(Original title: Star Man’s Son)

1. A THIEF BY NIGHT

A night mist which was almost fog-thick still wrapped most of the Eyrie in a cottony curtain. Beads of moisture gathered on the watcher’s bare arms and hide jerkin. He licked the wetness from his lips. But he made no move toward shelter, just as he had not during any of the long black hours behind him.

Hot anger had brought him up on this broken rock point above the village of his tribe. And something which was very close to real heartbreak kept him there. He propped a pointed chin—strong, cleft and stubborn—on the palm of a grimy hand and tried to pick out the buildings which made straight angles in the mist below.

Right before him, of course, was the Star Hall. And as he studied its rough stone walls, his lips drew tight in what was almost a noiseless snarl. To be one of the Star Men, honored by all the tribe, consecrated to the gathering and treasuring of knowledge, to the breaking of new trails and the exploration of lost lands—he, Fors of the Puma Clan, had never dreamed of any other life. Up until the hour of the Council Fire last night he had kept on hoping that he would be given the right to enter the Hall. But he had been a child and a fool to so hope when all the signs had read just the opposite. For five years he had been passed over at the choosing of youths as if he did not exist. Why then should his merits suddenly become diamond-bright on the sixth occasion?

Only—his head dropped and his teeth clenched. Only —this was the last year—the very last year for him. Next year he would be over the age limit allowed a novice. When he was passed over last night—

Maybe—if his father had come back from that last exploring venture—If he himself didn’t bear the stigma so plainly—His fingers clutched the thick hair on his head, tugging painfully as if he would have it all out by the roots. His hair was the worst! They might have forgotten about his night sight and too-keen hearing. He could have concealed those as soon as he learned how wrong it was to be different. But he could not hide the color of his close-cropped hair. And that had damned him from the day his father had brought him here. Other men had brown or black, or, at the worst, sunbleached yellow, covering their heads. He had silver white, which showed to all men that he was a mutant, different from the rest of his clan. Mutant! Mutant!

For more than two hundred years—ever since the black days of chaos following the Great Blow-up, the atomic war—that cry had been enough to condemn without trial. Fear caused it, the strong, instinctive fear of the whole race for anyone cursed with a different physique or unusual powers.

Ugly tales were told of what had happened to the mutants, those unfortunates born in the first year after the Blow-up. Some tribes had taken drastic steps in those days to see that the strain of human—or almost human-lineage be kept pure.

Here in the Eyrie, far apart from the infection of the bombed sectors, mutation had been almost unknown. But he, Fors, had Plains’ blood—tained, unclean—and, since he could remember at all, he had never been allowed to put that fact from him.

While his father had lived it had not been so bad. The other children had yelled at him and there had been fights. But somehow, his father’s confidence in him had made even that seem natural. And in the evenings, when they had shut out the rest of the Eyrie, there had been long hours of learning to read and write, to map and observe, the lore of the high trails and the low. Even among the Star Men his father had been a master instructor. And never had it appeared doubtful to Langdon that his only son Fors would follow him into the Star Hall. So even after his father had failed to return from a trip to the lowlands, Fors had been confident of the future. He had made his weapons, the long bow now lying beside him, the short stabbing sword, the hunting knife—all with his own hands according to the Law. He had learned the trails and had found Lura, his great hunting cat—thus fulfilling all the conditions for the Choosing. For five years he had come to the Fire each season, with diminishing hope to be sure, and each time to be ignored as if he did not exist. And now he was too old to try again.

Tomorrow—no, today—he would have to lay aside his weapons and obey the dictates of the Council. Their verdict would be that he live on sufferance—which was probably all a mutant could expect—as a worker in one of the cave-sheltered Hydro farms.

No more schooling, no fifteen or twenty years of roving the lowlands, with further honored years to look forward to as an instructor and guardian of knowledge—a Star Man, explorer of the wilderness existing in the land where the Great Blow-up had made a world hostile to man. He would have no part in tracing the old cities where forgotten knowledge might be discovered and brought back to the Eyrie, in mapping roads and trails, helping to bring light out of darkness. He couldn’t surrender that dream to the will of the Council!

A low questioning sound came out of the dark and ab-~ sently he answered with an assenting thought. A shadow detached itself from a jumble of rocks and crept on velvet feet, soft belly fur dragging on the moss, to him. Then a furred shoulder almost as wide as his own nudged against him and he dropped a hand to scratch behind pricked ears. Lura was impatient. All the wild scents of the woods were rich in her widened nostrils and she wanted to be on the trail. His hand on her head was a restraint she half resented.

Lura loved freedom. What service she gave was of her own choosing, after the manner of her kind. He had been so proud two years ago when the most beautifully marked kitten of Kanda’s last litter had shown such a preference for his company. One day Jarl himself—the Star Captain —had commented on it. How that had raised Fors’ hopes—but nothing had come of the incident, only Lura herself. He rubbed his hot cheek against the furry head raised to his. She made again the little questioning sound deep in her throat. She knew his unhappiness.

There was no sign of sunrise. Instead black clouds were gathering above the bald top of the Big Knob. It would be a stormy day and those below would keep within shelter. The moisture of the mist had become a drizzle and Lura was manifestly angry at his stubborness in not going indoors. But if he went into any building of the Eyrie now it would be in surrender—a surrender to the loss of the life he had been born to lead, a surrender to all the whispers, the badge of shameful failure, to the stigma of being mutant—not as other men. And he could not do that—he couldn’t!

If Langdon had stood before the Council last night— Langdonl He could remember his father so vividly, the tall strong body, the high-held head with its bright, restless, seeking eyes above a tight mouth and sharp jaw. Only—Langdon’s hair had been safely dark. It was from his unknown Plainswoman mother that Fors had that too fair hair which branded him as one apart.

Langdon’s shoulder bag with its star badge hung now in the treasure room of the Star Hall. It had been found with his battered body on the site of his last battle. A fight with the Beast Things seldom ended in victory for the mountaineers.

He had been on the track of a lost city when he had been killed. Not a “blue city,” still forbidden to men if they wished to live, but a safe place without radiation which could be looted for the advantage of the Eyrie. For the hundredth time Fors wondered if his father’s theory concerning the tattered bit of map was true—if a safe city did lie somewhere to the north on the edge of a great lake, ready and waiting for the man lucky and reckless enough to search it out.

“Ready and waiting—” Fors repeated the words aloud. Then his hand closed almost viciously on Lura’s fur. She growled warningly at his roughness, but he did not hear her.

Why—the answer had been before him all alongl Perhaps five years ago he could not have tried it—perhaps this eternal waiting and disappointment had been for the best after all. Because now he was ready—he knew it! His strength and the ability to use it, his knowledge and his wits were all ready.

No light yet showed below. The clouds were prolonging the night. But his time of grace was short, he would have to move fast! The bow, the filled quiver, the sword, were hidden between two rocks. Lura crawled in beside them to wait, his unspoken suggestion agreeing with her own desires.

Fors crept down the twisted trail to the Eyrie and made for the back of the Star Hall. The bunks of the Star Men on duty were all in the forepart of the house, the storage room was almost directly before him. And luck was favoring him as it never had before for the heavy shutter was not bolted or even completely closed as his exploring fingers discovered. After all—no one had ever dreamed of invading the Star Hall unasked.

Moving as noiselessly as Lura he swung over the high sill and stood breathing in a sort of light flutter. To the ordinary man of the Eyrie the room would have been almost pitch dark. But, for once, Fors’ mutant night sight was an aid. He could see the long table, the benches, without difficulty, make out the line of pouches hanging on the far wall. These were his goal. His hand closed unerringly on one he had helped to pack many times. But when he lifted it from its hook he detached the gleaming bit of metal pinned to its strap.

To his father’s papers and belongings he might prove some shadowy claim. But to that Star he had no right. His lips twisted in a bitter grimace as he laid the badge down on the edge of the long table before clambering back into the grayness of the outer world.

Now that the pouch swung from his shoulder he went openly to the storage house and selected a light blanket, a hunter’s canteen and a bag of traveler’s corn kept in readiness there. Then, reclaiming his weapons and the impatient Lura, he started off—not toward the narrow mountain valleys where all of his hunting had been done, but down toward the forbidden plains. A chill bom of excitement rather than the bite of the rising wind roughened his skin, but his step was sure and confident as he hunted out the path blazed by Langdon more than ten years before, a path which was not overlooked by any station of the outpost guards.

Many times around the evening fires had the men of the Eyrie discussed the plains below and the strange world which had felt the force of the Great Blow-up and been turned into an alien, poisonous trap for any human not knowing its ways. Why, in the past twenty years even the Star Men had mapped only four cities, and one of those was “blue” and so must be avoided.

They knew the traditions of the old times. But, Langdon had always insisted even while he was repeating the stories to Fors, they could not judge how much of this information had been warped and distorted by time. How could they be sure that they were of the same race as those who had lived before the Blow-up? The radiation sickness, which had cut the number of survivors in the Eyrie to less than half two years after the war, might well have altered the future generations. Certainly the misshapen Beast Things must once have had a human origin though that was difficult for any who saw them now to believe. But they clung to the old cities and there the worst of the change took place.

The men of the Eyrie had records to prove that their forefathers had been a small band of technicians and scientists engaged in some secret research, cut off from a world which disappeared so quickly. But there were the Plainsmen of the wide grasslands, also free from the taint of the beast, who had survived and now roamed with their herds.

And there might be others.

Who had started the atomic war was unknown. Fors had once seen an old book containing jotted fragments of messages which had come out of the air through machines during a single horrible day. And these broken messages only babbled of the death of a world.

But that was all the men of the mountains knew of the last war. And while they fought ceaselessly to keep alive the old skills and learning there was so much, so very much, they no longer understood. They had old maps with pink and green, blue and yellow patches all carefully marked. But the pink and green, blue and yellow areas had had no defense against fire and death from the air and so had ceased to be. Only now could men, venturing out from their pockets of safety into the unknown, bring back bits of knowledge which they might piece together into history.

Somewhere, within a mile or so of the trail he had chosen, Fors knew that there was a section of pre-Blow-up road. And that might be followed by the cautious for about a day’s journey north. He had seen and handled the various trophies brought back by his father and his father’s comrades, but he had never actually traveled the old roads or sniffed the air of the lowlands for himself. His pace quickened to a lope and he did not even feel the steady pour of the rain which streamed across his body plastering even his blanket to him. Lura protested with every leap she made to keep pace with him, but she did not go back. The excitement which drew him on at such an unwary sped had spread to the always sensitive mind of the great cat and she made her way through the underbrush with sinuous ease.

The old road was almost a disappointment when he stumbled out upon it. Once it must have had a smooth surface, but time, disuse, and the spreading greedy force of wild vegetation had seamed and broken it. Nevertheless it was a marvel to be examined closely by one who had never seen such footing before. Men had ridden on it once encased in machines. Fors knew that, he had seen pictures of such machines, but their fashioning was now a mystery. The men of the Eyrie knew facts about them, painfully dug out of the old books brought back from city lootings, but the materials and fuels for their production were now beyond hope of obtaining.

Lura did not like the roadway. She tried it with a cautious paw, sniffed at the upturned edge of a block, and went back to firm ground. But Fors stepped out on it boldly, walking the path of the Old Ones even when it would have been easier to take to the bush. It gave him an odd feeling of power to tread so. This stuff beneath his hide boots had been fashioned by those of his race who had been wiser and stronger and more learned. It was up to those of his breed to regain that lost wisdom.

“Ho, Lura!”

The cat paused at his exultant call and swung the dark brown mask of her face toward him. Then she meowed plaintively, conveying the thought that she was being greatly misused by this excursion into the dampness of an exceedingly unpleasant day.

She was beautiful indeed. Fors’ feeling of good will and happiness grew within him as he watched her. Since he had left the last step of the mountain trail he had felt a curious sense of freedom and for the first time in his life he did not care about the color of his hair or feel that he must be inferior to die others of the clan. He had all his father had taught him well in mind, and in the pouch swinging at his side his father’s greatest secret. He had a long bow no other youth of his age could string, a bow of his own making. His sword was sharp and balanced to suit his hand alone. There was all the lower world before him and the best of companions to match his steps.

Lura licked at her wet fur and Fors caught a flash of— was it her thoughts or just emotion? None of the Eyrie dwellers had ever ben able to decide how the great cats wer able to communicate with the men they chose to honor with their company. Once there had been dogs to run with man—Fors had read of them. But the strange radiation sickness had been fatal to the dogs of the Eyrie and their breed had died out forever.

Because of.that same plague the cats had changed. Small domestic animals of untamable independence had produced larger offspring with even quicker minds and greater strength. Mating with wild felines from the tainted plains had established the new mutation. The creature which now rubbed against Fors was the size of a mountain lion of pre-Blow-up days, but her thick fur was of a deep shade of cream, darkening on head, legs, and tail to a chocolate brown—after the coloring set by a Siamese ancestor first brought into the mountains by the wife of a research engineer. Her eyes were the deep sapphire blue of a true gem, but her claws were cruelly sharp and she was a. master hunter.

That taste possessed her now as she drew Fors’ attention to a patch of moist ground where the slot of a deer was deep marked. The trail was fresh—even as he studied it a bit of sand tumbled from the top into die hollow of the mark. Deer meat was good and he had few supplies. It might be worth turning aside. He need not speak to Lura—she knew his decision and was off on the trail at once. He padded after her with the noiseless woods walk he had learned so long before that he could not remember the lessons.

The trail led off at a right angle from the remains of the old road, across the tumbled line of a wall where old bricks protruded at crazy points from heaped earth and brush. Water from leaves and branches doused both hunters, gluing Fors’ homespun leggings to his legs and squeezing into his boots.

He was puzzled. By the signs, the deer had been fleeing for its life and yet whatever menaced it had left no trace. But Fors was not afraid. He had never met any living thing, man or animal, which could stand against the force of his steeltipped arrows or which he would have hesitated to face, short sword in hand.

Between the men of the mountains and the roving Plainsmen there was a truce. The Star Men often lived for periods of time in the skin-walled tents of the herders, exchanging knowledge of far places with those eternal wanderers. And his father had taken a wife among tine outlanders. Of course, there was war to the death between the humankind and the Beast Things which skulked in the city ruins. But the latter had never been known to venture far from their dank, evil-smelling burrows in the shattered buildings, and certainly one need not fear meeting with them in this sort of open country! So he followed the trail with a certain reckless disregard.

The trail ended suddenly on the tip of a small gully. Some ten feet or so below, a stream—swollen by the rain —frothed around green-grown rocks. Lura was on her belly, pulling her body forward along the rim of the ravine. Fors dropped down and inched behind a bush. He knew better than to interfere with her skilled approach.

When the tip of her brown tail quivered he watched for a trembling of Lura’s flanks which would signalize her spring. But instead the tail suddenly bristled and the shoulders hunched as if to put a brake upon muscles already tensed. He caught her message of bewilderment, of disgust and, yes, of fear.

He knew that he had better eyesight than almost all of the Eyrie men, that had been proved many times. But what had stopped Lura in her tracks was gone. True, upstream a bush still swayed as if something had just pushed past it. But the sound of the water covered any noise and although he strained—there was nothing to see.

Lura’s ears lay flat against her skull and her eyes were slits of blazing rage. But beneath the rage Fors grasped another emotion—almost fear. The big cat had come across something strange and therefore to be considered with suspicion. Aroused by her message Fors lowered himself over the edge of the gully. Lura made no attempt to stop him. Whatever had troubled her was gone, but he was determined to see what traces it might have left in its passing.

The greenish stones of the river bank were sleek and slippery with spray, and twice he had to catch hurriedly at bushes to keep from falling into the stream. He got to his hands and knees to move across one rock and then he was at the edge of the bush which had fluttered.

A red pool, sticky but already being diluted by the rain and the spray, filled a clay hollow. He tasted it with the aid of a finger. Blood. Probably that of the deer they had been following.

Then, just beyond, he saw the spoor of the hunter that had brought it down. It was stamped boldly into the clay, deeply as if the creature that made it had balanced for a moment under a weight, perhaps the body of the deer. And it was too clear to mistake the outline—the print of a naked foot.

No man of the Eyrie, no Plainsman had left that trackl It was narrow and the same width from heel to toe—as if the thing which had left it was completely flat-footed. The toes were much too long and skeleton-thin. Beyond their tips were indentations of—not nails—but what must be real claws!

Fors’ skin crawled. Its was unhealthy—that was the word which came into his mind as he stared at the track. He was glad—and then ashamed of that same gladness— that he had not seen the hunter in person.

Lura pushed past him. She tasted the blood with a dainty tongue and then lapped it once or twice before she came on to inspect his find. Again flattened ears and wrinkled, snarling lips gave voice to her opinion of the vanished hunter. Fors strung his bow for action. For the first time the chill of the day struck him. He shivered as a flood of water spouted at him over the rocks.

With more caution they went back up the slope. Lura showed no inclination to follow any trail the unknown hunter might have left and Fors did not suggest it to her. This wild world was Lura’s real home and more than once the life of a Star Man had “depended upon the instincts of his hunting cat. If Lura saw no reason to risk her skin downriver, he would abide by her choice.

They came back to the road. But now Fors used hunting craft and the trail-covering tricks which normally one kept only for the environs of a ruined city—those haunted places where death still lay in wait to strike down the unwary. It had stopped raining but the clouds did not lift.

Toward noon he brought down a fat bird Lura flushed out of a tangle of brush and they shared the raw flesh of the fowl equally.

It was close to dusk, a shadow time coming early because of the storm, when they came out upon a hill above the dead village the old road served.

2. INTO THE MIDST OF YESTERDAY

Even in the pre-Blow-up days when it had been lived in, the town must have been neither large nor impressive. But to Fors, who had never before seen any buildings but those of the Eyrie, it was utterly strange and even a bit frightening. The wild vegetation had made its claim and moldering houses were now only lumps tinder the greenery. One water-worn pier at the edge of the river which divided the town marked a bridge long since fallen away.

Fors hesitated on the heights above for several long minutes. There was a forbidding quality in that tangled wilderness below, a sort of moldy rankness rising on the evening wind from the hollow which cupped the ruins. Wind, storm and wild animals had had their way there too long.

On the road to one side was a heap of rusted metal which he thought must be the remains of a car such as the men of the old days had used for transportation. Even then it must have been an old one. Because just before the Blow-up they had perfected another type, powered by atom engines. Sometimes Star Men had found those almost intact. He skirted the wreckage and, keeping to the thread of battered road, went down into the town.

Lura trotted beside him, her head high as she tested each passing breeze for scent. Quail took flight into the tall grass and somewhere a cock pheasant called. Twice the scut of a rabbit showed white and clear against the green.

There were flowers in that tangle, defending themselves with hooked thorns, the running vines which bore them looped and relooped into barriers he could not crash through. And all at once the setting sun broke between cloud lines to bring their scarlet petals into angry life. Insects chirped in the grass. The storm was over.

The travelers pushed through into an open space bordered on all sides by crumbling mounds of buildings. From somewhere came the sound of water and Fors beat a bath through the rank shrubbery to where a trickle of a stream fed a manmade basin.

In the lowlands water must always be suspect—he knew that. But the clear stream before him was much more appetizing than the musty stuff which had sloshed all day in the canteen at his belt. Lura lapped it unafraid, shaking her head to free her whiskers from stray drops. So he dared to cup up a palmful and sip it gingerly.

The pool lay directly before a freak formation of rocks which might have once been heaped up to suggest a cave. And the mat of leaves which had collected inside there was dry. He crept in. Surely there would be no danger in camping here. One never slept in any of the old houses, of course. There was no way of telling whether the ghosts of ancient disease still lingered in their rottenness. Men had died from that carelessness. But here—In among the leaves he saw white bones. Some other hunter—a four-footed one—had already dined.

Fors kicked out the refuse and went prospecting for wood not too sodden to burn. There were places in and among the clustered rocks where winds had piled branches and he returned to the cave with one, then two, and finally three armloads, which he piled within reaching distance.

Out in the plains fire could be an enemy as well as a friend. A carelessly tended blaze in the wide grasslands might start one of the oceans of flame which would run for miles driving all living things before it. And in an enemy’s country it was instant betrayal. So even when he had his small circle of sticks in place Fors hesitated, flint and steel in hand. There was the mysterious hunter—what if he were lurking now in the maze of the ruined town?

Yet both he and Lura were chilled and soaked by the rain. To sleep cold might mean illness to come. And, while he could stomach raw meat when he had to, he relished it broiled much more. In the end it was the thought of the meat which won over his caution, but even when a thread of flame arose from the center of his wheel of sticks, his hand still hovered ready to put

it out. Then Lura came up to watch the flames and he knew that she would not be so at her ease if any danger threatened. Lura’s eyes and nose were both infinitely better than his own.

Later, simply by freezing into a hunter’s immobility by the pool, he was able to knock over three rabbits. Giving Lur.a two, he skinned and broiled the third. The setting sun was red and by the old signs he could hope for a clear day tomorrow. He licked his fingers, dabbled them in the water, and wiped them on a tuft of grass. Then for the first time that day he opened the pouch he had stolen before the dawn.

He knew what was inside, but this was the first time in years that he held in his hand again the sheaf of brittle old papers and read the words which had been carefully traced across them in his father’s small, even script. Yes —he was humming a broken little tune—it was here, the scrap of map his father had treasured so—the one which showed the city to the north, a city which his father had hoped was safe and yet large enough to yield rich loot for the Eyrie.

But it was not easy to read his father’s cryptic notes. Langdon had made them for his own use and Fors could only guess at the meaning of such directions as “snake river to the west of barrens,” “Northeast of the wide forest” and all the rest. Landmarks on the old maps were now gone, or else so altered by time that a man might pass a turning point and never know it. As Fors frowned over the scrap which had led his father to his death he began to realize a little of the enormity of the task before him. Why, he didn’t even know all the safe trails which had been blazed by the Star Men through the years, except by hearsay. And if he became lost— His fingers tightened around the roll of precious papers. Lost in the lowlands! To wander off the trails—!

Silky fur pressed against him and a round head butted his ribs. Lura had caught that sudden nip of fear and was answering it in her own way. Fors’ lungs filled slowly. The humid air of the lowlands lacked the keen bite of the mountain winds. But he was free and he was a man.

To return to the Eyrie was to acknowledge defeat. What if he did lose himself down here? There was a whole wide land to make his own! Why, he could go on and on across it until he reached the salt sea which tradition said lay at the rim of the world. This whole land was his for the exploring!

He delved deeper into the bag on his knee. Besides the notes and the torn map he found the compass he had hoped would be there, a small wooden case containing pencils, a package of bandages and wound salve, two small surgical knives, and a roughly fashioned notebook —the daily record of a Star Man. But to his vast disappointment the entries there were merely a record of distances. On impulse he set down on one of the blank pages an account of his own day’s travel, trying to make a drawing of the strange footprint. Then he repacked the pouch.

Lura’ stretched out on the leaf bed and he flopped down beside her, pulling the blanket over them both. It was twilight now. He pushed the sticks in toward the center of the fire so that unburnt ends would be consumed. The soft rumble of the cat’s purr as she washed her paws, biting at the spaces between her claws, made his eyes heavy. He flung an arm over her back and she favored him with a lick of her-tongue. The rasp of it across his skin was the last thing he clearly remembered. There were birds in the morning, a whole flock of them, and they did not approve of Lura. Their scolding cries brought Fors awake. He rubbed his eyes and looked out groggily at a gray world. Lura sat in the mouth of the cave, paying no attention to the chorus over her head. She yawned and looked back at Fors with some impatience.

He dragged himself out to join her and pulled off his roughly dried clothes before bathing in the pool. It was cold enough to set him sputtering and Lura withdrew to a safe distance. The birds flew away in a black flock. Fors dressed, lacing up his sleeveless jerkin and fastening his boots and belt with extra care.

A more experienced explorer would not have wasted

time on the forgotten town. Long ago any useful loot it might have once contained had either been taken or had moldered into rubbish. But it was the first dead place Fors had seen and he could not leave it without some examination. He followed the road around the square. Only one building still stood unharmed enough to allow entrance. Its stone walls were rank with ivy and moss and its empty windows blind. He shuffled through the dried leaves and grass which masked the broad flight of steps leading to its wide door.

There was the whir of disturbed grasshoppers in the leaves, a wasp sang past. Lura pawed at something which lay just within the doorway. It rolled away into the dusk of the interior and they followed. Fors stopped to trace with an inquiring finger the letters on a bronze plate. “First National Bank of Glentown.” He read the words aloud and they echoed hollowly down the long room, through the empty cage-like booths along the wall.

“First National Bank,” he repeated. What was a bank? He had only a vague idea—some sort of a storage place. And this dead town must be Glentown—or once it had been Glentown.

Lura had found again her round toy and was batting it along the cracked flooring. It skidded to strike the base of one of the cages just in front of Fors. Round eyeholes stared up at him accusingly from a half-crushed skull. He stooped and picked it up to set it on the stone shelf. Dust arose in a thick puff. A pile of coins spun and jingled in all directions, their metallic tinkle clear.

There were lots of the coins here, all along the shelves behind the cage fronts. He scooped up handfuls and sent them rolling to amuse Lura. But they had no value. A piece of good, rust-proof steel would be worth the taking—not these. The darkness of the place began to oppress him and no matter which way he turned he thought he could feel the gaze of that empty skull. He left, calling Lura to follow.

There was a dankness in the heart of this town, the air here had the faint corruption of ancient decay, mixed with the fresher scent of rotting wood and moldering vegetation. He wrinkled his nose against it and pushed on down a choked street, climbing over piles of rubble, heading toward the river. That stream had to be crossed some way if he were to travel straight to the goal his father had mapped. It would be easy for him to swim the thick brownish water, still roily from the storm, but he knew that Lura would not willingly venture in and he was certainly not going to leave her behind.

Fors struck out east along the bank above the flood. A raft of some sort would be the answer, but he would have to get away from the ruins before he could find trees. And he chafed at the loss of time.

Th’ere was a sun today, climbing up, striking specks of light from the water. By turning his head he could still see the foothills and, behind them, the blueish heights down which he had come twenty-four hours before. But he glanced back only once, his attention was all for the river now.

Half an hour later he came across a find which saved him hours of back-breaking labor. A sharp break in the bank outlined a narrow cove where the rive rose during the spring freshets. Now it was half choked with drift, from big logs to delicate, sunbleached twigs he could snap between his fingers. He had only to pick and choose.

By the end of the morning he had a raft, crude and certainly not intended for a long voyage, but it should serve to float them across. Lura had her objections to the foolishness of trusting to such a crazy woven platform. But, when Fors refused to stay safely ashore, she pulled herself aboard it, one cautions paw testing each step before she put her full weight upon it. And in the exact middle she squatted down with a sigh as Fors leaned hard on his pole and pushed off.

The weird craft showed a tendency to spin around which he had to work against. And once his pole caught in a mud bank below and he was almost jerked off into the flood. But as the salty sweat stung across his lips and burned in his blistered palms he could see that the current, though taking them downstream, was slowly nudging them toward the opposite bank.

Sun rays reflected by the water made them both warm and thirsty, and Lura gave small meowing whines of self-pity all the rest of the hour. Still, she grew accustomed enough to the new mode of travel to sit up and watch keen-eyed when a fish rose to snap at a fly. Once they slipped past a mass of decayed wreckage which must have been the remains of a boat, and twice swept between abutments of long-vanished bridges. This had been a thickly settled territory before the Blow-up. Fors tried to imagine what it had looked like when the towns had been lived in, the roads had been busy with traffic, when there had been boats on the river—

Since the current was taking them in the general direction of the route eastward he did not struggle too quickly to reach the other side. But when a portion of their shaky raft suddenly broke off and started a separate voyage of its own, he realized that such carelessness might mean trouble and he worked with the pole to break the grip of the current and reach the shore. There were bluffs along the river, cutting off easy access to the level lands behind them and he watched anxiously for a cove or sandbank which give them a fair landing.

He had to be satisfied with a very shallow notch where a landslide had brought down a section of the bank containing two trees which now formed a partial barrier out from the shore. The raft, after much back-breaking labor on his part, caught against these, shivered against the pull of the water, and held. Lura did not wait, but was gone in a single leap to the solid footing of the tree trunks. Fors grabbed up his belongings and followed, none too soon, as the raft split and whirled around, shaking into pieces which were carried on.

A hard scramble up the greasy clay of the bank brought them into open country once more. Grass grew tall, bushes spread in dusty blotches across the land and there were thickets of saplings reclaiming the old fields. But here the wild had not altogether conquered land tamed by centuries of the plow and the reaper.

Lura let him know that it had been too long since their last meal and she intended to do something about supplies. She set off across the faint boundaries of the old fields with grim purpose in every line of her graceful feline body. Grouse scuttled from underfoot and there were rabbits everywhere, but she disdained to notice such small game, pushing on, with Fors half a field behind her, toward a slope which was crowned with a growth of trees, almost a full wood.

Halfway up she paused, the tip of her tail quivered, the red rosette of her tongue showed briefly between her teeth. Then she was gone again, fading away into the tall grass as silently and effortlessly as the breeze might pass. Fors stepped back into the shade of the nearest tree. This was Lura’s hunt and he must leave it to her.

He looked out over the waving grass. It seemed to be some form of stunted grain, not yet quite ripe, for it had a seed head forming. The sky was blue with small white clouds drifting across it as if the storm winds had never torn them, although at his feet lay a branch splintered and broken by yesterday’s wind.

A hoarse bellowing brought him out of his half dream, bow in hand. It was followed by the spitting squall which was Lura’s war cry. Fors began to run up the slope toward the sound. But hunter’s caution kept him to such shelter as the field afforded so he did not burst rashly out onto the scene of the combat.

Lura had tackled big game! He caught the sun flash on her tawny fur as she leaped away from an inert red-brown body just in time to escape the charge of a larger beast. A wild cow! And Lura had killed her calf!

Fors’ arrow was already in the air. The cow bellowed again and tossed her wickedly horned head. She made a shambling run to the body of her calf, snorting in red rage. Then crimson froth puffed from her wide nostrils and she stumbled to her knees and fell on her side. Lura’s round head shot up above a stand of thick grass and she moved out to the side of her prey. Fors came from the trees where he had taken cover. He would have echoed Lura’s rasping purr had it been in his power. That arrow had gone straight and true to the mark he had set it.

It was a pity to have to waste all that meat. Enough to keep three Eyrie families for a week lay there. He prodded the cow with a regretful toe before starting to butcher the calf.

He could, of course, try to jerk the meat. But he was unsure of the right method and he could not carry it with him anyway. So he contended himself with preparing what he could for the next few days while Lura, after feasting, slept under a bush, rousing now and then to snap at the gathering flies.

They made camp that night a field or two beyond the kill, in the corner of an old wall. Piles of fallen stone turned it into a position which could be defended if the need arose. But neither slept well. The fresh meat they had left behind drew night rovers. There was a scream or two which must have come from Lura’s wild relatives and she growled in answer. Then in the early dawn there was a baying cry which Fors was unable to identify, woods learned as he was. But Lura went wild when she heard it, spitting in sheer hate, her fur rising stiff along her backbone.

It was early when Fors started on, striking across the open fields in the line set by his compass. Today he made no effort to keep cover or practice caution. He could see no menace in these waste fields. Why had there been all the talk back in the Eyrie about the danger in the lowlands? Of course, one did keep away from the “blue” patches where radiation still meant death even after all these years. And the Beast Things were always to be dreaded—had not Langdon died in their attack? But as far as the Star Men had been able to discover those nightmare creatures kept to the old cities and were not to be feared in the open. Surely these fields must be as safe for man as the mountain forests which encircled the Eyrie.

He took an easy curve and came out suddenly on a sight which brought him up—blinking. Here was a road —but such a road! The broken concrete was four times as wide as any he had seen—it had really been two roads running side by side with a stretch of earth between them, two wide roads running smoothly from one horizon to another.

But not two hundred yards from where he stood gaping, the road was choked with a tangle of rusting metal. A barrier of broken machines filled it from ditch to ditch. Fors approached it slowly. There was something about that monstrous wall which for forbidding—even though he knew that it had stood so for perhaps two hundred years. Black crickets jumped out of the weeds before him and a mouse flashed across a stretch of clear stone.

He rounded the jumble of wrecked machines. They must have been traveling along the road in a line when death had struck mysteriously, struck so that some of the machines had rammed others or wavered off to pile up in wild wreckage. Others stood solitary as if the dying driver had been able to bring them to a safe halt before he succumbed. Fors tried to pick out the outlines and associate what he saw with the ancient pictures. That—that was certainly a “tank,” one of the moving fortresses of the Old Ones. Its gun still pointed defiantly to the sky. Two, four, five more he counted, and then gave up.

The column of machines stretched out in its forgotten disaster for almost a mile. Fors brushed along beside it in the waist-high weeds which bordered the road. He had a queer distaste for approaching the dead machines more closely, no desire to touch any of the bits of rusted metal. Here and there he saw one of the atom-powered vehicles, seeming almost intact. But they were dead too. All of it was dead, in a horrible way. He experienced a vague feeling of contamination from just walking beside the wreckage.

There were guns on the moving forts, guns which still swung ready, and there had been men, hundreds of men. He could see their white bones mixed with the rust and the debris driven in by years of wind “and storm. Guns and men—where had they been going when the end came? And what was the end? There were none of the craters he had been told were to be found where bombs had fallen—just smashed machines and men, as if death had come as a mist or a wind.

Guns and men on the march—maybe to repel invaders. The book of air-borne messages treasured in the Eyrie had spoken once or twice of invaders coming from the sky—enemies who had struck with paralyzing swiftness. But something must have happened in turn to that enemy • —or else why had the invaders not made the land their own? Probably the answer to that question would never be known.

Fors reached the end of the blasted column. But he kept on walking along the clean earth until he topped a rise and could no longer sight the end of a wasted war. Then he dared once more to walk the road of the Old Ones.

3. THE DABK HUNTER

About half a mile farther on the shadow of a woodland swallowed up the road. Fors’ heart lifted when he saw it. These open fields were strange to a mountain-born man but he felt at home in a thick cloak of trees as the one before him now.

He was trying to remember the points on the big map which hung on the wall of the Star House, the map to which was added a tiny mark at the return of each roving explorer. This northern route crossed the wedge end of a portion of territory held loosely by Plainsmen. And the Plainsmen had horses—useless in the mountains and so untamed by his people—but very needful in this country of straight distances. To have a horse at his service now—

The cool of the woods lapped him in and he was at home at once, as was Lura. They padded on, their feet making but the faintest whisper of sound. It was a scent carried by a tiny puff of breeze which brought them up-Wood smoke!

Fors’ thought met Lura’s and agreed. She stood for a long moment, testing the air with her keener nostrils, and then she turned aside, pushing between two birches. Fors scraped after her. The guiding puff of wind was gone, but he could smell something else. They were approaching a body of water—not runing water or the sound of its passing would be heard.

There was a break in the foliage ahead. He saw Lura flatten herself out on a rock surface which was almost the same color as her own creamy hide, flatten and creep. And he hunkered down to follow her example, the gritty stone biting knees and hands as he wormed out beside her.

They were belly down on a spur of rock which overhung the surface of a woods-hemmed lake. Not far beyond a thread of stream trickled away and he could sp»t two islands, the nearest joined to the mainland by a series of stepping stones. On the shores of this islet crouched someone very busy over a cooking fire.

The stranger was no mountainer, that was certain. In the first place his wide-shouldered, muscular bronze body was bare to the waist and at least five shades darker as to skin tint than the most deeply tanned of the Eyrie men. The hair on his round skull was black and tightly curled. He had strongly marked features with a wide-lipped mouth and flat cheekbones, his large dark eyes set far apart. His only clothing was a sort of breechclout kilt held in place by a wide belt from which hung the tassel-ornamented scabbard of a knife. The knife itself, close to eighteen inches of blue steel, flashed in his hand as he energetically cleaned a fresh-caught fish.

Stuck upright in the ground close to his shoulder were three short-shafted spears, a blanke.t of coarse reddish wool draped over the point of one. Smoke rose from the fire laid on a flat stone, but there was no indication as to whether the stranger had merely halted for a meal or had been camping on the islet.

As he worked the fisherman sang—a low, monotonous chant, which, as he listened to it, affected Fors queerly, sending an odd shiver up his backbone. This was no Plainsman either. And Fors was just as sure that he was not spying on one of the Beast Things. The few mountaineer men who had survived a meeting with them had painted a far different picture—Aey were never to be associated with peaceful fishing and an intelligent, pleasant face.

This dark-skinned newcomer was of a different breed. Fors rested his chin on his folded arms and tried to deduce from the evidence this stranger’s background—as was the duty of an explorer.

The lack of clothing, now—that meant that he was accustomed to a warmer climate. .Such an outfit could only be worn here before fall closed in. He had those spears and—yes—that was a bow lying with its quiver beyond. But it was much shorter than the one Fors carried and did not appear to be made of wood but from some dark substance which reflected light from the sun.

He must come from a land where his race was all-powerful and had nothing to fear for he camped in the open and sang while he cooked as if he did not care if he atracted attention. And yet he did this on an island, more easily defended from attack than the shore itself.

Just then the fisherman impaled the cleaned fish on a sharpened twig and set it to broil while he got to his feet and hurled a baited line back into the water. Fors blinked. The man on the island must tower a good four or five inches over the tallest of the Eyrie men and his thatch of upstanding hair could not account for more than two inches of that difference. As he stood there, still humming, his hand skillfully adjusting the fishing line, he presented a picture of strength and power which would daunt even a Beast Thing.

The odor of the fish carried. Lura made a faint slur-ruping sound as it reached them. Fors hesitated. Should he hail the dark-skinned hunter, make the peace sign, and try to establish friendly relations or—

That question was decided for him. A shout tore the serene silence of the lake. The dark hunter moved—so fast that Fors was left gasping. Spears, blanket, bow— and the broiled fish—vanished with their owner. A bush quivered and then was still. The fire burned—on a deserted pebbled beach.

A second shout bore down wind, reinforced by a trampling crash, and down to the edge of the lake trotted a band of horses, mares mostly, each with a small foal running at her side. Urging them on were two riders, bent nearly flat on the backs of their mounts to escape the low sweeping branches of the trees. They herded the mares to water and waited for them to drink.

Fors almost forgot the dark hunter. Horses! He had seen pictures of them. But living horses! The age-old longing of his race—to possess one of those for his own-made a strange ache in his thigh muscles, as if he were already mounted upon one of the sleek backs.

One of the horse guards had dismounted and was rubbing down the legs of his animal with handfuls of grass pulled up from the bank. He was undoubtedly a Plainsman. His sleeveless jerkin laced across the chest was almost twin to the one Fors wore. But his leggings were of hide and polished by hours of riding. He wore his hair shoulder length as the sign of free birth and it was held out of his eyes by a broad band on which was painted the sign of his family clan and tribe. The long lance which was the terrible weapon of the horsemen hung in its loops at his saddle and in addition he wore at his belt the curved, slashing sword which was the badge of his nation.

For the second time Fors wondered whether he should make overtures. But that, too, was quickly answered. Out of the trees came a second pair of riders, both older men. One was a chief or sub chieftain of the Plainsmen, for the metal badge in his headband had caught the sun. But the other-Fors’ body jerked as if an arrow had thudded home between his shoulder blades. And Lura, catching his dismay, voiced one of her noiseless snarls.

That was Jarl! But Jarl was the Star Captain—now exempt from travel in the lowlands. He had not been exploring for two years or more. It was his duty to remain at the Eyrie and portion out the tasks of other Star Men. But there he was, riding knee to knee with the Plainsman chief as if he were any apprentice rover. What had brought Jarl down to the lowlands against all rule and custom?

Fors winced—there was an answer to that. Never before had the sanctuary of the Star House been violated. His crime must have brought Jarl out of the hills. And if he, Fors, were captured—What would be the penalty for such a theft? He had no idea but his imagination could supply quite a few—all of them drastic. In the meantime he could only remain where he was and pray that he would not be detected before the herders moved.

Luckily most of the horses had drunk their fill and were turning away from the lake. Fors watched them longingly. With one of them to lend four feet and save his two, he could be well beyond Jail’s reach before the Star Captain knew of his presence. He had too great an opinion of Jarl’s skill not to believe that the man from the Eyrie could cross his trail within a day or so.

The second herder urged the last mares away from the water while his companion mounted. But Jarl and the chief still sat talking and looking out idly across the lake. Fors silently endured the bites of flies which seemed to have accompanied the horses, but Lura growled again softly. She wanted to leave, knowing full well that if she did not want her trail followed it would not be. Fors could not hope for such results himself, so he hesitated until the cat’s impatience or some change in the air current changed their luck as it carried Lura’s scent down to the peaceful herd.

Within seconds there was wild confusion. Mares squealed, wild-eyed with fright for their foals, tramping up the bank and bursting between the riders—dashing ahead to get away from that dangerous place. The Plainsmen had been caught off guard. One was borne along with the rush, fighting to regain mastery of his own mount—the other could only ride after the rout.

Lance in hand the chief went after them. But Jarl remained where he was for a long moment, searching the shoreline of the lake with narrowed eyes. Fors flattened against the rock, sending a stern warning to Lura to do likewise. Fortunately Jarl was on the opposite side of the water and the Star Captain could not match the keen sight of his quarry. But how limited Jarl was in that respect he had no means of telling.

Hardly daring to draw the shallowest of breaths, cat and boy inched back. Jarl stayed, alert, watching. Then came the thunder of hoofs, just as Fors’ boots struck earth. He was off at his best woods’ pace, heading north, away from the camp which must lie somewhere on the other side of the lake. He wanted a horse, needed a horse, but not enough that he dared brave Jarl to get one. Fors had a very hearty respect for the abilities of the Star Captain.

As he sped away he wondered what the hunter on the island had done and whether he, too, was now putting some miles between himself and the Plains camp.

At least he had that broiled fish to take with him. Fors munched a handful of parched corn from his emergency rations as he trotted along and some shreds of dried meat, giving the rest to Lura who downed it in a single gulp. Halfripe berries snatched from bushes as he passed were sauce of a sort. But there still remained a feeling of emptiness in his middle which grew with the lengthening shadows of the afternoon.

They had used the feeder stream of the lake as a guide, but the thinning of the trees around them now and the appearance of open patches where grass and bushes competed for life, suggested that the end of the wood was close. Fors paused and tried to plan. He was at home in the forest country and knew how to conceal his trail there. On the other hand, in the open, out in the once cultivated fields, one would make better time and be able to cover a good many miles before the daylight failed entirely. The hunters of the plains-if human-were mounted men and any pursuit would be easily seen. And there were plenty of the scattered clumps of trees and running tongues of brush to give him shelter in a pinch. He decided to venture out.

A brown animal with a black mask about its eyes surveyed him critically from a pile of rocks but was gone in a flash when Lura’s head came out of a tall stand of grass. - That was the only living thing they saw until they skirted the rotting timbers of a farmhouse, missing a tumble into the half-exposed cellar only by chance.

A sound answered Fors’ exclamation and hearing it his hand swept to the hilt of his sword. He skidded around, bare steel out. An ugly naked pink snout, still smeared with earth and slime, protruded from a tangle of brush, and the wicked tusks below it caught and held the light. Fors hurled pouch and bow from him and half crouched, waiting for that most dangerous of all rushes, the attack of a wild boar.

It came with all the deadly ferocity he had expected, the tusks slashing for his legs. He struck, but the creature dodged so that, though a red and dripping line leaped out along its head and shoulder, it was not sent kicking. It grunted loudly, and there came answers. Fors’ mouth dried—he was facing a whole pack of swine!

Behind him was a pile of the collapsed timbers which had once been the wall of a small building, but they were pulpy with rot and they dipped dangerously toward the cellar. If he jumped for them he might well crash through.

From the bushes came a squall of rage and pain. The boar tossed its tusked head and blew foam. Its eyes in the black-and-white spotted face were red and evil. Another squeal came from the herd and this time it was followed by an answering snarl. Fors loosed a thankful breath.

Lura was keeping the herd occupied. Under her ripping claws the younger and weaker ones would certainly break and scatter. But not this old leader. It was wily and there were scars and bare patches enough on the hide to mark it victor in other battles. It had always won before so it was confident now. And—The charge came again!

Fors leaped to the left, slashing down as he moved out of danger. That stroke cut across the grinning devil’s mask of the boar, chopping off an ear and shearing the sight out of one red eye. It shook its head, sending a spray of blood flying, and squealed in rage and pain. Under the prod of pain it lost its cunning, wishing now only to tusk and trample the dancing figure before it—to root the life of the enemy away—

As Fors saw the heavy shoulders tense he took a step backward, groping for firm footing on which to maneuver. And in so doing he nearly lost the fight. His heel caught and was held as if a trap had snapped on it. He was still trying to pull loose as the boar charged for the third time.

And that pull unbalanced him so that he fell forward almost on top of the mad creature. There was a red dagger of pain across his leg and a foul stench filled his nostrils. He stabbed wildly, and felt his steel strike bone and slip deep beneath the mangy hide. Blood f ountained over both of them and then the sword was wrenched from Fors’ blood-slippery hand as the boar pulled away. It staggered out into the full sunlight and fell heavily, the hilt of the sword protruding behind its powerful shoulder. Fors rocked back and forth, his face twisted with pain, his fingers trying to rip away the cloth about a nasty-looking, freely bleeding slash down the outer side of his left leg above the knee.

Lura emerged from the bushes. There were unpleasant stains on her usually fastidiously kept coat and she moved with an air of general satisfaction. As she passed the boar she snarled and gave the body a raking clout with one front paw.

Fors worked his heel free from the rotten board which had clamped it and crawled toward the Star pouch. He needed water now—but Lura would sniff that out for him. The worst would be going lame for a while. He would be lucky if he did not have to stay where he was for a day or two.

Lura did find water, a spring a little beyond the farmhouse. And he crawled to it painfully. With dry twigs he kindled a fire and set a tiny pan of the clear water to boil. Now he was ready for the worst—boar’s tusks were notoriously dirty and deadly.

Setting his teeth he cut and tore away the cloth of his leggings until the skin around the still oozing slash was bare. Into the bubbling water he dropped a minute portion of the wound salve from the Star pouch. The secret of that salve belonged to the Healer of the tribe and the Captain of the Star Men alone. It was wisdom from the old days which had saved many lives. A wound anointed with it did not rot.

Fors let the water cool until he could just bear it and then poured more than half of it into that ragged tear in skin and muscle. His fingers were shaking when he thrust them into the water left in the pan, holding them there for a minute before tearing open the packet of bandage. With an end of the soft material he washed and dabbed delicately along the cut. Then he smeared some of the unheated paste across it and bound a pad tightly over it. The bleeding had almost stopped, but the wound was like a band of stinging fire from hip socket to ankle bone, and his eyes were misty as he worked, following the instructions which had been drilled into him since his first hunting trip.

At last he could put out the fire and lie quietly. Lura stretched out beside him and put a velvet-gloved paw on his arm. She purred soothingly, once or twice drawing her rough tongue across his flesh in her favorite caress. The burning in his leg eased, or else he was growing accustomed to the torment. He stared into the sky. Pink and gold streamed across it in wide swaths. It must be close to sundown. He would have to have shelter. But it was a struggle to move and his leg had stiffened so that even when he got up and clutched at bushes to pull himself along he made slow progress.

Lura went down the slope and he stumbled after her, glad that only tall grass covered most of it. She headed for the farmyard, but he did not call her back. Lura was hunting shelter for them both and she would find it, if any such existed.

She did bring him to the best housing they had had since they had left the Eyrie, a stone-walled, single-roomed building. He had no idea for what purpose it had been built. But there was only one door, no windows, and part of the roof was still in place. It could be easily defended and it was shelter.

Already small scavengers were busy about the bodies of the pigs. And with the dark the scent of blood would draw more formidable flesh eaters. He had not forgotten the quarrels over the bodies of the cow and calf. So Fors pushed loose stones into a barrier about his door and decided upon a fire. The walls would hide it from all but birds flying overhead.

He ate sparingly of dried corn. Lura jumped the barrier and went hunting on her own, questing through the twilight. But Fors nursed his point of fire and stared out into the gathering darkness. Fireflies made dancing sparks under the straggling limbs of ancient orchard trees. He watched them as he drank from the water in his canteen. The pain in his leg was now a steady throb which arose into his head and settled in his temples—beat—beat-beat—

Then Fors suddenly realized that that steady rhythm was not born of pain and fever. There was an actual sound, hanging on the night air, low, carrying well, a measured note which bore no resemblance to any natural noise he had heard before. Only, something in it suggested the queer crooning song of the fisherman. If some-tiling not unlike the same series of notes was being tapped out on the head of a drum now—

Fors jerked upright. Bow and sword were within reach of his hand. The night, which was never as dark for him as it was for others, was peaceful and empty—save for that distant signal. Then it stopped, abruptly, almost in mid-note, with a suggestion of finality. He guessed that he would not hear it again. But what could it mean?

Sound carried well in these lowlands—even if listeners did not have his keenness of ear. A message sent by such a drum might carry safely across miles.

His fingernails dug into the flesh of his palms. There was a trace of sound again—coming from the far south— a disturbance in the air so faint it might only be born of his imagination.

But he did not believe that. The drummer was receiving an answer. Under his breath Fors counted off seconds —five, ten, fifteen, and then again silence. He tried to sort out his impressions of the fisherman—and again came to the same conclusion. He was not native to these lowlands, which meant that he was probably a scout, an explorer from the south. Who or what was now moving up into these lands?

4. FOUR LEGS ARE BETTER THAN TWO

Even before dawn it began to rain, a steady, straight downpour which would last for hours. Fors’ wound was stiff and he had trouble crawling back into the corner of the hut where the broken roof still afforded some protection. Lura rolled against him and the warmth of her furry body was a comfort. But Fors was unable to drop back into the restless, dream-broken sleep which had held him most of the night.

It was the thought oj the day’s travel still before him which plagued him. To walk far would reopen the gash and he thought that he had a degree or so of fever. Yet he had to have food and better shelter. And that drumming—Being disabled he wanted to get out of the near vicinity of the drummer—fast.

As soon as it was light enough for him to distinguish a black line on white paper he got out his scrap of map, trying to guess his present position—if it were on that fragment at all. There were tiny red figures printed between certain points—the measured miles of the Old Ones who kept to the roads. By his reckoning he might yet be at least three days’ journey from the city—if, of course, he was now where he believed himself to be. Three days’ journey for a strong and tireless traveler, not for a crippled limper. If he had a horse now—

But the memory of Jarl with the horse herders put that thought out of his mind. If he went to the Plains camp and tried to trade, the Star Captain would hear of it. And for a novice to steal a mount out of one of the well-guarded herds was almost impossible even if he were able-bodied. But he could not banish his wish—even by repeating this argument of stern commonsense.

Lura went out hunting. She would bring back her kill. Fors pulled himself up, clenching his teeth against the pain that such movement gave his whole left side. He had to have some sort of crutch or cane if he wanted to keep going. There was part of a sapling among the wood within reach. It appeared almost straight and he hacked it down with his knife and trimmed off the branches. With this aid he could get around, and the more he moved the more the stiffness seemed to loosen. When Lura returned, a plump bronze-feathered turkey dragging out of her jaws, he was in a better frame of mind and ready to eat breakfast.

But the pace at which they started out was not a speedy one. Fors hissed between set teeth when now and again his weight shifted too heavily on the left leg. He turned instinctively into what once had been the lane tying the farmstead to the road, and brushed between the encroaching bushes, leaning heavily on his cane.

Rain made sticky mud of every patch of open ground and he was afraid of slipping and falling. Lura kept up a steady low whine of complaint against the weather and the slowness of their travel. But she did not go off on her own as she might have done had he been himself. And Fors talked to her constantly.

The lane came to the road and he turned into that since it went in the direction he wished. Soil had drifted across the concrete and made mud patches which gave root to spiked plants; but, even with that, it was better footing for an almost one-legged man than the wet ground. Lura scouted ahead, weaving in and out of the bushes and tall grass along the side of the old thoroughfare, testing the wind for alien scents, now and then shaking head or paws vigorously to rid them of clinging raindrops.

All at once she bounded out of the brush to Fors, pushing against him with her body, forcing him gently back toward the ditch which ran nearby. He caught the urgency of her warning and scrambled to cover with all the speed he could muster. As he lay against the greasy red clay bank with his palms spread flat, he felt the pounding long before he heard the hoofs which caused it. Then the herd came into sight, trotting at an easy pace down the old road. For a moment or two Fors searched for the herders and then he realized that none of the horses wore the patches of bright paint which distinguished ownership among the Plainsmen. They must be wild. There were several mares with foals, a snorting stallion bearing the scars of battle on his shoulders, and some yearlings running free.

But there was one mare who had no foal. Her rough, ungroomed coat was a very dark red, her burr-matted tail and mane black. Now and again she dropped to the back, stopping to snatch a mouthful of herbage, a trick which at last earned her a sharp nip from the stallion. She squealed, lashed out with ready hoofs, and then ran swiftly, breaking ahead of the rest of the band. Fors watched her go with regret. If he had had his two feet under him she might have been a possible capture. But no use thinking of that.

Then the herd rounded a curve and was out of sight. Fors took a moment’s breather before he pulled himself back on the road. Lura was there before him, kneading her front paws on a mat of grass, staring after the vanished horses. To her mind there was no difference between one of those foals and the calf she had pulled down. Both were meat and so to be eaten. It was in her mind to trail along behind such a wealth of food. Fors did not argue with her. He still thought of the mare who ran free and followed her own will.

They came up again with the herd before the hour was past. The road made a sudden dip into a valley which was almost cup-shaped. At the bottom rich grass grew tall and there the herd grazed, the watching stallion standing guard halfway up the rise.

But what caught Fors’ eyes was the shell of a building which stood almost directly below. Fire had eaten out its interior so that only the crumbling brick of the outer walls remained. He studied it carefully and then tried to identify the horses beyond.

The mare was apart from the herd, grazing close to the building. Fors wet his lips with his tongue tip. There was just a chance—a very wild chance-It would depend largely upon Lura’s co-operation. And that had never failed him yet. He turned to the great cat and tried to form a mind picture of what must be done. Slowly he thought out each point. Twice he went through it and then Lura crouched and withdrew into the grass. Fors wiped sweat and rain from his forehead and started crawling in turn, edging down into a maze of fallen bricks. They could never do it if the wind was not just right. But fortune was favoring to that extent. He swung himself up on a ledge above the widest gap in the broken wall and unwound from his waist the light tough cord all mountain men carried. The weighted noose at the end was in his hand. Good, the rain had not affected it. Now—!

He whistled, the clear call of one of the Eyrie country birds. And he knew, rather than saw, that Lura was in position and ready to move. If the wind would only hold-!

Suddenly the mare tossed up her head, snorted, and stared suspiciously at a clump of bushes. At the same time the stallion reared and thundered forth a fierce challenge. But he was almost the full length of the valley away, and he stopped to send the rest of his harem out of danger before he came to the mare. She wanted to follow but plainly the hidden menace now lay between her and freedom. She whirled on two feet and pounded back in the direction of the ruin where Fors waited. Twice she tried to go with her mates and both times she was sent back on the opposite course.

Fors coiled his rope. He had only to wait and trust to Lura’s skill. But the seconds that he was forced to do that were very long. At last the mare, her eyes white-rimmed with terror, burst through the gap in the masonry. Fors cast and as quickly snubbed the rope about a girder of rusting steel protruding from the brickwork. The heart of the metal was still sound enough to hold, even against the frantic plunges of the terrified horse. The scream of the aroused stallion, thundering down to the rescue, shook Fors. He did not know much about horses but he could imagine that there was danger now.

But the stallion never reached the ruin. Out of the bushes, directly at his head, leaped Lura, leaped and raked with cruel claws. The stallion reared, trumpeting like a mad thing, slashing out with teeth and hoofs. But Lura was only a flash of light fur covering steel springs and she was never there when the stallion struck. Twice more she got home with a wicked, slashing paw, before the horse gave up the battle and fled back down the valley, following the herd. The mare cried after him. He turned, but Lura was there, and her snarled warning sent him on again dripping blood.

Fors leaned back weakly against a pile of rubble. He had the mare all right, a rope about her neck, a rope which would hold her in spite of all her plunges and kicks. But here was no gentled mount already broken to ride. And how was he, with a bad leg, to conquer the fear-maddened animal?

He made the rope fast, looking ruefully at the burns on his hands. Just now he could not get near her. Might be well to let her become used to captivity for an hour or so—to try to win her—But would she ever lose her fear of Lura? That was another problem to be solved. Only-it must be done, he could not go on in this one-legged way, and he certainly was not going to beg shelter from the Plains camp and so fall into Jarl’s hands. He believed that he could make his own way in the lowlands—now was the time to prove that!

After a time the mare ceased to fight for freedom and stood with drooping head, nervous shudders running along her sweat-enciusted limbs and flanks. Fors stayed where he was but now he began to talk to her, using the same crooning tone with which he called Lura. Then he ventured to limp a few steps closer. Her head went up and she snorted. But he continued to talk to her, making an even monotone of his voice. At last he was close enough to touch her rough coat and as he did so he almost jumped. Still faintly sketched on the hide was a dab or two of fading paintl Then this was a Plainsman’s mount from one of the tame herds. Fors gulpecRveakly. Such luck was a little uncanny. Now, seeing that, he dared to stroke her nose. She shivered under his touch and then she whinnied almost inquiringly. He patted her shoulder and then she nudged him playfully with her nose. Fors laughed, tugging at the ragged forelock which bobbed between her eyes.

“So now you remember, old lady? Good girl, good girl!”

There remained the problem of Lura and that must be solved as quickly as possible. He unfastened the rope and pulled gently. The mare came after him willingly enough, picking her way daintily through the piles of fallen brick.

Why hadn’t she scented the cat on his clothes? Unless the rain had dampened it—But she had shown no fright at his handling.

He whistled the bird call for the second time, after he had snubbed the mare’s lead rope around a small tree. The answer to his summons came from down valley. Apparently Lura was following the herd. Fors stood talking to his captive as he waited. At last he ventured to rub down her flanks with tufts of grass. Then he felt her start and tremble and he turned.

Lura sat in the open, her tail curled neatly over her forepaws. She yawned, her red tongue pointing up and out, her eyes slitted, as if she had very little interest in the mare which her hunting companion chose to fondle so stupidly.

The mare jerked back to the full length of the rope, her eyes showing white. Lura took no notice of the open terror. At length she arose and stretched, then padded to the horse. The mare reared an,d gave a shrill scream. Fors tried to urge Lura back. But the big cat paced in a circle about the captive, eyeing her speculatively from all angles. The mare dropped back on four feet and shook her head, turning to keep her attention ever upon the cat. It seemed as if she were now puzzled when the attack she had expected had not come.

Maybe some message passed between the animals then. Fors never knew. But when Lura finished her inspection, she turned away indifferently and the mare stopped trembling. However, it was more than an hour before Fors improvised a bridle from the rope and a saddle pad from his blanket. He climbed upon the bricks and managed to throw his good leg over the mare’s back.

She had been well trained by the Plainsman who had owned her and her pace was so even that Fors, awkward and inexperienced at riding as he was, could keep his seat. He headed her back on the road which had brought him to the valley and they came up into the rolling fields once more.

In spite of the nagging ache of his wound Fors knew a surge of exultation and happiness. He had won safely out of the Eyrie, having plundered the Star House, he dared the lowlands, had spent one night in the heart of a dead town, had crossed a river through his own skill, spied successfully at the woods lake, faced the savage boar from which even the best of the mountain hunters sometimes fled, and now he had a horse under him, his weapons to hand, and the road open before him.

Judged unfit for the Star, cast aside by the Council was he? His even teeth gleamed in a grin which bore some likeness to Lura’s hunting snarl. Well, they would see-see that Langdon’s son, White Hair the Mutant—was as good as their bestl He would prove that to the whole Eyrie.

Lura drifted back and the mare side-stepped as if she were still none too pleased to have the big cat venture so close. Fors jolted out of his daydreams, paid heed to his surroundings.

There were piles of rubble scattered through the brush, skeletons of old buildings, and, all at once, the mare’s unshod hoofs raised a different sort of noise. She was picking her way across pavements in which were set long straight lines of rusted tracks. Fors pulled her up. Ahead the ruins were closer together and grew larger. A town —maybe even a small city.

There was something about these ruins which made him uneasy. The farms which had been recaptured by wild vegetation had none of this eerie strangeness about them. He knew again the faint sickness, neither of body nor spirit, which had gripped him on the road when he had traveled beside the wrecked convoy. Now he wiped one hand through the mare’s coarse mane as if he would like ta rub away an unpleasant smear. And yet he had touched nothing in this place. There was an evil miasma which arose mistlike even through the steady drizzle of rain.

Mist—there was real mist, too! Ahead he saw coils of dirty white drifting in, wreathing the tangled bulk of rotting wood and tumbled brick and stone. A fog was gathering, thicker than the mountain ones he had known, thick and somehow frightening. His fingers left the horse hair and flipped against his sore leg. The stab of pain which followed made him bite out a hot exclamation. This fog would put an end to travel for the day as far as he was concerned. Now he needed a safe place to hole up in where he could light a fire and prepare another treatment for his wound. And he wanted to be out of the rain for the night.

He did not like the ruins, but now they might hold what he needed and it was wiser to penetrate farther into them. But he held the mare to a slow walk and it was well that he did. For soon a break in the pavement opened before them—a gaping black hole rimmed with jagged teeth of broken concrete. They made a detour, edging as far from the crumbling lip as the ruins would allow. Fors began to regret leaving the stone hut on the farm. His constant pain he could no longer ignore. Perhaps it would have been better to have rested for a day or two back there. But if he had done that he would not now be riding the mare! He whistled softly and watched her ears point up in answer. No, it was worth even the grinding in his flesh to have such a mount.

Twice more the pavement was broken by great holes, the last being so large that it had the dimensions of a small crater. As Fors rode slowly around it he crossed a strip of muddy, but hard-beaten earth which came up out of its shadowed maw. It had the appearance of a well-worn and much-used path. Lura sniffed at it and snarled, her back fur roughened, and she spat with a violent hissing sound. Whatever made that path she counted an enemy.

Any creature which Lura, who would tackle a wild cow, a herd of roving swine, or a stallion, so designated was not one which Fors cared to meet in his present crippled state. He loosened rein and urged the mare to a brisker pace.

Some distance beyond the crater they came to a small hill on which stood a building of white stone, and it still possessed a roof. The slope of the hill was clear of all save a few low bushes and from the building Fors guessed one could have an almost unhampered view of the surrounding territory. He decided quickly in its favor.

It was a disappointment to discover that the roof covered only a part and that the center was open to the storm—being a small amphitheater in which rows of wide seats went down to a square platform.

However, there were small rooms around the outer rim, under the roof, and in one of these he made camp. He tied the mare to one of the pillars forming the aisle to the amphitheater and contented her with grass pulled from the hill and some of his parched corn which she relished. She could have been hobbled and left to graze but the memory of that worn path by the crater kept him from doing that.

Rain had collected in broken squares of the pavement and Lura drank eagerly from one such pool while the mare sucked noisily at another. From the drift of wind-driven branches caught among the pillars Fors built a fire, placed behind a wall so that it could not be observed from below. Water boiled in his pan and he went through the ordeal of redressing the gash in his leg. The salve was working, for the flesh was sore and stiff but it was clean and without infection, and the edges were already closing, though undoubtedly he would be scarred for the rest of his life.

Lura made no move to go hunting, although she must have been hungry. In fact, since she had skirted the crater she had kept close to him, and now she lay beside the fire, staring into the flames broodingly. He did not urge her to go out. Lura was more woodswise than any man could hope to be and if she did not choose to hunt there was good reason for her decision. Fors only wished that she could reveal to him the exact nature of the thing she both hated and feared. That hatred and fear came through to him when their minds held fleeting touch, but the creature which aroused such emotions remained a secret.

So they went hungry to bed since Fors determined to use what was left of his corn to bind the mare to him. He kept the fire burning low for he did not want to lie in the dark here where there were things beyond his knowledge.

For a time he listened for the drumming of the night before. He fully expected to hear it again. But the night was still. It had stopped raining at last, and he could hear insects in the grass outside. There was the murmur of a breeze through the foliage on the hill.

It made Fors uneasy, that faint sad soughing. Lura was not asleep either. He sensed her restlessness even before he heard the pad of her paws and saw her move toward the door. He crawled after her, trying to spare his leg. She had halted at the outer portico of the building and was looking down into the blackness of the ruined city. Then he saw what held her—a pin point of red to the north—the telltale flicker of fire flame!

So there was other life here! Plainsmen for the most part kept clear of the ruins—in memory of the old days when radiation killed. And the Beast Things—did they possess the secret of fire? No man knew how much or how little they had in the way of intelligence or perverted civilization.

The urge to get the mare, to crawl up on her back and cross the rubble to that distant fire, was strong. Fire and companionship in this place of the restless dead—they pulled at Fors now.

But before he so much as filled his lungs again he heard it—a low chorus of yapping, barking, howling which rose higher and higher to a frenzied bedlam. Lura’s hair was stiff under his hand. She hissed and snarled, but she did not stir. The cries were coming from some distance— from the direction of the fire. Whatever manner of beast made them had been drawn by that.

Fors shuddered. There was nothing he could do to aid the fire maker. Long before he could find his slow way through the ruins the end would have come. And now— now—there was only blackness down there! The flicker of friendly red was gone!

5. THE CITY ON THE LAKE

Fors dragged himself out into the morning sun. He had slept poorly, but he was content that his wound was healing. And, after he once got to his feet, he managed better, being able without too much effort to take the mare out to graze on the hillside. Lura had been on duty before he roused, as the body of a plump turkey laid on the floor by the remains of the fire testified. He broiled it and ate, knowing all the time that when he was done he must mount and ride across the shattered town searching out the cite of that fire which had vanished in the night.

And he did not want to take that ride. Because he did not want to, he finished quickly, gathering up his supplies with nervous haste. Lura came back and sat in the broad beam of sunlight washing her fur. But she was on her feet instantly as Fors got up on the mare and turned into the heart of the ruins.

They clattered out into a burned area where the black stain of a vast, devouring fire had not faded. There were flowers growing there among the sooty stones, yellow, white, and blue. And a ragged, red-leafed weed overran old cellars. Cat and horse moved slowly through the desolation, testing their footing.

On the far edge of the burned space they found the scene of that night battle. Black birds whirred up from almost under their feet, birds which had been feasting on scraps more powerful scavengers had left them. Fors dismounted and limped up to the trampled grass, reluctant to make investigation.

Two well-picked piles of bones lay on the bloodstained ground. But the skulls were not those of his own race. Those long narrow heads with the cruel yellow teeth he had never seen before. Then the glint of metal caught his eyes and he picked up a broken spear, the shaft snapped raggedly off not far from the head. And that spear he had seen before! It belonged to the fisherman of the islet.

Fors moved around the circle of the battlefield. He came across one more of the strange skeletons, but, save for the spear, there was no other trace of the hunter. Lura exhibited a violent distaste for the bones—as if the odd scent which clung to them was utterly offensive. And now she stood on her hind legs and sniffed inquiringly up the side of a heap of bricks and stone.

So that was what had happened! The hunter had not been overwhelmed by a rush out of the dark. He had had time to clamber up where the night-running things could not attack in force, had been able from above to fight them off and leave the wounded and dead to the tearing teeth of their own companions. And he must have escaped—since his bones were not in evidence.

Fors kicked through the underbrush a last time just to be sure. Something round and brown rolled away from his toe. He reached for a small, well-polished drum fashioned of dark wood, the stretched head of hide cured to an almost metallic smoothness. The signal drum! Impulsively he tapped the head, and started at the low throbbing note which echoed through the ruins.

When he rode on the drum went with him. Why he did not know, except that he was fascinated by such a message-sending device unknown to his own people.

Within a half hour the ruins lay behind. Fors was glad to be out in the clean freedom of the country again. All morning he rode at a leisurely pace, watching for any signs which the hunter might leave. He was sure that the man was striking north with almost as definite a purpose as the one which drew him in that direction. And, with the drum gone, there would be no more signals.

The next two days were quiet. There was no indication that the Plainsmen had ever ventured into this territory and the land was a hunters’ paradise teeming with game. Fors wasted none of his precious arrows but left the chase to Lura who enjoyed every moment of it. And he varied his diet with berries and the ripe grain which grew wild in the ancient fields.

They avoided two more small towns, cutting around when they saw the first ruins. The dank, moldy places had little appeal and Fors had once or twice speculated as to what might have happened that night had he been the one caught in the open by the hunting pack, too crippled to climb to the safety the unknown had found. Now his leg was less painful, he walked a part of each day, stretching the muscles and toughening tender flesh. Most of the ache was gone and soon he would be able to move as freely as ever.

On the morning of the fourth day they came out upon a waste of sand- and wind-carved dunes and saw the great lake of legend. There was no end to the gray-blue expanse of water—it must be almost as large as the distant sea. High piles of bleached driftwood lay along the shore. There must have been a recent storm for the bodies of fish lay there too. Fors’ nose wrinkled as he plowed through the sand, the mare sinking deeply as she followed him. Lura, investigating the fish, strayed some yards behind.

So—this much Was true—this was the lake. And somewhere along its shore must lie the city his father had sought. Right or left, east or west—that was the question. He found shelter from the wind behind a dune and squatted down to consult the scrap of map. When they had avoided that last town they had gone west—so now-east. He would keep to the shore and see-It was hard to travel in the sand, and after some time he gave up in disgust and edged inland to the more solid earth. Within two yards he was on a roadl And, since the roadway hugged the shoreline, he held to it. Shortly the familiar mounds of debris closed in. But this was the remains of no small town. Even in his inexperience he could judge that. In the morning sun far ahead he saw battered towers rising in the sky. This was one of the cities, the great cities of huge sky-reaching towers! And it was not a “blue” one either. He would have seen the sign of that taint on the sky in the night.

His city—all his! Langdon had been right—this was an untouched storehouse waiting to be looted for the benefit of the Eyrie. Fors allowed the mare to amble on at her own pace as he tried to recall all the training rules. Libraries—those were what one was to look for—and shops, especially those which had stores of hardware or paper or kindred supplies. One was not to touch food—no matter if it was found in unbroken containers. Experimentation of that kind had brought death by poisoning too many times in the past. Hospital supplies were best of all, but those had to be selected by the trained expert. Danger lay too in unknown drugs.

For his looting he had best take only samples of what was to be found—books, writing supplies, maps, anything which would prove that he knew how to select intelligently. And with the mare he ought to be able to pack out quite a lot.

Here were signs of fire, too. He rode across a bare stretch where the rough footing was all black ash. But the towers stood taller and they did not appear to be too badly damaged. If this city had been bombed, would they be standing at all? Maybe this was one of the places which had perished in the plagues which followed the war. Maybe it had died slowly with the ebbing life of its people—and not suddenly in explosion.

The road they had been following was now a narrow gorge between tall ranks of broken buildings, the upper stories of which had fallen into the street in mounds which almost blocked it completely at places. Here were numerous surface machines in which the Old Ones had ridden in comfort. And here, also, were bones. That single skull he had found in the old bank had had the power to shake him a little, but here lay a nation of dead and soon he ceased to notice them at all, even when the mare trod on brittle ribs or kicked rolling skulls aside. Yes, now it was very apparent that the men of this city had died of plague, or gas, or even of the radiation sickness. But sun and wind and animals had cleared away the foulness of that death, leaving only a framework without power to harm.

As yet Fors did not attempt to explore those caverns which had once been the lower floors of the buildings. Now he only wanted to get on into the very heart of the place, to the foundations of those towers which had guided him all morning. But before he could reach that goal a barrier was laid across his road.

There was a gash breaking the city in two, a deep valley which nursed a twisted river in its middle. Bridges spanned it. He came to the lip of one such span and he could see two others. But before him was a mass of rusting wreckage piled into a fantastic wall. Machines—not in ones and twos or even in tens, but in hundreds—were packed as they must have crashed and telescoped into one another, driven by men who feared some danger behind enough to drive in crazy flight. The bridge was now one gigantic crack-up. Fors might be able to scramble across but the mare could not. It would be best to descend into the valley and cross there^because as far as he could see the other bridges were also choked with rust-eaten metal.

There was a side road down into the valley, and machines filled it too. Men had taken that same trail when the bridge jammed. But the three of them—horse, cat and man—worked their way through to reach the river level. Tracks were rust-red lines and on them were trains—the first he had ever seen. Two had crashed together, the engine of one plowing into the other. Those who had tried to escape by train had been little better off than their brothers in the stalled cars above. It was difficult for Fors to imagine what that last wild day of flight must have been—the trains, the machines. He knew of them only from the old books. But the youngsters of the Eyrie sometimes stirred up nests of black ants and watched them boil up and out. So this city must have boiled—but few had been able to win out.

And those who had—what became of them in the end?

What could help a handful of panic-stricken refugees scattered over a countryside, perhaps dropping dead of the plague as they fled? Fors shivered as he picked his way along beside the wrecked trains. But when he found a narrow path through the jumble he was in luck. There had been barges on the river and they had drifted and sunk to form a shaky bridge across the water. Horse, man, and cat started over it, testing each step. There was a gap in the middle through which the stream still fought its way. But the mare, under the urging of Fors’ heels in her ribs, jumped it and Lura went sailing over with her usual agility.

More dark streets with blank-eyed buildings lining them, and then there was a road leading up at a sharp angle. They took it to find themselves at last close to the towers. Birds wheeled overhead, crying out in thin sharp voices, and Fors caught a glimpse of a brownish animal slithering out of sight through a broken doorway. Then he came up to a wall which was part glass, miraculously unbroken, but so besmeared by the dust and wind-driven grime of the years that he could not see what lay behind it. He dismounted and went over, rubbing his hands across that strange smoothness. The secret of fashioning such perfect glass was gone—with so many other secrets of the Old Ones.

What he saw beyond his peephole nearly made him retreat, until he remembered the Star Men’s tales. Those were not the Old Ones standing within the shadowed cavern, but effigies of themselves which they put up in shops to show off clothing. He pasted his nose to the glass and stared his fill at the three tall women and the draperies of rotting fabric still wreathed about them. None of that would, he knew, survive his touch.

It always turned to dust in the grasp of any explorer who tried to handle it.

There were other deep show windows about him but all had been denuded of their glass and were empty. Through them one could get into the stores behind. But Fors was not yet ready to go hunting, and probably there would be little there now worth carrying away.

The building to his left was topped with a tall tower which reached higher into the heavens than any other around it. From the top of that a man might see the whole city, to measure its size and environs. But he knew that the Old Ones had movable cars rising in such buildings, the power for which was dead. There might not be any steps—and if there were his lame leg was not yet ready for climbing. Maybe before he left the city—It would be a workmanlike project to make a sketch of the city as seen from that tower—an excellent embellishment to a formal report.

That was the nearest he came to admitting even to himself that he had hopes of a future within the Eyrie, that he dreamed of standing before the elders of the Council and proving that he, the rejected mutant, had accomplished what others had been trained for all their lives long. When he thought of that he was warm deep inside. A new city—the one his father had sought—all mapped and explored, ready for the systematic looting of the Eyrie—what could a man who reported that ask for as a reward? Just about what he wanted—

Fors went on slowly, afoot now, with the mare trailing him and Lura scouting ahead. Neither animal appeared to want to stray too far. The sound of a rolling stone, the cries of the birds, all echoed through the empty buildings eerily. For the first time Fors wished for a companion of his own breed—in a place where only the dead had lain so long it would be good to call upon the living.

The sun was overhead and it was reflected from a shelf in the forepart of a shop. Fors swung over a strip of iron embedded in concrete to investigate. Rings lay there, rows of them, set with brilliant white stones—diamonds he guessed. He sorted them out of the dust and litter. Most of them were too small to fit any of his fingers, but he chose four of the largest stones to take along—with some vague idea of surprising the young of the Eyrie. Among them was one broader band with a deep red gem and this slipped on to his third finger as if it had been fashioned for it. He turned it around, pleased with the deep crimson shade of the stone. It was a good omen, discovering it, as if the long dead craftsmen had made” it for him. He would wear it for luck.

But food would be more useful than sparkling stones new. The mare must eat and they would not find grazing hereabouts. In this section there was only a wild waste of ruins. He must head out toward the edge of the city if he wanted a real camping place. Not through the valley of the trains, though. It would be better to measure the extent of the city by trying to get through it to the opposite side—if he could do that by nightfall.

Fors did not stop to explore any more of the shops, but he made mental notes about those which might be worth a second visit. It was slow work breaking a trail through the blocked streets, and the heat reflected back from the buildings brought sweat dripping from his face to plaster his clothing to him. He had to mount again as his leg began to ache, and the hollow feeling in his middle grew worse. Lura protested—she wanted to get away from this wilderness of stone, into the fields where one could hunt.

Three hours of steady traveling brought them through to the edge of the enchanted wood, for that was what it seemed. It was a band of living green cutting across the pitiless heat and barrenness of the ruins. Once it had been a park, but now it arose a true forest which Lura welcomed with an open meow of delight. The mare whinnied, bursting through bushes until she came into what was undoubtedly a game trail leading down a gentle slope. Fors dismounted and let the mare go on, her pace now a trot. They reached the end of the trail, a lake. The mare stood, nose- and hock-deep, in the green water. Long red-gold fish swam away from the disturbance she caused.

Fors dropped down on a wide stone and pulled off his boots to dabble bis burning ieet in tbe coolness. Tbeie was a freeze across the water which dried his damp body and lifted the leaves of the wild shrubs around them. He looked across the lake. Opposite him there was a flight of broad white steps, cracked and moss-grown, and he caught a glimpse of a building at their head. But that could be explored later. Just now it was good to sit in the cool. The mare came out of the lake and tore up mouth-fuls of the long grass. A duck quacked and fled from under her hoofs, sailing out on the water, swimming energetically toward the steps.

The evening was long, the twilight soft about the hidden lake. While there was still light enough to see Fors ventured into the tall, pillared building at the head of the stairs and discovered that his luck was still holding. It was a museum—one of those treasure houses which rated very high on the Star Men’s list of desirable finds. He wandered through the high-ceiled rooms, his boots making splotchy tracks in the fine dust crisscrossed with the spoor of small animals. He brushed the dust from the tops of cases and tried to spell out the blotched and faded signs. Grotesque stone heads leered or stared blindly through the murk, and tatters of powdery canvas hung dismally from worm-eaten frames in what had once been picture galleries.

But the dark drove him out to shelter in the forecourt. Tomorrow would be time to estimate the worth of what lay within. Tomorrow—why, he had limitless time before him to discover and assess all that this city held! He had not even begun to explore.

It was warm and he allowed his cooking fire to burn down to a handful of coals. The forest was coming to life. He identified the bark of a questing fox, the mournful call of night birds. In the city streets he could almost imagine the gathering of wistful, hungry ghosts seeking what was gone forever. But here, where man had never lived, it was very peaceful and like the glens of his own mountain land. His hand fell on the pouch of the Star Men. Had Langdon actually walked here before him, had it been on a return trip from this place that his father had been killed? Fors hoped that was true—that Langdon had known the joy of proving his theory right—that his map had led him here before his death.

Lura appeared out of the shadows, padding lightly up the mossy steps from the water’s edge. And the mare moved in without urging, her hoofs ringing on the broken marble as she came to join them. It was almost—Fors straightened, regarded the gathering night more intently —almost as if they feared an alien world enough to seek company against it. And yet he did not feel the unease he had known in those other ruins—this slice of woodland held no terrors.

Nevertheless he roused and went to gather as much wood as he could find and he worked with mounting haste until it was too dark to see at all, ending with a pile of broken branches and storm drift which might have been gathered to withstand a siege. Lura watched him —and beyond him—sitting sentry-wise at the head of the stairs. Nor did the mare move again into the open.

At last, his hands shaking a little with fatigue, the odd drive still urging him to some sort of effort, Fors strung his bow and set it close to hand, loosened his sword in its sheath. The wind had gone down. It was almost sultry. Above the water the birds had ceased to wheel.

There was a sudden thunder clap and a flash of violet lightning crossed the southern sky. Heat lightning, but there might be another storm on the way. That was probably what made the air seem electric. But Fors did not deceive himself. Something besides a storm was brooding out in that night.

Back in the Eyrie—when they watched the wintertime singplays—just before they drew up the big screen and the play began, he had had a queer feeling like this. A sort of excited waiting—that was it. And something else was waiting now—holding its breath a little. He squirmed. His imagination—he was cursed with too much of that!

A little was good. Langdon had always said that imagination was a tool to be used and no Star Man was any good without it. But when a man had too much—then it fed the dark fears way down inside and there was always an extra foe to fight in any battle.

But now, thinking of Langdon had not banished his strange feeling. Something was outside, dark and formless, brooding, watching—watching a tiny Fors beside a spark of puny fire—watching for some action-He poked at the fire viciously. Getting as silly as a moonmad woodsrunner! There must be a madness which lay in wait in these dead cities to trap a man’s thoughts and poison him. A more subtle poison it was than any the Old Ones had distilled to fight their disastrous wars. He must break that grip on his mind—and do it quickly! Lura watched him from across the fire, her blue eyes fired with topaz by the flames. She purred hoarsely, reassuringly. Fors relaxed a fraction of his guard. Lura’s mood was an antidote. From the pouch he brought out the route book-and began to enter—with painstaking attention and his best script—observations on the day’s journey. If it was ever to be laid before Jarl it must measure up to the standard of such reports. The dark made a black circle beyond the reaches of the firelight.

6. MANTRAP

The next day gave threat of being sultry. Fors awakened beset with a dull headache and vague memories of unpleasant dreams. His leg pained him. But when he examined the healing wound it showed no signs of the infection he dreaded. He longed for a swim in the lake but dared not try it until the throbbing seam had totally closed, being forced to content himself with splashing in the shallows.

Inside the museum the air was dead and there was a faint taint of decay hanging in the long chill corridors. Sightless masks hung on the walls and when he tested some of the displayed swords and knives they broke in brittle fragments.

In the end he took very little—much of the exhibit was too delicate to transport or too large. He chose some tiny figurines from a case where the dusty card said something about “Egypt” and a clumsy finger ring set with a carving of a beetle from a neighboring shelf. Last of all was a small sleek black panther, smooth and cool to his fingers, which he fell in love with and could not bear to leave behind. He did not venture into the side wings— not with all the city waiting for him.

But the museum was safe. Here were no falling walls and the alcove where he had spent the night was excellent shelter. He piled up his supplies in one corner before he sallied forth.

The mare was reluctant to leave the woods and the lake, but Fors’ steady pull on her lead rope brought her back to the edge of the ruins. They went at a slow pace as he wanted to see what lay behind the spear points of glass which still clung in the shattered frames of the windows. These had all once been shops. How much of the wares they displayed were still worth plundering he could not guess. But he turned away in disappointment from fabrics eaten by insects and rotted by time.

In the fourth shop he entered was something much better. An unbroken glass case contained a treasure even greater than all the museum had to offer. Shut out from dust and most of the destruction of time were boxes of paper—whole boxes with blocks of separate sheets—and also pencils!

Of course the paper was brittle, yellowed, and easily torn. But in the Eyrie it could be pulped and re-worked into serviceable sections. And the pencils! There were few good substitutes for those. And the third box he opened held colored ones! He sharpened two with his hunting knife and made glorious red and green lines on the dusty floor. All of these must go with him. In the back of the shop he found a metal box which still seemed sturdy enough and into it he crammed all that he could. This—from just one shop I What riches could be expected from the city!

Why, here the men of the Eyrie could explore and loot perhaps for years before they exhausted all the supplies to be found. The only safe cities they had discovered before had been known to other tribes and were combed almost clean—or else they had been held by the Beast Things and were unsafe.

Fors tramped on, bits of glass crunching under his boots, skirting piles of rubble he could not clamber over. Such piles barricaded some shops entirely or else the roofs were unsafe. He was several blocks beyond the shop of the paper before he came to a second easy to enter. It had been another dealing in rings and gems. But the interior was in wild disorder as if it had been looted before. Cases lay smashed and the glass mingled with metal and stones on the floor. He stood in the doorway—it would take a long time to sort through that litter and the effort was not necessary. Only—as he turned away—he caught sight of something else on the floor which brought him back.

There was a patch of mud, dried brick-hard. And pressed deep into its surface, holding the pattern as if in a cast, was part of a footprint. He had seen its like before, near the pool of fresh deer blood. Those long narrow toe marks with the talon nail indentations could never be forgotten. That other print had been fresh. This was old. It might have been made months, even years before. The mud which held it crumbled under the prod of his finger tip. Fors backed out of the shop and stood with his back to a tumbling wall. The instinctive reaction which had made him do that also sent his eyes up and down the street.

Birds nested in the broken windows of the building across from him, flitting in and out on their own concerns. And not ten feet away a large gray rat sat on a pile of brick combing its fur and watching him with almost intelligent interest. It was a very large rat and a singularly fearless one. But no rat had made that footprint.

Fors summoned Lura from her ranging. With the cat to scout for him he would feel safer against attack. But he was still conscious of the many places where death could lurk, behind walls, in the pits which broke the street, in the open store fronts.

In the next hour he went about a mile, keeping to the main street and visiting only those buildings which Lura declared safe. The mare carried an odd assortment of bundles and he realized that he could not hope to transport more than a few selected samples of the abundance. He must cache part of his morning’s finds in the museum and take only the cream of his gleanings south. Now that the city was discovered the men from the Eyrie would “work” it with greater efficiency, sending experts to choose and dismantle what they needed most and could best use. So the sooner he started back with the news, the more time they would have to work here before the coming of the bad weather in the fall.

The day grew even warmer and big black flies came out of the crevices of the stones to bite viciously, making the mare so crazy he could hardly control her. He had best head back now to the green and the lake and there sort over his loot. But, as they passed the place where he had found the wealth of paper, he stepped in for a last check upon all he must leave behind. The sun made a bright bar across the floor bringing into prominence the pencil marks he had made there. But—he was certain he had not used a yellow or blue pencil, although there had been a few.

Now—yellow and blue lines crisscrossed the red and green ones he had left—almost challengingly. The boxes of pencils he had piled for later transportation had been opened and two were gone!

He could see the tracks in the floor dust—his own boot-heel pattern and across that a more shapeless outline. And in the corner by the door someone had spit out the stone of a cherry!

Fors whistled in Lura. She examined the evidence on the floor and waited for instructions. But she was displaying none of the disgust with which she had greeted that earlier spoor. This might have been left by a roving Plainsman who was exploring the city on his own. If that were so, it behooved Fors to move quickly. He must get back to the Eyrie and return with help before some other tribe staked out a fair claim to the riches here. Once or twice before the mountaineers had been so disappointed.

Now there would be no question about leaving most of the spoil he had gathered. He must cache it in the museum and travel as light as possible to make time. Frowning, he stamped out of the shop and jerked at the mare’s lead rope.

They came into the woods, cutting across a glade in the general direction of the museum. The mare snorted as they passed the end of the lake. Fors tugged her along by main force, bringing her up the steps to be relieved of her load. He packed the bundles into the room he now considered his own and freed the mare for grazing. Lura would keep watch until he had time to get everything in order.

But when Fors spread out the morning’s loot On the floor he found it very difficult to pick and choose. If he took this—then he could not carry that—and that might make a greater impression upon the experts of the Eyrie. He made piles, only to completely change their contents three and four times over. But in the end he made up a pack which he hoped would best display to the mountain clan the quality of this find and be a good example of his own powers of selection. The rest could be easily concealed somewhere in the rambling halls of this building until he returned.

He sighed as he began to sort the discards into order. There was so much to be left behind—why, he should have a pack train of horses, such as the Plains tribes used to carry their gear on the march. The drum rolled and he picked it up, rubbing his fingers across its top to hear again the queer pulsing sound. Then he tapped with his nails and the sound echoed weirdly through the halls.

This must have been the drum which had sounded through the night after his fight with the boar. A signal—! He could not resist other experimental thumps—and then tried out the rhythm of one of his own mountain hunting songs. But this strong music was more eerie than any from the flute or the three- and four-stringed harps his people knew.

As the frightening rumble died away Lura flowed in, her eyes uncannily aglow, haste and urgency expressed in every dark hair on her head. He must come with her and at once. Fors dropped the drum and reached for his bow. Lura stood by the door, her tail tip flicking. •^ She went down the steps in two bounds and he went after her, not sparing his leg. The mare was standing in the shallows of the lake undisturbed. Lura glided on, between trees and bushes and into the thick depths of the wood. Fors followed at a slower pace, not being able to move so quickly through the green obstruction.

But before he had gone out of sight of the lake he heard it—a faint moaning cry, almost a sigh, which had been wrung out of real suffering. It arose to a hoarse croak, framing muffled words he did not understand. But human lips had shaped them, he was sure of that. Lura would not have guided him to one of the Beast Things.

The gabble of strange words died away into another moan which seemed to rise out of the ground before him. Fors shied away from an expanse of dried grass and leaves which lay there. Lura had dropped to her belly, reaching out with a forepaw to feel delicately of the ground, not advancing into the small clearing.

One of the pits which he had found throughout the city was Fors’ first thought—at any rate a hole of some sort. Now he could see a break through at the opposite end of this cleared space. He started to edge around, treading on the half-exposed roots of trees and bushes and holding on firmly to anything which looked sturdy.

From the torn gap in the mat of dried grass and brush rose a sickening stench. Trying to spare his leg he went to his knees and peered into the dusk below. What he saw there set his stomach to churning.

It was a wicked trap—that pit—a trap artfully constructed and skillfully concealed with the matted covering. And it held its victims. The small deer had been dead for days, but the other body which, as his eyes adjusted to the dim light, he saw writhe weakly, must have lain there for a shorter time. The blood on the impaled shoulder still ran free.

Sharp-pointed stakes had been set in the earth at the bottom, pointing upward to catch and hold the fallen for a tortured death. And the man who half hung, half lay there now had escaped that death by less than six inches.

He had struggled to free himself, as the gaping wound in his own flesh testified, but all his strength had not brought his loose. Fors measured the space between the stakes and then looked around for a good-sized tree. This would not be easy— It did not take long to fetch what was left of his climbing rope and make a noose in it. The man in the pit looked up with glazed eyes. Whether he could see or understand what his rescuer was planning Fors did not know. He fastened the end of the cord to an arrow and shot the line over the branch which hung the closest to the trap.

To make one end of the rope fast to the tree took only an instant. Then, with the other in his hand, Fors lowered himself cautiously over the edge of the pit, using his elbows to break his speed as he slipped down to the smeared stakes. Black flies rose in a noxious cloud and he had to beat them off as he reached the side of the prisoner. The belt about the fellow’s middle was tight enough and he knotted the rope.

The way out of the pit was more difficult, since the makers had fashioned it with every precaution against that very operation. But a landslide at one end gave some footing and Fors fought his way back to the top. It was plain that whoever had set that pitfall had not visited it for some time and Fors left the sentry duty to Lura.

This was going to be nasty business, but it was the only way he could see of saving the sufferer below. He untied the rope end on the tree and twisted it about his wrists. Lura came without being summoned and seized the dangling tip in her jaws. Together they gave their weight to a quick jerk which was answered by a wild scream of agony. But Fors did not lessen the steady pull and Lura matched him step by step as he crept back.

Out of the black hole rose the lolling head and bloody shoulders of the stranger. When he swung clear Fors made fast the rope and hurried back to pull the limp body away from the edge of the fiendish mantrap. His hands were slippery with blood before he got the unconscious man free. He could not carry the fellow, not with his bad leg. Also he must weigh more than Fors by forty pounds. For, now that he lay in the sunlight, Fors recognized him as the dark-skinned hunter of the island. But his big body was flaccid and his face greenish white under its brown pigment. At least the blood was not spurting from that wound—no artery had been touched. He must get the stranger back to the museum where he could see to the ugly tear-There was a crashing in the brush. Fors hurled himself for the bow which lay where he had dropped it. But it was Lura who came out, urging the mare before her. The scent of blood made the mare roll her eyes and circle away, but Fors wanted no nonsense now and Lura was of a like mind. She walked up to the horse and gave several low snarls. The mare stood still, sweating, her eyes showing white. But she did not rear as Fors somehow got his patient across her back.

Once back in the shelter of the museum he gave a sigh of relief and rolled the stranger-onto his blanket. The other’s eyes were open again and this time with the light of reason in their dark brown depths. The hunter was very young. Now that he was so helpless this was plain. He could not count many more years than did Fors himself—in spite of his big frame and wide, well-muscled shoulders. He lay in quiet patience watching Fors make a fire and prepare the salve, but he said nothing, even when the mountaineer went to work with his crude surgery.

The stake had passed through the skin of the shoulder, tearing a wicked gouge, but, Fors saw with relief, breaking no bones. If infection did not develop the stranger would recover.