Beyond The Farthest Star Read online

  Suddenly the Kapar fleet disappeared, and then the anti-aircraft guns opened up on us. Like the antiaircraft guns of Unis, they fire a thousand-pound shell twelve or fifteen reties up into the air, and the burst scatters fragments of steel for five hundred yards in all directions. Other shells contain wire nets and small parachutes, which support the nets in the air to entangle and foul propellers.

  After unloading our bombs, some seven or eight thousand tons of them, upon an area of two hundred square miles over and around Ergos, we started for home, circling to the east and then to the north, which would bring us in over the southernmost tip of Unis. I had two dead men in the after cockpit; and I hadn't been able to raise the gunner in the belly of the ship for some time.

  As we circled over the eastern tip of Epris, my motor failed entirely, and there was nothing for me to do but come down. Another hour and I would have been within gliding distance of the tip of Unis, or one of the three islands which are an extension of this tip, at the southern end of the Karagan Ocean .

  The crews of many ships saw me gliding down for a landing, but no ship followed to succour me. It is one of the rules of the service that other ships and men must not be jeopardized to assist a pilot who is forced down in enemy country. The poor devil is just written off as a loss. I knew from my study of Polodan geography that I was beyond the southeastern boundary of Kapara, and over the country formerly known as Punos, one of the first to be subjugated by the Kapars over a hundred years before.

  What the country was like I could only guess from rumours that are current in Unis, and which suggest that its people have been reduced to the status of wild beasts by years of persecution and starvation.

  As I approached the ground I saw a mountainous country beneath me and two rivers which joined to form a very large river that emptied into a bay on the southern shoreline; but I found no people, no cities, and no indication of cultivated fields. Except along the river courses, where vegetation was discernible, the land appeared to be a vast wilderness. The whole terrain below me appeared pitted with ancient shell-craters, attesting the terrific bombardment to which it had been subjected in a bygone day.

  I had about given up all hope of finding a level place on which to make a landing, when I discovered one in the mouth of a broad caсon, at the southern foot of a range of mountains.

  As I was about to set the ship down I saw figures moving a short distance up the caсon. At first I could not make out what they were, for they dodged behind trees in an evident effort to conceal themselves from me; but when the ship came to rest they came out, a dozen men armed with spears and bows and arrows. They wore loincloths made of the skin of some animal, and they carried long knives in their belts. Their hair was matted and their bodies were filthy and terribly emaciated.

  They crept toward me, taking advantage of whatever cover the terrain afforded; and as they came they fitted arrows to their bows.

  Chapter Nine

  THE ATTITUDE OF THE reception committee was not encouraging. It seemed to indicate that I was not a welcome guest. I knew that if I let them get within bow range, a flight of arrows was almost certain to get me; so the thing to do was keep them out of bow range. I stood up in the cockpit and levelled my pistol at them, and they immediately disappeared behind rocks and trees.

  I wished very much to examine my engine and determine if it were possible for me to repair it, but I realized that as long as these men of Punos were around that would be impossible. I might go after them; but they had the advantage of cover and of knowing the terrain; and while I might get some of them, I could not get them all; and those that I did not get would come back, and they could certainly hang around until after dark and then rush me.

  It looked as though I were in a pretty bad way, but I finally decided to get down and go after them and have it out. Just then one of them stuck his head up above a rock and called to me. He spoke in one of the five languages of Unis that I had learned.

  "Are you a Unisan?" he asked.

  "Yes," I replied.

  "Then do not shoot," he said. "We will not harm you."

  "If that is true," I said, "go away."

  "We want to talk to you," he said. "We want to know how the war is going and when it will end."

  "One of you may come down," I said, "but not more."

  "I will come," he said, "but you need not fear us."

  He came down toward me then, an old man with wrinkled skin and a huge abdomen, which his skinny legs seemed scarcely able to support. His grey hair was matted with twigs and dirt, and he had the few grey hairs about his chin which can note old age on Poloda.

  "I knew you were from Unis when I saw your blue uniform," he said. "In olden times the people of Unis and the people of Punos were good friends. That has been handed down from father to son for many generations. When the Kapars first attacked us, the men of Unis gave us aid; but they, too, were unprepared; and before they had the strength to help us we were entirely subjugated, and all of Punos was overrun with Kapars. They flew their ships from our coastlines, and they set up great guns there; but after a while the men of Unis built great fleets and drove them out. Then, however, it was too late for our people."

  "How do you live?" I asked.

  "It is hard," he said. "The Kapars still come over occasionally, and if they find a cultivated field they bomb and destroy it. They fly low and shoot any people they see, which makes it difficult to raise crops in open country; so we have been driven into the mountains, where we live on fish and roots and whatever else we can find."

  "Many years ago," he continued, "the Kapars kept an army stationed here, and before they were through they killed every living thing that they could find-animals, birds, men, women, and children. Only a few hundred Punosans hid themselves in the inaccessible fastnesses of this mountain range, and in the years that have passed we have killed off all the remaining game for food faster than it could propagate."

  "You have no meat at all?" I asked.

  "Only when a Kapar is forced down near us," he replied. "We hoped that you were a Kapar, but because you are a Unisan you are safe."

  "But now that you are so helpless, why is it that the Kapars will not permit you to raise crops for food?"

  "Because our ancestors resisted them when they invaded our country and that aroused the hatred upon which Kapars live. Because of this hatred they tried to exterminate us. Now they fear to let us get a start again, and if we were left alone there would be many of us in another hundred years; and once again we would constitute a menace to Kapara."

  Harkas Yen had told me about Punos and I had also read something about the country in the history of Poloda. It had been inhabited by a virile and intelligent race of considerable culture. Its ships sailed the four great oceans of Poloda, carrying on commerce with the people of all the five continents. The central portion was a garden spot, supporting countless farms, where grazed countless herds of livestock; and along its coastline were its manufacturing cities and its fisheries. I looked at the poor old devil standing before me: this was what the warped, neurotic mind of one man could do to a happy and prosperous nation!

  "Won't your ship fly?" he asked me.

  "I don't know," I said. "I want to examine the motor and find out."

  "You'd better let us push it into the caсon for you," he said. "It can be better hidden there from any Kapars who may fly over."

  There was something about the poor old fellow that gave me confidence in him, and as the suggestion was a wise one, I accepted it. So he called his companions and they came down out of the caсon—eleven, dirty, scrawny, hopeless-looking creatures of all ages. They tried to smile at me, but I guess the smiling muscles of their ancestors had commenced to atrophy generations before.

  They helped me push the ship into the caсon, where, beneath a large tree, it was pretty well hidden from above. I had forgotten the dead men aboard the ship; but one of the Punosans, climbing up on the wing, discovered the two in the after cockpit; and I knew
that there must be another one in the belly of the ship. I shuddered as I thought what was passing through the creature's mind.

  "There are dead men in the ship," he said to his fellows; and the old man, who was the leader, climbed up on the wing and looked; then he turned to me.

  "Shall we bury your friends for you?" he asked, and a weight of fear and sorrow was lifted from my shoulders.

  They helped me remove the cartridge belts and uniforms from the bodies of my friends and then they scooped out shallow graves with their knives and their hands, and laid the three bodies in them and covered them again.

  When these sad and simple rites were ended, I started taking my engine down, the twelve Punosans hanging around and watching everything I did. They asked many questions about the progress of the war, but I could not encourage them to think that it would soon be over, or ever.

  I found the damage that had been done to my engine, and I knew that I could make the necessary repairs, for we carried tools and spare parts; but it was getting late and I could not complete the repairs until the following day.

  The old man realized this and asked me if I would come to their village and spend the night there.

  I could have slept in the ship, but purely out of curiosity I decided to accept his invitation.

  Before we started for his village he touched me timidly on the arm. "May we have the guns and ammunition of your dead friends?" he asked. "If we had them, we might kill some more Kapars."

  "Do you know how to use them?" I asked.

  "Yes," he said, "we have found them on the bodies of Kapars who crashed here, and those whom we killed, but we have used up all the ammunition."

  I followed them up the caсon and then along a narrow, precipitous trail that led to a tiny mesa on the shoulder of a towering peak. A waterfall tumbled from the cliff above into a little lake at its foot, and from there a mountain stream wandered across the mesa to leap over the edge of another cliff a mile away. Trees grew along one side of the stream and up to the foot of the cliff, and among these trees the village was hidden from the eyes of roving pilots.

  Hide! Hide! Hide! A world in hiding! It seemed difficult to imagine that anyone had ever walked freely in the sunlight on the surface of Poloda without being ready to dodge beneath a tree, or into a hole in the ground; and I wondered if my world would ever come to that. It didn't seem possible; but for thousands of years, up until a hundred years ago, no inhabitant of Poloda would have thought it possible here.

  In the village were a hundred people, forty women, fifty men, and ten children, poor, scrawny little things, with spindly arms and legs and enormous bellies, the result of stuffing, themselves with grasses and twigs and leaves to assuage the pangs of hunger. When the villagers saw my escort coming in with me they ran forward hungrily, but when they recognized my blue uniform they stopped.

  "He is our friend and guest," said the chief. "He has killed many Kapars, and he has given us guns and ammunition to kill more." And he showed them the weapons and the ammunition belts.

  They crowded around me then and, like the twelve men, asked innumerable questions. They dwelt much upon the food we had in Unis, and were surprised to know that we had plenty to eat, for they thought that the Kapars must have devastated Unis as they had Punos.

  The little children came timidly and felt of me. To them I was a man from another world. To me they were the indictment of a hideous regime.

  The hunting party whose activities I had interrupted had brought in a couple of small rodents and a little bird. The women built a fire and put a large pot on it, in which there wvas a little water. Then they took the feathers off the bird and skinned the rodents, and threw them in without cleaning them. To this they added herbs and roots and handfuls of grass.

  "The skins will make a little soup for the children for breakfast," an old woman explained to me as she laid them carefully aside.

  They stirred the horrible mess with a piece of a small branch of a tree, and when it boiled the children clustered around to sniff the steam as it arose; and the adults formed a circle and stared at the pot hungrily.

  I had never seen starving people before, and I prayed to God that I might never see any again unless I had the means wherewith to fill their bellies; and as I watched them I did not wonder that they ate Kapars, and I marvelled at the kindliness and strength of will that kept them from eating me. When those mothers looked at me I could imagine that they were thinking of me in terms of steaks and chops which they must forego although their children were starving.

  In a community in which there were forty adult women there were only ten children, but I wondered how there could be any, infant mortality must certainly be high among a starving people. I could imagine that I was looking at the remnant of a race that would soon be extinct, and I thought that there must be something wrong with all the religions in the universe that such a thing could happen to these people while the Kapars lived and bred.

  When they thought the mess in the pot was sufficiently cooked, little cups of clay, crudely burnt, were passed out, and the chief carefully measured out the contents of the pot with a large wooden ladle. When he came to me, I shook my head; and he looked offended.

  "Is our fare too mean for you?" he asked.

  "It is not that," I said. "I am well fed, and tomorrow I shall eat again. Here are starving men, and starving women, and, above all, starving children."

  "Forgive me," he said. "You are a very kind man. The children shall have your share." Then he dipped out other cupful and divided it among the ten children, scarcely a mouthful apiece; but they were so grateful that once again the tears came to my eyes. I must be getting to be a regular softy; but before I came to Poloda I had never seen such sadness, such courage, such fortitude, or such suffering, as I have upon this poor war-torn planet.

  Chapter Ten

  NEXT MORNING THE WHOLE VILLAGE accompanied me down the cation to see me take off for Orvis. Three men went far in advance and when he got down into the cation one of them came running back to meet us. I could see that he was very much excited, and he was motioning to us to be silent.

  "There is a Kapar at your ship," he said, in a whisper.

  "Let me go ahead," I said to the chief. "There will probably be shooting."

  "We should have brought the guns," he said. "Why did I not think of that?" And he sent three men scurrying back to get them.

  I walked down the caсon until I came to the other two men who had gone ahead. They were hiding behind bushes and they motioned me to take cover, but I had no time for that; and instead I ran forward, and when I came in sight of the ship a man was just climbing up onto the wing. He was a Kapar all right, and I started firing as I ran toward him. I missed him, and he wheeled about and held both hands above his head in sign of surrender.

  I kept him covered as I walked toward him, but as I got nearer I saw that he was unarmed.

  "What are you doing there, Kapar?" I demanded.

  He came toward me, his hands still above his head. "For the honour and glory of Unis," he said. "I am no Kapar." He removed his grey helmet, revealing a head of blond hair. But I had been told that there were some blond Kapars, and I was not to be taken in by any ruse.

  "You'll have to do better than that," I said. "If you are a Unisan, you can prove it more convincingly than by showing a head of blond hair. Who are you, and from what city do you come?"

  "I am Balzo Jan," he said, "and I come from the city of Orvis ."

  Now Balzo Jan was the brother that Balzo Maro had said was shot down in battle. This might be he, but I was still unconvinced.

  "How did you get here?" I demanded.

  "I was shot down in battle about two hundred miles from here," he said. "We made a good landing and some Kapars who saw that we were evidently not killed came down to finish us off. There were four of them and three of us. We got all four of them, but not before my two companions were killed. Knowing that I was somewhere in Epris, and therefore in Kapar-dominated country,
I took the uniform of one of the Kapars as a disguise."

  "Why didn't you take his gun and ammunition, too?"

  "Because we had all exhausted all our ammunition," he replied, "and guns without ammunition are only an extra burden to carry. I had killed the last Kapar with my last bullet."

  "You may be all right," I said, "but I don't know. Can you tell me the name of some of your sister's friends?"

  "Certainly," he said. "Her best friends are Harkas Yamoda and Harkas Don, daughter and son of Harkas Yen."

  "I guess you're all right," I said. "There are a couple of blue uniforms in the after cockpit. Get into one of them at once, and then we'll go to work on the motor."

  "Look," he cried, pointing beyond me, "some men are coming. They are going to attack us."

  I turned to see my friendly hosts creeping toward us with shafts fitted to their bows.

  "It is all right," I shouted to them, "this is a friend."

  "If he is a friend of yours, then you must be a Kapar," replied the chief.

  "He is no Kapar," I insisted; and then I turned and shouted to Balzo Jan to get into a blue uniform at once.

  "Perhaps you have deceived us," shouted the chief. "How do we know that you are not a Kapar, after all?"

  "Our children are hungry," screamed a woman farther back up the caсon. "Our children are hungry, we are hungry, and here are two Kapars."

  It was commencing to look very serious. The men were creeping closer; they would soon be within bow range. I had put my pistol back into its holster after I had been convinced that Balzo Jan was no impostor, and I did not draw it as I walked forward to meet the chief.

  "We are friends," I said. "You see, I am not afraid of you. Would I have given you the three guns and the ammunition had I been a Kapar? Would I have let that man back there live if I had not known that he was a Unisan?"

  The chief shook his head. "That is right," he said. "You would not have given us the guns and ammunition had you been a Kapar. But how do you know this man is not a Kapar?" he added suspiciously.