Cycle of Fire

He found it eventually. For the moment he did not think of the hours that had passed; he simply slid his pack to the black surface, checked to make sure that it was securely fastened — he wanted no risk of books falling out as it flew — tested its weight calculatingly with one powerful arm, and then, swinging around completely after the manner of a hammer thrower, launched it across the crack. There never was any doubt that it would get there; actually it went a little farther than Dar Lang Ahn had hoped and for an instant he wondered whether it might not reach the rough ground just beyond his target area. It finally stopped rolling, however, in full view and apparently intact, and with that assurance he planned his leap and made it.

He would have given no more details than that, had he been preparing a report of the incident. Most men would have had difficulty in avoiding mention of their feelings as they rushed toward the edge, put every bit of effort they could raise into a leap as they reached it, looked for an instant into the sickening depth below, and then thudded painfully into rough, sharp, hard lava on the other side. One man did have a good deal to say about it, later. Dar Lang Ahn felt all the appropriate emotions as he went through this series of actions, but with the leap behind him he thought only of the books. He went on.

Theer was visibly higher when he encountered another crevasse between himself and the forest. This took less time to cross but still contributed its bit of delay; and finally, with the red sun well above the horizon and seemingly twice as large as it had appeared from the site of the glider crash, he was forced to admit to himself that he was going to be on the lava flow through the summer — and this was no time of year to spend a summer far from a large supply of water.

His death, then, would come somewhat earlier than he had expected, and something would have to be done about the books. Presumably there would be searchers when he failed to return home in a reasonable time, and he was close enough still to the usual air route between Kwarr and the Ice Ramparts for his location to be covered without the need for much imagination on any searcher’s part. What was needed was something to make his position visible from the air. He considered trying to return to his glider but realized he could never make the journey — for one thing he would be too weak to get across the deep cracks by the time he reached them. Of course, if he had realized how small his chances of crossing the lava field actually were he would never have brought the books from the aircraft in the first place; it had simply never occurred to him to doubt his ability to make the trip. Now he had to rectify his error, or at least make it possible for someone else to do so.

He had left no visible trail on the rock, naturally, so that finding his glider would do no good to the searchers. They would know the general direction that he had taken, of course, but since they would not know the precise time of the crash there would be no way for them to tell how far he might have traveled. They would not guess, any more than he had, that he might not have reached the edge of the lava flow; no one had any first-hand knowledge of the conditions so near a volcano.

His own body would not show against the lava to an observer at any likely altitude, for neither his size nor his coloring rendered him conspicuous. Since all the rocks were of nearly the same color he could not make any sort of contrasting pattern which could be seen from the air. There was nothing in his pack which would make a decent- sized signal flag or serve to paint anything on the rocks. The only things about him which held any possibility of use in this problem, as far as Dar Lang Ahn could see, were the buckles of his harness.

These were flat and of polished iron; they might serve as mirrors, though they were pretty small. Still, where there was no other hope he would have to make them do. He reached this decision while still plodding northward.

The question that remained was whether he should stop where he was and devote his remaining time to perfecting an arrangement of buckles which would have a maximum chance of catching a passing flier’s eye, or keep on until he was obviously near the end. The latter alternative had the advantage of giving him a chance to reach some particularly advantageous spot — perhaps some spire of rock or configuration of lava slabs which would help catch a searcher’s eye. That it also included a possibility of his finding water in time to save his own life was a point he did not consider; so far as he thought about that matter he was dead already. The only advantage of stopping now was that he could spend the rest of his life in the shade, which might be more comfortable than traveling farther under the blaze of the two suns. As might have been expected, he elected to continue walking.

He walked, or scrambled, or climbed, as circumstances required, while the red sun continued to rise and grow. It was starting to swing back in an eastward direction, too, but Arren’s steady motion toward the west made him, at least, still useful as a guide. Perhaps Dar’s course corrections were a little vague; perhaps his path, toward the end, could hardly be called a course at all, for as time passed and temperature mounted his mind dwelt more and more on the torturing thirst messages which his body was sending it. A human being would have been dead long since — dead and baked dry. However, Dar Lang Ahn had no perspiration glands, since his nerve tissue could stand temperatures almost as high as the boiling point of water, and in consequence he did not lose the precious liquid nearly as rapidly as a man would. A little went, however, with each breath that passed out of his lungs, and the breaths were becoming ever more painful. He was no longer sure whether the wavering of the landscape in front of him was due to heat or his own eyesight; frequently he had to turn both eyes on the same object to be sure he was seeing it accurately. Short spurs of rock seemed, for brief instants, to take on a semblance of living creatures; once he caught himself starting to leave his chosen path in order to investigate a slab of lava. It took long seconds for him to convince himself that nothing could really have dodged behind it. Nothing lived here; nothing could move. The sounds which reached his ears were simply the crackings as new patches of lava were caught by the sunlight and warmed. He had heard them before.

Still, it had been a very convincing motion. Perhaps he should go back to see —

Go back. That was the one thing he must not do. That, of all possible actions, was the one provably useless one. If illusions were snatching at his mind in such a way as to tempt him into an act like that he must have come closer to the end than he thought. It was time to settle down and set up his reflector while he still had control of his muscles.

He wasted no time in regrets, but stopped where he was and looked around carefully. A few yards away a slab of hardened lava had been broken from the crust and tilted up almost perpendicularly by the pressure of liquid rock underneath. Its upper edge was a good ten feet above the surface in the immediate neighborhood. This was more than twice Dar Lang Ahn’s height, but the sheet was rough enough to give a grip to his claws and he saw no reason to expect difficulty in setting up his buckles at the top.

He unslung the pack of books and lowered it to the hot rock. He made sure it was closed tightly and fastened it in position with one of the pack straps; it would probably rain even here when summer was over, and he could not afford to have the books spoiled or washed away.

Then he removed his harness and checked its individual straps with one eye, while he examined with the other the ridge where he planned to set the buckles. Two or three pieces of leather which seemed superfluous he laid beside the pack; the rest, with the buckles, he strapped once more about his body in order to leave both hands free for climbing.

The upper edge of the slab was as jagged as it had appeared from below and he had little difficulty in snagging the straps around the projections. He arranged one buckle so that its reflected beams pointed southward, rising at a small angle; the other he tried to set for the eyes of a searcher directly overhead. Neither, of course, was very likely to attract attention — they really depended only upon Arren’s light, since the red sun would only be above the horizon for a short time before and after summer and the air lanes would be empty during the hot season itself. Still, it was the best that Dar Lang Ahn could do, and with the bits of metal arranged to his satisfaction he took one more look around before descending.

The landscape was shimmering more than ever. Once again he felt almost sure that he had seen something disappear behind a slab of rock, in the direction from which he had come. He dismissed the illusion from his mind and began to climb down, paying close attention to his hand and foot holds; he had no wish to spend his remaining few hours with the agony of a broken bone, even if there was no way to make the time really comfortable.

He reached the bottom safely and, after a few moments’ thought, dragged his book pack into the shadow of the ridge. Then he settled himself calmly, using the pack as a pillow, folded his arms across his chest, closed his eyes, and relaxed. There was nothing more to do; perhaps his centuries-trained sense of duty was not exactly satisfied, but even it could not find a specific task to make him perform.

It would be nearly impossible to put his thoughts into words. No doubt he regretted dying earlier than his fellows. Quite possibly he considered the bleak landscape spread before him and wondered idly just how much farther he would have had to get in order to live. However, Dar Lang Ahn was not human, and the pictures which