Chapter I: Front Matter

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. Rows of round windows stared outward from its curved sides. Beyond the windows whirled clouds of interstellar dust. An occasional lump of meteoric rock rebounded from the metal hull.

To port shone the triple stars of a constellation utterly foreign to those in the ship. To starboard gleamed the strangely altered pattern of the constellation Hercules. Straight ahead lay the great star Deneb, and circling around it, giant orbs shimmering in its light, were the planets it held in its awful grip.

Closer and closer swept the ship, trailing billows of spacedust. Over one of the planets that closely resembled the voyager's home planet in size and density, the vessel thundered. It rocketed downward, sweeping sidewise into the gravitational pull of the planet. It dropped into swirling clouds, swept into sunlighted sky, roaring gustily.

Inside the ship a voice cried hysterically, "Calling captain! Calling captain!"

"Captain responding. Over to forward jet ports."

"The forward jets are shot, sir! Unused for too long. Ever since we left 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 light years from Earth, farther out among the stars than any man had ever trespassed, and now, this! A hand squeezed his shoulder. He glanced up, found the blue eyes of his wife smiling at him, heard her voice whisper, "At least we'll go together, darling."

He patted her hand.

Through the compressed quartz panels they stared at the world unfolding beneath them. Rolling plains covered with long grasses that swayed gracefully before the wind bordered high, black mountains that cupped mounds 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 of Deneb's planets. You would have been famous."

He chuckled, "This is one consolation, darling. But I'd hoped for so much more than that ... a land to bring the restless spirits, where they could dwell apart from the regimented ones, to form a new country to call their own...."

He broke off. The ship was quivering, shuddering in the mad pace of its unchecked 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 their swiftness, by their strength, to fire those frontal jets, to stop this deadly dash through planetal atmosphere. He bit his lips and shook his head, whispering, "No use--no use!"

There was desert under the silvered belly of the ship. Heat waves glimmered up from the hot sands, distorting everything. Far in the distance lay a round yellow thing. The spaceship headed toward it, as though at the bullseye of a target.

"We're going to hit it," said the man.

"What is it, Jon?"

Yellow and glittering, it lay like a giant's plaything, half buried in the sand. It was a prism with clean, straight facets fitted together that seemed to stretch out at every angle to gather in the heat from the desert. Like a yellow diamond, it coruscated in the sunlight.

"I don't know," the man said softly. "It could be something that dropped from the skies to bury itself in this spot, or it could be the--the work of intelligent creatures!"

Their trajectory of flight shortened. The nose of the ship fell lower, aimed at the prism. The noise of its passage startled two white birds that ran on the sand. The birds ran faster, blurring along on the amber desert.

From behind the amber prism a two-legged thing came running. In his hand there was a flash and glitter.

"It's a man!" the woman shrieked, a red-nailed hand to her lips. "And he has a sword in his hand."

"Poor devil," sighed the captain. "We're heading right at him. He can't get away."

The ship came down with unbelievable rapidity. The man on the sand had taken only a few steps from the prism when a black shadow overhauled him. He had no time even to turn his head.

There was an explosion that ripped metal apart, that tore gaping holes in the smooth facets of the golden prism, that sent geysers of desert sand upward in dry showers. When the sands came down, there was only scattered wreckage.

Like a twisted, broken toy, the spaceship lay on the sand, partially obscuring the prism. Gaunt girders stuck up through the opened hull. Smoke swirling from the ship's insides mixed with the falling sand.

Somewhere in the wreckage, a voice wailed in agony and despair.