Child of the Sun: Leigh Brackett SF Boxed Set (Illustrated). Leigh Brackett

Sun-child's.

      * * * * *

      Falken stood with the others on spongy, yielding soil. Dim plant-shapes rose on all sides as far as he could see, forming an impenetrable tangle of queer geometric shapes that made him reel with a sense of spatial distortion.

      Overhead, in a sea-green sky, three tiny suns wheeled in mad orbits about a common center. There was a smell in the air, a rotting stench that was neither animal or vegetable.

      Falken stood still, pouring all his strength into that single mental command to stop.

      The tangled geometric trees wavered momentarily. Dizzily, through the wheeling triple suns, the Sun-child showed, stabbed through with puzzled, angry scarlet.

      The landscape steadied again. And the ground began to move.

      It crawled in small hungry wavelets about Falken's feet. The musky, rotten smell was heavy as oil. Sheila and Hilton seemed distant and unreal, their faces hidden in the helmets.

      Falken gripped them together and drove his brain to its task. He knew what this was. The reproduction of another world, remembered from the Sun-child's youth. If they could only stand still, and not think about it....

      He felt the earth lurch upward, and guessed that the Sun-child had raised its creation off the floor of the cavern.

      The earth began to coil away from under his feet.

      * * * * *

      For a giddy instant Falken saw the true world far below, and the Sun-child floating in rainbow light.

      It was angry. He could tell that from its color. Then suddenly the anger was drowned in a swirl of golden motes.

      It was laughing. The Sun-child was laughing.

      Falken fought down a sharp despair. A terrible fear of falling oppressed him. He heard Sheila scream. The world closed in again.

      Sheila Moore looked at him from between two writhing trees.

      He hadn't felt her go. But she was there. Hairy branches coiled around her, tore her vac-suit. She shrieked....

      Falken cried out and went forward. Something held him. He fought it off, driven by the agony in Sheila's cry.

      Something snapped thinly. There was a flaring shock inside his helmet. He fell, and staggered up and on, and the hungry branches whipped away from the girl.

      She stood there, her thin white body showing through the torn vac-suit, and laughed at him.

      He saw Miner Hilton crawling dazed on the living ground, toward the thing that looked like Sheila and laughed with mocking golden motes in its eyes.

      A vast darkness settled on Falken's soul. He turned. Sheila Moore crouched where he had thrown her from him, in his struggle to help the lying shell among the trees.

      He went and picked her up. He said to Miner Hilton,

      "Can we fix these broken wires?"

      Hilton shook his head. The shock of the breaking seemed to have steadied him a little. "No," he said. "Too much burned out."

      "Then we're beaten." Falken turned a bitter, snarling face to the green sky, raised one futile fist and shook it. Then he was silent, looking at the others.

      Sheila Moore said softly, "This is the end, isn't it?"

      Falken nodded. And Miner Hilton said,

      "I'm not afraid, now." He looked at the trees that hung over them, waiting, and shook his head. "I don't understand. Now that I know I'm going to die, I'm not afraid."

      Sheila's green eyes were soft and misty. She kissed Hilton, slowly and tenderly, on the lips.

      Falken turned his back and stared at the twisted ugly trees. He didn't see them. And he wasn't thinking of the Unregenerates and the world he'd won and then lost.

      * * * * *

      Sheila's hand touched him. She whispered, "Eric...."

      Her eyes were deep, glorious green. Her pale starved face had the brittle beauty of wind-carved snow. She held up her arms and smiled.

      Falken took her and buried his gypsy face in the raw gold of her hair.

      "How did you know?" he whispered. "How did you know I loved you?"

      "I just—knew."

      "And Hilton?"

      "He doesn't love me, Eric. He loves what I stand for. And anyway ... I can say this now, because we're going to die. I've loved you since I first saw you. I love you more than Tom, and I'd have died for him."

      Hungry tree branches reached for them, barely too short. Buds were shooting up underfoot. But Falken forgot them, the alien life and the wheeling suns that were only a monstrous dream, and the Sun-child who dreamed them.

      For that single instant he was happy, as he had not been since Kitty was lost.

      Presently he turned and smiled at Hilton, and the wolf look was gone from his face. Hilton said quietly.

      "Maybe she's right, about me. I don't know. There's so much I don't know. I'm sorry I'm not going to live to find out."

      "We're all sorry," said Falken, "about not living." A sudden sharp flare lighted his eyes. "Wait a minute!" he whispered. "There may be a chance...."

      He was taut and quivering with terrible urgency, and the buds grew and yearned upward around their feet.

      "You said we could only attack it through its mind. But there may be another way. Its memories, its pride...."

      He raised his scarred gypsy face to the green sky and shouted,

      "You, Child of the Sun! Listen to me! You have beaten us. Go ahead and kill us. But remember this. You're a child of the Sun, and we're only puny humans, little ground-crawlers, shackled with weakness and fear.

      "But we're greater than you! Always and forever, greater than you!"

      The writhing trees paused, the buds faltered in their hungry growth. Faintly, very faintly, the landscape flickered. Falken's voice rose to a ringing shout.

      "You were a child of the Sun. You had the galaxy for a toy, all the vast depths of space to play in. And what did you do? You sealed yourself like a craven into a black tomb, and lost all your greatness in the whimsies of a wicked child.

      "You were afraid of your destiny. You were too weak for your own strength. We fought you, we little humans, and our strength was so great that you had to beat us by a lying trick.

      "You can read our minds, Sun-child. Read them. See whether we fear you. And see whether we respect you, you who boast of your parentage and dream dreams of lost glory, and hide in a dark hole like a frightened rat!"

      * * * * *

      For one terrible moment the alien world was suffused with a glare of scarlet—anger so great that it was almost tangible. Then it greyed and faded, and Falken could see Sheila's face, calm and smiling, and Hilton's fingers locked in hers.

      The ground dropped suddenly. Blurred trees writhed against a fading sky, and the suns went out in ebon shadow. Falken felt clean earth under him. The rotting stench was gone.

      He looked up. The Sun-child floated overhead, under the rocky vault. They were back in the cavern world.

      The Sun-child's voice spoke in his brain, and its fires were a smoldering, dusky crimson.

      "What was that you said, human?"

      "Look into my mind and read it. You've thrown away your greatness. We had little, compared to you, but we kept it. You've won, but your very winning is a shame to you, that a child of the Sun should stoop to fight with little men."

      The smoldering crimson burned and grew, into glorious wicked fire that was sheer fury made visible. Falken felt death coiling to strike him out of that fire. But he faced it with bitter, mocking eyes, and he was surprised,