It was evident that our strange captors were aware in some way of every move we made in the darkness, and that the buzzing was of some pain-producing weapon of theirs. Later we were to learn that it was one that set up electrical pain-currents in the nervous system. Pain is but a sensation or electrical current in a certain nerve, and this strange weapon was one that by induction set up pain-currents of more or less intensity in every nerve in the body.
It was evident that we could not escape them in the darkness, so we remained grouped at the corridor's end. We heard the flute-like voices of the things calling to one another through the cruiser, and in a moment or so more came the throbbing of its generators again and the hiss of air outside as it began to move. In awe we listened.
"What can they be?" whispered Korus Kan. "Creatures of darkness-creatures of the cosmic cloud who move in its darkness as though in light!"
"There must be a world here," I answered, "through whose atmosphere we're moving now. They've come up from it to capture our ship and must be taking us down to its surface now."
"But a world in this perpetual darkness? How are they able to live-to move?"
"Who can say? Whatever they are, it is clear that they have pulled the thousands of the galaxy's ships into the cloud as they did ours, for their own reasons. I wonder what fate the other ships met."
* * *
Minutes passed while the cruiser throbbed through the darkness; then its speed decreased quickly and with a slight jar landed upon a solid surface. At once the doors that had been closed were clanging open again and the flute-voiced creatures of darkness, using their pain-producing weapons to control us, were herding us out of the corridor and through the space-door to emerge upon a solid, smooth-paved surface. All about us was still darkness absolute but we felt ourselves in open air, on the surface of a world of unending darkness here at the cosmic cloud's heart.
Our captors began to march us forward. We moved blindly, controlled by their touches or pushes. We heard a great babel of flute-voices, of innumerable creatures coming and going around us. Reaching my hand forth occasionally I ascertained that we were marching along a series of smooth-walled and wide-doored buildings. From their doors came sometimes the clash and clang of machinery operating inside, while in and out of others were swarming hordes of flute-voiced creatures, their flopping steps sounding all around us.
It was evident that we were being taken through a city-a city of darkness absolute in which these creatures of darkness came and went as we of light would do in our own sunlit cities.
I began to understand, though, as we marched along, how these creatures could move so surely in darkness, and whispered to Korus Kan and Jhul Din that it was by their sense of hearing that they must do so, since it seemed to be entirely by the sound of our footsteps that they controlled and guided us. Yet was it possible that any race of beings could live and flourish thus and raise their cities in the cosmic cloud's darkness with only hearing to aid them?
Twice our captors wheeled our group to right or to left as though following a definite course through the streets of the lightless city. In a few moments more, though, when they touched us with their flap-arms to make us again turn, I misunderstood the touch and took a step to the right instead of the left. Instantly agony shot through my every nerve as a buzzing sounded directly beside me. That agony was so terrible and so unexpected that it made me do what never else would I have done, whirl around and strike through the darkness at the thing behind me with all my frenzied strength.
My clenched fist drove into the cold, bulky body of the thing and I felt it knocked backward by the blow, heard the buzzing cease and felt the pain stop as whatever weapon the thing had held rattled upon the paving. Instantly from the other guards came flute-like cries and the sound of flopping steps rushing toward me through the darkness. I yielded to the first instinct as I heard them and threw myself away from them, running blindly through the darkness as their cries sounded behind me.
There came scuffling sounds and then the buzz of many of their weapons, and as I heard cries of pain I realized that my friends and crew had attempted to break loose also but had been halted by their captors. Then after me through the darkness they were racing with quick, flopping steps.
I ran madly forward, collided with a great creature and then with another, and as I blundered away from them was aware that in this world of perpetual darkness I was at a terrible disadvantage in attempting to escape the creatures of darkness who pursued me. Flute-like cries were sounding all along the street now, it seemed, a babel of shouts of alarm spreading quickly over the city. As I blundered again into a great creature whose flap-arms sought to grasp me I realized that not for long could I elude them in this darkness to which they were accustomed. Again I yielded to instinct, and as I felt beside me a wide door I threw myself through it, crouched motionless just inside it and behind the base of what felt to my touch like a great metal mechanism.
It seemed a great room in which I was, for I heard from far along it through the darkness the humming and clanging of machinery, and also the hurrying steps of many of the creatures of darkness as they left their tasks to answer the alarm of cries in the street outside. Their flapping limbs took them directly past me as they rushed to the door, and I could have reached out in the darkness and touched them. I made no move, scarcely daring to breathe; for though I was but a few feet from them, I felt sure they could become aware of my presence in the darkness only by any sounds that I might make.
I heard them answering in their strange voices utterances of the creatures outside, heard the noise of the alarm gradually receding as those who searched for me moved along the street. I breathed a little easier for a moment, but only for a moment. For as the creatures who had rushed to the door streamed back into the great room two of them halted so close beside me that their bodies actually brushed slightly against my arm.
Motionless as a statue I crouched there in the darkness, as the two conversed in their fluting voices beside me. Were they to move a fraction of an inch nearer they must discover me. Were the slightest sound to come from me my discovery was certain.
At last, after what seemed an eternity of waiting, though it could have been really no more than a few moments, the two passed on, and a kindly providence kept them from brushing nearer me as they went. Soon the activities of the great hall seemed resumed, the humming of its mechanisms coming to me again through the darkness, and the sound of the creatures among them moving from one to another.
The peril of immediate discovery seemed past, but how could I hope to escape for long in this city, this world, of eternal darkness? I could not move through it as the creatures that inhabited it did, as surely as though in day; and to stumble blindly through its streets meant swift discovery. How could I hope to find Korus Kan and Jhul Din and the others in this strange world of which I could see nothing? It seemed that by escaping for a while as I had done from our captors I was but prolonging an agony of spirit that might otherwise have been cut short, at least, by death.
In this desperate situation I strove to order my thoughts.
It was apparent that to remain where I was would be useless, since though I might escape discovery for a short time it would inevitably come. It would be better to make an effort at least, to find the others and the cruiser, even though such an effort would be stamped from the first as hopeless. To attempt to pass through the streets of this city seemed insane, yet to do so held the one slender chance of finding the others; so I summoned all my courage and crept out through the wide door and into the smooth-paved street outside.
There, pausing helplessly in the darkness, I listened intently. From all along the street came the flopping steps of the creatures moving this way or that. It seemed to me that it was along the edges of the street that fewest of the creatures moved; so, hugging the smooth walls of the buildings, I began to creep forward.
As flopping steps approached me though the darkness ahead I halted, for I knew that the soun
d of my own steps would betray me to the keen hearing of these creatures. In a moment the approaching creature had passed me and again I took up my careful progress forward. Again I halted as there came other steps near me. Slowly I made my way along the street, crouching motionless whenever any of the creatures neared me, praying that they might not collide with me. Blindly I felt my way forward through this city of awful night.
At last I felt myself at the street's end, with no more of the smooth-walled buildings beside me. I seemed emerging into a great open space, across which came a tremendous bustle of activity. I moved out a little into it, crouching every few instants as flopping steps came and went about me, until I struck something like a great smoothly curving wall of metal before me. For an instant I felt of it and then was motionless in amazement, for it took but that instant for me to recognize what was before me. It was a great interstellar ship, like those that plied the galaxy in countless thousands, and like those that had been drawn into this cosmic cloud in thousands!
For a moment astonishment held me to the exclusion of all else. That this before me was one of the thousands of ships that had been drawn into the cloud I could not doubt.
Had all then been captured like our own by these creatures of darkness? What could it mean?
I was aware that a tremendous activity was going on far around and before me, and as I made my way cautiously through the darkness along the hull of the ship I heard a stream of creatures pouring in and out of its space-doors, busy carrying in things of metal that clanked against the doors as they went through them. Avoiding them, I moved to the side and in moments had come to another great interstellar ship that was the center of a similar scene of activity. Evidently there were a great number of them in the open space before me, and as evidently they were being prepared and fitted by these creatures of darkness for some great enterprise. But that enterprise-what could it be?
I stifled the wonder and amazement that were strong in me, though, for I realized that this swarming place was one of the most dangerous I could encounter. It was inevitable that some of the creatures would collide with me in the darkness, if I stayed there long, so reluctantly I crept back toward the street from which I had emerged.
It did not seem that street which I entered again, though, but a narrower one. There were in it fewer of the city's creatures than in the other street, though I heard still the flopping steps of many of them hastening to and from the open space and interstellar ships which I had just left. I started along it, blindly and aimlessly, not knowing whether I was going back in the direction from which I had come, and not caring greatly. For by that time it seemed clear to me that I was destined to wander blindly through the darkness of the city until discovered and captured, so slender seemed any hope that remained to me.
Still I observed all caution, crouching low each time the sound of approaching creatures came to my ears, not moving until they had passed. Once as I flattened myself thus the flap-like limb or foot of the passing thing actually touched my hand, so close did it come to me, but as I did not move the thing passed on.
After feeling through the darkness along this street for perhaps a thousand yards, my greatest worry being to avoid the creatures who emerged suddenly now and then from the doors along it, I was aware of a still narrower street that branched from it. I took this way, and soon realized that in this narrower way were few of the darkness creatures, they taking the broader streets that crossed the city. I met but one or two of the things in several thousand feet of progress along the street, and though it was harder to elude them in the narrower way I began to feel more confidence. It was that confidence that undid me, for as I passed the door of a building without my usual precautions there emerged suddenly from it one of the great creatures who collided squarely with me.
For an instant the thing must have been even more surprised than I was, and before it could realize what had happened I had flung myself upon it, for well I realized that flight would not serve me now.
My hands sought in vain for a hold upon the smooth, cold body, even as its own great flap-like arms wrapped themselves around me. The thing seemed to have no head or neck whatever, and was almost featureless also. But by the merest chance my hands in that first instant fell upon a narrow aperture in the cold flesh of the upper part of the body. Instantly I closed my hand over it, and as a strangled flute-cry came from it I realized that I had found the monster's mouth. Holding tightly to it and encircling its great body with my other arm I wrestled wildly with it there in the darkness of the narrow street as it sought to shake me off.
The strength of its flap-arms was tremendous, but they were impeded by the fact that I had partly pinned them against its body. Yet it was whirling me this way and that with tremendous force, against the walls and paving of the street.
Nothing but choking sounds came from it, though, and I realized that the creature was air-breathing even as I was and that my hold upon its mouth-aperture was throttling it. Desperately I clung to retain the hold, and with a strength as desperate the great thing tried to tear me loose. I knew that a single cry would bring a swarm of the things to the aid of this one, and the knowledge steeled my muscles. The wild threshing of the creature seemed rapidly lessening, and in moments more my strangling hold had done its work and with a few convulsive jerks the monster went limp and dead.
I straightened from it, panting, then froze with renewed terror. Along the narrow street other steps were approaching me, somewhat lighter steps that were moving carefully as though in investigation, halting now and then. As they came level with me they halted again, and I held my breath. But in the next instant came the sound of the steps coming straight toward me!
With something like a cry of despair on my lips I threw myself forward at the approaching one through the darkness. I knew myself discovered, expected, even as I leaped, the flute-like cry that would bring the hordes in the neighboring streets upon me. But to my utter amazement, my hands grasped not another cold and bulky-bodied creature of darkness but a tall, erect man-like form that was making no resistance to me! I felt short, flat bat-like wings behind that body, felt a man-like head with big-beaked countenance, and then felt two muscular arms grasping my shoulders while a voice whispered tensely in my ear in the tongue of the galaxy.
"Quiet!" it whispered. "Another sound will bring them here from the other street!"
"You-" I stammered. "You're from the galaxy outside-you speak its tongue-but how in this darkness-"
"Not now!" the other warned. "I'll explain in a moment, but now we've got to get out of this street and get this dead thing out before it's discovered. Here-this way-"
Moving through the rayless opacity as a man in a dream might move, I felt myself guided by the other back to the body of the thing I had slain. We lifted it between us and my companion went a little along the street until he turned into a narrow aperture between two smooth-walled structures. Into this we cast the bulky body, and then crouched down together by it. The other had moved through the darkness as easily as through light, I had found, and my first whispered words as we crouched together were of his ability to do so.
"Here," he answered, "these disks-upon your eyes-"
As he spoke he was taking from somewhere on his person two flat little disks an inch or so across, one of which he fastened upon each of my eyes by means of vacuum-sucked rims. I uttered an involuntary cry of astonishment; for as I looked through those disks of glass, the utter darkness that had been about me since first we had been drawn into the great cloud gave way instantly to a pulsing violet light that illumined all things around me.
I could see clearly the towering walls of the two buildings between which we crouched, the narrow street outside in which I had had my battle, and my companion also. He was, I saw, in truth a tall bat-winged figure with strong beaked face and intelligent dark eyes, and I recognized him at once as one of the bat-folks who inhabit the worlds of the sun Deneb. Deneb! Thought of it brought flashing back to my mind a thing th
at the Chief had told us before our start, and I seized my companion's arm.
"Zat Zanat!" I cried. "You're Zat Zanat, the scientist of Deneb who went into the cloud years ago to explore it!"
He nodded. "I am Zat Zanat," he acknowledged, "and years it has been, in truth, since I came into this cosmic cloud, this place of darkness and horror unutterable."
"But it's not darkness to you!" I exclaimed, pointing to the two disks which he wore before his own eyes. "With these you can see in this absolute blackness-though I don't know how."
"I can tell you that soon enough," he said, "but you-how comes it that you were roaming this city of the creatures of darkness?"
Swiftly I explained to him how we had been sent to investigate the drawing in of thousands of the galaxy's ships into the cloud, and how having been drawn into it ourselves we had been captured and brought to this city where I had made my escape. He listened intently, nodding once or twice, and when I had finished asked a question.
"You wandered into one of the great masses of captured interstellar ships they are preparing. But did you guess why they drew those ships into the cloud, for what they are preparing them?"
At my negative his expression grew solemn. "They are preparing those thousands of captured ships, Dur Nal," he said, "for an enterprise that means horror to our galaxy: they are preparing to burst out of the cosmic cloud upon the galaxy in all their numbers and seize our suns and worlds in a conquest of darkness!"
"Of darkness?" I repeated, and he nodded.
"Within hours they leave this world and the cosmic cloud, to pour out into the galaxy, for even as we talk here their great plans are coming to their climax-plans that I have seen them form and carry out in the years I have been here.
"For it is years I have spent on this world of darkness in the great cloud. You have heard how years ago I, Zan Zanat, resolved to do what none ever had done, to explore the cosmic cloud's interior. I knew that light could not exist in it, for its darkness is formed by the meeting of ether-currents which generate etheric vibrations of a frequency that neutralizes all light-vibrations.
The Cosmic Cloud ip-7 Page 2