I
The man running through the forest gloom breathed in hot, panting gusts, pain tearing at his chest. Underfoot the crawling, pale network of tree-trunks lay flat upon the ground, and more than once he tripped over a slippery bole and crashed down, but he was up again instantly.
He had no breath to scream. He sobbed as he ran, his burning eyes trying to pierce the shadows. Whispers rustled down from above. When the leaf-ceiling parted, a blaze of terribly bright stars flamed in the jet sky. It was cold and dark, and the man knew that he was not on Earth.
They were following him, even here.
A squat yellow figure, huge-eyed, inhuman, loomed in his path—one of the swamp people of Southern Venus. The man swung a wild blow at the thing, and his fist found nothing. It had vanished. But beyond it rose a single-legged giant, a Martian, bellowing the great, gusty laughter of the Redland Tribes. The man dodged, stumbled, and smashed down heavily. He heard paddling footsteps and tried, with horrible intensity of purpose, to rise. He could not.
The Martian crept toward him—but it was no longer a Martian. An Earthman, with the face of some obscene devil, came forward with a sidling, slow motion. Horns sprouted from the low forehead. The teeth were fangs. As the creature came nearer, it raised its hands—twisted, gnarled talons—and slid them about the man’s throat.
Through the forest thundered the deep, booming clangor of a brass gong. The sound shattered the phantom as a hammer shatters glass. Instantly the man was alone.
Making hoarse, animal sounds in his throat, he staggered upright and lurched in the direction from which the sound came. But he was too weak. Presently he fell, and this time he did not rise. His arms moved a little and then were still. He slept, lines of tortured weariness twisting the haggard face.
Very faintly, from infinite distances, he heard a voice … two voices. Inhuman. Alien—and yet with a warmth of vital urgency that stirred something deep within him.
“He has passed our testing.”
Then a stronger, more powerful voice—answering.
“Others have passed our testing—but the Aesir slew them.”
“There is no other way. In this man I sensed something—a little different. He can hate—he has hated.”
“He will need more than hatred—” the deeper voice said. “Even with us to aid him. And there is little time. Strip his memories from him now, so that he may not be weakened by them—”
“May the gods fight with him.”
“But he fights the gods. The only gods men know in these evil days—”
The man awakened.
Triphammers beat ringingly inside his skull. He opened his eyes and closed them quickly against the sullen red glow that beat down from above. He lay motionless, gathering his strength.
What had happened?
He didn’t know. The jolting impact of that realization struck him violently. He felt a brief panic of disorientation. Where—?
I’m Derek Stuart, he thought. At least it isn’t complete amnesia. I know who I am. But not where I am.
This time when he opened his eyes they stayed open. Overhead a broad-leafed tree arched. Through its branches he could see a dark, starry sky, the glowing, ringed disc of Saturn very far away, and a deeply scarlet glow.
Not Earth, then. A Saturnian moon? No, Saturn didn’t eclipse most of the sky. Perhaps the asteroid belt.
He moved his head a little, and saw the red moon.
Aesir!
The message rippled along his nerves into his brain. Stuart reacted instantly. His hard, strong body writhed, whipped over, and then he was in a half-crouch, one hand flashing to his belt while his eyes searched the empty silence of the forest around him. There was no sound, no movement.
Sweat stood on Stuart’s forehead, and he brushed it away impatiently. His deeply-tanned face set into harsh lines of curiously hopeless desperation. There was no blaster gun at his belt; that didn’t matter. Guns couldn’t help him now—on Asgard.
The red moon had told him the answer. Only one world in the System had a red moon, and men didn’t go to that artificial asteroid willingly. They went, yes—but only to be doomed and damned. From Venus to Callisto spacemen spoke of Asgard in hushed voices—Asgard where the Aesir lived and ruled the worlds of Man.
No spaceships left Asgard, except the sleek black cruisers manned by the priests of Aesir. No man had ever returned from Asgard.
Stuart grinned mirthlessly. He’d learned a lesson, though he’d never profit by it now. Always before he’d been confident of his ability to outdrink anyone of his own weight and size. And certainly that slight, tired-eyed man at the Singing Star, in New Boston, should have passed out long before Stuart—under normal circumstances.
So the circumstances hadn’t been quite normal. It was a frame. A beautiful, airtight frame, because he’d never come back to squawk. Nobody came back from Asgard.
He shivered a little and looked up warily. There were legends, of course. The Watchers who patrolled the asteroid ceaselessly—robots, men said. They served the Aesir. As, in a way, all men served the Aesir.
No sound. No movement. Only the sullen crimson light beating down ominously from that dark sky.
Stuart took stock of his clothing. Regular leatheroid spaceman’s rig; they’d left him that, anyway. Whoever they were. He couldn’t remember anything that had happened after the fifth drink with the tired-eyed man. There was a very faint recollection of running somewhere—seeing unpleasant things—and hearing two oddly unreal voices. But the memories slipped away and vanished as he tried to focus on them.
The hell with it. He was on Asgard. And that meant—something rather more unpleasant than death, if the legends were to be believed. A very suitable climax to an unorthodox life, in this era when obedience and law enforcement were the rigid rule.
Stuart picked up a heavy branch that might serve as a club. Then, shrugging, he turned westward, striking at random through the forest. No use waiting here till the Watchers came. At least—he could fight, as he had always fought as far back as he could remember.
There wasn’t much room for fighters any more. Not under the Aesir rule. There were nations and kings and presidents, of course, but they were puppet figures, never daring to disobey any edicts that came from the mystery-shrouded asteroid hanging off the orbit of Mars, the tiny, artificial world that had ruled the System for a thousand years.
The Aesir. The inhuman, cryptic beings who—if legend were true—once had been human. Stuart scowled, trying to remember.
An—an entropic accelerator, that was it. A device, a method that speeded up evolution tremendously. That had been the start of the tyranny. A machine that could accelerate a man’s evolution by a million years—
Some had used that method. Those were the ones who had become the Aesir, creatures so far advanced in the evolutionary scale that they were no longer remotely human. Much was lost in the mists of the past. But Stuart could recall that much—the knowledge that the Aesir had once been human, that they were human no longer, and that for a thousand years they had ruled the System, very terribly, from their forbidden asteroid that they named Asgard—home of the legendary Norse gods.
Maybe the tired-eyed man had been an Aesir priest, collecting victims. Certainly no others would have dared to land a ship on Asgard. Stuart swung on, searching the empty skies, and now a queer, unreasoning excitement began to grow within him. At least, before he died, he’d learn what the Aesir were like. It probably wouldn’t be pleasant knowledge, but there’d be some satisfaction in it. And there’d be even more satisfaction if he thought he had a chance of smashing a hard fist into the face of one of the Aesir priests—or even—
Hell, why not? He had nothing to lose now. From the moment he had touched Asgard soil, he was damned anyway. But of one thing Stuart was certain; he wouldn’t be led like a helpless sheep to the throat-cutting. He wouldn’t die without fighting against them.
The forest thinned before him. There was a flicker of swift motion far ahead. Stuart froze, his grip tightening on the cudgel, his eyes searching.
Between the columnar trees, bright amid the purple shadows, a glitter of sparkling nebulae swept. A web of light, Stuart thought—so dazzling his eyes ached as he stared at the—the thing.
Bodiless, intangible, the shifting net of stars poised, high above his head. Hundreds of twinkling, glittering pinpoints flickered there, so swiftly it seemed as though an arabesque spiderweb of light weaved in the still, dark air—web of the Norns!
Each flickering star-fleck—watched. Each was an eye.
And as the thing poised, a horrible, half-human hesitancy in its stillness, a deep, humming note sounded, from its starry heart.
Star-points shook and quivered to the sound. Again it came—deeper, more menacing.
Questioning!
Was this one of the—Watchers? Was this one of them?
Abruptly its hesitancy vanished; it swept down upon Stuart. Instinctively he swung his cudgel in a smashing blow that sent him reeling forward—for there was no resistance. The star-creature was as intangible as air.
And yet it was not. The dazzling web of light enfolded him like a blazing cloak. Instantly a cold, trembling horror crawled along his skin. Bodiless the thing might be—but it was dangerous, infinitely so!
Pressure, shifting, quicksand pressure, was all about him. That stealthy cold crept into his flesh and bones, frigid icicles jabbing into his brain. Gasping with shock, Stuart struck out. He had dropped the club. Now he stooped and groped for it, but he could see nothing except a glittering veil of diamonds that raced like a mad torrent everywhere.
The humming rose again—ominously triumphant.
Cursing, Stuart staggered forward. The star-cloak stayed. He tried to grip it somewhere, to wrench it free, but he could not. The thousands of tiny eyes raced past him, glittering with alien ecstasy, shining brighter and ever brighter as they fed.
He felt the life being sucked out of him. … Deeper stabbed the gelid cold … louder roared that throbbing tone in his ears.
He heard his voice gasping furious, hopeless oaths. His eyes ached with the strain of staring at that blinding glitter. Then—
The heart of the Watcher. Crush the heart!
The words crashed like deep thunder in his brain. Had someone spoken them—? No … for, with the command, had come a message as well. As though a thought had spoken within his mind, a telepathic warning from—where?
His eyes strained at the dazzle. Now he saw that there was a brighter core that did not shift and change when the rest of the star-cloud wove its dreadful net. A spot of light that—
He reached out … the nucleus darted away … he lurched forward, on legs half-frozen, and felt a stone turn under his foot. As he crashed down, his hand closed and tightened on something warm and living that pulsed frantically against his palm.
The humming rose to a shrill scream … frightened … warning.
Stuart tightened his grip. He lay motionless, his eyes closed. But all around him he could feel the icy tendrils of the star-thing lashing at him, drinking his human warmth, probing with avid fingers at his brain.
He felt that warm—core—writhe and try to slip between his fingers. He squeezed. …
The scream burst out, an inhuman agony in its raw-edged keening.
It stopped.
In Stuart’s hand was—nothing.
He opened his eyes. The dazzling glitter of star-points had vanished. Only the forest, with its purple shadows, lay empty and silent around him.
Stuart got up slowly, swallowed dry-throated. The creatures of the Aesir were not invulnerable, then. Not to one who knew their weaknesses.
How had he known?
What voice had spoken in his brain? There had been an odd, impossible familiarity to that—that mental voice, now that he remembered it. Somewhere he had heard it, sensed it before.
That gap in his memory—
He tried to bridge it, but he could not. There was only a quickening of the desire to go on westward. He felt suddenly certain that he would find the Aesir in that direction.
He took a hesitant step—and another. And with each step, a queer, unmotivated confidence poured into him. As though some barrier in his mind had broken down, letting some strange flood of proud defiance rush in.
It was impossible. It was dangerous. But—certainly—no more dangerous than supinely waiting here on Asgard till another Watcher came to destroy him. There were worse things than the starry Watchers here, if legends were to be trusted.
He went on, the curious tide of defiance rising higher and ever higher in his blood. It was a strangely intoxicating sense of—of pure, crazy self-confidence such as no man should rightfully have felt on this haunted asteroid.
He wondered—but the drunkenness was such that he did not wonder much. He did not question.
He thought: To hell with the Aesir!
The forest ended. At his feet a road began, leading off into the purple horizons of the flat plain before him. At the end of that road was a thrusting pillar of light that rose like a tower toward the dark sky.
There were the Aesir. …