Part 1

When Kohonnes Screamed

By GARDNER F. FOX

Kohonnes breathed out across his little world and made the waters back up and the stones crawl and the trees writhe abominably. Why couldn't he distort men's souls also?

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Fall 1948. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

The spaceship was changing shape all around him. The curving walls sloped inward at crazy angles, and the glassine windows bulged like giant bubbles. The floor was an unending series of little waves, and the ceiling melted to drop liquid pellets.

"This is _it_!" exulted Grim Thorssen, slamming the levers of his control board, striving to slip his ship into the tug of the little planet looming through the starboard window. "Whatever kidnapped our trading vessels, whatever happened to the Fleet cruisers sent after them--here it is."

His tawny hair, long uncut, looped over his hard blue eyes as he stared at the instruments in front of him. Even the hard steeliscite cones and rods were altering subtly, their shapes fading to reform in different, twisted patterns. Grim felt a quick stab of fear. Sudden pain changed his grin to a spasmodic grimace of agony.

"Pirates I don't mind," he gasped, his body jerking suddenly as the force that bent his spaceship reached inside his body. "I--I'd take on Black Randolph as quick as down a cup of _yassallel_ right now. But this thing--"

His head whipped back as spasms tore his chest. Laboring, sweat standing out on his high forehead, he thought, 'Matter isn't matter here--not as I know it. A ceiling starts crying steel tears and a heatlite floor develops a permanent.'

The force was tearing him apart with pain. It came like iron fingers in his belly and across his ribs. It bent him over so that his face went purple.

No wonder the Trader Unions lost their big Caravans, packed to their rivets as they were with priceless radium and korse-210 from Tanit and the other planets of the suns Deneb and Achernar! The Council thought at first that it was Black Randolph looting, so the Unions Council ordered out the cruisers from the Interstellar Fleet to hunt him down. The cruisers, like the big Caravans, never came back.

Then they sent for Grim Thorssen.

The big Viking throwback was the spot trouble-tripper of the Fleet. He'd been decorated--and paid in credits--from Antares to Kruger-60 for a brash bravery that ran close to the margins of foolhardiness. But what looked like recklessness in some men was planned daring with the blond Nordic. He could think faster and shoot straighter than any other three men in the Fleet. He had the highest I.Q. that the books provided for, and black spots on his chest from friendly duels with his fellow officers using black disintegrater charges. He was smart and he was crazy and his brother Commanders loved him. They said to each other, "If anybody can do it, Grim will. He'll find out what grabs the Caravans and the cruisers."

Well, now he knew. Tortured and strained, bent in a thousand positions in a matter of minutes, he was sobbing out the thought that he wished he hadn't. There wasn't anything you could do to a force that turned your ship into a fantastic nightmare and cut you in two with lancets of agony.

The planet loomed in the forward window. A faint light hazed its outlines, as though a private sun of its own shone beyond it. Grim bit his lip until it bled, fighting the nausea and the throbbing in him. He had to land his ship. He had to find out what the force was, and what it wanted. He had to fight the tough luck that had hounded the Trader Unions ever since old Jasper Jones had retired. He had to--

The spacer grated on a ledge of rocks, its keel cracking and folding back and ripping off on the underside of the hull. A gigantic thin needle rising from a boulder towered before him. Grim yanked back on the power-brakes, but it was no use.

The blunt rock cliff loomed up. The nose of his vessel went ploughing into it with a force that snapped his leather safeties and skyrocketed him into the forward port....

* * * * *

There _was_ a sun! Grim felt it beating hot into his closed eyes. Muscles ached and pain pounded through his big frame. His eyes came open to what was left of his ruined Corsair.

There was only one half that was recognizable. That was the front section accordioned against the black cliffside. The back section was queerly warped and sculped into a caricature of a gaunt, metallic tree. Grim shook his head dazedly and lifted his eyes.

The landscape was riotous, mad. Things that looked like trees and bushes lifted branches bent and swollen attached to trunks that looped in bulbous curves. Tiny animals with seven horns and eight legs loped past. A gigantic beast with the hairy head of a mastodon, but with three long trunks, stared at him over the top of a blue bush; trumpeted, and was gone. And high above, a great yellow orb blazed heat and light.

Grim pulled himself up onto a gnarled rock. He squinted upward under a shading hand. He grunted, "Looks synthetic. Something about it--"

Leather rasped on rock, above him. Grim whirled, right hand going for the _orris_-nut handles of his disintegrator.

A girl stood on a ledge above him. Both hands were raised to the mass of rich black hair tumbling about her cape-hung shoulders. She was almost as tall as Grim, her long legs encased in tight golden skirts, her midriff bare below an ornate bolero that hugged her breasts. Seeing him, she brought her arms down fast, slant dark eyes widening.

Grim chuckled. "If I thought you could understand me, I'd ask you what kind of a crazy place this is."

The girl went back two steps, still staring at him. Her brow wrinkled. She said, "I do not understand you. Please--go away! If you are one of Althaya's men--"

Grim stared in amazement. He had spoken in the space _patois_ that was used by the Fleet and the Caravan crews from Mars on outward. But the girl had spoken to him in the pure, almost archaic mother tongue! He had to stop and recall the idioms and phraseology that men still used on Tellura. Grim, like most others of his breed, had never been on the Earth. They were born and bred among the stars and there they usually died.

"What is your name?" he said haltingly, remembering lessons in the Fleet school. "What is this place? And what in the name of Hades makes all--this?"

He waved his hand at the distorted trees, at the little animals, at the oddly humped ground. The girl did not look at his gesturing hand. Her sloe eyes were fastened to his face; in fright, he thought.

She whispered, "Where is Althaya? Where is the Red Priestess?"

Grim said gently, "Look, honey. I'm a stranger here myself. You're the first normal looking thing I've come across--and even you are several shades above average." He let his eyes drift over her, and she straightened angrily.

"I am the Black Priestess of Kohonnes. I am Tlokine."

"Okay, okay. Don't get sore. Come on down and let's be friends."

Something in his amused blue eyes decided her. She let a smile turn up the corners of her wide red mouth and came down gracefully.

"That's better," Grim chuckled. "Tell me all about this place."

"This is Stormland. The god Kohonnes made it by sending out his breath and creating it. And when he is angry he sends his breath again--and his world reshapes itself nearer to his heart's desire."

Grim stared at her oddly. "You cribbed that from Omar. Shows you _do_ know something about the Earth. And the sun? And Kohonnes, what is he?"

"Kohonnes is the creator of Stormland. He made me and Althaya and her people. He made the sun, too. His breath goes out and reshapes everything. If you want to avoid the anger of Kohonnes, you stand within the red markers. He never harms anyone in there."

* * * * *

Grim looked where her finger pointed. On the lower edges of the rock cliff he could see bright crimson splashes as though paint had been slapped on the stone. The red band formed a huge oval. He saw the tall needles lifting from the cliff. It was not rock as he had thought before the crash. It was a metal spire ending in a globe of interlaced wires and metal ribbons.

"Looks like an energy broadcaster," he muttered. Then he turned toward the girl. "Where can I see this Kohonnes of yours? What's he like?"

"He is All. He guides his people and shows them the way to a better, easier life. But some of his people do not want to wait--they want to be as powerful as Kohonnes before they are ready. And Althaya--the Red One--she is worse than any of them. Even now she is in special favor with the All. She knows somehow _before_ the breath-storms come. She can walk freely across Stormland. I and others like me must run between the markers, for we are never sure when the god may breathe again."

Grim felt he was in the middle of a surrealistic nightmare. He wondered if he were dead, still crumpled up in his wrecked spacer. Or better, dreaming. He looked at the obscenely humped ground, and shook his head.

"Honey, you have a plenty mixed-up man on your hands. If I could see this Kohonnes, talk with him--"

Tlokine smiled and nodded. "I will take you to him. I feel sure he will be glad to see you."

"I hope," whispered Grim under his breath.

* * * * *

_It was gloomy in the black-walled Temple. The girl with the red hair fanning down across her naked back shuddered. She could never quite overcome that stab of superstitious fear_--

"_I am displeased, Althaya. I had counted on better things from you._"

"_Your will is the Law, Kohonnes._"

"_See to it, then._"

_The girl bowed low until her crimson hair fell down over her head to the basalt floor. She seemed subservient, but there was a ruthless smile on her hidden lips._

* * * * *

Grim Thorssen found this world a land of magic. Twice now, in his journey to the god Kohonnes, he had sought refuge within the red ovals with Tlokine. He had seen shapes rear up from loamy ground, assume fey forms and dissolve, as a sea-wave rises and breaks against a cliff. Trees enchanted themselves before him; became tall, towering rods of wood; became thin, twisting things crawling along the grasses. It was like watching a world in its borning birthpangs. It was beautiful and eerie and frightening, all at once.

"They used to tell tales of magicians to me when I was a boy," he said to Tlokine. "I feel as though I'd been transplanted right into one of those stories."

"It is Kohonnes' breath," answered the girl, putting a hand on his shoulder to get to her feet. "But hurry now. We must go fast. Althaya may be riding with her men in this region."

They went fast and lightly. They ate of red fruit hanging from round branches, and drank from silvery brooks gurgling among dark rocks.

On the morning of the fourth day, they heard hoofbeats growing into a thundering tattoo behind them. Tlokine and Grim turned and looked at the same instant.

A lovely girl with red hair waving in the breeze rode a big white stallion at the head of ten men clad in leather armor, with needle-like longswords dangling at their waists. Their horses' hooves pounded them up to the man and girl waiting tensely on the ground.

The redhead reined in her horse, laughed mockingly down at the black-haired Tlokine. She cried, "I warned you, black one. I told you Kohonnes favored me."

Grim saw despair on Tlokine's face, and fright beneath it. Althaya whispered, "Now I will give you back to the Breath ... on one of my own altars!"

The redhead looked past Tlokine; saw Grim, and stared. Her puzzled green eyes raked him from the soles of his space-boots to his thick, tawny hair. Grim saw her eyes fill with curiosity over the gold and black Fleet uniform, over the stars-and-bars emblazoned in gilt thread on his chest and sleeve.

"Who are you?" she asked suddenly.

"Grim Thorssen. Commander in the Interstellar Fleet."

She shook her head. She said, "I don't know what to do with you. Perhaps Ran--" Althaya paused and looked frightened. Biting her full lower lip, she looked quickly around her. Then she waved a hand at Tlokine and Grim, saying to her men, "Take them."

Grim would have fought, but the odds were too great. He shrugged his shoulders philosophically and let his wrists be bound. Then he swung up behind one of the men-at-arms on the broad croup of his horse.

* * * * *

The sun drew golden glints from the smooth dun walls of the tiny castle on the black rocks. All around the base of the cliff was splashed the red color that denoted a zone of safety from the change and the storm that swept the countryside around it. The little cavalcade pounded across the wooden drawbridge that extended across the little red-splashed gully and into the dark cobblestoned courtyard beyond.

Althaya looked at Grim as he slipped from behind the saddle. She said, "Come with me, man." Obediently he followed her beneath a broad archway, along a cool corridor and into a small room.

She turned and walked up close to him. Her deep brown eyes were disturbing under the long red lashes. She saw his perturbation and smiled. She said, "You like Althaya?"

Grim chuckled, "Any man would like you, gorgeous. But why the buildup? You're too pretty to need a sop for your vanity."

She looked around her, came even closer so that Grim was assailed by her perfume and smooth white arms. She said, "There is a man living in my castle, a man called Black Randolph--ah, you know him?"

"He is a pirate. I've followed him for eight years and never caught up with him."

She looked at him oddly. "He was wrecked on Stormland. I rescued him from the storm. He stays here, seeking the secret of what causes the Change to come across my world. With it he says he can go out into his own land and be a king. He wants me to help him."

"And?"

Althaya shuddered. "I am afraid of him. He is hard. Ruthless. I have watched you. You can be a hard man, too. If you and I were to learn the secret of the Force--instead of Black Randolph--"

The Viking throwback laughed. "What you mean to say, beautiful, is that you think I'd be easier to manage than Black Randolph--once we got to be kings."

She slapped him hard across the face, and her face writhed in passion. She whispered, "For that you'll go to my torture-knives, you _passat_!"

Grim laughed, "Don't play it so thick, Red. A woman only gets as mad as that when a man turns her down because she isn't intriguing enough--not because he won't go spacebad with her."

Althaya laughed harshly. Her green eyes approved him. Her bare shoulders lifted casually.

Grim said, "But while we're on the subject, what _is_ the force that makes the change?"

"Kohonnes does it. He is the god of all this world."

"Is he a man? A beast? What?"

She shook her red head. "Kohonnes is made of metal. He has a thousand eyes that glow. He--"

"A machine," mused Grim. "But what kind of a machine does what this one will? And--who operates it?"

"Kohonnes. I do not know what a machine is, but Kohonnes is the All. He--"

Grim laughed, "How do you intend to steal a god?"

Althaya looked troubled. She said, "Black Randolph will know ... and that reminds me. He will want to see you."

* * * * *

Black Randolph went hysterical when he saw Grim. He threw back his head and roared. He slapped his hand against his thigh, making a sharp, flat sound. Tears of mirth sprang from his deep-sunk eyes.

He came across the tiled floor of the room to stand spraddle-legged before Grim, hands slammed into lean hips. His thin lips twitched amusedly.

"So you found me at last, Thorssen! You've come to the end of your eight-year trail. Congratulations! Too bad you aren't going back to Unions Council. You could tell 'em you're the only Fleet man ever to meet Black Randolph face to face."

Fury and hate seethed in the man's face. He brought his hard palm flat against Grim's cheek. "For eight years you've hounded me, Thorssen. You never caught me, but you smashed my empire. One by one--from Antares to Betelgeuse--you got my best men. But you'll suffer for it. Oh Lord, how you'll suffer!"

Black Randolph's eyes flickered when they brought Tlokine in. He grinned at her, running his eyes over her lissome body. He chuckled, "Too bad she has to go on your altar, Red. I could use that myself."

Althaya went white. She whispered sibilantly, "My patience is strained already. See that you don't test it further."

The pirate laughed, slid an arm around her waist and drew her against him. He laughed, "Once we get that force in our hands, Red--I'll make you a goddess as I promised. What about that, Thorssen? Imagine Black Randolph with that force all his own--free to roam between the stars, in the spacelanes--dictate my own terms to Unions Council or smash their ships! It was my lucky day when I spacewrecked on this planet."

Grim laughed coldly, "You can't kidnap a god, you scum."

"A god! Bah! I've lived here long enough to learn things. Haven't you wondered where all these people came from? Why they speak archaic English? Look at this!"

His hand on Althaya's shoulder slid the short jacket down to bare a tattoo mark on her white flesh. He grinned as she angrily shrugged the jacket into place. "Medical cases. Amnesiac spaceshock. Memories gone. Speech centers sound. Body normal. Perfect specimens to populate a new planet.

"Who brought 'em here, Thorssen? Not a god!"

The pirate laughed huskily. "Althaya and I--we're making them into our people. People to attack Kohonnes and get his secret. It's really too bad for you. You might join us instead of spending a week on her altar under the best torture-knives she owns. You'll be begging for death before the first day is over. And there'll be seven more of 'em, Thorssen--a day of agony for each of the years you've hounded me. Eight years, eight days."

Althaya clapped her hands. Big men, naked to their waists that were covered with twisted loin-clothes, padded in on bare soles. Althaya said, "Take them to the cells. Tomorrow at dawn, bring them to Kohonnes' altar. We will make a sacrifice to the All."

* * * * *

The rising sun was tinting the flat onyx altar with red stains when they put Grim on it. His ankles and his wrists were lashed so tightly that the skin was puffy and swollen around the cording. Staring upward, the Viking throwback saw an outcropping lip of blackish basalt hanging like a sea-wave caught in stone right above him. A weirdly bent tree dropped wire-like branches toward him, from which hung triangular red leaves.

Beneath the altar, and all around this rostrum of stone, was a scarlet marker. By craning his head beyond Althaya and Randolph, who stood rubbing his hands together and gloating, Grim could see the crimson band.

"I hope your voice is in good shape, Thorssen," chuckled the pirate. "I want to hear you yell loud and long. I've waited a long time for this!"

Althaya clapped her hands abruptly, and a big man with a broken nose flat against his face and tiny eyes that glittered cruelly stepped forward. A thin knife, curved and barbed, was in his right hand. The redhead said, "They are bringing Tlokine now. When she is here--commence, Tagat."

They crowded around the altar, waiting. Grim could see the tense, excited faces. Randolph craned forward, a muscle in his cheek dancing with eagerness. Althaya licked at her crimson mouth with her tongue. And beyond them, among the leather-jerkined men-at-arms, Tlokine stared with horrified eyes from her pale white face.

Tagat grinned and brought the knife down. Almost tenderly he placed the razor-like edge to Grim's naked ribs. He looked slyly up at Althaya.

Randolph cried hoarsely, "Hurry up! Waiting is as much torture to me as that knife is going to be to him."

Althaya said dryly, "Begin, Tagat."

The knife moved--

"_Wait!_"

Althaya stood rigid, looking down at Grim. He saw her green eyes widen dreamily. She whispered, "Kohonnes is sending his breath out across the world. Soon now the Change will come."

"So what?" rasped big Randolph, hands working furiously, his fingers opening and closing. "We're all on this red-marked island. It won't hurt us."

Althaya shook her head. "Not while the god is breathing. No. We can wait!"

The black sea-like curve of rock above Grim was altering. It lost its concave outlines; shimmered, and grew thin and tall, like an ebony finger pointing skywards. And the tree on it was a tree no more, but a green vine clinging to its sides and drooping white blossoms across its black edges.

Althaya and Randolph withdrew from the altar; went higher on the rockside. Grim stared at the changes working all around him. Not far away was another red-marked island. Between the altar island and that other, the ground lifted and fell restlessly.

Tlokine came toward the altar, her guards drawing back and away from the change.

Grim whispered, "Can you stand pain?"

"Pain? No, I hate it. When the knife touches me--"

"I don't mean that. I have an idea. I'm going to be tortured anyhow, but I'd rather make a break for freedom than--"

Tlokine laughed incredulously, "They would shoot you down, even if you were free to run. And you're not. You're bound."

Grim laughed harshly, "No time to argue--follow me!"

He rolled off the altar. He hit the sloping rock beneath it with a thud that jarred his bones, but he kept on rolling. He went down the slope to the red marker--

He went by the marker, and the Change caught his ropes and twisted them into upright snakes that writhed in queer formations. It bent him forward, knotted his insides into lumps.

But he was free.

He tried to run, and could not. He overcame the agony in him to crawl, one arm and one leg after another, dragging himself along. The island came nearer and nearer. He expected disintegrator pellets to thud into him before he realized that Black Randolph wanted him to die slowly. He imagined the pirate was laughing insanely, watching the Change almost tear him apart.

Grim put a hand over the red mark and the relief from pain was so great he almost fainted. His teeth dug into his lip and forced him forward. Going over the marker, he crumpled into a ball.

"Grim! Grim Thorssen!"

Tlokine lay many feet from his safety zone, twisted and huddled, the Change having its will of her. He knew she couldn't take that any longer--and live.

He felt sweat break out all over him. He had to go out there and bring her in. Grim closed his eyes and ran for her. The Change caught him, shook him, tortured him. Grim fought with his body and his will; put a hand on her and dragged. He brought her in as a wolf might bring in the carcass of a deer; slowly, inch by inch.

Tlokine was almost dead when she crumpled inside the marker. Grim worked over her frantically. The Change was subsiding.

She opened her slant brown eyes. Grim cried, "They'll be coming for us. The storm is almost over. We have to run for it."

Tlokine whispered, "The stables. We'll need horses."

* * * * *

They made a dash before the Change was through. There was pain, but nothing compared to what they had undergone. Grim saw Randolph on the edge of the marker, howling with rage. He was quivering with the eagerness to set out after them, but the Storm deterred him.

Inside a huge oval of red splashings that stretched as far as he could see, the white-walled stables stood. Grim threw open the low oak doors and ran inside. He hunted for the horses he wanted. He scanned their back and chests, sought the not too muscular neck of the racing horse. He went swiftly, making his eyes perform snap judgments.

He drew out a chestnut and a bay. He saddled them, helped Tlokine up.