by Don Wilcox
“No signs of Stupe?” Thelma Stevens asked.
“None.” Hefty’s voice was so hoarse he could hardly speak.
“Poor man, you’ve been shouting your lungs out all day long.”
“Vat you need,” said Gypsy, “is a vew good Sviss yodelers.”
They tried to cheer him up with conversation, but he was too weary to respond.
“Chust leaf him alone,” Gypsy said, “He needs some rest.”
While the others prepared for their night’s lodging in the hillside caves, Hefty looked out over the sloping valley to the calm sea. Tomorrow, he thought, he would fly out over the waters on the chance that he might find—what? An inhabited island? Another continent? Some low atoll that could not be seen from the mountain tops? It was not like Stupe to disappear without leaving a trail. Not unless he had been urged on by some promising pursuit.
The sky darkened. Hefty’s eyes drifted along the crest of the mountains, watching for any signs of winged men. Soon, he knew, their dark forms would be floating overhead. They would, no doubt, flock around the plane, attempting to enter it. But the Stevens girls had checked everything.
Suddenly, Hefty’s attention was attracted by the splash of waters about two hundred yards to the south. In the twilight he could not be sure what had made the noise. A dark object seemed to be plunging up out of the sea. It was coming fast. It struck the bank with a gallop of hoofs.
“The girl on the horse!” Hefty exclaimed automatically. That apparition which Mr. Vest had once described so vividly leaped into his mind. In his tired state he could hardly trust his own senses, but the reality was there—the pounding of hoofs—the running object growing whiter as it approached—powerful white stallion bearing a lone rider.
Before Hefty could break out of his momentary paralysis, the girl was riding past him. She carried a harpoon in her right hand which she waved against the sky. Something was attached to the harpoon—a small fish perhaps. At the moment that was the least of his interests. A cool breeze whipped his face. A flutter of the girl’s robe sounded upon his ears like the terrifying beat of an invader’s wings, but this girl was not a winged creature. She was simply the most dazzling phantom of a magic night that Hefty could possibly imagine.
“What’s going on out there?” came the shout of Dr. Jabetta from one of the caves,
Hefty couldn’t answer. He was speechless. The passing sight absorbed him so completely that he was frozen to the spot. He saw the horse swing about and come galloping back. The harpoon was waving like a fan, and Hefty shrank, believing that the girl was about to hurl it at him. As the hoofs thundered toward him, they slowed a trifle. The girl was calling something to him. She shook the harpoon in such a way that the object it held fell free. It floated to the ground.
It was a letter—and Hefty was no longer a statue. He was scrambling over the ground to recover it before the other members of the party emerged from the caves. As they appeared, bobbing out two and three at a time, calling all manner of frightened questions, Hefty waved them away with noncommittal answers.
“Wingmen?”
“Must have been,” Hefty replied, trying to appear unruffled. “They went so fast I couldn’t see them. Must have been a whole flock of ‘em.”
He had hidden the letter inside his shirt.
“You’d better get inside where it’s safe.”
“Reckon I’d better,” Hefty agreed. He started in and fainted dead away.
“What’s the matter with him?” Dr. Jabetta said. “Get back, folks, and give him air. Let’s open his collar—”
When Hefty came to his senses, he saw a mystified group around him, demanding to know where he had gotten this.
“What is it?” he asked blankly.
“It’s a letter to you. It’s from Stupe Smith.”
CHAPTER XXXIV
By starlight the flock of wingmen alighted at the edge of the bluff somewhere above the South East Ocean. Gunawoo gathered the group around him and launched into an oration. He knew that many of his companions were near exhaustion after the long flight. It gave him a sense of power to be ready with a speech that would set the next course of action.
“Breathe deeply, my men. Relax your wings. We will not undertake an attack until nearly dawn. You will find food in abundance at the upper edges of the next line of mountains. Feed lightly and then sleep. I shall awaken you in time.”
Gunawoo took a few scouts with him and proceeded to the Thirteenth Finger. They flew low so that they would not be seen against the sky.
One of them called, “There is the sky machine. See it? Toward the sea—”
Gunawoo led the party in a wide circle to the East of the dark object on the beach. Within a hundred yards of it they fluttered down and proceeded on foot. No word was spoken. They advanced with every expectation that they would meet a guard.
“Wait,” Gunawoo whispered. “There should be two sky ships, not one. We do not know whether this is the one we followed.”
“I will remember the design on the wings,” one of the scouts said.
They moved closer and the scout took a separate course. If Gunawoo could draw the guard away the scout would have a chance to examine the design.
“Get down,” Gunawoo commanded in a whisper. His three companions followed his actions. As they crouched against the sand, Gunawoo began to scrape his hands over the surface. He found some stones and began to beat them together, lightly at first, then louder. Then he stopped and listened.
From out of the darkness came the voice of an Earth Man.
“Who’s there?”
A flashlight went on. It began to sweep the ground a little distance before them.
“Lie low,” Gunawoo whispered. They remained in a huddle, their faces against the sand. The light was approaching them slowly.
“Who’s there?”
They waited until the approaching guard came within thirty feet then Gunawoo gave the signal and they leaped up simultaneously. As was their custom, they flew outward in all directions. The light staged a series of zigzag streaks that caught their wing tips. The guard was running back toward his plane. Perhaps he sensed that this was a ruse.
“This way!” Gunawoo shouted.
A few moments later the other scout rejoined them and his report was satisfactory. This was the plane in which little Gooyay had been kidnapped. Gunawoo was elated. Now he could boast he had been certain, all along, that this was the plane they had pursued. They would set their plans for the last hour of night.
One of the scouts suggested that little Gooyay might be expecting winged visitors at this very moment.
“If we would fly along the line of caves, flapping our wings, he might come out.”
“I am making the plans,” said Gunawoo. “To rescue Gooyay is one thing, to capture some magical supplies is quite another. We need the first glimpse of morning light.”
An hour before dawn Dr. Jabetta was doing sentinel duty. He was armed with a pistol and a flashlight and as he trudged back and forth past the entrances to the caves he wondered whether the night would pass without trouble. Each time he walked toward a certain tooth-shaped rock he tried to visualize his actions in case a wingman should spring up from behind it. Would he shoot first and ask questions afterward? Would he follow the wishes of the American Ambassador and try to talk his way to peace?
The black sky was softening with a first hint of morning gray. Dr. Jabetta scanned every dim line along the hills. His vigil would soon be over. Then he could sleep the forenoon away, he hoped.
A slight flutter sounded from somewhere up the mountainside. He stopped, listened.
From inside one of the caves he heard the faint whimper of little Gooyay, stirring in his sleep. Gypsy Brown had tied a cord to the little fellow’s ankle so he wouldn’t slip away in the night—not without a warning jerk on the cord, the other end of which was tied to her own ankle.
The whimper quieted. Gooyay had probably gone back to sleep. He had not been frightened
by the strange company. The bond of affection which had so quickly sprung up between him and Gypsy Brown was remarkable.
Soft footfalls were audible from another direction. Jabetta turned slowly, angering. No wingmen could be seen, yet he felt that they might be all around him, closing in for the kill.
“I should warn the party,” he said to himself. He had a vision of Gypsy Brown and the Stevens sisters being massacred in their sleep. “It would be a crime, they say, to take a shot at those wings.”
Mumbling to himself, he carefully slipped his pistol into his pocket and drew forth something else—a tiny object smaller than his little finger.
Rustle . . . Rustle . . . The unseen wingmen were close around him in the thinning darkness. They would hear his voice if he called. He walked toward the tooth-shaped rock.
“Hello . . . Hello . . .”
His voice sounded hollow.
“Hello, wingmen!”
No answer.
“I have a gift for the leader of your band. Do you hear me? Is the leader of your band a coward?”
Before the graying tooth of stone Dr. Jabetta repeated his challenge. Between his slow spoken words he could hear guarded whispers.
“If the leader of your band will step forth and shake hands with me I will give him a gift. But let me warn him—if he is a coward, he will not dare to shake hands with me. He will not dare—”
A squawking, metallic voice called out an answer. It came from behind the very tooth-shaped rock. Dr. Jabetta had guessed right. The leader had chosen that advanced position.
“You would dare to shake my hand?” came the voice. Gunawoo, the black-winged leader stepped out of hiding. He pranced forth like a conqueror, and though the doctor knew nothing of his name or identity, he guessed from the wingman’s actions, that a host of wingmen must be watching him.
Gunawoo leaped to the top of the rock, gave a quick proud flutter and an arrogant squawk.
“We’ll see who is the coward.”
He leaped down and took three steps toward his challenger.
Doctor Jabetta extended his right hand. Between his fingers the hypodermic needle was ready.
They shook hands. The big black winged fellow gave a little gasp of pain and surprise.
Dawn’s soft light must have revealed that weird meeting to countless pairs of curious eyes. The faint whispers could be heard from many directions. The aks of surprise!
Gunawoo towered tall. His wings jerked outward, twitched strangely, then dropped. Gunawoo was staggering—stumbling—falling!
Crunch! One of his handsome wings folded under him as he went down. He rolled onto it, half a turn, and then lay still in death.
Dr. Jabetta stood poised like a statue, right hand extended.
“Hello . . . Hello,” he called. “Is there a leader of the wingmen who will step forth and shake hands with me?”
The whispers had ceased.
Dr. Jabetta did not repeat the challenge. He simply stood, waiting. His throat had tightened. He was afraid that his voice would crack if he indulged in one more thunderous shout. The fact was, Dr. Jabetta, was scared.
But temporarily, at least, he had won his battle. Now the barely audible shuffling of footsteps assured him that the enemy was returning. They would move back into the hills quietly. He had won a delaying action.
A few minutes later Gypsy Brown confronted him at one of the cave entrances.
“Vonderful! Vonderful!”
“Did you hear?”
“Effryting!” She shook her head as if trying to shake out of her dizziness. “Ven he came out to shake hands I vas so scared I almost died. But he beat me to it. Iss he dead?”
“He acts like it.”
“Ooh,” said Gypsy, “could I haf a veather vor a souvenir? Vat you tink made him die so quick?”
“I wouldn’t know,” said the doctor.
CHAPTER XXXV
Down in the world which Stupendous Smith had called an inverted salad bowl under the sea, the stone-glass wall was leaking. Here was news. Every resident of the submarine city was concerned by this most unusual happening.
The cause of the leak was well known. A “foreigner” had invaded the premises, had resisted seizure, had climbed out of reach of the guards, and had thrown an explosive stick at them. The stick had bounced against the glass wall and caused a dreadful flash of fire.
At the time the black blotch which the explosion had left on the wall had not been considered a threat to the safety of the people. Most of the talk had concerned the stupidity of the guards. How could they have been so careless as to let a marauder slip through their fingers? They should be investigated. Political appointees, no doubt.
But within a few hours someone roused out of his night’s sleep, awakened by the steady swish of water flowing down the surface of the wall. It was a flat stream, less than two feet wide, and slow. Just enough to be audible. They reported their find to the Egg Inspector.
Let it be said that the Inspector, for all his years of preparing the city for danger, was no alarmist. A lesser man might have pulled the signal cord that would have set off the wild clanging of six alarm bells, one in each of the supporting towers. The Inspector, being fonder of a full night’s sleep than an hour of official glory, listened to the report of particulars and nodded.
“It is not serious,” he said. “Go back to bed.”
Then he turned over and went to sleep.
True, the leak did not appear serious to any of the officials when they examined it the following day. If it had not been for the smoky blotch reminiscent of the flash of fire, the citizens might have taken the event to be nothing.
But the water kept coming.
Stupendous Smith wondered what Zaleena-Zaleese-Ocella-Dudu would say when she returned. She had ridden away through the sea soon after the recent violence.
Stupe was again pressed into service as an assistant to the Inspector. He stood by while the engineers dragged the end of the giant caterpillar-shaped hose from a nearby tower to the point of the leak. The Old Man was called over from his balcony throne to oversee the operations.
“Start the patch at the underside,” the Old Man advised, “and build it wide and thick.”
Out of the hose a stream of stone-glass poured forth in molten form, pressed out by the force of live steam.
Stupe thought of a gigantic garden hose spouting a spray of glue.
The soft spot, small enough that it might have been plugged by a book, was surrounded by ten foot streaks from the explosion. When the stone-glass workers finished their patch, the whole’ blotched area was covered.
“There,” said the Old Man. “You’ll have no more trouble,”
“A good job,” said the Inspector. Then he chuckled, “When we have flood drill this season the people will remember this little incident. They’ll think it’s the real thing.”
A few hours later someone reported that the wall was leaking again—a very fine stream. The Inspector laughed and said not to worry, it was only the moisture draining down from the new patch.
Stupe continued to make the rounds of the Eggs with the Inspector, and it proved to be an interesting job. The housewives would come out of their shell-like houses to exchange all their latest gossip. The Inspector was an artist at carrying gossip. He could add to or subtract from any story just enough to tantalize his listeners, who would presently be seen trailing across to some neighbor’s house to compare notes. He could shift his allegiance as readily as a chameleon changes its colors. Each of the six points of the star-shaped city was a separate neighborhood, and each prided itself on being more aristocratic than the others. The Inspector nourished these petty prides by weighing his daily supply of news.
“He’s a regular village newspaper,” thought Stupe. “No, a metropolitan newspaper with a different edition for each section of the city.”
The invasion of the “foreigner” had become such all-absorbing news that Stupe was kept on needles and pins. Sooner or later some
one was going to discover that he too was a foreigner, in spite of his native clothes and make-up. However, as long as he did the work and the Inspector did the talking, everything went well.
Stupe experienced a chilling fear when their rounds brought them back to that section of vertical wall directly beneath the new patch.
“It’s still leaking,” said the resident of that area. “You ought to do something, Inspector. Your patch is no good.”
The Inspector shuddered throughout his tremendous bulk, so that the medals on his chest tinkled. His eyebrows went up and down and up again. He saw that the water was sliding down in a smooth three foot sheet, almost silently. At the foot of the wall it had formed a muddy pool that was spreading into the man’s garden and running off along the edge of the sidewalk.
The Inspector turned to Stupe and said, “Come on.”
“Another patch?” said Stupe.
“What do you mean, another patch. That first patch was no patch. What that wall needs is a real patch. Come on.”
That evening, after another fray with the caterpillar-shaped hose, Stupe returned to his room at the palace of Zaleena. He was weary and his hands were blistered and reeking with the smell of stone-glass. In his soiled costume he was a sorry sight to come before the most attractive girl he had ever seen.
“Zaleena has asked you to come into her study,” one of the servants told him.
Soft purple lights splashed upward along the curved walls of the room. He seemed to be walking through the mist of a dream. One corner was brilliantly lighted, however, by a deep amber glow above the circular silver desk. The light was like a canopy over the desk, a series of illuminated concentric circles. The effect like something magic. The Goddess sat at the desk reading a book. Her dark hair was highlighted with amber fire. Purple shadows played at her fingertips. It was like a scene from a child’s fairy story, Stupe thought—a fairy princess in a jeweled gown, reading some ancient pages that had been inscribed by the hand of some unknown mystic.
Stupe hesitated.
“Are you afraid of me?” the girl asked, looking up.