Astounding British Edition, Vol. 6, No. 8 — page 63: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

long, pointed stick. He sat down, the meat extended to the fire on the improvised fork, and waited for his supper to cook. It was not until he was eating it; some minutes later, that the stench of burning meat drove him away from the fire, prodded him into an investigation of the place into which he had fallen. It must have been used as a storeroom of some kind. There were boxes—or what was left of them—all packed with sheet after sheet of flimsy fabric. Unlike some of the material left—and found now and again by lucky discoverers—by the Ancients, it was uSeless for clothing or any kindred purpose. It was dry and brittle and tore easily. It had been disturbed by rats and other small beasts who had shredded it and carried it away to their nests. And in one or two of the boxes the rats them- selves had nested. But it burned. Useless it was for anything but that. It burned well. Enery was disappointed. He had known _others who had made similar finds, who had stumbled upon storehouses of all kinds of useful tools and weapons, He stood there in the light of his flaring fire, tearing with his teeth at the hunk of meat held in his right hand, holding a sheet of the useless fabric in his left. He looked at it contemptuously. Its yellowed surface was marred with little black marks. It was neither useful nor ornamental. He screwed . . into a tight ball and cast it on to the re. But there must, he told himself, be some- thing of value stored here. He lifted one of the boxes, intending to tip it over and spill its contents on the floor. But the sides ‘ burst as he was starting to do so. And in the box were still more of the sheets of fabric—but these were themselves boxed in a binding of some stiffer material. He opened them, looked through them with in- tolerant ignorance. There was one that ap- pealed fo him. It had pictures in addition to the meaningless little black marks—pic- tures such as William, the artist, could never hope to equal. There were men there, strangely clad and bearded, And there were women, attired as strangely as the men or naked, and with a slender grace that had passed from the world with the passing of ' the Ancients. The little black marks may have been meaningless to the. hunter, but the pictures stirred something deep and lost in his nature, were magic casements opening wide on-fairy lands far beyond his limited ken. Hastily, almost surreptitiously, he stuffed the little box into the pouch at his belt. There were other little boxes with pictures in them, But these were ugly, meaningless. They were no more than lines and circles— and the clearest of them seemed to be depic- tions of fantastic and graceless constructions. But they might, Enery decided, have some / ee i ee ee ee ee DAWN OF NOTHING See value or interest. He would take them to” Bart. Even though the stag was lost—or most of it—he would not return entirely empty handed. ‘He slept a little then, stretched out on a bed made of the pieces of flimsy fabric piled high in a rectangular pile. It was not too un- comfortable.. And it was almost his last sleep. He was awakened by a spasm of violent coughing. His smarting, smoke-filled eyes opened on what, at first, seemed to be the Hell promised for all those who did not follow ARP. The cavern was filled with a ruddy glare, with scorching heat. The flames had spread from the fire to the dry debris with which the floor was littered. Enery staggered to his feet. He forgot the little boxes of fabric that he had intended to take out with him, that lay beside his bed, soon to be consumed by the hungry flames. He remembered his bow that, as always, had been beside him as he slept. He snatched it up. And, more by instinct than by conscious volition, he turned his face to the indraught of cold air, started to stumble in the direction from which it was coming, The heat of the fire was fierce on his back when he found the door. It was of thick timber, bound with metal. Long ago, when the Ancients had made it, it had been strong. Now it was rotten, yielded at the first, pre- liminary nudge of the hunter’s shoulder. And Enery fell out onto the dew-wet grass, used his last reserves of energy to crawl away from the tongues of fire that licked out after him. And it was daylight, and the danger from the cats—although still to be reckoned with —was digi lessened. After a short rest the hunfer began his trudge back to the village of Bart. “And wot’s this I ’ear?” demanded the chief. “My best ’unter back from the chase wiv nuffin’? I tell yer, Enery, it won’t do!” Enery looked back at his master. He looked at the little eyes, half hidden by the grizzled tangle of hair and beard. He thought that he detected a twinkle, belying the severity of the chief’s tone. “Sorry, guv’ner,” he said. “I got a stag—a big *un—but ’e fell into one o’ them old caves wot the Old "Uns used ter make. Aht in the woods, it was. I’d chased ’im for miles, too, follered ‘is trail, like. ‘E was bleedin’ "eavy, see? An’ I was a bit careless like, an’ fell in arter ’im an’ laid myself aht. An’ when I come round the ’ole wood was alive wiv bleedin’ cats. So I ’ad ter light a fire, see? oO Poel ye ee ee es a et — POMS eye - 5 “ : . . ; te = < ry “CORmMicnooolKxs. conn