Henry Kuttner

“ It was only through Sanfel that I had made contact, until now—What is your name?"
"Dantan. Samuel Dantan."
"Not a Martian name. You are from—Earth, you say? What is that?"
"Another planet. Nearer the sun than Mars."
"We have no planets and no suns in Zha. This is a different universe indeed. So different I find it hard to imagine what your world must be like." The voice died.
And it was a voice he knew. Dantan was nearly sure of that now, and the certainty frightened him. When a man in the Martian desert begins to see or hear impossibilities, he has reason to be frightened. ”

“ He was alone—what was it the old shaman had once told him? "You are never alone in Klanvahr. The living shadows of the past are all around you. They cannot help, but they watch, and their pride must not be humbled. You are never alone in Klanvahr."
But nothing stirred. Only a whisper of the dry, hot wind murmuring up from the distance, sighing and soughing like muted harps. Ghosts of the past riding the night, Dantan thought. How did those ghosts see Klanvahr? ”

“ She said, her voice almost unbearably familiar; a voice sounding from the silence of death over many chilly years,
"Dantan. Samuel Dantan. Earthly language is as harsh as the Klanvahr I learned from Sanfel. Yet my name may seem strange to you. I am Quiana."
He said hoarsely, "What do you want? What did you want with Sanfel?"
"Help," Quiana said. "A weapon. Sanfel had promised me a weapon. He was working very hard to make one, risking much ... and now time has eaten him up—that strange, capricious time that varies so much between your world and mine. ”

“ After many seconds the voice spoke again, sadly and with an undernote of terror.
"I had not realized," it said, "that even time might be so different between Sanfel's world and mine. The space-time continua—yes, a day in my world might well be an age in yours. Time is elastic. In Zha I had thought a few dozen—" she used a term Dantan did not understand, "—had passed. But on Mars—centuries?"
"Tens of centuries," agreed Dantan, staring hard at the screen. "If Sanfel lived in old Klanvahr his people are scarcely a memory now. And Mars is dying. You—you're speaking from another world?" ”

“ Dantan glanced around. There was a cabinet in one corner. He went over to it slowly, his eyes wary. He had no intention of relaxing vigilance here simply because that voice sounded familiar....
Inside the cabinet hung a suit of something like space armor, more flexible and skin tight than any he had ever seen, and with a transparent helmet through which vision seemed oddly distorted. He got into the suit carefully, pulling up the rich shining folds over his body, thinking strangely how long time had stood still in this small room since the last time a man had worn it. ”

“ Quiana's voice was urgent.
"What would happen?"
"The door would open. I could enter your world, and you mine."
"Why can't you leave, then, and wait until it's safe to go back?"
"I have tried that," Quiana said. "It will never be safe. The Enemy waited too. No, it must come, in the end, to a battle—and I shall not win that fight. I shall not see my own people or my own land again, and I suppose I must face that knowledge. But I did hope, when I heard Sanfel's signal sound again...." She smiled a little. "I know you would help me if you could, Dantan. But there is nothing to be done now." ”

“ Then it began to ebb ... faded ... grew lesser and lesser, until—Beside him he could see Quiana now. She was no longer stumbling in the cone of light, no longer shuddering and wavering in its violence, but standing erect and facing the Enemy, and from her eyes—something—poured. ”

“ Dantan looked up at her grimly, muscles riding his set jaw. It was almost intolerable, this facing her again in need, and again helpless, and himself without power to aid. It had been bad enough that first time, to learn long afterward that she had died at enemy hands while he was too far away to protect her. But to see it all take place again before his very eyes!
"There must be a way," he said, and his hand gripped the lever marked "door" in the ancient tongue. ”

“ They raked the room for the unseen speaker—for some weapon to use when the time came for weapons.
His glance came back to the dark screen above the machine. And the voice said again, in the tongue of ancient Klanvahr:
"I am not used to waiting, Sanfel! If you hear me, speak. And speak quickly, for the time of peril comes close now. My Enemy is strong—"
Dantan said, "Can you hear me?" His eyes did not move from the screen.
Out of that blackness the girl's voice came, after a pause. It was imperious, and a little wary.
"You are not Sanfel. Where is he? Who are you, Martian?" ”

“ But Quiana's smile was a little scornful when he finished.
"We of Zha have passed beyond the use of missile weapons—even such missiles as bullets or rays. Nor could they touch my Enemy. No, we can destroy in ways that require no—no beams or explosives. No, Dantan, you speak in terms of your own universe. We have no common ground. It is a pity that time eddied between Sanfel and me, but eddy it did, and I am helpless now. ”

“ I must! If you are no enemy, bring me Sanfel!" This time there was something almost like panic in the voice.
"If I could, I would," Dantan said. "But there's no one here except me." He hesitated, wondering if the woman behind the voice could be—mad? Speaking from some mysterious place beyond the screen, in a language dead a thousand years, calling upon a man who must be long-dead too, if one could judge by the length of time this hidden room had lain buried.
He said after a moment, "This place has been buried for a long time. And—no one has spoken the tongue of Klanvahr for many centuries. ”

“ Between the planets, and in the far-flung worlds bordering the outer dark, there are more than ten. But Dantan had smashed them all.
In the end there was still the dull, sickening hopelessness, part loneliness, part something less definable. Hunted, he came back to Klanvahr, and when he came, men of the Redhelms died. They did not die easily. ”

“ Scraping vigorously, Dantan discovered that this marked the outline of an oval door, horizontal, and with a handle of some sort, though it was caked and fixed in its socket with dirt. Dantan's lips were very thin now, and his eyes glittering and bright. An ambush—a weapon against the Redhelms—whatever might exist behind this lost door, it was worth investigating, especially for a condemned man. ”

“ The wind sighed again down the canyon, and Dantan remembered the Redhelms on his track. He looked around once more and then lowered himself onto the ladder of metal pegs, testing them doubtfully before he let his full weight come down. They held.
There might be danger down below; there might not. ”

“ Those like the Enemy have a little of that power too, but they need mechanical devices to amplify it. And so when you diverted the Enemy's attention and forced him to divide his attack between us—the pressure upon me was relieved, and I could destroy him. ”

“ And that made Dantan's thin lips curl. Safety for a man hunted by the Redhelms? The thought was sufficiently absurd. He would die—he must die; but he did not mean to die alone. This time perhaps they had him, but the kill would not be easy nor without cost. If he could find some weapon, some ambush—prepare some trap for the hunters—
There might be possibilities in this canyon. The stream had only lately been diverted into this channel; the signs of that were clear. Thoughtfully Dantan worked his way upstream. ”

“ Of Earth stock, he had during a great Martian drought become godson to an old shaman of Klanvahr, one of the priests who still hoarded scraps of the forgotten knowledge of the past, glorious days of Martian destiny, when bright towers had fingered up triumphantly toward the Eyes of Thar.
Memories ... the solemn, antique dignity of the Undercities, in ruins now ... the wrinkled shaman, intoning his rituals ... very old books, and older stories ... raids by the Redhelm Tribe ... and a girl Samuel Dantan had known. There was a raid, and the girl had died. ”