by Harl Vincent
“What was that?” the Martian husked.
“What was what?”
“Blue light—moving. There, again.”
And then Jack saw it too. An eerie blue glow moving between the rows of coffins several aisles from them, bobbing rhythmically up and down, as if carried by a creature that walked. Fleetingly, it came to Donley that its movements coincided with the lub-dub of the pulse.
But he shook off the thought—there was enough without that.
“Who’s there?” he called out.
There was no reply but the light, whatever it was, . flicked off. Donley was sure he could see a shadowy form slithering away from where the light had been. He bent forward to see better in the gloom and his hand brushed the face of a corpse that was not a corpse but felt like one. He shuddered involuntarily at the contact, the face being cold and clammy, yes colder than was Mera’s skin to the touch. Must be the time element, he thought. He then peered closely into the face and was rewarded by seeing in calm repose the features of a most beautiful girl, a blonde child of perhaps eight years. If ages ran the same here as on earth. He shuddered anew at the thought that—but, she would not die. None of them would. This phase was a bad dream. Destruction of all of these and of themselves? Nuts!
Jal Tarjen, a few feet away, called out in a Martian dialect that was unintelligible to Jack.
There was a quick reply in the same tongue and a twisted, wrinkled ancient from the Martian drylands hobbled, slowly and painfully, to get on his knees before Jal Tarjen. He looked up into the faces of the two men, seeming to approve of what he saw. Then he spoke rapidly in the outlandish tongue for several minutes, addressing himself to Tarjen. His watery old eyes blinked in their crinkled setting as he finished and he rose creakingly to his feet.
Amazement was written large on Jal Tarjen’s face as he turned to Donley. “Man says he sent by queen from other realm to bring us there. This place deeper down and many vanirs to west but he guides us to the one who want to see us. Says this unknown to Apdar, another race once enemies. East against them and they against east long time back. She know about us, about Apdar, about living death. But say no effect of pulsation in her domain. This hard to believe, Donley.”
Understanding not a word, the distorted old dry-lander looked into Donley’s eyes as if to confirm what he had told Jal. And the American could not but believe that what he saw in the lined and weathered old face and faded eyes was complete honesty.
“Must be so,” said Donley. “Anyway, what can we lose? Let’s go.”
Tarjen translated rapidly to his gnomish compatriot and the little drylander shuffled swiftly off down the aisle, looking back to see if they were following. They were. And it was amazing the speed with which the ancient could step along. His blue light was again on and it cast weird flickering shadows of the numberless sarcophagi on walls and ceiling. Donley was not sorry to be leaving.
At length they came to a gravity lift shaft, the door to which was cleverly concealed in the frescoes of an ornamental or ceremonial niche of the metal wall at the far end of the chamber. They were dropped for what seemed an endless distance into the bowels of the planet, then came out in a tunnel where a monorail car awaited them. A ten-seater.
Cocking his head to one side and closing his eyes to concentrate, Donley could discern no hint of the stellar beat in his consciousness.
The car whisked them off into the blackness of the tunnel with effortless acceleration. Whatever its motive power might be, it was as silent as it was mighty, for their backs pressed into the seats as in the blastoff of an ethership.
CHAPTER NINE
As the tunnel car sped through the smooth-walled tube at a velocity he judged to be just under that of sound, Donley turned over in his mind some of the implications of what he had just heard. East against West. West against East. Two ideologies, two ways of life, two groups of nations or of States, with suspicions and enmities mounting to unreasonable proportions over a period of time. Until the inevitable happened. Whether one was the aggressor group and the other defensive made little difference in the parallel to what had been going on for a century or more on his own world. Each side had built up a huge arsenal of nuclear devices here in Ormin and eventually, whether by accident or design, had triggered off the exchange of searing blasts which had devastated the planet and destroyed its civilizations. That each side had been able to burrow in with a few survivors and develop a new civilization of its own was something to contemplate.
Jal Tarjen and the drylander had been conversing for what seemed like an interminable time in that guttural dialect, the drylander’s weird blue light making gargoyles of their faces and casting grotesque shadows of them on the swiftly receding tunnel walls. Eventually the big Martian began translating to Donley.
“We arrive quite soon,” he said. “This place about five hundred and fifty of your miles from the place we left. Just west of terminator on bright side of Ormin. Six vanirs—ten of your miles deep. People come from old enemies of eastern territorials so still keep location secret. Their ruler a woman. Name of Daila. She have mind power that learn much in recent time. Know about living-dead and why. But cause of same does not reach her or her people. She learn of us and send man for us so we can talk.”
“Man? You mean the little old guy, of course. How did he get to the place? I don’t get it.”
“Came from Saturnia. Daila also have airlock to surface. They go out, rocket to wreck after Apdar’s rescue, find him left behind. Sick. So they bring back and heal. But—”
The speedy tunnel car was slowing down so they must be nearing the end of the ride. By Donley’s wrist chronometer they had been less than an hour on the way! Earth time. They came into a lighted stretch of the tube and finally to a platform where the car came smoothly to rest. A group of humans, whose uniform attire gave them the appearance of police officers or guards of some sort, awaited them.
Which is exactly what they were, and a fine looking lot. About half were male and the other half female. Bright-faced, smiling, everyone of them. And with the erect postures of soldiery. But with no arms of any kind, not even the billies carried by the police of Risapar, planet Mars.
One who seemed to be their leader stepped out of line and the word “Welcome” came from his smiling countenance. But there was no movement of his lips. This was thought communication. “Will you come with us please? We go to Daila.”
There was a feeling of near reverence in the thought-word “Daila.”
Standing before her, a little later, Donley could well understand that note of reverence. For here was a woman so unusual, so enchanting, and yet so obviously consecrated to an ideal or ideals and to the welfare of her people as to stand out as beyond compare. Her features were chiseled and serene, her color creamy with just the proper blending of rose in cheeks and lips. Her smile was contagious, her manner imperious yet humble. The crown of taffy blonde hair that waved about her smooth brow completed the impression of saintliness that surrounded her like an aura. Yet her body, as revealed by the closely fitting garment she wore, was flawlessly perfect in form, and enticing. She sat slightly forward in the plainly decorated seat that was on a small platform a foot higher than the main floor of her audience room. Her lips moved excitingly to form words in her own tongue, accompanied by thought images understandable to both Donley and the Martian as a fervent welcome. Daila was a telepathist, they were to learn, as were all of her subjects to lesser degree.
She dismissed the guards and the grinning drylander, thanking them all for what they had done. “Be seated, friends,” she conveyed to her two visitors, indicating a cushioned divan that faced her only a few feet away.
Donley and the Martian sank into the cushions, both enslaved. Donley thought grimly how right Tar-jen had been when he told him he needed Mera “too much.” He wondered if this vision should be addressed as “majesty.”
Reading the thought, she smiled: “I am Daila and no more. Think of me, speak of me in that term.” T
hen she came to the point. “I sent for you because I seek your help in what is about to transpire. I’ll explain as well as I can. We here are about four thousand in number, selectively bred in the line descending from the small group of escapees from the great war of annihilation, escapees from the powerful western alliance. Your vessel of space was brought down near a similar refuge, that of those descended from our ancient enemy, the equally powerful eastern territorial alliance. We here have long since forgotten all past hatreds and bitterness but are not sure the same can be said of the easterners. Especially since all of them but Apdar now lie in suspended animation.”
“You—you know all about that?” gasped Donley. “How?”
Daila smiled her enchanting smile. “Just say for the moment that I’m clairvoyant, though that is not the correct designation for the gift that is mine. Suffice it to say that we know all about what has been determined by Apdar, and now your own scientist—by purely material technology. We know of the pulsation Apdar claimed was of his making, of the anticipated destruction of our planet Ormin by collision with another body from out of space. But our picture of that event does not admit of despair, only of faith in survival, and in a new life that is not yet clearly envisioned. One doubt that does remain is that there may still be the easterners to reckon with. We do not want nor are we prepared for another period of warfare. And that is where you two come in; we have great hopes that you may act as mediators or at least learn for our information what the likelihood is of our peaceful existence in the same environment as the easterners.
Jal Tarjen exclaimed delightedly. Donley’s heart leaped with renewal of his own flagging hopes. “You really think we’ll come through this collision in space?” he asked.
“So far as I can now determine, I do. But more of this later. I had almost forgotten an event of interest to you. There was a small ship of space, an auxiliary of your larger vessel, that landed devoid of fuel, in the ravine where our airlock above is hidden. We took in the three men who were aboard but now have them under restraint. They shot and killed one of my subjects who was assisting in their rescue. This is another of my reasons for bringing you here.”
“It’s very important,” Donley averred, “to us and to you. And to World Space Authority, I’m sure. May we see the prisoners?”
“Certainly. I had hoped you would wish to do so.”
She touched a flush wall plate and immediately there entered a small detachment of three guards. “They will conduct you,” she advised, “and return you here for the remainder of our talk.”
They were taken out onto a balcony which looked over a deep well that was girded by tier after tier of similar balconies, teaming with life in some cases. From down there came the throb of machinery and a transparent-walled lift cage rose up from the depths to their level. One of the guards indicated that they would use this and the five stepped inside. The lift was, by intent it appeared, slow in descent, so that they were able to look into some of the workings of Daila’s inner realm.
There were a number of the balconies from which corridors led off into what were obviously living quarters similar to those beneath the dome of Apdar. Another balcony opened into wide spaces of park-like appearance where growing things bloomed in profusion, floral and vegetable, in regular arrangement and with men and women working in several areas. A light rain of water was misting over one side, artificial sunlight bathed the other. Here was utility and beauty combined.
Another level opened out from a balcony, revealing vistas of manufacturing machines. Textiles, art materials, hard goods of all kinds, electronic equipment, minor repair work, all could be made here either on a quantity production or small job manufacturing basis.
Still another balcony opened into recreation areas, where games of various sorts seemed to be in progress. If time had only permitted, this would have been meat for Donley. As it was, it brought back memories of the Interplan contests he had competed in, not too many years back.
Near the lowest level of all were the utilities, nuclear power generators, oxygen equipment, refrigeration, humidity control, huge blowers and their plenums from which ductwork branched off in all directions to carry the manufactured atmosphere. This miscellany of rotating machinery gave fourth a variation of not unmusical tones, with heterodyne beats between frequencies that differed from one another.
The lift stopped and they stepped onto a moving way to a pokey such as he had once visited in a lunar prison. The three were in separate cells, Captain Stark pacing the narrow confines of his, the other two sitting on their cots, sullen and defiant. The Martian recognized these two at once.
“Why,” he exclaimed, “these men are from the Phobos. Plenty bad! Plenty bad!”
One of them spat at him through the bars. Donley stopped at Captain Stark’s cell and was greeted with a torrent of words. The captain swore the other two had forced him with a gun at his back to take them away in the escape ship, that he had knocked out the steward to save his life as the stowaways had planned to kill him as they had the two crew members they were then impersonating. He said he jettisoned most of the auxiliary’s fuel, and asked for a chance to tell his story to Randall and the mate, assuming that both had survived the crash of the Meteoric, which he had witnessed from afar.
“They did; we all survived,” Donley told the quaking, mustache-chewing prisoner. “But how come these crooks stowed away on the Meteoric in the first place? Just to escape the law on Terra?”
“That, and to make a getaway with some contraband they carried on board. In a steel box, whatever it is.”
“Ya-ah!” croaked the beetle-browed thug in the next cell. “You’ll never know what it is. And you’re in this a& deep as we are, you rat!”
Amazingly, the captain held his temper. Instead of raging at the man, he continued his pleading with Donley to intervene for him. Inclined to believe his story, Donley promised he would do what he could, but explained the situation that would probably make his intercession too late, with so short a time remaining until the predicted collision.
The captain paled at the news but threw back his shoulders. “If that happens we’ll all go together—and never know what hit us. But I’d like them to know anyway—before—”
“I can do that much at least,” Donley promised. “Tell them.”
“Thanks. And I had nothing to do with the killing here, either. That louse in the second cell did it.”
“Rat!” came from that quarter. “Anyway—prove it!”
Donley glanced at his timepiece. “We’ll have to hurry back, Captain. Time’s getting short.” He just barely touched his chin.
Stark, clung to his bars as they left and Donley didn’t want to look back. There was too much of the whipped dog in the once self-sufficient and arrogant ship’s master.
“Well?” Dalia’s thought questioned them when they had returned.
“Bad, bad men—the two,” Tarjen ejaculated, then bent his massive head toward Donley to indicate him as spokesman.
“The other,” he told Daila, “was captain of the Meteoric. And I believe his story that he was forced to take the smugglers in the small rocket job. But they all spoke of a metal box—”
“We have it,” Daila smiled, “and have not opened it. Would you like to see its contents?”
“Not now. Nor do we want any of the prisoners—yet. I grant you have first claim on them here. One of your own was killed, besides which time is short and the future too uncertain—as far as I’m concerned.” Donley wished fervently he could feel more of Daila’s trust. “I would discuss it with Apdar and our scientist anyway before acting.”
“This I approve. Even if you must wait until after the collision.”
Jack stared. She had expressed knowledge of this before, of the anticipated collision. But here was assurance that she definitely felt they would all be here after the fact.
“How can you be so sure we’ll live through it?” he inquired, hoping from her reply to regain some of his own previous
assurance, especially with respect to Mera.
Daila’s countenance shone with a look of dedication. “We have clung to the beliefs of our ancestors and these included the premise of the ultimate triumph of good and the doctrine of faith in the future rather than in ultimate doom. Much of it is legendary, but our forefathers we know were far happier in their beliefs than the easterners had been in their political ideologies and devotion to the material sciences as above all other ologies in importance. Actually, we have developed sciences such as cosmology and ontology to a degree now approaching perfection. This is in contrast to the entirely material technology of Adpar—and I take it of most of your own people. To begin with, our concept of the universe is that it was created by a master mind or intelligence and is still controlled by this power. We think of the cosmos as a colossal organism with life and percipience like a human being. With comparable voluntary and involuntary functions. Just as the natural functioning of human body mechanisms produces antibodies to combat disease germs, or healing fluids that are sent to the site of an injury such as lymph for the coagulation of blood, we believe that this sentient cosmos is now in the process of healing the sore spot in its midst that was Ormin—”
Donley stared, interrupting her thought train. “You sure you’ve not been probing Doctor Randall’s mind?” he asked.
“Doctor Randall, your scientific man? No, not more than superficially to learn his main interests. Why?”
“Randall has expressed beliefs very similar to those you just now expounded. With the exception of the very last thought, the healing of a lost planet. It’s astonishing.”
“Not to me. He is apparently a deep thinker in addition to being a student of the material sciences and an agent of your space authority. Naturally, a man like this would gravitate to what we know is Truth. He simply could not, in the end, deny the existence of a Plan and that an infinite intelligence is behind it all.”