Lord Of The Stars Read online

  Lord Of The Stars — Jean and Jeff Sutton — (1969)

  (Version 2002.10.31 — Done)

  For the four Kicklighters — Kurt, Andy, Nathan and Laurie

  1

  TOWARD DUSK, when the great emerald sun dipped below the horizon and the heat of day was past, but before the chill of night seeped in, Danny liked to walk out on the meadow and talk with Zandro. He could talk with Zandro while in the forest, of course, or even when inside the big ship; but somehow it was more fun when he was in the meadow.

  Although they talked of many things — of galaxies and small, furry creatures that scurried through the tall grasses and hideous dangers that lurked in the nearby swamp — he had never seen Zandro. Danny didn’t find that strange, for in his short memory life took many forms — or no form at all.

  Zandro was one of the no-form ones.

  He never wondered that Zandro’s voice was silent, that it came into his mind in almost the same way his own thoughts came. Yet, when he considered it, there was a difference. He could feel Zandro enter his mind; it was almost like a physical touch. Often, at night, he would awaken to the sensation, but then Zandro would quickly withdraw, leaving him more lonely than ever in the solitude of the big ship.

  Neither did he wonder that he communicated with Zandro in the same way, without speech, for words and images projected mentally came quite naturally. By projecting images, he could express thoughts for which he had no words. Besides, although he often spoke aloud to himself, it didn’t make sense to speak aloud to someone he couldn’t see.

  Danny got a warm feeling whenever he thought of Zandro. Zandro was his friend, his protector! That idea had come to him…how long ago? He wasn’t certain, for at first he’d had but a vague concept of time. But it was true; without Zandro…

  The thought frightened him. Without Zandro he wouldn’t have known of the danger in the swamp. Neither would he have known about the food-yielding trees and vines, how to find the edible plants that grew in the forest shade, or how to use the tough cloth material he had found stowed away in the big ship to protect his body against the hot sun and the thorns of trees.

  He still remembered how Zandro first had warned him of the storms. He had started toward the meadow when Zandro touched his mind and said, “You must return to the ship.”

  “Now?” he asked disappointedly. The pleasant half-light had just commenced.

  “A big storm is coming,” Zandro warned.

  “Storm?” Danny was puzzling over the word when Zandro projected a mental picture of great trees whipping back and forth, their branches tossing wildly against a darkened sky. Brilliant spears of light stabbed downward. With them came swirling balls of water, so closely packed they formed huge pools on the ground. Frightening rumbling noises churned across the heavens.

  “That is a storm,” Zandro explained. Danny retreated fearfully to the ship, locking the hatch behind him. In a short while he heard the wind rising. Deep growling noises rumbled across the sky, followed by a spattering against the metal hull which he knew must be caused by the small balls of water. Rain, Zandro had called it.

  After awhile he slept.

  Since then Zandro had explained many things. The sky — the place Danny saw when he looked upward — went on and on and on, never ending. The big emerald fire in the sky — the heat he felt at day was caused by the fire — was a sun. The sun also gave light, which was why the darkness came when the sun fell below the grassy plain. The small, gleaming lights he saw in the sky at night also were suns, but they were too far away for their heat to be felt. And the place on which he lived was a planet.

  “Planet?” he asked, when Zandro first told him.

  “Planets travel around suns, but they give no heat,” Zandro explained.

  “Does this planet go around the emerald sun?” he asked wonderingly.

  “Yes, and so do other planets — four more.”

  Danny gazed disbelievingly at the sky. “Why can’t I see them?”

  “You could at night if you knew where to look.”

  “Are they up there with the other suns?”

  “Yes, but much closer.”

  “At night I see a big place in the sky where there are no suns,” Danny said. “Why is that?”

  “It’s a huge gulf,” Zandro replied. He explained how such rifts ran like rivers through certain parts of the galaxy, separating one mass of suns from another. The emerald sun was located at the edge of the gulf Danny had asked about.

  Rivers in the sky! Rivers of nothingness! And on each side, great masses of stars, each hot like the emerald sun. Danny was fascinated. How much Zandro knew! “You mentioned a galaxy,” he said tentatively.

  “A galaxy is a great cluster of suns,” Zandro explained. “The suns in our galaxy are as many as the leaves of the forest.”

  Awed, Danny asked, “Is there more than one galaxy?”

  “The number is endless.”

  “How can anything be endless?” he protested.

  “That is the paradox of life,” Zandro answered. The galaxy — a mass of great burning suns that flamed in a void, yet small when compared with the whole — was more than Danny could comprehend.

  Another time, sitting beside the blue-green stream in the meadow, he asked, “Why do you call me Danny?”

  “Because that is your name.”

  “Name?” He contemplated the word.

  “Everything that exists has a name,” Zandro answered patiently. “Trees, mountains, rivers, rocks…” As he spoke, Danny experienced a mental image of each thing named. Zandro talked for a long time, explaining how names were used to distinguish one thing from another, to group different objects into a class, or to locate them in time or space. Danny thought that names were quite wonderful. He was Danny!

  But then another thought struck him. “There are lots of suns,” he said.

  “Billions upon billions,” Zandro agreed.

  “And lots of trees and lots of birds.” He paused, feeling a great solitude fill his soul, then blurted desperately, “Why is there only one me?”

  The silence came again, so vast and deep that even the gurgling of the stream seemed to cease before Zandro replied, “There are others like you, Danny.”

  “Like me?” He clung desperately to the words, awed by the thought. “Where?”

  “Far, far away. They are not on Wenda.”

  “Wenda?”

  “The name of this planet.”

  “Not here,” Danny exclaimed. A dismal feeling filled his soul, bringing such a loneliness that he turned from the meadow and rushed blindly back to the ship, his eyes wet. He was alone!

  He remained in the ship for several days. Too miserable to eat, sleepless, he stared at the white metal walls. When Zandro sent probing questions into his mind, he refused to answer. It was then he discovered that, by concentrating, he could shut out Zandro, leaving himself alone with his anguish.

  Alone! That was how he felt. Trees had trees, and flowers had flowers; little furry animals lived in the woods, and birds hopped from branch to branch or flew over the grassy meadow. Shiny creatures with large, solemn eyes lived in the blue-green stream; they all had one another, but he had no one. His eyes brimmed at the thought. When finally he returned to the meadow, he didn’t mention being alone; it was too painful. Instead he asked, “Why are some trees big and others small?”

  “There are different kinds of trees,” Zandro told him.

  “But lots of them look alike, except for size.”

  “Their ages differ, Danny.”

  “Ages?”

  “How long they’ve lived.”

  “Don’t they live forever?”

  “Not the same trees.” Zandro explained how trees came into being, how they flou
rished, reproduced, and died, leaving the younger trees behind. Danny believed it quite wonderful.

  “Does the same thing happen with birds and animals?” he asked. “Do they come from seeds?”

  “Yes, but in not quite the same way.” Zandro went on to say there were two kinds of each animal, and that together they brought new life. Male and female! Danny pondered it, filled with wonder. Life came, flourished, and passed away. That explained why the tall, pink flowers that grew in the meadow and sent their fragrance into the air often disappeared for long periods of time; the flowers died.

  “How old am I?” he asked.

  “On Wenda your age would be seven and a half years old.”

  “What are years?”

  “The time it takes Wenda to go around the emerald sun. Each time it goes around is one year. You would be a different age on the planet of your native sun.”

  “My native sun?” He whispered the words aloud.

  “A rather small sun,” Zandro said. “Really quite insignificant. Your native planet is somewhat smaller than Wenda and revolves around its sun in a shorter period.”

  He asked faintly, “If there’s only me, how did I get here?”

  “You came in a ship.”

  “Alone?”

  “The others who came with you are dead, Danny.”

  “Dead?” he asked tremulously. But, of course, he was alone.

  “Life is a transient thing.”

  “How did they die?”

  “The ship encountered trouble,” Zandro explained. “It had something to do with fuel and critical mass, but I’m not exactly certain what.”

  “How do you know?”

  A long silence ensued before Zandro said, “Everything you’ve ever seen or heard, even though you might not understand it at the time, leaves a record in your brain. I read that record.”

  “Is that how…” He struggled for words.

  “That I know your language, so much about you? Yes, that is how. You have seen and heard far more than you could ever know, Danny, right back to your earliest infancy.”

  Caught with another thought, Danny scarcely heard him. “But the ship

  wasn’t destroyed,” he protested. “I can’t see any marks on it.”

  “The ship you came down in is just a lifeboat launched from the big ship. Did you ever wonder that it was so small?”

  “It doesn’t look small to me.”

  “Very small,” Zandro asserted.

  “Did it come down by itself?”

  “It was automatically controlled.” Zandro described how the lifeboat’s instruments had been set to detect the nearest planet and to actuate the guidance and controls to bring it down into the atmosphere. When its sensors had determined that the planet was habitable, the landing had been made automatically. Otherwise the lifeboat would have sought another planet. “If none of the planets within this system had been habitable, then of course you would have died,” he said.

  Danny felt a great longing. “Why didn’t the others come with me?”

  “Perhaps there was no time. I’m not certain. Your memory pattern shows confusion.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “There was great excitement at the time. Your mind is filled with bits of information, quite disconnected. I have a picture of a woman — yes, it was your mother — putting you in the lifeboat, then rushing off to get your father.”

  “Why didn’t they come back?” he asked numbly.

  “Perhaps there was no time,” Zandro suggested. “I imagine the lifeboat was programmed to launch itself automatically at the last possible moment.”

  Danny gravely contemplated the information. If Zandro knew that much, he must know…

  Zandro caught the question in Danny’s mind and said, “It was a colonist ship.”

  “What does the word mean?”

  “Colonists? They are people who settle new worlds.”

  “Was my father a colonist?”

  “He was the captain.” Zandro explained what that meant. “The ship was named the Golden Ram.”

  His father — the captain! Danny felt a surge of pride. “Did he have a name?”

  “Gordell June,” Zandro replied. “Your mother’s name was Wenda.”

  “Like this planet?”

  “He named this world for her, Danny.”

  “Were they coming here?” He asked excitedly.

  “The name of this planet and the ship’s proximity to it at the time it was destroyed indicate that, yes. Fortunately for you, they were quite close.”

  “Did you get that from my mind?”

  “Yes, but much of it is fragmentary.”

  “You mentioned my native planet.” Danny whispered aloud again. “What is its name?” Suddenly he felt an imperative need to know.

  “Earth…Earth in the language of your people.”

  “Earth,” he murmured, caught with the sound. A lovely name. He felt a great longing. “My native sun?” he asked humbly.

  “Your people call it Sol.”

  “Sol is a fine name,” he declared stoutly.

  “A name is just a means of identification,” Zandro countered. “Remember, we spoke of names — how they are used to identify objects or to distinguish one object from another. A name is just a form of number.”

  “No,” he protested huskily, “it’s not that way at all.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “A name makes me feel something,” he asserted. “Earth and Sol — they make me feel good all over.”

  “You come from a race of dreamers, Danny.”

  “What are dreamers?”

  “People who twist reality into unreality. It’s characteristic of races which can’t face the harshness of life.”

  “My father wasn’t that way,” he denied. “He was captain of the Golden Ram. You said so yourself.”

  “You’re speaking from emotion,” Zandro counseled. “I’m not,” he denied. “How do you know what you say?”

  “I’ve seen things in your mind that your people call music and poetry and art,” Zandro explained. “They appear as attempts to disguise a Universe which is too fearful for them. Your people attach emotions to inanimate things to give them special meaning, make them something more or less than what they are. That is why a name gives you that feeling. Actually there are millions of planets quite similar to Earth. Then don’t you find it strange that you should feel attached to that particular one?”

  “It’s my native planet,” he protested.

  “You were far too young to remember it.”

  “Don’t your people feel that way about their planet?” he asked wonderingly.

  “My people face reality.”

  “But what is reality?”

  “Reality is this: but one race can survive in the Universe. My race.” The answer was stiff and uncompromising.

  “Your race?” Danny felt a quick dismay.

  “My race,” Zandro repeated loftily. Danny sensed his quick withdrawal. Bewildered, he stood on the meadow, watching the darkening sky. Zandro had always been so gentle, so understanding; but this time his projected thoughts had held a harsh, proud note that was totally unlike him.

  Unlike him? The question startled Danny. Suddenly he realized how very little he did know of Zandro. Nothing, really. Zandro had always talked about him, never about himself. He’d never discussed his own people — who they were or where they came from. This was the first time he’d even mentioned them. The Universe was created for his race! Danny didn’t believe that. His father wouldn’t have believed it, either!

  How had Zandro come to Wenda? He perused the question uneasily. Why was he here? Were others of his kind on the planet? If so, why hadn’t Zandro mentioned them? It was all very strange. Why, he didn’t even know what Zandro looked like…if he had a body!

  The last thought was disquieting. Up to now he’d never considered Zandro as…a physical being. He’d always accepted him as…what? A voice in his mind, a curiously
disembodied being who was profoundly wise. Could a mind exist without a body? He deemed it unlikely. What, then, did Zandro look like? More important, where, if he had a body, was it?

  His perturbation grew. Why did Zandro invade his mind at night? Why did he flee at the instant of Danny’s awareness? To escape detection? If so, why? He’d always wanted to ask, yet somehow had never quite dared. There was so much about Zandro he didn’t know.

  Yet Zandro was his friend; there was no denying that. Without him he might never have known who he was or how he had come to this vast, quiet, lonely world with its flaming emerald sun. He might never have known about his father or mother or about the great ship named the Golden Ram which, like a bird, had flown among the stars — had broken its wing. He felt a sadness.

  “Earth…” He spoke the name wonderingly. His father, Captain Gordell June of the Golden Ram, had come from there, had named this planet Wenda for his mother. He felt a fierce pride. His father must have considered it a very fine planet.

  He gazed at the sky. In the late dusk the first stars had appeared, glowing in the firmament like the fireflies he often glimpsed at night in the forest. His eyes went to the great black gulf where no stars gleamed. Across that blackness, at some incalculable distance, was a wonderful sun named Sol; and around it sailed the wonderful planet of Earth.

  He grew more sober as he reached the small clearing in the forest where the ship had settled down. Pausing at the edge of the trees, he studied the squat shape nestled in the tall grass. In the deep dusk it appeared scarcely more than a black shadow, discernible mainly through its geometric shape.

  It was small; he could see that now. He looked again at the great black gulf in the sky and at the countless dusky orange stars sprinkled off to one side. Clearly this ship could never be flown among those stars — certainly not across that vast gulf. He knew that with certainty. But if men had bridged that gulf once, they would come again — another ship like the Golden Ram. He felt a burst of pride.

  The interior of the ship was dark, but he knew every inch of it from long experience. The sleeping pallets that folded against the walls, the dials and controls he’d never understood, the tool bins, cabinets that once had held emergency food supplies and in which he now stored the fruits and nuts he gathered in the forest, the narrow door that led to the curious engine compartment — how small everything appeared!