While he was away, Thomas pointed to a great arch of bushes that had overgrown the unused lane.
"There's the brook," he whispered. "I always hoped to catch a fish there, but never did. Not deep enough." He shook his head, and his lined old face, tough though it was, seemed to crumple for a moment.
David had got back by now, and he ran us down to the brook. Old Thomas turned his head and peered into the mass of foliage, long untrimmed and uncared for, that sheltered the tiny stream at the little bridge.
"Nobody in the house," David mouthed silently to me. "Take him in, if you like, eh?"
We took Thomas in, four of us carrying his bed through the wide old door, and laid him down in room after room. He was so regretful at returning to Primswood, that I resolved to have him brought down here for a time, with someone to look after him.
The upshot was that next day, Thomas returned to his old home. "I'll get better in no time at all here," he assured us with a wan smile.
With him we left a handful of people, but no Virians. We could not calculate the psychological effect members of that race might have on Thomas, so we sent with him half a dozen people who could be spared for a time. There were a couple of women — they were mother and daughter — and four Europeans. Two of these latter were British, and two Belgian, but each was a friend of Thomas's.
Although Thomas himself got on well with the two Britons, I cannot say that the rest of us felt much affection for them. They had been looked on for some time as potential trouble-makers, being greatly given to argument, especially along political lines.
This fact was not surprising, I suppose, for both had bees active in party politics at one time.
For the sake of the record, I must detail more about these two individuals. There was, firstly, Lawrence Baggot, a powerfully built Yorkshireman who had been fanatically devoted to a certain political — or pseudo-political — party. There can be no point in my naming the party, for such matters will have no place in the coming Terrestrial civilisation, we hope. Baggot, then, had been something of a figurehead in his own small world, and it was one of his idiosyncracies that he should be called not Lawrence, but Lal. Such abbreviations of one's Christian name, it seems, had been one of the hallmarks of his associates. It was his practice, too, to abbreviate the names of others in this manner, but when he started to refer to Dr. Axel Bjornstrom as "Ax" we persuaded him to use more discretion.
The other Englishman was Cartwright Vincent, who, I must admit, was a considerable loafer. We had been able to persuade him to do little in the way of useful work, and had used great efforts to find some occupation that would at once, keep him occupied and keep the rest of our community amiably
disposed towards him. His Terrestrial occupation, he told us when we recorded such information for our own use, had been that of "philanthropic worker." More than that we could never elicit from him.
With these two we left the Belgians as some sort of occupational compensation. Both of these were devoted to old Thomas, and one of them, Marcel Vlamertinghe, enjoyed the distinction of being enamoured of one of the women we left.
It was the mother at whom he set his cap; the daughter, I fear, was a feckless and half-witted creature, poor girl.
That, then, is an outline of the household we established for Thomas at his cottage in Oxted. We left them happily setting about the task of making the place habitable and returned to London as it grew dusk.
During this time we had not yet received the advance party of the Nagani who were to come. We expected them to arrive in possibly another week's time, so had some opportunity of planning their reception in the meantime.
Two nights after we had left Thomas at Oxted, a curious thing happened.
We had constantly kept watch on the eighteen Vulcanids at Primswood Place, and there had been no sign of activity among them, except for the occasional flutter of their sensitive head fringes. The Nagani had warned us to leave them unmolested until they returned in force, bringing the means of dealing with the great creatures.
The event I am about to record shocked us with its significance when we realised its full import.
The first news we had of anything unusual was a call on the radio from the guard at Primswood Place.
The Vulcanids were moving swiftly away from the stationary Disc they had stood by for so long, he called breathlessly.
At first we welcomed the news. During the time when we might have been idly watching these monsters, we had built an electrified fence round them, and they could not escape, we were sure. But we had overlooked the obvious way of escape for them — the Disc.
However, as all eighteen of the creatures were now heading for the corner of the large compound we had erected round them, we gave little thought to the Disc itself, until...
There was a hiss, a flash and a roar, and the Disc had spun across the compound and shot off in a vertical trajectory out into the darkness.
By this time, a large party had turned out to watch the Vulcanids cornered by the electrified fence, and we stood in shocked amazement as the glowing slots round the edge of the Disc rapidly became smaller as it shot upwards.
Axel had the answer to the question we were all asking ourselves. "They have multiplied again!" he shouted excitedly. "Eighteen they have always kept in sight, but how many more are in the Disc by now? They have fooled us yet!"
The spotters who always remained on duty at a scanner in the Downland grounded Discs soon came in with their report, and we learnt that the escaped Disc had continued in a vertical direction until they had lost it on their screens.
Soon another report came in. They had picked up the Disc again, this time many miles to the south, still rising. By daylight, they had lost and found it a dozen times, until at last they acknowledged that it had disappeared, probably rounding the horizon so that it would no longer register on our apparatus.
The day went without the Disc appearing on our screens again. Ten of the Vulcanids were destroyed by our fence, but the remaining eight steadfastly refused to approach the fence.
That night, the watching Virians announced that they had caught a faint reaction on their equipment — not on their scanning screens, but on sensitive radio-sonic receivers. There was a Disc, and almost certainly a Vulcanid Disc rather than one of the giant Nagani craft, somewhere in the immediate neighbourhood, they were sure. But wherever it was, it had placed itself out of reach of the scanners.
This could mean that it was coasting low, out of range of the scanners. We were anxious for many hours, for the receivers constantly showed a reaction. Somewhere near us, we knew, was a Disc containing the monstrous Vulcanids.
Then we received a clue.
Our hourly radio call to Thomas at Oxted received no answer.
Within minutes we had set our for Oxted by auto-gyro. And inside half an hour from our first alarm we had set the machine down in a field two or three hundred yards from the cottage.
As we landed and stepped out, we heard the familiar hiss of a Disc taking off, and as the roar of its acceleration came to our ears it had hurtled upwards.
At the same moment we got the call from our scanners ten miles away that they had caught the Disc on their screens again. We watched the Disc shoot skywards, in despair. Its nearness to this little outpost could only mean that the Vulcanids had been trying to tamper with our people here.
There were four of us, Leo, myself, and two others, and we took a last look as the Disc became a small glowing circle miles above our heads. Then we rushed through the rank grass to the cottage, dreading what we expected to find.
The seven people at the cottage had been unarmed against Vulcanids, save for three or four fire-guns, which could not be of much use' if the monsters used their normal guile.
The cottage door was open, and as we ran inside we caught a glimpse of Thomas lying in his cast by the window. I reached him first, but it was too late.
The good old man was dead, and he lay there with a smile on his wrinkled
face, his eyes still gazing through the window at the brook. He had not been attacked, we felt sure, and he bore no signs of any struggle.
I cannot describe our feelings at this tragedy. Thomas was the sole cause for our Return to Earth, and we could bear his loss less than the loss of each one of us as an individual. We had one consolation: we were sure he had died naturally.
We had proof of this belief a few moments later. On the table in the room lay a sheet of paper, covered with the bold handwriting of Baggot. His message to us planted a new fear in the hearts of the human race. I reproduce it here.
"This is to Leo Arabin, from Lawrence Baggot," it started. "I am to tell you and your brutal kind that you are to lose the opportunity of harbouring the entire Vulcanid race. You will be left with those who choose to stay here on this planet. The rest have left you for ever. I am chosen for the glorious task of aiding them in their new life, and I am taking with me five of your people from this place. Together, we and the Intelligences will found a new world. With the knowledge given to me by my comrades, the Hafnarigi, I shall take their ship to that new world, and I shall build a new race of humans, to live and work side by side with the Intelligences. I am to tell you, also, that some day we of my race may return, for you will surely be punished for your massacre of the Intelligences."
Leo looked dumbly at the message. Then he snatched the microphone of his transmitter from the pocket on his shoulder, and called savagely into it.
"Scanners! Scanners!" he snapped. "Plot me that Disc — quickly — at once!"
In a few seconds, back came the call from the scanners on the Downs.
"Disc now approximately eight hundred miles at nine o'clock," the Virian whispered. "We have coupled our scanners for remote plotting. Disc is proceeding on a course now. There has been no variation in its direction or speed for seven minutes. We will keep its course recorded."
Leo snapped the switch off.
"Looks as though they've beaten us on that move," he groaned. "Now our main worry is — where are they heading for?"
I picked up the message he had dropped. It was obvious from its context that the Vulcanids, by some means, had regained control of one human mind, at least. What would that mean for those who were left behind? Our only hope was the speedy arrival of the Nagani. We must trust to their superior intelligence to rid us of the remainder of the Vulcanids.
I appreciated Leo's problem, nevertheless. Even assuming that the Nagani could destroy the remaining Vulcanids on this planet, there was now the nucleus of another colony of them somewhere in the Universe;
We turned our minds, with some difficulty, to the question of what had happened to the other captives of the Vulcanids. A search of the cottage showed that they had left with little or no preparation.
"That's a good sign, at least," sighed Leo. "It may mean that they won't survive in that Disc. They must have food. Oh, I know the Vulcanids can live on fresh air or some such bloody nonsense, but I'm thinking of those poor souls they've kidnapped now. They'll have to eat. Let's see if they've taken any food."
They had. Everything in the little larder had gone.
Baggott, it now appeared, had made his own arrangements for the exodus, before compelling — for we liked to think that he must have used compulsion — the others to accompany him on his evil mission.
By now, we feared, the other five would have fallen back into the mental control of the Vulcanids.
The rest of that day seemed like a nightmare. We buried poor Thomas in the garden of his cottage, and returned sadly to London.
By nightfall, when a conference had been called, we learnt of the escaped Disc's destination. The scanners had plotted its course, and Krill Hvensor presented us with the charts they had prepared.
Straight ahead on the Disc's course, a small point was marked in red. Our ten known planets were marked in blue on an elliptical orbit. As we compared the charts before us, we saw that on each one the disc was heading for the red spot.
"The red mark," said Krill Hvensor heavily, "shows the position at which the Disc, moving at its present speed, will coincide with the orbital position of the planet Varang-Varang."
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The Nagani Disc, with its first alien settlers, had arrived seven days before our scanners finally lost the renegade Disc. "It has entered the invisibility belt of Varang-Varang," announced Krill Hvensor. "No more shall we see it."
It was the Nagani, aided by the vocal chords of the Virians, who elucidated the theory of Varang-Varang's invisibility, had long been known on Hafna, and on Ama-Viri, that the planet Varang-Varang had assembled a cloak of invisibility around itself, but only within the last few centuries had the Nagani astronomers on Hafna learnt how and why. Even then, their knowledge was largely surmise. They had known Varang-Varang through many thousands of years, and then, in a comparatively short period of time, it had withdrawn itself from their view.
Their instruments had continued to detect its presence, but not by visual means. Then, as the centuries progressed, they had perfected a device which, at distances within the Solar System, was able to detect the presence of intellect. Thus they had confirmed their belief that Varang-Varang still existed, and that life continued thereon. Later still, they had observed spectroscopically an unknown belt of radiation from the direction of the invisible planet. Years of investigation showed that this was produced by a hitherto unknown element in the atmosphere of the blacked-out planet — an element, they were sure, that had been introduced by the inhabitants of Varang-Varang for the purpose of concealing their world.
So gradually as to be almost imperceptible, the cloak of invisibility had expanded, due to the dissemination of the new element beyond the planet's atmosphere, and by the present day this obscuring element had reached out many thousands of miles into space.
Thousands of years before, the Nagani and the Ama-Virians had attempted commerce with the
inhabitants of Varang-Varang, but their envoys had been butchered, and only rarely had a space-ship returned to its base. Consequently, no new attempts at direct communication had been made. The planet had been kept under observation, and as much as possible had been learnt about it, but that was little enough.
Baggott's flight in that direction with the Terrestrials and an unknown number of newly-bred Vulcanids aroused the suspicion that the Vulcanids themselves must have maintained some sort of contact with the minds of Varang-Varang throughout the centuries.
The Nagani, though, were confident that the inhabitants of the invisible world had as yet no means of space travel, so their presence in the Solar System aroused no immediate fear. Later, though — and the time might be close at hand — there would always be the risk that the Vulcanids might hand on to them the secret of their Discs. Even now, as I write this with an interval of three years between the settling of the Nagani on Earth and "today," men are wondering how long they have to wait before the beast-men of Varang-Varang launch their attack.
The Nagani's first care, after considering the flight of the Baggott party, was to eliminate the surviving Vulcanids from Earth. Methodically they set about the task, the nature of which was at first obscure to humanity. For nearly a month they surveyed Europe, flying low in their great black Discs, of which they had brought some eighty from the Lunar base.
Then the whole fleet departed suddenly in a southerly direction. Two months later they returned, and simultaneous with the return we had an inkling of their purpose. At first the results of their work went unnoticed, and then it became plain that something was happening to the weather.
The skies, which had been heavily overcast for some days, took on an orange glow, and the air carried a distinct trace of sulphur fumes. Day by day the phenomenon increased, until at the end of a fortnight it was difficult to see more than a few hundred yards at midday.
Our first inquiries of the Nagani had met with courteous refusal of an explanation, and then at the end of three weeks the secret was out. During their absen
ce they had tampered with every active volcano in Europe. With the aid of their tele-mentor equipment they showed us Etna, Stromboli, Vesuvius, and half a dozen other long-forgotten mountain menaces in full eruption. Whole countrysides were devastated, and their scanning screens — much larger than those of the smaller Discs to which we were accustomed — relayed to us from the Lunar base a picture of the northern hemisphere veiled in thick orange cloud.
They showed us mentally the reaction of Vulcanid life to this heavily charged atmosphere. The subtle change in the composition of the atmosphere carried poison for the cells constituting Vulcanid life, according to the tele-mentor evidence. We could only hope that this was completely true of every Vulcanid, for of course the tele-mentor could only show us thoughts and not actual incidents. And we had ourselves seen that the Vulcanids could achieve astounding mutations within their own species.
Who knew, we reasoned, whether they might not even find a means of combating the poisoned atmosphere?
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