Cycle of Fire

I. LOGISTICS

CONSIDERING THE general nature of a lava field the glider had no business looking as sound as it did. Its tail assembly was intact; its fuselage had suffered only the removal of fabric from the lower side; even the narrow wings appeared undamaged. Had there been a catapult within three thousand miles one would have been tempted to try launching the craft. Even Dar Lang Ahn might have been deceived, if his eyes had been his only source of information.

He had more than eyes, however. He had been the unfortunate who had ridden the machine in. He had seen the pitted black surface of the flow suddenly sweep toward him as an unexpected wind had dragged him toward the nameless volcano; he had felt the impact and the partial rebound as the springy wood frame of the aircraft had done its best to absorb the shock; and, most important, he had heard both main wing spars fail. The first question in his mind was not how to get aloft again but whether or not he should wreck the glider more obviously before he left it, and that was not really a question. The real problem was raised by the books.

There were not many of these, of course; Ree Pell Un had been far too foresighted to trust a very large fraction of the city’s knowledge to one aircraft. Still, they could not be ignored; it was his duty to get them intact to the Ice Ramparts, and eight hundred years is quite long enough to develop a strong devotion to duty. Dar Lang Ahn had lived that long.

Fortunately they were not heavy. He set resolutely to work making as much as possible into a pack that could be carried without hampering either his walking or his use of weapons. When he finally straightened up and started purposefully away from the wreck he was laden with perhaps half his own weight in books, a tenth as much food, and the crossbow and bolts which had been his inseparable companions since early life. The greater part of his food remained behind, but no reading matter.

He had thought about the direction to take while loading up. A great circle course to his intended destination was a shade over two thousand miles, of which roughly half was ocean. The way he had planned to fly was much longer, because of the islands which made it possible to get across that ocean in stages never greater than fifty miles. He decided to stick to this route, because he had already traveled it several times and knew the way. To be sure, the landmarks would look different from the ground, but that should not prove a great difficulty to his photographic memory.

He did not, of course, start in the direction he intended to maintain. That would have led almost directly over the mountain on whose flanks he had crashed. Dar was a better mountain climber than any human being ever would be, owing to natural advantages of physique, but the top of this mountain was emitting a faint, steady plume of yellow smoke, and the lava under his feet was, it seemed to him, rather warmer than sunlight could account for. Therefore, while his immediate goal on the near shore of the ocean lay to the northeast and the nearest edge of the lava straight north, he turned until the crimson sun he called Theer was to his left and behind him and the smaller, blue Arren straight behind, and started into the northwest.

A lava field is not easy to cross on foot, even without a heavy load. Laden as Dar Lang Ahn was, it is torture. His feet were tough enough to resist the sharp bits of rock which he could not avoid, but there was no such thing as a level path. Again and again he had to revise his estimate of the time the journey would take, but he never admitted to himself that he might not complete it.

Twice he ate and drank, if the token sip and nibble that he took could be called by such names. Both times he kept walking. There were less than fifty miles between the place where the glider had crashed and the edge of the lava sheet, but if he were to fall asleep before crossing those miles he would almost certainly die of thirst. There was no water on the lava, so far as he knew, and with summer approaching he needed water as badly as a human being would in the same situation.

The first of his meals found him far enough from the mountain to turn northward, putting Theer directly behind him. Arren was catching up with the red sun, but shadows were still short. Accustomed though he was to two light sources, the presence of both suns made it a little more difficult to judge the terrain more than a few dozen yards ahead, and consequently he frequently missed short cuts.

Still, he made progress. The second “meal” found him out of sight of the volcano and a few hours later he was sure he could see a line of green ahead. This might, of course, have been a mirage, with which Dar Lang Ahn was totally unfamiliar. It might also have been a denser covering of the spiky, pulpy, barrel-shaped plants which grew here and there on the lava itself. The traveler, however, felt sure that it was real forest — plants whose presence would mean a plentiful supply of the water he was beginning to want badly. He gave the equivalent of a grin of relief, resettled the pack of books across his shoulders, drank off the rest of his water, and started once more for the horizon. He discovered his mistake some time before he actually became thirsty again.

Traveling in anything like a straight line he could have walked the distance to the forest easily. Even with the sort of detours he had been forced to make on the lava field he could cover it before suffering too seriously from thirst. He simply had not counted on extraordinary detours, since he did not remember seeing from the air anything different from the general run of cracks and ridges on the lava flow. His memory did not betray him, as it turned out, but the terrain did.

Theer had nearly ceased his westward travel and was rising noticeably, preparing for his yearly swoop back toward Arren, when Dar Lang Ahn found the barrier. It was not a wall, which he would never have considered impassable in any case; it was a crack — a crack which must have formed after the lava mass as a whole had almost completely hardened, for it was far too deep and long to have been caused by the mere splitting of a bit of hardened crust under the pressure of fluid from below.

He had never noticed it from above simply because it was not straight; it snaked its way among the more ordinary irregularities of the region, so that he had traveled along it for more than an hour before he grasped the actual situation. That was when the crack began to curve back toward the now distant volcano.

When he did realize what was happening Dar Lang Ahn stopped instantly and sought the shade of an up-jutting slab of rock before he even began to think. He did not pause to berate his own foolishness, though he recognized it clearly enough; he concentrated on the problem that faced him.

The walls of the crevasse were unclimbable. Normally lava hardens in a surface rough enough to permit the claws of one of his people to get a grip on a nearly vertical surface, but this had been a split through the whole mass. True, the rock was full of gas bubbles and many of these had been opened by the crack and were large enough to furnish him support, but these occurred only near the surface. The opposite wall of the crevasse showed that only a few yards down the bubbles shrank to pinpoint size and, for practical purposes, vanished. Besides, the wall was not merely vertical. It “waved” so that no matter where he started down — or from which side, had he had a choice — he would find an overhang before descending very far. No, climbing was out.

The gap was too wide to jump — in most places too wide even for one without a burden, and Dar Lang Ahn never thought of abandoning his load.

He had no rope and not enough harness on his body or pack to improvise a line that would reach even as far as he could jump. Nothing grew on the lava from which either a rope or a bridge could be fashioned. The plants proved to be of a pulpy texture inside, quite without woody tissue, and the skins were not even tough enough to resist his claws.

The thing that delayed him longest in finding a solution was, of course, his determination not to be separated from the books. It took him an unbelievably long time to get the idea that the separation need not be permanent; he could throw the books across the gap and then jump himself.

This disposed of nearly all the difficulties, since he recalled several places where he was pretty sure of being able to jump across the crack if he was unhampered. He simply had to find one where a reasonably flat area existed, within reach of his throwing arm, on the far side of the crevasse.

He found it eventually. For the moment he did not think of the hours that had passed; he simply slid his pack to the black surface, checked to make sure that it was securely fastened — he wanted no risk of books falling out as it flew — tested its weight calculatingly with one powerful arm, and then, swinging around completely after the manner of a hammer thrower, launched it across the crack. There never was any doubt that it would get there; actually it went a little farther than Dar Lang Ahn had hoped and for an instant he wondered whether it might not reach the rough ground just beyond his target area. It finally stopped rolling, however, in full view and apparently intact, and with that assurance he planned his leap and made it.

He would have given no more details than that, had he been preparing a report of the incident. Most men would have had difficulty in avoiding mention of their feelings as they rushed toward the edge, put every bit of effort they could raise into a leap as they reached it, looked for an instant into the sickening depth below, and then thudded painfully into rough, sharp, hard lava on the other side. One man did have a good deal to say about it, later. Dar Lang Ahn felt all the appropriate emotions as he went through this series of actions, but with the leap behind him he thought only of the books. He went on.

Theer was visibly higher when he encountered another crevasse between himself and the forest. This took less time to cross but still contributed its bit of delay; and finally, with the red sun well above the horizon and seemingly twice as large as it had appeared from the site of the glider crash, he was forced to admit to himself that he was going to be on the lava flow through the summer — and this was no time of year to spend a summer far from a large supply of water.

His death, then, would come somewhat earlier than he had expected, and something would have to be done about the books. Presumably there would be searchers when he failed to return home in a reasonable time, and he was close enough still to the usual air route between Kwarr and the Ice Ramparts for his location to be covered without the need for much imagination on any searcher’s part. What was needed was something to make his position visible from the air. He considered trying to return to his glider but realized he could never make the journey — for one thing he would be too weak to get across the deep cracks by the time he reached them. Of course, if he had realized how small his chances of crossing the lava field actually were he would never have brought the books from the aircraft in the first place; it had simply never occurred to him to doubt his ability to make the trip. Now he had to rectify his error, or at least make it possible for someone else to do so.

He had left no visible trail on the rock, naturally, so that finding his glider would do no good to the searchers. They would know the general direction that he had taken, of course, but since they would not know the precise time of the crash there would be no way for them to tell how far he might have traveled. They would not guess, any more than he had, that he might not have reached the edge of the lava flow; no one had any first-hand knowledge of the conditions so near a volcano.

His own body would not show against the lava to an observer at any likely altitude, for neither his size nor his coloring rendered him conspicuous. Since all the rocks were of nearly the same color he could not make any sort of contrasting pattern which could be seen from the air. There was nothing in his pack which would make a decent-sized signal flag or serve to paint anything on the rocks. The only things about him which held any possibility of use in this problem, as far as Dar Lang Ahn could see, were the buckles of his harness.

These were flat and of polished iron; they might serve as mirrors, though they were pretty small. Still, where there was no other hope he would have to make them do. He reached this decision while still plodding northward.

The question that remained was whether he should stop where he was and devote his remaining time to perfecting an arrangement of buckles which would have a maximum chance of catching a passing flier’s eye, or keep on until he was obviously near the end. The latter alternative had the advantage of giving him a chance to reach some particularly advantageous spot — perhaps some spire of rock or configuration of lava slabs which would help catch a searcher’s eye. That it also included a possibility of his finding water in time to save his own life was a point he did not consider; so far as he thought about that matter he was dead already. The only advantage of stopping now was that he could spend the rest of his life in the shade, which might be more comfortable than traveling farther under the blaze of the two suns. As might have been expected, he elected to continue walking.

He walked, or scrambled, or climbed, as circumstances required, while the red sun continued to rise and grow. It was starting to swing back in an eastward direction, too, but Arren’s steady motion toward the west made him, at least, still useful as a guide. Perhaps Dar’s course corrections were a little vague; perhaps his path, toward the end, could hardly be called a course at all, for as time passed and temperature mounted his mind dwelt more and more on the torturing thirst messages which his body was sending it. A human being would have been dead long since — dead and baked dry. However, Dar Lang Ahn had no perspiration glands, since his nerve tissue could stand temperatures almost as high as the boiling point of water, and in consequence he did not lose the precious liquid nearly as rapidly as a man would. A little went, however, with each breath that passed out of his lungs, and the breaths were becoming ever more painful. He was no longer sure whether the wavering of the landscape in front of him was due to heat or his own eyesight; frequently he had to turn both eyes on the same object to be sure he was seeing it accurately. Short spurs of rock seemed, for brief instants, to take on a semblance of living creatures; once he caught himself starting to leave his chosen path in order to investigate a slab of lava. It took long seconds for him to convince himself that nothing could really have dodged behind it. Nothing lived here; nothing could move. The sounds which reached his ears were simply the crackings as new patches of lava were caught by the sunlight and warmed. He had heard them before.

Still, it had been a very convincing motion. Perhaps he should go back to see —

Go back. That was the one thing he must not do. That, of all possible actions, was the one provably useless one. If illusions were snatching at his mind in such a way as to tempt him into an act like that he must have come closer to the end than he thought. It was time to settle down and set up his reflector while he still had control of his muscles.

He wasted no time in regrets, but stopped where he was and looked around carefully. A few yards away a slab of hardened lava had been broken from the crust and tilted up almost perpendicularly by the pressure of liquid rock underneath. Its upper edge was a good ten feet above the surface in the immediate neighborhood. This was more than twice Dar Lang Ahn’s height, but the sheet was rough enough to give a grip to his claws and he saw no reason to expect difficulty in setting up his buckles at the top.

He unslung the pack of books and lowered it to the hot rock. He made sure it was closed tightly and fastened it in position with one of the pack straps; it would probably rain even here when summer was over, and he could not afford to have the books spoiled or washed away.

Then he removed his harness and checked its individual straps with one eye, while he examined with the other the ridge where he planned to set the buckles. Two or three pieces of leather which seemed superfluous he laid beside the pack; the rest, with the buckles, he strapped once more about his body in order to leave both hands free for climbing.

The upper edge of the slab was as jagged as it had appeared from below and he had little difficulty in snagging the straps around the projections. He arranged one buckle so that its reflected beams pointed southward, rising at a small angle; the other he tried to set for the eyes of a searcher directly overhead. Neither, of course, was very likely to attract attention — they really depended only upon Arren’s light, since the red sun would only be above the horizon for a short time before and after summer and the air lanes would be empty during the hot season itself. Still, it was the best that Dar Lang Ahn could do, and with the bits of metal arranged to his satisfaction he took one more look around before descending.

The landscape was shimmering more than ever. Once again he felt almost sure that he had seen something disappear behind a slab of rock, in the direction from which he had come. He dismissed the illusion from his mind and began to climb down, paying close attention to his hand and foot holds; he had no wish to spend his remaining few hours with the agony of a broken bone, even if there was no way to make the time really comfortable.

He reached the bottom safely and, after a few moments’ thought, dragged his book pack into the shadow of the ridge. Then he settled himself calmly, using the pack as a pillow, folded his arms across his chest, closed his eyes, and relaxed. There was nothing more to do; perhaps his centuries-trained sense of duty was not exactly satisfied, but even it could not find a specific task to make him perform.

It would be nearly impossible to put his thoughts into words. No doubt he regretted dying earlier than his fellows. Quite possibly he considered the bleak landscape spread before him and wondered idly just how much farther he would have had to get in order to live. However, Dar Lang Ahn was not human, and the pictures which formed most of his thoughts, being shaped by an eyesight and cultural background drastically different from those of any human being, could never be properly translated to the mind of a person of Earth. Even Nils Kruger, as adaptable a young man as might be found anywhere and who certainly became as well acquainted with Dar Lang Ahn as anyone could, refuses to guess at what went on in his mind between the time he settled down to die and the time Kruger caught up with him.

The boy’s approach went unheard by Dar, keen though his ears normally were. He was not entirely unconscious, however, for the scent of water affected him enough not only to snap his eyes open but to send him bounding to his feet. For just an instant his eyes roved wildly about in all directions, then they both fastened on the figure toiling over the rock a dozen yards away.

Dar Lang Ahn had never before had reason to distrust either his memory or his sanity, but this time he felt that something must be wrong with one or the other. This living thing was shaped correctly, more or less, but the size was unbelievable. It towered a good foot above his own four feet and a half, and that was simply wrong. The other oddities were minor — eyes in the front of its face, a beaklike projection above the mouth, pinkish coloration instead of purplish-black — but the height put it out of any class which Dar could drag from his memory. People, other than accident victims who had had to start over, were four and a half feet tall, just now; Teachers were a little under eight. There was nothing between those limits that walked on two legs.

Then even the size was driven from his thoughts by another fact. The smell of water that had roused him was coming from this creature; it must be literally drenched with the stuff. Dar Lang Ahn started to move toward the newcomer as this realization struck him, but he stopped after the first step. He was too weak. He groped backward, seeking support from the slab of rock in whose shadow he had been lying. With its aid he held up while the unbelievable thing approached; then, with the scent of water burning his nostrils, everything seemed to let go at once. A curtain dropped in front of his eyes and the rough stone at his back ceased to hurt. He felt his knees give, but not his impact with the lava.