{"id":2192,"date":"2025-03-06T01:29:47","date_gmt":"2025-03-06T01:29:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/?p=2192"},"modified":"2025-03-06T01:29:47","modified_gmt":"2025-03-06T01:29:47","slug":"the-creatures-that-time-forgot-by-ray-bradbury","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/?p=2192","title":{"rendered":"The Creatures That Time Forgot by Ray Bradbury"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Creatures That Time Forgot by <a href=\"https:\/\/quizlit.org\/best-science-fiction\">Ray Bradbury<\/a> was first published in Planet Stories in 1946. The story is about short-lived humans on a planet similar to Mercury.<\/p>\n<p><em>This post may contain affiliate links that earn us a commission at no extra cost to you.<\/em><\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-text-align-center\">The Creatures That Time Forgot by Ray Bradbury<\/h2>\n<div class=\"epyt-video-wrapper\">\n<div class=\"__youtube_prefs__ epyt-facade no-lazyload\"><button class=\"epyt-facade-play\"><\/button><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading has-text-align-center\">The Creatures That Time Forgot by Ray Bradbury<\/h3>\n<p>During the night, Sim was born. He lay wailing upon the cold cave stones. His blood beat through him a thousand pulses each minute. He grew, steadily.<\/p>\n<p>Into his mouth his mother with feverish hands put the food. The nightmare of living was begun. Almost instantly at birth his eyes grew alert, and then, without half understanding why, filled with bright, insistent terror. He gagged upon the food, choked and wailed. He looked about, blindly.<\/p>\n<p>There was a thick fog. It cleared. The outlines of the cave appeared. And a man loomed up, insane and wild and terrible. A man with a dying face. Old, withered by winds, baked like adobe in the heat. The man was crouched in a far corner of the cave, his eyes whitening to one side of his face, listening to the far wind trumpeting up above on the frozen night planet.<\/p>\n<p>Sim\u2019s mother, trembling, now and again, staring at the man, fed Sim pebble-fruits, valley-grasses and ice-nipples broken from the cavern entrances, and eating, eliminating, eating again, he grew larger, larger.<\/p>\n<p>The man in the corner of the cave was his father! The man\u2019s eyes were all that was alive in his face. He held a crude stone dagger in his withered hands and his jaw hung loose and senseless.<\/p>\n<p>Then, with a widening focus, Sim saw the old people sitting in the tunnel beyond this living quarter. And as he watched, they began to die.<\/p>\n<p>Their agonies filled the cave. They melted like waxen images, their faces collapsed inward on their sharp bones, their teeth protruded. One minute their faces were mature, fairly smooth, alive, electric. The next minute a desiccation and burning away of their flesh occurred.<\/p>\n<p>Sim thrashed in his mother\u2019s grasp. She held him. \u201cNo, no,\u201d she soothed him, quietly, earnestly, looking to see if this, too, would cause her husband to rise again.<\/p>\n<p>With a soft swift padding of naked feet, Sim\u2019s father ran across the cave. Sim\u2019s mother screamed. Sim felt himself torn loose from her grasp. He fell upon the stones, rolling, shrieking with his new, moist lungs!<\/p>\n<p>With a soft padding of naked feet Sim\u2019s father ran across the cave.<\/p>\n<p>The webbed face of his father jerked over him, the knife was poised. It was like one of those prenatal nightmares he\u2019d had while still in his mother\u2019s flesh. In the next few blazing, impossible instants questions flicked through his brain. The knife was high, suspended, ready to destroy him. But the whole question of life in this cave, the dying people, the withering and the insanity, surged through Sim\u2019s new, small head. How was it that he understood? A newborn child? Can a newborn child think, see, understand, interpret? No. It was wrong! It was impossible. Yet it was happening! To him. He had been alive an hour now. And in the next instant perhaps dead!<\/p>\n<p>His mother flung herself upon the back of his father, and beat down the weapon. Sim caught the terrific backwash of emotion from both their conflicting minds. \u201cLet me kill him!\u201d shouted the father, breathing harshly, sobbingly. \u201cWhat has he to live for?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo, no!\u201d insisted the mother, and her body, frail and old as it was, stretched across the huge body of the father, tearing at his weapon. \u201cHe must live! There may be a future for him! He may live longer than us, and be young!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The father fell back against a stone crib. Lying there, staring, eyes glittering, Sim saw another figure inside that stone crib. A girl-child, quietly feeding itself, moving its delicate hands to procure food. His sister.<\/p>\n<p>The mother wrenched the dagger from her husband\u2019s grasp, stood up, weeping and pushing back her cloud of stiffening gray hair. Her mouth trembled and jerked. \u201cI\u2019ll kill you!\u201d she said, glaring down at her husband. \u201cLeave my children alone.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The old man spat tiredly, bitterly, and looked vacantly into the stone crib, at the little girl. \u201cOne-eighth of her life\u2019s over, already,\u201d he gasped. \u201cAnd she doesn\u2019t know it. What\u2019s the use?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As Sim watched, his own mother seemed to shift and take a tortured, smoke-like form. The thin bony face broke out into a maze of wrinkles. She was shaken with pain and had to sit by him, shuddering and cuddling the knife to her shriveled breasts. She, like the old people in the tunnel, was aging, dying.<\/p>\n<p>Sim cried steadily. Everywhere he looked was horror. A mind came to meet his own. Instinctively he glanced toward the stone crib. Dark, his sister, returned his glance. Their minds brushed like straying fingers. He relaxed somewhat. He began to learn.<\/p>\n<p>The father sighed, shut his lids down over his green eyes. \u201cFeed the child,\u201d he said, exhaustedly. \u201cHurry. It is almost dawn and it is our last day of living, woman. Feed him. Make him grow.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Sim quieted, and images, out of the terror, floated to him.<\/p>\n<p>This was a planet next to the sun. The nights burned with cold, the days were like torches of fire. It was a violent, impossible world. The people lived in the cliffs to escape the incredible ice and the day of flame. Only at dawn and sunset was the air breath-sweet, flower-strong, and then the cave peoples brought their children out into a stony, barren valley. At dawn the ice thawed into creeks and rivers, at sunset the day-fires died and cooled. In the intervals of even, livable temperature the people lived, ran, played, loved, free of the caverns; all life on the planet jumped, burst into life. Plants grew instantly, birds were flung like pellets across the sky. Smaller, legged animal life rushed frantically through the rocks; everything tried to get its living down in the brief hour of respite.<\/p>\n<p>It was an unbearable planet. Sim understood this, a matter of hours after birth. Racial memory bloomed in him. He would live his entire life in the caves, with two hours a day outside. Here, in stone channels of air he would talk, talk incessantly with his people, sleep never, think, think and lie upon his back, dreaming; but never sleeping.<\/p>\n<p>And he would live exactly eight days.<\/p>\n<p>The violence of this thought evacuated his bowels. Eight days. Eight short days. It was wrong, impossible, but a fact. Even while in his mother\u2019s flesh some racial knowledge had told him he was being formed rapidly, shaped and propelled out swiftly.<\/p>\n<p>Birth was quick as a knife. Childhood was over in a flash. Adolescence was a sheet of lightning. Manhood was a dream, maturity a myth, old age an inescapably quick reality, death a swift certainty.<\/p>\n<p>Eight days from now he\u2019d stand half-blind, withering, dying, as his father now stood, staring uselessly at his own wife and child.<\/p>\n<p>This day was an eighth part of his total life! He must enjoy every second of it. He must search his parents\u2019 thoughts for knowledge.<\/p>\n<p>Because in a few hours they\u2019d be dead.<\/p>\n<p>This was so impossibly unfair. Was this all of life? In his prenatal state hadn\u2019t he dreamed of long lives, valleys not of blasted stone but green foliage and temperate clime? Yes! And if he\u2019d dreamed then there must be truth in the visions. How could he seek and find the long life? Where? And how could he accomplish a life mission that huge and depressing in eight short, vanishing days?<\/p>\n<p>How had his people gotten into such a condition?<\/p>\n<p>As if at a button pressed, he saw an image. Metal seeds, blown across space from a distant green world, fighting with long flames, crashing on this bleak planet. From their shattered hulls tumble men and women.<\/p>\n<p>When? Long ago. Ten thousand days. The crash victims hid in the cliffs from the sun. Fire, ice and floods washed away the wreckage of the huge metal seeds. The victims were shaped and beaten like iron upon a forge. Solar radiations drenched them. Their pulses quickened, two hundred, five hundred, a thousand beats a minute. Their skins thickened, their blood changed. Old age came rushing. Children were born in the caves. Swifter, swifter, swifter the process. Like all this world\u2019s wild life, the men and women from the crash lived and died in a week, leaving children to do likewise.<\/p>\n<p>So this is life, thought Sim. It was not spoken in his mind, for he knew no words, he knew only images, old memory, an awareness, a telepathy that could penetrate flesh, rock, metal. So I\u2019m the five thousandth in a long line of futile sons? What can I do to save myself from dying eight days from now? Is there escape?<\/p>\n<p>His eyes widened, another image came to focus.<\/p>\n<p>Beyond this valley of cliffs, on a low mountain lay a perfect, unscarred metal seed. A metal ship, not rusted or touched by the avalanches. The ship was deserted, whole, intact. It was the only ship of all these that had crashed that was still a unit, still usable. But it was so far away. There was no one in it to help. This ship, then, on the far mountain, was the destiny toward which he would grow. There was his only hope of escape.<\/p>\n<p>His mind flexed.<\/p>\n<p>In this cliff, deep down in a confinement of solitude, worked a handful of scientists. To these men, when he was old enough and wise enough, he must go. They, too, dreamed of escape, of long life, of green valleys and temperate weathers. They, too, stared longingly at that distant ship upon its high mountain, its metal so perfect it did not rust or age.<\/p>\n<p>The cliff groaned.<\/p>\n<p>Sim\u2019s father lifted his eroded, lifeless face.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDawn\u2019s coming,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>II<\/p>\n<p>Morning relaxed the mighty granite cliff muscles. It was the time of the Avalanche.<\/p>\n<p>The tunnels echoed to running bare feet. Adults, children pushed with eager, hungry eyes toward the outside dawn. From far out, Sim heard a rumble of rock, a scream, a silence. Avalanches fell into valley. Stones that had been biding their time, not quite ready to fall, for a million years let go their bulks, and where they had begun their journey as single boulders they smashed upon the valley floor in a thousand shrapnels and friction-heated nuggets.<\/p>\n<p>Every morning at least one person was caught in the downpour.<\/p>\n<p>The cliff people dared the avalanches. It added one more excitement to their lives, already too short, too headlong, too dangerous.<\/p>\n<p>Sim felt himself seized up by his father. He was carried brusquely down the tunnel for a thousand yards, to where the daylight appeared. There was a shining insane light in his father\u2019s eyes. Sim could not move. He sensed what was going to happen. Behind his father, his mother hurried, bringing with her the little sister, Dark. \u201cWait! Be careful!\u201d she cried to her husband.<\/p>\n<p>Sim felt his father crouch, listening.<\/p>\n<p>High in the cliff was a tremor, a shivering.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNow!\u201d bellowed his father, and leaped out.<\/p>\n<p>An avalanche fell down at them!<\/p>\n<p>Sim had accelerated impressions of plunging walls, dust, confusion. His mother screamed! There was a jolting, a plunging.<\/p>\n<p>With one last step, Sim\u2019s father hurried him forward into the day. The avalanche thundered behind him. The mouth of the cave, where mother and Dark stood back out of the way, was choked with rubble and two boulders that weighed a hundred pounds each.<\/p>\n<p>The storm thunder of the avalanche passed away to a trickle of sand. Sim\u2019s father burst out into laughter. \u201cMade it! By the Gods! Made it alive!\u201d And he looked scornfully at the cliff and spat. \u201cPagh!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Mother and sister Dark struggled through the rubble. She cursed her husband. \u201cFool! You might have killed Sim!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI may yet,\u201d retorted the father.<\/p>\n<p>Sim was not listening. He was fascinated with the remains of an avalanche afront of the next tunnel. A blood stain trickled out from under a rise of boulders, soaking into the ground. There was nothing else to be seen. Someone else had lost the game.<\/p>\n<p>Dark ran ahead on lithe, supple feet, naked and certain.<\/p>\n<p>The valley air was like a wine filtered between mountains. The heaven was a restive blue; not the pale scorched atmosphere of full day, nor the bloated, bruised black-purple of night, a-riot with sickly shining stars.<\/p>\n<p>This was a tide pool. A place where waves of varying and violent temperatures struck, receded. Now the tide pool was quiet, cool, and its life moved abroad.<\/p>\n<p>Laughter! Far away, Sim heard it. Why laughter? How could any of his people find time for laughing? Perhaps later he would discover why.<\/p>\n<p>The valley suddenly blushed with impulsive color. Plant-life, thawing in the precipitant dawn, shoved out from most unexpected sources. It flowered as you watched. Pale green tendrils appeared on scoured rocks. Seconds later, ripe globes of fruit twitched upon the blade-tips. Father gave Sim over to mother and harvested the momentary, volatile crop, thrust scarlet, blue, yellow fruits into a fur sack which hung at his waist. Mother tugged at the moist new grasses, laid them on Sim\u2019s tongue.<\/p>\n<p>His senses were being honed to a fine edge. He stored knowledge thirstily. He understood love, marriage, customs, anger, pity, rage, selfishness, shadings and subtleties, realities and reflections. One thing suggested another. The sight of green plant life whirled his mind like a gyroscope, seeking balance in a world where lack of time for explanations made a mind seek and interpret on its own. The soft burden of food gave him knowledge of his system, of energy, of movement. Like a bird newly cracking its way from a shell, he was almost a unit, complete, all-knowing. Heredity had done all this for him. He grew excited with his ability.<\/p>\n<p>They walked, mother, father and the two children, smelling the smells, watching the birds bounce from wall to wall of the valley like scurrying pebbles and suddenly the father said a strange thing:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cRemember?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Remember what? Sim lay cradled. Was it any effort for them to remember when they\u2019d lived only seven days!<\/p>\n<p>The husband and wife looked at each other.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWas it only three days ago?\u201d said the woman, her body shaking, her eyes closing to think. \u201cI can\u2019t believe it. It is so unfair.\u201d She sobbed, then drew her hand across her face and bit her parched lips. The wind played at her gray hair. \u201cNow is my turn to cry. An hour ago it was you!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAn hour is half a life.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCome,\u201d she took her husband\u2019s arm. \u201cLet us look at everything, because it will be our last looking.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe sun\u2019ll be up in a few minutes,\u201d said the old man. \u201cWe must turn back now.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cJust one more moment,\u201d pleaded the woman.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe sun will catch us.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLet it catch me then!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou don\u2019t mean that.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI mean nothing, nothing at all,\u201d cried the woman.<\/p>\n<p>The sun was coming fast. The green in the valley burnt away. Searing wind blasted from over the cliffs. Far away where sun bolts hammered battlements of cliff, the huge stone faces shook their contents; those avalanches not already powdered down, were now released and fell like mantles.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDark!\u201d shouted the father. The girl sprang over the warm floor of the valley, answering, her hair a black flag behind her. Hands full of green fruits, she joined them.<\/p>\n<p>The sun rimmed the horizon with flame, the air convulsed dangerously with it, and whistled.<\/p>\n<p>The cave people bolted, shouting, picking up their fallen children, bearing vast loads of fruit and grass with them back to their deep hideouts. In moments the valley was bare. Except for one small child someone had forgotten. He was running far out on the flatness, but he was not strong enough, and the engulfing heat was drifting down from the cliffs even as he was half across the valley.<\/p>\n<p>Flowers were burnt into effigies, grasses sucked back into rocks like singed snakes, flower seeds whirled and fell in the sudden furnace blast of wind, sown far into gullies and crannies, ready to blossom at sunset tonight, and then go to seed and die again.<\/p>\n<p>Sim\u2019s father watched that child running, alone, out on the floor of the valley. He and his wife and Dark and Sim were safe in the mouth of their tunnel.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe\u2019ll never make it,\u201d said father. \u201cDo not watch him, woman. It\u2019s not a good thing to watch.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>They turned away. All except Sim, whose eyes had caught a glint of metal far away. His heart hammered in him, and his eyes blurred. Far away, atop a low mountain, one of those metal seeds from space reflected a dazzling ripple of light! It was like one of his intra-embryo dreams fulfilled! A metal space seed, intact, undamaged, lying on a mountain! There was his future! There was his hope for survival! There was where he would go in a few days, when he was\u2014strange thought\u2014a grown man!<\/p>\n<p>The sun plunged into the valley like molten lava.<\/p>\n<p>The little running child screamed, the sun burned, and the screaming stopped.<\/p>\n<p>Sim\u2019s mother walked painfully, with sudden age, down the tunnel, paused, reached up, broke off two last icicles that had formed during the night. She handed one to her husband, kept the other. \u201cWe will drink one last toast. To you, to the children.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTo you,\u201d he nodded to her. \u201cTo the children.\u201d They lifted the icicles. The warmth melted the ice down into their thirsty mouths.<\/p>\n<p>All day the sun seemed to blaze and erupt into the valley. Sim could not see it, but the vivid pictorials in his parents\u2019 minds were sufficient evidence of the nature of the day fire. The light ran like mercury, sizzling and roasting the caves, poking inward, but never penetrating deeply enough. It lighted the caves. It made the hollows of the cliff comfortably warm.<\/p>\n<p>Sim fought to keep his parents young. But no matter how hard he fought with mind and image, they became like mummies before him. His father seemed to dissolve from one stage of oldness to another. This is what will happen to me soon, though Sim in terror.<\/p>\n<p>Sim grew upon himself. He felt the digestive-eliminatory movements of his body. He was fed every minute, he was continually swallowing, feeding. He began to fit words to images and processes. Such a word was love. It was not an abstraction, but a process, a stir of breath, a smell of morning air, a flutter of heart, the curve of arm holding him, the look in the suspended face of his mother. He saw the processes, then searched behind her suspended face and there was the word, in her brain, ready to use. His throat prepared to speak. Life was pushing him, rushing him along toward oblivion.<\/p>\n<p>He sensed the expansion of his fingernails, the adjustments of his cells, the profusion of his hair, the multiplication of his bones and sinew, the grooving of the soft pale wax of his brain. His brain at birth as clear as a circle of ice, innocent, unmarked, was, an instant later, as if hit with a thrown rock, cracked and marked and patterned in a million crevices of thought and discovery.<\/p>\n<p>His sister, Dark, ran in and out with other little hothouse children, forever eating. His mother trembled over him, not eating, she had no appetite, her eyes were webbed shut.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSunset,\u201d said his father, at last.<\/p>\n<p>The day was over. The light faded, a wind sounded.<\/p>\n<p>His mother arose. \u201cI want to see the outside world once more \u2026 just once more\u2026.\u201d She stared blindly, shivering.<\/p>\n<p>His father\u2019s eyes were shut, he lay against the wall.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI cannot rise,\u201d he whispered faintly. \u201cI cannot.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDark!\u201d The mother croaked, the girl came running. \u201cHere,\u201d and Sim was handed to the girl. \u201cHold to Sim, Dark, feed him, care for him.\u201d She gave Sim one last fondling touch.<\/p>\n<p>Dark said not a word, holding Sim, her great green eyes shining wetly.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGo now,\u201d said the mother. \u201cTake him out into the sunset time. Enjoy yourselves. Pick foods, eat. Play.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Dark walked away without looking back. Sim twisted in her grasp, looking over her shoulder with unbelieving, tragic eyes. He cried out and somehow summoned from his lips the first word of his existence.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhy\u2026?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He saw his mother stiffen. \u201cThe child spoke!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAye,\u201d said his father. \u201cDid you hear what he said?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI heard,\u201d said the mother quietly.<\/p>\n<p>The last thing Sim saw of his living parents was his mother weakly, swayingly, slowly moving across the floor to lie beside her silent husband. That was the last time he ever saw them move.<\/p>\n<p>IV<\/p>\n<p>The night came and passed and then started the second day.<\/p>\n<p>The bodies of all those who had died during the night were carried in a funeral procession to the top of a small hill. The procession was long, the bodies numerous.<\/p>\n<p>Dark walked in the procession, holding the newly walking Sim by one hand. Only an hour before dawn Sim had learned to walk.<\/p>\n<p>At the top of the hill, Sim saw once again the far off metal seed. Nobody ever looked at it, or spoke of it. Why? Was there some reason? Was it a mirage? Why did they not run toward it? Worship it? Try to get to it and fly away into space?<\/p>\n<p>The funeral words were spoken. The bodies were placed upon the ground where the sun, in a few minutes, would cremate them.<\/p>\n<p>The procession then turned and ran down the hill, eager to have their few minutes of free time running and playing and laughing in the sweet air.<\/p>\n<p>Dark and Sim, chattering like birds, feeding among the rocks, exchanged what they knew of life. He was in his second day, she in her third. They were driven, as always, by the mercurial speed of their lives.<\/p>\n<p>Another piece of his life opened wide.<\/p>\n<p>Fifty young men ran down from the cliffs, holding sharp stones and rock daggers in their thick hands. Shouting, they ran off toward distant black, low lines of small rock cliffs.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWar!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The thought stood in Sim\u2019s brain. It shocked and beat at him. These men were running to fight, to kill, over there in those small black cliffs where other people lived.<\/p>\n<p>But why? Wasn\u2019t life short enough without fighting, killing?<\/p>\n<p>From a great distance he heard the sound of conflict, and it made his stomach cold. \u201cWhy, Dark, why?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Dark didn\u2019t know. Perhaps they would understand tomorrow. Now, there was the business of eating to sustain and support their lives. Watching Dark was like seeing a lizard forever flickering its pink tongue, forever hungry.<\/p>\n<p>Pale children ran on all sides of them. One beetle-like boy scuttled up the rocks, knocking Sim aside, to take from him a particularly luscious red berry he had found growing under an outcrop.<\/p>\n<p>The child ate hastily of the fruit before Sim could gain his feet. Then Sim hurled himself unsteadily, the two of them fell in a ridiculous jumble, rolling, until Dark pried them, squalling, apart.<\/p>\n<p>Sim bled. A part of him stood off, like a god, and said, \u201cThis should not be. Children should not be this way. It is wrong!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Dark slapped the little intruding boy away. \u201cGet on!\u201d she cried. \u201cWhat\u2019s your name, bad one?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cChion!\u201d laughed the boy. \u201cChion, Chion, Chion!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Sim glared at him with all the ferocity in his small, unskilled features. He choked. This was his enemy. It was as if he\u2019d waited for an enemy of person as well as scene. He had already understood the avalanches, the heat, the cold, the shortness of life, but these were things of places, of scene\u2014mute, extravagant manifestations of unthinking nature, not motivated save by gravity and radiation. Here, now, in this stridulent Chion he recognized a thinking enemy!<\/p>\n<p>Chion darted off, turned at a distance, tauntingly crying:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTomorrow I will be big enough to kill you!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And he vanished around a rock.<\/p>\n<p>More children ran, giggling, by Sim. Which of them would be friends, enemies? How could friends and enemies come about in this impossible, quick life time? There was no time to make either, was there?<\/p>\n<p>Dark, as if knowing his thoughts, drew him away. As they searched for desired foods, she whispered fiercely in his ear. \u201cEnemies are made over things like stolen foods; gifts of long grasses make friends. Enemies come, too, from opinions and thoughts. In five seconds you\u2019ve made an enemy for life. Life\u2019s so short enemies must be made quickly.\u201d And she laughed with an irony strange for one so young, who was growing older before her rightful time. \u201cYou must fight to protect yourself. Others, superstitious ones, will try killing you. There is a belief, a ridiculous belief, that if one kills another, the murderer partakes of the life energy of the slain, and therefore will live an extra day. You see? As long as that is believed, you\u2019re in danger.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But Sim was not listening. Bursting from a flock of delicate girls who tomorrow would be tall, quieter, and who day after that would gain breasts and the next day take husbands, Sim caught sight of one small girl whose hair was a violet blue flame.<\/p>\n<p>She ran past, brushed Sim, their bodies touched. Her eyes, white as silver coins, shone at him. He knew then that he\u2019d found a friend, a love, a wife, one who\u2019d a week from now lie with him atop the funeral pyre as sunlight undressed their flesh from bone.<\/p>\n<p>Only the glance, but it held them in mid-motion, one instant.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYour name?\u201d he shouted after her.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLyte!\u201d she called laughingly back.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m Sim,\u201d he answered, confused and bewildered.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSim!\u201d she repeated it, flashing on. \u201cI\u2019ll remember!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Dark nudged his ribs. \u201cHere, eat,\u201d she said to the distracted boy. \u201cEat or you\u2019ll never get big enough to catch her.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>From nowhere, Chion appeared, running by. \u201cLyte!\u201d he mocked, dancing malevolently along and away. \u201cLyte! I\u2019ll remember Lyte, too!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Dark stood tall and reed slender, shaking her dark ebony clouds of hair, sadly. \u201cI see your life before you, little Sim. You\u2019ll need weapons soon to fight for this Lyte one. Now, hurry\u2014the sun\u2019s coming!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>They ran back to the caves.<\/p>\n<p>One-fourth of his life was over! Babyhood was gone. He was now a young boy! Wild rains lashed the valley at nightfall. He watched new river channels cut in the valley, out past the mountain of the metal seed. He stored the knowledge for later use. Each night there was a new river, a bed newly cut.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat\u2019s beyond the valley?\u201d wondered Sim.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo one\u2019s ever been beyond it,\u201d explained Dark. \u201cAll who tried to reach the plain were frozen to death or burnt. The only land we know\u2019s within half an hour\u2019s run. Half an hour out and half an hour back.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo one has ever reached the metal seed, then?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Dark scoffed. \u201cThe Scientists, they try. Silly fools. They don\u2019t know enough to stop. It\u2019s no use. It\u2019s too far.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Scientists. The word stirred him. He had almost forgotten the vision he had short hours after birth. His voice was eager. \u201cWhere are the Scientists?\u201d he demanded.<\/p>\n<p>Dark looked away from him, \u201cI wouldn\u2019t tell you if I knew. They\u2019d kill you, experimenting! I don\u2019t want you joining them! Live your life, don\u2019t cut it in half trying to reach that silly metal thing on the mountain.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ll find out where they are from someone else, then!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo one\u2019ll tell you! They hate the Scientists. You\u2019ll have to find them on your own. And then what? Will you save us? Yes, save us, little boy!\u201d Her face was sullen; already half her life was gone, her breasts were beginning to shape. Tomorrow she must divine how best to live her youth, her love, and she knew no way to fully plumb the depths of passion in so short a space.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe can\u2019t sit and talk and eat,\u201d he protested. \u201cAnd nothing else.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere\u2019s always love,\u201d she retorted acidly. \u201cIt helps one forget. Gods, yes,\u201d she spat it out. \u201cLove!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Sim ran through the tunnels, seeking. Sometimes he half imagined where the Scientists were. But then a flood of angry thought from those around him, when he asked the direction to the Scientists\u2019 cave, washed over him in confusion and resentment. After all, it was the Scientists\u2019 fault that they had been placed upon this terrible world! Sim flinched under the bombardment of oaths and curses.<\/p>\n<p>Quietly he took his seat in a central chamber with the children to listen to the grown men talk. This was the time of education, the Time of Talking. No matter how he chafed at delay, or how great his impatience, even though life slipped fast from him and death approached like a black meteor, he knew his mind needed knowledge. Tonight, then, was the night of school. But he sat uneasily. Only five more days of life.<\/p>\n<p>Chion sat across from Sim, his thin-mouthed face arrogant.<\/p>\n<p>Lyte appeared between the two. The last few hours had made her firmer footed, gentler, taller. Her hair shone brighter. She smiled as she sat beside Sim, ignoring Chion. And Chion became rigid at this and ceased eating.<\/p>\n<p>The dialogue crackled, filled the room. Swift as heart beats, one thousand, two thousand words a minute. Sim learned, his head filled. He did not shut his eyes, but lapsed into a kind of dreaming that was almost intra-embryonic in lassitude and drowsy vividness. In the faint background the words were spoken, and they wove a tapestry of knowledge in his head.<\/p>\n<p>He dreamed of green meadows free of stones, all grass, round and rolling and rushing easily toward a dawn with no taint of freezing, merciless cold or smell of boiled rock or scorched monument. He walked across the green meadow. Overhead the metal seeds flew by in a heaven that was a steady, even temperature. Things were slow, slow, slow.<\/p>\n<p>Birds lingered upon gigantic trees that took a hundred, two hundred, five thousand days to grow. Everything remained in its place, the birds did not flicker nervously at a hint of sun, nor did the trees suck back frightenedly when a ray of sunlight poured over them.<\/p>\n<p>In this dream people strolled, they rarely ran, the heart rhythm of them was evenly languid, not jerking and insane. Their kisses were long and lingering, not the parched mouthings and twitchings of lovers who had eight days to live. The grass remained, and did not burn away in torches. The dream people talked always of tomorrow and living and not tomorrow and dying. It all seemed so familiar that when Sim felt someone take his hand he thought it simply another part of the dream.<\/p>\n<p>Lyte\u2019s hand lay inside his own. \u201cDreaming?\u201d she asked.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThings are balanced. Our minds, to even things, to balance the unfairness of our living, go back in on ourselves, to find what there is that is good to see.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He beat his hand against the stone floor again and again. \u201cIt does not make things fair! I hate it! It reminds me that there is something better, something I have missed! Why can\u2019t we be ignorant! Why can\u2019t we live and die without knowing that this is an abnormal living?\u201d And his breath rushed harshly from his half-open, constricted mouth.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere is purpose in everything,\u201d said Lyte. \u201cThis gives us purpose, makes us work, plan, try to find a way.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>His eyes were hot emeralds in his face. \u201cI walked up a hill of grass, very slowly,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe same hill of grass I walked an hour ago?\u201d asked Lyte.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPerhaps. Close enough to it. The dream is better than the reality.\u201d He flexed his eyes, narrowed them. \u201cI watched people and they did not eat.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOr talk?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOr talk, either. And we always are eating, always talking. Sometimes those people in the dream sprawled with their eyes shut, not moving a muscle.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As Lyte stared down into his face a terrible thing happened. He imagined her face blackening, wrinkling, twisting into knots of agedness. The hair blew out like snow about her ears, the eyes were like discolored coins caught in a web of lashes. Her teeth sank away from her lips, the delicate fingers hung like charred twigs from her atrophied wrists. Her beauty was consumed and wasted even as he watched, and when he seized her, in terror, he cried out, for he imagined his own hand corroded, and he choked back a cry.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSim, what\u2019s wrong?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The saliva in his mouth dried at the taste of the words.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFive more days\u2026.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe Scientists.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Sim started. Who\u2019d spoken? In the dim light a tall man talked. \u201cThe Scientists crashed us on this world, and now have wasted thousands of lives and time. It\u2019s no use. It\u2019s no use. Tolerate them but give them none of your time. You only live once, remember.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Where were these hated Scientists? Now, after the Learning, the Time of Talking, he was ready to find them. Now, at least, he knew enough to begin his fight for freedom, for the ship!<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSim, where\u2019re you going?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But Sim was gone. The echo of his running feet died away down a shaft of polished stone.<\/p>\n<p>It seemed that half the night was wasted. He blundered into a dozen dead ends. Many times he was attacked by the insane young men who wanted his life energy. Their superstitious ravings echoed after him. The gashes of their hungry fingernails covered his body.<\/p>\n<p>He found what he looked for.<\/p>\n<p>A half dozen men gathered in a small basalt cave deep down in the cliff lode. On a table before them lay objects which, though unfamiliar, struck harmonious chords in Sim.<\/p>\n<p>The Scientists worked in sets, old men doing important work, young men learning, asking questions; and at their feet were three small children. They were a process. Every eight days there was an entirely new set of scientists working on any one problem. The amount of work done was terribly inadequate. They grew old, fell dead just when they were beginning their creative period. The creative time of any one individual was perhaps a matter of twelve hours out of his entire span. Three-quarters of one\u2019s life was spent learning, a brief interval of creative power, then senility, insanity, death.<\/p>\n<p>The men turned as Sim entered.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDon\u2019t tell me we have a recruit?\u201d said the eldest of them.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t believe it,\u201d said another, younger one. \u201cChase him away. He\u2019s probably one of those war-mongers.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo, no,\u201d objected the elder one, moving with little shuffles of his bare feet toward Sim. \u201cCome in, come in, boy.\u201d He had friendly eyes, slow eyes, unlike those of the swift inhabitants of the upper caves. Grey and quiet. \u201cWhat do you want?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Sim hesitated, lowered his head, unable to meet the quiet, gentle gaze. \u201cI want to live,\u201d he whispered.<\/p>\n<p>The old man laughed quietly. He touched Sim\u2019s shoulder. \u201cAre you a new breed? Are you sick?\u201d he queried of Sim, half-seriously. \u201cWhy aren\u2019t you playing? Why aren\u2019t you readying yourself for the time of love and marriage and children? Don\u2019t you know that tomorrow night you\u2019ll be an adolescent? Don\u2019t you realize that if you are not careful you\u2019ll miss all of life?\u201d He stopped.<\/p>\n<p>Sim moved his eyes back and forth with each query. He blinked at the instruments on the table top. \u201cShouldn\u2019t I be here?\u201d he asked, naively.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCertainly,\u201d roared the old man, sternly. \u201cBut it\u2019s a miracle you are. We\u2019ve had no volunteers from the rank and file for a thousand days! We\u2019ve had to breed our own scientists, a closed unit! Count us! Six! Six men! And three children! Are we not overwhelming?\u201d The old man spat upon the stone floor. \u201cWe ask for volunteers and the people shout back at us, \u2018Get someone else!\u2019 or \u2018We have no time!\u2019 And you know why they say that?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo.\u201d Sim flinched.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBecause they\u2019re selfish. They\u2019d like to live longer, yes, but they know that anything they do cannot possibly insure their own lives any extra time. It might guarantee longer life to some future offspring of theirs. But they won\u2019t give up their love, their brief youth, give up one interval of sunset or sunrise!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Sim leaned against the table, earnestly. \u201cI understand.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou do?\u201d The old man stared at him blindly. He sighed and slapped the child\u2019s thigh, gently. \u201cYes, of course, you do. It\u2019s too much to expect anyone to understand, any more. You\u2019re rare.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The others moved in around Sim and the old man.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI am Dienc. Tomorrow night Cort here will be in my place. I\u2019ll be dead by then. And the night after that someone else will be in Cort\u2019s place, and then you, if you work and believe\u2014but first, I give you a chance. Return to your playmates if you want. There is someone you love? Return to her. Life is short. Why should you care for the unborn to come? You have a right to youth. Go now, if you want. Because if you stay you\u2019ll have no time for anything but working and growing old and dying at your work. But it is good work. Well?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Sim looked at the tunnel. From a distance the wind roared and blew, the smells of cooking and the patter of naked feet sounded, and the laughter of lovers was an increasingly good thing to hear. He shook his head, impatiently, and his eyes were wet.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI will stay,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>VI<\/p>\n<p>The third night and third day passed. It was the fourth night. Sim was drawn into their living. He learned about that metal seed upon the top of the far mountain. He heard of the original seeds\u2014things called \u201cships\u201d that crashed and how the survivors hid and dug in the cliffs, grew old swiftly and in their scrabbling to barely survive, forgot all science. Knowledge of mechanical things had no chance of survival in such a volcanic civilization. There was only NOW for each human.<\/p>\n<p>Yesterday didn\u2019t matter, tomorrow stared them vividly in their very faces. But somehow the radiations that had forced their aging had also induced a kind of telepathic communication whereby philosophies and impressions were absorbed by the new born. Racial memory, growing instinctively, preserved memories of another time.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhy don\u2019t we go to that ship on the mountain?\u201d asked Sim.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt is too far. We would need protection from the sun,\u201d explained Dienc.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHave you tried to make protection?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSalves and ointments, suits of stone and bird-wing and, recently, crude metals. None of which worked. In ten thousand more life times perhaps we\u2019ll have made a metal in which will flow cool water to protect us on the march to the ship. But we work so slowly, so blindly. This morning, mature, I took up my instruments. Tomorrow, dying, I lay them down. What can one man do in one day? If we had ten thousand men, the problem would be solved\u2026.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI will go to the ship,\u201d said Sim.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThen you will die,\u201d said the old man. A silence had fallen on the room at Sim\u2019s words. Then the men stared at Sim. \u201cYou are a very selfish boy.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSelfish!\u201d cried Sim, resentfully.<\/p>\n<p>The old man patted the air. \u201cSelfish in a way I like. You want to live longer, you\u2019ll do anything for that. You will try for the ship. But I tell you it is useless. Yet, if you want to, I cannot stop you. At least you will not be like those among us who go to war for an extra few days of life.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWar?\u201d asked Sim. \u201cHow can there be war here?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And a shudder ran through him. He did not understand.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTomorrow will be time enough for that,\u201d said Dienc. \u201cListen to me, now.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The night passed.<\/p>\n<p>VII<\/p>\n<p>It was morning. Lyte came shouting and sobbing down a corridor, and ran full into his arms. She had changed again. She was older, again, more beautiful. She was shaking and she held to him. \u201cSim, they\u2019re coming after you!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Bare feet marched down the corridor, surged inward at the opening. Chion stood grinning there, taller, too, a sharp rock in either of his hands. \u201cOh, there you are, Sim!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGo away!\u201d cried Lyte savagely whirling on him.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNot until we take Sim with us,\u201d Chion assured her. Then, smiling at Sim. \u201cIf that is, he is with us in the fight.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Dienc shuffled forward, his eye weakly fluttering, his bird-like hands fumbling in the air. \u201cLeave!\u201d he shrilled angrily. \u201cThis boy is a Scientist now. He works with us.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Chion ceased smiling. \u201cThere is better work to be done. We go now to fight the people in the farthest cliffs.\u201d His eyes glittered anxiously. \u201cOf course, you will come with us, Sim?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo, no!\u201d Lyte clutched at his arm.<\/p>\n<p>Sim patted her shoulder, then turned to Chion. \u201cWhy are you attacking these people?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere are three extra days for those who go with us to fight.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThree extra days! Of living?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Chion nodded firmly. \u201cIf we win, we live eleven days instead of eight. The cliffs they live in, something about the mineral in it! Think of it, Sim, three long, good days of life. Will you join us?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Dienc interrupted. \u201cGet along without him. Sim is my pupil!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Chion snorted. \u201cGo die, old man. By sunset tonight you\u2019ll be charred bone. Who are you to order us? We are young, we want to live longer.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Eleven days. The words were unbelievable to Sim. Eleven days. Now he understood why there was war. Who wouldn\u2019t fight to have his life lengthened by almost half its total. So many more days of youth and love and seeing and living! Yes. Why not, indeed!<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThree extra days,\u201d called Dienc, stridently, \u201cif you live to enjoy them. If you\u2019re not killed in battle. If. If! You have never won yet. You have always lost!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut this time,\u201d Chion declared sharply, \u201cWe\u2019ll win!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Sim was bewildered. \u201cBut we are all of the same ancestors. Why don\u2019t we all share the best cliffs?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Chion laughed and adjusted a sharp stone in his hand. \u201cThose who live in the best cliffs think they are better than us. That is always man\u2019s attitude when he has power. The cliffs there, besides, are smaller, there\u2019s room for only three hundred people in them.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Three extra days.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ll go with you,\u201d Sim said to Chion.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFine!\u201d Chion was very glad, much too glad at the decision.<\/p>\n<p>Dienc gasped.<\/p>\n<p>Sim turned to Dienc and Lyte. \u201cIf I fight, and win, I will be half a mile closer to the Ship. And I\u2019ll have three extra days in which to strive to reach the Ship. That seems the only thing for me to do.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Dienc nodded, sadly. \u201cIt is the only thing. I believe you. Go along now.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGood-bye,\u201d said Sim.<\/p>\n<p>The old man looked surprised, then he laughed as at a little joke on himself. \u201cThat\u2019s right\u2014I won\u2019t see you again, will I? Good-bye, then.\u201d And they shook hands.<\/p>\n<p>They went out, Chion, Sim, and Lyte, together, followed by the others, all children growing swiftly into fighting men. And the light in Chion\u2019s eyes was not a good thing to see.<\/p>\n<p>Lyte went with him. She chose his rocks for him and carried them. She would not go back, no matter how he pleaded. The sun was just beyond the horizon and they marched across the valley.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPlease, Lyte, go back!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd wait for Chion to return?\u201d she said. \u201cHe plans that when you die I will be his mate.\u201d She shook out her unbelievable blue-white curls of hair defiantly. \u201cBut I\u2019ll be with you. If you fall, I fall.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Sim\u2019s face hardened. He was tall. The world had shrunk during the night. Children packs screamed by hilarious in their food-searching and he looked at them with alien wonder: could it be only four days ago he\u2019d been like these? Strange. There was a sense of many days in his mind, as if he\u2019d really lived a thousand days. There was a dimension of incident and thought so thick, so multi-colored, so richly diverse in his head that it was not to be believed so much could happen in so short a time.<\/p>\n<p>The fighting men ran in clusters of two or three. Sim looked ahead at the rising line of small ebon cliffs. This, then, he said to himself, is my fourth day. And still I am no closer to the Ship, or to anything, not even\u2014he heard the light tread of Lyte beside him\u2014not even to her who bears my weapons and picks me ripe berries.<\/p>\n<p>One-half of his life was gone. Or a third of it\u2014IF he won this battle. If.<\/p>\n<p>He ran easily, lifting, letting fall his legs. This is the day of my physical awareness, as I run I feed, as I feed I grow and as I grow I turn eyes to Lyte with a kind of dizzying vertigo. And she looks upon me with the same gentleness of thought. This is the day of our youth. Are we wasting it? Are we losing it on a dream, a folly?<\/p>\n<p>Distantly he heard laughter. As a child he\u2019d questioned it. Now he understood laughter. This particular laughter was made of climbing high rocks and plucking the greenest blades and drinking the headiest vintage from the morning ices and eating of the rock-fruits and tasting of young lips in new appetite.<\/p>\n<p>They neared the cliffs of the enemy.<\/p>\n<p>He saw the slender erectness of Lyte. The new surprise of her white breasts; the neck where if you touched you could time her pulse; the fingers which cupped in your own were animate and supple and never still; the\u2026.<\/p>\n<p>Lyte snapped her head to one side. \u201cLook ahead!\u201d she cried. \u201cSee what is to come\u2014look only ahead.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He felt that they were racing by part of their lives, leaving their youth on the pathside, without so much as a glance.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI am blind with looking at stones,\u201d he said, running.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFind new stones, then!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI see stones\u2014\u201d His voice grew gentle as the palm of her hand. The landscape floated under him. Everything was like a fine wind, blowing dreamily. \u201cI see stones that make a ravine that lies in a cool shadow where the stone-berries are thick as tears. You touch a boulder and the berries fall in silent red avalanches, and the grass is very tender\u2026.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI do not see it!\u201d She increased her pace, turning her head away.<\/p>\n<p>He saw the floss upon her neck, like the small moss that grows silvery and light on the cool side of pebbles, that stirs if you breathe the lightest breath upon it. He looked upon himself, his hands clenched as he heaved himself forward toward death. Already his hands were veined and youth-swollen.<\/p>\n<p>They were the hands of a young boy whose fingers are made for touching, which are suddenly sensitive and with more surface, and are nervous, and seem not a part of him because they are so big for the slender lengths of his arms. His neck, through which the blood ached and pumped, was building out with age, too, with tiny blue tendrils of veins imbedded and flaring in it.<\/p>\n<p>Lyte handed him food to eat.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI am not hungry,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEat, keep your mouth full,\u201d she commanded sharply. \u201cSo you will not talk to me this way!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf I could only kiss you,\u201d he pleaded. \u201cJust one time.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAfter the battle there may be time.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGods!\u201d He roared, anguished. \u201cWho cares for battles!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Ahead of them, rocks hailed down, thudding. A man fell with his skull split wide. The war was begun.<\/p>\n<p>Lyte passed the weapons to him. They ran without another word until they entered the killing ground. Then he spoke, not looking at her, his cheeks coloring. \u201cThank you,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>She ducked as a slung stone shot by her head. \u201cIt was not an easy thing for me,\u201d she admitted. \u201cSim! Be careful!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The boulders began to roll in a synthetic avalanche from the battlements of the enemy!<\/p>\n<p>Only one thought was in his mind now. To kill, to lessen the life of someone else so he could live, to gain a foothold here and live long enough to make a stab at the ship. He ducked, he weaved, he clutched stones and hurled them up. His left hand held a flat stone shield with which he diverted the swiftly plummeting rocks. There was a spatting sound everywhere. Lyte ran with him, encouraging him. Two men dropped before him, slain, their breasts cleaved to the bone, their blood springing out in unbelievable founts.<\/p>\n<p>It was a useless conflict. Sim realized instantly how insane the venture was. They could never storm the cliff. A solid wall of rocks rained down. A dozen men dropped with shards of ebony in their brains, a half dozen more showed drooping, broken arms. One screamed and the upthrust white joint of his knee was exposed as the flesh was pulled away by two successive blows of well-aimed granite. Men stumbled over one another.<\/p>\n<p>The muscles in his cheeks pulled tight and he began to wonder why he had ever come. But his raised eyes, as he danced from side to side, weaving and bobbing, sought always the cliffs. He wanted to live there so intensely, to have his chance. He would have to stick it out. But the heart was gone from him.<\/p>\n<p>Lyte screamed piercingly. Sim, his heart panicking, twisted and saw that her hand was loose at the wrist, with an ugly wound bleeding profusely on the back of the knuckles. She clamped it under her armpit to soothe the pain. The anger rose in him and exploded. In his fury he raced forward, throwing his missiles with deadly accuracy. He saw a man topple and flail down, falling from one level to another of the caves, a victim of his shot. He must have been screaming, for his lungs were bursting open and closed and his throat was raw, and the ground spun madly under his racing feet.<\/p>\n<p>The stone that clipped his head sent him reeling and plunging back. He ate sand. The universe dissolved into purple whorls. He could not get up. He lay and knew that this was his last day, his last time. The battle raged around him, dimly he felt Lyte over him. Her hands cooled his head, she tried to drag him out of range, but he lay gasping and telling her to leave him.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cStop!\u201d shouted a voice. The whole war seemed to give pause. \u201cRetreat!\u201d commanded the voice swiftly. And as Sim watched, lying upon his side, his comrades turned and fled back toward home.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe sun is coming, our time is up!\u201d He saw their muscled backs, their moving, tensing, flickering legs go up and down. The dead were left upon the field. The wounded cried for help. But there was no time for the wounded. There was only time for swift men to run the gauntlet home and, their lungs aching and raw with heated air, burst into their tunnels before the sun burnt and killed them.<\/p>\n<p>The sun!<\/p>\n<p>Sim saw another figure racing toward him. It was Chion! Lyte was helping Sim to his feet, whispering helpfully to him. \u201cCan you walk?\u201d she asked. And he groaned and said, \u201cI think so.\u201d \u201cWalk then,\u201d she said. \u201cWalk slowly, and then faster and faster. We\u2019ll make it. Walk slowly, start carefully. We\u2019ll make it, I know we will.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Sim got to his feet, stood swaying. Chion raced up, a strange expression cutting lines in his cheeks, his eyes shining with battle. Pushing Lyte abruptly aside he seized upon a rock and dealt Sim a jolting blow upon his ankle that laid wide the flesh. All of this was done quite silently.<\/p>\n<p>Now he stood back, still not speaking, grinning like an animal from the night mountains, his chest panting in and out, looking from the thing he had done, to Lyte, and back. He got his breath. \u201cHe\u2019ll never make it,\u201d he nodded at Sim. \u201cWe\u2019ll have to leave him here. Come along, Lyte.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Lyte, like a cat-animal, sprang upon Chion, searching for his eyes, shrieking through her exposed, hard-pressed teeth. Her fingers stroked great bloody furrows down Chion\u2019s arms and again, instantly, down his neck. Chion, with an oath, sprang away from her. She hurled a rock at him. Grunting, he let it miss him, then ran off a few yards. \u201cFool!\u201d he cried, turning to scorn her. \u201cCome along with me. Sim will be dead in a few minutes. Come along!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Lyte turned her back on him. \u201cI will go if you carry me.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Chion\u2019s face changed. His eyes lost their gleaming. \u201cThere is no time. We would both die if I carried you.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Lyte looked through and beyond him. \u201cCarry me, then, for that\u2019s how I wish it to be.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Without another word, glancing fearfully at the sun, Chion fled. His footsteps sped away and vanished from hearing. \u201cMay he fall and break his neck,\u201d whispered Lyte, savagely glaring at his form as it skirted a ravine. She returned to Sim. \u201cCan you walk?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Agonies of pain shot up his leg from the wounded ankle. He nodded ironically. \u201cWe could make it to the cave in two hours, walking. I have an idea, Lyte. Carry me.\u201d And he smiled with the grim joke.<\/p>\n<p>She took his arm. \u201cNevertheless we\u2019ll walk. Come.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re staying here.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut why?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe came to seek a home here. If we walk we will die. I would rather die here. How much time have we?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Together they measured the sun. \u201cA few minutes,\u201d she said, her voice flat and dull. She held close to him.<\/p>\n<p>He looked at her. Lyte, he thought. Tomorrow I would have been a man. My body would have been strong and full and there would have been time with you, a kissing and a touching. Damn, but what kind of life is this where every last instant is drenched with fear and alert with death? Am I to be denied even some bit of real life?<\/p>\n<p>The black rocks of the cliff were paling into deep purples and browns as the sun began to flood the world.<\/p>\n<p>What a fool he was! He should have stayed and worked with Dienc, and thought and dreamed, and at least one time cupped Lyte\u2019s mouth with his own.<\/p>\n<p>With the sinews of his neck standing out defiantly he bellowed upward at the cliff holes.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSend me down one man to do battle!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Silence. His voice echoed from the cliff. The air was warm.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s no use,\u201d said Lyte, \u201cThey\u2019ll pay no attention.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He shouted again. \u201cHear me!\u201d He stood with his weight on his good foot, his injured left leg throbbing and pulsating with pain. He shook a fist. \u201cSend down a warrior who is no coward! I will not turn and run home! I have come to fight a fair fight! Send a man who will fight for the right to his cave! Him I will surely kill!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>More silence. A wave of heat passed over the land, receded.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOh, surely,\u201d mocked Sim, hands on naked hips, head back, mouth wide, \u201csurely there\u2019s one among you not afraid to fight a cripple!\u201d Silence. \u201cNo?\u201d Silence.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThen I have miscalculated you. I\u2019m wrong. I\u2019ll stand here, then, until the sun shucks the flesh off my bone in black scraps, and call you the filthy names you deserve.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He got an answer.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI do not like being called names,\u201d replied a man\u2019s voice.<\/p>\n<p>Sim leaned forward, forgetting his crippled foot.<\/p>\n<p>A huge man appeared in a cave mouth on the third level.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCome down,\u201d urged Sim. \u201cCome down, fat one, and kill me.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The man scowled seriously at his opponent a moment, then lumbered slowly down the path, his hands empty of any weapons. Immediately every cave above clustered with heads. An audience for this drama.<\/p>\n<p>The man approached Sim. \u201cWe will fight by the rules, if you know them.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ll learn as we go,\u201d replied Sim.<\/p>\n<p>This pleased the man and he looked at Sim warily, but not unkindly. \u201cThis much I will tell you,\u201d offered the man generously. \u201cIf you die, I will give your mate shelter and she will live, as she pleases, because she is the wife of a good man.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Sim nodded swiftly. \u201cI am ready,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe rules are simple. We do not touch each other, save with stones. The stones and the sun will do either of us in. Now is the time\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>VIII<\/p>\n<p>A tip of the sun showed on the horizon. \u201cMy name is Nhoj,\u201d said Sim\u2019s enemy, casually fingering up a handful of pebbles and stones, weighing them. Sim did likewise. He was hungry. He had not eaten for many minutes. Hunger was the curse of this planet\u2019s peoples\u2014a perpetual demanding of empty stomachs for more, more food. His blood flushed weakly, shot tinglingly through veins in jolting throbs of heat and pressure, his ribcase shoved out, went in, shoved out again, impatiently.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNow!\u201d roared the three hundred watchers from the cliffs. \u201cNow!\u201d they clamored, the men and women and children balanced, in turmoil on the ledges. \u201cNow! Begin!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As if at a cue, the sun leaped high. It smote them a blow as with a flat, sizzling stone. The two men staggered under the molten impact, sweat broke from their naked thighs and loins, under their arms and on their faces was a glaze like fine glass.<\/p>\n<p>Nhoj shifted his huge weight and looked at the sun as if in no hurry to fight. Then, silently, with no warning, he kanurcked out a pebble with a startling trigger-flick of thumb and forefinger. It caught Sim flat on the cheek, staggered him back, so that a rocket of unbearable pain climbed up his crippled foot and burst into nervous explosion at the pit of his stomach. He tasted blood from his bleeding cheek.<\/p>\n<p>Nhoj moved serenely. Three more flickers of his magical hands and three tiny, seemingly harmless bits of stone flew like whistling birds. Each of them found a target, slammed it. The nerve centers of Sim\u2019s body! One hit his stomach so that ten hours\u2019 eating almost slid up his throat. A second got his forehead, a third his neck. He collapsed to the boiling sand. His knee made a wrenching sound on the hard earth. His face was colorless and his eyes, squeezed tight, were pushing tears out from the hot, quivering lids. But even as he had fallen he had let loose, with wild force, his handful of stones!<\/p>\n<p>The stones purred in the air. One of them, and only one, struck Nhoj. Upon the left eyeball. Nhoj moaned and laid his hands in the next instant to his shattered eye.<\/p>\n<p>Sim choked out a bitter, sighing laugh. This much triumph he had. The eye of his opponent. It would give him \u2026 Time. Oh, gods, he thought, his stomach retching sickly, fighting for breath, this is a world of time. Give me a little more, just a trifle!<\/p>\n<p>Nhoj, one-eyed, weaving with pain, pelted the writhing body of Sim, but his aim was off now, the stones flew to one side or if they struck at all they were weak and spent and lifeless.<\/p>\n<p>Sim forced himself half erect. From the corners of his eyes he saw Lyte, waiting, staring at him, her lips breathing words of encouragement and hope. He was bathed in sweat, as if a rain spray had showered him down.<\/p>\n<p>The sun was now fully over the horizon. You could smell it. Stones glinted like mirrors, the sand began to roil and bubble. Illusions sprang up everywhere in the valley. Instead of one warrior Nhoj he was confronted by a dozen, each in an upright position, preparing to launch another missile. A dozen irregular warriors who shimmered in the golden menace of day, like bronze gongs smitten, quivered in one vision!<\/p>\n<p>Sim was breathing desperately. His nostrils flared and sucked and his mouth drank thirstily of flame instead of oxygen. His lungs took fire like silk torches and his body was consumed. The sweat spilled from his pores to be instantly evaporated. He felt himself shriveling, shriveling in on himself, he imagined himself looking like his father, old, sunken, slight, withered! Where was the sand? Could he move? Yes. The world wriggled under him, but now he was on his feet.<\/p>\n<p>There would be no more fighting.<\/p>\n<p>A murmur from the cliff told this. The sunburnt faces of the high audience gaped and jeered and shouted encouragement to their warrior. \u201cStand straight, Nhoj, save your strength now! Stand tall and perspire!\u201d they urged him. And Nhoj stood, swaying lightly, swaying slowly, a pendulum in an incandescent fiery breath from the skyline. \u201cDon\u2019t move, Nhoj, save your heart, save your power!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe Test, The Test!\u201d said the people on the heights. \u201cThe test of the sun.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And this was the worst part of the fight. Sim squinted painfully at the distorted illusion of cliff. He thought he saw his parents; father with his defeated face, his green eyes burning, mother with her hair blowing like a cloud of grey smoke in the fire wind. He must get up to them, live for and with them!<\/p>\n<p>Behind him, Sim heard Lyte whimper softly. There was a whisper of flesh against sand. She had fallen. He did not dare turn. The strength of turning would bring him thundering down in pain and darkness.<\/p>\n<p>His knees bent. If I fall, he thought, I\u2019ll lie here and become ashes. Where was Nhoj? Nhoj was there, a few yards from him, standing bent, slick with perspiration, looking as if he were being hit over the spine with great hammers of destruction.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFall, Nhoj! Fall!\u201d screamed Sim, mentally. \u201cFall, fall! Fall and die so I can take your place!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But Nhoj did not fall. One by one the pebbles in his half-loose left hand plummeted to the broiling sands and Nhoj\u2019s lips peeled back, the saliva burned away from his lips and his eyes glazed. But he did not fall. The will to live was strong in him. He hung as if by a wire.<\/p>\n<p>Sim fell to one knee!<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAhh!\u201d wailed the knowing voices from the cliff. They were watching death. Sim jerked his head up, smiling mechanically, foolishly as if caught in the act of doing something silly. \u201cNo, no,\u201d he insisted drowsily, and got back up again. There was so much pain he was all one ringing numbness. A whirring, buzzing, frying sound filled the land. High up, an avalanche came down like a curtain on a drama, making no noise. Everything was quiet except for a steady humming. He saw fifty images of Nhoj now, dressed in armours of sweat, eyes puffed with torture, cheeks sunken, lips peeled back like the rind of a drying fruit. But the wire still held him.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNow,\u201d muttered Sim, sluggishly, with a thick, baked tongue between his blazing teeth. \u201cNow I\u2019ll fall and lie and dream.\u201d He said it with slow, thoughtful pleasure. He planned it. He knew how it must be done. He would do it accurately. He lifted his head to see if the audience was watching.<\/p>\n<p>They were gone!<\/p>\n<p>The sun had driven them back in. All save one or two brave ones. Sim laughed drunkenly and watched the sweat gather on his dead hands, hesitate, drop off, plunge down toward sand and turn to steam half way there.<\/p>\n<p>Nhoj fell.<\/p>\n<p>The wire was cut. Nhoj fell flat upon his stomach, a gout of blood kicked from his mouth. His eyes rolled back into a white, senseless insanity.<\/p>\n<p>Nhoj fell. So did his fifty duplicate illusions.<\/p>\n<p>All across the valley the winds sang and moaned and Sim saw a blue lake with a blue river feeding it and low white houses near the river with people going and coming in the houses and among the tall green trees. Trees taller than seven men, beside the river mirage.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNow,\u201d explained Sim to himself at last, \u201cNow I can fall. Right\u2014into\u2014that\u2014lake.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He fell forward.<\/p>\n<p>He was shocked when he felt the hands eagerly stop him in mid-plunge, lift him, hurry him off, high in the hungry air, like a torch held and waved, ablaze.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHow strange is death,\u201d he thought, and blackness took him.<\/p>\n<p>He wakened to the flow of cool water on his cheeks.<\/p>\n<p>He opened his eyes fearfully. Lyte held his head upon her lap, her fingers were moving food to his mouth. He was tremendously hungry and tired, but fear squeezed both of these things away. He struggled upward, seeing the strange cave contours overhead.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat time is it?\u201d he demanded.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe same day as the contest. Be quiet,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe same day!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>She nodded amusedly. \u201cYou\u2019ve lost nothing of your life. This is Nhoj\u2019s cave. We are inside the black cliff. We will live three extra days. Satisfied? Lie down.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNhoj is dead?\u201d He fell back, panting, his heart slamming his ribs. He relaxed slowly. \u201cI won. Gods, I won,\u201d he breathed.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNhoj is dead. So were we, almost. They carried us in from outside only in time.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He ate ravenously. \u201cWe have no time to waste. We must get strong. My leg\u2014\u201d He looked at it, tested it. There was a swathe of long yellow grasses around it and the ache had died away. Even as he watched the terrific pulsings of his body went to work and cured away the impurities under the bandages. It has to be strong by sunset, he thought. It has to be.<\/p>\n<p>He got up and limped around the cave like a captured animal. He felt Lyte\u2019s eyes upon him. He could not meet her gaze. Finally, helplessly, he turned.<\/p>\n<p>She interrupted him. \u201cYou want to go on to the ship?\u201d she asked, softly. \u201cTonight? When the sun goes down?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He took a breath, exhaled it. \u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou couldn\u2019t possibly wait until morning?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThen I\u2019ll go with you.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf I lag behind, let me. There\u2019s nothing here for me.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>They stared at each other a long while. He shrugged wearily.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAll right,\u201d he said, at last. \u201cI couldn\u2019t stop you, I know that. We\u2019ll go together.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>IX<\/p>\n<p>They waited in the mouth of their new cave. The sun set. The stones cooled so that one could walk on them. It was almost time for the leaping out and the running toward the distant, glittering metal seed that lay on the far mountain.<\/p>\n<p>Soon would come the rains. And Sim thought back over all the times he had watched the rains thicken into creeks, into rivers that cut new beds each night. One night there would be a river running north, the next a river running north-east, the third night a river running due west. The valley was continually cut and scarred by the torrents. Earthquakes and avalanches filled the old beds. New ones were the order of the day. It was this idea of the river and the directions of the river that he had turned over in his head for many hours. It might possibly\u2014Well, he would wait and see.<\/p>\n<p>He noticed how living in this new cliff had slowed his pulse, slowed everything. A mineral result, protection against the solar radiations. Life was still swift, but not as swift as before.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNow, Sim!\u201d cried Lyte, testing the valley air.<\/p>\n<p>They ran. Between the hot death and the cold one. Together, away from the cliffs, out toward the distant, beckoning ship.<\/p>\n<p>Never had they run this way in their lives. The sound of their feet running was a hard, insistent clatter over vast oblongs of rock, down into ravines, up the sides, and on again. They raked the air in and out their lungs. Behind them the cliffs faded away into things they could never turn back to now.<\/p>\n<p>They did not eat as they ran. They had eaten to the bursting point in the cave, to save time. Now it was only running, a lifting of legs, a balancing of bent elbows, a convulsion of muscles, a slaking in of air that had been fiery and was now cooling.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAre they watching us?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Lyte\u2019s breathless voice snatched at his ears, above the pound of his heart.<\/p>\n<p>Who? But he knew the answer. The cliff peoples, of course. How long had it been since a race like this one? A thousand days? Ten thousand? How long since someone had taken the chance and sprinted with an entire civilization\u2019s eyes upon their backs, into gullies, across cooling plain. Were there lovers pausing in their laughter back there, gazing at the two tiny dots that were a man and woman running toward destiny? Were children eating of new fruits and stopping in their play to see the two people racing against time? Was Dienc still living, narrowing hairy eyebrows down over fading eyes, shouting them on in a feeble, rasping voice, shaking a twisted hand? Were there jeers? Were they being called fools, idiots? And in the midst of the name calling, were people praying them on, hoping they would reach the ship? Yes, under all the cynicism and pessimism, some of them, all of them, must be praying.<\/p>\n<p>Sim took a quick glance at the sky, which was beginning to bruise with the coming night. Out of nowhere clouds materialized and a light shower trailed across a gully two hundred yards ahead of them. Lightning beat upon distant mountains and there was a strong scent of ozone on the disturbed air.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe halfway mark,\u201d panted Sim, and he saw Lyte\u2019s face half turn, longingly looking back at the life she was leaving. \u201cNow\u2019s the time, if we want to turn back, we still have time. Another minute\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Thunder snarled in the mountains. An avalanche started out small and ended up huge and monstrous in a deep fissure. Light rain dotted Lyte\u2019s smooth white skin. In a minute her hair was glistening and soggy with rain.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cToo late now,\u201d she shouted over the patting rhythm of her own naked feet. \u201cWe\u2019ve got to go ahead!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And it was too late. Sim knew, judging the distances, that there was no turning back now.<\/p>\n<p>His leg began to pain him a little. He favored it, slowing. A wind came up swiftly. A cold wind that bit into the skin. But it came from the cliffs behind them, helped rather than hindered them. An omen? he wondered. No.<\/p>\n<p>For as the minutes went by it grew upon him how poorly he had estimated the distance. Their time was dwindling out, but they were still an impossible distance from the ship. He said nothing, but the impotent anger at the slow muscles in his legs welled up into bitterly hot tears in his eyes.<\/p>\n<p>He knew that Lyte was thinking the same as himself. But she flew along like a white bird, seeming hardly to touch ground. He heard her breath go out and in her throat, like a clean, sharp knife in its sheathe.<\/p>\n<p>Half the sky was dark. The first stars were peering through lengths of black cloud. Lightning jiggled a path along a rim just ahead of them. A full thunderstorm of violent rain and exploding electricity fell upon them.<\/p>\n<p>They slipped and skidded on moss-smooth pebbles. Lyte fell, scrambled up again with a burning oath. Her body was scarred and dirty. The rain washed over her.<\/p>\n<p>The rain came down and cried on Sim. It filled his eyes and ran in rivers down his spine and he wanted to cry with it.<\/p>\n<p>Lyte fell and did not rise, sucking her breath, her breasts quivering.<\/p>\n<p>He picked her up and held her. \u201cRun, Lyte, please, run!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLeave me, Sim. Go ahead!\u201d The rain filled her mouth. There was water everywhere. \u201cIt\u2019s no use. Go on without me.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He stood there, cold and powerless, his thoughts sagging, the flame of hope blinking out. All the world was blackness, cold falling sheathes of water, and despair.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019ll walk, then,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd keep walking, and resting.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>They walked for fifty yards, easily, slowly, like children out for a stroll. The gully ahead of them filled with water that went sliding away with a swift wet sound, toward the horizon.<\/p>\n<p>Sim cried out. Tugging at Lyte he raced forward. \u201cA new channel,\u201d he said, pointing. \u201cEach day the rain cuts a new channel. Here, Lyte!\u201d He leaned over the flood waters.<\/p>\n<p>He dived in, taking her with him.<\/p>\n<p>The flood swept them like bits of wood. They fought to stay upright, the water got into their mouths, their noses. The land swept by on both sides of them. Clutching Lyte\u2019s fingers with insane strength, Sim felt himself hurled end over end, saw flicks of lightning on high, and a new fierce hope was born in him. They could no longer run, well, then they would let the water do the running for them.<\/p>\n<p>With a speed that dashed them against rocks, split open their shoulders, abraded their legs, the new, brief river carried them. \u201cThis way!\u201d Sim shouted over a salvo of thunder and steered frantically toward the opposite side of the gully. The mountain where the ship lay was just ahead. They must not pass it by. They fought in the transporting liquid and were slammed against the far side. Sim leaped up, caught at an overhanging rock, locked Lyte in his legs, and drew himself hand over hand upward.<\/p>\n<p>As quickly as it had come, the storm was gone. The lightning faded. The rain ceased. The clouds melted and fell away over the sky. The wind whispered into silence.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe ship!\u201d Lyte lay upon the ground. \u201cThe ship, Sim. This is the mountain of the ship!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Now the cold came. The killing cold.<\/p>\n<p>They forced themselves drunkenly up the mountain. The cold slid along their limbs, got into their arteries like a chemical and slowed them.<\/p>\n<p>Ahead of them, with a fresh-washed sheen, lay the ship. It was a dream. Sim could not believe that they were actually so near it. Two hundred yards. One hundred and seventy yards. Gods, but it was cold.<\/p>\n<p>Ahead of them lay the ship. Sim could not believe they were so near.<\/p>\n<p>The ground became covered with ice. They slipped and fell again and again. Behind them the river was frozen into a blue-white snake of cold solidity. A few last drops of rain from somewhere came down as hard pellets.<\/p>\n<p>Sim fell against the bulk of the ship. He was actually touching it. Touching it! He heard Lyte whimpering in her constricted throat. This was the metal, the ship. How many others had touched it in the long days? He and Lyte had made it!<\/p>\n<p>He touched it lovingly. Then, as cold as the air, his veins were chilled.<\/p>\n<p>Where was the entrance?<\/p>\n<p>You run, you swim, you almost drown, you curse, you sweat, you work, you reach a mountain, you go up it, you hammer on metal, you shout with relief, you reach the ship, and then\u2014you can\u2019t find the entrance.<\/p>\n<p>He fought to keep himself from breaking down. Slowly, he told himself, but not too slowly, go around the ship. The metal slid under his searching hands, so cold that his hands, sweating, almost froze to it. Now, far around to the side. Lyte moved with him. The cold held them like a fist. It began to squeeze.<\/p>\n<p>The entrance.<\/p>\n<p>Metal. Cold, immutable metal. A thin line of opening at the sealing point. Throwing all caution aside, he beat at it. He felt his stomach seething with cold. His fingers were numb, his eyes were half frozen in their sockets. He began to beat and search and scream against the metal door. \u201cOpen up! Open up!\u201d He staggered.<\/p>\n<p>The air-lock sighed. With a whispering of metal on rubber beddings, the door swung softly sidewise and vanished back.<\/p>\n<p>He saw Lyte run forward, clutch at her throat, and drop inside a small shiny chamber. He shuffled after her, blankly.<\/p>\n<p>The air-lock door sealed shut behind him.<\/p>\n<p>He could not breathe. His heart began to slow, to stop.<\/p>\n<p>They were trapped inside the ship now, and something was happening. He sank down to his knees and choked for air.<\/p>\n<p>The ship he had come to for salvation was now slowing his pulse, darkening his brain, poisoning him. With a starved, faint kind of expiring terror, he realized that he was dying.<\/p>\n<p>Blackness.<\/p>\n<p>He had a dim sense of time passing, of thinking, struggling, to make his heart go quick, quick\u2026. To make his eyes focus. But the fluid in his body lagged quietly through his settling veins and he heard his temple pulses thud, pause, thud, pause and thud again with lulling intermissions.<\/p>\n<p>He could not move, not a hand or leg or finger. It was an effort to lift the tonnage of his eyelashes. He could not shift his face even, to see Lyte lying beside him.<\/p>\n<p>From a distance came her irregular breathing. It was like the sound a wounded bird makes with his dry, unraveled pinions. She was so close he could almost feel the heat of her; yet she seemed a long way removed.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m getting cold! he thought. Is this death? This slowing of blood, of my heart, this cooling of my body, this drowsy thinking of thoughts?<\/p>\n<p>Staring at the ship\u2019s ceiling he traced its intricate system of tubes and machines. The knowledge, the purpose of the ship, its actions, seeped into him. He began to understand in a kind of revealing lassitude just what these things were his eyes rested upon. Slow. Slow.<\/p>\n<p>There was an instrument with a gleaming white dial.<\/p>\n<p>Its purpose?<\/p>\n<p>He drudged away at the problem, like a man underwater.<\/p>\n<p>People had used the dial. Touched it. People had repaired it. Installed it. People had dreamed of it before the building, before the installing, before the repairing and touching and using. The dial contained memory of use and manufacture, its very shape was a dream-memory telling Sim why and for what it had been built. Given time, looking at anything, he could draw from it the knowledge he desired. Some dim part of him reached out, dissected the contents of things, analyzed them.<\/p>\n<p>This dial measured time!<\/p>\n<p>Millions of days of time!<\/p>\n<p>But how could that be? Sim\u2019s eyes dilated, hot and glittering. Where were humans who needed such an instrument?<\/p>\n<p>Blood thrummed and beat behind his eyes. He closed them.<\/p>\n<p>Panic came to him. The day was passing. I am lying here, he thought, and my life slips away. I cannot move. My youth is passing. How long before I can move?<\/p>\n<p>Through a kind of porthole he saw the night pass, the day come, the day pass, and again another night. Stars danced frostily.<\/p>\n<p>I will lie here for four or five days, wrinkling and withering, he thought. This ship will not let me move. How much better if I had stayed in my home cliff, lived, enjoyed this short life. What good has it done to come here? I\u2019m missing all the twilights and dawns. I\u2019ll never touch Lyte, though she\u2019s here at my side.<\/p>\n<p>Delirium. His mind floated up. His thoughts whirled through the metal ship. He smelled the razor sharp smell of joined metal. He heard the hull contract with night, relax with day.<\/p>\n<p>Dawn.<\/p>\n<p>Already\u2014another dawn!<\/p>\n<p>Today I would have been mature. His jaw clenched. I must get up. I must move. I must enjoy my time of maturity.<\/p>\n<p>But he didn\u2019t move. He felt his blood pump sleepily from chamber to red chamber in his heart, on down and around through his dead body, to be purified by his folding and unfolding lungs. Then the circuit once more.<\/p>\n<p>The ship grew warm. From somewhere a machine clicked. Automatically the temperature cooled. A controlled gust of air flushed the room.<\/p>\n<p>Night again. And then another day.<\/p>\n<p>He lay and saw four days of his life pass.<\/p>\n<p>He did not try to fight. It was no use. His life was over.<\/p>\n<p>He didn\u2019t want to turn his head now. He didn\u2019t want to see Lyte with her face like his tortured mother\u2019s\u2014eyelids like gray ash flakes, eyes like beaten, sanded metal, cheeks like eroded stones. He didn\u2019t want to see a throat like parched thongs of yellow grass, hands the pattern of smoke risen from a fire, breasts like desiccated rinds and hair stubbly and unshorn as moist gray weeds!<\/p>\n<p>And himself? How did he look? Was his jaw sunken, the flesh of his eyes pitted, his brow lined and age-scarred?<\/p>\n<p>His strength began to return. He felt his heart beating so slow that it was amazing. One hundred beats a minute. Impossible. He felt so cool, so thoughtful, so easy.<\/p>\n<p>His head fell over to one side. He stared at Lyte. He shouted in surprise.<\/p>\n<p>She was young and fair.<\/p>\n<p>She was looking at him, too weak to say anything. Her eyes were like tiny silver medals, her throat curved like the arm of a child. Her hair was blue fire eating at her scalp, fed by the slender life of her body.<\/p>\n<p>Four days had passed and still she was young \u2026 no, younger than when they had entered the ship. She was still adolescent.<\/p>\n<p>He could not believe it.<\/p>\n<p>Her first words were, \u201cHow long will this last?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He replied, carefully. \u201cI don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe are still young.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe ship. Its metal is around us. It cuts away the sun and the things that came from the sun to age us.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Her eyes shifted thoughtfully. \u201cThen, if we stay here\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019ll remain young.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSix more days? Fourteen more? Twenty?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMore than that, maybe.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>She lay there, silently. After a long time she said, \u201cSim?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLet\u2019s stay here. Let\u2019s not go back. If we go back now, you know what\u2019ll happen to us\u2026?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m not certain.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019ll start getting old again, won\u2019t we?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He looked away. He stared at the ceiling and the clock with the moving finger. \u201cYes. We\u2019ll grow old.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat if we grow old\u2014instantly. When we step from the ship won\u2019t the shock be too much?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMaybe.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Another silence. He began to move his limbs, testing them. He was very hungry. \u201cThe others are waiting,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Her next words made him gasp. \u201cThe others are dead,\u201d she said. \u201cOr will be in a few hours. All those we knew back there are old and worn.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He tried to picture them old. Dark, his sister, bent and senile with time. He shook his head, wiping the picture away. \u201cThey may die,\u201d he said. \u201cBut there are others who\u2019ve been born.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPeople we don\u2019t even know,\u201d said Lyte, flatly.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut, nevertheless, our people,\u201d he replied. \u201cPeople who\u2019ll live only eight days, or eleven days unless we help them.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut we\u2019re young, Sim! We\u2019re young! We can stay young!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He didn\u2019t want to listen. It was too tempting a thing to listen to. To stay here. To live. \u201cWe\u2019ve already had more time than the others,\u201d he said. \u201cI need workers. Men to heal this ship. We\u2019ll get on our feet now, you and I, and find food, eat, and see if the ship is movable. I\u2019m afraid to try to move it myself. It\u2019s so big. I\u2019ll need help.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut that means running back all that distance!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI know.\u201d He lifted himself weakly. \u201cBut I\u2019ll do it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHow will you get the men back here?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019ll use the river.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf it\u2019s there. It may be somewhere else.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019ll wait until there is one, then. I\u2019ve got to go back, Lyte. The son of Dienc is waiting for me, my sister, your brother, are old people, ready to die, and waiting for some word from us\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>After a long while he heard her move, dragging herself tiredly to him. She put her head upon his chest, her eyes closed, stroking his arm. \u201cI\u2019m sorry. Forgive me. You have to go back. I\u2019m a selfish fool.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He touched her cheek, clumsily. \u201cYou\u2019re human. I understand you. There\u2019s nothing to forgive.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>They found food. They walked through the ship. It was empty. Only in the control room did they find the remains of a man who must have been the chief pilot. The others had evidently bailed out into space in emergency lifeboats. This pilot, sitting at his controls, alone, had landed the ship on a mountain within sight of other fallen and smashed crafts. Its location on high ground had saved it from the floods. The pilot himself had died, probably of heart failure, soon after landing. The ship had remained here, almost within reach of the other survivors, perfect as an egg, but silent, for\u2014how many thousand days? If the pilot had lived, what a different thing life might have been for the ancestors of Sim and Lyte. Sim, thinking of this\u2014felt the distant, ominous vibration of war. How had the war between worlds come out? Who had won? Or had both planets lost and never bothered trying to pick up survivors? Who had been right? Who was the enemy? Were Sim\u2019s people of the guilty or innocent side? They might never know.<\/p>\n<p>He checked the ship hurriedly. He knew nothing of its workings, yet as he walked its corridors, patted its machines, he learned from it. It needed only a crew. One man couldn\u2019t possibly set the whole thing running again. He laid his hand upon one round, snout-like machine. He jerked his hand away, as if burnt.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLyte!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat is it?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He touched the machine again, caressed it, his hand trembled violently, his eyes welled with tears, his mouth opened and closed, he looked at the machine, loving it, then looked at Lyte.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWith this machine\u2014\u201d he stammered, softly, incredulously. \u201cWith\u2014with this machine I can\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat, Sim?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He inserted his hand into a cup-like contraption with a lever inside. Out of porthole in front of him he could see the distant line of cliffs. \u201cWe were afraid there might never be another river running by this mountain, weren\u2019t we?\u201d he asked, exultantly.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYes, Sim, but\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere will be a river. And I will come back, tonight! And I\u2019ll bring men with me. Five hundred men! Because with this machine I can blast a river bottom all the way to the cliffs, down which the waters will rush, giving myself and the men a swift, sure way of traveling back!\u201d He rubbed the machine\u2019s barrel-like body. \u201cWhen I touched it, the life and method of it shot into me! Watch!\u201d He depressed the lever.<\/p>\n<p>A beam of incandescent fire lanced out from the ship, screaming.<\/p>\n<p>Steadily, accurately, Sim began to cut away a river bed for the storm waters to flow in. The night was turned to day by its hungry eating.<\/p>\n<p>The return to the cliffs was to be carried out by Sim alone. Lyte was to remain in the ship, in case of any mishap. The trip back seemed, at first glance, to be impossible. There would be no river rushing to cut his time, to sweep him along toward his destination. He would have to run the entire distance in the dawn, and the sun would get him, catch him before he\u2019d reached safety.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe only way to do it is to start before sunrise.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut you\u2019d be frozen, Sim.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHere.\u201d He made adjustments on the machine that had just finished cutting the river bed in the rock floor of the valley. He lifted the smooth snout of the gun, pressed the lever, left it down. A gout of fire shot toward the cliffs. He fingered the range control, focused the flame end three miles from its source. Done. He turned to Lyte. \u201cBut I don\u2019t understand,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>He opened the air-lock door. \u201cIt\u2019s bitter cold out, and half an hour yet till dawn. If I run parallel to the flame from the machine, close enough to it, there\u2019ll not be much heat but enough to sustain life, anyway.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt doesn\u2019t sound safe,\u201d Lyte protested.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNothing does, on this world.\u201d He moved forward. \u201cI\u2019ll have a half hour start. That should be enough to reach the cliffs.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut if the machine should fail while you\u2019re still running near its beam?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLet\u2019s not think of that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>A moment later he was outside. He staggered as if kicked in the stomach. His heart almost exploded in him. The environment of his world forced him into swift living again. He felt his pulse rise, kicking through his veins.<\/p>\n<p>The night was cold as death. The heat ray from the ship sliced across the valley, humming, solid and warm. He moved next to it, very close. One misstep in his running and\u2014<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ll be back,\u201d he called to Lyte.<\/p>\n<p>He and the ray of light went together.<\/p>\n<p>In the early morning the peoples in the caves saw the long finger of orange incandescence and the weird whitish apparition floating, running along beside it. There was muttering and superstition.<\/p>\n<p>So when Sim finally reached the cliffs of his childhood he saw alien peoples swarming there. There were no familiar faces. Then he realized how foolish it was to expect familiar faces. One of the older men glared down at him. \u201cWho\u2019re you?\u201d he shouted. \u201cAre you from the enemy cliff? What\u2019s your name?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI am Sim, the son of Sim!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSim!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>An old woman shrieked from the cliff above him. She came hobbling down the stone pathway. \u201cSim, Sim, it is you!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He looked at her, frankly bewildered. \u201cBut I don\u2019t know you,\u201d he murmured.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSim, don\u2019t you recognize me? Oh, Sim, it\u2019s me! Dark!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDark!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He felt sick at his stomach. She fell into his arms. This old, trembling woman with the half-blind eyes, his sister.<\/p>\n<p>Another face appeared above. That of an old man. A cruel, bitter face. It looked down at Sim and snarled. \u201cDrive him away!\u201d cried the old man. \u201cHe comes from the cliff of the enemy. He\u2019s lived there! He\u2019s still young! Those who go there can never come back among us. Disloyal beast!\u201d And a rock hurtled down.<\/p>\n<p>Sim leaped aside, pulling the old woman with him.<\/p>\n<p>A roar came from the people. They ran toward Sim, shaking their fists. \u201cKill him, kill him!\u201d raved the old man, and Sim did not know who he was.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cStop!\u201d Sim held out his hands. \u201cI come from the ship!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe ship?\u201d The people slowed. Dark clung to him, looking up into his young face, puzzling over its smoothness.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cKill him, kill him, kill him!\u201d croaked the old man, and picked up another rock.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI offer you ten days, twenty days, thirty more days of life!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The people stopped. Their mouths hung open. Their eyes were incredulous.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThirty days?\u201d It was repeated again and again. \u201cHow?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCome back to the ship with me. Inside it, one can live forever!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The old man lifted high a rock, then, choking, fell forward in an apoplectic fit, and tumbled down the rocks to lie at Sim\u2019s feet.<\/p>\n<p>Sim bent to peer at the ancient one, at the bleary, dead eyes, the loose, sneering lips, the crumpled, quiet body.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cChion!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYes,\u201d said Dark behind him, in a croaking, strange voice. \u201cYour enemy. Chion.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>That night a thousand warriors started for the ship as if going to war. The water ran in the new channel. Five hundred of them were drowned or lost behind in the cold. The others, with Sim, got through to the ship.<\/p>\n<p>Lyte awaited them, and threw wide the metal door.<\/p>\n<p>The weeks passed. Generations lived and died in the cliffs, while the five hundred workers labored over the ship, learning its functions and its parts.<\/p>\n<p>On the last day they disbanded. Each ran to his station. Now there was a destiny of travel who still remained behind.<\/p>\n<p>Sim touched the control plates under his fingers.<\/p>\n<p>Lyte, rubbing her eyes, came and sat on the floor next to him, resting her head against his knee, drowsily. \u201cI had a dream,\u201d she said, looking off at something far away. \u201cI dreamed I lived in caves in a cliff on a cold-hot planet where people grew old and died in eight days and were burnt.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat an impossible dream,\u201d said Sim. \u201cPeople couldn\u2019t possibly live in such a nightmare. Forget it. You\u2019re awake now.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He touched the plates gently. The ship rose and moved into space. Sim was right. The nightmare was over at last.<\/p>\n\n<p>If you enjoyed The Creatures That Time Forgot by Ray Bradbury, check out <a href=\"https:\/\/quizlit.org\/old-rambling-house-by-frank-herbert\">Old Rambling House by Frank Herbert<\/a><\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-text-align-center\">Best Ray Bradbury Books to Read<\/h2>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/48kz7Nq\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/49KVmNQ\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/3URmupY\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/3UOi5Er\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><\/a><br \/>\nclick on the image to get a copy<\/p>\n<p>Narrated by Ben Tucker, courtesy of Librivox<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Creatures That Time Forgot by Ray Bradbury was first published in Planet Stories in 1946. The story is about short-lived humans on a planet similar to Mercury. This post may contain affiliate links that earn us a commission at no extra cost to you. The Creatures That Time Forgot by Ray Bradbury The Creatures [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":2193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2192","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bookreviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2192"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2192"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2192\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}