Hard-Luck Diggings: The Early Jack Vance, Volume One by Jack Vance Read Free Book Online

Hewas not dead…Or was he?…He took a step forward, sensed solidity under his feet. He looked down, saw a glassy black floor where small sparks burst, flickered, died. Constellations? Universes? Or merely—sparks?
    He took another step. It might have been a yard, a mile, a light-year; he moved with the floating ease of a man walking in a dream.
    He stood on the lip of an amphitheater, a bowl like a lunar crater. He took another step; he stood in the center of the bowl. He halted, fought to convince himself of his consciousness. Blood made a rushing sound as it flowed through his veins. He swayed, might have fallen if gravity had existed to pull him down. But there was no gravity. His feet clung to the surface by some mysterious adhesion beyond his experience. The blood-sound rose and fell in his ears. Blood meant life. Hewas alive.
    He looked in back of him, and in the blurring of his eyes could not distinguish what he saw. He turned, took a step forward—
    He was intruding. He felt the sudden irritated attention of gigantic personalities.
    He gazed about the glassy floor, and the faintest of watery gray lights seeping down from above collected in the concavity where he stood. Space was vast, interminable, without perspective.
    Kelly saw the beings he had disturbed—felt ratherthan saw them: a dozen giant shapes looming above.
    One of these shapes formed a thought, and a surge of meaning permeated space, impinged on Kelly’s mind, willy-nilly translatingitself into words:
    “What is this thing? From whose world did it come?”
    “From mine.” This must be Han. Kelly looked from shape to shape, to determine which the god might be.
    “Remove it quickly—” and to Kelly’s mind came a jumble of impressions he had no words to express. “We must deal with the matter of…” Again a quick listing of ideas which refused to translate in Kelly’s mind. He felt Han’s attention focussingon him. He stood transfixed, waiting for the obliteration he knew to be imminent.
    But he held the jewels, and their green glow shone up through his fingers. He cried out, “Wait, I came here for a purpose; I want a planet put backwhere it belongs, and I have jewels to pay—”
    He felt the baleful pressure of Han’s will on his mind—increasing, increasing; he groaned in helpless anguish.
    “Wait,” came a calm thought, transcendently clear and serene.
    “I must destroy it,” Han protested. “It is the enemy of my jewel-senders.”
    “Wait,” came from yet another of the shades, and Kelly caught a nuance of antagonism to Han. “We must act judicially.”
    “Why are you here?” came the query of the Leader.
    Kelly said, “The Han priests are murdering people of my race, ever since the planet we live on was moved. It’s not right.”
    “Ah!” came a thought like an exclamation from the Antagonist. “Han’s jewel-senders do evil and unnatural deeds.”
    “A minor matter, a minor matter,” camethe restless thought of still another shape. “Han must protect his jewel-senders.”
    And Kelly caught the implication that the jewel-sending was of cardinal importance; that the jewels were vital to the gods.
    The Antagonist chose to make an issue of the matter. “The condition of injustice which Han has effected must be abated.”
    The Leader meditated. And now came a sly thought to Kelly, which he sensed had been channelled to his mind alone. It came from the Antagonist.“Challenge Han to a…” The thought could only be translated as ‘duel’.“I will aid you. Relax your mind.” Kelly, grasping at any straw, loosened his mental fibers, andfelt something like a damp shadow entering his brain, absorbing, recording…All in an instant. The contact vanished.
    Kellyfelt the Leader’s mind wavering over infavor of Han. He said hurriedly, improvising as best he could: “Leader, in one of the legends of Earth, a man journeyed to the land of the giants. As they came to kill him, he challenged the foremost to a duel with his