Collected Short Fiction, page 192
At last he found the fleet, a swarm of violet specks, circling high. Low blue hills were beneath them, scattered with gigantic white towers.
Increasing the magnification, he saw tiny black particles raining from the disks.
Bombs!
Ruin plunged upward when they touched the ground. Debris leapt skyward in black fountains. White towers buckled and fell. Yawning, ugly craters were left, hideous raw scars in the smooth blue flanks of the hills among white shattered stumps that had been inspiring pylons. Greenish clouds of gas coiled over the hillsides like amorphous many-tentacled monsters; behind them the flowering moss was left sere and black.
Dull reverberations of explosions shook the tower continually.
Again Miles moved the dial that increased the magnification until he could distinguish the figures upon the disks. Once more he found Bak-Toreg, and Su-Ildra, chained to him, still drooping strangely, and the red Amazon and the priest with the puzzling black box.
Then he turned the tube and centered the green cross upon a disk that was far from the one Su-Ildra rode.
He touched the key that discharged the weapon.
The result was immediate and, even to Miles, astounding. As the machine in the picture had done, the disk-flier crumbled. The violet-armored Amazons, the black-robed dwarf by the control post exploded into puffs of white dust. The machine, the piles of black bombs upon the deck disintegrated, spilled in dusty whirling streamers.
The flier became but a dissipating gray smear across the sky.
Miles had no idea, at the time, how the ancient weapon functioned. Later he came to know a little more of it. He believes that the tube projected a field of force which in some way momentarily neutralized the force of cohesion which binds together the molecules in any substance.
No other theory seems to account for the instantaneous explosion of all matter before the weapon into impalpable, molecular dust.
Eagerness of battle in him, Miles hastily adjusted the mechanism for a second discharge and turned it upon another flier.
Again he touched the key and the ship upon which the green cross was centered became instantly a gray, spreading wind-ripped cloud.
Quickly, he found a third mark, and a fourth.
Then the enemy struck back at him.
On three of the disks were thin cylinders mounted like howitzers. Scarlet Amazons were suddenly furiously busy about them, directed by orange-skinned dwarfs. Yellowish vapor puffed from them.
Instinctively, Miles crouched down in his seat.
Deafening waves of sound shattered against his eardrums. The tower lurched beneath terrific explosions. The green tubes that illuminated the dome flickered twice, and went out, leaving Miles in complete darkness.
For a moment, panic was near.
But the oval view-plate, when he looked back into it, was not dark; he found that he could operate the controls by touch.
Swiftly he brought the green cross upon the disk-fliers that carried the three thin cylinders. One by one they dissolved into expanding swirls of dust.
But two of the cylinders must have been discharged a second time, for twice again the tower shuddered beneath terrific explosions. Miles felt hot blood dripping from his nostrils and his ears were ringing from concussion.
Now he handled the controls more deftly, more rapidly, even in the dark. The violet disks were going swiftly.
At first the fleet must have numbered six score fliers. Half of them were gone when they ceased to rain bombs upon the white towers at the city’s edge and descended in an angry swarm upon the Tower of Dread.
Miles worked swiftly, sparing only the fliers that were near the one which carried Su-Ildra. The surviving ships were almost hidden in the gray dust of those destroyed.
Again the tower quivered in agony beneath titanic hammers of explosion. Miles was battered by waves of sheer sound until his whole body shrieked in protest. His head drummed and sticky, salty blood ran down across his lips.
He clung doggedly to the controls.
Then some, other weapon must have been turned upon the tower.
The darkness within the dome gave way abruptly to a weird purple-red luminosity that leapt crackling in sparks and flickering sheets from all projecting metal objects. The air immediately seemed intensely hot. Miles felt that his skin was parched. Intense pain filled his lungs; an iron ring of agony closed about his throat; he was unable to draw breath.
The darkness and terror of unconsciousness lowered its wings upon him. He fought them back with sheer power of will until the green cross was centered upon a disk-flier where three black-clad priests were suspiciously busy over some half-visible mechanism.
In the last instant of endurance he pressed the key.
The disk-ship swelled into a white dust-cloud.
And instantly, the dome was dark again and cool. The sudden pain was gone from Miles’s lungs. He inhaled delightful air.
Without pause, he brought the green cross upon ship after ship.
Twelve were left when they scattered and fled.
Miles followed them. The range of the ancient amazing weapon and the power of the telescopic instrument appeared unlimited.
Eleven of the fleeing machines disintegrated into swirling dust.
He brought the other into the viewplate.
Bak-Toreg was on its deck, dwarfed, shrunken, his sickly-hued yellow face twisted and leering with unfathomed evil—Su-Ildra chained at his side, drooping, lifeless, face hidden by loose, glistening hair—the red Amazon, erect and uncompromising in her metal harness of war. The second orange-skinned priest was still hugging in his arms the enigmatic black cube.
The disk fled as he watched, back in the direction of Neng.
The elation of victory cooled from Miles’s veins; despair again filled him. What, after all, had he accomplished? A few disk-fliers were destroyed, but Neng could build thousands more. The city of the Flame-Folk was safe for the moment, but Bak-Toreg was still free to attack again.
The victory was but temporary and he had failed Su-Ildra. Miles clenched his teeth and stared into the view-plate.
He was helpless. A pressure of his finger would destroy Bak-Toreg—and Su-Ildra also. Though retreating, the yellow priest had triumphed. Biting his lip, nails cutting into his palms, Miles watched the machine dwindling within the little oval panel, until even the extreme magnification of the instrument failed longer to bring out the features of the tiny figures upon it.
Then, weary, hopeless, he left the seat at the rear of the great cylinder and stumbled across the floor of the darkened dome to the door of the elevator.
He was back in the tiny square cage where the green light still glared, when inspiration struck him.
“By George, he can do it!” Miles cried. “Why not, when he could pick me up in Neng and carry me to Algiers. Why not?”
He jammed his toe upon a stud that sent the car plunging down.
CHAPTER VI
The Jest of Doom
l Miles had no conception of the destructive forces that had been loosed upon the tower until he came out upon the broad platform before the entrance. He found it heaped with raw earth and stone flung from the hillside below, scattered with titanic red blocks, half fused, that had been torn from the wails of the tower.
The once blue moss that had blanketed the hill now lay fiat, sere, withered. Long gashes were furrowed through it to living granite. The air was yet laden chokingly with acrid fumes.
Above, the red walls of the tower were scarred and battered unbelievably. But, Miles sighed thankfully, they had stood. The fathers of the Flame-Folk had built well; the tower must have been armored mightily.
A few moments Miles paused, bewildered by this story of the holocaust he had escaped so narrowly. Then at thought of the disk-ship even now bearing Bak-Toreg and Su-Ildra back to evil Neng, he leapt from the platform and started running down the cataclysm-pitted hillside toward the spot where he had left Alú.
Across fresh craters and over new mountains of naked rock he plunged, gasping in the acrid fumes that still polluted the air. Apprehension grew in his heart as he ran. Perhaps Alú had been fatally hurt when Miles left him—the strange being had looked very weak and ill, lying motionless on the blue moss. Or perhaps he had been destroyed, physically or mentally, in the battle with the raiders. Or it might even be that if he still lived, unharmed, he could not do the thing that Miles desired.
At last, panting, wet with sweat and coughing from breathing noxious gases, Miles reached the foot of the hill. Here were no more craters and the blue moss was blackened only in spots. He looked where he had left Alú, but saw nothing of the reptile-being.
He was sinking fast into the despair of complete helplessness when a voiceless question penetrated to his mind.
“Miles Kendon, you seek me?”
Startled, Miles turned to see the green-scaled being, glorious, flame-flushed mantles half extended, dropping to the sere moss beside him.
“Yes, Alú,” he gasped. “You were not hurt?”
“I was not harmed bodily. But bringing you to the Tower of Dread, the knowledge that I was contributing to the fearful thing that has been done here, has made a scar on my mind that will never be erased.”
“You must help me again,” Miles cried. “Twice you have moved me across space—I don’t know how. Once from Neng to Algiers, and from the Rock of Arnac to here. I want you to put me on Bak-Toreg’s flier.”
The huge dark eyes of Alú scanned him soberly.
“That would be another terrible thing, and a foolish thing for you. You could only sacrifice yourself. You are but one against several. You have no weapon and the several are armed. You can but die needlessly.”
“That’s not the question! Can you put me on the disk?”
“Without difficulty,” was the silent reply. “I can fold Space as readily as you double a sheet of paper. I can reach through hyper-space where distance means nothing. But you are unwise to wish the thing.”
“No matter!” urged Miles. “That’s our play. And please hurry!”
“Come.
Miles stepped close to the tall, strange being. A green slender arm, delicately scaled, reached out; a small hand, thin fingers tipped with scarlet claws, was laid upon his shoulder.
He looked up into the great black eyes of Alú. Memory of those orbs was to live with him. Broad windows in the queer, scarlet-crested head, out of which looked sorrowful laughter, intolerable weariness, pain unutterable, they were.
Miles looked into the great eyes. Suddenly they seemed to expand before him, and at the same time, to push him away.
One moment of reeling motion, and he was standing upon a dipping metal deck.
The city of white towers was gone with its blue hills and the bright, mysterious mist. He was high beneath the silvered emerald of the dome of Xandulu, the seven close-grouped suns above, the purple sea beneath.
Air rushed past.
He stood on the flying disk. The scarlet Amazon was beside him. The priest huddled over his precious black box at her feet. Black-robed Bak-Toreg stood at the control post, listless Su-Ildra chained at his side.
The flat, circular disk of polished violet metal was not a score of feet in diameter; the flimsy metal rail at the rim, by which the woman stood, was not a yard high. The control post, where the high priest stood, was at the center of the deck.
Surprise was Miles’s only weapon and he took no chance of losing that through delay. The red woman alone was more than his equal in strength, had she been without her violet blade. In one second his eye took in the situation. In the next he had thrust his foot in front of her ankle, flung his weight against her hip.
With an angry, deep-throated bellow of surprise and warning, she stumbled against the rail. Miles changed his footing, clutched and heaved; she toppled over the metal bars, fell toward the far dark sea. It was a thing he did not like to do, but, as he put it to himself, it was his life or that of Su-Ildra.
He turned, in the next instant, upon the black-robed priests.
l The one with the black box had sprung to his feet; Bak-Toreg had stepped toward him from the controls. The two stood side by side, facing Miles. Searching the seamed, hideous yellow visage of the high priest, looking into the twinkling, kindly golden eyes that merely emphasized the hellish malignancy of his inscrutable features, Miles could find nothing of surprise or fear.
“Stay, stranger,” said Bak-Toreg, in the resonant voice that was so singularly deep for one of his shrunken and emaciated form. “Stand as you are. One step means the end of the planet!”
“Yes?” Miles said, in the Aral tongue.
“You know that we are servants of the Red One, the Supreme Destroyer, whose temple you desecrated,” boomed the priest. “You know that the high purpose of our faith was ever to plunge all things into sacred annihilation!
“Lifetime upon lifetime the loyal have labored in the temples, searching out the secrets of matter that all material things might in time be rendered unto Conquering Ruin.
“Success at last has come. The Red One suffered destruction at your vile hands only that all might follow him into Chaos. He smiled upon our labors, and they were crowned with triumph.
“In this vessel—”
Bak-Toreg paused and laid a gnarled yellow hand upon the black box hugged in the arms of the other priest.
“In this vessel is the seed of annihilation. Age through age, in the natural course of events, all matter, all atoms of every substance break down into primal energy and the energy flows out into the Void, and death and cold and stillness reign.
“Cold, Death, Stillness—they are Destruction.”
The shriveled hand fondled a little lever on the side of the box.
“I have but to touch this key, and our planet is rendered in one moment unto Annihilation. The work of eternities is completed in a breath. Every atom of the planet releases its store of prisoned energy in a single devouring flame.
“And that is not all!”
Into the twinkling golden eyes had crept a mad light of fanaticism.
“That flame will spread ruin from world to world, from star to star! Like a fever, annihilation shall spread. The whole universe shall be gathered into sacred doom!”
Miles stood looking at the two dwarfish priests, at Su-Ildra beside Bak-Toreg. The down-cast eyes of the listless girl were half-closed; she seemed unaware that Miles was present.
“What’s the matter with Su-Ildra?” Miles demanded in sudden concern, disregarding the black box and the priest’s fantastic pronouncements. “What have you done to her?”
“I administered a harmless drug,” said Bak-Toreg. “It was required to prevent any chance of her interfering with our plans. It will disappear when she sleeps—if she does sleep before the planet is destroyed.”
He took the black box from the hands of the other priest and placed one twisted claw over the projecting lever.
“One instant’s pressure,” his deep voice boomed again, “and the earth flames into atomic disintegration. It is you, Miles Kendon, who sent the Red One into Oblivion to prepare the way. I am honoring you beyond your deserts. I am offering you an opportunity to save the planet your action condemned.”
“How’s that?” demanded Miles, narrowly watching him.
“Leap over the rail, and I shall spare the planet and even the life of this girl at my side. For without you, Lelural has no power and the Red One through me may rule the planet, undestroyed.”
“And if I don’t care to leap?”
“I shall press the key.”
Miles studied the face of the priest—a mask of wrinkled parchment, twisted into a yellow leer of supernal evil which was but intensified by the benignant mildness of the golden eyes. No fear could he find there—no doubt, no indecision.
The gnarled claw hung eagerly over the lever.
Three slow heart-beats and Miles had made up his mind.
“You aren’t going to press the lever,” he said. “Perhaps, as you say. the fate of the world is in your hands. But you don’t want to die. You won’t press the lever.
“Instead, you are going to take a chance on killing me with whatever other weapons you happen to have. I am unarmed, remember! And the odds are two to one.”
Deliberately he advanced across the bright deck. One step. Two. Three.
Bak-Toreg’s emaciated claw hovered over the lever on the side of the box. It trembled. Once it touched the lever and was snatched away again.
“Your faith is a joke,” Miles said. “Annihilation may be splendid in theory. But in practice—”
Black-toothed mouth hanging open, the second priest stared at the box in breathless fascination.
Miles stopped in front of Bak-Toreg. His hands reached out and closed upon the box. He lifted it slowly from the arms of the priest. Bak-Toreg’s claw darted once more at the lever and jerked back from it as if it had received an electric shock.
Deliberately, Miles tossed the black box over the rail.
Abruptly galvanized, both black-clad priests leapt into savage activity. A thin blade of violet metal came as if by magic into the hands of the second and Bak-Toreg himself produced a little black cone that was obviously a weapon.
Miles’s hands moved as the priest’s sought the weapons.
A single resistless blow laid the second priest groaning on the deck. One steel hand closed on Bak-Toreg’s wrist before he could use the enigmatic cone. The other found his throat and did not open until the high priest of the Red One was dead.
The groaning alcolyte followed his black-robed master over the rail.
* * *
The rest may as well be told in Miles’s own words as I heard them whispered from the phones in the Gay Moth’s tiny radio room, near the dawn of a quiet morning upon the sea.
“I broke the chains off Sue’s wrists and laid her on the deck. She didn’t seem to recognize me at all; her body was oddly limp and she seemed to have no will of her own. She lay there as if in open-eyed sleep.
“I was standing by her, wondering what I could do, when I looked up and saw Alú beside me.
