Shakespeare's Planet by Clifford D. Simak Read Free Book Online Page A

so deep between the hills and was so engulfed in forest that the darkness of the night had not been dispelled entirely. The trees stood tall, with few branches for the first thirty feet or so, and Carter noted that while in general structure they were much like the trees of Earth, the bark tended to have a scaly appearance and the leaves mostly merged toward black and purple rather than to green. Underneath the trees, the forest floor was fairly open, with only an occasional scattering of spindly and fragile shrubs. At times, tiny skittering creatures scampered across the ground, which was littered with many fallen branches, but at no time did Carter manage to get a good look at them.
    Here and there rock outcroppings thrust out of the hillside and when they descended another hill and crossed a small but brawling stream, low cliffs rose on the opposite bank. Carnivore led the way to where a path went up through a break in the wall of rock and they scrambled up the steep incline. Carter noted that the cliffs were pegmatite. There was no sign of sedimentary strata.
    They scrambled up the cleft and emerged on a hill that rose to another ridge, higher than the other two they had crossed. At the top, a scatter of boulders and a low ledge of rock outcropping ran along the ridge. Carnivore sat down upon a slab of stone and patted a place beside him, inviting Horton to sit.
    â€œHere we pause and catch the breath,” he said. “The land is rugged hereabouts.”
    â€œHow much farther?” Carter asked.
    Carnivore waved a nest of tentacles that served him as a hand. “Two more hills,” he said, “and we are almost there. Did you, by the way, catch god-hour last night?”
    â€œGod-hour?”
    â€œShakespeare called it that. Something reaching down and touching. Like someone being there.”
    â€œYes,” said Horton, “we caught it. Can you tell us what it is?”
    â€œI do not know,” said Carnivore, “and I do not like it. It look inside of you. It lay you open to the gut. That’s why I left you so abruptly. It jitters me. It turns me into water. But I stayed too long. It caught me going home.”
    â€œYou mean you knew that it was coming?”
    â€œIt comes every day. Or almost every day. There are times, not for very long, when it may not come at all. It moves across the day. It is coming now of evenings. It comes each time just a fraction later. It walks across the day and night. It keeps changing of its hour, but the change is very small.”
    â€œIt’s been coming all the time you’ve been here?”
    â€œAll the time,” said Carnivore. “It does not leave one be.”
    â€œYou have no idea what it is?”
    â€œShakespeare said it something out of space. He said it works like something far in space. It comes when this point of planet that we stand upon faces some point far in space.”
    Nicodemus had been prowling along the ledge of rock, stooping now and then to pick up a fallen chunk of stone. Now he came stalking toward them, holding out several small stones in his hand.
    â€œEmeralds,” he said. “Weathered out and lying on the ground. There are others in the matrix.”
    He handed them to Horton. Horton looked closely at them, holding them in the palm of his hand, probing at them with an index finger.
    Leaning over, Carnivore had a look at them. “Pretty rocks,” he said.
    â€œHell, no,” said Horton. “More than pretty rocks. These are emeralds.” He looked up at Nicodemus. “How did you know?” he asked.
    â€œI am wearing my rockhound transmog,” said the robot. “I put in my engineering transmog and there was room for one more, so I put in the rockhound …”
    â€œRockhound transmog! What the hell are you doing with a rockhound transmog?”
    â€œEach of us,” Nicodemus said sedately, “was allowed to include one hobby transmog. For our own personal