Above us tons of ice, dislodged by the Hayden blast, broke and slid down the face of the glacier upon theOlympus, rocking the ship over on its side. Baiel flung up his hands in terror, but lowered them a moment later. Behind his facial mask of stark fear, I saw a strange expression of uneasy surprise and calculation.
I moved toward him, my fists doubled.
"Even when they begin to conquer the taboos," I cried, through clenched teeth, "you still try to prevent it!"
"No, Captain; you've got it wrong. I just wanted—you—you had no right to give her the Hayden." Baiel spoke in a hoarse, nervous whisper, backing away from me slowly.
"Dayhan's my wife."
"She's still a primitive animal."
I lunged at him. He turned and ran. I would have followed, but Dayhan began to call after me frantically. I returned to help her. The ground beneath her was stained red; a jagged blade of ice had ripped a deep gash in her leg.
With my knife I cut a strip from my fur jacket and wound it as a tourniquet above the pulsing wound. My fingers were numb with cold. I worked slowly and awkwardly, but at last the bleeding ceased. Dayhan tried to stand, but she could not.
"Leave me here, my Lord," she whispered. "Brother glacier is angry; he wants my blood."
"It was simply an accident, Dayhan. The glacier had nothing to do with it."
"I trod on tabooed ground. I defied him."
"Man makes the taboos and the punishments and the sacrifices!"
"So you have said, my Lord, and yet—"
"I have taught you truth. You walked alone and without harm on tabooed ground. You must tell that to your people. The harm came to you after you found us, Dayhan—from Baiel. Only man is cruel to man, not the gods."
I pulled her arm around my shoulder and we began the slow, painful walk back to the village. We had to stop frequently to rest. Twice I loosed the tourniquet to permit the blood to circulate in her lower leg.
It was four hours before we reached the edge of the forest. There two of my men met us. They had begun to search the forest for me when Baiel returned to the village alone. We improvised a stretcher for Dayhan and carried her between us. The bleeding of her wound had stopped. With a pinpoint Hayden beam, I turned a drift of snow into steam and used the boiled water residue to cleanse the caked blood away from the cut. I seared a strip of skin and used it as a bandage. On the gently swaying stretcher Dayhan closed her eyes and slept.
When we were still a quarter of a mile from the village, the chief and a small band of his hunters met us on the forest trail.
"The sun god speaks to us in a giant voice," the chief said. "It thunders in every corner of our village!"
"What does the god say?"
"He orders to take up our goods and go. He gives us the hunting ground of the dead, beyond the fire mountains."
"And your people fear to obey?"
"No. Your sun god is all-powerful. It is your own people who prevent us. They hold the priest, Baiel, with his followers, imprisoned in the cave by means of your weapons, the brothers-of-the-sun. They tell us it is not the sun god who speaks, but Baiel himself."
"They tell you truly."
"But no man can have so great a voice as that we hear!"
So that was why Baiel had gone back to theOlympus! He had returned to the village with a portable amplifier concealed under his fur cloak. "Baiel is no priest," I told the Chief. "He speaks for no god. The great voice you hear is made by a machine, such a thing as this weapon that we use to slay meat for the tribe."
"You speak knowingly, Seus-man, because you, too, are a priest of the sun. You showed us that much last night. Some of my tribe say you and all your people are not simple priests, but brother gods."
"We are men."
"I have married my daughter to the brother-god of the sun!"
"We are men; men!"
"But have you not advised us to move, as the sun god does now? In our blindness we have heard and not obeyed. And now the sun god gives orders that we must be gone before he rides directly overhead; yet your people will not allow it."
"So Baiel's putting a time limit on the migration," I mused aloud. "Why? Tell me, Chief, how it was, from the beginning."
"As soon as you left, Seus-man, our old priest walked in the village, declaring we would have a great sign from the sun today. Later the priest, Baiel, returned and went into the cave, with some of your people. We began to hear the voice of the sun. The others of your people—the ones who carry the weapons—gathered outside, shooting streaks of fire at the cave, but above it so that no man was harmed. They cried to Baiel to come forth and give himself to them. He refused, and so things stand. I came seeking you. Only you can intercede with your priests so they allow us to obey the god. Come quickly, for our time is short."
We gave Dayhan's stretcher to four of the hunters. I turned to follow the chief back to the village. Only then did he seem to notice his daughter. With deference he glanced at her pale face. Trembling, he asked:
"She is dead?"
"No; but she has been hurt."
"Her Lord has punished her?"
"She was harmed by a piece of ice."
"Brother glacier still means to be revenged on us! If we do not hasten to obey the voice of the sun, who will protect us?"
"Protect yourselves, as men. No god has any power to equal yours."
"You speak as a priest of the sun. You hold the weapon of the sun in your hand. You are not like us."
"I am no different. I am a man, the husband of your daughter. Here, take my weapon." I thrust the Hayden into his hand. "Does it make you different? Are you transformed into a god?"
He caressed the cold metal, slowly raising the nozzle and pointing it at a drift of snow. The red flame sputtered and steam swirled up, coating the pines overhead with a film of ice.
"The power of the sun," he whispered. "Come, Lord, we must go quickly to our people."
In the village I found the men of my faction arranged in a semi-circle in front of the cave mouth. Huddled behind them was perhaps three-fourths of the tribe, the women my men had taken as mates and their families. The rest of the tribe was packed densely at the mouth of the cave, swaying and shouting their worship as the voice of Baiel thundered at intervals out of the darkness of the cavern.
One of my men saluted raggedly, explaining how the situation had developed. He added: "We have been aiming above their heads, trying to frighten them away from the cave. No luck, so far."
"Of course Baiel's people aren't armed?"
"No, but too many of the tribe would be killed if we tried to rush the cave."
"I think we can starve them out."
To hesitate was the natural result of our psycho-processing. Violence, we had always been taught, was the resort of the disoriented, not a solution to any problem. Even now we could not bring ourselves to give up the pattern of our Earthly civilization.
Since it was the prescribed rational procedure, I tried to talk to the tribe. From the beginning my argument was weak, for I was opposing the migration which I had myself advocated. It meant nothing to them when I tried to point out the difference in motivation; but it symbolized everything to me. The migration to a better land had to come as a result of their conquest of tribal taboos, not as an exchange of allegiances from brother glacier to the sun god.
As soon as Baiel heard my voice, he began to jeer at me over the amplifier. When I made no reply, his tone gradually changed. Over and over he repeated the orders of the sun god, that the migration must begin by high noon. But his mockery was slowly tainted with fear, as the sun mounted the heavens and my armed men still held the tribe in the village.
The stretcher bearers arrived with Dayhan. She was awake. She sat up against my shoulder, holding tight to my hand. Softly she spoke to the tribe as I had:
"It is not the gods that rule us. There are no taboos; the glacier is but a thing of ice, without life. I have seen for myself. I have walked unharmed on the tabooed ground. In truth, we must migrate to the south, but my Lord has taught us that we must go of our own will and not because of fear of the sun god."
She was one of the tribe. They knew her as they knew their own children. She spoke in their words, in terms of their concepts. It should have convinced them, but it did not. Instead they retreated from her, cringingly respectful, muttering among themselves that Dayhan's mating had changed her into a brother-god.
Suddenly there was a stirring at the cave mouth. The massed tribesmen shifted aside reluctantly. Eight of the women who had been in Baiel's faction slid down toward us, weeping with fear. At once Baiel's voice boomed out:
"The time is up. You have not obeyed. I was sent by the sun god to lead you to safety, and you have not heeded me. The god will strike, now, at the glacier and tear this ground from beneath your feet. I give you one chance more. Offer up Captain Theusaman in sacrifice and I, Baiel, will lead you to a new world. But you must make the sacrifice at once. The god grows impatient."
My men closed around Dayhan and me protectively, but at first there was no need. The concept bewildered the tribe. They had accepted me, too, as priest of the sun; the god could not demand my blood. According to the theory of their superstitions, it made no sense.
One of the women who had fled from the cave was brought to me. White-faced, she twisted her hands together in anguish while she talked.
"We didn't know he'd done it, Captain Theusaman—I swear it!"
"Who?"
"Baiel—this morning at theOlympus. He just told us."
"But what? Speak up! Tell me!"
"He put on the automatic power in the control room, timed to energize the dorsal tubes at noon."
"No harm in that. The tubes are blown. The blast will simply send open flame soaring into the sky."
"There's forty hours' residue in the tank. Baiel thought the sight of the flame would terrify the tribe into obeying him. But he says the ship was overturned this morning, after he had set the dials; so the broken tubes are pointing down toward the base of the glacier."
I understood the woman's terror, then, and my own body tensed with cold fear. Instead of making a harmless display, the sun-hot energy, blasting through the naked dorsal tubes for the next forty hours, would be fed into the glacier and the ground beneath it. In half that time the liquefying flame could pierce the planetary crust and reach its molten core.
As I sprang to my feet the first shock stabbed into the frozen ground. The shattering explosion of the crumbling glacier rocked the air. In the distance a cloud of steam arose, blood red from the flames raging beneath it. In seconds the sun was blotted over with thick clouds. Hot rain began to fall.
The earth quivered so violently it was almost impossible to stand. Yet still Baiel's voice boomed through the village.
"Give me the blood of Theusaman and I spare the tribe!"
From priest, he had become the sun god himself.
The rain fell in a deluge. The snow dissolved into slush, and the village ran with mud.
Dayhan screamed. I turned and saw one of the tribal hunters atop the stone pedestal, drawing careful aim on me with his bow and arrow. I caught the shaft in the air with a wide angle beam from my Hayden.
"Give me the blood of Theusaman!" Baiel cried.
The quaking increased steadily. Small landslides of stone began to slither from the face of the cliff. The roof of the cave shook and sagged. The tribe backed away, swirling around me in fury and brandishing their spears in the bleary air.
The distant rending of the glacier reached a new climax of thunder, and the deluge swelled into a torrent. The draining water became a stream, racing muddily through the village and eating at the crumbling cliffs. The skies darkened as if it were dusk. It was difficult to recognize faces in the frenzy of squirming bodies.
Driven by the madness of Baiel's chanting voice, many of the young hunters threw themselves upon us. We used Haydens only as a last resort, and the sluggish, hand-to-hand fighting in the rising mud went on indecisively. No one was badly hurt. It was too easy to escape clutching arms; it was too hard to know the face of friend from foe in the gloom. Shouting voices were drowned by the rising wind, the ceaseless din of crumbling glacial ice.
Abruptly the battle was over. A terrified whisper swept the throng: the god was gone! Someone had looked into the cave and found it empty. Baiel and ten of his faction had fled; thirty of the tribe had departed with them.
The shock was paralyzing to those who stayed behind. The tribe began to wail its lamentation. The god had deserted them! I moved from group to group, repeating my familiar theme:
"The gods can neither harm nor save you. That you must do for yourselves."
It had no effect. They stared at me with vacant eyes. They repeated dumbly in reply: "The sun god is gone. He leaves us to the mercy of brother glacier."
The stream coursing through the village had risen slowly until it became a raging river. Still the tribe made no effort to escape. They had violated their code of the supernatural, and they believed they must resign themselves to their punishment. I watched as a woman was carried away by the flood, drowned screaming beneath a part of the cliff which washed down upon her.
During a momentary lull in the din, the old chief mounted the swaying stone pedestal, brandishing the Hayden I had given him.
"The sun god has not gone," he cried. "See, I share his power, and I know he is still among us." He pointed the Hayden at the mouth of the cave, and the stone crumbled in the caress of red flame. "Seus-man is the sun god; Baiel was false, sent of evil things."
"Seus-man," the crowd whispered. After a moment, they began to shout with new hope. "Seus-man! Seus-man! Seus! Seus!"
On their shoulders they lifted me up and carried me to the pedestal. As I began to speak, I saw a wall of water moving down upon us, crested by a foaming wave. It was the first flood tide from the melting glacier. If it reached the village unbroken, the tribe would be wiped out.
I snatched the Hayden from the Chief, aiming the point of flame at the base of the cliff. Dirt and granite toppled into the path of the flood. The tribe dropped on its knees in the thick mud, shouting praise of my name.
My crude dam might hold for an hour, certainly no longer. I had no time to convince them by persuasion. It would be opposing the full violence of reality with the thin web of philosophy. The important thing at the moment was to lead the tribe to safety.
I looked down upon them and I began to speak wearily.
"I am Theusaman, god of the sun," I said. "Take up your possessions and follow me...."
Baiel had won, after all.
All that happened more than fifty years ago.
I did lead the tribe to safety; that much I accomplished. They have since built many villages and they have learned the art of agriculture and of domesticating cattle. They have thrived and grown and joined with other tribes. They will survive and someday rule their planet.
As Baiel once predicted, the glacier is rapidly retreating. The process began with the heat generated by the exposed dorsal tube of the deadOlympus. Each spring the run-off of melting water is greater than the ice which accumulates during the winter. When the glacier is gone, it will give my people a fertile world like our own Earth.
For that I am glad, because I have given them nothing else.
Nothing else!
I have, instead, saddled them with a hierarchy of gods. The tribes which migrated across the sea have taken a part of my name as their sun god; they call me Amon. Here at home they call me Zeus. Dayhan has become Diana, the goddess of the forests. Even Baiel leaves his name with a people settled in the desert, though to us Baal persists as a god of evil things.
Ironically, the one thing of Earth that I have given these people is the name itself. This planet they call the Earth, unaware of any other. They think of themselves as Earthmen. And I? I am called Zeus of Olympus, father of all the gods!
Perhaps I judge my failure too bitterly. I am an old man, now, the last living survivor of the expedition. I have looked into the face of my sons and my grandsons, as I have the sons and grandsons of the other Earthmen who were with our expedition. Our children have our features, not the slant skulls and ape arms of their mothers. Have we, by chance, left on this lonely planet something of our potential ability as Earthmen?
Though I cannot live long enough to know the answer, I would like to believe that we have. Because I want to believe, I leave this written account of the truth. I address it to my sons of tomorrow—to men who have finally made themselves free of taboo and superstition. To them I say: Lift up your eyes to the sky, to that other Earth across the emptiness of space. Seek them out, those other Earthmen, and know them for your brothers.