The Gates of Creation

Wolff sat guard while the others slept on their hard beds of white rock. He listened to the distant animal cries: the bray-wails, roars, and some new sounds, a shrill fluting, a plaintive sobbing, a whistling. Once, something beat out a gonging, and there was the flutter of wings overhead. He rose to his feet now and then and slowly pivoted around to cover all points of the compass. At the end of a half-hour, he woke up Enion and gave him the beamer. He had no watch to determine the tune, any more than the others did, but, like them, he knew the measured passage of tune. As a child, he had gone through a species of hypnosis which enabled him to clock the seconds as accurately as the most precise of chronometers.

For a while, he did not sleep. He was worried about the first watch of the next night, when Palamabron would be entrusted with the beamer. Of all the Lords, he was the most unstable. He hated Vala even more than the others. Could he withstand the temptation to kill her while she slept? Wolff decided he would have a talk with Palamabron in the morning. His cousin must understand that if he killed her, he would have to kill them all. This he could do with the beamer, but he would be alone from then on. This was a curious thing. Though the Lords could not stand to be with each other, they could stand the idea of being alone even less. In other circumstances, they would want no one but themselves, of course. In these, they shared a dread of their father and some comfort in having companions in misery and peril.

Just before he went to sleep, he had an idea. He swore. Why had he not thought of it? Why had not the others? It was so obvious. There was no need to creep and slip along on the ground. With boats, they could travel swiftly and much more surely. They would be safe from the predators. He would see what they could do about this in the morning.

He was propelled from sleep at dawn by shouting. He sat up to see Tharmas shooting at a maned beast, one just like the liongator he had scared off by singeing its hair. The beast came down the hill swiftly, plop-plopping as its suction pads pulled free. Behind it lay three dead mates. The survivor came within ten feet and then dropped, its snout cut half off.

Tharmas held the beamer while he stared at the carcass. Wolff shouted at him to turn the power off. The ray was drilling into the side of the hill. Tharmas suddenly realized what he was doing and deactivated the weapon. By then, most of the charge was gone. Groaning, Wolff took the beamer back. Now he was down to his final power pack.

The others went to work swiftly. They took turns with the knives of Theotormon and Vala and stripped the tough hides off the dead beasts. This was slow work, both because of their ineptness and because they kept sliding on the glassy surface. And they could not refrain from arguing with him, saying that all the hard work was for nothing. Where would he get the framework for the boats he planned? Even if he could use these hides as coverings for the boats, there were not enough to go around.

He told them to shut up and keep on working. He knew what he was doing. With Luvah, Vala, and Theotormon, he shuffled off to the nearest bushes. Here it was necessary to use more power to kill an animal that was eating the berries and refused to give up its claim. It was like a Chinese dragon. It hissed and struck threateningly at them before they got within its range. Its skin was as thick and ridged as armor plate and could be penetrated only by a beam at full-power. Even its eyes were protected. When Wolff shot at these, the ray struck transparent coverings. The creature began waving its head wildly so that Wolff could not keep the beam on one spot. Eventually, he cut through the armor back of the head, and it turned over and died, exposing the serrated plates and tiny suction discs on which it made progress.

“If this keeps up, we’ll be out of power,” he said to the others. “Pray that that time does not come.”

Wolff tested the toughness of the bark of the bushes and found it to be strong indeed. Chopping down the bushes and slicing off lengths to make a framework for the rough coracles he had in mind would be long hard work and ruin the sword. It was then, glancing at the caterdragon-as he called it-that he saw a ready-made vessel. Well, not quite finished, but it should need less work to complete than the original boat he had in mind.

The sword, driven by his powerful arm, was equal to the task of separating the caterdragon’s locomotion plates from the body armor. Thereafter, the sword and the knife cut up the internal organs. By then the other Lords were with them, and they took turns at the work. All were soon covered with blood, which also ran over the area and made the surface even more frictionless. Several of the lion-gators, attracted by the odor of blood, and then driven frantic by it, attacked. Wolff had to expend more power in killing them.