THE VICTORY OF KLON-3
617 Words
THE PEOPLE OF KLON’S nation were gathered in the Council Clearing, silent as each of the candidates for leader extolled his own virtues and explained his qualification for the position as their leader.
Hisses of approval and sounds of disapproval greeted each candidate as he placed himself on the stone at the clearing’s center.
And then Klon slipped into the clearing. He hissed greetings as he made his way to the central stone. Still clutching the box tightly to his body, he climbed to the top of the stone, faced his nation.
A respectful silence fell as his powerful body loomed high in the air over the heads of his people.
Klon stood for a moment, silently considering the short speech he intended to make. He caught the glance of Valok’s eye, looked away. His gaze travelled over the clearing, making out familiar features of his people.
The crowd was not large, for Klon’s nation was a small one. It was large in the sense that no other group on the planet was as large. And it was the only race with useful intelligence.
Klon looked at his people, and pride made his heart beat even faster.
“I am here to prove to you that I am the mightiest among you,” he hissed. “I have here the thing that will prove what I say.” He lifted the small box so that everyone could see.
A wave of interested hissing grew in sudden applause, then a respectful silence fell again. Klon hesitated for a moment longer, then continued:
“I got this thing from the belly of the thing that came from the clouds, killing three horrible creatures single-handedly. Thus I have proved that I am clever, brave and strong.”
“What is this thing you have brought us, Brave Klon?” Valok’s sneering hiss broke in upon Klon’s words.
“A thing that is like nothing any of you have ever seen; it is a shadow lighter than anything on this world,” Klon said proudly, and placed the small box on the rock beside himself.
He paused again, knowing the effect his wait would have on his audience. And then he whisked the cover from the radi-light, slid from the central stone.
The radi-light flared with a dazzling, gleaming whiteness on the stone, bringing with it a light such as had never penetrated the always-present clouds that veiled Venus. Klon stood proudly to one side, drinking in the hissing applause and hisses of surprise and awe that greeted his showing of the globe of light shadow. He knew then that he had won the coveted leadership of his nation.
“This,” he hissed over the uproar of his people, “is the—”
Klon gasped in sudden intolerable agony, fiery fingers of pain tearing at every bit of his body, cutting off his speech almost at its very inception. He crumpled slowly to the ground, dimly conscious that other cries were echoing his own.
He died then, hearing the agonized hisses of his friends, his last sight of life being that of the globe that burned with a white-hot light on the top of the central stone.
And slowly, but with increasing speed, his people died too. They fell like tiny trees before a huge storm, falling even as they tried to find a reason for the death around them. Like a wave eddying out from the central stone, death cut its merciless sweep.
And within seconds there was no life in the clearing. Within seconds an entire nation, every intelligent being on Venus, was dead of the unleashed light rays, the like of which had never penetrated the miles of fog that lay between earth and the sun.
The radi-light gleamed brightly on the central stone, shedding radiance over the last beings of intelligence ever to be on Venus—perhaps forever!
- Writer
