Author: Kirk Straughen
Synopsis: Michael Grant's fiancee has disappeared without a trace on the strange world of Nattan. After a mad dash by fast spaceship to the planet he discovers the Terran Embassy is helpless to intervene. What fell fate has befallen the woman he loves and can he save her from an alien menace? what horrors shall he witness? what foul fate awaits him? We dare you to read the story, but take no responsibility if you have a heart attack.
Edit history: Minor changes were made to this story on 2 June 2021
Michael Grant, a bitter expression on his rugged face, stalked angrily through the narrow streets of ancient Oogor’s hilltop quarter, immersed in bleak thoughts and oblivious to his surroundings. He had just departed the cool halls of the Terran Embassy after a futile meeting with Jack Corby, chief liaison officer for human/alien relations.
Grant uttered an acidic oath as he recalled the officious bureaucrat’s impersonal words: “Ms Jackson has disappeared without a trace. We have no jurisdiction over what occurs beyond the walls of this embassy. This is a violent and primitive world, the indigenes of an alien mindset and easily offended. More than one cultural anthropologist has vanished, never to be seen again. Your fiancée knew the risks. We’ve made enquiries with the ruling priesthood. They claim ignorance. I’m sorry, but there is really nothing more we can do.”
A vision of Sophia rose within his mind – tall, lithe, a mass of raven hair framing the loveliness her oval face. They’d met a year ago during a function at the Interplanetary Anthropological Society: he the son of a wealthy socialite, she a rising star in her chosen field.
Before this chance encounter Grant had been a rather idle young man. True, he had many interests that kept him fit and active – ju-jitsu, polo and pistol shooting, just to name a few. But he lacked sound direction in his life. All this changed when he met Sophia, who was captivated by his chivalrous charm and he by her allure and talk of distant exotic worlds. Her fascinating accounts of alien cultures had fired his interest to the point where they both found they had much in common – an affinity that slowly grew to love.
Sophia had encouraged him to enrol in university to become an anthropologist. She had changed his life for the better, and the thought that something dreadful had happened to her tore at him like a pack of savage wolves. He had been uneasy at her coming to this strange world – Nattan, as it was called by its weird aborigines. Had it been a premonition? She had eased his fears with a promise to call him every day on the embassy’s hyperspace communicator, and soothed him with a reminder that they were to be married upon completion of her research.
The first week had been uneventful, then came dread silence; unnerving in all its fearful implications. And now he was here after a mad dash on the first available ship – it was a gut wrenching delay of several days that had left him in a state of jittering anxiety.
Grant paused and wiped the sweat from his brow. Angrily stalking about the streets of Oogor would get him nowhere. Sophia was obviously in serious trouble; the bureaucrats were useless as timid mice. It was up to him to save her.
Firming his resolve, he looked about. Above him blazed Delta II, the planet’s sun, drenching the world in a blaze of glaring light that was reflected from the quartz cobblestones with dazzling brilliance that would have damaged the Earthman’s eyes but for the conditioning treatments he’d received en route – a temporary silvering of his entire body.
His aimless wandering had taken him to the cliff’s edge where soaring trees, each resembling a sheaf of ostrich plumes, pewter in colour, clawed the rocky precipice. Grant moved within their shade, leaned upon the timber railing, and gazed meditatively over the strange city which sprouted from the slopes that fell away towards the crescent bay of Otz.
The metropolis was a jumble of pentagonal buildings that glittered in the hot sunlight like sparkling jewels. The stone from which they were constructed was translucent amber shot through with crimson veins. Friezes of grotesque animalistic heads – images of the Oogoran’s many gods – adorned each structure. On the flat roofs wind harps played their mournful songs as the sea breeze plucked their strings and filled the city with weird melodies.
Outlandish vegetation grew lushly in rooftop gardens – strange plants of every hue of silver from chrome brightness to dull lead, all adorned with strange blooms of a burnished copper colour. The maze of narrow streets was thronged by weird beings – tall, angular, clad in bright kilts of red, blue and yellow that were patterned with elaborate silver beadwork. Beyond was the Sea of Attu – a mirror of intense blue dotted with white sailing vessels of alien rigging.
Further out was the Island of Netisu, where the spaceport was located. A glowing sphere – the starship Falcon – the vessel upon which he had arrived three hours ago, rose with slow and silent majesty from its landing stage, and disappeared into the azure vault of heaven.
The Earthman’s gaze shifted to the heart of the metropolis and came to rest on the massive temple of Kaxaxa – Cannibal-god of Oogor and seat of power of the ruling theocracy. Grant’s eyes narrowed as he took in the structure’s strange architecture – a series of five interlocking pentagons that tapered to tall spires whose bone whiteness reminded the watching man of the skeletal fingers of a long dead titan. The forms of innumerable alien deities of lesser peerage were interlocked in tessellated patterns upon every surface of the temple, and their eyes of semiprecious stones glinted with wicked hardness in the harsh sunlight.
Grant shuddered despite the heat. He knew Sophia had come to study the strange theology of the secretive Priesthood of Kaxaxa. In the last communiqué he’d had from her she’d excitedly said the High Priest had granted her an interview.
Grant knew with grim certainty there was only one place his love could be...
**********
Three moons of emerald green cast their unearthly radiance upon the slumbering city wrapped in its blanket of shadows. A dim shape floated upwards in the darkness, hugging the towering temple walls. Grant rose silently and swiftly, propelled aloft by the powerful magnetic fields of the levitation harness he’d brought with him from Earth. His sharp eyes scanned the darkness, looking for signs of egress that would enable him to circumvent the heavily barred and guarded entrance to the building.
The eyes of innumerable gods, even more sinister in the moonlight, gleamed with a feral hunger as he passed them by. Grant’s fingers tightened on his dart gun which he’d managed to smuggle through customs in a disguised and disassembled state. His hands were sweaty and his heart hammered in his chest. He was possessed by a mixture of apprehension and excitement that had commenced with his mad decision to invade the sanctity of Kaxaxa’s fell abode on a desperate quest to rescue the woman he loved.
But would he find her? Was she even alive? He pushed aside these tormenting thoughts and concentrated on the wall of hideous gods– in the darkness he could easily miss a window or some other means of entry. Upward he rose, higher still; then when he was on the verge of bleak despair at finding a means of ingress, his eyes glimpsed a balcony looming forth from the night darkened stonework of the temple.
Grant floated over the terrace’s balustrade and alighted upon its floor with cat-like wariness. All was quiet, silent; and yet he felt hidden eyes upon him. He waited for long minutes in the gloom. Nothing moved but the fitful wind. The gods were as deaf and blind as the stone from which they were carved. The Earthman silently upbraided himself. The weirdness of the scene and his fears for Sophia were combining in a ferment of nervousness to unman him.
Firming his resolve he stepped across the threshold of the open door. It was then that a club swiftly crashed upon his head and sent him tumbling into black unconsciousness.
**********
Grant awoke with a groan. A tender hand soothed his aching head. He opened his eyes and saw Sophia’s worried face.
“Sophia,” he gasped. Joy swelled within the Earthman. Then anger etched hard lines upon his face. His fiancée had been stripped of all clothing, and her eyes were shadowed by the haunting fear of many days.
He rose to an elbow, clutched his aching head and cursed. The girl gently eased him back upon the floor.
“Careful,” she cautioned. “Judging by the lump on your head it’s a wonder your skull wasn’t split like a melon.” And then, with a sudden burst of emotion she flung herself upon the man and cried in anguished tones: “Oh, Michael why did you have to come. Now they’ve caught you as well.”
Grant held the weeping girl and comforted her as best he could. He ignored the fact of their mutual nudity – their situation was simply too desperate to be erotic. He quickly looked about and saw they were in a windowless pentagonal cell illuminated by some phosphorescent material painted on the high ceiling. A single door of solid timber, securely locked, barred the exit from their prison. Escape, at least for the moment, was impossible.
He wondered how his captors had suspected his rescue attempt, for clearly they had been lying in wait for him. Then he recalled the Oogoran servant who had brought refreshments when he was meeting with the embassy’s liaison officer. Now that he thought about it the being had been hovering in the background as he angrily told Corby he’d take matters into his own hands. Was the native a spy for the priesthood? It seemed a definite possibility.
Grant shifted the focus of his thoughts. It was impossible to formulate a plan of escape unless he knew exactly what was going on, and seeing that Sophia had calmed somewhat he gently put the question to her.
“We’ve fallen victim to the irrationality of religion,” replied the girl as she dried her tears. “Kaxaxa is the chief god of the Oogorans. This hermaphroditic divinity consumes the lesser deities in a complex series of cycles, at the end of which it gives birth to these gods in renewed form – a kind of reincarnation, if you like. The timing of these cycles, or yadatha, as they are called, is marked by an astrological conjunction of Nattan’s three moons – Tal, Los and Nu - which occurs every hundred years.
“There are nine hundred lesser gods in the Oogoran pantheon. These divinities are divided into three groups, each representing the primal forces of the universe – creation, preservation and destruction which, in turn, are incarnated as living beings. These incarnations, or avatars of the primal forces, are identified by the priests using abstruse methods of divination, and then sacrificed in an age old ritual to ensure the consummation of the supernatural cycle.”
The girl paused. For a moment naked fear marred the beauty of her face. Then, with a deep steadying breath she mastered her terror and continued. “It is now the time of the yadatha, and I have been identified as one of the sacrificial avatars.”
It took a moment for Grant to comprehend the full import of Sophia’s shocking revelation. “God,” he sickly gasped when comprehension hit him in the face. The Earthman lurched erect, rushed to the door and threw his strength futilely against the iron bound portal. “I’ve got to get you out of here,” he cried as he strove desperately against the barrier.
Grant felt the door open under the might of his straining thews. He grinned. But then the panel was flung inward with such terrific force that it hurled the Earthman to the floor. Sophia screamed. Seven figures, tall and angular swarmed within the cell. It was not Grant’s strength that had been responsible for the movement of the door.
Grant rolled to his feet, flung himself upon the nearest priest. Sophia leapt to aid him. Their adversaries rushed forward, closed about them. Grant’s fist crashed against a hide of silvery scales. The Oogoran staggered back, hissing venomously. Another flung a strangling arm about the Earthman’s throat. The being screamed shrilly when Sophia raked his eyes.
The battle raged in a desperate melee of flailing limbs. But the weight of overwhelming numbers soon crushed the frantic pair’s resistance. A wild blow sent Grant staggering across the cell. He glimpsed Sophia go down beneath two attackers, then three more fell upon him and sent him crashing to the floor. They were all over him with the ferocity of a pack of wild dogs. Fists pounded him, feet kicked him into submission, then he was hauled erect and his hands bound behind his back.
Grant looked groggily about. He saw Sophia, similarly bound, being manhandled to her feet by two priests. She was battered, bruised and semiconscious. He cursed her tormentors virulently. A fist crashed against his jaw. Stars exploded in his vision.
“Silence,” hissed a voice. “You shall not profane the sacred servants of most holy Kaxaxa.”
Grant’s vision cleared and he found himself staring into the narrow visage of Xu, High Priest of the Cannibal-god. The cleric’s eyes, as dark as polished onyx and alive with insane fanaticism bored into the Earthman with unnerving intensity.
The High Priest turned and snapped orders at his acolytes – orders that Grant understood by virtue of the neural programming he’d received on the voyage which had implanted knowledge of the Oogoran dialect within his brain.
“The celestial spheres are at conjunction. The moment has come. The gods await the consummation of the ritual. Let the holy sacrifice commence!”
The pair was dragged from the cell. Grant cursed, struggled furiously. But it was useless - the strength of many hands and his bound limbs saw to that. They were hauled through a maze of corridors and rooms - dark, mysterious, and ornamented with carvings of monstrous, many limbed deities - to finally emerge in an expansive pentagonal chamber.
The walls of the room were adorned with garishly enamelled carvings that depicted the cycle of yadatha – the consumption and rebirth of the lesser gods in a grisly orgy of unbridled cannibalism. Grant’s stomach turned at the sight of Kaxaxa – a huge, fanged and bloated bisexual monstrosity delineated in the sickening act of biting the head off some minor divinity.
The Earthman struggled wildly as he and Sophia were dragged towards a huge pentagonal well in the centre of the room. The warning prick of a blade sobered Grant and he managed to reign in his galloping fear. If he was killed now his love was surely doomed to whatever horrid death awaited her. With an effort he made his body slump in mock defeat. If the priests thought he was cowed he might be able to catch them by surprise. Cunning, not brute strength was his only hope.
They halted at the rim of the pentagonal well and Grant saw that a narrow stairway spiralled around its walls to the floor fifteen feet below where three bronze pillars stood in a triangular arrangement, each surmounted by the mystic symbol of the triune avatars. The Earthman went cold at the sight, for two beings were already bound to the metal posts in preparation for the sacrificial rite.
As Sophia was dragged to the head of the stairway she turned to Grant and cried in a quivering voice pregnant with emotion: “I love you. Hold me in your heart and I shall not be truly dead.”
The thought of Sophia’s death – the destruction of all he held most dear – was almost too much for Grant. He was tempted to throw caution to the wind and attempt a desperate rescue. But the weapon of his captor was still pressed against his side, and he knew his wild plan would never see fruition.
“I love you too. Don’t give up hope,” he cried. Sophia smiled weakly. His final words sounded hollow to both of them.
“Your female,” explained Xu to the Earthman as his acolytes bound Sophia to the pillar, “is the Avatar of Preservation – essential to the Ritual of Yadatha. Your fate, however, shall be far less glorious.”
Grant felt like spitting in the alien’s inhuman, mask-like face, but with a great effort controlled himself. To provoke Xu would serve nothing and cost much.
The Earthman’s bleak musings were broken by Xu’s ringing tones: “Behold,” he cried, pointing upwards to a huge skylight. “The three moons are in alignment. The sacrifices are prepared. Let the Ritual of Yadatha commence.”
Five priests glided to huge golden bowls supported on tripods that stood at each corner of the pentagonal well. The scented oil flared as the hierophants ignited the giant cressets. A heady scent flied the air. The clerics began to strike the gongs suspended from the bowls’ tripods and raised shrill voices in an eerie chant that made Grant’s nape hairs stand erect.
A rumbling sound from within the well drew the Earthman’s worried gaze. He saw a section of the wall swing out with ponderous slowness to reveal a dark doorway. Grant stiffened. He could see feral eyes gleaming in the gloom. Something was there – something large, terrible. Sophia screamed as the Avatar of Kaxaxa stepped within the cressets flaring light.
Grant blanched at the sight of the horned monstrosity. The scaled body, as large as a pony, was massive and wolf-like in build, but with lower hind quarters and high withers. The back, crested with a crimson coxcomb-like growth, sloped noticeably downward towards the hind legs which were very short. The forelegs were high and the neck thick and squat. The ugly head was broad and flat, and the gaping mouth full of viciously serrated teeth.
The thing’s brutal eyes locked on its victims. Viscous drool oozed from its maw as it stalked in a circle, spiralling towards the sacrifices with sinister purposefulness. Sophia struggled wildly in her bonds. She shrieked in terror at the thought of those terrible jaws ripping her apart. By contrast the other victims stood in fatalistic resignation.
Closer came the drooling horror. Higher rose the priests’ fell chant. Grant’s fear grew to a roaring crescendo. He knew he had to act, but what to do to save his love. His darting eyes fell upon a flaring cresset which the beast would pass beneath. A desperate plan bloomed within his racing mind.
The cleric holding Grant screamed as the Earthman stomped upon the fellow’s foot. Grant broke free, charged towards the cresset. The priest standing by the tripod heard his brother’s piercing the cry. He spun about reaching for his weapon. Grant slammed against the cleric before he could draw the blade. The cultist was flung against the tripod. The bowl tilted, fell. The priest followed with a scream. Both struck the stalking monster in a flare of blazing oil.
Grant staggered up and looked within the well. The beast, wreathed in flames, had gone mad with pain. It charged about the pit, bellowing in thunderous agony that drowned out the screams of the flopping, flame shrouded cleric. The Earthman’s heart nearly stopped as the rearing brute missed Sophia by a foot and crashed against another sacrificial victim, crushing the hapless being to gory ruin.
A blur of rapid movement alerted Grant. He ducked and Xu’s kulbash – a deadly arrangement of claw-shaped blades mounted on a haft - whirled above his head in a narrow miss.
Other howling priests rushed towards the Earthman, frothing with mad fury at the profanation of their most sacred rite. The High Priest, a wild look upon his face, drew another kulbash and lunged savagely. The Earthman dodged the deadly slash, tripped the raging cleric. Xu crashed to the floor. Grant kicked him in the head, swiftly knelt and with bound hands snatched up his weapon. The other cultists were closing fast.
The Earthman gritted his teeth, jumped within the well. The fall jarred him. A hurled kulbash from the crowding priests above grazed his arm as she rolled. In an instant he was on his feet and racing towards Sophia. He dodged the thundering brute as it hurtled passed, vaulted the charred and smoking corpse of the cleric he’d knocked within the pit.
“Here,” he gasped as he pressed the haft of captured weapon into the girl’s hands. “Hold this while I saw my bonds against it.”
Sophia, though pale and trembling from the horror of her situation, nonetheless had her wits about her. Her grip upon the kulbash was firm as Grant frantically attacked the cord that bound his wrists.
The Earthman started as another whipping blade missed him by a heart stopping margin. The whirling kulbash struck the remaining alien. The Oogoran screamed and died in a spurt of coppery gore.
A roar of rage drew Grant’s gaze. The beast had finally extinguished the flames by rolling on the floor. Its eyes were locked upon him. Fury was in its dark, malignant stare – a fury born of pain and rage against the cause of its torment. The monster exploded into a wild charge.
Chill fear thrust Grant to the bone. Sophia screamed. He redoubled his efforts as the hurtling beast rushed towards him. The cord parted. Grant grabbed the kulbash, rushed the beast in a suicidal move born of utter desperation.
Above, the priests called down virulent curses upon the Earthman. Xu, who had been helped to his feet, waited in fervent expectation for the Avatar of Kaxaxa to wreak its vengeance on the impious infidel. The High Priest’s eyes were locked gleefully upon the unfolding drama. He saw Grant swerve aside and race towards the wall, the avatar hot upon his heels.
Grant swerved again and the heavy beast, unable to stop its furious charge or turn as nimbly as its fleet quarry, slammed against the stone. In an instant the Earthman leapt adroitly upon the stunned monster’s back. He grasped one horn in a vice-like grip and locked his legs around its body, then struck savagely at its ugly head with his weapon.
The priests cried in disbelief and horror. The monster screamed at the bite of razor steel. It bucked in tossing leaps as it bounded madly about the pit of sacrifice in a wild dance of agony. Grant hung on for dear life. Again and again he struck, his furious blows becoming more desperate as the pain crazed beast whirled in demented circles towards the helpless girl.
Grant sensed the beast begin to roll in a desperate bid to crush him with its scaled body. He slammed home the kulbash a final time, leapt from its back as it began its killing tumble. The monster crashed to earth, staggered up, the weapon buried in its skull. Blood gushed from a dozen wounds on the horror’s head, painting its sinister features with highlights of gore.
The Earthman, breathing hard and trembling from his crazed exertions looked on in horror as the thing took a step towards him. Its eyes were cauldrons of fury. Grant saw his death in their virulent depths. He was nearly spent from his frenetic efforts and could barely scramble to his feet. Cold sweat was upon him as it advanced. He hadn’t the strength to carry on the battle.
He threw a glance at Sophia. The girl was bound, helpless. If only he’d taken time to free her. Grant cursed himself, the priests and all of Oogor as the darkest moment of his life came upon him.
Then, as he was about to hurl himself at the beast in a final suicidal bid to save his love, the creature staggered, collapsed upon the floor. Coppery blood gushed from its fang lined maw. It tried to rise, fell. Its eyes glazed. The heavy body twitched a final time and it was dead.
A chorus of demented howls drew Grant’s attention. He saw the priests above had gone insane with superstitious dread. The Avatar of Kaxaxa – the embodiment of their god – had been slain. The clerics rent their clothes in grief. They fell upon the floor in paroxysms of wild abandon. The sound they raised was like tormented souls in the depths of Abaddon’s blazing pit.
Grant lost no time. Somehow he managed to find a hidden reserve of strength. He retrieved his kulbash and dashed towards the girl. A quick slash of the keen blade and she was free. Both darted up the steps with the fleetness of gazelles. The Earthman cursed. Xu stood at the head of the stairs, his face a contorted vision of rabid madness. The High Priest uttered a demented shriek and rushed at Grant, his hands outstretched like the talons of a beast.
The Earthman hurled his weapon. The whirling blades struck the High Priest in the shoulder. Xu screeched, staggered from the knifing pain. He lost his balance and toppled into the well with a piercing shriek – a shriek that was cut off when his skull was split by the unforgiving hardness of the floor.
The remaining priests were in a state of shock – the death of Kaxaxa’s avatar and now Xu’s gory end had disrupted all effectual thought. Grant paused briefly to snatch another kulbash from a numbed cleric; then he and Sophia darted through the disordered cultists and made their wild dash for freedom.
**********
Grant and Sophia sat in the small cabin, and watched the world of Nattan shrink to nothingness in the viewing disc as the evacuation ship sped away from the alien sphere, and entered hyperspace in a burst of prismatic coruscation.
The Earthman breathed a sigh of vast relief – homeward bound to the safety of blessed Earth. He recalled their nightmare flight from the temple and through the shadowed streets of Oogor: his clash with the guards at the temple door – a desperate battle of flashing knives and spurting blood, the mad race through the night dark streets of the city, a swarm of guardsman hot upon their heels.
They’d barely made it to the sanctuary of the embassy, and within an hour a wild mob was pounding at the gates, baying for the blood of every human in the fortified complex. To Grant’s surprise the embassy staff were most solicitous (he’d considered them useless for their lack of assistance in helping him find Sophia).
As Ambassador Tyler explained - just as Earth’s jurisdiction did not extend beyond the embassy’s walls, Oogoran authority did not penetrate within them, and so the couple would be given unstinting assistance once within the compound’s sanctuary. After the two hour debriefing both were spirited away by levicoptor to the spaceport, and were soon aboard the evacuation ship kept in readiness for such emergencies.
Grant drew his mind to the present and wondered how the ambassador would mollify the outraged priesthood. He certainly wouldn’t like to be in Tyler’s shoes – that was the only thing the Earthman knew for certain.
“After this incident,” said Sophia, worriedly, breaking in on his thoughts before he could contemplate the ambassador’s dilemma further, “I suppose you’ll want me to give up anthropology.”
“Not at all,” reassured Grant as he placed his arms comfortingly around her. “I know how much your profession means to you.” And then he grinned. “But next time I’m coming with you to keep you out of trouble.”
Sophia smiled. After all, she could hardly object to that.
THE END