Before The Golden Age - A SF Anthology of the 1930s

by Edited By Isaac Asimov

  We were up with the dawn, and after a scant breakfast of dried fruits, salvaged from the tents before the destruction of the valley, Valdez and I set out to find the plane. I wanted to return to the valley to get my bearings, but Valdez protested—claimed it was uselessly dangerous, that he could make better time from where we were. We struck into the tangle of dank underwood, Valdez leading, and within seconds of our leaving camp I was utterly lost. My companion seemed sure of his way, slipping through the maze of fine growth like a beast of the jungle, almost as if he were following an invisible trail.

  For nearly an hour we plunged ahead, then of a sudden came a gap in the forest roof as the level of the ground fell in a narrow ravine, and I woke to angry realization of what was happening! The sun, on our right when we started, lay behind us! We were traveling dead away from the valley, the camp, and the plane!

  Angrily I sprang forward, seized Valdez by the shoulder! He spun like a striking snake, fury in his half-closed eyes, fury and crazed fear! In his hand was a gun!

  “So—you have awakened at last, Senor Hawkins,” he sneered. “You feel that things are not quite as they seemed—is it not so? You fool—did you for one moment think I would cast my lot with those idiots back there? Do I seem mad, that I should offer my life for fools like them? You— you were not invited to our little party, but you came—you are here, and on my hands—and you will do as I say or wish you had! Am I clear?”

  “You’re too damn’ clear!” I shouted. “You’re not fit to live, Valdez, and it’s high time someone told you so to your sneaking face! So you’re going to sneak off and leave your comrades to the tender mercies of those tetrahedra—you want to make sure of your precious hide! Why, damn you, it’s you that’s a bigger fool than any of us! How can you expect to get clear of this filthy jungle, with the guides gone? Where are you going to find food when your shells run out? What do you think these damn’ stinking savages will do to you when they catch you out here alone, running away from their new gods? You haven’t the least chance in the world —you’re crazy, that’s it! You’re stark, staring mad—a damned, yellow, mad dog!”

  “You say unfortunate things, Senor Hawkins,” he replied coldly, the ugly sneer still on his thin, red lips. “I think that I can dispense with your company. It might interest you to know that Valdez is the name of my father by adoption, Senor. My people are those whom you have so kindly classified as ‘damned stinking savages’—my home is these very forests that you seem to find so unpleasant! And, Senor Hawkins, have I not said that I can always find your plane?”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “I mean, Senor, that it has always been I who could find the plane, and I who did find it, not very many minutes after it crashed. You would be disappointed, Senor Hawkins, were you to see it now. The food, the guns and ammunition of which you boasted—they can never have existed save in a mind disordered by jungle fevers. Or can it be that the Indios— the ‘stinking savages’ that even now are all about us, there behind you in the shadows, have stolen them? It would be most interesting to know the truth of the matter, would it not?”

  I stared up through the matted branches at the blandly shining sun, red hate clouding my vision! I raised both hands, fists clenched, as if to crash them down upon the evilly smiling face! But the little snub-nosed gun that bored into my belly spoke eloquent warning, and of a sudden came clear thought and cool, calculated words:

  “So even in this you must lie, Valdez! It is bred in the blood, I think! I do not question that you stole the food and weapons that meant life to your comrades—it is much too characteristic an act to doubt—but, Senor Valdez, no Indian would so steal another’s food. Was it, perhaps, your mother who was white?”

  Blind fury glazed his little, bloodshot eyes and drew back his thin lips in an ugly snarl of rage! I saw murder staring at me from those eyes, and in the instant when he stood frozen with his hate I leaped—swung with all my weight on the great liana that was looped over the branch above me! Even as the gun spat flame, the tautening vine caught him full at the base of the skull and toppled him forward into the black mold of the forest floor, out, and out for good!

  * * * *

  CHAPTER III

  The Tetrahedra’s Power

  It was his life or mine, but I had not contemplated killing him. The vine was heavy and swung loose on the limb, and it whipped taut with the force of a snapping hawser, catching him squarely at the base of his maddened brain! It was an awful blow, every bit as heavy as the swing of a sledge hammer, and it broke his spine free from his skull as I would snap an apple from its stem! I turned him over, his features purple and contorted, and as I lifted him his head flopped forward like that of a rag dummy! With a shudder I dropped him and turned away.

  Yet part of him was white, and all of him was human, and so I scooped a shallow trench in the soft mold and buried him, first searching his body for weapons and food. In his breast pocket was a rough sketch-map, showing the valley, the camp, and a small cross where the plane had fallen. Across its penciled contours ran a fine dotted line, due north from the camp nearly to the place where the plane lay, then bearing off to the west, toward the mountains, and toward a little upland river that ran down from the snows.

  There was the gulley where I stood, a dried-out stream-bed leading up into the lower end of the valley, and just beyond a second little cross, to the south of the trail. I knew what it meant—the food and guns from the looted plane! I could see now that the way was cunningly marked by untangled vines and diverted branches—a path of least resistance, more than a trail—and within five minutes I had uncovered Valdez’ cache, under the cover of an outcropping ledge of quartz, and loaded one of the packs we had brought along.

  How to return to camp with my news was another question entirely. I knew it was hopelessly futile for me to try to follow the back trail, or to run by the rude map for either plane or camp. There remained the valley—straight south along the ravine—and I felt certain that once there I could regain my lost sense of direction or wait until one of the others found me. The valley—and the tetrahedra! Driven by instinct or intuition, I shouldered one of the very light machine-guns and wrapped three belts of ammunition about my waist, under my shirt.

  The going was easier along the rim of the little ravine than at its bottom, where extra moisture made the tangle thicker. Indeed, it seemed almost like the trail Valdez had followed—a path of least resistance, carved invisibly into the underbrush by unknown hands. To right and left the thicket held like a tightly woven fabric, but ahead, parallel to the gulley, the branches slipped silently apart under a slight pressure of the hand and closed us quietly behind. It was obvious that either Valdez or the Indians had made this way to the valley, and it was not on Valdez’ map.

  The trail finally swung away from the stream-bed, toward the east, and suddenly emerged on a sort of peninsula jutting into the valley just above the point where the twin spheres lay. I saw the glare of sunlight through the trees, for there was a sort of clearing overlooking the parade-ground of the tetrahedra. Here were gathered the forest Indians, clustered behind the thin screen of vegetation, gazing in dumb adoration at the things below. So rapt were they that my approach went unnoticed, and I was able to retreat and bear to the west, creeping up to the edge of the valley midway between clearing and ravine.

  It was nearly noon, and the fury of the blazing sun made the valley a black cauldron of flickering air-currents. They boiled up from the naked rock in vast, shimmering waves of heat that made the distant jungle and the rocky valley floor seem to engage in a weird witches’ caper with the unearthly things that basked at the valley’s heart.

  Now, in the full light of day, I could see that it was as Professor Hornby had said. The tetrahedra were formed from some hard, crystalline mineral, black almost to invisibility, with a faint wash of rich purple running through it. As they moved, the sun sent up glittering flashes of brilliance from their polished flanks, dancing like little search
light rays along the shadowed face of the forest. For the tetrahedra were restless, were weaving aimlessly in and out among the boulders in weird arabesques as of some unearthly dance of the crystal folk, were condensing in little groups of half a dozen or less that formed and broke again even as do restless humans, waiting impatiently for some anticipated event.

  Apart from the rest, motionless in a sort of circular clearing among the rocks, squatted the giant leader of the tetrahedra. In him the deep violet of the crystal became a rich, plum-like hue, purple flushed with warm red, and the underlying black seemed less harsh. It was warmer and more like the calm velvet of the tropic night. But these are impressions, qualitative terms with which to distinguish him in some way other than by mere size from his fellows. To an observer, the distinction was apparent, but it is not easy to express in everyday terms. It must suffice that he was indefinably different from the others, that he seemed to have character and personality, where the rest were but pyramidal crystals, albeit terribly alive.

  And now the giant leader was dinning out his mighty call in long, slow billows of beating sound that seemed to thrust me back, press me into the dark of the forest, away from the alien monsters of the valley! In response came thirty of the lesser tetrahedra, chosen seemingly at random from the scattered ranks, to range themselves at equal intervals about their master, forming a single great circle a dozen yards in diameter.

  Again the throbbing call shattered against the cliffs about me, and now all the hordes of the tetrahedra broke into flowing motion, converging in a torrent of glittering purple crystal upon the natural amphitheater, clustering in threes at the spots that their fellows had marked—all but ten, who glided into place before every third group, forming a giant toothed wheel with hub and rim and spokes of living, sentient crystal—crystal with a purpose!

  There under that blazing sun they lay, gleaming like giant purple gems against the jetty rock. I thought of the great stone wheel of Stonehenge, and of the other monolithic circles that men have found in England and on the Continent. Strange resemblance, between the pattern of living monsters of another world and the ancient temples of a prehistoric race! And yet, is it too far-fetched to suggest that the superstitious savages should pattern their greatest temples after the unearthly gods of their worship-gods of purple crystal that came and smote and vanished again into the skies, leaving the memory of their inevitable circling, and the thunder of their language in the great drums of worship? May it not be that they have come before, and found Earth unfitted for their usage, and passed on to other worlds? And if they have so come, and found us wanting, what lies beyond that has prevented them from bearing back the tale of their findings, marking Earth as useless for their tetrahedral purposes? Why have they had to come again and again?

  * * * *

  I could see that the groups of three that formed the toothed rim of the giant crystal wheel were tipping inward, bringing their peaks together in a narrow focus, and more, that the ten that were the spokes, the binding members of the wheel, were of the same rich hue as their master. The shadows of the myriad tetrahedra squatted short and black about their shining bases, against the shining rock.

  As the sun soared higher, pouring its blazing rays straight down upon the sweltering world, I sensed the beginning of a vague roseate glow at the foci of the circling trios, a glow as of energy, light, focussed by the tetrahedra themselves, yet not of themselves, but sucked from the flood of light that poured upon them from above. For the light that was reflected from their sides gleamed ever bluer, ever colder, as they drank in the warm red rays and spewed them forth again into the seething globes of leashed energy that were forming just beyond their pointing tips!

  The rose-glow had deepened to angry vermillion, seemingly caged within the spheres defined by the tips of the tilted tetrahedra. Thirty glowing coals against the black, ninety great angular forms gleaming ghastly blue in the pillaged sunlight, forms that were slowly closing in upon the center, upon their mighty master, bearing him food, energy of the sun for his feasting!

  Now the scarlet flame of the prisoned light was mounting swiftly in an awful pinnacle of outrageous color—pure fire torn from the warm rays of the sun—raw energy for the glutting of these tetrahedral demons of another world! It seemed to me that it must needs burst its bounding spheres and fuse all that crystal horde with its unleashed fury of living flame, must win free of the unimaginable forces that held it there between the eager, glittering facets, must burst its unnatural bonds and sweep the valley with a tempest of awful fire that would consign the furnace of the tetrahedra to pitiful insignificance! It did none of these, for the power that had reft it from the golden sunbeams could mould it to the use and will of the tetrahedra, as clay before the potter!

  Slowly the great ring contracted, slowly the tetrahedra tipped toward their common center, bearing at their foci the globes of angry flame. Now they stopped, hung for a long moment in preparation. Then in an instant they loosed the cradled energy of the spheres in one mighty blaze of blinding crimson that swept out in a single huge sheet of flame, blanketing all the giant wheel with its glory, then rushing into the blazing vortex of its center. Here, all the freed energy of the flame was flowing into the body of the mighty ruler of the tetrahedra, bathing him in a fury of crimson light that sank into his glowing facets as water into parched sand of the desert, bringing a fresh, new glow of renewed life to his giant frame!

  And now, as in recoil, there spouted from his towering peak a fine, thin fountain of pale blue fire, soundless, like the blaze of man-made lightning between two mightily energized electrodes—the blue of electric fire— the seepage of the giant’s feast! Like slaves snatching at the crumbs from their master’s board, the ten lesser tetrahedra crowded close. As their fierce hunger voiced itself in awful, yearning force, the fountain of blue flame split into ten thin tongues, barely visible against the black rock, that bent down into the pinnacles of the ten and poured through them into the crowding rim of the giant wheel, a rim where again the spheres of crimson fire were mounting to their climactic burst!

  Again the crimson orbs shattered and swept over the horde in a titanic canopy of flame, and again the giant master drank in its fiery glory! Now the fountain of seepage had become a mighty geyser of sparkling sapphire light that hurtled a hundred feet into the shimmering atmosphere, and, bent by the fierce hungering of the lesser creatures, curved in a glorious parabola above the crystal wheel, down over them and into them, renewing their substance and their life!

  For as I watched, each tetrahedron began to swell, visibly, creeping in horrid slow growth to a magnitude very little less than that of their giant leader. And as they mounted in size, the torrent of blue fire paled and died, leaving them glutted and expectant of the final stage!

  It came, with startling suddenness! In an instant each of the hundred clustering monsters budded, burst, shattered into four of half its size that cleaved from each corner of the parent tetrahedron. They left an octohedral shape of transparent crystal, colorless and fragile, whence every evidence of life had been withdrawn into the new-born things—a shell that crumpled and fell in fine, sparkling crystal dust to the valley floor. Only the giant ruler lay unchanged beneath the downward slanting rays of the sun. The hundred had become four hundred! The tetrahedra had spawned!

  Four hundred of the monstrous things where a hundred had lain the moment before! Drinking in the light of the noonday sun, sucking up its energy to give them substance, these tetrahedral beings from an alien world held it in their power to smother out the slightest opposition by sheer force of ever-mounting numbers! Against a hundred, or four hundred, the armies and the science of mankind might have waged war with some possibility of success, but when each creature of these invulnerable hosts might become four, with the passing of each noon’s sun, surely hope lay dead! Man was doomed!

  On the jutting point to my left I sensed new activity. The Indians were chanting, in weird low tones, to the rhythm of a great, deep-throated d
rum. It was some monotonous hymn or supplication to their ancient gods—gods now personified in the things below. Through the screen of shrubbery between us, I glimpsed their chieftain, taller by a head than the rest, his arms up-raised, leading the exhortation. Their voices rose, broke in an angry clamor as a dozen of their kind burst from the forest dragging the bound form of a white man—of Marston!

  I must be closer. Here, separated from them by a hundred feet of space and a double screen of matted vines, I dared not fire for fear of slaying friend with foe! Headlong I dived into the tangle, shoving the machine-gun ahead of me! Had they not been utterly engrossed in their savage ritual, the Indians must surely have heard my blundering approach, ripping blindly through the undergrowth with caution flung to the winds! By chance or fortune the tangle was less matted than elsewhere, and I burst into the cleared space barely in the nick of time.

  * * * *

  For all of his traitorous hypocrisy, Valdez had spoken truly of old customs and old sacrifices! Marston’s huge, straining frame was bent back over a rounded slab of polished rock in the center of the clearing, the dwarfed forest-men fairly swarming over him to hold him in place! Arms raised in supplication, their chieftain stood over him, his features distorted by something more than fear of his gods, and frenzy of sacrifice! Hate and terrible rage had seized upon his bronzed visage, making of it a veritable devil-mask! And in his clenched fist he grasped a glittering knife of steel, a knife that half an hour ago I had seen buried in the black soil of the forest Root—Valdez’ knife!