Read The Game of Stars and Comets for Free Online

it is a part of him. If the fashioner is a man of Power and has made this work for a reason of Power, then it must follow that a portion of the Power he has tried to put into his work exists, at least for his purpose."
    "This you say of those scratches on a rock?" demanded Lik incredulously, aiming a thumb at the shadows which now enveloped the spring and the carved wall behind it.
    "So it might be said, if the fashioner of that carving intended it to be used as I believe he might have done." Because there was a measure of belief in Kade's own mind, his sincerity impressed the alien and the other's scoffing grin faded. "A man is a hunter and he wishes meat to fall before his spear. Therefore he makes an image of that meat, as well as he can envisage it, setting his choice of prey beside a pool where there is good water. And into this picture he puts all the Power of his mind, his heart, and his hands, centering upon his work his will that that prey come to where he had made such a carving, to fall beneath his weapon. So perhaps that happens. Wiser men than we have seen it chance so."
    Lik played with his belt. His grin was quite gone. Perhaps he had a thinking mind as well as a driver's callous heartlessness. A bully was not necessarily all fool. But inducing uneasiness was a delicate and precise bit of action. Kade had no intention of spoiling this play by too much force at the start.
    "It remains," he yawned, rubbed two fingers across his chin, "that there are those who have a liking for the records of such finds. And I am a trader." He returned the matter to the firm base of a commercial transaction, sure Lik would continue to think of the carving, consider its possibilities, in more than one field.
    Kade succeeded so well that the next morning when he went to the pool to rinse and fill his canteen he discovered Lik standing there, studying the carving. In the brighter light of day the kwitu was less impressive, more weatherworn, but the artistry of the conception was still boldly plain.
    That unknown artist had left no other trace of his passing or his living on the plateau which had survived the years. Although Kade examined every promising rock outcrop, there was not the slightest hint that anyone had crossed that expanse before their own party, though Iskug took a guide's lead with the assurance of one who knew his path.
    On the far side of the plateau they descended an easy zigzag stairway of ledges to the bottom of a canyon where the sky was a ribbon of pale silver-green far above, and their boots gritted in a coarse amber sand which identified a long-dried river bed. Their journey in the half-gloom of the depths took on an endless quality, but when they halted for cold rations at mid-day Iskug indicated a new trail, another climb toward the heights. This was the hardest pull they had so far had and the ascent brought them to another ridge.
    A murmur of sound filtered up, and with the noise a haze of dust thick as fog, not yet close enough to torment throats and eyes, hanging in a murky wave about a hundred feet below. Now and then the curtain wavered and Kade could see the bobbing, dust-grayed backs of the kwitu still headed north, filling the slit below from wall to wall, the constant complaint of their bellows echoed and reechoed into a sullen roaring.
    From here on their path followed ridge and ledge, gradually descending until the dust hid the road ahead. But Lik did not question Iskug, probably believing that with Lik's control of the collar, the native would not dare to lead them into danger.
    They found it easy enough to thread along until they hit the level of the dust. There Lik called a halt, stationing himself behind Iskug, his fingers on the control buttons in warning. Linked hand to hand in a line, water soaked strips of cloth tied over nose and mouth, they shuffled on, the sound of the kwitu loud enough to drown out all other noises. Now and then Kade caught a glimpse of a bull's head tossed high, heard