The 22nd Golden Age of Science Fiction Read online

  With each circling of the room, it grew larger. The cheeping sound became louder, there was a touch of harp music in it now. Effra’s fingers moved like lightning over the control panel. The growing eagle seemed to pick up its controls, it swirled, circled, went through the open slot, went out of the room, and into the air outside. It was now the Jezbro.

  Its image appeared on the screen. It shot high into the air, still growing. The scene on the screen revealed in miniature the whole island, the sea lapping its shores, the boat lying at anchor. Effra’s fingers moved frantically over the controls. “This is one of the hardest things to do. They seem to be attracted to the sun, when first released. They struggle desperately to escape into space—There! I’ve got it under control.”

  The scene changed, became a group of men climbing the ledge. Parker saw these men suddenly jerk their heads toward the sky as they became aware of the Jezbro. He could imagine the fear that was shooting through them. They had seen Johnny Retch destroy the Jezbro, only here the Jezbro was again.

  From their viewpoint, it had miraculously come back to life and was diving again upon them from the sky. Guns were fired upward. But these men did not have the cool, hard nerves of Johnny Retch, did not have his shooting eye. They missed. The Jezbro dived among them.

  They scattered, screaming. Two went off the ledge, three raced down it. One mounted to the sky to the triumphant harping of the Jezbro.

  Parker felt a wave of relief flow through him. Here in the Jezbro was actually a most potent weapon, the means of stopping an attack. “Girl! You’ve done it!”

  A second later he caught himself. “But Johnny Retch wasn’t in that bunch. He must already be inside the cliff.”

  A gun roared three times inside the mountain. Footsteps faltered in the corridor outside. Pedro stumbled into the room. His face was a bloody mask.

  “Him men inside.” As he coughed out the words, he coughed out blood—and his life. He stumbled, caught himself, stumbled again, went down the way a dead man goes down, never to rise again.

  “Qui est in Coelis—who are in Heaven—” Rozeno’s voice whispered through the room. The only sound.

  Ulnar moved slowly, stood beside Pedro. They had been master and servant but in the old days they had come up out of Mexico together, guarding a treasure. Ulnar moved to the wall, took down a heavy battle axe that hung there. “Time come for me,” he said. “Me go meet men as my chief went to meet Cortez!” His eyes glinted.

  “Wait!” Rozeno called. The priest was on his feet. “I have resolved the conflict in my soul. There comes a time when men, even good men, must fight against the forces of evil.” From the wall he took a spear.

  “I’ll go with you two,” Parker said. “In just a moment.” From his jacket, he took one of the two pistols. Silently he passed it to Effra. “As a last resort, use it.”

  “But, Bill, there is still time—”

  Parker didn’t hear her. He was moving with Rozeno and Ulnar through another opening. “At least,” Rozeno was saying. “We have this advantage. We know our way around here.”

  They moved silently, by side passages, through the rooms. “Find Retch,” Parker whispered over and over again. “He’s the heart and the core of this business. With him out of the way, we can handle the others.”

  “Do you see anybody, Pfluger?” Retch’s voice came from somewhere.

  “Naw. I think I got the old gink but he ducked out of sight somewhere.”

  “Retch is on the other side of the corridor,” Rozeno whispered. “The man who spoke last is in the next room.”

  They slipped to the opening, peering into the next room. A man in there was crouching against the wall and watching the opening into the corridor. At the sight of the man, Ulnar went berserk. This was the man who had killed Pedro.

  A shrill battle cry pealing from his lips, massive axe uplifted, Ulnar charged through the door.

  The crouching man whirled. Smoke and thunder rolled from the gun in his hand. Ulnar had taken death wounds before he was halfway across the room. But death wounds or not, he kept going.

  The heavy axe came down on the head of the man who was desperately trying to fend it off. The man went down. For an instant, Ulnar’s battle cry of triumph, wild and savage and fierce, roared through the honeycomb of passages, then went into silence with Ulnar, forever.

  “Hey, Pfluger, what the hell happened?” Retch’s startled voice came.

  “We’ve got to cross the corridor to get at him,” Parker whispered. “And there are other men in here somewhere.”

  “Listen!” Rozeno whispered.

  Voices, a babble of sound, were coming from behind them.

  “The men from the village,” Rozeno whispered. “When they ceased fearing the Jezbro, they found the courage to come up here.”

  * * * *

  The babble grew stronger. Running feet moved along the corridor. Retch shouted somewhere, but the words were lost.

  Rising above the other sounds was the cry of a woman—Effra.

  Parker cursed beneath his breath as he ran. At the side entrance to the big room where the pool of mercury turned, he stopped, appalled.

  The room seemed full of men. Some of them he recognized as coming from the village, others he had never seen before. From their appearance he judged they had come in the boat. Retch was coming through the door that led into the main corridor. The gun in his hands was centered on Effra, who crouched at the key board of the vast machine. There was a smile on Retch’s face.

  “Parker!” Retch’s voice lifted in a yell. “Parker! I’ve got your girl. Come on out and give yourself up or I’ll let her have it.”

  This was his moment of triumph, this was the moment when he won his victory. Parker, peering around the edge of the doorway, knew now that he had no way to go. If he moved into the room, and tried to shoot Retch, the man would certainly kill Effra in one wild burst of slugs as he turned the gun on the pilot.

  “Parker!” Retch yelled again. A smile on his face, he waited for an answer.

  Effra’s fingers moved on the control panel. Mercedes got slowly to her feet. The men in the room were silent, waiting for an answer to Retch’s command. Parker stood just outside the door, hesitant. No matter what he did, it seemed to him that there was only one answer.

  Behind Retch, coming from the corridor, something moved. At the sight of it, Parker felt a flood of biting cold surge through him.

  It was a puma—a gigantic puma. In its jaws, as it swung its head from side to side, dangled the body of a man it had killed in the corridor.

  It was a Jezbro puma.

  Once it had been a little image in a niche beside the machine from the old time. Then life had flowed into it, its own kind of life, now it walked as a huge ravening beast through the room where once it had been a tiny image.

  The first man who saw it went dead white and slumped downward in a faint. The others saw it in almost the same instant. Pandemonium swept through the room. No man’s nerves were proof against such a sight as this. Screaming men were suddenly trying to fight their way out of a place that had suddenly become haunted.

  The puma flowed into the room. Like Retch, it had yellow eyes. They glared now, with a burning light. There was a vague mistiness about this puma but there was also about it the appearance of solid reality.

  Retch spun to face the menace coming from behind him. The gun in his hands spat flame and fury.

  He had destroyed the Jezbro hawk. He would also destroy this Jezbro puma.

  The puma dropped the man from its jaws. It crouched. It leaped straight at the gun spouting lead. Retch slid to one side. The puma missed. It hit the floor, slid, tried to turn as a frantic girl moved buttons on the key board.

  The floor was slick, the padded feet did not grip. The tail of the sliding puma touched the pool of mercury. The tail smoked as if it was suddenly o
n fire.

  The puma screamed. It seemed to be drawn into the pool. It was as if something in the pool caught the puma, held it, pulled it into the mercury.

  It went out of sight, vanished. No puff of flame followed. The life that had animated it had come from this pool. Now the life had returned to its source.

  The dazed Retch lowered his smoking gun.

  Parker moved silently forward.

  “Lay down the gun, Johnny Retch!” he said.

  Retch seemed to stiffen. His back was to Parker. He did not attempt to turn.

  “You called for me,” Parker said. “Here I am. Drop the gun!”

  Retch snarled, spun, dropping flat as he turned. His eyes were narrowed. They glared at Parker like twin flames of yellow hate. He tried to bring up the gun.

  Something came through the air, something that he did not see. It grabbed his arms, clutched them with a fierce grip, screamed at him. Mercedes!

  Retch, with one savage thrust, flung her aside. Again the two yellow eyes glared at Parker as Retch brought up the weapon that he held.

  “You haven’t licked me yet!” Retch screamed.

  The gun in Parker’s hand exploded.

  Suddenly Retch had three eyes. One of them was in the middle of his forehead. It was round and blue.

  He stood for a second, transfixed. Something had happened to him. He did not know exactly what it was. He had come here seeking Montezuma’s treasure. He had it in the reach of his hand. But something had happened to him. What it was he did not quite know. Something—

  He tried to lift the gun he held. His hands would not obey him. Or perhaps the gun had suddenly grown too heavy for him to lift. He could not raise it.

  The yellow light in his eyes did not change. But suddenly he collapsed, went down, did not move.

  * * * *

  Even after he was on the floor, his eyes remained fixed on Parker, glaring, yellow. Then, little by little, the yellow flames began to go out.

  In the silence were two sounds. The first, Mercedes, whispering. “’Ave I paid my debt, Beel? I tried.”

  “You have paid it,” Parker said.

  The other sound was that of the old priest beginning the prayers for the dying. He had laid aside his spear. Now he was kneeling again, his voice lifting as he prayed even for those who had mis-used him.

  Then there was another sound, voices shouting in the distance. The men who had run from this room were trying to regain their courage, trying to find the will to come back again.

  Parker moved to the girl who sat at the key board.

  “Effra, my dear, if you would—”

  Catching his idea, she nodded. Her fingers lifted the image of an alligator from its niche.

  Parker saw the ’gator waddle from this room of mystery and of magic, from this room of lost science, from this forgotten laboratory of a vanished race.

  After the alligator, went a jungle cat, full of spit and scratch and the sounds of fury. After the cat went a jaguar, black, fanged, also with yellow eyes.

  In the corridors the screaming stopped. Parker, listening, shuddered. He was glad he was not out in one of those corridors; one of the men who had tried to steal the treasure of Montezuma, one of the men who had followed Johnny Retch. Hell was walking through those tunnels—hell in the form of an alligator; hell in the form of a jungle cat; hell in the form of a jaguar with yellow eyes.

  From the window slot, Parker watched men swarm out of the cliff. Some found the small boats, pushed out in them to the PT boat. Others swam. A jaguar went along the shoreline screeching at them. A jungle cat spat at them from the edge of the water.

  On the boat, the anchors were hastily cast off. Powerful motors growled. Gathering speed, leaving a growing wake behind it, the boat drove itself into the veil, went out of sight.

  Parker went back to the girl at the key board.

  Her eyes came up to him. “Hello, Bill,” she said.

  “Effra?” he whispered.

  “As I was sitting here, I remembered who you were—and who I am—Bill—Bill—” She came into his arms.

  Hours later, on a balcony in front of one of the window slots, they still stood very close together. Rozeno and Mercedes were with them. Rozeno was speaking.

  “Do you think, my son, that you can go out into the world, and contact the great men of this time, and bring them here one by one, so that we may build in this secure spot a group from which the lines of progress can flow out to all men in all the corners of the Earth?”

  “I can, Father,” Parker answered.

  “Unto all men—” Rozeno’s lips moved in prayer. “Unto all men—”

  THOMPSON’S CAT

  Planet Stories, September 1952.

  “It’s a dead world,” Thompson spoke. There was awe in his voice, and in spite of his sure knowledge that nothing could happen to him or to his crew here on this world, there was also somewhere inside of him the trace of a beginning fear.

  Standing beside him on the rooftop of the building, Kurkil spoke in a whisper, asking a question that had been better unasked. “What killed it?”

  Thompson stirred fretfully. He hadn’t wanted to hear this question, he didn’t want to hear it now. His gaze went automatically to the trim lines of the space cruiser resting quietly in the square below the building. His spirits lifted at the sight. That was his ship, he was in charge of this far-flung exploring expedition thrown out from Sol Cluster to the fringes of the universe, thrown out by Earth-sired races beginning their long exploration of the mysteries of space and of the worlds of space. There was pride in the sight of the ship and pride in the thought of belonging to this space-ranging race. Then his gaze went over the deserted city radiating in all directions from them and he was aware again of the touch of fear.

  Resolutely he turned the feeling out of his mind, began seeking an answer to Kurkil’s question.

  This place had been a city once. If you counted buildings and streets, tall structures where people might work quietly and effectively, broad avenues leading out to trim homes where they might rest in peace after their labors of the day, if you counted these things as being important, it was still a city. But if you thought that the important element in the make-up of a city was its inhabitants then this place no longer deserved the name.

  It had no inhabitants.

  “I don’t know what killed it,” Thompson said. Before landing they had circled this world. From the air they had seen more than a dozen cities such as this one. All of them dead, all of them deserted, all of them with streets overgrown by shrubbery, the pavements buckling from the simple pressure of roots pushing upward, the buildings falling away into ruin for the same reason. But they had seen no inhabitants. They had seen the roads the inhabitants had built to connect their cities, deserted now. They had seen the fields where these people had once worked, fields that now were turning back into forests. They had seen no evidence of landing fields for air craft or space ships. The race that had built the cities had not yet learned the secret of wings.

  From the roof of the building where they stood, the only living creatures to be seen were visible through the plastic viewport of the ship below them—Grant, the communication specialist, and Buster, the ship’s cat.

  Grant had been left to guard the vessel. Buster had been required to remain within the ship, obviously against his will. He had wanted to come with Thompson. A trace of a grin came to Thompson’s face at the sight of the cat. He and Buster were firm mutual friends.

  “I don’t like this place,” Kurkil spoke suddenly. “We shouldn’t have landed here.”

  Kurkil paused, then his voice came again, stronger now, and with overtones of fear in it. “There’s death here.” He slapped at his arm, stared around him.

  “What happened?”

  “Something bit me.” He showed the back of his hand. A tiny
puncture was visible.

  “Some insect,” Thompson said. The matter of an insect bite was of no concern. Kurkil, and every other member of this expedition, were disease-proof. Back in Sol Cluster vaccines and immunizing agents had been developed against every known or conceivable form of germ or virus. Each member of the crew had been carefully immunized. In addition, they had been proofed against stress, against mounting neural pressure resulting from facing real or imaginary danger.

  Barring space collision or an accident on a world they were exploring, nothing could happen to them.

  “We checked the air, took soil and vegetation samples, before we landed,” Thompson said. “There is nothing here that is harmful to a human.” There was comfort in the thought.

  Kurkil brightened perceptibly. “But, what happened to the race that built this city?”

  “I don’t know,” Thompson answered. A tinge of gruffness crept into his voice as he forced out of his mind the memories of what they had seen in this building they had entered and had climbed. This had once been an office building, a place where the unknown people who had worked here had handled their business transactions and had kept their records. They had seen no bookkeeping machines, none of the elaborate mechanical devices used in Sol Cluster to record the pulse of commerce. This race had not progressed that far. But they had left behind them books written in an unintelligible script, orders for merchandise still neatly pigeonholed, all in good order with no sign of disturbance.

  The workers might have left these offices yesterday, except for the carpets of dust that covered everything.

  “There isn’t even any animal life left,” Kurkil spoke.

  “I know.”

  “But what happened? A race that has progressed to the city-building stage doesn’t just get wiped out without leaving some indication of what happened to them.”

  “Apparently they did just that.”

  “But it’s not possible.”