ON THE FOURTH PLANET
by J. F. BONE
Illustrated by FINLAY
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Magazine April 1963.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
To Kworn the object was a roadblock, threatening his life.
But it was also a high road to a magnificent future!
The Ul Kworn paused in his search for food, extended his eye andconsidered the thing that blocked his path.
He hadn't notice the obstacle until he had almost touched it. Hisattention had been focused upon gleaning every feeder large enough tobe edible from the lichens that covered his feeding strip. But theunexpected warmth radiating from the object had startled him. Sundownwas at hand. There should be nothing living or non-living that radiateda fraction of the heat that was coming from the gleaming metal wallwhich lay before him. He expanded his mantle to trap the warmth as hepushed his eye upward to look over the top. It wasn't high, just highenough to be a nuisance. It curved away from him toward the boundariesof his strip, extending completely across the width of his land.
A dim racial memory told him that this was an artefact, a product ofthe days when the Folk had leisure to dream and time to build. It hadprobably been built by his remote ancestors millennia ago and had justrecently been uncovered from its hiding place beneath the sand. Thesemetal objects kept appearing and disappearing as the sands shiftedto the force of the wind. He had seen them before, but never a pieceso large or so well preserved. It shone as though it had been madeyesterday, gleaming with a soft silvery luster against the blue-blackdarkness of the sky.
As his eye cleared the top of the wall, he quivered with shock andastonishment. For it was not a wall as he had thought. Instead, it wasthe edge of a huge metal disc fifty raads in diameter. And that wasn'tall of it. Three thick columns of metal extended upward from the disc,leaning inward as they rose into the sky. High overhead, almost beyondthe range of accurate vision, they converged to support an immensecylinder set vertically to the ground. The cylinder was almost as greatin diameter as the disc upon which his eye first rested. It loomedoverhead, and he had a queasy feeling that it was about to fall andcrush him. Strange jointed excresences studded its surface, and in itsside, some two-thirds of the way up, two smaller cylinders projectedfrom the bigger one. They were set a little distance apart, divided bya vertical row of four black designs, and pointed straight down hisfeeding strip.
The Ul Kworn eyed the giant structure with disgust and puzzlement.The storm that had uncovered it must have been a great one to haveblown so much sand away. It was just his fortune to have the thingsquatting in his path! His mantle darkened with anger. Why was it thateverything happened to him? Why couldn't it have lain in someone else'sway, upon the land of one of his neighbors? It blocked him from nearlythree thousand square raads of life-sustaining soil. To cross it wouldrequire energy he could not spare. Why couldn't it have been on the UlCaada's or the Ul Varsi's strip—or any other of the numberless Folk?Why did he have to be faced with this roadblock?
He couldn't go around it since it extended beyond his territory and,therefore, he'd have to waste precious energy propelling his mass upthe wall and across the smooth shining surface of the disc—all ofwhich would have to be