“Take over while I get some of the zysturium,” Jon instructed, giving Mildred the pistol. She obeyed, while Jon finished laying bare the needed element and partly filled his other sack. He attached the tools and sacks to his shoulder-band, and telling Mildred to follow, began his escalade toward the space-flier.

It was a close race, especially in rounding the cataract. He heard the snap and hiss of the pistol and Mildred’s cry of triumph as at least one of their pursuers fell back.

At length, half blinded by sweat, with heart and lungs heaving stertorously, he was climbing the flier’s ladder. Pushing his loads through the manhole, he hung at one side, and made sure that Mildred preceded him, snatching the pistol from her hand as she went past. One of the reptile-men had started to mount the ladder, but dropped into the ravine when Jon fired. Jon went through the manhole and made fast the outer and inner lids.

They worked on their repairs for much of that night, hearing the baffled cries of the reptiles and the futile crash of their weapons against the hull and windows.

The furnaces had done their fusing, and the rod was welded and left to cool.

At earliest morning they took off and regained the outer skies.

APPENDIX ONE:

STORY NOTES

Abbreviations Used:

AHT Arkham House Transcripts: a set of transcriptions and excerpts from the letters of H. P. Lovecraft prepared by Donald Wandrei and August Derleth after Lovecraft’s death in preparation for what would be five volumes of Selected Letters (Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1965–1976).

AWD August W. Derleth (1909–1971), Wisconsin novelist, Weird Tales author, and co-founder of Arkham House.

AYThe Abominations of Yondo (Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1960).

BBThe Black Book of Clark Ashton Smith (Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1979).

BL Bancroft Library, University of California at Berkeley.

CAS Clark Ashton Smith (1893–1961).

DAW Donald A. Wandrei (1908–1987), poet, Weird Tales writer and co-founder of Arkham House.

DSThe Door to Saturn: The Collected Fantasiesof Clark Ashton Smith, Volume Two. Ed. Scott Connors and Ron Hilger (San Francisco: Night Shade Books, 2007).

EOD Emperor of Dreams: A Clark Ashton Smith Bio-Bibliography by Donald Sidney-Fryer et al. (West Kingston, RI: Donald M. Grant, 1978).

ES The End of the Story: The Collected Fantasies of Clark Ashton Smith, Volume One. Ed. Scott Connors and Ron Hilger (San Francisco: Night Shade Books, 2006).

FFT The Freedom of Fantastic Things. Ed. Scott Connors (New York: Hippocampus Press, 2006).

F&SF The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, a digest magazine founded in 1949 by Anthony Boucher and Robert Mills.

FW Farnsworth Wright (1888–1940), editor of Weird Tales from 1924 to 1940.

GLGenius Loci and Other Tales (Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1948).

HPL Howard Phillips Lovecraft (1890–1937), informal leader of a circle of writers for Weird Tales and related magazines, and probably the leading exponent of weird fiction in the twentieth century.

JHL Clark Ashton Smith Papers and H. P. Lovecraft Collection, John Hay Library, Brown University.

LL Letters to H. P. Lovecraft. Ed. Steve Behrends (West Warwick, RI: Necronomicon Press, 1987).

LW Lost Worlds (Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1944).

METhe Maze of the Enchanter: The Collected Fantasies of Clark Ashton Smith, Volume Four. Ed. Scott Connors and Ron Hilger (San Francisco: Night Shade Books, 2009).

MHS Donald Wandrei Papers, Minnesota Historical Society.

OD Other Dimensions (Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1970).

OST Out of Space and Time (Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1942).

PD Planets and Dimensions: Collected Essays. Ed. Charles K. Wolfe (Baltimore: Mirage Press, 1973).

PP Poems in Prose (Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1965).

RA A Rendezvous in Averoigne (Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1988).

RHB Robert H. Barlow (1918–1951), correspondent and collector of manuscripts of CAS, HPL, and other WT writers.

SHSW August Derleth Papers, State Historical Society of Wisconsin Library.

SL Selected Letters of Clark Ashton Smith. Ed. David E. Schultz and Scott Connors (Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 2003).

SS Strange Shadows: The Uncollected Fiction and Essays of Clark Ashton Smith. Ed. Steve Behrends with Donald Sidney-Fryer and Rah Hoffman (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1989).

ST Strange Tales of Mystery and Terror, a pulp edited by Harry Bates in competition with WT.

TSS Tales of Science and Sorcery (Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1964).

VAA Vintage from Atlantis: The Collected Fantasies of Clark Ashton Smith, Volume Three. Ed. Scott Connors and Ron Hilger (San Francisco: Night Shade Books, 2007).

WS Wonder Stories, a pulp published by Hugo Gernsback and edited first by David Lasser and then Charles D. Hornig.

WT Weird Tales, Smith’s primary market for fiction, edited by FW (1924–1940) and later Dorothy McIlwraith (1940–1954).

The Dark Age

When Clark Ashton Smith wrote “The Dark Age,” he intended to submit it to the Clayton Astounding, which had changed its policy to include a few occult-type stories.¹ It was finished by May 2, 1933, when he described the story as “my lousiest in many moons, largely, no doubt, because of the non-fantastic plot, which failed to engage my interest at any point. The one redeeming feature is the final paragraph, which takes a sly, underhanded crack at the benefits (?) of science.”² We have not been able to locate any letter of rejection for this story, so it is not known if it was rejected under the auspices of the dying Clayton regime at Astounding or by the incoming editorial team of F. Orlin Tremaine and Desmond Hall that had already accepted “The Demon of the Flower” for the December 1933 issue.

Hugo Gernsback sold Wonder Stories to Leo Margulies’ Better Publications on February 21, 1936. Mort Weisinger, who would later edit Superman during the so-called Silver Age of comics, took over from Charles D. Hornig as editor.³ It is not known if Smith was invited to contribute or if he just sent in the typescript on his own initiative, but CAS wrote to Virgil Finlay that “The sale of a pseudo-science short to Thrilling Wonder Stories at $55.00 [along with the sale of a carving] brings my September [1937] income to $62.50! If such sales continue, I shall become a bloated plutocrat!”⁴ “The Dark Age” appeared in Thrilling Wonder Stories for April 1938. This appearance was accompanied by a brief essay by Smith entitled “The Decline of Civilisation”:

“The Dark Age” was written to illustrate how easily scientific knowledge and its resultant inventions could be lost to the human race following the complete breakdown of a mechanistic civilization such as the present one. The tale seems far from fantastic or impossible; and I have tried to bring out several points and to emphasize the part played by mere chance and by personal emotions and reactions.

I have shown the old knowledge conserved by a select few, the Custodians, who, in the beginning, are forced to isolate themselves completely because of the hostility displayed by the barbarians. Through habit, the isolation becomes permanent even when it is no longer necessary; and with the sole exception of Atullos, who has been expelled from the laboratory-fortress by his fellows, none of the Custodians tries to help the benighted people about them.