A Heritage of Stars by Clifford D. Simak Read Free Book Online

first flush of the rising moon.
    He went north until he found an intersecting street and then turned to his left, traveling west. He doubted that he could clear the city before morning light, but he wanted to be as far along as he could manage. Well before dawn he would have to find a place to hole up during daylight hours.
    He was surprised to find himself, now that he was on his way, filled with a strange exhilaration. Freedom, he thought. Was that it, after all the years—the freedom—that exhilarated him? Was this the way, he wondered, that the ancient American long hunters had felt once they had shaken the dust of the eastern settlements off their feet? Was this the feeling of the old-time mountain man, equally mythical as the long hunters, when he had headed for the beaver streams? Was this the feeling that had been experienced by the astronauts when they had pointed the noses of their ships toward the distant stars? If they had, in fact, pointed at any stars at all.
    Occasionally, as he slipped along, he caught glimpses, on either side, of dark bulks looming among the trees. As the moon moved higher in the sky, he saw that the bulks were what was left of houses. Some of them still held the shape of houses and others were little more than piles of debris, not yet having settled into mounds or fallen into basements. He was, he knew, moving through a residential section and tried to picture in his mind what it might have looked like at another time—a tree-lined street with houses sitting, new and shining, in the greenness of their lawns. And the people in them—over there a doctor, across the street a lawyer, just down the street the owner of a hardware store. Children and dogs playing on the lawn, a mailman trudging on his rounds, a ground vehicle parked beside the curb. He shrugged, thinking of it, wondering how nearly he was right, how much the picture he was building in his mind might be romanticized. There had been pictures of such streets in the old files of magazines he’d read, but were these, he wondered, no more than highly selective pictures, unrepresentative of the general scene.
    The moonlight was stronger now and he could see that the street he moved along was filled with clumps of small bushes and with patches of briars through which a narrow trail snaked along, weaving from side to side to avoid the heavier growth that had intruded on the street. A deer path, he wondered, or was it one primarily used by men? If it were a man path, he should not be on it. He pondered that, deciding to stay on it. On it he could cover a fair amount of ground; off to one side of it, his way impeded by heavy growths of trees, fallen timber, the old houses and, worse, the gaping basements where houses had once stood, his progress would be slowed.
    Something caught his foot and tripped him, throwing him off balance. As he went down, something raked against his cheek, and behind him he heard a heavy thud. Twisting around from where he had landed in the briars, he saw the feathered shaft of an arrow protruding from a tree to one side of the twisting trail. A set, he told himself; for Christ’s sake, a set, and he had blundered into it. A few inches either way and he’d have had an arrow in his shoulder or his throat. A trip across the path to trigger a bended bow, the arrow held in place by a peg. Cold fear and anger filled him. A set for what? For deer, or man? What he should do, he thought, was wait here, hidden, until the owner of the set came at morning light to see what he had bagged, then put an arrow in him to ensure he’d never set such a trap again. But he didn’t have the time to do it; by morning light he must be far from here.
    He rose from the briars and moved off the street, plowing through rank growths of brush. Off the street the going was slower. It was darker among the trees, the moonlight blocked by dense foliage, and, as he had anticipated, there were obstacles.
    A short time