Clifford Simak - Dusty Zebra - And Other Stories

My clutching fingers, feeling along the wall slightly above and before my head, found a break in the stone and I knew that I had reached the postern gate which I had selected for my entrance to the temple.

Holding my breath for fear that the guard on duty there might hear it, I peered cautiously around the edge of the niche in which the gate was set. Like a graven image, upright, holding the ritualistic position of a Martian temple guard, the fellow stood there directly in front of the gate. The point of the massive sword rested on the stone flagging at his feet and both hands gripped the hilt.

I gathered myself together, gripped the edge of the wall tightly with my fingers to aid in directing my leap, took a firmer grip on the end of the lead-weighted club, and sprang.

The guard never lifted the point of the sword from the ground. I doubt if he recognized me as an Earthman at all. As I loomed in front of him, my club, which had whirled through an arc as I leaped, descended viciously on his skull. I caught his falling body with my left arm and my right hand closed in an iron grip over his mouth to strangle any sound that he might make. Easily I laid him on the flagging and moved to the door. With my hand on the heavy latch I stopped a moment to consider donning the clothes of the dead guard, but decided not to do so. His robes would hinder my movements and my greater size would betray me as quickly as my earthly dress.

The hinges of the door creaked slightly as I let myself in, but the slight sound must have gone unheeded, for nothing happened, although I waited for long minutes, poised to flee upon the slightest indication of any disturbance.

The corridor into which the door led was pitch black and when I closed the door behind me I was seized for a moment with that indescribable terror that descends upon one when facing danger in darkness. For a split second I wanted to use my flash, but I knew, even as I wanted to do it, that even the faintest glimmer of light might betray me and foil my plans.

From my talks with Ken, who had twice passed this way to rob the temple of its precious relic, I was fairly well acquainted with the route which I was to take to gain the great hall in the center of the temple. I knew that the corridor in which I stood ran straight ahead for a matter of two hundred paces and then veered sharply, almost at a right angle, to the left.

I was to follow the corridor until I gained another, which was more extensively used and which was lighted. There was little danger, I knew, to be expected in the dark corridor. It was after I had gained the second corridor that I would have to exercise the utmost caution. With my hand trailing along the wall of the corridor, I moved forward, tiptoeing so that the sound of my footsteps would be deadened.

I came to the turn in the corridor and saw a faint light in the distance where it entered the second corridor. Cautiously I moved forward, keeping sharp watch on all sides.

Near to the floor on the left wall my eyes made out a small patch of light and I stopped stock still to study it and try to determine its origin. I was unable to do so until I slithered across from the right wall, which I was hugging, to the left side and then I saw that the patch of light came from a small oblong chink in the right wall. Apparently the wall separated the corridor from another room and a chunk of stone had fallen from it.

Straining my ears, I heard a mumble of voices. Martian voices, apparently coming from the room from which the light streamed through the hole in the wall.

Determined to find what was transpiring in the room, I slid forward along the wall.

Only a matter of half a dozen feet from the hole, I was suddenly arrested in my tracks. My foot was lifted to take another step forward and I did not lower it. I was like a pointer who has suddenly run afoul of a bird. I believe that my ears actually moved forward a little, as I tried to catch again the words which I had heard.

Then, distinctly and as if the speaker were almost at my elbow, came other words, spoken in English and in a voice that I knew…the voice of the man I sought, Ken Smith!

“No, damn you. You’ll rot in Hell before I tell you. I rattled them in their filthy box. Rattled them and laughed when I heard them rattle. I rattled them, do you understand, blast your filthy souls. They’re only bones, musty, rotten bones, like the bones of my body over there will be in a few weeks and like your bones will be when you die…”

The voice had risen, shriller and shriller, to suddenly break in a terrible scream of pain that brought cold perspiration out of every pore in my body.

The screaming ended and I heard the rumble of a Martian voice.

“Kenneth Smith, you will tell us where the holy skeleton of Kell-Rabin is. Not until then will we give you a merciful release. Remember, we could leave you here, with the current turned on, high…higher than it was just now, and forget about you for years. Perhaps then you would tell us. You are immortal, you will never die. Could you endure an eternity of torture?”

Again I heard the voice of my friend, high and shrill.

“I will tell you where the bones are…I will tell you.”

I could almost see the breathless suspense of those who were on the other side of the wall.

“…I will tell you where the bones of Kell-Rabin are—when your stinking planet has dissolved into bloody dust and floats among the stars.”

The rumble of Martian voices boomed out like the angry beat of a drum. The screaming began again, rising until it seemed that it would burst the ear-drums.

With a leap I was at the hole in the wall and my fingers hooked themselves on the edge of a great block. With all my strength I tore at it and felt it give beneath my hands. Frantically I tugged and it came free. Madly I battered at other blocks, pulling them out, fighting madly to clear a space large enough to admit my body.

All the time the horrible agonized screaming beat upon my brain and urged me to greater effort. The screaming, too, drowned out the sound of crunching masonry and falling blocks of stone.

A last block came free and I leaped through the gap. Even as I leaped, my hands sought the holsters and before my feet hit the floor I had both electro-guns out.

It was a strange tableau that confronted me. On a table to one side of the room lay a naked human body, with the skull split open, the face gone, and the neck horribly mangled. On another table, about which were grouped five Martian priests, stood a small machine, attached by two wires to a transparent cylinder about three feet in height.

It was the cylinder, however, that held my eye and struck terror deep into my soul. It was filled with some sort of milky liquid and in the liquid floated a naked, pulsating human brain. Just below the brain hung a face, the face of Ken Smith! His features were distorted in pain, from the cylinder rose the shrill screams of torture. Below the face trailed a portion of the spinal cord and what were apparently the voice organs.

I was mad with terror and anguish at the scene before me. In two leaps I was at the table where the cylinder sat, had swept away the astonished priest who stood in my way, and flipped up the switch of the tiny mechanism beside the cylinder. Abruptly the transparency of the cylinder faded and the screaming was cut short. As I swung away from the table to face the priests, who were swiftly recovering from their astonishment at my appearance, I saw, out of the corner of my eye, that the cylinder had assumed a solid shape, a dull-grey, metallic shade.

The priests surged forward, but as I jabbed the two guns forward, they fell back, murmuring.

“One word out of you,” I hissed scarcely above a whisper, “and I’ll fry you where you stand.”