The Return of the Nyctalope

by Jean de La Hire

  “Ah!” said Saint-Clair. “We’re free to act.”

  “Yes,” said Gno, “and let’s not neglect anything. Pick up your cord, and I’ll take mine. We’ll coil them around our waists; they might be useful to us.”

  “Of course!” They rapidly did as the Japanese had suggested.

  “And now, without another moment’s delay, we march against Fageat, don’t we, Gno?”

  “Naturally.”

  A word and a gesture from Saint-Clair sufficed for the crowd of Diurnals, silent again, to open up before them. There was no doubt as to the route to follow: along the channel to the bifurcation with the tunnel that had brought them here. The phosphorescent columns provided enough light for Gno Mitang to walk without hesitation beside Saint-Clair—but in the sinuous tunnel, the darkness became opaque, and the Nyctalope grasped his friend’s right hand in his left.

  “We’re alone now,” whispered Saint-Clair. “None of the Diurnals is following us.”

  “Fortunately, you’re as nyctalopic as the Nocturnals!” said Gno Mitang, after a burst of relieved laughter. “On Rhea as on Earth, my dear Leo, you’re the King of the Night.”

  “A fine title, Gno—I accept it.”

  And he too laughed in relief. Henceforth, they were finished with the desperate emotion that had chilled them momentarily when they had first arrived before Fageat without having been able to free their hands.

  Confidently, “on their toes,” as Margot would have put it, they increased their pace, the Japanese having long since become accustomed to adapting himself to the Nyctalope’s stride in spite of darkness and whatever the terrain.

  Here, the ground was flat and smooth, permitting him to walk without apprehension.

  Meanwhile, the situation in the grotto of the amphitheater had been considerably modified.

  After Tugg and the six guards had taken Saint-Clair and Gno Mitang away, Ariste Fageat remained perplexed, sitting on the step beside the recumbent Véronique, still contemplated with an admiring curiosity by the Nocturnals. The first rows of the crowd were being maintained at a respectful distance by Rrou and Ggo, very proud of their role in such extraordinary circumstances.

  Fageat set about reflecting. In accordance with his mania, he embarked on a quiet monologue.

  “I’ve no further need to worry about the Nyctalope and the Japanese. I don’t have to decide right away what to do with them—that will depend on a great many things! First of all, Véronique’s attitude toward me...

  “Yes, but what about me? How shall I conduct myself with regard to Véronique? What shall I tell her when she wakes up? The truth? Get away—that would be idiotic. With all her body and soul she’d have nothing for me but hatred, scorn and repulsion. Certainly, I could use force, if it pleased me and when it pleases me, and impose my will upon her—but then, as the Japanese demon said, she’d kill herself brutally or let herself die, depending on the degree of physical liberty I allowed her. A passive woman, as if dead already…no, that’s not what I dreamed of on Earth, when I thought about Véronique d’Olbans night and day.”

  He interrupted himself, crossed his legs, gazed at the unconscious beauty, and then resumed:

  “I ought to tell her a story, something that will give me, in her eyes, the merits of a savior and a hero, but also, for the sake of plausibility, those of a skillful diplomat, a subtle negotiator, who has been able to tame the Nocturnals, at least to a certain point. Yes, that’s what I need to do. But how? What story can I make up that will be plausible to her and fit in well with out apparent situation in the society of the Nocturnals? I have to find one. I have time to search, to plan, to bring Rrou and Ggo into my plan; they understand me well enough to play the role I give them adequately...

  “Here, though, I’m not at ease. That crowd of Nocturnals… those Diurnals on the steps… I need to be alone, so that Véronique finds herself alone with me when she wakes up. Let’s see—there must be caves in this underground city that are less vast, more intimate. That’s what I need: a retreat that I can hasten to render comfortable, if I dare employ that word, and which I can make, at least temporarily, the private habitation of Mademoiselle Véronique d’Olbans and Monsieur Ariste Fageat. Yes, to bring about that small amelioration of the present situation—and then, I hope my imagination will provide the eventual necessities… let’s go!”

  In a loud voice, he called:

  “Rrou! Ggo!”

  They came to face him, very attentively.

  This time, however, it took him some time to make them understand what he wanted. He strove to find the most expressive gestures, to make them pronounce the words that might translate his thoughts. He went so far as to draw a diagram on the ground with the blade of his hatchet: an approximate plan of the immense cave where they were and corridors to other, hypothetical caves, one of which was much smaller than the rest...

  Finally, the two Nocturnals understood, and they replies did not take long to inform Fageat that his desire was easily realizable.

  “Right away!” he said, to himself—and he put the unconscious Véronique into Ggo’s left hand and right arm while Rrou opened a path through the crowd and set off in the lead.

  It was at that moment that Tugg appeared, followed by six colossi almost as tall as him. Fageat saw them, and was not content.

  “Damn it!” he swore. “Saint-Clair and Mitang have been left without surveillance, without guards! It’s true that the brave Tugg doesn’t know the Nyctalope, though, and that, on the other hand, I’m incapable of making the Nocturnals understand all my ideas. Let’s try.”

  First, he shouted:

  “Rrou! Ggo! Ma!”

  His two valets halted, Ggo laden with Véronique and Rrou frozen in the gesture of parting the crowd. Fageat caught up with Rrou, who was his interpreter in trying to make Tugg understand, firstly, that he must send the six guards to maintain strict and constant surveillance over the two captive adversaries, and secondly, that he, the great Woo Fagg, wanted to be provided with a place of his own, some way away from the large caves where the Nocturnals lived communally.

  Tugg understood right away. He sent the six guards back to the Diurnals’ grotto, with severe and precise instructions, and started walking himself in the direction in which Rrou had opened a path through the crowd. Ggo followed, carrying Véronique, then Fageat, who switched on the veiled electric lamp fixed to his torso. Rrou brought up the rear.

  Almost a quarter of an hour later, having gone through two other large caves and a short tunnel, the little procession arrived in an excavation much smaller than those already familiar to Fageat. The Terrand was surprised to find that this “habitation” was illuminated by a phosphorescent column, and that it included three natural steps, on the third of which four Diurnals were lying on monkey-hide beds.

  In response to Tugg’s gestures and cries the Diurnals stood up, and by the movements they made Fageant understood that they would obey the Nocturnal chief, who was expelling them, sending them elsewhere.

  He had an idea.

  “No” he said, swiftly. “No!”

  He succeeded fairly easily in making it understood that he wanted the Diurnals to stay, that they would be agreeable and useful company for his “wife” when she woke up. That done, he undertook a different mime to communicate that Tugg ought to leave, and that, in case of necessity, Ggo and Rrou would serve as envoys, couriers and agents of liaison.

  Without manifesting the slightest ill-humor, Tugg obeyed, turning his back and disappearing into the darkness of the tunnel.

  “There!” said Fageat. “I’m settled for the moment.”

  He uttered a deep sigh and passed his hand over his forehead, which was streaming with sweat. Suddenly, he felt very tired. His watch aboard the Olb.-I, his feverish activity before is departure with Véronique and the two Nocturnals, the hours of walking to the subterranean passages, and then to the caves, the mental effort of making himself understood, deciding at every moment upon the opportune course of
action, and envisaging the eventually realizable outcomes, would have exhausted the most vigorous and durable of men. And even though he was very lightly dressed he was too warm, and was breathing with difficulty in the relatively impure and heavy atmosphere of the underworld.

  “Come on, come on!” he muttered, chiding himself. “This isn’t the moment to weaken. I have to rest lucidly until Véronique wakes up. Yes, I need to rest, while staying keenly alert. I know so little about the world I’m in, about the Nocturnals, about their possible reactions. Come on, damn it—buck up!”

  And having got a grip on himself, he pronounced a few words that he knew of the Diurnal language, vaguely adequate to the situation.

  Standing on the second step of the cave, the four winged Rheans were frozen with astonishment and incomprehension at the sight of the extraordinary unknown beings who had arrived in their “apartment” with the chief Tugg and two other Nocturnals. Slender in their clinging garments, illuminated by the radiation of the phosphorescent pillar, still motionless, their inexpressive eyes went from Fageat, who was trying to speak to them, to Véronique, still carried by Ggo. Perhaps they understood what was being said to them, but they did not give any sign of it. They seemed utterly bewildered.

  That, at least, was what Fageat thought. “All right!” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “The essential thing is that they stay here, at Véronique’s disposal. She spent more than thirty-six hours with the ones in the city; she’ll know better than me how to make herself understood.”

  He climbed up to the third step, took a few hides from one of the four beds, threw them on to the first step, and then went down to arrange the pelts so as to form, in a corner of the grotto, as far away as possible from the tunnel entrance, a kind of thick and deep divan with a back. He had Véronique deposited on the divan, no longer lying down but in a sitting position, her head supported by a cushion made from several rolled-up hides. He examined the young woman’s face at close range, and, on a whim, touched hr lips with a kiss. She did not quiver; serene and vaguely smiling, she was profoundly asleep, but calmly, with no sign of distress.

  “Be patient! Be patient!” Fageat said to himself, not without a certain nervousness.

  He looked around slowly, in order to acquaint himself more thoroughly with the cave that would be his habitation, and that of Véronique, at least temporarily. Pulling himself together, he sniggered:

  “Our nuptial chamber!”

  The excavation was approximately square. It was primarily due to the unfathomable caprices of nature, and owed relatively little to the industry that the Nocturnals had undertaken in providing the necessities of life for the Diurnals imprisoned there. That “relatively little” consisted, firstly, of the phosphorescent column, made of superimposed fitted blocks of the rapidly-hardening clay, which Fageat knew, thanks to the Diurnals brought to the Olb.-I, to be extracted from inexhaustible quarries and fashioned by hand; secondly, of a sort of trough, also made of phosphorescent clay, containing a fairly large quantity of the shell-less nuts that were the Diurnals’ sole nourishment; and thirdly, the numerous hides of the quadrumane monkeys, piled into four beds on the third step.

  The steps themselves were entirely natural in formation, the first rising scarcely two meters from the inner surface at one extremity of which the access tunnel opened. Each of them had almost the same height, of about a meter, and the same width, of between three and four meters; their length was about twelve meters, which made the interior of the grotto into a visibly angular cube.

  These relative restricted dimensions permitted Fageat to see everything within it, the light of his electric lamp, although attenuated and blue-tinted by the camouflage, carrying at least twelve meters.

  One other, but important, detail was that a hole beside the opening of the tunnel gave passage to a steady flow of water which fell about fifty centimeters into a natural bowl, in a fresh and crystalline stream. The overflow ran down a brief slope terminating in a thin crevice, into which the water disappeared. There too, nothing was due to the labor of Nocturnals or Diurnals; that was obvious. Nature alone had amused herself in creating that spring, a trickle of water doubtless derived from the great subterranean river running in capricious channels from grotto to grotto.

  Finally, two paces to the left of the fountain, a kind of high black niche was hollowed out. Fageat went to explore it. The reflections of the column’s phosphorescence just about reached it. At the back was a hollow in the rocky floor—a basin in which Fageat’s lamp caused running water to gleam. The Terran burst out laughing.

  “A lavatory!” he exclaimed. “Well, when Nature takes the trouble to think about vermin like humans, Rheans, and doubtless inconceivable myriads of millions of other planets, she does things well.”

  He went back to the cave, and drank from the fountain. As he passed by he took a handful of nuts from the trough and started chewing them for a few minutes, standing motionless in front of Véronique.

  Then, in his clarified mind, the idea that had occurred to him when, on entering the cave, he had prevented Tugg from sending away the four Diurnals—the idea that the mere sight of the four Diurnals had inspired in him, at least hypothetically, in principle—began to develop.

  “Very good,” he said. “That’s it! It’s impossible that it won’t pass muster. Everything in the story hangs together. In Véronique’s eyes. I’ll be the hero, the savior, the only hope.”

  Thus spoke Mademoiselle d’Olbans’ abductor, while freeing himself of a considerable part of his equipment, which he went to hide in a corner under some monkey-skins. All he kept about his person were his belt, his holstered revolver, the sheath of his electric torch and the lamp fixed to his torso. Then he consulted his wristwatch. He made a rapid mental calculations and pronounced:

  “Employing our terrestrial vocabulary, adapted to Rhean astronomical conditions, it’s 8:15 p.m. on September 9.”

  It was at that moment that Véronique woke up.

  Two kilometers away, but exactly at the same moment, Saint-Clair, walking with Gno through the darkness of the tunnel leading from the Diurnals’ grotto to the grotto of the amphitheater, saw several Nocturnals rounding a bed 50 paces in front of him.

  “Alert!” he whispered to Gno. He pushed him against the wall of the tunnel and flattened himself against it too.

  “It’s our six guards coming back,” he said, in a low voice. They haven’t modified their stride, so they haven’t seen us. Take out your electric torch, my friend, and when I switch mine on, light it. At a stroke you’ll be able to see clearly and we’ll blind the Nocturnals.”

  “Yes,” said Gno. “Let’s hope that this sort of weapon is sufficient. I wouldn’t like to have to make use of my pistol to shoot down any of the troglodytes, who seem to me, fundamentally, to be good enough fellows, but simply passionate music-lovers—lovers, that is, of the Diurnals’ songs...”

  “I agree entirely,” Saint-Clair concluded. Immediately afterwards, he added: “I think that they can see well enough in the dark that they won’t get close to us without seeing us, for we’re only concealed by a slight projection in the rock. Nevertheless, I’ll let them come… if they look straight ahead, they might go past without having seen us, because of the width of the tunnel. They’re well-grouped in the middle...”

  The Nyctalope, leaning forward slightly, could see the six Nocturnals quite clearly. The Japanese could hear the muffled sound of their footsteps.

  They were no more than five or six meters away when ne of them raised his arm, stopped dead and shouted: “Ogr!”

  The two fiends immediately heard a precipitate exchange of hash monosyllable.

  “Gno!” said Saint-Clair, loudly. “They’re coming!”

  He pressed the switch of the powerful electric torch that he was holding in his left hand. Gno did likewise. Two lances of violent light sprang forth, zigzagging for a few seconds, and, well-aimed, struck the faces and eyes of the six huge Nocturnals one after another, and then swe
pt back again.

  What howls of agony! What terrified leaps! With their enormous hands covering their eyes and their whole faces, the six Nocturnals fell down, flattened against the ground, panting and moaning.

  “Poor devils!” said Saint-Clair, pityingly. “Let’s hope that the painful blindness will only be a kind of whiplash, with no other consequence, not an incurable injury.”

  “Yes, and let’s get on,” said Gno, swiftly.

  They stepped over two or three of the recumbent bodies, and, in darkness once again, holding hands, they resumed their march, having decided with a tacit accord only to use the electric torches in case of necessity, in order to make the batteries last as long as possible.

  Without any further incident they arrived at the threshold of the grotto of the amphitheater. The crowd of Nocturnals had their backs to them. The pale radiation of the phosphorescent steps laden with Diurnals did not reach that far. Saint-Clair informed Gno, and, spotting a rocky block once detached from the natural wall, which formed a pedestal, he climbed up on it, and easily hoisted Gno up with both hands.

  From there they could look down on the host of Nocturnals. The rumor of curt conversations rose up from the entire unmoving crowd. Suddenly, however, Saint-Clair said, in a tremulous voice:

  “Gno! Véronique and Fageat are no longer there!”

  “So I see.” The amphitheater was, in fact, near enough for the Japanese to distinguish the details of its luminous steps.

  Immediately, the Nyctalope continued:

  “There’s a stir at the back of the crowd, beyond the amphitheater…someone’s fraying a passage through it. It’s the big Nocturnal, undoubtedly the chief of the population, whom Fageat called Tugg. Can you see him?”

  “Yes.”

  “He’s alone,” said the Nyctalope. “Perhaps he’s coming back from accompanying Fageat to some retreat, to which he’s taken Véronique?”