Genre Short Story. Page - 21

st happen if our races fight -- extinction of one and weakening and retrogression of the other. The battle between them, said the Entity, depends upon what we do here. Why cannot we agree to an eternal peace -- your race to its galaxy, we to ours?'

Carson blanked out his mind to receive a reply.

It came, and it staggered him back, physically. He recoiled several steps in sheer horror at the intensity of the lust-to-kill of the red images projected at him. For a moment that seemed eternity he had to struggle against the impact of that hatred, fighting to clear his mind of it and drive out the alien thoughts to which he had given admittance. He wanted to retch.

His mind cleared slowly. He was breathing hard and he felt weaker, but he could think.

He stood studying the Roller. It had been motionless during the mental duel it had so nearly won. Now it rolled a few feet to one side, to the nearest of the blue bushes. Three tentacles whipped out of their grooves and began to investigate

. He wore a faded blue sweater, ragged with dirt, and short pants. His hair was long and matted. Brown hair. It hung over his face and around his ears. He held something in his arms.

"What's that you have?" Hendricks said sharply.

The boy held it out. It was a toy, a bear. A teddy bear. The boy's eyes were large, but without expression.

Hendricks relaxed. "I don't want it. Keep it."

The boy hugged the bear again.

"Where do you live?" Hendricks said.

"In there."

"The ruins?"

"Yes."

"Underground?"

"Yes."

"How many are there?"

"How--how many?"

"How many of you. How big's your settlement?"

The boy did not answer.

Hendricks frowned. "You're not all by yourself, are you?"

The boy nodded.

"How do you stay alive?"

"There's food."

"What kind of food?"

"Different."

Hendricks studied him. "How old are you?"

"Thirteen."

* * * * *

It wasn't possible. Or was

among the bracken but a few paces apart.

'What beast wouldst thou slay?' cried Deirdre, affrighted.

'It was no beast,' said Nathos, 'but yonder among the bracken lieth a deadman, if my javelin missed not its mark.'

In fear and wonder Deirdre ran to the spot. No man lay there, but she sawon the bracken the form of a crouching man. She saw, too, the tracks thatmarked his escape.

Nathos followed her, and stooped to take his javelin from the ground. Andthere, beside it, lay a wooden-hilted knife.

'It is as I thought,' he said. 'This knife is used but by the hillmen whoare in bondage to Concobar. The King seeketh my life. Go thou, then, backto thy lonely cottage, and await that day when he shall make thee hisQueen.'

'Ask me not to turn from following thee, O Nathos, for thy way must bemine, this day and ever.'

'Come, then,' and Nathos took her by the hand.

Through the shadowy forest they walked swiftly, until of a sudden he badeher rest among the bracken. Then went he forward and

picture, and gazed into those grey-green eyes till tears of passionate happiness filled my own.

"Oh! my dear, my dear, how shall I pass the hours till I hold you again?"

No thought, then, of my whole life's completion and consummation being a dream.

I staggered up to my room, fell across my bed, and slept heavily and dreamlessly. When I awoke it was high noon. Mildred and her mother were coming to lunch.

I remembered, at one o'clock, Mildred coming and her existence.

Now indeed the dream began.

With a penetrating sense of the futility of any action apart from her, I gave the necessary orders for the reception of my guests. When Mildred and her mother came I received them with cordiality; but my genial phrases all seemed to be someone else's. My voice sounded like an echo; my heart was not there.

Still, the situation was not intolerable, until the hour when afternoon tea was served in the drawing-room. Mildred and mother kept the conversational pot boiling with

early in the street this morning, what was you doing there?"

"Nothing, Miss Annie, I just went out to see, that's all and that's the same banana, 'deed it is Miss Annie."

"Sallie, how can you say so and after all I do for you, and Miss Mathilda is so good to you. I never brought home no bananas yesterday with specks on it like that. I know better, it was that boy was here last night and ate it while I was away, and you was out to get another this morning. I don't want no lying Sallie."

Sallie was stout in her defence but then she gave it up and she said it was the boy who snatched it as he ran away at the sound of Anna's key opening the outside door. "But I will never let him in again, Miss Annie, 'deed I won't," said Sallie.

And now it was all peaceful for some weeks and then Sallie with fatuous simplicity began on certain evenings to resume her bright red waist, her bits of jewels and her crinkly hair.

One pleasant evening in the early spring, Miss Mathilda was standing o

e building, divided into apartments or flats of a dismal and dingy sort. We found the landlady in the basement: a gaunt woman in soiled gray, with a hard, thin-lipped mouth and pale, suspicious eyes. She was rocking vigorously in a creaking chair and sewing on a pair of overalls, while three dirty kids tussled with a mongrel puppy up and down the room.

Dean showed his badge, and told her that we wanted to speak to her in privacy. She got up to chase the kids and their dog out, and then stood with hands on hips facing us.

"Well, what do you want?" she demanded sourly.

"Want to get a line on your tenants," Dean said. "Tell us about them."

"Tell you about them?" She had a voice that would have been harsh enough even if she hadn't been in such a peevish mood. "What do you think I got to say about 'em? What do you think I am? I'm a woman that minds her own business! Nobody can't say that I don't run a respectable --"

This was getting us nowhere.

"Who lives in number one?" I asked.

"The

onument that the famed tomb of Perneb was found--more than four hundred miles north of the Theban rock valley where Tut-Ankh-Amen sleeps. Again I was forced to silence through sheer awe. The prospect of such antiquity, and the secrets each hoary monument seemed to hold and brood over, filled me with a reverence and sense of immensity nothing else ever gave me.

Fatigued by our climb, and disgusted with the importunate Bedouins whose actions seemed to defy every rule of taste, we omitted the arduous detail of entering the cramped interior passages of any of the pyramids, though we saw several of the hardiest tourists preparing for the suffocating crawl through Cheops' mightiest memorial. As we dismissed and overpaid our local bodyguard and drove back to Cairo with Abdul Reis under the afternoon sun, we half regretted the omission we had made. Such fascinating things were whispered about lower pyramid passages not in the guide books; passages whose entrances had been hastily blocked up and concealed by ce

nd time it's happened that we know of. There may be others."

"The second time?"

"The previous interview was when we noticed it. The leady was not hot. It was cold, too, like this one."

Moss took back the metal plate from the leady's hands. He pressed the surface carefully and returned it to the stiff, unprotesting fingers.

"We shorted it out with this, so we could get close enough for a thorough check. It'll come back on in a second now. We had better get behind the wall again."

They walked back and the lead wall swung closed behind them. The soldiers left the chamber.

"Two periods from now," Franks said softly, "an initial investigating party will be ready to go surface-side. We're going up the Tube in suits, up to the top--the first human party to leave undersurface in eight years."

"It may mean nothing," Moss said, "but I doubt it. Something's going on, something strange. The leady told us no life could exist above without being roasted. The story doesn't fi

ndicular walls of the castle, trumpets sounded and mailed guards ran to appointed places at the castle's entrance. The beautiful creature nodded in acknowledgment of their salute as she stepped past them, Jenkins at her side and the eight bodyguards, two abreast, walking behind. Thus they proceeded up the long and narrow courtyard through another entrance, and into an inner courtyard which preceded the entrance hall proper to the castle.

Things happened at a greater pace from then on. At her signal men came forward, took Jenkins with them and, from then until his return to the woman, he was bathed, shaved, and dressed in a wondrously brocaded gown. When he returned, it was to find her in the immense banquet hall.

She motioned him forward and bade him sit at her right. His eyes went wide when he saw who was at her left--Griffin. And dressed in a gown similar to his own.

"Hi, chum," Griffin said. "Nice layout, huh?"

"I like him," Lucretia said, as she signalled for the food to be bro

wly came back.

Miri looked around the the people.

'Isn't anyone going to investigate?' she demanded, showing the palms of her hands.

She was met by blank stares and tutted, 'Cowards.'

Meru grabbed her arm, 'What are you going to do?'

'I'm going to have a look.'

'What? Are you mad?'

'No, I'm curious. This is a visit from the heavens, I must see them!'

She pulled away from Meru, and walked over to the object. She gingerly raised a hand and touched the object's flank. She was surprised to find it cool to the touch. The crowd watched her with trepidation.

'Miri, get back here!' Meru called.

'It's all right.' she replied. The crowd gasped as she vaulted up on top of the object and walked over to the hood.

Miri was confused by what she saw. Underneath the hood was something like a small room. There was a chair surrounded by a series of tables in which lights and buttons were placed. Many of them were a familiar and reassuring red colour, s