SWORD OF THE SEVEN SUNS
By GARDNER F. FOX
Their world was dark. Their Machine-God
was dead. Savage hordes threatened to overrun
them, smash them. What, then, was Flane doing
out in the desert, alone with the wreck of a
spaceship—and a strangely-wrought sword?
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Spring 1947.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The spaceship fled like a silver bullet across black nothingness. Rowsof round windows stared outward from its curved sides. Beyond thewindows whirled clouds of interstellar dust. An occasional lump ofmeteoric rock rebounded from the metal hull.
To port shone the triple stars of a constellation utterly foreign tothose in the ship. To starboard gleamed the strangely altered patternof the constellation Hercules. Straight ahead lay the great star Deneb,and circling around it, giant orbs shimmering in its light, were theplanets it held in its awful grip.
Closer and closer swept the ship, trailing billows of spacedust. Overone of the planets that closely resembled the voyager's home planet insize and density, the vessel thundered. It rocketed downward, sweepingsidewise into the gravitational pull of the planet. It dropped intoswirling clouds, swept into sunlighted sky, roaring gustily.
Inside the ship a voice cried hysterically, "Calling captain! Callingcaptain!"
"Captain responding. Over to forward jet ports."
"The forward jets are shot, sir! Unused for too long. Ever since weleft Earth, they've remained untested. Can't fix them now. No time.Inside gravity of planet. Over."
The man in the captain's uniform bowed his head, eyes tightly shut.There was bitterness in his heart, but no despair. Six hundred lightyears from Earth, farther out among the stars than any man had evertrespassed, and now, this! A hand squeezed his shoulder. He glancedup, found the blue eyes of his wife smiling at him, heard her voicewhisper, "At least we'll go together, darling."
He patted her hand.
Through the compressed quartz panels they stared at the world unfoldingbeneath them. Rolling plains covered with long grasses that swayedgracefully before the wind bordered high, black mountains that cuppedmounds of snow at their peaks. In the distance was the blue of a sea.
"A lovely world," he whispered.
"You were right, Jon. Your calculations proved the habitability ofDeneb's planets. You would have been famous."
He chuckled, "This is one consolation, darling. But I'd hoped for somuch more than that ... a land to bring the restless spirits, wherethey could dwell apart from the regimented ones, to form a new countryto call their own...."
He broke off. The ship was quivering, shuddering in the mad pace of itsunchecked flight. Thunder rolled like monumental cannonfire behind it,as the air was displaced and rolled together.
The captain worked the controls feverishly. His hands sought by theirswiftness, by their strength, to fire those frontal jets, to stop thisdeadly dash through planetal atmosphere. He bit his lips and shook hishead, whispering, "No use—no use!"
There was desert under the silvered belly of the ship. Heat wavesglimmered up from the hot sands, distorting everything. Far in thedistance lay a round yellow thing. The spaceship headed toward it, asthough at the bullseye of a target.
"We're going to hit it," said the man.
"What is it, Jon?"
Yello