Lake of Fire
Date: 2020-12-18T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Science fiction; Short stories; Mars (Planet) -- Fiction

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Lake of Fire

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Title: Lake of Fire

Author: Frank Belknap Long

Illustrator: Herman B. Vestal

Release date: December 18, 2020 [eBook #64072]
Most recently updated: October 18, 2024

Language: English

Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LAKE OF FIRE ***

Lake of Fire

by FRANK BELKNAP LONG

When you've been to Mars, when you've struggled
with men and ships and supplies like some tremendous
Herculean figure in the morning of the world,
you'll never really feel at home on Earth....

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories May 1951.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

Steve found the mirror in the great northwestern desert. It was lying half-buried in the sand, and the wind howled in fury over it, and when he bent to pick it up the sun smote him like a shining blade, dividing his tall body into blinding light and wavering shadow.

I knew it was a Martian mirror before he straightened. The craftsmanship was breathtaking and could not have been duplicated on Earth. It was shaped like an ordinary hand mirror; but its glass surface was like a lake of fire, with depth beyond depth to it, and the jewels sparkling at its rim were a deep aquamarine which seemed to transmute the sun-glow into shimmering bands of starlight.

I could have told Steve that such mirrors, by their very nature, were destructive. When a man carries a hopeless vision of loveliness about with him, when he lives with that vision night and day, he ceases to be the undisputed master of his own destiny—

"She's alive, Jim," Steve said. "A woman dead fifty thousand years. A woman from a civilization that flourished before the dawn of human history."

"Take it easy, Steve," I warned. "The Martians simply knew how to preserve every aspect of a mirrored image. Say howdedo to her if you like. Press your lips to the glass and see what happens. But don't mistake an imitation of life for the real thing."

"An imitation of life!" Steve flared. "Man, she just smiled at me. She's aware of us, I tell you."

"Sure she is. Her brain was mirrored too, every aspect of its electro-dynamic structure preserved forever by a science that's lost forever. Get a grip on yourself, Steve."

I was hot and tired and dusty. My throat was parched and I didn't feel much like arguing with him. But I had my reasons for being stubborn.

"Men have found Martian mirrors and gone mad," I said. "Don't take any chances, Steve. We don't know yet what it's rigged with. Why not play it safe? A thousand cycles of direct current should melt it down."

"Melt her down!" Steve's eyes narrowed in sudden fury. "Why, it would be murder!"

Steve got up and brushed sand from his knees. He held the mirror up so that the red Martian sunlight caught and aureoled the splendor of a face that offered a man no chance of help if he ever let go.

A pale, beautiful face, the eyes fringed with long, dark lashes, the lips parted in a mocking smile. A living image capable of mercurial changes of mood, unnaturally still one moment, smiling and animated the next.

One thing at a time, I thought. Don't drive him too hard.

"Some men have carried them about for years," I said. "But just remember what falling in love with an image can mean. You'll never hold her in your arms, Steve. And compulsions can kill."

"She's alive as flesh-and-blood is alive," he said, glaring at me.

"Easy, Steve!"

I could see that I was going to have trouble with my stout-hearted buddy, Captain Stephen Claymore.

He could have stared at a mountain of gold unmoved. He could have knelt with a wry chuckle, and let a handful of diamonds trickle through his wiry, bronze-knuckled hands, in utter contempt for what diamonds could buy on Earth.

He could have thrown back his head and laughed, at wealth, at glory, at anything you want to name that men prize highly on Earth. But a beautiful woman was a temptation apart. A beautiful woman—

Steve grabbed my arm. "Look out, Tom!" he cried. "Watch it!"

The bullet whizzed past like a heat-maddened insect. Steve leapt back, and I flattened myself.

The attack was no great surprise. When people take up a new way of life, when they pull up stakes and go striding into the sunrise, strife paces after like a ravenous hound, red tongue lolling. When the first colonists from Earth swarmed into the crumbling Martian cities a good third of them ended up in stony desolation with their hearts drilled through.

They danced to riotous tunes, calling for louder music and stronger wine, and they fought savagely to set up little kingdoms of tyranny eighty feet square.

Everywhere anarchy reigned, and haggard-eyed, desperate men crouched behind smoke-blackened ruins and held off other men as greedy as themselves. They fought and died by dozens, by hundreds, their minds inflamed by the quickly-made discovery that the Martian cities were vast treasure troves.

You had to go prospecting, you had to search, and when you found your own shining treasure you didn't want to share it with any man alive.

Steve had his gun trained on the wall ahead when he ducked down at my side.

"Yes, sir," I whispered, half to myself. "This is going to be rough!"

"They asked for it!" Steve said.

His gun roared twice.

From the wall ahead came a burst of gunfire in reply.

"If they think they're going to get this mirror away from me—"

I looked at his grim, sweat-beaded face. "I'll help you fight for it," I said.

"So nice of you," he grunted.

"Then maybe you'll have sense enough to bury it face down in the sand."

Guns went off thirty feet directly in front of us. Red sand geysered up, granite cracked and splintered. You could feel the awful heat of the blazing exchange of bullets.

I could see faces between the chinks. Malignant faces moving from peep-hole to peep-hole like scavenger birds hopping about in the desert.

I was aiming at one of the peep-holes when Steve groaned and sagged against me. His gun arm sagged, and I could see that a bullet had pierced his shoulder high up.

"I'm sorry, Tom," he whispered, hoarsely. "I was careless, damn it!"

"Never mind, Steve," I said.

"Now they'll close in and get you. Better take my gun. You can use two guns."

"I won't need two guns, Steve," I said. "I'm walking into the open with my hands raised."

"You're crazy!" he breathed, his eyes on my face. "We're outnumbered five to one. They'll drop you the instant you step out from behind this wall."

My gun was hot and smoking. I smiled and tossed it to the sand.

"I'll be back in a minute and fix up that shoulder," I said.

"You'll be walking to your death," he said. "They've been trailing us for days, hoping we'd stumble on something. They must have seen me pick up that mirror."

"They trailed us because they thought we looked experienced, rugged," I said. "They thought we were following a map. They just haven't got what it takes to go prospecting for themselves. They're hyenas of the desert, Steve."

"All right—hyenas. That means they won't respect a white flag. If you walk out with your hands raised they'll burn you down before you've taken five steps."

I steadied my helmet and unloosed my collar so that I wouldn't feel cramped.

"Don't worry, Steve," I said.

I knew they saw me the instant I stepped out from behind the wall.

The silence was ominous, and I could feel their eyes upon me, hot and deadly.

I didn't raise my hands. It didn't seem quite right to let them think I was seeking a truce. A man may be a fool to play fair with killers, but something made me change my mind about raising my hands.

I'd give them their chance—ten seconds. I wouldn't try to bargain for those ten seconds by walking toward them under false colors. I'd just trust to luck and—

Steve had never seen the weapon I held in my palm. It was a tiny electrostatic accelerator tube, capable of flexible, high precision control of ions with energies up to twelve million electron-volts.

It was a simple thing—and unbelievably destructive. It made no sound at all. But ten seconds after I clicked it on, the desert directly in my path was glowing white hot.

Just a glow, white, dazzling for an instant. Then a dull rumbling shook the ground and the wall opposite blackened and crumbled. The heat was like a blast of incandescent helium gas from a man-made sun.

I turned and walked back to where Steve was lying.

"I didn't want to do it that way," I said. "But I had no choice. It was them—or us."

Steve seemed not to realize we were no longer in danger. There was fear in his eyes, and he was staring at me as if I'd just returned from the dead.

In a way I had. A man may die fifty deaths while counting off ten seconds in his mind.

"I'll give you something to help you sleep, Steve," I said.

It didn't take me long to dress and bind up his wound. He winced once or twice, but he never took his eyes from the mirror.

"You promised to bury it face down in the sand," I said.

He looked at me. "You know better than that," he said. "I promised nothing of the sort."

"It's like falling in love with a ghost, only worse," I said.

"That's where you're wrong. There's nothing ghostly about her."

I mixed him a sleeping draught, using the little water we had left.

In five minutes he was snoring. I pried the mirror from his fingers and propped it up against a rock, so that he could see her face when he woke up.

Then I stretched myself out in the sand, kicked off my shoes and stared up at the sky. The sun was just sinking to rest, and there was a thin sprinkling of stars in the middle of the sky.

The stars seemed cold and immeasurably remote.

Would it work out?

Could it possibly work out? Was I sticking out my neck in a gamble so big it was like attempting to pierce the sun, and hammer out a new humanity on a great blazing anvil heated to millions of degrees centigrade?

I laughed, alone with my thoughts. Nothing dared, nothing gained. What does a man gain by striking bargains with the mouse in himself?

I awoke in the cool dawn. The morning mists had rolled back and the red desert looked almost beautiful in the sun-glow.

Steve was sitting up, staring at the mirror. The light shifted suddenly, and I could see the radiance which smouldered in the depths of the glass.

I got up, walked to the wall and peered over Steve's shoulder. The girl was looking at him, her face so beautiful it fairly took my breath away. It was as though after a lifetime of wandering she'd found the only man in the world for her.

Her face was bright with sympathy, with compassion for Steve. But Steve sat slumped in utter dejection, his eyes burning holes in his face. He didn't even look up when I spoke to him.

"She knows, Tom," he whispered, hoarsely. "She turned pale when that bullet hit me. She was relieved when you dressed the wound. She's been watching over me all night, like an angel of mercy."

"You'll need her more and more," I said. "You know what the end will be, Steve. Complete hopelessness in an empty room."

He stood up, his face savage.

"I never asked your advice," he ground out. "I'm not asking it now."

"I've got to save you, Steve," I said.

"I love her, do you hear? I don't care what happens to me!"

I picked up the mirror before he could guess my purpose. I swung about and I brought that rare and beautiful object down on the rock Steve had been sitting on.

There was a splintering crash, a crackling burst of white flame.

There was a splintering crash, a crackling burst of flame....

Steve gave a great despairing cry. He stood for an instant staring down at the shattered fragments of the mirror. Then he came at me like a charging bull, his eyes bloodshot.

I clipped him lightly on the jaw.

"That's all I wanted to know, Steve," I said. "Thanks, pal."

I looked down at him, lying in a crumpled heap at my feet.

I was glad he hadn't fallen on his wounded side. He was plenty sturdy, and he came from a long-lived family, and I didn't think a little clip on the jaw could hurt him. I hoped he'd forgive me when he woke up. That was important, because I thought a lot of Steve.

When you've been to Mars, when you've fought your way through the red and raging dust storms, and labored beneath the naked glare of the sun, and juggled with men and ships and supplies like some tremendous Herculean figure in the morning of the world, you'll never really feel at home on Earth. You'll see the world of ordinary men and women as a vision of Lilliput, too small to be measurable in terms of human worth. You'll be lost and helpless, blind and staggering beneath the weight of a memory you can't throw off. A memory of bigness, too much bigness, integrated into your every fiber, as much a part of you as the beating of your heart.

You'll lurch and over-reach yourself, you'll never feel at home on Earth, never really at home. You'll find a way to come back to Mars.

I smiled down at Steve.

So Steve had come back to go prospecting, like an ordinary greed-driven man, and only I knew he was one of the scant dozen great constructive geniuses who had made possible man's conquest of space.

He was an engineer, a physicist and—a man in need of a partner. So I'd just stepped up and introduced myself. Tom Gierson, who knew every square foot of Mars. For my purpose one Earth name was as good as another, and Tom Gierson had a sturdy ring.

Hard-bitten Tom Gierson, bronzed by the harsh Martian sunlight, as much at home in the desert as the sturdy little spiked plants that thrust their way up through the parched soil when the spring begins to break.

Steve's finest achievement was years in the past, but he was a young man still, with a young man's need of a woman as great as himself to share every moment of his waking life. That woman was waiting for him, but I had to be sure that he'd really go berserk if I smashed the glass.

I was sure now.

I raised my arm, and out of the ruins the Martians came.

Steady hands lifted Steve up, and a hushed silence ringed Steve round.

"Azala," I said. "Where is she—"

Then I saw her. She was advancing straight toward me through the glare of sunset on desert sand, a shining eagerness in her eyes. The girl of the mirror, young and straight and alive, her hair the color of red sand and sunset glow, her eyes twin dark stars.

She paused before me and raised her eyes in questioning wonder.

"Go to him," I said. "He will never love another woman. I can promise you that."

She ran to Steve with a little glad cry and fell to her knees beside him. I wanted to break through the circle and slap Steve on the back, and wish him all the happiness on Mars. The first Earthian to wed a Martian, and it was tremendous, and I wanted to tell Steve—

But how could I tell him that Martians had numerous ways of watching Earthians, the very best being mirrors which were really two-way televisual instruments. How could I tell him that the alert Martian women had all been trained to watch and observe Earthians day and night? And all the while the Earthians thought they were carrying about with them, in beautiful jeweled artifacts of a dead culture, the living images of their heart's desire!

Steve was awake now and sitting up straight, and the image was warm and alive in his arms. But how could I make Steve understand? I had a wild impulse to say: "I'd change places with you if I could, Steve. She's just about the cutest kid I know."

You get to thinking that way when you've mingled with Earthians around desert campfires, studying them as you'd study a new neighbor who comes knocking at your door, the neighbor you fear at first and are never quite sure of until you really get to know and like him.

You see, we had so much to offer one another. A young race, constructive, brawling, shouting its defiance to the stars. And an old race, imaginative, sensitive, heirs to a civilization on the wane, but needing just a few Steves to make it young and great again.

I'd picked Steve because he was one of the shining ones of Earth. I'd known from the start that persuading him to wed a Martian woman would take plenty of doing.

Earthians are funny that way. Love to them is a complex thing, a web that has to be skillfully woven right from the start. Beauty alone isn't enough. You have to say to them: "You'll never hold that woman in your arms. Can't you see how hopeless it is?"

Then the iron goes deep. If a love flies straight in the teeth of despair and comes out all right in the end, it will be as strong as death.

So I'd arranged for Steve to stumble on the mirror, to pick up that two-way televisual circuit into a very special paradise for two. And I'd opposed and warned him just to make sure he'd think of himself as a man facing hopeless odds to win through to an undying love.

On the other side it was easier. Azala had fallen in love with Steve before we put her on the other end of that televisual circuit. But seeing him wounded and in need of her had turned it into what Earthians call a great love.

Perhaps Earthians would someday smash the aura that had flamed about the heads of the Martian rulers for fifty thousand years.

I'd done my best to smash it. I had gone simply and humbly among Earthians, seeking a fresh wind to trundle the cinders of a dying culture.

I dreamed of Martians and Earthians standing equal and strong and proud, hands linked in friendship, cemented by bonds of kinship, separated by no gulfs such as now yawned before me, separating me from Steve.

I wanted to shout: "Good luck, Steve, Azala. You're good kids and you deserve the best."

Then I remembered that Steve was nearly forty, not quite a kid by Earthian standards. But, looking at Azala, I was pretty sure that Steve still had his best years ahead of him.

I wanted to go up to him and shake his hand for the last time. But now the hands of my people were tugging at my shoulders, stripping off the Earthian garments I'd worn so long with scant respect for my desire to be as human and regular as the next guy.

They got the suit off, and then I saw the old familiar cloak, purple and billowing out with shimmering star images, and I shuddered a little because I knew I'd never really feel at ease wearing it from that moment on.

They got me into the cloak and they bent down and straightened the stiff imperial folds and I was suddenly bored and deathly weary.

A chill wind from the stars seemed to blow over me, but I stood straight and still, and allowed them to fasten on the cloak the great glowing jewel I'd worn from childhood.

Steve saw me then. He was sitting up very straight, his hand on Azala's tumbled, red-gold hair, and I heard him say: "Holy smoke."

I stared down at the jewel, blazing and shuddering and shivering in the desert air, and I shut my eyes tight, wishing for the first time in my life that it did not proclaim me Tulan Sharm, the Glorious One, Temporal Ruler of the Seven Cities before Whom the Stars Bowed.

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LAKE OF FIRE ***

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