A Man without a World, this 1,000,000-year-old
Daryesh! Once Lord of a Thousand Suns, now condemned
to rove the spaceways in alien form, searching
for love, for life, for the great lost Vwyrdda.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories September 1951.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
"Yes, you'll find almost anything man has ever imagined, somewhere outin the Galaxy," I said. "There are so damned many millions of planets,and such a fantastic variety of surface conditions and of lifeevolving to meet them, and of intelligence and civilization appearingin that life. Why, I've been on worlds with fire-breathing dragons,and on worlds where dwarfs fought things that could pass for thegoblins our mothers used to scare us with, and on a planet where a raceof witches lived—telepathic pseudohypnosis, you know—oh, I'll betthere's not a tall story or fairy tale ever told which doesn't havesome kind of counterpart somewhere in the universe."
Laird nodded. "Uh-huh," he answered, in that oddly slow and soft voiceof his. "I once let a genie out of a bottle."
"Eh? What happened?"
"It killed me."
I opened my mouth to laugh, and then took a second glance at himand shut it again. He was just too dead-pan serious about it. Notpoker-faced, the way a good actor can be when he's slipping over a tallone—no, there was a sudden misery behind his eyes, and somehow it wasmixed with the damnedest cold humor.
I didn't know Laird very well. Nobody did. He was out most of the timeon Galactic Survey, prowling a thousand eldritch planets never meantfor human eyes. He came back to the Solar System more rarely and forbriefer visits than anyone else in his job, and had less to say aboutwhat he had found.
A huge man, six-and-a-half feet tall, with dark aquiline features andcuriously brilliant greenish-grey eyes, middle-aged now though itdidn't show except at the temples. He was courteous enough to everyone,but shortspoken and slow to laugh. Old friends, who had known himthirty years before when he was the gayest and most reckless officerin the Solar Navy, thought something during the Revolt had changed himmore than any psychologist would admit was possible. But he had neversaid anything about it, merely resigning his commission after the warand going into Survey.
We were sitting alone in a corner of the lounge. The Lunar branch ofthe Explorers' Club maintains its building outside the main dome ofSelene Center, and we were sitting beside one of the great windows,drinking Centaurian sidecars and swapping the inevitable shop-talk.Even Laird indulged in that, though I suspected more because of theinformation he could get than for any desire of companionship.
Behind us, the long quiet room was almost empty. Before us, the windowopened on the raw magnificence of moonscape, a sweep of crags andcliffs down the crater wall to the riven black plains, washed in theeerie blue of Earth's light. Space blazed above us, utter black and amillion sparks of frozen flame.
"Come again?" I said.
He laughed, without much humor. "I might as well tell you," he said."You won't believe it, and even if you did it'd make no difference.Sometimes I tell the story—alcohol makes me feel like it—I startremembering old times...."
He settled farther back in his chair. "Maybe it wasn't a real genie,"he went on. "More of a ghost, perhaps. That was a haunted planet. Theywere great a million years before man existed on Earth. They spannedthe stars and they knew things the present civilization hasn't evenguessed at. And