RAIDERS OF THE SECOND MOON-1
627 Words
RAIDERS OF THE SECOND MOON
BY GENE ELLERMAN
from
Planet Stories Summer 1945
A strange destiny had erased Noork’s memory, and had brought him to this tiny world—to write an end to his first existence.
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BEYOND EARTH SWINGS that airless pocked mass of fused rock and gray volcanic dust that we know as Luna. Of this our naked eyes assure us. But of the smaller satellite, hidden forever from the mundane view by Luna’s bulk, we know little.
Small is Sekk, that second moon, less than five hundred miles in diameter, but the period of its revolution is thirty two hours, and its meaner mass retains a breathable atmosphere. There is life on Sekk, life that centers around the sunken star-shaped cavity where an oval lake gleams softly in the depths. And the eleven radiating tips of the starry abyss are valleys green with jungle growth.
In one of those green valleys the white savage that the Vasads called Noork squatted in the ample crotch of a jungle giant and watched the trail forty feet below. For down there moved alertly a golden skinned girl, her only weapons a puny polished bow of yellow wood and a sheathed dagger.
Sight of the girl’s flowing brown hair and the graceful feminine contours of her smooth-limbed body beneath its skin-halter and the insignificant breech-clout, made his brow wrinkle with concentration. Not forever had he lived in this jungle world of valleys and ragged cliffs. Since he had learned the tongue of the hairy Vasads of forest, and the tongue of their gold-skinned leader, Gurn, the renegade, he had confirmed that belief.
For a huge gleaming bird had carried him in its talons to the top of the cliff above their valley and from the rock fire had risen to devour the great bird. Somehow he had been flung clear and escaped the death of the mysterious bird-thing. And in his delirium he had babbled the words that caused the apish Vasads to name him Noork. Now he repeated them aloud.
“New York,” he said, “good ol’ New York.”
The girl heard. She looked upward fearfully, her rounded bare arm going back to the bow slung across her shoulder. Swiftly she fitted an arrow and stepped back against the friendly bole of a shaggy barked jungle giant. Noork grinned.
“Tako, woman,” he greeted her.
“Tako,” she replied fearfully. “Who speaks to Tholon Sarna? Be you hunter or escaped slave?”
“A friend,” said Noork simply. “It was I who killed the spotted narl last night when it attacked you.”
Doubtfully the girl put away her bow. Her fingers, however, were never far from the hilt of her hunting dagger.
Noork swung outward from his perch, and then downward along the ladder of limbs to her side. The girl exclaimed at his brown skin.
“Your hair is the color of the sun!” she said. “Your garb is Vasad, yet you speak the language of the true men.” Her violet oddly slanting eyes opened yet wider. “Who are you?”
“I am Noork,” the man told her. “For many days have I dwelt among the wild Vasads of the jungle with their golden-skinned chief, Gurn, for my friend.”
The girl impulsively took a step nearer. “Gurn!” she cried. “Is he tall and strong? Has he a bracelet of golden discs linked together with human hair? Does he talk with his own shadow when he thinks?”
“That is Gurn,” admitted Noork shortly. “He is also an exile from the walled city of Grath. The city rulers call him a traitor. He has told me the reason. Perhaps you know it as well?”
“Indeed I do,” cried Sarna. “My brother said that we should no longer make slaves of the captured Zurans from the other valleys.”
Noork smiled. “I am glad he is your brother,” he said simply.
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