Space Prison Read online

  * * * * *

  PART 3

  * * * * *

  When spring came Steve Schroeder was leader, as Lake had wanted. It wasa duty and a responsibility that would be under circumstances differentfrom those of any of the leaders before him. The grim fight was over fora while. They were adapted and increasing in number; going into BigSummer and into a renascence that would last for fifty years. They wouldhave half a century in which to develop their environment to its fullestextent. Then Big Fall would come, to destroy all they had accomplished,and the Gerns would come, to destroy them.

  It was his job to make certain that by then they would be stronger thaneither.

  * * * * *

  He went north with nine men as soon as the weather permitted. It washard to retrace the route of the summer before, without compasses, amongthe hills which looked all the same as far as their binoculars couldreach, and it was summer when they saw the hill with the monument. Theyfound Lake's bones a few miles south of it, scattered by the scavengersas were the little bones of his mocker. They buried them together, manand mocker, and went silently on toward the hill.

  They had brought a little hand-cranked diamond drill with them to boreholes in the hard granite and black powder for blasting. They mined thevein, sorting out the ore from the waste and saving every particle.

  The vein was narrow at the surface and pinched very rapidly. At a depthof six feet it was a knife-blade seam; at ten feet it was only a reddiscoloration in the bottom of their shaft.

  "That seems to be all of it," he said to the others. "We'll send men uphere next year to go deeper and farther along its course but I have anidea we've just mined all of the only iron vein on Ragnarok. It will beenough for our purpose."

  They sewed the ore in strong rawhide sacks and then prospected, withoutsuccess, until it was time for the last unicorn band to pass by on itsway south. They trapped ten unicorns and hobbled their legs, with otherropes reaching from horn to hind leg on each side to prevent them fromswinging back their heads or even lifting them high.

  They had expected the capture and hobbling of the unicorns to be adifficult and dangerous job and it was. But when they were finished theunicorns were helpless. They could move awkwardly about to graze butthey could not charge. They could only stand with lowered heads and fumeand rumble.

  The ore sacks were tied on one frosty morning and the men mounted. Thehorn-leg ropes were loosened so the unicorns could travel, and theunicorns went into a frenzy of bucking and rearing, squealing with rageas they tried to impale their riders.

  The short spears, stabbing at the sensitive spot behind the jawbones ofthe unicorns, thwarted the backward flung heads and the unicorns wereslowly forced into submission. The last one conceded temporary defeatand the long journey to the south started, the unicorns going in the runthat they could maintain hour after hour.

  Each day they pushed the unicorns until they were too weary to fight atnight. Each morning, rested, the unicorns resumed the battle. It becamean expected routine for both unicorns and men.

  The unicorns were released when the ore was unloaded at the foot of thehill before the caves and Schroeder went to the new waterwheel, wherethe new generator was already in place. There George Craig told him ofthe unexpected obstacle that had appeared.

  "We're stuck," George said. "The aluminum ore isn't what we thought itwould be. It's scarce and very low grade, of such a complex nature thatwe can't refine it to the oxide with what we have to work with onRagnarok."

  "Have you produced any aluminum oxide at all?" Schroeder asked.

  "A little. We might have enough for the wire in a hundred years if wekept at it hard enough."

  "What else do you need--was there enough cryolite?" he asked.

  "Not much of it, but enough. We have the generator set up, the smeltingbox built and the carbon lining and rods ready. We have everything weneed to smelt aluminum ore--except the aluminum ore."

  "Go ahead and finish up the details, such as installing the lining," hesaid. "We didn't get this far to be stopped now."

  But the prospecting parties, making full use of the time left thembefore winter closed down, returned late that fall to report no sign ofthe ore they needed.

  Spring came and he was determined they would be smelting aluminum beforethe summer was over even though he had no idea where the ore would befound. They needed aluminum ore of a grade high enough that they couldextract the pure aluminum oxide. Specifically, they needed aluminumoxide....

  Then he saw the answer to their problem, so obvious that all of them hadoverlooked it.

  He passed by four children playing a game in front of the caves thatday; some kind of a checker-like game in which differently colored rocksrepresented the different children. One boy was using red stones; someof the rubies that had been brought back as curios from the chasm.Rubies were of no use or value on Ragnarok; only pretty rocks forchildren to play with....

  Only pretty rocks?--_rubies and sapphires were corundum, were purealuminum oxide!_

  He went to tell George and to arrange for a party of men to go into thechasm after all the rubies and sapphires they could find. The lastobstacle had been surmounted.

  The summer sun was hot the day the generator hummed into life. Thecarbon-lined smelting box was ready and the current flowed between theheavy carbon rods suspended in the cryolite and the lining, transformingthe cryolite into a liquid. The crushed rubies and sapphires were fedinto the box, glowing and glittering in blood-red and sky-bluescintillations of light, to be deprived by the current of their life andfire and be changed into something entirely different.

  When the time came to draw off some of the metal they opened the orificein the lower corner of the box. Molten aluminum flowed out into theingot mold in a little stream; more beautiful to them than any gemscould ever be, bright and gleaming in its promise that more than sixgenerations of imprisonment would soon be ended.

  * * * * *

  The aluminum smelting continued until the supply of rubies and sapphiresin the chasm had been exhausted but for small and scattered fragments.It was enough, with some aluminum above the amount needed for the wire.

  It was the year one hundred and fifty-two when they smelted thealuminum. In eight more years they would reach the middle of Big Summer;the suns would start their long drift southward, not to return for onehundred and fifty years. Time was passing swiftly by for them and therewas none of it to waste....

  The making of ceramics was developed to an art, as was the making ofdifferent types of glass. Looms were built to spin thread and cloth fromwoods goat wool, and vegetable dyes were discovered. Exploration partiescrossed the continent to the eastern and western seas: salty andlifeless seas that were bordered by immense deserts. No trees of anykind grew along their shores and ships could not be built to cross them.

  Efforts were continued to develop an inorganic field of chemistry, withdiscouraging results, but in one hundred and fifty-nine the orange cornwas successfully adapted to the elevation and climate of the caves.

  There was enough that year to feed the mockers all winter, supply nextyear's seeds, and leave enough that it could be ground and baked intobread for all to taste.

  It tasted strange, but good. It was, Schroeder thought, symbolic of agreat forward step. It was the first time in generations that any ofthem had known any food but meat. The corn would make them lessdependent upon hunting and, of paramount importance, it was the type offood to which they would have to become accustomed in the future--theycould not carry herds of woods goats and unicorns with them on Gernbattle cruisers.

  The lack of metals hindered them wherever they turned in their effortsto build even the simplest machines or weapons. Despite its dubiousprospects, however, they made a rifle-like gun.

  The barrel of it was thick, of the hardest, toughest ceramic materialthey could produce. It was a cumbersome,
heavy thing, firing with aflintlock action, and it could not be loaded with much powder lest thecharge burst the barrel.

  The flintlock ignition was not instantaneous, the lightweight porcelainbullet had far less penetrating power than an arrow, and the thingboomed and belched out a cloud of smoke that would have shown the Gernsexactly where the shooter was located.

  It was an interesting curio and the firing of it was somethingspectacular to behold but it was a weapon apt to be much more dangerousto the man behind it than to the Gern it was aimed at. Automaticcrossbows were far better.

  Woods goats had been trapped and housed during the summers in shelterswhere sprays of water maintained a temperature cool enough for them tosurvive. Only the young were kept when fall came, to be shelteredthrough the winter in one of the caves. Each new generation wassubjected to more heat in the summer and more cold in the winter thanthe generation before it and by the year one hundred and sixty the woodsgoats were well on their way toward adaptation.

  The next year they trapped two unicorns, to begin the job of adaptingand taming future generations of them. If they succeeded they would haveutilized the resources of Ragnarok to the limit--except for what shouldbe their most valuable ally with which to fight the Gerns: theprowlers.

  For twenty years prowlers had observed a truce wherein they would not gohunting for men if men would stay away from their routes of travel. Butit was a truce only and there was no indication that it could everevolve into friendship.

  Three times in the past, half-grown prowlers had been captured and cagedin the hope of taming them. Each time they had paced their cages,looking longingly into the distance, refusing to eat and defiant untilthey died.

  To prowlers, as to some men, freedom was more precious than life. Andeach time a prowler had been captured the free ones had retaliated witha resurgence of savage attacks.

  There seemed no way that men and prowlers could ever meet on commonground. They were alien to one another, separated by the gulf of anorigin on worlds two hundred and fifty light-years apart. Their onlycommon heritage was the will of each to battle.

  But in the spring of one hundred and sixty-one, for a little while oneday, the gulf was bridged.

  * * * * *

  Schroeder was returning from a trip he had taken alone to the east,coming down the long canyon that led from the high face of the plateauto the country near the caves. He hurried, glancing back at the blackclouds that had gathered so quickly on the mountain behind him. Thunderrumbled from within them, an almost continuous roll of it as the cloudspoured down their deluge of water.

  A cloudburst was coming and the sheer-walled canyon down which hehurried had suddenly become a death trap, its sunlit quiet soon to betransformed into roaring destruction. There was only one place along itsnine-mile length where he might climb out and the time was already shortin which to reach it.

  He had increased his pace to a trot when he came to it, a talus ofbroken rock that sloped up steeply for thirty feet to a shelf. A ledgeeleven feet high stood over the shelf and other, lower, ledges set backfrom it like climbing steps.

  At the foot of the talus he stopped to listen, wondering how closebehind him the water might be. He heard it coming, a sound like theroaring of a high wind up the canyon, and he scrambled up the talus ofloose rock to the shelf at its top. The shelf was not high enough abovethe canyon's floor--he would be killed there--and he followed it fiftyfeet around a sharp bend. There it narrowed abruptly, to merge into thesheer wall of the canyon. Blind alley....

  He ran back to the top of the talus where the edge of the ledge, raggedwith projections of rock, was unreachably far above him. As he did sothe roaring was suddenly a crashing, booming thunder and he saw thewater coming.

  It swept around the bend at perhaps a hundred miles an hour, stretchingfrom wall to wall of the canyon, the crest of it seething and slashingand towering forty sheer feet above the canyon's floor.

  A prowler was running in front of it, running for its life and losing.

  There was no time to watch. He leaped upward, as high as possible, hiscrossbow in his hand. He caught the end of the bow over one of the sharpprojections of rock on the ledge's rim and began to pull himself up,afraid to hurry lest the rock cut the bowstring in two and drop himback.

  It held and he stood on the ledge, safe, as the prowler flashed up thetalus below.

  It darted around the blind-alley shelf and was back a moment later. Itsaw that its only chance would be to leap up on the ledge where he stoodand it tried, handicapped by the steep, loose slope it had to jump from.

  It failed and fell back. It tried again, hurling itself upward with allits strength, and its claws caught fleetingly on the rough rock a footbelow the rim. It began to slide back, with no time left it for a thirdtry.

  It looked up at the rim of safety that it had not quite reached and thenon up at him, its eyes bright and cold with the knowledge that it wasgoing to die and its enemy would watch it.

  Schroeder dropped flat on his stomach and reached down, past the massiveblack head, to seize the prowler by the back of the neck. He pulled upwith all his strength and the claws of the prowler tore at the rocks asit climbed.

  When it was coming up over the ledge, safe, he rolled back from it andcame to his feet in one swift, wary motion, his eyes on it and his knifealready in his hand. As he did so the water went past below them with athunder that deafened. Logs and trees shot past, boulders crashedtogether, and things could be seen surging in the brown depths;shapeless things that had once been woods goats and the battered graybulk of a unicorn. He saw it all with a sideward glance, his attentionon the prowler.

  It stepped back from the rim of the ledge and looked at him; warily, ashe looked at it. With the wariness was something like question, andalmost disbelief.

  The ledge they stood on was narrow but it led out of the canyon and tothe open land beyond. He motioned to the prowler to precede him and,hesitating a moment, it did so.

  They climbed out of the canyon and out onto the grassy slope of themountainside. The roar of the water was a distant rumble there and hestopped. The prowler did the same and they watched each other again,each of them trying to understand what the thoughts of the other mightbe. It was something they could not know--they were too alien to eachother and had been enemies too long.

  Then a gust of wind swept across them, bending and rippling the tallgrass, and the prowler swung away to go with it and leave him standingalone.

  His route was such that it diverged gradually from that taken by theprowler. He went through a grove of trees and emerged into an open gladeon the other side. Up on the ridge to his right he saw something blackfor a moment, already far away.

  He was thirty feet from the next grove of trees when he saw the grayshadow waiting silently for his coming within them.

  Unicorn!

  His crossbow rattled as he jerked back the pistol grip. The unicorncharged, the underbrush crackling as it tore through it and a vinewhipping like a rope from its lowered horn.

  His first arrow went into its chest. It lurched, fatally wounded butstill coming, and he jerked back on the pistol grip for the quick shotthat would stop it.

  The rock-frayed bow string broke with a singing sound and the bow endssnapped harmlessly forward.

  He had counted on the bow and its failure came a fraction of a secondtoo late for him to dodge far enough. His sideward leap was short, andthe horn caught him in midair, ripping across his ribs and breakingthem, shattering the bone of his left arm and tearing the flesh. He washurled fifteen feet and he struck the ground with a stunning impact,pain washing over him in a blinding wave.

  Through it, dimly, he saw the unicorn fall and heard its dying trumpetblast as it called to another. He heard an answering call somewhere inthe distance and then the faraway drumming of hooves.

  He fought back the blindness and used his good arm to lift himself up.His bow was useless, his spear lay broken under the unicorn, and hisknife was g
one. His left arm swung helplessly and he could not climb thelimbless lower trunk of a lance tree with only one arm.

  He went forward, limping, trying to hurry to find his knife while thedrumming of hooves raced toward him. It would be a battle already lostthat he would make with the short knife but he would have blood for hisgoing....

  The grass grew tall and thick, hiding the knife until he could hear theunicorn crashing through the trees. He saw it ten feet ahead of him asthe unicorn tore out from the edge of the woods thirty feet away.

  It squealed, shrill with triumph, and the horn swept up to impale him.There was no time left to reach the knife, no time left for anything butthe last fleeting sight of sunshine and glade and arching blue sky----

  Something from behind him shot past and up at the unicorn's throat, athing that was snarling black savagery with yellow eyes blazing andwhite fangs slashing--the prowler!

  It ripped at the unicorn's throat, swerving its charge, and the unicornplunged past him. The unicorn swung back, all the triumph gone from itssqueal, and the prowler struck again. They became a swirling blur, thehorn of the unicorn swinging and stabbing and the attacks of the prowlerlike the swift, relentless thrusting of a rapier.

  He went to his knife and when he turned back with it in his hand thebattle was already over.

  The unicorn fell and the prowler turned away from it. One foreleg wasbathed in blood and its chest was heaving with a panting so fast that itcould not have been caused by the fight with the unicorn.

  _It must have been watching me_, he thought, with a strange feeling ofwonder. _It was watching from the ridge and it ran all the way._

  Its yellow eyes flickered to the knife in his hand. He dropped the knifein the grass and walked forward, unarmed, wanting the prowler to knowthat he understood; that for them in that moment the gulf of two hundredand fifty light-years did not exist.

  He stopped near it and squatted in the grass to begin binding up hisbroken arm so the bones would not grate together. It watched him, thenit began to lick at its bloody shoulder; standing so close to him thathe could have reached out and touched it.

  Again he felt the sense of wonder. They were alone together in theglade, he and a prowler, each caring for his hurts. There was a bondbetween them that for a little while made them like brothers. There wasa bridge for a little while across the gulf that had never been bridgedbefore....

  When he had finished with his arm and the prowler had lessened thebleeding of its shoulder it took a step back toward the ridge. He stoodup, knowing it was going to leave.

  "I suppose the score is even now," he said to it, "and we'll never seeeach other again. So good hunting--and thanks."

  It made a sound in its throat; a queer sound that was neither bark norgrowl, and he had the feeling it was trying to tell him something. Thenit turned and was gone like a black shadow across the grass and he wasalone again.

  He picked up his knife and bow and began the long, painful journey backto the caves, looking again and again at the ridge behind him andthinking: _They have a code of ethics. They fight for theirsurvival--but they pay their debts._

  Ragnarok was big enough for both men and prowlers. They could livetogether in friendship as men and dogs of Earth lived together. It mighttake a long time to win the trust of the prowlers but surely it could bedone.

  He came to the rocky trail that led to the caves and there he took alast look at the ridge behind him; feeling a poignant sense of loss andwondering if he would ever see the prowler again or ever again know thestrange, wild companionship he had known that day.

  Perhaps he never would ... but the time would come on Ragnarok whenchildren would play in the grass with prowler pups and the time wouldcome when men and prowlers, side by side, would face the Gerns.

  * * * * *

  In the year that followed there were two incidents when a prowler hadthe opportunity to kill a hunter on prowler territory and did not do so.There was no way of knowing if the prowler in each case had been the onehe had saved from the cloudburst or if the prowlers, as a whole, wererespecting what a human had done for one of them.

  Schroeder thought of again trying to capture prowler pups--very youngones--and decided it would be a stupid plan. Such an act would destroyall that had been done toward winning the trust of the prowlers. Itwould be better to wait, even though time was growing short, and findsome other way.

  The fall of one hundred and sixty-three came and the suns werenoticeably moving south. That was the fall that his third child, agirl, was born. She was named Julia, after the Julia of long ago, andshe was of the last generation that would be born in the caves.

  Plans were already under way to build a town in the valley a mile fromthe caves. The unicorn-proof stockade wall that would enclose it wasalready under construction, being made of stone blocks. The houses wouldbe of diamond-sawed stone, thick-walled, with dead-air spaces betweenthe double walls to insulate against heat and cold. Tall, wide canopiesof lance tree poles and the palm-like medusabush leaves would be builtover all the houses to supply additional shade.

  The woods goats were fully adapted that year and domesticated to such anextent that they had no desire to migrate with the wild goats. There wasa small herd of them then, enough to supply a limited amount of milk,cheese and wool.

  The adaptation of the unicorns proceeded in the following years, but nottheir domestication. It was their nature to be ill-tempered andtreacherous and only the threat of the spears in the hands of theirdrivers forced them to work; work that they could have done easily hadthey not diverted so much effort each day to trying to turn on theirmasters and kill them. Each night they were put in a massive-walledcorral, for they were almost as dangerous as wild unicorns.

  The slow, painstaking work on the transmitter continued while the sunsmoved farther south each year. The move from the caves to the new townwas made in one hundred and seventy-nine, the year that Schroeder's wifedied.

  His two sons were grown and married and Julia, at sixteen, was a womanby Ragnarok standards; blue-eyed and black-haired as her mother, aCraig, had been, and strikingly pretty in a wild, reckless way. Shemarried Will Humbolt that spring, leaving her father alone in the newhouse in the new town.

  Four months later she came to him to announce with pride and excitement:

  "I'm going to have a baby in only six months! If it's a boy he'll be theright age to be leader when the Gerns come and we're going to name himJohn, after the John who was the first leader we ever had on Ragnarok."

  Her words brought to his mind a question and he thought of what old DaleCraig, the leader who had preceded Lake, had written:

  _We have survived, the generations that the Gerns thought would never beborn. But we must never forget the characteristics that insured thatsurvival: an unswerving loyalty of every individual to all the othersand the courage to fight, and die if necessary.

  In any year, now, the Gerns will come. There will be no one to help us.Those on Athena are slaves and it is probable that Earth has beenenslaved by now. We will stand or fall alone. But if we of today couldknow that the ones who meet the Gerns will still have the courage andloyalty that made our survival possible, then we would know that theGerns are already defeated...._

  The era of danger and violence was over for a little while. The youngergeneration had grown up during a time of peaceful development of theirenvironment. It was a peace that the coming of the Gerns wouldshatter--but had it softened the courage and loyalty of the youngergeneration?

  A week later he was given his answer.

  He was climbing up the hill that morning, high above the town below,when he saw the blue of Julia's wool blouse in the distance. She wassitting up on a hillside, an open book in her lap and her short spearlying beside her.

  He frowned at the sight. The main southward migration of unicorns wasover but there were often lone stragglers who might appear at any time.He had warned her that someday a unicorn would kill her--but she wasreckless by nature
and given to restless moods in which she could notstand the confinement of the town.

  She jerked up her head as he watched, as though at a faint sound, and hesaw the first movement within the trees behind her--a unicorn.

  It lunged forward, its stealth abandoned as she heard it, and she cameto her feet in a swift, smooth movement; the spear in her hand and thebook spilling to the ground.

  The unicorn's squeal rang out and she whirled to face it, with twoseconds to live. He reached for his bow, knowing his help would come toolate.

  She did the only thing possible that might enable her to survive: sheshifted her balance to take advantage of the fact that a human couldjump to one side a little more quickly than a four-footed beast inheadlong charge. As she did so she brought up the spear for the thrustinto the vulnerable area just behind the jawbone.

  It seemed the needle point of the black horn was no more than an arm'slength from her stomach when she jumped aside with the lithe quicknessof a prowler, swinging as she jumped and thrusting the spear with allher strength into the unicorn's neck.

  The thrust was true and the spear went deep. She released it and flungherself backward to dodge the flying hooves. The force of the unicorn'scharge took it past her but its legs collapsed under it and it crashedto the ground, sliding a little way before it stopped. It kicked onceand lay still.

  She went to it, to retrieve her spear, and even from the distance therewas an air of pride about her as she walked past her bulky victim.

  Then she saw the book, knocked to one side by the unicorn's hooves.Tatters of its pages were blowing in the wind and she stiffened, herface growing pale. She ran to it to pick it up, the unicorn forgotten.

  She was trying to smooth the torn leaves when he reached her. It hadbeen one of the old textbooks, printed on real paper, and it was fragilewith age. She had been trusted by the librarian to take good care of it.Now, page after page was torn and unreadable....

  She looked up at him, shame and misery on her face.

  "Father," she said. "The book--I----"

  He saw that the unicorn was a bull considerably larger than the average.Men had in the past killed unicorns with spears but never, before, had asixteen-year-old girl done so....

  He looked back at her, keeping his face emotionless, and asked sternly,"You what?"

  "I guess--I guess I didn't have any right to take the book out of town.I wish I hadn't...."

  "You promised to take good care of it," he told her coldly. "Yourpromise was believed and you were trusted to keep it."

  "But--but I didn't mean to damage it--I didn't mean to!" She wassuddenly very near to tears. "I'm not a--a _bemmon_!"

  "Go back to town," he ordered. "Tonight bring the book to the town halland tell the council what happened to it."

  She swallowed and said in a faint voice, "Yes, father."

  She turned and started slowly back down the hill, not seeing the unicornas she passed it, the bloody spear trailing disconsolately behind herand her head hanging in shame.

  He watched her go and it was safe for him to smile. When night came andshe stood before the council, ashamed to lift her eyes to look at them,he would have to be grim and stern as he told her how she had beentrusted and how she had betrayed that trust. But now, as he watched hergo down the hill, he could smile with his pride in her and know that hisquestion was answered; that the younger generation had lost neithercourage nor loyalty.

  * * * * *

  Julia saved a child's life that spring and almost lost her own. Thechild was playing under a half-completed canopy when a sudden, violentwind struck it and transformed it into a death-trap of cracking, fallingtimbers. She reached him in time to fling him to safety but thecollapsing roof caught her before she could make her own escape.

  Her chest and throat were torn by the jagged ends of the broken polesand for a day and a night her life was a feebly flickering spark. Shebegan to rally on the second night and on the third morning she was ableto speak for the first time, her eyes dark and tortured with her fear:

  "My baby--what did it do to him?"

  She convalesced slowly, haunted by the fear. Her son was born fiveweeks later and her fears proved to have been groundless. He wasperfectly normal and healthy.

  And hungry--and her slowly healing breasts would be dry for weeks tocome.

  By a coincidence that had never happened before and could never happenagain there was not a single feeding-time foster-mother available forthe baby. There were many expectant mothers but only three women hadyoung babies--and each of the three had twins to feed.

  But there was a small supply of frozen goat milk in the ice house,enough to see young Johnny through until it was time for the goat herdto give milk. He would have to live on short rations until then but itcould not be helped.

  * * * * *

  Johnny was a month old when the opportunity came for the men of Ragnarokto have their ultimate ally.

  The last of the unicorns were going north and the prowlers had longsince gone. The blue star was lighting the night like a small sun whenthe breeze coming through Schroeder's window brought the distantsquealing of unicorns.

  He listened, wondering. It was a sound that did not belong. Everyone wassafely in the town, most of them in bed, and there should be nothingoutside the stockade for the unicorns to fight.

  He armed himself with spear and crossbow and went outside. He lethimself out through the east gate and went toward the sounds of battle.They grew louder as he approached, more furious, as though the battlewas reaching its climax.

  He crossed the creek and went through the trees beyond. There, in asmall clearing no more than half a mile from the town, he came upon thescene.

  A lone prowler was making a stand against two unicorns. Two otherunicorns lay on the ground, dead, and behind the prowler was the darkshape of its mate lying lifelessly in the grass. There was blood on theprowler, purple in the blue starlight, and gloating rang in the squealsof the unicorns as they lunged at it. The leaps of the prowler werefaltering as it fought them, the last desperate defiance of an animalalready dying.

  He brought up the bow and sent a volley of arrows into the unicorns.Their gloating squeals died and they fell. The prowler staggered andfell beside them.

  It was breathing its last when he reached it but in the way it looked upat him he had the feeling that it wanted to tell him something, that itwas trying hard to live long enough to do so. It died with the strangeappeal in its eyes and not until then did he see the scar on itsshoulder; a scar such as might have been made long ago by the rip of aunicorn's horn.

  It was the prowler he had known nineteen years before.

  The ground was trampled all around by the unicorns, showing that theprowlers had been besieged all day. He went to the other prowler and sawit was a female. Her breasts showed that she had had pups recently butshe had been dead at least two days. Her hind legs had been brokensometime that spring and they were still only half healed, twisted andalmost useless.

  Then, that was why the two of them were so far behind the otherprowlers. Prowlers, like the wolves, coyotes and foxes of Earth, matedfor life and the male helped take care of the young. She had beeninjured somewhere to the south, perhaps in a fight with unicorns, andher mate had stayed with her as she hobbled her slow way along andkilled game for her. The pups had been born and they had had to stop.Then the unicorns had found them and the female had been too crippled tofight....

  He looked for the pups, expecting to find them trampled and dead. Butthey were alive, hidden under the roots of a small tree near theirmother.

  Prowler pups--_alive!_

  They were very young, small and blind and helpless. He picked them upand his elation drained away as he looked at them. They made littlesounds of hunger, almost inaudible, and they moved feebly, trying tofind their mother's breasts and already so weak that they could not lifttheir heads.

  Small chunks of fresh meat had been left beside the p
ups and he thoughtof what the prowler's emotions must have been as his mate lay dead onthe ground and he carried meat to their young, knowing they were toosmall to eat it but helpless to do anything else for them.

  And he knew why there had been the appeal in the eyes of the prowler asit died and what it had tried to tell him: _Save them ... as you oncesaved me._

  He carried the pups back past the prowler and looked down at it inpassing. "I'll do my best," he said.

  When he reached his house he laid the pups on his bed and built a fire.There was no milk to give them--the goats would not have young for atleast another two weeks--but perhaps they could eat a soup of some kind.He put water on to boil and began shredding meat to make them a richbroth.

  One of them was a male, the other a female, and if he could save themthey would fight beside the men of Ragnarok when the Gerns came. Hethought of what he would name them as he worked. He would name thefemale Sigyn, after Loki's faithful wife who went with him when the godscondemned him to Hel, the Teutonic underworld. And he would name themale Fenrir, after the monster wolf who would fight beside Loki whenLoki led the forces of Hel in the final battle on the day of Ragnarok.

  But when the broth was prepared, and cooled enough, the pups could noteat it. He tried making it weaker, tried it mixed with corn and herbsoup, tried corn and herb soups alone. They could eat nothing heprepared for them.

  When gray daylight entered the room he had tried everything possible andhad failed. He sat wearily in his chair and watched them, defeated. Theywere no longer crying in their hunger and when he touched them they didnot move as they had done before.

  They would be dead before the day was over and the only chance men hadever had to have prowlers as their friends and allies would be gone.

  The first rays of sunrise were coming into the room, revealing fullythe frail thinness of the pups, when there was a step outside andJulia's voice:

  "Father?"

  "Come in, Julia," he said, not moving.

  She entered, still a pale shadow of the reckless girl who had fought aunicorn, even though she was slowly regaining her normal health. Shecarried young Johnny in one arm, in her other hand his little bottle ofmilk. Johnny was hungry--there was never quite enough milk for him--buthe was not crying. Ragnarok children did not cry....

  She saw the pups and her eyes went wide.

  "Prowlers--baby prowlers! Where did you get them?"

  He told her and she went to them, to look down at them and say, "If youand their father hadn't helped each other that day they wouldn't behere, nor you, nor I, nor Johnny--none of us in this room."

  "They won't live out the day," he said. "They have to have milk--andthere isn't any."

  She reached down to touch them and they seemed to sense that she wassomeone different. They stirred, making tiny whimpering sounds andtrying to move their heads to nuzzle at her fingers.

  Compassion came to her face, like a soft light.

  "They're so young," she said. "So terribly young to have to die...."

  She looked at Johnny and at the little bottle that held his too-smallmorning ration of milk.

  "Johnny--Johnny----" Her words were almost a whisper. "You'rehungry--but we can't let them die. And someday, for this, they willfight for your life."

  She sat on the bed and placed the pups in her lap beside Johnny. Shelifted a little black head with gentle fingers and a little pink mouthceased whimpering as it found the nipple of Johnny's bottle.

  Johnny's gray eyes darkened with the storm of approaching protest. Thenthe other pup touched his hand, crying in its hunger, and the protestfaded as surprise and something like sudden understanding came into hiseyes.

  Julia withdrew the bottle from the first pup and transferred it to thesecond one. Its crying ceased and Johnny leaned forward to touch itagain, and the one beside it.

  He made his decision with an approving sound and leaned back against hismother's shoulder, patiently awaiting his own turn and their presenceaccepted as though they had been born his brother and sister.

  * * * * *

  The golden light of the new day shone on them, on his daughter andgrandson and the prowler pups, and in it he saw the bright omen for thefuture.

  His own role was nearing its end but he had seen the people of Ragnarokconquer their environment in so far as Big Winter would ever let it beconquered. The last generation was being born, the generation that wouldmeet the Gerns, and now they would have their final ally. Perhaps itwould be Johnny who led them on that day, as the omen seemed toprophesy.

  He was the son of a line of leaders, born to a mother who had fought andkilled a unicorn. He had gone hungry to share what little he had withthe young of Ragnarok's most proud and savage species and Fenrir andSigyn would fight beside him on the day he led the forces of thehell-world in the battle with the Gerns who thought they were gods.

  Could the Gerns hope to have a leader to match?