by Garret Smith
I expected this new and yet more frightful turn of affairs to bring on a fresh panic; but it seemed that our nerves had been harassed beyond the point of reaction to further horror. Even those who had been most hysterical at the first discovery of our position now stood in stunned apathy at this later revelation.
Indeed, it was Carpenter, who had precipitated the recent mutiny, who now first collected himself sufficiently for coherent speech.
“My friends,” he said as solemnly as his shaking voice would allow, “we have the answer to our demand that we turn back home. Who now wishes to return? Hunter, I am ashamed even to apologize for what I said. While we were accusing you of leading us to destruction, you were saving us from a terrible death by fire!”
“By the Great Over Spirit!” swore Weaver, getting his breath at last. “I never believed before in prophecy, but who can doubt now that our leader is a prophet and foresaw this destruction coming?”
“I am no prophet,” Hunter disclaimed. “This destruction of Venus by fire is the last thing of which I could have dreamed. Had I foreseen it, would I not have saved at least my own father from this terrible death? Would I not have labored unceasingly to provide other ships to save as many as possible of our unfortunate brothers and sisters? Alas, I had rather have perished with them!”
His words instantly shamed those of us who had given first thought to our own fortunate escape.
“We cannot question the wisdom of the Over Spirit in this,” I said, seeking for some words to comfort him in his distress of soul. “None of us can think you consciously foresaw this destruction. But can’t we believe humbly that the Over Spirit ordained you to select certain ones of us for salvation from death? Why we of all others were chosen, we cannot say, but to us perhaps it has been given to perpetuate the race in this new world to which we are flying.”
He looked at me sadly, doubtfully. “It may be so,” he assented. “Who can decide what is just in the eyes of the Over Spirit? Be that as it may, we are here. They are gone. It is for us to meet bravely the conditions that are.
“Our great purpose was to provide a new world for the teeming peoples of Venus. Now, those for whom we strove and sacrificed have been blotted out. It remains, then, our duty to preserve ourselves and continue our fight to the end.” During this time the light that permeated our ship had grown steadily brighter. We slowly recovered the partial use of our tortured eyes, but they continued to smart as though laved with corroding chemicals. We were still unable to look toward the lower observation windows through which streamed this terrible glare.
This growing intensity of light suggested to someone that perhaps, after all, our ship had turned and was falling back toward this fiery caldron into which our doomed world had been converted.
The suggestion disturbed even Hunter. He made haste to examine the lifting device, and reported that it was still working properly, and that we should be continuing to rise, unless the conflagration of Venus had interrupted the working of gravity and caused our lifting-stone no longer to repel as it should.
“We can test that fact by observing the world above us to see if it has drawn any nearer since last we looked at it,” suggested Weaver.
But this apparently sensible suggestion was easier made than carried into effect. We found, on looking up, that our seared and streaming eyes could make out nothing save an indistinct blur.
We laved our eyes with water, and held them closed moments at a time in the hope that in thus refreshing and resting them, their full use might be quickly restored. But it availed little.
At length Hunter was seized with an idea—one whose whimsicality struck me forcibly even at that tragic moment.
“We have forgotten that we have aboard with us two good pairs of eyes that have not been injured by the glare,” he said.
We turned to him, bewildered, not comprehending for the moment what he could mean.
“I mean the queen and the Lady of the South,” he explained.
You may well imagine, that the shocks and perils we had been experiencing since we left the surface of Venus had driven our fair passengers quite out of our minds.
Indeed, we had all been so engrossed with the affairs of our flight that once we had these two troublemakers safely secured, each in a suite of staterooms of her own and at opposite ends of the ship, none of us gave any further thought to the women who had for a time held our fate in the balance, excepting the guards appointed to watch and feed them, and Hunter who visited them regularly. They were no longer important factors in our lives.
True, I had speculated at times as to what would happen when we finally reached our destination if the two women should be released and allowed to get together freely.
I WAS puzzled now as to how Hunter could expect either one to serve us willingly, and expressed my doubts.
“I would myself hesitate at releasing the queen at the present time,” he admitted. “But the Lady of the South is in a somewhat different frame of mind. She feels deeply grateful to me for saving her life in East Venus. She was quite contented to come away with us, for she realized that her cause in Venus was lost and that her life was not safe there. Moreover, I am sorry to say, her zeal for her cause was wholly secondary to her desire to marry me, and she now hopes that she has accomplished that wish. Her confinement to one suite of rooms has been made quite satisfactory to her on the ground that she is thereby safe from the queen, of whom she is in mortal dread.
“As far as the queen is concerned, I think she, too, will be quite reconciled when she finds that Venus has been destroyed and that her kidnaping has saved her life.”
“But,” Weaver demurred, “once you bring the Lady out on deck, will not she, too, be blinded by this glare and be then in no better case than we?”
“Quite right,” Hunter assented. “I had not thought of that. Is there no way to dim that outrageous light?”
“There is,” cried Weaver triumphantly, after a moment’s thought. “We have in our stores some black paint for use in keeping the ship’s hull freshened. It will take but a little time to blur over those lower windows, through which the light streams, with a thin coat of paint.”
“Well suggested,” Hunter agreed. “You might detail several men to that work at once. They will, of course, have to act mainly by feeling. Each had better hold a shield over his eyes while he works, or he will be blinded completely.”
“In the meantime,” cried Carpenter, with a new show of excitement, “we may be falling head on to destruction!”
“Contain your fears, Carpenter,” commanded Hunter, with unwonted sternness. “There is practically no chance that we are falling back toward Venus. But if we are, I assure you time will make no difference. For there is no power or device by which we can stop that fall if our lifting-stone has refused to work.”
At this Carpenter turned away, rebuffed, but evidently doubtful. We stood or sat about helplessly in our half-blinded state, while Weaver carried out Hunter’s direction as to the panning. Hunter himself went below to inform the Lady of the South of our predicament and prepare her to act as the eyes of our ship.
Weaver’s suggestion as to the paint proved a happy one. The coating of black once applied, the glare of light ceased, and little by little some degree of normal service returned to our vision. It was several sleeps, however, before my eyes ceased smarting and my sight became entirely clear. In fact, my eyes have never fully recovered their former strength.
Presently Hunter returned to the deck with the Lady of the South. It was the first time I had seen her since my famous interview with her before we sailed on our first voyage. Now my eyes still troubled me too much to make out her features clearly, but I noted that her bearing was calm and dignified, and that she still affected the same style of robe as that in which I had first seen her.
She took her place under the roof window and looked up, as Hunter directed her.
“What do you see?” asked Hunter, after she had studied the heavens for a moment.
“I see a little, round, pale spot in a black sky, right over my head,” she said. “Around it are several little points like tiny lights, only very pale.”
The glare of the light below us had evidently made the heavens above less brilliant by contrast, even as it had seemed to dim our deck-light.
“How large is the pale, round spot?” pursued Hunter.
She held up her thumb and finger spread a little apart.
“About so far across,” she answered.
The measure she gave proved beyond doubt that we were steadily approaching our new world, for its size, judging by her rough measure, was at least twice what it had appeared when we last noted it. So each of us, according to his state of mind, took certain comfort from this assurance and began to assume as philosophical an attitude as possible toward our precarious position.
Hunter now insisted that we return to our routine, prepare regular meals, and resume our watches as before. We were too excited, however, to take great interest in our food; and I, at least, found my first attempt to sleep a lamentable failure. Hunter, as was his wont in times of peril, slept only in brief naps. He took observations of the heavens from the Lady at regular intervals and each time reported noticeable progress. Several sleeps passed in this way without further excitement. We were becoming almost inured to our strange routine. The world above, according to the Lady’s estimate, now showed a span the width of a man’s hand.
Then came the time when Hunter’s eyesight was sufficiently restored to make an observation himself. At his first glimpse of our goal he uttered an exclamation of despair.
The fear he had expressed when we started out as to our holding a course directly at the world above had been realized. Our goal no longer shone directly over our heads, but off considerably to one side. It had moved, as he feared, or else we had turned from our course.
At any rate, we were shooting off into the empty heavens far wide of our mark!
CHAPTER VII
THE ISLE OF CHANGE
I HAD happened to be standing next to Hunter at the moment of his making this disheartening discovery, and caught the full import of the fragmentary exclamations that escaped him. He recovered his caution immediately, however, and looked around to see who else had overheard. Fortunately none of the rest of the watch were near by at the time. We had all grown somewhat accustomed to these regular observations by Hunter and the Lady of the South. As long as our leader had depended entirely on another’s eye, the reports had continued optimistic.
To her untrained observation, the gradual departure of the world above from the exact zenith had meant nothing, if indeed she had noted it at all. So the reports had become an old story, and we had ceased to give much heed to them.
“I think no one else heard,” Hunter whispered, seeing from my stricken face that I at least had taken in this new situation. “Say nothing about it at present. I must consult with Weaver, and see if we can think of any device to alter our course. I confess it seems hopeless to me at the moment, but there’s no need of plunging our companions into despair yet by letting them know of it.”
He called Weaver and told him of our predicament. The shipmaster received the news in grim silence. Finally he walked out and observed the nearing planet for himself.
“There is no way to tell how much of our distance to the new world remains to be covered,” he said at last. “Let’s see if our eyes will stand another look at Venus.” The three of us approached the blackened floor-windows rather gingerly; but discovered that we could look with impunity at the blazing orb, now that, the dimming of the glass had cut off most of its rays. We were greatly puzzled, however, to note that the fiery disk did not appear appreciably smaller than it did when the flames first burst out. This in spite of the fact that, we supposed we had been receding from it at tremendous speed, and that the world above had in the meantime certainly increased steadily in apparent size. “There are two possible causes for that.”
Hunter reasoned. “Either the burning of Venus has caused it to swell enormously in size, or else we have reached a point beyond which our lifting-stone refuses to act and we are hanging in one spot. The apparent increase in size of the world above might be due to that world moving toward us instead of we toward it. In that case it is pursuing a diagonal course across our path, and I see no hope of our meeting it.”
How strange now seem all these blind speculations of ours as to these unfamiliar elements of the starry spaces, as we look back at them after being set right by the ages-old earth-knowledge of astronomy! The merest schoolboy of earth should have been able to show us how greatly we still erred in our conceptions of the nature and movements of the heavenly bodies.
Now that I found I could safely hold my gaze on the great conflagration, it became a fascinating study to me. The flowing disk appeared about three times the width of a man’s hand. From its margin great streamers of flame shot far out into the heavens. Off near one side was a small, circular patch of black about the same size as the world above now appeared to us. This, I reasoned, was a small area of our old world not yet touched by the flames.
I wondered if by any chance that spot, not yet overrun, was an inhabited area, and if those living there were still ignorant of their approaching fate. I pictured in imagination the awful agony of those whom the flames devoured. At the same time came to my mind the hope that perhaps the flames would die out before that area was burned and so that some of our people might escape, and I prayed that it might be so. I was aroused from my gruesome reverie by joint outcry from Hunter and Weaver, followed on the instant by a shrill mocking laugh from the motor-cabin.
No need to look around. I knew that laugh all too well. When I did turn, I saw, as I had expected, the queen. That redoubtable female was standing over the controlling pins of the ship’s motor. Somehow, during the distractions due to the kaleidoscopic succession of perils that beset us, she had taken advantage of the inattention of her guards and had escaped. Now she stood with one hand on the controlling pin of the lifting-motor, with the manipulation of which she had become perfectly familiar in her continuous attendance on Hunter during the latter part of our previous voyage. Her malicious eyes fixed Hunter’s in flashing triumph.
In her other hand she held a heavy hammer directly over the delicate and complicated mechanism of the motor control, the slightest disarrangement of which would hopelessly disable our lifting apparatus and leave our ship to plunge to destruction.
“Now, cousin, I have you again,” she taunted. “Don’t take a step or sound an alarm, any of you, or I’ll smash your precious motor. I know its workings. It means that your ship will drop, and we’ll all die together. I’m not afraid. Better die than be shut up like a slave. Now, we’re going back to our world, where we belong, and where I now will rule as queen. You told me you were going to take me to a new world, but you are not. I’m running this ship now. Try to interfere at your peril.”
WE stood, eyeing her helplessly. We could not doubt that she would keep her promise. We had seen enough of her desperate determination on other occasions. Let one of us make a false move, and that menacing hammer would fall. The motor that kept our ship supported in space would not only stop, but no one could start the mutilated machine without extensive repair, which could not be accomplished before we had fallen all the way back to our blazing world.
I trembled at the thought that her deadly rival, the lady of the South, might inadvertently stroll on the scene at this inauspicious moment. I feared that the queen’s rage at such an appearance might lead her to carry out her threat, willy-nilly.
But no such complication intruded. Her purpose was fired by iron determination to rule, but without the element of wrath. She stood there, taunting us with her mocking eyes and threatening hammer for several moments.
Hunter reasoned, as he told me afterward, that it was best to appear for the time being to yield to her absolutely. If she insisted on shutting off the motor by the controlling pin, it would still
be possible to make her see her mistake and her peril before we returned too near to Venus to be in danger.
“I admit you have the best of me,” Hunter assented finally. “You do not need to wreck our motor. Turn it off, and let the ship fall back to Venus if you wish. No one will interfere with you. We value our lives too much. We had just learned that we had lost our way in our course for the new world above, so it was useless for us to go on. I am, therefore, quite ready to agree with you.”
But I assure you that neither Weaver nor I, nor the two other members of the watch who had happened along in time to take in what had occurred, felt any of the nonchalance that Hunter was attempting to assume.
Of course we knew, as a matter of fact, that it would take as long to fall back to Venus as it had taken to fly thence. That would give us several days’ leeway in which to effect some safe method of overcoming the queen, or of persuading her from her purpose. Probably when she saw the fiery ruin to which we were falling, she would be reconciled to giving up her obsession.
But in the alarm of the moment we thought out nothing clearly. We merely felt that our only support from imminent destruction would be gone, once the lift-motor were stopped. It seemed to us that even to pause in our flight would mean that the spreading flames of our world would leap up and devour us. Nor was it any foregone conclusion with us that the queen would accept Hunter’s acquiescence and refrain from wrecking the motor. We had always been convinced that she was at least half mad. Now we feared that she might be quite so.
These fears she must have read in our faces, for she continued to feed them by swinging the hammer up and down over the motor, her evil smile growing the more pronounced.
It seemed an endless time that she stood thus gloating over this tearing at our raw nerves. I know that during that time I held my breath.
At length she seemed to weary of this by-play, and withdrew the hammer from its dangerous neighborhood. At the same time, with her other hand, she thrust in the control-pin and the motor ceased humming.