Sword of the Seven Suns

The man in the captain's uniform bowed his head, eyes tightly shut. There was bitterness in his heart, but no despair. Six hundred light years from Earth, farther out among the stars than any man had ever trespassed, and now, this! A hand squeezed his shoulder. He glanced up, found the blue eyes of his wife smiling at him, heard her voice whisper, "At least we'll go together, darling."

He patted her hand.

Through the compressed quartz panels they stared at the world unfolding beneath them. Rolling plains covered with long grasses that swayed gracefully before the wind bordered high, black mountains that cupped mounds of snow at their peaks. In the distance was the blue of a sea.

"A lovely world," he whispered.

"You were right, Jon. Your calculations proved the habitability of Deneb's planets. You would have been famous."

He chuckled, "This is one consolation, darling. But I'd hoped for so much more than that ... a land to bring the restless spirits, where they could dwell apart from the regimented ones, to form a new country to call their own...."

He broke off. The ship was quivering, shuddering in the mad pace of its unchecked flight. Thunder rolled like monumental cannonfire behind it, as the air was displaced and rolled together.

The captain worked the controls feverishly. His hands sought by their swiftness, by their strength, to fire those frontal jets, to stop this deadly dash through planetal atmosphere. He bit his lips and shook his head, whispering, "No use--no use!"

There was desert under the silvered belly of the ship. Heat waves glimmered up from the hot sands, distorting everything. Far in the distance lay a round yellow thing. The spaceship headed toward it, as though at the bullseye of a target.

"We're going to hit it," said the man.

"What is it, Jon?"

Yellow and glittering, it lay like a giant's plaything, half buried in the sand. It was a prism with clean, straight facets fitted together that seemed to stretch out at every angle to gather in the heat from the desert. Like a yellow diamond, it coruscated in the sunlight.

"I don't know," the man said softly. "It could be something that dropped from the skies to bury itself in this spot, or it could be the--the work of intelligent creatures!"

Their trajectory of flight shortened. The nose of the ship fell lower, aimed at the prism. The noise of its passage startled two white birds that ran on the sand. The birds ran faster, blurring along on the amber desert.

From behind the amber prism a two-legged thing came running. In his hand there was a flash and glitter.

"It's a man!" the woman shrieked, a red-nailed hand to her lips. "And he has a sword in his hand."

"Poor devil," sighed the captain. "We're heading right at him. He can't get away."

The ship came down with unbelievable rapidity. The man on the sand had taken only a few steps from the prism when a black shadow overhauled him. He had no time even to turn his head.

There was an explosion that ripped metal apart, that tore gaping holes in the smooth facets of the golden prism, that sent geysers of desert sand upward in dry showers. When the sands came down, there was only scattered wreckage.

Like a twisted, broken toy, the spaceship lay on the sand, partially obscuring the prism. Gaunt girders stuck up through the opened hull. Smoke swirling from the ship's insides mixed with the falling sand.

Somewhere in the wreckage, a voice wailed in agony and despair.

I

The machine stood in the domed end of the dark temple, gleaming dully. Above it a hemisphere of translucent metal filtered pale moonbeams that drew flashes of silvered fire from the great metal bulk. Against the black basalt walls, the Machine brooded sullenly. It was great, was the Machine. It was worshipped. It held power of life and death over all Klarn. It possessed all power. It was god.

And yet, the Machine was--dead.

A figure slipped forward from the shadows that ringed the marble floor. From pillar to ivory pillar he crept, a hand ever on the stained leather hilt of his sword. Moonlight flicked over the close-cropped black hair and the tight uniform of the dulars that moulded his chest, and sheathed his long, lean thighs. Emblazoned on the chest of his jacket was the resurgent red dragon with fire spouting between its fangs, symbolic of his rank. A broad belt suspended his scabbard and blade, and sweeping upward from his shoulders were the metal epaulettes that bespoke his connection with royalty.

Flane looked around him, grinning.

He had eluded the mekniks. He could keep his appointment with Vawdar, unless the mekniks got to him first. Most of the mekniks were celebrating the death of his mother, the Princess Gleya. There would be rich liqueurs and much singing, and temple harlots to dance on the planked tabletops, sodden with the lees of spilled wine.

Flane was bitter, and savage. There was a fire in his heart that made him lust to kill. The mekniks were glad that his mother was dead, for she was all that held the mekniks and the dulars together. Now the mekniks would rule Klarn, with the aid of the Darksiders. Only Vawdar had a chance of keeping peace among the factions. And Vawdar was a hunted man, even as was Flane.

He came and knelt before the Machine, and touched his forehead to the cold marble floor. This was the ritual insisted upon by the mekniks, who insisted that the Machine was a deity, and there was enough shrewd caution in Flane to bow before it, just on the off chance that they might be right.

Then he rose and went to the grilled metal girdle that kept the Machine enclosed in its niche. He took out a strangely-wrought key and dangled it in his hand.

Engraven on the sides of the Machine were a series of symbols. Diamond-shaped, they were, with the tracery of a star surrounding each diamond. One of those diamonds was the lock that would restore to life the dead Machine. Flane hoped that the key he held would unlock the slumbering power of the Machine. If not--well, Vawdar and he were as good as dead, themselves.

He inserted the key in the slit-like hole of one of the diamonds and tried to turn it.

He whispered curses, attempting to move the key by sheer force.