by Don Wilcox
She handed the professor his spectacles!!
For a moment he stared. She stepped back into the circle. He took two steps toward her. He blustered something in German. Then he shifted to English.
“Vare? Vare? Vare did you get dem? How did you know?”
You never saw a more innocent face in the movies than the countenance of Orchid Wings. She ignored the German’s outbursts. She looked from one side to the other. The wings of one of the torch-bearers touched hers. He hopped a little closer on one talon. The flabby old lady began to stamp. Suddenly the whole circle was in motion again.
The professor stared daggers through his spectacles. Far from showing any signs of appreciating the gift, he burst into one of his expressive rages. He would teach them to steal his glasses. He would make them pay for all this undignified treatment. Just wait till he got back to Germany. He would have an army sweep into this desert and give them their dues.
“Don’t you know ve are conquering der whole vorId? Ve’ll get you, too. Ve’ll blast your vings to dust. Ve’ll scatter you ofer der sand . . . Now, does vun uff you understand me?”
It was an awful situation. The circle kept going faster until the wind beat against our faces from the flutter of feathers.
“What are we gonna do?” Maxie whispered.
“Witness a feast,” I said.
“My stomach won’t stand it,” said Maxie. “What did he mean about getting back to Germany? Does he know the way out of this hole?”
“There’s a chance,” I said. “Get your gun ready. If that Nazi comes close enough for me to grab him we’ll call off this feast.”
“Ye gods, what’s four bullets against eight pairs of wings? They’ll make desert hash of us. How can we—”
“I’ll tell you how—and they’ll never see us,” I said.
We crept back into the deep darkness and I told him. He made ready with the pistol. I returned to the rock barrier at the front of our little alcove that was like a closed gate between us and this pow-wow chamber.
The torch-bearers had tossed their torches to the floor so as not to be impeded as the circle gathered speed. The bold black shadows were spinning fast now, crisscrossing in fantastic designs over the ceiling. The German was looking for a way out. I knew by his eye that he was about to make a break for one of these dark corners. The way the torches lay, ours must have looked as promising as any.
Suddenly he began to rush the circle. He ran from one side to another like a trapped beast. There were no locked hands to hold him. These half-human creatures needed their claws to stand on. They simply bumped shoulders to turn him back. And when that didn’t do they would kick out with one claw. He drew back and regarded his trouser leg, torn from the knee down. He rushed again. He retreated to the center of the ring with blood streaming around his ankles.
He reared like a savage bull. Then suddenly shifting his direction he whirled and plunged straight at Orchid Wings. He must have guessed her to be the weakest link in the chain. He socked her on the jaw with a heavy fist. Hell, I thought it would kill her.
She fell back, terribly jolted, and for an instant I was a bit dizzy from the sight of her hair flying. But she didn’t fall. Not her. The German professor was the one who lost his balance. He came plunging through the broken line straight for our black corner.
Crack! A bullet whizzed past my ear. A flake of rock fell from somewhere. Rock and a few feathers.
It was the feathers that turned the trick. They dropped from the tip of an excited torchbearer’s wing.
That did it. Instantly the circling maneuver was done. Seven pairs of wingmen’s eyes turned on the unlucky torchbearer. And what eyes. They went ablaze with the wildest light this side of hell. It was the light of ridicule—mockery—contempt—but I tell you that with these birdmen it was a high passion.
Squawls and screeches rang out instantly. The big luckless torchbearer darted for an upward tunnel. Off he went, like a marked man fleeing from murderous gangsters.
Did the other seven winged folk stop to settle their score with the German professor? Did they stop to figure out whether he was a magician who could snap his fingers and cause missiles to fly through the tips of wings?
They did not. They whirled on their talons and gave chase. All the way up the rocky passage the shrill chorus of their cries echoed.
The torches burned on. I took a deep breath of damp, smoky air. I hadn’t had a chance to fulfill my part of the bargain—to grab the German out of the circle and slap a hand over his mouth. Orchid Wings’ dodge had taken care of silencing him.
Maxie, good scout, had come through with a perfect shot. Now he came up beside me, grinning. We crawled out of our hiding place to have a look at our dazed prisoner.
CHAPTER XI
The Pit of the White Flames
The fallen Nazi was a pretty soggy mess of flesh. I took my time about bathing his torn shins, for he was in the mood for a long sleep. I found a billfold and a few papers in his pockets. I also took his watch and his spectacles for safekeeping. He had no weapons.
Maxie kept an ear toward the upward tunnels meanwhile to make sure we’d have no intruders. The natives had evidently flown. All was quiet—much too quiet. What a good American yoo-hoo from one Lieutenant Wells wouldn’t have done for my spirits.
“Let’s get out of here,” said Maxie.
“Get your gun ready,” I said. “This Nazi elephant is about to wake up.”
The German groaned heavily and his face contorted with pain. His eyes half opened. He blinked at the nearest torch. Then he rubbed his hand over the top of his head, and something about the size of an egg on that baldish spot reminded him of his recent headlong dive into the stone wall.
“Shut up,” I said.
“I neffer said nutting,” he whimpered.
“Don’t.” I said. “Get up. You’re going for a long walk.”
“You got no right to order me—”
“Shut up!” I snapped. “You owe your life to us. We didn’t do it out of kindness. We know you’re an ungrateful beast. But we need you . . . On two feet, there. No false moves. Now walk”
He obeyed. He leaned against the wall heavily, and began groping along like a drunken giant. He was as bulky as Maxie and McCorkle added together, but he showed a healthy respect for us as well as our gun.
“Take this torch,” I said. “Move right up that tunnel. No lagging.” Along the way he whined, “I vas chust trying to vine somevun I knew.”
“I’m that someone,” I said. “We met in an African village.”
“I vas looking,” he said, “vor a vinged man dot talks English.”
“I’m the guy,” I said. “What did you want.”
He returned and gave me a bleary look out of his red eyes. The twist of his brutal face told me that he hadn’t remembered me from our meeting around that freakish chromium gun; it told me that he hated me on sight and that he knew I returned the sentiment in full measure.
“Vare’s your vings?” he growled.
“I lost them riding a jeep through a hailstorm.”
“You’re a man,” he said.
“Both of us,” said Maxie, “and don’t you ever forget it.”
“I vas looking vor—”
“We’ll take you to him,” I said. “He had dark wings—two of them.”
“One on each shoulder,” Maxie chimed in. “Sure we know him.”
“Dark brownish-gray vings,” said the professor.
“That’s right,” I said. “And such a face.”
“How did you know him?” said the professor, actually falling for our gags. “Ven did you talk to him? Vare—”
“I’ll never forget that face,” I said. “Or his voice, either.”
We kept it up until we got all the dope the German would give. It wasn’t much, but it was amazing. Evidently he had been in the midst of certain laboratory studies in Berlin when one of these winged natives walked in on him—a tall, long-haired old fellow with, powerf
ul chest and brownish-gray wings and a deep-throated voice like the low note on the pipe organ.
This apparition had walked in on the professor at midnight and had struck up a limping conversation in elementary English. He had informed the professor that he had been attracted to the laboratory because the knowledge had filtered through to him somehow that this German was delving into a theory that this desert existed. He declared that he had come to give the professor a friendly warning not to try to reach this land.
Maxie and I took this in with open ears. The German didn’t hesitate to reveal his particular shade of honor. He had not heeded the warning. He had come here to prove that the desert was here, and he finally intended to claim it in the name of the Reich, and to send for a Nazi army to back up his claim.
And yet in spite of this bare-faced robbery he meant to use the English-speaking native as a “friend.”
“So he told you the desert was here,” said Maxie, “and so you’ve come to take it away from him. Nice business. But did he tell you where here is?”
“Here?” said the-German. “Don’t you know?”
“Of course,” I said. “But you don’t.” That made hm angry again. “Didn’t I vork oudt der theory myself? Uff course I know. Der desert uff der damned—it’s no-vare dot anyvun knows. It’s uff der earth but not on der earth.”
Of the earth but not on the earth! I looked at Maxie. He gave me a skeptical eyebrow and muttered, “We shoulda brought those other torches. We could use more light.”
After we emerged from the cinnamon roll passages we had plenty of trouble keeping the German out of sight. In spite of his close call down inside the mountain the fool wouldn’t cooperate. A flock of natives were spinning around, keeping up a lot of gruesome excitement of their own—in fact, committing murder.
We caught the import of this a little later. But for several minutes we had our hands full, sneaking this German down the steep mountainside, finally pinning him down, hand and foot, with some sizable rocks. That was no small job. If Wells had been with us he might have invented some kind of rope or cord. We relied on strong-arm methods—rocks and threats and the promise of a drink of water every twelve hours if he’d behave himself.
We managed to block up the stones over his wrists and ankles so he’d be free from their weight—unless he took a notion to struggle, or sneezed—in which case a few hundred pounds could be jolted down kerplunk on some of his favorite bones.
“And remember—if you squeal,” Maxie said, dusting his hands, “you automatically turn into buzzard bait.” We bent the surrounding bushes to camouflage him. Then we hurried around to the other side of Green Tooth to see what that winged fight was all about.
There was a lot going on here that we didn’t understand. These seven natives who had left the caverns to give their companion the royal razzberries had dropped that game in favor of fighting a newcomer.
Strange business. How could you tell whether these creatures were playfull or serious? They could set up marching or flying formations around a human feast—and from our point of view a human feast wasn’t an event to be sneezed at. But they would drop it in a minute to give the razzberry to one of their own. Still, that wasn’t important compared to this.
This consisted of a new native—one I hadn’t seen in the cavern—being chased down and fought by the three husky torchbearers.
Darned if this newcomer hadn’t busted in on the wrong party. Apparently all eight of the Green Tooth cavern gang—Orchid Wings included—were willing to float around and see this intruder clawed to death.
That’s what happened. They stayed with him until they killed him. Finally he lay out there on the bare sand, as dead as a stone.
The eight of them went into a moment’s pow-wow. You could tell they were anxious over what they’d done. They were watching the skies to the south and east to be sure no other flocks were going to get in on this job. They came to a decision and acted on it.
One of the husky torchbearers picked up the dead form and flew northwest—toward a round topped mountain a mile or so away. The seven others followed.
“What’s that place?” Maxie asked.
“Wells and I didn’t get that far,” I said.
“Looks like smoke coming out at the top.”
“Heat waves,” I said. “The air wavers everywhere you look.”
“It wavers more over there,” said Maxie, just to be stubborn.
They flew over and dropped the dead body. If my eyes didn’t play tricks, it fell through the column of heat waves and squarely into the top of the mountain.
“The smokestack swallowed it up,” said Maxie.
I didn’t argue with him. Privately I resolved that I’d hike over and take a look before the next sunrise.
We put in a tough day of searching for Wells, and discovered no traces. At least Orchid Wings hadn’t hidden him on the outside of the mountain.
Nightfall found us hiking over the sand again—a short jaunt northwest, into new territory, up a new rocky grade . . .
Maxie peeked over the edge of the lighted pit. Whatever it was that illuminated his funny face made his eyebrows jump and his mouth fall open.
“Fire, McCorkle,” he gasped. “I told you I saw smoke. Come on up and see.”
I puffed and panted up the last few yards. The disk of dull amber light widened. It was a startling thing to look upon in the midst of a desert of blackness. A well of dimly lighted rock walls—a straight, deep shaft.
How deep? I crawled up to the edge on my hands and knees. Then, like Maxie, I became half-hypnotized by the weird sight.
Fire, Maxie had called it. That was my first impression as I looked straight down. A heap of white coals—almost pure white waves of heat flowing over them—silver and platinum and white gold all melting together in one beautiful liquid fire.
“She’s burning up,” Maxie hummed. “She’s burning up—hair and all. And damned if she isn’t smiling about it.”
I didn’t get it. I was trying to guess how many yards it was to those liquid coals. Only thirty or forty—and the pit was scarcely twelve yards across. It was strange that the heat didn’t whip up against our faces. Those white and platinum waves—more liquid than flame—seemed to rise half way to the top of the shaft. And when you began to study their form—
“She’s burning up—and smiling,” Maxie repeated.
When you began to study their form, you saw her—and she was a thing of fire. White fire. Fire like a thousand flowing flames of white silk ribbons. And her wings, thousands of little creeping flames of silver.
I looked at Maxie, and she was in his eyes, a beautiful winged goddess of flame, and she was tilting her head upward, smiling a most mysterious smile.
CHAPTER XII
The Whisper of Flames
I caught Maxie just in time. The poor sap was almost over the edge. I grabbed him by the ankles and pulled him back. He turned and gave me an unkind look.
“What’s the idea?”
“I wouldn’t be diving in there if I was you,” I said.
“I wasn’t aimin’ to,” said Maxie in an injured tone. “I was just reaching down to—er—”
“To what?”
“Well, she was lifting her hand up to me. When a gorgeous girl offers to hold my hand, how can I say no?”
“Don’t be silly,” I said. “She’s fifty feet down.”
“She was floating up, I thought,” Maxie said uncertainly. He looked down again. “Hell, I don’t even see her. There, you’ve gone and spoiled everything. We’ve made her sore.” As I gazed down, my dazzled eyes went through the same strange experience for a second time. After I got used to that mysterious white and silver haze, there she was as plain as day.
She shifted her wings a little, looked up with a plaintive expression, as if appealing to us. She stroked her hair lightly. A stream of it fell across the full curve of her breasts of white fire. She was rising toward us.
She extended an arm upward. The palm of
her hand invited me to reach down and touch her white fingers. The temptation of that moment was unlike anything I had ever known. Every nerve in my body urged me to obey her wish.
Thank goodness, Maxie had regained his senses by this time. He snapped an ugly remark just in time to stop me. Something like, “Don’t be a sap, you sap.”
He grabbed me by a wrist and hurled me backward.
“You don’t have to be so rough about it,” I said.
“I just got it doped out,” said Maxie, his eyes burning bright. “What do you think happened to that dead winged man?”
“It went down in this pit, I suppose. Hell, I’d forgot—”
“And then what happened?”
“I don’t know. Maybe she eats things like that. But the way she reached up to us I don’t figure she was exactly hungry. What do you think?”
“The only way to tell,” said Maxie, “is to try.”
“Where’ll we find the raw material?”
“Sand rats,” said Maxie. “We can chase down a few at the foot of the hill and toss them in.”
An hour later we returned through the darkness and executed this very experiment. Two of the rats we threw in were still alive and kicking. One was dead. The results were all the same. The little animals burned to nothing as they jell. The white flames consumed them. Little wisps of yellow smoke came up through the shaft and faded into the air. That was all.
“There, Maxie, but for the grace of God go you and I,” I said as the smoke disappeared.
“There, by the grace of Orchid Wings, probably went Gene Wells.”
“I wonder.” It was all I could say. “The fellows aren’t gonna like it,” said Maxie. “They’re gonna think things. They’re gonna say—”
“H-s-sh. What did I hear?”
It might have been a sputter of flames, but it had the sound of a whisper welling up out of the pit.
On our hands and knees, as before, we peered in. Her lips were moving. She was whispering with the breath of fire.