Short Fiction

beautiful bodies of the dwellers float hollow-boned, bare skeletons cleansed by the wandering denizens of the sea. The dead race lies forever entombed in its dead cities.

But a race still lives among them for awhile. A dark, alien race that destroyed its masters and shambles now among the ruins it made. Death lives with that race.

Out of the immense ocean dawn above the ravening sharks come down silently, one by one, to kill and kill⁠—and be killed. And on an island high over them, in the daylight he cannot see, a blind man sits on his beach with his strange sight focused in another world. A world of water and darkness and death.

He is not blind as other men are blind. He has a thousand eyes to see through. He had a vengeance to wreak. Some day that vengeance will be sated, when the last dark shambler dies. After that, Gresham will be content. He will give up his days then to looking at the world again through the strange, small lenses of other brains, and to the memory of beauty which he once saw so briefly, in the hour of its destruction, and will never see again.

In comparison to the memory of that beauty, all other men are blind.

The Power and the Glory

I

Transmutation

Carrying the coffeepot, the Belgian shuffled out of the room. The door thumped behind him. Miller met Slade’s inquiring stare and shrugged.

“So he’s crazy,” Miller said.

Slade drew down the corners of his thin mouth. “Maybe he is. But I’ve got other sources of information, remember. I’m sure there’s⁠—something⁠—up on Peak Seven Hundred. Something plenty valuable. You’re going to find it for me.” His teeth clicked on the last word.

“Am I?” Miller said sourly.

“Suit yourself. Anytime you feel like it you can go back to the States.” There was a threat in the way he said it.

Miller said, “Sure. And then you send a few telegrams⁠ ⁠… It was a sweet little frame you fixed up on me. A murder rap⁠—”

“Well,” Slade interrupted, “that happened to be a frame. I’ve got to protect myself, though, in case you ever want to turn State’s evidence.”

“I’ve done your dirty work for ten years,” Miller growled. “It’s too late now to try crossing you up. But we’re both guilty of one particular murder, Slade. A guy named Miller who was an honest lawyer, ten years ago. I feel sorry for the poor sucker.”

Slade’s strong, implacable face turned away from him.

“The man with the gun has the advantage. Up on Peak Seven Hundred there’s the biggest gun in the world⁠—I think. Something’s sending out terrific power-radiations. I’m no scientist, but I’ve got men working for me who are. If I can get that⁠—weapon⁠—from the Peak, I can write my own ticket.”

Miller looked at him curiously. He had to admit Slade’s strength, his powerful will. Head of a slightly criminal and completely unscrupulous political empire for a decade now, Slade was growing restive, reaching out for new worlds to conquer.

Word of this power-source on the peak in Alaska had sounded fantastic even back in the States but it seemed to fascinate Slade, who could afford to indulge his whims. And he could afford to trust Miller⁠—to a certain extent. Miller was in Slade’s hands and knew it.

They both looked up as the Belgian came back into the room, carrying a fresh bottle of whiskey. Van Hornung was drunk and well aware of his own drunkenness. He peered at them from under the huge fur cap he wore even indoors.

“Could man be drunk forever with liquor, love and fights⁠—” he murmured, hooking out a chair with his foot. “Ah well, it doesn’t matter now. Have another drink, gentlemen.”

Miller glanced at Slade, then leaned forward across the table.

“About Peak Seven Hundred, now,” he said. “I wish you’d⁠—”

The Belgian slapped a fat hand on the table. “You ask me about Seven Hundred. Very well, then⁠—listen. I would not tell you before⁠—I did not wish you to die. Now I am drunker and, I think, wiser. It does not matter whether a man lives or dies.

“For twenty years I have been neither alive nor dead. I have not thought nor felt emotion nor lived like a man. I have eaten and drunk and tried to forget. If you wish to go to the Peak I’ll tell you the way. It’s all quite futile, you see.”

He drank. Miller and Slade exchanged glances in silence.

“If you go,” Van Hornung said, “you will leave your soul behind you⁠—as I did. We are not the dominant race, you see. We try to achieve the summits but we forget that there may already be dwellers on the peaks. Oh yes, I will tell you the way to the Peak if you like. But if you live you will not care about anything any more.”

Miller glanced again at Slade, who gestured impatiently.

“I’ll take a chance on that,” Miller said to the Belgian. “Tell me the way.”

---

In the dim twilight of the arctic noon Miller followed his Inuit guides up the snowy foothills toward Seven Hundred. For many days they had traveled, deeper and deeper into this dry, sub-zero silence, muffled in snow. The guides were nervous. They knew their arctic gods, animistic, watchful, resented intrusion into sacred areas like Peak Seven Hundred. In their fur-hooded Eskimo faces oriental eyes watched Miller mistrustfully.

He was carrying his gun now. Two of the Inuits had deserted already, in the depths of the long nights. These two remained and hated him, and went on only because their fear of his gun was greater⁠—so far⁠—than their fear of the gods on Seven Hundred.

The Peak lifted great sheer cliffs almost overhead. There was no visible way of scaling it. But the Inuits were hurrying ahead as if they had already sighted a clearly marked trail. Miller quickened his steps, a vague uneasiness beginning to stir in his mind.

Then the foremost Eskimo dropped to his knees and began to scrabble in