Between Worlds

by Garret Smith

  Our monotony was founded in nature. I have said we had no days or nights. We had no months or years, for no glimpse of heaverfly bodies gave us such measure of time. Your hours and minutes did not exist. Time flowed in an unmarked stream, broken into periods only by the lengths of our lives.

  Likewise, we had no change of climate, for Venus does not lean on its axis toward the plane of its orbit as does your Earth.

  We lived on one great continent. No mountain ridges or intruding seas broke us into groups. So we had but one race, one language, one religion, one set of customs, that had not altered since the last corner of our land had been settled.

  And the consciousness of this monotony had suddenly burst upon me, though I had as yet no experience of its opposite.

  I wrenched myself from Hunter’s grasp and seized both his hands in mine.

  “Hunter!” I cried. “You’re right, and I’m with you to the end! I know now what I have hungered for all my life and what all Venus pines for, unknowing, in its soul. Change! Adventure! Surprise!

  “Don’t tell me more of your plans. I’ll follow where you lead. For once, let me have an experience which I cannot foresee!”

  And I knew that he understood. Without another word, we returned to the deck.

  All my dread of the darkness had vanished. I was looking forward with the eagerness of a child to our departure from the Land of Never Change.

  CHAPTER II

  A VOICE FROM THE DARK

  IT WAS a tense moment aboard the great vessel. Our little company of thirty seemed strangely alone as we stood grouped on the deck straining our eyes toward the spot where the convoy, the last link with our former life, was fading from sight in the thickening murk. At moments the heavy vapors rolled up and shut her from sight. Then through a rift we would catch some glimpses of her again.

  Ghastly stillness reigned, startlingly shattered at intervals by the melancholy boom of the convoy’s gong, tolling in the gloom like a funeral knell to life and light and all we held dear. The ship’s motor was still. She lay motionless on the black, stagnant flood. Even the heavy, biting air had ceased its eternal movement.

  It was as though the Spirit of Darkness had paused aghast at this impious intrusion while it considered what dire punishment to enforce on these imprudent mortals.

  I dare say that not one of us, as we stood huddled together, shivering in our strange new garbs of heavy fabric, but what suffered an instant of half repentance of our rash purpose.

  Soon the convoy was altogether blotted from sight. The throb of the gong came fainter to our ears, its mellowing resonance sounding more than ever a note of despair. The darkness steadily closed in around us. It became a blank wall a few paces from our gunwales, then it mounted our very rails. A few moments, and we gasped in unison as the black wall closed down altogether. It was as though the eyes had been plucked from our heads. I reached out involuntarily and touched my neighbor to make sure that I was not alone in the black void.

  I felt a stir of panic among my companions, an echo of the tumult in my own soul.

  At that critical point there came from the motor-cabin the calm, confident voice of Hunter.

  “Don’t be alarmed,” he assured us. “We will have light, plenty of it, in a moment. It will startle you when it comes, so be prepared.”

  It was here that our leader put our faith in him to the supreme test. I briefly regretted that I had not, after all, insisted on a full disclosure of the method he had in mind for coping with the darkness. Manifestly no progress could be made without the aid of eyesight. I recalled the ancient tales of great mountains of crystal floating out of the blackness to crush such a puny object as a man-made ship, of seas that turned solid so that no floating thing could force its way through.

  Did he mean that he had no conquering device, after all, and, confronted with the actual condition of darkness, had at once seen the hopelessness of advancing? Was he about to turn back to the light he had just left and abandon the expedition?

  The clang of the convoy’s gong was still faintly audible. We could get our bearings from it, and return to safety. I was guilty of the hope that such was his purpose.

  Or could he be obsessed with the idea that the Circle of Darkness was only a narrow zone through which we could drift in a few brief moments into a new realm of light?

  But even as we struggled with these doubts we were answered in most amazing fashion. The darkness was snatched from our vacant eyeballs by a great glare such as none of us had ever before experienced.

  So intense was its brilliance that it paralyzed our optic nerves. After the first sense of sheer whiteness we were left for an instant blind again.

  When our eyes became accustomed to this sudden change so that we could see again, we found ourselves bathed by radiance brighter than we had ever before known. Every detail of our bird-shaped vessel stood out in clear-cut distinctness. The great wings which extended half folded along either side, a unique feature of Hunter’s ship, to my mind then a useless decoration, shone as though of silver.

  The decks, the rounded cabin roofs, the short spars, and the high prow which terminated in the figure of a water-fowl’s neck and head, all gleamed in the same way. This effect, I noted in passing, was produced by the glare reflected from a thin sheeting of icy crystal that had coated the whole vessel since we entered the cold zone.

  Far out over the water the illumination extended, ending only where it was dissipated in the white shifting fog-banks. The surface of the sea, revealed at last sight as a lifeless floor of blackness, now sparkled and danced amid a flashing of myriad hues.

  We were aroused from our stupor of astonishment by the voice of Hunter: “What do you think of it? Didn’t I promise you light?”

  There was in his voice and manner the triumph of a small boy who has played a smart trick on his elders.

  For a moment more we stared, still uncomprehending. Then it dawned on us.

  For the first time, a mortal of Venus had produced light!

  To you, my Earth readers, this must be almost incomprehensible. It will be hard for you to understand a race that had never in its history known fire or artificial light, except as we had now and then seen an accidental manifestation of it, for which we had not any possible use.

  The races of Earth, I am told, began using Are before the dawn of civilization, indeed much of your civilization developed from that use. To-day your boasted progress would vanish in a night if fire were removed from Earth.

  But remember, necessity is the mother of invention, as one of your sages has said. You had need of fire to warm you in your winters. Hence you learned to use it. So your dark nights demanded the light that went with fire.

  We had no winter and no night. So why should we concern ourselves with fire? And in our world there were few of the accidental manifestations of natural fire, no volcanoes, no electrical storms, no conflagrations resulting from accident from the use of fire, as with you.

  WHEN it came to mechanical inventions, not even then had we missed the use of artificial heat. You being familiar with fire and learning its power, had from it developed the steam engine and later the electric dynamo.

  We, starting from a different viewpoint, had developed much earlier than you a knowledge of chemistry. We had for instance from the earliest recorded ages prepared our food by chemical process instead of fire cooking as with you. In developing artificial power we had invented crude chemical motors at first, later discovering a method of developing high power electricity chemically and applying it to the driving of powerful machinery, a thing which you have as yet seen only a glimmering of in what you call your galvanic batteries.

  But now, driven by need, Hunter had invented artificial light. Faced with his voyage into eternal darkness, he had bethought himself of the occasional dull flashes and glows he had noted while experimenting with chemical apparatus. Seeking their cause, he now devised glass globes filled with a compound which when excited by electricity produced this brillia
nce.

  He pointed out to us now some of these globes set on each point of the vessel, on the crest of the figurehead, at the top of the spars, and in rows on the cabin-roofs. We had-noted these globes before only as ornaments without use and commented on Hunter’s vain love of decoration.

  Each cabin also was equipped with one of these globes, giving the interior of the ship heat as well as light.

  “This is really the first time I have had darkness to test the lights!” Hunter exclaimed. “I haven’t felt confident of the success of our venture until now. I think we can dismiss the convoy and be on our way.”

  He entered the motor-cabin and sounded three sharp rings of the gong, the signal agreed upon with the convoy’s captain. Faintly over the water came the answer in kind.

  Then he pulled a control bolt. The motors underneath him began to throb. The great webbed feet at the vessel’s side swept out and began churning the water. A moment more, and we were gliding gracefully into the unknown.

  Gradually we became accustomed to our strange surroundings and our fears wore away, to be replaced again by the thrill of high adventure. The new light, once explained, gave us a sense of confidence we had not felt before since the voyage was proposed. We were in high spirits.

  True, we were already experiencing a foretaste of hardship in the extreme cold which searched and stung our untried bodies despite our heavy robes. Hunter made the watches short, and the members of each watch were glad to escape to the warm cabin for respite when the time marker in the motor-cabin pointed to the end of their trick.

  So five watches passed with. little incident, save that-now and then our ship crunched through a field of thin ice crystal or was occasionally bumped by jagged blocks of that material. To this we soon became accustomed but were ever sharply on the lookout lest we crash into one of the reported crystal mountains that might come upon us suddenly from the fog-banks.

  It was in the sixth watch, which chanced to be mine, that we first sighted one of these towering monsters off to our right, just within the range of our light, an awesome spectacle to our unaccustomed eyes. From then on we saw many of them. We ran at reduced speed, barely creeping at times. The crystal fields were becoming more frequent and more difficult to break through. The cold grew more intense.

  It was in this watch that a curious excitement occurred. Up to this point we had seen no sign of animal life in the chill, dead water or in the scarcely less dead and chill air.

  Now, near the end of my watch, we heard discordant cries in the air behind us which we soon recognized as those of water-fowls. Presently we were overtaken by a flock of some dozen of these birds, flying low and making to pass us close to the left.

  To our surprise they paid not the slightest attention to the glare of our lights, which we supposed would have terrified them.

  They had nearly passed us when one flying in the rear drove head on against the light at the summit of the ship’s figurehead and fell back, stunned on the deck.

  The forward watch picked it up and examined it curiously. After a moment he cried out in surprise and studied more closely the bird’s head.

  “Look!” he cried. “The creature has no eyes!”

  And it was true. We each examined the bird carefully, but could discover nothing but two faint scars where eyes should have been.

  There were indeed monsters in this strange world, forms of life that found their way about in the blackness without need of sight, and born without organs with which to see. For nature evidently wasted no unnecessary equipment on her creatures.

  One of us dropped the uncanny thing overboard with a shudder. Trivial, in a way, as was the incident, it left us with an uneasy feeling not readily shaken off.

  But we had little time to dwell upon this horror. A cry from the steersman called our attention back to our surroundings. While we had been examining the bird we were entering an apparently broad passage between two crystal fields. Now we saw that these fields had converged until they met just ahead of us. We were in a pocket.

  Weaver, chief of the watch, gave orders to the steersman to back out and seek some other passage. But on attempting to do so we found, to our consternation, that quantities of drifting crystal blocks and sheets had floated in. behind and threatened to imprison us. Moreover, the driving-feet crashed and ground against these impediments and were momentarily in danger of being broken.

  In this crisis Weaver ordered the motor stopped and summoned Hunter from his sleep for consultation.

  Hunter had just come on deck and was taking in the situation when a sound off across the crystal field to the right held us all at attention. It was a hoarse cry, low-pitched but penetrating.

  My first thought was that it was some strange animal denizen of the darkness. We listened for a moment. Again it came, this time with unmistakable distinctness.

  It was a human voice!

  WE STARED at each other, amazed. How could there possibly be human beings out there in the wastes of endless night and cold?

  And yet human beings there were, and no small number of them. For now the call was repeated and answered by another and another at different points. Then in still another quarter beyond the range of our powerful lights arose shouts. It was as if several persons were conversing excitedly.

  We were too far off to catch the words, yet words of human speech they were, and the speakers were rapidly drawing nearer.

  Those of our company off watch, aroused by the tumult, leaped from their sleeping pads and rushed to the deck. We stood at the rail, gripped with bewildered fear. Hunter himself was as much at loss as the rest, though if he felt any considerable degree of the terror that held us, his calm self-control concealed it.

  Suddenly with a cry of mixed relief and alarm he whirled from the rail toward the motor-cabin.

  “I have it!” he shouted. “Those must be the men of our convoy. They have drifted back into the shadow and have been lost. Probably had trouble with their motors. I’ll ring our gong so they’ll know who we are.”

  But at that another sound drowned the human outcry and held even our leader motionless with horror.

  It began in a low-pitched, thunderous growl that rattled the cabin windows. It rose to a rasping roar and ended in an ear-piercing, wailing shriek.

  Then out upon the lighted area of the ice-field staggered a great, shaggy, four-footed beast. To my excited eyes the creature measured no less than ten paces from his frothing jaws to his lashing tail. Our lights gleamed on a double row of hideous fangs and on formidable hooked claws that tore at the ice with each awkward leap. I was ready now to give full credit to the nursery tales of monsters with which in my childhood I had been regaled by my granddame.

  As he neared the center of the lighted area, his pace slackened and presently, with another awful outcry, he swayed and sank to the ice and lay twitching as if in agony.

  We could see protruding from his left side just back of the shoulder, a short lance, round which oozed a slow stream of blood. He had been struck by a human huntsman. As this last cry reechoed over the frozen fields there stole out of the shadows behind the great beast a half circle of some fifty human forms. They were creeping cautiously forward and closing around their wounded prey.

  They moved in absolute silence now, but there could be no doubt that these were the beings we had heard shouting in the distance. Nor did it take more than the first glance to convince us all that here were no sailors from our convoy, nor any men of the Venus we had known.

  I have called them human. In that I flattered them grossly. They walked upright and, to be sure, had human forms. Moreover, the creatures wore man-made clothing.

  But it was such clothing as none of us had ever before seen, fashioned rudely of shaggy fur, following the shape of their bodies throughout, so that they looked not unlike lesser copies of the great beast that sprawled before them.

  But their faces sent cold shivers of horror down our spines. They were darker in complexion than those of normal man, an
d heavy, protruding Jaws gave them a peculiarly beastly appearance. But even at this distance there was an indefinable lack of all expression. Nor were they the expressionless faces of beasts, but the blank countenances of dead men, of peculiarly brutal dead men who had died from some foul disease that had horribly disfigured and discolored their features. It was as though we were watching grotesque automatons silently closing in on the dying beast. Each fur-covered hand held a spear such as we had seen in the animal’s side.

  And not one of these strange figures, to our great surprise, had as yet taken the slightest notice of our brilliantly lighted ship, though such a spectacle had certainly never before invaded the haunts of these sons of the night.

  As the deadly circle closed in, the wounded quarry staggered up, and with a roar dashed forward. He was received on vicious spear-points and recoiled, snarling. A second lance now quivered in his right side.

  In a frenzy he whirled about the circle. Now a frantic sweep of a terrible hook-tipped claw caught two of the hunters unawares, and they went down under it.

  With a gasping snarl the great jaws snapped once at each prostrate throat and the two victims moved no more.

  But this moment of partial triumph was the beast’s final undoing. While he was thus preoccupied the circle closed in and lance after lance struck home. With a last cry of pain he sank to the ice, twitched convulsively, and was still.

  THERE followed a scene of brutal savagery such as I had never before dreamed possible among human beings. Remember, no savage race had survived in the Land of Light, and the savage period of our own race’s history ceased before the beginning of any records save the vaguest of discredited traditions. There was in our knowledge no precedent for murderous savagery.

  The instant they were satisfied that danger from the man-killing claws had passed, there was a rush for the carcass. The next instant they were madly fighting each other for the booty. The circle of allies had resolved into a mound of screaming, squirming, thrusting, fur-clad foes.