[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
."No one made any answer.There was no answer to make, no alternative tosuggest."In the future there will be more of us and it will be different," he said atlast."On Earth the Gerns were always stronger and faster than humans but whenthe Gerns come to Ragnarok they're going to find a race that isn't reallyhuman any more.They're going to find a race before which they'll be likewoods goats before prowlers.""If only they don't come too soon," Craig said."That was the chance that had to be taken," he replied.Page 50 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmlHe wondered again as he spoke, as he had wondered so often in the past years,if he had given them all their death sentence when he ordered the transmitterbuilt.Yet, the future generations could not be permitted to forget.andsteel could not be tempered without first thrusting it into the fire.* * *He was the last of the Young Ones when he awoke one night in the fall offifty-six and found himself burning with the Hell Fever.He did not summon anyof the others.They could do nothing for him and he had already done all hecould for them.He had done all he could for them.and now he would leave forty-nine men,women and children to face the unknown forces of Big Winter while over themhung the sword he had forged: the increasing danger of detection by the Gerns.The question came again, sharp with the knowledge that it was far too late forhim to change any of it.Did I arrange the execution of my people?Then, through the red haze of the fever, Julia spoke to him out of the past;sitting again beside him in the summer twilight and saying:Remember me, Billy, and this evening, and what I said to you.teach themto fight and be afraid of nothing.never let them forget how they came tobe on Ragnarok.She seemed very near and real and the doubt faded and was gone.Teach them to fight.never let them forget.The men of Ragnarok were only fur-clad hunters who crouched in caves but theywould grow in numbers as time went by.Each generation would be stronger thanthe generation before it and he had set forces in motion that would bring thelast generation the trial of combat and the opportunity for freedom.How wellthey fought on that day would determine their destiny but he was certain, onceagain, what that destiny would be.It would be to walk as conquerors before beaten and humbled Gerns.Part 3It was winter of the year eighty-five and the temperature was one hundred andsix degrees below zero.Walter Humbolt stood in front of the ice tunnel thatled back through the glacier to the caves and looked up into the sky.It was noon but there was no sun in the starlit sky.Many weeks before the sunhad slipped below the southern horizon.For a little while a dim halo hadmarked its passage each day; then that, too, had faded away.But now it wastime for the halo to appear again, to herald the sun's returning.Frost filled the sky, making the stars flicker as it swirled endlesslydownward.He blinked against it, his eyelashes trying to freeze to his lowereyelids at the movement, and turned to look at the north.There the northern lights were a gigantic curtain that filled a third of thesky, rippling and waving in folds that pulsated in red and green, rose andlavender and violet.Their reflection gleamed on the glacier that sloped downfrom the caves and glowed softly on the other glacier; the one that coveredthe transmitter station.The transmitter had long ago been taken into thecaves but the generator and waterwheel were still there, frozen in a tomb ofice.For three years the glacier had been growing before the caves and theplateau's southern face had been buried under snow for ten years.Only a fewwoods goats ever came as far north as the country south of the caves and theystayed only during the brief period between the last snow of spring and thefirst snow of fall.Their winter home was somewhere down near the equator.What had been called theSouthern Lowlands was a frozen, lifeless waste.Once they had thought about going to the valley in the chasm where the mockerswould be hibernating in their warm caves.But even if they could have gone upPage 51 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmlthe plateau and performed the incredible feat of crossing the glacier-covered,blizzard-ripped Craigs, they would have found no food in the mockers'valley only a little corn the mockers had stored away, which would soon havebeen exhausted.There was no place for them to live but in the caves or as nomads migratingwith the animals
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]