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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d7b82bc --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,4 @@ +*.txt text eol=lf +*.htm text eol=lf +*.html text eol=lf +*.md text eol=lf diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c0a6955 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #63874 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/63874) diff --git a/old/63874-0.txt b/old/63874-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index fbfc7d8..0000000 --- a/old/63874-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,2477 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Creatures That Time Forgot, by Ray -Bradbury - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and -most other parts of the world 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. If you are not located in the United States, you -will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before -using this ebook. - -Title: The Creatures That Time Forgot - -Author: Ray Bradbury - -Release Date: December 05, 2020 [EBook #63874] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -Produced by: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed - Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net - -*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CREATURES THAT TIME FORGOT *** - - - - - THE CREATURES THAT TIME FORGOT - - By RAY BRADBURY - - Mad, impossible world! Sun-blasted by day, - cold-wracked by night--and life condensed by - radiation into eight days! Sim eyed the - Ship--if he only dared reach it and - escape! ... but it was more than half an - hour distant--the limit of life itself! - - [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from - Planet Stories Fall 1946. - Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that - the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] - - -During the night, Sim was born. He lay wailing upon the cold cave -stones. His blood beat through him a thousand pulses each minute. He -grew, steadily. - -Into his mouth his mother with feverish hands put the food. The -nightmare of living was begun. Almost instantly at birth his eyes grew -alert, and then, without half understanding why, filled with bright, -insistent terror. He gagged upon the food, choked and wailed. He looked -about, blindly. - -There was a thick fog. It cleared. The outlines of the cave appeared. -And a man loomed up, insane and wild and terrible. A man with a dying -face. Old, withered by winds, baked like adobe in the heat. The man was -crouched in a far corner of the cave, his eyes whitening to one side of -his face, listening to the far wind trumpeting up above on the frozen -night planet. - -Sim's mother, trembling, now and again, staring at the man, fed Sim -pebble-fruits, valley-grasses and ice-nipples broken from the cavern -entrances, and eating, eliminating, eating again, he grew larger, -larger. - -The man in the corner of the cave was his father! The man's eyes were -all that was alive in his face. He held a crude stone dagger in his -withered hands and his jaw hung loose and senseless. - -Then, with a widening focus, Sim saw the old people sitting in the -tunnel beyond this living quarter. And as he watched, they began to die. - -Their agonies filled the cave. They melted like waxen images, their -faces collapsed inward on their sharp bones, their teeth protruded. One -minute their faces were mature, fairly smooth, alive, electric. The -next minute a desiccation and burning away of their flesh occurred. - -Sim thrashed in his mother's grasp. She held him. "No, no," she soothed -him, quietly, earnestly, looking to see if this, too, would cause her -husband to rise again. - -With a soft swift padding of naked feet, Sim's father ran across the -cave. Sim's mother screamed. Sim felt himself torn loose from her -grasp. He fell upon the stones, rolling, shrieking with his new, moist -lungs! - -[Illustration: _With a soft padding of naked feet Sim's father ran -across the cave._] - -The webbed face of his father jerked over him, the knife was poised. -It was like one of those prenatal nightmares he'd had while still -in his mother's flesh. In the next few blazing, impossible instants -questions flicked through his brain. The knife was high, suspended, -ready to destroy him. But the whole question of life in this cave, the -dying people, the withering and the insanity, surged through Sim's -new, small head. How was it that he understood? A newborn child? Can a -newborn child think, see, understand, interpret? No. It was wrong! It -was impossible. Yet it was happening! To him. He had been alive an hour -now. And in the next instant perhaps dead! - -His mother flung herself upon the back of his father, and beat down the -weapon. Sim caught the terrific backwash of emotion from both their -conflicting minds. "Let me kill him!" shouted the father, breathing -harshly, sobbingly. "What has he to live for?" - -"No, no!" insisted the mother, and her body, frail and old as it was, -stretched across the huge body of the father, tearing at his weapon. -"He must live! There may be a future for him! He may live longer than -us, and be young!" - -The father fell back against a stone crib. Lying there, staring, -eyes glittering, Sim saw another figure inside that stone crib. A -girl-child, quietly feeding itself, moving its delicate hands to -procure food. His sister. - -The mother wrenched the dagger from her husband's grasp, stood up, -weeping and pushing back her cloud of stiffening gray hair. Her mouth -trembled and jerked. "I'll kill you!" she said, glaring down at her -husband. "Leave my children alone." - -The old man spat tiredly, bitterly, and looked vacantly into the stone -crib, at the little girl. "One-eighth of _her_ life's over, already," -he gasped. "And she doesn't know it. What's the use?" - -As Sim watched, his own mother seemed to shift and take a tortured, -smoke-like form. The thin bony face broke out into a maze of wrinkles. -She was shaken with pain and had to sit by him, shuddering and cuddling -the knife to her shriveled breasts. She, like the old people in the -tunnel, was aging, dying. - -Sim cried steadily. Everywhere he looked was horror. A mind came to -meet his own. Instinctively he glanced toward the stone crib. Dark, his -sister, returned his glance. Their minds brushed like straying fingers. -He relaxed somewhat. He began to learn. - -The father sighed, shut his lids down over his green eyes. "Feed the -child," he said, exhaustedly. "Hurry. It is almost dawn and it is our -last day of living, woman. Feed him. Make him grow." - -Sim quieted, and images, out of the terror, floated to him. - -This was a planet next to the sun. The nights burned with cold, the -days were like torches of fire. It was a violent, impossible world. The -people lived in the cliffs to escape the incredible ice and the day of -flame. Only at dawn and sunset was the air breath-sweet, flower-strong, -and then the cave peoples brought their children out into a stony, -barren valley. At dawn the ice thawed into creeks and rivers, at sunset -the day-fires died and cooled. In the intervals of even, livable -temperature the people lived, ran, played, loved, free of the caverns; -all life on the planet jumped, burst into life. Plants grew instantly, -birds were flung like pellets across the sky. Smaller, legged animal -life rushed frantically through the rocks; everything tried to get -its living down in the brief hour of respite. - -It was an unbearable planet. Sim understood this, a matter of hours -after birth. Racial memory bloomed in him. He would live his entire -life in the caves, with two hours a day outside. Here, in stone -channels of air he would talk, talk incessantly with his people, sleep -never, think, think and lie upon his back, dreaming; but never sleeping. - -_And he would live exactly eight days._ - - * * * * * - -The violence of this thought evacuated his bowels. Eight days. Eight -_short_ days. It was wrong, impossible, but a fact. Even while in his -mother's flesh some racial knowledge had told him he was being formed -rapidly, shaped and propelled out swiftly. - -Birth was quick as a knife. Childhood was over in a flash. Adolescence -was a sheet of lightning. Manhood was a dream, maturity a myth, old age -an inescapably quick reality, death a swift certainty. - -Eight days from now he'd stand half-blind, withering, dying, as his -father now stood, staring uselessly at his own wife and child. - -This day was an eighth part of his total life! He must enjoy every -second of it. He must search his parents' thoughts for knowledge. - -_Because in a few hours they'd be dead._ - -This was so impossibly unfair. Was this all of life? In his prenatal -state hadn't he dreamed of _long_ lives, valleys not of blasted stone -but green foliage and temperate clime? Yes! And if he'd dreamed then -there must be truth in the visions. How could he seek and find the long -life? Where? And how could he accomplish a life mission that huge and -depressing in eight short, vanishing days? - -How had his people gotten into such a condition? - -As if at a button pressed, he saw an image. Metal seeds, blown across -space from a distant green world, fighting with long flames, crashing -on this bleak planet. From their shattered hulls tumble men and women. - -When? Long ago. Ten thousand days. The crash victims hid in the cliffs -from the sun. Fire, ice and floods washed away the wreckage of the -huge metal seeds. The victims were shaped and beaten like iron upon -a forge. Solar radiations drenched them. Their pulses quickened, -two hundred, five hundred, a thousand beats a minute. Their skins -thickened, their blood changed. Old age came rushing. Children were -born in the caves. Swifter, swifter, swifter the process. Like all this -world's wild life, the men and women from the crash lived and died in a -week, leaving children to do likewise. - -So this is life, thought Sim. It was not spoken in his mind, for -he knew no words, he knew only images, old memory, an awareness, a -telepathy that could penetrate flesh, rock, metal. So I'm the five -thousandth in a long line of futile sons? What can I do to save myself -from dying eight days from now? Is there escape? - -His eyes widened, another image came to focus. - -Beyond this valley of cliffs, on a low mountain lay a perfect, -unscarred metal seed. A metal ship, not rusted or touched by the -avalanches. The ship was deserted, whole, intact. It was the only ship -of all these that had crashed that was still a unit, still usable. But -it was so far away. There was no one in it to help. This ship, then, on -the far mountain, was the destiny toward which he would grow. There was -his only hope of escape. - -His mind flexed. - -In this cliff, deep down in a confinement of solitude, worked a handful -of scientists. To these men, when he was old enough and wise enough, he -must go. They, too, dreamed of escape, of long life, of green valleys -and temperate weathers. They, too, stared longingly at that distant -ship upon its high mountain, its metal so perfect it did not rust or -age. - -The cliff groaned. - -Sim's father lifted his eroded, lifeless face. - -"Dawn's coming," he said. - - - II - -Morning relaxed the mighty granite cliff muscles. It was the time of -the Avalanche. - -The tunnels echoed to running bare feet. Adults, children pushed with -eager, hungry eyes toward the outside dawn. From far out, Sim heard -a rumble of rock, a scream, a silence. Avalanches fell into valley. -Stones that had been biding their time, not quite ready to fall, for -a million years let go their bulks, and where they had begun their -journey as single boulders they smashed upon the valley floor in a -thousand shrapnels and friction-heated nuggets. - -Every morning at least one person was caught in the downpour. - -The cliff people dared the avalanches. It added one more excitement to -their lives, already too short, too headlong, too dangerous. - -Sim felt himself seized up by his father. He was carried brusquely down -the tunnel for a thousand yards, to where the daylight appeared. There -was a shining insane light in his father's eyes. Sim could not move. He -sensed what was going to happen. Behind his father, his mother hurried, -bringing with her the little sister, Dark. "Wait! Be careful!" she -cried to her husband. - -Sim felt his father crouch, listening. - -High in the cliff was a tremor, a shivering. - -"Now!" bellowed his father, and leaped out. - -An avalanche fell down at them! - -Sim had accelerated impressions of plunging walls, dust, confusion. His -mother screamed! There was a jolting, a plunging. - -With one last step, Sim's father hurried him forward into the day. The -avalanche thundered behind him. The mouth of the cave, where mother and -Dark stood back out of the way, was choked with rubble and two boulders -that weighed a hundred pounds each. - -The storm thunder of the avalanche passed away to a trickle of sand. -Sim's father burst out into laughter. "Made it! By the Gods! Made it -alive!" And he looked scornfully at the cliff and spat. "Pagh!" - -Mother and sister Dark struggled through the rubble. She cursed her -husband. "Fool! You might have killed Sim!" - -"I may yet," retorted the father. - -Sim was not listening. He was fascinated with the remains of an -avalanche afront of the next tunnel. A blood stain trickled out from -under a rise of boulders, soaking into the ground. There was nothing -else to be seen. Someone else had lost the game. - -Dark ran ahead on lithe, supple feet, naked and certain. - -The valley air was like a wine filtered between mountains. The heaven -was a restive blue; not the pale scorched atmosphere of full day, nor -the bloated, bruised black-purple of night, a-riot with sickly shining -stars. - -This was a tide pool. A place where waves of varying and violent -temperatures struck, receded. Now the tide pool was quiet, cool, and -its life moved abroad. - -Laughter! Far away, Sim heard it. Why laughter? How could any of his -people find time for laughing? Perhaps later he would discover why. - -The valley suddenly blushed with impulsive color. Plant-life, thawing -in the precipitant dawn, shoved out from most unexpected sources. It -flowered as you watched. Pale green tendrils appeared on scoured rocks. -Seconds later, ripe globes of fruit twitched upon the blade-tips. -Father gave Sim over to mother and harvested the momentary, volatile -crop, thrust scarlet, blue, yellow fruits into a fur sack which hung at -his waist. Mother tugged at the moist new grasses, laid them on Sim's -tongue. - -His senses were being honed to a fine edge. He stored knowledge -thirstily. He understood love, marriage, customs, anger, pity, rage, -selfishness, shadings and subtleties, realities and reflections. One -thing suggested another. The sight of green plant life whirled his mind -like a gyroscope, seeking balance in a world where lack of time for -explanations made a mind seek and interpret on its own. The soft burden -of food gave him knowledge of his system, of energy, of movement. Like -a bird newly cracking its way from a shell, he was almost a unit, -complete, all-knowing. Heredity had done all this for him. He grew -excited with his ability. - - * * * * * - -They walked, mother, father and the two children, smelling the smells, -watching the birds bounce from wall to wall of the valley like -scurrying pebbles and suddenly the father said a strange thing: - -"Remember?" - -Remember what? Sim lay cradled. Was it any effort for them to remember -when they'd lived only seven days! - -The husband and wife looked at each other. - -"Was it only three days ago?" said the woman, her body shaking, her -eyes closing to think. "I can't believe it. It is so unfair." She -sobbed, then drew her hand across her face and bit her parched lips. -The wind played at her gray hair. "Now is my turn to cry. An hour ago -it was you!" - -"An hour is half a life." - -"Come," she took her husband's arm. "Let us look at everything, because -it will be our last looking." - -"The sun'll be up in a few minutes," said the old man. "We must turn -back now." - -"Just one more moment," pleaded the woman. - -"The sun will catch us." - -"Let it catch me then!" - -"You don't mean that." - -"I mean nothing, nothing at all," cried the woman. - -The sun was coming fast. The green in the valley burnt away. Searing -wind blasted from over the cliffs. Far away where sun bolts hammered -battlements of cliff, the huge stone faces shook their contents; those -avalanches not already powdered down, were now released and fell like -mantles. - -"Dark!" shouted the father. The girl sprang over the warm floor of the -valley, answering, her hair a black flag behind her. Hands full of -green fruits, she joined them. - -The sun rimmed the horizon with flame, the air convulsed dangerously -with it, and whistled. - -The cave people bolted, shouting, picking up their fallen children, -bearing vast loads of fruit and grass with them back to their deep -hideouts. In moments the valley was bare. Except for one small child -someone had forgotten. He was running far out on the flatness, but he -was not strong enough, and the engulfing heat was drifting down from -the cliffs even as he was half across the valley. - -Flowers were burnt into effigies, grasses sucked back into rocks like -singed snakes, flower seeds whirled and fell in the sudden furnace -blast of wind, sown far into gullies and crannies, ready to blossom at -sunset tonight, and then go to seed and die again. - -Sim's father watched that child running, alone, out on the floor of -the valley. He and his wife and Dark and Sim were safe in the mouth of -their tunnel. - -"He'll never make it," said father. "Do not watch him, woman. It's not -a good thing to watch." - -They turned away. All except Sim, whose eyes had caught a glint of -metal far away. His heart hammered in him, and his eyes blurred. -Far away, atop a low mountain, one of those metal seeds from space -reflected a dazzling ripple of light! It was like one of his -intra-embryo dreams fulfilled! A metal space seed, intact, undamaged, -lying on a mountain! There was his future! There was his hope -for survival! There was where he would go in a few days, when he -was--strange thought--a grown man! - -The sun plunged into the valley like molten lava. - -The little running child screamed, the sun burned, and the screaming -stopped. - -Sim's mother walked painfully, with sudden age, down the tunnel, -paused, reached up, broke off two last icicles that had formed during -the night. She handed one to her husband, kept the other. "We will -drink one last toast. To you, to the children." - -"To _you_," he nodded to her. "To the children." They lifted the -icicles. The warmth melted the ice down into their thirsty mouths. - - * * * * * - -All day the sun seemed to blaze and erupt into the valley. Sim could -not see it, but the vivid pictorials in his parents' minds were -sufficient evidence of the nature of the day fire. The light ran like -mercury, sizzling and roasting the caves, poking inward, but never -penetrating deeply enough. It lighted the caves. It made the hollows of -the cliff comfortably warm. - -Sim fought to keep his parents young. But no matter how hard he fought -with mind and image, they became like mummies before him. His father -seemed to dissolve from one stage of oldness to another. This is what -will happen to me soon, though Sim in terror. - -Sim grew upon himself. He felt the digestive-eliminatory movements -of his body. He was fed every minute, he was continually swallowing, -feeding. He began to fit words to images and processes. Such a word was -love. It was not an abstraction, but a process, a stir of breath, a -smell of morning air, a flutter of heart, the curve of arm holding him, -the look in the suspended face of his mother. He saw the processes, -then searched behind her suspended face and there was the word, in her -brain, ready to use. His throat prepared to speak. Life was pushing -him, rushing him along toward oblivion. - -He sensed the expansion of his fingernails, the adjustments of his -cells, the profusion of his hair, the multiplication of his bones and -sinew, the grooving of the soft pale wax of his brain. His brain at -birth as clear as a circle of ice, innocent, unmarked, was, an instant -later, as if hit with a thrown rock, cracked and marked and patterned -in a million crevices of thought and discovery. - -His sister, Dark, ran in and out with other little hothouse children, -forever eating. His mother trembled over him, not eating, she had no -appetite, her eyes were webbed shut. - -"Sunset," said his father, at last. - -The day was over. The light faded, a wind sounded. - -His mother arose. "I want to see the outside world once more ... just -once more...." She stared blindly, shivering. - -His father's eyes were shut, he lay against the wall. - -"I cannot rise," he whispered faintly. "I cannot." - -"Dark!" The mother croaked, the girl came running. "Here," and Sim was -handed to the girl. "Hold to Sim, Dark, feed him, care for him." She -gave Sim one last fondling touch. - -Dark said not a word, holding Sim, her great green eyes shining wetly. - -"Go now," said the mother. "Take him out into the sunset time. Enjoy -yourselves. Pick foods, eat. Play." - -Dark walked away without looking back. Sim twisted in her grasp, -looking over her shoulder with unbelieving, tragic eyes. He cried out -and somehow summoned from his lips the first word of his existence. - -"Why...?" - -He saw his mother stiffen. "The child spoke!" - -"Aye," said his father. "Did you hear what he said?" - -"I heard," said the mother quietly. - -The last thing Sim saw of his living parents was his mother weakly, -swayingly, slowly moving across the floor to lie beside her silent -husband. That was the last time he ever saw them move. - - - IV - -The night came and passed and then started the second day. - -The bodies of all those who had died during the night were carried in a -funeral procession to the top of a small hill. The procession was long, -the bodies numerous. - -Dark walked in the procession, holding the newly walking Sim by one -hand. Only an hour before dawn Sim had learned to walk. - -At the top of the hill, Sim saw once again the far off metal seed. -Nobody ever looked at it, or spoke of it. Why? Was there some reason? -Was it a mirage? Why did they not run toward it? Worship it? Try to get -to it and fly away into space? - -The funeral words were spoken. The bodies were placed upon the ground -where the sun, in a few minutes, would cremate them. - -The procession then turned and ran down the hill, eager to have their -few minutes of free time running and playing and laughing in the sweet -air. - -Dark and Sim, chattering like birds, feeding among the rocks, exchanged -what they knew of life. He was in his second day, she in her third. -They were driven, as always, by the mercurial speed of their lives. - -Another piece of his life opened wide. - -Fifty young men ran down from the cliffs, holding sharp stones and rock -daggers in their thick hands. Shouting, they ran off toward distant -black, low lines of small rock cliffs. - -"War!" - -The thought stood in Sim's brain. It shocked and beat at him. These men -were running to fight, to kill, over there in those small black cliffs -where other people lived. - -But why? Wasn't life short enough without fighting, killing? - -From a great distance he heard the sound of conflict, and it made his -stomach cold. "Why, Dark, why?" - -Dark didn't know. Perhaps they would understand tomorrow. Now, there -was the business of eating to sustain and support their lives. Watching -Dark was like seeing a lizard forever flickering its pink tongue, -forever hungry. - -Pale children ran on all sides of them. One beetle-like boy scuttled up -the rocks, knocking Sim aside, to take from him a particularly luscious -red berry he had found growing under an outcrop. - -The child ate hastily of the fruit before Sim could gain his feet. Then -Sim hurled himself unsteadily, the two of them fell in a ridiculous -jumble, rolling, until Dark pried them, squalling, apart. - -Sim bled. A part of him stood off, like a god, and said, "This should -not be. Children should not be this way. It is wrong!" - -Dark slapped the little intruding boy away. "Get on!" she cried. -"What's your name, bad one?" - -"Chion!" laughed the boy. "Chion, Chion, Chion!" - -Sim glared at him with all the ferocity in his small, unskilled -features. He choked. This was his enemy. It was as if he'd waited -for an enemy of person as well as scene. He had already understood -the avalanches, the heat, the cold, the shortness of life, but these -were things of places, of scene--mute, extravagant manifestations of -unthinking nature, not motivated save by gravity and radiation. Here, -now, in this stridulent Chion he recognized a thinking enemy! - -Chion darted off, turned at a distance, tauntingly crying: - -"Tomorrow I will be big enough to kill you!" - -And he vanished around a rock. - -More children ran, giggling, by Sim. Which of them would be friends, -enemies? How could friends and enemies come about in this impossible, -quick life time? There was no time to make either, was there? - -Dark, as if knowing his thoughts, drew him away. As they searched for -desired foods, she whispered fiercely in his ear. "Enemies are made -over things like stolen foods; gifts of long grasses make friends. -Enemies come, too, from opinions and thoughts. In five seconds you've -made an enemy for life. Life's so short enemies must be made quickly." -And she laughed with an irony strange for one so young, who was growing -older before her rightful time. "You must fight to protect yourself. -Others, superstitious ones, will try killing you. There is a belief, a -ridiculous belief, that if one kills another, the murderer partakes of -the life energy of the slain, and therefore will live an extra day. You -see? As long as that is believed, you're in danger." - -But Sim was not listening. Bursting from a flock of delicate girls who -tomorrow would be tall, quieter, and who day after that would gain -breasts and the next day take husbands, Sim caught sight of one small -girl whose hair was a violet blue flame. - -She ran past, brushed Sim, their bodies touched. Her eyes, white as -silver coins, shone at him. He knew then that he'd found a friend, a -love, a wife, one who'd a week from now lie with him atop the funeral -pyre as sunlight undressed their flesh from bone. - -Only the glance, but it held them in mid-motion, one instant. - -"Your name?" he shouted after her. - -"Lyte!" she called laughingly back. - -"I'm Sim," he answered, confused and bewildered. - -"Sim!" she repeated it, flashing on. "I'll remember!" - -Dark nudged his ribs. "Here, _eat_," she said to the distracted boy. -"Eat or you'll never get big enough to catch her." - -From nowhere, Chion appeared, running by. "Lyte!" he mocked, dancing -malevolently along and away. "Lyte! I'll remember Lyte, too!" - -Dark stood tall and reed slender, shaking her dark ebony clouds of -hair, sadly. "I see your life before you, little Sim. You'll need -weapons soon to fight for this Lyte one. Now, hurry--the sun's coming!" - -They ran back to the caves. - - * * * * * - -One-fourth of his life was over! Babyhood was gone. He was now a young -boy! Wild rains lashed the valley at nightfall. He watched new river -channels cut in the valley, out past the mountain of the metal seed. -He stored the knowledge for later use. Each night there was a new -river, a bed newly cut. - -"What's beyond the valley?" wondered Sim. - -"No one's ever been beyond it," explained Dark. "All who tried to reach -the plain were frozen to death or burnt. The only land we know's within -half an hour's run. Half an hour out and half an hour back." - -"No one has ever reached the metal seed, then?" - -Dark scoffed. "The Scientists, they try. Silly fools. They don't know -enough to stop. It's no use. It's too far." - -The Scientists. The word stirred him. He had almost forgotten the -vision he had short hours after birth. His voice was eager. "Where are -the Scientists?" he demanded. - -Dark looked away from him, "I wouldn't tell you if I knew. They'd kill -you, experimenting! I don't want you joining them! Live your life, -don't cut it in half trying to reach that silly metal thing on the -mountain." - -"I'll find out where they are from someone else, then!" - -"No one'll tell you! They hate the Scientists. You'll have to find them -on your own. And then what? Will you save us? Yes, save us, little -boy!" Her face was sullen; already half her life was gone, her breasts -were beginning to shape. Tomorrow she must divine how best to live -her youth, her love, and she knew no way to fully plumb the depths of -passion in so short a space. - -"We can't sit and talk and eat," he protested. "And _nothing_ else." - -"There's always love," she retorted acidly. "It helps one forget. Gods, -yes," she spat it out. "Love!" - - * * * * * - -Sim ran through the tunnels, seeking. Sometimes he half imagined where -the Scientists were. But then a flood of angry thought from those -around him, when he asked the direction to the Scientists' cave, washed -over him in confusion and resentment. After all, it was the Scientists' -fault that they had been placed upon this terrible world! Sim flinched -under the bombardment of oaths and curses. - -Quietly he took his seat in a central chamber with the children to -listen to the grown men talk. This was the time of education, the -Time of Talking. No matter how he chafed at delay, or how great his -impatience, even though life slipped fast from him and death approached -like a black meteor, he knew his mind needed knowledge. Tonight, then, -was the night of school. But he sat uneasily. Only _five_ more days of -life. - -Chion sat across from Sim, his thin-mouthed face arrogant. - -Lyte appeared between the two. The last few hours had made her firmer -footed, gentler, taller. Her hair shone brighter. She smiled as she sat -beside Sim, ignoring Chion. And Chion became rigid at this and ceased -eating. - -The dialogue crackled, filled the room. Swift as heart beats, one -thousand, two thousand words a minute. Sim learned, his head filled. -He did not shut his eyes, but lapsed into a kind of dreaming that was -almost intra-embryonic in lassitude and drowsy vividness. In the faint -background the words were spoken, and they wove a tapestry of knowledge -in his head. - - * * * * * - -He dreamed of green meadows free of stones, all grass, round and -rolling and rushing easily toward a dawn with no taint of freezing, -merciless cold or smell of boiled rock or scorched monument. He walked -across the green meadow. Overhead the metal seeds flew by in a heaven -that was a steady, even temperature. Things were slow, slow, slow. - -Birds lingered upon gigantic trees that took a hundred, two hundred, -five thousand days to grow. Everything remained in its place, the birds -did not flicker nervously at a hint of sun, nor did the trees suck back -frightenedly when a ray of sunlight poured over them. - -In this dream people strolled, they rarely ran, the heart rhythm of -them was evenly languid, not jerking and insane. Their kisses were -long and lingering, not the parched mouthings and twitchings of lovers -who had eight days to live. The grass remained, and did not burn away -in torches. The dream people talked always of tomorrow and living and -not tomorrow and dying. It all seemed so familiar that when Sim felt -someone take his hand he thought it simply another part of the dream. - -Lyte's hand lay inside his own. "Dreaming?" she asked. - -"Yes." - -"Things are balanced. Our minds, to even things, to balance the -unfairness of our living, go back in on ourselves, to find what there -is that is good to see." - -He beat his hand against the stone floor again and again. "It does -not make things fair! I hate it! It reminds me that there is something -better, something I have missed! Why can't we be ignorant! Why can't we -live and die without knowing that this is an abnormal living?" And his -breath rushed harshly from his half-open, constricted mouth. - -"There is purpose in everything," said Lyte. "This gives us purpose, -makes us work, plan, try to find a way." - -His eyes were hot emeralds in his face. "I walked up a hill of grass, -very slowly," he said. - -"The same hill of grass I walked an hour ago?" asked Lyte. - -"Perhaps. Close enough to it. The dream is better than the reality." He -flexed his eyes, narrowed them. "I watched people and they did not eat." - -"Or talk?" - -"Or talk, either. And we always are eating, always talking. Sometimes -those people in the dream sprawled with their eyes shut, not moving a -muscle." - -As Lyte stared down into his face a terrible thing happened. He -imagined her face blackening, wrinkling, twisting into knots of -agedness. The hair blew out like snow about her ears, the eyes were -like discolored coins caught in a web of lashes. Her teeth sank away -from her lips, the delicate fingers hung like charred twigs from -her atrophied wrists. Her beauty was consumed and wasted even as he -watched, and when he seized her, in terror, he cried out, for he -imagined his own hand corroded, and he choked back a cry. - -"Sim, what's wrong?" - -The saliva in his mouth dried at the taste of the words. - -"Five more days...." - -"The Scientists." - -Sim started. Who'd spoken? In the dim light a tall man talked. "The -Scientists crashed us on this world, and now have wasted thousands of -lives and time. It's no use. It's no use. Tolerate them but give them -none of your time. You only live once, remember." - -Where were these hated Scientists? Now, after the Learning, the Time of -Talking, he was ready to find them. Now, at least, he knew enough to -begin his fight for freedom, for the ship! - -"Sim, where're you going?" - -But Sim was gone. The echo of his running feet died away down a shaft -of polished stone. - - * * * * * - -It seemed that half the night was wasted. He blundered into a dozen -dead ends. Many times he was attacked by the insane young men who -wanted his life energy. Their superstitious ravings echoed after him. -The gashes of their hungry fingernails covered his body. - -He found what he looked for. - -A half dozen men gathered in a small basalt cave deep down in the cliff -lode. On a table before them lay objects which, though unfamiliar, -struck harmonious chords in Sim. - -The Scientists worked in sets, old men doing important work, young -men learning, asking questions; and at their feet were three small -children. They were a process. Every eight days there was an entirely -new set of scientists working on any one problem. The amount of work -done was terribly inadequate. They grew old, fell dead just when they -were beginning their creative period. The creative time of any one -individual was perhaps a matter of twelve hours out of his entire span. -Three-quarters of one's life was spent learning, a brief interval of -creative power, then senility, insanity, death. - -The men turned as Sim entered. - -"Don't tell me we have a recruit?" said the eldest of them. - -"I don't believe it," said another, younger one. "Chase him away. He's -probably one of those war-mongers." - -"No, no," objected the elder one, moving with little shuffles of his -bare feet toward Sim. "Come in, come in, boy." He had friendly eyes, -slow eyes, unlike those of the swift inhabitants of the upper caves. -Grey and quiet. "What do you want?" - -Sim hesitated, lowered his head, unable to meet the quiet, gentle gaze. -"I want to live," he whispered. - -The old man laughed quietly. He touched Sim's shoulder. "Are you a new -breed? Are you sick?" he queried of Sim, half-seriously. "Why aren't -you playing? Why aren't you readying yourself for the time of love and -marriage and children? Don't you know that tomorrow night you'll be an -adolescent? Don't you realize that if you are not careful you'll miss -all of life?" He stopped. - -Sim moved his eyes back and forth with each query. He blinked at the -instruments on the table top. "Shouldn't I be here?" he asked, naively. - -"Certainly," roared the old man, sternly. "But it's a miracle you are. -We've had no volunteers from the rank and file for a thousand days! -We've had to breed our own scientists, a closed unit! Count us! Six! -Six men! And three children! Are we not overwhelming?" The old man spat -upon the stone floor. "We ask for volunteers and the people shout back -at us, 'Get someone else!' or 'We have no time!' And you know why they -say that?" - -"No." Sim flinched. - -"Because they're selfish. They'd like to live longer, yes, but they -know that anything they do cannot possibly insure their _own_ lives any -extra time. It might guarantee longer life to some future offspring of -theirs. But they won't give up their love, their brief youth, give up -one interval of sunset or sunrise!" - -Sim leaned against the table, earnestly. "I understand." - -"You do?" The old man stared at him blindly. He sighed and slapped the -child's thigh, gently. "Yes, of course, you do. It's too much to expect -anyone to understand, any more. You're rare." - -The others moved in around Sim and the old man. - -"I am Dienc. Tomorrow night Cort here will be in my place. I'll be dead -by then. And the night after that someone else will be in Cort's place, -and then you, if you work and believe--but first, I give you a chance. -Return to your playmates if you want. There is someone you love? Return -to her. Life is short. Why should you care for the unborn to come? You -have a right to youth. Go now, if you want. Because if you stay you'll -have no time for anything but working and growing old and dying at your -work. But it is good work. Well?" - -Sim looked at the tunnel. From a distance the wind roared and blew, -the smells of cooking and the patter of naked feet sounded, and the -laughter of lovers was an increasingly good thing to hear. He shook -his head, impatiently, and his eyes were wet. - -"I will stay," he said. - - - VI - -The third night and third day passed. It was the fourth night. Sim was -drawn into their living. He learned about that metal seed upon the top -of the far mountain. He heard of the original seeds--things called -"ships" that crashed and how the survivors hid and dug in the cliffs, -grew old swiftly and in their scrabbling to barely survive, forgot all -science. Knowledge of mechanical things had no chance of survival in -such a volcanic civilization. There was only NOW for each human. - -Yesterday didn't matter, tomorrow stared them vividly in their very -faces. But somehow the radiations that had forced their aging had -also induced a kind of telepathic communication whereby philosophies -and impressions were absorbed by the new born. Racial memory, growing -instinctively, preserved memories of another time. - -"Why don't we go to that ship on the mountain?" asked Sim. - -"It is too far. We would need protection from the sun," explained Dienc. - -"Have you tried to make protection?" - -"Salves and ointments, suits of stone and bird-wing and, recently, -crude metals. None of which worked. In ten thousand more life times -perhaps we'll have made a metal in which will flow cool water to -protect us on the march to the ship. But we work so slowly, so blindly. -This morning, mature, I took up my instruments. Tomorrow, dying, I lay -them down. What can one man do in one day? If we had ten thousand men, -the problem would be solved...." - -"I will go to the ship," said Sim. - -"Then you will die," said the old man. A silence had fallen on the room -at Sim's words. Then the men stared at Sim. "You are a very selfish -boy." - -"Selfish!" cried Sim, resentfully. - -The old man patted the air. "Selfish in a way I like. You want to live -longer, you'll do anything for that. You will try for the ship. But I -tell you it is useless. Yet, if you want to, I cannot stop you. At -least you will not be like those among us who go to war for an extra -few days of life." - -"War?" asked Sim. "How can there be war here?" - -And a shudder ran through him. He did not understand. - -"Tomorrow will be time enough for that," said Dienc. "Listen to me, -now." - -The night passed. - - - VII - -It was morning. Lyte came shouting and sobbing down a corridor, and ran -full into his arms. She had changed again. She was older, again, more -beautiful. She was shaking and she held to him. "Sim, they're coming -after you!" - -Bare feet marched down the corridor, surged inward at the opening. -Chion stood grinning there, taller, too, a sharp rock in either of his -hands. "Oh, there you are, Sim!" - -"Go away!" cried Lyte savagely whirling on him. - -"Not until we take Sim with us," Chion assured her. Then, smiling at -Sim. "_If_ that is, he is with us in the fight." - -Dienc shuffled forward, his eye weakly fluttering, his bird-like hands -fumbling in the air. "Leave!" he shrilled angrily. "This boy is a -Scientist now. He works with us." - -Chion ceased smiling. "There is better work to be done. We go now to -fight the people in the farthest cliffs." His eyes glittered anxiously. -"Of course, you will come with us, Sim?" - -"No, no!" Lyte clutched at his arm. - -Sim patted her shoulder, then turned to Chion. "Why are you attacking -these people?" - -"There are three extra days for those who go with us to fight." - -"Three extra days! Of living?" - -Chion nodded firmly. "If we win, we live eleven days instead of eight. -The cliffs they live in, something about the mineral in it! Think of -it, Sim, three long, good days of life. Will you join us?" - -Dienc interrupted. "Get along without him. Sim is my pupil!" - -Chion snorted. "Go die, old man. By sunset tonight you'll be charred -bone. Who are you to order us? We are young, we want to live longer." - -Eleven days. The words were unbelievable to Sim. Eleven days. Now he -understood why there was war. Who wouldn't fight to have his life -lengthened by almost half its total. So many more days of youth and -love and seeing and living! Yes. Why not, indeed! - -"Three extra days," called Dienc, stridently, "_if_ you live to enjoy -them. If you're not killed in battle. _If. If!_ You have never won yet. -You have always lost!" - -"But this time," Chion declared sharply, "We'll win!" - -Sim was bewildered. "But we are all of the same ancestors. Why don't we -all share the best cliffs?" - -Chion laughed and adjusted a sharp stone in his hand. "Those who live -in the best cliffs think they are better than us. That is always man's -attitude when he has power. The cliffs there, besides, are smaller, -there's room for only three hundred people in them." - -Three extra days. - -"I'll go with you," Sim said to Chion. - -"Fine!" Chion was very glad, much too glad at the decision. - -Dienc gasped. - -Sim turned to Dienc and Lyte. "If I fight, and win, I will be half a -mile closer to the Ship. And I'll have three extra days in which to -strive to reach the Ship. That seems the only thing for me to do." - -Dienc nodded, sadly. "It _is_ the only thing. I believe you. Go along -now." - -"Good-bye," said Sim. - -The old man looked surprised, then he laughed as at a little joke on -himself. "That's right--I won't see you again, will I? Good-bye, then." -And they shook hands. - -They went out, Chion, Sim, and Lyte, together, followed by the others, -all children growing swiftly into fighting men. And the light in -Chion's eyes was not a good thing to see. - - * * * * * - -Lyte went with him. She chose his rocks for him and carried them. She -would not go back, no matter how he pleaded. The sun was just beyond -the horizon and they marched across the valley. - -"Please, Lyte, go back!" - -"And wait for Chion to return?" she said. "He plans that when you die I -will be his mate." She shook out her unbelievable blue-white curls of -hair defiantly. "But I'll be with you. If you fall, I fall." - -Sim's face hardened. He was tall. The world had shrunk during the -night. Children packs screamed by hilarious in their food-searching and -he looked at them with alien wonder: could it be only four days ago -he'd been like these? Strange. There was a sense of many days in his -mind, as if he'd really lived a thousand days. There was a dimension -of incident and thought so thick, so multi-colored, so richly diverse -in his head that it was not to be believed so much could happen in so -short a time. - -The fighting men ran in clusters of two or three. Sim looked ahead at -the rising line of small ebon cliffs. This, then, he said to himself, -is my fourth day. And still I am no closer to the Ship, or to anything, -not even--he heard the light tread of Lyte beside him--not even to her -who bears my weapons and picks me ripe berries. - -One-half of his life was gone. Or a third of it--IF he won this battle. -_If._ - -He ran easily, lifting, letting fall his legs. This is the day of my -physical awareness, as I run I feed, as I feed I grow and as I grow I -turn eyes to Lyte with a kind of dizzying vertigo. And she looks upon -me with the same gentleness of thought. This is the day of our youth. -Are we wasting it? Are we losing it on a dream, a folly? - -Distantly he heard laughter. As a child he'd questioned it. Now he -understood laughter. This particular laughter was made of climbing -high rocks and plucking the greenest blades and drinking the headiest -vintage from the morning ices and eating of the rock-fruits and tasting -of young lips in new appetite. - -They neared the cliffs of the enemy. - -He saw the slender erectness of Lyte. The new surprise of her white -breasts; the neck where if you touched you could time her pulse; the -fingers which cupped in your own were animate and supple and never -still; the.... - -Lyte snapped her head to one side. "Look ahead!" she cried. "See what -is to come--look only ahead." - -He felt that they were racing by part of their lives, leaving their -youth on the pathside, without so much as a glance. - -"I am blind with looking at stones," he said, running. - -"Find new stones, then!" - -"I see stones--" His voice grew gentle as the palm of her hand. The -landscape floated under him. Everything was like a fine wind, blowing -dreamily. "I see stones that make a ravine that lies in a cool shadow -where the stone-berries are thick as tears. You touch a boulder and the -berries fall in silent red avalanches, and the grass is very tender...." - -"I do not see it!" She increased her pace, turning her head away. - -He saw the floss upon her neck, like the small moss that grows silvery -and light on the cool side of pebbles, that stirs if you breathe the -lightest breath upon it. He looked upon himself, his hands clenched as -he heaved himself forward toward death. Already his hands were veined -and youth-swollen. - -They were the hands of a young boy whose fingers are made for touching, -which are suddenly sensitive and with more surface, and are nervous, -and seem not a part of him because they are so big for the slender -lengths of his arms. His neck, through which the blood ached and -pumped, was building out with age, too, with tiny blue tendrils of -veins imbedded and flaring in it. - -Lyte handed him food to eat. - -"I am not hungry," he said. - -"Eat, keep your mouth full," she commanded sharply. "So you will not -talk to me this way!" - -"If I could only kiss you," he pleaded. "Just one time." - -"After the battle there may be time." - -"Gods!" He roared, anguished. "Who cares for battles!" - -Ahead of them, rocks hailed down, thudding. A man fell with his skull -split wide. The war was begun. - -Lyte passed the weapons to him. They ran without another word until -they entered the killing ground. Then he spoke, not looking at her, his -cheeks coloring. "Thank you," he said. - -She ducked as a slung stone shot by her head. "It was not an easy -thing for me," she admitted. "Sim! Be careful!" - -The boulders began to roll in a synthetic avalanche from the -battlements of the enemy! - - * * * * * - -Only one thought was in his mind now. To kill, to lessen the life of -someone else so he could live, to gain a foothold here and live long -enough to make a stab at the ship. He ducked, he weaved, he clutched -stones and hurled them up. His left hand held a flat stone shield with -which he diverted the swiftly plummeting rocks. There was a spatting -sound everywhere. Lyte ran with him, encouraging him. Two men dropped -before him, slain, their breasts cleaved to the bone, their blood -springing out in unbelievable founts. - -It was a useless conflict. Sim realized instantly how insane the -venture was. They could never storm the cliff. A solid wall of rocks -rained down. A dozen men dropped with shards of ebony in their brains, -a half dozen more showed drooping, broken arms. One screamed and the -upthrust white joint of his knee was exposed as the flesh was pulled -away by two successive blows of well-aimed granite. Men stumbled over -one another. - -The muscles in his cheeks pulled tight and he began to wonder why he -had ever come. But his raised eyes, as he danced from side to side, -weaving and bobbing, sought always the cliffs. He wanted to live there -so intensely, to have his chance. He would have to stick it out. But -the heart was gone from him. - -Lyte screamed piercingly. Sim, his heart panicking, twisted and saw -that her hand was loose at the wrist, with an ugly wound bleeding -profusely on the back of the knuckles. She clamped it under her armpit -to soothe the pain. The anger rose in him and exploded. In his fury he -raced forward, throwing his missiles with deadly accuracy. He saw a man -topple and flail down, falling from one level to another of the caves, -a victim of his shot. He must have been screaming, for his lungs were -bursting open and closed and his throat was raw, and the ground spun -madly under his racing feet. - -The stone that clipped his head sent him reeling and plunging back. -He ate sand. The universe dissolved into purple whorls. He could not -get up. He lay and knew that this was his last day, his last time. The -battle raged around him, dimly he felt Lyte over him. Her hands cooled -his head, she tried to drag him out of range, but he lay gasping and -telling her to leave him. - -"Stop!" shouted a voice. The whole war seemed to give pause. "Retreat!" -commanded the voice swiftly. And as Sim watched, lying upon his side, -his comrades turned and fled back toward home. - -"The sun is coming, our time is up!" He saw their muscled backs, their -moving, tensing, flickering legs go up and down. The dead were left -upon the field. The wounded cried for help. But there was no time for -the wounded. There was only time for swift men to run the gauntlet -home and, their lungs aching and raw with heated air, burst into their -tunnels before the sun burnt and killed them. - -The sun! - -Sim saw another figure racing toward him. It was Chion! Lyte was -helping Sim to his feet, whispering helpfully to him. "Can you walk?" -she asked. And he groaned and said, "I think so." "Walk then," she -said. "Walk slowly, and then faster and faster. We'll make it. Walk -slowly, start carefully. We'll make it, I know we will." - -Sim got to his feet, stood swaying. Chion raced up, a strange -expression cutting lines in his cheeks, his eyes shining with battle. -Pushing Lyte abruptly aside he seized upon a rock and dealt Sim a -jolting blow upon his ankle that laid wide the flesh. All of this was -done quite silently. - -Now he stood back, still not speaking, grinning like an animal from the -night mountains, his chest panting in and out, looking from the thing -he had done, to Lyte, and back. He got his breath. "He'll never make -it," he nodded at Sim. "We'll have to leave him here. Come along, Lyte." - -Lyte, like a cat-animal, sprang upon Chion, searching for his eyes, -shrieking through her exposed, hard-pressed teeth. Her fingers stroked -great bloody furrows down Chion's arms and again, instantly, down his -neck. Chion, with an oath, sprang away from her. She hurled a rock at -him. Grunting, he let it miss him, then ran off a few yards. "Fool!" -he cried, turning to scorn her. "Come along with me. Sim will be dead -in a few minutes. Come along!" - -Lyte turned her back on him. "I will go if you carry me." - -Chion's face changed. His eyes lost their gleaming. "There is no time. -We would both die if I carried you." - -Lyte looked through and beyond him. "Carry me, then, for that's how I -wish it to be." - -Without another word, glancing fearfully at the sun, Chion fled. His -footsteps sped away and vanished from hearing. "May he fall and break -his neck," whispered Lyte, savagely glaring at his form as it skirted a -ravine. She returned to Sim. "Can you walk?" - - * * * * * - -Agonies of pain shot up his leg from the wounded ankle. He nodded -ironically. "We could make it to the cave in two hours, walking. I have -an idea, Lyte. Carry me." And he smiled with the grim joke. - -She took his arm. "Nevertheless we'll walk. Come." - -"No," he said. "We're staying here." - -"But why?" - -"We came to seek a home here. If we walk we will die. I would rather -die here. How much time have we?" - -Together they measured the sun. "A few minutes," she said, her voice -flat and dull. She held close to him. - -He looked at her. Lyte, he thought. Tomorrow I would have been a man. -My body would have been strong and full and there would have been time -with you, a kissing and a touching. Damn, but what kind of life is this -where every last instant is drenched with fear and alert with death? Am -I to be denied even some bit of real life? - -The black rocks of the cliff were paling into deep purples and browns -as the sun began to flood the world. - -What a fool he was! He should have stayed and worked with Dienc, and -thought and dreamed, and at least one time cupped Lyte's mouth with his -own. - -With the sinews of his neck standing out defiantly he bellowed upward -at the cliff holes. - -"Send me down one man to do battle!" - -Silence. His voice echoed from the cliff. The air was warm. - -"It's no use," said Lyte, "They'll pay no attention." - -He shouted again. "Hear me!" He stood with his weight on his good foot, -his injured left leg throbbing and pulsating with pain. He shook a -fist. "Send down a warrior who is no coward! I will not turn and run -home! I have come to fight a fair fight! Send a man who will fight for -the right to his cave! Him I will surely kill!" - -More silence. A wave of heat passed over the land, receded. - -"Oh, surely," mocked Sim, hands on naked hips, head back, mouth wide, -"surely there's one among you not afraid to fight a cripple!" Silence. -"No?" Silence. - -"Then I have miscalculated you. I'm wrong. I'll stand here, then, until -the sun shucks the flesh off my bone in black scraps, and call you the -filthy names you deserve." - -He got an answer. - -"I do not like being called names," replied a man's voice. - -Sim leaned forward, forgetting his crippled foot. - -A huge man appeared in a cave mouth on the third level. - -"Come down," urged Sim. "Come down, fat one, and kill me." - -The man scowled seriously at his opponent a moment, then lumbered -slowly down the path, his hands empty of any weapons. Immediately every -cave above clustered with heads. An audience for this drama. - -The man approached Sim. "We will fight by the rules, if you know them." - -"I'll learn as we go," replied Sim. - -This pleased the man and he looked at Sim warily, but not unkindly. -"This much I will tell you," offered the man generously. "If you die, I -will give your mate shelter and she will live, as she pleases, because -she is the wife of a good man." - -Sim nodded swiftly. "I am ready," he said. - -"The rules are simple. We do not touch each other, save with stones. -The stones and the sun will do either of us in. Now is the time--" - - - VIII - -A tip of the sun showed on the horizon. "My name is Nhoj," said -Sim's enemy, casually fingering up a handful of pebbles and stones, -weighing them. Sim did likewise. He was hungry. He had not eaten -for many minutes. Hunger was the curse of this planet's peoples--a -perpetual demanding of empty stomachs for more, more food. His blood -flushed weakly, shot tinglingly through veins in jolting throbs of -heat and pressure, his ribcase shoved out, went in, shoved out again, -impatiently. - -"Now!" roared the three hundred watchers from the cliffs. "Now!" they -clamored, the men and women and children balanced, in turmoil on the -ledges. "Now! Begin!" - -As if at a cue, the sun leaped high. It smote them a blow as with a -flat, sizzling stone. The two men staggered under the molten impact, -sweat broke from their naked thighs and loins, under their arms and on -their faces was a glaze like fine glass. - -Nhoj shifted his huge weight and looked at the sun as if in no hurry to -fight. Then, silently, with no warning, he kanurcked out a pebble with -a startling trigger-flick of thumb and forefinger. It caught Sim flat -on the cheek, staggered him back, so that a rocket of unbearable pain -climbed up his crippled foot and burst into nervous explosion at the -pit of his stomach. He tasted blood from his bleeding cheek. - -Nhoj moved serenely. Three more flickers of his magical hands and three -tiny, seemingly harmless bits of stone flew like whistling birds. -Each of them found a target, slammed it. The nerve centers of Sim's -body! One hit his stomach so that ten hours' eating almost slid up his -throat. A second got his forehead, a third his neck. He collapsed to -the boiling sand. His knee made a wrenching sound on the hard earth. -His face was colorless and his eyes, squeezed tight, were pushing tears -out from the hot, quivering lids. But even as he had fallen he had let -loose, with wild force, his handful of stones! - -The stones purred in the air. One of them, and only one, struck Nhoj. -Upon the left eyeball. Nhoj moaned and laid his hands in the next -instant to his shattered eye. - -Sim choked out a bitter, sighing laugh. This much triumph he had. The -eye of his opponent. It would give him ... Time. Oh, gods, he thought, -his stomach retching sickly, fighting for breath, this is a world of -time. Give me a little more, just a trifle! - -Nhoj, one-eyed, weaving with pain, pelted the writhing body of Sim, but -his aim was off now, the stones flew to one side or if they struck at -all they were weak and spent and lifeless. - -Sim forced himself half erect. From the corners of his eyes he -saw Lyte, waiting, staring at him, her lips breathing words of -encouragement and hope. He was bathed in sweat, as if a rain spray had -showered him down. - - * * * * * - -The sun was now fully over the horizon. You could smell it. Stones -glinted like mirrors, the sand began to roil and bubble. Illusions -sprang up everywhere in the valley. Instead of one warrior Nhoj he was -confronted by a dozen, each in an upright position, preparing to launch -another missile. A dozen irregular warriors who shimmered in the golden -menace of day, like bronze gongs smitten, quivered in one vision! - -Sim was breathing desperately. His nostrils flared and sucked and his -mouth drank thirstily of flame instead of oxygen. His lungs took fire -like silk torches and his body was consumed. The sweat spilled from -his pores to be instantly evaporated. He felt himself shriveling, -shriveling in on himself, he imagined himself looking like his father, -old, sunken, slight, withered! Where was the sand? Could he move? Yes. -The world wriggled under him, but now he was on his feet. - -There would be no more fighting. - -A murmur from the cliff told this. The sunburnt faces of the high -audience gaped and jeered and shouted encouragement to their warrior. -"Stand straight, Nhoj, save your strength now! Stand tall and -perspire!" they urged him. And Nhoj stood, swaying lightly, swaying -slowly, a pendulum in an incandescent fiery breath from the skyline. -"Don't move, Nhoj, save your heart, save your power!" - -"The Test, The Test!" said the people on the heights. "The test of the -sun." - -And this was the worst part of the fight. Sim squinted painfully at the -distorted illusion of cliff. He thought he saw his parents; father with -his defeated face, his green eyes burning, mother with her hair blowing -like a cloud of grey smoke in the fire wind. He must get up to them, -live for and with them! - -Behind him, Sim heard Lyte whimper softly. There was a whisper of flesh -against sand. She had fallen. He did not dare turn. The strength of -turning would bring him thundering down in pain and darkness. - -His knees bent. If I fall, he thought, I'll lie here and become ashes. -Where was Nhoj? Nhoj was there, a few yards from him, standing bent, -slick with perspiration, looking as if he were being hit over the spine -with great hammers of destruction. - -"Fall, Nhoj! Fall!" screamed Sim, mentally. "Fall, fall! Fall and die -so I can take your place!" - -But Nhoj did not fall. One by one the pebbles in his half-loose left -hand plummeted to the broiling sands and Nhoj's lips peeled back, the -saliva burned away from his lips and his eyes glazed. But he did not -fall. The will to live was strong in him. He hung as if by a wire. - -Sim fell to one knee! - -"Ahh!" wailed the knowing voices from the cliff. They were watching -death. Sim jerked his head up, smiling mechanically, foolishly as if -caught in the act of doing something silly. "No, no," he insisted -drowsily, and got back up again. There was so much pain he was all one -ringing numbness. A whirring, buzzing, frying sound filled the land. -High up, an avalanche came down like a curtain on a drama, making no -noise. Everything was quiet except for a steady humming. He saw fifty -images of Nhoj now, dressed in armours of sweat, eyes puffed with -torture, cheeks sunken, lips peeled back like the rind of a drying -fruit. But the wire still held him. - -"Now," muttered Sim, sluggishly, with a thick, baked tongue between his -blazing teeth. "Now I'll fall and lie and dream." He said it with slow, -thoughtful pleasure. He planned it. He knew how it must be done. He -would do it accurately. He lifted his head to see if the audience was -watching. - -They were gone! - -The sun had driven them back in. All save one or two brave ones. Sim -laughed drunkenly and watched the sweat gather on his dead hands, -hesitate, drop off, plunge down toward sand and turn to steam half way -there. - -Nhoj fell. - -The wire was cut. Nhoj fell flat upon his stomach, a gout of blood -kicked from his mouth. His eyes rolled back into a white, senseless -insanity. - -Nhoj fell. So did his fifty duplicate illusions. - -All across the valley the winds sang and moaned and Sim saw a blue lake -with a blue river feeding it and low white houses near the river with -people going and coming in the houses and among the tall green trees. -Trees taller than seven men, beside the river mirage. - -"Now," explained Sim to himself at last, "Now I can fall. -Right--into--that--lake." - -He fell forward. - -He was shocked when he felt the hands eagerly stop him in mid-plunge, -lift him, hurry him off, high in the hungry air, like a torch held and -waved, ablaze. - -"How strange is death," he thought, and blackness took him. - - * * * * * - -He wakened to the flow of cool water on his cheeks. - -He opened his eyes fearfully. Lyte held his head upon her lap, her -fingers were moving food to his mouth. He was tremendously hungry -and tired, but fear squeezed both of these things away. He struggled -upward, seeing the strange cave contours overhead. - -"What time is it?" he demanded. - -"The same day as the contest. Be quiet," she said. - -"The same day!" - -She nodded amusedly. "You've lost nothing of your life. This is Nhoj's -cave. We are inside the black cliff. We will live three extra days. -Satisfied? Lie down." - -"Nhoj is dead?" He fell back, panting, his heart slamming his ribs. He -relaxed slowly. "I won. Gods, I won," he breathed. - -"Nhoj is dead. So were we, almost. They carried us in from outside only -in time." - -He ate ravenously. "We have no time to waste. We must get strong. My -leg--" He looked at it, tested it. There was a swathe of long yellow -grasses around it and the ache had died away. Even as he watched -the terrific pulsings of his body went to work and cured away the -impurities under the bandages. It _has_ to be strong by sunset, he -thought. It _has_ to be. - -He got up and limped around the cave like a captured animal. He felt -Lyte's eyes upon him. He could not meet her gaze. Finally, helplessly, -he turned. - -She interrupted him. "You want to go on to the ship?" she asked, -softly. "Tonight? When the sun goes down?" - -He took a breath, exhaled it. "Yes." - -"You couldn't possibly wait until morning?" - -"No." - -"Then I'll go with you." - -"No!" - -"If I lag behind, let me. There's nothing here for me." - -They stared at each other a long while. He shrugged wearily. - -"All right," he said, at last. "I couldn't stop you, I know that. We'll -go together." - - - IX - -They waited in the mouth of their new cave. The sun set. The stones -cooled so that one could walk on them. It was almost time for the -leaping out and the running toward the distant, glittering metal seed -that lay on the far mountain. - -Soon would come the rains. And Sim thought back over all the times -he had watched the rains thicken into creeks, into rivers that cut -new beds each night. One night there would be a river running north, -the next a river running north-east, the third night a river running -due west. The valley was continually cut and scarred by the torrents. -Earthquakes and avalanches filled the old beds. New ones were the order -of the day. It was this idea of the river and the directions of the -river that he had turned over in his head for many hours. It might -possibly--Well, he would wait and see. - -He noticed how living in this new cliff had slowed his pulse, slowed -everything. A mineral result, protection against the solar radiations. -Life was still swift, but not as swift as before. - -"Now, Sim!" cried Lyte, testing the valley air. - -They ran. Between the hot death and the cold one. Together, away from -the cliffs, out toward the distant, beckoning ship. - -Never had they run this way in their lives. The sound of their feet -running was a hard, insistent clatter over vast oblongs of rock, down -into ravines, up the sides, and on again. They raked the air in and out -their lungs. Behind them the cliffs faded away into things they could -never turn back to now. - -They did not eat as they ran. They had eaten to the bursting point in -the cave, to save time. Now it was only running, a lifting of legs, a -balancing of bent elbows, a convulsion of muscles, a slaking in of air -that had been fiery and was now cooling. - -"Are they watching us?" - -Lyte's breathless voice snatched at his ears, above the pound of his -heart. - -Who? But he knew the answer. The cliff peoples, of course. How long had -it been since a race like this one? A thousand days? Ten thousand? How -long since someone had taken the chance and sprinted with an entire -civilization's eyes upon their backs, into gullies, across cooling -plain. Were there lovers pausing in their laughter back there, gazing -at the two tiny dots that were a man and woman running toward destiny? -Were children eating of new fruits and stopping in their play to see -the two people racing against time? Was Dienc still living, narrowing -hairy eyebrows down over fading eyes, shouting them on in a feeble, -rasping voice, shaking a twisted hand? Were there jeers? Were they -being called fools, idiots? And in the midst of the name calling, were -people praying them on, hoping they would reach the ship? Yes, under -all the cynicism and pessimism, some of them, all of them, must be -praying. - -Sim took a quick glance at the sky, which was beginning to bruise with -the coming night. Out of nowhere clouds materialized and a light shower -trailed across a gully two hundred yards ahead of them. Lightning beat -upon distant mountains and there was a strong scent of ozone on the -disturbed air. - -"The halfway mark," panted Sim, and he saw Lyte's face half turn, -longingly looking back at the life she was leaving. "Now's the time, if -we want to turn back, we still have time. Another minute--" - - * * * * * - -Thunder snarled in the mountains. An avalanche started out small and -ended up huge and monstrous in a deep fissure. Light rain dotted Lyte's -smooth white skin. In a minute her hair was glistening and soggy with -rain. - -"Too late now," she shouted over the patting rhythm of her own naked -feet. "We've got to go ahead!" - -And it was too late. Sim knew, judging the distances, that there was no -turning back now. - -His leg began to pain him a little. He favored it, slowing. A wind -came up swiftly. A cold wind that bit into the skin. But it came from -the cliffs behind them, helped rather than hindered them. An omen? he -wondered. No. - -For as the minutes went by it grew upon him how poorly he had estimated -the distance. Their time was dwindling out, but they were still an -impossible distance from the ship. He said nothing, but the impotent -anger at the slow muscles in his legs welled up into bitterly hot tears -in his eyes. - -He knew that Lyte was thinking the same as himself. But she flew along -like a white bird, seeming hardly to touch ground. He heard her breath -go out and in her throat, like a clean, sharp knife in its sheathe. - -Half the sky was dark. The first stars were peering through lengths of -black cloud. Lightning jiggled a path along a rim just ahead of them. A -full thunderstorm of violent rain and exploding electricity fell upon -them. - -They slipped and skidded on moss-smooth pebbles. Lyte fell, scrambled -up again with a burning oath. Her body was scarred and dirty. The rain -washed over her. - -The rain came down and cried on Sim. It filled his eyes and ran in -rivers down his spine and he wanted to cry with it. - -Lyte fell and did not rise, sucking her breath, her breasts quivering. - -He picked her up and held her. "Run, Lyte, please, run!" - -"Leave me, Sim. Go ahead!" The rain filled her mouth. There was water -everywhere. "It's no use. Go on without me." - -He stood there, cold and powerless, his thoughts sagging, the flame of -hope blinking out. All the world was blackness, cold falling sheathes -of water, and despair. - -"We'll walk, then," he said. "And keep walking, and resting." - -They walked for fifty yards, easily, slowly, like children out for a -stroll. The gully ahead of them filled with water that went sliding -away with a swift wet sound, toward the horizon. - -Sim cried out. Tugging at Lyte he raced forward. "A new channel," he -said, pointing. "Each day the rain cuts a new channel. Here, Lyte!" He -leaned over the flood waters. - -He dived in, taking her with him. - -The flood swept them like bits of wood. They fought to stay upright, -the water got into their mouths, their noses. The land swept by on both -sides of them. Clutching Lyte's fingers with insane strength, Sim felt -himself hurled end over end, saw flicks of lightning on high, and a new -fierce hope was born in him. They could no longer run, well, then they -would let the water do the running for them. - -With a speed that dashed them against rocks, split open their -shoulders, abraded their legs, the new, brief river carried them. "This -way!" Sim shouted over a salvo of thunder and steered frantically -toward the opposite side of the gully. The mountain where the ship -lay was just ahead. They must not pass it by. They fought in the -transporting liquid and were slammed against the far side. Sim leaped -up, caught at an overhanging rock, locked Lyte in his legs, and drew -himself hand over hand upward. - -As quickly as it had come, the storm was gone. The lightning faded. The -rain ceased. The clouds melted and fell away over the sky. The wind -whispered into silence. - -"The ship!" Lyte lay upon the ground. "The ship, Sim. This is the -mountain of the ship!" - -Now the cold came. The killing cold. - -They forced themselves drunkenly up the mountain. The cold slid along -their limbs, got into their arteries like a chemical and slowed them. - -Ahead of them, with a fresh-washed sheen, lay the ship. It was a dream. -Sim could not believe that they were actually so near it. Two hundred -yards. One hundred and seventy yards. Gods, but it was cold. - -[Illustration: _Ahead of them lay the ship. Sim could not believe they -were so near._] - -The ground became covered with ice. They slipped and fell again and -again. Behind them the river was frozen into a blue-white snake of cold -solidity. A few last drops of rain from somewhere came down as hard -pellets. - -Sim fell against the bulk of the ship. He was actually touching it. -Touching it! He heard Lyte whimpering in her constricted throat. This -was the metal, the ship. How many others had touched it in the long -days? He and Lyte had made it! - -He touched it lovingly. Then, as cold as the air, his veins were -chilled. - -Where was the entrance? - -You run, you swim, you almost drown, you curse, you sweat, you work, -you reach a mountain, you go up it, you hammer on metal, you shout with -relief, you reach the ship, and then--you can't find the entrance. - - * * * * * - -He fought to keep himself from breaking down. Slowly, he told himself, -but not too slowly, go around the ship. The metal slid under his -searching hands, so cold that his hands, sweating, almost froze to it. -Now, far around to the side. Lyte moved with him. The cold held them -like a fist. It began to squeeze. - -The entrance. - -Metal. Cold, immutable metal. A thin line of opening at the sealing -point. Throwing all caution aside, he beat at it. He felt his stomach -seething with cold. His fingers were numb, his eyes were half frozen in -their sockets. He began to beat and search and scream against the metal -door. "Open up! Open up!" He staggered. - -The air-lock sighed. With a whispering of metal on rubber beddings, the -door swung softly sidewise and vanished back. - -He saw Lyte run forward, clutch at her throat, and drop inside a small -shiny chamber. He shuffled after her, blankly. - -The air-lock door sealed shut behind him. - -He could not breathe. His heart began to slow, to stop. - -They were trapped inside the ship now, and something was happening. He -sank down to his knees and choked for air. - -The ship he had come to for salvation was now slowing his pulse, -darkening his brain, poisoning him. With a starved, faint kind of -expiring terror, he realized that he was dying. - -Blackness. - - * * * * * - -He had a dim sense of time passing, of thinking, struggling, to make -his heart go quick, quick.... To make his eyes focus. But the fluid in -his body lagged quietly through his settling veins and he heard his -temple pulses thud, pause, thud, pause and thud again with lulling -intermissions. - -He could not move, not a hand or leg or finger. It was an effort to -lift the tonnage of his eyelashes. He could not shift his face even, to -see Lyte lying beside him. - -From a distance came her irregular breathing. It was like the sound a -wounded bird makes with his dry, unraveled pinions. She was so close he -could almost feel the heat of her; yet she seemed a long way removed. - -I'm getting cold! he thought. Is this death? This slowing of blood, of -my heart, this cooling of my body, this drowsy thinking of thoughts? - -Staring at the ship's ceiling he traced its intricate system of tubes -and machines. The knowledge, the purpose of the ship, its actions, -seeped into him. He began to understand in a kind of revealing -lassitude just what these things were his eyes rested upon. Slow. Slow. - -There was an instrument with a gleaming white dial. - -Its purpose? - -He drudged away at the problem, like a man underwater. - -People had used the dial. Touched it. People had repaired it. -Installed it. People had dreamed of it before the building, before -the installing, before the repairing and touching and using. The -dial contained memory of use and manufacture, its very shape was a -dream-memory telling Sim why and for what it had been built. Given -time, looking at anything, he could draw from it the knowledge he -desired. Some dim part of him reached out, dissected the contents of -things, analyzed them. - -This dial measured time! - -Millions of days of time! - -But how could that be? Sim's eyes dilated, hot and glittering. Where -were humans who needed such an instrument? - -Blood thrummed and beat behind his eyes. He closed them. - -Panic came to him. The day was passing. I am lying here, he thought, -and my life slips away. I cannot move. My youth is passing. How long -before I can move? - -Through a kind of porthole he saw the night pass, the day come, the day -pass, and again another night. Stars danced frostily. - -I will lie here for four or five days, wrinkling and withering, he -thought. This ship will not let me move. How much better if I had -stayed in my home cliff, lived, enjoyed this short life. What good has -it done to come here? I'm missing all the twilights and dawns. I'll -never touch Lyte, though she's here at my side. - -Delirium. His mind floated up. His thoughts whirled through the metal -ship. He smelled the razor sharp smell of joined metal. He heard the -hull contract with night, relax with day. - -Dawn. - -Already--another dawn! - -Today I would have been mature. His jaw clenched. I must get up. I must -move. I must enjoy my time of maturity. - -But he didn't move. He felt his blood pump sleepily from chamber to red -chamber in his heart, on down and around through his dead body, to be -purified by his folding and unfolding lungs. Then the circuit once more. - -The ship grew warm. From somewhere a machine clicked. Automatically the -temperature cooled. A controlled gust of air flushed the room. - -Night again. And then another day. - -He lay and saw four days of his life pass. - -He did not try to fight. It was no use. His life was over. - -He didn't want to turn his head now. He didn't want to see Lyte with -her face like his tortured mother's--eyelids like gray ash flakes, eyes -like beaten, sanded metal, cheeks like eroded stones. He didn't want to -see a throat like parched thongs of yellow grass, hands the pattern of -smoke risen from a fire, breasts like desiccated rinds and hair stubbly -and unshorn as moist gray weeds! - -And himself? How did _he_ look? Was his jaw sunken, the flesh of his -eyes pitted, his brow lined and age-scarred? - - * * * * * - -His strength began to return. He felt his heart beating so slow that it -was amazing. One hundred beats a minute. Impossible. He felt so cool, -so thoughtful, so easy. - -His head fell over to one side. He stared at Lyte. He shouted in -surprise. - -She was young and fair. - -She was looking at him, too weak to say anything. Her eyes were like -tiny silver medals, her throat curved like the arm of a child. Her hair -was blue fire eating at her scalp, fed by the slender life of her body. - -Four days had passed and still she was young ... no, younger than when -they had entered the ship. She was still adolescent. - -He could not believe it. - -Her first words were, "How long will this last?" - -He replied, carefully. "I don't know." - -"We are still young." - -"The ship. Its metal is around us. It cuts away the sun and the things -that came from the sun to age us." - -Her eyes shifted thoughtfully. "Then, if we stay here--" - -"We'll remain young." - -"Six more days? Fourteen more? Twenty?" - -"More than that, maybe." - -She lay there, silently. After a long time she said, "Sim?" - -"Yes." - -"Let's stay here. Let's not go back. If we go back now, you know -what'll happen to us...?" - -"I'm not certain." - -"We'll start getting old again, won't we?" - -He looked away. He stared at the ceiling and the clock with the moving -finger. "Yes. We'll grow old." - -"What if we grow old--instantly. When we step from the ship won't the -shock be too much?" - -"Maybe." - -Another silence. He began to move his limbs, testing them. He was very -hungry. "The others are waiting," he said. - -Her next words made him gasp. "The others are dead," she said. "Or will -be in a few hours. All those we knew back there are old and worn." - -He tried to picture them old. Dark, his sister, bent and senile with -time. He shook his head, wiping the picture away. "They may die," he -said. "But there are others who've been born." - -"People we don't even know," said Lyte, flatly. - -"But, nevertheless, _our_ people," he replied. "People who'll live only -eight days, or eleven days unless we help them." - -"But we're _young_, Sim! We're young! We can _stay_ young!" - -He didn't want to listen. It was too tempting a thing to listen to. To -stay here. To live. "We've already had more time than the others," he -said. "I need workers. Men to heal this ship. We'll get on our feet -now, you and I, and find food, eat, and see if the ship is movable. I'm -afraid to try to move it myself. It's so big. I'll need help." - -"But that means running back all that distance!" - -"I know." He lifted himself weakly. "But I'll do it." - -"How will you get the men back here?" - -"We'll use the river." - -"_If_ it's there. It _may_ be somewhere else." - -"We'll wait until there _is_ one, then. I've got to go back, Lyte. -The son of Dienc is waiting for me, my sister, your brother, are old -people, ready to die, and waiting for some word from us--" - -After a long while he heard her move, dragging herself tiredly to him. -She put her head upon his chest, her eyes closed, stroking his arm. -"I'm sorry. Forgive me. You have to go back. I'm a selfish fool." - -He touched her cheek, clumsily. "You're human. I understand you. -There's nothing to forgive." - - * * * * * - -They found food. They walked through the ship. It was empty. Only in -the control room did they find the remains of a man who must have been -the chief pilot. The others had evidently bailed out into space in -emergency lifeboats. This pilot, sitting at his controls, alone, had -landed the ship on a mountain within sight of other fallen and smashed -crafts. Its location on high ground had saved it from the floods. The -pilot himself had died, probably of heart failure, soon after landing. -The ship had remained here, almost within reach of the other survivors, -perfect as an egg, but silent, for--how many thousand days? If the -pilot had lived, what a different thing life might have been for the -ancestors of Sim and Lyte. Sim, thinking of this--felt the distant, -ominous vibration of war. How had the war between worlds come out? Who -had won? Or had both planets lost and never bothered trying to pick up -survivors? Who had been right? Who was the enemy? Were Sim's people of -the guilty or innocent side? They might never know. - -He checked the ship hurriedly. He knew nothing of its workings, yet -as he walked its corridors, patted its machines, he learned from it. -It needed only a crew. One man couldn't possibly set the whole thing -running again. He laid his hand upon one round, snout-like machine. He -jerked his hand away, as if burnt. - -"Lyte!" - -"What is it?" - -He touched the machine again, caressed it, his hand trembled violently, -his eyes welled with tears, his mouth opened and closed, he looked at -the machine, loving it, then looked at Lyte. - -"With this machine--" he stammered, softly, incredulously. "With--with -this machine I can--" - -"What, Sim?" - -He inserted his hand into a cup-like contraption with a lever inside. -Out of porthole in front of him he could see the distant line of -cliffs. "We were afraid there might never be another river running by -this mountain, weren't we?" he asked, exultantly. - -"Yes, Sim, but--" - -"There _will_ be a river. And I _will_ come back, tonight! And I'll -bring men with me. Five hundred men! Because with this machine I can -blast a river bottom all the way to the cliffs, down which the waters -will rush, giving myself and the men a swift, sure way of traveling -back!" He rubbed the machine's barrel-like body. "When I touched it, -the life and method of it shot into me! Watch!" He depressed the lever. - -A beam of incandescent fire lanced out from the ship, screaming. - -Steadily, accurately, Sim began to cut away a river bed for the storm -waters to flow in. The night was turned to day by its hungry eating. - - * * * * * - -The return to the cliffs was to be carried out by Sim alone. Lyte was -to remain in the ship, in case of any mishap. The trip back seemed, at -first glance, to be impossible. There would be no river rushing to cut -his time, to sweep him along toward his destination. He would have to -run the entire distance in the dawn, and the sun would get him, catch -him before he'd reached safety. - -"The only way to do it is to start _before_ sunrise." - -"But you'd be frozen, Sim." - -"Here." He made adjustments on the machine that had just finished -cutting the river bed in the rock floor of the valley. He lifted the -smooth snout of the gun, pressed the lever, left it down. A gout of -fire shot toward the cliffs. He fingered the range control, focused the -flame end three miles from its source. Done. He turned to Lyte. "But I -don't understand," she said. - -He opened the air-lock door. "It's bitter cold out, and half an hour -yet till dawn. If I run parallel to the flame from the machine, close -enough to it, there'll not be much heat but enough to sustain life, -anyway." - -"It doesn't sound safe," Lyte protested. - -"_Nothing_ does, on this world." He moved forward. "I'll have a half -hour start. That should be enough to reach the cliffs." - -"But if the machine should fail while you're still running near its -beam?" - -"Let's not think of that," he said. - -A moment later he was outside. He staggered as if kicked in the -stomach. His heart almost exploded in him. The environment of his -world forced him into swift living again. He felt his pulse rise, -kicking through his veins. - -The night was cold as death. The heat ray from the ship sliced across -the valley, humming, solid and warm. He moved next to it, very close. -One misstep in his running and-- - -"I'll be back," he called to Lyte. - -He and the ray of light went together. - - * * * * * - -In the early morning the peoples in the caves saw the long finger of -orange incandescence and the weird whitish apparition floating, running -along beside it. There was muttering and superstition. - -So when Sim finally reached the cliffs of his childhood he saw alien -peoples swarming there. There were no familiar faces. Then he realized -how foolish it was to expect familiar faces. One of the older men -glared down at him. "Who're you?" he shouted. "Are you from the enemy -cliff? What's your name?" - -"I am Sim, the son of Sim!" - -"Sim!" - -An old woman shrieked from the cliff above him. She came hobbling down -the stone pathway. "Sim, Sim, it _is_ you!" - -He looked at her, frankly bewildered. "But I don't know you," he -murmured. - -"Sim, don't you recognize me? Oh, Sim, it's me! Dark!" - -"Dark!" - -He felt sick at his stomach. She fell into his arms. This old, -trembling woman with the half-blind eyes, his sister. - -Another face appeared above. That of an old man. A cruel, bitter face. -It looked down at Sim and snarled. "Drive him away!" cried the old -man. "He comes from the cliff of the enemy. He's lived there! He's -still young! Those who go there can never come back among us. Disloyal -beast!" And a rock hurtled down. - -Sim leaped aside, pulling the old woman with him. - -A roar came from the people. They ran toward Sim, shaking their fists. -"Kill him, kill him!" raved the old man, and Sim did not know who he -was. - -"Stop!" Sim held out his hands. "I come from the ship!" - -"The ship?" The people slowed. Dark clung to him, looking up into his -young face, puzzling over its smoothness. - -"Kill him, kill him, kill him!" croaked the old man, and picked up -another rock. - -"I offer you ten days, twenty days, thirty more days of life!" - -The people stopped. Their mouths hung open. Their eyes were incredulous. - -"Thirty days?" It was repeated again and again. "How?" - -"Come back to the ship with me. Inside it, one can live forever!" - -The old man lifted high a rock, then, choking, fell forward in an -apoplectic fit, and tumbled down the rocks to lie at Sim's feet. - -Sim bent to peer at the ancient one, at the bleary, dead eyes, the -loose, sneering lips, the crumpled, quiet body. - -"Chion!" - -"Yes," said Dark behind him, in a croaking, strange voice. "Your enemy. -Chion." - - * * * * * - -That night a thousand warriors started for the ship as if going to war. -The water ran in the new channel. Five hundred of them were drowned or -lost behind in the cold. The others, with Sim, got through to the ship. - -Lyte awaited them, and threw wide the metal door. - -The weeks passed. Generations lived and died in the cliffs, while the -five hundred workers labored over the ship, learning its functions and -its parts. - -On the last day they disbanded. Each ran to his station. Now there was -a destiny of travel who still remained behind. - -Sim touched the control plates under his fingers. - -Lyte, rubbing her eyes, came and sat on the floor next to him, resting -her head against his knee, drowsily. "I had a dream," she said, looking -off at something far away. "I dreamed I lived in caves in a cliff on a -cold-hot planet where people grew old and died in eight days and were -burnt." - -"What an impossible dream," said Sim. "People couldn't possibly live in -such a nightmare. Forget it. You're awake now." - -He touched the plates gently. The ship rose and moved into space. Sim -was right. The nightmare was over at last. - - * * * * * -[Transcriber's Note: No Section III or V heading in original text.] - -*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CREATURES THAT TIME FORGOT *** - -***** This file should be named 63874-0.txt or 63874-0.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/6/3/8/7/63874/ - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part -of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm -concept and trademark. 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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. If you are not located in the United States, you -will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before -using this ebook. - -Title: The Creatures That Time Forgot - -Author: Ray Bradbury - -Release Date: December 05, 2020 [EBook #63874] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -Produced by: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed - Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net - -*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CREATURES THAT TIME FORGOT *** -</pre> -<div class="titlepage"> - -<h1>THE CREATURES THAT TIME FORGOT</h1> - -<h2>By RAY BRADBURY</h2> - -<p>Mad, impossible world! Sun-blasted by day,<br /> -cold-wracked by night—and life condensed by<br /> -radiation into eight days! Sim eyed the<br /> -Ship—if he only dared reach it and<br /> -escape! ... but it was more than half an<br /> -hour distant—the limit of life itself!</p> - -<p>[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from<br /> -Planet Stories Fall 1946.<br /> -Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that<br /> -the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p>During the night, Sim was born. He lay wailing upon the cold cave -stones. His blood beat through him a thousand pulses each minute. He -grew, steadily.</p> - -<p>Into his mouth his mother with feverish hands put the food. The -nightmare of living was begun. Almost instantly at birth his eyes grew -alert, and then, without half understanding why, filled with bright, -insistent terror. He gagged upon the food, choked and wailed. He looked -about, blindly.</p> - -<p>There was a thick fog. It cleared. The outlines of the cave appeared. -And a man loomed up, insane and wild and terrible. A man with a dying -face. Old, withered by winds, baked like adobe in the heat. The man was -crouched in a far corner of the cave, his eyes whitening to one side of -his face, listening to the far wind trumpeting up above on the frozen -night planet.</p> - -<p>Sim's mother, trembling, now and again, staring at the man, fed Sim -pebble-fruits, valley-grasses and ice-nipples broken from the cavern -entrances, and eating, eliminating, eating again, he grew larger, -larger.</p> - -<p>The man in the corner of the cave was his father! The man's eyes were -all that was alive in his face. He held a crude stone dagger in his -withered hands and his jaw hung loose and senseless.</p> - -<p>Then, with a widening focus, Sim saw the old people sitting in the -tunnel beyond this living quarter. And as he watched, they began to die.</p> - -<p>Their agonies filled the cave. They melted like waxen images, their -faces collapsed inward on their sharp bones, their teeth protruded. One -minute their faces were mature, fairly smooth, alive, electric. The -next minute a desiccation and burning away of their flesh occurred.</p> - -<p>Sim thrashed in his mother's grasp. She held him. "No, no," she soothed -him, quietly, earnestly, looking to see if this, too, would cause her -husband to rise again.</p> - -<p>With a soft swift padding of naked feet, Sim's father ran across the -cave. Sim's mother screamed. Sim felt himself torn loose from her -grasp. He fell upon the stones, rolling, shrieking with his new, moist -lungs!</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<div class="figcenter"> - <img src="images/illus2.jpg" alt=""/> - <div class="caption"> - <p><i>With a soft padding of naked feet Sim's father ran across the cave.</i></p> - </div> -</div> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p>The webbed face of his father jerked over him, the knife was poised. -It was like one of those prenatal nightmares he'd had while still -in his mother's flesh. In the next few blazing, impossible instants -questions flicked through his brain. The knife was high, suspended, -ready to destroy him. But the whole question of life in this cave, the -dying people, the withering and the insanity, surged through Sim's -new, small head. How was it that he understood? A newborn child? Can a -newborn child think, see, understand, interpret? No. It was wrong! It -was impossible. Yet it was happening! To him. He had been alive an hour -now. And in the next instant perhaps dead!</p> - -<p>His mother flung herself upon the back of his father, and beat down the -weapon. Sim caught the terrific backwash of emotion from both their -conflicting minds. "Let me kill him!" shouted the father, breathing -harshly, sobbingly. "What has he to live for?"</p> - -<p>"No, no!" insisted the mother, and her body, frail and old as it was, -stretched across the huge body of the father, tearing at his weapon. -"He must live! There may be a future for him! He may live longer than -us, and be young!"</p> - -<p>The father fell back against a stone crib. Lying there, staring, -eyes glittering, Sim saw another figure inside that stone crib. A -girl-child, quietly feeding itself, moving its delicate hands to -procure food. His sister.</p> - -<p>The mother wrenched the dagger from her husband's grasp, stood up, -weeping and pushing back her cloud of stiffening gray hair. Her mouth -trembled and jerked. "I'll kill you!" she said, glaring down at her -husband. "Leave my children alone."</p> - -<p>The old man spat tiredly, bitterly, and looked vacantly into the stone -crib, at the little girl. "One-eighth of <i>her</i> life's over, already," -he gasped. "And she doesn't know it. What's the use?"</p> - -<p>As Sim watched, his own mother seemed to shift and take a tortured, -smoke-like form. The thin bony face broke out into a maze of wrinkles. -She was shaken with pain and had to sit by him, shuddering and cuddling -the knife to her shriveled breasts. She, like the old people in the -tunnel, was aging, dying.</p> - -<p>Sim cried steadily. Everywhere he looked was horror. A mind came to -meet his own. Instinctively he glanced toward the stone crib. Dark, his -sister, returned his glance. Their minds brushed like straying fingers. -He relaxed somewhat. He began to learn.</p> - -<p>The father sighed, shut his lids down over his green eyes. "Feed the -child," he said, exhaustedly. "Hurry. It is almost dawn and it is our -last day of living, woman. Feed him. Make him grow."</p> - -<p>Sim quieted, and images, out of the terror, floated to him.</p> - -<p>This was a planet next to the sun. The nights burned with cold, the -days were like torches of fire. It was a violent, impossible world. The -people lived in the cliffs to escape the incredible ice and the day of -flame. Only at dawn and sunset was the air breath-sweet, flower-strong, -and then the cave peoples brought their children out into a stony, -barren valley. At dawn the ice thawed into creeks and rivers, at sunset -the day-fires died and cooled. In the intervals of even, livable -temperature the people lived, ran, played, loved, free of the caverns; -all life on the planet jumped, burst into life. Plants grew instantly, -birds were flung like pellets across the sky. Smaller, legged animal -life rushed frantically through the rocks; everything tried to get -its living down in the brief hour of respite.</p> - -<p>It was an unbearable planet. Sim understood this, a matter of hours -after birth. Racial memory bloomed in him. He would live his entire -life in the caves, with two hours a day outside. Here, in stone -channels of air he would talk, talk incessantly with his people, sleep -never, think, think and lie upon his back, dreaming; but never sleeping.</p> - -<p><i>And he would live exactly eight days.</i></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>The violence of this thought evacuated his bowels. Eight days. Eight -<i>short</i> days. It was wrong, impossible, but a fact. Even while in his -mother's flesh some racial knowledge had told him he was being formed -rapidly, shaped and propelled out swiftly.</p> - -<p>Birth was quick as a knife. Childhood was over in a flash. Adolescence -was a sheet of lightning. Manhood was a dream, maturity a myth, old age -an inescapably quick reality, death a swift certainty.</p> - -<p>Eight days from now he'd stand half-blind, withering, dying, as his -father now stood, staring uselessly at his own wife and child.</p> - -<p>This day was an eighth part of his total life! He must enjoy every -second of it. He must search his parents' thoughts for knowledge.</p> - -<p><i>Because in a few hours they'd be dead.</i></p> - -<p>This was so impossibly unfair. Was this all of life? In his prenatal -state hadn't he dreamed of <i>long</i> lives, valleys not of blasted stone -but green foliage and temperate clime? Yes! And if he'd dreamed then -there must be truth in the visions. How could he seek and find the long -life? Where? And how could he accomplish a life mission that huge and -depressing in eight short, vanishing days?</p> - -<p>How had his people gotten into such a condition?</p> - -<p>As if at a button pressed, he saw an image. Metal seeds, blown across -space from a distant green world, fighting with long flames, crashing -on this bleak planet. From their shattered hulls tumble men and women.</p> - -<p>When? Long ago. Ten thousand days. The crash victims hid in the cliffs -from the sun. Fire, ice and floods washed away the wreckage of the -huge metal seeds. The victims were shaped and beaten like iron upon -a forge. Solar radiations drenched them. Their pulses quickened, -two hundred, five hundred, a thousand beats a minute. Their skins -thickened, their blood changed. Old age came rushing. Children were -born in the caves. Swifter, swifter, swifter the process. Like all this -world's wild life, the men and women from the crash lived and died in a -week, leaving children to do likewise.</p> - -<p>So this is life, thought Sim. It was not spoken in his mind, for -he knew no words, he knew only images, old memory, an awareness, a -telepathy that could penetrate flesh, rock, metal. So I'm the five -thousandth in a long line of futile sons? What can I do to save myself -from dying eight days from now? Is there escape?</p> - -<p>His eyes widened, another image came to focus.</p> - -<p>Beyond this valley of cliffs, on a low mountain lay a perfect, -unscarred metal seed. A metal ship, not rusted or touched by the -avalanches. The ship was deserted, whole, intact. It was the only ship -of all these that had crashed that was still a unit, still usable. But -it was so far away. There was no one in it to help. This ship, then, on -the far mountain, was the destiny toward which he would grow. There was -his only hope of escape.</p> - -<p>His mind flexed.</p> - -<p>In this cliff, deep down in a confinement of solitude, worked a handful -of scientists. To these men, when he was old enough and wise enough, he -must go. They, too, dreamed of escape, of long life, of green valleys -and temperate weathers. They, too, stared longingly at that distant -ship upon its high mountain, its metal so perfect it did not rust or -age.</p> - -<p>The cliff groaned.</p> - -<p>Sim's father lifted his eroded, lifeless face.</p> - -<p>"Dawn's coming," he said.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p class="ph1">II</p> - -<p>Morning relaxed the mighty granite cliff muscles. It was the time of -the Avalanche.</p> - -<p>The tunnels echoed to running bare feet. Adults, children pushed with -eager, hungry eyes toward the outside dawn. From far out, Sim heard -a rumble of rock, a scream, a silence. Avalanches fell into valley. -Stones that had been biding their time, not quite ready to fall, for -a million years let go their bulks, and where they had begun their -journey as single boulders they smashed upon the valley floor in a -thousand shrapnels and friction-heated nuggets.</p> - -<p>Every morning at least one person was caught in the downpour.</p> - -<p>The cliff people dared the avalanches. It added one more excitement to -their lives, already too short, too headlong, too dangerous.</p> - -<p>Sim felt himself seized up by his father. He was carried brusquely down -the tunnel for a thousand yards, to where the daylight appeared. There -was a shining insane light in his father's eyes. Sim could not move. He -sensed what was going to happen. Behind his father, his mother hurried, -bringing with her the little sister, Dark. "Wait! Be careful!" she -cried to her husband.</p> - -<p>Sim felt his father crouch, listening.</p> - -<p>High in the cliff was a tremor, a shivering.</p> - -<p>"Now!" bellowed his father, and leaped out.</p> - -<p>An avalanche fell down at them!</p> - -<p>Sim had accelerated impressions of plunging walls, dust, confusion. His -mother screamed! There was a jolting, a plunging.</p> - -<p>With one last step, Sim's father hurried him forward into the day. The -avalanche thundered behind him. The mouth of the cave, where mother and -Dark stood back out of the way, was choked with rubble and two boulders -that weighed a hundred pounds each.</p> - -<p>The storm thunder of the avalanche passed away to a trickle of sand. -Sim's father burst out into laughter. "Made it! By the Gods! Made it -alive!" And he looked scornfully at the cliff and spat. "Pagh!"</p> - -<p>Mother and sister Dark struggled through the rubble. She cursed her -husband. "Fool! You might have killed Sim!"</p> - -<p>"I may yet," retorted the father.</p> - -<p>Sim was not listening. He was fascinated with the remains of an -avalanche afront of the next tunnel. A blood stain trickled out from -under a rise of boulders, soaking into the ground. There was nothing -else to be seen. Someone else had lost the game.</p> - -<p>Dark ran ahead on lithe, supple feet, naked and certain.</p> - -<p>The valley air was like a wine filtered between mountains. The heaven -was a restive blue; not the pale scorched atmosphere of full day, nor -the bloated, bruised black-purple of night, a-riot with sickly shining -stars.</p> - -<p>This was a tide pool. A place where waves of varying and violent -temperatures struck, receded. Now the tide pool was quiet, cool, and -its life moved abroad.</p> - -<p>Laughter! Far away, Sim heard it. Why laughter? How could any of his -people find time for laughing? Perhaps later he would discover why.</p> - -<p>The valley suddenly blushed with impulsive color. Plant-life, thawing -in the precipitant dawn, shoved out from most unexpected sources. It -flowered as you watched. Pale green tendrils appeared on scoured rocks. -Seconds later, ripe globes of fruit twitched upon the blade-tips. -Father gave Sim over to mother and harvested the momentary, volatile -crop, thrust scarlet, blue, yellow fruits into a fur sack which hung at -his waist. Mother tugged at the moist new grasses, laid them on Sim's -tongue.</p> - -<p>His senses were being honed to a fine edge. He stored knowledge -thirstily. He understood love, marriage, customs, anger, pity, rage, -selfishness, shadings and subtleties, realities and reflections. One -thing suggested another. The sight of green plant life whirled his mind -like a gyroscope, seeking balance in a world where lack of time for -explanations made a mind seek and interpret on its own. The soft burden -of food gave him knowledge of his system, of energy, of movement. Like -a bird newly cracking its way from a shell, he was almost a unit, -complete, all-knowing. Heredity had done all this for him. He grew -excited with his ability.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>They walked, mother, father and the two children, smelling the smells, -watching the birds bounce from wall to wall of the valley like -scurrying pebbles and suddenly the father said a strange thing:</p> - -<p>"Remember?"</p> - -<p>Remember what? Sim lay cradled. Was it any effort for them to remember -when they'd lived only seven days!</p> - -<p>The husband and wife looked at each other.</p> - -<p>"Was it only three days ago?" said the woman, her body shaking, her -eyes closing to think. "I can't believe it. It is so unfair." She -sobbed, then drew her hand across her face and bit her parched lips. -The wind played at her gray hair. "Now is my turn to cry. An hour ago -it was you!"</p> - -<p>"An hour is half a life."</p> - -<p>"Come," she took her husband's arm. "Let us look at everything, because -it will be our last looking."</p> - -<p>"The sun'll be up in a few minutes," said the old man. "We must turn -back now."</p> - -<p>"Just one more moment," pleaded the woman.</p> - -<p>"The sun will catch us."</p> - -<p>"Let it catch me then!"</p> - -<p>"You don't mean that."</p> - -<p>"I mean nothing, nothing at all," cried the woman.</p> - -<p>The sun was coming fast. The green in the valley burnt away. Searing -wind blasted from over the cliffs. Far away where sun bolts hammered -battlements of cliff, the huge stone faces shook their contents; those -avalanches not already powdered down, were now released and fell like -mantles.</p> - -<p>"Dark!" shouted the father. The girl sprang over the warm floor of the -valley, answering, her hair a black flag behind her. Hands full of -green fruits, she joined them.</p> - -<p>The sun rimmed the horizon with flame, the air convulsed dangerously -with it, and whistled.</p> - -<p>The cave people bolted, shouting, picking up their fallen children, -bearing vast loads of fruit and grass with them back to their deep -hideouts. In moments the valley was bare. Except for one small child -someone had forgotten. He was running far out on the flatness, but he -was not strong enough, and the engulfing heat was drifting down from -the cliffs even as he was half across the valley.</p> - -<p>Flowers were burnt into effigies, grasses sucked back into rocks like -singed snakes, flower seeds whirled and fell in the sudden furnace -blast of wind, sown far into gullies and crannies, ready to blossom at -sunset tonight, and then go to seed and die again.</p> - -<p>Sim's father watched that child running, alone, out on the floor of -the valley. He and his wife and Dark and Sim were safe in the mouth of -their tunnel.</p> - -<p>"He'll never make it," said father. "Do not watch him, woman. It's not -a good thing to watch."</p> - -<p>They turned away. All except Sim, whose eyes had caught a glint of -metal far away. His heart hammered in him, and his eyes blurred. -Far away, atop a low mountain, one of those metal seeds from space -reflected a dazzling ripple of light! It was like one of his -intra-embryo dreams fulfilled! A metal space seed, intact, undamaged, -lying on a mountain! There was his future! There was his hope -for survival! There was where he would go in a few days, when he -was—strange thought—a grown man!</p> - -<p>The sun plunged into the valley like molten lava.</p> - -<p>The little running child screamed, the sun burned, and the screaming -stopped.</p> - -<p>Sim's mother walked painfully, with sudden age, down the tunnel, -paused, reached up, broke off two last icicles that had formed during -the night. She handed one to her husband, kept the other. "We will -drink one last toast. To you, to the children."</p> - -<p>"To <i>you</i>," he nodded to her. "To the children." They lifted the -icicles. The warmth melted the ice down into their thirsty mouths.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>All day the sun seemed to blaze and erupt into the valley. Sim could -not see it, but the vivid pictorials in his parents' minds were -sufficient evidence of the nature of the day fire. The light ran like -mercury, sizzling and roasting the caves, poking inward, but never -penetrating deeply enough. It lighted the caves. It made the hollows of -the cliff comfortably warm.</p> - -<p>Sim fought to keep his parents young. But no matter how hard he fought -with mind and image, they became like mummies before him. His father -seemed to dissolve from one stage of oldness to another. This is what -will happen to me soon, though Sim in terror.</p> - -<p>Sim grew upon himself. He felt the digestive-eliminatory movements -of his body. He was fed every minute, he was continually swallowing, -feeding. He began to fit words to images and processes. Such a word was -love. It was not an abstraction, but a process, a stir of breath, a -smell of morning air, a flutter of heart, the curve of arm holding him, -the look in the suspended face of his mother. He saw the processes, -then searched behind her suspended face and there was the word, in her -brain, ready to use. His throat prepared to speak. Life was pushing -him, rushing him along toward oblivion.</p> - -<p>He sensed the expansion of his fingernails, the adjustments of his -cells, the profusion of his hair, the multiplication of his bones and -sinew, the grooving of the soft pale wax of his brain. His brain at -birth as clear as a circle of ice, innocent, unmarked, was, an instant -later, as if hit with a thrown rock, cracked and marked and patterned -in a million crevices of thought and discovery.</p> - -<p>His sister, Dark, ran in and out with other little hothouse children, -forever eating. His mother trembled over him, not eating, she had no -appetite, her eyes were webbed shut.</p> - -<p>"Sunset," said his father, at last.</p> - -<p>The day was over. The light faded, a wind sounded.</p> - -<p>His mother arose. "I want to see the outside world once more ... just -once more...." She stared blindly, shivering.</p> - -<p>His father's eyes were shut, he lay against the wall.</p> - -<p>"I cannot rise," he whispered faintly. "I cannot."</p> - -<p>"Dark!" The mother croaked, the girl came running. "Here," and Sim was -handed to the girl. "Hold to Sim, Dark, feed him, care for him." She -gave Sim one last fondling touch.</p> - -<p>Dark said not a word, holding Sim, her great green eyes shining wetly.</p> - -<p>"Go now," said the mother. "Take him out into the sunset time. Enjoy -yourselves. Pick foods, eat. Play."</p> - -<p>Dark walked away without looking back. Sim twisted in her grasp, -looking over her shoulder with unbelieving, tragic eyes. He cried out -and somehow summoned from his lips the first word of his existence.</p> - -<p>"Why...?"</p> - -<p>He saw his mother stiffen. "The child spoke!"</p> - -<p>"Aye," said his father. "Did you hear what he said?"</p> - -<p>"I heard," said the mother quietly.</p> - -<p>The last thing Sim saw of his living parents was his mother weakly, -swayingly, slowly moving across the floor to lie beside her silent -husband. That was the last time he ever saw them move.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p class="ph1">IV</p> - -<p>The night came and passed and then started the second day.</p> - -<p>The bodies of all those who had died during the night were carried in a -funeral procession to the top of a small hill. The procession was long, -the bodies numerous.</p> - -<p>Dark walked in the procession, holding the newly walking Sim by one -hand. Only an hour before dawn Sim had learned to walk.</p> - -<p>At the top of the hill, Sim saw once again the far off metal seed. -Nobody ever looked at it, or spoke of it. Why? Was there some reason? -Was it a mirage? Why did they not run toward it? Worship it? Try to get -to it and fly away into space?</p> - -<p>The funeral words were spoken. The bodies were placed upon the ground -where the sun, in a few minutes, would cremate them.</p> - -<p>The procession then turned and ran down the hill, eager to have their -few minutes of free time running and playing and laughing in the sweet -air.</p> - -<p>Dark and Sim, chattering like birds, feeding among the rocks, exchanged -what they knew of life. He was in his second day, she in her third. -They were driven, as always, by the mercurial speed of their lives.</p> - -<p>Another piece of his life opened wide.</p> - -<p>Fifty young men ran down from the cliffs, holding sharp stones and rock -daggers in their thick hands. Shouting, they ran off toward distant -black, low lines of small rock cliffs.</p> - -<p>"War!"</p> - -<p>The thought stood in Sim's brain. It shocked and beat at him. These men -were running to fight, to kill, over there in those small black cliffs -where other people lived.</p> - -<p>But why? Wasn't life short enough without fighting, killing?</p> - -<p>From a great distance he heard the sound of conflict, and it made his -stomach cold. "Why, Dark, why?"</p> - -<p>Dark didn't know. Perhaps they would understand tomorrow. Now, there -was the business of eating to sustain and support their lives. Watching -Dark was like seeing a lizard forever flickering its pink tongue, -forever hungry.</p> - -<p>Pale children ran on all sides of them. One beetle-like boy scuttled up -the rocks, knocking Sim aside, to take from him a particularly luscious -red berry he had found growing under an outcrop.</p> - -<p>The child ate hastily of the fruit before Sim could gain his feet. Then -Sim hurled himself unsteadily, the two of them fell in a ridiculous -jumble, rolling, until Dark pried them, squalling, apart.</p> - -<p>Sim bled. A part of him stood off, like a god, and said, "This should -not be. Children should not be this way. It is wrong!"</p> - -<p>Dark slapped the little intruding boy away. "Get on!" she cried. -"What's your name, bad one?"</p> - -<p>"Chion!" laughed the boy. "Chion, Chion, Chion!"</p> - -<p>Sim glared at him with all the ferocity in his small, unskilled -features. He choked. This was his enemy. It was as if he'd waited -for an enemy of person as well as scene. He had already understood -the avalanches, the heat, the cold, the shortness of life, but these -were things of places, of scene—mute, extravagant manifestations of -unthinking nature, not motivated save by gravity and radiation. Here, -now, in this stridulent Chion he recognized a thinking enemy!</p> - -<p>Chion darted off, turned at a distance, tauntingly crying:</p> - -<p>"Tomorrow I will be big enough to kill you!"</p> - -<p>And he vanished around a rock.</p> - -<p>More children ran, giggling, by Sim. Which of them would be friends, -enemies? How could friends and enemies come about in this impossible, -quick life time? There was no time to make either, was there?</p> - -<p>Dark, as if knowing his thoughts, drew him away. As they searched for -desired foods, she whispered fiercely in his ear. "Enemies are made -over things like stolen foods; gifts of long grasses make friends. -Enemies come, too, from opinions and thoughts. In five seconds you've -made an enemy for life. Life's so short enemies must be made quickly." -And she laughed with an irony strange for one so young, who was growing -older before her rightful time. "You must fight to protect yourself. -Others, superstitious ones, will try killing you. There is a belief, a -ridiculous belief, that if one kills another, the murderer partakes of -the life energy of the slain, and therefore will live an extra day. You -see? As long as that is believed, you're in danger."</p> - -<p>But Sim was not listening. Bursting from a flock of delicate girls who -tomorrow would be tall, quieter, and who day after that would gain -breasts and the next day take husbands, Sim caught sight of one small -girl whose hair was a violet blue flame.</p> - -<p>She ran past, brushed Sim, their bodies touched. Her eyes, white as -silver coins, shone at him. He knew then that he'd found a friend, a -love, a wife, one who'd a week from now lie with him atop the funeral -pyre as sunlight undressed their flesh from bone.</p> - -<p>Only the glance, but it held them in mid-motion, one instant.</p> - -<p>"Your name?" he shouted after her.</p> - -<p>"Lyte!" she called laughingly back.</p> - -<p>"I'm Sim," he answered, confused and bewildered.</p> - -<p>"Sim!" she repeated it, flashing on. "I'll remember!"</p> - -<p>Dark nudged his ribs. "Here, <i>eat</i>," she said to the distracted boy. -"Eat or you'll never get big enough to catch her."</p> - -<p>From nowhere, Chion appeared, running by. "Lyte!" he mocked, dancing -malevolently along and away. "Lyte! I'll remember Lyte, too!"</p> - -<p>Dark stood tall and reed slender, shaking her dark ebony clouds of -hair, sadly. "I see your life before you, little Sim. You'll need -weapons soon to fight for this Lyte one. Now, hurry—the sun's coming!"</p> - -<p>They ran back to the caves.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>One-fourth of his life was over! Babyhood was gone. He was now a young -boy! Wild rains lashed the valley at nightfall. He watched new river -channels cut in the valley, out past the mountain of the metal seed. -He stored the knowledge for later use. Each night there was a new -river, a bed newly cut.</p> - -<p>"What's beyond the valley?" wondered Sim.</p> - -<p>"No one's ever been beyond it," explained Dark. "All who tried to reach -the plain were frozen to death or burnt. The only land we know's within -half an hour's run. Half an hour out and half an hour back."</p> - -<p>"No one has ever reached the metal seed, then?"</p> - -<p>Dark scoffed. "The Scientists, they try. Silly fools. They don't know -enough to stop. It's no use. It's too far."</p> - -<p>The Scientists. The word stirred him. He had almost forgotten the -vision he had short hours after birth. His voice was eager. "Where are -the Scientists?" he demanded.</p> - -<p>Dark looked away from him, "I wouldn't tell you if I knew. They'd kill -you, experimenting! I don't want you joining them! Live your life, -don't cut it in half trying to reach that silly metal thing on the -mountain."</p> - -<p>"I'll find out where they are from someone else, then!"</p> - -<p>"No one'll tell you! They hate the Scientists. You'll have to find them -on your own. And then what? Will you save us? Yes, save us, little -boy!" Her face was sullen; already half her life was gone, her breasts -were beginning to shape. Tomorrow she must divine how best to live -her youth, her love, and she knew no way to fully plumb the depths of -passion in so short a space.</p> - -<p>"We can't sit and talk and eat," he protested. "And <i>nothing</i> else."</p> - -<p>"There's always love," she retorted acidly. "It helps one forget. Gods, -yes," she spat it out. "Love!"</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Sim ran through the tunnels, seeking. Sometimes he half imagined where -the Scientists were. But then a flood of angry thought from those -around him, when he asked the direction to the Scientists' cave, washed -over him in confusion and resentment. After all, it was the Scientists' -fault that they had been placed upon this terrible world! Sim flinched -under the bombardment of oaths and curses.</p> - -<p>Quietly he took his seat in a central chamber with the children to -listen to the grown men talk. This was the time of education, the -Time of Talking. No matter how he chafed at delay, or how great his -impatience, even though life slipped fast from him and death approached -like a black meteor, he knew his mind needed knowledge. Tonight, then, -was the night of school. But he sat uneasily. Only <i>five</i> more days of -life.</p> - -<p>Chion sat across from Sim, his thin-mouthed face arrogant.</p> - -<p>Lyte appeared between the two. The last few hours had made her firmer -footed, gentler, taller. Her hair shone brighter. She smiled as she sat -beside Sim, ignoring Chion. And Chion became rigid at this and ceased -eating.</p> - -<p>The dialogue crackled, filled the room. Swift as heart beats, one -thousand, two thousand words a minute. Sim learned, his head filled. -He did not shut his eyes, but lapsed into a kind of dreaming that was -almost intra-embryonic in lassitude and drowsy vividness. In the faint -background the words were spoken, and they wove a tapestry of knowledge -in his head.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>He dreamed of green meadows free of stones, all grass, round and -rolling and rushing easily toward a dawn with no taint of freezing, -merciless cold or smell of boiled rock or scorched monument. He walked -across the green meadow. Overhead the metal seeds flew by in a heaven -that was a steady, even temperature. Things were slow, slow, slow.</p> - -<p>Birds lingered upon gigantic trees that took a hundred, two hundred, -five thousand days to grow. Everything remained in its place, the birds -did not flicker nervously at a hint of sun, nor did the trees suck back -frightenedly when a ray of sunlight poured over them.</p> - -<p>In this dream people strolled, they rarely ran, the heart rhythm of -them was evenly languid, not jerking and insane. Their kisses were -long and lingering, not the parched mouthings and twitchings of lovers -who had eight days to live. The grass remained, and did not burn away -in torches. The dream people talked always of tomorrow and living and -not tomorrow and dying. It all seemed so familiar that when Sim felt -someone take his hand he thought it simply another part of the dream.</p> - -<p>Lyte's hand lay inside his own. "Dreaming?" she asked.</p> - -<p>"Yes."</p> - -<p>"Things are balanced. Our minds, to even things, to balance the -unfairness of our living, go back in on ourselves, to find what there -is that is good to see."</p> - -<p>He beat his hand against the stone floor again and again. "It does -not make things fair! I hate it! It reminds me that there is something -better, something I have missed! Why can't we be ignorant! Why can't we -live and die without knowing that this is an abnormal living?" And his -breath rushed harshly from his half-open, constricted mouth.</p> - -<p>"There is purpose in everything," said Lyte. "This gives us purpose, -makes us work, plan, try to find a way."</p> - -<p>His eyes were hot emeralds in his face. "I walked up a hill of grass, -very slowly," he said.</p> - -<p>"The same hill of grass I walked an hour ago?" asked Lyte.</p> - -<p>"Perhaps. Close enough to it. The dream is better than the reality." He -flexed his eyes, narrowed them. "I watched people and they did not eat."</p> - -<p>"Or talk?"</p> - -<p>"Or talk, either. And we always are eating, always talking. Sometimes -those people in the dream sprawled with their eyes shut, not moving a -muscle."</p> - -<p>As Lyte stared down into his face a terrible thing happened. He -imagined her face blackening, wrinkling, twisting into knots of -agedness. The hair blew out like snow about her ears, the eyes were -like discolored coins caught in a web of lashes. Her teeth sank away -from her lips, the delicate fingers hung like charred twigs from -her atrophied wrists. Her beauty was consumed and wasted even as he -watched, and when he seized her, in terror, he cried out, for he -imagined his own hand corroded, and he choked back a cry.</p> - -<p>"Sim, what's wrong?"</p> - -<p>The saliva in his mouth dried at the taste of the words.</p> - -<p>"Five more days...."</p> - -<p>"The Scientists."</p> - -<p>Sim started. Who'd spoken? In the dim light a tall man talked. "The -Scientists crashed us on this world, and now have wasted thousands of -lives and time. It's no use. It's no use. Tolerate them but give them -none of your time. You only live once, remember."</p> - -<p>Where were these hated Scientists? Now, after the Learning, the Time of -Talking, he was ready to find them. Now, at least, he knew enough to -begin his fight for freedom, for the ship!</p> - -<p>"Sim, where're you going?"</p> - -<p>But Sim was gone. The echo of his running feet died away down a shaft -of polished stone.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>It seemed that half the night was wasted. He blundered into a dozen -dead ends. Many times he was attacked by the insane young men who -wanted his life energy. Their superstitious ravings echoed after him. -The gashes of their hungry fingernails covered his body.</p> - -<p>He found what he looked for.</p> - -<p>A half dozen men gathered in a small basalt cave deep down in the cliff -lode. On a table before them lay objects which, though unfamiliar, -struck harmonious chords in Sim.</p> - -<p>The Scientists worked in sets, old men doing important work, young -men learning, asking questions; and at their feet were three small -children. They were a process. Every eight days there was an entirely -new set of scientists working on any one problem. The amount of work -done was terribly inadequate. They grew old, fell dead just when they -were beginning their creative period. The creative time of any one -individual was perhaps a matter of twelve hours out of his entire span. -Three-quarters of one's life was spent learning, a brief interval of -creative power, then senility, insanity, death.</p> - -<p>The men turned as Sim entered.</p> - -<p>"Don't tell me we have a recruit?" said the eldest of them.</p> - -<p>"I don't believe it," said another, younger one. "Chase him away. He's -probably one of those war-mongers."</p> - -<p>"No, no," objected the elder one, moving with little shuffles of his -bare feet toward Sim. "Come in, come in, boy." He had friendly eyes, -slow eyes, unlike those of the swift inhabitants of the upper caves. -Grey and quiet. "What do you want?"</p> - -<p>Sim hesitated, lowered his head, unable to meet the quiet, gentle gaze. -"I want to live," he whispered.</p> - -<p>The old man laughed quietly. He touched Sim's shoulder. "Are you a new -breed? Are you sick?" he queried of Sim, half-seriously. "Why aren't -you playing? Why aren't you readying yourself for the time of love and -marriage and children? Don't you know that tomorrow night you'll be an -adolescent? Don't you realize that if you are not careful you'll miss -all of life?" He stopped.</p> - -<p>Sim moved his eyes back and forth with each query. He blinked at the -instruments on the table top. "Shouldn't I be here?" he asked, naively.</p> - -<p>"Certainly," roared the old man, sternly. "But it's a miracle you are. -We've had no volunteers from the rank and file for a thousand days! -We've had to breed our own scientists, a closed unit! Count us! Six! -Six men! And three children! Are we not overwhelming?" The old man spat -upon the stone floor. "We ask for volunteers and the people shout back -at us, 'Get someone else!' or 'We have no time!' And you know why they -say that?"</p> - -<p>"No." Sim flinched.</p> - -<p>"Because they're selfish. They'd like to live longer, yes, but they -know that anything they do cannot possibly insure their <i>own</i> lives any -extra time. It might guarantee longer life to some future offspring of -theirs. But they won't give up their love, their brief youth, give up -one interval of sunset or sunrise!"</p> - -<p>Sim leaned against the table, earnestly. "I understand."</p> - -<p>"You do?" The old man stared at him blindly. He sighed and slapped the -child's thigh, gently. "Yes, of course, you do. It's too much to expect -anyone to understand, any more. You're rare."</p> - -<p>The others moved in around Sim and the old man.</p> - -<p>"I am Dienc. Tomorrow night Cort here will be in my place. I'll be dead -by then. And the night after that someone else will be in Cort's place, -and then you, if you work and believe—but first, I give you a chance. -Return to your playmates if you want. There is someone you love? Return -to her. Life is short. Why should you care for the unborn to come? You -have a right to youth. Go now, if you want. Because if you stay you'll -have no time for anything but working and growing old and dying at your -work. But it is good work. Well?"</p> - -<p>Sim looked at the tunnel. From a distance the wind roared and blew, -the smells of cooking and the patter of naked feet sounded, and the -laughter of lovers was an increasingly good thing to hear. He shook -his head, impatiently, and his eyes were wet.</p> - -<p>"I will stay," he said.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p class="ph1">VI</p> - -<p>The third night and third day passed. It was the fourth night. Sim was -drawn into their living. He learned about that metal seed upon the top -of the far mountain. He heard of the original seeds—things called -"ships" that crashed and how the survivors hid and dug in the cliffs, -grew old swiftly and in their scrabbling to barely survive, forgot all -science. Knowledge of mechanical things had no chance of survival in -such a volcanic civilization. There was only NOW for each human.</p> - -<p>Yesterday didn't matter, tomorrow stared them vividly in their very -faces. But somehow the radiations that had forced their aging had -also induced a kind of telepathic communication whereby philosophies -and impressions were absorbed by the new born. Racial memory, growing -instinctively, preserved memories of another time.</p> - -<p>"Why don't we go to that ship on the mountain?" asked Sim.</p> - -<p>"It is too far. We would need protection from the sun," explained Dienc.</p> - -<p>"Have you tried to make protection?"</p> - -<p>"Salves and ointments, suits of stone and bird-wing and, recently, -crude metals. None of which worked. In ten thousand more life times -perhaps we'll have made a metal in which will flow cool water to -protect us on the march to the ship. But we work so slowly, so blindly. -This morning, mature, I took up my instruments. Tomorrow, dying, I lay -them down. What can one man do in one day? If we had ten thousand men, -the problem would be solved...."</p> - -<p>"I will go to the ship," said Sim.</p> - -<p>"Then you will die," said the old man. A silence had fallen on the room -at Sim's words. Then the men stared at Sim. "You are a very selfish -boy."</p> - -<p>"Selfish!" cried Sim, resentfully.</p> - -<p>The old man patted the air. "Selfish in a way I like. You want to live -longer, you'll do anything for that. You will try for the ship. But I -tell you it is useless. Yet, if you want to, I cannot stop you. At -least you will not be like those among us who go to war for an extra -few days of life."</p> - -<p>"War?" asked Sim. "How can there be war here?"</p> - -<p>And a shudder ran through him. He did not understand.</p> - -<p>"Tomorrow will be time enough for that," said Dienc. "Listen to me, -now."</p> - -<p>The night passed.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p class="ph1">VII</p> - -<p>It was morning. Lyte came shouting and sobbing down a corridor, and ran -full into his arms. She had changed again. She was older, again, more -beautiful. She was shaking and she held to him. "Sim, they're coming -after you!"</p> - -<p>Bare feet marched down the corridor, surged inward at the opening. -Chion stood grinning there, taller, too, a sharp rock in either of his -hands. "Oh, there you are, Sim!"</p> - -<p>"Go away!" cried Lyte savagely whirling on him.</p> - -<p>"Not until we take Sim with us," Chion assured her. Then, smiling at -Sim. "<i>If</i> that is, he is with us in the fight."</p> - -<p>Dienc shuffled forward, his eye weakly fluttering, his bird-like hands -fumbling in the air. "Leave!" he shrilled angrily. "This boy is a -Scientist now. He works with us."</p> - -<p>Chion ceased smiling. "There is better work to be done. We go now to -fight the people in the farthest cliffs." His eyes glittered anxiously. -"Of course, you will come with us, Sim?"</p> - -<p>"No, no!" Lyte clutched at his arm.</p> - -<p>Sim patted her shoulder, then turned to Chion. "Why are you attacking -these people?"</p> - -<p>"There are three extra days for those who go with us to fight."</p> - -<p>"Three extra days! Of living?"</p> - -<p>Chion nodded firmly. "If we win, we live eleven days instead of eight. -The cliffs they live in, something about the mineral in it! Think of -it, Sim, three long, good days of life. Will you join us?"</p> - -<p>Dienc interrupted. "Get along without him. Sim is my pupil!"</p> - -<p>Chion snorted. "Go die, old man. By sunset tonight you'll be charred -bone. Who are you to order us? We are young, we want to live longer."</p> - -<p>Eleven days. The words were unbelievable to Sim. Eleven days. Now he -understood why there was war. Who wouldn't fight to have his life -lengthened by almost half its total. So many more days of youth and -love and seeing and living! Yes. Why not, indeed!</p> - -<p>"Three extra days," called Dienc, stridently, "<i>if</i> you live to enjoy -them. If you're not killed in battle. <i>If. If!</i> You have never won yet. -You have always lost!"</p> - -<p>"But this time," Chion declared sharply, "We'll win!"</p> - -<p>Sim was bewildered. "But we are all of the same ancestors. Why don't we -all share the best cliffs?"</p> - -<p>Chion laughed and adjusted a sharp stone in his hand. "Those who live -in the best cliffs think they are better than us. That is always man's -attitude when he has power. The cliffs there, besides, are smaller, -there's room for only three hundred people in them."</p> - -<p>Three extra days.</p> - -<p>"I'll go with you," Sim said to Chion.</p> - -<p>"Fine!" Chion was very glad, much too glad at the decision.</p> - -<p>Dienc gasped.</p> - -<p>Sim turned to Dienc and Lyte. "If I fight, and win, I will be half a -mile closer to the Ship. And I'll have three extra days in which to -strive to reach the Ship. That seems the only thing for me to do."</p> - -<p>Dienc nodded, sadly. "It <i>is</i> the only thing. I believe you. Go along -now."</p> - -<p>"Good-bye," said Sim.</p> - -<p>The old man looked surprised, then he laughed as at a little joke on -himself. "That's right—I won't see you again, will I? Good-bye, then." -And they shook hands.</p> - -<p>They went out, Chion, Sim, and Lyte, together, followed by the others, -all children growing swiftly into fighting men. And the light in -Chion's eyes was not a good thing to see.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Lyte went with him. She chose his rocks for him and carried them. She -would not go back, no matter how he pleaded. The sun was just beyond -the horizon and they marched across the valley.</p> - -<p>"Please, Lyte, go back!"</p> - -<p>"And wait for Chion to return?" she said. "He plans that when you die I -will be his mate." She shook out her unbelievable blue-white curls of -hair defiantly. "But I'll be with you. If you fall, I fall."</p> - -<p>Sim's face hardened. He was tall. The world had shrunk during the -night. Children packs screamed by hilarious in their food-searching and -he looked at them with alien wonder: could it be only four days ago -he'd been like these? Strange. There was a sense of many days in his -mind, as if he'd really lived a thousand days. There was a dimension -of incident and thought so thick, so multi-colored, so richly diverse -in his head that it was not to be believed so much could happen in so -short a time.</p> - -<p>The fighting men ran in clusters of two or three. Sim looked ahead at -the rising line of small ebon cliffs. This, then, he said to himself, -is my fourth day. And still I am no closer to the Ship, or to anything, -not even—he heard the light tread of Lyte beside him—not even to her -who bears my weapons and picks me ripe berries.</p> - -<p>One-half of his life was gone. Or a third of it—IF he won this battle. -<i>If.</i></p> - -<p>He ran easily, lifting, letting fall his legs. This is the day of my -physical awareness, as I run I feed, as I feed I grow and as I grow I -turn eyes to Lyte with a kind of dizzying vertigo. And she looks upon -me with the same gentleness of thought. This is the day of our youth. -Are we wasting it? Are we losing it on a dream, a folly?</p> - -<p>Distantly he heard laughter. As a child he'd questioned it. Now he -understood laughter. This particular laughter was made of climbing -high rocks and plucking the greenest blades and drinking the headiest -vintage from the morning ices and eating of the rock-fruits and tasting -of young lips in new appetite.</p> - -<p>They neared the cliffs of the enemy.</p> - -<p>He saw the slender erectness of Lyte. The new surprise of her white -breasts; the neck where if you touched you could time her pulse; the -fingers which cupped in your own were animate and supple and never -still; the....</p> - -<p>Lyte snapped her head to one side. "Look ahead!" she cried. "See what -is to come—look only ahead."</p> - -<p>He felt that they were racing by part of their lives, leaving their -youth on the pathside, without so much as a glance.</p> - -<p>"I am blind with looking at stones," he said, running.</p> - -<p>"Find new stones, then!"</p> - -<p>"I see stones—" His voice grew gentle as the palm of her hand. The -landscape floated under him. Everything was like a fine wind, blowing -dreamily. "I see stones that make a ravine that lies in a cool shadow -where the stone-berries are thick as tears. You touch a boulder and the -berries fall in silent red avalanches, and the grass is very tender...."</p> - -<p>"I do not see it!" She increased her pace, turning her head away.</p> - -<p>He saw the floss upon her neck, like the small moss that grows silvery -and light on the cool side of pebbles, that stirs if you breathe the -lightest breath upon it. He looked upon himself, his hands clenched as -he heaved himself forward toward death. Already his hands were veined -and youth-swollen.</p> - -<p>They were the hands of a young boy whose fingers are made for touching, -which are suddenly sensitive and with more surface, and are nervous, -and seem not a part of him because they are so big for the slender -lengths of his arms. His neck, through which the blood ached and -pumped, was building out with age, too, with tiny blue tendrils of -veins imbedded and flaring in it.</p> - -<p>Lyte handed him food to eat.</p> - -<p>"I am not hungry," he said.</p> - -<p>"Eat, keep your mouth full," she commanded sharply. "So you will not -talk to me this way!"</p> - -<p>"If I could only kiss you," he pleaded. "Just one time."</p> - -<p>"After the battle there may be time."</p> - -<p>"Gods!" He roared, anguished. "Who cares for battles!"</p> - -<p>Ahead of them, rocks hailed down, thudding. A man fell with his skull -split wide. The war was begun.</p> - -<p>Lyte passed the weapons to him. They ran without another word until -they entered the killing ground. Then he spoke, not looking at her, his -cheeks coloring. "Thank you," he said.</p> - -<p>She ducked as a slung stone shot by her head. "It was not an easy -thing for me," she admitted. "Sim! Be careful!"</p> - -<p>The boulders began to roll in a synthetic avalanche from the -battlements of the enemy!</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Only one thought was in his mind now. To kill, to lessen the life of -someone else so he could live, to gain a foothold here and live long -enough to make a stab at the ship. He ducked, he weaved, he clutched -stones and hurled them up. His left hand held a flat stone shield with -which he diverted the swiftly plummeting rocks. There was a spatting -sound everywhere. Lyte ran with him, encouraging him. Two men dropped -before him, slain, their breasts cleaved to the bone, their blood -springing out in unbelievable founts.</p> - -<p>It was a useless conflict. Sim realized instantly how insane the -venture was. They could never storm the cliff. A solid wall of rocks -rained down. A dozen men dropped with shards of ebony in their brains, -a half dozen more showed drooping, broken arms. One screamed and the -upthrust white joint of his knee was exposed as the flesh was pulled -away by two successive blows of well-aimed granite. Men stumbled over -one another.</p> - -<p>The muscles in his cheeks pulled tight and he began to wonder why he -had ever come. But his raised eyes, as he danced from side to side, -weaving and bobbing, sought always the cliffs. He wanted to live there -so intensely, to have his chance. He would have to stick it out. But -the heart was gone from him.</p> - -<p>Lyte screamed piercingly. Sim, his heart panicking, twisted and saw -that her hand was loose at the wrist, with an ugly wound bleeding -profusely on the back of the knuckles. She clamped it under her armpit -to soothe the pain. The anger rose in him and exploded. In his fury he -raced forward, throwing his missiles with deadly accuracy. He saw a man -topple and flail down, falling from one level to another of the caves, -a victim of his shot. He must have been screaming, for his lungs were -bursting open and closed and his throat was raw, and the ground spun -madly under his racing feet.</p> - -<p>The stone that clipped his head sent him reeling and plunging back. -He ate sand. The universe dissolved into purple whorls. He could not -get up. He lay and knew that this was his last day, his last time. The -battle raged around him, dimly he felt Lyte over him. Her hands cooled -his head, she tried to drag him out of range, but he lay gasping and -telling her to leave him.</p> - -<p>"Stop!" shouted a voice. The whole war seemed to give pause. "Retreat!" -commanded the voice swiftly. And as Sim watched, lying upon his side, -his comrades turned and fled back toward home.</p> - -<p>"The sun is coming, our time is up!" He saw their muscled backs, their -moving, tensing, flickering legs go up and down. The dead were left -upon the field. The wounded cried for help. But there was no time for -the wounded. There was only time for swift men to run the gauntlet -home and, their lungs aching and raw with heated air, burst into their -tunnels before the sun burnt and killed them.</p> - -<p>The sun!</p> - -<p>Sim saw another figure racing toward him. It was Chion! Lyte was -helping Sim to his feet, whispering helpfully to him. "Can you walk?" -she asked. And he groaned and said, "I think so." "Walk then," she -said. "Walk slowly, and then faster and faster. We'll make it. Walk -slowly, start carefully. We'll make it, I know we will."</p> - -<p>Sim got to his feet, stood swaying. Chion raced up, a strange -expression cutting lines in his cheeks, his eyes shining with battle. -Pushing Lyte abruptly aside he seized upon a rock and dealt Sim a -jolting blow upon his ankle that laid wide the flesh. All of this was -done quite silently.</p> - -<p>Now he stood back, still not speaking, grinning like an animal from the -night mountains, his chest panting in and out, looking from the thing -he had done, to Lyte, and back. He got his breath. "He'll never make -it," he nodded at Sim. "We'll have to leave him here. Come along, Lyte."</p> - -<p>Lyte, like a cat-animal, sprang upon Chion, searching for his eyes, -shrieking through her exposed, hard-pressed teeth. Her fingers stroked -great bloody furrows down Chion's arms and again, instantly, down his -neck. Chion, with an oath, sprang away from her. She hurled a rock at -him. Grunting, he let it miss him, then ran off a few yards. "Fool!" -he cried, turning to scorn her. "Come along with me. Sim will be dead -in a few minutes. Come along!"</p> - -<p>Lyte turned her back on him. "I will go if you carry me."</p> - -<p>Chion's face changed. His eyes lost their gleaming. "There is no time. -We would both die if I carried you."</p> - -<p>Lyte looked through and beyond him. "Carry me, then, for that's how I -wish it to be."</p> - -<p>Without another word, glancing fearfully at the sun, Chion fled. His -footsteps sped away and vanished from hearing. "May he fall and break -his neck," whispered Lyte, savagely glaring at his form as it skirted a -ravine. She returned to Sim. "Can you walk?"</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Agonies of pain shot up his leg from the wounded ankle. He nodded -ironically. "We could make it to the cave in two hours, walking. I have -an idea, Lyte. Carry me." And he smiled with the grim joke.</p> - -<p>She took his arm. "Nevertheless we'll walk. Come."</p> - -<p>"No," he said. "We're staying here."</p> - -<p>"But why?"</p> - -<p>"We came to seek a home here. If we walk we will die. I would rather -die here. How much time have we?"</p> - -<p>Together they measured the sun. "A few minutes," she said, her voice -flat and dull. She held close to him.</p> - -<p>He looked at her. Lyte, he thought. Tomorrow I would have been a man. -My body would have been strong and full and there would have been time -with you, a kissing and a touching. Damn, but what kind of life is this -where every last instant is drenched with fear and alert with death? Am -I to be denied even some bit of real life?</p> - -<p>The black rocks of the cliff were paling into deep purples and browns -as the sun began to flood the world.</p> - -<p>What a fool he was! He should have stayed and worked with Dienc, and -thought and dreamed, and at least one time cupped Lyte's mouth with his -own.</p> - -<p>With the sinews of his neck standing out defiantly he bellowed upward -at the cliff holes.</p> - -<p>"Send me down one man to do battle!"</p> - -<p>Silence. His voice echoed from the cliff. The air was warm.</p> - -<p>"It's no use," said Lyte, "They'll pay no attention."</p> - -<p>He shouted again. "Hear me!" He stood with his weight on his good foot, -his injured left leg throbbing and pulsating with pain. He shook a -fist. "Send down a warrior who is no coward! I will not turn and run -home! I have come to fight a fair fight! Send a man who will fight for -the right to his cave! Him I will surely kill!"</p> - -<p>More silence. A wave of heat passed over the land, receded.</p> - -<p>"Oh, surely," mocked Sim, hands on naked hips, head back, mouth wide, -"surely there's one among you not afraid to fight a cripple!" Silence. -"No?" Silence.</p> - -<p>"Then I have miscalculated you. I'm wrong. I'll stand here, then, until -the sun shucks the flesh off my bone in black scraps, and call you the -filthy names you deserve."</p> - -<p>He got an answer.</p> - -<p>"I do not like being called names," replied a man's voice.</p> - -<p>Sim leaned forward, forgetting his crippled foot.</p> - -<p>A huge man appeared in a cave mouth on the third level.</p> - -<p>"Come down," urged Sim. "Come down, fat one, and kill me."</p> - -<p>The man scowled seriously at his opponent a moment, then lumbered -slowly down the path, his hands empty of any weapons. Immediately every -cave above clustered with heads. An audience for this drama.</p> - -<p>The man approached Sim. "We will fight by the rules, if you know them."</p> - -<p>"I'll learn as we go," replied Sim.</p> - -<p>This pleased the man and he looked at Sim warily, but not unkindly. -"This much I will tell you," offered the man generously. "If you die, I -will give your mate shelter and she will live, as she pleases, because -she is the wife of a good man."</p> - -<p>Sim nodded swiftly. "I am ready," he said.</p> - -<p>"The rules are simple. We do not touch each other, save with stones. -The stones and the sun will do either of us in. Now is the time—"</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p class="ph1">VIII</p> - -<p>A tip of the sun showed on the horizon. "My name is Nhoj," said -Sim's enemy, casually fingering up a handful of pebbles and stones, -weighing them. Sim did likewise. He was hungry. He had not eaten -for many minutes. Hunger was the curse of this planet's peoples—a -perpetual demanding of empty stomachs for more, more food. His blood -flushed weakly, shot tinglingly through veins in jolting throbs of -heat and pressure, his ribcase shoved out, went in, shoved out again, -impatiently.</p> - -<p>"Now!" roared the three hundred watchers from the cliffs. "Now!" they -clamored, the men and women and children balanced, in turmoil on the -ledges. "Now! Begin!"</p> - -<p>As if at a cue, the sun leaped high. It smote them a blow as with a -flat, sizzling stone. The two men staggered under the molten impact, -sweat broke from their naked thighs and loins, under their arms and on -their faces was a glaze like fine glass.</p> - -<p>Nhoj shifted his huge weight and looked at the sun as if in no hurry to -fight. Then, silently, with no warning, he kanurcked out a pebble with -a startling trigger-flick of thumb and forefinger. It caught Sim flat -on the cheek, staggered him back, so that a rocket of unbearable pain -climbed up his crippled foot and burst into nervous explosion at the -pit of his stomach. He tasted blood from his bleeding cheek.</p> - -<p>Nhoj moved serenely. Three more flickers of his magical hands and three -tiny, seemingly harmless bits of stone flew like whistling birds. -Each of them found a target, slammed it. The nerve centers of Sim's -body! One hit his stomach so that ten hours' eating almost slid up his -throat. A second got his forehead, a third his neck. He collapsed to -the boiling sand. His knee made a wrenching sound on the hard earth. -His face was colorless and his eyes, squeezed tight, were pushing tears -out from the hot, quivering lids. But even as he had fallen he had let -loose, with wild force, his handful of stones!</p> - -<p>The stones purred in the air. One of them, and only one, struck Nhoj. -Upon the left eyeball. Nhoj moaned and laid his hands in the next -instant to his shattered eye.</p> - -<p>Sim choked out a bitter, sighing laugh. This much triumph he had. The -eye of his opponent. It would give him ... Time. Oh, gods, he thought, -his stomach retching sickly, fighting for breath, this is a world of -time. Give me a little more, just a trifle!</p> - -<p>Nhoj, one-eyed, weaving with pain, pelted the writhing body of Sim, but -his aim was off now, the stones flew to one side or if they struck at -all they were weak and spent and lifeless.</p> - -<p>Sim forced himself half erect. From the corners of his eyes he -saw Lyte, waiting, staring at him, her lips breathing words of -encouragement and hope. He was bathed in sweat, as if a rain spray had -showered him down.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>The sun was now fully over the horizon. You could smell it. Stones -glinted like mirrors, the sand began to roil and bubble. Illusions -sprang up everywhere in the valley. Instead of one warrior Nhoj he was -confronted by a dozen, each in an upright position, preparing to launch -another missile. A dozen irregular warriors who shimmered in the golden -menace of day, like bronze gongs smitten, quivered in one vision!</p> - -<p>Sim was breathing desperately. His nostrils flared and sucked and his -mouth drank thirstily of flame instead of oxygen. His lungs took fire -like silk torches and his body was consumed. The sweat spilled from -his pores to be instantly evaporated. He felt himself shriveling, -shriveling in on himself, he imagined himself looking like his father, -old, sunken, slight, withered! Where was the sand? Could he move? Yes. -The world wriggled under him, but now he was on his feet.</p> - -<p>There would be no more fighting.</p> - -<p>A murmur from the cliff told this. The sunburnt faces of the high -audience gaped and jeered and shouted encouragement to their warrior. -"Stand straight, Nhoj, save your strength now! Stand tall and -perspire!" they urged him. And Nhoj stood, swaying lightly, swaying -slowly, a pendulum in an incandescent fiery breath from the skyline. -"Don't move, Nhoj, save your heart, save your power!"</p> - -<p>"The Test, The Test!" said the people on the heights. "The test of the -sun."</p> - -<p>And this was the worst part of the fight. Sim squinted painfully at the -distorted illusion of cliff. He thought he saw his parents; father with -his defeated face, his green eyes burning, mother with her hair blowing -like a cloud of grey smoke in the fire wind. He must get up to them, -live for and with them!</p> - -<p>Behind him, Sim heard Lyte whimper softly. There was a whisper of flesh -against sand. She had fallen. He did not dare turn. The strength of -turning would bring him thundering down in pain and darkness.</p> - -<p>His knees bent. If I fall, he thought, I'll lie here and become ashes. -Where was Nhoj? Nhoj was there, a few yards from him, standing bent, -slick with perspiration, looking as if he were being hit over the spine -with great hammers of destruction.</p> - -<p>"Fall, Nhoj! Fall!" screamed Sim, mentally. "Fall, fall! Fall and die -so I can take your place!"</p> - -<p>But Nhoj did not fall. One by one the pebbles in his half-loose left -hand plummeted to the broiling sands and Nhoj's lips peeled back, the -saliva burned away from his lips and his eyes glazed. But he did not -fall. The will to live was strong in him. He hung as if by a wire.</p> - -<p>Sim fell to one knee!</p> - -<p>"Ahh!" wailed the knowing voices from the cliff. They were watching -death. Sim jerked his head up, smiling mechanically, foolishly as if -caught in the act of doing something silly. "No, no," he insisted -drowsily, and got back up again. There was so much pain he was all one -ringing numbness. A whirring, buzzing, frying sound filled the land. -High up, an avalanche came down like a curtain on a drama, making no -noise. Everything was quiet except for a steady humming. He saw fifty -images of Nhoj now, dressed in armours of sweat, eyes puffed with -torture, cheeks sunken, lips peeled back like the rind of a drying -fruit. But the wire still held him.</p> - -<p>"Now," muttered Sim, sluggishly, with a thick, baked tongue between his -blazing teeth. "Now I'll fall and lie and dream." He said it with slow, -thoughtful pleasure. He planned it. He knew how it must be done. He -would do it accurately. He lifted his head to see if the audience was -watching.</p> - -<p>They were gone!</p> - -<p>The sun had driven them back in. All save one or two brave ones. Sim -laughed drunkenly and watched the sweat gather on his dead hands, -hesitate, drop off, plunge down toward sand and turn to steam half way -there.</p> - -<p>Nhoj fell.</p> - -<p>The wire was cut. Nhoj fell flat upon his stomach, a gout of blood -kicked from his mouth. His eyes rolled back into a white, senseless -insanity.</p> - -<p>Nhoj fell. So did his fifty duplicate illusions.</p> - -<p>All across the valley the winds sang and moaned and Sim saw a blue lake -with a blue river feeding it and low white houses near the river with -people going and coming in the houses and among the tall green trees. -Trees taller than seven men, beside the river mirage.</p> - -<p>"Now," explained Sim to himself at last, "Now I can fall. -Right—into—that—lake."</p> - -<p>He fell forward.</p> - -<p>He was shocked when he felt the hands eagerly stop him in mid-plunge, -lift him, hurry him off, high in the hungry air, like a torch held and -waved, ablaze.</p> - -<p>"How strange is death," he thought, and blackness took him.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>He wakened to the flow of cool water on his cheeks.</p> - -<p>He opened his eyes fearfully. Lyte held his head upon her lap, her -fingers were moving food to his mouth. He was tremendously hungry -and tired, but fear squeezed both of these things away. He struggled -upward, seeing the strange cave contours overhead.</p> - -<p>"What time is it?" he demanded.</p> - -<p>"The same day as the contest. Be quiet," she said.</p> - -<p>"The same day!"</p> - -<p>She nodded amusedly. "You've lost nothing of your life. This is Nhoj's -cave. We are inside the black cliff. We will live three extra days. -Satisfied? Lie down."</p> - -<p>"Nhoj is dead?" He fell back, panting, his heart slamming his ribs. He -relaxed slowly. "I won. Gods, I won," he breathed.</p> - -<p>"Nhoj is dead. So were we, almost. They carried us in from outside only -in time."</p> - -<p>He ate ravenously. "We have no time to waste. We must get strong. My -leg—" He looked at it, tested it. There was a swathe of long yellow -grasses around it and the ache had died away. Even as he watched -the terrific pulsings of his body went to work and cured away the -impurities under the bandages. It <i>has</i> to be strong by sunset, he -thought. It <i>has</i> to be.</p> - -<p>He got up and limped around the cave like a captured animal. He felt -Lyte's eyes upon him. He could not meet her gaze. Finally, helplessly, -he turned.</p> - -<p>She interrupted him. "You want to go on to the ship?" she asked, -softly. "Tonight? When the sun goes down?"</p> - -<p>He took a breath, exhaled it. "Yes."</p> - -<p>"You couldn't possibly wait until morning?"</p> - -<p>"No."</p> - -<p>"Then I'll go with you."</p> - -<p>"No!"</p> - -<p>"If I lag behind, let me. There's nothing here for me."</p> - -<p>They stared at each other a long while. He shrugged wearily.</p> - -<p>"All right," he said, at last. "I couldn't stop you, I know that. We'll -go together."</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p class="ph1">IX</p> - -<p>They waited in the mouth of their new cave. The sun set. The stones -cooled so that one could walk on them. It was almost time for the -leaping out and the running toward the distant, glittering metal seed -that lay on the far mountain.</p> - -<p>Soon would come the rains. And Sim thought back over all the times -he had watched the rains thicken into creeks, into rivers that cut -new beds each night. One night there would be a river running north, -the next a river running north-east, the third night a river running -due west. The valley was continually cut and scarred by the torrents. -Earthquakes and avalanches filled the old beds. New ones were the order -of the day. It was this idea of the river and the directions of the -river that he had turned over in his head for many hours. It might -possibly—Well, he would wait and see.</p> - -<p>He noticed how living in this new cliff had slowed his pulse, slowed -everything. A mineral result, protection against the solar radiations. -Life was still swift, but not as swift as before.</p> - -<p>"Now, Sim!" cried Lyte, testing the valley air.</p> - -<p>They ran. Between the hot death and the cold one. Together, away from -the cliffs, out toward the distant, beckoning ship.</p> - -<p>Never had they run this way in their lives. The sound of their feet -running was a hard, insistent clatter over vast oblongs of rock, down -into ravines, up the sides, and on again. They raked the air in and out -their lungs. Behind them the cliffs faded away into things they could -never turn back to now.</p> - -<p>They did not eat as they ran. They had eaten to the bursting point in -the cave, to save time. Now it was only running, a lifting of legs, a -balancing of bent elbows, a convulsion of muscles, a slaking in of air -that had been fiery and was now cooling.</p> - -<p>"Are they watching us?"</p> - -<p>Lyte's breathless voice snatched at his ears, above the pound of his -heart.</p> - -<p>Who? But he knew the answer. The cliff peoples, of course. How long had -it been since a race like this one? A thousand days? Ten thousand? How -long since someone had taken the chance and sprinted with an entire -civilization's eyes upon their backs, into gullies, across cooling -plain. Were there lovers pausing in their laughter back there, gazing -at the two tiny dots that were a man and woman running toward destiny? -Were children eating of new fruits and stopping in their play to see -the two people racing against time? Was Dienc still living, narrowing -hairy eyebrows down over fading eyes, shouting them on in a feeble, -rasping voice, shaking a twisted hand? Were there jeers? Were they -being called fools, idiots? And in the midst of the name calling, were -people praying them on, hoping they would reach the ship? Yes, under -all the cynicism and pessimism, some of them, all of them, must be -praying.</p> - -<p>Sim took a quick glance at the sky, which was beginning to bruise with -the coming night. Out of nowhere clouds materialized and a light shower -trailed across a gully two hundred yards ahead of them. Lightning beat -upon distant mountains and there was a strong scent of ozone on the -disturbed air.</p> - -<p>"The halfway mark," panted Sim, and he saw Lyte's face half turn, -longingly looking back at the life she was leaving. "Now's the time, if -we want to turn back, we still have time. Another minute—"</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Thunder snarled in the mountains. An avalanche started out small and -ended up huge and monstrous in a deep fissure. Light rain dotted Lyte's -smooth white skin. In a minute her hair was glistening and soggy with -rain.</p> - -<p>"Too late now," she shouted over the patting rhythm of her own naked -feet. "We've got to go ahead!"</p> - -<p>And it was too late. Sim knew, judging the distances, that there was no -turning back now.</p> - -<p>His leg began to pain him a little. He favored it, slowing. A wind -came up swiftly. A cold wind that bit into the skin. But it came from -the cliffs behind them, helped rather than hindered them. An omen? he -wondered. No.</p> - -<p>For as the minutes went by it grew upon him how poorly he had estimated -the distance. Their time was dwindling out, but they were still an -impossible distance from the ship. He said nothing, but the impotent -anger at the slow muscles in his legs welled up into bitterly hot tears -in his eyes.</p> - -<p>He knew that Lyte was thinking the same as himself. But she flew along -like a white bird, seeming hardly to touch ground. He heard her breath -go out and in her throat, like a clean, sharp knife in its sheathe.</p> - -<p>Half the sky was dark. The first stars were peering through lengths of -black cloud. Lightning jiggled a path along a rim just ahead of them. A -full thunderstorm of violent rain and exploding electricity fell upon -them.</p> - -<p>They slipped and skidded on moss-smooth pebbles. Lyte fell, scrambled -up again with a burning oath. Her body was scarred and dirty. The rain -washed over her.</p> - -<p>The rain came down and cried on Sim. It filled his eyes and ran in -rivers down his spine and he wanted to cry with it.</p> - -<p>Lyte fell and did not rise, sucking her breath, her breasts quivering.</p> - -<p>He picked her up and held her. "Run, Lyte, please, run!"</p> - -<p>"Leave me, Sim. Go ahead!" The rain filled her mouth. There was water -everywhere. "It's no use. Go on without me."</p> - -<p>He stood there, cold and powerless, his thoughts sagging, the flame of -hope blinking out. All the world was blackness, cold falling sheathes -of water, and despair.</p> - -<p>"We'll walk, then," he said. "And keep walking, and resting."</p> - -<p>They walked for fifty yards, easily, slowly, like children out for a -stroll. The gully ahead of them filled with water that went sliding -away with a swift wet sound, toward the horizon.</p> - -<p>Sim cried out. Tugging at Lyte he raced forward. "A new channel," he -said, pointing. "Each day the rain cuts a new channel. Here, Lyte!" He -leaned over the flood waters.</p> - -<p>He dived in, taking her with him.</p> - -<p>The flood swept them like bits of wood. They fought to stay upright, -the water got into their mouths, their noses. The land swept by on both -sides of them. Clutching Lyte's fingers with insane strength, Sim felt -himself hurled end over end, saw flicks of lightning on high, and a new -fierce hope was born in him. They could no longer run, well, then they -would let the water do the running for them.</p> - -<p>With a speed that dashed them against rocks, split open their -shoulders, abraded their legs, the new, brief river carried them. "This -way!" Sim shouted over a salvo of thunder and steered frantically -toward the opposite side of the gully. The mountain where the ship -lay was just ahead. They must not pass it by. They fought in the -transporting liquid and were slammed against the far side. Sim leaped -up, caught at an overhanging rock, locked Lyte in his legs, and drew -himself hand over hand upward.</p> - -<p>As quickly as it had come, the storm was gone. The lightning faded. The -rain ceased. The clouds melted and fell away over the sky. The wind -whispered into silence.</p> - -<p>"The ship!" Lyte lay upon the ground. "The ship, Sim. This is the -mountain of the ship!"</p> - -<p>Now the cold came. The killing cold.</p> - -<p>They forced themselves drunkenly up the mountain. The cold slid along -their limbs, got into their arteries like a chemical and slowed them.</p> - -<p>Ahead of them, with a fresh-washed sheen, lay the ship. It was a dream. -Sim could not believe that they were actually so near it. Two hundred -yards. One hundred and seventy yards. Gods, but it was cold.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<div class="figcenter"> - <img src="images/illus1.jpg" alt=""/> - <div class="caption"> - <p><i>Ahead of them lay the ship. Sim could not believe they were so near.</i></p> - </div> -</div> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p>The ground became covered with ice. They slipped and fell again and -again. Behind them the river was frozen into a blue-white snake of cold -solidity. A few last drops of rain from somewhere came down as hard -pellets.</p> - -<p>Sim fell against the bulk of the ship. He was actually touching it. -Touching it! He heard Lyte whimpering in her constricted throat. This -was the metal, the ship. How many others had touched it in the long -days? He and Lyte had made it!</p> - -<p>He touched it lovingly. Then, as cold as the air, his veins were -chilled.</p> - -<p>Where was the entrance?</p> - -<p>You run, you swim, you almost drown, you curse, you sweat, you work, -you reach a mountain, you go up it, you hammer on metal, you shout with -relief, you reach the ship, and then—you can't find the entrance.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>He fought to keep himself from breaking down. Slowly, he told himself, -but not too slowly, go around the ship. The metal slid under his -searching hands, so cold that his hands, sweating, almost froze to it. -Now, far around to the side. Lyte moved with him. The cold held them -like a fist. It began to squeeze.</p> - -<p>The entrance.</p> - -<p>Metal. Cold, immutable metal. A thin line of opening at the sealing -point. Throwing all caution aside, he beat at it. He felt his stomach -seething with cold. His fingers were numb, his eyes were half frozen in -their sockets. He began to beat and search and scream against the metal -door. "Open up! Open up!" He staggered.</p> - -<p>The air-lock sighed. With a whispering of metal on rubber beddings, the -door swung softly sidewise and vanished back.</p> - -<p>He saw Lyte run forward, clutch at her throat, and drop inside a small -shiny chamber. He shuffled after her, blankly.</p> - -<p>The air-lock door sealed shut behind him.</p> - -<p>He could not breathe. His heart began to slow, to stop.</p> - -<p>They were trapped inside the ship now, and something was happening. He -sank down to his knees and choked for air.</p> - -<p>The ship he had come to for salvation was now slowing his pulse, -darkening his brain, poisoning him. With a starved, faint kind of -expiring terror, he realized that he was dying.</p> - -<p>Blackness.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>He had a dim sense of time passing, of thinking, struggling, to make -his heart go quick, quick.... To make his eyes focus. But the fluid in -his body lagged quietly through his settling veins and he heard his -temple pulses thud, pause, thud, pause and thud again with lulling -intermissions.</p> - -<p>He could not move, not a hand or leg or finger. It was an effort to -lift the tonnage of his eyelashes. He could not shift his face even, to -see Lyte lying beside him.</p> - -<p>From a distance came her irregular breathing. It was like the sound a -wounded bird makes with his dry, unraveled pinions. She was so close he -could almost feel the heat of her; yet she seemed a long way removed.</p> - -<p>I'm getting cold! he thought. Is this death? This slowing of blood, of -my heart, this cooling of my body, this drowsy thinking of thoughts?</p> - -<p>Staring at the ship's ceiling he traced its intricate system of tubes -and machines. The knowledge, the purpose of the ship, its actions, -seeped into him. He began to understand in a kind of revealing -lassitude just what these things were his eyes rested upon. Slow. Slow.</p> - -<p>There was an instrument with a gleaming white dial.</p> - -<p>Its purpose?</p> - -<p>He drudged away at the problem, like a man underwater.</p> - -<p>People had used the dial. Touched it. People had repaired it. -Installed it. People had dreamed of it before the building, before -the installing, before the repairing and touching and using. The -dial contained memory of use and manufacture, its very shape was a -dream-memory telling Sim why and for what it had been built. Given -time, looking at anything, he could draw from it the knowledge he -desired. Some dim part of him reached out, dissected the contents of -things, analyzed them.</p> - -<p>This dial measured time!</p> - -<p>Millions of days of time!</p> - -<p>But how could that be? Sim's eyes dilated, hot and glittering. Where -were humans who needed such an instrument?</p> - -<p>Blood thrummed and beat behind his eyes. He closed them.</p> - -<p>Panic came to him. The day was passing. I am lying here, he thought, -and my life slips away. I cannot move. My youth is passing. How long -before I can move?</p> - -<p>Through a kind of porthole he saw the night pass, the day come, the day -pass, and again another night. Stars danced frostily.</p> - -<p>I will lie here for four or five days, wrinkling and withering, he -thought. This ship will not let me move. How much better if I had -stayed in my home cliff, lived, enjoyed this short life. What good has -it done to come here? I'm missing all the twilights and dawns. I'll -never touch Lyte, though she's here at my side.</p> - -<p>Delirium. His mind floated up. His thoughts whirled through the metal -ship. He smelled the razor sharp smell of joined metal. He heard the -hull contract with night, relax with day.</p> - -<p>Dawn.</p> - -<p>Already—another dawn!</p> - -<p>Today I would have been mature. His jaw clenched. I must get up. I must -move. I must enjoy my time of maturity.</p> - -<p>But he didn't move. He felt his blood pump sleepily from chamber to red -chamber in his heart, on down and around through his dead body, to be -purified by his folding and unfolding lungs. Then the circuit once more.</p> - -<p>The ship grew warm. From somewhere a machine clicked. Automatically the -temperature cooled. A controlled gust of air flushed the room.</p> - -<p>Night again. And then another day.</p> - -<p>He lay and saw four days of his life pass.</p> - -<p>He did not try to fight. It was no use. His life was over.</p> - -<p>He didn't want to turn his head now. He didn't want to see Lyte with -her face like his tortured mother's—eyelids like gray ash flakes, eyes -like beaten, sanded metal, cheeks like eroded stones. He didn't want to -see a throat like parched thongs of yellow grass, hands the pattern of -smoke risen from a fire, breasts like desiccated rinds and hair stubbly -and unshorn as moist gray weeds!</p> - -<p>And himself? How did <i>he</i> look? Was his jaw sunken, the flesh of his -eyes pitted, his brow lined and age-scarred?</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>His strength began to return. He felt his heart beating so slow that it -was amazing. One hundred beats a minute. Impossible. He felt so cool, -so thoughtful, so easy.</p> - -<p>His head fell over to one side. He stared at Lyte. He shouted in -surprise.</p> - -<p>She was young and fair.</p> - -<p>She was looking at him, too weak to say anything. Her eyes were like -tiny silver medals, her throat curved like the arm of a child. Her hair -was blue fire eating at her scalp, fed by the slender life of her body.</p> - -<p>Four days had passed and still she was young ... no, younger than when -they had entered the ship. She was still adolescent.</p> - -<p>He could not believe it.</p> - -<p>Her first words were, "How long will this last?"</p> - -<p>He replied, carefully. "I don't know."</p> - -<p>"We are still young."</p> - -<p>"The ship. Its metal is around us. It cuts away the sun and the things -that came from the sun to age us."</p> - -<p>Her eyes shifted thoughtfully. "Then, if we stay here—"</p> - -<p>"We'll remain young."</p> - -<p>"Six more days? Fourteen more? Twenty?"</p> - -<p>"More than that, maybe."</p> - -<p>She lay there, silently. After a long time she said, "Sim?"</p> - -<p>"Yes."</p> - -<p>"Let's stay here. Let's not go back. If we go back now, you know -what'll happen to us...?"</p> - -<p>"I'm not certain."</p> - -<p>"We'll start getting old again, won't we?"</p> - -<p>He looked away. He stared at the ceiling and the clock with the moving -finger. "Yes. We'll grow old."</p> - -<p>"What if we grow old—instantly. When we step from the ship won't the -shock be too much?"</p> - -<p>"Maybe."</p> - -<p>Another silence. He began to move his limbs, testing them. He was very -hungry. "The others are waiting," he said.</p> - -<p>Her next words made him gasp. "The others are dead," she said. "Or will -be in a few hours. All those we knew back there are old and worn."</p> - -<p>He tried to picture them old. Dark, his sister, bent and senile with -time. He shook his head, wiping the picture away. "They may die," he -said. "But there are others who've been born."</p> - -<p>"People we don't even know," said Lyte, flatly.</p> - -<p>"But, nevertheless, <i>our</i> people," he replied. "People who'll live only -eight days, or eleven days unless we help them."</p> - -<p>"But we're <i>young</i>, Sim! We're young! We can <i>stay</i> young!"</p> - -<p>He didn't want to listen. It was too tempting a thing to listen to. To -stay here. To live. "We've already had more time than the others," he -said. "I need workers. Men to heal this ship. We'll get on our feet -now, you and I, and find food, eat, and see if the ship is movable. I'm -afraid to try to move it myself. It's so big. I'll need help."</p> - -<p>"But that means running back all that distance!"</p> - -<p>"I know." He lifted himself weakly. "But I'll do it."</p> - -<p>"How will you get the men back here?"</p> - -<p>"We'll use the river."</p> - -<p>"<i>If</i> it's there. It <i>may</i> be somewhere else."</p> - -<p>"We'll wait until there <i>is</i> one, then. I've got to go back, Lyte. -The son of Dienc is waiting for me, my sister, your brother, are old -people, ready to die, and waiting for some word from us—"</p> - -<p>After a long while he heard her move, dragging herself tiredly to him. -She put her head upon his chest, her eyes closed, stroking his arm. -"I'm sorry. Forgive me. You have to go back. I'm a selfish fool."</p> - -<p>He touched her cheek, clumsily. "You're human. I understand you. -There's nothing to forgive."</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>They found food. They walked through the ship. It was empty. Only in -the control room did they find the remains of a man who must have been -the chief pilot. The others had evidently bailed out into space in -emergency lifeboats. This pilot, sitting at his controls, alone, had -landed the ship on a mountain within sight of other fallen and smashed -crafts. Its location on high ground had saved it from the floods. The -pilot himself had died, probably of heart failure, soon after landing. -The ship had remained here, almost within reach of the other survivors, -perfect as an egg, but silent, for—how many thousand days? If the -pilot had lived, what a different thing life might have been for the -ancestors of Sim and Lyte. Sim, thinking of this—felt the distant, -ominous vibration of war. How had the war between worlds come out? Who -had won? Or had both planets lost and never bothered trying to pick up -survivors? Who had been right? Who was the enemy? Were Sim's people of -the guilty or innocent side? They might never know.</p> - -<p>He checked the ship hurriedly. He knew nothing of its workings, yet -as he walked its corridors, patted its machines, he learned from it. -It needed only a crew. One man couldn't possibly set the whole thing -running again. He laid his hand upon one round, snout-like machine. He -jerked his hand away, as if burnt.</p> - -<p>"Lyte!"</p> - -<p>"What is it?"</p> - -<p>He touched the machine again, caressed it, his hand trembled violently, -his eyes welled with tears, his mouth opened and closed, he looked at -the machine, loving it, then looked at Lyte.</p> - -<p>"With this machine—" he stammered, softly, incredulously. "With—with -this machine I can—"</p> - -<p>"What, Sim?"</p> - -<p>He inserted his hand into a cup-like contraption with a lever inside. -Out of porthole in front of him he could see the distant line of -cliffs. "We were afraid there might never be another river running by -this mountain, weren't we?" he asked, exultantly.</p> - -<p>"Yes, Sim, but—"</p> - -<p>"There <i>will</i> be a river. And I <i>will</i> come back, tonight! And I'll -bring men with me. Five hundred men! Because with this machine I can -blast a river bottom all the way to the cliffs, down which the waters -will rush, giving myself and the men a swift, sure way of traveling -back!" He rubbed the machine's barrel-like body. "When I touched it, -the life and method of it shot into me! Watch!" He depressed the lever.</p> - -<p>A beam of incandescent fire lanced out from the ship, screaming.</p> - -<p>Steadily, accurately, Sim began to cut away a river bed for the storm -waters to flow in. The night was turned to day by its hungry eating.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>The return to the cliffs was to be carried out by Sim alone. Lyte was -to remain in the ship, in case of any mishap. The trip back seemed, at -first glance, to be impossible. There would be no river rushing to cut -his time, to sweep him along toward his destination. He would have to -run the entire distance in the dawn, and the sun would get him, catch -him before he'd reached safety.</p> - -<p>"The only way to do it is to start <i>before</i> sunrise."</p> - -<p>"But you'd be frozen, Sim."</p> - -<p>"Here." He made adjustments on the machine that had just finished -cutting the river bed in the rock floor of the valley. He lifted the -smooth snout of the gun, pressed the lever, left it down. A gout of -fire shot toward the cliffs. He fingered the range control, focused the -flame end three miles from its source. Done. He turned to Lyte. "But I -don't understand," she said.</p> - -<p>He opened the air-lock door. "It's bitter cold out, and half an hour -yet till dawn. If I run parallel to the flame from the machine, close -enough to it, there'll not be much heat but enough to sustain life, -anyway."</p> - -<p>"It doesn't sound safe," Lyte protested.</p> - -<p>"<i>Nothing</i> does, on this world." He moved forward. "I'll have a half -hour start. That should be enough to reach the cliffs."</p> - -<p>"But if the machine should fail while you're still running near its -beam?"</p> - -<p>"Let's not think of that," he said.</p> - -<p>A moment later he was outside. He staggered as if kicked in the -stomach. His heart almost exploded in him. The environment of his -world forced him into swift living again. He felt his pulse rise, -kicking through his veins.</p> - -<p>The night was cold as death. The heat ray from the ship sliced across -the valley, humming, solid and warm. He moved next to it, very close. -One misstep in his running and—</p> - -<p>"I'll be back," he called to Lyte.</p> - -<p>He and the ray of light went together.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>In the early morning the peoples in the caves saw the long finger of -orange incandescence and the weird whitish apparition floating, running -along beside it. There was muttering and superstition.</p> - -<p>So when Sim finally reached the cliffs of his childhood he saw alien -peoples swarming there. There were no familiar faces. Then he realized -how foolish it was to expect familiar faces. One of the older men -glared down at him. "Who're you?" he shouted. "Are you from the enemy -cliff? What's your name?"</p> - -<p>"I am Sim, the son of Sim!"</p> - -<p>"Sim!"</p> - -<p>An old woman shrieked from the cliff above him. She came hobbling down -the stone pathway. "Sim, Sim, it <i>is</i> you!"</p> - -<p>He looked at her, frankly bewildered. "But I don't know you," he -murmured.</p> - -<p>"Sim, don't you recognize me? Oh, Sim, it's me! Dark!"</p> - -<p>"Dark!"</p> - -<p>He felt sick at his stomach. She fell into his arms. This old, -trembling woman with the half-blind eyes, his sister.</p> - -<p>Another face appeared above. That of an old man. A cruel, bitter face. -It looked down at Sim and snarled. "Drive him away!" cried the old -man. "He comes from the cliff of the enemy. He's lived there! He's -still young! Those who go there can never come back among us. Disloyal -beast!" And a rock hurtled down.</p> - -<p>Sim leaped aside, pulling the old woman with him.</p> - -<p>A roar came from the people. They ran toward Sim, shaking their fists. -"Kill him, kill him!" raved the old man, and Sim did not know who he -was.</p> - -<p>"Stop!" Sim held out his hands. "I come from the ship!"</p> - -<p>"The ship?" The people slowed. Dark clung to him, looking up into his -young face, puzzling over its smoothness.</p> - -<p>"Kill him, kill him, kill him!" croaked the old man, and picked up -another rock.</p> - -<p>"I offer you ten days, twenty days, thirty more days of life!"</p> - -<p>The people stopped. Their mouths hung open. Their eyes were incredulous.</p> - -<p>"Thirty days?" It was repeated again and again. "How?"</p> - -<p>"Come back to the ship with me. Inside it, one can live forever!"</p> - -<p>The old man lifted high a rock, then, choking, fell forward in an -apoplectic fit, and tumbled down the rocks to lie at Sim's feet.</p> - -<p>Sim bent to peer at the ancient one, at the bleary, dead eyes, the -loose, sneering lips, the crumpled, quiet body.</p> - -<p>"Chion!"</p> - -<p>"Yes," said Dark behind him, in a croaking, strange voice. "Your enemy. -Chion."</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>That night a thousand warriors started for the ship as if going to war. -The water ran in the new channel. Five hundred of them were drowned or -lost behind in the cold. The others, with Sim, got through to the ship.</p> - -<p>Lyte awaited them, and threw wide the metal door.</p> - -<p>The weeks passed. Generations lived and died in the cliffs, while the -five hundred workers labored over the ship, learning its functions and -its parts.</p> - -<p>On the last day they disbanded. Each ran to his station. Now there was -a destiny of travel who still remained behind.</p> - -<p>Sim touched the control plates under his fingers.</p> - -<p>Lyte, rubbing her eyes, came and sat on the floor next to him, resting -her head against his knee, drowsily. "I had a dream," she said, looking -off at something far away. "I dreamed I lived in caves in a cliff on a -cold-hot planet where people grew old and died in eight days and were -burnt."</p> - -<p>"What an impossible dream," said Sim. "People couldn't possibly live in -such a nightmare. Forget it. You're awake now."</p> - -<p>He touched the plates gently. The ship rose and moved into space. Sim -was right. The nightmare was over at last.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<div class="figcenter"> - <img src="images/illus3.jpg" alt=""/> -</div> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p class="ph1">[Transcriber's Note: No Section III or V heading in original text.]</p> - -<pre style='margin-top:6em'> -*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CREATURES THAT TIME FORGOT *** - -This file should be named 63874-h.htm or 63874-h.zip - -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: -http://www.gutenberg.org/6/3/8/7/63874/ - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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