Leigh Brackett

“ 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. ”

“ Past the Nahali girl who danced naked in the torchlight, her body glimmering with tiny scales and as sinuous and silent in motion as the body of a snake.
The single huge room was open on three sides to the steaming night. It was there that Heath's gaze went at last. Outside, to the darkness and the sea, because they had been his life and he loved them.
Darkness on Venus is not like the darkness of Earth or Mars. The planet is hungry for light and will not let it go. The face of Venus never sees the sun but even at night the hope and the memory of it are there, trapped in the eternal clouds. ”

“ And the woman Alor kept watching David Heath with her bitter challenging eyes and Heath hated her as he did the priests, with a deadly hatred, because he knew what he must took like with his beaked bony face and wasted body, swaying and shivering over the loom of the sweep.
Closer and closer swept the emerald sail, rounded and gleaming like a peacock's breast in the light. Pearl white and emerald, purple and gold, on a dark blue sea, the spiked ram glittering—two bright dragons racing toward marriage, toward death. ”

“ Suddenly the little dragon raised its wings and voiced a hissing scream.
Heath's nightmare world rocked around him, riven with loud sounds. He was mad with fear, he was dying, vast striding shapes thronged toward him out of a shining mist. His body was shaken, cracking, frail bones bursting into powder, his heart tearing out of him, his brain a part of the mist, shining burning. He tore the mask from his face and cried out a name, Ethne!, and sat up—and his eyes were wide open, blind and deep. ”

“ The man who can bathe in the heart of the Moonfire has the power of the High Ones. He can build a world to suit himself, he can be king and lord and master. He can give his woman-god a palace of diamonds with a floor of gold. That is true, Alor. You have heard the priests say it in the temple."
Alor answered, "It is true."
"A new world, Alor. A world of our own."
He made the great sweep swing in a frenzy of strength and once again the mystery of the Moonfire swept over Heath. Why, since the priests knew the way there, did they not themselves become gods. ”

“ Then the four tall priests in their black tunics said to Vakor, "We must believe. Look into their eyes."
With a solemn ritual gesture they stepped back and left Vakor alone.
Vakor whispered, "It can't be true. The law, the tabu is built on that rock. Men will come out of the fringe as you did, Heath, wrecked and cursed by their blasphemy. But not from the Moonfire itself. Never! That is why the law was made, lest all of Venus die in dreams."
Alor said quietly, "All those others wanted power. We wanted only love. We needed nothing else." ”

“ Heath answered. "The Guardians of the Upper Seas. They will crush a moving ship to splinters and eat the crew."
He glanced back at the Lahal. She, too, had come to a dead stop. The canny Vakor had scented the danger also.
"We'll have to wait," said Heath, "until it goes away."
They waited. The huge shape of darkness sucked and floundered in the weed and was in no hurry to go.
Broca sat staring at Heath. He was deep in fever and his eyes were not sane. He began to mutter to himself, incoherent ramblings in which only the name Alor and the word Moonfire were distinguishable. ”

“ David Heath had found his godhead.
But some stubborn corner of his heart betrayed him. It said, This is all a lie and Alor waits for you. If you tarry you and she will be as those others, who are dead and smiling in the Moonfire.
He did not want to listen. He was happy. But something made him listen and he knew that as long as the real Alor lived he could not really be content with a dream. He knew that he must destroy this paradise before it destroyed him. He knew that the Moonfire was a deadly thing and that men could not be given the power of gods and continue sane. ”

“ Broca cried. "Weakling! Even to save your life, you can't create!"
It was true. He dared not. The shadow-people drew in upon him with their soulless eyes and their faces that were mirrors of the urge to kill.
And then, suddenly, the answer came. Heath's answer rang back. "I will not create—but I will destroy!"
Once again he threw the strength of his mind against the Moonfire but this time there was no unhealthy lure to what he did. There was no desire in him but his love for Alor and the need to keep her safe.
The hands of the shadow-people reached out and dragged him away from Alor. ”

“ Heath said, "Do the high gods stoop to tread on ants and worms? We don't deserve such honor, she and I. We're weak and even the Moonfire can't give us strength."
He saw the flicker of thought in Broca's face and went on. "You're all-powerful, there's nothing you can't do. Why burden yourself with a mate too weak to worship you? Create another Alor, Broca! Create a goddess worthy of you!" ”

“ I think the priests are after them."
"We're all three proscribed," said Broca, "but Alor and I could get away. You they'll hunt down no matter where you go—except one place."
And Heath said, "Where is that?"
"The Moonfire."
After a long while Heath uttered a harsh grating sound that might have been a laugh.
"Get out," he said. "Get away from me."
He got to his feet, shaking with weakness and fury. "You lie, both of you—because I'm the only living man who has seen the Moonfire and you want me to take you there. You believe the legends. You think the Moonfire will change you into gods. ”

“ The little dragon went on screaming and flapping, tethered by a short thong to the head of Heath's cot so that it could not tear out the eyes of the stranger.
Heath caught his breath in a long shuddering sob and sprang.
He would have killed the man who had robbed him of his little time of peace. He tried, in deadly silence, while the seamen and the masters and the mates and the dancing girls watched, not moving, sidelong out of their frightened, hateful eyes. But the Uplander was a big man, bigger than Heath in his best days had even been. ”

“ The stranger went on, "All Venus knows about you, David Heath. The word travels. The priests know too—the Children of the Moon. They have a special interest in you."
Heath waited. He did not speak.
"You belong to the gods for their own vengeance," the stranger said. "But the vengeance hasn't come. Perhaps because you're an Earthman and therefore less obedient to the gods of Venus. Anyway, the Children of the Moon are tired of waiting. The longer you live the more men may be tempted to blasphemy, the less faith there will be in the ability of the gods to punish men for their sins." ”

“ The golden mist is the cloud of his breathing, and the shining of his body is the Moonfire. A man may gain divinity from the heart of the sleeping god but all the gods of Venus will curse him if he tries because man has no right to steal their powers. ”

“ And they did sweat and strain and fresh relays of men worked at the sweep of the Lahal, breaking their hearts to go faster and ever faster. Vakor laughed from his high perch and it seemed futile for the Ethne to go on any longer with this lost race.
But Heath looked ahead with burning sunken eyes. He saw how the mists rose and gathered to the north, how the color of the weed changed, and he urged the others on. There was a fury in him now. It blazed brighter and harder than Broca's, this iron fury that would not, by the gods themselves, be balked of the Moonfire. ”

“ The air is the colour of indigo and it carries its own pale glow. Heath lay watching how the slow hot wind made drifts of light among the liha-trees, touched the muddy harbour beaches with a wavering gleam and blended into the restless phosphorescence of the Sea of Morning Opals. ”

“ For more than three seasons Kalruna had obeyed the traditional law. He had fed and made drunk the pariah who was sacred to the anger of the gods—the gods who guarded so jealously the secret of the Moonfire. Now Kalruna was full of doubt and very angry.
Heath began to laugh aloud. The effects of his uncompleted jag were making him reckless and hysterical. He sat up on the cot and laughed in their faces.
"I was only in the fringe," he said. "I'm not a god. I'm not even a man any more. ”

“ There was life under the weed, spawning in the hot stagnant waters, multiform and formless, swarming, endlessly hungry. Small reptilian creatures flopped and slithered through the weed, eating the dragon's eggs, and here and there a flat dark head would break through with a snap and a crunch, and it would watch the Ethne with incurious eyes while it chewed and swallowed. ”

“ He lifted his head, like a man straining to breathe, and the running torchlight brought his face clear of the shadows. In all the huge room there was not a sound, not a rustle, except for a small sharp gasp that ran through every mouth and then was silent.
"The gods know where they are now, the strong brave men who went through the Moonfire. The gods know what they are now. Not human if they live at all." ”

“ Alor whispered. "I feel it."
And Broca said, "It is like wine."
Heath went on, putting the old, old thoughts into words. "The moon was destroyed. Not by jealous gods but by collision with another body, perhaps an asteroid. Or maybe it was burst apart by its own blazing energy. I think that a fragment of it survived and fell here and that its radiation permeated and changed the sea and the air around it.
"It changes men in the same way. It seems to alter the whole electrical set-up of the brain, to amplify its power far beyond anything human. ”

“ A man mad enough to look for power in the Moonfire and faithfulness in a temple wench! And now you're jealous."
He hated both Broca and Alor bitterly in this moment and out of his hate he spoke.
"Wait until the Moonfire touches you. It will break your strength and your pride. After that you won't care who your woman talks to or where."
Broca gave him a stare of unmoved contempt. Then he turned his back and settled down to look out across the darkening sea.
After a while, the amusing side of the whole thing struck Heath, and he began to laugh. ”

“ He repeated the name of Ethne over and over again and a puzzled strangely wistful look came in the eyes of Alor.
When it was dawn again Heath awoke and went on deck. Broca said with barbarian bluntness, "Have you decided?"
Heath did not answer and Alor said, "Vakor will hunt you down. The word has gone out all over Venus, wherever there are men. There'll be no refuge for you—except one."
Heath smiled, a mirthless baring of the teeth. "And that's the Moonfire. You make it all so simple." ”

“ Why had no man ever come out of it with godhead—only a few, a handful like himself, who had not had the valor to go all the way in.
And yet there was godhead there. He knew because within himself there was the shadow of it.
The endless day wore on. The emerald sail came closer.
Toward mid-afternoon there was a sudden clattering flight of the little dragons and all life stopped still in the weed. The reptilian creatures lay motionless with dragon's eggs unbroken in their jaws. ”

“ Her white limbs glistened with sweat and her red mouth was sullen with weariness and even so there was a strange wild beauty about her. Time and again her gaze would meet his, a quick hungry glance from under her lashes, and her eyes were not the eyes of a temple wench. ”