Part 2

There _was_ something. Crazy words about a man who would come with stars in his hands, who would unite all Klarn, _dulars_ and _mekniks_ and Darksiders alike, who would bring them the blessings of the Machine, and lead them to greatness. But such a man must be a giant. Stars in his hands! Flane grunted disbelief.

There came to Vawdar that false strength that some experience before death. He said strongly, "The key is lost, Flane. It may never be found. In certain records that your moth--the Princess Gleya, rather--kept, there was mention of it. She never knew, apparently. When the Keeper disappeared so long ago, he had the key with him.

"If you can find the Keeper, he will have the key. Search, Flane, Search!"

The man stiffened, opened his mouth wide for air.

Flane said softly, "But what is the key like? Is it big? Small? Is--"

Flane opened his eyes wide and put out a hand. The flesh he touched was yet warm, but--

He sat on his haunches for long minutes, numb. The key was gone now. Only Vawdar knew what it was like, and he could never tell.

Flane buried him beneath a hillock of sand, with flat stones from a small mesa to mark the spot. Weary, Flane stood and stared at the grave, quiet with grief. He had buried the hope of all Klarn here in this lonely spot. Without Vawdar, the Klarnva were a lost race.

Light glimmered on the horizon. Flane stared at it uncomprehendingly, a still, lean figure leaning on a sword.

II

For many days, Flane rode across the desert. This was the Barrenland out here, uncharted, unexplored. For a thousand miles, the dun sands flung their sheathing blanket over the earth. Only here and there was anything other than this deadly sand: a rocky escarpment, or a stone plateau with dry weeds blowing in the breeze. And the rock was as dead as the sand.

A man could die easily out here, from thirst or hunger, or the terrible heat. When he was two days on an aimless trail, Flane found water bubbling under a lip of rock; that gave him strength to run down a sand-hare and spit it with his blade. After that it was much the same, for the hares abounded, and there was always Flane's deep spring.

The _megathon_ ate the sparse weeds, and thrived. Flane shared the cool water with him, and rubbed him down nightly after stripping off the ornate saddle and blanket. Together, they roved the Barrenland, always learning. Affection born of the great still places of a world grew between them, as it will wherever there are planets that bear diverse forms of life.

On the roan's back, Flane ranged far and wide. He came to know the vermilion sunset coating the sand in blood and the sunrise tinting it with gold. In the saddle he stared at strange ruins poking above the hiding sands, puzzled and wondering. He discovered olden roads beneath scudding dust, and queer little beasts who scampered from his shining sword.

Mount and rider grew lean and hard. Flane lost track of the days, being too concerned with keeping soul fastened to his body to care much about anything else; though often he sat and brooded on the lost key to the Machine.

And over the fires that he made from weed-roots at the entrance to his little cave, he thought of the girl with the flaming hair. Her features nestled there amid the darting flames, eyes wide and searching as they met his, her mouth seeming to yearn toward him. Occasionally he would bury his face in his hands, and shudder.

Then came the morning when he filled his flagons with springwater, and walked toward the roan _megathon_. Holding the beast's head on his shoulder, he stroked the satiny jaw and pulled the short ears.

"We rot here, Saarl," he whispered, looking out across the desert. "We could die as well by riding forward to seek our fate."

The _megathon_ tossed its shapely head and whinnied.

Flane grinned and hit his heavily muscled shoulder lightly. He threw blanket and saddle on him, and buckled the cinch. Swinging upward, he kicked a heel into Saarl's ribs.

Flane found the going not too difficult. The months they had spent at the cave inured them to the mad sun, and to little water. And Flane already knew the signs that meant the sand-hares were about. They rode on and on, into the sea of sand, week after week.

It was the stallion that first sensed the thing in the distance. He stood with nostrils flaring, head up, looking to the west. Flane rose in his stirrups, staring. There was something yellow and sparkling there, with something else twisted and caught around it.

"Let's go see, Saarl," he whispered, and let the roan run.

They circled the spaceship warily, the _megathon_ stepping on dainty hooves, alert to fly. Flane had a hand on his sword-hilt, but when his eyes beheld the evidence of years that had dwelt here a while and gone away, he relaxed.

When they were closer to the ship, Flane saw the gigantic prism, and awareness came upon him.

"It's the Great Prism," he told the animal, in awe. "We always thought it half a legend, though the Princess assured me that it was real. But, without the Machine, there were none who dared to seek it, for only a few knew the way that led here."

* * * * *

Flane walked on foot around it. Built of sheets of glass, fitted and joined together with the cunning of a master scientist, it glowed like amber fire in the blaze of the sun. Though it nearly blinded him, Flane went nearer and stared down through the sheets of glass, into the interior. He saw great whitish globes standing on coiled springs, and where the whiteness was, was a glowing fire that looked like the heart of the sun.

Flane rubbed his eyeballs, turning away.

The rusted hull of the spaceship lured him. His gaze found a burst-open section and he peered within. Backing out, he stared from prism to ship, and back again.

"This fell from the sky," he mused, in the manner of men long used to their own company. "It broke the prism, and--"

Flane gasped.

Could it be that this had something to do with the stopping of the Machine? But no, no. In that event, there would be no need for a key to operate the Machine. Yet deep inside him, Flane thought that this tragedy might have to blame itself for what had happened to the Klarnva. Somehow, at least.

Nimbly he went inside the ship and walked its metal floor. Here was wonder piled upon wonder. This vessel was a city-state all by itself. In the domed ceilings were lights, and in the rooms he passed were machines, many and varied, strange. The lights and the machines were dead. Had they been alive, it would have been even more miraculous to Flane, for he had been brought up in a world where everything that moved by motor depended upon the Machine. Curious, he went and ran his hands over the smooth sides of the things he saw.

Do they, too, lie quiet because the Machine is dead? he puzzled. Yet this thing that must have come out of the sky in this deserted place was not like the magniships that the Klarnva had. It could not depend on the Machine. No. It must have power of its own.

Elated, he ran from chamber to chamber, until he stood in a small room with compressed quartz for windows. Dust was piled thickly on floor and bench, and there were two queerly human heaps of dust sprawled on the floor. Flane felt that he stood in the presence of a very great sorrow.

Childlike, he searched throughout the ship. In a drawer he found pictures on paper, pictures far more lifelike than the paintings that hung in the Museum of Art back in Klarn. He held the photographs to the light, and gasped.

_He was in that picture!_

Flane felt faint, staring at himself. It was he, it was. The tall man, lean and dark, with black hair was Flane. He was not mistaken. But the garments the man wore were so odd! And the woman beside him, with the tiny baby in her arms--Flane was positive he did not know her.

Flane sat down to riddle himself the question.

He remembered now that all his life he had been a little different from the Klarnva. Where they were dull and apathetic, he was bursting with vigour. Curious he had ever been, to the dismay of the Princess Gleya. Often he was wont to take apart the various machines that the Klarnva owned; dead machines they were, but exasperating to Flane, who wondered why they did not work. In those days, he had not understood about the Machine. He recalled now that Vawdar had said once to the Princess, "It is his heritage. The space-wanderers' blood is in his veins." That used to fret him, but now--

Now he understood. That man was his father, and that woman, his true mother. The hate of the Klarnva for him, that expressed itself when the _mekniks_ spoke of him among themselves, was explained. He was brood of those who had smashed the prism. And, possibly, the Machine. They beheld Flane, a living monument to The Catastrophe, always before their eyes. Flane chuckled, understanding.

He stood up. If these were his people, then he was home. And, if this were his home, he should know all he could of it.

His search of the ship was thorough, and it took five days. Some of that time he spent in the saddle, for he had to eat, and there was always the problem of water. On the third day he solved that problem. He discovered hermetically-sealed tanks deep in the bowels of the ship, and when he learned that they held water, his respect for his race zoomed skyward. The water was warm, but it was pure.

At last he chanced upon a room that was filled with fascination. From floor to ceiling, it housed machines. He spent hours over them, pondering. They were different from the machines of the Klarnva, for all of their machines had tiny globes atop them. These had no globes. They had wires connecting them to the walls. Eventually he realized that their sources of power were dissimilar.

If only he could learn the power of these people! The thought buoyed him like a drug. After two days spent in the room, he was dispirited. Whatever power the space-wanderers used was as dead as the Machine.

Flane swore and heaved a wrench at a wall.

The wall opened.

Something tumbled out, and from the mouth of it a purple flame sizzled and burned, and ate away the wall and the wall beyond that.

Flane yelped and sprang. He stared in numb horror until he saw the button on the thing, a button as obvious as a trigger. He crept close, pressed it, and the violet flame stopped.

Flane shook for minutes, kneeling on the metal floor with the deadly thing in his hands.

* * * * *

He knew nothing of atomic power, did Flane, but the quick mind of him was alert to the power he held in his palms. Tentatively he pressed the button again, directed the lavender fire, watched it eat up whatever stood in its path.

"This is a weapon that is a weapon," he breathed, patting its shining sides, his eyes dancing. With this in his hands, he could remake a world.

Where the violet flame had been was an empty hole. Flane stared into it, seeing twisted girders and gaping hullsides, and black sands below. That was the desert, down there, and--

Something gleamed whitely beneath him. Stretching far out, he scrutinized it. A skeleton lay there, blasted into fragments, scattered apart. At one time that had been a man. From his position, Flane thought that the spaceship must have killed him; caught him on the sands, and crushed him, throwing his body.

Something else shone and glittered down in the sands. Something long and bright, and with darkness at one end, although that darkness glittered.

Flane gasped, "A sword!"

He dropped from girder to girder until he stood in the darkness, bending and lifting the thing. In his hand the blade made a singing play, humming vibrantly. The blade was coated with runes, and figures carved in a delicate frieze in the steel. A craftsman had made that blade, ornamenting it without weakening it. With a big hand on the hilt, Flane danced it before him.

The hilt was a dark blue, like a midnight sky. Set inside the translucent, crystalline stuff were seven tiny globules of light that glittered eerily. Five of them formed a star at the guard, and the other two were embedded in the pronged pommel. They made a queer design, and reminded Flane of a constellation he could see at night from Klarn.

Saarl whinnied alarm somewhere outside.

Flane sprang for the girders, sword in belt. He went up the twisted steel, hand over hand, and ran for the opening in the hull, snatching up the flame-weapon as he ran.

A magniship was coming from the south.

The only known mechanism that did not need the Machine to function was the magniship. It, too, was a discovery of the ancient genius, Norda. It utilized the polar magnetism that held the planet in its grip; the red balls that endlessly circled the rim of the ship drew on that stream of magnetism for its power, sent it toward the motors deep in the hull which whirled the propellors.

Flane tightened his hands on the gun and waited, watching through thin-slitted eyes as the ship altered course, observing the great wreck. He thought, _with this in my hands, I could destroy that ship_. The knowledge made him feel like a god.

Saarl nuzzled his back as he stood on the sand, watching men walk toward him.

"Are you suspicious, too, Saarl?" he whispered. "We are alone, you and I. The Klarnva ran us out of Klarn, and there are no others that we know. It is best to be careful."

He threw up a palm, calling out, "Stand where you are. You can come no closer."

A tall man threw back the hood of his cloak and scowled at him.

"You talk big for a man who dwells in a ruined house."

Flane spat, saying, "This is no house, fool. It is a ship that came from the sky. I talk big because I am big. I bear death in my palms."

The tall man looked interested. Flane saw him study the gun, then look toward the prism and the ship twisted around it. The man looked back at him.

"I would search your house, or ship, or whatever it is."

Flane shook his head.

"Step no closer or the colour that sizzles and eats everything in its path will come out to sear you."

The thin man beckoned and the men with him shed their black cloaks and came for Flane with naked swords in their hands. Flane grinned as they ran toward him. He lifted the gun and aimed it at the cloaks that lay on the sand.

The violet light came forth from the gun and stole all around the black cloaks that lay on the sand, and ate them up. It ate up some of the sand, too.

* * * * *

The men skidded to a halt in the sand, staring; beneath their white faces was the pallor of fear. Flane said softly, "Go back to your ship and be grateful to Flane. If I had wanted, I could have aimed the gun at _you_."

The tall man started; he stared at Flane with his dark eyes, as though absorbing his every feature.

He said, "Are you Flane in truth? The Flane who fled from Klarn with Vawdar?"

"I am that Flane."

"And Vawdar? What of him? Did he give you the key to the Machine?"

"Vawdar died. He said the key was lost, which we knew; but he also said it was not what we think it is, that key."

"I am searching for that key, even now. If I do not find it, the Darksiders will overrun Moornal. I am overlord of Moornal. My name is Harth."

A flame leaped inside Flane, for he thought of the girl with hair like dancing fire, red as the desert sunset. But months of wandering on the desert made him taciturn and suspicious.

"How do I know this? You may be a _meknik_ for all you can prove. And I have learned that the _mekniks_ do not approve of me."

Harth chuckled.

"So I have heard. But, about that weapon of yours. I would like to use it. It would be a wondrous thing against the Darksiders. They would never capture Moornal if I had that."

"The weapon is mine. Forget it."

"You are of Klarn, man. In this time of need, you must use that weapon to save your people!"

"I am no Klarnvan. The blood of the space-wanderers is in my veins. I am son to those who lie in the big ship. I owe loyalty to none but them and Saarl--and a girl with red hair."

Harth opened his eyes very wide at that. He grinned, and turned to look at the magniship. He shouted, "Aevlyn!"

Flane backed against Saarl, ready for attack from the ship. But all he saw there was someone in a white cloak come through a doorway and stand at the rail, staring over the sands toward them. It was a girl--a girl with hair as red as the sinking sun, who looked at him and laughed and waved a white arm.

* * * * *

She was here at last, at arm's length, laughing. The others stayed at bay, eyeing the flame-gun in the crook of Flane's arm, but the girl walked toward him, calling out, "Flane! You got away that night!"

He touched her hands with his, gently, and chuckled. "You are real, then. There were times since then that I thought you something my brain made up in the fury of battle. Real. You are real."

"Of course, I'm real! And alive, too--though how much longer I'll be alive, I don't know. Flane, the Darksiders are grown bold. They attack in the daytime, now. They kill our--my people. No one has learned the key to the Machine. Without it, the Klarnva will perish."

Flane patted the gun, grinning, "With this, the Darksiders will be no threat. Just a few blasts of the violet light, and they will run for shelter."

He told her how he found it. When he concluded, he discovered that the others had come nearer, listening in amazement. But as they made no hostile gestures, Flane did not worry. He was once again with Aevlyn.

"You must come on board the ship," she told him, walking toward the spaceship with him. "You can hold the Darksiders off while the others continue their search for the key."

Flane showed her around the great vessel, pointing out the machines that worked through some energy other than the Machine. He dropped into the hole in the ship and reappeared with an elaborately carved scabbard into which he slipped the darkly hilted sword.

"What a strangely beautiful weapon," she said when he showed it to her.

They studied the runes engraved on the blade, which told in frieze form the tale of Norda the genius, of how he and the Klarnva came first to the planet, of their struggles with the Darksiders, and the erections of the city-states, and the building of the Machine. With a long fingernail, Aevlyn traced the outlines of the tiny forms on the blade.

"They stand out from the shaft," she said slowly.

Flane held it to the light that filtered through a cracked window. His eye went along the keen edge.

"It forms a diamond shape through the middle. If we were to break it clean, those friezes would form the outer edges of the diamond, and the two sword-edges, the upper and lower points."

Flane shook his head wonderingly, staring at the blue hilt of the sword. Glitterings like the sky at night stared back at him, the buried points of light in the haft winking and twinkling like stars. Like a beam of silver light, the blade sprang from the star-shaped guard, a shimmer of deadly steel.

"A sword like this would be famous," he muttered. "People would talk of it. And yet--and yet I have never heard of any such a sword."

"Nor have I," sighed red Aevlyn.

* * * * *

Harth waited for them outside the spaceship, to walk with them across the sands toward the magniship. As they went, Flane whistled to Saarl, and drew his reins under his arm. The _megathon_ trotted daintily at his heels.

Energy surged in Flane's chest, lifting it; like a great wave elevating itself in a concave greenness lipped with foam-bubbles, it grew in him. Here before him was a task: To fight the Darksiders. No longer would his life be a goalless ramble across desert sands. Instead he had a people who would be like brothers to him, who was an orphan. He stood a moment, staring at the monument of his own folk, watching sunlight dapple the silvern hull of the spaceship.

Then he turned his face to the magniship and went up the ladder. He saw that Saarl was stabled below decks, and walked with Aevlyn toward the master-cabin.

Here Harth awaited him with maps and charts.

"I want to show you how bold the Darksiders have become," said the Klarnvan. "Here is Moornal, southernmost of all the city-states of the Klarn. Beyond Moornal rise a chain of mountains. In those mountains, and in the plains beyond them, dwell the Darksiders."

"I have never seen a Darksider," said Flane slowly. "I don't know much about them."

Harth said bitterly, "Klarn itself is too centralized to be aware of their threat. But we of Moornal and Yeelya--we know! We rim their perimeter. Us they raid on their fleet _megathons_, stealing our horses and our women. With lance and arrow they come, shouting _O jho! O jho!_ which is their warcry."

"They are a nomad race," said Aevlyn, seated on a stool of carved _yxon_. "They live in tents that collapse to fit the backs of their pack _megathons_. They can cross miles of country in a day, so that we never find them in the same spot. Some of their men are master craftsmen. They make lances and bows that we marvel at; we marvel, too, at their skill with them."

Harth said, "I have heard it rumored that deep in the Darkside country, they have cities, patterned after ours. Their spies come and go in Moornal and Yeelya because we Klarnva aren't suspicious enough to look for them. They learn much, and quickly. It is said they have imitated our culture to a great extent."

"Are they like us that they can come and go unnoticed?" asked Flane.

"As alike as _khrees_ in a pod. Usually they are browned by the sun, but then, so are our hunters and herdsmen." Harth sighed, "In the olden days, when the Machine functioned, we did not need hunters and herdsmen. But now--"

Flane thought fleetingly of Vawdar. Now that he was dead, all hope for the key was lost, unless by chance someone would stumble on the combination of the lock. But so many had tried, for so many years, that Flane felt positive this was an improbable chance.

He said, to take his mind off the key, "Do you intend moving against the Darksiders? Attacking them in their own domain?"

"What else can we do? Should we wait for them to attack, we should never break their power. They swoop on us in few numbers at many points. If we are too strong at one point, they flee. But one or two of their bands always makes a killing."

Flane patted the violet-gun in his hands.

"With this we can make a killing ourselves!"

Over a _zeethis_-wood table, Harth planned his strategy. They would go over Moornal, displaying banners to tell the people below that they were visiting Darkside to raise an army. High in the air, the last of the magniships could survey an endless countryside. At the signs of the gathered Darksider host, the ship could swing into position, and Flane could sweep their ranks with his weapon. Then the army would attack.

Flane protested, as a thought came to him, "But must we kill these Darksiders, if they are as ourselves? Perhaps we could reason with them, teach them our culture, make them as we are."

Harth was horrified, and said so. But Flane felt a sneaking liking for the nomads; he himself had been one for uncounted months, on the desert. Besides, he was not a Klarnvan, and neither were the Darksiders. Without a race, Flane thought momentarily of adopting the outsiders as his own.

"We could teach them our knowledge," Flane continued stubbornly. "Their lances and arrows would make good trading material for them. We need good arrows and spears for hunting. Our ceramics and cities would be good bartering stuff. If we could instill in them a love for beauty, art to decorate their homes--"

"Tents!" sniffed Harth.

"Those rumored cities of theirs," said Flane, "will need ornament. Besides, were we to unite Klarnva and Darksiders, we might build a race that would develop its own science, so that the Machine would not be such a necessity."