Short Fiction

terror of Armageddon to the Varra. And the energy-beings never paused; their life and their future was in the scales. If Duncan broke through, they were doomed. He must be stopped.

---

They could not stop him! Almost blind with the agony burning within his brain, Saul Duncan nevertheless hunched over the controls, while the cannons thundered their demoniac message into space. By dozens and hundreds the Varra died, their energy-matrices wrenched and broken by the electronic bolts. Duncan and the ship were one⁠—and both were mad.

He got through. He had to. Nothing could have stopped Saul Duncan, not even the Varra. In the end, the black cruiser raced Sunward, cannons silent, for the Varra were scattered.

Duncan got up wearily. He stood above Andrea’s body, watching the still features, the long lashes that would never rise.

“It’s done,” he said. “Finished. Earth will get the message⁠—”

Earth would get the message. The Varra could not stop the cruiser now, and the radio would continue to send out its signal till the fires of the Sun swallowed the black ship.

Duncan knelt. His legs were weak. The radium, of course. His suit could not protect him from the fatal radiations of a pound of the pure ore. But the stuff had served its purpose. It had kept the Varra at a distance till Duncan could fulfill his vengeance.

And now it would kill him⁠—unless he replaced it in the leaden casket. But even that might not work now.

Duncan shrugged. It was better to die of radium burns than by the power of the Varra.

He would be dead long before then.

But the Varra would be hunted down, ruthlessly slain, their power broken forever. Earth-science would destroy them, as they themselves had slain so many, as they had killed Andrea.

The bellow of the rockets died. The ship held true to its course, plunging on faster and faster toward the sunlit worlds where men knew joy and laughter and happiness. It would go on, to the funeral pyre of the Sun.

But it would leave a message in its wake.

Crypt-City of the Deathless One

I

Icy water splashed into Ed Garth’s face and dripped down his tattered, grimy shirt. It was a tremendous effort to open his eyes. Fumes of the native Ganymedean rotgut liquor were swimming in his brain.

Someone was shaking him roughly. Garth’s stocky body jerked convulsively. He struck out, his drink-swollen face twisted with frightened fury, and gasped, “Ylgana! Vo m’trana al-khron⁠—”

The hand on his shoulder fell away. Someone said, “That’s it, Paula! The Ancient Tongue!”

And a girl’s voice, doubtful, a little disgusted.

“You’re sure? But how in the System did this⁠—this⁠—”

“Bum. Tramp,” Garth muttered, peering blearily at the pale ovals of unfocused faces above him. “Don’t mind me, sister. Beachcomber is the word⁠—drunk, right now. So please get the hell out and let me finish my bottle.”

More water was sluiced on Garth. He shook his head, groaning, and saw Tolomo, the Ganymedean trader, scowling down at him. The native’s three-pupiled eyes were angry.

English hissed, oddly accented, on his tongue.

“You wake up, Garth! Hear me? This is a job for you. You owe me too much already. These people come looking for you, say they want a guide. Now you do what they want, and pay me for all that liquor you buy on credit.”

“Sure,” Garth said wearily. “Tomorrow. Not now.”

Tolomo snorted. “I get you native guides, Captain Brown. They know way to Chahnn.”

The man’s voice said stubbornly, “I don’t want natives. I want Ed Garth.”

“Well, you won’t get him,” Garth growled, pillowing his head on his arms. “This joint smells already, but you make it worse. Beat it.”

He did not see Captain Brown slip Tolomo a folded credit-current. The trader deftly pocketed the money, nodded, and gripped Garth by the hair, lifting his head. The bluish, inhuman face was thrust into the Earthman’s.

“Listen to me, Garth,” Tolomo said, fairly spitting the words. “I let you come in here and get drunk all the time on the cuff. You pay me a little, not much, whenever you gather enough alka-roots to sell. But you owe plenty. People ask me why I let a bum like you come to my Moonflower-Ritz Bar⁠—”

“That’s a laugh,” Garth mouthed. “A ramshackle plastic flophouse full of cockroaches and bad liquor. Moonflower-Ritz, hogwash!”

“Shut up,” Tolomo snapped. “I let you run up a bill here when nobody else would. Now you take this job and pay me or I have the marshal put you in jail. At hard labor, in the swamps.”

Garth called Tolomo something unprintable. “Okay,” he groaned. “You win, louse. You know damn well no Earthman can stand swampwork, even with bog-shoes. Now let go of my hair before I smash your teeth in.”

“You do it? You guide these people?”

“I said I would, didn’t I?” Garth reached fumblingly for the bottle before him. Someone thrust a filled glass into his hand. He gulped the fiery purplish liquor, shuddered, and blew out his breath.

“Okay,” he said. “Welcome to Ganymede, the pleasure spot of the System. The worst climate outside Hell, the only world almost completely unexplored, and the nicest place for going to the dogs I’ve ever seen. The Chamber of Commerce greets you. Here’s the representative.” He pointed to a six-legged lizard with the face of a gargoyle that scuttled over the table and leaped into the shadows where the light of the radio-lamp did not reach.

Captain Brown said, “I can offer you fifty dollars to guide us to the ruined city⁠—Chahnn. And, maybe, I can offer you ten thousand bucks to do another little job for us.”

---

The shock of that was more effective than cold water had been. Garth jerked back, for the first time looking at his companions. There were two of them⁠—a man and a girl, their neat tropical outfits looking out of a place in this grimy dive. The man was thin and bronzed, looking as though all the moisture had been boiled out of him by hot suns. He was made