Leigh Brackett by The Halfling & Other Stories

Author:The Halfling & Other Stories [Halfling, The & Stories, Other]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-08-27T21:00:15+00:00

Schmidt stood shivering. "It was cold. Cold as death."

"You're not dead, are you?" "No."

"You're not hurt?" T-No."

"Then shut up." Barrier glared at Schmidt, at the others. "The next one of you that panics, I'll knock him flat."

He was afraid himself. Miserably afraid. But he said, "They haven't hurt us yet. Maybe they can't. Anyway, let's wait a while before we blow our tops."

The young men swallowed and straightened their faces out into stiff lines and tried hard not to see the shadows. Schmidt twitched as he walked. Barrier wished there was a sound in the forest. A squeak, a grunt, a roar that meant something warm-blooded and alive. There wasn't. Even their own footfalls were deadened on the soft ground.

The mists thickened, sparkling, bright. The alien sun was blotted out. The shadows skulked and clung. Sweat poured down the cheeks of the men, stained their drill jackets. Hubbard said, licking his lips, "How much farther?"

"Another mile or two."

Barrier wished the mists were not there. They made him feel shut in and suffocated. He worried about bogs. The blue daylight was maddening. He thought of the honest yellow glare of Sol and wondered what madness it was that sent men out to the ends of the galaxy seeking other suns.

He stumbled suddenly, and looked down. At first he thought the obstacle was a rounded stone half buried in the mold of fallen petals. And then he knew it wasn't. He stooped and lifted it up and held it out to Hubbard.

"You wanted man," he said.

Hubbard rubbed his palms up and down along his 181 thighs. He stared at the thing in Barrier's hands, and the others stared over their shoulders, and the thing grinned at them with a single gaping line of teeth.

Hubbard reached out and took it.

"It's very old," he said. "As old as that." He pointed to Gordon's trophy.

Schmidt said in a curiously shrill voice, "There were men here once, and animals. Now there aren't any. They're all dead, and I know what killed them." He stared hard at the shadows.

Barrier swore. "That's fine talk from a scientist. I thought you people were trained not to jump to conclusions."

Hubbard muttered, "Barrier is right." He looked at the skull and repressed a shiver. "Come on, I want to see those ruins."

They went on, so close together that their shoulders rubbed. The mists grew denser and brighter and heavier. The men sweated, ignoring the shadows, desperately ignoring them.

Without any warning, the shadows sprang.

There was a moment's terrible screaming from the men, and then there was silence, and after that a few stifled, horrid sounds. The skull fell from Hubbard's grasp and rolled away, grinning a wise grin as it went. Barrier swayed where he stood, clawing blindly with his hands at his own flesh.

He could see the others. Through a veil of shadowy gloom he could see them, dimly, and the gloom was behind his eyes and not before them. Some of the men had tried to run, and the shadows had caught them as they ran.

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