Clifford Simak - Grotto of the Dancing Deer - And Other Stories

To Jacobs the sword had been a symbol. He had carried it from the Earth to this forsaken planet, where the only evidence of life was ten huge domes of quartz set over as many mines, owned and operated completely by the Universal Ore Mining Company.

Only twenty-four hours ago he had told Tom the story of the sword. Now Jacobs lay motionless on the floor and the ancient blade was dyed with the blood of vanquished foemen.

Gently Tom lowered the point of the sword to the floor and gazed upon his handiwork. Before him lay three bodies. One was that of a Martian, a yellow-skinned, eight-limbed body, the skin covered with hideous warts. The grinning head, almost severed from the trunk, boasted three eyes, two in the same position as those of a Terrestrial, the other on the top of the hairless head. The mouth was large, as was also the nose, with the ears almost twice as large as those of an Earth man.

The other two bodies were those of Selenites, the gigantic Moon men with their small heads, their abnormally developed torsos and correspondingly large, powerful arms and their small, but singularly powerful legs, built on the same lines as those of a kangaroo.

Tom lifted the sword again and ran his fingers along its edge. They came away red and sticky.

He laughed grimly. The sword, ancient weapon as it may have been, had another tale added to the long list which had started, said legends, in the year 1815, in the Napoleonic Wars. For century upon century the blade had been regarded as a heirloom, a thing of sentiment. On this day, however, it had come again into its own. It had leaped and flashed, bitten deeply into flesh and bone, drunk blood.

Stepping over the body of one of the Selenites, Tom made his way to the side of the prostrate figure of Ben Jacobs. He had seen Jacobs felled like an ox by the huge fist of one of the now dead Selenites, but there was a chance the man still lived.

Kneeling on the floor, he placed his ear to the breast of the prone body. There was not so much as a flutter of the heart. Tom turned his attention to Jacobs’ head and what he found there convinced him the brilliant young scientist, who had been in charge of the atmosphere plant, was no longer alive.

Tom stood up and gazed about the death-ridden room. It presented a spectacle of ordered complexity with its many dials, tubes, pipes, valve controls, motors and the huge central control board. A silence, which was only accentuated by the steady hum of the machinery, assailed him and he suddenly realized he was the only Terrestrial alive at Shaft Number Nine.

Outside there might still lurk a few of the Selenites and possibly a few Martians, but they would be few. The only machine gun at the station, spitting out over 150 atomic pellets every minute, had wrought havoc among the mutineers before a stone, thrown by one of the Selenites, had bowled over McGregor, the radio operator. The latter, who had been taken unawares by the outbreak, had been unable to reach his post to send out an S.O.S.; and had philosophically, and entirely in keeping with his Scotch blood, done the next best thing by unlimbering the gun and turning it against the mob of howling miners who were destroying the radio station.

If McGregor had been at his desk, as his duty required him to be, instead of playing a few hands of cards with old Andy Schwartz, the head engineer, word of the uprising and an appeal for help would have been sent out at once. Failing in this, he had at least saved the mine and costly apparatus from immediate destruction, by the simple process of reducing the number of hands for the performance of the pending destruction.

The uprising had been a complete surprise, coming just as the second shift was coming out of the shaft and the third shift ready to go down. The miners in Shift Number One, evidently by a pre-arranged signal, had come storming forth from their quarters as soon as the attack was launched.

Evidently the captains underground had been neatly disposed of, for there had been no warning anything was amiss. The first indication of trouble came when the men had come up without the captains. Even before questions could be asked concerning the absent Terrestrials, the blow had been struck.

“It’s those damn Martians,” Hal Eaton, young time keeper, only six weeks from the Earth, had screamed as a huge Selenite struck him down with a blow of his mighty pick.

Tom, jerking his atomic pistol from its holster, knew that what young Eaton had just screamed was true. The Martians were the trouble-makers and the traitors of the solar system. Once an insolent people, who had regarded themselves as the most advanced in culture and erudition in the universe, they still, even after hundreds of years, resented the bondage in which it had been necessary to place them to curb their diabolic cunning and haughty egotism. They were forever forming secret societies, always cooking up local revolutions. Where there was trouble, one would usually find a scheming Martian.

Tom leveled the pistol at the mob of Selenites rushing at him and pressed the trigger. There was a sharp, spiteful spat. The leading Moon man disappeared in a puff of white dust, his upraised shovel clattering to the ground.

Rapidly the pistol spat and the charge broke. Even the ape-brained Selenites, who seldom knew fear, could not stand in front of that pistol which caused one of their number to evaporate into thin air every time it spoke.

From all over the compound came the sound of firing and the pounding of many feet on the hard packed earth. There were no other sounds. It was uncanny, the way these dumb, ox-like Selenites attacked, silently, ponderously, armed only with their mining tools, or lacking these, with bare hands.

From somewhere near the atmosphere plant came a rapid “pit-pat,” a sound not unlike the tramp of rain across a tin roof. Someone had unlimbered the machine gun. Lucky thing! Lulled into a false sense of security by the apparent orderliness of the station, the former superintendent, a soft fool who had no business holding such a position, had ordered the gun stored away as a thing for which there would be no further need. He had lasted six months and had been transferred back to Earth, at his own request. Too bad he couldn’t have stayed to taste the fruits of his asinine management.

A stone whizzed past Tom’s head. The Moon men were returning. They had retreated as far as the rock pile. From around the corner of the pile they came, each carrying an armful of missiles, heaving them as they ran.

Tom jerked up his arm, leveling his gun. Before he could press the trigger a rock, flung with considerable strength, caught him flush on the elbow. The gun clattered to the baked earth.

As he dived to retrieve it, another stone struck him in the ribs and toppled him sidewise. Stones pattered all about him and as he struggled to his knees he was again bowled over.

The Moon men were almost upon him. They were rotten throwers, or they would have bagged him for good and all. They couldn’t keep on making only casual hits, however. Eventually one would connect with his head and it would be lights out. For a fleeting moment, he hoped one would finish him before the lousy beggars reached him.

“Lie low, I’ll clean the devils out.”

Tom twisted his head as the spiteful rattle of the machine gun broke loose.

In front of the atmosphere plant, old McGregor, his white hair looking like a lion’s mane, his shirt ripped to shreds, his teeth working savagely on an oversized quid of tobacco, squatted behind the gun. It seemed to quiver with the excitement of the moment as it spat out blasting death.

Over Tom’s head the pellets whispered their death song and behind him he knew the charging Selenites were being blown into clouds of white ash.

Slowly he started to worm his way toward McGregor, keeping his head low, for he did not wish to intercept one of the lethal pellets.