Clifford Simak - No Life of Their Own And Other Stories

“I saw it again!” yelled George. “Just a flash, like a blue light blinking.”

“It’s the Flame that burns in space,” Old Ben said, his bright eyes glowing with excitement. “I’ve heard wild tales about the Flame and Space Beasts, but I never really did believe them.”

“Start believing in them, then,” said Johnny grimly, “because there’s a Space Beast out there, too.”

Old Ben’s face twisted and he fumbled his greasy cap with misshapen, greasy hands. “You don’t say, Johnny?”

Johnny nodded. “That’s right, Ben.”

The old man stood silent for a moment, shuffling his feet.

“I forgot, Johnny. I came up to report. I loaded the fuel chambers and checked everything, like you told me to. Everything is ship-shape.”

“We’re going deeper into the Belt,” said Johnny. “Into a sector that is taboo to the miners. You couldn’t hire one of them to come in here. So be sure everything is ready for prompt action.”

Ben mumbled a reply, shuffling away. But at the door he stopped and turned around.

“You know that contraption I picked up at the sale in Sandebar?” he said. “That thing I bought sight unseen?”

Johnny nodded. It was one of the jokes of the ship. Old Ben had bought it in the famous Martian market, bought it because of the weird carvings on the box which enclosed it. Somehow or other, those carvings had intrigued the old man, touched some responsive chord of wonder deep in his soul. But the machine inside the box was even more weird … an assembly of discs and flaring pipes, an apparatus that had no conceivable purpose or function. Old Ben claimed it was a musical instrument of unknown origin and despite the friendly jibes and bickering of the other crew members he stuck to that theory.

“I was just thinking,” said Old Ben. “Maybe that danged thing plays by radiations.”

Johnny grinned. “Maybe it does at that.”

The old man turned and shuffled out.

The ship careened and bucked as George blasted with port tubes to duck a wicked chunk of rock that suddenly loomed in their path. Johnny saw the needle-like spires as the asteroid swung below them, spires that would have sheared the ship as a knife cuts cheese.

There was no doubt now that the flash they had sighted actually was a light. They could see it, a streak of blue that arced briefly across the vision port, lending its surroundings a bluish tint.

“It’s an asteroid,” declared George, “and our little friend is heading right for it.”

What he had said was true. The Space Beast had gained on them but was still almost directly ahead, apparently moving in toward the distant light.

The Karen drove on with flaming tubes. The meteoric screens flared again and again, in short flashes and long ripples, as tiny debris of the Belt struck like speeding bullets and were blasted into harmless gas.

“Johnny,” asked George, “what are we going to do?”

“Keep going,” said Johnny. “Head for the blue light. We want to see what it is if we can. But be ready to sheer off and give it all you’ve got at the first sign of danger.”

He looked at Karen for confirmation of the decision. She nodded at him with a half-smile, her eyes bright … the kind of brightness that had shown in the eyes of old Jim Franklin when his fists knotted around the controls as his ship thundered down toward new terrain or nosed outward into unexplored space.

Hours later they were within a few miles of the asteroid. Minutes before the weird Space Beast had dived for the surface, was roosting on one of the rocky spires that hemmed in the little valley where the light flamed in blue intensity.

Speechless, Johnny stared down at the scene. The flame was not a flame at all. Not a flame in the sense that it burned. Rather it was a glowing crown that hovered over a massive pyramid.

But it was not the flame, nor the roosting Beast of Space, nor even the fact that here was an old tale come to life which held Johnny’s attention. It was the pyramid. For a pyramid is something which never occurs naturally. Nature has never achieved a straight line and a pyramid is all straight lines.

“It’s uncanny,” he whispered.

“Johnny,” came George’s hoarse whisper, “look over that highest peak. Just above it.”

Johnny lined his vision over the peak, saw something flash dully. A shimmering flash that looked like steel reflecting light.

He squinted his eyes, trying to force his sight just a little farther out into the black. For an instant, just a fleeting instant, he saw what it was.

“A ship!” he shouted.

George nodded, his face grim.

“There’s two or three out there,” he declared. “I saw them a minute ago. See, there’s one of them now.”

He pointed and Johnny saw the ship. For a moment it seemed to roll, catching the shine from the blue light atop the pyramid.

Johnny’s lips compressed tightly. The skin seemed to stretch, like dry parchment, over his face.

“Derelicts,” he said, and George nodded.

Karen had turned from the vision plate and was staring at them. For the first time there was terror on her face. Her cheeks were white and her lips bloodless. Her words were little more than a whisper: “Derelicts! That means …”

Johnny nodded, finishing the sentence: “Something happened.”

A nameless dread reached out and struck at them. Alien fear creeping in from the mysterious reaches of the Asteroid Belt.

“Johnny,” said George quietly, “we better be getting out of here.”

Karen screamed even as Johnny leaped for the controls.

Through the panel he saw what had frightened her. Another Space Beast had swept across their vision … and another … and another. Suddenly the void seemed to be filled with them.

Mad thoughts hammered in his brain as he reached for the levers. Something had happened to those other ships! Something that had left them drifting hulks, derelicts that had taken up an orbit around the asteroid with its flame-topped pyramid. This was an evil place with its derelicts and its Space Beasts and its flaming stones. No wonder the miners shunned it!

His right hand shoved the lever far over and the rockets thundered. The ship was shaking, as if it was being tossed about by winds in space, as if something had it in its teeth and was worrying it.

Johnny felt the blood drain from his face. For an instant his heart seemed to stand stock still.

There was something wrong. Something was happening to the ship!

He heard the screech of shearing metal, the shriek of suddenly released atmosphere, the crunching of stubborn beams and girders.

His straining ears caught the thud of emergency bulkheads automatically slamming into place.

The rocket motors no longer responded and he snatched his eyes away from the control panel to glance through the vision plate.

The ship was falling toward the asteroid! Directly below loomed the little valley of the pyramid. From where he stood he could look straight down into the glare of the blue light.

A great wing, a wing of writhing flame, swept quarteringly across the vision plate. For a moment the cabin was lighted with a weird green and blue … the gleaming instruments reflecting the light from the wing and the pyramid flame. Weird shadows danced and crawled over the walls, over the whiteness of the watching faces.

The Space Beast veered off, volplaning down toward the flame. Johnny caught his breath. The Beast was monstrous! Cold shivers raced up and down his spine. His flesh crawled.

From the creature’s beak hung a mass of twisted steel, bent and mangled girders ripped from the Karen’s frame. Gripped in its talons, or what should have been its talons, was an entire rocket assembly.