Part 1

SWORD OF FIRE

By EMMETT McDOWELL

Jupiter Jones, naked and helpless in the slime of that vile world, cursed the space warp that had flung him down among its groveling mutants. For their rising, excited whispers proclaimed him a knight in shining armor--the bright weapon in his hands their only hope against the terrible octopods!

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Winter 1949. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

The Mizar, a glittering needle with stubby, backswept wings, hurtled out of deep space, arced into orbital flight a thousand kilometers above the surface of the planet. The starship had approached from the night side. Now, as it decelerated rapidly, it flashed into the raw orange daylight of the planet's K1 type sun, angled downward into the stratosphere.

Inside the Mizar's control blister, Jupiter Jones lifted red-rimmed eyes to the fuel gauge. It showed only a few centigrams left. Little more than enough to land.

He swore under his breath, hunched lower over the controls, a long, loose-framed man with a shock of red hair and vivid green eyes. The olive uniform of the Galactic Colonization Board was wrinkled as if it had been slept in, and he had allowed his beard to grow. The bushy orange-red mass of it hid his face almost to the eyes.

He was alone in the ship. He'd been alone, operating the Mizar single-handed since Briggs, his co-pilot, had gone crazy and killed himself.

It had been a damned inconsiderate thing for Briggs to do, Jones felt. Not that he could altogether blame the co-pilot.

They had blundered into a space warp beyond Alpha Centaurus. The Mizar had been flung into an uncharted region of the cosmos, hundreds, perhaps thousands of parsecs from Sol. Hopelessly lost, the chance of ever finding their way back to Earth had been slimmer than trying to locate one certain atom of oxygen in Earth's envelope of air. Briggs had cracked under the strain.

When the co-pilot had failed to relieve him at the end of his watch, Jupiter Jones had switched the controls over to "George," the robot pilot, and had gone in search of him. He'd found Briggs dead in his bunk. An analysis of his stomach had revealed that he'd taken cyanide. There had been no note. Nothing.

He had recorded the tragedy in the log along with a biting opinion of the Psychiatric Board for allowing a man with a flaw in his psychosis to be assigned to advance exploration. Then he'd heaved the body out the refuse port.

Well, he was still lost, Jupiter Jones reflected savagely. Fortunately though, he'd discovered this huge K1 type sun with its system of seven planets while he still had fuel enough to reach it.

Spectroscopic observations had revealed that the second planet possessed an atmosphere high in oxygen and showing traces of water vapor. It was a small world about the size of Mars and uncomfortably close to its flaming orange sun, but it had been his only bet.

He glanced obliquely at the fuel gauge again. His lips thinned, and he dropped his eyes to the scanner.

Immediately, the surface seemed to bounce up at him. Dense jungles. The sheen of an inland sea. The terrain flowed past like an immense relief map.

Then he saw the city.

* * * * *

It rose at the edge of the sea, all turrets and spires and battlements like a walled medieval town. He caught a glimpse of quays with ships warped against them, of cultivated fields like a vast checkerboard. Then the Mizar had flashed past. The city seemed to dwindle and vanish, only the sparkle of orange sunlight on the spires lingering an instant longer.

Jupiter Jones blew out his breath. His first reaction had been to swing the Mizar around, but caution prevailed. He was too old a hand at Galactic exploration to burst unannounced on an alien culture.

The terrain below had been growing progressively rougher. Just ahead a range of mountains reared saw-edged peaks into the clouds. He nursed the Mizar along until the gorges fell away beneath him like blue-green troughs. There was no sign of habitation anywhere.

He braked and banked, spiraling lower and lower, dropping into a deep valley with a river cutting through it like a silver thread. At the last moment, he frantically buckled himself down and cut in "George".

Flame bellowed around the Mizar as the automatic landing jets burst into life. With a fierce crackling roar the star ship sliced through the tangled vegetation, came to rest a hundred meters from the river.

Jupiter Jones threw off the safety straps, stood up, feeling a tingle of excitement take hold of him.

He was down, the ship resting on the crust of a strange world. A world that might well be his home for the rest of his natural life.

It was a dismaying thought.

With gravity dragging at his feet once more, he moved to the transparent rind of the thermoplas blister and stared out.

The landing jets had charred a huge swathe in the vegetation, charred it to the finest ash and baked the ground like brick, leaving a wall of jungle hemming the ship in.

Nothing moved.

He flicked on the outside amplifiers, but the silence was tomb-like. The thunder of his descent must have frightened off all the wild life.

He was conscious of a cumulative weariness like an ache. Experience had taught him the necessity of being fresh before venturing into an alien environment. He entered his landing in the log, switched on the electronic alarm.

"Let 'George' keep watch," he thought. "George's" senses were keener than any human's, and "George" could be depended on!

With a last glance at the dark mass of jungle, he climbed down the ladder to the cabin, flung himself into his bunk.

He was awakened by the wild ringing of the alarm bell.

* * * * *

Jupiter Jones sprang from his bunk. It seemed as if his head had barely touched the pillow; but as he yanked himself through the well to the control blister above, he saw that night had fallen.

The bluish pallor of the riding lights illuminated the instruments. Through the skin of the blister, he could see the black vault of the heavens sparkling with unfamiliar constellations. But that was all. The Mizar, itself, seemed to be lying in a vale of tar-like darkness.

The clamor of the bell never abated. It drowned out any sound that might be coming through the amplifiers.

He shut it off. As the ringing fell silent, he could hear coughing grunts. The hair on the nape of his neck rose like the hackles of a dog and he switched on the floodlights.

Instantly the burn blazed with a fierce white illumination. He caught a glimpse of a dozen startled figures at the edge of the jungle!

They were human--in shape at least--tall, kilted men with long red hair and copper colored features. Blinded by the light they stood in postures of frozen surprise.

Staring out from the darkened blister, Jupiter Jones thought he'd never seen such feral savagery as was reflected in their expressions. Like--like mad wolves! They were armed with bows. Swords dangled from harness over their backs. Two of them carried a litter.

A frown clouded Jupiter's face.

The litter-bearers belonged to a different race. They were squat, naked, powerful brutes, their slick hides tinged a greenish cast. But it wasn't altogether that. The pair had a passive, resigned look like oxen.

Like the beasts of burden they appeared to be, he thought. Probably a slave race. Then his whole attention was focused on the fantastic creature in the litter.

It was no bigger than a large monkey. Eight spidery arms sprouted from its grotesque body which was covered with a glittering purple shell like a huge mollusk. Jupiter Jones noted these details almost before the creatures recovered from their surprise at the blinding light. His first impression of the purple-shelled octopod in the litter had been that it must be a captive.

Then the octopod raised a silver tube to an orifice in its head, blew a single, piercing note.

The two slate-green porters wheeled and bore the thing off into the jungle. The half dozen naked, copper-skinned warriors followed hard on their heels for all the world like a pack of fox hounds.

He wiped the sweat from his forehead.

Lord, he thought; what was that thing? Could it have been the dominant life form?

He switched out the floodlights, reset the alarm. His first exultation at finding a habitable and inhabited world began to give way to a gnawing distrust.

Suddenly the darkness appeared malignant, concealing hosts of savage brute-men, unguessable horrors. There was the feel of movement out there. He heard something grunt and thrash in the underbrush followed by a squealing noise like a stuck pig.

He shivered, glanced at the photo-electric chronometer.

The sun had set at nine hours, Earth time, he saw. It was fifteen o'clock now. He had ascertained the rotation of the planet while still out in space and knew it wouldn't be light for three hours yet.

He set himself to the task that had occupied him during every leisure moment since the warp had hurled the Mizar beyond the known regions of space--charting the stars in an effort to locate himself.

But he couldn't concentrate. He kept listening subconsciously for any untoward sound of the world outside.

* * * * *

His real name was Jones RV860-09-34271. The Jupiter had been pinned on because he had been marooned once on that planet for three months and had lived to tell about it.

There were two things which Jupiter especially didn't like. He didn't like men; and he didn't like women.

He prided himself on being self-sufficient and tough--and he was tough, morally tough, and physically and intellectually tough. He had grown up in the stews of Venusport, fending for himself since the age of nine. Because he'd never seen the stars, he'd had one consuming ambition--to go to space.

He had studied, worked and fought his way through the Galactic Colonization Board's Institute of Technology. The Institute was a hard school. The men of the advance exploratory units, the special corpsmen, had to be well versed in all sciences from astro-physics to zoomorphology.

No one had believed that Jupiter could make it. Briggs, who had been an upper classman, had ridden him unmercifully. All of which had merely crystallized his determination. In the end he'd graduated with top honors.

It was the same sort of determination that sustained him at this moment.

Jupiter had long since reached the dismaying conclusion that the Mizar had been swept entirely beyond the local system, even beyond any of the adjacent star clusters. That was the final straw that had caused Briggs to crack.

At the thought of Briggs, Jupiter Jones spat into the waste chute and arranged his lank frame before the powerful electronic telescope with which all the ships of advance exploration were equipped. But he didn't use it right away. Instead, he gazed upward at the star-encrusted heavens.

The milky way, he saw, began down near the horizon, though it climbed less than a third of the way up into the sky. The rest of that tremendous path was blotted out by an inky blackness.

He tugged at his beard. There was something familiar about that black pall, and he turned to the star charts again.

Sure enough the "rift", a dark nebula, split the milky way from the constellations of Centaurus to Cygnus!

He must be very close to it, perhaps within a few light years, for it to blot out so much of the super galaxy. But was it the same one? There were hundreds of these dark nebulae. And even if it was, on what side of it was he in relation to Earth?

His elation slowly ebbed.

Pulling out his notes, he recommenced the endless task of mapping the universe. He kept hard at it until the giant orange sun had suffused the sky with a saffron light, blotting out the stars.

The Mizar was only one of many such units probing the local star system in search of habitable worlds. Their role in the long Galactic Colonization plan was to make a superficial examination: vegetation, atmosphere, dominant life form if any and report their findings. Later, depending on the reports of these advance units, the real exploration by staffs of specialists commenced.

Although Jupiter was sure the planet was too many light years off ever to be colonized, he entered the composition of the air in the log from force of habit.

He broke out the emergency pack, selected a semi-automatic carbine from the Mizar's arsenal. He added electroscope, geiger counter, ultra violet ray lamp and prospecting tools to the load. If he ever were to lift the Mizar from the surface again, he must find a deposit of uranium or thorium bearing minerals.

Then he shaved off his great red beard, revealing a hard face, bold featured with a wide, thin-lipped mouth. He slung the load to his shoulders, opened the main port.

A strong saffron sunlight beat into his eyes as he let himself to the ground. He stood still a moment, feeling the dirt press against the soles of his feet, examining the blank hostile wall of jungle, tasting the moist warm air.

Bird-like creatures flitted through the foliage. The vegetation looked mesozoic with its great pulpy stems and fern-like fronds. One of the bird things sailed overhead. It was apple green and appeared as if it might be some freakish symbiosis of plant and animal.

Damn Briggs, he thought for the hundredth time. It was suicidal to attempt the exploration of a strange world alone!

II

Jupiter started cautiously for the river, his feet kicking up little puffs of the powdery ash left by the jets. When he reached the jungle, he halted again, unpleasant memories of the cannibal plants of Sirius III in the back of his mind. Then, setting his jaw, he forged ahead.

It was hot and green in the jungle. Sweat coursed down his face, plastered his tunic to his back.

He had gone less than thirty meters when he broke into a well traveled trail paralleling the river.

Jupiter Jones' nostrils flared. He came to an abrupt halt. Although he wasn't yet thirty-five, he was known as an old man in the special corps. He had survived partly because of an instinct of danger that was almost psychic.

He sensed it now in the sudden dryness of his mouth, the hammering of his heart as his adrenal glands surcharged his blood. Then away in the distance, he heard the winding of a horn!

At least, it sounded like a horn. His hands tightened about the carbine and he held his breath. But though he listened for some time, the sound wasn't repeated.

Gradually, the valley narrowed. Tall cliffs towered above him like the jaws of a vise. He had gone about five miles, the limit he had set himself for the first day, when he caught the sound of splashing mingled with laughter.

He stopped in midstride, his nerves atingle. The sounds went on punctuated by giggling screams. He slid the safety off the carbine, crept forward.

A hundred meters upstream the jungle on the opposite bank gave way to meadows that swelled up to meet the talus at the foot of a towering thousand foot cliff.

Where the meadow dipped down to the stream there was a little gravel beach, and a band of women and children were splashing in the shallow water.

Jupiter stood stock still, peering out from the forest like a tiger.

The women were tall, brown-skinned, their hair wet and glistening like seals. Naked children squealed and played among the pebbles of the beach.

His glance strayed beyond them to the cliffs, which were pitted by cave mouths, broken by ledges. He could distinguish the figures of men and women in breechclouts and skins clinging to the face of the rock like flies.

These people had neither the brutish look of the green-skinned slaves he'd seen last night, nor yet the ferocity of the warriors. He felt the hot sluggish breeze shift, blowing from him towards the bathers.

Instantly, the women were thrown into a panic. Those with children snatched them up, and the whole pack broke from the water, fled screaming towards the cliffs!

Jupiter Jones narrowed his eyes in alarm. Their sense of smell must be keen as a hound's! He could see the males leaping down the cliffs, brandishing clubs. It reminded him of a disturbed colony of baboons he'd seen once. Gad, but he'd stirred up a hornet's nest! He began to back warily from the river bank.

* * * * *

There was a grunt behind him; a branch snapped. He tried to whirl around, bringing up his carbine. A pair of arms wrapped around him, seized him in a crushing grip!

Shock closed Jupiter's throat. He twisted, wrenched frantically.

The arms tightened like steel cables. There were more grunts, triumphant shouts, the crashing of underbrush.

Across the river the caveman had come to a halt. Then suddenly he saw them turn and flee, scampering up the cliffs like terrified monkeys, tearing at each other in their efforts to get away from the thing that had him in its grip.

Jupiter Jones was a powerful man--doubly so on this planet of mild gravity. Furthermore he'd been in too many tight scrapes to be overly bothered with scruples.

Recovering from his first shock, he twisted the carbine over his shoulder until he felt the muzzle prod into flesh and pulled the trigger.

The flat vicious "craack!" of the rifle slapped back from the cliffs. The arms relaxed. He wrenched himself free, spun around.

One glance told him these were the lean red-haired savages he'd seen last night. He was already pulling the trigger as he recognized them. The shot knocked the nearest brute off his feet.

The others hesitated, ringing him in like a pack of wolves. Down the trail, the two green tinted porters stood nervously, the litter perched atop their shoulders.

The glittering purple-shelled octopod was sitting bolt upright in the litter. At this distance it looked like a huge snail--an obese snail that has grown out of its shell. Perched on one of its tentacles was a kite-like thing.

Jupiter jerked the gun around. But at that moment the purple-shelled monstrosity tossed the kite-thing into the air where it spread enormous membrane wings.

With a shock, he realized that the kite was alive--a huge, flying, web-like bird!

He put a bullet through it. But if the shot had the least effect, it wasn't apparent. The creature swooped at him suddenly like a hawk dropping on a rabbit.

He shot again, then tried to hurl himself aside, but the pack hampered his movements. One moist wing snared him, slapped around him like wet rubber. He twisted, squirmed, toppled to the ground, rolling over and over.

The other wing lapped around him, binding his arms to his side, squeezing, squeezing.

The pain was intolerable.

As if from a distance, he could hear shouting. The savages had closed around him, snarling, baying triumphantly like hounds at the kill, but he was only dimly conscious of them.

The octopod on the litter put a silver tube to its mouth. A loud mourning note wound through the jungle.

The horn! It was the horn he'd heard earlier. It was also the last sound that he heard, for the terrible constriction never relaxed. Blackness welled up suddenly behind his eyes, blotted out everything.

* * * * *

When Jupiter Jones struggled back to consciousness, he was lying in a cage like a wild animal.

The realization shocked him.

The cage, he saw, was about two and a half meters long, very narrow and barely high enough for him to sit up in. It was only one of a whole row of such cages, and they were all occupied by men and women like himself.

His gun was gone. His pack, even his clothes had been taken away from him. He grasped one of the bars, pulled himself to a sitting posture. His neck felt stiff and for a moment his head swam dizzily. Then the scene jarred into focus.

Afternoon sunlight overlaid everything like an angry orange wash. Striped tents had been pitched along the river bank. Four of the purple-shelled octopods squatted about a cloth spread on the ground beneath the largest pavilion.

Its sides had been raised to permit the free flow of air, and he could see the creatures plucking food from strange vessels and goblets with their snakey tentacles.

All about the tents green men and copper-skinned hunters milled in a senseless jostling confusion like a circus breaking its stand.

Suddenly, his eyes narrowed. The octopods were being waited on by a hairless pink-skinned species of human. That made four distinct races he'd observed since landing. He ticked them off on his fingers--the cave people, the red-haired fighting men, the green and stolid porters. Now these bald, hairless white slugs of men.

The white men were doing most of the work, herding the porters about, packing chop boxes. Jupiter frowned. An odd little protuberance, he discovered, sprouted from the backs of all their necks.

The protuberances varied in size, some no larger than a small snail shell, others as big as a tangerine. They were plum-colored and looked as if they were made of horn. What the devil could the things be?

He shifted his eyes to a lank, coppery fighting man and saw that he bore one of the things on the back of his neck also. They all did, he realized with a sudden dryness of mouth.

All along he'd been aware vaguely of the stiffness in his spine. With a thrill of alarm, he felt the back of his neck, touched a knob-like thing just below the base of his skull.

The shock of the discovery left him sick at his stomach.

He examined it gently with his finger tips. It was small, hard. He had the uncomfortable conviction that it was alive, feeding off of him like a leech.

He tugged at it, but it was firmly anchored, the flesh about it quite numb. In panic he tried to twist it off.

Instantly a blinding flash of pain seared through him like acid tingling out to the very tips of his fingers. He pitched forward, cracked his head on the bars of his cage, slid to a prone position.

For moments he lay there unable to lift a finger although his brain was clear, lucid. It was as if the thing had perceived his intention and had paralyzed the voluntary motor centers of his brain!

* * * * *

With mounting horror, Jones realized that the mollusk-like organism must be fastened directly to his spinal cord. He had best not meddle with it again until he learned more about it.

"_Za'min--car?_" he heard a voice say behind him.

He sat up, looked around, realized with a start that the paralysis was gone, leaving no appreciable ill effects.

There was a girl in the next cage watching him out of wide yellow eyes. She was one of the cave people, he recognized with a scowl of suspicion. It was impossible to mistake the air of wildness about her--like a caged leopard.

She was quite naked, crouching in her cell with her uncombed black hair hanging down to her sturdy brown shoulders.

"Za'min--car?" she repeated.

He shook his head. What the devil was the girl driving at?

She looked puzzled then touched her breast, said: "Lete."

"Lady?"

"Lete--Lete--Lete," she insisted, jabbing herself in the chest each time.

She had small flashing white teeth, a pretty face, brown as sepia. In fact she was sepia all over, a warm rich tint that made Jupiter Jones uncomfortably conscious of the fish-belly whiteness of his own skin.

But it was her eyes that caught his interest. The iris was large, yellow, flecked with green like a cat's eye. The pupil wasn't round but a narrow slit.

He wondered if Lete was her name or the name of her tribe or what. He pointed at another captive, said:

"Lete?"

The girl revolved her right shoulder with an impatient gesture that fascinated him.

"Io. Io. Ca'min 'Kagan'!" she said, or so the words sounded. Then she touched her breast. "Na'min 'Lete'."