Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced from If Worlds of Science Fiction November 1954. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.
THE HONORED PROPHET
BY WILLIAM E. BENTLEY
Illustrated by Virgil Finlay
The black dwarf sun sent its assassin on a mission whichwas calculated to erase the threat to its existence. Butprophesies run in strange patterns and, sometimes, an act ofevasion becomes an act of fulfillment....
he ruler of a planet with a black dwarf sun had called a meeting ofthe council. It was some time before they were assembled, and hewaited patiently without thought.
When the patchwork of mentalities was complete he allowed theconclusions of the prognosticator to occupy his mind. A wall ofunanimous incredulity sprang up. The statement was that when theinhabitants of a distant planet achieved space flight they would cometo this planet, and use a weapon invented by an individual to destroyit. The prognosticator could not lie, and soon the facade dissolvedinto individual reactions as acceptance became general. Anger, fear,resignation, and greedy little thoughts of self-aggrandizement. Thosethoughts were replaced by a quiescent, questioning receptivity. Thequestioning grew out of proportion, became hysterical, assumed thepanic shape. Self-preservation demanding that there be a solution.Minor prophecies had been evaded before. Details of the individual hadbeen supplied, could not something be done?
The Assassin was summoned.
The pattern of Dr. Simon Cartwright's encephalic emanations, and theapproximate position of the center of these emanations were impressedon its mind. And in a strangely bulbous ship it plunged outward fromthat eternally dark and silent planet towards Earth.
A man was walking along a road. A high road. A silent, dark road.Below him on both sides of the road flat marshland swept away, and alittle wind caressed him with chill fingers. His tiny world of roadbeneath him, darkness around him, sky above him, contained only thesound of his footsteps—and one other. A regular, liquid sound. Hethought it was a sound from the marsh. He listened to it, and wonderedhow long it had been with him. It was close behind him on the road. Hestopped, turned round in small curiosity, and bellowed in greathorror. He threw up his hands against an immense bulk, a frog-likeshape, a lurching, flowing movement. Then it was upon him, and stilledhis futile writhings, and passed over him, and left him dead.
The Assassin continued along the road. It was aware that it hadkilled, but it could not contemplate the fact. It possessed all themental powers of its race, but its conditioning had focused them inone direction, the assassination of Dr. Cartwright. It could consideronly those factors which had