Collected short fiction, p.366
Collected Short Fiction, page 366
For haste was obviously imperative. Sirens wailed behind him. Presently a great searchlight thrust its glaring eye over the rim. Now and then a rifle twanged, once a machine gun coughed briefly.
In his youth, near his father’s mission, Jimmy Hall had known country much like this—where growing ravines had devoured the farm lands. Often he had played bandits-and-caravans in them with the native boys.
Now he played that old game again, with death for a penalty. And, it might be, even the safety of the world as the prize. All the old skill came back, as he crouched in narrow crevices, climbed silently down banks of splintered shale, slipped across dry, ever-deeper gulches.
The G-ray, at last, went into action. For a clay pinnacle above him gleamed out abruptly in the darkness, as if illuminated by a spotlight of ghastly purple. And then it crumbled, flattened as if a great invisible hammer had crushed it. No dust, even, rose against that awful force.
After that, he clung to the black canyon bottoms.
It was a G-bomb, from which he had the closest call.
An airplane was roaring in the sky. A Verey flare had floated down ahead, vanished. And the bomb struck, without other warning, some distance up the slope.
The thud of its fall was just audible. There was a sudden flare of dull purple light, that was somehow searingly painful to his eyes. And he was flung down upon his face, as if his weight had been several-fold increased.
His hands and face were lacerated by the fall. For a few seconds he was pinned against the gravel, unable even to breathe. But, with the fading of that dull, blinding purple, the burden of weight departed.
Hall squeezed his bruised body against a boulder, until the plane had dropped another Verey flare, and dived to see the bomb’s effect. It roared over, and left him. He rose again, and staggered on.
He was anxious to get as far as possible, before dawn. His stumbling progress was slow by starlight. After midnight, however, the gibbous moon picked out the larger obstacles, and he held a steady pace down the main, deepening canyon.
In the dawn, when motors began to roar again in the sky, he found the shelter of a shallow cave. He slept through the morning, presently awoke to the torture of thirst. At dark, reeling now with hunger, he went on.
All that night, slogging wearily down the canyon, he hoped to come upon some seep or rainpool. But the dry desert mocked him. And it came to him, with a horrible certainty, that in the land itself Renvic had chosen a better guard for his secrets than all his gray minions and the terror of the G-ray.
For this day would surely bring madness.
The next night, Hall thought, would be his last.
In that stupor of fatigue and despair, plodding through the chill gray of dawn, Hall heard some hoarse, croaking sound. A thing came to meet him, crawling up the dry gravel stream-bed in the bottom of the canyon. He saw at last, with a shock of incredulous horror, that the thing was human.
The man moved in a manner a little ludicrous, more than a little frightful. Holding his wrists close together, he made a queer hopping step with his arms. Then he lurched his body, to drag his knees forward.
The stranger’s body was bare to the waist. The sun had cooked his back to a hot brick red. His close-trimmed beard was black, but the hair on his head was completely white.
The crawling man came up on his lacerated knees. The hands he held up, close together, were worn bloody paws. In a moment, Hall saw why he held them together. The swollen, bleeding wrists were cruelly bound with wire.
His ankles, Hall saw, were likewise tied.
A harsh, rattling sound came from the throat of the red-eyed stranger. And the big pilot shuddered to a thrill of deeper, puzzled horror. For that dreadful croaking made his own name:
“Jim! Jim Hall!”
CHAPTER X
CONQUEROR TO COME
HIS steps stiffened with dread, Hall walked slowly up to the kneeling man. He searched the thin, pain-drawn face beneath that tangle of white hair. For all the black beard, the inflamed eyes, the cracked and swollen lips, he glimpsed some ghost of the past.
“Don’t you know me, Jim?” It was hard to understand the dry, agonized croaking. “Don’t you remember Randolph Field? The kid from Boston? The one they called Beans?”
“Boyd?” Hall was incredulous. “Carter—you aren’t Carter Boyd?”
“All that is left of him.”
“What—in God’s name, Carter—what has happened to you?”
But Carter Boyd didn’t hear him. He had pitched suddenly forward, on his face. Hall attacked the wires. They had been twisted mercilessly tight, with pliers, and then cut short, so that naked fingers could do nothing with them.
Thrusting the blade of his pocket knife between the twisted ends of wire, Hall was able to loosen them. When Boyd was free, he dragged him into the shadow of a cliff, and rubbed at his swollen wrists and ankles to restore circulation.
After an hour, Boyd came to.
“Thanks,” he croaked. “Sorry I passed out, old man. But I had been going all night. Knew it was my last chance.”
“You’ll be all right, old scout,” murmured Hall. That is, he held back the reservation, if we don’t die of thirst before Renvic gets us with his G-bombs. “Now—:if you can stand to talk—who did it?”
Horror shadowed Boyd’s dark eyes.
“I don’t know.” His pale face twitched with pain. “It was a green-eyed devil in black, with a gang of men in gray uniforms. They came in a queer gray plane, and took her away.”
Sobs shook Boyd’s red-burned shoulders.
“They took Shadrona, and carried her away!”
Green-eyed devil! That fitted Renvic. Breathless, Hall dropped to his knees on the gravel, beside Boyd.
“Shadrona?” he demanded. “Who’s Shadrona?”
The dark, blood-shot eyes of Boyd stared up at him. They looked almost insane.
“Shadrona’s an angel. We were in love. Those devils carried her away.”
“An angel? What do you mean?”
Boyd’s white head dropped wearily back to the gravel.
“I can’t tell you, Jim,” he whispered. “Don’t think I’m out of my head, Jim. I’m as sane as any man ever was. But if I told you about Shadrona, you would know I was crazy.”
“You’ve got to tell me, Beans,” Hall urged him hoarsely. “We’re both in a pretty bad pickle. We’ve got to work together.”
Boyd shook his white head wearily.
“You wouldn’t believe, Jim. Even I couldn’t believe in Shadrona at first. If you did believe, you couldn’t understand—not how a man could love a winged thing—”
“Winged thing?” Hall caught at the phrase. He fumbled in his pocket. “Carter,” he asked softly, “would it help you to tell me about Shadrona if I showed you—this?”
He produced the strange jewel. Light glittered yellow on the slim nude woman-body hung from the ruby chain, shimmered from the many-colored wings.
“Shadrona!” Boyd almost screamed. “It is Shadrona!”
His stiff bloody hand reached quivering, and Hall let him have the jewel. His reddened, hollowed eyes studied it. At last his head shook.
“No, it isn’t Shadrona,” he gasped. “But where did it come from, Jim?”
“I don’t know,” Hall said. “But now, Carter—can’t you tell me?”
In short, gasping phrases, Carter Boyd told of the freezing music and how he had fought the gray planes, to aid Shadrona. How she in turn had saved his life, carried him to the valley of the ancient monastery, nursed his wound.
“And Renvic found you?” Hall prompted him.
“The gray plane came,” Boyd’s dry, tortured voice doggedly continued. “I didn’t think any plane could land in that narrow canyon—but it did.
“I tried to get Shadrona to escape. But she wouldn’t leave me. She tried to defend us with her weapon of cold. But a queer purple ray smashed us down—”
“The G-ray,” muttered Hall. “But go on.”
“When I came to,” gasped Boyd, “they had us. The green-eyed one was standing by, snapping orders. A big, black-haired devil had the wire and pliers.”
HALL’S whisper hissed through clenched teeth, “Krošeć!”
“They called him that,” husked Boyd. “He had tied the joints of Shadrona’s wings together behind her back. He tied her feet. His black face wore a look of ghoulish delight. And I couldn’t endure the way his big, savage hands—”
Boyd bit his blackened lips. Blood oozed down, into the black beard on his chin.
“I tried to fight,” he went on at last. “That—Krošeć clubbed me with his gun. His men held me. He tied my wrists and ankles with the wire. Then he fastened my arms up to the branch of an old apple tree, so that I was half hanging.
“Shadrona was just coming back to consciousness. The wires must have been agonizing. For she made little whimpering sounds, that would have torn your heart out.
“Panting with a beastly passion, Krošeć crushed her in his arms.
“Then he began to laugh. ‘We’ll leave your friend to hang there,’ he told her, ‘till his bones fall apart.’ He carried her into the plane. One of his men picked up the cold-weapon, and they took off.”
Pity choked Hall.
“How—Carter—how’d you ever get away?”
“It was an old tree, Jim. The branch was dead. I managed to break it with my weight. Then I tried all day to untie the wires. I failed. When night came, I started to crawl.
“Once I had thought I glimpsed a Mongol horseman up on the rim. I hoped to find a camp—”
“The spy!” whispered Hall, “who found you!”
“That night, I crawled,” gasped Boyd. “The next day. And last night. Till I met you.” His dark, tortured eyes stared at Hall. “Now—what can we do?”
“We’ve got to stop Renvic.” Hall’s voice was hoarse and grim. “He calls himself Alexander. He is going to attack the world, with those weird weapons. He’ll try to conquer civilization, if he isn’t stopped. And the odds are about a million to one, against us.”
“But we’ve got to try,” sobbed Boyd. “For Shadrona.”
“For the world,” gasped Hall’s dry throat. “But first—water!”
CHAPTER XI
DWELLERS IN THE SKY
AS IF Renvic had decided to leave Hall’s fate to the merciless hands of the desert, they saw no searching planes that day. Staggering, Hall aiding Boyd, they went back the way that Boyd had come.
Beyond a welter of tumbled boulders which it seemed incredible to Hall that the crawling man could have crossed, they found a well-concealed rift in the age-shattered canyon wall, and came into the tiny green valley of the lost monastery.
Laughing with a kind of delirious joy, they drank.
That same day, Hall prepared to leave again.
“We’ve got to have more information,” he said, “about what we’re up against. And I think I know how to get it.”
Carter Boyd insisted that he must go along—until his haggard white head fell in exhausted sleep. He looked obviously unfit for any effort for several days. Taking a little food and a pottery jar of water, Hall left him sleeping.
Venturing now to travel by day, Hall was able to move more rapidly. But it was late on the following day when he glimpsed the ominous silver tower that guarded the plateau’s rim.
His plan was a desperate gamble. Its basis was no more than a pit and a spade that he had glimpsed from the air, and chance words that he had overheard. The armed sentry, stalking back and forth on the rim above, made the attempt seem wholly foolhardy.
At last, giddy with hunger and fatigue, Hall reached the pit unobserved. He secreted himself twenty yards below it, and waited for Dr. Gaylord—cold with a sudden doubt that the archeologist would ever return to his dig.
But at last, just before sunset, the little scientist came waddling eagerly down the trail. The monocle glittered beneath his white pith helmet. An automatic was belted over his shorts.
He hurried down into the pit, and went to work. The end of some huge gray bone was projecting from the red clay. He was uncovering it with careful skill. He used a chisel to pry off bits of day, removed the fragments with a tiny brush, and covered the huge ancient bone, as fast as it was exposed, with shellac.
He made a tuneless buzzing sound as he worked.
Hall came up silently behind. He caught the butt of the automatic, removed it. Still Gaylord buzzed, unconscious of him. Hall set the muzzle against his stooped back, and said:
“Sorry, Doc, but I’ve got to interrupt.”
The little man emitted a startled howl. His chisel gouged deep into the gray brittle bone. His monocle fell out of his eye, shattered. White and trembling, he blinked at Hall.
“I won’t hurt you, Doc. I’ve just got some questions to ask.”
Swelling angrily, Gaylord pushed the topi back off his red bald head. He pointed at the deep gouge in the bone.
“Look what you m-m-made me do!” his thin voice shrilled. “I know what you are. You are a secret agent in the pay of the German government. Renvic told me. I’ll not t-t-t-tell you anything.”
“We’ll see.”
Gaylord’s moon face froze into a stubborn frown.
“I won’t b-b-betray Renvic and his Plan.”
Hall jabbed him sharply with the gun.
“Better, Doc.” His voice was a menacing rasp. “All about Renvic and his Plan and the winged people and whatever place you found them. Quick!”
The small eyes of Gaylord narrowed cunningly.
“Not a word about the Rock!”
For answer, Hall caught up the dropped chisel. He drove it into the buried bone. Soft fragments splintered out. And Gaylord made a little scream of pain.
“Don’t do that! You’ll destroy my Cycloptosaurus Gaylordi—the only specimen—my chance for immortality!” His fat hands groped vainly at the chisel. “D-d-don’t!”
Hall lifted the chisel grimly.
“Talk!”
“All right,” sighed the little man. “For the sake of science, I will tell you. Only, put down that chisel!”
HALL obeyed, but kept the automatic level. Gaylord fished another monocle out of the pocket of his red polo shirt, and inflated his chest importantly.
“As you would be aware, young man, if you read the scientific abstracts, my genius has been displayed in many fields of research. It was an investigation of the Cosmic Rays, three years ago, that led to the discovery of the Rock.”
Hall was a little surprised at his sudden willingness to talk. Was there a catch to it?
“I was making high altitude flights,” Gaylord went on, “carrying Geiger counters and a portable cloud chamber of my own design. Count Renvic was my pilot.”
“Renvic?” Hall broke in. “Who was he?”
“My daughter met him at a party in Hollywood. He was then a penniless refugee. With his Iron Shirts, he had attempted a revolution in his own country. They were defeated and exiled. He and Linda were attracted. She persuaded me to employ him.”
“Now,” said Hall. “About the Rock?”
The little man was peering through the monocle, up toward the plateau’s rim. His face set stubbornly. When Hall reached for the chisel again, however, he resumed nervously:
“Descending through a cloud, we struck the Rock quite by accident. Renvic managed to level off, but there was damage to both ourselves and the plane.”
Amazed, Hall demanded:
“What is the Rock?”
Gaylord cleared his throat.
“The Rock, as my unpublished monograph shows, is a stone mass of igneous origin, nearly four miles in length, and about one thousand feet in extreme thickness. It floats on the atmosphere, at an altitude of about three miles.”
“Floats?” rapped Hall. “How?”
“By an almost complete nullification of gravity,” said the shrill-voiced little scientist. “We haven’t got the full secret, yet—that’s why Renvic was so anxious to recapture the fugitive.
“But, like the gravity-multiplying G-ray, it depends upon the mass-velocity relation. Weight is increased by acceleration of electronic spins. The nullification, from the evidence at hand, seems to follow the same principle. The spin, however, is apparently on a hyperaxis, resulting in a minimization of the time-factor.”
“If there’s a Rock floating in the sky,” demanded Hall, “why hasn’t it been seen?”
The monocle glittered superciliously.
“The surrounding atmosphere,” squeaked Gaylord, “through an extension of the anti-gravity effect, is lightened, so that a continual up-current rises about the Rock. The resulting rarefication, cooling, and condensation surrounds the Rock with clouds and mist. That condition has caused it to be mistaken for a more or less ordinary atmospheric disturbance.”
“Well,” Hall muttered. “And what did you find on the Rock?”
“The Rock is covered with snow,” Gaylord said. “In the center of it stands a singular city. The buildings are cylindrical and crowned with flat, disk-shaped platforms. There are no streets, and few ground-level doors. For the inhabitants are—or were—a unique race of winged avian mammals.
“They were highly intelligent. It seems a misfortune for the science of biology that Renvic found it necessary to kill so many of them before a proper study had been made.”
Hall’s lean face was grim.
“How did he come to kill them?”
“They were extremely friendly, on the occasion of our first landing,” the little scientist told him. “They cared for our injuries, and helped repair the plane. The trouble developed when we returned with a larger expedition.
“While I was carrying on scientific observations, Renvic set up a trading post near their city. Previously, we had seen the wealth of these beings—at some earlier period in their history, they must have worked extensive mines on the surface of the planet. They had flying machines, that once had been used in that commerce—we discovered several useful aerodynamic principles from a study of them. Their early visits, by the way, doubtless established the Icarus legend, and the various myths of winged supernatural beings.
