 EPISODE VIII. It was winter of the year eighty-five and the temperature was one hundred and six degrees below zero. Walter Humboldt stood in front of the ice-tunnel that led back through the glacier to the caves and looked up into the sky. It was noon, but there was no sun in the starlit sky. Many weeks before the sun had slipped below the southern horizon. For a little while a dim halo had marked its passage each day, then that too had faded away. But now it was time for the halo to appear again, to herald the sun's returning. Frost filled the sky, making the stars flicker as it swirled endlessly downward. He blinked against it, his eyelashes trying to freeze to his lower eyelids at the movement, and turned to look at the north. There the northern lights were a gigantic curtain that filled a third of the sky, rippling and waving in folds that pulsated in red and green, rose and lavender and violet. Their reflection gleamed on the glacier that sloped down from the caves and glowed softly on the other glacier, the one that covered the transmitter station. The transmitter had long ago been taken into the caves, but the generator and water-wheel were still there, frozen in a tomb of ice. For three years the glacier had been growing before the caves, and the plateau's southern face had been buried under snow for ten years. Only a few woods-goats ever came as far north as the country south of the caves, and they stayed only during the brief period between the last snow of spring and the first snow of fall. Their winter home was somewhere down near the equator. What had been called the southern lowlands was a frozen, lifeless waste. Once they had thought about going to the valley in the chasm where the mockers would be hibernating in their warm caves, but even if they could have gone up the plateau and performed the incredible feat of crossing the glacier-covered, blizzard-ripped craigs, they would have found no food in the mockers' valley. Only a little corn the mockers had stored away, which would soon have been exhausted. There was no place for them to live but in the caves or as nomads migrating with the animals. And if they migrated to the equator each year they would have to leave behind them all the books and tools and everything that might some day have given them a civilized way of life and might some day have shown them how to escape from their prison. He looked again to the south, where the halo should be, thinking, they should have made their decision in there by now. I am their leader, but I can't force them to stay here against their will. I could only ask them to consider what it would mean if we left here. Snow creaked underfoot as he moved restlessly. He saw something lying under the blanket of frost and went to it. It was an arrow that someone had dropped. He picked it up carefully because the intense cold had made the shaft as brittle as glass. It would regain its normal strength when taken into the caves. There was the sound of steps and Fred Schroeder came out of the tunnel, dressed as he was dressed in bulky furs. Schroeder looked to the south and said, It seems to be starting to get a little lighter there. He saw that it was a small faint paling of the black sky. They talked over what you and I told them, Schroeder said, and about how we've struggled to stay here this long, and how, even if the sun should stop drifting south this year, it will be years of ice and cold at the caves before big spring comes. If we leave here, the glacier will cover the caves and fill them with ice, he said. All we ever had will be buried back in there, and all we'll have left will be our bows and arrows and animal skins. We'll be taking a one-way road back into the Stone Age, for ourselves and our children and their children. They know that, Schroeder said. We both told them. He paused. They watched the sky to the south turn lighter. The northern lights flamed unnoticed behind them as the pale halo of the invisible sun slowly brightened to its maximum. Their faces were white, with near freezing. Then they turned to go back into the caves. They had made their decision, Schroeder went on. I guess you and I did them in injustice when we thought they had lost their determination, when we thought they might want to hand their children a flint axe and say, Here, take this, and let it be the symbol of all you are or all you will ever be. Their decision was unanimous. We'll stay for as long as it's possible for us to survive here. Howard Lake listened to teacher Morgan West read from the Diary of Walter Humboldt, written during the terrible winter of thirty-five years before. Each morning the light to the south was brighter. On the seventh morning we saw the sun, and it was not due until the eighth morning. It will be years before we can stop fighting the enclosure of the glacier, but we have reached and passed the dead of big winter. We have reached the bottom, and the only direction we can go in the future is up. And so West said, closing the book, We are here in the caves tonight because of the stubbornness of Humboldt and Schroeder and all the others. Had they thought only of their own welfare, had they conceded defeat and gone into the migratory way of life, we would be sitting beside grass campfires somewhere to the south tonight, our way of life containing no plans or aspirations greater than to follow the game back and forth through the years. Now let's go outside to finish tonight's lesson. Teacher West led the way into the starlit night just outside the caves, Howard Lake and the other children following him. West pointed to the sky where the star group they called the Athena Constellation blazed like a huge arrowhead high in the east. There, he said, beyond the top of the arrowhead is where we were going when the gurn stopped us a hundred and twenty years ago and left us to die on Ragnarok. It's so far that Athena's son can't be seen from here, so far that it will be another hundred and fifteen years before our first signal gets there. Why is it then that you and all the other groups of children have to learn such things as history, physics, the gurn language, and the way to fire a gurn blaster? The hand of every child went up. West selected eight-year-old Clifton Humboldt. Tell us, Clifton, he said. Because, Clifton answered, a gurn cruiser might pass by a few light-years out at any time and pick up our signals, so we have to know all we can about them and how to fight them because there aren't very many of us yet. The gurns will come to kill us, little Marie Chiara said, her dark eyes large and earnest. They'll come to kill us and to make slaves out of the ones they don't kill like they did with the others a long time ago. They're awful mean and awful smart, and we have to be smarter than they are. Howard looked again at the Athena constellation, thinking, I hope they come just as soon as I'm old enough to fight them, or even to-night. "'Teacher,' he asked, how would a gurn cruiser look if it came to-night? Would it come from the Athena arrow-head?' "'It probably would,' West answered. "'You would see its rocket blast, like a bright trail of fire.'" A bright trail of fire burst suddenly into being, coming from the constellation of Athena and lighting up the woods and hills and their startled faces as it arched down toward them. "'It's them,' a treble voice exclaimed, and there was a quick flurry of movement as Howard and the other older children shoved the younger children behind them. Then the light vanished, leaving a dimmer glow where it had been. Only a meteor, West said. He looked at the line of older children who were standing protectingly in front of the younger ones, rocks in their hands with which to ward off the gurns, and he smiled in the way he had when he was pleased with them. He watched the meteor trail fade swiftly into invisibility and felt his heart beat slow from the first wild thrill to gray disappointment. Only a meteor. But some day he might be leader, and by then, surely, the gurns would come. If not, he would find some way to make them come. Ten years later Howard Lake was leader. There were three hundred and fifty of them then, and Big Spring was on its way to becoming Big Summer. The snow was gone from the southern end of the plateau, and once again, game migrated up the valleys east of the caves. There were many things to be done now that Big Winter was passed, and they could have the chance to do them. They needed a larger pottery kiln, a larger workshop, and a wooden lathe, more diamonds to make cutting wheels, more quartz crystals to make binoculars and microscopes. They could again explore the field of inorganic chemistry, even though results in the past had produced nothing of value, and they could, within a few years, resume the metal prospecting up the plateau, the most important project of all. Their weapons seemed to be as perfect as was possible, but when the gurns came they would need some quick and certain means of communication between the various units that would fight the gurns. A leader who could not communicate with his forces and coordinate their actions would be helpless. And they had on Ragnarok a form of communication, if trained, that the gurns could not detect or interfere with electronically—the mockers. The craigs were still white and impassable with snow that summer, but the snow was receding higher each year. Five years later, in the summer of 135, the craigs were passable for a few weeks. Lake led a party of eight over them and down into the chasm. They took with them two small cages, constructed of wood and glass, and made airtight with the strong Medusa bush glue. Each cage was equipped with a simple air pump and a pressure gauge. They brought back two pairs of mockers, as interested and trusting captives, together with a supply of the orange corn and a large amount of diamonds. The mockers, in their pressure-maintained cages, were not even aware of the increase in elevation as they were carried over the high summit of the craigs. To Lake and the men with him, the climb back up the long steep slope of the mountain was a stiff climb to make in one day, but no more than that. It was hard to believe that it had taken Humboldt and Barber almost three days to climb it, and that Barber had died in the attempt. It reminded him of the old crossbows that Humboldt and the others had used. They were thin, with a light pull, such as the present generation boys used. It must have required courage for the old ones to dare unicorn attacks, with bows so thin that only the small area behind the unicorn's jaws was vulnerable to their arrows. When the caves were reached, a very gradual reduction of pressure in the mocker cages was started, one that would cover a period of weeks. One pair of mockers survived and had two young ones that fall. The young mockers, like the first generation of Ragnarok-born children of many years before, were more adapted to their environment than their parents were. The orange corn was planted, using an adaptation method somewhat similar to that used with the mockers. It might have worked had the orange corn not required such a long period of time in which to reach maturity, when winter came only a few grains had formed. They were saved for next year's seeds to continue the slow adaptation process. By the fifth year, the youngest generation of mockers was well adapted to the elevation of the caves, but for a susceptibility to a quickly fatal form of pneumonia, which made it necessary to keep them from exposing themselves to the cold or to any sudden changes of temperature. Their intelligence was surprising, and they seemed to be partially receptive to human thoughts as Bill Humboldt had written. By the end of the fifteenth year, their training had reached such a stage of perfection that a mocker would transmit or not transmit with only the unspoken thought of its master to tell it which it should be. In addition, they would transmit the message to whichever mocker their masters thought directed. Presumably all mockers received the message, but only the mocker to whom it was addressed would repeat it aloud. They had their method of communication. They had their automatic crossbows for quick, close fighting and their long-range long bows. They were fully adapted to the 1.5 gravity, and their reflexes were almost like those of prowlers. Ragnarok had long ago separated the quick from the dead. There were eight hundred and nineteen of them that year, in the early spring of one hundred and fifty, and they were ready and impatient for the coming of the Guernes. Then the transmitter, which had been in operation again for many years, failed one day. George Craig had finished checking it when Lake arrived. He looked up from his instruments, remarkably similar in appearance to a sketch of the old George Ord, a resemblance that had been passed down to him by his mother, and said, "'The entire circuit is either gone or ready to go. It's already operated for a lot longer than it should have.' "'It doesn't matter,' Lake said. It served its purpose. We won't rebuild it.'" George watched him questioningly. "'It served its purpose,' he said again. "'It didn't let us forget that the Guernes will come again. But that isn't enough now. The first signal won't reach Athena until the year 235. It will be the dead of big winter again, then. They'll have to fight the Guernes with bows and arrows that the cold will make as brittle as glass. They won't have a chance.'" "'No,' George said. They won't have a chance. But what can we do to change it?" "'It's something I've been thinking about,' he said. "'We'll build a hyperspace transmitter and bring the Guernes before big winter comes.' "'We will,' George asked, lifting his dark eyebrows. "'And what do we use for the three hundred pounds of copper and five hundred pounds of iron we would have to have to make the generator?' "'Surely we can find five hundred pounds of iron somewhere on Ragnarok. The north end of the plateau might be the best bet. As for the copper, I doubt that we'll ever find it. But there are seams of a bauxite-like clay in the western hills. We're certain to contain aluminum, to at least some extent, so we'll make the wires of aluminum.'" "'The ore would have to be refined to pure aluminum oxide before it could be smelted,' George said. "'And you can't smelt aluminum ore in an ordinary furnace. Only in an electric furnace, with a generator that can supply a high amperage. And we would have to have cryolite ore to serve as the solvent in the smelting process.'" "'There's a seam of cryolite in the eastern hills, according to the old maps,' said Lake. "'We can make a larger generator by melting down everything we have. It wouldn't be big enough to power the hyperspace transmitter, but it should be big enough to smelt aluminum ore.'" George considered the idea. "'I think we can do it.'" "'How long until we can send the signal?' he asked. "'Given the extra metal we need, the building of the generator is a simple job. The transmitter is what will take years. Maybe as long as fifty.'" "'Fifty years.'" "'Can't anything be done to make it sooner?' he asked. "'I know,' George said. "'You would like for the guerns to come while you're still here. So would every man on Ragnarok. But even on earth the building of a hyperspace transmitter was a long, slow job, with all the materials they needed and all the special tools and equipment. Here we'll have to do everything by hand. And for materials we have only broken and burned out odds and ends. It will take about fifty years. It can't be helped.'" "'Fifty years. But that would bring the guerns before big winter came again. And there was the rapidly increasing chance that a guern cruiser would at any day intercept the first signals. They were already more than half-way to Athena.' "'Melt down the generator,' he said. "'Start making a bigger one. Tomorrow men will go out after Bauxite and Kryolite, and four of us will go up the plateau to look for iron. Lake selected Gene Taylor, Tony Chiara, and Steve Schroeder to go with him. They were well on their way by daylight the next morning, on the shoulder of each of them a mocker which observed the activity and new scenes with bright, interested eyes. They traveled light since they would have fresh meat all the way, and carried herbs and corn only for the mockers. Once generations before it had been necessary for men to eat herbs to prevent deficiency diseases, but now the deficiency diseases, like hell fever, were unknown to them. They carried no compasses, since the radiations of the two suns constantly created magnetic storms that caused compass needles to swing as much as twenty degrees within an hour. Each of them carried a pair of powerful binoculars, however, binoculars that had been diamond-carved from the ivory-like black unicorn horn and set with lenses and prisms of diamond-cut quartz. The foremost bands of woods-goats followed the advance of spring up the plateau, and they followed the woods-goats. They could not go ahead of the goats. The goats were already pressing close behind the melting of the snow. No hills or ridges were seen as the weeks went by, and it seemed to lake that they would walk forever across the endless rolling floor of the plain. Early summer came, and they walked across a land that was green and pleasantly cool at a time when the vegetation around the caves would be burned brown and lifeless. The woods-goats grew less in number, then, as some of them stopped for the rest of the summer in their chosen latitudes. They continued on, and at last they saw, far to the north, what seemed to be an almost infinitesimal bulge on the horizon. They reached it two days later, a land of rolling green hills scarred here and there with ragged outcroppings of rock, and a land that climbed slowly and steadily higher as it went into the north. They camped that night in a little veil. The fore of it was white with the bones of woods-goats that had tarried too long the fall before and got caught by an early blizzard. There was still flesh on the bones, and scavenger rodents scuttled among the carcasses, feasting. We'll split up now," he told the others the next morning. He assigned each of them his position. Steve Schroeder to parallel his course thirty miles to his right. Gene Taylor to go thirty miles to his left, and Tony Chiara to go thirty miles to the left of Taylor. We'll try to hold those distances, he said. We can't look over the country in detail that way, but it will give us a good general survey of it. We don't have too much time left by now, and we'll make as many miles into the north as we can each day. The woods-goats will tell us when it's time for us to turn back. They parted company, with casual farewells, but for Steve Schroeder, who smiled sardonically at the bones of the woods-goats in the veil and asked, "'Who's supposed to tell the woods-goats?' Tip, the black white-nosed mocker on Lake's shoulder, kept twisting his neck to watch the departure of the others, until he had crossed the next hill, and the others were hidden from view. "'All right, Tip,' he said then, "'you can unwind your neck now.'" "'Unwind? All right, all right,' Tip said. Then, with a sudden burst of energy, which was characteristic of the mockers, he began to jiggle up and down and chant in time with his movements. "'All right, all right, all right, all right, shut up,' he commanded. "'You want to talk nonsense, I don't care. But don't say, all right, any more.'" "'All right,' Tip agreed, amiably, settling down. "'Shut up, if you want to talk nonsense, I don't care. And don't slaughter the punctuation like that. You change the meaning entirely.' "'But don't say, all right, any more,' Tip went on, ignoring him. "'You change the meaning entirely.'" Then, with another surge of animation, Tip began to fish in his jacket pocket with little hand-like paws. "'Tip, hungry, tip, hungry!' Lake unbuttoned the pocket and gave Tip an herb leaf. "'I noticed there's no nonsensical chatter when you went to ask for something to eat.'" Tip took the herb leaf, but he spoke again before he began to eat, slowly as though trying to seriously express a thought. "'Tip, hungry, no nonsensical?' "'Sometimes,' he said, turning his head to look at Tip, "'you mockers give me the peculiar feeling that you're right on the edge of becoming a new and intelligent race and no fooling.'" Tip wiggled his whiskers and bit into the herb leaf. "'No fooling,' he agreed. He stopped for the night in a steep-walled hollow and built a small fire of dead moss and grass to ward off the chill that came with dark. He called the others, thinking first of Schroeder, so that Tip would transmit to Schroeder's mocker. "'Steve?' "'Here,' Tip answered, in a detectable imitation of Schroeder's voice. "'No luck.'" He thought of Jean Taylor and called, "'Jean?' There was no answer, and he called Chiara. "'Tony, could you see any of Jean's route today?' "'Part of it,' Chiara answered. "'I saw a herd of unicorns over that way. Why, doesn't he answer?' "'No.'" "'Then,' Chiara said, "'they must have got him.'" "'Did you find anything today, Tony?' he asked. "'Nothing but pure and incite, not even an iron stain.'" It was the same kind of barren formation that he, himself, had been walking over all day, but he had not expected success so soon. He tried once again to call Jean Taylor. "'Jean, Jean, are you there, Jean?' There was no answer, and he knew there would never be." End of Episode 8 Episode 9 of Space Prison by Tom Godwin. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Space Prison, Episode 9. The days became weeks with dismaying swiftness as they penetrated farther into the north. The hills became more rugged and there were intrusions of granite and other formations to promise a chance of finding metal, a promise that urged them on faster as their time grew shorter. Twice he saw something white in the distance. Once it was the bones of another band of wits-goats that had huddled together and frozen to death in some early blizzard of the past, and once it was the bones of a dozen unicorns. The nights grew chillier and the suns moved faster and faster to the south. The animals began to migrate, an almost imperceptible movement in the beginning but one that increased each day. The first frost came and the migration began in earnest. By the third day it was a hurrying tide. It was strangely silent that day. He did not speak until the noon sun had cleared the cold, heavy mists of morning. When he spoke it was to give a message from Chiara. Howard, last report, Goldie is dying, pneumonia! Goldie was Chiara's mucker, his only means of communication and there would be no way to tell him when they were turning back. Turn back today, Tony, he said. Steve and I will go on for a few days more. There was no answer and he said, quickly, Turn back! Turn back! Acknowledge that, Tony! Turning back, the acknowledgment came, try to save her. The message stopped and there was a silence that Chiara's mucker would never break again. Goldie walked on, with Tip sitting very small and quiet on his shoulder. He had crossed another hill before Tip moved to press up close to him the way mockers did when they were lonely and to hold tightly to him. What is it, Tip? He asked. Goldie is dying, Tip said. And then again, like a soft, sad whisper, Goldie is dying! She was your mate. I'm sorry. Tip made a little whimpering sound and the man reached up to stroke his silky side. I'm sorry, he said again. I'm sorry as hell, little fellow. For two days, Tip sat lonely and silent on his shoulder, no longer interested in the new scenes nor any longer relieving the monotony with his chatter. He refused to eat until the morning of the third day. By then the exodus of the woods-goats and unicorns had dwindled to almost nothing. The sky was a leaden gray through which the sun could not be seen. That evening he saw what he was sure would be the last band of woods-goats and shot one of them. When he went to it he was almost afraid to believe what he saw. The hair above its feet was red, discolored with the stain of iron-bearing clay. He examined it more closely and saw that the goat had apparently watered at a spring where the mud was material washed down from an iron-bearing vein or formation. It had done so fairly recently. There were still tiny particles of clay adhering to the hair. The wind stirred, cold and damp, with its warning of an approaching storm. He looked to the north where the evening had turned the gray clouds black and called Schroeder. "'Steve, any luck?' None," Schroeder answered. "'I just killed a goat,' he said. "'It has iron stains on its legs. It got at some spring farther north. I'm going on to try to find it. You can turn back in the morning.' "'No,' Schroeder objected. "'I can angle over and catch up with you in a couple of days.' "'You'll turn back in the morning,' he said. "'I'm going to try to find this iron. But if I get caught by a blizzard it will be up to you to tell them at the caves that I found iron and to tell them where it is. You know the mockers can't transmit that far.' There was a short silence. Then Schroeder said. "'All right, I see. I'll head south in the morning.' Lake took a route the next day that would most likely be the one the woods goats had come down, stopping on each ridge top to study the country ahead of him through his binoculars. It was cloudy all day, but at sunset the sun appeared very briefly, to send its last rays across the hills and redden them in a mockery of the iron he sought. Far ahead of him, small even through the glasses and made visible only because of the position of the sun, was a spot at the base of a hill that was redder than the sunset had made the other hills. He was confident it would be the red clay he was searching for and he hurried on, not stopping until darkness made further progress impossible. Tip slept inside his jacket, curled up against his chest, while the wind blew raw and cold all through the night. He was on his way again at the first touch of daylight, the sky darker than ever and the wind spinning random flakes of snow before him. He stopped to look back to the south once, thinking, if I turn back now I might get out before the blizzard hits. Then the other thought came. These hills all look the same. If I don't go to the iron while I'm this close and know where it is, it might be years before I or anyone else could find it again. He went on and did not look back again for the rest of the day. By mid-afternoon the higher hills around him were hidden under the clouds and the snow was coming harder and faster as the wind drove the flakes against his face. It began to snow with a heaviness that brought a half darkness when he came finally to the hill he had seen through the glasses. A spring was at the base of it, bubbling out of red clay. Above it the red dirt led a hundred feet to a dike of granite and stopped. He hurried up the hillside that was rapidly whitening with snow and saw the vein. It set against the dike, short and narrow, but red-black with the iron it contained. He picked up a piece and felt the weight of it. It was heavy. It was pure iron oxide. He called Schroeder and asked, Are you down out of the high hill, Steve? I'm in the lower ones," Schroeder answered, the words coming a little muffled from where tip lay inside his jacket. It looks black as hell up your way. I found the iron, Steve. Listen, these are the nearest to landmarks I can give you. When he had finished, he said, That's the best I can do. You can't see the red clay except when the sun is low in the southwest, but I'm going to build a monument on top of the hill to find it by. About you, Howard," Steve asked, What are your chances? The wind was rising to a high moaning around the ledges of the granite dike and the vein was already invisible under the snow. It doesn't look like they're very good," he answered. You'll probably be leader when you come back next spring. I told the council, I wanted that, if anything happened to me. Keep things going the way I would have. Now I'll have to hurry to get the monument built in time. All right," Schroeder said. So long, Howard. Good luck. He climbed to the top of the hill and saw boulders there he could use to build the monument. They were large, he might crush tip against his chest in picking them up and he took off his jacket to wrap it around tip and leave him lying on the ground. He worked until he was panting for breath, the wind driving the snow harder and harder against him until the cold seemed to have penetrated to the bone. He worked until the monument was too high for his numb hands to lift any more boulders to its top. By then it was tall enough that it should serve its purpose. He went back to look for tip, the ground already four inches deep in snow and the darkness almost complete. Tip, he called. Tip, tip! He walked back and forth across the hillside in the area where he thought he had left him, stumbling over rocks buried in the snow and invisible in the darkness, calling against the wind and thinking, I can't leave him to die alone here. Then from a bulge he had not seen in the snow under him there came a frightened, lonely wail. Tip cold! Tip cold! He raked the snow off his jacket and unwrapped tip to put him inside his shirt next to his bare skin. Tips paws were like ice and he was shivering violently, the first symptom of the pneumonia that killed Mocker so quickly. Tip coughed, a wrenching, rattling little sound, and whimpered, Hurt! Hurt! I know, he said, your lungs hurt. Damn it to hell, I wish I could have let you go home with Steve! He put on the cold jacket and went down the hill. There was nothing with which he could make a fire, only the short half-green grass already buried under the snow. He turned south at the bottom of the hill, determining the direction by the wind, and began the stubborn march southward that could have but one ending. He walked until his cold-numbed legs would carry him no farther. The snow was warm when he fell for the last time, warm and soft as it drifted over him, and his mind was clouded with a pleasant drowsiness. This isn't so bad, he thought, and there was something like surprise through the drowsiness. I can't regret doing what I had to do, doing it the best I could. Tip was no longer coughing, and the thought of Tip was the only thing that was tinged with regret. I hope he wasn't still hurting when he died. He felt Tip still very feebly against his chest then, and he did not know if it was his imagination, or if in that last dream-like state it was Tip's thought that came to him, warm and close and reassuring him. No hurt, no cold now. All right now. We sleep now. Part 3 When spring came, Steve Schroeder was leader, as Lake had wanted. It was a duty and a responsibility that would be under circumstances different from those of any of the leaders before him. The grim fight was over for a while. They were adapted and increasing in number, going into big summer and into a renaissance that would last for fifty years. They would have half a century in which to develop their environment to its fullest extent. Then big fall would come to destroy all they had accomplished, and the guerns would come to destroy them. It was his job to make certain that by then they would be stronger than either. He went north with nine men as soon as the weather permitted. It was hard to retrace the root of the summer before, without compasses, among the hills which looked all the same as far as their binoculars could reach, and it was summer when they saw the hill with the monument. They found Lake's bones a few miles south of it, scattered by the scavengers as were the little bones of his mokker. They buried them together, man and mokker, and went silently on toward the hill. They had brought a little hen-cranked diamond drill with them to bore holes in the hard granite and black powder for blasting. They mined the vein, sorting out the ore from the waste and saving every particle. The vein was narrow at the surface and pinched very rapidly. At a depth of six feet it was a knife-blade seam. At ten feet it was only a red discoloration in the bottom of their shaft. "'That seems to be all of it,' he said to the others. "'We'll send men up here next year to go deeper and farther along its course. But I have an idea. We've just mined all of the only iron vein on Ragnarok. It will be enough for our purpose.' They sewed the ore in strong, raw-hide sacks and then prospected, without success, until it was time for the last unicorn band to pass by on its way south. They trapped ten unicorns and hobbled their legs, with other ropes reaching from horn to hind leg on each side to prevent them from swinging back their heads or even lifting them high. They had expected the capture and hobbling of the unicorns to be a difficult and dangerous job, and it was. But when they were finished the unicorns were helpless. They could move awkwardly about to graze, but they could not charge. They could only stand with lowered heads and fume and rumble. The oarsacks were tied on one frosty morning and the men mounted. The horn-leg ropes were loosened so the unicorns could travel, and the unicorns went into a frenzy of bucking and rearing, squealing with rage as they tried to impale their riders. The short spears, stabbing at the sensitive spot behind the jawbones of the unicorns, thwarted the backward flung heads and the unicorns were slowly forced into submission. The last one conceded temporary defeat and the long journey to the south started. The unicorns going in the run that they could maintain hour after hour. Each day they pushed the unicorns until they were too weary to fight at night. Each morning rested the unicorns resumed the battle. It became an expected routine for both unicorns and men. The unicorns were released when the oar was unloaded at the foot of the hill before the caves, and Schroeder went to the new water-wheel where the new generator was already in place. There George Craig told him of the unexpected obstacle that had appeared. "'Where stuck?' George said. "'The aluminum oar isn't what we thought it would be. It's scarce and very low-grade, of such a complex nature that we can't refine it to the oxide with what we have to work with on Ragnarok.' "'Have you produced any aluminum oxide at all?' Schroeder asked. "'A little. We might have enough for the wire in a hundred years if we kept out it hard enough.' "'What else do you need? Was there enough cryolite?' he asked. "'Not much of it, but enough. We have the generator set up, the smelting box built, and the carbon lining and rods ready. We have everything we need to smelt aluminum oar, except the aluminum oar.' "'Go ahead and finish up the details, such as installing the lining,' he said. "'We didn't get this far to be stopped now.' "'But the prospecting parties, making full use of the time left them before the winter closed down, returned late that fall to report no sign of the oar they needed. Everything came, and he was determined they would be smelting aluminum before the summer was over, even though he had no idea where the oar would be found. They needed aluminum oar of a grade high enough that they could extract the pure aluminum oxide. Specifically they needed aluminum oxide. Then he saw the answer to their problem, so obvious that all of them had overlooked it. They passed by four children playing a game in front of the caves that day, some kind of a checker-like game in which different colored rocks represented the different children. One boy was using red stones, some of the rubies that had been brought back as curios from the chasm. Rubies were of no use or value on Ragnarok. Only pretty rocks for children to play with. Only pretty rocks? Rubies and sapphires were curundum, were pure aluminum oxide. He went to tell George and to arrange for a party of men to go into the chasm after all the rubies and sapphires they could find. The last obstacle had been surmounted. The summer sun was hot the day the generator hummed into life. The carbon-lined smelting box was ready, and the current flowed between the heavy carbon rods suspended in the cryolite and the lining, transforming the cryolite into a liquid. The crushed rubies and sapphires were fed into the box, glowing and glittering in blood-red and sky-blue scintillations of light, to be deprived by the current of their life and fire and be changed into something entirely different. When the time came to draw off some of the metal they opened the orifice in the lower corner of the box. Molten aluminum flowed out into the ingot mold in a little stream, more beautiful to them than any gems could ever be, bright and gleaming in its promise that more than six generations of imprisonment would soon be ended. The aluminum smelting continued until the supply of rubies and sapphires in the chasm had been exhausted, but for small and scattered fragments. It was enough, with some aluminum above the amount needed for the wire. It was the year 152 when they smelted the aluminum. In eight more years they would reach the middle of big summer. The Sons would start their long drift southward, not to return for one hundred and fifty years. aluminum was passing swiftly by for them, and there was none of it to waste. The making of ceramics was developed to an art, as was the making of different types of glass. Looms were built to spin thread, and cloth from woods-goat wool, and vegetable dyes were discovered. Exploration parties crossed the continent to the eastern and western seas, salty and lifeless seas that were bordered by immense deserts. No trees of any kind grew along their shores, and ships could not be built to cross them. Efforts were continued to develop an inorganic field of chemistry, with discouraging results. But in 159 the orange corn was successfully adapted to the elevation and climate of the caves. There was enough that year to feed the mockers all winter, supply next year's seeds, and leave enough that it could be ground and baked into bread for all to taste. It tasted strange, but good. It was, Schroeder thought, symbolic of a great forward step. It was the first time in generations that any of them had known any food but meat. The corn would make them less dependent upon hunting, and, of paramount importance, it was the type of food to which they would have to become accustomed in the future. They could not carry herds of woods-goats and unicorns with them on Gern battle-cruisers. The lack of metals hindered them wherever they turned in their efforts to build even the simplest machines or weapons. Despite its dubious prospects, however, they made a rifle-like gun. The barrel of it was thick, of the hardest, toughest ceramic material they could produce. It was a cumbersome, heavy thing, firing with a flint-lock action, and it could not be loaded with much powder lest the charge burst the barrel. The flint-lock ignition was not instantaneous. The lightweight porcelain bullet had far less penetrating power than an arrow, and the thing boomed and belched out a cloud of smoke that would have shown the Gerns exactly where the shooter was located. It was an interesting curio, and the firing of it was something spectacular to behold, but it was a weapon apt to be much more dangerous to the man behind it than to the Gern it was aimed at. Automatic crossbows were far better. Woods-goats had been trapped and housed during the summers in shelters, where sprays of water maintained a temperature cool enough for them to survive. Only the young were kept when fall came to be sheltered through the winter in one of the caves. Each new generation was subjected to more heat in the summer and more cold in the winter than the generation before it, and by the year 160 the Woods-goats were well on their way toward adaptation. The next year they trapped two unicorns to begin the job of adapting and taming future generations of them. If they succeeded they would have utilized the resources of Ragnarok to the limit, except for what should be their most valuable ally with which to fight the Gerns, the prowlers. For twenty years prowlers had observed a truce wherein they would not go hunting for men if the men would stay away from their roots of travel. But it was a truce only, and there was no indication that it could ever evolve into friendship. Three times in the past half-grown prowlers had been captured and caged in the hope of taming them. Each time they had paced their cages, looking longingly into the distance, refusing to eat and defiant until they died. To prowlers, as to some men, freedom was more precious than life, and each time a prowler had been captured the free ones had retaliated with a resurgence of savage attacks. There seemed no way that men and prowlers could ever meet on common ground. They were alien to one another, separated by the Gulf of an origin on worlds two hundred and fifty light-years apart. Their only common heritage was the will of each to battle. But in the spring of one hundred and sixty-one, for a little while one day, the Gulf was bridged. CHAPTER X Schroeder was returning from a trip he had taken alone to the east, coming down the long canyon that led from the high face of the plateau to the country near the caves. He hurried, glancing back at the black clouds that had gathered so quickly on the mountain behind him. Thunder rumbled from within them, an almost continuous roll of it as the clouds poured down their deluge of water. A cloudburst was coming, and the sheer walled canyon down which he hurried had suddenly become a death-trap, its sun-lit quiet soon to be transformed into roaring destruction. There was only one place along its nine-mile length where he might climb out, and the time was already short in which to reach it. He had increased his pace to a trot when he came to it, a talus of broken rock that sloped up steeply for thirty feet to a shelf. A ledge eleven feet high stood over the shelf and other lower ledges set back from it like climbing steps. At the foot of the talus he stopped to listen, wondering how close behind him the water might be. He heard it coming, a sound like the roaring of a high wind up the canyon, and he scrambled up the talus of loose rock to the shelf at its top. The shelf was not high enough above the canyon's floor, he would be killed there, and he followed it fifty feet around a sharp bend. There it narrowed abruptly to merge into the sheer wall of the canyon. Blind alley. He ran back to the top of the talus where the edge of the ledge ragged with projections of rock was unreachably far above him. As he did so the roaring was suddenly a crashing, booming thunder, and he saw the water coming. It swept around the bend at perhaps a hundred miles an hour, stretching from wall to wall of the canyon, the crest of it seething and slashing and towering forty sheer feet above the canyon's floor. A prowler was running in front of it, running for its life, and losing. There was no time to watch. He leaped upward as high as possible, his crossbow in his hand. He caught the edge of the bow over one of the sharp projections of rock on the ledge's rim, and began to pull himself up, afraid to hurry lest the rock cut the bow string in two and drop him back. It held, and he stood on the ledge, safe, as the prowler flashed up the talus below. He darted around the blind alley shelf and was back a moment later. It saw that its only chance would be to leap up on the ledge where he stood, and it tried, handicapped by the steep loose sleep it had to jump from. It failed and fell back. It tried again, hurling itself upward with all its strength, and its claws caught fleetingly on the rough rock a foot below the rim. It began to slide back, with no time left it for a third try. It looked up at the rim of safety that it had not quite reached, and then on up at him, its eyes bright and cold with the knowledge that it was going to die, and its enemy would watch it. Schroeder dropped flat on his stomach and reached down, past the massive black head, to seize the prowler by the back of the neck. He pulled up with all his strength, and the claws of the prowler tore at the rocks as it climbed. When it was coming over the ledge safe, he rolled back from it and came to his feet in one swift, wary motion. His eyes on it, and his knife already in his hand. As he did so, the water went past below them with a thunder that deafened. Logs and trees shot past, boulders crashed together, and things could be seen surging in the brown depths, shapeless things that had once been wood's goats and the battered gray bulk of a unicorn. He saw it all with a sideward glance, his attention on the prowler. It stepped back from the rim of the ledge and looked at him, warily as he looked at it. With the wariness was something like question and almost disbelief. The ledge they stood on was narrow, but it led out of the canyon and to the open land beyond. He motioned to the prowler to precede him, and, hesitating a moment, it did so. They climbed out of the canyon and out onto the grassy slope of the mountainside. The roar of the water was a distant rumble there, and he stopped. The prowler did the same, and they watched each other again, each of them trying to understand what the thoughts of the other might be. It was something they could not know. They were too alien to each other and had been enemies too long. Then a gust of wind swept across them, bending and rippling the tall grass, and the prowler swung away to go with it and leave him standing alone. His root was such that it diverged gradually from that taken by the prowler. He went through a grove of trees and emerged into an open glade on the other side. Up on the ridge to his right he saw something black for a moment already far away. He was thirty feet from the next grove of trees when he saw the gray shadow waiting silently for his coming within them. Unicorn. His crossbow rattled as he jerked back the pistol grip. The unicorn charged, the underbrush crackling as it tore through it and a vine whipping like a rope from its lowered horn. His first arrow went into its chest. It lurched, fatally wounded, but still coming, and he jerked back on the pistol grip for the quick shot that would stop it. The rock-fraid bowstring broke with a singing sound and the bow ends snapped harmlessly forward. He had counted on the bow and its failure came a fraction of a second too late for him to dodge far enough. His sideward leap was short and the horn caught him in mid-air, ripping across his ribs and breaking them, shattering the bone of his left arm and tearing the flesh. He was hurled fifteen feet and he struck the ground with a stunning impact, pain washing over him in a blinding wave. Through it, dimly, he saw the unicorn fall and heard its dying trumpet blast as it called to another. He heard an answering call somewhere in the distance and then the faraway drumming of hooves. He fought back the blindness and used his good arm to lift himself up. His bow was useless, his spear lay broken under the unicorn, and his knife was gone. His left arm swung helplessly and he could not climb the limbless lower trunk of a lance-tree with only one arm. He went forward, limping, trying to hurry to find his knife while the drumming of the hooves raced toward him. It would be a battle already lost that he would make with the short knife, but he would have blood for his going. The grass grew tall and thick, hiding the knife until he could hear the unicorn crashing through the trees. He saw it ten feet ahead of him as the unicorn tore out of the edge of the woods thirty feet away. It squealed, shrill with triumph, and the horn swept up to impale him. There was no time left to reach the knife, no time left for anything but the last fleeting sight of sunshine and glade and arching blue sky. Something from behind him shot past and up at the unicorn's throat, a thing that was snarling with black savagery, with yellow eyes blazing and white fangs slashing, the prowler. It ripped at the unicorn's throat, swerving its charge, and the unicorn plunged past him. The unicorn swung back, all the triumph gone from its squeal, and the prowler struck again. They became a swirling blur, the horn of the unicorn swinging and stabbing and the attacks of the prowler like the swift, relentless thrust of a rapier. He went to his knife, and when he turned back with it in his hand the battle was already over. The unicorn fell, and the prowler turned away from it. One foreleg was bathed in blood, and its chest was heaving with the panting so fast that it could not have been caused by the fight with the unicorn. It must have been watching me, he thought, with a strange feeling of wonder. It was watching from the ridge, and it ran all the way. Its yellow eyes flickered to the knife in his hand. He dropped the knife in the grass, and walked forward, unarmed, wanting the prowler to know that he understood, that for them, in that moment, the gulf of 250 light-years did not exist. He stopped near it, and squatted in the grass to begin binding up his broken arm, so the bones would not grate together. It watched him. Then it began to lick at its bloody shoulder, standing so close to him that he could have reached out and touched it. Again he felt the sense of wonder. They were alone together in the glade. He and a prowler, each caring for his hurts. There was a bond between them that for a little while made them like brothers. There was a bridge for a little while across the gulf that had never been bridged before. When he had finished with his arm and the prowler had lessened the bleeding of its shoulder, it took a step back toward the ridge. He stood up, knowing it was going to leave. I suppose the score is even now, he said to it, and we'll never see each other again. So good hunting, and thanks. It made a sound in its throat, a queer sound that was neither bark nor growl, and he had the feeling he was trying to tell him something. Then it turned and it was gone like a black shadow across the grass and he was alone again. He picked up his knife and bow and began the long, painful journey back to the caves, looking again and again at the ridge behind him and thinking, They have a code of ethics. They fight for their survival, but they pay their debts. Ragnarok was big enough for both men and prowlers. They could live together in friendship as men and dogs of earth live together. It might take a long time to win the trust of the prowlers, but surely it could be done. He came to the rocky trail that led to the caves, and there he took a last look at the ridge behind him, feeling a poignant sense of loss and wondering if he would ever see the prowler again, or ever again know the strange, wild companionship he had known that day. Perhaps he never would, but the time would come on Ragnarok when children would play in the grass with prowler pups, and the time would come when men and prowlers, side by side, would face the guerns. In the year that followed there were two incidents when a prowler had the opportunity to kill a hunter on prowler territory and did not do so. There was no way of knowing if the prowler in each case had been the one he had saved from the cloudburst, or if the prowlers, as a whole, were respecting what a human had done for one of them. Schroeder thought of again trying to capture prowler pups, very young ones, and decided it would be a stupid plan. Such an act would destroy all that had been done toward winning the trust of the prowlers. It would be better to wait, even though time was growing short, and find some other way. The fall of 163 came, and the suns were noticeably moving south. That was the fall that his third child, a girl, was born. She was named Julia, after the Julia of long ago, and she was of the last generation that would be born in the caves. Plans were already under way to build a town in the valley, a mile from the caves. The unicorn-proof stockade wall that would enclose it was already under construction, being made of stone blocks. The houses would be of diamond-sod stone, thick walled, with dead air spaces between the double walls to insulate against heat and cold. Tall wide canopies of lance-tree poles and the palm-like Medusa bush leaves would be built over all the houses to supply additional shade. The woods-goats were fully adapted that year, and domesticated to such an extent that they had no desire to migrate with the wild goats. There was a small herd of them then, enough to supply a limited amount of milk, cheese, and wool. The adaptation of the unicorns proceeded in the following years, but not their domestication. It was their nature to be ill-tempered and treacherous, and only the thread of the spears in the hands of their drivers forced them to work. That they could have done easily had they not diverted so much effort each day to try to turn on their masters and kill them. Each night they were put in a massive walled corral, for they were almost as dangerous as wild unicorns. The slow, painstaking work on the transmitter continued while the suns moved farther south each year. The move from the caves to the new town was made in 179, the year that Schroeder's wife died. His two sons were grown and married, and Julia, at 16, was a woman by Ragnarok standards. Blue-eyed and black-haired as her mother, a craig had been, and strikingly pretty in a wild, reckless way. She married Will Humboldt that spring, leaving her father alone in the new house, in the new town. Four months later, she came to him to announce with pride and excitement, I'm going to have a baby in only six months. If it's a boy, he'll be the right age to be leader when the Guerns come, and we're going to name him John, after the John who was the first leader we ever had on Ragnarok. Her words brought to his mind a question, and he thought of what old Dale Craig, the leader who had preceded Lake, had written, we have survived the generations that the Guerns thought would never be born, but we must never forget the characteristics that ensured that survival, and unswerving loyalty of every individual to all the others, and the courage to fight and die if necessary. In any year now, the Guerns will come. There will be no one to help us. Those on Athena are slaves, and it is probable that earth has been enslaved by now. We will stand or fall alone, but if we of today could know that the ones who meet the Guerns will still have the courage and loyalty that made our survival possible, then we would know that the Guerns are already defeated. The era of danger and violence was over for a little while. The younger generation had grown up during a time of peaceful development of their environment. It was a peace that the coming of the Guerns would shatter, but had it softened the courage and loyalty of the younger generation? A week later he was given his answer. He was climbing up the hill that morning, high above the town below, when he saw the blue of Julia's wool blouse in the distance. She was sitting up on a hillside, an open book in her lap, and her short spear lying beside her. He frowned at the sight. The main southward migration of unicorns was over, but there were often lone stragglers who might appear at any time. He had warned her that someday a unicorn would kill her, but she was reckless by nature and given to restless moods in which she could not stand the confinement of the town. She jerked up her head as he watched, as though at a faint sound, and he saw the first movement within the trees behind her, a unicorn. He lunged forward, its stealth abandoned as she heard it, and she came to her feet in a swift, smooth movement, the spear in her hand, and the book spilling to the ground. The unicorn squeal rang out, and she whirled to face it, with two seconds to live. He reached for his bow, knowing his help would come too late. She did the only thing possible that might enable her to survive. She shifted her balance to take advantage of the fact that a human could jump to one side a little more quickly than a four-footed beast in headlong charge. As she did so, she brought up the spear for the thrust into the vulnerable area just behind the jawbone. It seemed the needle point of the black horn was no more than an arm's length from her stomach when she jumped aside with the life quickness of a prowler, swinging as she jumped and thrusting the spear with all her strength into the unicorn's neck. The thrust was true and the spear went deep. She released it and flung herself backward to dodge the flying hooves. The force of the unicorn's charge took it past her, but its legs collapsed under it and it crashed to the ground, sliding a little way before it stopped. It kicked once and lay still. She went to it to retrieve her spear, and even from the distance there was an air of pride about her as she walked past her bulky victim. Then she saw the book knocked to one side by the unicorn's hooves. Tatters of its pages were blowing in the wind and she stiffened, her face growing pale. She ran to try to pick it up, the unicorn forgotten. She was trying to smooth the torn leaves when he reached her. It had been one of the old textbooks printed on real paper and it was fragile with age. She had been trusted by the librarian to take good care of it. Now page after page was torn and unreadable. She looked up at him, shame and misery on her face. Father, she said, the book, I... He saw that the unicorn was a bull considerably larger than the average. Men had in the past killed unicorns with spears, but never before had a 16-year-old girl done so. He looked back at her, keeping his face emotionless and asked sternly, you what? I guess, I guess I didn't have any right to take the book out of town. I wish I hadn't. You promised to take good care of it, he told her coldly. Your promise was believed and you were trusted to keep it. But, but I didn't mean to damage it, I didn't mean to. She was suddenly very near to tears. I'm not a, a beman. Go back to town, he ordered. Tonight bring the book to the town hall and tell the council what happened to it. She swallowed and said in a faint voice, yes, Father. She turned and started slowly back down the hill, not seeing the unicorn as she passed it. The bloody spear trailing disconsolently behind her and her head hanging in shame. He watched her go and it was safe for him to smile. When night came and she stood before the council, a shame to lift her eyes to look at them. He would have to be grim and stern as he told her how she had been trusted and how she had betrayed that trust. But now, as he watched her go down the hill, he could smile with his pride in her and know that his question was answered, that the younger generation had lost neither courage nor loyalty. Julia saved a child's life that spring and almost lost her own. The child was playing under a half-completed canopy when a sudden violent wind struck it and transformed it into a death trap of crackling, falling timbers. She reached him in time to fling him to safety but the collapsing roof caught her before she could make her own escape. Her chest and throat were torn by the jagged ends of the broken poles and for a day and a night her life was a feebly flickering spark. She began to rally on the second night and on the third morning she was able to speak for the first time, her eyes dark and tortured with fear. My baby, what did it do to him? She convalesced slowly, haunted by the fear. Her son was born five weeks later and her fears proved to have been groundless. He was perfectly normal and healthy and hungry and her slowly healing breasts would be dry for weeks to come. By a coincidence that had never happened before and could never happen again, there was not a single feeding time foster mother available for the baby. There were many expected mothers but only three women had young babies and each of the three had twins to feed. But there was a small supply of frozen goat milk in the ice house, enough to see young Johnny through until it was time for the goat herd to give milk. He would have to live on short rations until then but it could not be helped. Johnny was a month old when the opportunity came for the men of Ragnarok to have their ultimate ally. The last of the unicorns were going north and the prowlers had long since gone. The blue star was lighting the night like a small sun when the breeze coming through Schroeder's window brought the distant squealing of unicorns. He listened, wondering. It was a sound that did not belong. Everyone was safely in the town, most of them in bed and there should be nothing outside the stockade for the unicorns to fight. He armed himself with spear and crossbow and went outside. He led himself out through the east gate and went toward the sounds of battle. They grew louder as he approached, more furious as though the battle was reaching its climax. He crossed the creek and went through the trees beyond. There in a small clearing, no more than half a mile from the town he came upon the scene. A lone prowler was making a stand against two unicorns. Two other unicorns lay on the ground dead and behind the prowler was the dark shape of its mate lying lifelessly in the grass. There was blood on the prowler, purple in the blue starlight, and gloating rang in the squeals of the unicorns as they lunged at it. The leaps of the prowler were faltering as it fought them, the last desperate defiance of an animal already dying. He brought up the bow and sent a volley of arrows into the unicorns. Their gloating squeals died and they fell. The prowler staggered and fell beside them. It was breathing its last when he reached it, but in the way it looked up at him he had the feeling that it wanted to tell him something, that it was trying hard to live long enough to do so. It died with a strange appeal in its eyes and not until then did he see the scar on its shoulder, a scar such as might have been made long ago by the rip of a unicorn's horn. It was the prowler he had known 19 years before. The ground was trampled all around by the unicorns showing that the prowlers had been besieged all day. He went to the other prowler and saw it was a female. Her breasts showed that she had had pups recently but she had been dead at least two days. Her hind legs had been broken sometime that spring and they were still only half healed, twisted and almost useless. Then that was why the two of them were so far behind the other prowlers. Prowlers, like the wolves, coyotes, and foxes of earth, made it for life and the male helped take care of the young. She had been injured somewhere to the south, perhaps in a fight with unicorns and her mate had stayed with her as she hobbled her slow way along and killed game for her. The pups had been born and they had had to stop. Then the unicorns had found them and the female had been too crippled to fight. He looked for the pups, expecting to find them trampled and dead. But they were alive, hidden under the roots of a small tree near their mother. Prowler pups, alive. They were very young, small and blind and helpless. He picked them up and his elation drained away as he looked at them. They made little sounds of hunger, almost inaudible and they moved feebly, trying to find their mother's breasts and already so weak that they could not lift their heads. Small chunks of fresh meat have been left beside the pups and he thought of what the prowler's emotions must have been as his mate laid dead on the ground and he carried meat to their young, knowing they were too small to eat it, but helpless to do anything else for them. And he knew why there had been the appeal in the eyes of the prowler as it died and what it had tried to tell him. Save them as you once saved me. He carried the pups back past the prowler and looked down at it in passing. I'll do my best, he said. When he reached the house, he laid the pups on his bed and built a fire. There was no milk to give them. The goats would not have young for at least another two weeks, but perhaps they could eat a soup of some kind. He put water on to boil and began shredding meat to make them a rich broth. One of them was a male, the other a female, and if he could save them, they would fight beside the men of Ragnarok when the Guerns came. He thought of what he would name them as he worked. He would name the female Sagan after Loki's faithful wife who went with him when the gods condemned him to hell, the Teutonic Underworld. And he would name the male Fenrir after the monster wolf who would fight beside Loki when Loki led the forces of hell in the final battle on the day of Ragnarok. But when the broth was prepared and cooled enough, the pups could not eat it. He tried making it weaker, tried it mixed with corn and herb soup, tried corn and herb soups alone. They could eat nothing he prepared for them. When the gray daylight entered the room, he had tried everything possible and had failed. He sat wearily in his chair and watched them defeated. They were no longer crying in their hunger, and when he touched them, they did not move as they had done before. They would be dead before the day was over, and the only chance men had ever had to have prowlers as their friends and allies would be gone. End of Episode 10, Episode 11 of Space Prison by Tom Godwin. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Space Prison, Episode 11. The first rays of sunrise were coming into the room, revealing fully the frail thinness of the pups, when there was a step outside and Julia's voice. Father? Come in, Julia, he said, not moving. She entered, still a pale shadow of the reckless girl who had fought a unicorn, even though she was slowly regaining her normal health. She carried young Johnny in one arm, in her other hand, his little bottle of milk. Johnny was hungry, there was never quite enough milk for him, but he was not crying. Ragnarok children did not cry. She saw the pups, and her eyes went wide. Prouders, baby prouders, where did you get them? He told her, and she went to them, to look at them and say, if you and their father hadn't helped each other that day, they wouldn't be here, nor you, nor I, nor Johnny, none of us in this room. They won't live out the day, he said. They have to have milk, and there isn't any. She reached down to them, and they seemed to sense that she was someone different. They stirred, making tiny whimpering sounds, and tried to move their heads to nuzzle at her fingers. Compassion came to her face, like a soft light. They're so young, she said, so terribly young to have to die. She looked at Johnny and at the little bottle that held his two small mourning ration of milk. Johnny, Johnny, her words were almost a whisper. You're hungry, but we can't let them die, and some day, for this, they will fight for your life. She sat on the bed and placed the pups in her lap beside Johnny. She lifted a little black head with gentle fingers, and a little pink mouth ceased whimpering as it found the nipple of Johnny's bottle. Johnny's gray eyes darkened with the storm of approaching protest. Then the other pup touched his hand, crying in its hunger, and the protest faded as surprise, and something like sudden understanding came into his eyes. Johnny withdrew the bottle from the first pup and transferred it to the second one. Its crying ceased, and Johnny leaned forward to touch it again, and the one beside it. He made his decision with an approving sound, and leaned back against his mother's shoulder, patiently awaiting his own turn, and their presence accepted as though they had been born his brother and sister. The golden light of the new day shone on them, on his daughter and grandson and the prouder pups, and in it he saw the bright omen for the future. His own role was nearing its end, but he had seen the people of Ragnarok conquer their environment insofar as big winter would never let it be conquered. The last generation was being born, the generation that would meet the Gerns, and now they would have their final ally. Perhaps it would be Johnny who led them on that day, as the omen seemed to prophesy. He was the son of a line of leaders, born to a mother who had fought and killed a unicorn. He had gone hungry to share what little he had with the young of Ragnarok's most proud and savage species, and Fenrir and Sagan would fight beside him on the day he led the forces of the hell-world in the battle with the Gerns who thought they were gods. Would the Gerns hope to have a leader to match? PART IV John Humboldt, leader, stood on the wide-stockade wall and watched the lowering sun touch the western horizon, far south of where it had set when he was a child. Big summer was over, and now, in the year two hundred, they were already three years into big fall. The Craigs had been impassable with snow for five years, and the country at the north end of the plateau, where the iron had been found, had been buried under never-melting snow and growing glaciers for twenty years. There came the soft tinkling of ceramic bells as the herd of milk-goats came down off the hills. Two children were following, and six prowlers walked with them, to protect them from wild unicorns. There were not many of the goats. Each year the winters were longer, requiring the stocking of a larger supply of hay. The time would come when the summers would be so short and the winter so long that they could not keep goats at all. And by then, when big winter had closed in on them, the summer seasons would be too short for the growing of the orange corn. They would have nothing left but the hunting. They had, he knew, reached and passed the zenith of development of their environment. From a low of forty-nine men, women and children in dark caves, they had risen to a town of six thousand. For a few years they had had a way of life that was almost a civilization, but the inevitable decline was already under way. The years of frozen sterility of big winter were coming, and no amount of determination or ingenuity could alter them. Six thousand would have to live by hunting. And one hundred in the first big winter had found barely enough game. They would have to migrate in one of two different ways. They could go to the south as nomad hunters, or they could go to other, fairer worlds and ships they took from the Guernes. The choice was very easy to make, and they were almost ready. In the workshop at the farther edge of town the hyperspace transmitter was nearing completion. The little smelter was waiting to receive the lathe and other iron and steel and turn them into the castings for the generator. Their weapons were ready, the mockers were trained, the prowlers were waiting. And in the massive corral beyond town forty half-tame unicorns trampled the ground and hated the world, wanting to kill something. They had learned to be afraid of Ragnarok men, but they would not be afraid to kill Guernes. When children with the goats reached the stockade and two of the prowlers, Fenrir and Sagan turned to see him standing on the wall. He had made a little motion with his hand, and they came running, to leap up beside him on the ten-foot high wall. "'So, you've been checking up on how well the young ones guard the children?' he asked. Sagan lulled out her tongue, and her white teeth grinned at him in answer. Fenrir, always the grimmer of the two, made a sound in his throat in reply. Prowlers developed something like a telepathic rapport with their masters, and could sense their thoughts and understand relatively complex instructions. Their intelligence was greater, and of a far more mature order than that of the little mockers, but their vocal cords were not capable of making the sounds necessary for speech. He rested his hands on their shoulders, where their ebony fur was frosted with gray. Age had not yet affected their quick flowing movement, but they were getting old. They were only a few weeks short of his own age. He could not remember when they had not been with him. Sometimes it seemed to him he could remember those hungry days when he and Fenrir and Sagan shared together in his mother's lap. But it was probably only his imagination from having heard the story told so often. But he could remember for certain when he was learning to walk, and Fenrir and Sagan, full-grown then, walked tall and black beside him. He could remember playing with Sagan's pups, and he could remember Sagan watching over them all, sometimes giving her pups a bath and his face a washing with equal disregard for their and his protests. Above all, he could remember the times when he was almost grown. The wild, free days when he and Fenrir and Sagan had roamed the mountains together. With a bow and a knife and two prowlers beside him he had felt that there was nothing on Ragnarok that they could not conquer, that there was nothing in the universe they could not defy together. There was a flicker of black movement and a young messenger prowler came running from the direction of the Council Hall, a speckle-faced mocker clinging to its back. It leaped up on the wall beside him, and the mocker, one that had been trained to remember and repeat messages verbatim, took a breath so deep that its cheeks bulged out. It spoke, in a quick rush, like a child that is afraid it might forget some of the words. "'Will you please come to the Council Hall to lead the discussion regarding the last preparations for the meeting with the Gerns? That transmitter is completed!' The lathe was torn down the next day, and the smelter began to roar with its forced draught. Excitement and anticipation ran through the town like a fever. It would take perhaps twenty days to build the generator, working day and night so that not an hour of time would be lost, forty days for the signal to reach Athena, and forty days for the Gern cruiser to reach Ragnarok. In one hundred days the Gerns would be there. The men who would engage in the fight for the cruiser quit trimming their beards. Later, when it was time for the Gerns to appear, they would discard their woollen garments for ones of goat skin. The Gerns would regard them as primitive inferiors at best, and it might be of advantage to heighten the impression. It would make the awakening of the Gerns a little more shocking. An underground passage, leading from the town to the concealment of the woods in the distance, had long ago been dug. Through it the women and children would go when the Gerns arrived. There was a level area of ground, just beyond the south wall of town, where the cruiser would be almost certain to land. The town had been built with that thought in mind. Woods were not far from both sides of the landing site, and unicorn corrals were hidden in them. Even the corrals would come the rear flanking attack against the Gerns. The prowlers, of course, would be scattered among all the forces. The generator was completed and installed on the nineteenth night. Charlie Craig, a giant of a man whose red beard gave him a genially murderous appearance, opened the valve of the water pipe. The new wooden turbine stirred, and belts and pulleys began to spin. The generator hummed, the needles of the dials climbed, flickered, and steadied. Norman Lake looked from them to humbult, his pale gray eyes coldly satisfied. "'Full output,' he said. "'We have the power we need this time.' Jim Chiara was at the transmitter, and they waited while he threw switches and studied dials. Every component of the transmitter had been tested, but they had not had the power to test the complete assembly. "'That's it,' he said at last, looking up at them. She's ready, after almost two hundred years of wanting her.' Humbult wondered what the signal should be, and saw no reason why it should not be the same one that had been set out with such hope a hundred and sixty-five years ago. "'All right, Jim,' he said. "'Let the Gerns know we're waiting for them. Take it,' Ragnarok calling again. The transmitter key rattled, and the all-wave signal that the Gerns could not fail to receive went out at a velocity of five light-years a day. "'Ragnarok calling, Ragnarok calling, Ragnarok calling.' It was the longest summer Humbult had ever experienced. He was not alone in his impatience. Among all of them the restlessness flamed higher as the slow days dragged by, making it almost impossible to go about their routine duties. The gentle mockers sensed the anticipation of their masters for the coming battle, and they became nervous and apprehensive. The prowlers sensed it, and they paced about the town in the dark of night, watching, listening, on ceaseless guard against the mysterious enemy their masters waited for. Even the unicorn seemed to sense what was coming, and they rumbled and squealed in their corrals at night, red-eyed with the lust for blood, and sometimes attacking the log-walls with blows that shook the ground. The interminable days went their slow succession, and summer gave way to fall. The hundredth day dawned, cold and gray, with the approach of winter, the day of the Gerns. No cruiser came that day, nor the next. He stood again on the stockade walled in the evening of the third day, Fenrir and Sagan beside him. He'd listened for the first dim, distant sound of the Gern cruiser, and heard only the moaning of the wind around him. Winter was coming. Always on Ragnarok winter was coming, or the brown death of summer. Ragnarok was a harsh and barren prison, and no amount of desire could ever make it otherwise. Only the coming of a Gern cruiser could ever offer them the bloody, violent opportunity to regain their freedom. But what if the cruiser never came? It was a thought too dark and hopeless to be held. They were not asking a large favour of fate, after two hundred years of striving for it, only the chance to challenge the Gern Empire with bows and knives. Fenrir stiffened, the fur lifting on his shoulders, an immuted growl coming from him. Then Humboldt heard the first whisper of sound, a faint, faraway roaring that was not the wind. He watched and listened, and the sound came swiftly nearer, rising in pitch and swelling in volume. Then it broke through the clouds, tall and black and beautifully deadly. It rode down on its rockets aflame, filling the valley with its thunder, and his heart hammered with exaltation. It had come. The cruiser had come. He turned and dropped the ten feet to the ground inside the stockade. The warning signal was being sounded from the centre of town. A unicorn horn that gave out the call they had used in the practice alarms. Already the women and children would be hurring along the tunnels that led to the temporary safety of the woods beyond the town. The Gerns might use their turret blasters to destroy the town and all in it before the night was over. There was no way of knowing what might happen before it ended. But whatever it was, it would be the action they had all been wanting. He ran to where the others would be gathering. Fenrir and Sagan loping beside him, and the horn ringing wild and savage and triumphant as it was announced the end of two centuries of waiting. The cruiser settled to earth in the area where it had been expected to land, towering high above the town with its turret blasters looking down upon the houses. Charlie Craig and Norman Lake were waiting for him on the high steps of his own house in the centre of town, where the elevation gave them a good view of the ship, yet where the fringes of the canopy would conceal them from the ship's owners. They were heavily armed, their prowlers beside them and their mockers on their shoulders. Elsewhere, under the connected rows of concealing canopies, armed men were hurrying to their pre-arranged stations. Most of them were accompanied by prowlers, bristling and snarling as they looked at the alien ship. A few men were deliberately making themselves visible not far away, going about unimportant tasks with only occasional and carefully disinterested glances toward the ship. They were the bait to lure the first attachment into the centre of town. Well, Norman Lake asked, his pale eyes restless with his hunger for violence. There's our ship, when do we take her? Just as soon as we get them outside it, he said, we'll use the plan we first had. Wait until they send a full force to rescue the first attachment and then we hit them with everything we have. His black, white-nosed mokker was standing in the open doorway and watching the hurrying men and prowlers with worried interest. Tip the great, great, great grandson of the mokker that had died with Howard Lake north of the plateau. He reached down to pick him up and set him on his shoulder and said, Jim? The long bows are ready. Tip's treble imitation of Jim Chiara's voice answered. We'll black out their searchlights when the time comes. Andy, he asked. The last of us for this section are coming in now, Andy Taylor answered. He made his check of all the sub-leaders, then looked up to the roof to ask. All set, Jimmy? Jimmy Stevens' grinning face appeared over the edge. One crossbows are cocked and waiting up here, bring us our targets. They waited while the evening deepened into near dusk. Then the airlock of the cruiser slid open and thirteen guerns emerged, the one leading them wearing the resplendent uniform of a sub-commander. There they come, he said to Lake and Craig. It looks like we'll be able to trap them in here and force the commander to send out a full-sized force. We'll all attack at the sound of the horn, and if you can hit their rear flanks hard enough with the unicorns to give us a chance to split them from this end, some of us should make it to the ship before they realize up in the control room that they should close the airlocks. Now he looked at the guerns who were coming straight toward the stockade wall, ignoring the gate to their right. You'd better be on your way. They'll meet again before long in the ship. Fenrir and Sagan looked from the advancing guerns to him, with question in their eyes, after Lake and Craig were gone, Fenrir growling restlessly. "'Pretty soon,' he said to them. "'Right now it would be better if they didn't see you. Wait inside, both of you.' They went reluctantly inside to merge with the darkness of the interior. Only an occasional yellow gleam of their eyes showed that they were crouched to spring just inside the doorway. He called to the nearest unarmed man, not loud enough to be heard by the guerns. "'Cliff, you and Sam Anders come here. Tell the rest to fade out of sight and get armed.' Cliff Schroeder passed the command along, and he and Sam Anders approached. He looked back at the guerns and saw they were within a hundred feet of the, for them, unscalable wall of the stockade. They were coming without hesitation. A pale blue beam lashed down from one of the cruiser's turrets, and a fifty-foot section of the wall erupted into dust with a sound like thunder. The wind swept the dust aside in a gigantic cloud, and the guerns came through the gap, looking neither to the right nor left. "'That, I suppose,' Sam Anders said from beside him, was lesson number one for degenerate savages like us. Guerns like gods are not to be hindered by man-made barriers.' The guerns walked with a peculiar gait that puzzled him, until he saw what it was. They were trying to come with the arrogant military stride affected by the guerns, and in the 1.5 gravity they were succeeding in achieving only a heavy clumping. They advanced steadily, and as they drew closer he saw that in the right hand of each guern soldier was a blaster, while in the left hand of each could be seen the metallic glitter of chains. Schroeder smiled thinly. "'It looks like they want to subject about a dozen of us to some painful questioning.' No one else was any longer in sight, and the guerns came straight toward the three on the steps. They stopped forty feet away at a word of command from the officer, and guerns and ragnarok men exchanged silent stares. The faces of the ragnarok men bearded and expressionless, the faces of the guerns hairless and reflecting a contemptuous curiosity. "'Narth!' the communicator on the guern officer's belt spoke with metallic authority. "'What do they look like? Did we come two hundred light years to view some animated vegetables?' "'No, Commander,' North answered. "'I think the discard of the rejects two hundred years ago has produced for us an unexpected reward. There are three natives under the canopy before me, and their physical perfection and complete adaptation to this hellish gravity is astonishing.' "'They could be used to replace expensive machines on some of the outer world minds,' the Commander said, providing their intelligence isn't too abysmally low. What about that?' "'They can surely be taught to perform simple manual labour,' North answered. "'Get on with your job,' the Commander said. "'Try to pick some of the most intelligent-looking ones for questioning. I can't believe these cattle sent that message, and they're going to tell us who did, and pick some young, strong ones for the medical staff to examine, ones that won't curl up and die after the first few cuts of the knife.' "'We'll chain these three first,' North said. He lifted his hand in an imperious gesture to Humboldt and the other two, and ordered an accent at Taren. "'Come here.' "'No one moved,' and he said again sharply. "'Come here.' "'Again no one moved,' and the minor officer beside North said. "'Apparently they can't even understand Taren now. "'Then we'll give them some action they can understand,' North snapped, his face flushing with irritation. "'We'll drag them out by their heels.' The Guerns advanced purposefully, three of them holstering their blasters to make their chains ready. When they had passed under the canopy and could not be seen from the ship, Humboldt spoke. "'All right, Jimmy.' The Guerns froze in mid-stride, suspicion flashing across their faces. "'Look up on the roof,' he said in Guern. They looked, and the suspicion became gaping dismay. "'You can be our prisoners, or you can be corpses,' he said. "'We don't care which.' The urgent hiss of North's command broke their indecision. "'Kill them!' Six of them tried to obey, bringing up their blasters in movements that seemed curiously heavy and slow, as though the gravity of Ragnarok had turned their arms to wood. Three of them almost lifted their blasters high enough to fire at the steps in front of them before arrows went through their throats. The other three did not get that far. North and the remaining six went rigid motionless and said to them, "'Drop your blasters, quick!' Their blasters thumped to the ground, and Jimmy Stevens and his bowmen slid off the roof. In a minute the Guerns were bound with their own chains, but for the officer and the blasters were in the hands of the Ragnarok men. Jimmy looked down the row of Guerns and shook his head. "'So these are Guerns?' he said. It was like trapping a band of woods-goats. "'Young ones,' Schroder amended, and almost as dangerous. North's face flushed at the words, and his eyes went to the ship. The sight of it seemed to restore his courage, and his lips drew back in a snarl. "'You fools! You stupid, megalomaniac dung-heaps! Do you think you can kill Guerns and live to boast about it?' "'Keep quiet,' Humboldt ordered, studying him with curiosity. North, like all the Guerns, was different from what they had expected. It was true the Guerns had strode into their town with an attempt at arrogance, but they were harmless in appearance, soft of face and belly, and the snarling of the red-faced North was like the bluster of a cornered scavenger, wrote it. "'I promise you this,' North was saying viciously. "'If you don't release us and return our weapons this instant, I'll personally oversee the extermination of you and every savage in this village, with the most painful death science can contrive, and, I'll,' Humboldt reached at his hand and flicked North under the chin. North's teeth cracked loudly together, and his face twisted with the pain of a bitten tongue. "'Tie him up, Jess,' he said to a man near him. "'If he opens his mouth again, shove your foot in it!' He spoke to Schroeder. "'We'll keep three of the blasters and send two to each of the other front groups. Have that done!' North was deepening into darkness, and he called Chiara again. "'They'll turn on their searchlights any minute and make the town as light as day,' he said. "'If you can keep them blacked out until some of us have reached the ship, I think we'll have won.' "'They'll be kept blacked out,' Chiara said, with some flint-headed arrows left over for the guerns.' He called Lake and Krieg to be told they were ready and waiting. "'But we're having hell keeping the unicorns quiet,' Krieg said. "'They want to get to killing something.' He pressed the switch of the communicator, but it was dead. They had, of course, transferred to some other wavelength, so he could not hear the commands. It was something he had already anticipated.' Fenrir and Sagan were still obediently inside the doorway, almost frantic with desire to rejoin him. He spoke to them and they bounded out, snarling at the three guerns in passing and causing them to blanch to a dead white color. He set tip on Sagan's shoulders and said, "'Sagan, there's a job for you and tip to do. A dangerous job. Listen, both of you.' The yellow eyes of Sagan and the dark eyes of the little mocker looked into his as he spoke to them and accompanied his words with the strongest, clearest mental images he could project. Sagan, take tip to the not-men thing. Leave him hidden in the grass to one side of the big hole in it. Tip you wait there. When the not-men come out you listen and tell what they say. Now do you both understand?' Sagan made a sound that meant she did, but tip clutched at his wrist with little pause suddenly gone cold and wailed, "'No! Scared! Scared!' "'You have to go, tip,' he said, gently disengaging his wrist. And Sagan will hide near to you and watch over you.' He spoke to Sagan. When the horn calls, you run back with him. Again she made the sound signifying understanding and he touched them both and what he hoped would not be the last farewell. All right, Sagan, go now.' She vanished into the gloom of coming night, tip hanging tightly to her. Fenrir stood with the fur lifted on his shoulders and a half snarl on his face as he watched her go and watch the place where the not-men would appear. "'Where's freckles?' he asked, Jimmy. "'Here,' someone said, and came forward with tip's mate. He set freckles on his shoulder and the first searchlight came on, shining down from high up on the cruiser. He lighted up the area around them in harsh white brilliance, its reflection revealing the black shadow that was Sagan just vanishing behind the ship. Two more searchlights came on to illuminate the town. Then the guerns came. They poured out through the airlock and down the ramp, there to form in columns that marched forward as still more guerns hurried down the ramp behind them. The searchlights gleamed on their battle-helmets and on the blades of the bayonets affixed to their rifle-like long-range blasters. Handblasters and grenades hung from their belts together with stubby flame guns. They were a solid mass reaching halfway to the stockade before the last of them, the commanding officers, appeared. One of them stopped at the foot of the ramp to watch the advance of the punitive force and give the frightened but faithful tip the first words to transmit to freckles. The full force is on its way, Commander. A reply came in freckles' simulation of the metallic tones of a communicator. The key numbers of the confiscated blasters have been checked and the disturbance rays of the master integrator set. You'll probably have few natives left alive to take as prisoners after those thirteen charges explode, but continue with a mopping-up job that the survivors will never forget. Although the gurns could, by remote control, set the total charges of stolen blasters to explode upon touching the firing stud, it was something new since the days of the old ones. He called Chiara and the other groups quickly to tell them what he had learned. We'll get more blasters, ones they can't know the numbers of when we attack, he finished. He took the blaster from his belt and laid it on the ground. The front ranks of the gurns were almost to the wall by then, a column wider than the gap that had been blastered through it, coming with silent purposefulness. Two blaster beams lanced down from the turrets to smash at the wall. Dust billowed and thunder rumbled as they swept along. A full three hundred feet of the wall had been destroyed when they stopped, and the dust hid the ship and made dim glows of the searchlights. It had no doubt been intended to impress them with the might of the gurns, but in doing so it hid the Ragnarok forces from the advancing gurns for a few seconds. Jim, black out their lights before the dust clears, he called. Joe, the horn, we attack now! The first longbow arrow struck a searchlight and its glow grew dimmer as the arrow's burden, a thin tube of thick lance-tree ink splattered against it. Another followed. Then the horn rang out, harsh and commanding, and in the distance a unicorn screamed in answer. The savage cry of a prowler came, like a sound to match, and the attack was on. He ran with Fenrir beside him, and to his left and right ran the others with their prowlers. The lead groups converged as they went through the wide gap in the wall. They ran on into the dust cloud, and the shadowy forms of the gurns were suddenly before them. A blaster beam cut into them, and a gurn shouted, The natives! Other beams sprang into life, winking like pale blue eyes through the dust and killing all they touched. The beams dropped as the first volley of arrows tore through the massed front ranks to be replaced by others. They charged on into the blue winking of the blasters and the red lances of the flame-guns, with the crossbows rattling and strumming in answer. The prowlers lunged and fought beside them and ahead of them. Black hell creatures that struck the gurns too swiftly for blasters to find before throats were torn out. The sound of battle turned into a confusion of raging snarls, frantic shouts, and dying screams. A prowler shot past him to join Fenrir, second, and he felt tip dart up to his shoulder. He made a sound of greeting and passing, a sound that was gone as her jaws closed on a gurn. The dust cloud cleared a little and the searchlights looked down on the scene. No longer brilliantly white, but shining through the red-black lancetree ink as a blood-red glow. A searchlight turret slid shut and opened a moment later, the light wiped clean. The longbows immediately transformed it into a red glow. The beam of one of the turret blasters stabbed down, to blaze a trail of death through the battle. It ceased as its own light revealed to the gurn commander that the Ragnarok forces were so intermixed with the gurn forces that he was killing more gurns than Ragnarok men. By then the fighting was so hand to hand that knives were better than crossbows. The gurns fell like harvested corn, too slow and awkward to use their bayonets against the faster Ragnarok men and killing as many of one another as men when they tried to use their blasters and flame guns. From the rear there came the command of a gurn officer, shouted high and thin above the sound of battle. Back to the ship! Leave the natives for the ship's blasters to kill! The unicorns arrived then to cut off their retreat. End of episode 11.