Henry Kuttner & C. L. Moore - Earth' s last Citadel

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EARTH S LAST CITADEL

for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review, without permission in writing from the

publisher.

All characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is

purely coincidental.

An ACE Book

Printed in U.S.A.

EARTH'S

LAST CITADEL

PROLOGUE

BEHIND THE LOW ridge of rock to the north was the Mediterranean. Alan Drake could hear it and

smell it. The bitter chill of the North African night cut through his torn uniform, but sporadic

flares of whiteness from the sea battle seemed to give him warmth, somehow. Out there the big guns

were blasting, the battlewagons thundering their fury.

This was it.

And he wasn't in it—not this time. His job was to bring Sir Colin safely out of the Tunisian

desert. That, it seemed, was important.

Squatting in the cold sand, Alan ignored the Scots scientist huddled beside him, to stare at the

ridge as though his gaze could hurdle its summit and leap out to where the ships were fighting.

Behind him, from the south, came the deep echoing noise of heavy artillery. That, he knew, was one

jaw of the trap that was closing on him. The tides of war changed so swiftly—there was nothing for

them now but heading blindly for the Mediterranean and safety.

He had got Sir Colin out of one Nazi trap already, two

breathless days ago. ButColinDouglas was too valuable a man for either side to forget easily. And

the Nazis would be following. They were between the lines now, lost, trying desperately to reach

safety and stay hidden.

Somewhere in the night sky a nearing plane droned high. Moonlight glinted on Drake's smooth blond

head as he leaped for the shadow of a dune, signaling Sir Colin fiercely. Drake crouched askew,

favoring his left side where a bullet gouge ran aslant up one powerful forearm and disappeared

under his torn sleeve. He'd got that two nights ago in the Nazi raid, when he snatched Sir Colin

away barely in time.

Army Intelligence meant such work, very often. Drake was a good man for his job, which was

dangerous. A glance at his tight-lipped poker-face would have told that. It was a face of curious

contrasts. Opponents were at a loss trying to gauge his character by one contradictory feature or

the other; more often than not they guessed wrong.

The plane's droning roar was very near now. It shook the whole sky with a canopy of sound. Sir

Colin said impersonally, huddled against the dune:

"That meteor we saw last night—must have fallen near here, eh?"

There were stories about Sir Colin. His mind was a great one, but until the war he had detested

having to use it. Science was only his avocation. He preferred the pleasures which food and liquor

and society supplied. A decadent Epicurus with an Einstein brain—strange combination. And yet his

technical skill—he was a top-rank physicist—had been of enormous value to the Allies.

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"Meteor?" Drake said. "I'm not worried about that.

But the plane—" He glanced up futilely. The plane was drawing farther away. "If they spotted us. .

. ."

Sir Colin scratched himself shamelessly. "I could do with a plane now. There seemed to be fleas in

Tunisia —carnivorous sand-fleas, be damned to them."

"You'd better worry about that plane—and what's in it."

Sir Colin glanced up thoughtfully. "What?"

"A dollar to a sand-flea it's Karen Martin."

"Oh." Sir Colin grimaced. "Her again. Maybe this time we'll meet."

"She's a bad egg, Sir Colin. If she's really after us, we're in for trouble."

The big Scotsman grunted. "An Amazon, eh?"

"You'dbe surprised. She's damned clever. She and her sidekick draw good pay from the Nazis, and

earn it, too. You know Mike Smith?"

"An American?" Sir Colin scratched again.

"Americanized German. He's got a bad history, too. Racketeer, I think, until Repeal. When the

Nazis got going, he headed back for Germany. Killing's his profession, and their routine suits

him. He and Karen make a really dangerous team."

The Scotsman got laboriously to his feet, looking after the vanished plane.

"Well," he said, "if that was the team, they'll be back."

"And we'd better not be here." Drake scrambled up, nursing his arm.

The Scotsman shrugged and jerked his thumb forward. Drake grinned. His blue eyes, almost black

under the

shadow of the full lids, held expressionless impassivity. Even when he smiled, as he did now, the

eyes did not change.

"Come on," he said.

The sand was cold; night made it pale as snow in the faint moonlight. Guns were still clamoring as

the two men moved toward the ridge. Beyond it lay the Mediterranean and, perhaps, safety.

Beyond it lay—something else.

In the cup that sloped down softly to the darkened sea was—a crater. A shimmering glow lay half-

buried in the up-splashed earth. Ovoid-shaped, that glow. Its mass was like a monstrous radiant

coal in the dimness.

For a long moment the two men stood silent. Then, "Meteor?" Drake asked.

There was incredulity in the scientist's voice. "It can't be a meteor. They're never that regular.

The atmosphere heated it to incandescence, but see—the surface isn't even pitted. If this weren't

war I'd almost think it was"—he brought out the words after a perceptible pause—"some kind of

manmade ship from—"

Drake was conscious of a strange excitement. "You mean, more likely it's some Axis super-tank?"

Sir Colin didn't answer. Caution forgotten, he had started hastily down the slope. There was a

faint droning in the air now. Drake could not be sure if it was a returning plane, or if it came

from the great globe itself. He followed the Scotsman, but more warily.

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It was very quiet here in the valley. Even the shore birds must have been frightened away. The sea-

battle had moved eastward; only a breeze stirred through the sparse

bushes with a murmur of leaves. A glow rippled and darkened and ran HRe flame over the red-hot

metal above them when the wind played upon those smooth, high surfaces. The air still had an oddly

scorched smell.

The night silence in the valley had been so deep that when Drake heard the first faint crackling

in the scrubby desert brush he found that he had whirled, gun ready, without realizing it.

"Don't shoot," a girl's light voice said from the darkness. "Weren't you expecting me?"

Drake kept his pistol raised. There was an annoying coldness in the pit of his stomach. Sir Colin,

he saw, from the corner of his eye, had stepped back into the dark.

"Karen Martin, isn't it?" Drake said. And his skin crawled with the expectation of a bullet from

the night shadows. It was Sir Colin they wanted alive, not himself.

A low laugh in the dark, and a slim, pale figure took shape in the wavering glow from the meteor.

"Right. What luck, our meeting like this!"

Underbrush crashed behind her and another shape emerged from the bushes. ButDrake was watching

Karen. He had met her before, and he had no illusions about the girl. He remembered how she had

fought her way up in Europe, using slyness, using trickery, using ruthlessness as a man would use

his fists. The new Germany had liked that unscrupulousness, needed it—used it. All the better that

it came packaged in slim, curved flesh, bronze-curled, blue-eyed, with shadowy dimples and a mouth

like red velvet, the unstable brilliance of many mixed races shining in her eyes.

Drake was scowling, finger motionless on the gun-trigger. He was, he knew, in a bad spot just now,

silhouet-

ted against the brilliance of the—the thing from the sky. But Sir Colin was still hidden, and he

had a gun.

"Mike," Karen said, "you haven't met Alan Drake. Army Intelligence—American."

A deep, lazy voice from beyond the girl said, "Better drop the gun, buddy. You're a good target."

Drake hesitated. There was no sign from Sir Colin. That meant,—what? Karen and Mike Smith were

probably not alone. Others might be following, and swift action should be in order.

He saw Karen's eyes lifting past him to the glowing surface above. In its red reflection her face

was very curious. Her voice, irritating sure of itself, carried on the ironic pretense of

politeness.

"What have we here?" she inquired lightly. "Not a tank? The High Command will be interested—" She

stepped aside for a better look.

Drake said dryly, "Maybe it's a ship from outer space. Maybe there's something inside—"

There was.

The astonishing certainty of that suddenly filled his mind, stilling all other thought. For an

incredible instant the moonlit valley wavered around him as a probing and a questioning fumbled

through his brain.

Karen took two uncertain backward steps, the self-confidence wiped off her face by blank

amazement, as if the questioning had invaded her mind too. Behind her Mike Smith swore abruptly in

a bewildered undertone. The air seemed to quiver through the Mediterranean valley, as if an

inconceivable Presence had suddenly brimmed it from wall to wall.

Then Sir Colin's voice spoke from the dark. "Drop your guns, you two. Quick. I can—"

His voice died. Suddenly, silently, without warning, the valley all around them sprang into

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brilliant light. Time stopped for a moment, and Drake across Karen's red head could see Mike

hesitate with lifted gun, see the gangling Sir Colin tense a dozen feet beyond, see every leaf and

twig in the underbrush with unbearable distinctness.

Then the light sank. The glare that had sprung out from the great globe withdrew inward, like a

tangible thing, and a smooth, soft, blinding darkness followed after.

When sight returned to them, the globe was a great pale moon resting upon its crest of up-splashed

earth. All heat and color had gone from it in the one burst of cool brilliance, and it rested now

like a tremendous golden bubble in the center of the valley.

A door was opening slowly in the curve of the golden hull.

Drake did not know that his gun-arm was dropping, that he was turning, moving forward toward the

ship with slow-paced steps.

He was not even aware of the others crackling through the brush beside him toward that dark

doorway.

Briefly their reflections swam distorted in the golden curve of the hull. One by one they bent

their heads under the low lintel of that doorway, in silence, without protest.

The darkness closed around them all.

Afterward, for a while, the great moon-globe lay quiet, shedding its radiance. Nothing stirred but

the wind.

Later an almost imperceptible quiver shook the reflections in the curved surfaces of the ship. The

crest of earth

that splashed like a wave against the sphere washed higher, higher. As smoothly as if through

water, the ship was sinking into the sand of the desert. The ship was large, but the sinking did

not take very long.

Shortly before dawn armed men on camels came riding over the ridge. But by then earth had closed

like water over the ship from space.

I THE CITADEL

IT SEEMED to Alan Drake that he had been rocking here forever upon the ebb and flow of deep,

intangible tides. He stared into grayness that swam as formlessly as his swimming mind, and

eternity lay just beyond it. He was quite content to lie still here, rocking upon the long, slow

ages.

Reluctantly, after a long while, he decided that it was no longer infinity. By degrees the world

came slowly into focus—a vast curve of a dim and glowing hollow rounded out before his eyes,

mirrory metal walls, a ceiling shining and golden, far above. The rocking motion was imperceptibly

ceasing, too. Time no longer cradled him upon its ebb and flow. He blinked across the vast hollow

while k memory stirred painfully. It was quiet as death in here; but he should not be alone.

I Karen lay a little way from him, her red hair showering [across the bent arm pillowing her

head. With a slow,

impersonal pleasure he liked the way the curved lines of her caught shadow and low light as she

sprawled there asleep.

He sat up very slowly, very stiffly, like an old man. Memory was returning—there should be others.

He saw them in a moment, relaxed figures dreaming on the shining floor.

And beyond them all, in the center of the huge sphere, was the high, dark doorway, narrow and

pointed at the top like an arrow, within which blackness would be lying curdled into faintly

visible clouds of deeper and lesser darkness. That was the Alien. The name came painfully into his

brain, and his stiff lips moved soundlessly, forming it. He remembered—what did he remember? It

was all so long ago it really couldn't matter much now, anyhow. He thought of the slow-swinging

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years upon which he had rocked so long.

He frowned. Now how did he know it had been Time that rocked him in his sleep? Why was he so sure

that years had ebbed like water through the darkness of this mirrory place and the silence of his

dreams? Dreams! That must be it! He had dreamed—about the Alien, for instance. He had not known

that name when he fell asleep. His mind was beginning to thaw a bit, and now there was a sharp

distinction in it between the things that had happened before this sleep came upon him—and

afterward.

Afterward, in the long interval between sleeping and waking, the Alien was a part of that

afterward. The things he dimly knew about it must have come floating into his mind from somewhere

entirely outside the past he remembered. He closed his eyes and struggled hard to recall those

dreams.

No use. He shook his head dizzily. The memories swam formlessly just out of Conscious reach.

Later, they might come back—not now. He stretched, feeling the long muscles slip pleasantly along

his shoulders. In a moment or two the others would be waking.

It would be wiser if they woke unarmed. Whatever had been happening here in the dim time while

Alan slept, Karen and Smith would wake enemies still. From here he could see that a revolver lay

on the shining floor under Karen's hand. He got up stiffly, conscious of an overwhelming

lassitude, and leaned to take the gun from her relaxed fingers.

Above her as he straightened he saw the high, arched doorway, and a sudden shock jolted him. For

that dark and narrow portal was untenanted now. Nothing moved there, no curdled darkness, no swirl

of black against black. The Alien was gone.

Why he was so certain, he did not know. No power on earth, he thought, could have drawn him to

that arrow-shaped doorway to peer inside. But without it, he still knew they were alone now in the

great empty shell of the ship.

He knew they had all come in here, out of the desert night and the distant thunder of sea-

fighting—come in silence and obedience to a command not theirs to question. They had slept. And in

their sleeping, dreamed strangely. The Alien, hovering in the darkness of its doorway, must have

controlled those dreams. And now the Alien had gone. Where, why, when?

Karen stirred in her sleep. The dreams were still moving through her brain, perhaps; perhaps she

might remember when she woke, as he had not. But she would remember,

too, that they were enemies. Alan Drake's mind flashed back to the urgent present, and he stepped

over her, past Sir Colin, to Mike Smith. He was lying on his side with a hand thrust under his

coat as if even in the mindless lassitude which had attended their coming here, he had reached for

his weapon.

Mike Smith groaned a little as Alan rolled him over, searching for and finding a second gun. An

instinctive antagonism flared in Alan as he looked down upon the big, bronzed animal at his feet.

Mike Smith, soldier of fortune, had battled his way across continents to earn the reputation for

which Nazi Germany paid him. A reputation for tigerish courage, for absolute ruthlessness. One

glance at his blunt brown features told that.

Karen sat up shakily. For a full minute she stared with blind blue eyes straight before her. But

then awareness suddenly flashed into them and she met Alan's gaze. Like a mask, wariness dropped

over her face. Her finger closed swiftly, then opened to grope about the floor beside her.

Simultaneously she glanced around for Mike.

Alan laughed. The sound was odd, harshly cracked, as if he had not used his throat-muscles for a

long time.

"I've got the guns, Karen," he said. A distant ghost mocked him from the high vaults above them.

"Guns—Karen—guns—Karen. . . ."

She glanced up and then back again, and he wondered if a little shudder ran over her. Did she

remember? Did she share this inexplicable feeling of strange nameless loss, of wrongness and

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disaster beyond reason? She did not betray it.

Mike Smith was getting slowly to his feet, shaking his head like a big cat, groping for the guns

that were not

there. Deliberately Alan crossed to the curved wall. He wanted something solid at his back.

Curiously, he noticed that his feet roused no echoes in all that vast, hollow place. Walking on

steel as if he walked on velvet, he carried his load of guns toward the great circular crack in

the outer wall that outlined the closed door they had entered through. Mike and Karen watched him

dazedly. Beyond them, Sir Colin was sitting up, blinking.

Mike's eyes were on the gun that Alan held steadily. He said:

"Karen, what's up? Were we gassed?" And his voice was rusty too, unused.

Sir Colin's burred tones almost creaked as he spoke. Faint echoes roused among the shadows

overhead. "Maybe we were," he said. "Maybe we were."

There was silence. Four people had dreamed the same dream, or a part of it. They were groping in

their memories now, and finding no more than Alan had found to judge by their bewildered faces.

Presently Karen shook her red head and said:

"I want my gun back."

Sir Colin was staring about, uneasily rubbing his beard. 'Wait," he said. "Things have changed,

you know."

"Things may have changed," the girl said, and took a step toward Alan. "But I still have my job to

do."

"For Germany," Alan murmured, and gently covered the revolver's trigger with his middle finger.

"Better stay where you are, Karen. I don't trust you."

SirColin's eyes were troubled under the shaggy reddish brows. I'm not so sure there is a Germany,"

he said bluntly. "There's—"

Alan saw the almost imperceptible signal Karen gave.

Mike Smith had apparently been paying little attention to the dialogue. But now, without an

instant's warning, he flung himself forward in a long smooth leap toward Alan. No—to Alan's left.

The revolver had swung in a little arc before Alan realized his mistake. He saw Karen coming at

him and swept the gun in a vicious blow at her head.

He didn't want to kill her—merely to put her out of the picture so that he could attend to Smith.

But Karen's movement had been startling swift. She slid under the swinging gun, twisted sidewise,

and suddenly she had crashed into him with the full weight of her body, jolting him back hard

against the closed port. Alan stumbled, and felt the door slip smoothly away. He swayed on his

heels against empty air. Mike Smith was coming in, lithe and boneless as a big cat, a joyous

little smile on his face.

Motion slowed down, then. For Alan, it always slowed down in moments like this, so that he could

see everything at once and act with lightning deliberation. Hard ground crunched under his heels

as he pivoted and put all his force into a smashing blow that caught Mike Smith heavily across the

jaw with the gun-barrel.

Mike went back and down, teeth bared in a feline snarl. Alan took one long forward stride to

finish the job—and then saw Karen. And what he saw froze him. She had paused in the doorway, and

it was surely not a trick that had twisted her smooth features into such a look of blank

astonishment. Behind her, SirColin stood frozen, too, the same incredulity on his face.

Drake turned slowly, still holding his gun ready. Then for a moment his mind went lax, and what he

saw before him had no significance at all.

For this was not the flame-scorched valley they had left.

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And it was not morning, or noon, or night. There was only a ruddy twilight here, and a flat

unfeatured landscape across which patches of mist drifted aimlessly as they watched, like clouds

before a sluggish wind. Low down in the sky hung a dull and ruddy sun that they could look upon

unblinded, with steady eyes.

Briefly, in the distance, something moved high up across the sky. There was a dark shape out there

somewhere, a building monstrously silhouetted against the sun. But the mists closed in like

curtains to veil it from his gaze, as if it were a secret to this dead world not for living eyes

to see.

SirColin was the first who came to life. He reached out a big, red-knuckled hand and barred Mike

Smith's automatic lurch forward, toward Alan and the gun.

"Not now," he burred. "Not now! You can forget about Germany. And Bizerte and Sousse and all

Tunisia too, all Africa. This is—"

Alan let his own gun sink. Their quarrel seemed curiously lacking in point now, somehow against

the light from that dying sun. For Germany and America and England had been—must have been—dust

for countless millenniums. Their way did not belong in a world from which all passion must have

ebbed forever long ago.

How long?

"It's Time," Alan heard himself whisper. "Time —gone out like a tide and left us stranded."

In the silence Karen cried, "It's still a dream—it must be!" But her voice was hushed to a half-

whisper by the desolation all around, and she let the words die. Alan shook his head. He knew.

They all knew, really. That was

part of the dream they shared. By tacit agreement none of them mentioned that cloudy interval that

had passed between their sleeping and their waking, but in it enough had seeped into their minds

to have no doubt there now. This was no shock, after the first surprise wore away.

"Look," SirColin said, stepping away from the ship. "Whatever happened, we must have been buried."

He pointed to the mounds of sandy soil heaped around the great sphere, as if it had thrust itself

up from the depths of the earth. And even the soil was dead. This upheaval from far underground

had turned up no moisture, no richness, no life.

"We'd better have our guns again, all of us," Karen said in a flat voice. "We may need them."

Mike Smith returned his guns to their holsters beneath his coat, and laughed with a short,

unpleasant bark. Alan turned an impassively icy gaze upon him. He knew why Mike laughed. Mike was

making the mistake that many others had made when they saw Alan Drake smile. Mike thought it was

the fear of the unknown world, not simple acceptance of altered conditions, which had made Alan

give up the gun. Well, Mike would have to learn sooner or later that the gentleness of Alan's

smile was not a sign of weakness.

"Listen!" called Karen breathlessly. "Didn't you hear it? Listen!"

And while they all stood in strained quiet, a far, faint keening cry from high overhead came

floating down to them through the twilight and the mist. Not a bird-cry. They all heard it

clearly, and they must all have known it came from a human throat. While they stood frozen, it

sounded again, nearer and lower and infinitely sad. And then across their range of vision, high in

the ruddy gloom, a slim, winged shape floated, riding the air-currents like a condor with broad,

pale wings outspread. They had glimpsed it before. And it was no bird-form. Clearly, even at this

distance, they all could see the contours of a human body sailing on winged arms high in the

twilight.

Once more the infinitely plaintive, thin cry keened through the air before the thing suddenly beat

its winged arms together and went soaring off into the dimness, with the echoes of its heart-

breaking wail fading on the air behind it.

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No one spoke. Every face was lifted to the chilly wind as the pale, soaring speck melted into the

sky and vanished far out over the unfeatured landscape. Alan found himself wondering if this slim,

winged thing fading into the twilight would be the last man on earth, down an unimaginable line of

evolution that had left all humanity winged and wailing—and mindless.

Alan shook himself a little.

"Evolution," Sir Colin was murmuring, an echo of Alan's thought. "So that's the end of the race,

is it? How long have we slept, then?"

"One thing," said Alan in as brisk a voice as he could manage. "Whatever the thing was, it's got

to eat. Somewhere in the world there must be some food and water left."

"Good for you, laddie," Sir Colin grinned. "Hadn't thought of that yet. Maybe there's hope for us

yet, if we follow—"

"Don't forget, it can fly," reminded Karen.

Alan shrugged. "All the more reason to start after it now, while we're fresh. There isn't anything

here to stay for."

"I think I'll just have a wee look inside before we go," put in Sir Colin thoughtfully. "There's a

bare chance. . . ." He led the way back inside, and the rest followed, none of them willing to

stay out alone in the desert of the world.

But there was nothing here. Only the vast curved walls, the confused reflections of themselves

that swam dizzily when they moved. Only empty concavity, and the arrow-shaped doorway behind which

nothing dwelt now. The Alien was gone, but whether he—it—had just preceded them into the ruddy

twilight of the world's end, or whether he had been gone for many years when they woke, there was

no way of guessing.

"If this was a space-ship once," murmured Sir Colin, scratching his rusty beard, "there must have

been controls, motors—something! Now where could they be but there?" And he cocked a bristling

eyebrow toward the dark doorway.

A little coldness shivered through Alan and was gone. He did not know what he remembered of that

narrow door, but the thought of approaching it made the flesh crawl on his bones.

Sir Colin moved as slowly toward the door as if he too shared the .unreasoning revulsion, but he

moved, and Alan followed at his heels. He was at Sir Colin's elbow when the hulking scientist

stooped his big, bony shoulders forward to peer into that slitted doorway they all feared without

remembering why.

' 'Um—dark,'' grunted the Scotsman. He was fumbling

in the pocket of his shapeless suit. He found a tiny flashlight there and clicked*on an intense

needle-beam of light that flared in blinding reflection from the wall as he swung it toward the

doorway.

He grunted in astonishment. "It shouldn't work," he muttered. "A battery, after a million years—"

But it did work, and it was useless. The light, turned to the narrow doorway, seemed to strike a

wall of darkness and spray backward. That black interior seemed as solidly tangible as brick. Sir

Colin put out his gun-hand and saw it vanish to the wrist in dark like water. He jerked it out

again, unharmed.

Alan whistled softly. There was a moment of silence.

"All the same," Alan said doggedly, "we've got to explore that room before we leave. There's just

a bare hope of something in there that can help us."

He drew his own gun and took a deep breath, and stepped over the threshold of the arrow-shaped

door like a man plunging into deep water. The most hideous revulsions crawled through every nerve

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of his body as that blinding darkness closed over his eyes. He could not even hear Sir Colin's

step behind him, but he felt a groping hand find his shoulder and grip it, and the two men moved

forward with wary, shuffling steps into a darkness that blinded every sense like oblivion itself.

Alan's outstretched hand found the wall. He followed it grimly, prepared for anything. He was

trying very hard not to remember that once the Alien had seemed to brim this little room, filling

the high doorway with a curling and shifting of dark against dark.

It was a small room. They groped their way around the

wall and, in a space of time that might or might not have been long, Alan felt the wall fall away

beneath his fingers, and he stepped out into the comparative brightness of the great dim hollow

again. He had a moment of utter vertigo. Then the floor steadied under his feet, and he was

looking into Sir Colin's face, white and a little sick.

"You—you look the way I feel," he heard himself saying inanely. "Well—"

Sir Colin put his gun away methodically, pocketed the flash. "Nothing," he said, in a thinnish

voice. "Nothing at all."

Karen lifted questioning blue eyes to them, searched each face in turn. She did not ask them what

they had found inside the arrowy doorway, perhaps she did not want to know. But after a moment, in

a subdued voice, she echoed Mike.

"Yes, we'd better go. This ship—it's no good any more. It will never move again." She said it

flatly, and for a moment Alan almost recaptured the memory he had been groping for. She was right.

This ship had never needed machinery, but whatever motive power had lifted it no longer existed.

It was as dead as the world it had brought them to.

He followed the others toward the door.

The dust of the world's end rose in sluggish whirls around their feet, and settled again as they

plodded across the desert. The empty sphere of the ship was hidden in the mists behind them.

Nothing lay ahead but the invisible airy path the birdman had followed, and the hope of food and

water somewhere before their strength gave out.

Alan scuffed through the dust which was all that remained of the vivid world he had left only

yesterday,

before the long night of his sleep. This dust was Tunis, it was the bazaars and the sTiouting

Arabs of Bizerte. It was tanks and guns and great ships, his own friends, and the titanic battle

that had raged about the Mediterranean. He shivered in the frigid wind that whirled the dust of

ages around him. Iron desolation was all that remained, desolation and silence and—

There was that cryptic structure he had glimpsed, or thought he glimpsed, against the sky. It

might hold life —if he had not imagined it. The bird-like creatures might have come from there. In

any case, they might as well walk in that direction, lacking any other sign.

The stillness was like death around them. But was it stillness? Alan tilted his head away from the

wind to catch that distant sound, then called out, "Wait!"

In a moment they heard it, too, the great rushing roar from so far away that its intensity was

diminished to a whisper without, somehow, diminishing its volume. The roar grew louder. Now it was

low thunder, shaking the drifting mists, shaking the very ground they stood on. But it did not

come nearer. It went rushing and rumbling off into diminuendo again, far away through the mists.

They stood there blindly, huddled together against the immense mystery and menace of a force that

could shake the earth as it passed. And while they still stood quiet a faint, thin cry from

overhead electrified them all.

"The bird again!" Karen whispered, and with the nervous dig of her fingers into his, Alan realized

suddenly that they had been clutching one another with tense hands.

"There it is!" cried Mike Smith suddenly. "I see it! Look!" And his gun was in his hand with

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magical smoothness and swiftness, lifting toward the pale winged

figure that was sailing low through the thinning mists overhead.

Alan's leap was pure reflex, too swift for even his own reasoning to follow. He had no time to

wonder why he did it, but he felt his muscles gather and release with coiled-spring violence, and

then his hurtling shoulder struck solid flesh, and he heard Mike grunt hollowly. The next moment

the ground received them both with jolting force.

Alan rolled over and got to his feet, automatically brushing himself off and frowning down at

Mike, who lay motionless, his gun a foot away.

The basic difference between the two men had come clearly into sight in the moment when the bird-

creature sailed across the sky. Mike's instant reaction was to kill, Alan's to prevent that

slaughter.

Sir Colin hulked forward and picked up Mike's fallen gun.

Mike was up then, swiftly recovered, and poised. Karen stepped in front of his catlike rebound.

"Wait," she said, putting out an arm that stopped him in midstride. "Drake's right. We don't know

what the sound of a shot might bring down on us. And those bird-things—what do we know about them?

They might be—property. And the owners might be even less human than they are."

"I just wanted to wing the thing,'' Mike snarled.' 'How the hell can we trail a bird? It might

lead us to food if we'd got it down on the ground. That's sense."

"We mustn't make enemies before we know their strength," Karen told him.

"We've got to hang together now," Sir Colin put in, pocketing the gun. "Otherwise, we haven't a

hope. We must not squabble, laddie."

Mike shrugged, his good-looking cat-features darkened with his scowl. "I won't turn my back on you

again, Drake," he said evenly. "We'll settle it later. But we'll settle it."

Alan said, "Suit yourself."

It was very cold now. But even the wind felt lifeless as night deepened over the earth. When the

stars came, they were unrecognizable. The Milky Way alone looked familiar. Alan thought

fantastically that its light might have left it at the very moment they had left their own world

forever—to meet them here in an unimaginable rendezvous where the last dregs of time were ebbing

from the world.

Moonrise roused them a little. The great pale disc came up slowly, tremendously, overpowering and

desolately beautiful in the night of the world.

"Look," murmured Karen in a hushed voice. "You can see the craters and the dead seas—"

"Not close enough yet to cause quakes, I think," Sir Colin said, squinting at it. "Might be

tremendous tidal waves, though, if any water's left. I wonder—"

He stopped quite suddenly, halting the others. A rift in the ground mists had drawn cloudy

curtains aside, and there before them, in monstrous silhouette against the moon, stood the great

black outlines of that shape they had glimpsed for a fleeting instant from the ship. Misshapen,

asymmetrical, but too regular to be any natural formation.

Karen's voice was as thin as a voice in a dream. "Nothing that men ever made. ..."

"It must be enormous," Sir Colin murmured. "Far away, but big—big! Well, we head for it, I

suppose?"

"Of course we do." Karen spoke sharply. Command was in her voice for the first time since their

awakening, as if she had only now fully aroused from a dream. Alan looked at her in surprise in

the gray of the moonlight. Seeing a chance of survival, she had come alive. Life and color had

flowed back into her.

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Henry Kuttner & C. L. Moore - Earth' s last Citadel

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