Planet Stories Super Pack #2. Ray Bradbury, Nelson S. Bond, Leigh Brackett

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СКАЧАТЬ mob screamed out of a single throat. Out of the tail of his eye Kirk saw the yellow girl spring up. Her hands were clenched and her face was a mask of horror, of hatred and a strange pleading. She was saying something, but the mob yell drowned her words, and when it died down somebody had the girl, holding her arms and her mouth.

      "All right," said Samel hoarsely, and licked his lips. "All right. What are you going to do about it? What’s your scheme?"

      "I’m going to take you there, the secret way. I’m going to take you to the Ship, so that we can break the Officers and live, together."

      He did not look at the Captain’s yellow daughter.

      *

      The northern escarpment of the plateau fell sheer into a deep gorge. Kirk led them into it, Samel and six hands of Pirut men and the yellow girl with a strip of hide to gag her mouth. The darkness had come down, so thick and black that pupils at their widest spread could hardly make anything from the starshine. They went slowly, but almost without sound.

      Kirk watched the dead Ship, thrusting high above them against the cold stars. Presently he stopped and whispered, "Here, I think."

      They stopped. Kirk went alone to the cliff wall and felt along it. His hands slipped behind a curtain of moss, into a crack barely big enough for a man’s shoulder. There seemed to be a blank wall beyond, but he felt sideways, and found that Jakk had been right. There was a way.

      He went back to Samel. "It’s there. Come on."

      "No!" Samel caught his arm. He was looking up, at the broken Ship on the cliff-top, and he was trembling. "Wait," he whispered. "I want to know this, to keep it."

      Kirk followed his rapt stare. The Ship, brooding over the plain, dominant even in death. The Ship that had brought them, Officers and Hans, in some strange forgotten way from some forgotten place, and died in the bringing. The Ship, Untouchable....

      Kirk shivered, violently. His heartbeats choked him. And then Samel was speaking, no louder than a whisper, to the night and the Ship.

      "We came from the sky, following, hunting. It had power and gold in its belly, and they kept us from it. They kept us Outside, away from the Ship, and we starved and froze and waited. And now we’re going in." He caught his breath between his teeth and shuddered. "And now we’re going in!"

      Kirk whispered, "What are ‘power’ and ‘gold’?"

      "I don’t know. Something in the legend. Something men live for, and die for. We’ll know soon."

      "We’ll know soon. Samel, remember the bargain. No killing or plundering among the Hans."

      Samel smiled, but the muscles ran hard along his jaw.

      "If you’re telling the truth, there won’t be any reason for it. We’ll let the Officers decide whether they die or not." Samel started forward. "The Ship," he said softly, and laughed. "The Ship! "

      They went toward the cleft in the rock. Somebody said, "Hey, it’s warm in this gorge!" Kirk realized then that he wasn’t cold, and wondered why. Then he smiled bitterly. Sure. The Officers had found a vein of heat-stones, probably just under the soil where they were standing. The gorge had never been a source of the stones, the crystal rocks that looked just like the ones scattered all over except that they had a tiny light in them and burned you when you picked them up. But the Officers must be getting them from here and taking them up to the Ship, to hoard.

      Most of his superstitious chill went away when he thought about that.

      Inside the cleft was a shaft leading up, tool-shaped here and there, with rusty metal bars set in the rock. Kirk led the way. There was no sound made loud enough to be heard over the wind that blew across the plateau. Kirk and Samel came up out of the shaft and took the two guards from behind easily enough, and went on to the Ship.

      Just for a moment, looking down across the plain, thinking about Ma Kirk and Lil and the little ones, Kirk was scared. He’d let the Piruts in. If Samel didn’t keep his word, if anything....

      But nothing would go wrong. There was no reason for it to. He was telling the truth, and once the Ship was broken into there was no quarrel between the Piruts and the Hans. They were allies against the Officers.

      He remembered what he’d said to Lil, about the Captain’s yellow daughter.

      Samel left a guard behind and went into the Ship.

      Darkness and cold and the smell of a place that hasn’t been used or lived in for a long, long time, and the grit of rusty metal under bare feet. They went very slowly, and the yellow girl whimpered in her gag.

      They couldn’t really be silent, slipping and blundering in blackness too thick even for their eyes, over buckled deck plates and around broken walls. Somebody heard them and called out, and the yellow girl struggled like a speared shag.

      Kirk shivered and the palms of his hands were wet. He could feel the Ship like a living presence in the dark.

      The somebody called again, with fear in his voice. They stumbled down a long, tilted passageway and came into a little room with a great gash in it looking out over the gorge. There was a barred door in one wall, and a man sitting in front of it over a tiny box of heat-stones.

      The Captain.

      He got up, a lean grey man moving with dignity. He didn’t drop his spear, but he didn’t try to use it, either. He didn’t say anything. His eyes took them in, in the dull glow of the heat-stones—Kirk and Samel and the Piruts, and then the yellow girl, gagged and held by the arms. His eyes blazed, then. Kirk’s heart jolted. It was just the way Pa might have looked at Lil.

      He said roughly, thinking of Pa, "Don’t try anything, and you won’t get hurt. I’ve made a pact with the Piruts. There’s to be no more fighting and we take the Ship together, share and share alike. The Officers can obey, or take what’s coming to them. Where are the heat-stones?"

      The Captain stared at him. His face had no expression. He said, "Let my daughter go."

      Samel started forward. The Captain raised his spear. "Let my daughter go!" The Piruts raised their weapons. Samel looked around the room, at the single door behind them, and grinned.

      "Sure," he said. "Why not? Let her go."

      They let her go. She tore off the gag and ran to her father and stood by him, glaring at the Piruts with hot black eyes. Neither one said anything.

      "All right," said Samel lazily. "Now where are the stones?"

      "There." The Captain pointed at the tiny box at his feet. "Those are all the heat-stones there are in the Ship."

      Kirk cried, "That’s a lie!"

      The Captain looked at him. "Tell your friends to go and search."

      "What about that door behind you?"

      "There are no stones in there."

      Kirk laughed. The laugh was not pleasant. He was thinking of the cold huts of the Hans and the thin babies that cried, and Jakk Randl dying on the pillbox wall, telling him what he’d seen.

      "You СКАЧАТЬ