Image of the Gods | Page 8

on the ground, hands out in front of him, staring in horror as the
Dusties kept moving into the fire. "Do you see what they're doing!" he
screamed. "They'll be slaughtered, every one of them!" And then he
was running down the road, shouting at them to stop, and so were Pete
and Tegan and the rest of the men.
Something hit Pete in the shoulder as he ran. He spun around and fell
into the dusty road. A dozen Dusties closed in around him, lifted him
up bodily, and started back through the village with him. He tried to
struggle, but vaguely he saw that the other men were being carried back
also, while the river of brown creatures held the jeeps at bay. The
Dusties were hurrying, half carrying and half dragging him back
through the village and up a long ravine into the hills beyond. At last
they set Pete on his feet again, plucking urgently at his shirt sleeve as
they hurried him along.
He followed them willingly, then, with the rest of the colonists at his

heels. He didn't know what the Dusties were doing, but he knew they
were trying to save him. Finally they reached a cave, a great cleft in the
rock that Pete knew for certain had not been there when he had led
exploring parties through these hills years before. It was a huge
opening, and already a dozen of the men were there, waiting, dazed by
what they had witnessed down in the valley, while more were
stumbling up the rocky incline, tugged along by the fuzzy brown
creatures.
Inside the cavern, steps led down the side of the rock, deep into the
dark coolness of the earth. Down and down they went, until they
suddenly found themselves in a mammoth room lit by blazing torches.
Pete stopped and stared at his friends who had already arrived. Jack
Mario was sitting on the floor, his face in his hands, sobbing. Tegan
was sitting, too, blinking at Pete as if he were a stranger, and Dorfman
was trembling like a leaf. Pete stared about him through the dim light,
and then looked where Tegan was pointing at the end of the room.
He couldn't see it clearly, at first. Finally, he made out a raised platform
with four steps leading up. A torch lighted either side of a dais at the
top, and between the torches, rising high into the gloom, stood a statue.
It was a beautifully carved thing, hewn from the heavy granite that
made up the core of this planet, with the same curious styling as other
carving the Dusties had done. The design was intricate, the lines
carefully turned and polished. At first Pete thought it was a statue of a
Dustie, but when he moved forward and squinted in the dim light, he
suddenly realized that it was something else indeed. And in that
moment he realized why they were there and why the Dusties had done
this incredible thing to protect them.
The statue was weirdly beautiful, the work of a dedicated master
sculptor. It was a figure, standing with five-fingered hands on hips,
head raised high. Not a portrait, but an image seen through other eyes
than human, standing high in the room with the lights burning
reverently at its feet.
Unmistakably it was the statue of a man.

* * * * *
They heard the bombs, much later. The granite roof and floor of the
cavern trembled, and the men and women stared at each other, helpless
and sick as they huddled in that great hall. But presently the bombing
stopped. Later, when they stumbled out of that grotto into the late
afternoon light, the ship was gone.
They knew it would be back. Possibly it would bring back search
parties to hunt down the rebels in the hills; perhaps it would just wait
and again bomb out the new village when it rose. But searching parties
would never find their quarry, and the village would rise again and
again, if necessary.
And in the end, somehow, Pete knew that the colonists would find a
way to survive here and live free as they had always lived. It might be a
bitter struggle, but no matter how hard the fight, there would be one
strange and wonderful thing they could count on.
No matter what they had to do, he knew the Dusties would help them.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Image of the Gods, by Alan
Edward Nourse
*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IMAGE OF
THE GODS ***
***** This file should be named 22882.txt or 22882.zip ***** This
and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
http://www.gutenberg.org/2/2/8/8/22882/
Produced by Greg Weeks, Stephen Blundell