Between Worlds

by Garret Smith

  At the same time our tactful leader managed to convey to the Lady of the South, more by a look than by speech, the gratitude and affection she had won by her noble conduct.

  So he left them together presently to return to the business of directing the ship.

  There was no more sleep for any of us. Every moment of our time not actually employed in necessary duties was spent leaning, fascinated, over the floor windows.

  Steadily the great sphere opened out below. There came a time when it seemed nearly to fill the nether heavens.

  We discovered then another point of difference between it and Venus. It was not covered by an envelope of opaque mist like our old home. This at first caused Hunter to fear that we might shortly be stranded on a world without air. But a little later he was relieved by noting small patches of cloud floating here and there above the surface of the planet. Where there were clouds of vapor, He reasoned, there must of necessity be air to sustain them. There remained, however, the uncertainty as to whether or not this air would be of the same consistency and composition as the all-sustaining gas that surrounded our old planet. Might it not be possible that we would find ourselves surrounded by an atmosphere alien and poisonous to our form of life?

  But some time later these doubts were set at rest in startling fashion. We had approached so near to this world that it now spread out under us like a great, circular plain from horizon to horizon.

  We could now distinguish clearly the major details of this vast surface. And those of us who had sighed for change in our old, monotonous world were delighted to see that here, in the main physical aspects, at least, was unending, bewildering variety.

  We looked down on vast, open oceans, dotted with green, irregular islands in great profusion, and bounded by great, winding continental shore lines. These big land masses, unlike our monotonous continent of the Land of Light, were varied by winding water-courses, instead of our straight canals; irregular inland lakes of all shapes and sizes, instead of our orderly storage basins; towering mountains, plateaus, and plains interspersed in profusion, instead of the almost unbroken dead level of Venus. It all lay below us like a great relief map.

  But in the midst of these observations we were interrupted by a terrific shock.

  Our vessel seemed suddenly to halt in its course. We were thrown violently to the deck. The ship creaked and ground in every joint—then began rolling and pitching violently.

  We began struggling to our feet just as, with a roar and a crash, a big section of one side of the deck-house was torn away and scattered in fragments into empty space. We were overwhelmed by a strong blast of freezing air.

  “We’ve struck air again!” Hunter shouted, as he struggled toward the motor-cabin.

  We followed him in to warmth and safety, while our ship continued to careen on down.

  After a few moments of manipulating. controlling pins, Hunter got the ship’s wings in operation again, and presently we were gliding down in great, easy spirals toward the surface of our new world.

  After a little it became safe to appear on the now nearly open deck. The motion of the vessel created a strong wind that chilled us to the bone, but we threw on extra garments and braved it for the sake of gratifying our curiosity to the full.

  We were now slowly descending over an open ocean. In the distance was a low, green shore toward which Hunter headed.

  From now on there was no further incident of note, save as we drew nearer we now and then saw high-flying birds that indicated animal life similar to that on Venus. Of ships on the water or buildings on land we had seen nothing to indicate the presence before us of any human life.

  So some half a sleep after first striking the air of this new world our vessel settled on the surface of this strange sea, and we began gliding toward a beautiful wooded shore backed by rolling green hills that lay only a little ahead.

  We were standing forward in an eager group, each tensely waiting the moment when he could once more set his foot on solid ground.

  Weaver had sighted what appeared a deep inlet, and was running in to seek harborage, when there came seemingly from under our very bows a thunderous report. The sea leaped up in a great column of water higher than our mastheads. I felt the deck suddenly rising under me. I was thrown violently down. Before I could struggle to my feet the great water column toppled and submerged us.

  IN A twinkling the tranquil scene, the atmosphere of joyful expectancy that pervaded our company, had been changed to horrible confusion and terror.

  The surge of green water that engulfed us when the great liquid column toppled over swept me with several others against the rail, where we clung, choking and sputtering, while the vessel heeled over till we were driven so far under that it seemed we were destined to drown there. Yet so powerful was the, rush of water that we instinctively kept clutch on the rail rather than strike out and attempt swimming in the racing current.

  Then, before I could collect my wits and consider the advisability of swimming free of the wreck, the ship dipped over in the other direction and bore us clear of the flood.

  I saw, as I staggered to my feet, that several of my companions had been wrenched away and were struggling in the sea. Some still clung, half drowned, to whatever projection about the deck afforded a hold. Hunter and Weaver had been in the motor-cabin directing the ship when the blow fell, and though the room was flooded, they still held their posts.

  A glance showed that the high bird-head figure at the prow had been torn away by some powerful explosion from under the surface of the sea, and that a gaping hole extended well below the water line, into which the sea was pouring in a torrent. Already the ship’s nose was burying itself under the waves. The deck was taking a sharp incline, and the stern was gradually lifting itself from the water.

  Then, before any of us could take thought to saving ourselves, an after hatch blew out from the compression of air within, and the ship began to dive straight down by the head. There was no time to launch such life-rafts as had not already been swept away.

  But even as we clung to the now almost perpendicular deck to meet this final plunge, we heard the lifting motor whirr, at full speed. By great good luck neither explosion nor flood had injured the machinery.

  Our vessel stopped in its descent. It seemed to shake itself like a man emerging from his bath. Then slowly draw its nose from the engulfing waters.

  A moment it hung suspended, just above the churning surface, slowly returning to an even keel as the great weight of water poured forth from the gaping wound in the bow.

  While Weaver held the ship at this height, Hunter dashed out, rallied half a dozen of us to his aid, and in a few moments we had launched our remaining life-raft and were rescuing those who had been swept overboard.

  A little later, with all our company accounted for, and little worse for this final adventure, our ship ended the strangest voyage in the history of two worlds, and lay on a sandy beach well out of reach of the elements that had so nearly devoured it at the last.

  But now that our perils seemed over, and we found ourselves with solid ground under our feet, a warm, clear air about us, and the flaming orb that had given us so much trouble shrouded a little behind a cloud that had lately drifted up, the reaction set in. We did not stop to speculate on the mysterious upheaval that had wrecked us.

  Our worn bodies and nerves that for some three sleeps had undergone great strain without a moment’s rest, cried aloud for nature’s restorer. Not curiosity as to our new surroundings, not fear of unknown dangers that might lie in wait for us, not any remaining urge of nervous excitement, such as one might expect would still have held such castaways, could longer keep us awake.

  Still in our drenched garments, with common and tacit consent we threw ourselves on the warm sand. No watch had been set. Precaution had been hurled to the soft, spicy winds that played about us. We slept the sleep of the dead.

  And when we awoke it was dark!

  I was among the first to open my eyes
upon this unexpected change. When I found only blackness about me, the first confused thought that came to my halfdrugged mind was that we were back in Venus and in the Land of Night. But why, then, this genial warmth?

  Then I remembered that I had gone to sleep in a land of light toward whose ever-shining face we had flown for sleep after sleep. Had we been snatched away while we slept and borne to some strange region of night?

  Trembling with apprehension, I arose and looked toward the heavens. The fiery orb had vanished. Instead there gleamed through all the firmament that same myriad of sparkling points that we had seen over the Land of Night in far-off Venus.

  Had this world, then, also a Land of Light and a Land of Night like our globe? But how could we have been moved from one to the other while we slept?

  Then my mind reverted to the queen, whose malice had before played strange tricks with us. Could she have made use of some of the ship’s store of anesthetics, drugged us, and borne us away in our ship? Her blindness might have driven her insane and led her to perpetrate a ghastly joke.

  But at that I remembered that the queen, being blind, was helpless.

  Now I heard others moving about, and, calling out, presently located Hunter. He was as much perplexed as I.

  “I would think that the fire of Venus had burned out and been extinguished while we slept,” he said. “but we have seen this world gleaming With light from afar, long before Venus burst aflame.”

  I mentioned my thought of the queen arid the possibility that we had been moved.

  “It would seem that some strange power had moved us, but not the queen,” he demurred. “I have found her near by, still asleep, as was also the Lady near her. Our moving may have to do with the mysterious force that wrecked our ship, but another such explosion would surely have awakened us. I fear we have to deal with new, mysterious forces such as we never dreamed of in the world of our birth.”

  At this moment I noticed, or fancied I did, that the darkness about us was not so intense as it had been. I called Hunter’s attention to it. Certainly objects began to appear to our vision. We made out the dark hull of our ship. The dim forms of our companions could be seen here and there.

  We scanned the heavens again in wonder. Then down on the horizon we saw a faint, gray streak of light. The brightness grew and turned to crimson. The lesser lights of the sky faded before it, save one clear, torchlike glow that hung just above this illumination and reminded us of the appearance of this new world when we had first viewed it from Venus.

  But now the great glow spread and mounted and seemed to consume that one remaining spark. Suddenly Hunter grasped my arm convulsively.

  “Is it possible,” he cried, “that some vast, universal conflagration is consuming the universe: first Venus, and now this new world to which we have fled? Must we flee again?”

  Black despair filled our hearts as we watched the flaming sky momentarily grow brighter.

  Then one and all we gasped in amazement. Up out of the sea that still spread before us as when we lay down to sleep lifted the same glowing orb that had beaten its hot rays upon our heads when last we saw it.

  This blazing world had broken from its moorings and was traveling about in the heavens, perhaps presently to collide with this planet and destroy it!

  But our amazement and perplexity was tempered with relief at being assured that our new world was not yet in flames.

  And again the demands of the body turned our minds from our greater worries. We were famished for lack of food.

  So we turned to the ship, which we now saw, as a matter of course, lay right where it had come to rest before we slept, and partook of a hearty breakfast.

  This accomplished, and no new marvel having beset us in the meantime, we began to view our situation with philosophical calm. We abandoned other speculations for the present, and fell to making ourselves as comfortable as possible in our new abode. Too many surprising perils and amazing mysteries had beset us in our long wanderings for us to dwell long over any new one.

  THE ship remained our dwelling-place, but many of us, so enamored were we with the feel of the ground and the cool shelter that the great trees afforded against the growing intensity of the light from above, pitched tents improvised from blankets and green boughs and moved our sleeping pads to them.

  Next we explored a little way about our landing-place. The shore at some points was high, rocky, and bare, at other points the forest came almost to the water’s edge. These woods were a never-ending novelty to us, who had before known only the tiny trees of our walled gardens. Moreover, all the species of trees and smaller plants that we saw differed from anything we had known in Venus. The foliage was brighter, and of infinite variety of color and form, sharp contrast to the few varieties and general sameness we had always before known.

  The number and variety of birds and the sweetness of their songs were also a novelty.

  But nowhere in the short walks we ventured to take away from our landing-place did we see any sign of human life or mark of the hand or foot of man. So far, it seemed that we had preempted an untouched wilderness.

  In the meantime the orb of fire had crossed the heavens and sunk from sight on the other horizon, leaving us once more in darkness. Being again weary, and seeing no profit in continuing our exploration by torch-light, we slept again, wondering as we lay down If we would ever again see this wandering light.

  When we next awoke we were already reassured on this point, for the great globe of fire was just peeping above the horizon again. The light still troubled our eyes a little when we were out from shelter, but at no time did it blaze so intensely as it had in the airless spaces above, an indication, we thought then, that it was burning out.

  After this alternation of light and darkness had continued unbroken for three sleeps, we accepted it as a regular thing, and thought less and less of the perplexities of the present and the uncertainties of the future. For the time being the thousand and one novelties about us absorbed our minds.

  The view we had of this land before our ship came down had shown us it was an island of no great extent. We had not been here many sleeps before the Lady named it the Isle of Chicago, and it was not an inappropriate title.

  So, beguiled by the delightful surroundings, we became less and less eager to explore farther, more content to lead a quiet life of idleness. Our past sorrows and dangers, all our former life in Venus, seemed very far away.

  Then, in the midst of this pleasure-drugged existence, fell a blow that awoke us again to danger.

  Every sleep, on arising from rest, we had become accustomed to bathing in the open ocean, a refreshing change from our cramped ship baths. We were all swimmers save the blind queen, and even she under the guidance of the Lady, soon mastered the art and seemed to take great delight in it.

  Once when we were all in the water together, the queen, somehow, in her blindness, became separated from our group, and instead of turning toward shore, swam directly out to sea.

  Hunter was the first to notice her when she was already some distance away, and called to her in alarm to turn back.

  We all watched her as she paused and raised her head to catch the direction of the sound.

  At that instant a straight, slender, upright object, that looked at a distance the size of a man’s arm, arose in the water right beside her.

  While we stared in helpless wonder a rounded thing like a great inverted bucket arose from the water bearing on its top the projection we had first seen. Before one of us could cry out in warning, the top of this object opened and we distinctly saw the head and shoulders of a strangely clad, barbarous-looking man protrude from the opening.

  He reached out, grasped the unsuspecting queen under the arms, and drew her through the opening.

  Then man and woman disappeared within the great bucket. The cover slammed down, and the whole thing disappeared beneath the waves.

  CHAPTER VIII

  A NEW RACE

  NOT until the queen and
her strange captor had been completely blotted out by the waters did we break from stupor of astonishment. Then there was not a man of us, whatever may have been his former attitude toward the unfortunate girl, but boiled with rage, and, forgetful of personal danger, dashed to the rescue.

  Hunter led the group that had dived forward and were swimming in all haste toward the spot where this strange thing had happened But though we swam about, diving repeatedly to explore the depths below, until we were all exhausted, we could discover nothing.

  After resting a little, some of us paddled out again on the life-raft and continued our search, but to no avail. The queen had utterly vanished and her brutal captor had left not a trace behind.

  For many sleeps thereafter we continued the search, spending much of each period of light in the water, but nothing came of it. So at length we abandoned the search in despair.

  But thereafter we never dared separate our forces. Hunter always kept his potent spraying apparatus with him and the rest of us carried always the short, deadly spears which we had brought with us, useful relics of the Queen’s invasion of the Land of Light.

  Whether Hunter’s grief at the fate of the queen struck deeply I could not determine. I do know that he found ready consolation in the Lady of the South, and from that time on, the rival removed, I had no doubt that she would eventually overcome Hunter’s scruples and have him for her own.

  But aside from our natural grief at this first real loss from our devoted band, our greatest concern was, after all, over the discovery that we did not have this new world to ourselves. There were previous tenants, manlike beings apparently, but of what strange appearance and habits! I say this world was inhabited by others.