The Valley of Creation

'Take warning not lightly to unchain the forces and powers within this ship, should you learn to master them! Take warning to let no unscrupulous or ignorant ones even know of these powers! Take warning from our own tragic fate!

'We who speak to you were not like you in body. We were not of this world of yours. Upon a world far out in the starry universe we were born and developed in intelligence and grew to great knowledge and power.

'Our world was a world of beauty, our cities were cities of laughter and light. But we aspired too high, we dreamed too greatly of conquering all nature and, finally, we unloosed powers that we could not chain again and that began to destroy our world.

'So we built this starship, and in it the last remnants of our race went out from our dying planet into the stars to find another world. We searched star-system after star-system without finding a world that fitted us — until at last a disastrous accident in space crippled our starship as it neared this System.

'Our crippled ship crashed upon this planet, in this valley. It could never fly again. And we could not build another ship, for we were dying. This world was wrong for us, its atmosphere and chemical composition poisoned us and that poison in our bodies left us not long to live.

'We knew that we were doomed. Yet we could not let all the hard-won intelligence and knowledge of our race thus perish! Therefore we determined that, though our bodies were dying, our minds should continue to live upon this planet.

'They could only do so, if we transferred our minds into the bodies of creatures native to this world. Only the higher creatures could house our minds. So we picked five different species from among them, the ape and the tiger and the horse and the wolf and eagle.

'At least one of those differing species, we hoped, would survive even if the others perished. So we took members of those clans and we so altered their brain-structure as to give them the power of telepathic speech and so altered their genes as to make the change in them hereditary. Then we transferred our minds into their bodies.

'Now that has been done. We wear the new bodies of the five Clans and our old bodies are dead. We go out now from this wrecked ship to begin again the struggle against nature on this planet.

'We know that a dark time is coming! We know that the children of our new bodies will not inherit all our capacity of mind, that our knowledge and wisdom will slip from their memories and be largely forgotten.

'But some day, in ages to come, some at least of the five species will slowly develop to intelligence approximating our own. Then they will understand the relics of our power left in this ship.

'When that time comes, take warning! Take warning not to loose doom upon yourself as we did upon our world! Remember always the tragedy of us, your star-born ancestors of long ago!'

* * *

Eric Nelson, stunned and incredulous, felt the strong vibration of thought die away in his mind. He stepped back in awe from between the platinum pillars, with Tark and Nsharra.

'Good Lord!' Nelson husked. 'That incredible story — it means that the myth of the Cavern of Creation is true!

Yes, it was true, that fantastic legend to which he had not given even second thought, at which even the Humanites had scoffed!

* * *

Out of this cavern — this cavern that was a buried star-ship of long ago—had come the first intelligence on Earth! Intelligence that had embodied itself in the five great clans of which man was but one.

'The Clans and men were really equal, from the first!' he whispered. 'In Brotherhood from the first! And then some of the human Clan, leaving this valley and spreading out over Earth—'

The riddle that had mystified anthropologists, the riddle of man's enigmatic origin in Central Asia, was solved at last. Long ago ancient and alien beings whose physical nature he might never know had transferred their minds into the bodies of the five species of Earthly animals. Had done that with machines which still survived, one of which Kree had used so weirdly upon himself!

And of the five Clans originally in this valley, it was the man-Clan that had gone out and subdued the rest of the wild earth and its animals, had made itself tyrannical master of the unthinking brutes outside the valley.

And this valley L'Lan, where the five clans were still equal in intelligence and where the Brotherhood still held true, had been forgotten by the conquering human hosts in the outer world! Nelson felt shaken by the revelation. He looked with widened eyes around the vast gloom, the towering platinum machines.

'To think of the powers, the knowledge, that have been hidden here for ages!'

'It is why this cavern is a forbidden place,' said Nsharra. 'It is why my father could not let any enter here to hear these records that prove the origin of the Brotherhood is no myth!'

Of a sudden Tark whirled and his thought came swiftly to Nelson and the girl. 'They come now from outside, into the Cavern!'

Nelson swung around, gripping his gun. He could not see the entrance of the Cavern-the shaking curtain of radiance from the cleft of cold fire barred his gaze.

Yet he trusted the wolf's instincts. He asked quickly, 'How many, Tark?'

'But four,' the wolf's thought answered. 'The two outlanders, and Shan Kar and Hoik of the Humanites.'

'The other Humanites would fear to enter!' Nsharra exclaimed, her eyes blazing.

'It gives us a better chance,' Nelson rasped. 'Nsharra, stay back here in the shadows. I'm going to try to get them as they come through that tube.'

He sprang forward and found Tark running beside him. 'It was for this fight that I came with you, outlander! I owe a blood-debt!'

They hastened into the shadowy interior of the huge wrecked turbine, to the end of the giant tube. Nelson crouched there, gun in hand, his other hand restraining the tense hairy body of Tark.

He had only half a clip left in his gun, and he knew he must wait until Sloan and the others came past the twist in the tube. He had to make sure.

He heard the slipping, scrambling sounds of their progress through the tube, and he felt Tark tauten beside him.

'Not yet!' Nelson told himself, sweating. 'Not yet—'

The scuffling of feet was louder, much louder. They had surely come around the twist in the tube by now.

But he had to be sure! He waited seconds longer, waited when he felt sure they were but yards away from him in the dark tube.

Then Nelson emptied his pistol straight down the tube.

'Piet, hold on!' yelled a muffled voice in the tube as the thunderous echoes died.

Nelson had heard his bullets whining off metal. He knew then that he had failed, that the amplification of sound in the tube had tricked him into firing too soon.

A whisper came down the tube to him. 'Give him—'

Then, a metallic something came bumping and rattling along the tube toward him.

'Grenade!' yelled Nelson. 'Back, Tark!'

He and the wolf recoiled and leaped to escape from the turbine interior as the bumping, rattling thing came out of the tube. As they burst out of the turbine, a terrific explosion blammed behind them. Murderous bits of steel thudded into the turbine walls, and a few that found openings whizzed over their heads.

Then Nelson heard the sharp rattle of submachine-gun fire, heard bullets ricocheting inside the huge turbine.

'I will not flee without killing!' flared Tark's thought. The wolf had turned, his hair bristling, great fangs gleaming.

'You wouldn't have a chance, Tark! They're clearing the way ahead with guns now! We may be able to evade them back in the shadows.'

* * *

Nelson knew with a cold and terrible certainty how small that chance was. Sloan and the Dutchman would methodically hunt them down, and he had not a shot left in his gun.

He and Tark ran between the platinum pillars of the thought-record, too swiftly to hear that mechanical epic