THRALLS of the ENDLESS NIGHT
By LEIGH BRACKETT
The Ship held an ancient secret that meant
life to the dying cast-aways of the void.
Then Wes Kirk revealed the secret to his
people's enemies—and found that his betrayal
meant the death of the girl he loved.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Fall 1943.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Wes Kirk shut his teeth together, hard. He turned his back on Ma Kirkand the five younger ones huddled around the box of heat-stones andwent to the doorway, padding soft and tight with the anger in him.
He shoved the curtain of little skins aside and crouched there with histhick shoulders fitted into the angle of the jamb, staring out, coldwind threading in across his splayed and naked feet.
The hackles rose golden and stiff across Kirk's back. He said carefully,
"I would like to kill the Captain and the First Officer and the SecondOfficer and all the little Officers, and the Engineers, and all theirfamilies."
His voice carried inside on the wind eddies. Ma Kirk yelled,
"Wes! You come here and let that curtain down! You want us all tofreeze?" Her dark-furred shoulders moved rhythmically over the rockingchild. She added sharply, "Besides, that's fool's talk, Jakk Randl'stalk, and only gets the sucking-plant."
"Who's to hear it?" Kirk raised his heavy overlids and let his pupilswiden, huge liquid drops spreading black across his eyeballs, suckingthe dim grey light into themselves, forcing line and shape out ofblurred nothingness. He made no move to drop the curtain.
The same landscape he had stared at since he was able to crawl byhimself away from the box of heat-stones. Flat grey plain runningright and left to the little curve of the horizon. Rocks on it, andedible moss. Wind-made gullies with grey shrubs thick in their bottoms,guarding their sour white berries with thorns and sacs of poisoned dustthat burst when touched.
Between the fields and the gullies there were huts like his own, sunkinto the earth and sodded tight. A lot of huts, but not as many asthere had been, the old ones said. The Hans died, and the huts wereempty, and the wind and the earth took them back again.
Kirk raised his shaggy head. The light of the yellow star they calledSun caught in the huge luminous blackness of his eyes.
Beyond the Hansquarter, just where the flat plain began to rise, werethe Engineers. Not many of them any more. You could see the dusty lumpswhere the huts had been, the tumbled heaps of metal that might havemeant something once, a longer time ago than anyone could remember. Butthere were still plenty of huts standing. Two hands and one hand anda thumb of them, full of Engineers who said how the furrows should belaid for the planting but did nothing about the tilling of them.
And beyond the Engineers—the Officers.
The baby cried. Ma Kirk shrilled at her son, and two of the youngerones fought over a bone with no meat on it, rolling and snapping on thedirt floor. Kirk shifted his head forward to shut out the sound of themand followed the line of the plain upward with sullen, glowing eyes.
The huts of the Engineers were larger than those in the Hansquarter.The huts of the Officers were not much larger than the Engineers', butthere were more of them and they climbed higher up the grey slope.Five, nearly six hands of them, with the Captain's metal-roofed placehighest of all.
Highest and nearest, rig