Part 1

PRODIGAL WEAPON

by VASELEOS GARSON

They were the pitiful remnants of a proud world, huddled into slave quarters on Karrar, dying before the cold brutality of the Kraks, seeking the Achilles' heel in the armor of their masters. One man alone still fought them--even he knowing he battled with a lance of straw.

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Summer 1945. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

Nothing new ... this. The viewpoint, maybe, was different, this time. The script was the same, only there were new actors in the cast of characters.

Human historians had written the story over and over. Even the _Kraks_ probably had a parallel story in their world.

Sean McKenna flinched a little as the beam of the thin yellow light bit into his left shoulder, burning a crooked X into the tanned flesh. Then with a shrug, Sean nodded his red-thatched head slightly, moved into the rapidly growing queue of humans who watched the Krak counters with varied expressions, most of them quietly despairing.

Sean accepted his destiny with a slanted smile.

He, too, stared steadily at the impassive-faced _Kraks_ whose naked torsos and hairless round heads glistened with sweat in the afternoon of Earth's sun.

He thought: They have two eyes, two ears, a nose, a mouth, one body, two arms and two legs just like us humans. But they are something apart from us, for they are the masters and we--his mind shrugged--are the slaves.

Sean fixed his green eyes on the scarlet-kilted Krak whose light had so emotionlessly added him to the cargo of slaves for the Krak's home planet somewhere out in the reaches of space.

Sean grew aware of the monotonous voice of a Krak, tolling out what must be numbers as the yellow lights in the hands of other Kraks flicked haphazardly among the other residents of Sean's village. Then the monotonous voice sharpened, and the yellow lights stopped flickering.

There was silence then for a brief moment, while the eyes of those chosen and those left behind touched briefly, despairingly. In that silence, Sean heard her voice and the quietness with which he had accepted the end of his earthly life almost vanished.

"Oh, Sean," she cried. "They didn't take me!" Sean's eyes darted to the edge of the crowd to where she stood, her arms stretched out supplicatingly to him; her soft red lips quivering; her blue eyes brimming; her soft black hair caressed by the afternoon wind.

Sean broke out of line then, almost running toward her. The scarlet-kilted Krak who had marked him reached out a restraining hand. His fingers bit into Sean's arm until the blood spurted; the shock of pain from his arm held in the Krak's unbreakable hold halted him.

He looked at her quietly then shrugged, and marched back to his place in the line.

He was unmindful of the pain in his wrenched arm as he moved along with the rest up the slanted walk to the oval door of the space ship. At the top he turned, and his voice rose above the murmur of the crowd.

"I'll come back, Maureen," he said, and blew her a kiss from his fingertips. Then he stepped into the darkness, following those others before him.

In the gloom, someone said: "Always the gallant one, eh, Sean? You know damn well that you'll never see Earth again. No one who ever left on these slave ships has ever come back."

"I think I recognize Michael O'Hara, the village pessimist," Sean replied and there was almost a lightness in his voice. They moved deeper into the bowels of the ship, aware of the curious scraping sound the Krak guards made as they walked with them.

* * * * *

They were all quiet, these men, women and children whom the Kraks had carelessly chosen, as they marched into the huge dark room that was to be their home for the journey to Karrar. The scraping noise moved through the room, then to the door of the hole. The portal shut with the dull sound of heavy metal. The scraping noise grew fainter, then it was gone.

Not until then did the humans give vent to their emotions. The sound of despair was hesitant at first--in a far corner a child gasped, coughed and then sobbed. It was the signal--and the mingled sounds of hysterical laughter, weeping, groaning were ragged knives twisting in Sean McKenna's heart. A rending cacophony of lost hope.

"Shut up," he shouted hoarsely. "This is no time for weeping and wailing; this is the time to think, to plan." For a moment the awful symphony subsided; then someone said wearily:

"Against the Kraks? What did planning ever do against them? They are invulnerable. We used atomic power, guns, knives, bow and arrows, even our fists against them. And they crushed us like rats in a corner."

The cacophony resumed, and Sean's shouting voice could not stop it now--he could not even hear his own voice. A hand touched his arm gently:

"Easy, Sean," Michael O'Hara whispered in his ear. "They are right. If we couldn't beat them as free men, how can we even think of it as slaves?"

"The fools," Sean said savagely. "No matter how weak they are, they can keep fighting, keep probing for a chink in their armor."

"No, Sean, for fifteen years we fought, seeking that chink, and failed to find it. Deep down in your heart you know the Kraks cannot be beaten. Physically, they are to us as we are to new-born babes--no weapon of man can touch them, and did you ever hear of a Krak dying of disease?

"No, we met a better adversary. Mother of Erin, Sean, we deserve to be slaves, we haven't the accoutrements to take on the Universe Champion."

"There's nothing anywhere that hasn't a weakness, Mike. I aim to find the weakness."

Mike O'Hara grunted: "Why this sudden fervor to destroy the Kraks, anyway? Until today, you were content to go fishing and hunting without thought of them. Now you've done a right-about-face."

"I know," said Sean, and there was chagrin in his voice. "Until today, they hadn't bothered me."

"So you want to embroil the whole human race in your fight, eh?"

"Oh, hell, Mike, it's not my fight--it's humanity's battle for self-preservation. You know that as well as I do. Besides, wouldn't you like to see Jane again?"

"That hurt, Sean," Mike said softly.

Sean touched him lightly on the shoulder: "Sorry, Mike, but don't you see? All of us want to see the ones we love again. And we won't, if we let despair grab us."

"All right," said Mike. "I'll go along with you. But it's no go just the same."

"Pessimist," Sean said and laughed softly. But he was glad the blocky, black-haired Mike was with him.

* * * * *

The uprooting of these humans from their home of ages had been simple enough, Sean decided. Except for the nausea that held the stomach in noisome fingers when the Krak ship broke loose from the earth.

Were there more captives this time than in the long years before? Were there 1,000 Krak ships--instead of 500--transplanting men and women and children to that scarlet land of Karrar?

Sean said as much to Mike, and Mike said: "I heard before we left that this would be the biggest batch." Mike looked harried in the yellow wall light. "Sean," he said quickly, with a twist on his lips: "How's the search coming?"

Sean jerked his red-thatched head around, stared at him.

"Why the sudden earnestness?" Mike licked his lips quickly. "I didn't know it before, but just now when I was looking over the people here, I found Marcia, and she's sick."

"Marcia?" Sean repeated. "I thought you and she had busted up that romance?"

Mike nodded: "She did," he said quietly. "But I'll never stop loving her."

"Mike, how about Jane? You and she were to be married--tomorrow, wasn't it?"

"I know, I know," Mike said hurriedly. "But Marcia's sick, and she looked at me so appealingly when I recognized her, it all came back. The least I can do is comfort her."

"Sure, sure ..." Sean said. That curious scraping sound that marked the coming of a Krak interrupted them.

It was the scarlet-kilted Krak who had marked Sean for the trip. He stood inside the open prison door, his naked torso gleaming in the yellow light and his hairless round head turning.

His round head stopped turning as his dark eyes above the wide flat nose fastened on Sean's red hair.

"You," he mouthed, "with the red hair. Come!"

Sean moved forward cautiously, his nerves atingle, his strong hands doubled into fists.

He followed the scarlet kilt out of the packed prison room, along an interminable series of passageways that led upward, and finally entered a room about twenty feet wide and thirty feet long.

It was innocent of furniture or decoration. There were no windows.

But standing in the middle of the room was an eight-foot Krak, dwarfing even the seven-foot bulk of his guide.

The scarlet-kilted Krak turned to him.

"Find your answer," the scarlet-kilted Krak said cryptically. He pointed to the Krak, naked save for a kind of breechclout about his loins. "He is your subject."

Sean was staring at his guide, startled out of his usual acceptance of the bizarre and the trite.

"Our audios picked up your plotting," the scarlet-kilted one said. "We do not wish to kill you, you are much more valuable on Karrar. But we cannot have restless humans fired by one like you who thinks we are vulnerable.

"There is a Krak. Kill him if you can." The scarlet-kilted Krak turned to the other standing in the center of the room.

"You have understood my words, Klash? You understand that you will allow this human to do all in his power to kill you. Allow him all liberties until you are convinced that he has run out of ways in which to take your life."

"Yes, O, Ralk." Klash bent his huge bald head.

Ralk called aloud in his own tongue. Another Krak appeared pushing a plastic crate before him. He pushed the crate into the room. Then he went out, followed by Ralk. At the door Ralk stopped and said:

"Human, there are many weapons there. Use them, and see if you can kill one of us." Then he went out.

Sean McKenna was alone with the brute called Klash.

He moved to the box, looked in.

He looked up then at Klash, and whistled. "You must be tough, brother." Then he hauled the array of weapons from the crate. He laid them on the duralloy deck beneath his feet.

A high-powered rifle, a meat ax, a sledge hammer, an acetylene torch, a sword, a rope, a crowbar. Then a grenade. Sean laid the last item gently aside, and remarked, "That'd kill _me_."

Then he dumped the whole mass of weapons out on the deck.

* * * * *

It was a very good collection of various Earth and Krak weapons. Besides diverse types of guns, powder, electric and air operated, there were blowguns of all lengths, complete with quivers of poison-dipped arrows. There were many weapons made by the Kraks, only one or two of which Sean recognized.

He picked up the little hand-gun that emitted the burning ray.

He trained it on the Krak's chest, nicked the little button wide open. Such power exploded a human being, instantly converting the moisture in his system to steam.

Klash stood there, impassive. Sean pumped a full round of bullets at the Krak from the high-powered rifle, then hurled himself on the floor to dodge the richocheting bullets. He got up, a rueful grin on his thin lips, and shot assorted poisonous darts through the blowguns.

The poison was sudden death to any earthly thing.

Klash was impassive.

Sean hefted a battle-ax that the Kraks apparently had filched from some museum. He walked up slowly toward Klash, the double-bitted ax swinging heavily in his hand.

Sean took a stance, spat on his palms, and swung the ax, unmindful that he ripped open the wound Ralk had made when he stopped him from moving toward Maureen.

The bright blade gleamed in the yellow light, the muscles, lean and sinewy across Sean's back rippled and tore his tunic across the back. The head of the ax hit Klash waist-high and bounced, flipping Sean to the deck. Klash rocked a little on his feet from the shock. That was all.

Sean, a desperate grin tightening his lips, threw the book at Klash--he tied the hemp rope about his neck and tried to strangle the Krak; he put the crowbar in Klash's mouth, tried to break the jaws; turned the blow torch against his chest. No response.

At long last, after he exhausted almost the complete roster of weapons, Sean looked thoughtfully at the grenade. Then he shook his head.

Sean walked up to Klash, stared up at his towering bulk. Klash looked down at him, impassive. Sean laughed then and hurled himself upward, lashing out with his bony fists at the Krak's neck and shoulders.

The impassivity vanished from Klash's face. It twisted, almost as if in pain, Sean thought, before the Earthman's senses were washed out in a rocking shock as one big fist lashed against the side of his head. The echo of his own laughter was the last sound he heard.

* * * * *

Sean still saw that strange look on Klash's face when he opened his eyes into the glaring yellow light. But the picture vanished as pain shuddered through his body.

Mike's voice worked its way through his pain.

"Mother of Erin, Sean, what did they do to you?"

"Uh," grunted Sean and moved to a sitting position against the wall and looked down at his body and legs. He was covered with bruises, yellow and red and blue and black, and each throbbed its own special melody of hurt.

"I don't know, Mike. I passed out when Klash hit me."

Mike said: "Old Doc Perkins said there isn't a square inch of your body that hasn't a bruise. What he can't figure is how you took such punishment without getting a bone broken."

"Hah," Sean tried to laugh through bruised lips. "Doc's wrong. They busted every bone in my body. Then they glued me together again." He paused.

"Mike, I found it."

"Sure, Sean," Mike put in gently. "You found it. That nice little pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Only it blew up in your face."

"No, Mike, I found that chink."

Mike gasped once, then sat there very quietly staring at the red-headed Sean.

Finally, he said, "Give me the solution."

"It's the bone from the shoulder to neck, Mike. That's the vulnerable part." He launched into a description of his hopeless task of trying to destroy Klash. "Then at the end, Mike, I jumped up and socked him in the neck and in that hollow in the shoulder.

"He winced, Mike, and I'll swear that he flinched in pain. Then he knocked me out."

"But how do you know it isn't the neck?"

"I told you I had that rope around his neck."

"Maybe he had a stomach ache or something that brought that look to his face."

"Holy Mother, Mike, if he'd eaten something that didn't agree with him, do you think he'd wait until then to feel painful?"

"Maybe it was the poison, Sean, just taking hold?"

"No, Mike, he grimaced just when my fist struck that bone. It was the first sign of pain during the whole time. That's got to be it, Mike. Kraks aren't invulnerable. They've just been careful not to let us find out."

"Why didn't they kill you then, when you found out?"

Sean shrugged the thought away. "Maybe Klash didn't tell them. Maybe it's just luck. I don't know. But I do know this, Mike, it's the first time that a Krak ever departed from that poker face."

Mike sat there, pessimism fighting with this new thread of hope.

"Okay," he said finally. "I guess we can try it, anyway. Though I don't think much of the idea. But it's a chance. And I sure would like to get Marcia back on earth."

"To meet Jane?" Sean asked quietly. Mike looked at him, almost like a boy caught with his hand in the jam jar.

It was some hours later, when Sean slapped the sandal against the palm of his hand and muttered:

"Sandals aren't much good as weapons, but they'll have to do." He looked at Mike and the other eleven men that the two of them had convinced, in whispers so that the audios would pick up only sounds and not the words of their plan.

Mike said: "He's due along here any minute now."

Sean nodded and slapped the sandal against the palm of his hand again.

* * * * *

Afar off at first it was, that curious scraping sound the thighs of Kraks make as they walk. The thirteen men tensed, their palms sweating against the leather soles of the sandals they gripped so tightly.

The excitement had deadened the pain of Sean's bruises and he was waiting just as tensely as the others.

The other Earth people packed into the huge cell were staring at them, some licking their lips, some with questions fighting through the despair in their eyes--all of them dejectedly looking.

The cry was in Sean's mind: Oh, to destroy their despair that they might see once more with eyes of hope!

The scrape-scrape came closer. It halted outside the heavy metal door. Smaller bits of metal rattled; then the door opened inward.

Sean, being closest to the opening portal, swung his sandal first. It made a curious spatting sound. Forgetful of the wrenching pain, he leaped, wrapped an arm around the Krak's neck and lashed out with the sandal again and again.

The Krak reached up one powerful arm, ripped the red-headed Earthman from his perch. The other dozen Earthmen leaped on him then, their sandals flailing.

Sean, flung against the wall, tried to move, but his muscles were tar and wouldn't respond. He watched the battle, trying desperately to move.

Of a sudden then, he was biting his lips, and tears of chagrin were blinding his eyes. For the Krak still towered there, impassive and invulnerable, smashing the Earthmen down with his huge fists. One of the thirteen, Bill Hawkins, lay on the deck of the prison, his head split open like a ruptured muskmelon.

Another moaned on the floor, helplessly trying to move both his broken arms. Mike fought to the last, but even his driving fists were stopped when the Krak pounded him on the side of the head and drove him to the floor.

The Krak looked around the prison room impassively, his bald head moving slowly, effortlessly.

Then he went out.

The tar that was his muscles finally set and Sean could move. He crawled to where Mike lay spread-eagled on the floor, took the black-topped head in his lap, rocked with it. "Oh, Mike, I'm sorry. I was so sure."

Tiny fists pounded on his bruised back. Sean started to turn. Then fingers were entwined in his red hair, yanking, bringing painful tears to his eyes.

"Get away from him, you beast." Sean saw tiny, blonde Marcia, her soft face twisted into harsh lines, pulling him away from Mike. He let Mike's head drop gently to the deck. Then he stood up. Instantly Marcia was beside Mike, touching him, talking to him softly.

Sean looked at Bill Hawkins lying dead there on the floor, the dark dead stuff smearing the polished surface. He looked at those others there. Despair was still there in their eyes, but something else, too.

They looked away from him, deliberately avoiding his eyes. The soft moaning of Jack Wilson turned him around.

"I'm sorry, Jack. It's my fault. I was so sure that was the vulnerable point."

Jack's pain-filled eyes looked down on his broken arms, then fastened on Sean.

"I wouldn't mind so much," Jack said through tight lips, "if it had worked." Then he looked away.

Sean turned to Mike and Marcia. Mike was sitting up now, shaking his head dazedly.

He saw Sean.

Mike said just one word before he stood up and walked away with Marcia.

The word was: "Satisfied?"

For the rest of the trip, Sean McKenna had plenty of room to stretch his body out. As if by pre-arranged signal, he was given a wide berth, and those Earth people near him constantly tried to keep their backs to him.

Impassively, the Kraks had come, and when they left, the body of Bill Hawkins went with them, leaving only that dark dried stain on the prison deck as a reminder. Perhaps it hadn't been deliberate, but the prisoners had made a lane through so that each time Sean McKenna lifted his harried green eyes he saw the spot where Hawkins had died.

Hawkins' death twisted at Sean's heart, but it was always overshadowed by his conviction that the Kraks were vulnerable. Sean's mind probed, trying to find the answer to why Klash, the huge Krak, had flinched when Sean's fists had struck him.

If ever he had seen pain, Sean swore to himself, it had been on Klash's face then. But what had caused it?

What had made an invulnerable Krak wince at the blows from an Earthman's fist?

* * * * *

There were no earthly words to describe Karrar, the home planet of the Kraks.

Karrar was Karrar--a stupendous planet, brooded over by a sullen sun, a land of harsh reds and blacks. Impassive it was--as indestructible as its spawn of Kraks.

They'd known when the landing had been made, for the Kraks, their blank faces rigid, had come into the prison room and roughly strapped a metal contrivance on the back of each Earth person, man, woman and child.

For such a sullen-looking planet, Sean decided, the weather was exceedingly cold, striking at his flesh and bones like tiny needles.

The Kraks herded the long line of humans through the airlock out onto the huge expanse of the space port. There were thousands of ship cradles, it seemed, and they were packed with other ships unloading their cargo. As far as his green eyes could see, Sean recognized only human beings--thousands of them moving single file out of the maws of the swollen Krak ships. Those files were converging at a huge gate at the far end of the port.

They looked, Sean thought, like long lines of ants moving toward their hill. Then he, too, was moving toward the same gate.

Perhaps only he, of those thousands, was different. For he was not squeezed into the line. The human ahead of him and the human behind were a good four feet from him, as if keeping as far from a carrier of the plague as possible.

Sean grinned wryly. He kept his eyes fixed ahead where black buildings shoved their coarse heavy structures against the lowering scarlet sky.

They moved through the mammoth portal at last, and finally Sean was swept into the mass of humans who clogged the way. They stumbled through the black block-paved streets and the few Kraks who were on the street gave those humans only cursory glances.

Nothing new to them, Sean thought grimly. And the urgency of his conviction that these Kraks could be destroyed put buoyancy in his step and set his mind to working frantically. He towered above the other humans around him, his flame-hair blazing like a torch.

A Krak saw that flame head. Sean didn't know it then, but he learned shortly.

Finally those thousands of humans were herded into an open-air compound, surrounded by heavy, black stone walls that lifted breathtakingly above them. Other humans were there, men bearded and filthy, women, even in their despair, trying to keep some semblance of beauty.

The clothes of these older prisoners were almost gone, only that metal contrivance on their backs shone brightly. Many of the children, even in the cold of Karrar, moved about listlessly, naked. Sean counted seven fist and kick fights going on in the compound as he entered.

Much of the decency of man had been destroyed by the Kraks; there seemed no joy, no laughter, no comradeship, only an all-pervading air of despair. That light of intelligence had left many a human's eyes in that inclosure to be replaced by a blank stare.

* * * * *

Sean shuddered a little, and the wry twist came to his mouth. Somehow, he thought, and the coldness of the thought was like a knife of chilled steel, the Kraks must be destroyed and punished for this terrible blow to the dignity of man.

The cold hand of a Krak on his shoulder roused him from his bitter thoughts. He followed the Krak, wonderingly.