THE DAY OF THE BROTHERHOOD
Nelson stopped, stricken by a freezing awe that he had never felt before. It was not the mere fact of the thought-voice speaking in his mind that stupefied him. He was too accustomed to that, by now.
It was the power and the quality of this new mental voice. It had in it the vibrations of a mind of range and magnitude beyond his imagination. It was alien, yet had a tantalizing echo of familiarity.
"Take warning!"
Nsharra's voice broke the spell. She had stepped quickly with Tark to his side as he stood frozen between the platinum pillars.
"It is the voice of the ancients of the Cavern, Eric Nelson! Their voice, speaking from the dim past, from those!" She pointed at the great, glittering quartz spheres atop the two platinum pillars.
"Each time one steps between these pillars, their mind speaks — always the same. My father and all the Guardians before him knew it."
Nelson began dimly to understand. The mental voice he heard was a record — not a sonic record but a telepathic one imprinted somehow in those quartz spheres and reproduced to all who came between them.
How was it done? How could thought be recorded and reproduced? He did not know that, would never know. But that the ancients had been masters of telepathic science, his experience with the thought-crowns and the mind-transferer proved.
And now, after a pregnant pause, that cool passionless voice was speaking on in his mind.
"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 message begin again. They reached Nsharra, back in the shadows.
"I failed," Nelson told her bitterly. "They will come on now. You should not have come here, Nsharra!"
She looked at him steadily, her face a white blur in the shadows. "I think L'Lan dies tonight and, if it does, I have no wish to live."
He took her into his arms. And it was then, as he held her, that Nick Sloan's calm voice came out to them.
Sloan and the other three had issued from the tube into the turbine, but they had not come out of the turbine into the light of the cold fire. Nelson knew why. They were afraid he had more bullets.
"Nelson!" called the cool, hard voice. "Nelson, are you ready to quit making a fool of yourself and talk business?"
"Say what you have to say, Sloan," he called back.
The other's voice was almost a drawl. "Nelson, even though you got your body back, you joined the losing side and I guess now you know it. You're trapped, but I've no wish to rub you out. Give yourself up and I'll let you go free out of L'Lan."
Nelson thought swiftly. "You'd let the girl, and Tark, go with me?"
"Sure," came the quick answer. "Just toss your gun out and come out with hands raised."
Eric Nelson's mind was racing. He saw a vague possibility, a slender chance—
He put no faith whatever in Sloan's specious promise. He knew as completely as he could know anything that, when he walked out unarmed into the light, Sloan would give him a burst. But he had still one card in his hand that the others knew nothing of — a card that was a poor one, perhaps, but worth playing.
"I don't trust you, Sloan," he answered harshly. "But I'll give my gun to Shan Kar if he will guarantee our safety."
Instantly came Shan Kar's voice. "I will promise that, Nelson."
"Sure, and we'll stick by it," Sloan chimed in. "Won't we, Piet?"
"Then let Shan Kar come here and I'll surrender to him — but only to him," Nelson said.
There was a pause, a silence from the huge wrecked turbine. Then came the Humanite leader's voice.
"I am coming, Eric Nelson. Remember that if you kill me it will only seal your own doom."
Shan Kar came out into the light. He had sword in hand and his head was high, his stride confident as he came back toward the shadows. He glimpsed Nelson, standing with Nsharra and Tark in the shadows beyond the platinum pillars. He came toward them, his hand extended for the pistol that Nelson was holding out butt-foremost.
And then, as he stepped between the two quartz spheres on the pillars, Shan Kar stopped. A bewildered look came upon his face.
"What — what—?" he faltered, amazed.
Nelson knew. He knew that in Shan Kar's mind was now sounding that thought-record, that solemn message of the ancients.
"Take warning!"
Shan Kar stood rooted, listening — listening to that tremendous voice of the dim past repeating its saga of the coming of intelligence to Earth. And the Humanite's face grew strange.
Nelson knew when the record had ended. For Shan Kar moved forward again, hand still reaching out to take the empty gun. But he moved now like a man in a dream. And his eyes stared at them unseeingly.
"The word of the ancients!" he whispered. "But then it is true that the Brotherhood of the Clans is as old as man! Then the myths that we Humanites thought were lies are true."
"They are true, Shan Kar," said Nsharra. "You would not believe my father because you did not want to believe him. And he could not bring you in here to hear because the ancients themselves prohibited that unscrupulous or ignorant men should enter here. But they are true!"
Shan Kar's olive, handsome face was pallid. "Then what we Humanites have believed, the natural dominance of man over the Clans— that is the lie!"
Nelson almost pitied the Humanite in this moment. Shan Kar had built a fanatic belief upon a basis that now was swept away.
He saw in the man's face the awful realization that he had brought fire and blood and death to L'Lan for a fanatic faith in human right to rule that had no warrant in reality.
"You can pass that gun over to me," said Nick Sloan.
He and Van Voss, with Hoik behind them, had come out of the turbine, their submachine-guns held breast-high. They stood not a dozen feet behind Shan Kar.
Shan Kar, wild-eyed, swung around to them. His voice was a hoarse cry. "We have done wrong! The legend of the Brotherhood is true! This killing must stop."
"The thing I dislike about working with fanatics," said Nick Sloan boredly, "is that you can't depend on them."
He pressed trigger as he spoke, briefly. The little burst of slugs spun Shan Kar around and flung him into the dust between the pillars.
* * *
Sloan stepped forward, his eyes searching the shadows for Nelson and the girl. "Sorry it has to end this way, Nelson. You always were a fool in some ways. I hope—"
Nelson, almost dully, had watched him step forward. His last card, his hope of setting Shan Kar against Sloan by means of the thought-record, had failed him.
But had it? There was still a thin chance left if he could make it. Sloan stepped between the platinum pillars.
For a heartbeat, as the solemn thought-voice of the ancients automatically spoke to him, Sloan looked startled. That was the moment when Nelson charged him.
The submachine-gun blasted over his head with a fiery breath and voice of thunder as he hit Sloan low and brought him down. They rolled together over the Cavern floor, toward the shaking curtain of cold light, Van Voss running after them to get in a burst that would not hit Sloan.
"This for Barin!" raged a wild wolf-thought and, as he rolled, Nelson glimpsed Tark's great body at the Dutchman's throat.
Sloan was battering him with his knee as he strove to tear loose his heavy gun and bang it against Nelson's skull. Abruptly then Sloan quit that and pulled the trigger. Flame and hot lead plowed along Nelson's forearm — and Sloan instantly wrenched free.
Sloan jumped to his feet, on the edge of the cleft of cold fire, standing magnified to giant proportions by the curtain of shaking light behind him as he swiftly leveled his gun at Nelson.
"This time there won't be any—"
A slim, flying thing of metal flashed past Nelson's head from behind him — a flung sword. It struck Sloan, not point foremost as had been intended, but flatly. The impact knocked him backward.
His foot clawed the edge of the cleft, he staggered and toppled backward still gripping the submachine-gun, then vanished into that blaze of radiant light.
A scream came out of that glory of cold fire — a scream that made Nelson feel sick.
He forced himself to turn around. Van Voss lay staring up with pale empty eyes at the Cavern roof, his throat torn out. Tark's fangs showed red in the shaking glare and there was madness in the wolf's eyes.
"Hoik, listen!"
Shan Kar, sitting in the dust between the pillars with blood streaming from his breast, had uttered that whispered call.
And Shan Kar, he knew now, was the one who, with dying strength, had flung the sword and toppled Nick Sloan into the most terrible of deaths. The Humanite's face was a gray mask. Hoik, who had stood stunned by the swift turn of events, came toward him. Nelson, gripping his bleeding arm, went too.
"Hoik, listen to the record of the ancients — then let the others listen too," Shan Kar whispered. "Let the war end, the Brotherhood be restored. I sinned when I tried to break it."
Hoik looked up with sudden awe, as the man died. Nelson knew that he too now was hearing that solemn voice.
"You who shall come after us, take warning!"
* * *
It was dawn when Nelson came with Nsharra out of the Cavern. L'Lan lay before them in the rising sun, a valley half blackened and blasted by fire. The bubble-domes of Vruun glittered amid smoking ashes.
"But all the valley east of the river was untouched by fire," Nsharra said. "It is enough until the forests grow again."
The Humanites were gone — their warriors, led by Hoik, had gone back to Anshan. And they had gone silently and heavily.
It was not only because their leader was dead, their outland mercenaries and weapons lost, their campaign a failure. It was because the whole basis of their ambition for human supremacy had been swept away by the revelation of the ancients.
For Hoik had obeyed the dying command of Shan Kar and had brought the Humanites, one by one, into the Cavern to hear that mighty message of the ancients. And they had listened in sick silence.
"We know that we are guilty of wrong," Hoik had said, in parting. "But we will strive to redress the wrong. Anshan shall be a city of the Brotherhood as of old."
"The past is done," Nsharra had answered. "Let there be peace now in L'Lan."
* * *
The Humanites had so gone — but the Clans were waiting. Down on the slopes below the Cavern they waited — the packs of the Hairy Ones, the hot-eyed tiger Clan, the wild-maned brothers of Hatha. And overhead against the sunrise swung the hosts of the Winged Ones.
Hatha and Tark, Quorr and Ei, were waiting on the ledge outside the Cavern. Nelson heard their thought-cry.
"Nsharra, you are Guardian of the Brotherhood now!"
The girl looked at Nelson. "You can go from L'Lan with clear conscience now, Eric Nelson. You redeemed any guilt that was yours in bringing death to our valley."
Nelson said slowly, "I don't want to go, Nsharra. I've found something here that I never found in the outer world."
Her eyes were doubtful and at the same time glad. "Could you, a man of the different outer world, be happy here where there is Brotherhood of man and beast?"
"Nsharra, I learned what that Brotherhood can be when I ran in the body of Asha!" he told her.
He had learned, yes! He knew now that the ancient way of life that held in L'Lan was not really strange, that it was the outer world of rigid caste, of men-masters and enslaved beasts, that was really strange.
He would never again, Nelson knew, be at home in that world. He would suffer and endure with every driven beast in it, and the magic of L'Lan would tug in memory at his heart until it broke,
"I want to stay, to help keep L'Lan as it is and prevent the outer world from ever breaking in upon it!" he told her. "And I want to stay with you, Nsharra!"
Her eyes searched his face. "I want you to stay," she said.
Then, as incredulous hope and joy sang up in his heart, she turned and sent her thought and her voice ringing out.
"Clan-leaders, will you accept Eric Nelson into our Brotherhood?"
Tark's green eyes flashed bright as the great wolf strode forward. "He fought shoulder to shoulder with me! For the Clan of the Hairy Ones, I acclaim him brother!"
Up from the wolf-packs crashed the pack yell and the greeting thought.
"Hai-ooo, brother!"
Ei's thought came coolly, swiftly. "Tark says well. The Winged Ones accept him!"
"And my Clan," said Hatha. "I saw him fight in Anshan!"
Nsharra looked down at the tiger. Quorr wrinkled his terrible face.
"He nearly killed some of us once," growled Quorr's thought. "But he has bled for Vruun. Blood pays back blood! We accept him!"
Nsharra grasped Nelson's hand. "Now let us go down to Vruun, Clan-brothers!"
They went down the hill, in the rising sunlight, down toward the blackened forest and the forlorn city that would live again. And as they went the Brotherhood was all about them and over their heads was a thunder of wings.
THE END