Exile From Venus
Date: 2021-01-02T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Science fiction; Man-woman relationships -- Fiction; Regression (Civilization) -- Fiction; Earth (Planet) -- Fiction

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Title: Exile From Venus

Author: E. Hoffmann Price

Illustrator: Herman B. Vestal

Release date: January 2, 2021 [eBook #64199]
Most recently updated: October 18, 2024

Language: English

Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EXILE FROM VENUS ***

EXILE FROM VENUS

By E. HOFFMAN PRICE

Earth was a world of murdering savages; bleak
and desolate; contaminated by deadly radioactivity.
Only Craig Verrill's atavistic stubbornness—and
a rash promise, made in fury—could have brought
him back to that perilous birthplace of Man....

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories May 1951.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

The solicitude of Linda's voice, the seductiveness of her perfume, her very presence as they sat in the artificial twilight of the Domes of Venus, tempted him to abandon his plan to sail at once for Terra, venture among the savage Terrestrians, and get possession of that enormous ruby they called the Fire of Skanderbek.

Linda was long legged and supple waisted, with dark eyes and gold-bronze hair, and very white skin. Her cheek bones were just sufficiently prominent to keep her face from being too regular; and there was a perceptible dusting of tiny freckles which accented the irregularity, adding a piquant touch. These were natural, and a rarity that had existed only in fable for the past six-hundred years, for the glow-lamps and the occlusive Venusian atmosphere seemed to combine to make the freckle almost impossible. However, though the cosmeticians had driven the Board of Science frantic until they had devised a process for artificially imitating Linda's unique flaw, this distinction had not spoiled her.

"Never mind what I said, last night," Linda pleaded. "We were all angry, you and Gil and I. No sense at all!"

"But I promised," Verrill said stubbornly. Which helped—a little—to sustain himself against backing down from the rash venture for which he had not a bit of taste.

He had an angular face, narrowish, with the bony structure well accented. His nose was prominent; his hazel eyes were intent and impatient. He was lean, muscular, and all in all, just the sort of Venusian to go on such a crazy venture—yet he didn't like the idea at all, now that he had had time to consider.

"Let's forget it all, Craig! Rubies aren't important enough. The one Gil brought me from that trading-post of Terra isn't—wasn't—"

Verrill said sourly: "That's what makes me feel so foolish about it. He brought you a souvenir, and I grabbed it from you, flung it into the lake, and pasted him. What for?"

"Oh, Craig, who cares! Gil was lording it over you. I was too smug and pleased with the gift to realize how far he was going. Oh, all right, of course you were wrong! But what of it?"

Verrill shook his head. "I fairly shouted myself into it."

"I don't want you to go."

"I know you don't. But too many of our friends were within sight and hearing of the whole mess. Sooner or later their attitude would make you unhappy about a man who talked big, and then backed down."

His insistence widened Linda's eyes. The civilized Venusians were always ready to take the sensible, the expedient way. Had they been otherwise, had they not been the descendants of sensible Terrestrian ancestors, they would have been included in the devastation which had left all but small and widely scattered patches of Terra uninhabitable for the past seven-hundred years. Rather, those who today were Venusians would have been struggling savages, scraping out a living in some uncontaminated area.

Verrill's was an almost Terrestrian stubbornness; something primitive and atavistic, very much like that queer quirk which made some Venusians return to their native Earth to set up trading-posts, where they bartered with the barbarian tribesmen for tobacco and wines, spices and jewels and perfumes, all manner of luxuries which Venus did not offer.

Linda made her final appeal: "Leaving all this, to scramble around in that terrible waste and desolation—oh, do be sensible!"

Her voice, and the kiss that followed it, made Verrill at once aware of what generations of Venusians had taken for granted. He looked across the gardens and the lake, and up at the prodigious span of girders. The original purpose of the structure had been to house a military outpost that was to have outflanked a comparable one on Luna. In the years just before The War, engineers and scientists had been sent from Terra to build those enormous domes, plastic-sheathed and air-tight, to exclude the raging dust-storms and the overwhelming concentration of formaldehyde which made up most of the natural Venusian atmosphere. Rather than rely on any system depending upon chemically prepared oxygen, they had established gardens, orchards, fields of plant-life which liberated sufficient oxygen to maintain the required balance.

This was to have been simply a garrison. According to plan, it would have played a decisive part in the final clash for Terrestrian supremacy. Meanwhile, there had come to be little difference between the rival dictatorships, except in the wording of their slogans. The Anglo-Capitalist Bloc had borrowed all the kinds and twists of regimentation of the rival bloc. The difference finally became one of flavor rather than principle.

A cool-headed few, in command of the Venusian garrison, had seen that neither side could win; that there would be only mutual and total destruction. The warfare became more and more atrocious; and the Anglo-Capitalist Bloc drifted further and further from the sort of organization that the Venus garrison, in no immediate danger, could contemplate defending with enthusiasm. Thus, when one day the Lunar Base radio complained of attack by suicide-ships and then went abruptly silent, the Venusian Base, which might have been expected to cry "Geronimo!" and leap into the holocaust, instead underwent a short and violent revolution in which the ardently military were disposed of. Then, stubbornly intending to survive chaos and idiocy, the Venus Base folded its hands and sat out the fatal clash that ended The War and virtually the whole of Terrestrian civilization with it....

After several centuries, the Venus Council risked an exploration party to Terra to see whether the globe was becoming fit for human habitation again. Large areas had, of course, through natural processes become decontaminated; there were scattered colonies of survivors—farmers, herdsmen, hunters, armed with clubs, spears, and other primitive weapons. Contact was made, communication struck up, trade—of considerable importance to both—established; and, after the ten years which this took, the Venusians were left with very little inclination to colonize Terra. Life under the domes was comfortable, with controlled climate, law and order, science and art. Comfortable, civilized, and sensible. While Terra—

"Be a sensible Venusian," was what Linda meant. "Don't go looking for trouble when you can do better without. Don't be a typical Terrestrian!"

The whole clash of the previous night had been silly. Irritated by Gil Dawson's giving Linda a ruby as a souvenir of his official inspection-tour of the Council-controlled Terrestrian trading-posts, Verrill had flung the trinket into the lake. After a brisk fracas in which Dawson had finally wearied of getting up, only to be knocked down again, Verrill had shouted to Linda and to most of Venus that he'd get her a man's-sized ruby, the Fire of Skanderbek. She, thoroughly outraged, had told him and Dawson that by Heaven she'd not be the prize, either of a brawl or a souvenir-finding contest. To make it good, she had concluded by telling Verrill that he'd be far better occupied if he got the Venus Council to assign him to one of the committees for improving the living-standards of the Terrestrians, and won the Fire of Skanderbek as a token of their gratitude.

But however earnestly she besought him to forget it all, Verrill was just as unhappily determined to go through with it. "I can't back down. Dawson will surely take a crack at stealing the Fire himself—and that would make it tough for me. And for you."

"Oh, let the fool try!" she cried, desperately. "He'd never come back from the territory of those wildmen."

Verrill shook his head. "He might come back. Even though I did give him a trouncing, he's anything but a clown. You wouldn't accept the Fire of Skanderbek if he offered it—but he'd give it to someone else, and then—well, a lot of women do dislike you! There's nothing I can do, except to beat him to it."

And so, Verrill went to do as he had to do.

The space-freighter veered from her course only a little; instead of landing in the sun-blasted plain at the foot of the mountains into which Verrill was to go, she launched a crew-boat which took him to the trading-post at the foot of barren limestone bulwarks.

Dawson was not at the post. But while a head start was a happy omen, Verrill knew that it had its limits, since his plan to ingratiate himself with the barbarians until he could seize the fetish-ruby and return to the post involved so much time that the gain of hours or days meant little.

Ingratiate himself—steal the Fire of Skanderbek—and get out—infinitely simpler than Linda's suggestion, probably an utterly impossible one, of deserving it finally as a gift. His first look at the bearded mountaineers convinced him that no amount of do-gooding could ever move them to gratitude.

Those lounging in the compound of the fortified trading-post wore homespun pants and sheepskin jackets. They fairly clanked with trade daggers, trade pistols, and trade hatchets; some carried trade muskets, and some had the new repeating rifles. Their tanned and hairy faces and bitter eyes made it plain that looting and robbing, brawling and mayhem and murder were their very breath of life.

They spoke the international language which had developed sufficiently to come into common use around 2200 A.D. English, while a nightmare of contradictions to baffle a foreigner, had offered these advantages: next to Chinese, no other language was so free of inflections; and it could so readily assimilate all manner of foreign words. Thus, since the tone-deaf Occidental had not been able to master the simplicities of Chinese or other Mongolian tongues, the Asiatics had taken up English, with which had been blended Arabic, Urdu, Malay, and a good deal of Western European; and, while seven centuries of Venusian isolation had made the speech of the people of the Domes diverge from the original international Terrestrian, Verrill had not too much difficulty in making himself understood.

"This black bag," he told a group of the caravan men, "will interest Ardelan—that's your chief's name, isn't it? Let me go into the mountains with you to talk to him."

"You're crazy," a craggy faced fellow with drooping moustaches and hard blue eyes told him, levelly. "You think I'm crazy."

Verrill laid out three daggers. He picked one up, jabbed it into the top of a table cluttered with heaps of goatskins, dried apricots, raisins, and bags of coriander seed. He bent the weapon until the grip touched the table top. He released it. It snapped straight up, with a fine, high pitched spang. He plucked a dagger from the mountaineer's belt, drew the other weapon from the table, and slashed them edge to edge.

He cut shavings from the mountaineer's weapon. Then he stropped his own blade on the palm of his hand for a couple of strokes, and next ran it along his arm. The hairs toppled as he cut them free; there was no drag at all, the edge was so keen.

"Mine are not trade daggers," he said. "Bet you the three that Ardelan will listen to me, and not throw me out."

The Terrestrian's eyes gleamed. "What do I put up for a bet?"

"A pair of those boots you're wearing. Put my knives in your belt now. If I lose my bet, they're yours. If I win, you're welcome to them anyway."

So the caravan men fitted him out with garments and boots like their own; and Verrill went into the mountains with them.

II

The trail snaked along precipices and wound past narrow, hidden valleys. At the foot of a cliff lay the shell of a space-cruiser which had been telescoped from its original six-hundred feet to a bare two-hundred, though much of the nose had melted from the impact against the rocks. Gnarled oaks and junipers reached up from a riven seam of the shell. The metal had not rusted. It was merely tarnished to a slate gray. It was a mine of such metal as could have furnished all manner of implements for the Terrestrians—but they did not know how to exploit it.

Finally, Verrill was looking down into narrow, upland meadows where sheep grazed. There were barley patches. His eyes felt as though they were full of sand. The snow-white glare from cliffs, and the dust which rose in yellow puffs at every step, made the way a torment for one accustomed to the paradisiacal clime of the Venusian Domes.

Each day's march brought the donkey-caravan within sight of alternate trails, guarded by mud-brick towers, where armed men were stationed to watch the moves of hostile neighbors. The return, even without pursuit, would be dangerous.

At last they came to Ardelan's mud-walled houses, huddled on a rocky shelf which overhung a fertile valley. The settlement was surrounded by a wall of earth and stone, and had escaped contamination because no one would have bombed a 12,000 foot range of limestone peaks except by mistake.

When the trading convoy filed into the tangle of flat-roofed houses which surrounded a hard-packed central square, women, children, and dogs came out, each in full voice. The procession kept straight on toward the entrance of a two-storeyed building. Half the ground-level was a stable; the rest, a courtyard where Ardelan and a handful of armed companions lolled under an awning of black goat-hair.

Terrestrian faces were no novelty to Verrill; but this time, being a stranger among them—instead of merely a spectator seeing a handful of them, half defiant and half uneasy in the strangeness of a trading-post—he saw what he had never before noticed. They tended toward height and ranginess, prominence of nose, angularity of face; yet behind this likeness was a shadow-pattern of racial differentiation. There were differences of flavor, rather than of outright form. The flare of a nostril, the shape of an eye, the fullness or thinness of lip—a thick necked one, here and there, suggested that, generations back, there had been among his ancestors a blocky Mongol from Central Asia.

The guards, instead of presenting Verrill, explained him as though he had been some trade article. Ardelan, listening, studied his visitor with entire impersonality, as he might have scrutinized a basket of fresh ripe apricots to see how they had endured being hauled so far.

"What's in the bag?" he demanded, abruptly.

"Medicine. I am a doctor."

"What for? People die anyway."

"A doctor," Verrill explained, concealing his dismay, "is not to keep people from dying. He is to make it more agreeable for them until they finally have to die."

Ardelan addressed his henchmen. The answers summed up to this: that if nothing much ailed a man, he'd get well by himself, and if something really incapacitated him, it would of course be something so serious that he could not last long at the best.

Ardelan digested this wisdom, then asked, "Verrill, can you make knives like these you gave that man?"

"I am a doctor, not a blacksmith."

"Can you make guns or cartridges?"

"No."

"Can you fight?"

Verrill glanced uneasily about, as though Ardelan might be on the point of selecting an opponent to test the stranger's claims. And, having read Verrill's face, Ardelan snorted, and not waiting for a reply, demanded, "Then what are you good for?"

"To treat the sick," Verrill repeated, with growing sense of futility. "To bind wounds. To set broken bones."

"Look at us. We've done very well."

"I can do better."

"Can't work, can't fight! Good for nothing but doctoring. Bad as a priest! Lock him up; I want to think this over."

The guard hustled Verrill and his medical case into an empty granary. They slammed the door and rolled a boulder against it. It made no difference whether or not he could shove the door open; there was nowhere to go if he did get out. He could not find his way back to the trading-post except over the way which his escort had brought him: a guarded way.

In the half-gloom, Verrill noted that the wall had been cracked by earthquakes. These cracks gave him hand and toe holds, to climb up until he could catch the rough-hewn timber which supported the roof of brush and clay. Lying on the crown of the wall, he could look out through rifts in the roof.

Herdsmen were driving their flocks in from distant slopes. Others drove donkeys laden with brush. Verrill was appalled by the ever present evidence that Terrestrian life was a matter of digging, scratching, and enduring the elements. The stark emptiness of the sky worried him; he was accustomed to the perpetual twilight and impenetrable clouds of Venus.

Well away from the settlement, and outside the wall, was a small, squatty cube with a small tower at each corner. The structure was backed up against an overhanging cliff, and was unapproachable except from the walled town. The precipitous ending of the shelf guarded the whitewashed cube more surely than if it had been within the town wall.

The open doorway was so large in proportion to the structure itself that surmise made Verrill's pulse hammer. That must be the shrine where the Fire of Skanderbek was kept.

Toward dusk, drums rumbled and trumpets of ram's horns bawled hoarsely. Men carrying tightly bound bundles of brush marched in procession toward the whitewashed cube, and chanted as they went. When they came to the place, they filed in, each coming out with his faggots ablaze.

They returned to their houses. Before long, Verrill's captors brought him a bowl of mutton stew, and leathery cakes of bread. "They couldn't have cooked this stuff so soon," he reasoned. "It must have been cooking all the while, on fires already lighted. That procession was fire worship."

He sat there a long time after he had licked the gravy from his fingers. A shocking business: meat so plentiful that it was fed to a prisoner, and yet the barbarians knew nothing at all about cookery.

The town swarmed with flies. Vultures perched on the walls and watch-towers, waiting to clean up the garbage and offal flung from the houses. The community well had a nasty taint from surface drainage from the stables. Verrill, after a bad night's sleep, spent the morning deciding that when pestilence did break out, he would need his medical supplies for himself.

The women, shapely and graceful, gathered about the well to fill the earthenware jugs they carried balanced on their heads. They chattered mainly about the outsider, giving most emphasis to his looks, though devoting certain speculation to his possible usefulness, and probable destination.

"Kwangtan," they all agreed, "wants him killed or sent away."

From what he could piece together from the various relays of women he overheard, Verrill concluded that Kwangtan was the keeper of the shrine; and that medical practice was the monopoly of old women, who cooked up herbs. These potions, plus Kwangtan's incantations, kept the community in health.

The drowsy silence of midafternoon was broken by an hysterical screeching and screaming. Before Verrill could arouse himself from the stupor of half suffocation, the door was jerked open and several men pounced for him.

"You, with the medicine! Work for you. Bring the black box!"

They hustled him to a house where several old women were shaking and back-slapping a boy of three or four. The kid's mother, one of the few redheads in the colony, was wailing at a pitch that made Verrill shiver. A beetle-browed young man with a wiry beard squatted on the floor, looking helpless. All he did was repeat, "Get Kwangtan!" And no one paid him any heed at all.

At the sight of Verrill, one of the old women laid the child on a sheepskin spread on the floor. The child's face was gray. His lips were bluish. His eyes bugged out. He wheezed agonizingly. It made Verrill's skin twitch, just to see the little fellow's losing battle for breath. He was slowly choking. With all voices suddenly stilled at Verrill's approach, the sound became all the more ominous.

In his utter perplexity and dismay, Verrill hoped that what he heard was the death-rattle which would relieve him of the task about to be forced upon him. The absence of Kwangtan, the holy man, told him the story: that wise fellow was not going to lose any prestige by tackling something he could not handle.

"What's wrong?" Verrill asked, with a show of assurance.

"You're a doctor," the kid's father snarled. "Do something."

"He swallowed an apricot seed," the child's redhaired mother said. "It's stuck, we can't shake it out, he's choking. Get it out, you blinking fool!"

The kid's father drew and cocked his pistol. The dry click chilled Verrill to the heart. He remembered an old story of an emergency operation at a trading-post. The yarn had given the Venusians quite a thrill.

Ardelan stalked in. He nodded his approval of the man who had a pistol trained on the doctor. "Stranger, do not make any mistakes. Kwangtan has warned us."

Verrill had a raft of Venusian specifics for just about every known ailment; he had counted, however, on nothing of the sort which now confronted him—had looked forward simply to giving the savages pills, and swabbing them with antiseptics. As he knelt, he fumbled helplessly with the instruments in the case.

"Do this right," Ardelan said. "Or he shoots."

Verrill loaded a hypo with a local anaesthetic. The glint of metal, and the sudden end of the child's gagging as the injection stilled his struggles, nearly cost Verrill his life. Ardelan's big hand knocked the pistol out of line as it blazed, and the slug scorched Verrill's cheek and pounded a chunk out of the wall.

"He's not dead," the chief said, "Not yet."

A splash of antiseptic.

Then, nerving himself, Verrill made a slit in the throat. There was not much blood. He got the apricot seed free. With haggling jabs, he took a couple of stitches. He taped and bandaged.

Then, shoulders sagging, he settled back, trying to keep from toppling to the floor. The kid's lips were no longer bluish. He was breathing freely. At last he blinked, cried out, and reached for his throat.

"He's brought him back to life!" the redhead cried, and snatched up the boy.

Verrill crumpled. He toppled, and sprawled. He was, however, conscious, and when he heard what the mountaineers were saying he realized that had he done it intentionally, he could not have done better than collapse.

One said, "He's left his body for awhile to fight off the devils, so they won't come back to hurt the kid."

Verrill muttered and mumbled until, satisfied that his act had been up to their expectation, he sat up. Again, he faced a pistol, but this time it was presented butt foremost.

"Take it, doctor. It's yours," the kid's father said.

And now Kwangtan, the fire priest, joined the group.

His deep-set eyes blazed fiercely. His face was sunken. His hands were like parchment drawn over bones. He wore white pants and a white shirt. His beard and his shoulder-length hair were white. For a moment, Verrill thought that the old fellow was a veteran of The War. His age made him fantastic in a colony where men over forty were scarce, and those over fifty, rarities; though old women were more than plentiful.

Verrill declined the gift of the pistol. "Give it to the holy man," he said. "I did not come here for pay."

Then he went with Ardelan to sit under the black awning where the chief settled disputes, and planned raids on neighboring tribes.

"Excellency," Verrill pointed out, "holding a pistol at a doctor's head is no way of making sure he'll help the patient."

"You are a stranger. You might have killed him with a curse."

"He was already nearly dead."

"But he was still alive, and you might have finished him."

"He must have known I'd do my best."

"Still, if the boy had died, that clan would have lost a fighting man, so your clan had to lose. That is our law."

"Is that why Kwangtan wouldn't help?"

"Not at all. He's not a stranger. And if the women who were working on the boy had kept at it until he choked to death, no one would have hurt them. They're not strangers."

"The quicker I get out of here, the better!"

Ardelan permitted himself to smile. "Once you are no longer a stranger, doctoring will not be so dangerous."

III

As Ardelan's reserve thawed out, Verrill pressed him with questions. "Your men talk about nothing but raids on your neighbors' flocks, and about feuds. Haven't you enough sheep?"

"Doctor, you know how to save lives, but you know nothing at all about living."

Ardelan pointed toward the gateway, which opened from courtyard to the square. Half a dozen women, high-breasted and long-limbed, were gossiping at the well. Their wild gracefulness was blood-stirring. Verrill contrasted them with the studiedly elegant ladies of Venus, and with Linda particularly.

"We have enough sheep, and enough women," the chief explained. "The sheep don't make trouble. The women do. If my men are not to cut each other's throats, they must have outside enemies to keep them busy. Or the jealousies of their wives would prod them to too much competition with each other."

Thinking back to his quarrel with Gil Dawson, Verrill had to concede Ardelan's point and principle. And then he got back to the perils of being a stranger. The following day, he proposed, "Let me take part in the fire ceremony of an evening. In that way, I won't be a stranger so long."

The chief got up, presently, and clapped his hands. A retainer came forward with two horses. They were hammer-headed, shaggy, Roman-nosed, and with fierce eyes. The saddles were sheepskin pads. There were no stirrups.

Verrill said, "Excellency, you ride. I'll walk."

They set out for the shrine. Meanwhile, half a dozen horsemen came in from the other end of the shelf. One, overtaking Verrill and the chief, slowed down enough to exchange a hail, and then pressed on. Before they came to the shrine, the rider had finished his business with Kwangtan, and was leaving.

He circled wide, to avoid an encounter. This made Verrill uneasy. The man was dust-caked, sweat-drenched, and sagging.

Ardelan frowned. "More trouble! That's one of the outpost guards. I wish I could have just the right amount of raiding, and no more."

"He might have told you what it was about."

"He will, at the sunset council. But Kwangtan has to dip his long nose into everything first, or he makes trouble."

They got the news in a hurry.

Standing in the entrance of the shrine, Kwangtan cursed his chief and the doctor as well. "Get that fellow out of here! He's come to steal the Fire of Skanderbek. And you're a fool for allowing him around here!"

Ardelan endured the cursing until he had a chance to ask, "Have you had another vision, Holy One?"

"The man who just rode up told me what I had already learned from the fire gods. This Verrill has promised the ruby to one of his women."

"Who said that?" Verrill demanded.

"One of your own people who fly down from heaven. One called Dawson. At the trading-post. Dawson talked about you to our men, and to our neighbors."

"You stick to your own business," Ardelan interposed, quietly. "He will stick to his. He is an outlaw from his own people. Naturally, his enemies try to harm him."

The snarling saint listened. He and Ardelan eyed each other. What unspoken thought passed between them was beyond Verrill's guessing; yet it must have had force, for Kwangtan offered no objection when Ardelan said, "Verrill, come in with me and bow to the flame."

The interior of the shrine was much larger than the front had suggested. This was because of a grotto in the overhang of the cliff. From a rift in the natural shelf of rock came hissing jets of fire. They wavered, varied, blending into each other and separating again.

Behind the low barrier of flames was a monstrous ruby, uncut, yet a perfect hexagonal crystal, with edges clean and sharp. This was not from any alluvial deposit, else the faces would have been dulled and the edges chipped.

Whether or not the stone had been polished, Verrill could not even surmise. At all events, this was a ruby that had come from the original matrix, the rocky birthplace of gems. It collected all the wavering light, transformed it, and poured it back again, transmuted into living red. The crystal seemed to pulsate with a life of its own.

The beauty and the splendor made Verrill picture the Fire of Skanderbek against Linda's white skin—and the wonder of it must have showed in his face, rather than the resolve to have the gem at any cost, for Kwangtan's radiant hostility softened perceptibly. Verrill imitated Ardelan's gesture and bow: and the two withdrew from the shrine.

"I don't doubt," said Ardelan, once he was in the saddle, and Verrill tramping alongside, "that you'd steal it if you could get out of here with it. Don't try it. Maybe I could—but probably I could not—save your life."

"You'd not try any too hard."

"You are wrong," the chief countered, earnestly. "Slitting that kid's gullet and not hurting him was something I'd never heard about. Maybe you can be useful around here."

"Not with what Kwangtan thinks of me."

"It really depends on the women—though quite a few of the men believe in the fire god."

"You don't," Verrill said, boldly. "Though you do wonder a lot about fire that comes out of a rock, with no fuel."

"I don't wonder as much as you think. There's a place, far away from here, where a blaze like that comes from the ground sometimes when a camp fire is built too near it. But the wind whisks the flames out and then there's nothing but a smell."

Verrill had by now revised somewhat his notions on savages. "Then why do you put up with that wild-eyed fanatic?"

Ardelan smiled indulgently. "You people from the outside know many strange things. How to come down from the stars. How to make guns. But the few of you I've talked to are dog-ignorant when it comes to people. The fire god is something our neighbors don't have. It makes us stick together better, and keeps us from fighting among ourselves. Aren't any of your people smart enough to have gods?"

Verrill answered, with feigned humility, "I came to teach you people a few things but it seems I can learn something. Then it will be a fair exchange."

The next day, he had Ardelan send a courier to the trading-post. The man carried an order for a consignment of medical supplies to be sent from the Venusian Domes via the next freighter. There was also a letter for Linda, telling of the success of his first operation, and of Dawson's first move to make trouble. "But Gil was a bit late," he wrote. "I'd already got in pretty solid. That won't keep him from trying something else. He must have talked a good deal before he left. If you hear any gossip as to what he planned to do or how he intended to do it, be sure and write me the details. From all I've seen of Terra so far, they should have bombed it even more than they did. One well-organized Dome is worth a dozen Earths. But the natives don't seem to mind a bit...."

Knife and gunshot wounds and fractures, Verrill reasoned, would make up most of his practice: surgery, that is, in its engineering aspect, rather than as a corrective of ailments. And the centuries, fortunately, had worked to keep his task from being utterly beyond a well-educated layman. Whereas in the twentieth century, there had not been more than two or three specifics, there were now ten times as many. It was a matter of taking the proper bottle, just as, in ancient times, one had reached automatically for quinine, the primitive specific against malaria.

Meanwhile, what had been his prison became his home and his dispensary. During his wait for the shipment from Venus, he instituted a garbage-disposal program. He condemned the shallow well, and had them build a wooden flume from a spring high up on the mountainside. Each radical move, however, had to wait until a cure he had effected assured him of sufficient momentary popularity to enable him to kick an ancient unsanitary practice overboard.

Then one night came a furtive sound at his door, as though someone were trying to enter by stealth. A cold shiver trickled down his spine. Though he doubted that the fire priest was coming to dispose of him, there was all too much chance that Kwangtan had convinced one of the tribe that carving the stranger would in the long run be beneficial. Despite the warning, and Verrill's readiness for whatever might be creeping up, he had his moment of terror. However well he handled himself, he could not win—for if he killed an intruder, there would be a blood feud.

Groping in the dark, he found a length of firewood. He had to end the matter by knocking the other out before he could come to grips to make it a finish fight. Stealthily, he skirted the wall. He heard the soft mumble of the leather-hinged door as it dragged the hard earth. A sliver of moonlight reached into the darkness. Barefooted, Verrill made no sound as he evaded the widening streak of light. A patch of shadow broke it. A dark shape edged into the gloom. Verrill measured the distance. He gathered himself.

He had to make sure whether there was only that one, or whether others had joined. He held his breath until his pulse hammered in his ears. The motion at the door had stopped. He was afraid to exhale—

And then he breathed again.

The one who approached had long hair which mirrored red glints. She had shifted enough for the moonlight to outline the curve of cheek and throat, and hint at the smoothness of shoulder and ripeness of breast. The arms were white and slender. Her stalking motion was beautiful even in the obscurity.

There was a whisper of sandals, and of breath. She was then of a sudden close against him, and seemingly not at all surprised. It was as though she had expected him to be precisely where they met in the darkness. He must have dropped the cudgel, for at the first touch of her, he was stroking the sleek red hair, and with the other hand tracing the curve of waist and back.

She snuggled closer, and he said, "Falana!" as though touch and taste and smell had identified the girl as surely as sight. She was Falana, the aunt of his first patient. She wore the shapeless, crude garments of the tribe, yet it was as though there were neither homespun nor even a wisp of air between them.

Falana had no words to waste as she found his mouth in the darkness. There was nothing to explain. When he stepped back and further into the gloom, she was close as ever; and, as if seeing in the darkness, she seemed to know exactly where he spread his sheepskin mat—

She did know. Or else he must have remembered.

When Falana finally got around to talking with words, she did not tell him how she had admired him from first sight, or that his surgery had been marvelous. She said, "I'll bring my things over in the morning," and yawned contentedly, and snuggled closer.

Verrill spent a restless night, being intensely occupied in telling himself, over and over again, that Venus was a long way off, and that whatever happened on Terra did not really count, unless as a result he became embroiled in feuds on Falana's account and to such an extent that he would be unable to make off with the Fire of Skanderbek.

Well before dawn, Falana went to the door to get a small bundle she had left lying at the jamb. Before Verrill knew what was happening, he got his first whiff of breakfast cooked in his own home.

"Eating with neighbors," Falana observed, "must have been awful. And you never know who might poison you."

Watching Falana patting oat cakes into shape, and baking them on a hot rock, he began to see her as a very pleasant reality, though he could not help but go long-faced when he considered how he had without doubt inherited a few dangerous animosities as well.

She must have read his thought, for she said, "It's much better this way, Verrill. You haven't more than maybe one-two-three enemies on my account. But as long as you lived alone, doctoring all day while most of the men are out with the flocks, they'd all be suspecting and hating you."

There was nothing to explain to Ardelan. The chief seemed to have been expecting something of the sort. "Falana," he said to Verrill, "probably didn't get around to telling you this, but you can either send her home, or else take her to the fire temple to get Kwangtan's blessing. Then you won't be a stranger anymore, and you'll get along better."

That very day, Falana and Verrill knelt before the altar of living flame and passed their joined hands quickly through the fire. This time, Verrill got a good look at the shrine as Kwangtan blessed them.

He likewise got a look at the surroundings. He noted Kwangtan's cell, hewn out of the limestone cliff. He noted the cairns of rock raised above the grave of each of Kwangtan's predecessors. Having sized up the situation, he decided that his next move would be to ride a circuit of Ardelan's territory, to treat those tribesmen who rarely if ever got to town. By becoming acquainted with all the trails, he would have a better chance of escaping with the Fire of Skanderbek.

Too bad he could not take Falana along. She would be a sensation, back home. The most skilled cosmeticians of the Venusian Domes could not begin to duplicate Falana's glowing red-bronze hair.

IV

By the time medical supplies and equipment arrived—and also a message from Linda, who was thrilled from having heard of his good work among the barbarians—Ardelan's mountaineers had begun to accept Verrill as a man, and not a mere medico. His efforts to ride their half-tamed horses, time and again picking himself up from where they had thrown him, to mount and try again, amused them enormously, and gave them a comfortable feeling of superiority—and evoked a degree of respect.

To make his escape with the Fire of Skanderbek, he would have to ride on a few cattle- and sheep-stealing raids and so acquire sufficient skill for getting away with his loot.

It was Falana who explained the monstrous ruby's status as a tribal fetish. "Ages ago," she said, "the gods destroyed the world with fire, and after the flames had gone, the ghosts of the dead flames danced over the earth, and killed whoever came near. They killed without burning. The ghosts of the fire lived in the earth and air and water. And there were only small patches where men could live.

"And there was Skanderbek, a wise man who talked to the ghosts. Maybe he smelled them. Maybe he could see what others could not. Others say that he had a talisman that talked to him, and warned him where not to go. There are many stories.

"Skanderbek led his people to these mountains in time to keep them from starving or being poisoned. He made fire come out of the rock. Everlasting fire. Over it he hung the fire stone you now see. He taught us to bow to the fire and serve it, so that when the fire gods stopped hating mankind, the ghosts of the dead flames would go away. The years passed, and there was always further range for our animals. Other people came, and then of course there was looting and war.

"But Skanderbek talked with gods and devils, and so no one could drive us out of here. One day Skanderbek said, 'I am going back to the gods. Let such and such a one take my place; I have taught him what to do and what to say to the holy flame, so that fire will never again destroy the earth. And one day, wearing a new body, I will come back.' All this was a long time ago, long before your people came out of the sky with knives of steel, and with guns, to trade with us.

"And now tell me about your gods, Verrill."

There was very little to tell Falana, except that Science had become, had from the beginning been the god of Venus. He was quite too busy reflecting that Skanderbek, a man like himself, had undoubtedly used a Geiger counter and some imagination, and had as a result become a god.

He was thinking also of Linda's letter. She had not been able to give him much gossip about Dawson's plans to oppose him, since Dawson had left without having done much talking. But he inferred from what she did write, and from stories Ardelan's tribesmen brought from the disputed frontier, that a Venusian was living with the neighboring tribe, giving them rifles to take the place of their trade muskets. This suggested that Dawson was taking the simple and direct approach: coaching his protectors in the art of more efficient fighting, so that as the climax of an eventual raid into Ardelan's almost inaccessible fortress, Dawson could seize the Fire of Skanderbek and make off with it in the confusion.

Whatever Verrill intended to do, he would have to do it quickly.

He went to the shrine and asked, "Kwangtan, where is the grave of Skanderbek?"

"Skanderbek," the priest said, contemptuous of ignorance, "is not buried. He went back to the gods. Now go, and stay away."

"I have heard a story like that," Verrill retorted. "Among my own people, there are old books, ancient before Skanderbek was even dreamed of. And it is written always how one leader or another went back to the gods, not dying as other men died. But we know better. A man dies, and his bones remain."

Kwangtan's eyes sharpened and changed. He seemed to be asking himself whether this might not be one of those times when the wise thing was to make an ally of an enemy. And Verrill was at the same time thinking, "Lies are the foundation of all priestcraft, and I've got this one searching the foundations."

Verrill said, "If a man found the bones of Skanderbek, he could build a shrine there for the gods of death. Men serve most what they fear most."

"Which of us fears death?" the priest challenged. "We are fighting-men."

"My patients act otherwise," Verrill blandly countered. Then: "Skanderbek had no wings. His bones can not be far from here. The bones of Skanderbek will give a light like a glow-worm or a fire-fly. Wherever they are lying, they will be easily recognized. Any herdsman would know if he found them."

Verrill was gambling on the probability that Skanderbek, leading a group of Terrestrians to safety, had exposed himself overmuch to the deadly radioactivity, more so than any of those he led. Whether there had been sufficient to make his bones radioactive until they would glow, either then or now, was an open question. But Kwangtan was of the line of priests who create and maintain a tradition: the blend of knowledge and falsehood that keeps their craft alive and their privilege secure. Kwangtan would surely have enough of that blend to set him wondering, and in his own interests.

It was time to leave; and, nodding contentedly, Verrill left, rightly assured that the old devil would lose no time hunting the bones of Skanderbek, lest someone else find them first and set up a rival shrine. He would have to hunt by night, and alone. The nights were cold, and the trails dangerous.

A few nights later, Verrill went out, high on the rimrock, to lurk in a perilous perch overhanging the shrine. He saw Kwangtan momentarily outlined by the light that came from the grotto. The priest was making for the spring, and then climbing higher. Apparently he was going out by a secret way, for a concealed purpose. Well satisfied, Verrill climbed down out of the bitter cold wind which whined eternally about the limestone buttresses. Unobserved, he went down again into the shelter of the ledge, and to the house where Falana was asleep.

She no more perceived his return than she had his departure.

Before many days had passed, Verrill was busily probing for bullets, suturing sword slashes, and setting bones. When the fighting-men he had salvaged were well enough to be about and looking for more trouble, Ardelan confessed that he had entirely revised his notions on doctors. And that gave Verrill his chance to say, "I'll go along the next time there's a raid. I could have saved that one who died on the way."

Ardelan shook his head. "There is a personal enemy of yours among our neighbors. I can't take any chance of your being killed or captured."

"You're making a priest of me!" Verrill said, mockingly. "Living on the fat of the land, and taking none of the risks."

"You've made that for yourself," Ardelan retorted. "And speaking of priests, you'll have one for a patient."

"How's that?"

"Kwangtan is coughing a lot. He's failing rapidly. We had always thought he would live forever."

Verrill shrugged. "He's old, so old he hasn't much time left. He'd rather die a little sooner than admit that there is anything I could possibly do for him. Letting me treat him would be casting serious reflections on the fire god. How was the raid—did it pay?"

"Pretty well, all around."

"A few more sheep, and some more work for me!"

"More than that," Ardelan corrected. "There's a nice looking valley, but it's always been deadly. Poisonous from the beginning. We've never used it. That stranger, that Dawson, must have found out that the curse is no longer on the soil. They've been using it for their flocks. Well, it's ours, it always has been, so we ran them out."

"They'll come back?"

"Of course they will; but with enough raids, we'll discourage them, and then we can send some of our own people to hold it permanently. Build a settlement."

Verrill had heard talk of all this, but not in such clear terms; now, having got it from the chief, he could take notice, and he was prepared.

"Your oldest son will live there," Verrill surmised, "to represent you?"

Ardelan nodded. "Good experience for him against the day of my death, when he will rule the tribe."

"That's been worrying you."

Ardelan's brows bristled and his eyes went fierce. "Worrying about the day of my death—what do you mean?"

"I meant, worrying about your son's taking an exposed outpost."

"It's good experience for him."

"It's worrying you. The next son is six years younger."

The chief grimaced. "He's a reckless young fool and a show-off. Like I was at his age. And I don't think he has my luck."

"Next time there's a raid," Verrill promised, "I'll go. It will be good for all your men, not just for him in case he is wounded. It won't look as though you're favoring your son."

Ardelan grumbled something midway between throat and beard, and gave Verrill a gesture of dismissal. Verrill knew when to stop pressing a point; and he knew also that further words had not been needed.

In this he was right. He rode out with others who went to reconnoiter the dangerous valley, and there was no objection. He rode well. His presence was good for the morale of the raiders. And while he caught no sight of Dawson, he won prestige from supposedly having come to the frontier camps to get a shot at his enemy. Actually, he rather hoped that he would not have any such chance to settle the feud ... it would be much more satisfactory to have Dawson witness his return to Venus with the Fire of Skanderbek.

And of an evening, when he was at home with Falana, she would sit with him as he watched Venus hanging low over the rimrock, white and splendid; she was finishing her term as evening star. And the sight of that far-off globe made him more than homesick. It accentuated his feeling of remoteness and of exile, and at the same time made him uneasy and uncomfortable, as though he and his Terrestrian redhead were somehow under Linda's eyes.

And he was afraid lest Falana read his thoughts. The longer he stayed, the harder it would be to leave; for in spite of his having come with fraudulent intent, he had done enough good to these barbarians to have become attached to them.

Meanwhile, the sooner Venus became the morning star, the better he would like it.

V

At last came the night when he felt sure that Kwangtan's search for the bones of Skanderbek had become such a fixed habit that the priest would be ranging further and further afield, leaving the shrine unguarded for an ever-lengthening period. The length of Kwangtan's absence was the measure of Verrill's head start.

As he set out for his goal, he said to himself, "When the old devil misses the ruby, and then hears I'm gone, he'll likely play foxy and cook up a yarn about my having taken it back to the gods. He couldn't be so dumb as to admit he was out wandering when he should have been guarding the shrine.... I've done a reasonable number of other miracles since I brought Falana's nephew back from the dead ... so if he's smart, he'll invent another miracle, and that will make it nice for Falana...."

And so, all at ease, he rode boldly from the walled enclosure. The guards, assuming he was going out on a case, settled back after greeting him, and drew their sheepskin coats closer about them.

Nearing the shrine, he left his horse in the shadow of a limestone ledge, to proceed afoot. He had to make sure that Kwangtan was actually away.

Stealthily, he made the most of rocks and shadows to cover his advance. The gurgling overflow of the spring combined with the whining of the wind to make a curtain of sound. He was quite near the spot from which, unseen, he could look in and see if Kwangtan was there, when he heard a disturbance which gave him all the answer he needed.

Kwangtan was not abroad, hunting a dead man's bones. He was instead choking, gasping for breath; in his struggle, he knocked down some pottery, judging from the clatter.

The sounds, and the way the old man had been scrambling about by night, exploring ravines and caverns, exposing and overtaxing himself, told the story. He had come to the end of his crooked rope.

This was perfect. It had worked far better than Verrill had anticipated. Just sit and wait for silence and the finish.

But another ingredient took effect. Verrill's own long-sustained pretense of being a doctor drove him forward against his best interest. After two paces taken in a helpless daze, he was no longer compulsion-driven and bewildered; he ran, and with his kit. He had brought it with him, from force of habit as much as for making a show for the benefit of whomsoever he might encounter along the way to the border.

As he knelt beside his patient, Verrill concluded that Kwangtan's heart had been cutting up tricks; though with exposure and worry, other complications might have set in. He got his vials and his hypo and set to work.

Of a sudden, he knew that he was not alone with his patient. Startled, he glanced about.

Falana was in the doorway, and with her two of the guards. They held her by the arms. She had a bundle of something wrapped up in a shawl. Her face showed only impatience and annoyance at their stupidity. Their faces were still changing; the growth of understanding and the accepting of a new idea had not yet erased suspicion.

The sight of the trio gave Verrill the story, before any could speak: Falana, sensing what he planned, had packed up a bundle and had set out after him; and the guards, even though not getting the entire point, had suspected that the doctor was up to the very trick of which he had been accused. Falana had from the start been a hostage, at least a bond sufficiently strong to guarantee his good behavior. Thus the sight of her apparently preparing to follow him into the night had aroused all the suspicions which his work had lulled.

Falana said, "The poor fellow's half starved, Verrill! And shivering from cold! Let go of me, you blockheads—he's busy and I've got to give him a hand."

She plopped her bundle on the floor, brought out a small pot, and set to work heating water over the sacred flame.

"If you don't like it, get some brush," she told the guards, "and I'll stop the sacrilege."

Blinking owlishly, they obeyed.

When they returned to kindle a fire on the floor, she had dried meat in the pot. "Here, hold this!" she directed, and taking a heavy cape from the bundle, she blanketed the patient. Next she drew the shawl about his head and shoulders. Whatever else she may have had in the bundle, Verrill did not know, for she had very deftly wadded the odds and ends into a shirt and had tucked the lot under the priest's head, for a pillow.

When Kwangtan responded to treatment and regained consciousness, he did not have any idea as to what had happened, or why people were gathered about him. But he swallowed some of the broth Falana offered him.

The guards explained, "The doctor knew you were in trouble."

Falana nodded. "He awakened suddenly and told me to follow when I had this and that gathered together. The gods talk to him. Now that you've had your fill of snooping, suppose you go on about your business!"

They went, leaving Verrill and Falana to sit up with the priest until he was out of danger.

Within the hour, Verrill could have ridden off with the Fire of Skanderbek. Instead, he made apologies to himself; he could not rob a patient, or even collect his fee before he had really earned it.

Several days passed, and word of Verrill's having heard the voice of the gods and so having gone to the shrine in time to save Kwangtan gave him an enormous boost in prestige. He had the priest at least halfway on the road to recovery when a courier brought news of another outbreak on the border. He hesitated to leave his patient, and decided to wait until the warring tribesmen made actual contact. As nearly as he could analyze the report, both sides were still scouting, skulking, maneuvering into positions suitable for the seizure of, or the defense of, the valley that Ardelan claimed as his own.

There would not be a serious clash until both sides had completed their infiltration whereby each planned to catch the other off guard, and so precipitate a panic the result of which would be relatively few casualties and a great deal of loot in the form of stampeded or abandoned or lost animals.

These barbarians, Verrill told himself, had a warfare far more civilized than had been that of The War, and also, a lot more sensible—there was a result to show for the effort exerted, and a profit instead of a mutual loss.

He decided to stay with his patient, and then by dint of hard riding join Ardelan's son when there was immediately impending need.

Falana said, "You're making a mistake. Now is your chance."

Just that way: with no build up at all. And she was right, for he needed no explanation of her meaning. He knew all of a sudden that she had tuned in on all his unspoken debates with himself. He and Kwangtan were supposed to be able to talk with the gods. That was pure nonsense. The gift was largely a feminine monopoly. Falana undoubtedly knew all about Linda, instead of merely about the Venusian Domes.

Verrill answered, "I can't rob a patient. If he dies or gets well, then it will be different...."

Falana shrugged, and for no apparent reason, moved a bundle wrapped up in a cape. "Suit yourself, Verrill, but you are letting your luck wear thin. If you want it this way, though, I'll be ready whenever you are."

"You were all ready the other night?"

"Of course. And when the guardsmen caught me, I was scared silly. I don't know what would have happened if that old devil hadn't been at death's door. Now is your chance.... It won't ever be better."

Falana was right, so very right, yet Verrill balked. He mounted up, with his medical kit, and with a pair of pistols thrust into his sash.

He was worried, and worn down. Tending to Kwangtan, and within reaching distance of the ruby, had been difficult. Worse yet, there was the problem created by Falana. Whenever he convinced himself that once back in the Venusian Domes, he would forget the Terrestrian girl, his argument went into reverse: and he knew that regardless of distance, the bond could not be broken in fact. Then, pursuing the endless debate from its other alternative, neither could he remain an exile from Venus, and stay away from Linda by any choice of his own.

And all this went with him, oppressing him as he rode toward the new valley which would so enrich Ardelan's people.

VI

Verrill was still well short of his destination when he heard a rider behind him: a horse blowing and wheezing, ridden nearly to death, yet carrying on. He wheeled about. It was Falana who had overtaken him.

"You little idiot, go back home!"

"I won't."

"You will, and now."

"Yes, if you carry me back."

"What's the idea? You know I'm coming back, and you know there's a lot of trouble ahead, where I'm bound for."

"I'm going anyway."

And then her horse collapsed. Verrill had no magic to restore it to life. "Now I can't go back," she announced, contentedly, as though she had foreseen this decisive detail.

She mounted up and rode behind him.

From time to time, Verrill halted, and cocked an ear. Thus far, he had heard no firing. He had seen no signal fires on the crests that were dark against the stars. The way became harder, and until moon-rise, difficult to pick.

When the first half-glow whitened the limestone slopes and the high snowcaps, the mountain world became a maze of illusion and shifting glamour.

Finally, Verrill's horse sniffed the air, and would have whinnied, had he not checked him in time. As he paused, he wondered whether Falana's presence, the night he had saved Kwangtan, would be sufficient precedent for her accompanying him into the field; or whether instead suspicion would be aroused.

He had reined in at the edge of a deep shadow. Before he could make up his mind, Falana said, "Turn around and see—I've got it."

As he twisted about, the horse shifted, moving out of the shadow and into light strong enough for him to see the ruby she had in her hand. It collected enough of the glow to pulse and flame as though in its own right. One good look he got, and then she had knotted it again into the end of her scarf and thrust it securely between her breasts.

"I'm going with you to the home of the gods," Falana said, "and if they, your people, don't like me, they can do what they want with me. But I'm going."

However she had made away with the gem, there would be the devil to pay when Kwangtan missed it. His exclamation of dismay made her add, "He won't make any trouble. He smothered under his sheepskin robe."

Verrill preferred not to ask whether she meant that the invalid had himself done this, accidentally, or whether, aroused by her prowling, his protest had been stifled, quickly and silently, by a solid armful of a woman who knew precisely what she had to do to save herself. Instead of being horrified by a very logical suspicion, he dismissed the query: for in either event, he had no longer any choice concerning Falana. She had made the bond so strong that wherever he went, he would take her. There was no more clash between him and Dawson. The bond that had attached him to Linda had been cut. Whether by smothering the fire priest, or merely robbing the fire god, Falana had done well for herself.

After a silence, he said, "There's someone just ahead. My horse scented them. Whoever they are, they may have caught some sign of us. You get down and wait. The sight of you is likely to make the outposts think I'm leaving the tribe. And now is no time for suspicion!"

"I know another way around, and out," Falana said. "A hard trail, but we can make it."

"Whoever's ahead, up there, might start wondering. All I have to do is go ahead and identify myself, and then go my way."

"You can make some excuse for coming back this way," she said, and slipped to the ground. "I'll wait."

He rode on, at a walk. Ten to one, Falana had smothered Kwangtan, not out of malice, but simply because he would have kept her from following Verrill. Since Verrill could not reject her, he had to accept the act as his own, however heavy the burden. He shrank from the very suspicion of the deed, and at the same time, his eyes were tear-blinded from realization of her devotion, so much more reckless than any Venusian woman's could have been.

A horse whinnied. Verrill's mount answered. And before Verrill could hail the dimly-discerned rider, revealed when he rounded a sharp curve, he knew that this was an ambush; the recognition between horses had come because the animals ahead had been stolen from Ardelan's herd.

Despite his disadvantage, knowledge came before he had made himself too good a target.

That split-second sensing gave him a chance with his pistol. He spurred in, shooting. A wild shot grazed him. The enemy stampeded, as though from the sudden fear that they had tricked themselves; it was as though his boldness had convinced them that he had a large party at his back.

Verrill spurred in, shooting....

In half a dozen hoofbeats, he was through. One horse was down, and struggling. Something thumped into the ravine, far below. There was a brief shower of rocks, and the diminishing clatter of hoofs.

Only two had lain in wait: and one was bound for home.

Verrill reined in sharply, and called to Falana. She answered, and knowing it was all over, came toward him at a walk.

Verrill was badly shaken. Falana, knowing that he would be, was giving him a welcome moment to himself. This was his first taste of combat.

The enemy, sprawled among the rocks, groaned and cursed, as though shock had until that moment held him unable to make a sound. This was something familiar to Verrill, for in his way, he was now a doctor in fact—a man was a man, whether friend or enemy. And this one, being a man he had wounded, evoked his response more readily than had Kwangtan.

Verrill dismounted. The man in the shadows mumbled and choked; the man's horse lay dead; and approaching his own handiwork shook Verrill's composure. Worse yet, he should not dally. No telling who might have heard the shots, who might be hurrying to the scene. But he could not abandon a patient, though this might become a dangerous business, with the Fire of Skanderbek taken from the shrine—

Three sounds blended. Verrill understood each, but too late.

"Now see if you'll get the ruby!" the patient challenged, triumphantly, and fired.

Venusian accent and intonation; pistol blast; and then, as Dawson, unwounded, bound up to take Verrill's horse, came the third sound: Falana's cry.

Her approach, afoot, had tricked Dawson. She was on him from the rear before he sensed his danger. He swayed, he choked, and he would have flung her aside, but for the knife with which she finished him. Stab and slash; and he was dead before she could crawl free of him to go to Verrill.

Dawson, living with the enemy tribe, had learned raiding tricks, and had known how to tempt an enemy by offering hope of plunder. By feigning a mortal wound, he had played the game as his brothers in raiding would have played it: and at the most he could not have hoped for more than a horse, and the weapons of the supposedly greedy and reckless one whose loot hunger had driven out ordinary caution. Moonlight on Verrill's face had given Dawson his moment of triumphant recognition—and then, sudden death which he might otherwise have avoided.

The irony of all this passed through Verrill's mind during the moments which elapsed before he could recover sufficiently from shock to speak. Teeth chattering from the deadly chill which took hold of him, he said, "Physician, heal thyself."

He knew he was beyond mending. He knew also that he had long drawn-out hours of agony ahead of him. Falana knew, without being told, that she would soon be alone; that she would never board the long gleaming shell on the take-off ramp of the trading-post to go with him to the home of the gods. Since he was shivering, she wrapped a shawl about him, and waited for him to tell her what else to do.

The shift of the moon thinned the shadows that had tricked first one and then another of those who had met in that rocky angle. Verrill pointed to the kit, and told her how to load the hypo. He had done this himself, many times, for those he knew he could not save. They lasted just as long, but avoided consciousness and pain. This had won him esteem. And now he was to learn how good his work had been.

His vision began to play tricks, and his memory also, but he was sure that the white orb shimmering, rising from behind a distant crest, was Venus, beginning her term as morning star. Seen through that thin mountain air, Venus was an expanding splendor, and memories danced: memories of Linda, blurred with the memories of all other Venusian women, perfumed and sleek and all bejewelled. They were shapes of the mind, rather than a semblance to the eye; for at the same time, he saw clearly where he was, and who was beside him. And he was glad that it was Falana.

Falana peeled off her jacket and blouse. She cut a long strand of hair, and despite the biting wind that lashed her from shoulder to hip, she shaped a loop, using two long hairs to suspend the Fire of Skanderbek from about her throat.

She knelt, posed by sure instinct, head flung back, and the monstrous ruby all ablaze against her white skin. The lower end of the six-sided crystal barely dipped into the shadow of her breasts.

The Venusian images of memory were blotted out, and with them, the great white orb as well. Falana became all women in one, yet remaining all the while wholly herself.

Verrill's face, or her own instinct, told her when to end the tableau. She slipped into her jacket and went into the shadow beside him. She caught him in her arms, to pillow him better than had the rocks and the saddle-bags that had softened them. And then Verrill went on his long road, and entirely content, for he had in his way done with the Fire of Skanderbek as he had planned.

Not long after sunrise, a handful of Ardelan's men came along from the new valley. They had routed the raiders. Somewhere, they told Falana, there had been several shots, which had alerted them.

"The shots Verrill fired," they concluded, having seen and understood from the face of things.

She gave them no time to wonder about her presence. "He was going to stay for days and days with the people Ardelan was sending into the new valley. I made him take me with him. So I was here when he killed his enemy, the one with whom he had a feud."

Despite their grief at losing their doctor, the mountaineers forgot none of their ways. Methodically, they took the gear from the dead horse, and stripped the dead enemy, leaving nothing but vulture bait. And among the things they found in his clothes was the Fire of Skanderbek.

"The gods told Verrill," Falana said. "But not all, and not in time. Only enough to send him where he would meet the thief."

They studied his face, and one said, "It is clear that the gods welcomed him when he took their road."

Later, Ardelan himself joined them. He heard, he saw, and then he said, "We will bury Verrill by those others who have guarded the Fire of Skanderbek. He saved many lives for us, as Skanderbek did in the old days."

And this was done, with no one wondering at Kwangtan's death. Some said that the spirit of the priest had guided Verrill to overtake the looter. Falana heard the legend grow, and could not tell what Ardelan really thought. Whatever his thought, the chief kept it to himself, until, days later, he said to Falana, "Verrill's son will be a great man among us, to watch the Fire of Skanderbek, and teach us the way of the gods."

Which seemed reasonable enough to Falana, who had command of more miracles than any man.

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