by Don Wilcox
“If there was a god watching over this city—”
Hefty’s low muttered cynicism broke off abruptly. The waves were being pushed aside by the stubborn, powerful cloud as it flattened over the wide floor in an immense protective disc. Like liquid in a whirling bucket, the roaring flood spun high against the walls. The people raced to the center of the plaza, great huddles of them, momentarily safe in the center of the vast whirlpool. There must have been a god watching over this city . . .
But the waters were still pouring in, and they were rising against the walls, higher and higher. They roared and shrieked with strange thunder as they carried the patches of wall debris. “Eggs” were spinning around, more slowly than the stones with rough edges; some were occupied, for their doors were sealed closed, others were drinking in water noisily. They had been built for this hour of crisis and they were proving their worth. Even when they struck some of the six towers in their rounds, they danced off unharmed.
Higher and higher . . . The water was rising, and the eight members of the earth party were trapped. They had been forgotten by the goddess of this realm, Hefty thought, as he shook the bars. She had ridden away. And Stupe, who never would have deserted, had been carried away.
“He was carried away by her,” Hefty said to himself, and the double meaning of his words revealed the thought he had tried to deny.
CHAPTER LIV
J.J. Wellington was perspiring and his lawyers were looking worried. The federal investigators had cut short his ocean cruise to come aboard and question him. Their accusations were too hot for comfort.
“Speak up, Mr. Wellington. Did you have to send a whole arsenal along with your two expeditions?”
“It’s a dangerous country,” Wellington retorted. “The Ambassador will back me up on that.”
Ambassador Jewell made no response. He had already spoken his piece. He had come all the way back from Venus to start this fire under Wellington. Here on the deck of Wellington’s ocean-going yacht the story was being pieced together.
“I have already described the work of my scouts in their midget planes,” Jewell said, when Wellington tried to twist the earlier testimony to his own advantage. “They found that your second expedition did all it could toward establishing military outposts at strategic points. This is already a matter of court record.”
Wellington winced. The cameraman caught his changing expressions. From the deck rail three of the London scientists watched unhappily. They had invited themselves aboard, just as the yacht left the harbor an hour before. They had come in the company of Mr. Vest, hoping to learn more of the mysterious natural phenomena of Venus. They were about to be disappointed, they thought. All that was coming was a political squabble.
But Wellington’s eyes suddenly lighted with hope. A cutter, which had sped out of New York harbor a few minutes before, was coming alongside. From its deck Mae Krueger waved at him.
“You, Mr. Wellington! I’ve brought you a little prize!”
The cutter tied to the yacht’s side and Mae Krueger crossed over. She turned back to the three figures who had accompanied her: Zaleena-Zaleese, Marble Boy, and Stupe Smith.
“Won’t you come too, my dears? Or are you going to be stubborn? Come on over, like nice children. Mr. Wellington is all ready to make out a check, aren’t you Mr. Wellington?”
Stupe felt the hot anger course through his neck and forehead. “You brought us here under false pretenses, Mae Krueger!”
His muscles stiffened. His left arm, still lightly bandaged, throbbed with pain. He saw that Zaleena was watching with great curiosity. She had heard about Wellington and his million-dollar offer. Now she was seeing him, and she must have known that she was about to be delivered to him.
She and Stupe nodded their recognition to Ambassador Jewell. They wondered whether the investigation was going the right way for him.
“You came just in time,” Wellington said to the red-haired Mrs. Krueger, crossing to her and taking her hand. Stupe saw the sly wink that he gave her. “Just in time to give me the proof I need to convince these stupid gentlemen!”
Zaleena whispered to Stupe, asking him what was going to happen. The white stallion poked his head down between them as if to get in on the answers, his eyes wide, his ears on the alert. Stupe replied that he would have no part of this deal. Yes, it was true that he had gone to Venus originally to find the goddess and to bring her back to Wellington.
“But that was before I knew you, my dear,” he whispered, reassuring her. “As soon as I saw you—well, you know what happened.”
“You fell in love with me?”
“Yes. And then I knew I could never betray you.” Stupe’s hand tightened upon hers. “One can’t betray those he loves, can he?”
“No. No, never! . . . Why are you staring at me so?”
Her amazing innocence! There it was again. Stupe couldn’t understand it. He loved her so, and yet every time he remembered her swift betrayal of her people at the bottom of the sea, his whole being was flooded with bitterness. He was afraid of that bitterness, afraid it would grow on him so that someday he would turn upon her with dangerous hatred.
The men on the yacht were calling to her now, ordering her to prove her unusual talent for riding down into the sea. And she wasn’t hearing them. She was staring at Stupe, looking through his very soul, trying to read some awful secret there.
“You distrust me, don’t you!” she said. “You are accusing me of deserting my people—”
“They’re calling you,” said Stupe, motioning to the adjoining deck.
“Yes, you distrust me . . . Don’t you?”
“Dudu!” Stupe said fiercely. “Listen to them. They’re demanding that you give them a demonstration.”
“Stupe, do you?”
“Do you hear them, Dudu?”
“Don’t call me Dudu! You don’t mean it. You don’t understand me. You don’t know the secrets of the book. You haven’t learned. And you don’t trust!”
“They’re asking for a demonstration—you and Marble Boy.”
“I can’t give it! I can’t!” Then Zaleena-Zaleese-Ocella-Dudu changed her tone. Her words were soft and low and tragic. “All right, Stupe. I’ll go down into the sea. For you.”
Marble Boy knelt for her, she mounted, and they plunged over the rail into the ocean.
CHAPTER LV
“They’re sinking!”
It was the mysterious little Mr. Vest who cried the alarm.
Stupe’s nerves went taut. What was the matter? Marble Boy was floundering. He acted as if he couldn’t swim!
“They’ll drown!” Mr. Vest shouted. “Something’s wrong!” Wellington began to curse. This demonstration was to have been his trump card. It would prove that his expeditions had gone to Venus for this girl and her horse, and for no other purpose. This was to be his moment of triumph! And now the very Mr. Vest who had sworn that this was the girl had suddenly gone into a panic.
Marble boy couldn’t swim! He was going down! Zaleena-Zaleese was going down with him!
“Why doesn’t she swim?” someone cried. “She isn’t even trying!”
The London scientists stared, shaking their wise heads gravely. This was a hoax. The federal investigators scowled, mentally sealing Wellington’s doom. Vest and Ambassador Jewell and the cameramen were too confused to do anything. But their eyes applauded Stupe Smith as he plunged over the rail, one bandaged arm tight against his side.
It was a shot for the movie cameras that would long be remembered by the newsreel audiences—the expression of pain and bafflement in Stupe’s face giving way to the cold steel of determination. For minutes, it seemed, the figures were out of sight. Stupe had dived deep into the blackness that had swallowed Zaleena and the stallion.
“Two minutes!” Someone was counting the time. “-and ten seconds . . . Two-twenty. . . Two-forty . . . Three minutes . . .”
The waters were roiling underneath. Stupe was coming up, fighting the waters with hi
s good arm and two good legs, clinging to Zaleena’s hair with his bandaged hand . . .
Air! They reached the surface. Stupe took in a breath. The girl sputtered and choked. When they got her up on the deck she clung to the floor, her head in her arms, sobbing, “Marble Boy! . . . Marble Boy! . . .”
Marble boy, Stupe knew, had raced down into the sea for the last time. His proud head and flowing mane, his gleaming white body and thumping hoofs, his godlike grace and strength would never be seen again. He had served his goddess to the last, and in his effort to help her end her own life, he had expended his last breath.
“Marble Boy!” Zaleena wept . . .
Many hours later the girl talked of herself—as a goddess and as a person—and the group of people on Wellington’s yacht listened to her every word. It was twilight. The sea was calm, a silvery calm.
“I am no longer a goddess,” she said simply. “When I left Venus I tossed my jeweled harpoon to—to someone else. If the Spirit approves my choice, that person will receive my gift of Youth Eternal—a gift that I no longer desire. You see, I chose to renounce my deity.”
“Why?” someone asked.
“For many reasons, perhaps. But it is enough that I fell in love and wanted to marry. As my husband advances in years, I wish to keep pace with him.”
Stupe tightened his arm around her waist. What a mysterious person. In some ways he didn’t understand her at all. But this he understood. She wanted to be just a human being because she loved him so.
“At once, after relinquishing my deity,” she went on, “I was given to the mistakes of humans. I will have to learn patience anew. It was weak of me, and terribly rash, to leap overboard with Marble Boy . . .” She brushed her eyes with a handkerchief. “I was too suddenly shattered, believing someone did not trust me. Surely I was wrong.”
“It wasn’t distrust,” Stupe said. “It’s simply that I don’t understand.”
“I know. You can’t understand. Not until you’ve read more in the book. Not until you’ve gone back to Venus to see . . .”
CHAPTER LVI
The radio news that reached the space ship as it was racing into the skies had little to do with the mysteries of Venus and the gifts of deities. Regarding such puzzles the matter-of-fact newscasters were hopelessly baffled. But more earthly affairs, such as business deals involving the well-known financier, Mr. Wellington, made headline news.
Mr. Vest and the London Scientists, according to the broadcast, had scored an important victory over Mr. Wellington. They had made a philanthropist of him! He had donated several hundred thousand dollars to the London Scientists to carry on scientific research in the little known lands of Venus.
Ambassador Jewell chuckled as he heard the news, and Stupe knew that this was the Ambassador’s victory too. The great financier had barely squirmed out of an embarrassing run-in with the federal government; he would do well to play angel with his dollars from now on. “Listen, Stupe. You’ve made headlines, too,” said the Ambassador.
Stupe saw Zaleena’s knowing smile as the radio announcement came through.
“. . . an important government assignment has been given to ‘Stupendous Smith,’ the explorer, who is now on his way back to Venus. He will assist Ambassador Jewell in the development of Venus lands. As roving Ambassador, he will help keep peace among the various native groups on this planet. His wife, by the way, is a native of Venus . . .”
Stupe tapped his head to be sure he was awake. Was he hearing straight?
“It’s official,” said Ambassador Jewell, “if you’ll accept the appointment.”
“I—I think I’ll accept.” Stupe, hesitating, looked from Jewell to Zaleena. “Still—I wonder—”
“He is wondering,” said Zaleena, “whether he can make peace with the world of people he left under the sea.”
“Yes, that’s it. If there are any survivors, they’re sure to remember my hoax, playing that I was the Old Man—”
“Shall we not worry,” said Zaleena, until we see whether there are any survivors?”
When the space ship reached Venus it radioed its report to the capital and proceeded immediately to the Southeast Ocean.
“Something has changed!” Stupe kept saying. “The land is different!”
Air-crusing slowly over the Thirteen Fingers, Stupe began to realize what had happened. Those several mountainous projections that had extended into the sea were no longer surrounded by water. They were surrounded by wide acres of muddy beaches. The sea had apparently receded!
“The coastline has risen, Stupe . . . Do you remember the words of the book? Do you recall the voice of the Spirit at the time of our marriage ceremony?”
“The Spirit told us,” said Stupe, somewhat dazed, “that the city was weighed down. Wasn’t that it?”
“It was weighed down with the weight of its deities. With fewer deities to bear down upon its people, it would be lifted.”
That is what has happened, Stupe. The whole shoreline has risen.
“Is it possible? I wonder how many feet it’s risen.”
“More than ten,” said Zaleena, smiling wistfully. “Maybe sixty-thousand or some big number like that.”
The concentric rings of light-yellow and orange and red—which had once shown through the surface of the waters were no longer submerged. As the space ship floated through the air above the Tenth Finger, Stupe saw that the whole city had risen.
“The salad bowl!” Stupe exclaimed. “The whole darned upside-down salad bowl is standing up on dry land. Well, of all the miracles! Do you suppose there’s anything left of the city inside?”
Zaleena smiled and said, “Stupe, tell me, what is a salad bowl?”
“It’s a bowl they put salad in.”
“Oh. But what is salad?”
Stupe laughed. “Well, it’s—it’s a lot of stuff they throw together to eat. Like if you’d mix up some of that red gelatin from snails, and toss in some cookie-grass, and add a little—”
He had started to say mayonnaise, but the word horse-radish had come to his lips, and he had suddenly stopped speaking. It was good for Zaleena to be playful. He must never say anything to bring up that painful memory . . .
The concentric circles of light glowed through the massive stone-glass bowl that stood solid upon the muddy, sea-washed land. One break could be seen in the south side of the wall, where the remains of the old patch were being removed by workmen, the sunlight streaming in upon them and their scaffolds.
On the top of the structure the small plastic platform stood like a roof garden, overlooking the land and sea. The platform was occupied by a number of very busy persons, including eight members of the earth party.
The ship moored to the platform and Stupe, Zaleena, and the Ambassador stepped forth.
“Vat’s dis?” cried a familiar voice. “Der no-good pennies iss returning! And bless dem, dot’s good!”
Gypsy Brown! Hefty! The three Stevens girls! And in addition, a small hospital-full of recuperating persons from the flooded city. Dr. Jabetta had taken charge in the very first moments that first aid could be given. With the assistance of Jake Fiddle and Frenchy and the others, he was making hospital history for the afflicted natives.
“Welcome to our open-air living quarters,” Hefty said. He and Stupe shook hands three times before they could be sure it was real.
Several hours later Stupe learned all of the picturesque details. As Hefty explained, “We were drowning for hours, mentally, as that water whirled up along the walls, higher and higher. We busted our hands trying to fight out of our bars, and darn you, Stupe, I couldn’t forget that you had been the Old Man who had chucked us back in these coops. I still think I ought to bust you in the nose, but I reckon I’ll have to wait till your arm gets well.”
“All I could do,” said Gypsy, “vas close my eyes and dream I vould svallow der vlood as fast as it came.”
“Then what happened? Did this Spiritcloud push the water away from you, too?”
“And you were still in your cells?”
“Naw, that clever little winged boy kept flying back with one weapon after another until he came through with some crowbars that pried us loose. Right away the doc began dispensing first aid, and we helped him, and the city took us to their bosoms.”
Most of the ten thousand persons hadn’t been touched, miraculously. They had found it hard to believe that the flood was receding and the waters draining off through the mine tunnels. But after several days they discovered that they had been lifted.
“And then,” said Stupe, “did they remember the words of the Spirit?”
“You should have heard them,” said Hefty.
One of the Stevens girls chimed in excitedly. “You never heard a group of people change their tune so quick. They knew, then, why Zaleena had taken flight. They were being unweighted, so to speak. She had forsaken her own advantages, you see, because she knew.”
“Thank you,” said Zaleena softly, as she came up to the group. “Now that you have said these kind words, I think that my good husband understands.”
Stupe took her in his arms and kissed her with all the fullness of his understanding love. “We’re going to understand everything from now on,” he said, “now that we’re no longer deities.” Then, “By the way, which one of these folks caught the jeweled harpoon that you tossed away, Dudu? Who received your gift of Youth Eternal, that is, if the Spirit approves your choice?”
Zaleena smiled. “I gave it to a youth. When he grows up he will still remain youthful through his years.”
“Will he weigh upon the city and cause it to sink again?”
“I think not, because he has wings.”
“Gooyay!” Stupe exclaimed.
“Yes. As a deity he will do much to bring peace to the various people of this land. His father is one of the rising wingman leaders.”