Collected short fiction, p.126
Collected Short Fiction, page 126
“Forgive my weakness,” came her thought. “It is terrible to know that Kerak can reach us, even here! Will he follow us to the limits of the universe? Can there be no hope?” For a moment a look of bitter hopelessness was upon her lovely face. Then resolution flashed in her superb blue eyes. She added, “But whatever comes, I will not be weak again!”
Then wrinkled and emaciated old Luroth, who had been at the controls, broke in with the projected thought, “The cube is a machine Kerak has sent to run us down. I fear we will never escape. This cube we may destroy, but Yothanda has the power to build many of them for Kerak.
“Higdon, you may take my place, and drive the cone onward at the limit of our power. Eric, you may show how well you have learned to use the weapon. Sharothon and I must make certain preparations, for we may soon be battling with thousands of the cubes.”
I WENT to the controls. Our vessel was already plunging forward at the highest speed of which it was capable. The musical note from the power generators had become so sharp and shrill that it was almost painful to the ear. But my task, involving only the occasional adjustment of the dials, was so simple that I was able to watch what went on about me.
Eric sprang to the board from which the weapon was operated, peered into a tube which resembled the ocular of a telescope, manipulated dials and levers.
Then, looking in a screen, I saw a misty-edged sphere of rosy light plunge backward from our craft. It resembled those obliterating globes of rose-flame which had been hurled from our crystal weapons, in the battle to escape from Yothanda. But it was many times huger. A vast sphere of coralline light, spinning dizzily about an intensely brilliant core of anger scarlet!
It drove backward through the midnight void, toward the golden cube with circular emerald “eyes.”
The yellow cube, which had grown enormously larger since we first had seen it, moved swiftly sidewise, as if to avoid the crashing rosy globe. Writhing streamers of green flame—which appeared, except for the color, exactly like the amazing tentacles of crimson incandescence with which we had battled before—were thrust from the emerald circles on the sides of the cube. Wavering, snake-like ribbons of green light. They moved as if trying to catch the ball of rosy fire, push it back.
The sphere crashed through the green, tentacular streamers, touched the golden cube. Together, they—vanished!
The void was once more black and empty behind us. Luroth and Sharothon were busy with their ytlan rods. The old man “condensed” two little handles of copper-colored metal which projected near the controls of Eric’s weapon. Later, in the midst of tragedy, I learned their dread meaning.
When those were finished, he began building up, outside the hurtling cone, a shell of vibration similar to the one which had sheltered us while the ship was being constructed—a blue-screen of vibratory energy. The cosmic void seemed no longer utterly black; it became the deepest midnight blue.
Sharothon, at the same time, was busy with her emerald staff, making certain improvements in the cone-ship’s mechanism. The shrill music of the generators suddenly rose to a higher pitch as she worked; I knew that we were moving faster.
Very soon another yellow cube was in view. Like a tiny golden die, hanging in the blue-black void, with one green spot in the center of each face.
It was destroyed by Eric’s hurtling ball of rose-flame. Then three cubes came into view, hanging together, linked by ribbons of emerald incandescence.
Each of the three was also obliterated.
Quickly, a group of eleven yellow cubes were within sight. A vast web of woven green streamers was flung between them—a net of emerald flame, spread for us!
Eric became very busy, peering into his shining tube, manipulating his instruments. He counted aloud, as the golden cubes vanished.
“One . . . two . . . three—no, so that’s the trick, is it? Well, that got you . . . five . . . six—a close shave for you, anyhow! . . . seven . . .”
Suddenly the cone-ship was drawn violently backward, with a sickening motion. The shrill song of the generators dropped many octaves, to a low note. I observed a dimming of Sharothon’s violet aura.
“Hello!” Eric cried. “Something cut the juice off!”
Looking in the screens, I saw that one of the flexing, green filaments of tentacles of light had reached the cone from the nearest of the cubes, coiled itself about us.
Old Luroth sprang suddenly across the little room, seized the two copper-colored handles that he had just formed, projecting from the base of the weapon.
Eric hastily operated his levers and dials. Glancing into a screen, I saw another huge globe of roseate fire go crashing out. It obliterated the closest yellow cube. The green tentacle vanished from about us.
Abruptly the singing of the generators rose to its former shrill pitch. I almost felt the ship leap forward again. Sharothon’s radiant nimbus brightened.
“Plenty of juice again,” Eric reported. “What was the matter?”
“The green flame drew from about us the power of the ytlan, carried it to the cube.” Luroth explained. “The green tongues exhaust the ytlan from the space about them. They hold great danger for us. For without the ytlan, we cannot move the ship, or use the weapon, or even maintain the zone of vibration which protects us.”
“But the weapon worked when you took those handles,” Eric said.
“Yes, but I was drawing upon a source of energy which would soon be exhausted,” the old man said.
Even then, I did not suspect his heroism, his sacrifice.
ERIC had easily destroyed the three yellow cubes remaining of the eleven. For some time—as I explained, I cannot be accurate in stating time-intervals—no more appeared. I began to hope that we had distanced pursuit. I saw Eric and Sharothon exchange a quick glance of eager hope—and saw Luroth, intercepting it, sadly shake his head.
Then we made out another group of golden cubes, with a net of green woven between them, swimming behind us in the infinite void of blue darkness. Half a hundred, there must have been.
Eric went a little white when he saw them, set his jaw grimly, bent desperately over his instruments. A tremor shook Sharothon. Her eyes were wide and tragic. She ran to Eric, put a hand about his shoulder.
Luroth kept busy with his purple ytlan rod.
A full dozen of the yellow cubes were left, when we were caught in the emerald web. The cone was meshed in the living, writhing tentacles of green radiance. Again we were insulated from the Cosmic Rays which supplied our power.
The shrill music of the generators died again, became inaudible. The violet aura faded completely from about Sharothon’s lovely, grief-shaken body. Again, the weapon refused to operate.
“No juice!” Eric called.
I glanced at Luroth. A strange look of doubt, indecision, was in his kind brown eyes. He looked uncertainly from the copper-colored handles, which he had grasped before to make the weapon operate, toward Eric and Sharothon. They were side by side at the controls. Eric was fumbling desperately with the levers; Sharothon had her white arms tenderly about him.
The old man’s brown eyes suddenly kindled with a light of tender devotion. With a quick shrug of the shoulders, as if having decided upon an unalterable course of action, he sprang to the metal handles, took one of them in each hand.
“She percolates!” Eric muttered.
One by one, globes of rosy light drove back from the crimson cone, struck the golden cubes. One by one, the cubes were annihilated.
Paralyzed with horror, I watched a fearful and incredible change come over Luroth.
The old man shrunk, dwindled—as if his body were being sucked away!
His stature grew amazingly less, until he could hardly reach the handles, as he stood on the floor of the room. His limbs became dreadfully thin. He weakened, until it seemed as if it must take all his strength to cling to the handles.
For a little time, I watched that awful change in petrified silence. Then I started forward, to cry a warning to Eric. Just what was happening, I did not know—but I did know that in some way the operation of the weapon was destroying Luroth.
As I moved, the old man looked at me with stern brown eyes, from his shrinking face. His command came strongly to my mind:
“Silence!”
I stepped back.
“Two more!” I heard Eric’s excited cry. “The last!” But my eyes were riveted upon Luroth; I felt none of Eric’s savage joy of victory.
For the fearfully shrunken figure of the old man had become suddenly transparent. It became a strange spectre of shimmering, ghostly radiance.
It vanished.
Luroth was gone—used up!
“Tally one more for us—” Eric was crying eagerly, as he turned. Then, in blank wonder,. “Where’s Luroth?”
“He shrank—as you fired the balls of light,” I stammered. “He—faded. Gone.”
I hardly realized that the song of the generators had risen again; that Sharothon’s purple nimbus was restored.
The girl, after an abrupt, sharp look at the copper-hued handles, collapsed in a tragic heap against Eric’s body. Her slender white shoulders were shaken with great sobs of abandoned grief. It seemed a long time before she had recovered sufficiently to explain what had happened.
“Luroth used up his body to save us—to feed the weapon. You know matter and energy are the same; either can be converted into the other. The green web cut us off, insulated us, from the ytlan. And Luroth dissolved his own body into energy, to penetrate the weapon.
“He used up his body. Gave it—for us!”
Again she broke into uncontrolled sobbing.
“Gee!” Eric muttered brokenly. “A great scout!”
I saw tears trickle across his drawn, white cheeks. For a longer interval than before, we hurtled onward, alone in the void. I had hopes that Luroth had not made the supreme sacrifice in vain.
Then, with a little cry of heart-broken anguish, Eric pointed out upon the screen another cluster of the golden cubes. There must have been a hundred of them. A vast net of weaving streamers of green radiance was stretched between them.
Eric was soon furiously busy with the weapon. But he had made scant inroads upon the new horde before slender tentacles of emerald incandescence were twined about the cone. Once more we were dragged back, with generators dead, and with the violet radiance gone from Sharothon.
Again, the weapon refused to operate.
It gives me vast pride to say that I sprang forward, seized the metal handles at which Luroth had vanished. I feel that the act serves as a feeble excuse for my including myself in this. history. I cannot say that I was unafraid, or that I moved without hesitation. And it may be that I am inclined to make too much of it. For what was life worth to me? An old man, an exile from his own universe, with none to love save those whom I might save by dying—how could I have done otherwise?
It was a futile gesture.
Nothing happened to me. Luroth had dwindled, faded, and vanished, together with his purple garment, his silver belt, and his purple ytlan rod, when he put his hands upon the copper-colored handles. But I might as well have crossed my thumbs, for any result. Perhaps I failed to perform some necessary preliminary act—I shall never know!
Nothing happened to me. The weapon still refused to function. The web of green flame grew tighter about us.
Eric and Sharothon were in each other’s arms . . . silent . . . stricken with grief and the shadow of disaster . . . drinking the bittersweet cup of the last embrace . . .
Finally, I saw that the hazy, luminous patch, lying in an infinity of utter blackness, which was our Galaxy, was slowly growing larger. The green web which meshed us was drawing us back! Back to Yothanda and the evil might of Kerak!
Luroth had sacrificed himself in vain.
CHAPTER X
The Choice of Sharothon
PRESENTLY I lost consciousness. No definite impressions remain in my mind, of the remainder of the timeless period which I spent within the crimson cone. I think I was not actually asleep, however, for vague scraps of recollection come to me. Dim pictures of Eric and Sharothon, striving desperately to escape the pall of tragic gloom that seemed about to overwhelm them, laughing feverishly, struggling madly to be gay, drinking recklessly from the vessel of love so soon to be shattered. It seems, too, that I have faint memories of the aspect of the void, as the green web was dragging us back through the crowded suns of the Galaxy . . .
But I can find no faintest recollection of our arrival in Yothanda. By that time, my body was far gone in the dissolution caused by the action of the Cosmic Ray. I must have been completely insensible.
It seemed that I woke abruptly, to find myself standing in the strange and mystic Place of the Nine. Discovering myself there brought me a sense of wonder and dread which, for the time, sharpened my weakened faculties. Though I was far from feeling any sense of strength or well-being, I was clearly enough aware of my surroundings, master of myself again.
The Palace of the Nine—seat of mysterious and dread authority!
I was standing upon the vast floor of polished sapphire crystal. Far away from me, on each side, rose the twin lines of square, Cyclopean sapphire columns—leaping up incredibly, to lose themselves in purple haze. Beyond the vast blue pillars, overhead, all about me, nothing was visible save the fog of twinkling, sparkling purple atoms, which filled all this strange void, within the core of wondrous Yothanda.
The transparent suit, which Sharothon had so long before materialized upon my body to save my life, was still about me. A strong man, clad in a black tunic, and holding an ebon ytlan rod, was supporting me.
I turned weakly—all strength and vigor had long since ebbed from me—and saw Eric and Sharothon. They were beside me on the floor of azure crystal, held by men in black.
I was amazed, horror-stricken, at the change in Eric. His mighty body was emaciated until it seemed a mere animated skeleton, clothed in pale skin. His grim, haggard face was fearfully drawn. His gray eyes were dreadfully sunken and hollow, gleaming with a strange, feverish light.
One shrunken arm was about Sharothon’s waist.
The girl’s body was still lovely, in the shimmering rose-violet nimbus that flowed from her silvery girdle. But her face was pale, almost as haggard as Eric’s. It was terrible to see the sorrow and desolation in her blue eyes, as they rested upon Eric’s broken body with such unutterable longing.
“The Nine is in judgment upon you!”
Kerak’s thought-forms burst upon my brain with the unpleasant, rasping power of a coarse and heavy voice. Weakly, I turned away from Eric and Sharothon, saw the Nine.
The splendid dome of milky, opalescent fire still rose from the floor of blue crystal. Nine figures were floating in it, at ease. Four men and four women, in white, holding white ytlan rods. Above them, purple-clad, but still with the black staff, was Kerak. His cold face regarded us with sneering satisfaction. Cold fire of evil victory was in his pale blue eyes.
“The penalty for revolt against the Nine is death,” Kerak announced.
Sharothon and Eric looked up at him, with scorn in their eyes, quietly and impassively. If he expected them to plead for mercy, he was disappointed. For a little time his chill eyes watched them, then he continued:
“But Luroth, your leader, has already paid the penalty—and that I regret, for I would have administered it with my own ytlan rod, or with his own, had I taken it.
“And to the three of you, the Nine extends mercy.”
He paused, and seemed to sneer at us, mockingly. A cold and ugly smile twisted his bleak face.
“To you, I grant mercy. Your revolt against the Nine is forgiven. And the first decree of the Nine—which Luroth uttered—I shall honor. For the words of the Nine are sacred.” He smirked mockingly.
“The lives of the beasts are spared. They will be set back upon the third planet, at the point from which they set out upon their foolish attempt to navigate the void.
“And Sharothon—if she will—may go with them. That is the decree which Luroth rendered, and I will honor it. But no ytlan rod, and no girdle of life may she take with her. And I fear that her life would not be long, upon the third planet, without them.
“If Sharothon still values her life, if her reason has not entirely departed since her infatuation with these curious jungle monsters, she may remain in Yothanda. She has only to give her word that she will never slip past the Portal again, and she may remain, to be companion to Kerak, leader of the Nine, and bear him an heir, that his great name may be perpetuated.
“Sharothon may choose.”
His pale, cold blue eyes stared down upon Sharothon, from the splendrous dome of opalescent light in which he floated. The wan girl looked up at him, directly, impassively. Her reply was prompt:
“I choose to go with these men.”
Black anger filled Kerak’s pale eyes, twisted his face into a hideous mask.
“Then go. Die—as a beast!” His thought-forms seemed a snarl.
“You can’t do that, dear!” Eric was objecting, turning abruptly to look in the girl’s face. “You can’t live beyond the ytlan—”
She looked soberly into his sunken, hollow eyes. And he was suddenly quiet.
WITH the knowledge that the noble girl was doomed—that she was bravely choosing death, weakness overwhelmed me. I felt abruptly sick and trembling. The dome of milky white in which the Nine floated, and the colossal azure pillars seemed to spin about me, until all was lost in the pressing fog of dancing purple notes.
Again there is a space of which I have only the vaguest and most unsatisfactory recollections. I can recall almost nothing of how we left Yothanda, or were set back on Earth.
My next definite memory is of waking up to find myself lying on a familiar bunk, in the old ranch house in New Mexico, where we had built the rocket. As I lifted myself weakly upon an elbow, staring about at the rude furnishings which I had not seen for so long that they seemed almost strange, I heard the well-known nasal voice of “Shorty Joe,” one of my hands, singing doleful words to the effect that he would not see his mother when the work was completed on the following autumn. Accompanying the voice came a clatter of pans and tin plates. The window in the end of the room was open; a hot, white flood of sunlight poured through it, across the worn pine floor. A cool breeze blew into the room, laden with the fragrance of the white locust blooms, which hung amid the green foliage of the tree in view outside.
