Astounding Science Fiction Stories Vol 1 Read online

  But the beetles--Among the thoughts that tumbled disjointedly through Dworn's head in this awful moment was a clear vision of the night, five years ago, when his machine-existence had begun: when, in the horde's encampment by the sea a thousand miles from here, the beetle's last seam had been welded, and its engine set going with the appropriate ritual of birth.... The sixteen-year-old boy's heart had beaten high and proudly, in tune with the heart of steel and fire that had begun to throb at that moment. And the life expectancy of the two was measured with the same measure, the life of flesh and that of metal indissolubly entwined....

  He mumbled dazedly, "I'm dead, do you hear? Dead!"

  There was a sudden howling in the sky. Flashing overhead, as the two stood momentarily petrified, went a shrieking flight of half a dozen winged shapes--stubby vanes slanting back from vicious noses, they hurtled low over the desert and vanished swiftly into the distance, dust-devils dancing across the ground in the whirling wind of their passage.

  Dworn stared after them, and his eyes narrowed. A new and desperate resolve had begun shaping itself in his mind.

  Of the things he had meant to do in life, it was no use thinking any more of rejoining his people. He was dead to them, for sure--not even a beetle any more, but only what was left of one, a ghost.... But a holy duty, stronger than death, remained to him; his father was still unrevenged.

  What he could do against a foe so powerful as those who had just passed over, he had no idea--but perhaps a ghost could accomplish what a living man might well deem impossible.

  He motioned Qanya peremptorily toward the waiting spider-machine. "Come on. We're taking your machine, and we're going to find them!"

  For a moment she seemed to hesitate ... then she obeyed. If her face was paler than usual, Dworn failed to notice it.

  * * * * *

  The spider-vehicle lurched and swayed, even its marvelous system of shock-absorbers protesting as it climbed steeply, straddling upward from rock to rock.

  Dworn clutched at handholds inside the pitching cabin and tried to combat the sympathetic lurching of his stomach. Qanya huddled tensely over the controls, slim hands flashing nimbly to and fro as with incredible deftness she guided the laboring machine.

  Dworn risked a glimpse from the turret-windows, then shut his eyes with a rush of giddiness. They were climbing now up the steepest part of the great slide, where the mountainside had collapsed in a chaos of splintered rock and tumbled crags that would have been utterly impassible for any wheeled vehicle. Below them, the sloping valley floor they had left appeared from this height entirely flat and sickeningly far away. And still the cliff-heads frowning above them seemed terribly remote.

  "How ... far?" gasped Dworn.

  "It can't be very far now to the top," said Qanya, without glancing up from her absorbed concentration. Both their lives were in her hands; a slip, a misstep, and they might fall hundreds of feet among the jagged rocks to their death.

  For seconds at a time, the walking machine poised motionless, one or more of its clawed limbs groping for footholds. As it clambered painfully upward, it was hopelessly exposed to attack if it should be sighted from the air.

  Dworn, the beetle told himself savagely, you are not only a ghost, you are an insane ghost. Only a madman would have undertaken such a journey.

  The cabin heeled wildly as the machine grappled a ledge and, its engine panting at full throttle, levered itself upward a few more feet.

  He had commanded the spider girl to find the route by which her people had descended. But twice already they had missed the way and had arrived at dead ends beyond which it was impossible to climb higher; twice they had been forced to descend and search for an easier path. It had been scarcely noon when they started; now the sun was already sinking low.

  Dworn could not even be sure that he would find his sworn enemies beyond the Barrier. But the duty of vengeance was all he had left to live for, since what was to have been his triumphal return had ended in bereavement and catastrophe.

  And a dead man, thought Dworn bleakly, needs something to live for, even more than other people do.

  The world came level again, for the moment. The machine sidled precariously along a narrow ledge girdling an unscalable wall of rock, as Qanya sought a spot to resume the ascent. Dworn winced at the thought that the way might be blocked again. But, no--fifty yards further on, the wall was breached, and toppled boulders formed a perilous but not impossible stairway.

  Just as Qanya grasped the levers which would set the spider scrambling upward once more, there was a sound--one grown hatefully familiar to Dworn since the night before, the feverish buzzing of a number of light high-speed engines. He opened his mouth to hiss a warning, but Qanya too had heard. Instantly she guided the spider-machine as close as possible to the cliff, where the hollowed rock afforded some shelter, and twirled a knob that made it sink down, legs folding compactly.

  They waited scarcely breathing. A couple of times before they had huddled like this, while flights of the winged enemies whistled over ... but the wingless ones? It seemed impossible that they should be up here, where surely nothing that ran on wheels could travel....

  * * * * *

  The head of a column of the aluminum crawlers came into view, whirring along the ledge with a confident air of knowing where they were going. One by one, the little machines rolled past within a few feet of the crouching spider, hastening on with an uncanny pre-occupation.

  Dworn saw that, like those he had seen earlier, they were of diverse kinds; and several of them, fitted with claws and racks for transporting booty, were heavily laden now with metal plates and girders carved from some larger machine, a roll of caterpillar tread, a slightly bent axle.... The last pygmy in line, whose afterbody was a bloated tank, gurgled as it jolted by, and trailed an aroma of looted fuel.

  A few yards beyond the staring watchers, each of the little plunderers pivoted sharply in its turn and without even slackening speed vanished straight into the cliff-face. Dworn and Qanya looked incredulously at one another.

  "A tunnel!" Dworn grunted in realization.

  That explained one mystery, at least--how, if the winged and wingless strangers' home base was somewhere above the cliffs, the wheeled machines contrived to forage at the foot of the Barrier. They must have one or more inclined tunnels, bored through solid rock for a distance that staggered Dworn's imagination. Emerging at this level, they had found or constructed a passable road the rest of the way to the valley floor.... Now he noticed that the ledge to which the spider had so laboriously climbed showed signs of being an often-used trail, and the cliffs it skirted exhibited in places the raw marks of recent blasting.

  "Remember this spot," he told Qanya. "If we should return this same way--there's evidently an easier path down."

  She said nothing. Dworn wondered wrily if, in her drug beclouded mind, she was aware of how unlikely it was that either of them would be returning from beyond the Barrier.

  A mad enterprise indeed--a ghost and a zombie, going to seek out a foe whose numbers and whose might grew ever more apparent. The tunnel opening here was clear evidence of engineering resources and skill far beyond that of any of the machine races Dworn knew.

  Its discovery was no help to them, since it was far too small to admit the spider.

  "Go on!" Dworn ordered doggedly. "At least we know now that their dwelling can't be far!"

  Qanya glanced briefly sidelong at him, then moved the levers, and the spider rocked upright once more and began to climb.

  * * * * *

  The sun was low, and the shadows of rocks and dunes in the valley behind them were pointing long blue fingers eastward, when the machine staggered up the last precipitous ascent and stood on level ground at the summit.

  Dworn took a deep breath and looked ahead, looked for the first time in his life upon the unknown land beyond the Barrier.

  At first glance, it differed little from any of the desert country where he had lived all his life. Th
e ground shelved gradually away from the rocky rim on which they stood; far off, against the darkening eastern sky, blue mountains rose murkily, but between here and the ranges lay a vast shallow depression, an arid sink floored with wind-rippled sand. Perhaps it had been a lake-bed once, before natural or unnatural cataclysms, and the millennial drying-up of all this country, had emptied it of water. Or perhaps--as its circular form suggested--it was one of those other, mysterious depressions which were scattered irregularly across the face of the earth where no lakes had ever been; those, legend said, were scars left by the ancients' wars.

  The rich light of the declining sun fell at a shallow angle into the miles-wide bowl and brought out with startling clarity the maze of wheel-tracks, crossing and criss-crossing, which covered its sandy expanse and testified to a fever of recent machine activity there. The light gleamed, too, here and there, upon scurrying metallic shapes, that raced by ones and twos or in trickling columns to and from the center of the bowl, where--

  Dworn strained his eyes and his capacity for belief in an effort to make sense of the structures there, miles away. He was not very successful, for the scene was too unlike anything he had ever looked on before.

  There were certain races which built stationary dwellings--Dworn knew of the scale-makers who lived, in colonies sometimes of considerable size, beneath individual armored, anchored domes sunk into the face of some impregnable rock; he knew of the sand devils with their pits, and now he had seen also how the spider people nested. But the huge buildings that loomed yonder, lowering and windowless, and the winged things clustering thick on the ground about them, were such as he had never seen in his nomadic life.

  Atop a slender tower that spired above the squat structures he could make out something which turned and turned, something like a broad net of lacy wires, revolving steadily from east to west, from north to south. Strange, too, the smooth-surfaced ways that radiated outward in four directions, like an immense cross, broad paved roads that came to abrupt dead ends a mile or more from the central buildings.... After a moment, though, he guessed that those were runways for the aircraft which flew from this place.

  The unknown builders were obviously a mighty people, a people who had perfected their peculiar form of organization on a gigantic scale. And a people who acted and thought strangely; for their behavior, as Dworn had observed it, suggested a chilly-blooded and fanatic discipline, a regimentation which he found monstrous and repellent.

  Dworn turned questioning eyes on Qanya.

  "I don't know what they are," she answered his unspoken query in a voice that faltered. "I remember this valley. But a few months ago it was uninhabited. All this has been built since then."

  * * * * *

  Dworn hesitated. He was seeing very clearly now just how hopeless this mad expedition was. Nevertheless, he had sworn vengeance, and he could at least perish with honor.

  But--Seeing the fear in Qanya's face, it came to him sharply that, after all, she had no part in his blood feud. She had served him well by bringing him this far. The vague plans he had had, of using the spider-machine for an attack on the enemy, stood revealed as rankest folly. Big and powerful as the spider was by ordinary standards, against such as those it could accomplish little more than a man with his bare hands.

  Which was what Dworn would be--He stifled further reflection, said crisply: "You can go now. I'll remain here; I have a duty to perform. But you can return--go make your peace with your people, or whatever you like."

  Qanya's black eyes met his squarely. "I won't," she said.

  "Now see here--" Dworn began, and broke off, thunderstruck.

  "B-but," he gulped, "you can't disobey me. The drug, the spider poison--"

  "Doesn't work on a born spider. I must have neglected to mention that, naturally, we're all immunized against it." She smiled with a flash of those sharp white teeth.

  "Then--then--" Dworn stumbled, feeling his preconceptions tossed helter-skelter. "Then you must have come with me--of your own free will!"

  "At first," murmured Qanya, "I knew you'd never trust me unless I pretended ... and I was curious, too, to see how it was to be the one that obeyed. And then ... well, you'd have known, if you'd ever seen how the drug really works. You should have realized, anyway, when I laughed at you.... But you do so love to be masterful don't you?"

  For a moment, Dworn's chief emotion was one of quick rage at the revelation of how thoroughly she'd deceived him. Then the anger subsided and left him feeling merely foolish, as he saw that she'd merely let him deceive himself. And, finally--as it came home to him that this girl had followed him of her own choice into exile and great danger--a new and quite unaccustomed feeling flooded in on him, a queer sense of humility.

  "I'm sorry," he said confusedly. "I didn't--I don't--understand."

  She breathed in a barely audible voice, "You said I was beautiful.... And you hadn't the drug."

  From far away, from around the vast, mysterious buildings, came mournful hooting sounds, a sighing and a sobbing as of some mythical monster in torment.

  Dworn was rudely recalled to realization of where they were--and of the fact that, as the spider-machine stood poised here on the cliff-edge, it would be starkly visible from over there, seen against the setting sun.

  He gave up trying to unsnarl the tangle of his own feelings. He said hurriedly, "But you should go back. There's no time--I have to go on. But there's no reason you should die."

  Qanya's face was drawn and determined. "No," she said flatly.

  "I don't know what you're talking about. But I won't leave you now...."

  The distant sighing rose to a whining roar.

  "Quick!" cried Dworn in desperation. "Find cover. I think we've been seen!"

  * * * * *

  The girl reached for the controls and the spider's engine raced up. But it was already late. Off yonder, along that one of the radiating runways that stretched toward them, something was moving, racing swiftly and more swiftly outward with its long shadow following it.

  All at once the moving thing left its shadow behind, and Dworn recognized it for an aircraft taking off.

  Then he had to snatch for a handhold as the spider-machine lunged into a dead run. At full speed on the level ground, it could make good time; the ground outside skimmed past at fifty or sixty miles an hour.

  Qanya had spied some rocky outcroppings, which might furnish a modicum of shelter, about a mile away and some distance from the brink of the cliffs, and she was heading for them. But the terrain nearer at hand was implacably flat--and the enemy was airborne, a vicious winged shape growing at terrifying speed. Its whistling roar swelled and grew deafening.

  Qanya shouted something inaudible and pointed. Dworn understood, and, holding on for dear life in the pitching cabin, clawed his way within reach of the fire-controls. Wrestling with the unfamiliar mechanism, he fought to train the spider's guns on the hurtling attacker.

  Puffs of smoke bloomed high in air--but any hit on such a fast-moving target, from so unstable a platform, would have been a miracle. The enemy screeched overhead, and an instant later flame and thunder erupted all around the running spider. The machine stumbled and for a moment seemed going down, but it righted itself and staggered on.

  Dworn shook his ringing head and saw the flier banking steeply half a mile away, while a second and a third were climbing against the sky, gaining altitude to dive.

  They couldn't last another thirty seconds, couldn't even hope to reach the doubtful cover of the rocks.... Up ahead, two hundred yards, was a low mound, only a few feet high, the only nearby elevation of any sort. And it was plainly artificial, though wind-piled sand had softened its outlines; others like it were scattered around the periphery of the great sink, and Dworn guessed their nature as he saw a column of the aluminum crawlers beginning to emerge from the side of the one just ahead. It must be the other end of a tunnel such as they had discovered among the cliffs....

  He nudged Qanya urgently, shouted, "He
ad for that!"

  She gave him a fleeting, wide-eyed look. The mound's low swell could furnish no shelter for the towering spider, and the tunnel mouth was of course much too small to enter. But she veered without slackening speed in the direction indicated.

  Dworn abandoned the useless guns. The mound, with a gleaming line of crawlers still parading out of it, swept closer; and at the same time the desert echoed back the screaming onrush of the two new attackers.

  Dworn wrenched open the cabin door with one hand. His other arm circled Qanya's waist, dragged her away from the controls. She cried in uncomprehending shock as he swung her before him into the open doorway. They swayed there, high above the speeding ground, wind whipping at them as the spider pounded blindly on.

  The mound loomed immediately at hand. Dworn prayed that he had judged the moment right, and with a mighty leap launched both of them out into space.

  A pistoning steel leg barely missed them. Even as they fell, the air was torn by explosions as the swooping fliers opened fire.

  * * * * *

  Dworn hit the ground with almost stunning force. His hold on the girl was broken and he was rolled helplessly over and over by his own momentum. But he fetched up on hands and knees, bruised and breathless but unhurt.

  From the corner of his eye he saw Qanya sitting up dizzily, half-buried in the drifted sand that had broken their fall. Apparently she too was uninjured, but she was staring in horrified fascination after her runaway machine.

  The spider careened onward, no hand at its controls. It hit the line of crawling little machines coming from underground; it knocked one spinning end over end, and stepped squarely on another, stamping it flat. It recovered its balance amazingly, and loped on, even though one leg was buckling beneath it--

  Then it was hit dead-on by what must have been at least a hundred-pound high explosive rocket.

  The winged killers shot low overhead with an exultant whoop of jets, peeling off to right and left of the column of smoke that rose and towered where the spider had been struck. Out of the cloud, metal fragments soared glinting upward and arced back to earth, and on the ground, amid smoke and dust, a metal limb was briefly visible, flexing convulsively and growing still.