Fox The Warlock of Sharrador and two more stories

1. Auflage 2022
ISBN: 978-3-98744-670-2
Verlag: OTB eBook publishing
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 115 Seiten

Reihe: Classics To Go

This is a great collection of action short stories by Gardner F. Fox from The Golden Age of Science Fiction. Featured here: The Warlock of Sharrador, Werwile of the Crystal Crypt, and When Kohonnes Screamed.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Fox, Gardner F.

Leseproben

When Kohonnes Screamed
Kohonnes breathed out across his little
world and made the waters back up and the
stones crawl and the trees writhe abominably.
Why couldn't he distort men's souls also? The spaceship was changing shape all around him. The curving walls sloped inward at crazy angles, and the glassine windows bulged like giant bubbles. The floor was an unending series of little waves, and the ceiling melted to drop liquid pellets. "This is it!" exulted Grim Thorssen, slamming the levers of his control board, striving to slip his ship into the tug of the little planet looming through the starboard window. "Whatever kidnapped our trading vessels, whatever happened to the Fleet cruisers sent after them—here it is." His tawny hair, long uncut, looped over his hard blue eyes as he stared at the instruments in front of him. Even the hard steeliscite cones and rods were altering subtly, their shapes fading to reform in different, twisted patterns. Grim felt a quick stab of fear. Sudden pain changed his grin to a spasmodic grimace of agony. "Pirates I don't mind," he gasped, his body jerking suddenly as the force that bent his spaceship reached inside his body. "I—I'd take on Black Randolph as quick as down a cup of yassallel right now. But this thing—" His head whipped back as spasms tore his chest. Laboring, sweat standing out on his high forehead, he thought, 'Matter isn't matter here—not as I know it. A ceiling starts crying steel tears and a heatlite floor develops a permanent.' The force was tearing him apart with pain. It came like iron fingers in his belly and across his ribs. It bent him over so that his face went purple. No wonder the Trader Unions lost their big Caravans, packed to their rivets as they were with priceless radium and korse-210 from Tanit and the other planets of the suns Deneb and Achernar! The Council thought at first that it was Black Randolph looting, so the Unions Council ordered out the cruisers from the Interstellar Fleet to hunt him down. The cruisers, like the big Caravans, never came back. Then they sent for Grim Thorssen. The big Viking throwback was the spot trouble-tripper of the Fleet. He'd been decorated—and paid in credits—from Antares to Kruger-60 for a brash bravery that ran close to the margins of foolhardiness. But what looked like recklessness in some men was planned daring with the blond Nordic. He could think faster and shoot straighter than any other three men in the Fleet. He had the highest I.Q. that the books provided for, and black spots on his chest from friendly duels with his fellow officers using black disintegrater charges. He was smart and he was crazy and his brother Commanders loved him. They said to each other, "If anybody can do it, Grim will. He'll find out what grabs the Caravans and the cruisers." Well, now he knew. Tortured and strained, bent in a thousand positions in a matter of minutes, he was sobbing out the thought that he wished he hadn't. There wasn't anything you could do to a force that turned your ship into a fantastic nightmare and cut you in two with lancets of agony. The planet loomed in the forward window. A faint light hazed its outlines, as though a private sun of its own shone beyond it. Grim bit his lip until it bled, fighting the nausea and the throbbing in him. He had to land his ship. He had to find out what the force was, and what it wanted. He had to fight the tough luck that had hounded the Trader Unions ever since old Jasper Jones had retired. He had to— The spacer grated on a ledge of rocks, its keel cracking and folding back and ripping off on the underside of the hull. A gigantic thin needle rising from a boulder towered before him. Grim yanked back on the power-brakes, but it was no use. The blunt rock cliff loomed up. The nose of his vessel went ploughing into it with a force that snapped his leather safeties and skyrocketed him into the forward port.... There was a sun! Grim felt it beating hot into his closed eyes. Muscles ached and pain pounded through his big frame. His eyes came open to what was left of his ruined Corsair. There was only one half that was recognizable. That was the front section accordioned against the black cliffside. The back section was queerly warped and sculped into a caricature of a gaunt, metallic tree. Grim shook his head dazedly and lifted his eyes. The landscape was riotous, mad. Things that looked like trees and bushes lifted branches bent and swollen attached to trunks that looped in bulbous curves. Tiny animals with seven horns and eight legs loped past. A gigantic beast with the hairy head of a mastodon, but with three long trunks, stared at him over the top of a blue bush; trumpeted, and was gone. And high above, a great yellow orb blazed heat and light. Grim pulled himself up onto a gnarled rock. He squinted upward under a shading hand. He grunted, "Looks synthetic. Something about it—" Leather rasped on rock, above him. Grim whirled, right hand going for the orris-nut handles of his disintegrator. A girl stood on a ledge above him. Both hands were raised to the mass of rich black hair tumbling about her cape-hung shoulders. She was almost as tall as Grim, her long legs encased in tight golden skirts, her midriff bare below an ornate bolero that hugged her breasts. Seeing him, she brought her arms down fast, slant dark eyes widening. Grim chuckled. "If I thought you could understand me, I'd ask you what kind of a crazy place this is." The girl went back two steps, still staring at him. Her brow wrinkled. She said, "I do not understand you. Please—go away! If you are one of Althaya's men—" Grim stared in amazement. He had spoken in the space patois that was used by the Fleet and the Caravan crews from Mars on outward. But the girl had spoken to him in the pure, almost archaic mother tongue! He had to stop and recall the idioms and phraseology that men still used on Tellura. Grim, like most others of his breed, had never been on the Earth. They were born and bred among the stars and there they usually died. "What is your name?" he said haltingly, remembering lessons in the Fleet school. "What is this place? And what in the name of Hades makes all—this?" He waved his hand at the distorted trees, at the little animals, at the oddly humped ground. The girl did not look at his gesturing hand. Her sloe eyes were fastened to his face; in fright, he thought. She whispered, "Where is Althaya? Where is the Red Priestess?" Grim said gently, "Look, honey. I'm a stranger here myself. You're the first normal looking thing I've come across—and even you are several shades above average." He let his eyes drift over her, and she straightened angrily. "I am the Black Priestess of Kohonnes. I am Tlokine." "Okay, okay. Don't get sore. Come on down and let's be friends." Something in his amused blue eyes decided her. She let a smile turn up the corners of her wide red mouth and came down gracefully. "That's better," Grim chuckled. "Tell me all about this place." "This is Stormland. The god Kohonnes made it by sending out his breath and creating it. And when he is angry he sends his breath again—and his world reshapes itself nearer to his heart's desire." Grim stared at her oddly. "You cribbed that from Omar. Shows you do know something about the Earth. And the sun? And Kohonnes, what is he?" "Kohonnes is the creator of Stormland. He made me and Althaya and her people. He made the sun, too. His breath goes out and reshapes everything. If you want to avoid the anger of Kohonnes, you stand within the red markers. He never harms anyone in there." Grim looked where her finger pointed. On the lower edges of the rock cliff he could see bright crimson splashes as though paint had been slapped on the stone. The red band formed a huge oval. He saw the tall needles lifting from the cliff. It was not rock as he had thought before the crash. It was a metal spire ending in a globe of interlaced wires and metal ribbons. "Looks like an energy broadcaster," he muttered. Then he turned toward the girl. "Where can I see this Kohonnes of yours? What's he like?" "He is All. He guides his people and shows them the way to a better, easier life. But some of his people do not want to wait—they want to be as powerful as Kohonnes before they are ready. And Althaya—the Red One—she is worse than any of them. Even now she is in special favor with the All. She knows somehow before the breath-storms come. She can walk freely across Stormland. I and others like me must run between the markers, for we are never sure when the god may breathe again." Grim felt he was in the middle of a surrealistic nightmare. He wondered if he were dead, still crumpled up in his wrecked spacer. Or better, dreaming. He looked at the obscenely humped ground, and shook his head. "Honey, you have a plenty mixed-up man on your hands. If I could see this Kohonnes, talk with him—" Tlokine smiled and nodded. "I will take you to him. I feel sure he will be glad to see you." "I hope," whispered Grim under his breath. It was gloomy in the black-walled Temple. The girl with the red hair fanning down across her naked back shuddered. She could never quite overcome that stab of superstitious fear— "I am displeased, Althaya. I had counted on better things from you." "Your will is the Law, Kohonnes." "See to it, then." The girl bowed low until her crimson hair fell down over her head to the basalt floor. She seemed subservient, but there was a ruthless smile on her hidden lips. Grim...