by Garret Smith
Jerry eBooks
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Fantastic Novels Magazine
July, 1949
Vol. 3, No. 2
Custom eBook created by
Jerry eBooks
May 2016
CHAPTER I
INTO ENDLESS NIGHT
PROBABLY no man or woman in the planet of Venus thought the Hunter expedition other than the mad scheme of one driven daft by too much study.
I count it final proof of my devotion to my lifelong friend that I found myself on the way to join his little band of skeptical but inseparable companions about to start on that epoch-making voyage. Not one of us, I believe, really expected to return alive. For, indeed, in all the known history of Venus none had ever ventured into that great circle of endless darkness beyond the seas and come back to tell the story.
I had started from my bachelor apartment well before sailing time, having sent my luggage on ahead, deciding to walk to the dock, that I might have a final season of intimate and leisurely communion with the familiar scenes in which I had passed my life.
But in this I was disappointed. The street into which I stepped forth was strangely unfamiliar. True, the setting was unchanged. There was the same broad, palm-lined avenue with the grand canal at its center. Up and down busily plied as usual the swift, duck-shaped street-boats, their drab-tunicked motormen struggling sturdily at the driving levers.
Nor had the buildings suffered change. Not a dwelling in all that thoroughfare had been altered within my lifetime, nor, for that matter, within the memories of my parents and grandparents.
The big, five-storied pyramid I had just left, as near like all its fellows as so many grains of sand, had been the home of my family for a hundred generations. My great-great-grandfather had built the final story in which were the quarters I occupied. It had henceforth sufficed as it stood for our branch of the clan.
Overhead hung the same, eternally unchanging, gray sky, shedding its unvarying, diffuse light. The mellow air, as always, moved gently from west to east, now and then dropping momentarily its load of life-giving moisture in the form of a fine, misty shower.
But it was the number and manner of the people in the street that changed this familiar scene into one of grotesque strangeness.
I do not remember ever before having seen our usually placid populace in such uproar. All the concourse bordering the grand canal on the way to the harbor was thronged with excited people, men and women, old and young, all discussing one subject and all bent on one errand, to get as near as might be to that strange ship which lay at the head of the main pier.
Indeed all Venus was athrill with the news that had been flashed from signal-tower to signal-tower unto the uttermost corners of the Land of Light. It was not the mere fact, that a scholar had ventured the theory that there were other habitable lands than ours beyond the Circle of Darkness. That would have been dismissed with contemptuous shrugs.
But that such a revolutionary notion should be held, by the popular son and heir of the Chief Patriarch, and that he should stake his life in an attempt to prove it was cause for universal excitement! It marked an epoch in the history of a race accustomed to the passage of one monotonous age after another without event more notable than the occasional long-expected death of a Chief Patriarch.
Some two hundred steps on, where the dwellings gave way to the low, two-storied shops of the market-place, the crowd became congested to a point where progress was difficult. I mounted near-by-steps, the better to survey the strange spectacle.
The entire market square was already filled with milling heads, and four other streets were momentarily adding to the mass. I was looking out over a turbulent sea of flaxen hair, the monotony of coloring broken only as here and there a more restless individual pushed way through the throng, exposing briefly the white flash of a woman’s tunic or the darker drab of masculine garb.
All eyes were turned expectantly toward the great pyramid across the square, the home of the Chief Patriarch and the official capitol of Venus. I guessed at once the meaning of this attention. Such of the people as had been unable to find place on the dock where Hunter’s ship lay, sought to catch a glimpse of him as he left his father’s house. That they had in prospect even more exciting possibilities I learned presently from fragments of speech tossed up from the crowd near me.
“I’m with the Patriarch, for one. Why should we let this go on?” shouted an elderly woman.
“Hush, mother!” cautioned her son at her elbow. “Don’t start trouble.”
“I believe the Patriarch would wink at it if we stopped the young man at his door,” came the voice of another.
“The insanity of our ancestors back among us—”
“Should not be allowed—”
“Ideas proved absurd ages ago—”
“The son of a Patriarch—no right to throw himself away—who would succeed this chief?”
THESE and other bits of excited talk filled me with misgivings. Was the throng bent on force to prevent Hunter’s journey? Such a thing as a popular demonstration, particularly a resort to violence, had been unheard of in many ages. Yet incendiary talk like this was equally unknown. I knew well the Chief Patriarch had little sympathy with his son’s venture. I could not conceive, however, that he should so far fly in the face of the custom of Venus as to use stronger measures than persuasion.
“Here comes Weaver, back from the dock. Perhaps he has news,” called a young man near me. “Oh, Weaver! Has Hunter’s ship sailed yet?”
“Not yet, nor will it for some time,” replied a sturdy, middle-aged man who was struggling through the press. “Hunter and his party are not yet aboard.”
“We are in time, then!” exclaimed the questioner.
“In time for what?” demanded the other.
“To prevent the sailing. It is reported the Patriarch has forbidden his son to go, and we are here to help him carry out his wish.”
“Forbid, did you say?” inquired the elder man sarcastically. “Who on Venus has power to forbid anyone to do anything? One would think, young man, that you came from some strange world beyond the Circle of Darkness of which our Hunter dreams. Forbid, indeed! Better for Venus that all the sons of all the Patriarchs and the Patriarchs themselves go bury themselves in the darkness than that for one moment one man assume to rule over another!”
“All well enough among sane men,” retorted the youth, “but do you believe this son of the Patriarch sane? True, we supposed we had for many ages banished sickness of mind and body from Venus, but what do you make of this?”
“I make no more than do you, and like it no better. Hunter is committing grave error, all our scholars say, but we cannot count him truly insane, though his error be a mad one. Of course it has been agreed through all ages that this Land of Light is the only world, at least the only world in which man can live. We know nothing about the great Circle of Darkness around it except that it is cold past all endurance and that there is never light there to guide the way if man could endure the cold. None but children believe the fables of monsters dwelling there.
“Now, all that being so, and no man knowing anything contrary, how shall you or I call a man crazy who talks of lands beyond the darkness? He may be right, who can say? To try to cross the darkness is madness. I grant that. But I love the man with daring to attempt it, and I agree to no step to hinder him.”
From the murmurs of approval within hearing of his voice, I judged that this opinion met with considerable favor. There were, however, enough dark looks from others to show that public sentiment was rat
her evenly divided.
At that moment a shout in the direction of the Patriarch’s house again drew every eye that way. The great main door was slowly rising.
A moment later the venerable Patriarch came forth alone, and stood with hand upraised for silence. The vast throng responded on the instant and waited respectfully for their leader to speak.
The Chief Patriarch was then in the seventh period of his life, but his tall, commanding figure was still unbent and his movements vigorous. Only his hair, which hung below his shoulders and had long since turned from flaxen to pure white, indicated his age. His voice though gentle and sympathetic, rang out clearly to the far side of the square:
“Fellow citizens,” he said, “I appreciate your show of devotion. Word has come to me that you stand ready to help me restrain my son from this adventure, which, to you, seems madness. I beg to remind you, however, that restraint is a thing unknown among us. In all Venus there is no man or group of men, no power, that would dare to exercise restraint toward any being.
“I call upon you to remember the event which ushered in our modern era, from which we reckon all time, the overthrow of the only power that ever sought to impose authority, laws, force, and all their attendant evils upon the people of Venus.
“Ever since, we have known no law but custom, no authority but public opinion, no force but persuasion. That custom has placed me, your Chief Patriarch, among you as counselor and guide, not as ruler. I would then be repeating the error of that power which we overthrew two hundred ages ago did I, with your assistance, try to impose the false authority of force upon my own son.
“But, though you know that I cannot agree with my son in this venture of his, and that I am torn with grief at the thought that he may be going to an untimely death, I would not have you misjudge him. This is no madcap escapade of a restless youth driven by mere love of adventure. However mistaken he may be,
I believe—and would have you believe—that he is moved by an unselfish devotion to your welfare and the welfare of the children that shall come after you.
“We have all for some time realized that our continent, this great Land of Light, the only known habitable land, is becoming overcrowded. Time was when it held open fields and forests. It is now one vast city. Our gardens no longer supply enough food. We have perforce turned to the laboratory for sustenance. Where shall the race turn next? We look up and see only a canopy of unsubstantial mist. There is no promise of other worlds there, and if there were, we have not the wings of birds with which to seek them. We look off from our shores over the seas in every direction only to be met by the unfathomed ring of eternal night and deadly cold.
“No man has ever crossed that Circle of Darkness. No man can say what lies beyond. My son believes he can cross it and find fair lands on the other side. Let us put down our private beliefs as to his unwisdom and honor his courage and the self-sacrifice of his brave companions, and bid him good-speed. And may the Great Over Spirit, Father of us all, be with him and them.”
Overcome with emotion, the old Patriarch ceased speaking, stood for a moment searching the faces of the throng and, with head still proudly erect, turned and withdrew within his dwelling.
The crowd hesitated for a moment, then, without a word, began to disperse.
I watched them thoughtfully. The eloquence of the Patriarch had swayed them for the moment. But as I considered what had occurred and what had been said and the significance of it all, I was suddenly seized with a feeling almost prophetic, a conviction that I had been witnessing the germinating of the seeds of disruption of this slumbrous, custom-ruled, changeless land of ours, seeds that had lain dormant for two hundred ages.”
THE more I reflected on this nearly revolutionary-demonstration by the people in the market-place, the more I was convinced that it was in part, at least, the result of the baleful influence of the First Lady of the South, whom I had interviewed shortly before. The revolutionary ideas of that remarkable woman had bade fair to be a public sensation had not their announcement been followed so closely by the more spectacular proposal of Hunter.
She was the daughter of the Patriarch of South Venus, head of the chief family of the ancient clan of Masons.
The people of Venus were divided into clans according to their original occupations, and all the families of each clan bore the name of its particular calling. Hence the Masons were the families forming the group or clan of those whose ancestors had worked at the building of walls.
Of course these family names, as I give them here, are by no means the same in sound as they were spoken in the tongue of Venus. In setting this record down I have been forced to translate even our proper names, as far as possible, according to sense, into their equivalent English words.
For so utterly alien to you is our speech that not one word of it can be expressed in Earth characters or pronounced in any Earth tongue.
Some thirty sleep-periods before the time set for the departure of Hunter’s expedition, and while his plans were yet secret, there had been signaled through to Central Venus the report that this Mme. Mason, who, through her position and personal ability, had become known as the First Lady of the South, had been whispering about among her friends a most revolutionary proposal.
It was said that she declared for defiance of the ancient, unbroken custom of Venus by seeking in marriage a mate from another clan than her own, a thing that had never been tolerated in Venus as far back as recorded history or even tradition goes.
I remember how amazed I was later when I first learned that in this topsyturvy Earth of yours, you not only allowed but encouraged the practice, to us so repulsive, of mating a man and woman not related by blood or the ties of a clan, nay, that, on the other hand, you rather discouraged the marriage of relatives, a practice so common among us.
So serious was the suggesting of this hitherto unheard-of thing by so influential a woman that I determined not to record the rumor in our Chronicle until I had it first-hand from the lady herself.
You may well understand how important I considered this interview when I tell you that I disliked travel exceedingly, and that the distance to South Venus was a little over twenty sleeps, or about two thousand of your Earth miles.
In Venus a “sleep” was not only our unit of time but of distance as well. Despite our lack of a natural time-unit, such as furnished by your Earth day and night, custom had established with us a uniform, periodical time of sleeping. From the beginning of one sleep-period to the beginning of the next, we called a “sleep”, as you call your time-unit a day. Likewise, our ancients hit upon their average journey. In a sleep-period as a measure of distance, just as your primitive tribes measured distance by a day’s journey.
But in our modern times, with our swift motor-driven canal barges being our sole means of overland travel in Venus, we were able to make at least two sleeps of distance in one sleep of time. So in the course of ten sleeps. I arrived in South Venus and secured quarters at the leading travelers’ home.
When I think of the perils and hardships of the appalling pilgrimages I have undergone since, over black, uncharted lands and seas and through empty spaces, I smile at the to-do I made over this brief journey.
But I was accustomed to the privacy of my roomy quarters and the freedom of the streets, and I chafed under the restraint of the narrow cabin and the enforced company of my traveling companions. Those who occupied adjacent sections and hence were most thrust upon me proved uncongenial and tiresome.
There was an elderly woman, an engineer who had charge of the upkeep of one of. the southern sections of the canal systems; a young woman who acted as buyer of raw materials for a big chemical concern in Central Venus, and a middle-aged man, manager of a line of ships plying around the coast from South Venus to the Western Islands.
NO sooner did this worthy trio learn that I was editor, of the Chronicle than they began vying with each other to get my ear and pour into that suffering organ innumerable dull details of their several
affairs, aiming, no doubt, to impress me sufficiently with their importance to get mention before the public. To my death, I shall positively loathe the subjects of canals, chemistry, and shipping.
But, aside from the wearisomeness of my company-and my eagerness to get at the nub of my errand, the journey had been most tiresome, in that it was entirely lacking in new interest. Though I had not made this trip before since my early youth, when I had taken it with my father, the landscape had not altered a whit.
There was the same endlessly flat country as far as the eye could reach, traversed by its network of straight, narrow canals, through which we made our way. Along either bank was the same unbroken succession of pyramidal buildings, all alike, whether dwelling or business buildings, save that around each dwelling was the usual small garden patch which did its part toward supplying food and vegetable fabrics. Nor were there any of the variations of customs and dress among the people, such as I have found since lend constant interest to an earthly journey.
So it came about that I arrived in South Venus wearied and out of temper and in no proper frame of mind to interview so exalted a personage. But my impatience to have done with my errand and be upon my homeward way prevented my first seeking rest and a more equable mood.
Then, as I was about to set out for the Mason dwelling, there came over the signal-towers the astounding news of my friend Hunter’s proposal to traverse the Circle of Darkness, and the purpose of my visit was at once thrust into the background.
I was therefore ushered into the presence of the Lady of the South with mind greatly distraught with my new tidings, little dreaming that any connection existed between Hunter’s mad purpose and the mad ideas of my hostess.
I WAS ushered into the Patriarchal residence by one of the young women of the Mason clan, who was fulfilling her customary term of household service, such as fell to the lot of all youths of Venus. She was a shy maiden who greeted me politely enough, but there was about her an air of suppressed excitement, which I noted also in all those I met in the passages of the great house on my way to the apartments of her I sought.