Distant Planet: SF Boxed Set (Illustrated Edition). Leigh Brackett

It cuts away the sun and the things that came from the sun to age us."

      Her eyes shifted thoughtfully. "Then, if we stay here—"

      "We'll remain young."

      "Six more days? Fourteen more? Twenty?"

      "More than that, maybe."

      She lay there, silently. After a long time she said, "Sim?"

      "Yes."

      "Let's stay here. Let's not go back. If we go back now, you know what'll happen to us...?"

      "I'm not certain."

      "We'll start getting old again, won't we?"

      He looked away. He stared at the ceiling and the clock with the moving finger. "Yes. We'll grow old."

      "What if we grow old—instantly. When we step from the ship won't the shock be too much?"

      "Maybe."

      Another silence. He began to move his limbs, testing them. He was very hungry. "The others are waiting," he said.

      Her next words made him gasp. "The others are dead," she said. "Or will be in a few hours. All those we knew back there are old and worn."

      He tried to picture them old. Dark, his sister, bent and senile with time. He shook his head, wiping the picture away. "They may die," he said. "But there are others who've been born."

      "People we don't even know," said Lyte, flatly.

      "But, nevertheless, our people," he replied. "People who'll live only eight days, or eleven days unless we help them."

      "But we're young, Sim! We're young! We can stay young!"

      He didn't want to listen. It was too tempting a thing to listen to. To stay here. To live. "We've already had more time than the others," he said. "I need workers. Men to heal this ship. We'll get on our feet now, you and I, and find food, eat, and see if the ship is movable. I'm afraid to try to move it myself. It's so big. I'll need help."

      "But that means running back all that distance!"

      "I know." He lifted himself weakly. "But I'll do it."

      "How will you get the men back here?"

      "We'll use the river."

      "If it's there. It may be somewhere else."

      "We'll wait until there is one, then. I've got to go back, Lyte. The son of Dienc is waiting for me, my sister, your brother, are old people, ready to die, and waiting for some word from us—"

      After a long while he heard her move, dragging herself tiredly to him. She put her head upon his chest, her eyes closed, stroking his arm. "I'm sorry. Forgive me. You have to go back. I'm a selfish fool."

      He touched her cheek, clumsily. "You're human. I understand you. There's nothing to forgive."

      * * * * *

      They found food. They walked through the ship. It was empty. Only in the control room did they find the remains of a man who must have been the chief pilot. The others had evidently bailed out into space in emergency lifeboats. This pilot, sitting at his controls, alone, had landed the ship on a mountain within sight of other fallen and smashed crafts. Its location on high ground had saved it from the floods. The pilot himself had died, probably of heart failure, soon after landing. The ship had remained here, almost within reach of the other survivors, perfect as an egg, but silent, for—how many thousand days? If the pilot had lived, what a different thing life might have been for the ancestors of Sim and Lyte. Sim, thinking of this—felt the distant, ominous vibration of war. How had the war between worlds come out? Who had won? Or had both planets lost and never bothered trying to pick up survivors? Who had been right? Who was the enemy? Were Sim's people of the guilty or innocent side? They might never know.

      He checked the ship hurriedly. He knew nothing of its workings, yet as he walked its corridors, patted its machines, he learned from it. It needed only a crew. One man couldn't possibly set the whole thing running again. He laid his hand upon one round, snout-like machine. He jerked his hand away, as if burnt.

      "Lyte!"

      "What is it?"

      He touched the machine again, caressed it, his hand trembled violently, his eyes welled with tears, his mouth opened and closed, he looked at the machine, loving it, then looked at Lyte.

      "With this machine—" he stammered, softly, incredulously. "With—with this machine I can—"

      "What, Sim?"

      He inserted his hand into a cup-like contraption with a lever inside. Out of porthole in front of him he could see the distant line of cliffs. "We were afraid there might never be another river running by this mountain, weren't we?" he asked, exultantly.

      "Yes, Sim, but—"

      "There will be a river. And I will come back, tonight! And I'll bring men with me. Five hundred men! Because with this machine I can blast a river bottom all the way to the cliffs, down which the waters will rush, giving myself and the men a swift, sure way of traveling back!" He rubbed the machine's barrel-like body. "When I touched it, the life and method of it shot into me! Watch!" He depressed the lever.

      A beam of incandescent fire lanced out from the ship, screaming.

      Steadily, accurately, Sim began to cut away a river bed for the storm waters to flow in. The night was turned to day by its hungry eating.

      * * * * *

      The return to the cliffs was to be carried out by Sim alone. Lyte was to remain in the ship, in case of any mishap. The trip back seemed, at first glance, to be impossible. There would be no river rushing to cut his time, to sweep him along toward his destination. He would have to run the entire distance in the dawn, and the sun would get him, catch him before he'd reached safety.

      "The only way to do it is to start before sunrise."

      "But you'd be frozen, Sim."

      "Here." He made adjustments on the machine that had just finished cutting the river bed in the rock floor of the valley. He lifted the smooth snout of the gun, pressed the lever, left it down. A gout of fire shot toward the cliffs. He fingered the range control, focused the flame end three miles from its source. Done. He turned to Lyte. "But I don't understand," she said.

      He opened the air-lock door. "It's bitter cold out, and half an hour yet till dawn. If I run parallel to the flame from the machine, close enough to it, there'll not be much heat but enough to sustain life, anyway."

      "It doesn't sound safe," Lyte protested.

      "Nothing does, on this world." He moved forward. "I'll have a half hour start. That should be enough to reach the cliffs."

      "But if the machine should fail while you're still running near its beam?"

      "Let's not think of that," he said.

      A moment later he was outside. He staggered as if kicked in the stomach. His heart almost exploded in him. The environment of his world forced him into swift living again. He felt his pulse rise, kicking through his veins.

      The night was cold as death. The heat ray from the ship sliced across the valley, humming, solid and warm. He moved next to it, very close. One misstep in his running and—

      "I'll be back," he called to Lyte.

      He and the ray of light went together.

      * * * * *

      In the early morning the peoples in the caves saw the long finger of orange incandescence and the weird whitish apparition floating, running along beside it. There was muttering and superstition.

      So when Sim finally reached the cliffs of his childhood he saw alien peoples swarming there. There were no familiar faces. Then he realized how foolish it was to expect familiar faces. One of the older men glared down at him. "Who're you?" he shouted. "Are you from the enemy cliff? What's your name?"