Sisters of Tomorrow by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wesleyan University Press
Published: 2016-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

Northwest Smith opened his eyes to Martian sunlight streaming thinly through the dingy window. Something wet and cold was slapping his face, and the familiar fiery sting of segir-whisky burnt his throat.

“Smith!” Yarol’s voice was saying from far away. “N.W.! Wake up, damn you! Wake up!”

“I’m—awake,” Smith managed to articulate thickly. “Wha’s matter?”

Then a cup-rim was thrust against his teeth and Yarol said irritably, “Drink it, you fool!”

Smith swallowed obediently and more of the fire-hot segir flowed down his grateful throat. It spread a warmth through his body that awakened him from the numbness that had gripped him until now, and helped a little toward driving out the all-devouring weakness he was becoming aware of, slowly. He lay still for a few minutes while the warmth of the whisky went through him, and memory sluggishly began to permeate his brain with the spread of the segir. Nightmare memories … sweet and terrible … memories of—

“God!” gasped Smith suddenly, and tried to sit up. Weakness smote him like a blow, and for an instant the room wheeled as he fell back against something firm and warm—Yarol’s shoulder. The Venusian’s arm supported him while the room steadied, and after a while he twisted a little and stared into the other’s black gaze.

Yarol was holding him with one arm and finishing the mug of segir himself, and the black eyes met his over the rim and crinkled into sudden laughter, half-hysterical after that terror that was passed.

“By Pharol!” gasped Yarol, choking into his mug. “By Pharol, N.W.! I’m never gonna let you forget this! Next time you have to drag me out of a mess I’ll say—”

“Let it go,” said Smith. “What’s been going on? How—”

“Shambleau.” Yarol’s laughter died. “Shambleau! What were you doing with a thing like that?”

“What was it?” Smith asked soberly.

“Mean to say you didn’t know? But where’d you find it? How—”

“Suppose you tell me first what you know,” said Smith firmly. “And another swig of that segir, too, please. I need it.”

“Can you hold the mug now? Feel better?”

‘‘Yeah—some. I can hold it—thanks. Now go on.”

“Well—I don’t know just where to start. They call them Shambleau—”

“Good God, is there more than one?”

“It’s a—a sort of race, I think, one of the very oldest. Where they come from nobody knows. The name sounds a little French, doesn’t it? But it goes back beyond the start of history. There have always been Shambleau.”

“I never heard of ’em.”

“Not many people have. And those who know don’t care to talk about it much.”

“Well, half this town knows. I hadn’t any idea what they were talking about, then. And I still don’t understand, but—”

“Yes, it happens like this, sometimes. They’ll appear, and the news will spread and the town will get together and hunt them down, and after that—well, the story doesn’t get around very far. It’s too—too unbelievable.”

“But—my God, Yarol!—what was it? Where’d it come from? How—”

“Nobody knows just where they come from. Another planet—maybe some undiscovered one. Some say Venus—I know there

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