Captain Future 25 - Moon of the Unforgotten (January 1951) (2 page)

The paving stones were hollow under his feet, rutted by the tread of a myriad generations. The walls of the buildings rose on either side, some mere shells with the coppery planet-light shining through their graceful arches, others still tolerably whole with window-places like peering eyes, showing here and there a gleam of light.

Otho, moving catlike at Curt’s side, lifted his shoulders uneasily. “My back itches,” he said.

Curt nodded. “We’re being watched.”

There was nothing to show that this was so but he knew it as Otho did, without needing to see.

They came out into a wide square, from which many streets led off. In the center was a winged monument, so effaced by millenniums of wind and dust that it had the look of a grotesque skeleton, its eroded pinions stark against the sky. Curt and Otho paused beneath it, tiny figures beside that hundred-foot bulk of greenish marble.

Nothing stirred in the square. The deserted avenues stretched away, edged with clotted shadow. The fallen palaces and shattered temples reared to unknown gods stood still and brooding, remembering the banners and the glory, the incense and the crimson robes.

One or two of the streets showed life, where flaring light marked the wine-shops and the inns.

“Down there,” said Captain Future and they went on, their boots ringing on the paving blocks.

They entered the street that Curt had chosen. And as they walked a little crowd began to gather, softly, unobtrusively, the dark-faced men in dusty cloaks coming without sound from the doorways, from the mouths of alleys, from nowhere and everywhere.

They were not the young men, the hot-handed fighters. Most of them were grey and some were bent and even the youngest of them had an indefinable look of age, a thing of the spirit rather than the flesh. They did not speak. They watched the tall Earthman and the lithe one beside him that seemed to be a man. Their dark eyes glistened and they followed the strangers, borne with them like a ring of tattered shadows shifting, flowing, thickening.

There was a coldness on Curt Newton’s flesh. It was an effort to keep his hand away from the butt of his weapon.

“There it is ahead,” said Otho quietly. “The sign of the Three Red Moons.”

The soft-footed multitude around them swirled and coalesced into a silent barrier across the windy street.

Curt stopped. He did not seem to be afraid or even angry — merely curious. He regarded the wall of men with a patience equal to their own.

An old white-bearded man stepped forward. He was shorter by a head than the Earthman but he stood erect and there was an ancient beauty in his high-boned face, a deep grand sorrowful pride. His cloak was as old as he, dun-colored with the sifting dust but he carried it as splendidly as though it had been fashioned of the purple cloth of kings.

He said with an odd sort of courtesy, “There is no passage here for strangers.”

Captain Future smiled. “Come now, father — surely a thirsty man may refresh himself with wine.”

The old man shook his head. “You do not come for wine. Return to your own kind — there is nothing for you here but sorrow.”

“It has been told to me,” said Curt slowly, “that others have come here seeking joy.”

“Does not all mankind seek for joy? That is why I tell you — return to your own!”

CURT looked over the heads of the old man and the other men who were old and the men who should have been young but were not. He looked at the sign of the Three Red Moons and he said quite softly, “Will you stop me, father?”

The old man’s eyes were very sad. “No,” he said, “I will not stop you. I will only tell you this, that no man nor woman has yet been harmed nor will be harmed — but that he who comes in search of death shall surely find it.”

“I shall remember,” Curt said and began again to walk forward against the crowd, with Otho close beside him.

The ranks held unbroken, the rows of silent hostile faces, until he was almost touching them. Then the old man raised his hand and let it fall again in a gesture of finality. The crowd broke and the way was open. Curt passed on and behind him the men vanished one by one into the shadows again, like old leaves caught by the wind and whirled away.

Curt and Otho entered the Inn of the Three Red Moons.

The common room was large, with a vaulted roof of stone, black as though carved from jet. Lights flared in the corners and a score of men sat around antique massive metal tables. They glanced at the two strangers, then ignored them.

Curt and Otho sat down in an empty place and presently a dark girl came and brought them wine and slipped away again.

They sipped the strong spicy brown liquid. They might have been no more than two spacemen off from the port for a night’s pleasure in old Europolis. And yet they knew that eyes watched them, that the inn was too quiet. Captain Future’s muscles quivered with anticipation and Otho’s gaze was very bright.

Presently Otho said in a language not likely to be understood, “That young chap at the next table hasn’t taken his eyes off us since we came in.”

“I know.” The dark fierce young face and hungry glance were only too obviously turned toward the strangers. Curt thought that if anything happened it would be men like this they would have to deal with, men still free of the withering taint of age that seemed to overtake the Europans in their prime.

He beckoned to the girl again. “We’re minded to take a ride into the hills,” he said. “Can we hire mounts here?”

The girl’s face was expressionless. “That is Shargo’s province.”

“And where may we find Shargo?”

“Through that passageway. The paddocks are behind the inn.”

Curt laid a coin on the table and rose. “Come on, Otho, it’s getting late.”

They crossed the common-room and entered the passage. Without seeming to notice, Curt saw that the young man who had watched them left swiftly by the front door and that the others bent together in a sudden murmur of guarded talk.

The girl glanced after them. Her face held bitter resentment.

The passage was long and shadowy. They traversed it swiftly, hearing nothing to warn them of any danger. At its end it opened into a court containing ruined outbuildings and a stone-walled paddock in good repair. The wall was high, for the Europan beasts are good jumpers, and the gate was of iron bars.

A man came toward them from one of the ruined sheds. He was old and not nimble. He wore the leather tunic of a hostler and it was not even clean. But still there was about him the same look that Curt had seen before, the look of pride and inward vision, as though he saw the flaunt of silken banners in the wind and heard the trumpets sounding far away.

Captain Future repeated his request for two mounts.

He had expected refusals, at the least arguments and evasions. There were none. The old man shrugged and answered. “You will have to bridle them yourselves. In the day there is a young man here to hold the brutes and rein them — but the fools who wish to ride at night must catch their own.”

“Very well,” said Curt. “Give us the halters.”

The old man produced two arrangements of leather straps, bitted with iron. “Get them by the combs,” he grunted, “and watch their forefeet.”

He led the way to the paddock gate.

Curt looked around. The court was empty. It was very still. Otho whispered, “What are they waiting for?”

“Perhaps they want us clear of the city,” Curt answered. Another disappearance in the shadowy hills would be preferable from the Europans’ viewpoint.

Otho nodded. “The trap could be at the other end. These beasts have been there before. They must know the way without being guided.”

“One thing sure,” said Captain Future, “they’ll have to stop us somewhere.”

The old man lifted the heavy bar of the gate.

The paddock was not too large for the herd of twenty or so Europan mounts that it contained. They were huddled together, drowsing in the Jupiter-light — serpentine scaly creatures with powerful legs and tails like wire lashes. Their narrow heads were crowned with fleshy yellow combs. They blinked and peered at the men with shining wicked eyes as red as coals.

“Take your choice,” said the old Europan, standing by the gate.

Curt and Otho went forward with the bridles.

AT THEIR approach the beasts hissed softly and backed away. Their padded feet made a nervous thumping on the ground. Curt spoke softly but the herd began to shift.

“I don’t think they like the smell of us,” said Otho.

Curt reached out swiftly and caught one golden comb. The creature plunged and whistled as he fitted the rude bridle. Then suddenly from behind them there came the clang of the gate-bar dropping and he knew that there would be no waiting for the silence of the dark hills, that this, here and now, was the trap — and that they were in it.

Otho had spun around, holding his bridled mount. He was cursing the old man. Curt kept his grip on his unwilling mount, turning with it to keep clear of the clawed forefeet. The paddock walls were high, worn smooth as glass by the rubbing of many flanks. There was no escape that way.

The herd was stirring uneasily, moving with a hiss and flickering of scaly tails, a quivering of muscles. Curt cried out a warning to Otho but it was already too late.

A makeshift torch of flaming rags whirled in over the gate, leaving a trail of oily smoke. Curt heard the old man’s voice lifted in a cracked
Hai-hai,
urgent, shrill. A second wad of burning cloth shot in, dropping in the middle of the herd with a burst of sparks. Instantly there was brute panic, pent up and turned upon itself by the paddock walls.

Plunging, trampling, screaming, the penned beasts tried to flee the smoke and the stinging fire. Curt’s mount reared and dragged him and he clung to its comb with the grip of a man who knows he is lost if he lets go. He dug his heels into the dusty ground, twisted the brute’s head until its neck-bones cracked and leaped up, clamping his legs around the slender belly.

Dimly through the dust and turmoil he saw Otho. An ordinary man would have been trampled to death in those first seconds. But Otho was not a man. Swift, sure-footed, incredibly strong, the android had imitated Curt’s example and had swung himself to the back of his plunging mount, getting an iron grip on its comb.

It was only temporary escape. The maddened beasts had turned to fighting among themselves. Curt knew it was only a matter of time and not much of it before his creature would fall or be thrown. The paddock was a swirling madness of leaping bodies and tearing jaws and dust and noise. Nothing could stand for long in that.

The old Europan remained beyond the gate. He held another of the makeshift torches in his hands, waving it slowly back and forth so that all the beasts shied away from the opening.

A solemn proud fine-cut old man. Later he would be very sorry for this tragic accident. He would know nothing more than that two spacemen had drunk wine in the tavern and had then gone staggering in among the beasts and frightened them and been most regrettably slain.

Even in that moment of fury Curt found time to wonder what strange madness drove these men — the madness of the mysterious Second Life that urged them to any length.

He was trying to reach the gate when his mount stumbled over another that was down and kicking its life out in the dust and blood. He heard a wild yell from Otho and a commotion by the gate. The straining body under him staggered and fell. Desperately he pulled the creature’s head back, forcing it up, forcing it on its feet again, and suddenly there was a rush past him of slaty backs and outstretched necks, a squealing stampede outward and the gate was open.

He fought his mount to keep it back. Over the wall, Otho was riding a frantic demon, twisting its comb until it shrieked. In a matter of seconds they were alone in the paddock and the herd was stamping through the courtyard, scattering away down the dark alleys.

The old man was gone, presumably to cover in one of the sheds.

“The young one,” Otho panted. “Stand still, you son of a worm’s egg! The young one that watched us inside the inn — he drove the old man off. He opened the gate.”

The court was clear now. From the shelter of a broken wall a figure leaped and ran.

“Get him!” Curt yelled. “
Get him!”

He sank his heels in the scaly flanks and the creature hissed and went hard after the running shadow.

Chapter 3: The House of Returning

THEY caught him. They rode him down in a narrow alley, the dark young man with the fierce eyes, and he fought them but he did not draw any weapon.

Curt had no time for pleasantries. He leaned over and struck the young man hard on the side of the jaw, and pulled the limp body up before him.

“Out of the city,” he said to Otho. “This way, toward the hills. After that we can talk.”

They found their way out of the maze of alleys into a broad avenue spanned by massive arches, broken now, their heroic carvings shattered by the slow hammers of time. Curt and Otho sped beneath their shadows, alone with the wind and the blowing dust.