Short Fiction quotes

One pale, sardonic face reminded me of my father, but I could not be sure, so monstrously altered was its expression.

I was dining with my ancestors⁠—the House of Kralitz!

My cup was still held high, and I drained it, for somehow the grim revelation was not entirely unexpected. A strange glow thrilled through my veins, and I laughed aloud for the evil delight that was in me.

I picked up my drink and went to Arnsen’s table. All I could see was the back of his sleek, massive head. Then he looked up—

If ever I saw hell in a man’s face, I saw it in Arnsen’s then.

There was a dreadful longing, and an equally horrible hopelessness, the expression one might see on the face of a damned soul looking up from the pit at the shining gates forever beyond his reach.

It was one with the darkness. The sun-glare, in the absence of atmosphere, made sharp contrasts between light and jet shadow. The fingers of rock reached up hungrily, as though searching for warmth. There was nothing menacing about the picture.

It was horrible in its lifelessness; that was all.

It was not intended for life. Arnsen felt himself an intruder.

In the ship is a man and a jewel. He will die, but I do not think that even in death his hand will relax its grip on that jewel.

And the ship will go on, into the blackness which has no name.

Vanning’s shoulders slumped. “It’s nasty. But—I suppose—”

“Even the gods must die,” Zeeth said.

“Yeah. … Well, we’ve work to do. We’ll get food, water, and supplies, and head south for Venus Landing to get help. A small party will do. Then we can commandeer troops and swamp-cats to rescue the slaves from this corner of hell.

But Moriarty had been Duncan’s superior officer. And there had been no witnesses except Andrea and Duncan. The verdict was murder, with extenuating circumstances. A recommendation for mercy.

Mercy⁠—ten years in Transpolar, of which Duncan had already served five!

Five years of knowing that Andrea, ticketed as a jailbird’s wife, could scarcely earn enough to keep alive. Five years, and there were patches of iron gray along Saul Duncan’s temples.

“Okay,” he said. “

Welcome to Ganymede, the pleasure spot of the System.

The worst climate outside Hell, the only world almost completely unexplored, and the nicest place for going to the dogs I’ve ever seen. The Chamber of Commerce greets you. Here’s the representative.”

She smiled at him, very tenderly. “

The grass is still green on the hills of Earth, my lover. Have you forgotten?

The little streams that go laughing down the valleys, and the ocean surging up to the white beaches? There are still sunsets on Earth, and men and women will see them for ages to come. Men who might have been our sons;

Mighty cities reared to the blue skies of Earth, and ships swept out beyond the stars, binding the galaxies and the universe with unbreakable chains of life. Outward and ever outward the circles of humanity and civilization rippled.

Men and women like gods, unafraid, knowing a life greater than ever before⁠—

And they turned questioning eyes on Garth, asking him the question on which their existence depended.

He had broken more than ten commandments.

Between the planets, and in the far-flung worlds bordering the outer dark, there are more than ten. But Dantan had smashed them all.

In the end there was still the dull, sickening hopelessness, part loneliness, part something less definable. Hunted, he came back to Klanvahr, and when he came, men of the Redhelms died. They did not die easily.

Staring around, he took stock of resources. He was alone—what was it the old shaman had once told him? “

You are never alone in Klanvahr.

The living shadows of the past are all around you. They cannot help, but they watch, and their pride must not be humbled. You are never alone in Klanvahr.”

Landslide. Where water had chuckled and rustled along the left-hand branch before, now it took the other route. Dantan followed the dry canyon, finding the going easier now, since Phobos had risen … an Eye of Thar. “

The Eyes of the god miss nothing. They move across the world, and nothing can hide from Thar, or from his destiny.

”

So the circumstances hadn’t been quite normal. It was a frame. A beautiful, airtight frame, because he’d never come back to squawk.

Nobody came back from Asgard.

He shivered a little and looked up warily. There were legends, of course. The Watchers who patrolled the asteroid ceaselessly—robots, men said. They served the Aesir. As, in a way, all men served the Aesir.

On Io, Callisto, Ganymede, a man can orient himself by the gigantic mother planet—Saturn or Jupiter—and in the Asteroid Belt, there is always the strange procession of little worlds like lanterns, some half-shadowed, others brightly reflecting the Sun’s glare.

Anywhere in the System the sky is friendly⁠—

Except on Asgard. Jupiter was too far and too small; Mars was scarcely visible; the Asteroid Belt not much thicker than the Milky Way. The unfamiliar magnitudes of the planets told Stuart, very surely, that he was on unknown territory.

Stuart’s lips twisted in a bitter smile. The crazy confidence had not left him, but he was conscious of a reassuring warmth; at least he was no longer completely alone. That would help.

Between the worlds, and on the desolate planets that swing along the edge of the System, loneliness is the lurking terror, more horrible than the most exotic monster ever spawned by the radioactive Plutonian earth.

He touched the tapestry twice; it swept away from him, and a staircase was visible, leading down through stone or metal—he could not tell which. Stuart fought back the impulse that urged him to race down those curving spiral steps.

He knew that. But—but her shining smile lightened the darkness that engulfed him now. He had never seen loveliness like Kari’s, and he had known so many women, so many, too many. …

A man who has fought his way Sunward and back again by way of Pluto’s chasmed midnight is not so easily misled by the smile of a pretty woman.

Kari was no ordinary woman—God knew she was not! Perhaps not even human, perhaps not even real at all. It might be that very touch of alienage that had stamped her shining image upon his memory, but he could not put the image aside now.

Stark, abysmal nerve-shock poured like a current of fire up his spine and into his brain.

It was like tearing off his own skin.

Sick, blind, gasping dry-throated sobs, Stuart stumbled away from the black alcove, tearing at the cloak. It tried to cling to him—

Morrissey picked up a stethoscope. After a while he nodded.

“A physician hasn’t any right to be afraid of the dark,” Bruno said.

“A physician isn’t charting unmapped territory,” Morrissey said abruptly. “You can dissect a cadaver, but you can’t do that to the psyche. As a psychiatrist you should be the first to admit that we don’t know all there is to know about the mind.

Bruno chuckled. “Witchcraft, Ken—pure witchcraft! The germ theory of psychosis! Afraid I’ll catch Gregson’s insanity? I hate to disillusion you, but episodic disorders aren’t contagious.”

“Just because you can’t see a bug doesn’t mean it isn’t there,” Morrissey growled.

“What about a filterable virus? A few years ago nobody could conceive of liquid life.”

“

Because of the Martians, you fool. They own the world.

”

“It was not,” Martin said.

“Ah, then she must have been the Great Hairy One,” the robot murmured.

Martin took his feet off the desk and sat up slowly.

Martin glanced at his brimming glass.

“Fueling,” he said tersely. “High octane. You really believe in staying in character, don’t you? Why not⁠—”

“Oh, the principle of irritation,” the robot interrupted. “I see. Just like fermented mammoth’s milk.”

And St. Cyr, also too subhuman to be impressed by urbanity, hit Martin a clout on the jaw.

It could never have happened in the British Parliament.

When the robot walked into Martin’s office that evening, he, or it, went directly to the desk, unscrewed the bulb from the lamp, pressed the switch, and stuck his finger into the socket. There was a crackling flash.

He regarded them. He unclenched them slowly, while a terrible grin spread across his face. And then, with every tooth showing, and with the hungry gleam of a mad tiger in his tiny little eyes, he lifted his gaze to St. Cyr’s throat.

Mammoth-Slayer was not the son of the Great Hairy One for nothing.

So did St. Cyr—in another direction, screaming with sudden terror. For, after all, he was only a medievalist.

My specimens had been sent through to Callao by pack-train, and my notes were safe with Fra Rafael. Also, I was young and the lure of far places and their mysteries was hot in my blood. I hoped I’d find something odd—even dangerous—at Huascan.

I was young. Therefore, somewhat of a fool.⁠ ⁠…

The first night I camped in a little cave, sheltered from the wind and snug enough in my fleece-lined sleeping-bag. There were no insects at this height. It was impossible to make a fire for there was no wood.

My compass told me I was heading due north.

The fog was a living, sentient thing now, secretive, shrouding the secret that lay beyond its gray wall.

Suddenly I was conscious of a change. An electric tingle coursed through my body. Abruptly the fog-wall brightened. Dimly, as through a translucent pane, I could make out vague images ahead of me.

They were, I think, harder than metal, yet they had been here long enough for the elements to erode them into featureless shards. Had they been of earthly origin they would have antedated Mankind—antedated even the Neanderthaler man.

Curious how our minds are conditioned to run in anthropomorphic lines.

I was, though I did not know it, walking through a land that had its beginnings outside the known universe. The blue trees hinted at that. The crimson ruins told me that clearly.