Collected Short Fiction, page 125
Eric and Sharothon were drifting side by side, arm in arm.
“This is darn good of you!” Eric addressed Luroth, brokenly.
“They come!” Sharothon warned.
She pointed into the purple fog that surrounded us.
Then I saw a score of dark objects swimming up through it, toward us, swiftly yet warily. At first I could not understand what they might be. Then I realized that they were men, the henchmen of Kerak, shrouded in grim darkness as Kerak had been shrouded when he fought Sharothon outside the rocket. Kerak’s men were rushing toward us across the abyss of purple mist!
I was still watching when a thin and wavering tenacle of red flame sprang from the nearest, struck toward us like a coiled snake, increasing astoundingly in length. An angry, whipping filament of crimson incandescence.
I saw Sharothon turn the flat face of her crystal hemisphere toward it, saw her small thumb press the white lever. A pink spark was born within the transparent crystal. It expanded, because a little swirling sphere of rosy light, its edges fading mistily. In an instant, it had shot from the crystal.
Still expanding swiftly, it darted toward that mass of inky mist from which the red tongue was striking. It became a crashing, hurtling ball of rose-flame, whose intensely brilliant core was almost scarlet. It struck that mass of darkness in which lurked a man.
Together rosy sphere and black mist vanished—annihilated!
“So good may come from evil,” Luroth remarked, still busy with the keys upon his purple rod, “when the vibration-frames of such a man are broken down, dissolving his body again in the sea of cosmic energy.”
In a moment the twisting, wavering, darting tentacles of scarlet flame had struck out from all the score or so of black clouds in which our enemies were hidden. Sharothon manipulated her crystal hemisphere again—and another crashing globe of coralline light went out through the purple mist upon its mission of obliteration.
Then Eric and I began using our own weapons. Our skill was, to say the least, indifferent. The first rosy spheres we formed went rushing away until they vanished in the glittering red-blue mist—perhaps to wreak havoc among the wonders of Yothanda. But several of that first group of attackers vanished beneath our fire. Twice one of the blood-red tongues struck perilously near us, but the quickness of Sharothon saved the day.
“More come!” the girl warned us abruptly. “Kerak has called aid from the city, into the sacred Place of the Nine!”
New black specks were hanging in the purple haze, swiftly growing. And this time, no mere score! They numbered hundreds! A wide space of purple was soon dotted with the inky clouds. Thin red streamers whipped out again.
“Forward the Light Brigade!” Eric muttered, sending a sphere of rosy radiance crashing out to meet the attackers.
In moments they were upon us. Sharothon, Eric, and I were using our marvelous weapons as rapidly as we could press the white levers. The clouds of blackness were vanishing swiftly—but not swiftly enough! Again and again the striking crimson tongues came near, until I was sure that one would soon seize us, as I had seen Sharothon seized, long before.
Again and again I sent out the rosy globes.
Then I saw a narrow scarlet tongue dart in, wrap itself around Eric’s body. He writhed as though in agony. His gasping words came to me:
“Good-by—Sharothon—”
Abruptly, a blue wall was about us. We were within a sphere of shimmering, electric blue radiance. In the center of a marvelous bubble of sapphire light.
The crimson tentacle about Eric was cut off—it vanished. “Seems my farewell was a bit premature,” Eric grinned.
In a few moments, score upon score of the twisting ribbons of crimson light were darting at us. But always they were stopped, hurled back by the strange, shimmering wall of electric blue that had appeared so suddenly about us. It protected us, as a heavy sphere of blue glass might protect its occupants from a den of striking cobras.
“The blue is a barrier of force, of vibration,” Luroth informed us, “through which the weapons of our enemies cannot penetrate—not easily nor quickly, at least.
“Now we may attempt to leave Yothanda!”
ONCE more we were in swift flight, driven by the astonishing forces which Luroth controlled, through his sage knowledge, and through his possession of the purple rod, which, I think, was the most powerful ytlan staff in existence, though the black rods of Kerak and his followers were near it in power.
Through the glittering purple mist we drove, and out of it, through the Cyclopean arch of ebony. Then we were darting once more amid the strange wonders of Yothanda.
Over elfin cities of gems. Past incredible statues, and vast living pictures. Through dazzling fountains of liquid flame, and forests fashioned of unflawed jewels. Among splendrous arches and columns, walls and floating, spinning shapes of pure, many-colored light, imprisoned in solid form. Above wonder-crested seas of liquid fire. The myriads of Yothanda rose against us!
Millions of black, tiny clouds of coiling inky vapor appeared before us, struck at us with slender crimson tentacles. But the strange wall of shimmering, unstable electric blue force was not broken. We burst onward through the opposing throngs.
Then we came upon the wall of Yothanda.
An endless, unbroken sheet of coral-colored crystal, like polished rose quartz. It stretched across before us, with the amazing columns and walls of the city’s interior springing from it. Our hurtling flight slowed as we drew near it—and the attacking myriads thickened behind us.
Luroth pointed his purple staff at that rosy wall.
A circle of white incandescence appeared upon the coralline crystal, grew dazzling brilliant, seemed to cut through it. Abruptly it went out. And the circle was black. Black and shot with cold, motionless stars!
We drove through a hole in the rosy wall, out amid the strange wonders of interstellar space. I was glad to see the infinite abyss of darkness once more, sprinkled with the colored, unwinking points of stars, and dusted with the silvery powder of Galaxy and nebulas.
Yothanda dwindled behind us. Became a tiny, rosy gem, of many facets. Hung gleaming pink in the void, pale and dim beside flaming Canopus in Argo.
Safe!” I breathed, in vast relief.
“No,” the projected thought of Luroth came swiftly. “Never safe, so near Yothanda. It is a matter of time alone until Kerak, with all the power of Yothanda at his command, will find means to break through this barrier of vibration, seize us, crush us!
“Our only safety is in flight. Flight to a far part of the universe, beyond all power or knowledge of Kerak or the people he now rules.”
“Do you think we can get away?” Eric asked slowly. “Get to a place where Sharothon can live, and where we won’t be killed by the Cosmic Ray?”
His dark gray eyes watched the old man’s wrinkled face with an eager intentness that was almost pathetic.
“We can do no more than try,” Luroth replied deliberately. “Your bodies cannot long survive the action of the ytlan. And Sharothon cannot live long without it. So, as matters stand, you cannot be much together.
“But our fathers, who came first into the void, suffered as you are suffering from the ytlan. And they found means to change their bodies—though only slowly, and through several generations—so that it no longer injured them. Perhaps, if we reach peace and safety, beyond the power of Kerak, I can do something to aid you. At least we can build an insulated chamber, to which you can retire for temporary shelter from the rays.
“But peace and safety are not yet ours. Kerak will not easily let us go. Battles are yet to be fought!
“Shall we construct a vessel, Sharothon, and fly? Or have you a better idea?”
“Let it be flight,” came from the girl. And she added serenely, “For peace and health, for Eric Locklin and myself, away from the power of Kerak, I am willing to give all that I have, and am. But Luroth, it is wrong for you to take such risks, to aid us! You might have lived on in Yothanda, in peace.”
“To work!” the old man commanded, brusquely.
Any very comprehensive description of the building of our ship of space is beyond my power. I did not completely understand even the mode of its propulsion, though Sharothon informed me that it utilized a pressure-producing radiation, akin to that of gravitation, which pervades all space. By interference and cancellation of waves, the pressure from one direction was eliminated, and the unbalanced pressure from the opposite direction propelled the ship at incredible velocities. By an arrangement which I failed to comprehend, the dangerous effects of acceleration were avoided.
After some difficulty, Luroth materialized or condensed from cosmic energy a second ytlan rod, for Sharothon, to replace the green staff which our captors had taken from her. He also made one each for Eric and myself. Ours, of a pale rose-or wine-colored crystal, were relatively weak affairs—there would have been danger in entrusting our unskilled hands with instruments even so powerful as the green rod of Sharothon.
Eric and I soon mastered the rudiments of control, which are simpler than might perhaps be imagined. Of course we were not able to fashion delicate instruments. But a large part of the vessel’s hull was formed by our rays, while Sharothon and Kerak were busy with the weapons and the propulsive mechanism.
The building of the vessel took perhaps a week. Eric and I were compelled to pause, several times, for rest and sleep, Sharothon provided tanks of liquid food, within our transparent suits, which we could suck into our mouths through flexible tubes when we were hungry. The old man and the girl toiled continually.
Kerak’s scouts, clad in the purple auras, or mantled in impenetrable darkness, were always visible outside the electric blue wall of vibration. Luroth assured us that our foes would soon find a way to penetrate the sheltering wall. But we saw nothing alarming.
Our ship took the shape of a sharp cone. Its color was a bright crimson. It seemed very small to me, used as I was to the colossal immensities of Yothanda. The diameter of the cone’s base was no more than twenty feet, its height less than one hundred.
The propulsive apparatus was situated in the base of the cone—which, to my surprise, was the bow. The controls, and our living quarters, were to be in the central part. And the weapon, which Luroth designed very carefully, was mounted behind, at the vertex or point of the cone.
As the cone-ship neared completion, Kerak, by some means (probably by the physical amplification and projection of thought, by the use of some device similar to the thought-transmitters which Eric and I had worn since we left the rocket) got into mental contact with Luroth. I was able to pick up his message:
“Your foolish attempt to evade the power of myself, and of the Nine, and of Yothanda, has no chance of success. I am gathering all the resources at my command to use against you, to crush the screen of force behind which you have taken shelter, or to pursue you beyond the galactic system!
“Surrender now, and these terms you may have:
“You, Luroth, may be pardoned for the treason you have done, and live a free man in Yothanda.
“Sharothon need only obey the edict of the Nine, and present me an heir to my greatness.
“And the beasts with you, if you wish, may be set alive in the jungles of their own planet.”
“And what if I refuse?” Luroth sent the calm query.
“Then you die as a traitor when you are taken—as you are certain to be!”
“If that is all,” Luroth replied, almost serenely, “then I refuse!”
CHAPTER IX
The Hegira in the Crimson Cone
THE space which we occupied within the cone-ship was quite small, circular, and not above twelve feet in diameter. The floor was toward the stern, a slight force of artificial gravity holding us to it, to facilitate movement. The aspect of space ahead was reproduced upon the room’s curved roof by an ingenious system of periscopic screens. The little chamber was crowded with an almost incomprehensible and quite indescribable array of apparatus—the controls of weapons, of the propulsive and steering mechanisms.
“So long, little universe!” Eric muttered, when the four of us were crowded into the little bridge, ready to begin the flight.
Luroth began manipulating the score of little colored wheels or dials by which the motion of the cone-ship was controlled. A low musical vibration, a faint singing or humming sound of a curious and indescribable timbre, came from the apparatus above our heads—air had been liberated within the ship, for the benefit of Eric and myself, making sound audible.
That curious sound grew slowly higher in pitch, but still I felt no sensation of motion.
“Wonder when we start?” I addressed Eric.
Silently, he pointed at the screen on which appeared the view to the stern of the cone-ship. Familiar constellations were visible there—Andromeda, with the hazy patch of its great nebula; Perseus, with its magnificent double cluster; part of the great square of Pegasus. But creeping among those constellations, moving slowly toward the center of the screen—was a new star!
A bright, yellow-white star. It faded, grew swiftly dim. I lost it among the unwinking myriads of space. Puzzled, I turned to Eric.
“What was that? A comet—”
He grinned at me. “Don’t you realize it? That was the sun—our sun!”
“Yes,” Sharothon assured me, “our sun is already so far behind that we could never pick it out with unaided vision.”
“Then we must be safe—”
“I wish we were.” She smiled sadly. “Kerak now commands all Yothanda’s might. The arm of his power is long!”
She smiled at Eric, and they sat down together, at the side of the tiny, crowded room.
I am unable to judge the duration of our flight. In fact, time almost ceases to have meaning, to observers moving at such terrific velocities as we attained. Curious problems in relativity are encountered in the consideration of such rates of speed. Any discussion of them is quite beyond the scope of this narrative; the interested scientific student must be referred to the writings of Lorentz, Fitzgerald, Einstein, Eddington, Jeans, and others, or to such popular expositions of relativity as that by Mills—and the little I learned of the vast science of Yothanda impels me to warn the student that these, our greatest thinkers, are but stumbling blindly after the light of truth, with a long way of darkness yet before them.
Eric and I did not sleep, during the whole of our flight. Nor did we more than taste the food Sharothon had prepared for us. We were neither hungry nor sleepy. Yet the time that passed, measured by terrestrial standards, must have been several months. The problem is much too complex to consider here.
Luroth taught me how to keep the cone-ship upon her course. A little circle of colored light, moving across the screens upon which the wonders of space were visible, showed the direction of flight; and our rate of speed was indicated by the color, violet denoting the highest velocity. Very slight motions of the little wheels sufficed to keep us upon the chosen course.
And Sharothon instructed Eric in operating the great weapon which took up the entire rear part of the vessel. Its control, being partly automatic, was not beyond Eric’s ability. Luroth and Sharothon apparently wished to be free to meet unforeseen emergencies in the contest which they appeared to expect.
It seemed very soon to me—though, as I said, ordinary standards of time cannot be applied to the interval—that the stars thinned before us, thickened into clouds of silvery haze behind.
Past the last flashing outposts of the Galaxy we darted, into the terrible and unbroken blackness of an incredible abyss—into the extra-galactic void!
Behind us the Galaxy—the island-universe of myriad clustered suns among which our own is one of the smaller—became a vague and dwindling elliptic patch of light—a tiny fleck of misty white, appearing much the same as the Andromeda nebula appears in a telescope of moderate power.
But for that speck of light—in which our earth and our sun were invisible atoms—and for a few other similar specks, that were other island-universes, the impenetrable blackness about us was unbroken.
We drove onward through the infinite darkness of the outer universe—through frozen and incredible night! So far from our own sun that its light, which could not have been distinguished by a telescope powerful as any on earth, would have been a million years and more in reaching us!
And even there, we were not beyond Yothanda’s power!
Eric and I were incredulous when the first of our pursuers came within view—I could hardly believe that we had been followed so far and so swiftly. But Luroth and Sharothon seemed prepared for it. The old man accepted it in grim calm. The girl was white, tense, nervous; but she did not lose her head.
It was Sharothon who first saw the cube, pointed it out.
“The grasping hand of Kerak!” came her warning thought.
She stood pointing into the screen upon which was visible the rearward gulf of night-black, empty infinity. The pale, tiny fleck of white light, which our Galaxy had become, was visible there. And beside it was another object.
A cube. A cube of gleaming gold, with a small, round spot of glistening green, like an ominous green eye, in the center of each face. It seemed to float in the black and vacant cosmic behind us. But its size seemed slowly to increase.
It was exceeding even our incredible speed!
Sharothon stood for a long moment, staring into the screen. Her face was pale and drawn; dread was in her great, blue eyes. Strength seemed somehow drained from her slim, magnificent body, in its nimbus of pale, violet flame. She staggered a little, as if about to fall.
Eric, standing near her, reached out a strong arm. She collapsed in it, hung inert against his shoulder for a long instant. For the moment, he looked magnificently powerful, holding the limp form of the girl. I forgot that his mighty form was appallingly wasted, that his gray eyes were hollow and his face wan and grim. Forgot that he, like myself, was weak, dying, under the continual bombardment of the Cosmic Ray.
Then he heeled under Sharothon’s weight—we were using nearly normal gravity in the cone-ship, because Eric and I found it more comfortable than a weightless condition. In a moment the girl seemed completely recovered, was half supporting Eric himself.
