Citadel of Lost Ships
By LEIGH BRACKETT
It was a Gypsy world, built of space flotsam,
peopled with the few free races of the Solar
System. Roy Campbell, outcast prey of the
Coalition, entered its depths to seek haven
for the Kraylens of Venus—only to find that it
had become a slave trap from which there was no escape.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories March 1943.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Roy Campbell woke painfully. His body made a blind, instinctive lungefor the control panel, and it was only when his hands struck thesmooth, hard mud of the wall that he realized he wasn't in his shipany longer, and that the Spaceguard wasn't chasing him, their gunshammering death.
He leaned against the wall, the perspiration thick on his heavychest, his eyes wide and remembering. He could feel again, as thoughthe running fight were still happening, the bucking of his sleekFitz-Sothern beneath the calm control of his hands. He could rememberthe pencil rays lashing through the night, searching for him, seekinghis life. He could recall the tiny prayer that lingered in his memory,as he fought so skillfully, so dangerously, to evade the relentlesspursuer.
Then there was a hazy period, when a blasting cannon had twisted hisship like a wind-tossed leaf, and his head had smashed cruelly againstthe control panel. And then the slinking minutes when he had raced forsafety—and then the sodden hours when sleep was the only thing in theUniverse that he craved.
He sank back on the hide-frame cot with something between a laughand a curse. He was sweating, and his wiry body twitched. He found acigarette, lit it on the second try and sat still, listening to hisheartbeats slow down.
He began to wonder, then, what had wakened him.
It was night, the deep indigo night of Venus. Beyond the open hut door,Campbell could see the liha-trees swaying a little in the hot, slowbreeze. It seemed as though the whole night swayed, like a dark blueveil.
For a long time he didn't hear anything but the far-off screaming ofsome swamp-beast on the kill. Then, sharp and cruel against the bluesilence, a drum began to beat.
It made Campbell's heart jerk. The sound wasn't loud, but it had atight, hard quality of savagery, something as primal as the swamp andas alien, no matter how long a man lived with it.
The drumming stopped. The second, perhaps the third, ritual prelude.The first must have wakened him. Campbell stared with narrow dark eyesat the doorway.
He'd been with the Kraylens only two days this time, and he'd sleptmost of that. Now he realized, that in spite of his exhaustion, he hadsensed something wrong in the village.
Something was wrong, very wrong, when the drum beat that way in thesticky night.
He pulled on his short, black spaceman's boots and went out of the hut.No one moved in the village. Thatch rustled softly in the slow wind,and that was the only sign of life.
Campbell turned into a path under the whispering liha-trees. Hewore nothing but the tight black pants of his space garb, and the hotwind lay on his skin like soft hands. He filled his lungs with it. Itsmelled of warm still water and green, growing things, and....
Freedom. Above all, freedom. This was one place where a man couldstill stand on his legs and feel human.
The drumming started again, like a man's angry heart beating out of theindigo night. This