SWORD OF THE SEVEN SUNS By GARDNER F. FOX Their world was dark. Their Machine-God was dead. Savage hordes threatened to overrun them, smash them. What, then, was Flane doing out in the desert, alone with the wreck of a spaceship--and a strangely-wrought sword? [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Spring 1947. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] The spaceship fled like a silver bullet across black nothingness. Rows of round windows stared outward from its curved sides. Beyond the windows whirled clouds of interstellar dust. An occasional lump of meteoric rock rebounded from the metal hull. To port shone the triple stars of a constellation utterly foreign to those in the ship. To starboard gleamed the strangely altered pattern of the constellation Hercules. Straight ahead lay the great star Deneb, and circling around it, giant orbs shimmering in its light, were the planets it held in its awful grip. Closer and closer swept the ship, trailing billows of spacedust. Over one of the planets that closely resembled the voyager's home planet in size and density, the vessel thundered. It rocketed downward, sweeping sidewise into the gravitational pull of the planet. It dropped into swirling clouds, swept into sunlighted sky, roaring gustily. Inside the ship a voice cried hysterically, "Calling captain! Calling captain!" "Captain responding. Over to forward jet ports." "The forward jets are shot, sir! Unused for too long. Ever since we left Earth, they've remained untested. Can't fix them now. No time. Inside gravity of planet. Over." * * * * * The man in the captain's uniform bowed his head, eyes tightly shut. There was bitterness in his heart, but no despair. Six hundred light years from Earth, farther out among the stars than any man had ever trespassed, and now, this! A hand squeezed his shoulder. He glanced up, found the blue eyes of his wife smiling at him, heard her voice whisper, "At least we'll go together, darling." He patted her hand. Through the compressed quartz panels they stared at the world unfolding beneath them. Rolling plains covered with long grasses that swayed gracefully before the wind bordered high, black mountains that cupped mounds of snow at their peaks. In the distance was the blue of a sea. "A lovely world," he whispered. "You were right, Jon. Your calculations proved the habitability of Deneb's planets. You would have been famous." He chuckled, "This is one consolation, darling. But I'd hoped for so much more than that ... a land to bring the restless spirits, where they could dwell apart from the regimented ones, to form a new country to call their own...."