Part 1

ENGINES of the GODS

By GARDNER F. FOX

The engine was the wealth of Mars. With it Kortha could save his people ... or the evil Guantra could rule the Universe. But neither could use the machine until its secret was solved--so they fought and schemed for the knowledge, and their planet lay on the brink of destruction.

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Spring 1946. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

Kortha the smith brooded out over the great red waste of desert. Men said Kortha was a genius. Men said he was the biggest man on Mars, and strong as an anthropoid ape. But Kortha brooded, because Kortha was a coward.

He was not afraid for himself. He was afraid _of_ himself.

He looked at his sun-bronzed, hamlike hands, and shuddered; glistening beads of sweat appeared on his forehead. With those hands he had killed men, and had crippled his best friend for life.

Behind him gleamed the red _utta_-brick smithy and his small shack, and the tiny structure he called his laboratory. Swinging on his heel, he went away from the desert and into the smithy. He made the bellows leap, and the red flames spurt from the furnace. With the tongs he lifted a white-hot strip of metal and pounded on it with a sledge that an ordinary man would have found immovable.

In the clang and dance of hammer on anvil, he lost himself; listened only to the mad symphony of beaten metal instead of the still, small voices of his soul. The din of smitten steel jangling on the sootblacked anvil was the music that helped the giant forget his heart. His eyes gleamed red from the smarting flames, and he peered into their depths with green eyes wide and angry as though he beheld a corner of some lost hell.

He did not hear the muffled thunder of the 'copter that swung in a circle above his shack and swooped downward to dig its tires into the yielding sands. He did not see the door open, and who came out.

"Kortha," said a voice like a song.

He started then; looked up, brows furrowed. His eyes opened a trifle in astonishment.

"Ilse!" he whispered. The hammer fell from his grasp and bounced on the brick floor.

The girl with the hair like spun flax laughed softly and leaned against the wooden door. A white cloak clasped with a fiery ruby draped her shoulders. She wore gauze trousers with broad leather belt studded with jewels, and a bolero of _arket_-fur. Her white midriff was bare.

"You ran away, Kortha," she accused, her dark eyes gleaming like uncut sapphires from the tanned oval of her face. "You ran away from Hurlgut when he needed you. It took me a long time to learn where you had holed."

"Three years," said Kortha softly, wiping grimy hands on the white fur that clasped his hard loins beneath the leathern apron.

The girl ran her eyes over his massive frame in approval; saw shoulders a yard wide, and a chest and legs that were ridged in muscles. His long arms, tanned by years of exposure to a desert sun, were those of a king gorilla. She had seen Kortha snap an iron chain with those arms; had seen him break a man's back, and other things. Well did Ilse know the strength of Kortha, and the fact that she carried a heatgun in her cloak was mute evidence that she had knowledge of his mad, flare-hot temper.

Ilse sighed, "You could rule the Confederacy if you would."

"And own gems to garland your hair, and furs to swathe your body," he said.

His green eyes belied his voice: they drank up the sight of Ilse and her red mouth and her platinum hair as a miser drinks up the sight of his yellow gold.

"You idiot," she whispered. "You man-killing, tempestuous idiot! Zut forgive me, but I love you."

* * * * *

She straightened; faced him fully, eyes unwavering.

"They sent me to you, knowing that you might kill another. They--we need you, Kortha. Hurlgut lies on his back, unable to move. You put him there; you and those terrible arms of yours. But Hurlgut forgave you long ago. You know that! But you don't know--

"You don't know that Guantra keeps him there, with green _bessa_-mead and white women to amuse him, to make him forget that he rules Mars!"

Kortha started, and his lips drew back from his large white teeth, like the snarl of a hungry leopard. Deep in his corded throat a curse rumbled.

"Guantra. I remember him. An evil smell of a thing!"

"Guantra aspires to power. He has had himself declared Premier of the Council. He wants to turn Mars over to the victors in the Earth-Venus war, with himself as sole power on Mars. He plays politics like a master, does Guantra. Mars, with its rich ore-beds and mines--Mars, the prize of a war that does not concern her. Under a united Mars, she would take her place among the planets beside Earth and Venus as members of the Council of the Trinity. Under the Confederacy, Mars could have done this. Once it was almost accepted. Then--you ran away. And the Earthmen and the Venusians who feared your brains and your body, Kortha--they revoked their acceptance."

"They had agreed. I stayed that long."

"They refused to go through with it. They revoked their decision. They said--they said Mars was a hotbed of trouble, that it had no competent ruler to make its decisions, and enforce them!"

"Guantra," said Kortha bitterly, "wants to be that ruler. As Premier he stands an excellent chance of fulfilling his ambition."

Ilse came close to him, touched his hands with hers and clung. Her blue eyes stared anxiously up to his green ones.

"If you were to come back, and be that ruler," she breathed. "Kortha, Kortha, don't you see Mars needs you?"

Kortha looked past Ilse, out toward the red desert. Far in the haze of distance, against the black and jagged Mountains of Eternity, there was something white that shook and eddied in the heat waves rising from the sands. Kortha knew it for forgotten Yassa, the city beyond recall. A dead city, that ate up travelers that went to it.

Kortha sighed, and looked at Ilse. Always had Kortha wanted to go to Yassa. There was a mystery about Yassa, a mystery that Kortha meant to solve. The time was now come when he could.

"Give me time," he said to Ilse. "I need time to think."

She looked at him and in the depths of her blue eyes there was an infinite sadness, a yearning.

"You lie, Kortha," she whispered, tears in her eyes. "You do not ever intend to return. Tell me why?"

He looked down at her and smiled. How could he tell _her_? The long uncut blonde hair that hung to his naked brown shoulders swayed a bit as he shook his head.

"I will, perhaps. But not yet."

Not yet you cannot tell her, Kortha. It is for her sake that you have buried yourself alive. But she would not understand. She is turning now and going away from you, perhaps forever.

Kortha walked across the sands behind her toward the 'copter. Once his great hands went out hungrily, then fell listlessly at his sides. Ilse was not for him. She was part of his brooding, the part that ached and stabbed with loneliness. Ilse was what made him a coward.

In the shadows of the flier the girl faced him once again. She stood perilously close, her eyes beseeching silently, and the fragrance of her hair and her curving body steamed in his nostrils.

"You are no hermit, Kortha. You need life. You need a woman. You need--me."

He nodded, staring at her face, drinking it in. He did not ever intend to see Ilse again, Ilse whom he loved, Ilse of the fair hair and the blue eyes and the body tanned brown by Sol.

Kortha stepped back and his shadow fell from hers. He lifted a hand, saying softly, "Goodbye."

With arms hanging to his thighs, he stood on the desert, watching until the dot that was the 'copter in the sky passed beyond the horizon. Wearily he swung about and went back to his hut.

He yanked down a gigantic steel hammer from the wall, breaking the thong that held it to its nail. Gripping the hammer in his great hands, he swung it around his head, once, twice, in a flashing circle of blue-white light.

The walls crumpled when he hit them. The roof caved in and became the floor. Scraps of brick and metal fell to dance on the shuddering tiles. Fire leaped from the forge, caught hold and grew in a red frenzy. Red and huge in its crimson heat, Kortha battered and slammed his sledge, buckling even the wrought metalwork of his dwelling. This was his past, here before him. Sobbing, he fought it; and sobbing, watched as the fire came to consume it.

When the place lay black and smouldering, Kortha lifted his head and looked with his green eyes across the desert to Yassa.

* * * * *

A rolling something on the red sands caught his alert gaze. He smiled gently. A tumblie. Probably Xax, who liked him. He watched it roll straight and fast over the desert, toward him.

Nature had made a perfect gyroscope in a tumblie: a round ball of sharp, glistening spikes with a core of jelly that stayed level no matter how fast the powerful spikes rotated. Two long feelers, like skeletal arms, lay hidden in the spikes, but could stretch beyond them to clutch food seeking to escape. In the heart of the jelly was a strong brain.

Xax stopped, looking between his hard spikes at the blackened ruins.

"You leave the desert, Kortha?"

"I go to Yassa."

He felt the alarm of the tumblie, and sighed as Xax shrilled, "You go to death! Only the tumblies have ever entered Yassa and--lived. There is a part of Yassa that even a tumblie cannot penetrate. The white tower. The temple of dead, forgotten Zut."

Kortha hefted his big hammer and eyed its gleaming length.

"Kortha has never gone to Yassa," he whispered grimly.

It was not a boast; it was a statement of fact, a realization that there was only one Kortha.

Xax looked around him and saw the tire marks in the sand. He sat silent, looking up at the man who towered more than six feet above him.

"Someone was here," Xax said at last. "Ilse, wasn't it? You've told me enough of her! The Confederacy needs you, doesn't it? And you won't go."

"I go to Yassa."

"Mad. Mad!"

"Not mad, Xax. So sane that I go to the one spot on Mars where I might bring her freedom, and a place in the planetary sun."

Xax digested that, squatting there.

At last he said, "You have not dwelt out here three years for nothing. You tried to hide from yourself at first, but you have learned things here on the desert."

A pain tugged and tore at Kortha's heart, and his lips were bitter as they smiled.

"You are clever, Xax. Smarter than Ilse."

"Ilse is a woman who loves you. Her love is inclined to blind her."

Kortha swung the hammer idly in his hand, eying the sunlight play across it. He took a stride toward Yassa, and another.

"Come, Xax," he called. "It is easy to talk and walk at the same time."

The tumblie rolled along beside him. They went out into the hot red sands, their shadows before them. Kortha fixed his eyes on the white blot that was Yassa, and his long legs lengthened their stride. Sand crunched faintly under his sandalled feet, releasing tiny clouds of red dust at every step.

"Eons ago Mars was a cultured world, Xax. They had everything, our ancestors. Even you tumblies possessed your own civilization. The ancients had power, and weapons long since forgotten by the clans that descended from the survivors of the Great War.

"Wars are useless things, but they must be fought as long as there are men to quarrel. Who says otherwise is a fool. But the Great War--ahh, that _was_ a war. They used things to fight with that we have long ago lost, and that Earth and Venus have never known. Mars is older than either and had more time to develop them. Our ancestors fought and destroyed: men and machines and cities. They left little. Among the things they did not leave was the knowledge of their arts and sciences. Mars had to build again, from scratch."

Their shadows crept behind them as they walked.

"Today Mars is a weak Confederacy of clans, ruled by a prince I crippled for life. Guantra hopes to rule that Confederacy, but Guantra is a cautious man. He would never dare usurp the throne unless he were sure of victory. So sure of such a complete victory that he need fear neither Earth nor Venus.

"There is only one thing that would make Guantra so confident."

A pool of clear blue water lay in a little hollow ahead of them. Kortha put his palms to the hard sand that packed its edge and lowered himself to his belly. Immersing his lips in the cold spring water bubbling from hidden streams, he drank deeply. Xax lay to one side, watching him.

With the back of his hand, Kortha wiped his mouth, his eyes on the blood red sun dying in the desert a darker crimson on the horizon.

"We'll stay here for the night."

Kortha lay down and locked his hands behind his head. His golden hair spilled in a flood across the red sand. Xax rolled close to him.

"Two hundred years ago," said Kortha slowly, "the first Earthmen set foot on Mars. Those first colonists settled among us. Some of them married Martian girls. One of them wedded my great-great-grandmother. Mixed blood flows in my veins. I am brood of Earth and brood of Mars."

Xax said, "You keep me in suspense, Kortha. What one thing is there that will make Guantra confident?"

"A weapon, Xax. He needs a weapon. I think I know where he can find it. But to get back--

"They say that Earth ancestor of mine was a big man, and strong. He must have been, for it was he who whipped the clans into semblance of order, who established the Confederacy, who placed Hurlgut's ancestor on the throne.

"Earth made Mars rich in those early days, with demands for the metals of its mines and the stellus-ore to power their rocket ships. Earth was not strong enough to conquer us, then. It extended friendship, and traded. Fortunately, the Confederacy was ruled by wise men. They used their new riches to make the Confederacy strong, too."

Kortha sighed and watched Phobos roll on upward into the vault of sky above him.

"Those early leaders left the Confederacy strong. I made it weak."

Kortha rolled onto his stomach, his head buried in the crook of his naked forearm. He heard Xax snort, "You were the greatest of the lot!"

"I crippled Hurlgut in a fit of rage. I left him prey to Guantra." Kortha sighed, "I ran away. It has been bitter, being out here, Xax. I had a long time to think. I hope my hermitdom has made me a wiser man. But I am afraid."

They were silent for long moments. Xax stirred restlessly and the clicking of his quills was like the rasping of many needles.

"Now Guantra will rule Mars," said Kortha hoarsely. "He will get his weapon unless I can stop him. He will wait until Earth and Venus are weakened by war. Then he will attack them. Ilse thinks he will turn Mars over to them, but that is not so! He wants to rule the Trinity of the three planets. In the end he will pull Mars down, for Mars is not ripe to rule--not yet. Not under Guantra, at any time."

Kortha closed his eyes, whispering, "I must stop Guantra. I must stop him without seeming to do so. For I cannot ever again take my place in the Confederacy. I am too dangerous."

Xax said softly, "Guantra has the army and the air fleet tinder his banner. You are one man against a world."

"I am Kortha," said the giant.

He rolled on his side and cuddled his head in his elbow.

An instant later, he was asleep.

Xax squatted, thinking.

II

Five days later a giant of a man and a round thing that rolled straight as a warlance beside him clambered up the sloping black rock side of the Mountains of Eternity.

Sunlight glinted from the smooth, dark stone that was polished bright as a mirror by the myriad dust storms that swept up from the desert, year after year. Heat shimmered all about them, rising slowly from the vast sand-bottom, reflected back from the igneous rock. Sweat wetted the hairs on the man's chest and forearms. It dripped from his face in tiny streams.

Kortha stood erect on a narrow footpath and looked above him. Upward the trail wound to dizzy heights. Set on a shelf of massy ebon stone beyond him lay Yassa, like a white bowl of cool water in a black furnace.

Onward they climbed, and upward, their eyes fastened on the goal ahead of them.

They came together to the greenish bronze gates that tilted off their hinges and lay at grotesque angles. Down the street that stretched behind the gates walked Kortha, and with him swept the tumblie.

Kortha stood still, nostrils distended.

"I smell danger."

Eyes alert, he walked on; but now he paced like the stalking cat, and the muscles in his long legs humped and swelled beneath the bronzed skin. His hammer hung loose in his hand, but then, the claws of a tiger are often sheathed.

A shadow dropped from above, swiftly.

Kortha whirled, side-stepping.

A huge king gorilla slammed an arm at him and screeched in anger as the smooth-skinned man eluded him. The gorilla gave his attention to alighting on the hard stones, and that was his mistake, for this smooth skin was on him like a charging buffalo, head lowered between his tremendous shoulders, and arms long as the gorilla's own shooting at him, hitting hard, like pistons.

Kortha was laughing harshly in his throat as he hit. He had not fought in three years, and the taste of a battle was as old wine to his lips. He needed this test, badly. He wanted to learn if his reflexes were as they used to be. Kortha balled a fist and drove it into the gorilla's ribs. He hit again, and again, and something snapped.

Blood flecked the wide, distorted mouth of the animal. His tiny eyes glared beneath shaggy brows. His dark brown coat bristled.

The gorilla had got his balance by now, and Kortha darted beneath a blow that could have ripped his head off. He swung low, then veered up sharply, legs planted apart, arms pliant and big hands grasping. He caught the gorilla by a wrist, whirled, taking the screaming animal on his back. He humped his hips and flung the beast from him, into the air. But he kept tight hold of its wrist, and snapped downward with all the fury of his titanic strength.

The gorilla hit the stones on its back. It screamed as its spine burst.

Kortha stared down at the writhing, dying gorilla, saying, "So. This is the secret of Yassa. The extinct king gorilla is not extinct. Only an expedition in force could completely explore Yassa."

Xax shrilled, "They dare not touch a tumblie. That is why we can come and go."

He proved his point an instant later when another gorilla dropped from a low roof. Xax rolled beneath the falling beast who screeched in agony as the tumblie's long quills ripped into the pads of his feet. Chattering in pain, the gorilla ran off while Kortha laughed.

"You're a good companion to have at a time like this, Xax," he chuckled.

Xax clicked his needles. "We're coming to the Tower of Zut. A tumblie can't fight what dwells in there."

Kortha said, "No living thing dwells there, Xax. And the dead cannot harm you."

* * * * *

The glory that was Yassa burst on them as they rounded a corner and stood in the square of Zut. A massive building of translucent white jadestone loomed solitary in the square. The face of the temple, gleaming lucid in the sunlight, fronted toward them, broad and tall and tapering to a triangular crown far above. From its base four bulbous domes stretched backward, fanshaped, like blunted and misshapen fingers. The symmetry of the building was awesome. The ancient architect who designed it had been an artist as well as an engineer. It was a thing of beauty, as well as a place of terror.

Like a dark mouth set in the white face of the windowless tower gloomed a gate of shadows, open to the square. That yawning space was black with emptiness. There were no doors hung on hinges; only that sombre opening, silently menacing.

Kortha stood looking at it. The wind ruffled the white fur of his mantle. It stirred his amber hair and cooled the naked skin of arms and shoulders.

He lifted his hammer and shook it in the sunlight, and grinned.

He walked forward.

Xax spoke to him above the clicking of his needles on the broken flagging of the square, "Are you walking into that thing like a _yavit_ to the trap?"

"Others have examined it before me, Xax. I have not heard that their examinations saved them. Besides, if the death that lurks in the tower of Zut still lives, I have no need to fear Guantra."

They were quite close to the doorway now, and looking in they glimpsed something white and shining on the tiled floor. As they drew nearer, the heaps of white stuff grew plainer.

They were bones. Human bones: what was left of the skeletons of many men.

Kortha lifted his head to survey the doorway. His green eyes blazed with challenge, but their fire was controlled, and alert. He saw the entrance plain and severe in style, affording no clue as to the manner of its deadliness. From the way in which the walls shone, so clearly translucent with the hint of inner fires deep within them, he knew that the tower was built of _transvaline_, that rare building material whose secret was lost with so many others during the Great War.

In the walls two tall, faint strips of black shone dully: the doors of this queer adit.

Kortha swung his hammer in his hand and tossed it through the opening. The doors remained open, and the bolt of force that he half expected to sweep from somewhere at the hammer, remained hidden.

He grunted to Xax, "Come on. No sense wasting time out here, like dogs fretting before a bear's cave."

They passed the threshold together, and stood in a domed chamber, circular in shape, with another doorway beyond and opposite the entrance. There were words on the lintel above its arch.

"Science chamber," whispered Kortha, and started toward it.

Behind them was a metallic whisper, susurrating in the stillness. Kortha whirled and cursed and leaped. The doors closed before his shoulder struck their smooth black surface. He hit and bounced slightly, jarred. Kortha swore slowly, fluently, looking at the doors.

"How long will the air last?" wondered Xax.

"Longer than our bellies will stand the lack of food and drink. So this is the great tower of Zut. Sliding doors that imprison any who break a secret electri-beam. Zut! I'd thought better of the Ancient Ones. This is really too simple. Find the beam and send a current along it, and the doors'll open again."

Kortha swung on his heel, going down the hall and into the Science Chamber. Standing motionless on the threshold, he ran keen eyes into the huge chamber.

He chuckled. He laughed. Head flung back, he roared hoarse laughter to the trestled ceiling. He sobbed his delight, hands spread over his muscled loins, helpless with his mirth.

Xax clicked a question at him, impatient.

"It's Guantra," said Kortha when he could. "The fool. The utter fool. And he hopes to rule the Trinity. Look for yourself, Xax. Look at all these machines spread out before your eyes. The wealth of a planet is spread out for you. The greatest weapons the solar system has known are here. And Guantra has left them all!"

"How do you know Guantra has been here?"

"Down there. Observe the blacker spaces against the grey dust inches thick on the floor. Something rested there for ages, Xax. Gone now. Oh, Guantra was here, all right, probably with his entire science staff. They took two things away with them. Probably the simplest machines of the lot. Why did he leave the rest? Because the fools who man his science staff didn't know what in the world all these things are. Didn't know how to use them. Didn't have the slightest idea of what they are supposed to be. Zut, it's rich!"

"You may not know yourself," chided Xax.