STAR OF REBIRTH
BY BERNARD WALL
Atanta knew the red star was
the home of his people after
death.... And for months now
it had been growing brighter.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, February 1959.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Everyone should have known. They should have known as surely as thoughit were written in the curved palm of the wind. They should have knownwhen they looked up at the empty sky; they should have known when theylooked down at the hungry children. Yet somehow they did not know thattheir last migratory hunt was almost over.
The straggling band had woven its slow trail among the mountains forforty days of vanishing hopes and shrinking stomachs. Ahead of the mainparty, the scouts had crawled until their knees and palms were raw; butstill there was no track of game, and the only scent was that of thepungent air that rose from the ragged peaks of ice.
At last they halted, only a few footsteps from The Cave of the FallenSun, the farthest western reach of their frozen domain. In the rearof the column the women threatened the children into silence and thescouts went first to the mouth of the cave to look for signs of ananimal having entered. Presently the scouts stood up with their massiveshoulders drooping, turned to the rest and made a hopeless gesture.
Atanta, who stood alone and motionless between the scouts and therest of his band, knew that all were waiting for him to use hismagic to make a great leopard appear in the empty cave. "A verygreat leopard," he thought sarcastically. Enough to feed them allfor a hundred days. A leopard so huge it would whine pitifully whilethey killed it. A leopard so gigantic that it would not leave itsfootprints in the snow. Indeed, Atanta was sure, the leopard his peoplewanted would be much too large to fit into the cave. Well, perhapsthere would be a bird.
He held himself very tall and straight so that his dejection might notshow to either his people or his gods. But after forty days of thetrackless hunt, Atanta felt with certainty that the gods were deaf ordead ... or at least very far away.
The sun was hot and the gods were gone, and he would not keep hispeople waiting with false hopes. He closed his eyes and took up thecrude bone cross that hung from his waist, and he cursed the gods withsilent venom. And when his chastisement of the delinquent gods wasdone, he dropped the cross to dangle at his waist again.
Two hunters moved stealthily forward, their spears disappearing beforethem into the cave. It was somehow pathetic, Atanta felt, the way theymoved so courageously into the empty darkness.
How many caves had there been, Atanta wondered, since they left themouth of the river? Fully a dozen, always empty, except for thescattered bones of bears and men. Perhaps he should have kept hispeople at the river. No, he told himself. He had done the only thinghe could do. The season had been bad and their meager catch of fishcarefully stored. But the already heavy ice thickened with the approachof winter and made fishing almost impossible. When their supplies werealmost gone, he had done as so many had done before him. He had led hispeople on the futile hunt, hoping for the miracle of a dozen sleepingbears or a great white leopard. Such miracles had happened in the past.Once he had gone with his father on such a winter hunt.
But miracles without footprints were qui