WAY OF THE GODS
By HENRY KUTTNER
Spawn of atomic fission, this strange company
of mutants exiled by humanity battles against
enslavement in a foreign world dominated by
the evil Spirit of the Crystal Mountain!
[Transcriber’s Note: This etext was produced from
Thrilling Wonder Stories, April 1947.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
CHAPTER I
New Worlds
He looked at the October morning all about him as if he had never seenOctober before. That was not true, of course. But he knew that he wouldnever see it again. Unless they had mornings, and Octobers—where he wasgoing. It did not seem likely, though the old man had talked a greatdeal about key-patterns and the selectivity of the machine, and themultiple universes spinning like motes in a snowstorm through infinity.
“But I’m human!” he said aloud, sitting cross-legged on the warm brownearth and feeling the breeze which gave the lie instantly to histhought. He felt the gentle pull at his shoulder-blades which meant thathis wings were fluttered a little by the breeze, and instinctively heflexed the heavy bands of muscle across his chest to control thewing-surfaces.
He was not human. That was the trouble. And this world, this brightOctober world that stretched to the horizon around him was made toshelter the race that had become dominant, and was jealous of itsdominion. Humanity, that had no place for strangers among its ranks.
The others did not seem to care very much. They had been reared in thecreche almost from birth, under a special regime that isolated them fromthe humans. The old man had been responsible for that. He had built thehuge house on the hillside, swooping curves of warmly-colored plasticthat blended into the brown and green of the land—an asylum that hadfinally failed. The walls were breached.
“Kern,” someone behind him said.
The winged man turned his head, glancing up past the dark curve of hiswings. A girl came toward him down the slope from the house. Her namewas Kua. Her parents had been Polynesian, and she had the height and thelithe grace of her Oceanic race, and the shining dark hair, the warm,honey-colored skin. But she wore opaque dark glasses, and across herforehead a band of dark plastic that looked opaque too, and was not.Beneath, her face was lovely, the red mouth generously curved, thefeatures softly rounded like the features of all her race.
She was not human either.
“It’s no use worrying, Kern,” she said, smiling down at him. “It’ll workout all right. You’ll see.”
“All right!” Kern snorted scornfully. “You think so, do you?”
Kua glanced instinctively around the hillside, making sure they werealone. Then she put both hands to her face and slipped off the glassesand the dark band from her forehead. Kern, meeting the gaze of herbright blue eye, was conscious again of the little shock he always feltwhen he looked into her uncovered face.
For Kua was a cyclops. She had one eye centered in her forehead. And shewas—when the mind could accept her as she was, not as she should be—abeautiful woman in spite of it. That blue brilliance in the dusky facehad a depth and luster beyond the eyes of humans. Heavy lashes ringedit, and the gaze could sink fathom upon fathom in her eye and neverplumb its depths.
Kua’s eye was a perfect lens. Whatever lens can do, her eye could do. Noone could be sure just what miraculous m