The Dark Goddess
By Richard S. Shaver
[Transcriber Note: This etext was produced from Imagination Stories ofScience and Fantasy February 1953. Extensive research did not uncoverany evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The black-emerald water swirled and broke in many silver gleamings. Fromthe misty center of the pool rose a vast but beautiful head. The longdripping hair was not hair, but had a rippling life of its own. Thegreat lonely eyes and wide scarlet mouth were far more lovely than anyhuman's. The gleaming green shoulders and shapely long arms ended ingraceful webbed fingers. The red tipped breasts were proud, naked mountswhere beauty lived forever. The pillaring waist—the strong-arched hipsthat did not divide into legs but into two great serpentinedrivers—ended in the wide tail fins of a fish.
The dark sea-scented lapping green water was circled by tiers of marbleseats, where many human people sat, their eyes upon the throne-seat intowhich the tremendous female figure vaulted in one powerful thrust fromthe water, as a tall wave uncurls effortlessly upon a golden beach.
The people bowed their heads and waited for her words, and she sat for along time looking on them sadly and somehow conveying that they had longdisappointed her. When her voice came, a great bell of meaning in thesea-cavern, the humans began to weep, for they knew now in their heartsthey had failed her.
"My people, when the first of you came here I welcomed you. I was glad,for I had been long alone. I never knew my own origin, my own race, andthe wisdom that I learned here in these caverns I was glad to give tothe young and ignorant voyagers that first came.
"An age ago, before any of you saw life, the work began. Today, thishome of ours is the fruit of long labor, of generations of men. We donot like to give up our home, built to house our genius, to provideeverlasting protection against the unstable elements."
Her people, of several shapes and sizes, sourcing from an amalgam ofmany human races of divergent strains from several near-forgottenplanets, all sighed together, like a little wind of sadness. Andsomething about that resignation of theirs seemed to anger the greatgreen mer-woman's eyes, but her voice did not reflect that anger. Allabout them, below and above and on and on around the ancient bedrock ofthe dark planet, tier on tier and level on level, their cavern citystretched, a myriad homes for a myriad individuals.
"Today we face a contingency long foreseen. One which we hoped timeitself would change, through some new force changing the motions ofthose bodies which circle ahead of us in space. It was foretold that intime this planet in its free course through space would be attracted toone or the other of two great suns which it will pass—or encounter. Itis most probable that our planet will find an orbit about one of thosesuns ahead.
"Today that fate is no longer a prediction from an astronomer peeringinto far space. It is a fact we face within short weeks, not in some farfuture time. Already the surface ice is melting, seas forming above.Already those who used to travel on the surface on their duties andobservations have been affected by the powerful radiations of thosesuns. Those radiations when we are caught and held close will shortenthe life span to a hundredth of what it is now. You must go, and go now.You must seek out a new home in the darkness of