Hal Clement - Cycle of Fire

Eventually the pilot pointed, and following his finger the boy saw what could only be their landing place. It was a level platform, apparently a natural terrace, far up the side of one of the mountains. The valley below was filled with ice, part of a glacier which remained solid for fully a dozen more miles after flowing beneath this point. The terrace was simply an entryway; the mouths of several huge tunnels which seemed to lead deep into the mountain were visible opening onto it. Several winged shapes lying near the tunnel mouths left no doubt of the nature of the place.

To Kruger it seemed as though they could glide to it from their present position, but Dar Lang Ahn knew only too well the fierce downdrafts present along the edge of the terrace when the sun was not shining on the mountain face, and took his last opportunity to climb. For two or three minutes as he circled, the glider was in the last rays of Alcyone and must have been visible to the watchers on the terrace below.

Then the star vanished behind a peak and the terrace swelled under the aircraft’s nose. Dar brought the machine across the level space with five hundred feet to spare, made two tight slipping turns within its confines to get rid of the excess altitude, and settled like a feather in front of one of the tunnel openings. Kruger, half-frozen from the last climb, stumbled thankfully out of the machine and gratefully accepted the water jug which one of the waiting natives immediately presented him.

Apparently they were expected — naturally enough; the other gliders must have arrived long before.

“Do you need rest before talking to the Teachers?” asked one of those who had met them. Dar Lang Ahn looked at Kruger, who he knew had been awake much longer than he normally was, but to his surprise the boy answered, “No; let’s go. I can rest later; I’d like to see your Teachers and I know Dar Lang Ahn is in a hurry to get back to the village. Is it far to their office?”

“Not very distant.” Their questioner led the way back into the tunnel, which presently turned into a spiral ramp leading downward. They followed it for what seemed fully half an hour to the boy, who began to wonder just what their guide considered “very distant,” but finally the slope eased off onto the level floor of a large cavern. The cave itself was nearly deserted, but several doors led into it, and their guide headed them toward one of these.

The room beyond proved to be an office and was occupied by two being’s who were rather obviously, from Dar Lang Ahn’s description, Teachers. As he had said, they were identical with him in appearance, with the single exception of their size. These creatures were fully eight feet tall.

They each took a step toward the newcomers and waited silently for introductions. Their motions were slow and a trifle clumsy. Kruger noted, and with that observation the suspicion he had entertained for some time grew abruptly in his mind to a virtual certainty.

EARTH LIES some five hundred light years from Alcyone and the star cluster in which it lies. This is not far as galactic distances go, so it must have been some time before Nils Kruger first met Dar Lang Ahn that the data gathered by the Alphard was delivered to the home planet. Since the survey vessel had obtained spectra, photometric and stereometric readings, and physical samples from some five hundred points in the space occupied by the Pleiades as well as biological and meteorological data from about a dozen planets within the cluster, there was a good deal of observational matter to be reduced.

In spite of this, the planet where Nils Kruger was presumed to have died came in for attention very quickly. There was not enough data on hand to make known its orbit about the red dwarf sun to which it was presumably attached or the latter’s relationship to the nearby Alcyone, but a planet, a dwarf sun, and a giant sun all close together within a mass of nebular gas form together a situation which is rather peculiar by most of the cosmological theories. The astrophysicist who first came across the material looked at it again, then called a colleague; announcement cards went out, and a burning desire to know more began to be felt among the ranks of the astronomers. Nils Kruger was not quite as dead as he himself believed.

But Kruger himself was not an astronomer, and while he had by now a pretty good idea of the sort of orbit Abyormen pursued about its sun he knew no reason to suppose that the system should be of special interest to anyone but himself. He had put thoughts of Earth out of his mind — almost, for he had something else to consider. He expected to live out his life on Abyormen; he had found only one being there whom he considered a personal friend. Now he had been informed by the friend himself that their acquaintance could last only a few more of Kruger’s months, that the other would die his natural death at the end of that time.

Kruger didn’t believe it or, at least, didn’t believe it was necessary. Dar Lang Ahn’s description of the Teachers had aroused a suspicion in his mind. His sight of the great creatures had confirmed those suspicions, and he settled down to his first conversation with them possessed of a grim determination to do everything in his power to postpone the end that Dar Lang Ahn regarded as inevitable. It did not occur to him to question whether or not he would be doing a favor to Dar Lang Ahn in the process.

There is no way of telling whether the Teachers who questioned Nils Kruger sensed his underlying hostility to them; no one asked them during the short remainder of their lives, and they did not bother to record mere suspicions. They certainly showed none themselves; they were courteous, according to their standards, and answered nearly as many questions as they asked. They showed no surprise at the astronomical facts Kruger was forced to mention in describing his background; they asked many of the same questions that the Teacher of the villagers had put to him earlier. He pointed out that the previous Teacher had kept his fire-lighter, when the conversation went that way; he was prepared to defend Dar Lang Ahn’s association with fire, but the Teachers did not seem bothered by the fact. Dar’s relief at this was evident even to Kruger.

The Teachers showed him the Ice Ramparts in considerable detail — more than Dar Lang Ahn himself had ever seen. The caverns in the mountain were only an outpost; the main settlement was far underground and miles further inland. Several tunnels connected it with landing stages similar to the one on which they had arrived. It was here that the libraries were located; they saw load after load of the books which had come in from the cities scattered over Abyormen being filed for further distribution. Asked when this would take place the Teacher made no bones about the answer.

“It will be about four hundred years after the end of this life until the next starts. Within ten years after that the cities should be peopled again and the process of educating the populations begin.”

“Then you have already started to abandon your cities. Do all your people come here to die?”

“No. We do not abandon our cities; the people live in them to the end.”

“But the one Dar Lang Ahn and I found was abandoned!”

“That was not one of our cities. The people who lived near it were not our people and their Teachers were not of our kind.”

“Did you know about this city?”

“Not exactly, though those Teachers are not complete strangers to us. We are still undecided about what to do in that connection.” Dar interrupted here.

“We’ll simply have to go back with enough people to take the books away — and I’m sure you want Nils’s fire-lighter, too, even though we don’t use fire. It is knowledge and should go into the libraries.”