The Golden Age of Science Fiction Novels Vol 01

by Anthology

  At this I shot a glance at Lugur. He did not seem unduly interested. I wondered if the Russian had told him as yet of the girl of the rosy wall of the Moon Pool Chamber and the real reasons for our search. Then I answered as briefly as possible--omitting all reference to these things. The red dwarf watched me with unmistakable amusement--and I knew Marakinoff had told him. But clearly Lugur had kept his information even from Yolara; and as clearly she had spoken to none of that episode when O'Keefe's automatic had shattered the Keth-smitten vase. Again I felt that sense of deep bewilderment--of helpless search for clue to all the tangle.

  For two hours we were questioned and then the priestess called Rador and let us go.

  Larry was sombre as we returned. He walked about the room uneasily.

  "Hell's brewing here all right," he said at last, stopping before me. "I can't make out just the particular brand--that's all that bothers me. We're going to have a stiff fight, that's sure. What I want to do quick is to find the Golden Girl, Doc. Haven't seen her on the wall lately, have you?" he queried, hopefully fantastic.

  "Laugh if you want to," he went on. "But she's our best bet. It's going to be a race between her and the O'Keefe banshee--but I put my money on her. I had a queer experience while I was in that garden, after you'd left." His voice grew solemn. "Did you ever see a leprechaun, Doc?" I shook my head again, as solemnly. "He's a little man in green," said Larry. "Oh, about as high as your knee. I saw one once--in Carntogher Woods. And as I sat there, half asleep, in Yolara's garden, the living spit of him stepped out from one of those bushes, twirling a little shillalah.

  "'It's a tight box ye're gettin' in, Larry avick,' said he, 'but don't ye be downhearted, lad.'

  "'I'm carrying on,' said I, 'but you're a long way from Ireland,' I said, or thought I did.

  "'Ye've a lot o' friends there,' he answered. 'An' where the heart rests the feet are swift to follow. Not that I'm sayin' I'd like to live here, Larry,' said he.

  "'I know where my heart is now,' I told him. 'It rests on a girl with golden eyes and the hair and swan-white breast of Eilidh the Fair--but me feet don't seem to get me to her,' I said."

  The brogue thickened.

  "An' the little man in green nodded his head an' whirled his shillalah.

  "'It's what I came to tell ye,' says he. 'Don't ye fall for the Bhean-Nimher, the serpent woman wit' the blue eyes; she's a daughter of Ivor, lad--an' don't ye do nothin' to make the brown-haired coleen ashamed o' ye, Larry O'Keefe. I knew yer great, great grandfather an' his before him, aroon,' says he, 'an' wan o' the O'Keefe failin's is to think their hearts big enough to hold all the wimmen o' the world. A heart's built to hold only wan permanently, Larry,' he says, 'an' I'm warnin' ye a nice girl don't like to move into a place all cluttered up wid another's washin' an' mendin' an' cookin' an' other things pertainin' to general wife work. Not that I think the blue-eyed wan is keen for mendin' an' cookin'!' says he.

  "'You don't have to be comin' all this way to tell me that,' I answer.

  "'Well, I'm just a tellin' you,' he says. 'Ye've got some rough knocks comin', Larry. In fact, ye're in for a devil of a time. But, remember that ye're the O'Keefe,' says he. 'An' while the bhoys are all wid ye, avick, ye've got to be on the job yourself.'

  "'I hope,' I tell him, 'that the O'Keefe banshee can find her way here in time--that is, if it's necessary, which I hope it won't be.'

  "'Don't ye worry about that,' says he. 'Not that she's keen on leavin' the ould sod, Larry. The good ould soul's in quite a state o' mind about ye, aroon. I don't mind tellin' ye, lad, that she's mobilizing all the clan an' if she has to come for ye, avick, they'll be wid her an' they'll sweep this joint clean before ye go. What they'll do to it'll make the Big Wind look like a summer breeze on Lough Lene! An' that's about all, Larry. We thought a voice from the Green Isle would cheer ye. Don't fergit that ye're the O'Keefe an' I say it again--all the bhoys are wid ye. But we want t' kape bein' proud o' ye, lad!'

  "An' I looked again and there was only a bush waving."

  There wasn't a smile in my heart--or if there was it was a very tender one.

  "I'm going to bed," he said abruptly. "Keep an eye on the wall, Doc!"

  Between the seven sleeps that followed, Larry and I saw but little of each other. Yolara sought him more and more. Thrice we were called before the Council; once we were at a great feast, whose splendours and surprises I can never forget. Largely I was in the company of Rador. Together we two passed the green barriers into the dwelling-place of the ladala.

  They seemed provided with everything needful for life. But everywhere was an oppressiveness, a gathering together of hate, that was spiritual rather than material--as tangible as the latter and far, far more menacing!

  "They do not like to dance with the Shining One," was Rador's constant and only reply to my efforts to find the cause.

  Once I had concrete evidence of the mood. Glancing behind me, I saw a white, vengeful face peer from behind a tree-trunk, a hand lift, a shining dart speed from it straight toward Rador's back. Instinctively I thrust him aside. He turned upon me angrily. I pointed to where the little missile lay, still quivering, on the ground. He gripped my hand.

  "That, some day I will repay!" he said. I looked again at the thing. At its end was a tiny cone covered with a glistening, gelatinous substance.

  Rador pulled from a tree beside us a fruit somewhat like an apple.

  "Look!" he said. He dropped it upon the dart--and at once, before my eyes, in less than ten seconds, the fruit had rotted away!

  "That's what would have happened to Rador but for you, friend!" he said.

  Come now between this and the prelude to the latter half of the drama whose history this narrative is--only scattering and necessarily fragmentary observations.

  First--the nature of the ebon opacities, blocking out the spaces between the pavilion-pillars or covering their tops like roofs, These were magnetic fields, light absorbers, negativing the vibrations of radiance; literally screens of electric force which formed as impervious a barrier to light as would have screens of steel.

  They instantaneously made night appear in a place where no night was. But they interposed no obstacle to air or to sound. They were extremely simple in their inception--no more miraculous than is glass, which, inversely, admits the vibrations of light, but shuts out those coarser ones we call air--and, partly, those others which produce upon our auditory nerves the effects we call sound.

  Briefly their mechanism was this:

  [For the same reason that Dr. Goodwin's exposition of the mechanism of the atomic engines was deleted, his description of the light-destroying screens has been deleted by the Executive Council.--J. B. F., President, I. A. of S.]

  There were two favoured classes of the ladala--the soldiers and the dream-makers. The dream-makers were the most astonishing social phenomena, I think, of all. Denied by their circumscribed environment the wider experiences of us of the outer world, the Murians had perfected an amazing system of escape through the imagination.

  They were, too, intensely musical. Their favourite instruments were double flutes; immensely complex pipe-organs; harps, great and small. They had another remarkable instrument made up of a double octave of small drums which gave forth percussions remarkably disturbing to the emotional centres.

  It was this love of music that gave rise to one of the few truly humorous incidents of our caverned life. Larry came to me--it was just after our fourth sleep, I remember.

  "Come on to a concert," he said.

  We skimmed off to one of the bridge garrisons. Rador called the two-score guards to attention; and then, to my utter stupefaction, the whole company, O'Keefe leading them, roared out the anthem, "God Save the King." They sang--in a closer approach to the English than might have been expected scores of miles below England's level. "Send him victorious! Happy and glorious!" they bellowed.

  He quivered with suppressed mirth at my paralysis of surprise.

  "Taught 'em that for Marak
inoff's benefit!" he gasped. "Wait till that Red hears it. He'll blow up.

  "Just wait until you hear Yolara lisp a pretty little thing I taught her," said Larry as we set back for what we now called home. There was an impish twinkle in his eyes.

  And I did hear. For it was not many minutes later that the priestess condescended to command me to come to her with O'Keefe.

  "Show Goodwin how much you have learned of our speech, O lady of the lips of honeyed flame!" murmured Larry.

  She hesitated; smiled at him, and then from that perfect mouth, out of the exquisite throat, in the voice that was like the chiming of little silver bells, she trilled a melody familiar to me indeed:

  "She's only a bird in a gilded cage, A bee-yu-tiful sight to see--"

  And so on to the bitter end.

  "She thinks it's a love-song," said Larry when we had left. "It's only part of a repertoire I'm teaching her. Honestly, Doc, it's the only way I can keep my mind clear when I'm with her," he went on earnestly. "She's a devil-ess from hell--but a wonder. Whenever I find myself going I get her to sing that, or Take Back Your Gold! or some other ancient lay, and I'm back again--pronto--with the right perspective! POP goes all the mystery! 'Hell!' I say, 'she's only a woman!'"

  CHAPTER XVIII

  The Amphitheatre of Jet

  For hours the black-haired folk had been streaming across the bridges, flowing along the promenade by scores and by hundreds, drifting down toward the gigantic seven-terraced temple whose interior I had never as yet seen, and from whose towering exterior, indeed, I had always been kept far enough away--unobtrusively, but none the less decisively --to prevent any real observation. The structure, I had estimated, nevertheless, could not reach less than a thousand feet above its silvery base, and the diameter of its circular foundation was about the same.

  I wondered what was bringing the ladala into Lora, and where they were vanishing. All of them were flower-crowned with the luminous, lovely blooms--old and young, slender, mocking-eyed girls, dwarfed youths, mothers with their babes, gnomed oldsters--on they poured, silent for the most part and sullen--a sullenness that held acid bitterness even as their subtle, half-sinister, half-gay malice seemed tempered into little keen-edged flames, oddly, menacingly defiant.

  There were many of the green-clad soldiers along the way, and the garrison of the only bridge span I could see had certainly been doubled.

  Wondering still, I turned from my point of observation and made my way back to our pavilion, hoping that Larry, who had been with Yolara for the past two hours, had returned. Hardly had I reached it before Rador came hurrying up, in his manner a curious exultance mingled with what in anyone else I would have called a decided nervousness.

  "Come!" he commanded before I could speak. "The Council has made decision--and Larree is awaiting you."

  "What has been decided?" I panted as we sped along the mosaic path that led to the house of Yolara. "And why is Larry awaiting me?"

  And at his answer I felt my heart pause in its beat and through me race a wave of mingled panic and eagerness.

  "The Shining One dances!" had answered the green dwarf. "And you are to worship!"

  What was this dancing of the Shining One, of which so often he had spoken?

  Whatever my forebodings, Larry evidently had none.

  "Great stuff!" he cried, when we had met in the great antechamber now empty of the dwarfs. "Hope it will be worth seeing--have to be something damned good, though, to catch me, after what I've seen of shows at the front," he added.

  And remembering, with a little shock of apprehension, that he had no knowledge of the Dweller beyond my poor description of it--for there are no words actually to describe what that miracle of interwoven glory and horror was--I wondered what Larry O'Keefe would say and do when he did behold it!

  Rador began to show impatience.

  "Come!" he urged. "There is much to be done--and the time grows short!"

  He led us to a tiny fountain room in whose miniature pool the white waters were concentrated, pearl-like and opalescent in their circling rim.

  "Bathe!" he commanded; and set the example by stripping himself and plunging within. Only a minute or two did the green dwarf allow us, and he checked us as we were about to don our clothing.

  Then, to my intense embarrassment, without warning, two of the black-haired girls entered, bearing robes of a peculiar dull-blue hue. At our manifest discomfort Rador's laughter roared out. He took the garments from the pair, motioned them to leave us, and, still laughing, threw one around me. Its texture was soft, but decidedly metallic--like some blue metal spun to the fineness of a spider's thread. The garment buckled tightly at the throat, was girdled at the waist, and, below this cincture, fell to the floor, its folds being held together by a half-dozen looped cords; from the shoulders a hood resembling a monk's cowl.

  Rador cast this over my head; it completely covered my face, but was of so transparent a texture that I could see, though somewhat mistily, through it. Finally he handed us both a pair of long gloves of the same material and high stockings, the feet of which were gloved--five-toed.

  And again his laughter rang out at our manifest surprise.

  "The priestess of the Shining One does not altogether trust the Shining One's Voice," he said at last. "And these are to guard against any sudden--errors. And fear not, Goodwin," he went on kindly. "Not for the Shining One itself would Yolara see harm come to Larree here--nor, because of him, to you. But I would not stake much on the great white one. And for him I am sorry, for him I do like well."

  "Is he to be with us?" asked Larry eagerly.

  "He is to be where we go," replied the dwarf soberly.

  Grimly Larry reached down and drew from his uniform his automatic. He popped a fresh clip into the pocket fold of his girdle. The pistol he slung high up beneath his arm-pit.

  The green dwarf looked at the weapon curiously. O'Keefe tapped it.

  "This," said Larry, "slays quicker than the Keth--I take it so no harm shall come to the blue-eyed one whose name is Olaf. If I should raise it--be you not in its way, Rador!" he added significantly.

  The dwarf nodded again, his eyes sparkling. He thrust a hand out to both of us.

  "A change comes," he said. "What it is I know not, nor how it will fall. But this remember--Rador is more friend to you than you yet can know. And now let us go!" he ended abruptly.

  He led us, not through the entrance, but into a sloping passage ending in a blind wall; touched a symbol graven there, and it opened, precisely as had the rosy barrier of the Moon Pool Chamber. And, just as there, but far smaller, was a passage end, a low curved wall facing a shaft not black as had been that abode of living darkness, but faintly luminescent. Rador leaned over the wall. The mechanism clicked and started; the door swung shut; the sides of the car slipped into place, and we swept swiftly down the passage; overhead the wind whistled. In a few moments the moving platform began to slow down. It stopped in a closed chamber no larger than itself.

  Rador drew his poniard and struck twice upon the wall with its hilt. Immediately a panel moved away, revealing a space filled with faint, misty blue radiance. And at each side of the open portal stood four of the dwarfish men, grey-headed, old, clad in flowing garments of white, each pointing toward us a short silver rod.

  Rador drew from his girdle a ring and held it out to the first dwarf. He examined it, handed it to the one beside him, and not until each had inspected the ring did they lower their curious weapons; containers of that terrific energy they called the Keth, I thought; and later was to know that I had been right.

  We stepped out; the doors closed behind us. The place was weird enough. Its pave was a greenish-blue stone resembling lapis lazuli. On each side were high pedestals holding carved figures of the same material. There were perhaps a score of these, but in the mistiness I could not make out their outlines. A droning, rushing roar beat upon our ears; filled the whole cavern.

  "I smell the sea," said Larry suddenly.

/>   The roaring became deep-toned, clamorous, and close in front of us a rift opened. Twenty feet in width, it cut the cavern floor and vanished into the blue mist on each side. The cleft was spanned by one solid slab of rock not more than two yards wide. It had neither railing nor other protection.

  The four leading priests marched out upon it one by one, and we followed. In the middle of the span they knelt. Ten feet beneath us was a torrent of blue sea-water racing with prodigious speed between polished walls. It gave the impression of vast depth. It roared as it sped by, and far to the right was a low arch through which it disappeared. It was so swift that its surface shone like polished blue steel, and from it came the blessed, our worldly, familiar ocean breath that strengthened my soul amazingly and made me realize how earth-sick I was.

  Whence came the stream, I marvelled, forgetting for the moment, as we passed on again, all else. Were we closer to the surface of earth than I had thought, or was this some mighty flood falling through an opening in sea floor, Heaven alone knew how many miles above us, losing itself in deeper abysses beyond these? How near and how far this was from the truth I was to learn--and never did truth come to man in more dreadful guise!

  The roaring fell away, the blue haze lessened. In front of us stretched a wide flight of steps, huge as those which had led us into the courtyard of Nan-Tauach through the ruined sea-gate. We scaled it; it narrowed; from above light poured through a still narrower opening. Side by side Larry and I passed out of it.

  We had emerged upon an enormous platform of what seemed to be glistening ivory. It stretched before us for a hundred yards or more and then shelved gently into the white waters. Opposite--not a mile away--was that prodigious web of woven rainbows Rador had called the Veil of the Shining One. There it shone in all its unearthly grandeur, on each side of the Cyclopean pillars, as though a mountain should stretch up arms raising between them a fairy banner of auroral glories. Beneath it was the curved, scimitar sweep of the pier with its clustered, gleaming temples.