THE SHIP OF ISHTAR: Sci-Fi Classic. Abraham Merritt
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man’s pallid face like a little wave from hell.
“This is Ishtar’s Ship,” he answered, “yet my Dread Lord has claim upon it too, Sharane? The House of the Goddess brims with light — but tell me, does not Nergal’s shadow darken behind me?”
And Kenton saw that the deck on which were these men was black as polished jet and again memory strove to make itself heard.
A sudden wind smote the ship, like an open hand, heeling it. From the doves within the trees of the rosy cabin broke a tumult of cries; they flew up like a white cloud flecked with crimson; they fluttered around the woman.
The ape-like arms of the drummer unwrapped, his spidery fingers poised over the head of the snake drum. Darkness deepened about him and hid him; darkness cloaked all the ship’s stern.
Kenton felt the gathering of unknown forces. He slid down, upon his haunches, pressed himself against the bulwarks.
From the deck of the rosy cabin blared a golden trumpeting; defiant; inhuman. He turned his head, and on it the hair lifted and prickled.
Resting on the rosy cabin was a great orb, an orb like the moon at full; but not, like the moon, white and cold — an orb alive with pulsing roseate candescence. Over the ship it poured its rays and where the woman called Sharane had been was now — no woman!
Bathed in the orb’s rays she loomed gigantic. The lids of her eyes were closed, yet through those closed lids eyes glared! Plainly Kenton saw them — eyes hard as jade, glaring through the closed lids as though those lids had been gossamer! The slender crescent upon her brows was an arc of living fire, and all about it the masses of her red-gold hair beat and tossed.
Round and round, in clamorous rings above the ship, wheeled the cloud of doves, snowy wings beating, red beaks open; screaming.
Within the blackness of the ship’s stern roared the thunder of the serpent drum.
The blackness thinned. A face stared out, half veiled, bodiless, floating in the shadow. It was the face of the man Klaneth — and yet no more his than that which challenged it was the woman Sharane’s. The pale eyes had become twin pools of hell flames; pupilless. For a heart beat the face hovered, framed by the darkness. The shadow dropped over it and hid it.
Now Kenton saw that this shadow hung like a curtain over the exact center of the ship, and that he crouched hardly ten feet distant from where that curtain cut the craft in twain. The deck on which he lay was pale ivory and again memory stirred but did not awaken. The radiance from the roseate orb struck against the curtain of shadow and made upon it a disk, wider than the ship, that was like a web of beams spun from the rays of a rosy moon. Against this shining web the shadow pressed, straining to break through.
From the black deck the thunder of the serpent drum redoubled; the brazen conches shrieked. Drum-thunder and shrieking horn mingled; they became the pulse of Abaddon, lair of the damned.
From Sharane’s three women, shot storm of harpings, arpeggios like gusts of tiny arrows and with them shrill javelin pipings from the double flute. Arrows and javelins of sound cut through the thunder hammering of the drum and the bellow of the horns, sapping them, beating them back.
A movement began within the shadow. It seethed. It spawned.
Over the face of the disk of radiance black shapes swarmed. Their bodies were like monstrous larva, slugs; faceless. They tore at the web; stove to thrust through it; flailed it.
The web gave!
Its edge held firm, but slowly the center was pushed back until the disk was like the half of a huge hollow sphere. Within that hollow crawled and writhed and struck the monstrous shapes. From the black deck serpent drum and brazen horns bellowed triumph.
Again rang the golden trumpet cry from the deck of ivory. Out of the orb streamed an incandescence intolerable. The edges of the web shot forward and curved.
They closed upon the black spawn; within it the black spawn milled and struggled like fish in a net. Like a net lifted by some mighty hand the web swung high up above the ship. Its brightness grew to match that of the orb. From netted shapes of blackness came a faint, high-pitched, obscene wailing. They shrank, dissolved, were gone.
The net opened. Out of it drifted a little cloud of ebon dust.
The web streamed back into the orb that had sent it forth.
Then, swiftly, the orb was gone! Gone too was the shadow that had shrouded the black deck. High above the ship the snowy doves circled, screaming victory.
A hand touched Kenton’s shoulder. He looked up into the shadowy eyes of the woman called Sharane; no goddess now, only woman. In her eyes he read amazement, startled disbelief.
Kenton sprang to his feet. A thrust of blinding pain shot through his head. The deck whirled round him. He tried to master the dizziness; he could not. Dizzily the ship spun beneath his feet; and beyond in wider arcs dizzily spun turquoise sea and silver horizon.
Now all formed a vortex, a maelstrom, down whose pit he was dropping — faster, ever faster. Around him was a formless blur. Again he heard the tumult of the tempests; the shrillings of the winds of space. The winds died away. There were three clear bell notes —
Kenton stood within his own room!
The bell had been his clock, striking the hour of six. Six o’clock? Why the last sound of his own world before the mystic sea had swept it from under him had been the third stroke of that hour clipped off in mid-note.
God — what a dream! And all in half a bell stroke!
He lifted his hand and touched a throbbing bruise over his right temple. He winced — well, that blow at least had been no dream. He stumbled over to the jewelled ship.
He stared at it, incredulous.
The toys upon the ship had moved — new toys had appeared!
No longer were there four manikins on the black deck.
There were only two. One stood pointing toward the starboard platform near the mast, his hand resting on the shoulder of a red-bearded, agate-eyed soldier toy clad all in glittering chain mail.
Nor was there any woman at the rosy cabin’s door as there had been when Kenton had loosed the ship from the block. At its threshold were five slim girls with javelins in hands.
The woman was on the starboard platform, bent low beside the rail!
And the ship’s oars were no longer buried in the waves of lapis lazuli. They were lifted, poised for the downward stroke!
3 THE SHIP RETURNS
ONE BY ONE Kenton pulled at the manikins, each toy. Immovable, gem hard, each was, seemingly part of the deck itself; no force he could exert would move them.
Yet something had shifted them — and where were the vanished ones? From where had the new ones come?
Nor was there any haze around the little figures, nor blurring; each lineament stood out clean cut. The pointing toy on the black deck had dwarfed, bowed legs; his torso was that of a giant; his bald pate glinted and in his ears were wide discs of gold. Kenton recognized him — the beater of the serpent drum.
There was a tiny silver crescent upon the head of the bending woman toy, and over its tips poured flood of red-gold hair —
Sharane!
And that place at which she peered — was it not where he had lain on that other ship of his dream?
That — other ship? He saw again its decks ebon and ivory, its rosy cabin and its emerald mast. It had been this ship before him — no other! Dream? Then what had moved the toys?
Kenton’s wonder grew. Within it moved a sharp unease, a sharper curiosity. He found