by Earl
Suddenly there was a low murmur from outside and a moment later an orderly dashed into the tent, gasping in excitement.
“What is it, fool? Speak and tell me!” said Alexander, springing to his feet, thinking that some mysterious enemy had attacked.
“Emperor! There is a Strange light in the sky. No one knows what it is! The men are uneasy and—”
Alexander brushed the orderly aside and darted outside the tent to step out under the stars. Almost at the same moment the officers came running up.
They all peered at the celestial phenomenon that hung eerily over the land of the Dravidians like a giant glow-worm with hairs of light spreading in a grand sweep toward the nadir. There was no moon, and in the blacksness of night it seemed to pulsate and writhe, as though it were angry.
“It is a fire in the sky,” said Kalijan, breaking the silence of the company. “By Zeus, I hope it does not fall here!”
Polemus had been watching Alexander’s face closely, and had seen written there a great and fearsome awe. Alexander had always been known to have great respect for soothsaying, black magic and the like.
“It hangs over the land of the Dravidians,” Polemus suggested craftily. “Might it not be their god preparing to protect the country against our invasion, with a bolt of lightning in his hand?”
Alexander started nervously and peered yet more closely at the heavenly light as though to verify Polemus’ subtle surmise.
“Yes—yes,” the world-conqueror said softly, too stricken with awe to raise his voice. “Tomorrow we start back for Greece!”
CHAPTER II
Prophecy
THE astrologer held the paper close to the flickering taper and read from it—or appeared to read from it.
“Jupiter being in the ascension and fast approaching opposition to Mars, which presages much battling; and Saturn retreating from the zenith and waxing to brightness in the early morning hours, it is apparent that the zodiacal, signs are tending toward a three-fold triangular configuration, which—”
“The devil take you!” burst in Count Robert testily. “Do you play with my temper? Have done with your learned embellishments and give me the gist of the matter, or by God, I will—
“You will read it yourself?” mocked the astrologer, holding out the parchment.
“Oh, no, no,” said D’Aine hastily, to whom writing was as much a mystery as star-gating. “My—my eyes are bad; I would but fumble it. You read, good sir, but for Mary’s blessed sake, tell me what I want to know!”
“Then listen closely,” said the old man, making his voice sonorous and portentous. “I have read the stars.
I have bared their celestial secrets. It has been revealed that your invasion into barbaric Saxony, sometimes called England, will prosper greatly providing it be done instantly. You will win much, Count Robert, and your name will ring in all Normandy as one of its most heroic leaders.”
The astrologer, without raising his head, rolled his eyes to see what effect the words had had on his patron. Count Robert’s face had suffused with a radiant glow and his eyes shone happily.
Satisfied, the astrologer continued reading in the same sepulchral, prophetic voice: “The Saxons will fall before your men-at-arms like reeds, wondering frantically what invincible enemy has attacked them. But you must push ahead rapidly or your conquest will go for nothing. Fear hot, for the stars have crowned your future with glory.”
“Voila!” cried the count as the old man stopped.——”Success—fame—
glory—they shall be mine! If the stars say it, how can I fail?”
“As the stars foretell, so shall it be,” nodded the astrologer. “Soothsaying, the mortal gift divine, as read in the almighty stars, is a true portent of the future. Your ten pieces of gold will bear you an hundred-fold fruit, in that my predictions send you on your conquest the sooner, that it may be wholly successful.”
The count spoke after a pause: “You will remember to what death a certain self-named astrologer came at the hands of the wrathful Duke de Chaplette—how he was hunted from his hovel and tortured, and forced to eat his own lying tongue! Remember that, old sir, and remember that I am like to do the same thing to you if my future is not as you paint it!”
Despite a chill that clutched his heart at the threat, the old astrologer answered firmly: “You threaten one who has no reason to fear your words, in that he knows he has read the stars right. However—”
He licked dry lips. “However, come with me to the roof. I will check once more my calculations.” He did not think it necessary to mention that he might find a disturbing note in the stars, so that he might make his predictions double-edged.
FALTERINGLY the astrologer led the way up rickety steps with a candle to light the way, and ushered his guest out into the chill of midnight on the flat roof of his ancient abode. Hardly had they stepped out under the open sky than they both gasped aloud.
Hanging in the void and slowly ascending from the horizon was a celestial phenomenon unmatched for grandeur except perhaps by an eclipse of the sun. Its dazzling brilliance lighted up the desolate moorland almost as the moon might have at full, and the long, shimmering tail which streamed from a head many times brighter than scintillant Venus seemed to be unwinding from some cosmic spool below the earth.
“Blessed saints!” cried the count, crossing himself. “What—what fearsome thing is that?”
He suddenly grasped the astrologer fiercely by the arm.
“You that have watched the heavens three score years and more, and have read the meanings of its eternal pageant—you must know what it means! Tell me, what does it signify in my horoscope?”
It was a poor time to falter, and realizing it, the old astrologer spoke firmly, increasing his voice till it became a cackling shout.
“It is a godly symbol, a heavenly talisman,” he intoned, “arid he that acts to his best ability and to the most righteous purpose while its influence reigns in the skies will surely become great and mighty. More than that I cannot and will not say.”
“Then if I begin my campaign this very night—this very night of May 10, 1066,” said the Norman eagerly, “I will be attended by the great fortune that this mysterious light from heaven sheds on mortals below! Is it so, old man?”
“It is so,” nodded the astrologer. Without a further word the count sprang away, raced down the steps, flung himself on his horse tethered outside the door, and galloped away toward the Norman military headquarters.
The astrologer watched the horse vanish in the night gloom. Then he suddenly became imbued with an energy, if not quite as spry, at least as earnest as that displayed by the count. He stumbled down the steps, nearly breaking his thin neck in the process, and flew into his room of books and writings, shouting a name “at the same time until the whole building rang with echoes.
“Jebedee! Jebedee! Come here at once! Jebedee-e-el Thou sluggard! Thou cursed snail! Jebe—”
“Yes, master,” answered a voice at the, door. Jebedee, the old man’s apprentice and future successor as astrologer and alchemist, stood there but half dressed.
“ ’Tis about time,” growled the old man, thumbing a book furiously. “Can you come ho quicker when your master calls and when every second is precious beyond sight?”
“I was in bed, master, as is my rightful due. I came as quickly as I could—”
“Cease thy aimless chatter, fool, and harken to me. Jebedee, this night may see the accomplishment of my life-long aim—in fact, the dearest aim of every one of our learned sect.” Jebedee gasped and blinked.
“What do you mean, master? Not—not—” his voice fell to a hushed whisper—“not the philosopher’s stone!”
“Exactly,” cried the old astrologer. “If I could only find—ah, here it is. Zolon’s masterful treatise—”
HE HELD a volume up to the light, retrieved from the midst of the pile, a most aged and battered sheaf of crudely bound parchment which would be ready to crumble to dust in another fe
w years. Yet in spite of its poor condition, the black-inked writing on its pages was clearly legible wherever the page itself was not missing. The astrologer fumbled through the sheaf excitedly and finally stopped at a sheet marked with superimposed notes on the margin.
“Yes, yes, Jebedee, my son,” said the old man. “The Philosopher’s Stone itself! Listen, I will translate a passage from this vile Greek, written before our lifetime by Zolon, the master magician of Zoroastria! As follows:
. . . and this compound, treated with human blood, and then exposed to the magic rays of a strange spear of light, that has a nose and tail and which comes but once in a millennium, will cast out of itself a stone like unto a ruby, but with magical powers that change base metals to pure, shining gold I-I swear in the name of dread Baal that I had the stone three days and made with it a huge rack of golden metal, and then I was preyed upon by thieves who took both gold and stone. . . .
“Did you hear, Jebedee? The strange spear of light that has a nose and tail and comes but once in a millennium is in the sky at this moment! Hurry, prepare me the first part of this compound, while I do the rest. Hurry, Jebedee, it will be our one and only chance to achieve this great thing—a magical stone which can change dross to gold!”
An, hour later, after the laboratory had been filled with the reek and fumes of corrosive chemicals and boiling liquids, the two zealous alchemists stormed to the roof with a bronze pot of hissing and seething chemicals, into which they both poured some of the blood of their veins from self-inflicted wounds.
Then they stepped back to let the magical glow of the strange heavenly object pour into the pot, to crystallize in its fuming depths the Stone that would convert lead to gold. At least, so they hoped!
CHAPTER III
Reason
“ONE of your bronze crucifixes with a chain for the neck,” requested the woman who had just entered the small jeweler’s shop. She continued as the shopkeeper selected one from stock and proceeded to wrap it carefully: “And can you guess, M. Brignaic, whom it’s for? None other than Briggs, that worthless English drunkard whom I have kept out of the gutters these last two months!”
Madame Brignaic jerked her head from the floor, where she had been picking up the broken pieces of a set of dishes her husband had knocked down.
“What does he want with a crucifix, God bless us, he that came in this shop once and cursed most bitterly our church?”
“Would you believe it,” informed the customer, “that he is mending his evil ways? And of course there is but one thing that has brought such a lost soul to repentance—”
The woman pointed aloft significantly, paid for her purchase, and hurried out. The Brignaics looked at each other in astonishment.
“And it is also that which caused me to break the dishes,” said M. Brignaic solemnly, pointing upward, as his customer departed. “I tell you, wife”—his voice became shrill—“it is like to drive me mad! Each day for a week now it has been the same. Every hour, every minute, every person that comes in talks of it in hushed, tones, in awed tones, in frightened tones. Even Captain Jussic, who fears nothing, came in this morning subdued and quiet. And the news of the day, what does it tell—riots, bloodshed, insanity, murders.
“The past week has seen more of such horrible things than any full year before. Only this morning, while you were asleep, a man ran screaming by in the street, perfectly mad, waving his arms and pointing in the sky. And do you know, Maria”—his voice fell low suddenly—“it can now be seen in broad daylight!”
The woman crossed herself, gasping, her previous rage over the broken dishware completely forgotten.
The comet of 1680, very bright and dreadfully large, seemed to hang over the world ominously, threateningly. Its effect on a civilization that had barely struggled from the abysmal superstition and ignorance of the Dark Ages was profound, striking terror into the hearts of the masses. Weak, depraved and timid natures, unable to quell a rising fear, broke at the weakest link of their mental chain and metamorphosed into lunatics, beasts, and cringing human rats.
In the larger cities like Paris, mobs would tremble and shudder and suddenly run amuck, killing and destroying in the blind fear that had come upon them. Even strong minds could not gaze upon the awesome celestial light without qualms of doubt and wonder. Of course, there were ten thousand different opinions concerning the phenomenon. One claimed that it meant the coming of the Second Christ, another that it predicted Earth’s destruction by fire.
But there were at that same time a few, a pitiful few, who in the light of a new science, were neither frightened nor amazed.
IT WAS the evening of the day that M. Brignaic had broken the chinaware in extreme nervousness. With the approach of dusk and the thought of that awful light in the sky, the shopkeeper became more and more nervous. He had heard practically all of the dire predictions circulated among the masses and in his simplicity believed the worst of them—particularly those that promised destruction and damnation.
He moved about his shop warily, as though ready at any moment to flee should something happen. His wife was in the rear with the children, comforting them and refusing to let them out of her sight for even a second.
Quite suddenly the street door swung open and two figures rushed in. One of them promptly threw his arms around M. Brignaic’s neck.
“Father, it is I—Enric, your son!” Recognizing him, the old man burst into happy tears.
“My son!” he sobbed. “Is it truly you? It has been such a long time—” The young man cut him short: “Explanations later, Father. Right now I want you to serve this gentleman whom I’ve brought here—”
The other man, considerably older and very impatient at the moment, immediately spoke: “A block of Naples paper, my good man. And hurry. Naples it must be; I use no other. Holds the ink well. No, don’t wrap it—I must be going immediately. The night will be over only too soon, and I have much to do.”
With the paper clutched tightly under his arm, he ran to the door, speaking over his shoulder: “I will expect you in an hour, Enric.”
“Who was that?” asked the shopkeeper, astounded, as a carriage rumbled away from the door.
“My master, for whom I work,” informed Enric. “He took me for his assistant when I met him at Oxford. Father, that man will one day be famous, if not while alive, at least after death. His name is Dr. Halley. He is an English astronomer and mathematician. I have but an hour to stay with you, father—”
“But an hour!” wailed the old man, “when you have been away from your father’s fireside for seven years—”
“I will be back, perhaps in a week or so,” promised the son, “for a longer stay. But right now only an hour; then I must go to Signore Cassini’s observatory and work through the night.”
“Through the night! What is this work you have to do, Enric?”
“I am a mathematician, Father, and all night I will be working with pen and paper, helping Cassini and Halley plot the course of the comet in the sky.”
M. Brignaic turned pale.
“My son, what have you to do with that object of evil which will engulf the world in fire and destruction—”
It took the young mathematician many minutes to explain to his agitated father that the light that hung in the sky, despite its awesome aspect, was only a heavenly body millions of miles away, something as harmless as the stars.
“DON’T you understand?” cried the son. “Ah, when will the light of science and reason clear the minds of men? Listen closely, Father. The earth is a ball, a globe. It circles through space around the sun, as do all the planets with their satellites. And that thing which has terrified the people is nothing but am other member of the Solar System, whose orbit is as yet unknown.
“But tonight, or soon, Dr. Halley, with the help of Cassini and his telescope, will plot its heavenly course, and if Dr. Halley is right it will mean one of the greatest discoveries of all time! He already suspicions that a comet has a closed orbit which
will bring it back to the sun periodically. Our figures and calculations will show us whether it is so or not. If we—”
“Enric!”
The son stopped, suddenly realizing he had been forgetting that his father could understand nothing of those things.
“Enric, you bewilder me with those words. But tell me one thing and I’ll be satisfied—is it true that the—the comet, as you call it, will not—will not—”
“Destroy the earth?” finished Enric, smiling. “I swear to you by all that is holy, father, that such a thing cannot occur! Reason forbids it!”
CHAPTER IV
Men on a Comet
WITH a sullen drumming of several hundred sturdy rocket-tubes, the space ship Discovery slid away from Earth gracefully and arrowed out into the void. Long and slender, equipped with wings for atmospheric navigation, the shaft of beryllium accelerated steadily under the power of its rocket engines. Its hungry, valves were fed by the pale blue Trinotex liquid, several hundred times more powerful than gasoline.
Inside, an hour later, when Earth’s atmosphere had been navigated without accident, Captain James Willoby, Am-NY-b-22, class A Cosmicon—or space navigator—looked over the list of his crew carefully. Each time he came across a name familiar to him, mostly Class A and B Cosmicons, he lifted his brows in pleasure. A wonderful crew of men. A half hundred stalwarts inured to the hardships of space travel, unaffected by the incapacitating space-nausea, and undisturbed by a lack of normal Earth’s gravitation.
The door opened to the captain’s office and First Officer Milton Jones entered, saluted and stood respectfully at attention. Jones was a fine, upstanding young man with an alert way about him that Captain Willoby liked. Furthermore, he was an Am-NY-b—in plain words, American Continent, New York City, and class “B” intelligence. Class “B” was topped only by class “A.”