Collected Short Fiction, page 123
But mine is not the power to detail the wonder of it all. I can only suggest it, hint at it, and hope that the reader may glimpse some vague impression of the incredible glory of Yothanda.
Many times, in that world whose architecture was of motionless, frozen light, of the rigid, concentrate essence of pure color, I forgot that within it, as without, was the frigid, airless vacuum of space. It was hard for me to remember that any breach in the transparent envelope about me would be instantly fatal—that the air would rush out through any rent, that the moisture would be sucked away from my tissues, that I would quickly become a rigid mass, frozen iron-hard.
At last, when I was beginning to feel that I could no longer endure the burning, penetrating radiation to which the invisibility rays exposed my body, we flew swiftly toward the head of a marvelous statue, whose pedestal rose from a pool of liquid flame—of pure light, blue as the condensed rays of giant sapphires.
A remarkable statue, though not more so, perhaps, than a thousand others of which I had had fleeting glimpses, as we had swept through the crowded wonders of Yothanda.
Cyclopean—it must have been a full mile in height. It showed a man—a demigod, superb muscled—apparently hanging upon white, wide-spread wings. A golden shield was held before him, in one great hand. The other arm was flung back, to hurl a silver spear. Hot zest of battle was upon the handsome face; the hair was flung back by the wind.
“I made that.” Sharothon told us. “Not yet is it finished, though I have toiled upon it since I was small. Not a great work, perhaps. But nobler than the idle joys of those millions you have seen.
“And I will hide you in the head of it. Space there is, for you to live there. And I can always be near you. Kerak watches me jealously—but how could he suspect that I have you near me, as he watches me busy upon the statue?”
Swiftly we floated toward the gigantic head. Beneath the hair that flew behind it, and through a tiny, cleverly concealed opening, in the nape of the neck we entered. A fast, dim space—the head’s interior—was about us.
I felt, again, a slight force of artificial gravity. And we were standing upon a smooth surface, in the base of the great head.
In the dim light, two ghostly figures appeared beside me, grew swiftly real. Eric and Sharothon, restored to visibility! They looked to be in a sorry plight. Eric was pale, trembling, reeling as if with fatigue. Sharothon, within her violet nimbus, looked white-faced and shaken.
I felt suddenly sick and dizzy. The burning radiation no longer beat upon my body. But every tissue of my being seemed aching, screaming for relaxation.
“We feel the effect of the force which made us unseen,” came wearily from Sharothon. “It would soon destroy our bodies. We must have rest. Lie down, and feel that you are in security. There is no danger—unless Kerak finds us, which is unlikely . . . Unlikely, I hope!”
She reached a slender hand from the splendid violet radiance that bathed her body, touched me upon the forehead.
Her hand seemed to hurl me into an abyss of sleep.
CHAPTER VI
The Palace of Wonder
“WAKE up, Higdon, and give the once over to a palace out of fairyland!” Eric was shouting, shaking me roughly by the shoulder. My whole body seemed stiff and sore; I merely groaned. “Get up, man,” he cried again. “You’d sleep through your own funeral! Sharothon has been busy with her little wand, while we slept. Just sneak a look at what she’s made!”
At that, I struggled to a sitting position, and soon forgot the dull aches of my body in astonishment at the changes that the wondrous Lady of Light had made, while we slept, in the vast space that was the interior of the colossal statue’s head.
To my astonishment, I found that I had been lying upon a luxuriously soft couch, covered with some exquisitely soft, dark-red material, resembling velvet. My transparent, flexible suit had been removed, while I slept, and also the soiled and wrinkled garments that I had worn since the rocket had left the earth. I was now clad in a soft, silk-like robe of vivid blue.
My couch was near the center of a long room, of oval shape. Its floor was of a smooth, pale-blue substance, resembling stone to the eye, but proving to be oddly soft and elastic to the step. The curving walls and the groined vaults of the ceiling looked to be of brightly red stone, curiously streaked and veined with gold and purple.
Set deep in the walls were several panels, upon which appeared strange moving pictures—similar to those amazing scenes of drama that I had already observed upon the Cyclopean inner walls of Yothanda. Pictures that were three-dimensional, vivid, living! A far cry from the distorted, flickering shadows of terrestrial “movies.” Every scene had the balance and power of a supreme work of art. Amazing pictures, drawn from the vast history of Yothanda’s people, and their far vaster store of imaginative literature.
The air within the room, just sufficiently cool to be invigorating, was laden with a softly delicate incense or perfume, infinitely delightful, and quite strange to me. Low strains of fine and exotic music came from somewhere. Soft rosy light, from a source that I did not see, bathed the wonderful chamber, broken into a thousand prismatic gleams of diamond light in a fountain that rose in many-colored drops and streams, near each end of the oval room.
Standing beside my couch were Eric and Sharothon—with arm linked in arm.
The girl was gloriously lovely. Her fine skin glowed with vitality—with a stronger life than is known on earth. She had exchanged her green tunic for one of shimmering rose. Still she wore the silvery girdle, and carried the emerald ytlan rod. Her glinting, sun-gold hair was massed in a new fashion, held to her head with a broad band of brilliant scarlet.
And her eyes, upon Eric, were softly and wondrously alight—with love.
Eric himself had draped his mighty form with a loose robe of intense blue, similar to my own—unless the change had been made before he woke. He looked, I thought, rather as I felt—weary, and stiff of muscle and joint. But he looked almost handsome, in his rugged strength. And his dark gray eyes were often upon Sharothon—aglow with a light akin to that in her own.
“There is artificial gravity in here?” I asked, noticing that they stood naturally upon the floor, and that my body seemed to be pressed against the couch with almost its usual weight.
Eric laughed queerly. “Higdon, you’re a scream,” he said. “A purple scream! If an angel came to see you, you’d make him step on the scales! You’d take his finger prints, and count the feathers in his left wing!” He turned to Sharothon, smiled into her eyes, and said, “But the poor fellow won’t be happy until you satisfy his curiosity on a few technical points.”
She looked at me, with friendship on her face, and her thought-message came to me—Eric and I still wore the blue disks of the thought-transformers; Sharothon and the other people of Yothanda needed no such instruments.
“Do not mind his jests, Higdon. You are a scientist, and my race, as well as yours, owes much to science. And the scientist must ever be a seeker of truth, an asker of questions and an answerer.
“Yes, we are held to the floor by an artificial field of gravitation. While you slept, I was busy, with the ytlan rod, sealing this space with a strong, insulating wall, which would hold the air which you need, and protect you from the chill of the void. I made rooms for you and Eric, air, food—all the things of which I knew, that you needed, or that might please you. Come, let me show it to you. Then we can bathe, and you may eat the food you need.”
I could not repress a groan, as I got stiffly off the couch, and stood up.
“It is strange that your body and Eric’s are so hurt,” came from Sharothon. “It must be the effect of the invisibility. The effect of light rays upon the inner parts of the body that are never exposed to them. But you have both slept long—very long. I was sure that you would be recovered, as I am. But soon you will be better, I hope.”
Arm in arm, she and Eric led the way to the end of the oval room. A panel slid quietly aside before us, and we stepped into another chamber,’ as amazing, and almost as lovely. I cannot take space to describe it all completely. But it was octagonal in shape, with walls of translucent emerald crystal, inlaid with harmonious and pleasing, though strange, designs in bright silver.
In the room’s center was a broad pool, filled with a blue liquid, bright as azure flame. It was fed with eight tinkling little fountains of sapphire fluid.
“Let us bathe!” came Sharothon’s thought-message.
I FOUND the bath singularly invigorating. I emerged from the brilliantly blue pool feeling new elasticity and exhilaration, and keenly hungry. My muscles, however, remained slightly sore. And when I was donning my blue robe again, I discovered inflamed and angry patches upon my skin.
“Now you may eat!”
Sharothon’s lips did not move; no actual sound came from her. But the impression made upon my mind was almost exactly the same as if she had called out the words in an eager, vibrant, musical voice. It almost seemed to me as if she had really spoken.
She guided us through another silent, open passage, into a long and splendid room, paneled and ceilinged with broad smooth sheets of polished crystal, milky white, intensely scarlet, and jet-black. The effect of the gem-like walls was magnificent beyond imagination.
In the center of the floor was a table of ebon crystal, with three soft couches about it. Sharothon made us recline. She herself took the third couch.
With the emerald ytlan rod she “condensed” the dishes from pure cosmic energy, as we ate. A most spectacular service. A swirling globe of blue-white radiance would appear upon the table, and a platter of food or a flagon of crystal drink would remain when it vanished. It seemed almost magical. But Sharothon took it all as a matter of course, and insisted upon directing our attention to a panel at the end of the room, upon which were appearing astounding, living scenes from the early history of her race, portraying the destruction of the Lost Planet—a most striking cataclysm—and the ensuing struggle on the part of the survivors to maintain their existence in the void.
To describe the food is beyond me. It was infinitely varied in taste and color and form. There were sparkling liquids, and brilliant, translucent geometric solids. And delicately fashioned miniature images of various objects, so perfect that it seemed a crime to destroy them. Every item was delicious beyond the dreams of the veriest epicure.
Currents of cool, fresh air, subtly fragrant, breathed upon us. And we still heard an undertone of low, beautiful music.
Sharothon had prepared for us, or perhaps I should say for Eric, a palace that might have graced any fairy tale. She had left nothing lacking, for our joy or comfort. But she herself was the most perfect thing. Sharothon—the lover!
But the meal was hardly ended when she told us suddenly that she must go.
“Kerak watches me jealously,” came her regretful thought-images. “If I stay with you too long in this hiding place, he will suspect me, search, discover us together. Then his rage will be a fearful flame. By no simple trick will he be again evaded.
“Before I go, I will show you how to don quickly the transparent garments in which you may live in space. For your danger would be great indeed, should he come when I am gone, and break the walls to let the air you breathe escape!”
She took us into another marvelous room, where lay the wonderful suits, and showed us how to slip into them quickly through a long slit in the front, and how to seal that slit with a remarkable mechanism. Then we watched her slip out, through an air-lock similar to that in the top of the rocket—after a lingering, almost pathetic embrace from Eric.
All the wonders of that palace seemed hollow, dead, after Sharothon was gone. Only by effort could I concentrate my attention upon the marvelous, stereoscopic moving pictures upon the walls, showing as they did in colorful reality, the stupendous history of an amazing race, and the more stupendous dreams of that people’s most gifted members.
Eric would do nothing but restlessly pace the floor of the room in which the entrance to the air-lock was situated, or talk to me incoherently of the beauty and nobility and kindness of Sharothon.
At last she returned—but it was only a few brief hours before she had to go again. Her manner revealed that she was suffering under a nervous strain, worried, afraid that Kerak would discover us.
When she was gone, I slept again. Eric was pacing the floor when I lay down, still tramping wearily and futilely when I woke.
Some time—weeks, I suppose—went by without decisive event. Sharothon was never with us long. There were short periods of feverish, almost delirious gaiety, when she was in the palace. And long, intolerable intervals of anxious, fearful waiting, when she was absent.
Contrary to our hopes, and to Sharothon’s expectations, Eric’s and my physical condition got rather worse than better. Our muscles remained sore; the red, inflamed areas upon our bodies increased in extent. We lost appetite, even for the delightful viands that Sharothon served so marvelously. Our heads ached almost continually, and both of us suffered frequently from nosebleed. Eric’s mighty body wasted visibly, and I felt a depressing loss of strength and vigor.
Both of us minimized our symptoms, in discussing them with Sharothon, or tried to conceal them—for fear that she should think it necessary to send us back to the earth, to save our lives.
She was stricken with grief, and at a loss to account for the duration of our illness. She supposed it to be due to our adventure in invisibility. But she could not understand our failure to recover.
We had lived through weeks of despair and delight before the occurrence of the dread event which we had all feared and had been helpless to avoid.
Eric and I happened to be both gazing through the transparent inner valve of the air-lock. We saw Sharothon dart into it in mad haste. Her slender body was trembling in its nimbus of violet flame. Her face was white, her eyes wide with terror.
At once her thought-impulses reached us:
“Kerak comes! He has watched me, guessed our secret! With him he brings many of his evil, power-seeking companions. There is no hope to fight or escape. I fear much for all of us. But quickly don your suits, or your lives will be lost when they break the walls!”
Eric and I dashed into the next room, where our transparent suits lay ready, began scrambling desperately into them. In an instant Sharothon was with us, to help. It seemed a frightful time, though it must have been seconds only, before we had slipped into the flexible, air-tight garments and sealed the openings.
Then we waited.
Eric and Sharothon stood side by side, arms about each other’s shoulders. Eric, in the transparent suit, still looked strong and aggressive, despite the slow and inexplicable wasting away of his mighty limbs. Sharothon, quiet within her violet aura, was white-faced, but defiant in manner. In the attitude of neither was there hint of surrender!
I stood near them, a little behind them.
Only a few seconds more of silence slipped past. Then a whole side of the splendid room—where there had been one of the marvelous, living pictures—burst into blue incandescence. The wall shone with a light of cyanic blue, as the walls of the rocket had shone when they were destroyed. And like the rocket, the wall melted away.
There was a sudden dull explosion. An abrupt rush of wind hurled us to the floor—the air in the room rushing out into void space.
Then, through the rudely burst opening flew a score of men.
Kerak led them, a powerful and evil figure.
His vast body was clad in black, with silver girdle. He bore a black ytlan rod. Purple fire bathed him. Upon his cold, hard face was a mocking sneer of malicious triumph.
Those with him were similar—but feebler copies of himself. Their tunics and their rods were also black. Upon their faces was the print of narrow selfishness. Now they were smiling in malevolent mockery.
Eric and Sharothon stood quietly, still embracing, as they burst into the room.
Through the thought-transmitter, I caught the substance of Kerak’s challenge:
“Ah, my lovely Sharothon, you will answer to the Nine for this! And the sentimental senility of old Luroth will not save you again, as it did when he released you from the duty of bearing my child! Nor will it save these queer apes that you must have caught for pets in the jungles of some young planet—you, a daughter of Yothanda and legal mate of Kerak!”
Sharothon’s face grew whiter. She bit a red lip. And the arm about Eric’s shoulder tightened. But she made no reply.
Eric stepped forward a little, though still keeping one arm about the lovely girl. He shook a hard fist at Kerak.
Then the three of us were seized by many hands!
CHAPTER VII
The Judgment of the Nine
PART of our rude captors held us, there in the wreck of that splendid room of Sharothon’s palace of love. And others pointed at us their black ytlan rods. I feared instant annihilation, by the incredible forces they drew from the Cosmic Ray. But my hands were drawn behind my back, as the palely scarlet rays flickered from the ebon rods.
When the feeble red rays went out, I found that my wrists and ankles were manacled with close-fitting fetters of a glistening, black, metallic substance. Unbreakable bonds, condensed upon me by the unbelievable power of the ray!
Eric and Sharothon, I saw, were similarly fettered. They had made no resistance. Their faces were impassive, save when they cast burning, desperate glances at each other. They seemed to scorn even to look at Kerak again.
“We take you before the Nine!” Kerak announced.
Each of the three of us was held between two of our captors, within the vague purple auras that mantled them. Driving white flame jetted from ytlan rods. We were whisked out through the vast, ragged hole that the ray had cut in the wall, outside the colossal statue’s head.
Swiftly we drove through the wonders of strange Yothanda.
My dazed, bewildered and terrified mind retained but few impressions of that meteor flight. I have but vague recollections of darting through vast abysms of space, in which spheres and cubes and cylinders of pure, frozen flame spun, planet-like. Of flashing high over fantastic elfin cities, wrought of bright-hued gems, and strangely of skimming scintillant, flame-bright seas. Of flying past vast walls upon which living pictures moved. Of hurtling through innumerable rows of carved and fluted, translucent columns, many-colored, and so luminous they seemed formed of prisoned light.
