ALAN nodded without speaking. Yes, they must take it if they could. There was nothing the Carcasillians could do to prevent them. All over the city, that violet light dying, the fountain of life fading, the delicate folk who were made for toys tasting mortality at last—hunger and thirst and death. The bubble city shivering in the cold winds from outside, it’s floating castles shattered, its colors dimmed. And Evaya in the gathering, shadows—Evaya, with her eyes blank mirrors through which the Light-Wearer stared!
Alan said harshly, “All right. What’s the plan?”
It was Karen who laughed. “The plan? Why, keep the gongs going while we can, until the Alien breaks through and gets us.” Her voice was brittle.
Sir Colin said evenly, as if she had not spoken, “The plan would be to get back into Carcasilla, I suppose—now, while the. people are gone—and try to find what lies beneath the fountain and. see if we can use it.”
Alan said suddenly, “Flande! Flande won’t be gone! Flande’s no fragile toy for the Light-Wearer to command. And the Carcasillians aren’t quite as helpless as we thought, not while Flande’s alive. He’ll prevent our taking away the power source, if only for his own safety!”
“Aye, Flande,” Sir Colin said heavily. “I’d forgotten him. Flande’s a force I haven’t reckoned with. He’s too enigmatic to fit in anywhere until we know who he is, or what. But Karen’s right, laddie.” The big shoulders of the older man sagged a little.
“We’ve got another problem here and now,” he said then. He nodded toward the screen upon which the flutter of gossamer garments was passing. “They must be nearly here. The Alien’s making his last bid, you know. He’ll have something—”
The brazen note of a gong thundered out from the cavern below them, cutting off his words. The echoes spread shuddering through the whole great space of the cave, and another gong answered them, deeper-toned, vibrating. And then another. A diapason of quivering metal, like the striking of shields, rose and bellowed and rent the air within the cavern with a mighty crashing.
Mike’s hand went to his gun. “This is it.”
Brekkir sprang to the stairway. They followed him dizzily upward, around and around, until the sloping roof opened before them. Far below lay the machine-city and the cavern floor.
The deafening vibrations of beaten metal roared out, echoing and re-echoing from the walls and the arched roof. Around them, oh roof-tops, in the streets, knots of Terasi were gathered about heavy plates that gleamed like brass. Crude sledges swung and crashed with resounding force against the gongs.
Booming, roaring, bellowing, the Terasi thundered their defiance to the last of the living gods.
Brekkir pointed. In the cracks that split the cavern walls figures stirred. Pale figures, gossamer-robed. The Carcasillians, clambering like hundreds of ants above them.
Mike jerked out his pistol and fired, but Karen struck down his arm.
“Hold it! Save ’em, Mike. We haven’t got too much ammunition.”
Mike looked at her, paling. Karen shrugged. Then she looked up quickly as a thin lance of light shot down from the distant cavern wall. It touched a platform nearby, where. Terasi were swinging their measured blows heavily against a bronze plate.
The Terasi jumped aside, startled. But the ray did not seem to harm them. It went through their bodies like x-rays made visible. But on the surface of the metal it exploded in white fire. Broke there, and crawled, like a stain.
The Terasi lifted their hammers again and struck savagely. No vibrating thunder followed the blows. The gong clanked dully, like struck lead.
Sir Colin grimaced. “Heat-rays that don’t harm living organisms.”
“What is it?” Karen asked.
“After a bell’s been heated in a furnace, it won’t vibrate. Same principle, I think. The Carcasillians can silence every gong here with those. See, there goes another. Now where the Alien found such weapons I’d give a lot to know.”
“You won’t know,” Mike told him, with a faint echo of hysteria in his voice. “We’ll never know. Look—another gong has gone!”
The worst thing, thought Alan, was the fact that the heat-rays did not harm human flesh. The Alien was saving his Humans alive.
“And we can’t do anything!” raged Karen, striking the rail before her with both hands. “We’ve even got to save our ammunition for the noise—or for each other.”
Brekkir grunted to Sir Colin and then leaned across the roof-top, waving an arm and shouting above the thunder of the gongs. Among the machines below, Terasi carrying dull-shining metal bows began to climb up here and. there, balancing and bracing themselves in the angles of the great toppling machines. Steel arrows began to flash toward the cracks in the walls where the swarming multitude of figures moved.
“We can do a little, it seems,” Sir Colin said. “Not much, but some.”
THE delicately colored carriers of doom were creeping closer now, ignoring the Terasi arrows. Now and then Alan saw one find its mark and a gossamer-robed denizen of the city that never knew death fell silently among the rocks. But the Carcasillians crept on, and long fingers of light went probing out before them, seeking and silencing the gongs. That tremendous swelling bellow of sound still rioted through the cavern, but just perceptibly it was lessening now. One gong, or two or three, made no real difference that could be measured. But the toll inevitably was mounting.
Helplessly Alan watched the fragile army advance. How incongruous it seemed, that these doll-like creatures could bring doom upon the savage Terasi, creeping down the walls in their floating garments, firing as they came. Evaya would be somewhere among them, fragile and lovely and blind. Unless an arrow had found her already . . .
(It had been like holding life itself in his arms, to hold that resilient, steel-spring body, so delicate and so strong. He had been near to forgetting that latent strength in her which would never matter to him now. He thought of the dizzy moment of their kiss, while the bubble city rocked below them. He must forget it now and forever—for whatever time in eternity remained.)
And he knew that this way of dying was perhaps as good as any, and easier than some. For now he would not have to watch Carcasilla shattered and ruined and dark.
Also, he knew, suddenly as he heard the gongs falling silent one by one below him, that he would never have left Evaya in a dying Carcasilla while the Terasi set sail for the future, even if Flande had let them rob the fountain of its power. He knew he would have gone back to the ruined city and taken that fragile, resilient body in his arms and held her, waiting while the darkness closed around them both.
In the end, he knew now, they must have died together, one way or another. This was quicker and so perhaps it was easier.
He looked up and saw a pale shimmer far back in a chasm of the walls, and a hard shudder of revulsion shook him. Easier? Easier to die in the Light-Wearer’s terrible embrace?
He watched it, fascinated, glimmering far back in the darkness, waiting and urging its puppets on.
The pale light lanced down from all around them. And the cavern was no longer bellowing with shaking sound. Here on the roof-top they had no need to shout to one another any more. Alan saw Karen take a firmer grip upon her gun, saw her shoulders square beneath the ragged blouse.
“Well, it won’t be long now,” she said grimly. “This is it, boys. Too bad—I’d have liked to see Venus.”
(To Be Concluded in the Next Issue)
GRIEF OF BAGDAD
Pete Manx Rides the Magic Carpet Back to an Ancient City—and It’s No Caliphornia Stunt!
“NO,” said Pete Manx. “Never again. This is my final word.”
Dr. Horatio Mayhem smiled sadly, glancing about his famous laboratory at Plymouth University with its welter of apparatus ranging from huge dynamos to the most delicate detectors and most sensitive selectors, all subsidiary to the incredible Time Chair. He nodded.
“Yes, my boy. I understand your aversion to making any more trips into the historical Past. You
have been a—um—lodestone for violent trouble . . .”
“Something always happens to me!” exclaimed Pete. “What if I sh’d get bumped off in the Past? Nix. No more o’ that stuff for me.”
“Quite right, my son. And yet—” Mayhem’s benign tone and dreamy stare at the ceiling were pure ham, “I would never have invited you here again, Pete, knowing it to be a place of strange memories, except that occasionally in our lives there arise demands that transcend all selfish personal considerations. Do you follow me?”
“No, but I smell something fishy.”
“Tut, tut.” Mayhem signaled surreptitiously to Professor Belleigh Aker, who waited beside the door to the office. Quickly Aker leaned over a portable phonograph, then flung open the door. A burst of martial music filled the lab, a flag unfurled in the doorway, and into the room marched a middle-aged man in officer’s uniform.
“I give you,” cried Aker, “Colonel Henry Crowell, U.S.A.!”
He paled as the significance of this elaborate act dawned on him. Mayhem and Aker were putting, on the pressure again and he could guess the reason. He wanted Army service, or any fighting for his country, but another hectic journey into the Past—huh-uh!
Colonel Crowell approached and gazed at Pete’s undersized, though tough and wiry, figure.
“This is the man?” he asked incredulously.
Dr. Mayhem beamed.
“The most well-traveled man in world history, Colonel. Shrewd and able.”
Pete stared at Mayhem suspiciously, like a turkey hearing the ax being whetted.
“Well,” the Army man said, “I’ve heard some amazing things about you, Mr. Manx!”
Pete blushed modestly, and the colonel sat down.
“I won’t kid you.” the colonel said. “I came to ask you a favor in the interest of national defense. As you know, we face a grave crisis and no stone is being left unturned to strengthen our military position. Now, men of your cosmopolitanism know there are scientific secrets, valuable ones, lost in the past. The Mayans, the Lemurians, the builders of the pyramids—all show indications of scientific advancement which we can’t match. Right?”
Pete’s heart did a quick wing-over and spin.
“Yeah, but them guys never had any knowledge of military stuff that’d do us—”
“Ah-ah! Don’t be too sure. There’s one secret, if we can find it, that would make us masters of the air. Ever hear of the magic carpet?”
PETE had seen the Thief of Bagdad in the movies. He nodded.
“Of course,” Crowell continued, “it may only be a fairy tale. But historical research has shown us that the wildest fairy tales and legends often had their basis in fact. Now, if some early oriental discovered how to defeat gravity think what it would mean to us to rediscover that secret. How easy it would be to defend our cities; we could suspend great platforms in the sky with the heaviest cannon on them. We could hover ten miles over the enemy and rain bombs down. The science of aviation would be revolutionized! You would be immortal, Mr. Manx!”
“I’m just about immortal now,” Pete muttered with waning resistance. “Why pick on me? Anyone could make the trip.”
Professor Aker broke in eagerly.
“Not so, Manx. You are the best fitted. As you’ve made so many Time trips, Dr. Mayhem has plotted with utmost accuracy your Time Potential, and can project you almost exactly wherever we wish. We couldn’t do that with a stranger.”
“Besides,” added Mayhem, “it takes a man of wits and initiative like yourself to handle situations after he gets there.”
This rank flattery shattered the remnants of Pete’s resolve. He looked at the Time Chair, shuddering, and fixed his mind on the glories of patriotism.
“Okay,” he sighed. “Shoot the jolt to me, dolt.”
Quickly the preliminaries were completed. Power surged about the lab, shaking its very walls with muted dronings. Mayhem fiddled with dials and switches. Pete took his place in the Chair, one ear taking in Professor Aker’s explanations to the curious Colonel Crowell.
“Our proven concept of Time is that of a complete, coexistent circle, at the hub of which exists what we may call a Central Time Consciousness. Our apparatus releases the mind from the artificial barriers confining it to the present. Once within the Central Time Consciousness, it comes within the influence of a sort of psychic centrifuge, and is whirled out again into the mind of a person in the preselected era. Quite simple, as you can readily see . . .”
The Colonel seemed a little dazed. “The Chair, of course, ties the mind immutably to its body in the Present, so the Traveler never gets beyond our control or lost in Time.”
Aker surreptitiously mopped his face with relief, and was spied so doing by Pete. The latter started up.
“Hey! I been framed! I ain’t the only one with experience in this thing! What about Aker? He’s able to make the trip—”
Hastily Aker reached past Mayhem toward the switch.
“Six weeks, Pete!”
Zung-g-g! There was a crackling, and quite suddenly the body of Pete Manx became revoltingly corpse-like. Only the most subtle instruments could have detected life therein. For the tenth fantastic time, Pete Manx was suffering with amps in his pants.
HIS first impression was of an overpowering odor—a combination of unwashed people, goats, and dogs, plus the sharpness of many spices, with a dash of putrescence from the quaintly oriental sewage disposal system. It was not altogether unpleasant.
Conquering a touch of nausea, Pete looked about him. He was apparently standing in the hot sunlight on the main street of ancient Bagdad. The uproar was terrific. Children fought and played shrilly in the streets. Hawkers in the bazaars shouted their wares. Thieves and cut-purses operated brazenly, resulting in many a wild race with indignant citizens chasing the criminals in vain.
Pete sighed at this display of crudity; he always preferred his crime on the subtle side. He glanced at his clothing to judge if he were rich or poor, and to decide whether he would be able to live in quietness while pursuing his quest of the magic carpet.
He was dressed as most of the other inhabitants—loose, wide trousers, cotton kami from neck to ankles and a sash round the waist, red leather slippers. A turban completed the costume. A leather purse yielded a few odd coins, nothing more. Pete sighed. Probably he was a worthless lout again. How monotonous.
A voice caught his ear with a Persian equivalent of “Oh, nuts!”
A boy in his late teens squatted in the shade of a wall, looking disgustedly at an empty brass bottle. Pete had, on occasion, looked disconsolately at at empty bottles, but not at that age. “What’s cookin’, bud?” he asked. The boy stared.
“I do not cook, master. I am the victim of a cheat of a magician who sold me this bottle, which had the seal of Solomon, son of David, on whom be peace.”
“How’s that, chum?”
“He vowed that if one maketh certain motions and pronounceth certain words, a genie will appear from the bottle to do one’s bidding. But nothing hath occurred. I have been defrauded.”
Pete leaned over and patted him on the back.
“Kid, you don’t realize it, but more terrific magic than that has just been pulled off under your nose.”
The lad. was quick on the uptake. “Then thou art the genie?” he asked eagerly. “Whence comest thou?”
“From very distant lands, pal,” Pete swaggered, “that ain’t even been discovered yet. In fact, I won’t even be born for about eighteen centuries. That’s me, the genie with the light brown hair. Ha, ha!”
The youth failed to crack a smile. “What great magic!” he whispered in awe. “If thou’rt the genie, bring me great wealth at once.”
Pete grinned. He was enjoying himself kidding this yokel.
“That takes time, bud. Us genies don’t produce the geetus from thin air. We fix things so it seems to come natural-like. Be patient.”
Pete’s agile brain was already at work. He would need a native, possibly, to help
him get around with his inquiries about the flying carpet. Why not this credulous lad, who already had a proper appreciation of Pete Manx’s importance in the scheme of things?
“Stick with me, chum, an’ you’ll wear diamonds. What’s yer name?”
“Ahmedalhazred.”
“I’ll call you Sabu. And you can call me—” Pete paused; naturally he didn’t know the name of the man whose body he was temporarily usurping. “Oh, just call me Bo.”
“As thou wishest, O Bo. What dost thou plan first?”
“As a matter o’ fact, I come here on a little personal business. Look. Is there a guy around here who operates a magic carpet?”
SABU stared blankly; he had never heard of so wondrous a thing. “It’s a flying carpet.” Pete elaborated. “Goes through the air like a Spitfire—I mean just like a bird. Maybe you seen it zooming by, huh?” Sabu registered bafflement. Pete shrugged in disgust. If the boy couldn’t help, he would just make some inquiries till he found someone who could. Discreet inquiries of course, not open advertising, else he might arouse competition for the secret knowledge.
With Sabu trailing behind still clutching his worthless magic bottle, Pete began his questioning. Weavers, tent-makers, coppersmiths, merchants, wine-sellers—all the businessmen in several blocks along the crooked thoroughfare were interviewed. Not one had so much as heard of the aerial carpet, and many looked rather queerly at the none too affluent stranger who asked crazy questions.
Twice Pete spoke to petty chiselers who promised, with secretive glances, that for a sum of money they would make contact with mysterious, informed personages who couldn’t be reached at the moment, and would Bo meet them here tomorrow? Pete laughed scornfully at such obvious punks.
One thing seemed quite clear; the existence of the flying carpet was not commonly known. Perhaps the inventor was keeping it a secret. Pete pondered. It was obvious that he must contrive to make the inventor come to him, rather than continue an interminable and probably unsuccessful search. How? By offering some sort of profit.
Collected Fiction Page 361