Doomstar

'The scanner shows a bunch of critters gathering on an open landing place on this side of the bend. They seem to have spotted us. That's probably your tribe.'

The lifeboat swerved and dropped and presently was out of sight behind the buttes, for the catamarans had not yet turned the bend of the river.

'It is a mess,' the copilot complained. 'Old craters, old lava beds, rugged little mesas…'

'Do you see anything?' said Kettrick into the transmitter. 'Anything?' He was aware of Boker and Hurth and Gevan straining from their log perches.

'Nothing yet. We're circling, as low as we dare.' A long silence. 'No…' Some background gabble with the pilot. 'Nothing.' Another silence. Then, wearily, 'Oh, hell, we might have known. It was a good try, Kettrick, but we should have stuck with our pattern…'

The pilot's voice cut suddenly across his, loud and curiously flat. 'Look at that.'

The copilot made the beginning of a startled cry.

Then nothing. A crackle of static, but nothing more.

Kettrick worked furiously with the radio, shouting until he was hoarse. Finally he understood that they were not going to answer. The boat's radio was dead.

The boat itself had not reappeared, nor would it.

'They may have crashed,' said Boker. 'Or they may have landed. But did they sight the thing, that's what I want to know. Did they sight it?'

Kettrick shook his head. He kept the radio open but there was not a whisper from it, all the way down the bend of the river to where the tribe of Hhurr waited at the landing beyond the Many Hills.

And now the sun was beginning its last journey to the west.

Kettrick let the two chiefs have the first and most important part of their ceremonial greeting, and then he said, 'It is known to Ghnak, and no doubt to Hhurr also, for they are both great chiefs, that the sun must be saved before its setting. Where has Hhurr seen the magic of the sun-slayers?'

Hhurr, a muscular Krinn with many scars and the twenty heartstones around his thick neck, pointed to the tumbled land beyond the belt of forest.

'On the Black Hill the magic has been done.'

'Ghnak will lead us,' Kettrick said, 'and also Hhurr. They will lead us as swiftly as the wind.'

They set off, two tribes of Krinn now, or the males thereof, numbering something over a hundred, with the four men and Chai. The chiefs apparently were impressed by the need for haste. They ran, and the Krinn could run like deer. Chai kept up with them easily, though her tongue lolled and dripped in the heat. The men, weakened by two or three million years, soon had to submit to the indignity of being helped, and then carried by relays of grunting tribesmen.

They left the forest and the shade behind them. They ran in the naked blaze of the sun across stony slopes where scaled things hissed at them and slid away. There were lava beds and scattered malpais, and in a half circle to the west and north a nest of old volcanic cones thrust up. At their feet were the eroded remnants of a plain, flat rock tables of which the largest was the Black Hill.

It was black, with old lava, black against the charred stumps of the volcanoes, and it was impossible to see its top. But as they strained toward it, all at once they saw a quick bright flash against the blackness, and heard the unmistakable crack and whish of a missile going skyward, and Kettrick said, 'It is.'

The ragged file of tribesmen had stopped. They pointed, shouting harshly, at the already silent mesa and the sky. 'The magic! The magic!' cried Hhurr.

Ghnak thumped his chest and screamed with rage and fright. The men shook their weapons. Kettrick licked his parched lips and summoned all the voice he had.

'They throw spears at the sun! The sun-slayers! Kill! Kill!'

'Kill! Kill!' shouted the tribesmen. They leaped forward. The sun threw their tailed shadows long across the sand,

'There won't be anyone there to kill,' said Glevan.

'We'll kill the launcher,' Kettrick answered. 'It's all one to them.' He looked at the sun and the length of the shadows. 'How many more of them until sunset?'

'At least two,' Boker said. 'Maybe three.' He too looked at the sun and then at the distance they had yet to go. 'Better hope it's three. Unless you can raise the cruiser.' He glared at the fatuously crackling radio with a species of hate.

'Not yet,' said Kettrick. He turned it off. 'They had the bigger part of the globe to cover. They're working this way, but I don't think we'd better count on them.'

'What happened to the lifeboat?' Hurth muttered. 'That's what they must have seen, a missile going off. But what happened?'

Kettrick said, 'Don't worry about it now.'

The radio was an encumbrance and he shed it. They ran stumbling in the hot sand, blinded with glare, hauled and hurried by stinking tribesmen with the rank sweat dried and crusted on them. The shadows of the old crones lengthened and the Black Hill seemed to come no closer, and once again from its unseen summit a flaming spear went up to wound the sun. Kettrick felt himself very oddly empty of emotion. He was not excited or triumphant or even greatly interested. He had set himself to run toward a certain place, and he was running, and his energies were entirely absorbed in the performance of that act. He thought that probably he was just a little out of his head.

A broken wall of rock appeared before him. He began to climb it. On both sides of him and before him ragged lines of Krinn went clambering swiftly. He knew then that they had reached the Black Hill. He was not conscious now of being tired. He was astonished at how quickly he was able to scale the rock. And Chai, who was not so good at climbing, was beside him.

Strangely, here and there, Krinn began to lose their footing and fall.

Chai said urgently, 'John-nee…'

There were men on top of the mesa, firing at them. Beams from their weapons whiplashed downward, crackling, flicking away the tribesmen wherever they struck.

Kettrick shouted, 'Hug the rock! Stay close!' He did not know whether anyone heard him or not. The Krinn were screaming, howling their war cries. Some of them continued to scramble up toward the summit, spurred on by the sight of actual enemies. Others hesitated, fierce and furious as ever but daunted by the powerful magic of weapons that made the rock smoke and brushed their brothers away like flies. Kettrick thought that in a minute or two they would break and run.

He hunched himself into the rock as tight as he could and pulled out the weapon he had brought from the lifeboat. He began to fire upward at the heads and leaning-out bodies silhouetted above him against the sky. There were not many of them, no more than eight or ten. Other sidearms now began to crackle where Boker and the others were. Wooden spears flew upward ineffectually and fell back and one of them hit Kettrick a glancing blow, nicking his buttock. One of the silhouetted heads above him appeared to disintegrate. The body belonging to it came bumping and sliding down. Another head hung at a broken angle over the rock edge. The others drew back. The fire slackened and stopped altogether as a third man who had reached out to take careful aim at somebody, Kettrick or another of the humans who had punishing weapons, lost his own weapon and the hand that held it.

Kettrick shouted, 'Ghnak will lead us! Kill! Kill!' He began to climb again as quickly as he could. The Krinn howled and swarmed upward, their tails lashing. Boker shouted something but Kettrick could not hear what it was. Boker and Glevan came on. Only Hurth remained where he was. Rather incredibly, it seemed, he had grown tired of the battle and curled up to sleep between the rocks. Kettrick saw him and called to him twice before he realized that Hurth was dead.

The mesa rim was close above him now. The first wave of the Krinn went over it. There were more whiplash noises, and screams mingled with the war cries. Kettrick hauled himself over the edge, lying as flat as he could, and a dead Krinn gave him shelter.

The men who had fired from the edge had now withdrawn toward a structure erected on the flat top of the mesa. It was a moment before Kettrick's sun-dazzled eyes could distinguish its outline, even though he knew what it had to be. Then he understood why the lifeboat had been able to pass over it repeatedly at a low altitude without seeing it until the actual firing of the missile gave it away.

The top of the mesa was black with the old lava that gave it its name. The launcher was all black, the entire