During the latter days of our journey I noticed a curious change in the ground. It seemed now, in many places, to be like a soft, chalky limestone, which ran in pockets and seams between strata of very hard rock. I called Miela's attention to it once, and she pointed out a number of irregular shaped, small masses of a substance which in daylight I assumed might be yellow. These were embedded in the soft limestone.
"Sulphur," she said. "Like that on your earth. There is much of it up here, I have heard."
The Dark City occupied a flat plateau, slightly elevated above the surrounding country, and on the brink of a sheer drop of some six or seven thousand feet to an arm of the polar sea.
Our problems now were very different from when we had laid siege to the Lone City. The conformation of the country allowed us no opportunity to approach closer than two or three miles to the barrage of light we must expect. We could not reach the city from these nearest points with our projectors.
There were many lateral ravines depressed below the upper surface of the main plateau, and though the light‑rays from the city, directed horizontally, would sweep their tops, we found we could traverse many of them a considerable distance in safety. But from the bottoms of them we could only fire our rockets without specific aim and our projectors not at all.
Only by the most fortuitous of circumstances did we escape complete annihilation the first moment we appeared within range. We had no idea what lay ahead—although the guides we had brought with us from the Lone City informed us we were nearing our destination—and the scene remained in complete darkness until we were hardly more than five miles outside Tao's stronghold.
Then, without warning, his lights flashed on—not only a vertical barrage, but a horizontal one as well—sweeping the higher points of the entire country around for a distance of twelve or fifteen miles.
We were, at the moment, following the bottom of a narrow gully. Had we been on any of the upper reaches of the plateau we would undoubtedly have been picked out by one of the roving beams of light and destroyed.
We camped where we were, and again for several days I attempted nothing, devoting myself to a thorough exploration of the country about us. The Dark City appeared impregnable. Beams of light from Tao's larger projectors were constantly roaming about the entire plateau that surrounded it, and every higher point of vantage from which one of ours could have reached them must have been struck by their rays a score of times a day.
It will be understood, of course, that any place where we could mount one of the higher powered projectors, a task of several hours at best, and strike the city, must of necessity be also within range of their rays, for theirs were as powerful as ours. Upon observation I felt convinced that should we attempt to mount a projector anywhere on these higher points it would be sought out and destroyed long before we could bring it into action.
That this was Tao's stronghold, and not the Lone City, now became evident. I could readily understand why he had retreated here. Fully four times as many projectors as he had in operation in the Lone City were now in evidence. Those of shorter range, and spreading rays, kept the entire country bathed in steady light for several miles around him, while the larger ones—a hundred of them possibly—roved constantly over the black emptiness beyond.
From our encampment we could advance but little farther. Fortunately, retreat was open to us; and once beyond the circle of steady light, we had no difficulty in moving about in the darkness, even though momentarily we frequently were within range of the single light‑beams, had they chanced to swing upon us.
This was the situation which, even Mercer agreed, appeared hopeless. We explored the brink of the precipice below which lay the sea. It was a sheer drop of many thousand feet. Although a descent might have been made closer to the Dark City, certainly it was not possible at any point we could reach. We sent our girls down, and they reported that from below it appeared probable that access to the ocean was had by the Dark City some miles farther along. They went but a short distance, for Tao's lights were occasionally sweeping about; and more than that, they could make but very short flights, owing to the cold.
To starve Tao out appeared equally as impractical as a direct attack. With our little army we could not surround the city on a circumference of some eighty miles. We might, indeed, have barred the several roads that entered it, but it seemed probable that if Tao wanted to come out he would come, for all we could do to stop him. And yet to starve him out seemed our only possible plan.
"We'll have to send back for reënforcements," I told Mercer, Miela and Anina at one of our many conferences. "An army of several thousand, if we can maintain it up here."
And then, the very next day, Mercer and Anina came forward with their discovery. We had set up our encampment of little black fabric tents in a ravine some six miles outside the city, securely hidden by surrounding cliffs. Above us across the black sky the greenish‑red beams of Tao's light‑rays swept continually to and fro. Miela and I were sitting together disconsolately in our tent, reviewing the situation, when Mercer and Anina burst in. They had been roaming about together, exploring the country, and came in now full of excitement and enthusiasm to tell us what they had found. We two were to accompany them. They would tell us no more than that; and as soon as we had all eaten we started off. It would be a trip of several hours, Mercer said, and would take us around to the other side and partly behind the Dark City.
We followed no road, but scrambled along over the open country, picking our way as best we could, and using the lights from the city to give us direction. The two girls half walked, half flew, and Mercer and I, with our ability to take huge leaps, made rapid progress.
The night was black—that unluminous blackness that seems to swallow everything, even objects near at hand. We made our way along, using little hand search‑lights that threw a red glare a short distance before us.
We kept down in the gulleys as much as possible, avoiding the higher places where Tao's long‑range beams were constantly striking, and passed around in front of the Dark City, keeping always at least five miles away.
We had been traveling two or three hours, and still Mercer and Anina gave us no clew to what we were about to see. It began to snow. Huge, soft flakes soon lay thick on the ground.
"Mercer, where are you taking us?" I exclaimed once.
"You shall see very soon now," Anina answered me. "What we have found, Ollie and I—and our plan—you shall understand it soon."
We had to be content with that. An hour later we found ourselves well around behind the Dark City and hardly more than four miles outside it. A great jagged cliff‑face, two hundred feet high perhaps, fronted us. We, at its base, were on comparatively low ground here, with another low line of cliffs shading us from the light‑beams of the city.
Mercer and Anina stopped and pointed upward at the cliff. A huge seam of the soft, chalky limestone ran laterally for five hundred feet or more across its face. I saw embedded in this seam great irregular masses of sulphur.
"There you are," said Mercer triumphantly. "Sulphur—stacks of it. All we have to do is set fire to it. With the wind blowing this way—right toward the city—" His gesture was significant.
The feasibility of the plan struck us at once. It was an enormous deposit of free sulphur. From this point the prevailing wind blew directly across the city. The sulphur lay in great masses sufficiently close together so that if we were to set fire to it in several places with our small light‑ray torches we could be assured of its burning steadily. And its fumes, without warning, blowing directly over the city—I shuddered as the whole thing became clear to me.
"Good God, man—"
"That'll smoke 'em out," declared Mercer, waving his hand again toward the cliff. "I ask you now, won't that smoke 'em out?"
"Tao's men—yes." Miela's face was grave as she answered Mercer's triumphant question. "It will do that, Ollie. Kill them all, of a certainty; but that whole city there—"
Mercer stared at his feet, toying idly with the little torch in his hand.
"Can you think of any other way to get at Tao?" he asked.
Anina met my eyes steadily.
"There is no other way," she said quietly. "It must be done. It is your world—your people—we must think of now. And you know there is no other way."
We decided at last to try it. Once we had made the decision, we proceeded as quickly as possible to put the plan into execution. We moved our encampment farther away, well out of danger from the fumes.
We mounted several of the projectors in positions where their rays could reach the surrounding country, and the sky, although not the city itself. Then, ordering our men and girls to hold themselves in readiness for whatever might occur, we four went off together to fire the sulphur.
The wind was blowing directly toward the city as we stood at the base of the cliff, a silent little group. I think that now, at this moment, we all of us hesitated in awe at what we were about to do.
Mercer broke the tension.
"Come on, Alan—let's start it off. Now is the time—a lot of places at once."
We flashed on our little light‑rays, and in a moment the sulphur was on fire at a score of different points. We drew off a few hundred feet to one side and sat down to watch it in the darkness. Overhead Tao's red beams swept like giant search‑lights across the inky sky.
The sulphur started burning with tiny little spots of wavering blue flame that seemed, many of them, about to die away. Gradually they grew larger, spreading out slowly and silently in ever‑widening circles. Under the heat of the flames the sulphur masses became molten, turned into a viscous dark red fluid that boiled and bubbled heavily and dropped spluttering upon the ground.
Slowly the blue‑green flames spread about, joining each other and making more rapid headway—a dozen tiny volcanoes vomiting their deadly fumes and pouring forth their sluggish, boiling lava. The scene about us now was lighted in a horrible blue‑green glare. A great cloud of thin smoke gathered, hung poised a moment, and then rolled slowly away—its deadly fumes hanging low to the ground and spreading ever wider as though eager to clutch the unsuspecting city in their deadly embrace.
The entire face of the cliff was now covered with the crawling blue fire, lapping avidly about with its ten‑foot tongues. We drew back, staring silently at each other's ghastly green faces.
"Let's—let's get away," Mercer whispered finally. "No use staying here now."
We hurried back to the nearest place where one of our projectors was set up. The two men guarding it looked at us anxiously, and smiled triumphantly when Miela told them what we had done. We stood beside them a moment, then Miela and I climbed to an eminence near by from which we had an unobstructed view of the city.
The light‑barrage still held steady. The individual, higher‑powered projectors as before swung their beams lazily about the country. We sat partly in the shelter of a huge bowlder, behind which we could have dropped quickly had one of them turned our way.
"Soon it will be there," Miela said softly, when we had been sitting quiet for a time.
I did not answer. It was indeed too solemn a thing for words, this watching from the darkness while an invisible death, let loose by our own hands, stole down upon our complacent enemies.
A few moments more we watched—and still the scene before us showed no change. Then, abruptly, the lights seemed to waver; some of the beams swung hurriedly to and fro, then remained motionless in unusual positions, as though the men at their levers in sudden panic had abandoned them.
My heart was beating violently. What hidden tragedy was being enacted behind that silent barrier of light? I shuddered as my imagination conjured up hideous pictures of that unseen death that now must be stalking about those city streets, entering those homes, polluting the air with its stifling, noisome breath, and that even at this distance seemed clutching at my own lungs.
I suppose the whole thingdidlast only a moment. There was little in what we saw of significance had we not known. But we did know—and the knowledge left us trembling and unnerved.
I leaped to my feet, pulling Miela after me, and in a few moments more we were back beside the projector we had left with Mercer and Anina. Suddenly a white shape appeared in the sky over the city. It passed perilously close above the shattered light‑barrage and came sailing out in our direction.
Mercer jumped for the projector, but I was nearer, and in a moment I had flashed it on.
"It's Tao!" Mercer shouted. "He—"
It was one of Tao's interplanetary vehicles, rising slowly in a great arc above us. I swung our light‑beams upward; it swept across the sky and fell upon the white shape; the thing seemed to poise in its flight, as though held by the little red circle of light that fastened upon it, boring its way in. Then, slowly at first, it fell; faster and faster it dropped, until it struck the ground with a great crash—the first and only sound of all this soundless warfare.
It was three days before the great sulphur deposit we had ignited burned itself out. The lights of the city had all died away, and blackness such as I never hope to experience again settled down upon the scene.
We approached the Dark City then; we even entered one or two of its outlying houses;, but beyond that we did not go, for we had made certain of what we wanted to know.
I remember my father once describing how, when a young man, he had gone to the little island of Martinique shortly after the great volcanic outbreak of Mount Pelée. I remember his reluctance to dwell upon the scenes he saw there in that silent city of St. Pierre—the houses with their dead occupants, stricken as they were sitting about the family table; the motionless forms in the streets, lying huddled where death had overtaken them in their sudden panic. That same reluctance silences me now, for one does not voluntarily dwell upon such scenes as those.
A day or so later we found the interplanetary projectile which had sought to escape. Amid its wreckage lay the single, broken form of Tao—that leader who, plotting the devastation of two worlds for his own personal gain, had at the very last deserted his comrades and met his death alone.
There is but little more to add. With the death of Tao and the changing of the law concerning the virgins' wings, my mission on Mercury was over. But I did not think of that then, for with the war ended, my position as virtual ruler of the Light Country still held Mercer and me occupied with a multiplicity of details. It was a month or more after our return from the Twilight Country that Miela reminded me of father and my duty to him. "You have forgotten, my husband. But I have not. Your world—it calls you now. You must go back."
Go back home—to father and dear little Beth! I had not realized how much I had wanted it.
"What you have done for our nation—for our girls—can never be repaid, Alan. And you can do more in later years, perhaps. But now your father needs you—and we must think of him."
I cast aside every consideration of what changes would first have to be made here on Mercury, and decided in that moment to go.
"But you must go with me, Miela," I said, and then, as I thought of something else, I added gently: "You will, won't you, little wife? For you know I cannot leave you now."
She smiled her tender little smile.
"'Whither thou goest, I will go,' my husband," she quoted softly, "'for thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.'"
We were ready to start at the time of the next inferior conjunction of Mercury with the earth. At our combined pleading, and with the permission of his associates, Fuero was persuaded to take command of the nation during my absence; and I felt I was leaving affairs in able hands.
Lua refused to accompany us; but she urged Anina to go, and the little girl was ready enough to take advantage of her mother's permission.
Though he said nothing, I shall never forget Mercer's face as this decision was made.
The vehicle in which Miela had made her former trip was still lying in the valley where we had left it. We went away privately, only Lua and Fuero accompanying us out of the city.
Lua parted with her two daughters quietly. Her emotions at seeing them go she concealed under that sweet, gentle reserve which was characteristic of her always.
"Promise me you will be careful of her, Alan," she said softly as she kissed me at parting.
We landed in the Chilean Andes, with that patient statue of the Christ to welcome us back to earth. The Trans‑Andean Railroad runs near it, and we soon were in the city of Buenos Aires. The two girls, with wings shrouded in their long cloaks, walked about its crowded streets with a wonderment I can only vaguely imagine. We had only what little money I had taken with me to Mercury. I interviewed a prominent banker of the city, told him in confidence who I was, and from him obtained necessary funds.
We cabled father then, and he answered at once that he would come down and join us. We waited for him down there, and in another month he was with us—dear old gentleman, leaning over the steamer rail, trying to hold back the tears of joy that sprang into his eyes at sight of me. Little Beth was with him, too, smart and stylish as ever, and good old Bob Trevor, whom she shyly presented as her husband.
The beach at Mar del Plata, near Buenos Aires, is one of the most beautiful spots in South America; and on a clear moonlit night, with the Southern Cross overhead, it displays the starry heavens as few other places can on this earth.
On such a night in February, 1942, Mercer and Anina sat together on the sand, apart from the gay throng that crowded the pavilion below them. The girl was dressed all in white, with a long black cape covering her wings. Her beautiful blond hair was piled on her head in huge soft coils, and over it she had thrown a filmy, sky‑blue mantilla that shone with a soft luster in the moonlight and seemed reflected in the blue of her eyes.
Mercer in white flannels sat beside her, cross‑legged on the white sand, with a newly purchased Hawaiian guitar across his lap. From the band stand in the pavilion down the beach faint strains of music floated up to them. The moon silvered the water before them; a soft, gentle breeze of summer caressed their cheeks; the myriad stars glittered overhead like brilliant gems scattered on the turquoise velvet of the sky.
Anina, chin cupped in her hand, sat staring at the wonderful heavens that all her life before had been withheld from her sight. She sighed tremulously.
"I want to say this is a night," Mercer declared, breaking a long silence.
"It's—it's beautiful," she answered softly. "Those millions of worlds—like mine, perhaps—or like this one of yours." She turned to him. "Ollie, which of them is my world?"
"You can't see it now, Anina. It's too close to the sun."
Again she sighed. "I'm sorry for that. It would seem closer, perhaps, if we could see it."
"You're not sorry you came, Anina? You don't want to go back now?"
"Not now, Ollie." She smiled into his earnest, pleading eyes. "For those I love are here as well as there. I have Miela and Alan—and—"
"And?" Mercer leaned forward eagerly.
"And Miela's little son—that darling little baby. We must go back soon and see Miela. She will be wondering where we are."
Mercer sat back. "Oh," he said. "Yes, we must."
The band in the pavilion stopped its music. Mercer slid his little steel cross‑piece over the guitar strings and began to play the haunting, crying music of the islands, the music of moonlight and love. After a moment he stopped abruptly.
"Anina, that little song you sang in the boat that day—you remember—the day we went to the Water City? Sing it again, Anina."
She sang it through softly, just as she had in the boat, to its last ending little half‑sob.
Mercer laid his guitar on the sand beside him.
"You said that music talks to you, Anina—though sometimes you—you don't understand just what it tries to say. I feel it that way, too—only—only to‑night—now—I think Idounderstand."
His voice was very soft and earnest and just a trifle husky.
"You said that it was a love‑song, Anina, and it was sad because love is sad. Do you—think love is always sad?" He put out his hand awkwardly and touched hers.
"Do you, Anina?" he whispered.
Her little figure swayed toward him. She half turned, and in her shining eyes he saw the light that needs no words to make its meaning clear.
The timidity that so often before had restrained him was swept away; he took her abruptly into his arms, kissing her hair, her eyes, her lips.
"Love isn't—always very sad, is it, Anina?"
Her arms held him close.
"I—I don't know," she breathed against his shoulder. "But it's—it's very—wonderful."