path: root/63795-0.txt

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 63795 ***

                            THE SHADOW-GODS

                          By VASELEOS GARSON

         Curt watched them, screaming as they fled before the
            shadow-things--the tortured humans of Earth. He
         watched them die, crushed and seared by the spreading
           blue flower, and he cursed himself. With all his
         knowledge and strength he could not save his people.

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
                      Planet Stories Summer 1946.
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]


Around them, space--implacable but generous, impalpable but
tangible--shot through with a thousand far off suns.

Looming at starboard, blacking out a section of space, the dark
starside of the Moon. Then hundreds of flickering fireflies moving out
of the darkness, blinking on by ones ... twos ... threes ... as they
passed the black moon's rim.

Curt Wing relaxing, his dark head nodding softly, his dark eyes
widening as he stared into the teleplate. He stared into the plate, and
his lips, for so many hours a thin gray line, pursed into an almost
inaudible whistle.

Without turning his head, he said to the lean rangy blond lieutenant
beside him.

"That did it, Packer. It flushed them from cover. Curiosity did it."

"Now?" Lt. George Packer asked, pulling on his helmet, reaching for the
red button to sound the klaxon alarm. One long finger almost touched
the scarlet dot which would send a hundred crews on a hundred Earth
ships into the action which they had awaited for these long weeks.

Curt Wing, wing Space Commander, shook his black shock of hair with
deliberate slowness, wiped the sticky sweat from the palms of his hands
on his gold-striped blue breeches.

"Wait."

"But, Curt! We've waited two weeks. And for the last seven hours the
crew has been going mad. They know the Mercurians must be out there
now. We got the flash on the intercommunicator and it's tuned to
all-ship length."

"I know," Wing said. "But what's another moment or two. This has to
be right. We'll never get another chance like this again. Be patient,
George."

Curt Wing still stared at the visaplate.

"They must have the whole fleet with them! I've never seen so many
Mercurian ships in my life."

"They'll spot us," Lt. Packer said anxiously. "Let me signal, Curt."

"Easy, George. This is Earth's last chance. We've got to be sure it's
good. They've got us--ten to one. Surprise is our only chance of
whittling down the odds."

"But every minute, Curt, every minute counts. They'll spot us sure."

His eyes still soldered to the plate, Wing said, an overtone of
exasperation in his deep-timbered voice; "We've been here two weeks.
They didn't spot our black ships in the moon's shadow before. I hardly
think they will now. Take it easy."

The two stood there, watching the black shadow of the plate, now
flickering with swarms of silver Mercurian ships. Beads of sweat
built up on Curt Wing's forehead, swelled, then rolled down his lean,
harsh-planed face to make tiny plopping sounds on the duralloy deck
beneath their feet.

"Man!" Lt. Packer burst out. "Curt, are you mad? We've got to strike
now. Their black light visas'll pick us up any second."

Wing Space Commander Wing didn't answer. Seconds oozed away like
viscous blobs of oil. Then:

"Now!"

       *       *       *       *       *

Packer's itching finger stabbed the red button viciously. Muted through
the thick bulkheads surrounding the plotting room came the ululating
howl of the ready signal.

Curt Wing moved from the visaplate, clicked on the intercommunications
speaker, came back to the plate. He studied it for a moment, unmindful
of George Packer who was chewing his nails very deliberately.

Curt Wing lifted his head, turned toward the speaker and said casually,

"Fire at will."

Then his dark eyes turned back to the thousand fireflies flickering
in the visaplate. Lt. Packer crowded his lean body alongside of him,
stared at the screen.

The ship shuddered. The deck quivered beneath their feet like a
restrained earthquake. Almost simultaneously, the fireflies in the
visaplate were spotting with flowering bursts of bright-hued colors
which hid other of the fireflies for a long moment.

A metallic voice echoed into the plotting room as the spotter's hit
calculator started clacking from its eyrie in the nose of the ship.

"Seven direct ... no twelve ..." the metallic voice broke, then resumed
and reflected the glee of the spotter. "Commander, this damn machine's
gone mad. We're hitting them so fast it can't keep up!"

The flagship trembled again, and the visaplate was filled with the
bright, blooming flowers as Mercurian ship after Mercurian ship tasted
the atomic bolts, sucked them up and exploded.

Curt Wing's voice was no longer casual as he turned his lips toward the
intercom.

"Sock it to 'em, you precious monkeys. You've got a million Earthmen to
avenge!"

Then he kicked the tuning dial over, swept the visascreen from Earth
ship to Earth ship. Only the flashing blue bolts identified most, but
here and there an Earth ship blazed red, then white and molten metal
dripped off into the darkness as the Mercurian ships lashed back at the
dark shrouded hornets which were poisoning them with quick flashing
death.

The huge Mercurian fleet, its thousands scattered through with broken
hulks, was turning slowly, its own bolts searching out, lighting up the
blackness which hid the tiny Earthian fleet.

The silver ships moved in, and concentrated hell poured on to one of
the far-flung ships of Earth. The Earth ship exploded into myriad
shells of molten metal, and the horrible atomic rays moved to the next
blue flashing terrestrial ship.

Curt Wing's voice barked into the intercom:

"Plan L."

And the outnumbered Earth ships, pulling in their horns of atomic
bolts, flashed away from the darkness, their rocket exhausts spurting
fire. They blasted into the sky in unison, climbing above the slower
Mercurian ships, and hurtled downward, their blue bolts thrusting
before them, lashing at the silver ships.

The Mercurian ships swung upward, lumbering, but the Earth ships were
darting in and out like slashing knives wielded by agile, practiced
hands.

Curt Wing's tight-held breath relaxed, made a whistling sound in
the plotting room. He said, "The longest chance I ever took, and it
worked." His voice was very low, almost like a prayer.

"Look at them run!" Packer chortled. "You did it again." He was staring
into the visaplate, watching the silver ships begin to scatter away
from the black Earth ships above them. "This is the knockout punch.
We'll drive them away now, forever. Five years they've been nagging us
and all the time they waited until they were strong enough to strike."

"Yes," said Wing, "and they almost got us in the slaughtering pit by
the asteroid belt. But now...." He halted, snapped into the intercom:

"Attack at will, you itchy-fingered monkeys. They're all yours. Take
'em."

The oval door to the plotting room burst open; a big-framed,
heavy-paunched Blackbeard came plowing in.

"Gee, Cap," his heavy voice lumbered. "I bin missing somepin, huh?"

Commander Wing turned to the newcomer. The harsh planes of his face
softened as he grinned.

"Yes, Dead-Eye, I guess you bin missing something all right. Making
love to Elizabeth again?"

       *       *       *       *       *

Dead-Eye Lindstrom grinned, his white square teeth glaring through the
black of his bearded face.

"Yep, I sure have. Y'know, Cap, Elizabeth's coming along fine now. I
jest got through placing five out of six slugs in the bull'e eye, and
I warn't even looking. I jest grabbed leather and started fanning the
hammer and whamo! Elizabeth put 'em right in thar."

Dead-Eye patted the bulky length of the archaic powder gun strapped to
his right leg. Then he jerked his hand up quickly and the white steel
of the ancient Frontier .44 revolver sparkled in the light.

"Pard," he said, "Pard, them were the days. You stood face to face with
another owlhoot rider and reached. By gosh, you could see the whites of
his eyes and whamo! You got him or he got you."

"Shut up, will you, Lindstrom?" Packer snapped. "You and your ancient
history give me a pain. They buried the last beef striker--"

"Cowpuncher!" Dead-Eye corrected.

"Three hundred years ago," Packer went on. "And where you ever found
that excuse for a pistol, only Neptune knows."

"Easy," said Curt Wing quietly.

Dead-Eye drew himself up to his full six feet six so that he towered
a full head over Lt. Packer. "Brother," he growled, and his pale blue
eyes were cold, "I'll match you Elizabeth against any of these modern
guns and I'll kill you so quicker that you'll have to be cremated ahead
of time. Why--"

An eerie whistle from the Earth panel halted him. The three turned
at the summons, infraction of all space battle procedure except in
cases of extreme urgency. Only once before in five years had that
whistle sounded during either battle practice or battle. Then it was to
announce war with Mercury.

Now....

The visaplate crawled up from black through purple to yellow and white.
A voice came through but there was no face accompanying it.

"Signal six-two ... signal six-two...."

"No!" Wing cried out.

"Signal six-two ... signal six-two...."

Wing glanced at the battle visaplate. The Mercurians were in full rout.

We've got them licked, he thought; they're running.

Now this.

"Signal six-two...." the Earth voice repeated.

Lt. Packer said, "Commander Wing, what is signal six-two? I thought
there were only sixty-one code numbers."

Curt Wing looked at Packer but his dark eyes were blank, the lips
thinned and harsh.

"Signal six-two, lieutenant?" he asked, and there was no life in his
voice. "It takes precedence over everything an Earthman has. Life,
liberty, home, happiness--everything. We must return to Earth at once.
To hell with the Mercurians. They're unimportant." Curt Wing spoke into
the intercom:

"Commander to all ships. Abandon chase. Gain formation. We're returning
to home base."

The formation board began to blink as ship captains acknowledged the
order. But where each green light of acquiescence lighted up, below it
came also the yellow light of query.

Wing pushed on the all-ship button on the officers' intercom system and
said quietly:

"Signal six-two--you know what that means." The yellow query lights
went off immediately, the green ones blinked off, on, then off again.

"Yes," Wing said to Lt. Packer, "The Mercurians are unimportant
compared to this. Signal six-two is the emergency signal for earth
catastrophe. What's wrong I don't know. But whatever it is, a mere
interplanetary war is a kindergarten class." He ran his blunt-fingered
hands through his hair.

"Gee, Cap," said Dead-Eye suddenly. "That's bad, huh?"

"Yes, Dead-Eye," Wing said softly. "It's bad. Very bad."

"You'll fix it, won't you, Cap?" Dead-Eye asked, and his light-blue
eyes were trusting. "You can do anything, Cap. Why, didn't you find
Elizabeth for me?"

Wing stared at Dead-Eye's hulking figure.

Finally he said, "I think this will be slightly more difficult than
picking Elizabeth out of a museum case, Dead-Eye."

       *       *       *       *       *

Earth below them now, its diadem of clouds winking in the reflected
shafts of light from the moon.

What danger lay there? What danger so great that they must let a
victory become a might-have-been. What catastrophe so important that a
fight for interplanetary life was dismissed casually with the signal.

Curt Wing shrugged his shoulders, heard that incessant signal boring
monotonously into his ears.

Then the breaking rockets were kicking, the high thin wail as the
thickening atmosphere scratched along the black ship's bulk was
deepening, and the deceleration was pushing lazy hands against him,
urging him against the duralloy bulwark at his back.

"Gosh," Dead-Eye said, gaping open-mouthed into the visaplate. "Cap,
looky here, the whole city is blue."

It _was_ blue--this White City which in the long ago had been New York.
A blue visible with an inner light of its own that absorbed the white
moon beams and made even black shadows turn blue.

       *       *       *       *       *

The city was like some huge blue flower, sunset blue for stamen and
pistil, its hue lightening to aquamarine, cerulean, and pastel as its
petals stretched farther out over the city. It was pulsing and each
pulsation swelled its circumference.

Then the visaplate was flickering and the tiny red bulb centered in its
plastic base began to blink, signaling power trouble. Then the screen
went blank.

"What is it?" Packer exclaimed. His voice was loud and harsh in the
plotting room now. The incessant signal six-two ... signal six-two ...
had ceased. The instrument panel lights went dark, the rockets cut off
abruptly, the only sound was the scrabbling fingers of the outside....

"Force field," Curt Wing said. "Something we've never been able to
develop. But there it is. That's the catastrophe. It's swallowing White
City, and if there's an intelligence behind it or not, mankind is done
if we can't stop it."

"Force field?" Packer asked. "But didn't you...?"

"Yes," Wing said. "I created one once. A little thing less than an
inch square. Balanced one magnetic field against another by firing four
atomic guns at a coincident point. But a funny thing, the longer the
field held the more power I had to shove into it.

"Then I didn't have any more power to give, and Dead-Eye says, 'Gee,
what's happening to all those atoms?' So I grabbed him and ran like
hell for the nearest sub-basement. When those compressed atoms let go
it tore everything loose from the experimental station.

"When Dead-Eye and I crawled out, all it was was a desert. There
wasn't a tree, a bush, a rock or a hill for ten miles around. It was
the flattest place I ever saw, or hope to see again." He was staring
blankly at the insentient visaplate.

"But, hell, I talk too much."

Jake Wilson, landing supervisor, pushed open the oval hatch, said:
"Hang on, sir, we're volplaning in. It's lucky we got the vanes out
before the power quit."

The shock spilled the chunky Wilson into the plotting room, clipped the
legs out from under the three already there.

There was a moment of lift, then another shock a little less severe.
The ship lifted again, struck, lifted once more and settled with an
audible groan of metal stress.

They hurried from the plotting room, heading for the exit lock.

It was a peculiar sort of night outside, a benevolent blue softening
the blackness. Curt Wing stared at the blue haloed city off to the
west. He was licking his dry lips.

"Gosh, Cap," Dead-Eye asked suddenly. "What if _that_ blows up?" A
shudder quivered through his bulky frame.

Wing's dark eyes went blank. He put one hand on Dead-Eye's arm. He said
nothing.

He was standing there, staring at the pulsating blue flower that was
spreading out from the city, his fingers quiescent on Dead-Eye's arm
when the red-uniformed riot officer jockeyed his speedy rocket car up
to them....

The building was still untouched by the force field's encroaching maw.
Curt Wing stood by the window staring out at the blue night scene.
Finally he answered the men who sat at the long narrow table behind him.

"I don't know what we can do. My experiments with such a field taught
me only that I could not control it once it was set in motion," he said
quietly.

He turned then to face the men--the governors of the seven divisions
of earth. "You have flattered me because of an experiment that ended
in failure," he went on. "But even if we had a solution, a way
to overcome this impossibility, we must not forget that is only
one problem. We have this unknown to lick, yes; but meanwhile the
Mercurians we left out by the moon can punch us to Stardust."

       *       *       *       *       *

Jan Eliel, senior governor, shook his white head quickly. "No, we have
only this force field with which to contend. We have nothing to worry
about from the Mercurians. We gave them Earth's unconditional surrender
only minutes after you were ordered back."

"Huh?" The exclamation, shot through with amazement, exploded from the
shadows in the corner where Dead-Eye had buried himself. "Why, you!"

"Quiet, Dead-Eye!" Wing barked. Dead-Eye subsided, grumbling.

Wing's face had drained of color, the sharp planes of his face came
into sharper relief, the muscles in his throat were working pulsating
as if he could not catch a full breath.

His mind was shrieking. It's gone, Curt Wing! The loveliest world in
the galaxy no longer belongs to Earthmen. It is owned by strangers, by
Mercurians, by an alien people who will grind its beauty into a molten
crucible so that it may support their hell-hot lives.

Gone! Everything worth fighting for, living for, dying for! Earth,
who had flung her minions to the stars, first beings in the galaxy to
solve space travel, first to probe across eternity in rickety ships,
spanning the vast distances with blood and broken lives. Earth, who had
struggled to bring her peoples together in peaceful harmony, finally
succeeding in it, lifting them toward their destiny.

All this--Gone.

Curt Wing looked at the seven governors.

"If that's the case," he said finally. "I can't see any reason why we
should worry about the force field. Let the damn Mercurians worry about
it. Earth is theirs now."

"Wait, Wing!" Eliel cried out as Wing strode past the long narrow
table, Dead-Eye's bulk dogging his heels. "You don't understand!"

Wing spun around. "I don't understand?" he repeated, and his deep voice
was harsh.

"Look, you governors. There was only one way Earth could have licked
this force field. Someone would have found the way out--the way to chop
this blue flower off at its source if you hadn't taken it away.

"Scan back through Earth's history. Way back in the 15th century, a sea
captain did the impossible. He crossed water as vast to him as space
once was to us. He had a way. Earthmen flung their power at a dictator
called Schickelgruber or some such name. It had been impossible to stop
him. But a way was found."

"Then the moon rocket. That was impossible, too. There was no way to
break gravity chains without killing any living thing on the ship. But
a way was found. Oh, there are scores of instances where Earthmen did
the impossible. But they had something worth fighting for. Columbus his
adopted country; the united nations their people; Dawson and his moon
rocket, the welfare of a world."

"We had Earth. Now what have we got? Not a mote of dust to call our
own. _I_ don't understand! Hell, I hope the Mercurians use you to fire
those ghastly gas pots they use here to keep Earth's air from poisoning
them."

Space Commander Curt Wing was balanced on the balls of his feet,
leaning forward now, breathing hard, his fine-muscled body quivering as
his dark eyes burned at the seven governors.

Jan Eliel said quietly, "We know how you feel, Curt Wing. But there
wasn't anything else we could do. Wait!" He held up his hand as Wing
threatened to interrupt him.

"We were like the fellow in the old story who stood at the gates of
hell. He was damned if he opened the door and damned if he didn't."

"We had two alternatives--an unknown enemy and a known enemy, and we
needed time, so we chose to capitulate to Mercury. We recognized the
blue flower for what it was--and we needed you. Until you switched from
building atomics to piloting them, you had made the greatest advance in
the force field."

"We have time now--precious little since it will be only two weeks
before the Mercurian fleet arrives with Mercury's Zhan Nekel. Earth
still is ours. If you can solve the force field, we need not lose. We
can turn it upon the Mercurians. They have fought with deceit and in
this we must deceive them."

Jan Eliel sat up stiffly in his chair. "Will you desert us, Curt Wing?"

Wing's relaxed figure was their answer. The boyish grin which wiped the
harsh planes of his face into softness was his promise. But Dead-Eye
added emphasis, dragging his powder gun from his belt and waving it.

"Elizabeth and me'll help!" he declared.

       *       *       *       *       *

The _electric clock_ whirred softly--like a breathless metronone
keeping time with Curt Wing's pencil. The metal desk was littered with
crumpled and half-crumpled sheets of paper. Wing's black hair was
rumpled and awry, his face dirtier by a ragged growth of beard, and
when he lifted his aching eyes to the clock, they were blood-shot and
watery with strain.

Behind him, the door sighed softly as it closed. Aware of a presence,
but too weary to turn around Wing asked:

"Dead-Eye?"

"No," a quiet voice answered. Then a laugh, soft, so soft--like the
whisper of leaves at nightfall, the murmuring of water sprites dancing
on moonlit waters. Memory of a day--_that_ day.

"Get out," Curt Wing said flatly. He did not look around.

"I won't go, Curt." That voice again--_her_ voice. I didn't think it
would ever hurt me again. I had it licked. I was living. Now--

Then that lovely, remembered presence was warming that ache, that cold,
bitter ache in his heart, soothing it. But her words--those words which
had turned him from science to adventure--stayed frozen in his heart.

"_You're not a man, Curt Wing. You're a machine. You're too sufficient
unto yourself. You don't need me. Your life is just a mixture of metal,
paper and pencils. You just want me because you think a man should have
a mate. So make one out of your metal, paper and pencils!_"

       *       *       *       *       *

Curt Wing stared wryly at the pencil held motionless between his thumb
and forefinger. He forgot for a moment that into those fingers had been
given the solution of an impossible problem--forgot that to him had
been delegated a task so important that every second he relaxed meant
the blue flower of destruction was spreading and Zhan Nekel's Mercurian
fleet sped closer to Earth.

_She_ was his own personal problem, breaking out from beneath the hard
shell of pain he had built up within him. But his problem meant nothing
at all if Earth no longer belonged to Earthmen. He had wanted her so
much--still wanted her!--that there were times when he wanted to break
down and bawl like a baby. Like now....

Then Curt Wing was chuckling. I'm feeling sorry for myself! At a time
when there's no time for self-pity or anything else but work.

He turned around quickly. She still stood there just inside the door.
She was more beautiful than he remembered! Her soft brown hair that
felt like gossamer when it brushed against his lips; her blue eyes that
could speak of love and hate, of pleasure and disgust so eloquently
her lips need not move; the soft oval of her face--it was all that he
remembered and more....

But he said,

"Business, Miss Packer?" There was no softness in the harsh planes of
his face and his dark eyes were blank.

"No, Curt, not business."

"If you'll excuse me then?" Wing said, raising his eyebrows. "There's
no time for anything else."

She smiled. "It won't take long, Curt. I just wanted to tell you
something before it's too late.

"You never did and never will need me. I don't need you. But I hurt
you, you hurt me, too, because I've loved you ever since you and dad
first started your force field experiments."

"I still love you, you sweet fool!"

Then she was gone. Wing's cry, "Pat!" struck the closed door.

Wing hurled himself toward the door. Then stopped short as a sleepy
"Whassa matter, Curt?" growled out of the corner where Dead-Eye had
been napping.

"Nothing," Wing said abruptly. Then: "I thought you went home hours
ago."

Rubbing bleary eyes and pulling on his beard, Dead-Eye, grinning
through the black mass, said, "I pretended to, but I thought you might
need me and Elizabeth for sumpin."

Wing glanced at the metal desk, heaped with the paper covered with a
thousand figures he had set down as he tried again and again to find
where in the long ago he had made his mistake in creating his field. If
Prof. Packer were still alive, he could find that error. If I can only
solve that maybe I can build up a neutralizing field.

"Come on, Dead-Eye, my brain's dulled with too much paper work. Let's
go take a first hand look at that damn blue flower."

The blue flower was pulsing faster now, Wing decided, as he and Dead
Eye approached a police captain who was directing people with clothing
and valuables, toward the line of rocket buses.

Wing looked into the hazy depths of the force field.

Were those figures moving about in there? Or was his tired brain
playing tricks on him?

"Gee, Cap," Dead-Eye exclaimed. "There's somebody inside!"

The police captain moved up to them. "We've reported what you see,
Commander," he said. "They only became noticeable a half hour ago. But
it didn't seem possible there _could_ be any life in there."

"Life within that death?" Wing repeated. His blood-shot eyes peered at
the police captain. "I don't see why not. Whoever created it must be
able to handle it. They must have some protection, some armor against
it. If we could capture one."

"That's it," the captain said. "They're inside and they won't come out.
Before, those shadows looked like some sort of beings. They're dimmer
now. They walk upright in a sort of shuffle, but they won't come out of
the flower."

"If we could entice one of them out somehow," Wing said softly. "If we
knew what they were, it might help us find a way of throttling that
flower before it destroyed anything else."

       *       *       *       *       *

The captain grinned ruefully. "We've tried everything to dent that
field, and it didn't even change color. I guess maybe we'll just have
to wait until they decide to come out, huh, Commander?"

Wing grinned back at the captain. "Maybe we ought to let sleeping dogs
lie, Captain? Maybe you're right, but if one of them even looks like he
intends to come out, buzz me on the visaplate at once."

Wing and Dead-Eye moved away from the captain, watched the red-clad
police herd more homeless families into the rocket buses for
transportation to other points. But unless that blue flower is killed,
Wing thought, they can go to the far ends of the earth and they'll
never escape it. And if they try to escape to other worlds the
Mercurians will be their Nemesis.

Wing and Dead-Eye were threading their way through the crowd when the
shout reached them:

"Commander, one's coming out!"

Wing spun and sprinted back toward the captain, Dead-Eye's big heavy
bulk lumbering behind him. Wing's atomic pistol was clutched in his
hand as he jarred to a stop beside the captain. His eyes followed the
pointing red arm.

_One's coming out!_

Tensely, Wing waited, aware of Dead-Eye's labored breathing beside him,
of the pounding of his own heart, of the sudden quiet among the police
and their homeless charges.

What was it? Did it hold the answer he and the Council of Seven were
seeking? Would Earth be free of this voracious flower? Could the
Mercurians be stopped before it was too late? Would it give up its
secret which meant so much to Earth--and Pat's sweet face was smiling
at him--and him?

One shadow was growing more distinct as it moved toward the rim of
the blue force field. It shuffled along slowly, like an Earth diver
moving across the ocean floor. Wing was aware of the police captain's
gestures, drawing up a squad of red-clad police with their atomic
rifles at the ready.

The shadow moved closer to the outside. As it approached, the blue
flower immediately before it began to dim, to grow black as if some
intangible hole were opening to let it through.

Then the shadow-thing was outside the blue flower.

The police captain's thumb pointed down. Atomic lightning from the
police rifles lashed at the shadow-thing.

Wing saw the lethal bolts strike the shadow. Then a blast of sound and
light deluged him, spinning him off his feet, hurling him against a
blackness shot through with pain and searing heat.

The pain and the heat were still branded on his mind--raw wounds that
made him want to scream out in protest--as he crept slowly back to
awareness of the things around him.

His ears came to life first--and he heard the voice whispering over
and over again. "Oh, Curt. Oh, Curt." Then his skin was responding to
the warm, vibrant fingers caressing his cheek. Into his nostrils came
the sweet scent of her loveliness. His eyes opened and he saw the soft
brown head cradled on his breast.

Then his mind brushed aside the memory of pain and heat.

"We failed, didn't we?" He didn't recognize the broken, almost lifeless
voice as his own.

Pat lifted her head. She didn't need to speak, not when her blue eyes
were so eloquent.

"Dead-Eye?" Wing asked.

"Don't you fret, Captain. I'm all in one piece, even if Elizabeth did
give me six nasty powder burns on my leg."

Curt Wing wearily turned his bandaged head, beheld a mound of bandages
sprawled atop the bed beside him.

"You sure look like a hangover, Dead-Eye," Wing observed. Then: "Was it
bad, Pat?"

She nodded. "Only a half dozen out of all those hundreds escaped. Most
of them were killed in the explosion. The medics don't know how any
one came out alive--especially you and Dead-Eye. You were right in the
center of the blast."

"Well," Wing observed, and it was an effort to speak lightly, but
something had to be done about the horror in her voice, "I don't feel
the least bit alive. Maybe I'm a ghost."

Her laughter was a relief, but a little too full for such a flimsy
joke. So he said:

"I suppose the shadow-thing wasn't harmed." It was more a statement
than a question.

"No," she said flatly. And in the same flat voice, added, "I'd better
go. You need rest and quiet."

"Wait," he called. But she was gone. "Pat," he called out, once, twice.
That unemotional voice was a dead give away. Something worse had
happened and she didn't dare tell him.

       *       *       *       *       *

Curt Wing dragged his body out of the bed. It screamed in agonized
protest. Somehow, his mind held together against the shock and hurt
that poured into it as he pulled his body upright, focused his eyes,
looking for something to wear instead of the brief hospital garment.

Dead-Eye, from the next bed, asked weakly, "Where you going, Cap?" Wing
didn't answer. He was delving into a wall locker, dragging out a burnt
tunic, finding torn and broken sandals.

A white-gowned nurse barred his way in the hall.

"You can't leave, Commander. In your condition, you'll kill yourself,"
she said gently.

"Why not?" Wing grated. "I should be dead anyway. What's a few more
minutes more or less? Life won't be any fun anyway if Earth is lost."
He had to use his hand to guide himself along the wall as he pushed his
weary, beaten body toward outside.

Behind him, he heard Dead-Eye calling,

"Wait for me and Elizabeth, Cap. We're coming, too."

Outside, it was raining--unobtrusively but relentlessly. The early
afternoon was drab, but in the little park across the hospital
courtyard, there was color. The circular beds of pink roses, of
multi-colored pansies, of bluebells seemed brighter for the rain which
beat so gently at them.

Wing heard the muted twittering of birds as he stood on the hospital
steps. He looked up into the lowering sky and let the raindrops beat
at his bandaged face. The door behind him opened and Dead-Eye came
stumbling out.

Wing breathed deeply of the wet air, felt it clearing the heat and pain
from his mind.

He looked at Dead-Eye, then toward the east where the blue radiance
suffused the sky.

"Let's go," he said simply.

They hadn't trudged far in the rain before they found out what Pat
Packer's unemotional voice had meant.

Terror was riding through the city, whipping the men and women of Earth
into madness and death.

As the two of them moved closer to the edge of the blue flower,
wild-eyed humans fled past them, casting fearful glances behind.

These panic-stricken humans ran silently, except for the gasps which
burst from tortured throats. Abandoned children sobbed as they ran,
not knowing nor caring where they went--driven by the fear of what was
behind them.

Behind them, flames from burning houses were growing brighter and dull
explosions were growing louder. Soon there were no more humans running,
but as Wing Commander Curt Wing and Dead-Eye plodded on, they saw
charred and broken corpses and the smell of burnt flesh was mingling
with the stench of wood and plastic and paint.

And then Wing and Dead-Eye saw _Them_.

_They_ numbered in the hundreds--spreading in a long single
line--moving sluggishly but steadily, bolts of blue flame flaring out
ahead of them. The flashing blue bolts melted steel, sent plastic into
exploding drops of fire, touched and charred humans who still moved in
their path.

Wing dragged Dead-Eye out of the deserted street into a low shop
building. They moved to a window and watched those blue bolts leap
overhead to jab at building or human somewhere back from where they
had just come.

"What are they?" Dead-Eye asked, peering at the thin line moving
closer. "They're nothing but shadows, looks like."

"Another dimension," Wing suggested. "Probably on a higher plane than
our own. Maybe that's why they're just shadows to us."

Dear God, he thought, what has humanity done to deserve this? We cannot
fight them. We don't know what they are. Somehow, though, we must beat
them. Earth must not die, not now, when we are on the very threshold of
destiny.

We've come from the mud and slime of a new born Earth, clawed and
fought our way out of nothing to start reaching for the stars. Is this
our destiny--to come so far and then be snuffed out before we even
realize our talents?

"We've got to beat them, Dead-Eye," Wing said harshly.

"Don't worry, Cap," Dead-Eye urged. "Shucks, they can't be so tough
that they can lick us. Besides, Cap, us Earthmen always fight better
when the going's rough. Why, just give me and Elizabeth a chancet at
them. We'll knock 'em dead."

Wing's dark eyes were soft as they looked at Dead-Eye's earnest,
bearded face.

"We sure will, Dead-Eye," he said. "We sure will knock 'em dead."

That is, Wing amended, staring at the relentless shadows as they moved
slowly toward their haven, if _They_ don't knock us dead first.

Wing and Dead-Eye hugged the buildings as they retreated. They picked
their way along the rubble-strewn streets, their nostrils quivering at
the intermingled odor of death, burnt flesh, charred and rain-wet wood.

Ahead and behind them as they retreated, the flashing bolts of the
shadow-things smashed buildings, leveled the trees along the boulevard,
sending them up in puffs of white smoke and flame, heaving up the walks
as tree roots exploded.

The rain was turning heavier now, turning chill, soaking through their
own burnt and tattered clothes. It was relentless, that rain, almost as
if it were bent upon breaking the spirit of man as the shadow-things
were rending and tearing the flesh.

The two limped on alone, ahead of the advancing shadow line. They
walked alone through death and destruction as man's promise and hope
darkened.

We're walking toward the end of our world, Wing thought. We'll soon be
nothing but dust motes kicked up by the tread of a new, more powerful
race.

The hell of it is, we're not even fighting back. Why, he thought in
amazement, we're not even trying any more.

"Dead-Eye," he asked suddenly. "What are we running away for?"

Dead-Eye's slumped figure straightened suddenly. "Gee, Cap, I was
wondering when you'd begin wondering about that. You ain't been acting
natural at all. We never ran away from a fight before. Let's go knock
'em dead right now, huh, Cap?"

Wing looked at Elizabeth, strapped snugly to Dead-Eye's left hip, then
at his own two empty bandaged hands.

"Well, Dead-Eye, here, as your owlhoot pard would say, 'here goes
nuttin'."

Not for many days had Curt Wing felt such a sense of peace and relief
as he did that moment when he turned back toward the unknown and
implacable enemy. Deep inside he was chuckling. It was silly for the
two of them to march against the shadows. Silly, sure, his proud spirit
admitted, but wasn't that the way of man?

Wasn't it man's way to thumb his nose at impossibilities and forge
ahead? It wasn't a matter of winning, really, but having the guts to go
ahead and try.

Dead-Eye snapped open the cylinder of his powder gun, observed
candidly: "I hope I don't get rattled again and try to shoot my toes
off. Those six slugs jerked out of Elizabeth so fast before that there
explosion I couldn't even control her at all."

They moved back deeper into hell.

All around them buildings, trees, streets and sidewalks were being
flung about as the power of the shadows smashed. The rain was coming
down in torrents now, and the two of them could barely see a few feet
ahead.

But always they knew where the shadows were--the slashing bolts pointed
them out unerringly. They were very close to that unseen line of
shadows. The thunder of those bolts was rending the air and mixing in
the fresh smell of ozone with the pall of smoke and putrid smells which
even the driving rain could not beat to earth.

Suddenly, Wing and Dead-Eye stopped. It was as if they had walked into
a solid wall. But this wall was different. It pushed them backward
easily, although they strove to move ahead.

       *       *       *       *       *

"A harmless force wall," Wing said in answer to Dead-Eye's query. "But
we can't get through. There goes our grand gesture, Dead-Eye. We can
hardly thumb our noses while we're being pushed backward."

"Huh!" grunted Dead-Eye. "I'll fix 'em." He levelled Elizabeth, aimed
her into the unseen obstacle. His thumb flicked at the hammer, and
Elizabeth's gruff voice broke through the cacophony of noise with
amazing clarity. He strode forward, Wing beside him, and blasted at the
invisible wall.

Of a sudden, the noise was gone. Wing halted in amazement. The
tremendous symphony of sound which had been pounding at his ears now
miraculously was stilled.

Elizabeth's last shot still echoed, but the crash of masonry and
plastic, the scream of tortured steel, the growling crackling
of the shadows bolts, the snapping as fire gulped at wood and
inflammables--all these were gone.

But while they still marveled at this change from noise to silence,
something happened. They were thrown off their feet, and they once more
found themselves out in the noise and fire.

No more had they picked themselves up from the rubble than the
invisible wall was nudging at them again, shoving them ahead of it.

The insentient wall kept nudging them backward--ever backward until
there was no longer any sense of time or place to them. A confused
roar of crashing buildings, explosions, groans of tortured metal; an
indiscriminate blend of smells, of smoke, fire, charred flesh and wood;
a heterogeneous awareness of pain, cold heat; a knowledge that this,
for Earthmen, was the end.

What did it matter now that Zhan Nekel and his rocket fleet thundered
ever closer to Earth? That Pat, who had come back with her promise of
happiness, loved him? What did anything matter anymore, except dying
like an Earthman should--in the ruins of his world, still trying to
lick something so much stronger that his greatest effort was breath
against a cylinder?

Curt Wing stumbled, fell. Then the force wall was rolling over him over
and over, always back, back. The broken pavement, the shattered rubble
pounded and tore at his already burned and battered body.

Then suddenly:

"Here they are, Pat!" The voice cut through into his dulled mind. A
powerful light, hurting his eyes, struck at him, and in its reflection
he caught sight of a figure in space blues, gargoyle eyes glinting. Lt.
Packer! Packer shouted:

"Swing the rocket car around, Pat. Quick! Something's shoving Curt and
Dead-Eye around and it might upset the car."

His light suddenly twisted crazily and Packer grunted, "Damn, it's
like a moving wall." Then Packer swung back, lifted Wing to his feet,
dragged him ahead of the crawling wall. Wing felt the heat of the
rocket exhaust, muted by its muffler, fan his cheek. Then he was inside
the car. Moments later, Dead-Eye's heavy bulk followed him, and Packer
was leaping in with them, urging:

"Get going, Pat, but watch out for those rubble piles and holes." Then,
in the bucking car, Packer was tearing open a package of antiseptic
drug needles. Wing felt the sting in his neck, and the dullness and
pain were fleeing from his mind.

"You're a couple of space zanies," Packer muttered, yanking the
gargoyle-like smoke glasses from his eyes and pulling off his space
crash-helmet. "Pat almost went crazy when she found you'd left the
hospital. We've been searching for you ever since in this hell. It
was only luck Pat spotted you with the infra-red, or you'd be rolling
still."

Curt Wing leaned back against the car cushion. "Well, Lieutenant,"
he said, "I might as well be rolling still for all the good I can do
against these shadow-things." He lifted his bandaged head, his dark
eyes almost black now with weariness and hate of the beings who were
casually flicking man into the limbo of forgotten things.

"You know what we're up against, don't you, George?" he asked. From the
pilot seat, Pat said bitterly:

"We know, Curt. The whole world knows. The telecasts have been
bombarding the world with it ever since the first shadow came out and
hurled our own destruction back at us a hundred-fold."

George Packer added, "I was recruited to pull our biggest space guns
out and hook them up on land rockets. The ships can't rise, somehow,
and when we've called for ships from other points, they get so close
and then their power gives out."

"But, gee," put in Dead-Eye, "this car's running. How come?"

"Don't know why, Dead-Eye," Packer added. "These, of course, don't have
the new cyc motors; still run on the old combustion principle. The
force field probably neutralizes the cycs, but doesn't faze the firing
gas in the cars."

"The space guns didn't help, I suppose?" Wing asked.

"No," Packer said, twisted his face ruefully. "The shadows thrived on
it and threw our bolts back ten times as hard. It wasn't nice to see."

"Sometimes," he said, wistfully, "I wish we were back in your
beef-striker--sorry, Dead-Eye--cow-puncher days. It was man to man
then, and you knew that it wasn't the weapon but the wielder." He ran
his hands through his tousled blond hair.

"Yep," said Dead-Eye. "Elizabeth and me'd fix 'em if we could see 'em."

       *       *       *       *       *

The bucketing car began to have smoother going; the darkness outside
was lifting, and the beat of the rain seemed to decelerate.

In the comparative quiet and peace, Curt Wing's dulled mind, clarified
by the stimulating drug, was beginning to work again; his spirit numbed
and beaten down by pain and inability to solve the enigma of the
shadows and their weapons was lifting itself, shaking itself from its
lethargy, as something stirred within.

Just that buoyant spirit of man which refused to admit defeat? Wing was
wondering. Or was despair so deep that I couldn't go any deeper so I
have to come up toward hope again?

The rocket car suddenly sloughed to a stop.

"Sorry," Pat said softly, and laughed. There was a note of hysteria in
that laugh. "But we're surrounded." The three men peered out through
the plastic windshield. The shadow-things were ahead, moving toward
them.

But no destruction was spitting from those ghostly figures. For the
first time, Curt Wing had a chance to observe closely.

They seemed about the height of a man--but distorted like a man's
shadow falling before him as he trudged up a hill with the sun behind.
Yet not so distinct. They wavered, too, within themselves, although the
outline remained constant.

The rain was only a light patter now and the sky was brightening as the
three men and one woman crawled out of the rocket car. The shadows were
very close now, but there still was no sign that their weapons would
speak.

Silently the shadows moved, scores of them. That straight line they
made began to bend and curve around the four who stood waiting.

No threatening gestures, no weapons visible, just that relentless,
closing circle.

"Damn you," said Dead-Eye suddenly. "Elizabeth didn't get a chancet at
you before. But she will now."

"No!" Curt Wing snapped. "I think they want to take us alive. Maybe we
can learn something. No, Dead-Eye, no!"

But it was too late.

Dead-Eye had snapped his ancient powder gun from its holster, and his
left hand was fanning Elizabeth's sharp-biting tongue. The hammer
snapped down thrice--three shots blasted out.

In that breathless second before the awful blast of sound and light
struck, Curt Wing saw three shadows suddenly disappear. Then the sound
and light struck as Wing steeled his muscles and mind against it.
But, amazingly, at the first touch, it was gone, and he was standing
unharmed.

He twisted his head. Pat was standing close beside him, and George. But
Dead-Eye was gone. Only Elizabeth, her metal twisted and white hot, lay
smoking on the ground where Dead-Eye had stood.

Dead-Eye, Wing's mind was crying, you big, dumb, blundering bear, where
are you? Oh, you damn fool, pitting an old, crazy powder gun against
atomic power! You killed yourself, you crazy, gallant guy. Now you're
gone--who am I going to have to look out for after this?

Pat's fingers were soft on his arm, drawing him back from the pain of
the loss. "He always wanted it that way, Curt. Quick, while he was in
action."

Rage began to boil in Wing's heart against these tenuous shadows who
scorned giving an Earthman even a hopeless chance. The ache for Dead
Eye, who was like a big good-natured puppy; that ever-conscious nagging
of the doom of mankind at the hands of these callous shadows; the
knowledge that even if this doom could be somehow stopped or turned
aside there was Zhan Nekel's space fleet coming nearer, churned his
mind. And from his whirling brain came only one driving thought. Avenge
Dead-Eye--the thousands of Dead-Eyes who never would have the chance
for their simple joys and pleasures if man knuckled down under this
greatest threat!

With that rage came clear thinking. Little things--like Dead-Eye's
firing into the invisible wall, combustion type engines firing when
cyc-powered units went dead, shadows disappearing when Elizabeth spat
at them; little things, simple things.

A thought coalescing, growing sharper, until it was burning in his
mind, fueling his spirit with new hope.

"Thank you, Dead-Eye," he whispered. The harsh sharp planes of Curt
Wing's face were softening.

"We've got a chance," he said. "Dead-Eye gave it to us, Pat. But we've
got to get away--out of this circle somehow." He waved his hands at the
tight circle of shadow-things that hemmed them in. "Any ideas, George?
Pat?"

Lt. George Packer's shoulders had come up, he was touched by this new
assurance in Curt Wing's voice, in the fire of those dark eyes. "Not,"
he said, and there was new life in his voice, too, "not unless an old
wish comes true and the ground swallows us up."

"It can," Pat said, the words tumbling out. "We can fall in a hole,
can't we? Look at them, Curt. They shuffle along, but they don't step
into holes. They just float over them--like they do belong in another
dimension and can't anchor themselves to Earth. See?" Her voice rang
with excitement.

Wing laughed. "But what good would falling in a hole do us? All they'd
have to do is fish us out again. And we'd have new bruises." The circle
was tight now, and suddenly they felt the push of an invisible wall
against them as the shadow-things moved closer. Then they were moving.

Pat didn't stop arguing. "If you were a fat man and you dropped
something between your feet, wouldn't you have to get your stomach out
of the way to see it?"

Wing looked at her sharply. "What are you driving at, Pat?"

"If they're from another dimension, and all the telecast say they are,
and if their vision devices for this world are just for straight-ahead
seeing, what would they have to do in order to look down?"

"Pat," Wing said softly. "It would be like riding in a rocket car. Once
something gets underneath it, out of the range of the windshield, you
can't see it. You have to back up or go forward. And if we pick a deep
enough hole, the shadows can't back enough or go forward enough to see
the bottom. Is that what you mean? Because the high sides cut off their
vision?"

Her wide smile and sparkling eyes were his answer.

       *       *       *       *       *

Curt Wing, nursing a new set of bruises after plunging into a
fifteen-foot hole and scrambling out after the shadow-things had
finally floated by above them, led Pat and lanky George Packer at a
loping run back to the rocket car.

It was almost nightfall and the fire and noise and stench of White City
were far behind them by the time the speedy little car made it to the
mountain retreat of the Council of Seven.

During the ride, Curt Wing's sense of loss with Dead-Eye gone was
softening, mingling with a gratitude deep and strong to the big,
black-bearded giant.

With a child's intuition for solving a problem simply, Dead-Eye and his
Elizabeth had given man a chance to fight.

"A chance, Curt?" Pat had overheard his whisper. Her hand on his arm
was warm and vibrant. Curt clasped his fingers softly over hers.

"Yes," he said, "if there is only time."

Jan Eliel, senior governor of the Council of Seven, pulled his
red-rimmed eyes from the telecast when Curt Wing and Pat and Lt. Packer
entered the consultation room.

Old as his face had stamped him those few days ago when Wing had
brought the fleet back, Jan Eliel now was a broken and bent caricature
of the man who held the direction of a world in his hands.

"Yes?" he asked, and the life was out of his voice.

Then he saw the four miniature earths which still glinted proudly in a
row across Wing's torn and burnt tunic's left breast.

"Wing!" He rose from his seat on the telecast bench, hurried forward.
"You've solved it!"

Wing shook his bandaged head. "I don't know for sure, Governor, but I
think we do have a way of stopping the shadows--if there's time."

Jan Eliel ran a shaking hand through his white hair.

"I don't know. Zhan Nekel's fleet is moving faster than we thought
it would, and the fleet units you smashed at the Moon have been
re-organized and now are swinging toward us. That, at the most, gives
us two days--and I thought we'd have at least two weeks.

"But enough of that; what is the way to stop these terrible shadows?"

Instead of answer, Wing asked:

"How much of that obsolete Twentieth century artillery is available?"

Jan Eliel's old eyes widened.

"You're mad, Curt Wing," he said wearily. "We've tried everything
we have, the finest weapons, the heaviest atom machines, and we get
nothing in return except our own power turned against us. Powder
would be worse than useless. You can't stop atomic power with an
old-fashioned shell."

"My friend Dead-Eye was killed when he proved you can," Wing said
quietly.

       *       *       *       *       *

Jan Eliel's voice was cold. He spoke quite without emotion. "You've
been under too heavy a strain, Space Commander Wing. You are not the
clear-headed Wing we once knew. Go back to the hospital and rest.
Perhaps you will be able to bring back some semblance of sanity and
help your world when she needs you most."

"Damn you," Wing said. "Can't you see it? We've been throwing atomic
power at an atomic shield, so it just bounces back at us. Suppose we
threw something it couldn't bounce back right away, leaving us an
opening to hurl our own atomic bolts into the heart of it?"

Jan Eliel had turned his back on them, once more was watching the
telecast.

What's the use, Curt Wing? Why bother when the ruler of the world won't
listen to what a big, blundering guy proved when he got mad and fired
an old powder gun at a shadow? He's blinded as you were not so long ago
by despair. Follow Dead-Eye's lead, show him the way and he may follow.

"Come on," Wing said abruptly. "We have a job to do."

The long low barracks at the Spacers' Training school outside
Washington buzzed and growled with the hundreds of blue-uniformed
spacers.

There at the far end of the hall on the little platform where the
sergeants took the roll, Wing stood looking at the hard-bitten,
space-burned men who had been land-bound since they turned from victory
to answer that fatal six-two....

They had come because their commander had offered them a fight; a
little different perhaps using old-fashioned projectile weapons, but
nevertheless a fight; and they, who had used space guns against the
shadow-things, who had been beaten back without a chance to fight, were
spoiling for battle.

Some of them were reading the hastily-printed instructions that came
with the bright, shining, but outmoded weapons. Some were a little
jealous of other comrades who even now were hurling their atomic bolts
through the skies over Earth as they harassed the vanguard of Zhan
Nekel's Mercurian fleet.

But with the pangs of jealousy they had pride in themselves, too. While
their shipmates battled a known enemy, they were going out to fight
against an unknown enemy with untried weapons and only the promise of
their Space Commander, Curt Wing, that these weapons, three centuries
old, could win where atomics had so miserably failed.

Wing raised his hand for attention.

"Some of you knew Dead-Eye and his Elizabeth. He's gone now, but he
destroyed three of the shadow-things with leaden pellets from his old
sixshooter before he died. He showed me the way to lick those shadows.
Simply, it's this. A concentration of powder can open a hole in the
atomic shield of the shadows. But in our atomic weapons we have a flow
of power and it's sucked away by the shield before it can concentrate.

"In Elizabeth, Dead-Eye had concentrated power--the leaden projectile.
Its comparatively inert atoms struck the shield and broke through
before it could be spread out evenly over the shield.

"For a moment, the shield was out of balance. That's your job and
mine--keep that shield out of balance until we can find the invaders
within and destroy them.

"I realize that you've had only five days to study what these old
weapons are and how they operate--but we haven't any more time. We've
got to lick an enemy from outside and an enemy from within at one and
the same time.

"Do you think we can do it?"

A roar of assent greeted him.

They numbered in the thousands. Space rovers of the Twenty-fourth
century, moving in a long, spread out line toward the edge of the blue
flower that still pulsated and grew, reaching farther and farther out
from White City.

Curt Wing's heart was filled with pride--pride in these thousands who,
with strange, obsolete arms, were moving against a shadowy foe equipped
with weapons the like of which they'd never dreamed; pride in that
unbeatable spirit and courage of man, the magnificent fool, who had
lifted himself by his own bootstraps from the caves of Earth to the
vast reaches of the stars!

It was Curt Wing's powder gun which opened the attack when they struck
against the invisible force barrier.

In the dawn light, all up and down that long thin line, the powder guns
began snapping and crackling. Tommy guns, rifles and revolvers hurled
their slugs at the wall.

       *       *       *       *       *

The long line kept moving forward. Wing snapped on the portable radio
phone strapped across his chest, and at his words, far behind him,
a dozen space cruisers--those which could be spared from the battle
against the Mercurians above Earth--rose and soon were scintillating in
the rays of a sun still hidden by the rim of Earth.

As the line of marching men strode forward, the cruisers, their rocket
motors vibrating the air, circled high above them.

The line reached the edge of the flower--and the intensity of the
firing increased until it was the steady roll of a thousand drums.

Wing spoke into the phone again as the flower grew bluer along the
edge. The blue deepened and deepened until it was almost black. Then
Wing spoke into the phone once more.

The circling cruisers steadied. Their blue bolts spat at the blackness.

The shock of it could be seen for miles in the blue flower. The shield
blackened in scattered spots. Where every black spot showed, the bolts
from the Earth ships lashed.

The terrible power unleashed inside the shield began to show as the
flower shrunk back into itself.

The ground smoked and trembled as it emerged from the retreating force
field; great fissures opened and the ground trembled and shook as if in
the grip of an earthquake.

Wing snapped a halt order to the captains on either side of him and the
word moved rapidly down the line.

Bracing themselves against the shock of the quake, they waited.

It wasn't for long.

In the brightening day ahead of them, on the leveled plain behind them,
the Earthmen saw the shadow-things approaching, their power bolts
lashing out ahead of them. Every other man turned, so that half of them
faced the shadows ahead and half the shadows behind.

The powder guns crashed, and the steel and lead and copper pellets
whined a song of death in the ranks of the shadows.

The mist things exploded and disappeared as the multi-shaped spawn of
Dead-Eye's Elizabeth struck their shields.

Like puncturing a kid's balloon with a needle, Curt Wing thought. He
was laughing now--man had risen once again from the dust. No longer
need he despair. He had been stopped only momentarily in his climb
toward destiny. After this unbelievable enemy, the Mercurians would be,
perhaps not simply, but finally, hurled back to their hell-pot planet.

It was a tired and weary Curt Wing who threaded his way through the
smoking ash of what had been one of the mightiest of Earth cities. He
moved toward the church, which stood so remarkably untouched by the
tremendous forces which had been unleashed within the blue flower.

The two powder-burned and dirty spacemen who flanked the steel portals
saluted him as he walked tiredly up the stone steps.

"Who phoned me?" Wing asked.

The redhead at the left of the portal saluted.

"I did, Commander. Jack and I saw this thing and we peeked inside and
saw that funny light, so we thought we'd better call you."

Wing moved through the steel portals, stood in the quiet hush of
the church. There, just before the altar rail was the curious blue
light--like a hexagon of blue.

He walked slowly toward it and as he approached, the altar behind it
seemed to fade away and he was looking into a silver hallway.

He halted within a foot of it. It was like looking through a
doorway--why, it is a doorway, the doorway to the world these invaders
came from!

He unsheathed the revolver, spun the cylinder to see that it was
loaded, and with only a glimpse over his shoulder at the two spacemen
silhouetted in the church doorway, he stepped through.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was like stepping through fire--a fire that clawed and tore at the
heart of him--but it lasted only a moment.

The hallway in which he found himself was of silver, tiny overlapping
bits of silver plating that rippled and cast off flashes of light. He
walked slowly ahead to the other doorway he saw before him.

Framed in the door, he looked above him, through a glass roof, up into
a strange star-studded night sky.

Where is this world? Curt Wing wondered. Have I crossed a thousand, a
million or a trillion light years to come here?

He looked down from the night sky and the vastness of the transparent
roof reached as far his eyes could see.

It was only a whisper in his mind at first--then it grew stronger until
it was as if his ears were hearing it.

"You're a man," the thought said. Curt Wing's dark eyes cast about for
the source of it.

"You're a man," the emotionless thought repeated. "That is why we
could not beat you. We are a dying race, trapped on a dying world. You
are young and have your destiny still before you."

"Who are you?" Wing's mind called out. "Where are you?"

"We were never beaten until now. We knew that to survive this dying
system we must fight across eternity to find another sun and another
system. We started from mud and slime like you, and some day you too
must come to this--the end of your destiny.

"You will fight as we have fought. We built a machine to warp space.
For centuries our scientists labored to perfect it, just as other
technicians created a space scanner to find a world suitable to us."

Curt Wing was trembling as he listened. Somehow, the measured cadence
of those cold thoughts was fingering his heart, bringing a chill to it.

"We found your world--the world of man, Earth, but we didn't know it
until now.

"We made a mistake--a mistake which is destroying us but will in your
far distant future destroy you."

"A mistake?" Wing's mind asked.

"Yes, those scientists of ours who labored so hard and long, built a
machine not to warp space, as we all thought, but to warp time.

"You see, Space Commander Curt Wing, we, too, are men. We were fighting
our past, you your future on Earth, our common home. In attacking your
world, we have destroyed ourselves."

"But why?" Wing's mind started to ask.

"You saw us merely as shadows, did you not? That's all you were to us,
too. Shadows; but very, very stubborn. Never in our recorded history
had we met such a stubborn and such an able foe. No wonder. We were
fighting against ourselves.

"It's time to go, Curt Wing, before the time door closes and locks you
forever here."

Man to climb so far into the stars and to die by his own hand, Wing was
thinking bitterly.

"Do not despair," the thought intruded. "What is done is done, and
nothing can be changed."

"Wait," Wing cried out. "We beat you because a big, dumb guy by the
name of Dead-Eye had the quiet faith that we could. He showed us the
way.

"Dead-Eye said," and the words came from his memory like a prayer,
"don't worry, Cap. Shucks, they can't be tough enough to lick us.
Earthmen always fight better when the going's rough. Why, we'll knock
'em dead.

"Take hope from Dead-Eye's words. We were in the depths of despair when
he uttered them, and we came up that long, terrible road to hope. We
licked our problem. You, because you, too, are men, can lick yours."

There was nothing in the emotionless thought that answered him, that
told they were heartened.

Curt Wing turned his back on Man's future, walked down the silver
hallway, through the hexagonal door to his own world. He stepped out in
the quiet hush of the church.

He saw the two spacers still staring in as he walked out of the
darkness of the church into the brightness of day.

One of the spacers called out:

"Commander, the light's fading!"

The shouted words echoed in his ears as he strode down the steps.

_The light's fading...._ Like hell it was! Somehow those future
men would find a way. Wasn't it man's way to thumb his nose at
impossibilities and forge ahead?

Space Commander Curt Wing's shoulders straightened. He lengthened his
stride. He did not look back.

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 63795 ***