that he fell sprawling on the sand. “If you get up, I’ll knock you down again. Get some sleep, dope.”
“Well—okay.” He was asleep in a moment.
I WENT back to the plane and tried the radio. No luck. I pulled Mary Lou out of the cabin and buckled her around my waist. She was a handy little weapon I’d picked up a while before—a blade about as long as a machete, but slimmer, with a razor edge and a set of brass knuckles set into the hilt. Very convenient. In close quarters, especially. If the slash missed, the brass knucks would follow through with a nice backhand motion. I’d ruined a Jap’s face with that six weeks ago, when he’d come charging at me with his gun blazing and my automatic jammed. In hand-to-hand fighting, I’d back Mary Lou against the field.
I went back to where I’d left Glenn and put my back against a palm. I was more exhausted than I’d realized. But I still thought I could keep awake—
Which was the damnedest mistake I’d ever made. Because the O’Mara went out like a light in about two minutes flat. At that, it wasn’t entirely physical fatigue. Maybe hypnotism had something to do with it.
I was—dreaming.
That soundless call had come back. Relaxation of my mind left an opening. I still thought, with some distant part of me, that I was on the beach, sitting against the palm, but at the same time I saw things.
What I saw—
There was a great darkness. Through the cloudy murk vast figures strode, thunder-footed, towering to the skies. I sensed danger, the perilous danger of Abaddon itself.
The Titans marched on, converging on a—a—
There was no word. Something, a glowing, writhing, flaming spot of light glared far off against the dark curtain. I saw a temple, or its equivalent—a massive structure mighty as Valhalla Hall, where the mighty Aesir feast eternally.
To it the giants marched!
I went, without volition, in their train. Dimly, from far away, I heard a cry, my own name, in a voice I knew. Glenn—
Who was Glenn? I did not remember. . . .
Faster thundered those racing feet! Hordes of colossi, hurrying to follow a call, a summons.
“Sean! Sean O’Mara!”
Is it Sean O’Mara who stumbles through the jungle, up the lava slopes, among the volcanic fissures where shadows crouch in deeper darkness? O’Mara? Not I!
I was one with the Titans!
They drew me on, carried me with them. Past fallen blocks of masonry, eroded and broken, past ruined, vine-sheathed things that once were monoliths, past the Road—
The Road?
Time had wrecked it; centuries had smashed and crumbled what had once been great. But I saw the shadows of the past, the towers and plinths that had once risen here. Shadowy but real as the titans that strode onward along the Road!
“Sean!”
This was the door. Yet it, too, had been eaten by Kronos, the time god who will some day eat up the world and the universe as well. There was no door. There was only a slit of blackness, half-hidden by rubble, at the base of a cliff. . . .
> I lifted a great boulder and put it aside. The way was clear. The giants thundered past me, along the road, through the door—and I was one with them.
The tocsin sang within my brain. It drew me. Drew me into the darkness—
Light filtered through the gap in the wall, faint but strong enough to reveal my surroundings. I was in a cave. The walls and roof and floor shone bright silver.
Before me in emptiness a globe hung, dull and tarnished, larger than my arms might span—and old—old!
From it the summons sang. And had been singing for a thousand thousand years, since the day when tall monoliths had guarded this road. I felt the incredible antiquity of the sphere, as though, half-sentient, nearly alive, its intolerable weariness had come surging out to meet me.
A machine—yet half alive. It had been waiting. Waiting for someone to walk the Road once more?
Suddenly it flashed into blazing light. I felt that tremendous pulse of power rush through me. I felt a hand grip my shoulder, was swung around, off balance, to stare into the amazed face of Glenn Kirk. He had no time to speak.
Again the tide of power thundered silently out from the sphere. And this time it brought darkness in its wake. The oblivion of eternity itself!
CHAPTER TWO
Feast with the Gods
WHERE were the Titans?
It was a dream, nothing more. My head throbbing, I sat up, staring around. Those nightmare visions had been phantoms, I knew. And yet—
Part of the dream had been real.
I was in a room with walls and roof and floor of silver. A few feet away in midair hung the sphere, dull now and lifeless. There was a cleft in one wall, and through it blue light came softly.
Beside me Glenn lay, breathing stertorously, the lines of fatigue almost gone from his face. I realized that I was no longer tired. How long had we slept? I was ravenously hungry. But the fatigue toxins were gone from my body, washed away by healing sleep. How long—
Many hours, at least. I turned to examine the globe. It was quiescent, with out that strange air of half life. What unknown hands had built it? Or the city that lay in ruins outside? Perhaps those ruins, too, were like the giant figures, part of my dream.
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