“Very sharp, Joe,” Mary said. “We’re thinking alike. Me, I’m going to give them a hell of a time. I know a place where nobody can come up with me plumping rocks down on their heads.”
Joe, his voice softer, said, “I should a met you a long time ago, Mary. You got guts.”
“Listen to the sweet talk.”
Joe stirred restlessly, his voice growing husky. “Kid, on account of maybe this is our last night and—”
“Not so sharp, Joe. Don’t let the princess give you wrong ideas. On account of this might be our last night, I’ll stay up an hour later and we can have a nice talk.”
Universe organization collapsed when Adolph Kane, egomaniac supervisor of the colonies near Sirius and Alpha Centauri, built a war fleet in secret and, after ten years of bitter warfare wiped out all organized resistance on the part of the Planet Foundation.
Within fifteen more years he controlled all of the civilized universe, having subjugated the colonies in the Regulus, Fomalhaut, Pollux, Aldebaran, Altair, Procryon, Arctures and Capella Sectors. He established new colonies near Archermar, the furthest mankind had yet been from Mother Earth.
He called himself Emperor, built on the gray planet, Lobos, a mighty palace and fortress, protected by the impenetrable ring of satellite warships.
In the shining palace he begat the sons who carried his name and his authority. During three hundred years of the reign of the line of Kane, research for the sake of knowledge ceased to exist. All research was channeled toward the single goal of making the Empire immune to attack, both from within and from without — for men yet feared the possibility of intelligent and warlike races in some yet unconquered comer of the universe.
Yet mankind benefited from the single-minded lust for power of the Empire, for it was through the insistence of the Kanes that the mighty space-ships plunged through the barrier of the speed of light with the lateral time movement aberration cancelled down to the point where it was so slight as to be recorded only by the most delicate instruments.
And the Empire, searching the far comers of the universe, found that no enemy was in opposition and they yet lusted for war, as no dictatorship can exist without war.
Bannot, the Ninth in the Succession, turned his attention to past eras m search of a worthy foe.
Chapter IV
They Come to Kill
They did not come the following dawn — or the next.
Joe Gresham had gradually taken over authority from Howard Loomis, yet he deferred to the judgment of Mary Callahan when he was in doubt. The headquarters cave was forty feet from the narrow valley floor, reached by a narrow ledge.
Joe summed up their plan. “We’ll try to dicker with these jokers, but if they won’t listen we better be ready. It’s no use running. This is as good a place as we’ll find.”
During the two full days of preparation, Mary canceled all attempts at surprise weapons. She pointed up at the hovering boxes and said, “Whatever we do we’ll be watched.”
At the end of the second day there were six heavy bows. Stacey, pale and upset, displayed a remarkable talent for fashioning arrows. For the sake of speed the tips were fire-hardened. Joe had carried up the rocks. Howard Loomis had fashioned the spears, had made a sling, had traveled to the stream bed to gather small stones for the sling.
Water storage was a problem, unhappily solved by using the hides of the small deer-like creatures to fashion waterbags. Improper curing of the hides gave the water an evil smell, a worse taste.
The initial attack came on the third dawn.
Stacey was on watch at the cave mouth near the embers of the dead fire. Her scream jolted the other three out of sleep.
There were four of them. They stood on the brow of the hill opposite the cliff face. They were a good hundred and fifty yards away, the sun silhouetting them.
Mary shaded her eyes and frowned. “A ham act,” she said. “A walk-on part. Spear-carriers. Something out of Shakespeare. J. Caesar, maybe.”
The four, even at that distance, looked trim and young. They wore the crested helmets of antiquity, carried oval shields, short swords, unscabbarded. The sun glinted off the silver of their shields, the naked blades, the breastplates, the metallic thongs binding their husky legs.
They merely stood and watched.
“Armor, yet,” Joe muttered. “What good are wooden arrows going to be?”
Stacey began to moan.
“Shut up, honey,” Mary said softly.
The four men advanced down the slope with cautious steps. As they reached the valley floor their tanned faces were upturned toward the face of the cliff. They wore short stout war axes suspended from their belts.
And above each of them floated a small metallic box.
They seemed wary but confident. Joe growled deep in his throat, backed into the shadow, notched one of the best arrows on the bowstring of the heaviest bow, pulled it back until his thumb touched his cheek, just under his right eye. His big arms trembled slightly with the strain.
He released the arrow. It sped down whizzing toward the biggest of the four. The man raised his shield with startled speed. The arrow penetrated halfway through the shield. The big man staggered back, lowering his shield. A thin line of blood ran down his cheek. He shouted something in a foreign tongue, a wide smile on his face. With a careless flick of his short sword, he lopped off the protruding arrow.
Howard shouted, his voice shrilled, “What do you want?”
The answer was in English, oddly accented. “To kill you!”
“He couldn’t have made it clearer,” Mary said.
“Come on and try,” Joe yelled.
The four, shields high, inched toward the narrow ledge that wound up to the wide place in front of the cave mouth.
“Let ’em get nearly up here,” Joe muttered.
They were so close that the shields overlapped, giving the impression of a vast metallic beetle crawling up the rock.
Joe selected a rock that had taken him much effort to lug up to the cave. His big arms corded with the effort as he lifted it, staying back out of sight. Mary peered over the edge.
She signaled to Joe. He held the rock over his head, stumbled as he came rushing forward.
It took him precious seconds to regain his balance.
The hundred-pound stone crashed down among them. A man yelled in pain as he was smashed against the ledge. Two men fell off, tumbling down into the brush.
But the lead man, the one with the punctured cheek, scrambled up the last ten feet, throwing aside his shield.
He stood enormous in front of the cave, his sword flashing, the war axe in his huge left hand. His mouth was open in a wide grin of battle. Joe charged him with one of the spears but the sword lopped off the spear, along with Joe’s first finger and thumb.
Joe fell back. Mary flattened against the inside wall of the cave, stooped and picked up a half pound rock. Her tomboy girlhood had left cunning in her muscles. The rock hit the broad forehead. The man dropped sword and axe, dropped to his knees, his eyes glazed.
Joe took two steps forward and kicked the man in the face. He went over backward, dropped out of sight.
Two of the attackers were uninjured. They had recovered their shields, which they used to protect the injured man who had been hit by the stone Joe dropped among them. They disappeared down the valley into the brush.