by Don Wilcox
“Where did you come from?” Veeva rejoined. “What kind of people are you?”
For some reason this confused conversation made me feel that I was on my way to be hanged. If so, I would be an easy victim, for I was already half-dead from exhaustion.
I was placed in a cell by myself.
Of the ceremony which followed, I saw little. I could hear the sound. I could catch echoes of curious folk songs. And when my eyes looked across the vast expanse of colored light which was obviously the Red Room, I could catch glimpses of the shadowy figures of these natives moving through their weird dances.
I’m glad to say that the temperatures which prevailed overhead had been escaped. Here the air was warm and drowsy. Soon after I had been locked in the cell I went off to sleep.
That sleep must have extended over many hours. Perhaps twenty-five or thirty.
I awakened intermittently. The metal dishes of food placed before me were delicious. Food and sleep—what luxury. But after my strength returned I was angry with myself, for failing to watch the native ceremonies.
At last my siege of snoozing was over. I roused up and sauntered to the doorway of my cell.
The curious light which I have already described seemed to come from every surface of stone. My room was a high-ceilinged prison about twenty feet in circumference. The single doorway was closed by means of a huge slab of rock which had been carved through with long narrow ornamental slits.
There must have been several such cells. To my right, in a semicircular alcove, I could see five or six of these doorways; all of them prisons.
I suddenly caught echoes of a low conversation within a few feet of me. I recognized the voice of Shorty.
“We could go into a circus,” he was saying. “I’d be a trick rider in no time.”
Then I heard the low laughter of Veeva. My pulse jumped. I crowded against my stone door, trying to see. But Shorty’s cell door must have been flush with mine. I listened.
“You’d be surprised,” Shorty said, “how much money we could make, and we’d be famous too, and we’d wear yellow tights and everybody would shout and clap and whistle for us.”
Then Veeva answered. Something that I couldn’t hear.
“Don’t you think that he could get used to me?” said Shorty. “He didn’t mind my riding down the steps with you.”
I thought at first that Shorty was referring to the king, and I thought. The crazy fool, trying to horn in ahead of the king. Doesn’t he know he’s in jail, and the king might ask for his head?
“He gets awfully hungry sometimes,” I heard Veeva say. So the tiger was complicating Shorty’s prospects.
Shorty’s voice grew serious. But I don’t think he was getting along very well. Veeva’s amused laughter testified to that.
I did some tall thinking. Pretty nervy of Shorty for him to hope he could win a girl like her. The rube! Offering a queen a circus! If I couldn’t do better than that—but just wait. Maybe I’d have a chance!
Now the low conversation came from a different cell, and I knew that she was talking with Professor Peterson. She was simply inquiring about his health and comfort, so far as I could gather.
Presently Veeva came to me. Her beautiful face was at the doorway. Through the grill of carved stone her beautiful eyes were smiling upon me.
My resolution to declare my love faltered. Had she come to mock and ridicule? Wasn’t she barely repressing her quick laughter?
But no, her eyes were gazing at me intently. She said in a low serious voice, “Are you quite comfortable, Jim McClurg?”
“Frankly, no. I want to get out of here.”
“Have you had food and rest?” she asked.
“Yes, I’m ready for a journey back out. When do we go?”
“Why do you want to go back?” she asked.
“I don’t feel safe,” I retorted. “For all I know, the cell may crumble down on me at any moment. I don’t know these people. They make me nervous—all their music and jabber, and their big fierce faces. Who are they?”
“My people,” she said simply. “Are you afraid of them?”
“Yes.”
“You’re very suspicious,” she said, reaching through the stone bars to press my hand. “I would be glad to acquaint you with this world, but I must tell you at once, forget all about going back. Drop it from your thoughts.”
I felt very much like a trapped animal.
I didn’t want to suspect Veeva of treachery. It’s very difficult to gaze upon a girl so beautiful and think evil of her. The heat swept my brain. I somehow controlled my temper, but only because there was a scheme in the back of my mind.
“How long have you lived here?” I asked.
“All my life.”
“How far away have you been?”
“Many miles,” she said. “Even many weeks journey, traveling with Whitey. I know all of the coasts and all of the mountains.”
“Have you ever been down into Labrador?”
Her silence was as good as a negative answer. I tried of her localities.
“Have you ever been to the United States? Have you seen Hudson Bay? Have you even been to the southern tip of Greenland?”
Only Greenland struck a responsive chord.
“If that’s as far as you’ve gone,” I said, “you’ve much to see. The whole wide world is waiting.”
“I have all the world I want,” she said. “How could any world be more beautiful than this world?”
“There are mammoth cities. There are lighted streets. Swift traffic that rolls on wheels. Machines that carry voices and machines that throw postcard pictures on the wall—wonders that you’ve never dreamed of.”
Now Veeva was laughing at me. “I heard such talk before,” she said. “So many of our enemies who come intending to spy upon us try to tell me these things. I am only amused. These are traps to lure me into the enemy’s hands. But I am the queen, and I am too clever to be captured.”
I gave back her laugh of ridicule. “And you accuse me of being suspicious!”
She started to draw her hand away. I held it tightly.
“Is there anything more you wish to say?” she asked.
“Only that I’m terribly in love with you,” I said.
Her eyes widened, a high color rushed to her cheeks. But she made no reply. She drew her hand away—though I fancied that it lingered for an instant as I brushed my lips against it.
At once she was gone, and I was never so much alone.
CHAPTER XVII
A Lord at Large
“You ought to be ashamed. You frightened her away,” came a voice from my left.
“Steve Pound!” I gasped. “Are you alive?”
“Righto. More than ever.”
Steve’s big blond countenance was before me, peering in through the carved stone gate. I tried to tell him he was a ghost but he denied it, reaching through to shake hands with me.
“You fellows didn’t need to come,” he said. “I was doing all right.”
“Just what we figured,” came Shorty’s voice from my right. “It’s no fair, Steve. I want that gal myself.”
“I’m not talking about the girl,” said Steve, and he sauntered on down the row of cells to greet Shorty and Professor Peterson.
Shorty must have been pretty badly stung over his recent talk with Veeva for he hopped on Steve with lively accusations.
“You’ve fixed things so she’ll hardly talk with me,” Shorty complained. “She laughs at everything I say.”
“She brought you down here alive, didn’t she?” said Steve. “You’ve got nothing to complain about. Did you see that row of ice domes along the valley trail?”
“From a distance,” said Shorty.
“I got to see inside some of them,” said Steve. “Men were frozen to death in those traps five years ago. I saw some of the remains. It’s enough to make a fellow watch his step.”
I heard Shorty gasp. “Who—who were they?”
“Memb
ers of Lord Lorruth’s expedition-men that got too fresh and made a play for Veeva.”
“Gee-gosh!” Shorty groaned, and he expressed my sentiments precisely. “I better be careful how I talk.”
“Any guy who feels like getting too friendly with the queen of these parts had better go out and take a look at those scattered skeletons.”
I called Steve back to get the matter straight.
“It’s murder,” I said. “I won’t believe it of her. After all, what man can look at her without falling in love? Is it any crime if a fellow’s heart turns a flip-flop?”
“You’d better tie a rock to that heart of yours,” said Steve. “But maybe you’re right about her. These ice traps aren’t straight murder. Anyhow she claims they just happen. When men start yelling at her, she can’t help it if a dome of ice forms to hold ‘em off.”
“She can’t?” I was highly dubious on this point, in spite of my anxiety to clear her character.
“But if those instantaneous igloos didn’t happen,” Steve went on, “she admits she’d have a lot more trouble keeping out of men’s clutches. She’s such a friendly thing, I figure this is nature’s way of protecting her from the wrong men.”
“I notice she hasn’t flopped the ice over you,” I observed, as the warmth of jealously rushed to my head. “I suppose you’re immune. She doesn’t even keep you locked up.”
“I’m out on good behavior,” Steve smiled. “That’s what Lord Lorruth did for me. He warned me that if I attended strictly to business and didn’t get any silly notions that the queen was interested in me—”
“Who warned, you?” I gulped. “Lord Lorruth. Here he comes now.
Strictly a gentleman, that’s his rule. I’ll introduce you.”
A tall, bewhiskered, fur-clad gentleman was approaching. From his appearance, he might have been one of the natives. But his greetings were delivered with a mellow English accent.
“It is very kind of your gentlemen to make this trip in my interest.” He bowed graciously, casting his earnest gray eyes around the alcove. He had evidently stationed himself where Shorty and the professor could also see him. “I hope it will not inconvenience any of you if you are never allowed to return.”
His manner was annoyingly mild and pleasant. It seemed to me that he might as easily have said, “We’ll take pleasure in burning you at the stake. I hope you’ll be happy about it.”
Steve hastily supplemented this ominous remark.
“Lord Lorruth doesn’t mean that just the way it sounds. He only means that now that we’re all in his confidence, we couldn’t be allowed to go back and tell his secrets.”
“That’s right,” the tall elderly man smiled. “For my own part, staying right here is quite the easiest way.”
I couldn’t swallow all this without considerable gulping. Lord Lorruth wasn’t old. His shaggy whiskers and eyebrows were only slightly gray. Once out of this lost world, I thought, he would have thirty years of pleasant living before him.
“These friends of mine can be trusted,” Steve was saying to Lord Lorruth. “And as soon as they settle down and prove they’re not vicious agents of the enemy, Veeva will have them released from their cells.”
“But they will still remain down in this world,” Lord Lorruth added confidently.
“Of course—unless these people change their mind about the enemy.”
“What’s all this enemy talk?” I heard Professor Peterson demanding in an irate tone.
“It’s a notion of theirs about an army of invaders,” said Steve. “All five of us are a part of that army. As near as I can make out, they think there’s a whole avalanche of warriors up on top waiting for a chance to crash the gates.”
“Absurd!” I said. “No army would ever come up to this waste land.”
“But these people never lack for evidence that their enemy is real,” Lord Lorruth asserted. “The fact is, there have been many parties of visitors recently. To be sure, most of them, like twelve of my men, have been turned to ice before they ever start down the steps.”
The professor was disturbed by this talk of other visitors recently. He wanted to know what Lorruth meant by “recently.”
“In the last seven or eight centuries,” said Lord Lorruth casually. “Recently enough to give the queen a smattering of modern languages—Latin, Scandinavian and English. Come along, Steve, if you want to help me with that packing.”
“Then you’ve come to a decision,” said Steve mysteriously. “All right, let’s get busy.”
CHAPTER XVIII
Firemakers’ Fears
“Packing! Packing! Packing! I snorted angrily. “What the devil did Lord Lorruth mean by that?”
“You explain it;” said Shorty apathetically. “I’m busy pining over a lost love. But don’t tell her for gosh sakes, or she’ll put me in cold storage.”
“Do you know what I think?” I raved on. “I think Lord Lorruth and Steve are going to get a nice sweet tiger ride right back to the Aurora and leave us here stranded.”
“You ought to know Steve better than that,” the professor snapped, making me half ashamed.
But I was in a cell and Steve was out, and I was more than a little jealous and wrought up. I argued that his talk about liking to stay here was only so much cake frosting to make us content with our fate.
Shorty decided the whole underground population was crazy. But Professor Peterson declared we were both being very absurd.
He reminded us that these people were working with fine teamwork. There were no idlers—not even among the high and mighty Firemakers. There was a systematic division of labor. The artisans were highly skilled as evidenced by their careful gardening, their highly artistic metal works, and their immense engineering achievements—huge triangular doorways, roof supports, and ice dams.
The Firemakers paid us a visit. There were five of them. They were among the oldest of the men. All of them had strong fierce faces, coarse beards, deep-set eyes, powerful muscles. They would talk in low guttural voices as they discussed our fate.
One of them looked through the stone apertures at me.
“We know your new code. We can talk it as well as you. We have had it for two hundred darknesses.”
By this I understood him to mean years. Their seasons came and went with the arctic days and nights. I discussed this code with him.
I tried to tell him he was only speaking my native tongue, the only one I had ever known. He considered my explanation subterfuge. He called the other four Firemakers over and repeated my excuse to them.
“But it’s true,” I declared. “I’ve come here with no knowledge of any enemy that might seek to harm you.”
“That is exactly what I expected. An enemy,” said the tallest of the Firemakers. “Don’t strain yourselves in protesting your innocence.”
Then I lost my temper. “I don’t mind being insulted,” I said. “But this is too much. I challenge you to prove that any man of us intends any harm. You don’t believe me! All right. Go back and capture some of the others. Bring them here. Question them. They’ll all tell you the same as I. We came here searching one lost fur trader and his party.”
The Firemakers exchanged doubting glances.
“How soon,” I demanded, “are you going to let me out of here?”
“Let you out? That is a simple request.”
One of the Firemakers gestured to a group of small boys and together they tackled the huge slab of stone. Slowly it rolled to one side.
“Now,” said the Firemaker, “you are out. What do you want to do about it?”
“I want to go home,” I said, “and I can whip any man that tries to stand in my way.”
“You’re a very rough fellow,” said the Firemaker. “We don’t like to waste our hands on the grim business of fighting. But if you want to fight, take your anger out on these boys.”
The group of lads, ranging from eight to twelve years of age, turned on me with their fierce little eyes and began doubli
ng their fists.
“No,” I protested. “Not these little fellows. But I’ll take on the biggest of you.”
The tallest of the Firemakers snapped his fingers and the seven or eight boys flew into me. I had a fight on my hands whether I liked it or not. I tried to wave them away. They tackled me around my ankles, flung themselves at my neck. They were all over me like a pack of wolves. I got a tight grip on the huskiest lad and began hurling him about, trying to knock off the others. But the lad was too strong.
They tightened their grips on my arms and legs and flung their weight at me until I was swerved off balance. I went down under the dog-pile and they began pummeling me.
Even when I had a chance to strike a solid blow I couldn’t do it. Not against these boys. This may have been the reason the tallest Firemaker suddenly called them off.
“I believe you now. You want to fight a man. That proves that you are no coward. But it proves too that our enemies are highly dangerous, if you are a fair example.”
“Show me the way out of here,” I demanded. “I’m leaving at once. Turn my pals loose—”
“Not so fast,” said the Firemaker.
“If we let you go back, all our enemies will know that we know their new language. This is our protection. We will not give away this secret, so we will not let you go back.”
Then I saw the face of Professor Peterson gazing at me from his cell. He was shaking his head, warning me to quiet down. I walked back into my cell.
“All right,” I said. “Roll the stone back in place.”
The Firemaker laughed. “Very wise of you, my enemy. We will release you in due time, if your behavior is good.”
Two meals, a period of sleep, a few hours of silent waiting and wondering-then Veeva!
Veeva gave us the privilege of attending the council of the Firemakers.
The affair began with a feast. Veeva made it a lively, happy occasion, and whenever she laughed the Firemakers would have to laugh too—though some of them did a pretty sorry job of it. The laughter was pretty thin after being strained through their bushy black whiskers.