NEW MOON
by Basil Wells
(Author of "Biped," "Rebirth of Man," etc.)
The barbarian rode out of the wilds to capture one of the little demons whose 
eyes flashed fire.



ARIS CX13 perched precariously atop a gleaming white boulder as she watched the 
strange rider's approach. A ferocious shaggy gray pack of wolfish grals clawed 
futilely at the rock's smooth base, fighting to gorge their gaunt bellies on her 
tender flesh.
Her scanty black tunic hung in ribbons, shredded by clawing blanches as she had 
raced to escape their keen fangs long hours before, and her long raven hair 
streamed unbound down about her shoulders.
Less than two miles away, upon the rocky upper plateau, the dozen dome cities of 
her people gleamed in the afternoon sunlight. Two miles, or a thousand parsecs 
distant--she knew there would be no rescue from that source. Only this morning 
Krath GDT8 had announced that she must soon be exiled from the plateau, to live 
out her life among the miserable wretches who eked out a precarious existence in 
Numark's inner swamplands.
Aris CX13 was an atavistic throwback to some primitive ancestor--a shapely, 
beautiful reversion to the ancestral type. She walked, a giantess, among the 
scrawny bald men of Numark. They regarded with disgust her graceful rounded 
body, and her gleaming white teeth filled them with horror--beastly fangs! But 
for her father, kindly old Hed CX12 the scientist, she would have been destroyed 
many years before.
Eagerly now Aris watched the rider from beyond the horizon reach the cliff's 
tree-clad rim and ride toward her along a narrow game-trail.
She could see now that he was a barbarian, a tall giant of a man, well-muscled 
and straight. Here was no shambling hairy outcast! Here was a man!
A great bow of yellow wood thrust above his bronzed shoulder, the polished shaft 
of his stout, quartz-tipped spear beside it. At his side a knife of soft, 
hammered iron, its handle bound about with shrunken leather bands, swung in its 
sheath. He wore no garment save a simple g-string of tanned leather, and clumsy 
looking moccasins of zarp-hide were upon his feet. His hair was long--a tawny 
yellow--and the flame of his deep-set eyes made startling sparks of blue in the 
darkness of his lean features.
He came full upon the grals as he rounded a turn in the trail. He pulled up his 
horse and unslung the bow, nocking the bowstring in place with one swift motion. 
Then his bow bent; one--two--three the arrows flashed, and three of the 
lank-ribbed beasts kicked out their lives on the uneven grassy ground.
The snarling pack melted away before this new deadly foe, seeking shelter among 
the jutting rocks and the clumps of brush that sparsely dotted the lower 
plateau's grassland. In a moment the last of their shadowy shapes were gone.
Aris slid down from her rough-surfaced seat atop the great rock and was gingerly 
rubbing a portion of her bruised anatomy as the stranger rode up beside her. 
Aris faced him proudly but the color was high in her cheeks and her heart was 
thudding fast. He slid from the muddy gray blanket that did service as his 
saddle, not three feet away.
"I am Toam Blak," he announced stiffly.
"I am grateful to you, Toam Blak, for driving away the grals," Aris replied. "I 
am called Aris CX13."
"I look for the hills of ice," Toam said, "and for the little demons who dwell 
within them. I wish to see them breathe fire from their nostrils."
"Do you wish to die?" exclaimed Aris. "I live in the domes of Numark and I speak 
the truth. The little bald men destroy any barbarian or swamp-dweller found on 
their plateau. You must not go near their domes or the robot guards will kill 
you."
"I must see the demons," insisted Toam stubbornly, "and the shining hills of 
ice. I have journeyed far across the swamps. I have battled the slim zarps that 
come from the sea, and I have beaten off the attacks of the scaly, winged 
thulars. I have come to see the demons and take one, captive, back to Yark. I 
will not turn back now."
"Well, " said Aris breathlessly, "why not take me back to Yark with you. I can 
teach your people many things. I have studied the ancient books that gather dust 
in musty vaults beneath the domes. I can show you how to build machines. I can 
teach you to read."
"You," laughed Toam, "are not a demon. You are a woman like my sister, Elner. 
But you can come to Yark with me--when I have captured a demon."
"Good!" cried Aris. "I will help you capture one of the little men, Krath GDT8 
if possible--the heartless old wretch. I will meet you tonight outside the 
domes. My robot can easily carry double and it will not tire as does your 
four-legged beast."
"I can trust you, I think," said Toam slowly, his piercing eyes intent upon her 
face. "Yes, you are speaking words of truth. You are unhappy living with the 
demons. That is why you wander here alone."
FOR A LONG time they sat in the lengthening shade of the giant white boulder and 
made their plans. Aris tried to explain to the simple barbarian that the 
dome-dwellers were really men and not demons, but Toam would not be convinced.
"Our legends tell us that Dawan, the great Erth god, carried us from our ancient 
homeland in a vast boat," he said. "Out of the Great Sea only a single barren 
rock lifted. There was no sunlight. But Dawan carried water from the ocean and 
made a moon, and when the water was gone the islands appeared.
"Our people and the demons lived together on the great rock in the hills of ice. 
But the demons would not let Toam, my ancestor, mate with the woman he wanted; 
so he took some of his friends and their women in a boat and went to the island 
of Yark."
"Men did come to this planet, Venus, in a spaceship," admitted Aris, "and they 
landed on the level top of the upper plateau, the only exposed bit of land on 
this watery world. They built great domes and grew their food in hydroponic 
vats. Later they discovered the catalyst that frees the energy of copper atoms, 
in a deep-buried meteor. They constructed several mattercasters like those used 
on distant Earth for the transmission of matter from station to station, and set 
the spaceship spinning in an orbit about Venus.
"Then the transmission of water from the Great Sea to the tiny artificial moon 
began. Centuries passed and ice built up about the spaceship into a miniature 
satellite. More mattercast receivers were constructed on the moon and its bulk 
grew swiftly. The Great Sea's level constantly lowered and the higher islands 
appeared. Vegetation spread out across the mud flats. Animals escaped from the 
domes to run wild and multiply in the dankness of the swampy jungles.
"Your ancestor, Tom Blake, was a biologist in Dome 7. He rebelled against the 
rigid code that forbade him to mate with a woman from outside his own 
classification. He declared that mankind would grow decadent and perish if such 
over-specialization of mental types were long continued. And the passing 
centuries have shown how right he was....
"The little men with the bulging hairless heads are the final product of that 
code. All the human traits of love, kindness, and curiosity have been carefully 
and scientifically bred out of them. They have become impractical students of 
useless abstractions, creating nothing new or worthwhile. Long ago they halted 
the transmission of water to the moon. They were content with the artificial 
life of the domes where the temperature was always even and robots did all the 
work. Every year their number dwindles. They are doomed. . ."
"Your legend is silly," laughed Toam. "Our story is of course the true one. The 
demons have told lies to you."
"I read all that I have told you in the books of the historians," cried Aris 
indignantly. "But, of course, a barbarian like you could not read. When we are 
in Yark I will teach you to read. Then you will know the truth."
"You are pretty when your eyes flash lightning," said Toam unexpectedly, "and 
your mouth puckers so. I like you very much, I think."
Aris smiled. She gathered the shreds of her tunic about her closer and got up 
from the flat stone where they had been sitting.
"Time that I was leaving, I fear," she told him.
Then she hurried away toward the chalky white cliffs that rimmed the upper 
plateau.
Toam watched her go, a quizzical half-smile rifting his dark features. Then he 
knelt on the grassy ground beside the flat rock, his fingers busy with the 
contents of the beaded leather bag laced inside his loincloth. His eyes sought 
the eastern horizon where lay Yark and his lips moved slowly as they framed 
silent words. He bowed his head down to the pouch again and again as though he 
were listening to the faint voice of some unseen spirit.
"It is good," he said after a time. "I will meet the girl tonight outside the 
domes. We will escape across the marshes."
Carefully Toam stowed the little bag in its accustomed place and laced it firmly 
there. To lose that beaded bit of leather and its precious contents would be 
worse than losing an arm. It was a very potent amulet.
He ate a hard black strip of dried meat, a handful of grain kernels, and several 
of the wrinkled yellow fruit that grew on a low bush near at hand. The girl was 
gone from sight by this time, so he took his weapons and set out upon her trail.
TOAM TOPPED the last steep slope of the rocky trail and crept cautiously into 
the welcome shelter of a stunted clump of brush. The red flame of the twilight 
outlined his surroundings with a brush of deepest crimson.
The upper plateau was a barren thick U, roughly five miles in diameter, an 
unlovely broken stretch of jumbled rock and layered shale. At the base of the U 
sheer crags of gleaming black rock butted their serrated spines sharply against 
the clouds; while into the empty center of the plateau there stretched a finger 
of the Great Sea. In this natural bay, choking its shoreline, lay the swamplands 
inhabited by exiled dome-dwellers. And along either side of the great U 
glistened the vast transparent domes of the little bald men--a dozen of them 
squatted there upon the drab gray rocks.
There was no growing thing within a hundred yards of any of the domes, nor were 
there any concealing ridges of shale. The ground was levelled smooth and 
hard--blackened as though by fire--close up to them. Only under shelter of night 
could he hope to reach those looming half-globes.
The pale icy disc of the moon was riding close down to the horizon's rim when 
Toam came at last to the barren stretch of rock before the dome. He crouched 
behind a low cluster of rock fragments, his eyes searching that curving smooth 
wall for an opening. This was the dome that Aris had entered he knew, but he 
could see no door leading inside.
The click of metal against rock behind him gave belated warning that he was not 
alone. Swiftly Toam launched his body forward out into the blackened zone, and 
his knife flashed in his hand as he turned to face this unknown foe.
Eight broad shapes, taller than the tallest man, lumbered from behind shadowy 
rocks on either hand. Ponderously they moved forward, their great arms 
outstretched ready to block any attempt at escape. Toam slid his knife back into 
its sheath and fitted an arrow to his bow.
The feathered shaft rebounded with a metallic clang from the body of the nearest 
giant. A second, and a third arrow suffered a like fate, their slender shafts 
shattering against unyielding metal. The mighty shapes loomed nearer now, 
closing grimly in about him.
Toam dropped his bow and swung his heavy spear, point foremost, like a club at 
the nearest monster's head. Down it crashed and splintered across the narrow 
head of the giant. Then harsh, unyielding fingers of metal clamped about his 
body and a hard something crashed with stunning power against his skull. He 
struggled hopelessly in that iron grip for a moment.
Two of the shadowy giants lifted his limp body. Dimly Toam remembered being 
carried through a circular port that somehow opened in the blank dome-wall and 
thumping violently down upon a cold stone floor. Then his senses failed him and 
the misty grayness that clouded his vision darkened into impenetrable inky 
blackness....
TOAM CAME abruptly back to consciousness with the realization that all was not 
well. His head seemed to expand like a balloon with every beat of his heart. His 
eyes felt raw and puffy and his limbs were rigid and senseless. Numbness pressed 
close about his body as though metal bands were slowly constricting his vitals.
His eyelids slitted open a minute fraction of an inch. He was bound, strapped 
into a massive chair of some glossy gray material. Shining white metal bands 
were locked across his arms and legs, and three similar bands were about his 
middle.
Toam felt another pressure, like a heavy helmet of bone or metal, that flattened 
the long hair against his skull. He was held rigidly upright, pinned, like some 
impaled insect, against the smooth hardness of the chair's back.
His eyes widened slowly, taking in a constricted view of the narrow gray-walled 
room and its furnishings. Strange apparatus and intricate machines, most of them 
in dusty disrepair, cluttered the floor-space. A great globe of light, festooned 
with dark cobweb streamers, was set flush with the low-arched ceiling overhead.
Suddenly Toam laughed.
Clustered about him on low padded chairs, their owlish watery eyes oddly 
distorted by the transparent helmets that reached to the level of their meager 
nostrils, sat a half-dozen spindly-legged, corpse-skinned little men. They wore 
baggy dark tunics that almost covered their knobby little knees, and tiny, 
slipper-like sandals were on their stunted feet. Their hairless blue-veined 
heads, clammy-skinned bulbous caricatures of normal human skulls, perched like 
some toothless living puffball atop a stalk-like scrawny neck. When they stood 
erect they were little more than three feet in height. But they stood on their 
puny feet rarely. The impassive robots that stood rigidly behind each little 
seat carried them where they directed.
Toam did not laugh as he regarded the robots. Great eight-foot bodies of 
dull-sheened metal and tough plastic were theirs, stronger than the combined 
muscles of ten fighting men. The things that captured him outside the dome must 
have been giant machines like these. He studied their thick cylindrical bodies 
and the many-eyed knobs of metal that jutted above them. No wonder that his 
hard-driven arrows had shattered!
One of the little monsters seated before Toam leaned toward him, peering 
near-sightedly up into his face. Then the dome dweller spoke, in a dull rasping 
monotone that made Toam's flesh crawl, asking Toam whence he had come.
"You are not a swamp-dweller," he said. "Perhaps you are an ape."
"I am a man!" cried Toam, breaking his stubborn silence. "It is you who are the 
monsters, the little demons of our fables. No wonder my ancestors escaped from 
your ugly presence."
A chill gleam of some emotion-- hatred or triumph, Toam could not tell 
which--came into the eyes of his questioner.
"It can talk," he muttered to the others, and they nodded.
"Tell me," he commanded, "have you great stores of the copper catalyst on your 
island?"
"Cat List?" exclaimed Toam, "The magic stones? No we have none of them."
"Come now, barbarian," snarled the little man impatiently, "there is no use 
denying that you have the catalyst. Must I have a robot twist off an arm before 
you tell us the truth?"
"We have none of the magic stones," replied Toam firmly.
A little man whom Toam had not seen before spoke from a corner of the room where 
he huddled over an instrument board, flanked by many glowing tubes and dusty 
coils of wire.
"He speaks the truth, Krath GDT8," he informed Toam's inquisitor. "The dectors 
linked with the metallic plates against his skull and those running from the 
bands upon his arm indicate that he is not deceiving you."
"I had not finished questioning him, Hed CX12," almost screamed Krath GDT8. "Now 
it is useless to question him further. He will not answer so we can discover 
whether he tells the truth or not.
"Drag him away," he ordered one of the robots, "and feed him to the zarps penned 
beneath the dome. They must have food."
Robot fingers, hard and cold, unstrapped Toam's unfeeling body from the chair. 
He could not stand upright, his blood starved muscles refused to function; so 
the mechanical man draped Toam's limp body across his thick arm and carried him 
from the room.
TOAM LAY on a narrow shelf of stone rimming about the shallow filth-scummed pool 
of water at the cell's center. Floating on the dark surface were the bloated, 
rubbery-hided shapes of two amphibian monsters, the terrible shark-jawed zarps 
that lurk in the marshy pools and muddy coves of island-spotted Venus. Shapeless 
they were as a seal is shapeless, but their hides were mottled purple and 
yellow--hideous and slimy as a wet toad to the touch....
When the man from Yark was tossed through a quickly opened cell-door and landed 
with a splash in the waist-deep pool of stinking water his strength had almost 
fully returned. Cautiously he had waded through the water until his outstretched 
hand brushed a damp wall of masonry and he had climbed up to a slimy stone shelf 
barely a foot above water level.
Hardly had he reached this poor refuge when the sucking slither of rubbery wet 
hide warned him of a zarp's dragging approach. His eyes had gradually accustomed 
themselves to the gray twilight of the underground cell, its only illumination a 
distant corridor globe; so now he could see the gaping maw of the hideous 
monster that crawled, on stubby flippers, toward him.
Toam had flung himself forward to the zarp's slippery back and his thumbs had 
sought, and found, those twin, red-rimmed eyes. The monster roared--a bellowing, 
shrill, pain-wracked cry--and slid, blinded, back into the shallow murk of the 
pool. Toam leaped from his back, in time to witness the arrowing approach of a 
second swimming zarp.
The sightless zarp had felt the movement of that other bulk and had shuttled 
swiftly about, his four rows of sharply serrated teeth sinking into the 
fat-armored side of his fellow. In a moment the pool had become a whirlpool of 
slashing, fighting bodies locked in combat to the death....
Now Toam lay silently beside the narrow door of latticed metal, waiting 
patiently for the coming of some robot attendant. If he could smash the scanning 
lenses of the robot with the bit of stone he had wrenched from the wall he might 
escape.
The sound of cautious footsteps outside his cell brought him crouching silently 
to his feet. He gripped the stone tighter.
"Toam," a voice whispered, "are you alive?"
"Aris!" exclaimed Toam gladly. "Unlock the door."
"Just a moment," came the reply and a key rattled thunder-loud in the echoing 
corridor.
A zarp bellowed his weird whistling cry of warning from a nearby cell and his 
penned fellows echoed his challenge. Then the door swung slowly open and Toam 
crossed its threshold to the girl's side. Her hand touched his fingers and 
clung.
"I feared for your life, Toam," she whispered, an involuntary shudder wracking 
her slim body. "Those terrible creatures....
"We must escape through Hutson Bay," she went on. "My father, Hed CX12, is going 
with us. Krath GDT8 has ordered that he be exiled among the swamp people because 
he protested my own exile.
"I know the ancient ways that descend from the dome to the inner swamplands 
where the exiles live," she finished. "We can steal a boat from them and escape 
to the Great Sea."
"Good," agreed Toam.
HALFWAY ALONG the ancient dusty tunnel that angled downward from the lower 
levels of the great dome they overtook a giant robot carrying a bulging-browed 
little man in his padded chair. Toam recognized him, the man who had come from 
the corner to say that he told the truth--a scientist he must be. Toam smiled. 
He would bring a wise little demon back to Yark after all.
They came out through a ragged cave entrance into the swamplands and followed an 
ancient oozy trail that wound outward toward the open waters of the bay. Finally 
they came to a raised hummock of solid earth where a grove of low, thick-stemmed 
trees bulked like some grotesque woodcut against the background of silvery 
moonlight.
Aris pointed to the trees. "Swamp dwellers," she said.
Toam saw a score or more jumbled masses of poles and mud, interwoven with swamp 
grasses and weeds, that perched shoulder-high above the ground. He snorted his 
disgust. Even the zarps constructed better nests out of mud and reeds for their 
newly laid eggs.
They hurried through the ugly tree-village and came to the muddy rim of the bay. 
A dozen crude dugouts were drawn up on the shore, and of these Toam selected the 
most seaworthy.
The robot he seated in the stern while Aris and her father sat in the boat's 
middle. Then he waded alongside the ungainly craft until they were afloat on the 
smooth surface of the bay and sprang aboard. He showed the robot how to handle 
the clumsy paddle; took another for himself, and the boat drove erratically away 
from shore.
They had paddled barely ten canoe-lengths when a great uproar arose from the 
direction of the tree-village. A string of mechanically striding robots advanced 
to the water's edge and came to a halt. Carefully they set five little chairs, 
and their dwarfish occupants, on the ground. One of the little men, Krath it 
must have been, spoke a sharp word of command, and three of the metal giants 
pointed their right arms toward the escaping boat.
Three pencils of bluish flame lanced out across the water. Water hissed and 
boiled into steam as they struck, but the range was too great and the occupants 
of the dugout were unharmed. Hed CX12 drew an ovoid object from beneath the 
heavy cape that he wore over his tunic and pointed it back toward shore. 
Greenish light flamed for a moment and two of the foremost robots dissolved into 
scattered scraps of metal and plastic.
"Hurry!" cried the girl, "before the other dome-cities are warned of our attempt 
to leave Numark. Once outside the bay their heat projectors cannot reach us."
The robot in the stern had rapidly learned how to paddle. The little dugout 
leaped ahead and Toam was hard put to it to keep the craft on its course. 
Swiftly they raced across the heaving swells of the sheltered bay toward the 
frowning cliffs guarding the watery road to the Great Sea.
Then Aris shouted something to Toam and pointed back the way they had come. He 
turned and a grim smile tightened his lips. Four more dugouts were moving slowly 
in their wake, methodical robot arms forcing them along!
ALL THAT NIGHT they raced before those untiring pursuers. Toam's muscles ached 
and his hands were raw with blisters, but the robot in the stern paddled 
steadily ahead, the scorched smell of overheated oil in his bearings alone 
telling of the strain he had endured.
Despite all their efforts to escape, the pursuing boats were slowly closing the 
gap between. Numark had long since vanished below the horizon but ahead a thin 
black line of land showed. Once ashore Toam felt sure that he could evade the 
dome dwellers and their mighty robots; so he had headed toward that smudge of 
darkness.
But now he realized that they were trapped. The low, wave-drenched bow of a 
crescent-shaped mud flat lay ahead, closing pincher-like arms in on either hand. 
Already the pursuing boats had spread out to block any sudden dash for the open 
sea again.
"Perhaps," he told Aris, "we can slide the boat across the mud banks to the 
opposite side and so escape."
The girl nodded doubtfully and took the paddle that he handed her.
Toam's hands found the little beaded pouch that the little men had not troubled 
to remove from inside his loin cloth. A rapt expression came across his face as 
he knelt above it. He seemed to be listening. Hed CX12 watched curiously as his 
fingers fumbled inside the bag.
At last Toam heaved a sigh of relief and restored the bag to its hiding place. 
He caught Hed's curious glance and laughed exultantly.
"We will be rescued," he said. "With the little bag I have summoned aid."
Hed grimaced bitterly. These superstitious barbarians with their blind faith in 
fetishes and medicine bags! He clamped his chilled tiny fingers about the ovoid 
of silvery metal. Only that now lay between them all and destruction.
The low mud flat loomed closer and suddenly the boat's uneven bottom ploughed 
through soft ooze and came to rest. The robot continued to churn up the water 
into a muddy froth until Aris commanded him to stop.
Toam climbed over the dugout's side into waist-deep, clinging mud. Five short 
steps he waded and then suddenly plunged to his neck in a crawling pit of 
quicksand. Aris stretched her paddle to him and slowly dragged him back to 
safety.
"No use," he panted as he climbed back aboard.
"Then we're doomed!" cried the girl.
"Maybe not," disagreed Toam. "Remember your father's weapon."
Hed CX12 lifted his weapon as the boats closed in about them. Green flame spat 
from its narrow mouth and one of the enemy dugouts fell apart. Brilliant blue 
flashes hissed from the remaining three boats but all fell short. They drew back 
out of range.
Then the sea about the shattered boat was filled with writhing scaly monsters. 
An unearthly shriek of mortal terror burst from the throat of a struggling 
little man, and choked off abruptly. Aris shuddered and covered her eyes with 
clenched little fists.
Another boat ventured within range after a time and Hed sent a spear of green 
toward it. Unexpectedly a low splutter of sound came from the metal ovoid and it 
swiftly turned to red. Hed dropped the weapon and stared tragically at his 
burned fingers.
"Burned-out!" he exclaimed. "The salt air or faulty insulation."
"The finish, I'm afraid," said Toam, and the girl's hand squeezed his blistered 
palm hard. "If only...."
And then, behind the central boat that bore Krath GDT8 and his six robots, a 
great black bulk smoothly emerged from beneath the waves. A long black object on 
its back swivelled around toward Krath's dugout, its hollow black tip dropping 
lower and lower.
Boom! A stab of flame roared out from the object's hollow snout and Krath's boat 
dissolved into torn splinters of fire-scarred wood.
"Good work, Jonesy," shouted Toam Blak, standing up in the grounded dugout. 
"Blast 'em out of the water."
"What does this mean?" cried Aris, her eyes wide and eager. "You are no 
barbarian! That is--a--a submarine!"
MOONLIGHT LAID a silvery sheen across the placid harbor of Yark, capital city of 
half Venus, outlining sharply her jutting towers and soaring domes. The sound of 
soft music drifted from the building behind them and the voices of other 
couples, strolling like themselves in the garden, came faintly to their 
unheeding ears.
"Beautiful moon," said Aris in an awed voice. "But for that moon Venus would be 
a watery, cloud-mantled, dead world. All this beauty would be impossible."
"That is right," agreed Toam. "We must be kind to the dome dwellers. That is 
why, while we have duplicated the civilization of Earth in more distant islands, 
we have left Numark alone. They carried on the work started by our common 
ancestors, for many centuries. Now, in their last days of decadence, their 
supplies of the copper catalyst all but gone, they are doomed to final 
extinction."
"Toam," whispered Aris softly, "why did you come to Numark?"
"We wanted to know more about the machines and weapons of the dome dwellers," 
Toam told her, "before they became extinct. I disguised myself as a native and 
planned, somehow, to slip inside the domes. Once there I thought that I could 
carry away some of their text-books or kidnap one of them."
"And the leather pouch?" Aris wanted to know.
"Contained a tiny radio receiver and transmitter," laughed Toam. "A sacred 
little dot and dash affair."
Then they were silent and the moonlight outlined the sharp blackness of one 
shadow where two had been before.



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