Kuru stood his ground bravely as the ship
flamed down from the sky. Truly this was a great
and terrible moment. He must warn his people to—
Beware The Star Gods
By S. J. Byrne
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy
June 1954
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Kuru paused, his stone knife poised above the half-skinned kill. Helistened, at the same time twitching his sensitive nostrils in aneffort to read the messages of the wind. But there was nothing in theair for his nose to read. Rather, it was sound that gave him warning.
He stood up and looked through the trees at the small valley beyond theridge on which he stood. He could hear the raucous cry of birds and thetree people.
Kuru wanted very much to run to his people, but if he should do so whatwould he tell them? That he was running from that which he had not evenlooked upon with his own eyes? That Kuru ran from the cry of birds andtree people?
Now the tree people saw him and they paused in their flight,concentrating their numbers in the trees over his head, looking downat him and chattering and gesticulating with their busy little furryarms. He was aware that they recognized him as a hunter and the enemyof the murder-beast, and he was proud, knowing that they were appealingto him now in the face of this new and greater enemy, whatever it was.He could see that they were pointing at the sky.
The sky! Only the gods lived in the sky! He felt the hair along thebase of his neck stand out stiffly.
Something great and terrible was coming out of the sky!
The thing was long and rounded and shone brightly like the stars. Itsparkled in the blue-white light of the triple suns like a love-stonebrought from the Faraway Caves beyond the Great River. And it wasfloating down on pillars of fire toward the valley. It was becomingbigger and bigger, as were Kuru's large, black eyes.
Fear began to give place to Kuru's wonder. How had such a thing evercome to be? And what was it doing in the sky? What was it?
It was big, far bigger than Kuru could have imagined. When it came tothe ground it crushed and burned dozens of great trees. And there itsat, motionlessly and without sound, as though a mountain had droppedfrom the sky to stay there forever.
Suddenly, in the shining surface of the great sky-jewel a long, blackhole appeared, and even as he watched something glittering began toemerge from it. At first it seemed that this was some sort of giganticcocoon, breaking open to release the wing of an unimaginable insect.But in another moment he received the biggest surprise of all.
"Men!" he gasped. "What are men doing in that sky-jewel? They could nothave made it and come out of the sky—unless they are gods!"
The "man-gods" wore strange garments. They were amazingly frail andbeautiful looking people, like women in their fairness of skin andtheir almost complete lack of hair on their bodies. Kuru felt that hecould have broken one of them with each hand. But what strange strengthof magic did they possess to make this shining cave that brought themfrom the sky?
He heard a ferocious roar which emanated from the region of thesky-cave. It was a murder-beast. He saw several of the "man-gods" runto a gleaming sort of fence at the edge of the wing that had extendeditself out of the black hole. They were looking downward.
Now here was something Kuru could understand. In the face of theterrifying murder-beast he would be able to tell whether or not thesepeople were weaklings. He saw one of them extract a small objec