Leigh Brackett

“ The great Cluster of Hercules grew from a patch of hazy brilliance lost in the blaze and crash and thunder of the universe, to a monstrous star-swarm, blinding even through a darkened port—a swirling hive of suns, white, red, yellow, peacock blue and vivid green, booming across the eternal void with the rush and roar of a cosmic avalanche toward some unknown destination, guided by the evil blinking eyes of the Cepheid variables. The Saarga plunged in at last among the edges of the swarm, and Trehearne discovered at least one reason why Edri had warned him about the Hercules run. ”

“ The girl slipped in the loose rubble, and lost her hold on Fallon. The broad tentacles on the ray's head closed in like the horns of a half moon, folding the girl in a narrowing circle of death.
Fallon raised his iron curtain rod. He was irrationally conscious, with a detached fragment of his brain, of the girl's sapphire eyes and the lovely strength of her body. Her face was set with terror, but she didn't scream. She fought.
Something turned over in Fallon's heart, something buried and unfamiliar. Something that had never stirred for Madge. He stepped in. The bar swung up, slashed down. ”

“ Carey could understand now why Sinharat was tabu. It was not only because of an ancient dread. It was the city itself, now, in the sharp sunlight or under the gliding moons. It was a small city. There had never been more than perhaps three thousand Ramas, and this remote little island had given them safety and room enough. But they had built close, and high. The streets ran like topless tunnels between the walls and the towers reached impossibly thin and tall into the sky. Some of them had lost their upper storeys and some had fallen entirely, but in the main they were still beautiful. ”

“ He wondered who would be king in Kushat by the time this unrisen sun had set.
"You were wrong," said Balin, peering. "There is nothing on the plain."
Stark said, "Wait."
Swiftly now, in the thin air of Mars, the dawn came with a rush and a leap, flooding the world with harsh light. It flashed in cruel brilliance from sword-blades, from spearheads, from helmets and burnished mail, from the war-harness of beasts, glistened on bare russet heads and coats of leather, set the banners of the clans to burning, crimson and gold and green, bright against the snow. ”

“ We earned the right to what we have. We were the first—first of all the races of the Galaxy to go into interstellar space. And we did it without mutation, without anything! Four generations that first voyage took. Four generations of children born in deep space, in a little ship crawling between the stars! No one else ever did that. No one else ever dared! And as for our wicked monopoly—it keeps the peace of the Galaxy. It keeps worlds alive that would have died. It brings wealth and comfort where they never were before. ”

“ Trevor stared at him. A burning flood of light fell in through the tall windows so high above his head, setting the sun-stone ablaze between the Korin's sullen brows. Trevor's gaze fixed on that single point of brilliance.
"Oh, yes," said Galt. "It's true."
It struck Trevor with an ugly shock that Galt's lips had not moved, and that he had made no audible sound.
"The stones give us a limited ability," Galt went on, still without speaking aloud. "Not like His, of course. But we can control the hawks, and exchange ideas between us when we want to if the range isn't too far. ”

“ The first dim rumble of thunder rolled down the wind. Gripping Jill, Gray turned up the tunnel.
The wind, compressed in that narrow throat of rock, beat them blind and breathless, beat them to their bellies, to crawl. How long it took them, they never knew.
But Gray caught glimpses of Dio the Martian crawling behind them, and behind him again, the relentless flow of the fire-things.
They floundered out onto a rocky slope, fell away beneath the suck of the wind, and lay still, gasping. It was hot. Thunder crashed abruptly, and lightning flared between the cliffs. ”

“ Sometimes he would see a dim figure crouching in the mist, and he would think that he had found her but each time it was the body of a man, dead for God knew how long. They were all alike. They were emaciated, as though they had died of starvation and they were all smiling. There seemed to be lost visions still in their open eyes.
These were the gods of the Moonfire—the handful of men through all the ages who had fought their way through to the ultimate goal.
Heath saw the cruelty of the jest. A man could find godhead in the golden lake. He could create his own world within it. ”

“ He rode for a time in silence, and then he said slowly, repeating Delgaun's words,
"Perhaps you have forgotten something, Berild. There is nothing for you in me, the creature of an hour."
He saw her start, and for a moment her eyes blazed and her breath was sharply drawn. Then she laughed, and said,
"The wild man is also a parrot. And an hour can be a long time—as long as eternity, if one wills it so."
"Yes," said Stark, "I have often thought so, waiting for death to come at me out of a crevice in the rocks. The great lizard stings, and his bite is fatal." ”

“ Fallon's hard jaw set. "I can't go any longer without sleep."
Bjarnsson's cragged face was flushed and greasy behind his helmet, but his eyes were like glittering frost.
"All the whisky and the women," he whispered. "They make you soft, Fallon. The girl would have been better."
A flashing glimpse of Joan as she had looked in the car that morning crossed the eye of Fallon's mind—the tumbled fair hair and the sunlight warm on throat and cheek, and her voice saying, "You wouldn't be bad, Webb ... so lazy and so hell-fired selfish!" ”

“ On the other side of the reef was a dry lagoon, stretching perhaps half a mile to a coral island that stood up tall in the hard clear sunlight, its naked cliffs beautifully striated with deep rose and white and delicate pink. A noble stairway went up from the desert to a city of walls and towers so perfectly built from many-shaded marble and so softly sculptured by time that it was difficult to tell where the work of men began and ended. Carey saw it through a shimmering haze of exhaustion and wonder, and knew that he looked at Sinharat, the Ever-Living. ”

“ Why did he build Kushat to guard the pass forever, if not to hoard that power out of reach of all the other nations of Mars?
"Yes, Stark. My men will follow me. And if they do not, I will go alone."
"You are not Ban Cruach. Nor am I." He took her by the shoulders. "Listen, Ciara. You're already king in the Norlands, and half a legend as you stand. Be content."
"Content!" Her face was close to his, and he saw the blaze of it, the white intensity of ambition and an iron pride. "Are you content?" she asked him. "Have you ever been content?"
He smiled. "For strangers, we do know each other well. ”

“ Seeing it as he had before, far off and with nothing to measure it against but the overtopping titan peaks, it had seemed no more than a city built of rock. Now he was close to it. Black shadows lay on it, and on the valley, but half way up the opposite mountain wall the light still blazed, reflected downward on the shallow sky, so that everything seemed to float in some curious dimension between night and day, Trevor stared, shut his eyes, and stared again. ”

“ Ships lay in most of them, recumbent monsters taking their ease, while men and machines in vast numbers and great complexity waited on their needs. The ringing air was heavy with smells, strange spices and subtle unidentifiable things mingling with the reek of oil and hot metal, cargoes of unimagined riches from unimaginable worlds. Trehearne stood, feeling the tremendous pulse beat through him, hardly aware for the moment that Edri was trying to steer him to a kiosk at the end of the dock, or that the young Vardda was amused at his wide-eyed astonishment. ”

“ No head broke the surface to feed. The dragons flew away in a hissing cloud. There was utter silence.
Heath flung himself against the sweep and stopped it.
"Be quiet," he said. "Look. Out there."
They followed his gesture. Far away over the port bow, flowing toward them, was a ripple in the weed. A ripple as though the very bed of the Upper Seas was in motion.
"What is it?" whispered Alor, and saw Heath's face, and was silent.
Sluggishly, yet with frightened speed, the ripple came toward them. Heath got a harpoon out of the stern locker. ”

“ The Martian dawn, brilliant and clear, flooded the dead sea bottom with harsh light. Beyond the black line of the canal a caravan was coming toward Valkis through the blowing dust.
It was no ordinary caravan. Warriors rode before and behind, their spearheads blazing in the sunrise. Jewelled trappings on the beasts, a litter with curtains of crimson silk, barbaric splendor. Clear and thin on the air came the wild music of pipes and the deep-throated throbbing of drums.
Stark guessed without being told who it was that rode out of the desert like a king. ”

“ He thought Joan answered, but there was another picture. A vast red crab, pulling a man to bits with its claws. And after that, the shrieking woman outside the broken window, dragged down by a worm.
"Wonder who got those shots?" said Fallon. Again Joan answered, but he didn't hear her. The pictures moved more rapidly. Rays, black against the blue sky. Planes falling. Guns firing and firing and choking to silence. People, black endless streams of them, running, running, running.
Joan pulled at him. Her face was strangely huge. Her eyes were as he had first seen them, hard chips of sapphire. ”

“ Llyrdis. He said the name again, and it felt strange on his tongue. Llyrdis. A name and a world he had never heard of until a few short hours ago, and now.... The hollow spaces inside him were filled suddenly with homesickness, with a longing, with something akin to horror. He stared at the iron walls that closed him in, and he knew where he was, in an impossible ship with alien people, flying faster than light across nothingness to an alien star.... His stomach contracted, sending up a bitter fluid to burn his throat, and his hands were cold as a dead man's. Earth was gone. ”

“ The woman wheeled her mount. Bending low, she took up the axe from where it had fallen, and faced her warriors, who were as dazed as Stark.
"I have led you well," she said. "I have taken you Kushat. Will any man dispute me?"
They knew the axe, if they did not know her. They looked from side to side uneasily, completely at a loss, and Stark, still gasping on the ground, thought that he had never seen anything as proud and beautiful as she was then in her black mail, with her bright hair blowing and her glance like blue lightning.
The nobles of Kushat chose that moment to charge. ”

“ Alor's head was high and Broca leaped up beside the figurehead and gave a great ringing shout, a challenge to all the gods there were to stop him.
Heath found himself looking into Alor's eyes. She smiled, an aching thing of tears and tenderness and farewell.
"I think none of us will live," she whispered. "May you find your shadow, David, before you die."
Then Broca had turned toward them once more and the moment was gone.
Within the veil of the Moonfire there was no day nor night nor time. Heath had no idea how long the Ethne's purple hull rode the golden current. ”

“ They came out of the darkness so suddenly that Stark blinked in the unaccustomed light of torches set in great silver sconces on the walls.
The floor had been artificially smoothed, but otherwise this crypt was as the eroding action of the sea had shaped it out of the coral reef. It was not large, and it was like a cavern in a fairy tale, walled and roofed with the fantastic wreathing shapes of the rose-red coral. At one end there was a golden coffer set with flaming jewels. ”

“ In endless hordes, men swarmed upon the looming hulls and went busily along the docks, testing, checking, guiding and managing the machines. They were not Vardda men. They were men from the other worlds, who could not fly the stars. A lot of them—and here Trehearne's eyes opened even wider, because even though he had been told, seeing is another thing—were not at all what he would have called human. But in spite of their strangeness, they seemed familiar. They were like any of the cheerful, hard-handed, competent men to be seen around any port of Earth, serving the ships and the planes. ”