Collected short fiction, p.26
Collected Short Fiction, page 26
For a moment there was frank admiration in her violet eyes that went oddly to my head, “You killed it! You are like the great warriors of old!”
“Hardly,” I demurred with painful honesty. “I did nothing except push down a little pin.”
“But the Lunak, the flying thing, is not what I fear. It had taken me from a fate that was far worse. It was carrying me from the power of the Lord of Flame!”
Her eyes dilated as she pronounced the words, as if they were a curse of fatal horror. For a moment she seemed to struggle fiercely with some terrible fear. She sank back rigid and unconscious to the couch. I sprang to her and lifted her in my arms. I started to call Sam, but in a moment her body relaxed, and her breathing was resumed, though she did not open her eyes.
Still. I felt no haste to put her down. I brought her a little closer to my heart, and my lips were very close indeed to hers when suddenly her violet eyes opened wide. I almost dropped her in my speechless confusion, and I felt myself turning red. Embarrassed more than I care to say, I hurriedly departed for the galley.
I found Sam whistling cheerfully and busy making apple pies for dinner, I have known several men who called themselves scientists, but Sam is the only one of them who had mastered the science of cooking. He used to say that if he were going to be hanged, he would want to cook and eat his dinner first.
“What did you do with the little—reptile-plant?” I asked.
“Oh, Alexander’s gone to bed,” he said lightly, pointing to a ventilated cardboard box on the shelves. “But how are you coming on with your specimen?” he questioned with a grin.
“Xenora seems—er—recovering very well. Perhaps you had better see her. She might think—that I——”
As Sam, with an understanding nod, walked toward the cabin door, I climbed out on deck, to think about it all. The great trees still whispered a little in the hot south wind, which was laden with the unfamiliar fragrance of the great purple flowers. The rich green grass moved in long waves before it. The red glare still beat down with a torrid intensity. I gazed up the vast slope of purple and green, to the blue cliffs in the distant north, and wondered about what the girl had told me—and about what she thought of me now. I cursed myself for my impulsive action.
A city of ruined palaces! A fallen race that had had a science great enough to build a radio machine—if such it was—which she had found and over which our minds had met! And a thing more terrible, and the flying plants! What had she meant by the words, “The Lord of Flame,” the mere utterance of which had overwhelmed her with horror?
Then I thought again of the metal bands and frame we had cut from her body, and of the strange burns upon her skin. What was it that had caused them? Did all of that link up with the menace that threatened the earth? That might even now be doing its work?
END OF PART I
The Green Girl
(A Serial in Two Parts) Part II
IT must be generally conceded by anybody who has thought about the subject at all that there are many forces absolutely unknown to us. How, then, can we tell with what driving powers and activations these forces might be imbued? Or what inimical dangers might be hidden within them? In the concluding chapters of this scientific classic, which might unhesitatingly be numbered among the very best ever published, the author continues the accelerating pace set in the first instalment. And the story is full of sound science, so cleverly interwoven with good fiction, that it reads like “The Moon Pool,” for the author possesses not only the art of writing, but excellent imaginative pawers as well.
WHAT WENT BEFORE
“AT high noon on May 4, 1999, the sun went out.” Thus starts the story, as told by Melvin Dane, foster son of Dr. Sam Walden, famous scientist and sole savior of the world, who alone knew of the impending disaster.
When the sun goes out and the world begins to freeze over, Sam Walden and Melvin Dane embark on the scientist’s specially prepared vessel, which is equipped to fly through the air, travel on land, and sail on the ocean and under its surface equally well. They head almost straight down through the Pacific to the ocean bed and find themselves in a sub-sea city. By the use of certain radioactive gas which negatives the gravity of the water, the ocean is held as a sky or ceiling over the place. They find in this city obvious signs of habitation—green grasslands, which are here and there marked with huge, strange splotches of purple woodland; and coming toward them are largo winged things, which on closer examination are seen to be a sort of enormous, monstrous, flying thing, that carries on its forward end, in place of a head, a huge, many-petaled flower. One of these creatures holds in its tentacles a human form, which upon extrication by the two men, proves to be The Green Girl, Melvin Dane’s dream girl. Way back, in his childhood days Melvin accidentally hits on a wave length which gives him talking contact with a girl-child from a strange land, with whom he seemed, over the radio, to have had many adventures. So they grow up together, she in his dream world, and he on earth.
When they free her from a metal box clamped on her back by means of two metal bands, she recovers consciousness and recognizes Melvin. She then tells them she is Xenora, a princess of the old City of Lothar, and that she had been captured and enslaved by that most terrible of menaces, “The Lord of Flame.”
CHAPTER XVII
The Lord of Flame
I MUST have stood there many minutes, lost in fearful reverie. Unconsciously I heard Sam and Xenora moving about below, heard faintly the murmur of their conversation. At last my grim forebodings of the horror that was to come were interrupted by Sam’s cheerful hail, and I went below. I came upon Xenora in the cabin. She was arrayed in a fresh suit of my white flannels that Sam had laid out for her; and evidently she had been under the shower, for drops of water still gleamed on her dark hair. She looked freshly, incredibly beautiful, dressed even as she was.
I must have flushed somewhat, for she laughed at me. But she showed no anger or displeasure—she had not resented what I had done. She looked squarely at me with those cool violet eyes that shone with humor and human feeling. I read honest understanding in their dear depths, and suddenly I went to her and held out my hands. She took them in her slender ones.
Presently we went in together to Sam’s wonderful feast. He had the little dining room spick and span as usual, with the windows screened and the white lights going to shut out the terrible red glare. It was very cool in the soft breezes from the fans, and we three sat down in comfort to the delicacies he had prepared.
Sam still remembered what I had taught him, so many years ago, of Xenora’s language, so that he was able to converse in it. “It’ll be some revelation to the old deadheads at the Academy if we ever get back and publish our account,” he said. “They have never admitted telepathy, just because the phenomenon of thought transference depends upon such delicate attunement of minds that it cannot be reproduced at will. Of course, we don’t know just how much the radio had to do with it in your case. Undoubtedly it served as a carrying wave, at first at least. But anyhow, it would be some bombshell to toss among my old associates!”
“Who cares what they think about it?” I said. “We’ve found her. That’s all that matters!”
Xenora sat down eagerly. I found joy in watching her eat. She manipulated her unfamiliar fork with instinctive culture, and seemed to like Sam’s viands immensely. And she ate with the restrained eagerness of one who has not touched food for some time. What misfortunes had the brave girl been through?
Presently, when she was somewhat satisfied, Sam began questioning her in an effort to find out something of the strange world about us. “Where do your people live?” he began.
“Once Lothar was an empire that girdled the central sea. But many lifetimes ago the evil power of Mutron arose, and our people were conquered by the slaves of the Lord of Flame. Now there are but a handful of my race, living in the forests by the northern cliffs. And even they are taken to serve the Lord of Flame——”
“The Lord of Flame! What is that?” Sam cried in amazement.
“It is a dreadful thing—a serpent of green fire that dwells in the violet mists of the chasm of Xath,” she said hastily. “But let us not speak of it. No man speaks of the Lord of Flame, for it hears—stay! Oh, horror! Do you not—feel it?”
And indeed, at her words, I felt a strange and alien thrill, as if the revealing searchlight of some dreadful power had been suddenly thrown upon me, as if some strange wind of fear had blown upon my soul. I shivered involuntarily, and crouched closer to the others, trying to drive the horror from my mind.
“God!” Sam breathed hoarsely. “What can we be up against?”
In a moment the girl went hurriedly on, as though to change our thoughts to other things. “Many sleeps ago I was taken by the men of Mutron, and put in the power of Xath. They sent me on a ship to fight the Lunaks. We fell in with a vast number of them, and they brought the vessel down. The fire-crystal was torn from my back in the wreck, and I was free. I ran for the trees, but the Lunak caught me. And that was the last I knew, until I woke, from my dream of—of——”
She turned to me with a little smile, as if such weirdly incredible adventures were to be taken as a matter of course. I could not speak for the pity and horror that were mingled with my admiration for her courage. But I could, and did, reach under the table and take her hand. Thereafter each of us contrived—after a fashion—to eat with one hand.
That brief and puzzling account of her adventures was all that Xenora was able to give us until experience would enlarge our common vocabularies. Certainly it offered plenty of food for conjecture. She had little scientific knowledge; and when Sam continued his questions, the accounts she gave of the origin and meaning of the strange things she mentioned smacked more of myth than of history.
“Has the Lord of Flame always been, Xenora?”
“No,” the Green Girl answered. “Back in the beginning, ten thousand lifetimes past, the men of Lothar ruled, and there was no Mutron to carry them to Xath. The warriors of Lothar were very brave. They fought the Lunaks, and hunted the beasts of the plain. The kings of Lothar reigned in a hundred cities that ringed the central sea, and there was food and joy for all.
“But the Lunaks were very wise. When the great men of Lothar brought weapons of fire to fight them, they went into the jungle and laid an egg, and guarded it, and there sprang up the Lord of Flame! It is a serpent of green fire, as thick as a mountain and as long as a river! All the warriors of Lothar went to meet it, and it slew them with a breath of fire! It took slaves of our people and carried them into the fire-pit of Xath.
“And from that day, through countless lifetimes, our people have been worshipers and slaves of the Lord of Flame. Those who are taken are no longer as men, but as sleepers walking, with the fire-crystal on their backs. They fly in ships of Mutron, the City of the Sleepers, and rule with a heavy hand in the name of the Lord of Flame. None escape them!”
“Well, I’ll be d—er—flabbergasted!” Sam exploded. His face was a study. Incredulous disbelief was there, and amazement, and something of fear and horror, too. What the girl said had all the earmarks of a fairy tale. But we had seen the metal upon her body, and the purple stains—and we had felt that sudden, inexplicable wave of fear.
“Is it possible? Mel, it can’t be! It’s too fantastic!”
I could make no answer. “And you, Xenora. You were taken by that thing?” I cried in sudden horror.
“I was taken in a ship, and carried to Mutron, the City of Fear. There they fastened on me the fire-crystal. Then my mind was in a sleep, and my limbs did not what I willed. Until the ship fell my life was a nightmare of toil and terror. The Lunak took me, and I knew nothing until you found me.”
Xenora still seemed rather weak and tired from her terrible ordeal. After we had eaten, Sam and I conducted her over the ship, with a view to convincing her of the wonderful power of the machine and thus to quiet her fear of that mysterious menace. We started the engines and moved the machine a little. I fired the gun for her edification, to show how the monster had been killed, and Sam showed her how to blow the siren, and even let her pull the cord. Then we took her back to a stateroom, and turned it over to her.
As she went into the room, Sam proposed that he and I go hunting. His real object, I think, was to get some fresh meat for the little winged plant, but we wished to learn as much as possible of the fauna and flora about us.
I was not eager to leave the machine, but we were armed with the best of weapons, and there seemed to be little danger. Then, we intended to be gone only a few minutes. When we were ready to start I tapped on Xenora’s door, to tell her that we were leaving, but she made no answer. I suppose that she was already asleep.
We climbed up on deck, and closed the hatch behind us.
CHAPTER XVIII
Lost in the Purple Forest
WE WALKED off east through the level green meadows, beneath the scattered trees that were bright with purple bloom. For my own part, I was much more interested in the vegetation than in any game we might come upon. In fact, I would not have been greatly disappointed if our hunt had been in vain.
The leaves of what I have called grass were really so wide and thick that it was hardly grass at all. The higher stems of it bore myriads of tiny, bright-red flowers. The great trees were, in shape and foliage, somewhat like the oak, though the rich profusion of the purple flowers almost concealed the leaves. They bore small fruits, in appearance a little like the date, which, as we were later to learn, were edible. But, in all the time I was in that strange world, I found no single plant that was exactly like any I had known above.
Indeed that was a strange hunt, under a flaming scarlet sky, nine miles beneath the ocean, through forests of the purple trees that burdened the air with their unfamiliar fragrance, in search of we knew not what in the way of game.
We tramped steadily eastward over the green meadows for perhaps half an hour, rewarded with the sight of no living thing. The Omnimobile had long been out of sight. We crossed a low greasy ridge and made our way out across another broad smooth valley.
At last, as we looked from a screen of brush at the edge of a little meadow, we saw an odd-looking creature gazing unalarmed a hundred yards away. It was somewhat larger than a hog, with gray, hairless skin and long white tusks or horns. It had an oddly heavy, barrellike body.
It must have winded us, for it threw up its head with a peculiar squeal, tossing its great tusks. Sam and I both fired. We have never agreed which of us hit it, but it slumped over on the green vegetation. We hurried up to it. It was quite dead. It had great claws, and somewhat resembled a sloth, although it was exactly like nothing that I had ever seen.
Sam took out his knife and skilfully removed half of the skin, wrapping up a piece of meat in it. The beast had thick rolls of fat along the back, but the flesh beneath looked so nice and tender that he took some of it to try for steak.
“We’ll try some of it broiled when we get back,” he anticipated, smacking his lips.
“Let’s hurry on,” I said. “We’ve been gone longer than I intended, already. What if Xenora wakes up and we’re not there?”
“Let’s see.” Sam said doubtfully. “The wind was from the south, wasn’t it?”
I looked around in sudden panic. I was almost sure that I knew the way back to the machine—almost!
The strange world about us was suddenly very alien and cruel. The plains were lonely and fiat and dead. The trees were suddenly wild and mysterious, as if they concealed strange monsters. There was a ghastly, unearthly menace in the red gleam of the sky.
In all directions the country looked much the same. There was no definite landmark. We stood there for a time, scanning the unfamiliar panorama, in the beginning of panic. There were half a dozen groups of trees, any of which might have been the one from which we fired. It occurred to me that it would be very inconvenient if one of the flying plants came along, and I began to think of other things that might happen. I came to a tardy realization of our helplessness and utter ignorance of the dangers that might surround us.
The purple trees and the scarlet sky seemed to leer at us, to gather closer, to laugh in fiendish joy at the unnamable doom they might have in store for us. Unconsciously I drew my pistol, and my muscles were involuntarily tensed, so that I started when Sam spoke.
“Of course we can see the wall of cliffs in the north. That will give us the general direction. If we can get up on that hill, we might be able to see the machine.”
He pointed toward a round, bare, green hilltop that rose several hundred feet toward the red sky. It was perhaps a mile away, in the direction of the hazy blue cliffs. He slung the piece of meat over his shoulder and we set out over the open field. It was very hot, and the perspiration was dripping from us. I had hardly noticed the damp, hot wind before, but now it felt like a blast from a furnace. The intense scarlet radiation of the flaming sky dried up our energy. The steady beam of heat brought over us a growing languor, a depressed and spiritless weariness.
The whole weird region was very still. The only sounds were the soft sighing of the wind in the trees, and the thrashing and rustling of our feet in the rank grass. The tiny scarlet flowers danced before the wind almost like little insects, and a few brilliant petals blew sometimes from one of the sparsely scattered trees.
“Phew!” Sam whistled, stopping to mop his brow with the huge red bandanna he had tied around his neck. “This is beginning to feel like the Sahara! I’m glad I didn’t happen to be a native of the place! You bet the machine will look good, when we find it!”
“If we find it,” I could not refrain from saying.
In five minutes more we were far up the side of the little hill. The side of the eminence was bare of the great flowering trees, so the strange forest lay about us southward for many miles. Eagerly we looked in the direction that should have been southwest, for the Omnimobile.
