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Read Ebook: Sword of the Seven Suns by Fox Gardner F Gardner Francis
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Ebook has 444 lines and 20234 words, and 9 pages
SWORD OF THE SEVEN SUNS
Their world was dark. Their Machine-God was dead. Savage hordes threatened to overrun them, smash them. What, then, was Flane doing out in the desert, alone with the wreck of a spaceship--and a strangely-wrought sword?
The spaceship fled like a silver bullet across black nothingness. Rows of round windows stared outward from its curved sides. Beyond the windows whirled clouds of interstellar dust. An occasional lump of meteoric rock rebounded from the metal hull.
To port shone the triple stars of a constellation utterly foreign to those in the ship. To starboard gleamed the strangely altered pattern of the constellation Hercules. Straight ahead lay the great star Deneb, and circling around it, giant orbs shimmering in its light, were the planets it held in its awful grip.
Closer and closer swept the ship, trailing billows of spacedust. Over one of the planets that closely resembled the voyager's home planet in size and density, the vessel thundered. It rocketed downward, sweeping sidewise into the gravitational pull of the planet. It dropped into swirling clouds, swept into sunlighted sky, roaring gustily.
Inside the ship a voice cried hysterically, "Calling captain! Calling captain!"
"Captain responding. Over to forward jet ports."
"The forward jets are shot, sir! Unused for too long. Ever since we left Earth, they've remained untested. Can't fix them now. No time. Inside gravity of planet. Over."
The man in the captain's uniform bowed his head, eyes tightly shut. There was bitterness in his heart, but no despair. Six hundred light years from Earth, farther out among the stars than any man had ever trespassed, and now, this! A hand squeezed his shoulder. He glanced up, found the blue eyes of his wife smiling at him, heard her voice whisper, "At least we'll go together, darling."
He patted her hand.
Through the compressed quartz panels they stared at the world unfolding beneath them. Rolling plains covered with long grasses that swayed gracefully before the wind bordered high, black mountains that cupped mounds of snow at their peaks. In the distance was the blue of a sea.
"A lovely world," he whispered.
"You were right, Jon. Your calculations proved the habitability of Deneb's planets. You would have been famous."
He chuckled, "This is one consolation, darling. But I'd hoped for so much more than that ... a land to bring the restless spirits, where they could dwell apart from the regimented ones, to form a new country to call their own...."
He broke off. The ship was quivering, shuddering in the mad pace of its unchecked flight. Thunder rolled like monumental cannonfire behind it, as the air was displaced and rolled together.
The captain worked the controls feverishly. His hands sought by their swiftness, by their strength, to fire those frontal jets, to stop this deadly dash through planetal atmosphere. He bit his lips and shook his head, whispering, "No use--no use!"
There was desert under the silvered belly of the ship. Heat waves glimmered up from the hot sands, distorting everything. Far in the distance lay a round yellow thing. The spaceship headed toward it, as though at the bullseye of a target.
"We're going to hit it," said the man.
"What is it, Jon?"
Yellow and glittering, it lay like a giant's plaything, half buried in the sand. It was a prism with clean, straight facets fitted together that seemed to stretch out at every angle to gather in the heat from the desert. Like a yellow diamond, it coruscated in the sunlight.
"I don't know," the man said softly. "It could be something that dropped from the skies to bury itself in this spot, or it could be the--the work of intelligent creatures!"
Their trajectory of flight shortened. The nose of the ship fell lower, aimed at the prism. The noise of its passage startled two white birds that ran on the sand. The birds ran faster, blurring along on the amber desert.
From behind the amber prism a two-legged thing came running. In his hand there was a flash and glitter.
"It's a man!" the woman shrieked, a red-nailed hand to her lips. "And he has a sword in his hand."
"Poor devil," sighed the captain. "We're heading right at him. He can't get away."
The ship came down with unbelievable rapidity. The man on the sand had taken only a few steps from the prism when a black shadow overhauled him. He had no time even to turn his head.
There was an explosion that ripped metal apart, that tore gaping holes in the smooth facets of the golden prism, that sent geysers of desert sand upward in dry showers. When the sands came down, there was only scattered wreckage.
Like a twisted, broken toy, the spaceship lay on the sand, partially obscuring the prism. Gaunt girders stuck up through the opened hull. Smoke swirling from the ship's insides mixed with the falling sand.
Somewhere in the wreckage, a voice wailed in agony and despair.
The machine stood in the domed end of the dark temple, gleaming dully. Above it a hemisphere of translucent metal filtered pale moonbeams that drew flashes of silvered fire from the great metal bulk. Against the black basalt walls, the Machine brooded sullenly. It was great, was the Machine. It was worshipped. It held power of life and death over all Klarn. It possessed all power. It was god.
And yet, the Machine was--dead.
Flane looked around him, grinning.
Then he rose and went to the grilled metal girdle that kept the Machine enclosed in its niche. He took out a strangely-wrought key and dangled it in his hand.
Engraven on the sides of the Machine were a series of symbols. Diamond-shaped, they were, with the tracery of a star surrounding each diamond. One of those diamonds was the lock that would restore to life the dead Machine. Flane hoped that the key he held would unlock the slumbering power of the Machine. If not--well, Vawdar and he were as good as dead, themselves.
He inserted the key in the slit-like hole of one of the diamonds and tried to turn it.
He whispered curses, attempting to move the key by sheer force.
Flane ran his fingers over the tiny hole. He saw the star pattern bordering the lock, like a frieze ornamenting it. He sighed. All the diamonds had holes.
Sound came to him as he stood before the machine, in the light of Klarn's three moons seeping in from the dome. He whirled, and half-drew his sword. Voices floated to him, riotous with laughter and derision.
"Vawdar! They got him at last. As he was trying to get out the Dragon Gate."
"Good news. Now if we could get the Princess' whelp, Flane!"
The man in the shadows showed his white teeth in a silent snarl of pure hate. His knuckles tensed on the sword-hilt until they threatened to burst the tightened skin.
One of the men grumbled, "If we have Vawdar, what use for us to miss the celebration? Why stand guard at the Temple here?"
"The council thinks Flane might try once more to make the Machine work. If he succeeded--well, that would mean that Klarn will spring to life. The Darksiders, though they outnumber us all, will never dare attack. They remember too well the weapons of the Klarnva."
Flane stirred himself, stepped forward into the shadows, stalking toward the temple entrance where the guards talked. There were only two of them, and Flane had a great deal of confidence in his sword-arm, confidence that had been justified again and again.
He leaped from the darkness, his blade a thing of lightning in his hand. The guards came around on their heels, yanking out their weapons, laughing gutturally.
"Flane! We have him, too!" rasped one of them.
"Pig bird!" whispered Flane.
His blade drove in like a beam of light, twirled the blade of the nearest guard in a circular envelopment, wresting it from his fingers to send it flashing high in the air. Sidestepping the lunge of the other guard, Flane slithered his blade through his opponent's neck, watched him gargle blood in his throat as he plunged.
In a moment the second guard lay beside his fellows, lifeless. Flane stepped across their still legs, out into the cool night air. Above his head the three moons of Klarn whirled high in the heavens, flooding the court with light.
"The Dragon Gate," Flane whispered, and ran.
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