This star shall be free

There were helmets with transparent windows, from which eyes looked out. But the windows were filled with water.... This Star Shall be Free By Murray Leinster Tork was a simple man of the caves. How could he dream that the star box held the power to make his people gods—or only a lost memory in stone? The urge was part of an Antarean experiment in artificial ecological imbalance, though of course the cave-folk could not guess that. They were savages with no interest in science or, indeed, in anything much except filling their bellies and satisfying other primal urges. They inhabited a series of caves in a chalk formation above a river that ran through primordial England and France before it joined the Rhine and emptied into the sea. They did not understand the urge at all—which was natural. It followed the disappearance of the ship from Antares by a full two hours, so they saw no connection between the two. Anyhow, it was just a vague, indefinite desire to move to the eastward—an impulse for which they had no explanation whatever. Tork was spearing fish from a rock out in the river when the ship passed overhead. He was a young man, still gangling and awkward. He wasn’t up to a fight with One-Ear, yet, and had a bad time in consequence. One-Ear was the boss male of the cave-dwellers’ colony in the cliff over the river. He wanted to chase Tork away or kill him, and Tork had to be on guard every second. But he felt safe out on his rock. He had just speared a fine ganoid when he heard a howl of terror from the shore. He jerked his head around. He saw Bent-Leg, the other adult male, go hobbling in terror toward his own cave-mouth, and he saw One-Ear knock two of his wives and three children off the ladder to his cave, so he could get in first. The others shrieked and popped into whatever crevice was at hand, including the small opening in which Tork himself slept when he dared. Then there was stillness. Tork stared blankly. He saw no cause for alarm ashore. He ran his eyes along the top of the cliff. He saw birch and beech and oak, growing above the chalk. His eyes swept the stream. There were old-men’s stories of sea-monsters coming all the way up from…