Part 4

Yorgh became aware of someone yanking his arm.

"Come on!" yelled little Puko. "I have a wolly for you. You can flee to the mountains!"

Yorgh looked around, and most of the talk and bustle ceased. People, finding themselves still alive, stopped to stare at Yorgh. He saw a group hurrying over from the Raydower camp.

Why don't they look to Tefior or Jayn? he wondered peevishly.

The first words Jayn spoke when she panted up with Ueln and others of her people were, "You were wrong to go up there!"

"I do not think well of it," Tefior agreed sadly.

"This is what comes of violating the shrine!" shouted one of the Raydowers. "The spirits of the Old Ones have come to avenge themselves upon us all!"

"No!" roared Yorgh.

He stared around at them, then out across the plain where the great, gleaming thing stood upright with wisps of smoke curling up from the grass at its base.

"I brought it upon us; I will go!"

Jayn and Ueln stared at him with pale, sorrowful faces. Kwint fingered his bow, and seemed about to step forward. Puko did, but Tefior grabbed him by the hair.

Yorgh turned and walked slowly away.

"Yorgh! Wait!"

Vaneen ran after him.

"We'll go together! I was there with you!"

"No!" he groaned. "Jayn, she went because I took her. Kwint! Ueln! Hold her!"

He broke away and ran toward the thing on the plain, not thinking, not even hoping. The voices behind him died away.

After he had covered a quarter of a mile, he noticed that the metal thing was like the ships of the Sea People in some ways. It was rounded, like a hull, and its upthrust bow--

To his amazement, there were four men standing under it when he arrived. Yorgh gaped at their queer clothes.

"Well, look at him!" said one of them with a strange accent. "Is that what's been sending out a repetitive message that's well over two hundred years old? I thought the plague wiped this planet clean."

"Man!" exclaimed the one with the close-cropped red hair. "If we can find out why not, maybe we can stop it wherever it still pops up in the galaxy!"

It was late afternoon when Yorgh ambled back into camp.

A great sigh went up from the waiting groups when they saw that he was smiling.

"They are men!" he shouted. "Sons of the Old Ones--as are we! Tefior, Jayn, when I have told you, this will be a night for a feast!"

He told them of the strange men who said they came from the Terran Colonial Patrol in answer to a message from The World, which had long been shunned as a dead colony, dead of a plague still known among the stars.

He told how the Terrans had taken blood from his arm and looked at it in a queer machine, whereupon they had grown talkative and excited.

"They said they will send people to teach us the forgotten ways of the Old Ones, because we are the first they have found who do not die of the sickness," he concluded. "Just for bringing them kromps and other animals to help cure the sickness, they will see that we have all we need to stand beside them, as brothers."

And he told how one of the Terrans had knocked a kromp unconscious with a small machine in his hand, to get some of its blood.

"I will show you," he grinned, thinking of a tremendous joke. "Where is Moyt?"

The others pushed the tall, blond Moyt forward.

"Is there any reason why you would not like to marry Jayn, who is the first of the Raydower women?" Yorgh asked.

"I--" began Moyt suspiciously, and stiffened as Yorgh pressed the trigger of the Terran stunner he held inside his tunic.

Moyt got control of his knees and straightened up as Yorgh turned off the power.

He started to open his mouth angrily, and Yorgh stunned him again. Moyt slumped to his knees beside Jayn.

The Raydower woman's lips curved in a thoughtful smile, and she reached out to run a finger through Moyt's hair. The man had changed his mind about protesting by the time the second shock had worn off.

Then Yorgh sat down to answer question after question while preparations for the night's feast went on. The men gathered and voted that messengers should be sent to the Sea People to tell of what had happened. Someone shouted Yorgh's name to be chief of the three tribes, and the cry was taken up over his protests.

"Well, I'll take a walk and think about it," he said finally, and strolled up the creek for a breather.

In the quiet of the trees, he shook his head to see if he would wake from the dream, but the only result was that he heard voices.

He lengthened his stride and caught up with a group of the young women.

"Where are you going?" he asked amiably.

"We were going swimming before the feast," answered pert Ahnee, "but if there is to be a ponadu named Yorgh in the woods--"

"I won't bother you," he grinned, "if you will tell me where Vaneen is."

"She went ahead alone when we stopped to hear what all the shouting was for. She is anxious to try the new dress of white wool that Jayn gave her."

"Oh," said Yorgh, wrinkling his brow. "Well, in that case, I must ask you girls to find another part of the creek."

"What!" cried Ahnee. "Yorgh, you oughtn't!"

"The Raydower elder said a marriage spell over us, didn't he? Now, will you go, or must I show you what happened to Moyt?"

"We'll go!" squealed Ahnee hastily, as the other girls faded back from beside her. "But it was said that you did not mean to hold her to that foreign ceremony."

"I must obey everyone's laws," said Yorgh, "now that I am to be chief of all the tribes."

He thought he heard splashing a little way up the creek, and grinned to himself at the vision in his mind.

"But it is well known that you told Tefior--"

"Argh!" said Yorgh. "It is well known that I seldom speak in earnest!"

End of Project Gutenberg's Calling World-4 of Kithgol, by H. B. Fyfe