Collected short fiction, p.261
Collected Short Fiction, page 261
“He has been aware of the more recent development of intelligence upon your planet, but has neglected to destroy it, being certain that it would be overtaken by death in the approaching nebula, which he has for some time perceived, long before it advanced high enough to discover the energy catalyst.
“He was amazed and frightened to find that your father had rediscovered the art of forming photon constructs stable and complex enough to serve as media of intelligence. Cowardly as of old, however, he dared not venture to Earth to destroy them. Rather, he chose to wait within the intricate and deadly maze of defenses he has fashioned about his dwelling, confident that your photon bodies had been devised to start a quest for the energy catalyst, and that his possession of it would surely lure them to destruction here.
“GOGOK received into his place Barthu Jildo, the traitor from your own world, who arrived here long before you. He seeks to learn as much as he can about your planet and its peoples, that he may anticipate any danger from them.
“Also, in his ancient, cunning mind is the beginning of another plan. He has come to regard this planet, because of its small size and the time-battered weakness of its structure, as insecure. He thinks now of migrating to Earth, whose relatively tremendous mass would be a vastly greater reservoir of material energy.
“He is weary of this world where he has dwelt so long. He desires new slaves to master, a new and younger planet to rule, the more splendid monuments to his vanity and the more powerful defenses of his life that he could build upon Earth.
“But in Barthu Jildo his ancient craft has a worthy antagonist. Barthu is seeking to employ the same ruse that won Gogok the secret. He brought Gogok warning that you would come behind him, and told a fabulous tale of an army of invading cubes to follow you. He offers his aid in return for the secret, and Gogok merely puts him off. Each is hoping to pit the other against you, so that he may step in to destroy the weakened victor.”
As the sphere of opalescence paused again, the small green cube stirred apprehensively in the utter, frigid darkness of the ancient caverns.
Swiftly, Ivec asked: “Do they know that I have set you free?”
“Not yet,” answered Lakne. “Gogok has been distracted by his parley with Barthu. But his senses are keen enough to perceive my movements, whenever he makes the effort. And when he does, both of them will surely unite against us, for their danger from the two of us is greater than their danger from each other.”
“Then we must act before they discover us,” said Ivec. “For they are superior to us in knowledge and energy. We should certainly be destroyed in a fight. Can we enter Gogok’s fortress, do you think, and reach the place where material energy is released? Secretly?” And, as the sphere seemed to hesitate, doubtfully, he explained: “This cube possesses a wide and delicate sensitivity to wave and radiation phenomena. It was particularly designed to undertake the analysis of the material-energy process. I believe I could learn the-secret of the catalyst by studying the operation of Gogok’s apparatus.”
Anxiously, he awaited Lakne’s reply. “The fastness of Gogok is well-guarded.” Slow thought came from the small globe of mother-of-pearl. “His cowardly craft has devised many defenses to trap and destroy intruders, as well as to warn him of their approach.
“Yet, I believe I know a way that we may enter his dwelling undetected—through the ancient mines of the troglodytes. But if we are discovered near his secret apparatus, as we almost certainly will be, our doom will be swift and sure.”
“But come,” said Ivec.
The green cube quivered, as if to shake off its fear.
“Let us try it,” continued Ivec. “Our energy is scant and the time is short. I must obtain the catalyst and return to Earth at once—in spite of Barthu and Gogok—or all my kind will be destroyed.”
“Our perils are many,” said Lakne. But she rose beside him.
The flawed cube of green and the milky sphere floated away from the broken vault, through the frozen, airless dark that filled those age-dead caverns.
IX.
“LOOK WELL at the guarded dwelling of Gogok,” came the soft, cautious thought waves from Lakne of the sphere. “For there—if we reach it alive—you will see the future of the planet Earth, as it will be if either Gogok or Barthu is victorious. You will see the inevitable issue of dictatorship, the final fate of any world enslaved to the egoism of one selfish mind.”
The globe of glowing pearl and the tiny, flickering emerald cube wound silently, together, through dark, endless caverns. They passed above the dust mounds of immemorial cities, and through airless, frozen tunnels hewn aeons before the Earth was born.
“We are near,” Lakne warned at last. “The mines extend no higher. We must find our own way, now—and be cautious of any radiation that might be detected.”
Black rocks narrowed upon them. They slipped upward through tiny rifts and crevices, extinct volcanic fumaroles, the fissures left in the surface of the dead, contracting world.
The delicate senses of the sphere found the way with uncanny accuracy, yet again and again they came to some passage that must be widened with a cutting beam of directed radiation—always at a painful cost in energy, and with the danger that Gogok, above, might detect the operation.
“Halt!” the sphere emanated abruptly, in alarm. “Gogok has set a trap here, also!”
Ivec had hardly been aware of the faint, blue radiance of the rocks; the impact of a sinister radiation had been almost imperceptible. But suddenly, even as Lakne spoke, the cube was robbed of all energy. It fell helpless on the glowing stones. And the unending pain of its inner flaw exploded abruptly into a fountain of crimson agony that drenched all his being.
Extinction was close upon him, when he felt the vital contact of the sphere, sensed the shelter of a swiftly projected counterbarrier of interfering frequencies that shut out the hostile emanations. The red pain ebbed; his numbed mind groped again for sensation and strength.
“Come,” Lakne urged him, apprehensively. “And swiftly. I can guard you until we pass the danger—unless it is too long.”
Again they sought a way upward, through the tortuous labyrinth of crevices. The sinister blue faded slowly from the rocks, and the sphere was able to cease the effort of maintaining the barrier wave. But it was Visibly weaker from exhaustion, its milky light duller, clouded.
“We are now within Gogok’s defenses,” came the very faint and cautious warning. “He can detect us very easily, now—and if he does, there is no escape.”
They emerged presently, through a narrow fissure in the flank of a time-shattered mountain. The valley beneath was a pool of faintly shining haze, the sky a chasm of blue mist. Cautiously alert, cube and sphere drifted out into the luminous air.
Strange plants covered mountain and valley and the opposite slope. Frail leaves shone like pale-hued gem stones, saffron and pink and soft violet, wrought into shapes of ineffable, delicate grace. For all its eldritch beauty, however, the vegetation seemed to Ivec unhealthy.
lifeless, unpleasant as the dream of a diseased mind. Unconsciously, he shrank from the fragile, pallid fronds.
PRESENTLY, as the two flitted apprehensively forward, Ivec was startled to see living things. Thick-bodied, repulsive scarlet worms were feeding upon the singular pale shrubs, cropping them into neat, artistic symmetry. Small, humped violet things, like snails with spiral shells, delicately lovely as the maggotlike worms were hideous, were indistinguishable against the soft violet moss that covered the surface. They mowed the vegetation evenly, Ivec saw, or turned the soil with sharp appendages.
“There is no danger from them,” said Lakne of the sphere. She paused above them, as if with pity. “These are the children of my ancient race. Once they were individuals, with lives and aims and values of their own. But Gogok’s slavery shut off all original expression, and degraded them into mindless instruments of his will.”
Cube and sphere flitted more cautiously ahead, keeping within the cover of the pale, repulsive vegetation. At last, in the thick copse that crowned a long high ridge, the sphere paused again.
“Beyond,” said Lakne, “is the dwelling of Gogok. The mechanisms of the catalytic process are locked within the glowing dome.”
Quivering fearfully, the cube slipped forward to peer through the pallid, screening leaves. Before Ivec, upon a long plateau, stupendous and lofty beneath a sky of dusted azurite, loomed a building that shook him with amazement.
Upon this black and frozen world, aeon of aeons dead, it was an incredible thing. From the pale, well-tended gardens of the violet-carpeted plateau towered scarlet columns. Colossal, a full mile high, they were made delicately beautiful by an exquisite perfection of proportion. Curving walls of ebon black, beyond, were pierced with tall archways that opened into inner mystery. Above black walls and crimson colonnades, Cyclopean against the blue, misty sky, loomed a dome of intensely glowing purple.
“Gogok exhausted every resource of the planet to make this dwelling for himself,” said the sphere. “For a million years, every being slaved toward its completion. While the whole is immense, every individual part is far smaller than your cube—and each a perfect jewel!”
And Ivec perceived that, while the large outlines were artistically simple, the detail was infinitely elaborate. There were clustered smaller towers, intricacies of windows, many-pillared balconies, patterned niches, sculptured architraves—and every jewellike surface engraved with a minute and exquisite perfection.
The sphere was motionless for a little time, while its milky luster dimmed with the effort of sensation.
“Gogok and his guest are together,” said Lakne, “in a guarded, inmost chamber, beneath the dome. It may be possible for us to approach undetected close enough for you to observe the operation of the energy process—if we are very fortunate.”
Again they flitted forward, close above the pale-violet moss. The very stone beneath them, Ivec perceived, had been molded into the perfect foundation for these landscapes of exotic loveliness. They passed a hedge of shrubs, whose rose-colored swordlike leaves defended great freakish blooms of utter black. Beyond, they were among tall, yellow cones, plumed with crimson, whose low-clustered leaves were like nests of gray, hideous, flat-headed serpents.
WHEN the mountainous mass of the building was near, gleaming, wondrous, incredible, Ivec saw living creatures of a different sort. Busy little gray things were clinging to crimson columns and graven ebon walls and even to the glowing dome. They had many limbs, equipped with the suction cups with which they clung to the jewellike surface, or with brushes and polishing pads that bore their own wax-secreting glands. With an intense and mindless activity, they were cleaning and polishing interminably—the caretakers of Gogok’s dwelling.
The opalescent sphere paused again, to regard them solemnly. The slow thought came: “These, also, are the children of my people. And such the people of your Earth will be, if either Gogok or Barthu wins the coming struggle—the dead-alive tools of absolutism.”
“Come!” The green cube quivered with dread. “We must hasten.”
Flitting out of the gardens, the two darted between colossal scarlet pillars, and through a pointed ebon arch into a long, colossal hall of darkness. Silently, upon swift wings of apprehension, they flashed through that tremendous dark corridor, and upward through a maze of gem-gleaming passages and of lofty empty spaces, cold with dead and austere splendor.
They paused, at last, in a well of darkness, above a lofty balcony. Beyond it was an elaborate trefoil window, whose crystal panes burned with an intense and radiant purple.
“There!” Lakne’s radiation was tremulous with excitement. “That is the place we seek!”
The glowing crystal panels, Ivec perceived, were, in reality, the surface of the great purple dome, continued beneath the roof of the building. Actually, it was simply a vacuum tube, incredibly immense. Within, he sensed the vast, confusing bulks of tremendous elements, the interplay of terrific energy beams, and the white, burning intensity of the Sunlike central vortex, where matter was broken down into rivers of unimaginable power.
The green cube quivered to deep elation.
“Here it is! And it is wonderful! No engineer on Earth has dreamed of such things as these. This will advance our technology a thousand years!” Ivec’s exclamations were checked by the stern chill of fear. “But I have no time to study all this! It will take me weeks, months, to analyze it all, and deduce the principle of the catalyst—simple as it probably is. Long before I can succeed, Gogok and Barthu will probably have——”
Ivec was interrupted by a screaming vibration of frantic terror from the sphere. With them, upon the dark, high balcony, he was abruptly aware of a third being—a formless, many-tentacled thing of intense white radiance, whose burning arms had already seized his companion.
“I am taken!” came Lakne’s urgent, frightened warning. “Fly! Quickly! This is Gogok’s creature—sent to take us both!”
X.
WITHIN THE GLOOM that pressed thick upon the lofty balcony, in that vast and silent space, the green cube flashed to the aid of the pearly sphere. The globe was wrapped, helpless, in clinging amoeboid tentacles of flowing white flame. Ivec struggled with field effects to tear them away, but the light creature’s strength proved far beyond his own. He directed an intense energy beam against the shining form—a ray strong enough to fuse any material substance. But it was deflected harmlessly away.
“Go!” Lakne warned again. “You cannot liberate me. This is a photon creation of Gogok’s. It can tap the power of the matter converter. It has boundless energy——”
But Ivec stepped up the intensity of his stabbing beam. Without the aid and knowledge of the sphere, he knew, he was surely doomed. Nor even otherwise would he willingly have abandoned it. But still the photon creature seemed unharmed by his attack, and he knew that his energies were near ultimate exhaustion.
He was aware, abruptly, of a vast and increasing lassitude. That, he realized in sick despair, was a warning of the end. The cube’s energy had been limited from the beginning. He had drawn deep upon it on the long flight out to Persephone, and in the desperate struggle to escape the nebula’s sucking vortices. Again he had spent precious energy, to fight free of the Blue Spot’s radiation trap, and to liberate Lakne from her prison. He had shared the scant remainder of his energy with her, had expended still more to cut their way here. The limit was now at hand.
Dread numbed him with the realization that, even if he were now free, with full knowledge of the energy catalyst, he had no strength left for the long journey back to Earth—not enough even to escape the feeble gravitation of Persephone.
All hope fled away, left him inert, leaden, paralyzed.
When a flaming tentacle reached out from the photon being, he made an effort to resist. But its strength was far greater than his own. He yielded to it.
Cube and sphere were lifted in the burning, shapeless arms, carried downward through the vast and splendid spaces of Gogok’s dwelling, and into a central inner room.
This chamber, beneath the power dome, was circular, lofty and immense. Ebon and scarlet gleamed darkly from the floor, in intricate inlay. The tall, slim columns were a flawless white. The vaulted ceiling shone purple, with transmitted light from the dome.
The chamber was empty, save for a massive black pillar that stood in the center of the floor. Upon its crest, as if upon a black throne, lay two shining beings. One was a globe—similar to Lakne’s globe, save that it was not white, but a hot, malefic scarlet—that, Ivec knew, was the infamous Gogok. Beside it, glowing with a clear, cold green, was the small photon cube that had been appropriated by Barthu Jildo.
The thing of flowing light brought its two helpless prisoners near, floating through the air.
The green cube stirred upon the pillar, and Ivec distinguished the mocking voice of Barthu Jildo: “Greetings, young Andrel! And thanks to you for having followed me here. For it is because of your coming that I have been able to conclude, with Gogok, the master of this planet, here beside me, an agreement which allows me to carry back to Earth the energy catalyst which we sought.
“With it, I shall be master of Earth, as he is of Persephone. Men shall live to do me honor, or perish—like that!”
He paused to allow Ivec to observe a small gray being near the base of the throne, polishing at the black-and-scarlet floor with a mindless and infinite diligence. Then a dazzling ray jetted from the cube upon the throne, and the gray toiler became a mass of smoking, twitching flesh.
“You, clever Andrel,” Barthu Jildo continued mockingly, “shall also perish. For it is my aid in destroying you and the rest of your proud family, which Gogok is to reward with knowledge of the secret——”
Beside Ivec, suspended helpless in the luminous tentacles of Gogok’s photon slave, the small globe of Lakne stirred and flushed with opalescent color.
“Fool!” her warning thought was radiated to the green cube on the throne. “I know Gogok of old. And he seeks but to bend you to his own ends, and to destroy you, as he does all beings. He plans to cause you to exhaust your own energies in a struggle with Ivec Andrel—and then to obliterate you.”
THE SCARLET GLOBE of Gogok flamed with angry color, and a burning red ray stabbed at the opalescent sphere of Lakne.
“Stop, Gogok!” The green cube of Barthu Jildo darted from the throne, poised in the path of the red ray, to deflect it from Lakne. His voice demanded, harsh with alarm. “You—can you prove that charge?”
“I know Gogok of old,” the milky sphere repeated. “And I, who loved him, am the one who has suffered most dreadfully from his evil cunning. Let him prove that he is dealing fair. Ask him to reveal the secret of the catalyst, now.”
The scarlet globe lifted angrily above the tall, black throne.
“Lakne is my oldest enemy,” it radiated swiftly. “Your fellow being from Earth has set her free from prison. Don’t you believe her lies. And let us destroy her, for her liberty is a menace to both our lives.”
