The COMPLEAT Collected Short SFF Stories Read online

Abruptly dismissing further speculation as profitless, he walked over to the left-hand end of the beach and began to wade out, as he had done earlier on the other side. The sheer cliff of the island came down just as sharply here, but to his delight he could wade around the corner of the cliff in no more than a foot or two of murky water.

  Peering cautiously around the elbow of rock, he found he could see about a dozen yards clearly. There was no corresponding beach on the other side, but at first glance there appeared to be a slight inward angle to the cliff face, offering possible handholds for climbing.

  Ever so carefully, keeping his left hand on the rock, he waded out, shuffling his naked feet, so as not to step into a pothole, or a sudden dropoff into deep water. He glanced once out to sea, but this time there was no sign of the fin.

  About twenty feet along from the corner of the bay, he found what he was looking for. A narrow crack angled up the cliff on a steep, but not impossible, slant and, moreover, the cliff drew back a little, so that peering up, he could see the dark line which marked its top, even now through the brown and baffling dusk.

  He decided to take one more precaution and waded inch by inch out into the water directly in front of the crack. As he expected, it deepened within two yards. Satisfied, he waded back to the base of the crack. If he became stuck higher up on his climb, he could at least leap out into the sea and try to make the little bay again by swimming.

  Then he stood breathing deeply for a moment and said a silent prayer. At length, he began to climb. He did not like climbing heights and never had. In fact he dreaded it, but he was in good condition and his nerves were under rigid control. Keeping his face to the wall and looking up, not down, he made slow but steady progress. He had learned the basic elements of climbing long before in various survival schools, and he was surprised how easily they returned when needed from the depths of his memory. At one point a considerable distance above the sea, the crack widened suddenly into a narrow chimney, and he braced himself on both sides automatically, going up like an inchworm.

  He felt the strain of unused muscles only slightly, but it was a relief to discover a small ledge fifty feet up the chimney on which he could sit and take a breather. The ledge had room only for his buttocks and his legs hung over the drop, but he could rest his back and relax, at least momentarily.

  Looking out over the strange sea, he felt a chill, not of his skin, but from deep inside. What was this uncanny place? The light had faded even more, and although the fine rain had now stopped, the visibility was still dropping. And yet it was not a true night, but rather a dark, gloomy evening, which nevertheless maintained some odd, diffused source of light, never entirely absent. The wind had risen until it was audible as a faint moan, which added to the increasing unease in Powers' mind. He was conscious of a feeling of forlornness, of being hopelessly lost and adrift, which he had never felt before, and against which he had to continually brace himself if he were to keep going.

  He gathered his feet under him on the ledge and got set to resume his progress up the cleft. Looking up, he saw with some surprise that the cliff edge was not very far away. He looked down briefly and estimated that he must have climbed at least two hundred feet, and now had another eighty or so to go. A brief wave of nausea made him turn quickly away to his task and he started to climb again.

  Now he looked neither up nor down. Despite his rest on the ledge, he was becoming tired and he didn't dare use up any reserves of nervous energy getting frightened by heights. He just climbed, feeling for handholds and levering himself up in a steady, undeviating motion. The wind ruffled his hair, bringing no coolness, but rather a nasty feeling of delicate fingers probing for him, and its soughing on the damp rocks seemed to have a malignant note.

  THE CLIFFTOP came as a shock. His outflung arm, searching vainly for a new grip, encountered nothingness and a brief spasm of panic struck him before he looked up and saw the line of the top only a foot above his head, dark against the lighter sky. Drawing on a last store of energy, he gave a mighty heave and snapped his body over the top in one motion, to lie gasping on the moist ground. He lay face down, panting, the sweat pouring from his body, dead to everything but the need to rest.

  When his starved lungs had finally fulfilled their need for air and his overstrained muscles stopped their spasmodic twitching, he sat up and stared about him, now cold again from congealed perspiration.

  He was lying on the cliff's edge, at the bottom of a gentle slope. A yard from his position, a verge of brownish, tussocky grass led into a tangled mass of shrubbery and bushlike vegetation, with here and there a low tree, all tossing in the rising wind, their colors a variety of duns and brownish shades.

  Rising out of the scrub and wood, about a half mile away, was the house he had seen from the sea, an enormous structure of peaked and crenellated roofs, broken chimneys and countless windows, black pits of emptiness in the gray walls.

  As he stared at it, he saw that flecks of reddish light now played here and there over both the building and the surrounding foliage, and looking up, saw a vast dim, red moon had appeared, partly veiled by flying murk and cloud. It gave little light, and only added a mottled effect to the landscape, which was unpleasant enough anyway. The view now appeared both spectral and unclean, in some manner which disturbed the inner part of his being. The moon was far larger than that of Terra, but blank and featureless where the surface showed.

  Looking at the house once again, Powers felt a tug of memory. Somewhere, he had a feeling, he had seen it before, and in some connection he did not like to recall. The feeling was momentary and he suppressed it quickly. Whatever the place looked like, he had to have shelter, for as the sweat cooled on his skin, he was aware of an icy chill which penetrated to his bones, and at the same time, thirst, not a severe problem until now, made itself felt as a sharp pang.

  He stood up and unsheathing his knife stepped on to the edge of the shaggy grass. His bare feet, which were now sore from many small cuts, registered that it felt greasy and unpleasant, but it seemed to contain no thorns or brambles. In only a few steps he had crossed it and entered the shadow of the shrubbery. For as he entered it, he had realized that this was the correct word. He was in the ruins of some mighty garden or estate, surrounding the huge and apparently empty house like a barrier to keep out intruders. A few more cautious steps confirmed this view. He could not identify the low, wind tossed bushes around him or the larger trees that jutted up from their midst, but the whole appearance of the place was unmistakable.

  As he stared about him in the strange half-light, he began to pick out overgrown paths, heavy with rank grass here and there through the bushes. In one place through the trees a faint gleam flickered momentarily as lighter than the rest, and seemed to speak of stone. As the identification registered on his forebrain, so, too, did his now acute thirst. Gardens should contain fountains, which meant stonework.

  STUMBLING slightly over the longer grass stems, he headed in the direction of the faint gleam. He found a dim, overgrown path which led that way, although winding here and there through the dark vegetation. Soon he emerged in an open space, and there, sure enough, was water.

  It was a dark, round pool, perhaps twenty feet across, oily and repellent in aspect, backed by the broken wall of whitish stone, which he had seen in the distance. Patches of some bloated weed lay here and there on the still surface. The slimy, light brown roots of some water plant sprawled on the edge and spilled up and over into the rank grass which surrounded the verge.

  Still, it was water and presumably fresh, and he now badly needed water. Crouching, one wary eye on the house, which now lay much closer and to his right front, he left the bushes and moved toward the nearest part of the silent pool.

  As he did so, a strange and terrible thing happened. The fat, ropy tendrils of ochre weed which he had seen lying on the brink of the stonework lifted suddenly and began to wave and oscillate in the air, like monstrous feelers trying to grasp some unimaginable prey.
r />   He was no more than a yard or two from the water when it happened, but drew back convulsively to the edge of the bushes, and numb, stared at the thick dancing tentacles which whipped and vibrated all around the edge of the pool to a height of six feet. He had never seen a more disgusting sight, and he felt almost physically sick. Even as he watched, the movements began to slowly die down, until in a few moments the pool was once more still under the evil rusty moonlight, as calm as when he had first appeared.

  He stood a moment more in concentrated thought. Whether animal or plant, the evil-looking guardian of the pool had clearly been somehow alerted by his approach. To try and get a drink from the water now would be madness, particularly since he had only a knife.

  What particularly annoyed him, even more than his painful thirst, was his own fright. Since waking from the Sleep gas, he had been conscious of recurrent waves of fear passing through his system. Although he had mastered them and gone on, over one menace and obstacle to yet another, they were still surging against his inner being. As he raised his eyes to the great house, frowning above him, the fear returned again, so strongly that his body shook as if with an ague.

  His mind fought the fear back, and he held his fist out stiffly until its trembling subsided and the dagger point ceased to waver. Helping him muster strength was a renewed feeling of rage, rage at Survey & Contact for dumping a man in this ghastly place and using the forces of some unknown area as a trap for an almost defenseless man.

  ONCE AGAIN he started for the house. Skirting the neighborhood of the uncanny pool, he kept in the shadow of the trees and moved around the water in a wide circle. Although he watched carefully, he could not see any movement from the strange inhabitant which lurked there.

  On the far side of the open space, he found, as he had expected, a continuation of the path which had brought him thus far. The tussocky grass was now knee-high, but the opening was unmistakable, and pointed straight up the slope toward the house.

  As he entered the gap in the trees, the wind rose from a moan to a shriek, and glancing up, he saw the moon clearly, with only a few racing scuds of cloud to shield it. Then he knew that it was no moon he had ever seen before. It was not only a far larger orb, but the sickly red of its light was an actual color he had never before glimpsed.

  Looking down again, he moved steadily on down the lane of windswept trees. He was not on Terra, but on something alien, some lost planet. But then, the house! How had that come here? Even as he pondered it, it appeared before him.

  Clearly delineated in the moonlight, now grown brighter, it stood, less than a hundred yards away, across another belt of brown grass. The trees thinned back on both sides and so far as he could see, approached the place nowhere closer than the distance which separated him from the walls.

  He had not realized the sheer bulk of the huge, stone building or its countless convolutions until now. It had four rows of windows in the main body, which was directly in front of him, but wings led off on both sides and innumerable towers, separate roofs and chimneys broke the outline. Here and there, small balconies and walks with black doorways behind them broke the outline of the walls. The place could have housed an army, he thought and realized that if it had ever done so it had been long ago. For the house walls were crumbling, piles of rock and rubble marking where weaker parts had long ago crashed to ruin. Holes were visible in the slanted main roof, and many of the chimneys were gaunt fingers of stone with two or three sides missing. Windows here and there were irregular in outline, as if etched out of their true shape by time's acid. And over all brooded a feeling of age, desolation and decay.

  And more, of menace. As Powers swept the vast building with his gaze, he was suddenly and sharply aware of that. The monstrous pile might be crumbling and falling to the ground, but there was life somewhere about, inimical life, horrible in purpose. His brain, sent this message by some subtle chemistry of the body, filed and accepted the fact, and he steeled himself for an encounter, crouching to earth under a low shrub as he did so.

  And suddenly he saw something. To his left, where a wing of the house extended beyond his vision, in one place a walk had been built into an angle of the building, at the highest level of windows and doors, just before the peaked roof actually started to rise. A crumbling stone balustrade marked the line of the walk along a fifty-yard stretch of the wall. His eyes, alerted by a half-seen flicker of movement, switched left and centered on the walkway.

  Along it, at speed, came a great dark shape, moving at a lumbering yet fluid pace. It was hard to see details, but before the body passed from sight into a dark doorway further down the balcony, Powers had received several impressions.

  One was of size. The thing he had seen was at least the size of a Terran bear, and not unlike it in outline and movement. But the head, in the one glimpse he had caught, was rounded and without visible ears. It had seemed to move on all fours, but he had an ugly and innate feeling that it could move on two almost as easily.

  The total impression given him was one of mind-chilling stealth and ferocity, schooled into his brain by previous encounters with alien forms of life on a dozen worlds. Nowhere had he seen anything like this, and yet he knew it was dangerous, hideously dangerous, on the instant.

  All these sensations flooded into his mind in a split second. Even as they were recorded, his ears were assailed by a cry, coming from behind him in the dark and tangled wilds of the forlorn and abandoned garden. It was, he realized instantly, the same noise he had heard when calling for help at the foot of the cliff, a shrieking wail, rising above the wind and dying away in a high, piercing tremolo. But it was now far louder and nearer. As he crouched, numbed by a new terror, it sounded again, closer still.

  With the simultaneous realization that it must be on his track, Powers darted from cover, his limbs galvanized by desperation. Better the house and its lurking occupant than meeting the author of that horrid sound in the open. In the house, he had a chance at least to take cover. He raced for the building, momentarily not knowing or caring what might be hidden there, and hurled himself through an open ground floor window head first in a spaceman's roll. He hit with a thud on a stone floor, the breath driven out of his body, but still clutching the knife in the ready position.

  Sparked by adrenalin, he staggered to his feet and peered out of one corner of the window, hoping to gain a view of whatever was following him. As he tried to muffle his gasps for breath and quiet his twitching nerves, he raked the space in front of the windows with his eyes. But only the tossing bushes in which he had recently sheltered, swaying in the wind, met his gaze. Under the fitful light of the red moon, the lank grasses waved undisturbed. Of whatever made that uncanny wail, no trace presented itself.

  HE SWUNG back into the room of a sudden, damning himself internally for a careless fool. As he peered from the window, anything might have stolen upon him from the inner doorway of the small chamber in which he found himself. It was solid stone, walls, floor, ceiling, with no trace of any furnishings, the floor only faintly dusty. A man-sized doorway opened on to dimness beyond, but no door was in evidence.

  Moving silently, but with every nerve thrilling, Powers went to the opening and peered into the dark beyond. His eyes were now well-accustomed to the poor light, and he found that he could see clearly.

  The small room gave upon a long, high corridor, unlit except for patches of lessened dimness marking other doors. In both directions it ran away into darkness, but one glimpse off to the right gave him a flash of hope. This was a gap in the corridor wall which looked like the base of a stair.

  Once more checking the corridor for sound or movement, and finding neither, he gripped the knife firmly and ventured out of the room, moving slowly along to the right, every muscle taut as a wire.

  Underfoot, the stone felt slimy and cold, but it was smooth and well-worn, presenting no obstacle to silent movement.

  He passed the doorways of several rooms, four of them lit by the moonlight outside, to his r
ight, and two on the inner wall, dark as tombs. In each case he braced himself for a sudden assault from one of the openings as he passed, but nothing happened and he soon found himself at the foot of the stair which he had hoped for before starting.

  It was narrow, also of stone and seemed perfectly sound. It wound in a tight spiral and pausing at the foot, he tried to see up. He listened, to the point of straining his eardrums.

  No sound broke the silence but the faint noise of the wind, outside, now muffled by the house walls. But another sense, one long-used, screamed "Beware" in his mind, and he continued to stand frozen while his tired and overwrought brain sought to identify it.

  It was—scent! Musky, abominable and mephitic, a strange odor hung about the stairway. It was not strong, as if whatever had made it had not been present recently, but it was not stale either.

  Powers had no doubt what the origin was and felt the panic rising to the surface again. The black bulk he had seen on the upper stories of the house had been here, and could use the stair.

  He began to mount, testing each worn and greasy step and finding it firm beneath his sore feet. He nerved himself as he passed the small landing of the second floor, but heard and saw nothing. He went on.

  Nothing happened at the third floor either, but he had no trouble realizing that his passage might still have been marked by a silent listener. Narrow windows, set high in the wall of the stairwell, gave some light, but he could not see out of them and could only continue his progress. He was acutely sensitive to each minute scuff of his feet on the smooth steps, his own breathing, which he fought to keep even and the noise of the wind outside, as it hummed around the house.

  He arrived at the fourth landing, and far down inside his being, felt better. Some heritage from tree-dwelling ancestors made heights seem safer, he mused to himself, even as he stood waiting and listening.

  THE STAIRS climbed no higher. One doorway opened off the landing, just as in the ground floor, a rectangle of blackness. He tried to catch the elusive and acrid odor he had detected earlier, but it was gone. Gripping his knife, he passed through the doorway and found himself in another corridor.