The Radio Planet

by Ralph Milne Farley

  All this was as clear as mud to Myles Cabot. He could not make head nor tail out of it. Boomalayla appeared to be talking in riddles, or allegories.

  Nevertheless, Myles determined to try and make a beginning somewhere in order to understand what this mass of verbiage was all about, so he wrote, “How can you tell? Surely you cannot see souls!”

  “Surely we can,” the reptile king replied; “for souls are creatures just as real as we are, and have an independent existence from the day they hatch until they are inserted in the brain of somebody. From the way you talk, I cannot believe that you have any soul.”

  “Of course I have,” Myles remonstrated.

  “Prove it to me,” Boomalayla demanded. “Let me see the back of your head.”

  Myles complied.

  “No,” the winged king continued, “you have no soul. There is no scar.”

  This conversation was irritating in the extreme. It led nowhere. Quivven and Doggo read all the correspondence, and were equally perplexed.

  The huge pterosaur continued writing. “I can see that you do not believe me,” he wrote.

  “This is not to be wondered at, since you yourself are soulless. Though I cannot understand how a beast like you, without a soul, can be as intelligent as you seem to be. Come to our temple, and I will show you souls.”

  So saying, Boomalayla, accompanied by Queekle Mukki, the serpent, led Cabot and his two companions out of the buildings and through the streets of the city to another edifice, which they entered.

  What a travesty on the lost religion of Cupia!

  Within the temple there moved about a score or more of assorted beasts—pterodactyls, reptiles, huge insects, furry creatures, and so forth—bearing absolutely no resemblance to each other except the fact that each and every one of them wore a long robe emblazoned with a crimson triangle and swastika, emblem of the true religion of Poros.

  Among them was one enormous slate-colored pterosaur, almost the exact counterpart of Boomalayla, the king, who introduced this beast to his guests by means of the following note: “This is the chief priest of the true religion. She is my mate. But come, let me show you some souls.”

  The chief priest then led the party into an adjoining room, the walls of which were lined with tiny cages, most of which contained pairs of moths.

  The dragon king explained as follows: “When a Whoo-mang dies, his body is brought to the temple and is watched day and night by a priest, net in hand, to catch the soul when it emerges.”

  What it had to do with souls Cabot couldn’t see for the life of him. Neither could Quivven nor Doggo.

  Having made a complete tour of inspection the party then returned to the palace, where they discussed the glories of Vairkingi and Cupia with the king and Queekle Mukki, and then dined on cereal cakes and a flesh resembling fish.

  “Be not afraid to eat this,” Boomalayla urged. “It is fresh flesh. We breed these water reptiles especially for food.”

  After the meal the three travelers were assigned rooms in the palace.

  At Cabot’s request, tapestries were brought from the plane, and the party severally retired for the night.

  The next morning they were up early, and assembled in Cabot’s room. The night had proved uneventful, but Doggo wrote in great excitement that he had talked with the green guards, who had refused to disclose the whereabouts of the plane, and had said that this was the king’s order.

  Immediately after breakfast, which consisted of cakes and sweetened water, they requested an audience with the king—and, when it was granted, demanded news of the plane. But Boomalayla waved them off with an evasive answer.

  “Tarry but a day or so,” he wrote, “and then your wings shall be returned to you, and you shall be permitted to depart. I promise it, on the word of honor of a king.”

  So there was nothing but to wait, for it would not do to antagonize this powerful beast, and thus perhaps lose forever the chance to return which he had promised them.

  The day was spent in a personally-conducted tour of the city, with Boomalayla as a most courteous and attentive guide and host. The Whoomangs appeared to be a highly cultivated race, if you can call them a “race”—a “congeries” would perhaps be the most accurate term. Objects of all the arts abounded, and the tour would have been most pleasurable if the three travelers had not been so anxious to be on their way once more to Cupia.

  The night was spent as before, uneventfully, but the next day Doggo was missing. In reply to all inquiries, the Whoomangs returned evasive answers.

  “He is gone on business of his own,” was all they would say.

  This day Queekle Mukki, the serpent, was their host and guide. He used every effort to outdo Boomalayla in courtesy, but his two guests were strangely uneasy. Some impending calamity seemed to hang over them.

  Late that evening, when they were in their quarters, Doggo rushed in bristling with excitement. He had something to tell them, and wanted to tell it quickly, but had mislaid his pad and stylus. Strange to relate, Cabot could not find his own writing materials either. Quivven finally found her stylus but no pad.

  Seizing the lead-tipped stick, Doggo scratched on the pavement of the room, “Quick, give me paper! Quick! Your lives depend upon it! Quick, before it is too late!”

  Cabot rushed into the hall and clicked twice with his tongue against the roof of his mouth, but nothing happened. Again and again he repeated the call, until finally one of the little winged messengers flitted into sight. To him the earthman indicated his wants by going through the motions of writing with the index finger of his right hand upon the palm of his left. The little creature flitted away, and after what seemed an interminable wait returned with pad and stylus.

  Myles snatched them and rushed back to Doggo. “What is the matter?” he wrote.

  But Doggo replied, “Nothing. It was just a joke, to frighten you. We are all perfectly safe here, and Boomalayla has a wonderful plan to facilitate our departure three days from now.”

  It was not like Doggo, or any other member of the serious minded race of ant-men, to play a practical joke like this. Myles could swear that his friend had been genuinely agitated a few moments ago. What could have happened in the meantime to change him?

  The earth-man looked at the Formian steadily through narrowed lids. His friend appeared to act strangely. Could this, in truth, be Doggo?

  If they had been on any other continent Myles would have sworn that some other ant-man, closely resembling his friend, was attempting an impersonation, but that could not be the case here, for Doggo was certainly the only Formian on this continent.

  It was Doggo’s body, all right, yet it did not act or look like Doggo.

  Even Quivven noticed that something was wrong. Nervously she said good night, and Cabot followed shortly after. Instead of retiring he went to Quivven’s room, where the two puzzled together for some time, trying to guess what had come over their friend. What at last they parted for the night the mystery was no nearer solution than before. In fact, they had practically made up their minds that no mystery existed, after all; and that the strange, surroundings, and strange events, and strange talk of souls, had merely cast an aura of strangeness, even over their friend.

  The next morning Doggo was on hand bright and early, but this time it was Quivven who was missing.

  “My turn next,” thought Myles, “and then perhaps I shall find out what it is all about.”

  As before, the Whoomangs were evasive as to the whereabouts of the golden one, and even Doggo was singularly unresponsive and devoid of ideas on the subject.

  This day the she-dragon high-priestess was their guide, but although she outdid both Boomalayla and Queekle Mukki, Cabot fretted, and worried, and merely put on an external show of interest.

  Late that afternoon—the fourth of their stay among the Whoomangs—as soon as the tour was over, Cabot left Doggo and withdrew to his own room.

  Where was Quivven all this time, he wondered.

 
His question was answered by the Golden Flame herself bursting into the room full of excitement.

  “Thank the Builder I can talk to you with my mouth, and do not have to wait for pencil and paper,” she exclaimed. “The Whoomangs overlooked our powers of vocal speech when they hid our writing materials as before.”

  It was true; their pads and styluses had miraculously disappeared again.

  “Where have you been?” Cabot asked, somewhat testily. “I suppose that in a few moments you will say that all your excitement has been a mere practical joke on me, the same as Doggo’s was.”

  “Yes,” she replied seriously. “I shall—undoubtedly. And therefore listen while there is yet time—while I am still Quivven.”

  “What do you mean?” Myles exclaimed, staring at her.

  “This,” she said. “In a few moments I shall be Whoomang.”

  He started to interrupt, but she stopped him with a peremptory gesture, and continued: “Know, then, the secret of all this talk of souls. The grubs which they breed from their moths are strong personalities, potential devils, needing only a highly-developed body in order to become devils incarnate. Namllup, whoever he was, discovered this, ages ago.

  “By a simple operation, the Whoomangs can insert one of these larvae at the base of a creature’s brain, where in a few hours the personality of the larva overcomes the proper personality of the creature, and henceforth rules the creature until the creature dies. The larva then flutters free, a moth, to propagate other devil-souls for this nefarious usage.

  “Yesterday these fiends operated upon Doggo. For a time, his own soul .and this brain-maggot struggled for supremacy. While his own personality remained ascendant, and yet had imbibed sufficient knowledge to understand the situation, he tried to warn us of our danger. Would that he had been in time! But when the pad of paper had arrived, dear old Doggo was dead. His body had become a Whoomang, dominated by one of their moth-grubs, ‘souls’ as they call them.

  “This afternoon they operated on me!”

  Myles shuddered, but Quivven went relentlessly on: “Two personalities are now contending within me for mastery. There can be but one outcome. Quivven must die, and her brain and body must become the vehicle for the thoughts and schemes of an alien mind. My will is strong. At present it is in control. But any moment now, it may snap. So I adjure you, by> the Great Builder and your loved ones, refuse stonily and absolutely to listen to any denial which my mouth may give you.

  “Now, while there is yet time, I must tell you their plans. Boomalayla sighs for more worlds to conquer. He was captivated by your tales of your country. To-morrow he will operate on you. Then, when the bodies of you and Doggo and I are all Whoomangs, and yet retain a certain amount of our own knowledge and skill, he plans to send us on to Cupia with a plane-load of moths, to operate on your countrymen, and build up a second empire of Whoomangs there.”

  Myles gasped at the dastardliness of the plan, a plan which might yet succeed; for, even if he escaped, Doggo‘s body might still carry the plan into execution.

  “Where is our plane?” he asked.-

  “Yes,” Quivven sadly replied, “I must lead you to the plane, while I am yet me. Come quickly.”

  “But. can we leave Doggo?”

  “Yes,” she replied. “Not only must you leave Doggo, but you must leave me, too; for Doggo is no longer Doggo, and I shall not be Quivven in a few minutes from now, for I feel the Whoomang soul struggling for ascendency within me. Come!”

  Quickly she led him out of the room, and down several hallways to a courtyard of the palace, where stood the plane, guarded by a green dragon. This beast interposed no objection to their approach. Quivven smiled wanly.

  “He will not stop you,” she said, ““for already they regard me as one of them, and count on me to inveigle you. And now, Myles, good-by. I feel myself slipping. In a minute or two your Quivven will be no more. Whether my own soul will then go to the happy land, as though I had normally died, or whether it will simply be blotted out, I know not; but one thing I do know, and that is that I love you with all my heart.”

  She flung her arms around his neck and kissed him.

  Then suddenly she cried, “I’ve won! I made you love me. It was all a scheme, cooked up by Doggo and myself to trap you out of your complacency and force you to admit your love. The story of the moth-grubs souls is a lie, woven out of the weird philosophizing of Boomalayla. From now on, I know that you love me. From now on, I am confident that I can compete with that Lilla of yours.”

  He stood aghast. Could this be so? He was half inclined to believe. Then he remembered her words: “Refuse stonily and absolutely to listen to any denial which my mouth may give you,” Also he reflected that Doggo certainly would never have been a party to a trick to betray Lilla.

  So he thrust the golden maid to one side, and strode toward the plane.

  But she rushed after him and clung to him, wailing piteously, “Myles, Myles, surely you aren’t going to desert us just because of this trick which we played on you. Surely you don’t intend to leave us to the mercy of these terrible beasts.”

  He did not know what to believe. There was a possibility that her story about the souls was the truth. If so, then the safety of the whole continent of Cupia was at stake. And yet, if not, what an awful country to leave her and Doggo in!

  He vaulted into the plane, then stood irresolute at the levers. He looked intently at the golden maid, who clung to the side of the car. There was something strange about her face, something clearly un-Quivven. And yet, as he gazed, he became certain that it was Quivven after all. And he was right.

  “Myles,” she shouted, letting go the plane, “Quick! By the grace of the Builder, my own spirit is again in the ascendency for an instant. The story I told you is true! Flee, before it is too late.” Then suddenly she changed again and shouted to the guardian pterosaur, “Quick, stop him!”

  Her expression altered as she spoke, but Myles slammed on the power, and the machine rose quickly, leaving behind the frantic golden form of little Quivven.

  After him trailed a swarm of winged creatures of all sorts, but his fast airship soon outdistanced them as it sped due west toward a sky that had already begun to turn pink with the unseen setting sun. On and on he sped until his pursuers dropped from view. Then he turned northward to throw them off the trail; and then, after a while, due west again, until, as night was about to fall, the steam-bank of the boiling sea loomed ahead.

  Whereupon he landed. He must wait until morning before attempting the passage. But as he prepared to spend the night he noticed that all the tapestries were gone from the cockpit.

  How could he brave the steam clouds without wrappings of some sort? And was he certain, after all, that he was not leaving two perfectly good friends in the lurch?

  XXII

  FLIGHT

  There must be something in the airship in which he could swathe himself for the trip across the boiling seas. With this in view he made a frantic search of the entire cockpit. Doggo’s rifle and the ammunition were still there, but his own he had left in his room on his hurried departure. Here, too, was the little stone lamp, by the light of which they had watched their instruments beneath the kayak covering. Even some of their provisions were left.

  Finally he came upon some boxes which he did not recognize. A rank smell became evident upon closer examination. Gingerly he opened one of those boxes.

  It contained flesh, finely ground and putrid. And in this carrion there wriggled and swarmed scores of small white grubs! The last of Cabot’s doubts vanished. These were the devil-souls which he and Doggo and Quivven had been expected to carry to Cupia, to found there a new empire of Whoomangs. Evidently his hosts had expected some possible trouble from him, and therefore had prepared the plane for a quick get-away by Doggo and Quivven.

  Indignantly the lonely earth-man emptied out box after box onto the ground, and mashed the contents into the dirt with his sandaled feet.

  By this tim
e it was nearly pitch dark, but of course, this would make no difference while flying through steam clouds, for visibility under such circumstances would be impossible even in daylight. If he only had some covering for the cockpit to keep out the steam, he could fly just as well at night as by day, except for one danger; how could he be warned of flying too high, passing through the circumambient cloud envelope, and being shriveled to a crisp by the close proximity of the sun.

  In despair the earth-man sat beside his beached airship, as the velvet blackness crept out of the east and enveloped the planet. So near, and yet so far! He had successfully transmitted himself through millions of miles of space from the earth to Poros. He had escaped the clutches of‘ the Formians and the Roies.

  He had built a complete radio set out of nothing, and had talked with Cupia across the boiling seas. He had traversed those seas once without accident. He had eluded the machinations of the Whoomangs, with their moth grub “souls”. And yet here he was, with only a few miles of ocean separating him from his loved ones, and, nevertheless, blocked effectually by the lack of a few yards of cloth. What fate! “

  As the last purple flush died on the western horizon, Myles suddenly jumped to his feet, and laughed aloud. The solution was so obvious that it had completely escaped him until now. It was the setting sun that had suggested the escape from his dilemma.

  There is no sun at night!

  Of course not!

  Therefore why not soar straight up, pierce the cloud envelope and fly above it to Cupia, letting the clouds protect him from the heat of the boiling seas, as they normally protect the planet from the light and heat of the sun? At any rate, it was worth trying. To remain where he was would mean either eventual starvation, or recapture by the terrible Whoomangs.

  So, by the light of his little Vairking stone lamp, he made a hasty lunch from his few remaining provisions, and then took his stand at the levers for a new experiment in Porovian navigation.

  Up, up, he shot through the dense blackness, up to a height which in earth would have filled his blood with air bubbles, and have suffocated his lungs. But on Poros, with its thicker atmospheric shell and its lesser gravity, the change was not so evident.