A World Called Crimson, Page 2

she could see. The boy wassleeping. She still hated him. He was sleeping with her doll in hisarms. She took the doll and he moved his arms and woke up. She jumpedout of the open spaceship with the doll and started running.

  She ran along a beach. But the sand was green. The ocean hissed androared and there was nobody else. "N'ya! N'ya! Y'can't catch me!" shebawled at the top of her voice. And fell down in the sand.

  He caught up with her and fell on top of her and they wrestled for thedoll. The surf thundered nearby. The tide, capricious in the grip of thethree suns, rose suddenly, flooding them with chill water. Coughing andspluttering and choking, they retreated further up the beach.

  Soon they quieted down.

  "I'm soaking wet," she said.

  "My name is Charlie," he said sullenly. "Let's go back now."

  "How do we go back?" she wanted to know.

  "That's a nice doll," Charlie said.

  "You took it from me!" Accusingly.

  "Aw, I only wanted to look at it."

  "She has a crimson dress and everything."

  "This is some world," Charlie said after a while.

  "What's a world?"

  "Oh, a world is--you know--everything."

  "Oh."

  "You think it has Indians?"

  She said, "It ought to have Indians, anyhow."

  "And pirates too?" he asked in a voice full of awe.

  She nodded her head very seriously. "I like pirates," she said. "They'reso scarey."

  Just then a ship came into view far away across the water. It hadenormous sails and a black hull. On the fore-sail was painted a hugeblack skull.

  "Let's get out of here!" Charlie cried in alarm. But beetling cliffsreared behind the beach and although they ran frantically along at theedge of the green sand, they could find no way to scale the cliffs. Thepirate ship came closer and closer.

  They got down whimpering at the base of the cliffs and remained verystill. After a long time the pirate ship came close to shore. A longboatwas dispatched and its oars flashed in the triple sunlight like giantlegs on which the longboat walked across the waves toward the beach.

  Then the pirates were ashore. The man who led them had only one leg, anda peg. He looked very mean.

  * * * * *

  "It's Blackbeard the Pirate!" said Charlie in a frightened whisper. HisDad had once read him a story about Blackbeard.

  The pirate with the wooden leg suddenly had a black beard.

  "The doll!" cried Robin.

  "What's the matter?"

  "We left her down there. Crimson." She called her doll Crimson becauseshe had a crimson dress.

  Now Blackbeard approached the model spaceship with his crew. Theygathered around it, frowning. Robin watched, her face pale, her eyeswide. Crimson was there on the sand. They were going to see Crimson.Even as she was thinking these horrible thoughts, one of the pirates sawCrimson and picked her up. Blackbeard came over and took the doll andlooked at her. At that moment there was a shout from above the cliffsand an arrow suddenly transfixed one of the pirates. He fell downwrithing and Blackbeard and the rest of his men raced back to thelongboat.

  "Indians," Charlie whispered knowingly.

  The Indians shouted and yelled.

  "Are there any cowboys here?" Robin asked hopefully.

  "No, sir. No cowboys," Charlie said very definitely.

  "I'm hungry," Robin said. "I wish we had something."

  With a little squeal of delight, she looked down at her feet. Twoplatters of fried chicken, with all the trimmings. Her favorite. Theyate ravenously, not hearing the Indians any more. They watched thelongboat return to the pirate ship. All this way, they could see littleCrimson's dress as Blackbeard took her aboard. Robin finished her friedchicken and started to cry.

  "Girls," said Charlie in disgust.

  "I can't help it. Poor Crimson."

  "Is she dead?"

  "Blackbeard the pirate took her."

  "Charles was my grandfather's name. My grandfather died and they namedme Charles."

  "I want Crimson!"

  "Get down! The Indians will see you."

  "The Indians went away. I want Crimson!"

  "We could name this beach after Crimson."

  "Aw, what do you know? It's only a beach."

  "We could name the whole wide world." Charlie gestured expansively.

  The green sand of the beach became crimson. The sky had a crimson glow.

  "It sure is a funny world," Charlie said. Laughter loud as thunderechoed in the sky. "A world called Crimson," he added.

  * * * * *

  The tide came in. Spray and surf bounded off the rocks, wetting them."We better go up the hill," Robin said. By hill she meant theperpendicular cliffs behind them.

  The tide thundered in. They were sodden. They clung to the rocks.

  "We need an elevator or something," Charlie said.

  Golden cables flashed in the sunlight. The gilt elevator cage came down.They climbed in as a big wave came and battered the rocks. The elevatorwent up, up to the top of the cliff. They could see a long way acrossthe water. They could watch the pirate ship sailing away, the skullblack as night on its sail.

  They got out of the elevator at the top of the cliff. They didn't seeany Indians, but they saw the ashes of a campfire.

  "Are there lions and tigers and everything?" Robin asked in wonder,gazing out over the beach and the sea and then turning around to see thegreen forest which began fifty yards beyond the edge of the cliff.

  "Sure there are lions and tigers," Charlie said matter-of-factly.

  * * * * *

  Off somewhere in the woods, a big cat roared. Robin whimpered.

  "I w-was only fooling," Charlie said, vaguely understanding that youcould somehow make things happen on this world called Crimson.

  But he learned a lesson that night. You could make things happen onCrimson, but you couldn't unmake them.

  The tiger roared again. But they were downwind from it and it wentelsewhere in search of prey. Huddled together near the embers of theIndian campfire, the two children slept fitfully through the cold night.

  Then the three suns finally came up on three different sides of thehorizon. Crimson was deadly, but beautiful....

  * * * * *

  _Although credit for the discovery of _Aladdin's Planet_ goes to theexplorer Richard Purcell of Earth, two Earth children actually wereshipwrecked there twenty years before Purcell's expedition. But insteadof paving the way for Purcell, they actually made the exploration moredifficult for him. In fact, it was positively fraught with peril. Butsince _Aladdin's Planet_ had become the galaxy's arsenal of plenty, itwas well worth Purcell's effort. As any schoolboy knows in this utopiaof 24th century plenty, _Aladdin's Planet_, almost exactly at the heartof the galaxy, where matter is spontaneously created to sweep out inlong cosmic trails across the galaxy, is the home not merely ofspontaneous creation of matter, but spontaneous _formed_ creation, withany human psyche capable of doing the handwork of God. A planet of greatimport ..._

  _--from The ANNALS OF SPACE, Vol. 2_

  * * * * *

  She stood poised for a glorious moment on the very edge of the rock, thebronze and pink of her glistening in the sun, the spray still clingingto her from her last dive. Then, grace in every line of her lithe body,she sprang from the rock in a perfectly executed swan dive.

  Charlie helped her out, smiling. "That was pretty," he said.

  "Well, you taught me how." Her figure was not yet that of a woman, butfar more than that of a girl. She was very beautiful and Charlie knewthis although he had no standards to judge by, except for the Indianwomen they occasionally saw or Blackbeard's slave girls when the pirateship came in to trade.

  Unselfconsciously, Robin climbed into her gold-mesh shorts. Charliehelped her fasten the gold-mesh halter. Long,
long ago--it seemed anunreal dream, almost--he had been a very small boy and his mother hadtaken him to a show in which everyone danced and sang and wore gold-meshclothing. He had never forgotten it, and now all their clothing wasgold-mesh.

  * * * * *

  Robin spun around and looked at him. Her tawny blonde hair fell almostto her waist, and he helped her comb it with a jewel-encrusted comb hehad wished into being a few days before.

  "I so like Crimson!" she cried impulsively.

  Charlie smiled. "Why, that's a funny thing to say. Is there any otherkind of a place?"

  "You mean, but Crimson?"

  "Yes."

  "I don't know. It is funny. Sometimes