Battlefield Earth Read Online Free PDF Page B

with the bar, and sure enough it was just the door groaning on the pins that held it.
        
    An awful smell had come out of the cracked opening. The smell itself had made him afraid. A little light had been let in and he peeked inside.
        
    A long flight of steps led down, remarkably even steps. And they would have been very neat, except…
        
    The steps were covered by skeletons tumbled every which way. Skeletons in strips of clothing- clothing like he had never seen.
        
    Bits of metal, some bright, had fallen among the bones.
        
    He ran away again, but this time not as far as the pony. He had suddenly realized he would need proof.
        
    Bracing his nerve to a pitch he had seldom before achieved, he went back and gingerly stepped inside and picked up one of the bits of metal. It had a pretty design, a bird with flying wings holding arrows in its claws, quite bright.
        
    His heart almost stopped when the skull he had removed it from tipped sideways and went to powder before his very gaze, as though it reproached him with its gaping eyes for his robbery and then expired.
        
    The pony had been in a white-coat lather when he pulled up in the village.
        
    For two whole days he said nothing, wondering how best to ask his questions. Previous experience in asking questions had made him cautious.
        
    Mayor Duncan was still alive at that time. Jonnie had sat quietly beside him until the big man was properly stuffed with venison and was quiet except for a few belches.
        
    “That big tomb,” Jonnie had said abruptly.
        
    “What big what?” Mayor Duncan had snorted.
        
    “The place up the dark canyon where they used to put the dead people.” “What place?”
        
    Jonnie had taken out the bright bird badge and shown it to Mayor Duncan.
        
    Duncan had looked at it, twisting his head this way and that, twisting the badge this way and that.
        
    Parson Staffor, brighter in those days, had reached across the fire in a sudden swoop and grabbed the badge.
        
    The ensuing interrogation had not been pleasant: about young boys who went to places that were forbidden and got everybody in trouble and didn’t listen at conferences where they had to learn legends and were too smart anyway.
        
    Mayor Duncan, however, had himself been curious and finally pinned Parson Staffor into recounting an applicable legend.
        
    “A tomb of the old gods,” the parson had finally said. “Nobody has been there in living memory- small boys do not count. But it was said to exist by my great-grandfather when he was still alive- and he lived a long time. The gods used to come into these mountains and they buried the great men in huge caverns. When the lightning flashed on Highpeak, it was because the gods had come to bury a great man from over the water.
        
    “Once there were thousands and thousands living in big villages a hundred times the size of this one. These villages were to the east, and it is said there is the remains of one straight east where thousands lived. And the place was flat except for some hills. And when a great man died there the gods brought him to the tomb of the gods.”
        
    Parson Staffor had shaken the badge. “This was placed on the foreheads of the great when they were laid to rest in the great tomb of the gods. And that’s what it is, and ancient law says that nobody is supposed to go there and everybody had better stay away from there forever- especially little boys.” And he had put the badge in his pouch, and that was the last Jonnie ever saw of it. After all, Staffor was a holy man and in charge of holy things.
        
    Nevertheless, Jonnie thought his father should have been buried in the tomb of the gods. Jonnie had never been back there again and thought of it only when he saw lightning hit Highpeak.
        
    But he wished he had buried his father there.
        
    “Are you