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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A World Called Crimson, by Darius John Granger
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: A World Called Crimson
+
+Author: Darius John Granger
+
+Release Date: June 3, 2008 [EBook #25684]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A WORLD CALLED CRIMSON ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Greg Weeks, Stephen Blundell, and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+         _There was a boy and a girl and a strange new planet;
+         the planet was alive with hideous dangers. But the boy
+         and girl were very young and all Robin wanted to know
+         was: "Who stole my doll?"_
+
+
+ A
+ WORLD
+ CALLED
+ CRIMSON
+
+ By
+ DARIUS JOHN GRANGER
+
+
+_When the starship _Star of Fire_ collided with a meteor swarm six
+parsecs stellar north of the galactic hub in the year A.D. 2278, it lost
+its atmosphere within forty-five minutes. At first it was thought that
+every man, woman and child of the four thousand, one hundred and
+sixty-six aboard were lost, in this the greatest of all interstellar
+disasters. But as was discovered twenty years later in the Purcell
+exploration, this was not quite the case. (See PURCELL)_
+
+                                   _--from The ANNALS OF SPACE, Vol. 12_
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Illustration: The Cyclops--not hungry at the moment--regarded Robin as
+a new toy.]
+
+It was the nasty little boy from B Deck who had stolen her doll. She
+hated him. He was horrid. She slipped out of their stateroom while her
+Mom and Dad were dressing for dinner. She'd find that horrid little boy
+on B Deck. She'd scratch his eyes out.
+
+Her name was Robin Sinclair and she was five years old and mad enough to
+throw the boy from B Deck out into space, only she didn't know how to go
+about that.
+
+She went down the companionway to B Deck, where the people dressed
+differently. The colors weren't as bright, somehow, the cloth not so
+fine. It was a major distinction in the eyes of a five-year-old girl,
+especially one who loved to run her fingers over fine synthetics and who
+even had a favorite color. Her favorite color was crimson.
+
+"'Scuse me, mister. Didja see a little boy with a doll with a crimson
+dress on?"
+
+A smile. But she was deadly serious. "Not me, young lady."
+
+She walked for a while aimlessly on B Deck. She saw two little boys, but
+they weren't the right ones. Pouting now, almost in tears, she was on
+the verge of giving up. Mom and Dad could buy her a new doll. Mom and
+Dad were richer than anybody, weren't they?
+
+Then, all of a sudden, she saw him. He was just ducking out of sight up
+ahead. Under his arm was tucked the doll with the crimson dress, her
+favorite doll.
+
+"Hey!" she cried. "Hey, wait for me!"
+
+Her little feet pounding, she raced down the companionway. As she
+reached the irising door in the bulkhead, an electric eye opened it for
+her. She had never come this way before. It was not as bright and clean
+as the rest of the ship. She had not even seen the sign which said
+PASSENGERS NOT PERMITTED BEYOND THIS POINT. But then, she could barely
+read, anyway.
+
+She caught a quick second glimpse of the boy, and started running as he
+rounded a turn in the corridor. Shouting for him to stop, she reached
+the turn and saw him up ahead. He looked back at her and stuck out his
+tongue and kept running.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was then that the whole world shuddered, like it was trying to shake
+itself to pieces.
+
+Alarm bells clanged everywhere. Whistles shrilled. Pretty soon
+uniformed men were running in all directions. Robin Sinclair was
+suddenly very frightened. She wanted to go back to A Deck, to her Mom
+and Dad, but she had followed the boy through so many twisting, turning
+corridors that she knew she would be lost if she tried. She looked
+ahead. The boy seemed confident as he made his way. She followed him.
+But she was really mad at him now. It was his fault she was so far from
+Mom and Dad when a thing like this happened.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Uniformed members of the crew continued rushing by. She heard snatches
+of conversation she didn't understand.
+
+"Trying to patch it ..."
+
+"The whole stern section of the ship. Losing air fast ..."
+
+"The lifeboats. I was just down there. Every last one of 'em. Gone. The
+meteor took 'em right off into space."
+
+"If the damage can't be repaired ..."
+
+And one man, finally, with a face awful to behold: "Patches won't hold.
+We're losing air faster'n it can be replaced. Better tell the Captain."
+
+A man in a lot of gold braid rushed into view. He was
+distinguished-looking, but old. Boy, he was old, Robin thought. He
+looked as old as her grandfather.
+
+"Captain! We're losing too much air. It can't be replaced."
+
+"Then prepare to abandon ship."
+
+"But, sir, every lifeboat is gone!"
+
+"No lifeboats? No lifeboats!"
+
+The boy stuck his tongue out again. She ran after him, shaking her
+little fist. They were completely absorbed in their private enmity while
+the word went out that the situation was hopeless and almost five
+thousand people prepared to die.
+
+"I've got you now!"
+
+He had run up against a blank wall. She came toward him, holding her
+hands out for the doll with the crimson dress. He held it behind his
+back. She reached around to get it but he pushed her and she fell down.
+
+"I'll fix you!" she threatened, getting up and rushing toward him again.
+Big arms came down, and big hands grabbed her.
+
+"There now, little miss," a voice said. "Why aren't you with your folks?
+Time like this, you ought to be with your folks. What is it, B Deck?"
+
+"A Deck," Robin said haughtily. "_He's_ from B. Why is everybody running
+around so?"
+
+He was a tall, slat-thin man with a kind-looking face. "Say, wait a
+minute!" he suddenly said, looking perplexed. "They all the time said I
+was nuts, building that damn thing. Well, I can't fit into it, but maybe
+these here kids can."
+
+He scooped Robin up with one hand, got the boy with the other. "I want
+my doll!" Robin cried, but the boy held it away from her.
+
+"Take it easy now," the man said. "Take it easy. We'll take care of
+you."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He ran with them to one of the repair bays of the great, doom-bound
+starship. In one corner, beyond the now useless patching equipment, was
+a table. On the table stood a model of the _Star of Fire_. It was six
+feet long and perfect in every external detail. He hadn't got around to
+the inside yet. The inside was completely empty. It had rockets and
+everything. There was no reason why it wouldn't be perfectly
+space-worthy. Why, it would even hold an atmosphere ...
+
+"In you go!" he said.
+
+The little boy was suddenly scared. "I want my Mother," he said. "I
+want my Dad."
+
+"In you go."
+
+Robin felt herself lifted, and thrust inside something. It was dark in
+there. She moved around and bumped into something. She moved around some
+more and bumped against the little boy from B Deck.
+
+"How do you get out of here?" she asked.
+
+"I don't know," he said.
+
+"I want my doll back," she said.
+
+"Oh yeah?"
+
+"You better give it to me."
+
+He said nothing. There was a hissing sound, and a faint roar. Far away,
+something slid ponderously.
+
+"Pleasant voyage, little ones!" a voice boomed.
+
+Something sat on her chest all at once, squeezing all the air from her.
+It was a great weight holding her motionless, squeezing. She wanted to
+cry, but couldn't get the sound out. She wanted her Mom. Mom would know
+what to do.
+
+She was crushed and flattened into a tunnel of blackness.
+
+Thirty minutes later, the starship _Star of Fire_, outworld-bound from
+Sol to the starswarms beyond Ophiuchus, lost all its remaining air. It
+became an enormous coffin spinning end over end in space amid the blaze
+of starlight near the center of the galaxy.
+
+One tiny spaceship, a small model of the huge liner, sped away. If it
+went two days finding no planet, its two occupants would perish when the
+small oxygen supply gave out. If it found a planet it would circle and
+land automatically. The possibility of this was small, but not remote.
+For here at the center of the galaxy, stellar distances are more nearly
+planetary and most of the stars have attendant planets. But even then,
+it would have to be a world capable of supporting their lives ...
+
+They sped on, in all innocence. She was five. He was six. His name was
+Charlie Fullerton. He had her doll. She hated him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Two hours after the tiny model spaceship landed on a planet with three
+suns in the sky, Robin Sinclair awoke. She felt cramped and
+uncomfortable. It took her a while to orient herself. She had some kind
+of a dream. A dream was a funny thing. Mom said it wasn't real. But it
+sure was real to her.
+
+She got up and pushed with her hands. A section of the tiny spaceship
+sprang away at her touch, admitting blinding light. She lay there with
+her eyes tightly shut, but after a while she could see. The boy was
+sleeping. She still hated him. He was sleeping with her doll in his
+arms. She took the doll and he moved his arms and woke up. She jumped
+out of the open spaceship with the doll and started running.
+
+She ran along a beach. But the sand was green. The ocean hissed and
+roared and there was nobody else. "N'ya! N'ya! Y'can't catch me!" she
+bawled at the top of her voice. And fell down in the sand.
+
+He caught up with her and fell on top of her and they wrestled for the
+doll. The surf thundered nearby. The tide, capricious in the grip of the
+three suns, rose suddenly, flooding them with chill water. Coughing and
+spluttering and choking, they retreated further up the beach.
+
+Soon they quieted down.
+
+"I'm soaking wet," she said.
+
+"My name is Charlie," he said sullenly. "Let's go back now."
+
+"How do we go back?" she wanted to know.
+
+"That's a nice doll," Charlie said.
+
+"You took it from me!" Accusingly.
+
+"Aw, I only wanted to look at it."
+
+"She has a crimson dress and everything."
+
+"This is some world," Charlie said after a while.
+
+"What's a world?"
+
+"Oh, a world is--you know--everything."
+
+"Oh."
+
+"You think it has Indians?"
+
+She said, "It ought to have Indians, anyhow."
+
+"And pirates too?" he asked in a voice full of awe.
+
+She nodded her head very seriously. "I like pirates," she said. "They're
+so scarey."
+
+Just then a ship came into view far away across the water. It had
+enormous sails and a black hull. On the fore-sail was painted a huge
+black skull.
+
+"Let's get out of here!" Charlie cried in alarm. But beetling cliffs
+reared behind the beach and although they ran frantically along at the
+edge of the green sand, they could find no way to scale the cliffs. The
+pirate ship came closer and closer.
+
+They got down whimpering at the base of the cliffs and remained very
+still. After a long time the pirate ship came close to shore. A longboat
+was dispatched and its oars flashed in the triple sunlight like giant
+legs on which the longboat walked across the waves toward the beach.
+
+Then the pirates were ashore. The man who led them had only one leg, and
+a peg. He looked very mean.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"It's Blackbeard the Pirate!" said Charlie in a frightened whisper. His
+Dad had once read him a story about Blackbeard.
+
+The pirate with the wooden leg suddenly had a black beard.
+
+"The doll!" cried Robin.
+
+"What's the matter?"
+
+"We left her down there. Crimson." She called her doll Crimson because
+she had a crimson dress.
+
+Now Blackbeard approached the model spaceship with his crew. They
+gathered around it, frowning. Robin watched, her face pale, her eyes
+wide. Crimson was there on the sand. They were going to see Crimson.
+Even as she was thinking these horrible thoughts, one of the pirates saw
+Crimson and picked her up. Blackbeard came over and took the doll and
+looked at her. At that moment there was a shout from above the cliffs
+and an arrow suddenly transfixed one of the pirates. He fell down
+writhing and Blackbeard and the rest of his men raced back to the
+longboat.
+
+"Indians," Charlie whispered knowingly.
+
+The Indians shouted and yelled.
+
+"Are there any cowboys here?" Robin asked hopefully.
+
+"No, sir. No cowboys," Charlie said very definitely.
+
+"I'm hungry," Robin said. "I wish we had something."
+
+With a little squeal of delight, she looked down at her feet. Two
+platters of fried chicken, with all the trimmings. Her favorite. They
+ate ravenously, not hearing the Indians any more. They watched the
+longboat return to the pirate ship. All this way, they could see little
+Crimson's dress as Blackbeard took her aboard. Robin finished her fried
+chicken and started to cry.
+
+"Girls," said Charlie in disgust.
+
+"I can't help it. Poor Crimson."
+
+"Is she dead?"
+
+"Blackbeard the pirate took her."
+
+"Charles was my grandfather's name. My grandfather died and they named
+me Charles."
+
+"I want Crimson!"
+
+"Get down! The Indians will see you."
+
+"The Indians went away. I want Crimson!"
+
+"We could name this beach after Crimson."
+
+"Aw, what do you know? It's only a beach."
+
+"We could name the whole wide world." Charlie gestured expansively.
+
+The green sand of the beach became crimson. The sky had a crimson glow.
+
+"It sure is a funny world," Charlie said. Laughter loud as thunder
+echoed in the sky. "A world called Crimson," he added.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The tide came in. Spray and surf bounded off the rocks, wetting them.
+"We better go up the hill," Robin said. By hill she meant the
+perpendicular cliffs behind them.
+
+The tide thundered in. They were sodden. They clung to the rocks.
+
+"We need an elevator or something," Charlie said.
+
+Golden cables flashed in the sunlight. The gilt elevator cage came down.
+They climbed in as a big wave came and battered the rocks. The elevator
+went up, up to the top of the cliff. They could see a long way across
+the water. They could watch the pirate ship sailing away, the skull
+black as night on its sail.
+
+They got out of the elevator at the top of the cliff. They didn't see
+any Indians, but they saw the ashes of a campfire.
+
+"Are there lions and tigers and everything?" Robin asked in wonder,
+gazing out over the beach and the sea and then turning around to see the
+green forest which began fifty yards beyond the edge of the cliff.
+
+"Sure there are lions and tigers," Charlie said matter-of-factly.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Off somewhere in the woods, a big cat roared. Robin whimpered.
+
+"I w-was only fooling," Charlie said, vaguely understanding that you
+could somehow make things happen on this world called Crimson.
+
+But he learned a lesson that night. You could make things happen on
+Crimson, but you couldn't unmake them.
+
+The tiger roared again. But they were downwind from it and it went
+elsewhere in search of prey. Huddled together near the embers of the
+Indian campfire, the two children slept fitfully through the cold night.
+
+Then the three suns finally came up on three different sides of the
+horizon. Crimson was deadly, but beautiful....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Although credit for the discovery of _Aladdin's Planet_ goes to the
+explorer Richard Purcell of Earth, two Earth children actually were
+shipwrecked there twenty years before Purcell's expedition. But instead
+of paving the way for Purcell, they actually made the exploration more
+difficult for him. In fact, it was positively fraught with peril. But
+since _Aladdin's Planet_ had become the galaxy's arsenal of plenty, it
+was well worth Purcell's effort. As any schoolboy knows in this utopia
+of 24th century plenty, _Aladdin's Planet_, almost exactly at the heart
+of the galaxy, where matter is spontaneously created to sweep out in
+long cosmic trails across the galaxy, is the home not merely of
+spontaneous creation of matter, but spontaneous _formed_ creation, with
+any human psyche capable of doing the handwork of God. A planet of great
+import ..._
+
+                                    _--from The ANNALS OF SPACE, Vol. 2_
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She stood poised for a glorious moment on the very edge of the rock, the
+bronze and pink of her glistening in the sun, the spray still clinging
+to her from her last dive. Then, grace in every line of her lithe body,
+she sprang from the rock in a perfectly executed swan dive.
+
+Charlie helped her out, smiling. "That was pretty," he said.
+
+"Well, you taught me how." Her figure was not yet that of a woman, but
+far more than that of a girl. She was very beautiful and Charlie knew
+this although he had no standards to judge by, except for the Indian
+women they occasionally saw or Blackbeard's slave girls when the pirate
+ship came in to trade.
+
+Unselfconsciously, Robin climbed into her gold-mesh shorts. Charlie
+helped her fasten the gold-mesh halter. Long, long ago--it seemed an
+unreal dream, almost--he had been a very small boy and his mother had
+taken him to a show in which everyone danced and sang and wore gold-mesh
+clothing. He had never forgotten it, and now all their clothing was
+gold-mesh.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Robin spun around and looked at him. Her tawny blonde hair fell almost
+to her waist, and he helped her comb it with a jewel-encrusted comb he
+had wished into being a few days before.
+
+"I so like Crimson!" she cried impulsively.
+
+Charlie smiled. "Why, that's a funny thing to say. Is there any other
+kind of a place?"
+
+"You mean, but Crimson?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I don't know. It is funny. Sometimes I think--"
+
+Charlie smiled at her, a little condescendingly. "Oh, it's the book
+again, is it?" he asked.
+
+"All right. It's the book. Stop making fun of me."
+
+Many years ago, when they'd been small children, they had returned to
+the ruined spaceship which had brought them to Crimson. It had been
+empty except for the book, as if the book had been placed there for them
+by whatever power had put them in the spaceship. Naturally, they had not
+been able to read, but they kept the book anyway. Then one day, years
+later, Robin had wished to be able to read and the next time she lifted
+the book and opened it, the magic of the words was miraculously revealed
+to her. The book was called A ONE VOLUME ENCYCLOPEDIC HISTORY and it
+told about just everything--except Crimson. There was no mention of
+Crimson at all. Robin read the book over and over again until she almost
+knew it by heart. Even Charlie had listened to it twice all the way
+through when she read it, but he had never wished for the ability to
+read himself.
+
+Now Charlie asked: "Do you really believe the book? This is Crimson.
+This is real."
+
+"I don't know. Sometimes I think this isn't as real as everything in the
+book. And sometimes I just don't know."
+
+They walked in silence to their elevator and took it to the top of the
+highest cliff. They had wished for a house there, like one Robin had
+seen in the book. They had wished for many things to make their lives
+interesting, or pleasant. They had peopled Crimson with the fruit of
+their wishes, using the ONE VOLUME ENCYCLOPEDIC HISTORY as a guide.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They lived a mile from the Indian Camp. They traded with the Indians
+who, strangely, did not know how to wish for things. Neither did the
+pirates, or anyone. Just Robin and Charlie. The pirates lived across the
+sea on an island. To the south along the shore were Phoenicians, Greeks,
+Mayas, Royal Navymen, Submariners, mermaids and Cyclopes. To the north
+along the shore were Polynesians, Maoris, Panamanians and Dutchmen.
+Inland were Cannibals, Lotus Eaters, a few settlements of cowboys to
+make life interesting for the Indians, farmers, Russians, Congressmen
+and Ministers. All had been created by Robin and Charlie, who visited
+them sometimes. They never believed for a minute that Robin and Charlie
+had really created them, although all were amazed by Robin and Charlie's
+ability to make things appear out of thin air.
+
+Just as they reached their house, an Indian brave came running down the
+trail toward them.
+
+"Skyship come!" he cried, gesturing wildly and excitedly.
+
+"Skyship?" repeated Charlie, looking at Robin. "Have you created any
+spaceships?"
+
+"No. You know it's a bargain between us. We don't create anything we
+don't think we understand."
+
+The Indian was sweating. His name was Tashtu, which meant Wild Eagle,
+and he was their go-between with the tribe. "Skyship sweep across
+heavens," he said. "Not land. Go up in Wild Country."
+
+Charlie's interest quickened. Wild Country. They had created it on
+impulse, about twenty miles from the Indian Camp, midway between the
+settlements of Congressmen inland and Cyclopes on the shore. It was a
+place of tortuous gorges and rocks and mountains, utterly lifeless. No
+one ever went there. Someday, he had always told Robin, they would
+explore Wild Country. If there really was a spaceship, and if it had
+gone there ...
+
+"No," Robin said. "I know what you're thinking. But I'm perfectly happy
+here."
+
+"You just now said you sometimes thought Crimson wasn't real and there
+were other, real worlds which--"
+
+"That's different. I can dream, can't I?"
+
+"But don't you see, if a spaceship's really come, maybe they can tell
+us."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She gripped his arm. "Charlie. Oh, Charlie, I don't know. I'm afraid.
+We've been happy here, haven't we? We really wouldn't want it to
+change ..."
+
+"I'm going to Wild Country," Charlie said stubbornly.
+
+Tashtu nodded his head. "It is good that you do. For the braves--"
+
+"Don't tell me they went after the skyship?" Charlie asked.
+
+"Yes, Lord. Skyship come low, ruin crops mile around. War dance follow.
+War party leave last sunrise."
+
+"Six hours ago!" Charlie cried. "Can we overtake them?"
+
+Tashtu shrugged. "Hurry, Lord."
+
+"Don't you see," Charlie told Robin. "They're savages. They wouldn't
+understand anything like spaceships. They wouldn't want to. If they get
+the chance, they'll kill first and ask questions afterwards. We've got
+to go to the Wild Country now."
+
+Big and brawny Tashtu was nodding his head earnestly, but Robin seemed
+unconvinced. "Why," she said, "there isn't even anything about Wild
+Country in the book."
+
+"That's because we made it."
+
+"And besides, the Congressmen are dangerous."
+
+"Congressmen? Don't you mean the Cyclopes?"
+
+"Yes, I'm sorry. The Cyclopes are dangerous."
+
+She couldn't possibly have meant the Congressmen. It was never clear to
+either of them precisely what a Congressman did. But there were hundreds
+of them on one side of Wild Country and they were forever making
+speeches and promises, little round bald men with great, rich voices
+and wonderful vocabularies. Charlie loved to hear them speak.
+
+"We go, Lord?" Tashtu asked.
+
+Charlie nodded and went inside swiftly for his rifle. It was modeled
+after the most powerful rifle in the encyclopedia and was called a
+Mannlicher Elephant Gun. Robin came with her own smaller Springfield
+repeater.
+
+"Ready?" Charlie asked.
+
+"Yes. We can think up food along the trail."
+
+"Hurry, Lord," Tashtu urged.
+
+Charlie could hardly contain his excitement. The Wild Country, at last.
+And a spaceship.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+By the time they were ready to make planetfall on the unexplored world,
+Purcell knew his dislike of Glaudot bordered on actual hatred. Purcell,
+who was forty-five years old and a bachelor, liked his spacemen tough,
+yes: you had to be tough to land on, explore, and subdue a couple of
+dozen worlds, as Purcell himself had done. But he also liked his
+spacemen with humility: facing the unknown and sometimes the unknowable
+at every step of the way, you needed humility.
+
+Glaudot, younger than Purcell by fifteen years, confident, arrogant, a
+lean hard man and handsome in a gaunt-cheeked, saturnine way, lacked
+humility. For one thing, he treated the crew like dirt and had treated
+them that way since blastoff from Earth almost five months before. For
+another, he seemed impatient with Purcell's orders, although Purcell was
+not a cautious man, and certainly not a timid one. What had been growing
+between them flared out into the open moments before planetfall.
+
+"I can't get over it," Purcell said. "I've never seen a world anything
+like it." They had made telescopic observations from within the
+atmosphere. "Giants living in caves," Purcell went on. "Sailing ships
+flying the Jolly Roger. A town consisting of miniature replicas of the
+White House on Earth. Mermaids."
+
+"Don't tell me you really thought you saw mermaids?" Glaudot asked a
+little condescendingly.
+
+"All right, I'll admit I only caught a glimpse of them. I thought they
+were mermaids. But what about the Indians?"
+
+"Yes," Glaudot admitted. "I saw the Indians."
+
+Using their atmospheric rockets, they had flown over the Indian village
+at an altitude of only a few hundred feet, to see bronze-skinned men
+rush out of tents and stare up at them in awe. After that, Purcell had
+decided to find some desolate spot in which to land, in order not to
+risk a too-sudden encounter with any of the fantastically diversified
+natives.
+
+Now Glaudot said: "You're taking what we saw too literally, Captain.
+Why, I remember on Harfonte we had all sorts of hallucinations until
+Captain Jamison discovered they were exactly that--we'd been hypnotized
+into seeing the things we most feared by powerless natives who really
+feared us."
+
+"This isn't Harfonte," Purcell said, a little irritably.
+
+"Yeah, but you weren't there."
+
+"I know that, Glaudot. I'm only trying to point out that each world must
+be considered as unique. Each world presents its own problems, which--"
+
+"I say this is like Harfonte all over again. I say if you'd had the guts
+to land right smack in the middle of that Indian village, you'd have
+seen for yourself. I say to play it close to the vest is ridiculous,"
+Glaudot said, and then smiled deprecatingly. "Begging your pardon, of
+course, Captain. But don't you see, man, you've got to show the
+extraterrestrials, whatever form they take, that Earthmen aren't afraid
+of them."
+
+"Caution and fear aren't the same thing," Purcell insisted. He didn't
+know why he bothered to explain this to Glaudot. Perhaps it was because
+Ensign Chandler, youngest man in the exploration party, was in the
+lounge listening to them. Chandler was a nice kid, clean-cut and right
+out of the finest tradition of Earth, but Chandler was, like all boys
+barely out of their teens, impressionable. He was particularly
+impressionable in these, his first months in space.
+
+"When you're cautious it's as much to protect the natives as yourself,"
+Purcell went on, and then put into simple words what Glaudot and
+Chandler should have learned at the Academy for Exploration, anyway.
+
+When he finished, Glaudot shrugged and asked: "What do you think, Ensign
+Chandler?"
+
+Chandler blushed slowly. "I--I'd rather not say," he told them. "Captain
+Purcell is--the captain."
+
+Glaudot smiled his triumph at Purcell. It was then, for the first time,
+that Purcell's dislike for the man became intense. Purcell wondered how
+long he'd been poisoning the youth's mind against the doctrines of the
+Academy.
+
+Just then a light glowed in the bulkhead and a metallic voice intoned:
+"Prepare for landing. Prepare for landing at once."
+
+Purcell, striding to his blast-hammock, told Glaudot, who was the
+expedition's exec, "I'll want the landing party ready to move half an
+hour after planetfall."
+
+"Yes, sir," said Glaudot eagerly. At least there was something they
+agreed on.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Men," Purcell told the small landing party as they assembled near the
+main airlock thirty-five minutes later, "we have an obligation to our
+civilization which I hope all of you understand. While here on this
+unknown world we must do nothing to bring discredit to the name of Earth
+and the galactic culture which Earth represents."
+
+They had all seen the bleak moon-like landscape through the viewports.
+They were eager to get out there and plant the flag of Earth and
+determine what the new world was like. There were only eight of them in
+the first landing party: others would follow once the eight established
+a preliminary base of operations. The eight were wearing the new-style,
+light-weight spacesuits which all exploration parties used even though
+the temperature and atmosphere of the new world seemed close enough to
+Earth-norm. It had long ago been decided at the Academy that chances
+couldn't be taken with some unknown factor, possibly toxic, fatal and
+irreversible, in an unknown atmosphere. After a day or two of thorough
+laboratory analysis of the air they'd be able to chuck their spacesuits
+if all went well.
+
+They filed through the airlock silently, Purcell first with the flag of
+Earth, then Glaudot, then the others. White faces watched from the
+viewport as they clomped across the convoluted terrain.
+
+"Nobody here but us chickens!" Glaudot said, and he laughed, after they
+had walked some way across the desolate landscape. "But then, what did
+you expect? Captain took us clear of all the more promising places."
+
+The man's only motive, Purcell decided, was his colossal ego. He made no
+reply: that would be descending to Glaudot's level.
+
+After they walked almost entirely across the low-walled crater in which
+the exploration ship had come down, and after Purcell had planted the
+flag on the highest pinnacle within the low crater walls, Glaudot said:
+
+"How's about taking a look-see over the top, Captain? At least that
+much."
+
+Purcell wasn't in favor of the idea. It would mean leaving sight of the
+ship too soon. But the radio voices of most of the men indicated that
+they agreed with Glaudot, so Purcell shrugged and said a pair of
+volunteers could go, if they promised to rejoin the main party within
+two hours.
+
+Glaudot immediately volunteered. That at least made sense. Glaudot had
+the courage of his convictions. Several others volunteered, but the
+first hand up had been Ensign Chandler's.
+
+"I don't want to sound like a martinet," Purcell told them. "But you
+understand that by two hours I mean two hours. Not a minute more."
+
+"Yes, sir," Chandler said.
+
+"Glaudot?"
+
+"Yes, sir," the Executive Officer replied.
+
+"All right," Purcell said. He walked over to the first of the big
+magna-sleds piled high with equipment. "We'll be setting up the base
+camp over here. I know the men still in the ship will want to stretch
+their legs soon as possible. We don't want to have to go looking for
+you, Glaudot."
+
+"Not me, Captain," Glaudot assured him, and walked off toward the crater
+rim with young Ensign Chandler.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"What the devil was that?" Chandler said forty-five minutes later.
+
+"Stop jumping at every shadow you see. Relax."
+
+"I thought I saw something moving behind that rock."
+
+"So, go take a look."
+
+"But--"
+
+"Hell, boy, don't let that Purcell put the fear of the unknown into you
+on your very first trip out. Huh, what do you say?"
+
+"Yes, sir, Mr. Glaudot," Ensign Chandler replied.
+
+"After all," Glaudot went on, "we have nothing to be afraid of. We're
+still within sight of the ship."
+
+Chandler turned around. "I don't see it," he said.
+
+"From the top of that rock you could."
+
+"Think so?"
+
+"Sure I do. Why don't you take a look if it will make you feel better?"
+
+"All right," Chandler said, and smiled at his own temerity. But he knew
+vaguely that he'd been caught in a crossfire between the cautious
+Purcell and the bold, arrogant Glaudot. Sometimes he really thought that
+the Captain's caution made sense: on Wulcreston, he'd learned at the
+Academy, a whole Earth expedition had been slaughtered before contact
+because the natives mistook hand telescopes for weapons. And surely on
+any world a spacesuited man looked more like a monster than a man
+although he was vulnerable in a spacesuit, even more vulnerable than a
+naked man because he could only run awkwardly.
+
+All this Chandler thought as he climbed the high rock rampart. He'd send
+a subspace letter back to the folks tonight, sure enough, he told
+himself. Not only had he been chosen for the preliminary exploration
+party, he'd made the first trip out of sight of the spaceship. It
+certainly was something to write home about, and Mom would be very
+proud ...
+
+He was on top of the rock now. The vast tortuous landscape spread out
+below him like a relief map in a mapmaker's nightmare. Far to his left,
+beyond Glaudot's spacesuited figure, he could see the projectile-shaped
+spaceship resting on its tail fins. And to his right--
+
+He stared. He gawked.
+
+At the last moment he tried to get down from the rock, but his spaceboot
+caught on an outcropping and his fatal mistake was standing upright in
+an attempt to free it.
+
+Then all at once in a blinding burst of pain he was clutching at
+something in his chest but knew as his life ebbed rapidly from his young
+body that it would not matter if he was able to pull the cruel shaft
+out....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Glaudot went rushing up the side of the rock. He still couldn't believe
+his eyes. Ensign Chandler had been impaled by two long feathered shafts,
+two arrows. The force of the first one had spun Chandler around and he
+lay now with his back arched across the topmost ramparts of the rock,
+two arrows protruding from his chest and his life blood, starkly crimson
+against the white of the spacesuit, pouring out.
+
+Reaching the top of the rock in an attempt to drag the dying boy down,
+Glaudot saw the Indians rushing up the other side of the crater wall.
+Indians, he thought incredulously. Indians, as in the American West
+hundreds of years ago. Indians ... But just what the hell were they
+doing here?
+
+A muscular brave notched an arrow, his right hand drawing the feathered
+shaft back to his ear. Quickly Glaudot flung his arms skyward, hoping
+that the universal gesture of surrender would be understood. The brave
+stood statue-still. His lips opened. He was speaking to another of the
+half-dozen Indians in the raiding band, but Glaudot could not hear the
+words through his space helmet. He knew his life hung in the balance.
+
+He watched, fascinated and helpless, as the Indian who had slain Ensign
+Chandler came toward him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Tashtu said: "Two raiding bands, Lord. One go north. Other south. We
+follow?"
+
+They had reached the advance Indian camp on the fringe of the Wild
+Country. So far they had seen nothing of the Cyclopes who lived in this
+part of the world. Of all their creations, Charlie and Robin feared and
+avoided only the Cyclopes, the enormous one-eyed giants which had so
+intrigued Robin in the encyclopedia that she'd had a compulsion to
+create them, and had done so.
+
+"We can't follow both bands," Charlie said, looking troubled.
+
+"Why can't we?" Robin asked. "You go north with some of the braves,
+Charlie. I'll go south. We ought to be able to overtake the raiding
+parties before anything happens."
+
+"I can't let you go alone."
+
+"All right. I'll take Tashtu with me. Don't you think Tashtu can take
+care of me as well as you can?"
+
+"Well, I just don't like the idea--" Charlie began.
+
+"That's silly. If we have to find them before there's trouble, we have
+to find them. Well, don't we?"
+
+Charlie gave her an uncertain nod. He had grown up with her and had seen
+her every day of his life, but every time he took a good look at her, at
+the lovely face and the tawny, long-limbed form ill-concealed by the
+gold-mesh garments, it took his breath away. Although in a sense a whole
+world was his plaything, he had never seen anything so lovely. Finally
+he said, "I guess you're too logical for me. Take care of her, Tashtu."
+
+"With my life, Lord," the Indian vowed as the group broke up. Robin ran
+to Charlie and hugged him, kissing his cheek half playfully, half in
+earnest.
+
+"You be careful, too," she said, and went off with Tashtu and several of
+the braves.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Naturally she was excited. She knew more about spacemen than Charlie
+did. She had read the encyclopedia more carefully, hadn't she? She
+wondered what the spacemen would be like. She couldn't help wondering it
+because the only man she had ever known, except for those they had
+created, was Charlie. Of course, she hadn't told Charlie this in so many
+words, but she felt, had always felt, vaguely and now felt clearly, that
+before she could settle down contentedly with Charlie, she would have to
+know something of the world beyond Crimson. And there was a vast
+world--a multitude of worlds--beyond Crimson. She knew that. The
+encyclopedia mentioned all of them but did not mention Crimson at all.
+
+They walked for several minutes through green forest, and then abruptly
+came to the edge of the Wild Country. Even the idea of the Wild Country
+brought an eagerness to Robin's limbs and made her walk more rapidly.
+The Wild Country was unknown, wasn't it? They had created it without
+knowing quite what they were creating, and had never explored it.
+
+She went ahead with Tashtu over the rocks and crushed pumice. No winds
+blew in Wild Country. The air was neither hot nor cold. The landscape
+seemed changeless and eternal, as if it had been that way since before
+the dawn of history, although actually Charlie and Robin had created it
+only a few years before.
+
+They forged on for two hours, Tashtu following the easily read spoor in
+the pumice. They came at last to a low crater wall, where the spoor
+disappeared. At first Tashtu was confused, but then he pointed to the
+top, several hundred feet above their heads. Robin caught a glimpse of
+tawny skin and feathers and buckskin in the sunlight.
+
+"Haloo!" Tashtu called, and some of the braves above them whirled, all
+speaking excitedly in the clumsy English which was the only tongue they
+knew.
+
+"Huragpha slay monster," they said. "Capture other monster. But then
+see ..." the words drifted off into silence. Obviously, the Indians were
+perplexed. "You come, see. Monster, him bleed like man."
+
+At Tashtu's side, Robin rushed up the steep rocky slope. When they
+reached the top, breathless and all but exhausted, Robin put her hand to
+her mouth with a little cry of horror.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was a dead man stretched out on the rock there, two arrows
+transfixing his chest through the fabric of his spacesuit. The spacesuit
+had probably frightened the Indians, but he was a man all right. Had
+they been closer, even the Indians would have known that. That poor
+man.... Why, he was hardly more than a boy.
+
+Spacemen!
+
+And there was another, surrounded now by several of the Indians. "Him
+prisoner," said the Indian called Huragpha a little uncertainly.
+
+Robin walked over to the man in the spacesuit. He was a big man, even
+bigger than Charlie. He looked very strong, but the spacesuit might have
+been deceptive. He looked frightened, but not terrified.
+
+"Are you really a spaceman?" Robin asked.
+
+Glaudot said: "Well, so one of you can speak more than a few grunts.
+That's something." He looked carefully at Robin. "Beautiful, too," he
+said. The way he said it was not a compliment. It was an objective
+statement of fact.
+
+"I know it won't help to say I'm sorry about your friend. Words won't
+help, I guess. But--"
+
+"Yeah," Glaudot said. "All right. He's dead. I can't bring him back and
+you can't bring him back, sister."
+
+"I'm not your sister," Robin said.
+
+Glaudot told her it was a way of speaking. He couldn't quite believe his
+ears. She spoke English as well as he did, which was incredible enough
+here on a world halfway across the galaxy. But he got the impression
+that she was almost fantastically naive. Yet the Indians--and,
+incredibly, they were Indians--seemed to be subservient to her, almost
+seemed to worship her.
+
+Glaudot sat down on his space helmet, which he had taken off some
+minutes before, and said: "Are you the boss lady around here?"
+
+"Boss lady? I don't understand."
+
+"Are you in charge? Do you run things?"
+
+Robin smiled and said: "I created them."
+
+"I'm sorry. Now _I_ don't get _you_."
+
+"I said I created them. It's very simple. My friend and I decided a very
+long time ago it would be nice or interesting or I forget what, it was
+so long ago, if we had some Indians. So, we created Indians."
+
+Glaudot threw his head back and laughed. "For a minute," he said, "you
+almost had me believing you." The girl was dressed like a savage, he
+told himself, like a beautiful savage, but at least she had a sense of
+humor. That was something.
+
+"But what is so funny?" Robin asked.
+
+"You just now said--"
+
+"I know what I said. My friend and I created the Indians. Of course.
+Why? Can't you create anything you want? Just anything?"
+
+"All right, sister," Glaudot said a little angrily. He did not like
+being made fun of, for he lacked the capacity to laugh at himself. "Just
+how much of a fool do you think I am?"
+
+"Why, I don't know," Robin replied. "How much of a fool are you?"
+
+Glaudot glared at her. Purcell was going to be one mad captain when he
+was told of Chandler's death, but men had died on expeditions before and
+it really wasn't Glaudot's fault. At any rate he had established contact
+with somebody of obvious importance among the natives, and Purcell would
+appreciate that.
+
+"Never mind," Glaudot said.
+
+"Tell me about being a spaceman. Do you really fly among the stars?"
+
+"Well, yes," Glaudot said, "although it isn't really flying."
+
+"And do you create new stars as you go along?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There she went again with her talk of creation, as if creating things
+out of nothing was the commonest occurrence in the world. Glaudot stood
+up. "All right, sister. Show me."
+
+"Why, show you what?"
+
+"Create something."
+
+"You mean," Robin said, disappointed, "you actually can't?"
+
+"Just go ahead and create something."
+
+Robin shrugged. "What would you like?"
+
+Glaudot thought for a moment. "A piano!" he said suddenly. "How about a
+piano?" It was complicated enough, he thought. "And while you're at it,
+how about telling me how come everyone speaks English--or tries to speak
+English around here?"
+
+Robin frowned. "Is there some other way of speaking?"
+
+Glaudot also frowned. That line of thought wouldn't get him anywhere.
+"O.K.," he said. "One piano coming up?"
+
+"All right," Robin said.
+
+Glaudot blinked. The pretty girl hadn't moved. She hadn't even changed
+her facial expression. But a parlor grand piano stood on the rock before
+them.
+
+"Well, I'll be damned," Glaudot said. "What else can you create?"
+
+"We made all the natives here. We made the green and crimson. We made
+this whole Wild Country. We made some of the animals too."
+
+"Like--the piano? Out of nothing?"
+
+"Is there another way?"
+
+Glaudot said, "You better come back to the ship with me. Captain'll like
+to see you."
+
+Tashtu shook his head. "The Lady Robin awaits the Lord."
+
+Glaudot looked at Robin. "Who's that?"
+
+"Charlie. He's just my friend. I--I don't think I have to wait for him.
+I've always been more interested in reading about spacemen than he has.
+I'll go with you now if you want."
+
+Tashtu looked unhappy. "Lord Charlie, he say--"
+
+"Well, you wait right here, Tashtu, and tell Charlie where I've gone.
+What could be simpler? I'll be all right, don't worry about me."
+
+"Lord Charlie, he say watch you."
+
+"And I say I'm going with the spaceman to his spaceship."
+
+Tashtu bowed. "The Lady has spoken," he said, and watched Robin descend
+the rocky rampart and walk back with Glaudot toward the far distant
+glint of metal which was this spaceship they were talking about.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"So you can create just anything," Glaudot said.
+
+"I guess so."
+
+A goddess, he thought. A beautiful goddess who ...
+
+Suddenly he stared at her. Who could make him the most powerful man in
+the galaxy.
+
+"This spaceship of yours--" she began.
+
+"Wait. Wait a minute. If you can create anything, how's about
+re-creating Chandler?"
+
+"Chand-ler? What is Chand-ler?"
+
+"The boy back there. The one your braves killed."
+
+Robin said: "If you wish," and Glaudot held his breath. The power over
+life and death, he thought....
+
+He looked down and saw Chandler's spacesuited body there, the two arrows
+protruding from his chest. He shook his head. "Not dead," he said. "What
+good is he to anybody dead?"
+
+Robin nodded. "I'm sorry," she said. "I just hadn't thought before of
+bringing people back to life. It ... why it seems ..."
+
+"What's the matter?"
+
+"I wouldn't really be bringing him back, you know. It would be a copy,
+just a copy."
+
+"But a perfect copy?"
+
+"I think so."
+
+"Then if it's just a copy it shouldn't bother you at all, should it?"
+
+"Well ..." Robin said doubtfully.
+
+"Go ahead. Show me you can do it."
+
+Glaudot gaped. Another figure sat alongside Chandler's corpse,
+Chandler's second corpse. The other figure got up. It was Chandler.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Look out!" the new Chandler cried. "Look out--Indians!"
+
+"Just take it easy," Glaudot told him. Glaudot's face was very white,
+his eyes big and round and staring.
+
+Chandler looked down at the body on the rocks. His knees buckled and
+Glaudot caught him, stopping him from falling. Chandler tried to say
+something, but the words wouldn't come. He stared with horrified
+fascination at the body, which was an exact copy of himself--or a copy
+of the dead man from whom the new living man was copied.
+
+"May we go to your spaceship now?" Robin asked Glaudot politely. "I have
+always wished to see a spaceship."
+
+Here was power, Glaudot thought. Incredible power. All the power to
+control worlds, to carve worlds from primordial slime, almost, for
+yourself. Here was far more power than any man in the galaxy had ever
+been offered. Was it his, Glaudot's?
+
+It wouldn't be if he brought the beautiful girl to the spaceship and
+Purcell. For Captain Purcell, a devoted servant of the galactic
+civilization which he was attempting to spread to the outworlds, would
+think in terms of what good the discovery of this girl could bring to
+all humanity. But if Glaudot kept her to himself ...
+
+And then another thought almost stunned him. Why merely the girl? She'd
+mentioned a friend, hadn't she? Perhaps it was something in the
+atmosphere of this strange world, in the very air you breathed. Perhaps
+anyone could do it, could create out of nothing--Glaudot included.
+
+"You want to go to the spaceship?" he asked.
+
+"Yes. Oh, yes."
+
+"Then teach me the secret of creation."
+
+"Of making things, you mean? Why, there isn't any secret. Should there
+be any secret? You merely--create."
+
+"Show me," said Glaudot.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A table appeared, and savory dishes of food.
+
+"Magician!" cried Chandler.
+
+A great roan stallion, bridled but without a saddle, materialized. Robin
+swung up on its broad back and used her bare knees for balance and
+control. The stallion cantered off.
+
+"Wait!" cried Glaudot. "Please wait."
+
+The stallion cantered back and Robin alighted. The stallion began to
+graze on a patch of grass which suddenly appeared on the naked rock. The
+stallion seemed quite content.
+
+"You mean," the new Chandler asked in an awed voice, "she just _made_
+these things? The food. The table. The horse ..."
+
+"Yes," said Glaudot. He concentrated his will on creating a single
+flower in the new field of grass. He concentrated his whole being.
+
+But nothing happened.
+
+He glared almost angrily at Robin, as if it were her fault. "I don't
+have the power you have," he said.
+
+She nodded. "Only Charlie and me." She looked at the roan stallion.
+"Beauty, isn't he? I'll present him to Charlie." She turned to Glaudot.
+"Now take me to the ship."
+
+"We ought to get started back there, Mr. Glaudot," Chandler said.
+
+"Yes? Why?"
+
+"But--but I don't have to tell you why! This girl is one of the most
+important discoveries that has ever been made. The ability to create
+material things ... out of nothing...."
+
+"Show me your planet," Glaudot told Robin, ignoring the younger man. "We
+can talk about the spaceship later. You see, I'm an explorer and it's
+my job to explore new worlds." He spoke slowly, simply, as he would
+speak to a child. Somehow, although the girl was not a child and was
+quite the most astonishingly beautiful girl he had ever seen, he thought
+that was the right approach.
+
+"Now wait a minute, Mr. Glaudot," Chandler protested. "We both know it's
+our duty to bring her to Captain Purcell."
+
+"Maybe you think it's your duty," Glaudot told the younger man. "I don't
+think it's mine. And before you run off to the ship to tell that
+precious captain of yours, you ought to know that you'd be dead right
+now if it hadn't been for me."
+
+"You?"
+
+"Hell, yes. Those Indians or whatever they were killed you. I asked the
+girl to bring you back to life."
+
+"To bring--" echoed Chandler his mouth falling open.
+
+"Actually, she produced a perfect copy of you. A living copy. Do you see
+what she offers us, Chandler? Infinite wealth from creativity out of
+nothing--and eternal life by copying our bodies each time we die! What
+do you say about your precious captain now?"
+
+Chandler seemed confused. He shook his head, staring first at Glaudot
+and then at Robin. "The ship," he said. "Our duty ... the captain ..."
+
+Glaudot snorted and told Robin: "Kill him."
+
+"Kill him?"
+
+"Yes. You brought him into being. Now send him out of being."
+
+"But I can't do that. I have no further control once I make something.
+And besides I--I wouldn't kill a human being, even if I could."
+
+Fear was in Chandler's eyes. "Mr. Glaudot, listen ..." he began.
+
+"Listen, hell," Glaudot said. "I brought you back to life. I offered you
+a share in the greatest power the worlds have ever known. You turned it
+down. I'm sorry, Chandler. I'm really sorry for you. But I can't let you
+return to the ship, you see. Not until I learn some more about this
+world, not until I understand exactly what the girl's power is, and
+consolidate my position."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Without waiting to hear more, Chandler began to run. In three great
+bounds he reached the grazing roan stallion and leaped on its back,
+digging his heels into its flanks. The stallion moved off at a quick
+trot as Glaudot drew his blaster and took dead aim at Chandler's
+retreating back.
+
+When he had Chandler squarely in his sights, Glaudot began to squeeze
+the trigger. But suddenly the trigger-housing-unit of the blaster became
+encumbered with tiny vines. There were hundreds of them writhing and
+crawling all over the weapon and getting in the sights too so Glaudot
+could no longer aim. By the time he tore the vines clear, cursing
+savagely, the roan stallion had taken Chandler out of sight on his
+retreat toward the spaceship.
+
+Glaudot whirled on Robin. "You did this!" he accused her. "You did it.
+Why--why?"
+
+"You were going to kill him. You shouldn't have."
+
+"But now you've ruined everything. Not just for me. For us, don't you
+see? I could have laid the world at your feet. I could have--listen!
+Tell me this--is there any place we can hide? Some place they won't find
+us if they come looking, while we work on this power of yours and see
+exactly what it can do and what it can't do?"
+
+"I want to see the spaceship, please," said Robin.
+
+"Afterwards, I promise you," Glaudot said. "Why, we can make all the
+spaceships we want--out of nothing. Can't we?"
+
+"Yes," said Robin. "I guess so. But even if we hide from your friends,
+my friend Charlie will find us. He'll be worried about me and he'll find
+us. Charlie can do everything I can do, you see."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Glaudot stared at her with anger in his eyes. Then something else
+replaced the anger. No, he thought, Charlie couldn't do everything she
+could do. She was beautiful. Her half-nude body summoned desire in him.
+Tentatively, ready to withdraw his hand at the first indication of
+protest, he touched her bare shoulder. She made no response. She merely
+stood there, waiting for some kind of an answer from him.
+
+"Then we'll have to hide from Charlie too. Please believe me," Glaudot
+said. "I'm a spaceman and you know very little about spacemen. Do you
+want to learn?"
+
+"Yes. Yes, I do."
+
+"Then take me some place even Charlie will have difficulty finding us."
+
+"But he'll know."
+
+"What do you mean he'll know? Don't tell me you can read one another's
+minds?"
+
+"Oh, goodness, no. Nothing like that. But when we were very little I
+once told Charlie if ever I got mad at him I would go to hide in the
+country of the Cyclopes and he would never be able to find me because
+the Cyclopes would eat him. That was after we read about the Cyclopes in
+the Ulysses story in our encyclopedia. You see?"
+
+"Cyclopes, huh? You really mean one-eyed giants?"
+
+"Yes. We made them but they don't obey us."
+
+"Can the two of us hide in their land? Is it far?"
+
+"No. Very close. But I don't know if I want--"
+
+"I'm a spaceman, aren't I? And you want to learn all about spacemen and
+the worlds beyond this place, don't you? Then come with me!"
+
+"But--"
+
+"If you say no and I go back to the spaceship we'll blast off and you'll
+never see spacemen again the rest of your life," threatened Glaudot.
+
+Robin did not answer. "Well?" Glaudot snapped, as if he was quite
+indifferent. "Would you want that to happen?"
+
+"No," Robin admitted after a while.
+
+"Then let's go." They had to hurry, Glaudot knew. Riding that stallion,
+that incredible conjured-out-of-nothing stallion, Chandler had probably
+reached the spaceship by now. A few words, a few hurried explanations,
+and Purcell would lead an armed party out after Glaudot.
+
+Again Robin was silent. Glaudot stood stiffly in front of her, so close
+he could reach out and wrap his arms about her. But this wasn't the
+time, he told himself. Later ... later ...
+
+"All right," Robin said at last, her eyes looking troubled. "I'll take
+you to the land of Cyclopes."
+
+They began to walk, in silence. Half an hour later, the barren terrain
+of rocks gave way to a verdant jungle in which the trees were quite the
+biggest Glaudot had ever seen and in which even the grass and the
+fragrant wild flowers grew over their heads. Glaudot had never felt so
+small.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Wait a minute, Chandler," Captain Purcell said. "I listened in silence
+to what you said. All of it, as incredible as it sounded. But you don't
+expect me to believe--"
+
+"Look at the horse. Where did I get the horse, sir?"
+
+"So there are horses on this world. So what?"
+
+"But I saw the girl create it out of thin air!"
+
+"Really, Chandler."
+
+"And I saw the corpse. My corpse, Captain. Mine!"
+
+"But hell, man. Glaudot would have come back here with the girl. He
+knows his obligation to civilization. He--"
+
+"Glaudot, sir? Does he?"
+
+Purcell scowled and said finally: "Chandler, either you and Glaudot have
+made the most astonishing discovery since man first domesticated his
+environment and so became more than a reasonably clever animal, or
+you're the biggest liar that ever crossed deep space."
+
+Chandler offered his captain a pale smile. "Why don't you find out
+which, sir?"
+
+"By God," said Purcell, "I will. McCreedy!" he bawled over the intercom.
+"Smith! Wong! I want an armed expedition of twenty-five men ready to
+leave the ship in half an hour."
+
+And, exactly half an hour later, the expedition set out with Captain
+Purcell and Chandler leading it. Chandler went astride the roan
+stallion.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When Charlie and his small Indian band learned that the action had taken
+place to the south, where Robin had gone, they set out quickly in that
+direction. The further they went, the more worried Charlie became. If
+Robin had met with any kind of success, if she had called off the war
+party and established some kind of peaceful relations with the spacemen,
+a runner would have been sent to tell them. But the desolate rock-strewn
+terrain stretched out before them as devoid of life as the Paleozoic
+Earth.
+
+Charlie urged his men on relentlessly. He was a tireless hiker and since
+the braves lived by hunting they could match almost any pace he set.
+Finally Charlie saw the second Indian band ahead of them. Slinging the
+Mannlicher Elephant Gun, he began to run.
+
+"Tashtu!" he called. "Tashtu!"
+
+The Indian sprinted to him. "Lord," he said breathlessly, "one sky
+critter, him die. Turn out man."
+
+"What are you talking about?" Charlie asked.
+
+Tashtu led him to the group of braves which still clustered about Ensign
+Chandler's body. "Why?" Charlie demanded, horror-struck. "Why?"
+
+Tashtu told him all that had happened. How the braves had mistaken the
+spacesuited man for a monster. How arrows had been fired before they had
+learned otherwise. How Robin had come, and gone off with the spaceman.
+
+"To their spaceship?" Charlie asked.
+
+"Yes, Lord. That is what they spoke of." Tashtu pointed to the top of
+the rampart of rock. "From there, Lord, you can see it."
+
+Charlie scrambled up the rock. From his giddy perch on top he could see
+the tiny silver gleam of the spaceship--and a band of men, led by a man
+on horseback, approaching them. Charlie hurried down the rock, half
+climbing, half sliding. "They are coming," he said. "Maybe Robin's with
+them." He remembered what had happened last time and said: "The rest of
+you return to your homes. Tashtu and I will go on ahead."
+
+"But Lord--" Tashtu began.
+
+"Well?"
+
+"I did not like the man. I did not trust him."
+
+"Then why did you let Robin go?"
+
+"Let her, Lord? But surely Robin, the Lady Robin, does not obey a
+mere--"
+
+"All right, all right," Charlie said. "But all the more reason for the
+rest of the braves to return to their homes. We can handle this, Tashtu,
+you and I. I don't want any more killing."
+
+"Yes, Lord," said Tashtu.
+
+The Indians formed a marching column and moved off. Charlie told Tashtu
+what he had seen from the top of the rampart. Then he added: "Let's go
+and meet them."
+
+And Charlie and Tashtu set out across the tortuous Wild Country.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Two men coming!" Chandler cried, reining up the roan stallion.
+
+Captain Purcell signaled his twenty-five men to halt, and their orderly
+double file came up short behind him. Pretty soon the two figures could
+be seen by all, advancing toward them across the rocks. When they were
+close enough, Captain Purcell hailed: "We come in peace!"
+
+"And in peace we come!" Charlie called. A moment later he was shaking
+hands gravely with Captain Purcell.
+
+"Tell the captain about--about my corpse," Chandler told Tashtu.
+
+Charlie looked at Chandler. He had seen the dead man. "Did Robin make
+you?" he asked in surprise. "We never brought the dead to life before."
+
+"Can you really do it?" Purcell demanded.
+
+"No, not really. But we can copy perfectly--and the copies live."
+
+"You see?" Chandler demanded triumphantly.
+
+Captain Purcell said: "Show me."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Charlie created a brother to the roan stallion. Captain Purcell gawked.
+The one example sufficed and he did not ask for more as Glaudot had
+done.
+
+"Where's Robin?" Charlie asked. "At the ship?"
+
+Chandler shook his head. "Glaudot went off with her."
+
+"But I thought he was on the ship!"
+
+"He deserted," Chandler said. "With the girl. He wants her. He wants her
+power for himself."
+
+Charlie moved very quickly. He swung in front of Chandler and grabbed
+his tunic-front, bunching it, ripping it and all but dragging Chandler
+clear off his feet before a hand could be raised to stop him. "Where did
+they go?" he asked in a terrible voice. "Where are they? Take me to
+them."
+
+"But I don't--don't know!" Chandler protested, trying without success to
+break free.
+
+It was Captain Purcell who came forward and firmly took Charlie's arm,
+pulling him clear of Chandler. "Remember," he said. "In peace. In
+peace."
+
+Charlie stood with his hands at his sides. His face was white and
+strained. "The girl," he said.
+
+"We all want to find out where Glaudot took her," Captain Purcell said.
+"We're going to help you. Tell me: could the girl have gone willingly
+with Glaudot? To share his mad dream of power, perhaps?"
+
+"Robin?" Charlie cried. "Never!"
+
+"Please, lad," Captain Purcell said. "I want you to think. I want you to
+consider everything. You and this girl of yours may have almost godlike
+powers, but you've spent your lives on an uncivilized world and
+well--frankly--couldn't a sophisticated man like Glaudot turn the girl's
+head? Couldn't he confuse her into going off with him, at least
+temporarily? And, assuming, he did, he doesn't know this world. He's
+aware of that. He'd know we'd be coming after him. Perhaps the girl
+would tell him about you. Tell me, man--where would the girl go if she
+didn't want you to find her? Is there such a place? Before you answer, I
+want you to know that what we do here may be far graver than you think.
+It is not merely the safety of one girl we have to consider--but no, you
+wouldn't understand ..."
+
+"You mean," Charlie asked, "if this man Glaudot somehow convinces Robin
+to use her power as he tells her, he might want to take over all of
+Crimson?"
+
+"Do you mean this world? Is it called Crimson? Yes--and more than that.
+There's no telling how far a man like Glaudot could go with such power.
+And with the ability to create all the armament and all the deadly
+weapons he needed, and all the missiles to carry those weapons, he might
+challenge the entire galaxy--and win!"
+
+The words were strange to Charlie. He only understood them vaguely. Now
+Robin, she would understand, he thought. Robin was always more
+interested in things like that, Robin who almost knew their encyclopedia
+by heart, Robin ...
+
+"Listen," he said. "Listen. We created all the life on this world. We
+made Greeks and Royal Navymen and Ministers and Russians and Congressmen
+and everything we knew or somehow had heard about or had read in our
+book. We get along fine with all of them, except ..."
+
+"Yes," Captain Purcell prompted. "Go on, go on!"
+
+"No, she'd never go there. She was always afraid of them."
+
+"Where, man? Where?"
+
+"No. Robin wouldn't. She just wouldn't."
+
+It was not hot in Wild Country, but sweat trickled down Purcell's face
+while he waited for Charlie's answer.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Show me!" cried Glaudot in rapture. "Show me! Show me! Show me!"
+
+He stood with Robin in a little glade in the Land of the Cyclopes. About
+them were heaped all the treasures Glaudot had suddenly demanded. He did
+not quite know why. He felt his iron control slipping and permitted it
+to slip now, for once he got this wild desire from his system, he knew
+only his untroubled iron will would be left, and with it--and the
+girl--he might conquer the galaxy.
+
+Heaped about them were jewels and precious metals and deadly weapons,
+all of which Robin had summoned into being at Glaudot's orders, while
+Glaudot smiled at her. It was almost a frightening smile. She was even a
+little sorry she had come away with him, but she could always go back,
+couldn't she? She wasn't shackled to this strange man from space, was
+she? And the way he looked at her, the desire she saw in his eyes, that
+was frightening too. She did not know how to cope with it. Oh, she could
+create a duplicate Charlie, for example. Charlie would know what to do.
+Charlie would help her. Charlie hadn't read the book as she had read it,
+but Charlie was more practical. Still, what would they do with the
+duplicate Charlie afterwards? You couldn't uncreate something ...
+
+"A spaceship," Glaudot said suddenly. "Can you create a spaceship out of
+nothing?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Robin nodded slowly. "I can. Yes, I can. It tells all about spaceships
+in the book. But I don't know if I want to."
+
+Glaudot let it pass. There was no hurry. He was thinking about the
+future, though. If Purcell opposed him, as Purcell would, and managed
+to escape in the exploration ship, Glaudot would need a ship to leave
+this world ...
+
+"Why not?" he asked, his voice quite calm now, the mania which had
+seized him under control now, and only his iron purpose motivating him.
+
+"I--I don't know. You have one spaceship. I guess that's why. What do
+you need another one for?"
+
+"It was just a thought," said Glaudot. "It doesn't matter." He kneeled
+near the heaps of sun-dazzled jewels. He let them trickle through his
+fingers. No, the desire wasn't gone yet. It was still fighting with his
+will. And, since he knew his will could win at any time, it pleased him
+to give his desire free rein.
+
+He scooped up a handful of jewels. He found a necklace and came close to
+Robin and dropped it over her head. The pearls were very white against
+her sun-tanned skin. The pearl pendant hung almost to the start of the
+dusky valley which cleaved her breasts delightfully and disappeared with
+the tanned swell of flesh on either side into the gold-mesh halter.
+Glaudot fingered the pendant. His fingers touched flesh. Abruptly he
+drew the surprised Robin to him and kissed her lips hungrily.
+
+For a moment she remained passive. She neither returned his ardor nor
+fought it. But when his hands began to stroke her back she pulled away
+from him and stood there looking at him. She took the necklace off and
+threw it at his feet.
+
+"I don't want that any more," she said. "Why did you do--what you did?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He felt the fire in his veins. He willed it to subside. He needed his
+control now. All of it. But this girl, in the full flower of her youth
+... No, she was not a girl, not to Glaudot. He must not think of her as
+a girl. She was power. Power. The power was his--if he didn't alienate
+the girl.
+
+"We do such as that on my world," he said. "It is a kind of homage to
+loveliness. I hope you didn't mind."
+
+"I--it was strange. With Charlie sometimes I hope--but with Charlie it
+is ... different. Please don't touch me again. Please promise me that."
+
+Glaudot shrugged. "If you wish, my dear child, if you wish...."
+
+The dual desire was gone now, truly gone. He knew that. For his will had
+been threatened, more by his own foolish desire than by this innocent
+girl. He had to think. Clearly. More clearly than he had ever thought
+before. He needed the girl as an ally. Not as a slave. She had to be
+willing. She had to co-operate. Give her a warped picture of the rest of
+the galaxy? Convince her its governments were evil, totalitarian, when
+in reality they were democratic? Convince her that he alone, given
+unlimited power, could right the wrongs of a thousand worlds? She was
+naive enough for that sort of approach, he thought. Besides, it would
+strike her as something like creation--moral creation, perhaps. And
+creation she would understand. Then, with her as his partner, he could
+quickly build a war machine which the combined might of the galaxy
+couldn't stand against. And that, he suddenly realized, would even
+include an unlimited number of soldiers for occupation and policing
+duties. This power would be unparalleled.
+
+"I have something I want to tell you about," he said. "It will take a
+long time and we must be undisturbed, which is why I asked you to bring
+me here."
+
+"What is it you want to tell me?"
+
+Before Glaudot could answer, they heard a crashing, rending sound not
+too far off in the woods. It sounded to Glaudot exactly as if trees were
+being uprooted, boulders strewn carelessly.
+
+"Cyclopes!" Robin screamed in terror, and began to run.
+
+Glaudot ran after her, stumbling, picking himself up, hurtling in
+pursuit. He couldn't let her get away. He had to follow her ...
+
+Nothing living, he told himself as he ran, could uproot those huge
+trees. Of course, there were the saplings, but even the saplings were
+the size of full-grown oaks and maples on far Earth.
+
+Something roared behind him. The sound was pitched almost too low for
+human ears. He whirled. The earth shook, great clods of it flying. Bare
+tree roots suddenly appeared, and a young tree the size of a towering
+oak was lifted skyward.
+
+Behind it, brandishing it and then hurling it away, was a naked man
+whose head towered impossibly a hundred and fifty feet into the air.
+Trembling, awestruck, Glaudot looked up at the great savage face. Wild
+hair streaming, filthy beard matted with dirt and tree-branches, it was
+the most ferocious face Glaudot had ever seen.
+
+And it had only one eye, one enormous eye in the middle of its head. But
+an eye three feet across!
+
+"A Cyclops!" Robin screamed again.
+
+A moment later the creature stooped and with a scooping motion of its
+great right hand picked up the two tiny creatures on the forest floor
+beneath it. Then it ran, uprooting oak-sized saplings, back toward the
+rocky hillside where it dwelled, after the Cyclopes of old on which
+Robin and Charlie had naively patterned it, in a cave overlooking the
+sea.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Where, man? Where?" Captain Purcell demanded.
+
+"I don't know," Charlie said. "I really don't think she would. You see,
+she always threatened she'd go there if we ever had a fight, but she was
+usually half-joking. She knows it's dangerous--"
+
+"But where? Don't you know a drowning man has to grasp at straws?
+Haven't I gotten it across to you--the whole galaxy may be in danger!"
+
+Charlie sighed. "I don't understand much of your galaxy. Robin knows the
+encyclopedia--she would understand. And I--I only want to know Robin is
+safe." He took a deep breath and said: "She always threatened to go to
+the Land of the Cyclopes."
+
+"Then take us there at once," Captain Purcell said....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+If he shouted and cried now, he would go insane. He knew that. He tried
+to hold his fear in check. He was being swung pendulum-like in an
+enormous hand as the one-eyed giant loped along. Robin shared the
+clenched-fist prison with him. Her hair streamed in the wind as the huge
+arm swung the huge hand in time with the giant's enormous strides.
+
+"Does it eat people?" he managed to ask Robin. He had to shout because
+the wind created by the creature's movement was considerable. The ground
+spun giddily far, far below them, whirling patches of green, of yellow,
+of brown.
+
+"We made them to eat people. Like in the book. We were just children.
+It seemed--it seemed so thrilling."
+
+The Cyclops loped along, uprooting saplings. After a while it began to
+climb a rocky slope and from the heights Glaudot could see the shores of
+an unknown sea. Then the Cyclops reached a cave entrance and rolled
+aside a huge boulder and took his prisoners within.
+
+Glaudot heard the bleating of sheep.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Why, it's a fortune in jewels!" Captain Purcell exclaimed. They had
+found the glade in the forest, where Robin had created a king's ransom
+for Glaudot. The men gathered around, many of them struck dumb by the
+sight of all this wealth.
+
+Charlie said: "Captain, look."
+
+Purcell went over to him and saw the wide swathe cut through the forest
+and curving out of sight. "What went through there?" he gasped.
+
+"A Cyclops," Charlie said grimly. "A Cyclops has them. Captain, we've
+got to hurry. Listen, there are two horses now. I could create horses
+for all of us, but all these men coming up would probably be seen by the
+Cyclops. You come on foot with your men. Let one of them come with me
+on the stallions." As he spoke Charlie unslung the Mannlicher and put it
+down.
+
+"Oh, you want our more modern weapons?" Purcell asked.
+
+Charlie shook his head. "For fun, Robin and I made the Cyclopes
+invulnerable to any kind of attack except the kind mentioned in the
+encyclopedia--putting out their single eye with a stake. To protect all
+the other people we created, we made the Cyclopes so they'd never want
+to leave their homeland. So if we can get Robin and your man Glaudot
+free, they'll be safe. Now, who's the volunteer?"
+
+"I'm already on horseback," Chandler said. Charlie nodded and mounted
+the second roan stallion.
+
+"My men will be coming as fast as they can march," Captain Purcell said.
+
+Charlie nodded. He did not bother to tell the captain that a Cyclops
+could cover in a few minutes ground a marching party could not hope to
+cover in as many hours. He set off at a swift gallop with Chandler.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Will he eat us now?" said Glaudot. Strangely, he was not afraid. The
+unexpected nature of their impending demise he almost found amusing.
+
+Robin shook her head. "I don't think so. He'll probably drink himself to
+sleep. We made the Cyclopes great drunkards."
+
+The Cyclops, his tree-trunk sized walking stick leaning against the
+wall, was reclining and drinking from a huge bowl of wine. The cave was
+torchlit. Seventy or eighty sheep milled about, settling for the night
+after three of their number had supplied a meal for the giant, who had
+eaten them raw.
+
+"Isn't there anything we can do?" demanded Glaudot, whose dreams of
+galactic conquest were fading before the spectre of being eaten alive.
+
+"Reserve your strength until he sleeps," Robin said. "Of course there's
+something we can do."
+
+"Yes? What?"
+
+"His walking stick. You see the end comes almost to a point? We harden
+it in the fire--and put his eye out. Then, in the morning, when he
+unrolls the stone from the cave-entrance and blindly leads his flock
+out, we hide among the sheep and make our escape. At least that's how it
+happens in the encyclopedia."
+
+Glaudot swallowed hard. He had never had a great deal of physical
+courage....
+
+Just then they heard a great fluttering, groaning sound. Robin said:
+"You see, he's asleep. He's snoring."
+
+"I--I don't think I could possibly--"
+
+"He's liable to want us for breakfast. Come on."
+
+They got up swiftly and silently, and crept to the walking stick. It was
+the size of a young tree. It would be heavy, perhaps too heavy for them
+to handle.
+
+"Easy now," Robin said. She nimbly climbed the ledges on the cave-wall
+and tipped the great walking stick, then leaped down and grabbed the
+front end as Glaudot got a grip on the rear of the big pole.
+
+"Heavy," Glaudot said.
+
+"But not too heavy, I--I think."
+
+"Try to lift it," said Glaudot.
+
+They tried. Together they could barely get it overhead.
+
+"Try to poke it at something," Glaudot said.
+
+They could not. Robin sighed. They put it down slowly, quietly. It would
+take more than the two of them. It would take them and two or three more
+men to do the job.
+
+"We wait," Glaudot said bleakly.
+
+Robin stared up in frustration at the smoke hole, through which smoke
+from the Cyclops's fire poured out into the gathering night. It was
+hopelessly over their head, although help could reach them through it
+from the outside. But how could they possibly expect help to come...?
+
+"We wait," Glaudot said again, hopelessly.
+
+"For breakfast," Robin said.
+
+Glaudot broke suddenly. "I don't want to die!" he cried. "I don't want
+to die ..."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The feeblest of Crimson's three suns came over the horizon, lighting the
+landscape with the illumination of three or four full moons on Earth.
+
+"I told you I smelled smoke!" Charlie cried, pointing triumphantly at
+the thin tendril of smoke that rose through the cooling air against the
+weak sunlight.
+
+"Is it a campfire?" Chandler asked.
+
+"Chimney hole, probably. Come on."
+
+They left the two stallions grazing at the base of the rocky escarpment.
+They began to climb. Once Chandler stumbled and went sliding down the
+rocky slope, but Charlie caught his arm, all but wrenching it from the
+socket. Charlie thought: we have to hurry. Their lives may depend on it.
+Already we may be too late....
+
+The smoke from the chimney hole was acrid. It was very strong now.
+Suddenly Charlie could feel the slightly increased slope of the rocks.
+The slope was precipitous now, almost perpendicular.
+
+"I can't--can't go much further!" Chandler groaned.
+
+"We've got to, man. We've got to."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"He's waking," said Robin.
+
+Glaudot had broken completely. The confident would-be conqueror was
+reduced to trembling and whining now. "M-maybe he's hungry. Oh, God,
+maybe he's hungry ..."
+
+But the Cyclops only turned over in its sleep and began to snore again.
+The fire had burned low. The sheep were resting. Robin thought of
+Charlie, probably many miles away. There would be a late moonrise
+tonight, she thought. They often spoke of the feeblest of Crimson's
+three suns as the moon, although it really wasn't. Then dawn would come.
+If the Cyclops were hungry and wanted a change in diet ...
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"But you'll choke to death going down there," Chandler protested.
+
+"It's only a chimney hole. Nobody's going to choke to death."
+
+"Can you see down it?"
+
+"No. Too much smoke."
+
+"Then how do you know how far we'll have to fall?"
+
+"I don't. I'll have to take the chance. You don't have to, though."
+
+"I'll go where you go. That's what I volunteered for."
+
+"Good. It's almost morning, so the fire's probably almost burned down
+from now. If you land in the embers, jump aside quickly. You
+understand?"
+
+"Yes," Chandler said.
+
+Without another word, Charlie suddenly lowered himself into the smoke
+and let go.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Dim fiery light lit the cave. He alighted in embers and quickly jumped
+clear. Embers flew. A ram bleated. Charlie saw the enormous sleeping
+bulk of the Cyclops against one wall of the cave. He heard something
+behind him, and whirled. It was Chandler. More sparks flew. The sheep
+bleated again, louder this time.
+
+Robin and a spaceman who was probably Glaudot came toward them. There
+was amazement on Robin's face. Glaudot looked like a child in the grip
+of terror he couldn't quite understand.
+
+Charlie held Robin close for a moment. "Quiet," he whispered. "Listen."
+
+The slight disturbance had bothered the Cyclops. He was half awake. He
+made noises with his lips. One great arm lifted and fell. It could have
+crushed the four of them.
+
+"There's a stake," Robin said. "Just like in the book."
+
+They got it and took it to the embers of the fire between them. Glaudot,
+who brought up the rear, dragged his end, the wood scraping on the rocky
+floor.
+
+"Lift it up," Charlie said.
+
+Glaudot giggled and then began to cry. He was hysterical. "The three of
+us?" Charlie asked.
+
+"I don't know," Robin said.
+
+Glaudot laughed hysterically. The Cyclops stirred. That made up
+Charlie's mind. He placed his end of the stake carefully on the floor
+and went back to Glaudot. He struck Glaudot neatly and precisely on the
+point of the jaw and Glaudot collapsed in his arms.
+
+Then they returned with the stake to the fire. Charlie scraped and
+pushed the embers together with a charcoal log. They began to toast the
+point of the stake.
+
+"We've got to hurry," Robin said.
+
+"The skin of his eyelid is like armor plate," Charlie told her. "We've
+got to make sure it doesn't turn the point aside."
+
+The flock stirred and began to grow more lively. It was now dawn
+outside. The Cyclops yawned in his sleep and stretched out an arm the
+size of an oak tree.
+
+"Hurry!" Robin said urgently.
+
+The Cyclops rolled over, its face to the wall.
+
+"The eye!" Charlie groaned. "We'll never be able to reach the eye now."
+
+They kept at their work, though. There was nothing else they could do.
+The surface wood of the big stake was taking on a dull cherry-red color.
+Finally Charlie said: "That's enough, I guess."
+
+The Cyclops rolled over again. They were in luck, Charlie thought, but
+changed his mind immediately. The Cyclops sat up, its eye blinking
+sleepily. It yawned and stretched mightily, then stared stupidly for a
+few moments at the flock of sheep. Charlie and the others stood frozen,
+not daring to move. The Cyclops brushed at the sheep with its hand, and
+two of them crashed with bone-crushing thuds and death-rattle bleats
+against the wall. The Cyclops glared stupidly about, its one great eye
+squinting. Clearly, it was looking for something else to eat. Not sheep.
+People ...
+
+It got down on hands and knees and groped on the floor. The arm swept
+out. The hand flashed ponderously by, missing Robin by only a few feet.
+The Cyclops advanced on its knees, searching, its mouth slavering now.
+It was hungry and soon it would eat ...
+
+The hand swept by again, caught a sheep. The hand lifted, the sheep
+bleated, the jaws crunched once and the sheep disappeared. The Cyclops
+wiped a trace of blood from its lips. The hand came down again,
+closer ...
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"The stake!" Charlie whispered fiercely.
+
+They brought it up horizontally. Charlie stood just behind the point,
+Robin behind him, Chandler in the rear. They jabbed with the stake as
+the Cyclops's hand swept along the floor again. The Cyclops roared with
+pain and rage and beat both mighty hands on the rocky floor, attempting
+to crush its tormentors.
+
+Just then Glaudot regained consciousness and stood up groggily. "Don't
+move!" Charlie warned, taking the chance of revealing their own position
+in an attempt to save Glaudot's life.
+
+But Glaudot, seeing the huge creature so close, began to run. It was
+like running on a treadmill. He ran and he ran and after a while the
+Cyclops reached down and plucked him off the floor. He screamed thinly.
+There was the same crunching as before--and no Glaudot ...
+
+Now the Cyclops, its appetite whetted, searched the floor in a frenzy of
+earnest on hands and knees. The great head swung low, close to the
+floor, the single eye stared myopically. Once the huge hand clubbed the
+rock so close to them that Charlie could feel the floor shaking. They
+retreated slowly toward the far wall of the cave, the monster following
+relentlessly. They still held the heavy stake between them but had not
+yet gathered either the strength or the courage for their one try. If
+they failed--
+
+They had backed up as far as they could. The wall was behind them. The
+monster came on, its head low, its nose practically scraping the ground.
+It swept the floor with a giant hand, a fingertip barely touching
+Charlie and almost knocking him senseless. He shook his head and took
+deep breaths until his strength returned.
+
+"Now," he said, as the hand began its swinging arc again.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They ran forward toward the creature's single eye with the stake.
+
+Charlie barely remembered the contact, or the bath of eye-fluid and
+blood which followed, or the wild roaring of the brute creature, or its
+frantic charging back and forth, blinded, across the cave, while the
+flock bleated and stampeded. After a while the crazed Cyclops ran to the
+cave entrance and shouldered the great door-rock aside, rushing out into
+the day.
+
+It went tearing down the slope and did not stop until, battered and
+bleeding, it reached the sea. It stood on the narrow strand of beach for
+a moment, scooping great handfuls of water for its stricken eye. Then
+it plunged into the surf.
+
+They went outside and watched it. They made their way down the slope
+while it advanced into the sea. Finally only the great head remained
+above the waves.
+
+They reached the shore.
+
+The Cyclops was gone.
+
+Moments later, Captain Purcell and the others joined them.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Then you mean you won't come back to Earth with us?" Purcell asked
+later, in the spaceship.
+
+"Not if all you say about this world is true," Charlie said. "We're
+needed here."
+
+"Yes," Purcell agreed. "With your help, the galaxy could be made into a
+universe of plenty for everyone."
+
+"Besides," said Robin. "We'll have to think of training children to take
+over after we're gone." She looked at Charlie. She blushed. "Such as our
+own," she said, very quickly, and added: "You can marry us, can't you,
+Captain?"
+
+Purcell beamed, and nodded, and did so.
+
+Later, Charlie said: "It isn't only that we're needed here, is it,
+darling?"
+
+Robin shook her head. "We like it here," she said.
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Note:
+
+    This etext was produced from _Amazing Stories_ September 1956.
+    Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.
+    copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and
+    typographical errors have been corrected without note.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's A World Called Crimson, by Darius John Granger
+
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