The Lake of Gone Forever by Leigh Brackett (Thrilling Wonder Stories, October 1949) opens with Rand Conway dreaming that he is on Iskar, and his dead father is telling him, “I can never go back to Iskar, to the Lake of Gone Forever.” Conway then wakes, realises he is on his way there in a spaceship, and he thinks about the great wealth that he may find at the lake. Shortly afterwards, Rohan (a rich man who is connected to Esmond, the ethnologist fiancé of Conway’s daughter Marcia) comes to tell him that they are about to arrive.
After they land, the crew get the sledges out and they head for the nearest village: Conway, Rohan and Esmond travel, but Marcia is left behind with the ship. Several hours later, and after they continue on foot, they eventually come to the city:
It spread across the valley floor and up the slopes as though it grew from the frozen earth, a part of it, as enduring as the mountains. At Conway’s first glance, it seemed to be built all of ice, its turrets and crenellations glowing with a subtle luminescence in the dusky twilight, fantastically shaped, dusted here and there with snow. From the window openings came a glow of pearly light.
Beyond the city the twin ranges drew in and in until their flanks were parted only by a thin line of shadow, a narrow valley with walls of ice reaching up to the sky.
Conway’s heart contracted with a fiery pang.
A narrow valley—The valley.
For a moment everything vanished in a roaring darkness. Dream and reality rushed together—his father’s notes, his father’s dying cry, his own waking visions and fearful wanderings beyond the wall of sleep.
It lies beyond the city, in a narrow place between the mountains—The Lake of the Gone Forever. And I can never go back!
Conway said aloud to the wind and the snow and the crying horns, “But I have come back. I have come!” p. 69
When they arrive at the city an armed group meet them before an old man arrives and identifies them as Earthmen. The old man, Krah, mentions someone called “Conna”, which Conway presumes is his father. Krah tells him and the other Earthmen to leave but, when Conway threatens war, Krah reluctantly orders the gates opened. Esmond and Rohan are not happy at Conway’s conduct, but he is determined to get to the lake.
The rest of the story unravels the reasons for Krah’s dislike and suspicion of the visitors—which are mostly connected with Conway’s father it seems—among the complications introduced by a native girl called Ciel, who causes trouble by trying to visit Conway, and Krah’s production of Conway’s daughter Marcia, who followed the group after they left and ran into trouble with the native women.
Ciel later shows Conway a way out of the city that leads to The Lake of Gone Forever and (spoiler), after Krah and his men pursue the pair there, the climactic scene sees Conway arrive at the lake, which is “semi-liquid” and contains valuable “transuranic elements”. He is told by Krah (who, like his men, has left his weapons outside the entrance to the lake) that their dead are put in the lake, and that it acts as a repository of the Ishtar people’s memories. Conway then sees a vision of his younger father together with his native wife and then, over the course of several visions, Conway sees his father consumed with greed at the thought of the wealth in the lake. Later there is an altercation when he tries to take a sample of the liquid, and he is stopped by his wife in the presence of Conway as a baby. During the struggle between Conway’s father and mother she falls into the lake and perishes. Conway’s father subsequently flees the planet.
Conway realises, after seeing the visions, that his mother was Krah’s daughter and so he must be Krah’s grandson. He gives up his dreams of wealth and asks Krah if he can stay on the planet. Krah agrees, and Ciel becomes Conway’s wife.
There is quite a lot going on at the end of this story after quite a protracted and unnecessary build-up (the story could probably start with Conway arriving at the city, and you could lose most of the other characters). Also, the idea of a radioactive (I presume) memory lake is poetic but doesn’t entirely convince. If you read this for the description and atmosphere it’s not bad, and I suppose it is a change, albeit a long-winded one, from the more prosaic delivery of the other stories of the period.
**+ (Average to Good). 13,400 words. Story link.