ENGINES of the GODS
By GARDNER F. FOX
The engine was the wealth of Mars. With it Kortha
could save his people ... or the evil Guantra
could rule the Universe. But neither could use
the machine until its secret was solved—so
they fought and schemed for the knowledge, and
their planet lay on the brink of destruction.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Spring 1946.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Kortha the smith brooded out over the great red waste of desert. Men said Kortha was a genius. Men said he was the biggest man on Mars, and strong as an anthropoid ape. But Kortha brooded, because Kortha was a coward.
He was not afraid for himself. He was afraid of himself.
He looked at his sun-bronzed, hamlike hands, and shuddered; glistening beads of sweat appeared on his forehead. With those hands he had killed men, and had crippled his best friend for life.
Behind him gleamed the red utta-brick smithy and his small shack, and the tiny structure he called his laboratory. Swinging on his heel, he went away from the desert and into the smithy. He made the bellows leap, and the red flames spurt from the furnace. With the tongs he lifted a white-hot strip of metal and pounded on it with a sledge that an ordinary man would have found immovable.
In the clang and dance of hammer on anvil, he lost himself; listened only to the mad symphony of beaten metal instead of the still, small voices of his soul. The din of smitten steel jangling on the sootblacked anvil was the music that helped the giant forget his heart. His eyes gleamed red from the smarting flames, and he peered into their depths with green eyes wide and angry as though he beheld a corner of some lost hell.