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

later he heard a sound that brought him to a halt, poised in mid-stride, waiting to hear the sound again. When it came, in the space of a heartbeat or two, he knew what it was: the soft mutter of a drum. He waited and the sound came again, louder now and with the drumrolls longer. Then it fell silent, only to take up again, louder and more insistent, not simply the tatooing ruffle of a single drum but more drums now, with the somber booming of a bigger drum marking off the ruffles.
    He puzzled over it. He had struck across the city’s southern edge, believing that by doing so he would swing wide of any tribal encampment. Although, so far as that was concerned, he had been foolish to think so. One could never tell where a camp might be. The tribes, while staying in the confines of the city, moved around a great deal. When the vicinity of one camping ground became too fouled for comfort, the tribe would move down the street a ways.
    The drums were gaining strength and volume. They were, he calculated, some distance ahead of him and slightly to the north. Some big doings, he told himself, grinning in the dark. A celebration of some sort, perhaps a commemorative notice of some tribal anniversary. He started moving once again. The thing for him to do was get out of here, to pay no attention to the drums and continue on his way.
    As he slogged along, keeping off the clearer paths of the one-time streets, the noise of the drumming grew. There was in it now a bloodcurdling savagery that had not been evidenced at the start. Listening to it, Cushing shivered, and yet, chilling as it was, it held a certain fascination. From time to time, interspersed between the drumbeats, he could hear a shouting and the yapping of dogs. In another mile or so he detected the flare of fires, slightly to the north and west, reflected off the sky.
    He stopped to gauge the situation better. Whatever was going on was taking place just over the brow of the hill that reared up to his right—much closer than he first had judged it. Perhaps, he told himself, he should angle to the south, putting more distance between himself and whatever might be going on. There might be sentries out and there was no sense in taking the chance of bumping into them.
    But he made no move. He stood there, with his back against a tree, staring up the hill, listening to the drumming and the shouting. Maybe he should know, he told himself, what was happening just beyond the hill. It would take no time at all. He could sneak up the hill and have a look, then be on his way again. No one would spot him. He’d keep a close outlook for sentries. The moon was out, of course, but here, underneath the heavy foliage of the trees, its light was tricky and uncertain at the best.
    Almost before he knew it he had started up the hill, moving at a crouch, sometimes on hands and knees, seeking the deeper shadows, watching for any movement, slithering up the slope, the low-hanging branches sliding noiselessly off his buckskins.
    There is trouble brewing, Monty had reminded him, trouble in the west. Some nomad band that had suddenly been seized with the thirst for conquest, and probably moving east. Could it be, he wondered, that the city tribes had spotted such a movement and were now in the process of whipping themselves into a warlike frenzy?
    Now that he was near the brow of the hill, his caution increased. He slid along from one deep shadow to another, studying the ground ahead before he made any move. Beyond the hill the bedlam grew. The drums rolled and thundered and the yelling never ceased. The dogs kept up their excited barking.
    Finally he reached the ridgetop, and there, below him, in a bowl-like valley, he saw the ring of fires and the dancing, yelling figures. In the center of the circle of fires stood a gleaming pyramid that caught and reflected the light of the leaping flames.
    A pyramid of skulls, he thought—a pyramid of polished human skulls—but even as he