by Don Wilcox
“Do you remember how long it took your grandfather to build this structure?” one of them asked sharply. “How old were you at the time? Well, why don’t you answer? Has your memory gone dim? I thought your marriage to Zaleena would restore your youth. You seem to have forgotten everything.”
“Leave him alone,” Zaleena said. “Stop persecuting him. Can’t you see he is weary? He needs rest. He has had no rest since the Spirit spoke to us in the ceremony. He has been holding court continuously.”
The committeemen were talking uneasily among themselves. They had not been satisfied with the court and Stupe knew it. Not a single charge had he held out against Hefty and the rest of the party. The investigation had turned into a sort of mind-reading exercise, and while this demonstration had greatly impressed Gypsy Brown and some of the others, it had now begun to boomerang from the hardboiled committeemen. How, they had asked each other, did the Old Man know so much about these foreigners? “The Old Man is behaving strangely,” one of them said aloud. “He has accomplished nothing.”
This, Stupe conceded, was true. He had only ordered Hefty and the others back to their cells to await his further consideration.
The inquisition was growing hot around Stupe now. Somehow he expected one of the committeemen to jump up and yank off his false whiskers at any moment.
Poor Zaleena! She was doing her best to divert them.
“Please go back to your homes. It is almost morning. After the Old Man and I have had our wedding breakfast together we will call for you. Then if you are not pleased with our decisions, let us read more from the ancient book. We may even call our Spirit to come back and speak to us.”
The committeemen rose at her command and started to file out of the throne room. But at that moment a flutter and flurry from the spiral stairs attracted them. They stopped and turned.
It was little Gooyay! He was half flying, half bounding down the steps.
“Gooyay!” The cry came from Gypsy Brown, watching from her cell across the balcony.
The winged urchin must have been flying for all he was worth. His face was flushed, his hair wind-blown.
The child was shouting in his high-pitched voice. Stupe knew, before he could catch the words, that it was a cry of alarm.
“They will kill you!”
The six committeemen shrank back into a frightened huddle. From across the way Gypsy and the Stevens sisters, Hefty, and the others were straining at their bars to see what was happening. They had gone back to their cells willingly after the trial because they had felt a strange confidence in the Old Man. But at the sound of an alarm they were terrorized, realizing their helplessness.
“They will kill you!” The fluttering wingboy screamed again, racing toward Stupe.
From across the balcony the engineers at the wall stopped their machines to take in this weird outburst. From the city eight hundred feet below, hundreds of spectators on the streets stared upward into the light.
It was Stupe, posing as an Old Man, who was most upset by this outburst.
“Who? What?” He almost forgot to use his Old Man’s voice.
“They have guns! They are coming!”
Little Gooyay, flapping his wings madly, tried to push the men out of their lethargy. They were too slow about moving and he wanted them out of the way of the spiral path when some enemy descended.
With the best of intentions the little winged fellow grabbed Stupe by the hair and yanked. It was a mistake. The flowing white locks of the “Old Man” slipped off and fell to the steps.
“Old Man!” one of the committeemen taunted, and acting upon impulse he reached out and grabbed the long white beard. It jerked away from Stupe’s chin, the snowy wisps scattering.
“You! You fake! You’re a foreigner!”
Stupe stood exposed. For one brief instant his practiced mannerisms of old age restrained his muscles. Then he broke out of the role, as suddenly as a dead man jumping out of his coffin. He was Stupe Smith, ready for action, ready with a good pair of youthful fists.
CHAPTER LI
“Fake! Fake!” The committeemen cried. The six of them started for Stupe in a body, their hands reaching like six pairs of claws.
At the same time Gooyay kept shouting.
“They are coming! Hide or they will kill.”
The goddess Zaleena and her good horse Marble Boy were the heroine and hero of that moment, as far as Stupe was concerned. Hoofs clattered around the throne, the stallion’s white head and flowing mane shook with a weird beating motion, faster than the flap of little Gooyay’s wings. The committeemen who failed to dodge were struck down. They rolled in a heap.
At the same time bright-colored dust—the luminous “dream dust” that Stupe had encountered many days ago in the finger prints on his map—shook out of the horse’s mane like flour from a feather duster. The place was at once in a luminous fog.
Stupe could barely see Zaleena reaching her hand out to him. He tried to catch it. She meant for him to mount and ride away with her. He leaped and missed, and fell at the foot of the throne.
As he fell he had a quick vision of death—not his own, but that of Gypsy, the girls, Hefty and the others. If he rode away with Zaleena, what would become of them? It was better that he missed. He scrambled to his feet.
“She’ll desert her people!”
It was a bitter thought for this wild moment. Footsteps were clattering down the spiral stairs. That would be the men with the guns. Gooyay was right, this foggy brilliance would soon be blazing with gunfire. And at such a time Stupe could think only of his loyalty to his friends in their cells—and his strange bitterness toward the goddess he had married.
What had she done to deserve to be a goddess? Even now the hoofs were thundering away from the scene of danger. She would ride off into the sea. No one else could ride under the sea, but she would look out for her own life. Yes, and if she got a chance she would flee this very planet! Why? Why?
Frantically Stupe was groping through the sparkling fog, unaware that he was jerking nervously at the remains of the Old Man’s white beard that stuck to his chin.
Gooyay, continuing his wild alarm, had flown across to Gypsy. Wings! How lucky the little devil was to have wings in time of danger! In Stupe’s spinning thoughts the future of this planet would be in the hands of men endowed with wings.
Zing! Zing! Zing! The bullets were spitting from some unseen gun on the spiral stairs.
The command rang out in a familiar voice.
“Lie down on your backs! Down or we’ll shoot! Down with your hands in the air!”
Captain Meetz! Stupe gulped. So the captain himself had rallied. Dick must have put the story across with him. They had come on this fateful dawn, to take the undersea city by storm.
“Shoot a couple,” came Dick’s low snarl. “That’s the quickest way to establish order. I said shoot-”
Stupe knew, then, that Captain Meetz was taking orders instead of giving them. The gun blazed a path through the fog, and two of the six committeemen spun in their tracks and toppled against the balcony railing.
The four others were racing around the elevated passageway, stumbling, shouting incoherent curses against the “Old Man.” In their terror they might have blamed anyone for this unaccountable attack. To them the wild warning cries of Gooyay and the unmasking of the foreigner, Smith, were all a part of the some incomprehensible pattern.
“Where’s the gal on the horse?” Stupe heard Dick’s shout as the young murderer charged down the steps.
“Where’s the gal? We want the gal!” Dick bent over one of the fallen committeemen and repeated his shrill demand. “We’re takin’ her back with us, see?”
“You can’t kill her!” the dying fellow moaned. “She has a gift that will defy you. . . Eternal youth . . . Eternal—”
Stupe didn’t hear the last of the poor fellow’s speech, for Dick gave the fallen form a thrust with his foot. The fellow slipped through the rail and fell, his moan fading away li
ke a dying siren . . . Eight hundred feet down.
Stupe didn’t know how long he had been using his fists. All he knew was that other men had bounded down the stairs—three earth men that he had never seen before, and that he was battling them, knocking the guns out of their hands, dodging them as they ganged up on him. Twice he retreated all the way around the throne, parrying their blows, knocking them down, watching them leap up again like staggering shadows within a glowing mist.
Zaleena must have ridden past during the thick of the fight. He heard the approach of hoofs, beating like drums. He heard her voice, calling commands to her servants. Then the hoofs were running up the spiral stairs. A cloud of luminous dust thickened the air again.
“Come with us, Smith!” was Zaleena’s call. “Leave them and come! If you love me—”
In the pandemonium Zaleena’s call was lost.
Stupe had run from the flying fists for a brief moment, trying to hear more of Zaleena’s call. His adversaries were left back of the throne, gathering themselves up, catching their breath for a renewed attack. But at that instant a bit of clearing in the fog revealed to Stupe the slightly bent, broad-shouldered figure of Captain Meetz, before him.
“Meetz!” Stupe cried. “You! I wouldn’t have thought this of you!”
Meetz gripped his gun. But instead of pointing it at Stupe he leveled it at some target across the elevated passageway.
“It’s that damned maniac!” Meetz snarled through his teeth. He was looking at Dick Bracket. “He forced us.”
Dick, having pursued the retreating committeemen, was moving toward one of the towers only a few feet from the grayish-brown patched wall. He turned to see the captain’s pistol.
“Don’t! Don’t! It’s me!” he cried. The white of terror showed in his eyes like a flash of white fire. His hands flung upward, his fingers outspread.
The captain shot at him three times. The bullets cut past him and buried themselves in the wall patch.
The captain tried to shoot again. His gun went dead. Dick’s terrorized face turned into a mask of mockery.
“Yah! You would turn on me!”
Dick’s teeth showed with a gleam of savage triumph. He had beat death. He would beat it again. Then—
A knife flew through the air. Stupe saw it coming toward Dick. That was Frenchy’s concealed weapon. It had come from his cell. Frenchy had waited for his chance to turn the trick. A blade through the heart—
But Dick, unaware of this danger, chanced to move back a step, and the flying death missed him.
“Youth eternal!” Stupe gasped under his breath. Had the ancient volume stated that the gift of the goddess would go to another if she were to leave? Had she gone? Did Dick Bracket now bear a charmed life?
Without knowing it, Stupe had placed his quivering hand on Captain Meetz’s shoulder as the two of them stood watching. The captain broke away from him with a startled cry, pointing.
“Hell! The wall!
The whole wide patch suddenly bulged inward like something elastic. From several hundred feet below, one great scream of terror, the composite of thousands of voices, rang through the vast enclosure that protected the city from the sea.
It was like an exploding mountainside. With one gigantic burst, the patched wall leaped inward, high above the city, and the ocean gushed in.
CHAPTER LII
“Where is Hefty?” Stupe Smith kept asking. He was only half conscious. He knew that he had somehow been lifted out of danger. He had come away while the others had been left in peril, trapped. “Where is Hefty? Where is Gypsy Brown?”
“Please be quiet, Stupe,” came that soft, soothing voice. “You must rest.” He was riding. Only the sky was outside his windows. He was riding away from danger, and in his troubled mind the sea was still back there somewhere, flooding in upon the city and upon his friends, trapped.
“Where are we going?” he asked. “Why don’t we go back? Why don’t we help them?”
He was in a space ship and Zaleena-Zaleese-Ocella-Dudu was comforting him. They were on their way back to the earth. There was the lulling hum of the ship’s motors vibrating through his body as if with a healing effect. Bandages weighed upon his left arm and shoulder. The pain was slight. The greater pain was from his burning conscience.
They had fled! Why? Why should a goddess, a smiling goddess with a kindly voice, a lovely, attractive girl with magical laughter—why should such a talented person decide to desert her people in time of danger?
“He is resting now. Please do not talk with him.” The voice of Zaleena was quietly persuasive.
“What makes you think you can tell me what not to do?” Another feminine voice much harsher . . . familiar, too. A voice Stupe hadn’t heard for a long time. A voice that went with red hair and a half forgotten love affair. Yes, that was Mae Krueger, for now she was saying, “I know how to handle Stupe Smith. My husband sent me along to see to it that he got good care.”
“I am giving him good care.”
“My husband wants me to look after a certain business deal,” Mae Krueger said. “Maybe you didn’t know that there’s a fortune involved. I’ve come along to manage it for him.”
“And what right have you?” Zaleena asked quietly.
“He’s an old friend. I used to be in love with him.”
“I am in love with him,” said Zaleena. “And I am married to him. Please leave him to me.”
Stupe tried to shake out of his stupor. He didn’t like the way Mae Krueger laughed at Zaleena’s gentle words. She spoke with an air of superiority. The fortune, she said, was to be given him for delivering a prize. “And you, my dear, are the prize.”
“I—I am the what?”
“You’re the prize he’s taking back to the earth. You and your horse. He’s going to trade you off for a million dollars, sister. Don’t look so shocked. That’s the way big business operates. What do you think he came to see you for in the first place? To make love to you? Oh, no!”
“But he didn’t want to take me back,” Zaleena protested. “No, not once did he ask. I had to take him back . . . You cannot tell me he is untrue . . . I would rather believe him than you . . . Please stop talking to me and go away . . .”
Stupe smiled inwardly and sank into a deep, contented sleep.
CHAPTER LIII
Hefty Winkle watched the sea rush into the vast enclosure. His hands gripped the bars of his cage so tightly he was like something carved of stone-glass. Then he unfroze his fingers to clamp his palms over his ears against the deafening roar.
“Trapped! . . . Trapped! . . . The whole city full of fanatics!”
He hadn’t called them that before. But in a crisis one’s mind will flare out with a passion to damn the guilty parties. Why had these stubborn people clung to their so-called sacred spot right up to the minute of destruction?
If there was a god that was watching over this submerged city, how could this disaster occur?
“Fanatics . . . They’ll all be lost! And we—”
But before Hefty could call curses down upon his own earth party for getting themselves into this tangle he caught sight of the winged boy flying around in dizzy spirals.
“Gooyay! Gooyay!”
No use trying to out shout the roar of the inpouring sea. Little Gooyay would follow his own whims in this mad hour. Hefty saw him sweep down to the balcony to seize the knife that Frenchy had thrown. The whole framework of elevated passageways was vibrating so that the knife, which had barely clung to the edge, now toppled and fell toward the city beneath.
Like a flash Gooyay darted down and caught it out of the air. He brought it back to the cage of Gypsy and the Stevens girls. He began battering at the bars of their cage with it, steel against iron. A futile effort. Hefty wondered if they were screaming. He couldn’t tell. The maddest of howling came from the angry sea, but occasionally he could hear the wails of people below.
Dick had gone down under the first burst of the wall. Hefty had watched him fal
l, and had seen his body sheared in two by the massive falling flakes of stone-glass.
Captain Meetz and Stupe Smith had been caught by the outer edges of the first torrent, and Bull Fiddle had rushed down the spiral steps with gun in hand just in time to be knocked off his feet and hurled across the central balcony. His pistol had bounced along the walk and fallen overboard. Bull, however, had scrambled to his feet, his two hundred and forty pounds defying the dashing water. He had caught Stupe and jerked him to his feet, and then gone on after Captain Meetz. But the torrent gushed forth in new fury and took the two men and a section of the platform down with it.
Stupe had staggered on the ragged edge for a split second, and Hefty saw that the muscles of his arm and shoulder had been ripped open. The flying wall had hashed him. He was tottering.
Zaleena must have ridden in from the outside! Hefty couldn’t be sure. But now, as he tried to reconstruct the dizzy scenes of a few moments before, that was the only way he could picture it.
She had galloped in on the second crest of the gushing waters, her horse had hurdled the rail and landed a fore-hoof on the elevated walk. She had snatched Stupe by the hand just as he was toppling, fainting, falling. The swift pull from her hand caught him up, and the last Hefty saw of him, he had flopped over the rear of the horse like a dead man, his bloody left arm dangling limply in the air.
A profusion of luminous dust had flown from the stallion’s tossing mane. The bright fog boiled like a cloud of microscopic diamonds. Hefty blinked at the sight, and saw and heard the water as it dashed against the sides of that sparkling cloud, and bounced off!
Now, as Hefty looked down upon the flooding city, he saw that it was this broiling, steaming cloud, expanded and puffing fiercely, that combated the torrent of waters. Like a whirlwind of unbreakable metal, it had funneled down to the center of the city to push the waters aside.