The Survivors quotes

The doors were still thudding shut when another explosion came, from toward the bow. Then there was silence; a feeling of utter quiet and motionlessness.

The fingers of fear enclosed her and her mind said to her, like the cold, unpassionate voice of a stranger: The Gerns have found us.

The light came on again, a feeble glow, and there was the soft, muffled sound of questioning voices in the other compartments. She dressed, her fingers shaking and clumsy, wishing that Dale would come to reassure her;

She knelt to put her arms around him, thinking:

Tears and fear are futile weapons; they can never bring us any tomorrows.

We’ll have to fight whatever comes to kill us no matter how scared we are. For ourselves and for our children. Above all else, for our children. …

Then he stopped and said something that sounded like “No.” He laid the teddy bear back down, wiping a little dust from its face as in a last gesture of farewell, and stood up to face Julia empty-handed.

“I don’t think I’ll want to play with my teddy bear any more,” he said. “I don’t think I’ll ever want to play at all anymore.”

Then he went to walk beside her, leaving his teddy bear lying on the ground behind him and with it leaving forever the tears and laughter of childhood.

“I don’t think I’ll want to play with my teddy bear any more,” he said. “I don’t think I’ll ever want to play at all anymore.”

Then he went to walk beside her, leaving his teddy bear lying on the ground behind him and with it leaving forever the tears and laughter of childhood.

The overcast deepened, and at midafternoon dark storm clouds came driving in from the west. Efforts were intensified to complete the move before the storm broke, both in his section of the camp and in Lake’s.

Prentiss went on, to make the rounds of the guards. When he returned he saw that his order had been obeyed.

The prowlers lay in the snow as before, their savage faces still twisted in their dying snarls, but snug and warm inside them babies slept.

The prowlers attacked again and again and when the wan sun lifted to shine down on the white, frozen land there were five hundred dead in Prentiss’s camp: three hundred by Hell Fever and two hundred by prowler attacks.

Even of the unicorns and swamp crawlers. But now we’ve come and they’re intelligent enough to know that we’re accustomed to being the dominant species, ourselves.

“There can’t be two dominant species on the same world⁠—and they know it. Men or prowlers⁠—in the end one is going to have to go down before the other.”

“I suppose you’re right,” Lake said. He looked at the guards, a fourth of them already reduced to bows and arrows that they had not yet had time to learn how to use.

His lips turned up a little at the corners and the Chiara of the dead past smiled for the last time at Lake.

“Just like a damned fool intern.⁠ ⁠…”

That was all, then, and the chamber was suddenly very quiet. Lake stood up to leave, and to speak the words that Chiara could never hear:

But the disease had given no warning of its coming.

Nothing, on Ragnarok, ever seemed to give warning before it killed.

Another week went by and hunters began to trickle in, gaunt and exhausted, to report all the game going north up the plateau and not a single creature left below.

Craig answered him, with a smile that was like the thin snarl of a wolf:

“Neither did two of my children.”

Lake nodded to Craig and Schroeder, not waiting any longer. They stepped back to seize the free end of the rope and Bemmon screamed at what was coming, tearing loose from the grip of Barber.

He did. That’s why I killed him. I had to kill two Venusian police to get away—that’s where I put the rope around my neck.”

“It’s not what we did but what we do that we’ll live or die by on Ragnarok,”

Lake said. He handed Schroeder the sheets of parchment. “Tell Craig to make at least four copies of this. Someday our knowledge of Gern blasters may be something else we’ll live or die by.”

Then he half brought it up again as the yellow one opened its mouth and said in a tone that held distinct anticipation:

“I think we’ll eat you for supper.”

He darted glances to right and left but there was nothing near him except the six little animals. The yellow one, having spoken, was staring silently at him with only curiosity on its furry face.

“So that’s that,” Humbolt said, looking down at them.

“The only things on Ragnarok that ever trusted us and wanted to be our friends⁠—and we killed them.”

They drank the last of their water and went on. They made dry camp that night and dreams of cold streams of water tormented their exhausted sleep.

“You’re not the only one who would like to leave our prison. Get me eight hundred pounds of copper and iron and I’ll make the transmitter, some way.”

Eight hundred pounds of metal.⁠ ⁠… On Ragnarok that was like asking for the sun.

The years went by and each year there was the same determined effort, the same lack of success. And each year the suns were farther south, marking the coming of the end of any efforts other than the one to survive.

“I see,” George said.

“The sword of Damocles hanging over their heads, to make them remember.”

“You know what would happen to them if they ever forgot. You’re as old as I am—you know what the Gerns did to us.”

They had their method of communication. They had their automatic crossbows for quick, close fighting, and their long range longbows. They were fully adapted to the 1.5 gravity and their reflexes were almost like those of prowlers—

Ragnarok had long ago separated the quick from the dead.

There were eight hundred and nineteen of them that year, in the early spring of one hundred and fifty, and they were ready and impatient for the coming of the Gerns.

Three times in the past, half-grown prowlers had been captured and caged in the hope of taming them. Each time they had paced their cages, looking longingly into the distance, refusing to eat and defiant until they died.

To prowlers, as to some men, freedom was more precious than life.

And each time a prowler had been captured the free ones had retaliated with a resurgence of savage attacks.

He picked up his knife and bow and began the long, painful journey back to the caves, looking again and again at the ridge behind him and thinking:

They have a code of ethics. They fight for their survival⁠—but they pay their debts.

Ragnarok was big enough for both men and prowlers. They could live together in friendship as men and dogs of Earth lived together. It might take a long time to win the trust of the prowlers but surely it could be done.

She carried young Johnny in one arm, in her other hand his little bottle of milk. Johnny was hungry—there was never quite enough milk for him—but he was not crying.

Ragnarok children did not cry.⁠ ⁠…

She saw the pups and her eyes went wide.

Winter was coming. Always, on Ragnarok, winter was coming or the brown death of summer.

Ragnarok was a harsh and barren prison, and no amount of desire could ever make it otherwise.

Only the coming of a Gern cruiser could ever offer them the bloody, violent opportunity to regain their freedom.

They looked, and the suspicion became gaping dismay.

“You can be our prisoners or you can be corpses,” he said. “We don’t care which.”

The urgent hiss of Narth’s command broke their indecision:

Jimmy looked down the row of Gerns and shook his head.

“So these are Gerns?” he said. “It was like trapping a band of woods goats.”

“Young ones,” Schroeder amended. “And almost as dangerous.”

“No one expected any of you to survive here.” The commander wiped at his swollen lips, wincing, and an almost childlike petulance came into his tone.

“You weren’t supposed to survive.”

“I know,” he said again. “We’ve made it a point to remember that.”

“It’s a battleship,” Narth said. “It’s three times the size of this cruiser, the newest and most powerful battleship in the Gern fleet. How does that sound to you?”

“It sounds good,” he said. “We’ll make it our flagship.”

“Your flagship—your ‘flagship’!” The last trace of pretense left Narth and he let his full and rankling hatred come through. “You got this cruiser by trickery and learned how to operate it after a fashion because of an animal-like reflex abnormality.

“It sounds good,” he said. “We’ll make it our flagship.”

“Your flagship⁠—your ‘flagship’!”

The last trace of pretense left Narth and he let his full and rankling hatred come through. “You got this cruiser by trickery and learned how to operate it after a fashion because of an animal-like reflex abnormality.