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 clear 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 dead-heads 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 blooms. 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, barrel-like 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 flat 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.
A vast stretch of the rolling plateau lay before our eyes, low verdant hills, and vast green meadows, scattered with the brilliant purple trees, singly and in groves. Far away, all across the southern horizon, stretched the black sea on which we had landed, glancing with the crimson light of the sky. But nowhere, in all that vast strange expanse, did we catch a glimpse of the machine.
"It must be just in a low place," Sam said hopefully. "Or, I think I remember now that there was a little grove just north of it. We will see it in a minute, if we climb higher up."
"I hope so," I said, raising my binoculars for a better look.
"And we have compasses and instruments to guide ourselves around the world, if we'd just thought to bring them!"
"It's no use!" I said. "Let's go on to the top."
CHAPTER XIX
The Hill of Horror
We climbed up the last few yards to the summit, and gazed across toward the dim blue cliffs that rimmed this world on the north. We stood on a great divide. A vast valley lay before us, stretching away until it was veiled with a faint rosy haze. The curious checkered expanse of green plain and purple woodland sloped far, far away to the north. Perhaps twenty miles away was the vague outline of a great silver lake, dyed with the light of the crimson sky.
Just back of the lake seemed to be a shore of low black cliffs. And beyond those ragged peaks, and beneath the towering and rugged columns of blue that threw themselves up to the bloody sky, was a strange sight indeed!
There was a weird flicker of dancing lights in that far-flung crimson mist, as if it reflected strange infernal fires in a pit behind the low black wall. There were faint and moving gleams of violet—of pale violet flames that changed and rose and fell. Vague tongues of violet fire wove themselves throughout that distant rose-colored mist, with a writhing, rhythmic motion. They formed curious shapes of flame, that faded strangely and came again!
But my description is futile. The important thing was not what we saw, but what wefelt! A curiously unpleasant sensation of helplessness, and of strange horror, came over me. I felt as if I were stealing a forbidden glimpse of an ancient and incredible hell! Fear swept over me—alien, inconceivable terror—like a keen and bitter wind that numbed my brain! I felt the horror of a sentient force, utterly inhuman, devoid of all human knowledge or understanding, as cold and remote as the frozen night of space!
It was terrible—an intangibleauraof fear that reached out of that pit and tugged at our souls with the icy hand of stark horror! I can give the world no conception of the overwhelming terror of it! Nor would I if I could, for such things are better forgotten. I dropped my rifle and clenched my hands, trembling. I braced my feet as though against the force of a physical wind that was striving to carry me toward that abyss of nebulous horror-light!
I looked at Sam. He stood very still, leaning back, with hands raised and jaw dropped. In his eyes was the look of the fresh and innocent soul that struggles with a pitiless terror that it cannot know or understand! Such a look I had never seen before—and God grant that I may never see it again!
My gaze was drawn irresistibly back into that mantle of moving light. Even as I watched, a pillar of green flame, very bright and broad, thrust itself up through the wavering mist of violet fire, and into the crimson haze. It was like the slender head of some obscene green reptile. It reached up—incredibly! It writhed and twisted about! Itwaslike a great serpent of fire. And itsawus!
It grew still with awful attention. Eternities seemed to pass as the dreadful thing hung there, motionless, like a vast frozen pillar of twisted emerald flame, like a column of curdled green fire, with curious throbbing changes in its brightness. I felt a weird force flowing out of it. And I knew that it waswatching us!
"My God!" Sam muttered. "My God!" I looked at him again. His thin face was very white, and beaded with perspiration. He was mechanically mopping at his forehead with the red handkerchief, and staring at the mist of flame with the glaze of terror upon his eyes.
I struggled mightily to throw off the spell of amazement and terror—of alien and unutterable horror—that was grasping at my mind. It was a heart-breaking effort. I moved. I seized Sam's arm and shook it. He swayed drunkenly, with his eyes still on the awful lights. He was like one in a trance—like a man in a dream of death!
And I felt those icy fingers of unthinkable doom closing about my own mind. I was paralyzed again, with my eyes drawn back to the north. The snake's head of frozen green still throbbed strangely, and the flickering violet aurora still kept up its storm of varying motion, in the dim rosy haze into which the awful head was lifted.
Something was reaching toward us, out of the pit! I knew there was intelligence in it—awill, inhuman, and unthinkably strong! It was calling us, compelling us! I knew that in a few moments we could fight no more.
Suddenly a low sobbing sound reached us on that warm, humid south wind, a sound that wailed uncertainly behind us, and rose to a piercing shriek, and slowly died away into the distant south, echoing weirdly on hills and trees as it rolled and sank.
Sam started with a hoarse cry, and went off down the hill toward the north at a stumbling run—toward that abyss of alien horror! A moment more I struggled desperately, but that pitiless power overwhelmed me! I followed in his tracks!
And then, a clear rich voice reached me from beyond the hill—a shout in Xenora's rich and ringing tones. It had a clear human overtone of confidence and courage. "Come back, Melvin Dane! Come back, Sam!"
The old scientist stopped uncertainly, passing his hand dazedly before his brow. Abruptly the terror was gone from my mind! The love and the courage of the brave girl flowed into me. And suddenly, with the green light still pulsing through it, as though sent by a mighty heart, the terrible thing in the north dimmed slowly and faded away! Still the violet lances flickered through the rosy mist, but the green thing was gone—and we were free!
I took Sam's hand, and we turned our backs on the amazing play of fire above the incredible pit, and hastened to the trees from which Xenora's voice had seemed to come. We reached the little grove, but I did not see the girl. Suddenly I had the persuasion that I had not actually heard her with my ears, after all!
"Xenora! Xenora! Are you here?" I called uncertainly.
Sam was still trembling and mopping at his forehead. "She wasn't really here, I think, Mel," he presently said in a strained voice. "She must have reached us with telepathy."
For a long time then we stood there under the flowering trees—very close together, feeling all the awful mystery of the strange world about us—and thinking of what had happened.
"What was it?" My silent lips at last formed the question.
"'The Lord of Flame!' Xenora said. 'The Lord of Flame!' 'A serpent of green fire that dwells in Xath below Mutron!'" Sam repeated mechanically. "I would to God I knew what it is!"
"And what was that awful sound?"
"That was the siren of the Omnimobile, I think. You know we showed Xenora how to operate it. Probably that saved us, by attracting our minds from the Thing while Xenora reached us."
"Then if we go toward it——"
At the instant the wild, sobbing shriek rose again, very welcome for all the wailing qualities of its tones. In a moment we were hastening down the green hillside among the purple trees, in the direction from which the sound had come. Twice we heard it again. And in half an hour we saw the glint of the silver metal side of the machine beyond a thicket of purple bloom!
I have seen few more welcome sights than the Omnimobile was then. The heaviness of it, the threatening nose of the little gun, the air of irresistible power about it, and even its clumsy, beast-like appearance were reassuring. Sam gave a cheer, and we made the last hundred yards at a run. At last we stumbled up the metal ladder and stood upon the narrow deck again.
We clambered through the manhole. The white electric light of the interior was in strange contrast to the crimson gloom, and the coolness of the air was very refreshing. Xenora was in the cabin, anxiously on her feet.
"It was the Lord of Flame!" she whispered. "And you escaped!"
"Thanks to you, my dream girl," I said, taking her boldly in my arms.
CHAPTER XX
Sam's Pet
"I felt it watching you—calling you—and I pulled the cord that makes the great cry," Xenora whispered, after a long, long time.
"Thank God you did! It saved us! We were lost!" And I told her of the amazing storm of flames, of the Thing that had risen out of them, and of the irresistible spell of terror, from which she had awakened us.
"Yes," she said. "It was the Lord of Flame. He watches the world from Xath. He knows the acts of every man!"
I must have reeled a little with fatigue, for suddenly the girl looked at me with quick sympathy brimming in her eyes. "But you—my white prince of dreams—you are very tired. You must rest."
Abruptly I realized that I was tired, dead with fatigue, with an unutterable weariness not only of body but of mind, for the horror had exhausted my emotions. I heard Sam splashing water under the shower. I followed him to the bathroom, and then went to my bunk in the stern, for I had given Xenora my stateroom. I was leaden with weariness, but peacefully secure in the protection of the heavy metal walls of the Omnimobile.
I have very little idea how long I slept, for we had let our watches run down. In the absence of the sun, we came to pay less and less attention to the time, though we usually kept the chronometers going.
When I woke I felt greatly refreshed, with my terrorized despair almost gone. But I would not forget the sense of evil and intelligent power that I had got from the pillar of strange green fire that had been thrust so deliberately and purposefully up through the mist of violet flame, and into the rosy haze that hung over the hidden abyss in which it lurked.
It hadseenus! I knew it. And I knew that, even if its incredible power seemed withdrawn, it was still not far away.
I heard Sam speak, heard Xenora laugh. Evidently they were in the little galley, for I heard the clatter of cooking utensils. I dressed and went in. How beautiful the girl was! Her red lips were brilliant against the light green tan of her skin. Her dark hair fell over her shoulders in a rich cascade, and her violet eyes were sparkling with life.
She came to me quickly, and took my hand. No words passed between us, for our minds were too near together to need many words. It was enough for me to see the sympathy and love in her eyes. And it seemed again, when our hands met, that a subtle current flowed back and forth between us, setting our minds alight, making our hearts beat faster, raising us together into a higher ethereal plane and fusing our beings into one!
In a moment Sam, with a kind smile of understanding on his face, called us to the table. The steak from the thing we had killed was a great success, and the table was loaded with the good things with which the larder of the machine was stocked. The girl ate heartily, as did Sam and I, and we talked and laughed a good deal. Even if the small number of our common experiences limited the topics of conversation, we had a merry enough time of it, and somehow that happy meal gave us greater courage to meet the strange menace that rose before us.
After we had eaten, and all had helped wash the dishes, all in the same gay spirit, Sam got out the box in which he had put the little creature he had named Alexander. I had quite forgotten all about the diminutive winged plant. With mingled curiosity and repulsion I watched him unfasten the box. I had not yet recovered from my instinctive horror at sight of the flying plants. Xenora seemed to share my antipathy toward them. But Sam has always seemed to care as much for wild life as for men; and he seemed to consider the little creature as natural a pet as a dog. However, of course, his real reason for keeping it was for scientific observation.
The thing fluttered about in the box when he picked it up, and as soon as the lid was raised, it flew out and lit on his hand. Already it seemed bigger and stronger than it had been a day before. The pale yellow of the little fish-like body was darkening. The wings seemed a darker green, and stronger. The blood-color of the slender tentacles along the sides of the body was growing deeper and deeper.
The weird little monster clung to his finger with three of its tentacles, holding the thin, petal-like membranes about its head extended, and moving its black, knobbed organs restlessly. At first the color of the flower-like tissues was almost white, but when I made a sudden motion, they quickly darkened to a deep violet, and the little creature crouched down in Sam's hand as if it were alarmed.
Sam smiled down at it with real understanding in his face.
He uncovered on the table a dish containing a great chunk of the raw, bloody meat of the thing we had killed. The queer, flower-like head twisted about, and the black, stalked organs moved like eyes. Abruptly the membrane changed color again, from the violet of its fright to a deep red.
Sam held his hand over the meat and the slender tentacles disengaged themselves and writhed down over the plate like tiny red snakes. They began to suck the juices out of the meat, and, as the thing filled itself, the strange flower slowly faded in color, until it was a pale pink.
Observing my instinctive horror of the thing, Sam said: "That's the way it was meant to eat, Mel. Nothing unnatural about it. Our table manners might not seem very elegant to an angel!"
"I guess you're right. But that thing just gets on my nerves."
When he went to put the little creature back in the box, it clung to his finger as if reluctant to go, and strange bright patterns of color flashed over the thin membrane. It seems fantastic enough, but even then I was sure that the little thing possessed intelligence, and that it was beginning to feel affection for Sam.
The next time he took it out it seemed larger and stronger—and hungrier! We stayed there for what must have been ten days, though we kept no accurate account of time. It grew rather astonishingly, and always its odd appearance of intelligence was greater. It seemed to feel a real affection for Sam. He whistled ancient tunes to it sometimes, and it seemed to listen in great delight. And for long hours he would sit with the thing in his lap and talk to it. He declared that it was getting so that it could understand. Bright colors crawled on the membranous fringe, and it seemed to listen to him with great intentness.
CHAPTER XXI
Back to the Haunted Hill
On the morning—if one may speak of morning in that world of eternal day—after we had slept off the fatigue of our visit to the hill where we had seen the lights of terror, Sam took me aside for a short talk.
"Mel," he said, "we can't forget what we've come here for! My generator is still keeping up the interference in the ether; but, sooner or later, the force we have come to fight—and it must be that 'Lord of Flame' of Xenora's, and the thing we saw from the hill—will break down the interference! And then the earth—will freeze!"
"But what can we do against—that? And Xenora! Sam, I can't leave her. She's worth more to me than the earth! There's plenty of room in here for us to live our lives out. I've been thinking about it—and I can't go!"
He nodded sympathetically. "I know, Mel. She means a lot to you. But perhaps we will win and save our lives, too."
"Not a chance!" I said bitterly. "Not against that thing we saw! It means death—or worse! But I suppose we have to go on and do our best!"
The old man was beaming. He patted me on the shoulder. "I knew you would be with me, when you had time to think," he said. "Now, when the life of the world is at issue, we can't consider ourselves."
"What do you think we can do?"
"What can't we do? We have the Omnimobile. We have machines and tools. We have knowledge, and our hands. We can go anywhere, and do anything! But the first thing is to study, to find out what we have to deal with, and how to fight it."
"I suppose so."
"Mel, we must go back to that hill."
"No! no! Not there! It was only a miracle—and Xenora—that saved us before!"
"I've some theories. We'll be better prepared next time."
A sudden thought struck me. "Say, couldn't we pay a flying visit to our own world again, and tell what we've found? Then the world would still have a chance, when we are—gone. A half-million Americans, with tanks and heavy artillery, would look mighty good down here. And it would just take a day or two to go."
"No," Sam said. "The world would hardly believe it all, even if we carried out what evidence we could. And nothing could be done in time. Then, I'm not sure we could get out. In fact, I'm pretty sure we couldn't. The rockets might carry us three miles high, all right; but we could never break through that water from beneath. We would fall back. Mel, it's up to us!"
During the days that followed, Sam spent most of his hours in the little laboratory. He spent much time on those great machines that controlled his forces in the ether. And he invented and developed another device that was more nearly within my understanding.
"You know, Mel," he said one day, "I think I can rig up something to protect us from that—fear—that came so near getting us. Ever since you made your telepathic contact with the Green Girl, I have had the idea that the brain sets up disturbances in the ether. We know that the action of the nervous system is electrical in nature, and all electric discharges set up ether waves. It happened that you and she had great minds, created in perfect synchronism, so that each was sensitive to the vibrations of the other. Hypnotism is best explained by such electric theories.
"Now, I am convinced that the 'Lord of Flame' is a brain—whether in a human body or not I cannot attempt to say. It creates such powerful etheric disturbances that it was able to affect us at a distance. If that is the case, it ought to be a fairly simple matter to provide insulation against its vibrations. You know that induction or electric action cannot penetrate a conducting cage. I ought to be able to fix a conducting helmet that will prevent the induction of neuronic currents in our brains."
A short time after he showed me three helmets, as he called them. They were little more than bags of wire gauze to be put over our heads. He demonstrated that an electroscope draped with one of them remained entirely unaffected by charges brought near it; but it seemed a ridiculously inadequate protection against that terror.
We went hunting several times, for the benefit of the little plant. After the first few days, Sam let it go along, hanging on his coat. It was growing very fast, and developing remarkable characteristics. It showed surprising intelligence. Sam seemed to have a real affection for it, and it, in turn, seemed to love him.
I never ceased to feel the strangeness of those expeditions over the rolling green grasslands, among the sparsely scattered flowering trees, in the hot damp air and the intense red light. We shot two more animals like the first, and three others of a smaller variety, which somewhat resembled large rabbits.
Very shortly after Sam had perfected his electro-screen helmets, he planned another expedition to the hill where we had so nearly met incredible disaster. We carried a telescope, electrometers, spectroscope, and a few pieces of Sam's recently developed and highly complicated apparatus, which he had neglected to name, for detecting and analyzing etheric waves.
Xenora insisted on going with us, and there seemed no reason for leaving her behind, since Sam had perfect confidence in the efficacy of his new helmets, and since the girl herself was an excellent woodsman, and could undertake to keep us from getting lost.
We had a long hot march of it across the green plateau among the purple trees, with the fierce beams of the crimson sky pouring down upon us. Burdened with the heavy instruments, we were worn out when we reached the summit. I had suggested that we come in the machine, but Sam wanted to keep it out of the sight of the weird enemy we fought.
Once more we gazed across the vast valley of purple and green, to the mists of ruby light over that abyss beyond the distant lake, in which the violet beams still danced and pulsed. And hardly did we have our apparatus set up when we saw that unearthly, serpent-like beam of green fire writhe up out of the vale of mystery into the rosy haze!
We had on the insulating shields, and I felt nothing of the inexplicable horror of the former occasion; though, of course, the whole adventure was certainly terrible enough. But now that strange thing of green seemed distant and devoid of menace. By way of experiment, I ventured to raise my helmet. The terror caught me like a cold and rushing torrent that swept me almost off my feet! I was glad enough to get the wire gauze fastened back about my head again.
"It is the Lord of Flame," Xenora cried, "looking over toward the city of my people, to see who will be taken to become his slaves. This is a wonderful thing, Barsoni Sam, that lets us not feel its power!"—Barsoni being a word that means 'great man,' in the tongue of Lothar.
For many minutes the amazing shape of twisting green radiance hung in the air. Sam was busy with his apparatus, squinting at the thing through telescope and spectroscope, and reading his other devices. At last the awful, throbbing thing faded away, and died into nothingness. Only the violet lances were left in the mist.
"Many of my theories were substantiated," Sam informed me, almost jubilant. "And I got a lot of new data! It is rather odd, but the light from that thing shows the helium lines as luminous bands, not as the dark lines that might be expected to rise from the absorption of the helium in this atmosphere! I can hardly understand it!"
He said nothing more, but was sunk deep in thought as we quickly gathered the instruments and hastened silently down the hill. I felt that he had won a notable victory in the invention of the thought-insulating helmets. We arrived at the machine again without accident.
CHAPTER XXII
The Silver Sphere
For several days longer, Sam continued his labors in the laboratory. During that time "Alexander," the flying plant, developed remarkably. Before we moved, it had a wing-spread of two or three feet. I have spoken of its intelligence. It soon learned to flutter to the guns when we were preparing to hunt. Sam talked to it incessantly, and declared that it could understand him. He said it could even make its thoughts known by the varying pattern of colors on its fringe of brilliant membrane. Presently he had it trained to dry dishes and to do other similar tasks in the galley.
Of course the thing never learned to speak. In fact, it was devoid of vocal organs, and incapable of making a sound, though its hearing seemed to be good enough. It appeared to communicate its emotions and thoughts by means of changes of color in the tissue-like membrane that I have termed a flower. And, from a strictly scientific point of view, communication by light, or sight, is quite as logical as communication by sound.
Sam examined the black, rod-like organs projecting from the flower on the thing, and said that each of them bore thousands of tiny eyes, like the compound eyes of an insect.
After we had been in the vicinity for perhaps two weeks by upper world time, we started the Omnimobile's great motors again, and moved northward. I had not told Xenora about my talk with Sam—our minds were too closely attuned to require much conversation. I knew that she understood that our maneuver would probably mean our sacrifice to the cause of the world. She said nothing of it, but I thought I detected a sadness in her manner.
During all the hours that Sam had been in his laboratory, alone or with Alexander, I had spent most of the time with Xenora. We wandered together about the meadows, or sat in the cabin to escape the almost intolerable heat. Always I loved her more, brimming as she was with humor and sympathy and love. And bitterly I cursed the fate that was dragging us both to our doom!
Even at the beginning, Sam's scientific achievements had been so far above my understanding, that I would scarcely comprehend them, and his later speculations regarding the menace of the abyss were so abstruse that I quite failed to follow them. His little workshop forward was crammed with strange machinery, some of it humming incessantly. Indeed, his apparatus was still keeping up the interference that prevented the freezing of the earth!
Sam had been signally unsuccessful in getting any scientific information from Xenora, for the simple reason that she had none to impart. But, from her geographical knowledge, he attempted to draw a map, showing the locations of Lothar, of Mutron, and of the pit of the Lord of Flame.
The Map that Sam and Xenora Drew.
The Map that Sam and Xenora Drew.
The Map that Sam and Xenora Drew.
It seemed that there was a strip a score of miles in width between the farther blue walls of the abyss and the great lake we had seen. The pit of Xath seemed to be a great crater lying in that strip. On the brink of the crater Xenora located her "City of the Sleepers," or Mutron. The domain of the last city of Lothar, where she had spent her childhood, lay along the cliffs far to the west of there.
Our boldest plan of action would have been to hurl the machine, by means of the rocket tubes, into the abyss in a direct attack on the Lord of Flame; but Sam, for reasons he did not divulge, doubted the success of such a maneuver. He wished to keep up his researches, and possibly to visit the city of Lothar. His apparatus told him that hidden forces were again stirring in the ether.
For ten hours we moved toward the north, making a long detour to westward to keep within a valley, and always trying to take advantage of such cover as was offered by the purple trees. The country was, for the most part, rolling and green, with the great flowering trees dotting the hills and plains but sparsely. The blazing radiation of the eternal crimson day was undiminished, but the temperature fell slightly with increased altitude.
Xenora and I were together at the cabin control-board, driving the machine; and Sam was in the conning-tower, with the little gun, ready for emergencies. When we had been moving for some ten hours, we mounted a low, bare hill, and saw in the little green valley before us a thicker forest of the bright purple trees, offering good cover for the machine.
We had crossed the summit, and I had increased the speed to ten miles per hour in haste to reach the trees, in spite of Sam's fear that the operation of the motors at anything like full capacity would create a disturbance in the ether that our hidden enemies would pick up.
Suddenly I saw a strange thing skimming along over the bright forest before us—in our direction! It looked like a bright silver globe, many feet in diameter! It floated a few hundred feet above the trees, drifting smoothly along like a bright metal balloon in a very swift wind. There was no visible propulsive mechanism.
I shouted a warning to Sam through the speaking tube, to stand by his little gun.
Xenora laid a light hand on my shoulder and said, in a tense voice: "It is the Sleepers of Mutron, the slaves of the Lord of Flame! They will fight to death—they know not fear!"
As the silver sphere drifted swiftly and silently down upon us, as though borne by an invisible wind, twice I caught a glimpse of a slender ray of purple flame, that darted out of it and moved searchingly over the bare greensward below. And then a rich purple beam fell suddenly and intensely upon the Omnimobile!
When that misty finger of purple light discovered us, I saw a strange vortex of pale green fire spring up about the globe and reach out in our direction. Suddenly I realized that this ship was of the same appearance as the weird thing that had destroyed our cottage! Small hope, I thought, if that force of atomic disintegration were to be released again!
I heard the rapid crashing of the machine gun, as Sam began to fire, and presently bursts of smoke appeared about the gleaming sphere. But to hit a relatively small and rapidly moving target even a mile away is no mean feat of marksmanship. I drove rapidly for the purple wood, but with little hope of getting there before the terrible red disintegration had melted us away.
Suddenly I heard the drone of some of Sam's new machinery going into action. He had mounted his switches and dials in the conning-tower, so he could control it from where he stood. Vivid blue electric flame quivered and flashed over the metal parts of the machine as his new weapons went into play!
The floating globe of silver drifted nearer, and the misty vortex of green fire about us grew more intense. A strange red glow stole over the vegetation around us, and a solitary purple tree ahead burst into crimson flame. Then the sparkling fingers of purple fire reached out at us again from the sphere. I wondered vaguely why the strange force was not acting upon us. I did not know, until it was all over, that Sam's vacuum tubes had set up a repulsive screen in the ether, protecting us from the electronic vortex!
Abruptly an intensely bright, blinding tongue of white flame leapt toward the silver thing from the great platinum electrode on the nose of the Omnimobile! Sam had turned loose his electric arc! The flame struck the globe, impinging upon it like a jet of fire, converting it into a ball of supernal light!
Then it fell! It plunged toward the forest in a gleaming curve! The green vortex of the disintegrator ray was gone, and the purple fingers shone no longer! The incandescent shell crashed out of sight beyond the purple trees!
CHAPTER XXIII
The Green Slaves
Sam snapped off the arc as the silver ship fell, and the drumming of the generators stopped. For a little time the world was very still. Xenora stood tense and silent beside me. As I turned toward her, I caught the slight perfume of her dark hair.
Indeed, the Green Girl was a beautiful being! The white flannels she wore failed to conceal the delectable curves of her slight and boyish figure. Her rich, red lips were parted slightly, in the unconscious intensity of her outward gaze.
Abruptly she became conscious of my look, and turned to face me, with a quick smile on her face. There was a radiant, joyous light in her eyes. The soft green tint of her skin was obscured by the rich, warm flush of her excitement, and she smiled with gladness.
Impulsively she reached her slender hand out to take mine. "You have won, Melvin Dane!" her soft voice said. "The ship of Mutron is fallen! We shall not be slaves of the Lord of Flame! We shall not die the violet death in the pit of Xath!"
"I hope not, my Xenora," I said. "I hope——" and I stopped in a little confusion. I was not really embarrassed, but I could not go on. Really, talking to a princess like Xenora is quite a different thing from making protestations of love to a being of one's dreams.
"What is it that you hope?" she said quickly, with an impish smile.
Sam saved me by coming in from the turret, begrimed with the smoke of the little cannon. He was a wonderful man. He was still strong, erect, and confident, despite the load of toil and hardship our adventure was putting upon his seventy years. His white hair was tousled, and he was cheerfully loading up his ancient pipe, as calmly as if he were in his own kitchen in Florida.
"Looks like the arc did for 'em all right," he said briskly. "Suppose we get over and take a look. We might pick up something new."
"Very well," I assented, and turned to start the motors. I could not resist a grin at Xenora, who was still regarding me with a speculative smile. She laughed back at me; then was suddenly serious.
"Be careful! The Sleepers of Mutron! They might be alive in the wreck! As long as they breathe, the Lord of Flame rules them!"
I started the generators, and the Omnimobile rolled heavily down across the green slope, and through the fringe of flaming purple trees. In a few minutes we came upon the wreck of the silver car, a great tangle of twisted wreckage, half fused by the electricity, and bent and torn by the fall. It lay in the little open space, with a great tree splintered and smoking under it, and the ground about empurpled with fallen petals. The twisted metal plates gleamed brightly in the light of the scarlet sky.
I stopped the Omnimobile, and we got out and approached the wrecked machine. There was a vast mass of the débris. The globe must have been forty feet in diameter. We spent several minutes in gazing at it from different angles, and then Sam and I climbed into the tangle of bent white plates and massive twisted girders.
The machinery had been too completely destroyed for us to be sure just how it worked. But Sam thought that the shell had carried tanks of water, the gravity of which had been negatived by the emanations from tanks of the same luminous gas which supported the roof of waters, lifting the ship. From the nature of the fragments of electrical machinery we observed, it seemed that the horizontal propulsion was attained by the ionization and repulsion of the helium atoms in the air. The apparatus that had produced the atomic disintegration was too badly wrecked to be identified.
Presently I came upon the body of a man, caught between two twisted bars, and cut half in two. The body was naked. It had a greenish cast that was darker by far than that of Xenora's fair skin. The physique, and the size and shape of the head, showed a race of high intellectual development.
The dead man had a metal frame clamped upon his back. It was twisted and broken, and whatever had been fastened upon his body had been torn away in the crash. And the corpse had upon its back the strange violet stains that had been upon Xenora when we found her!
Presently Sam found another body. It had been half burned up by the arc. It, too, had the metal frame upon it, and the thing the frame was to hold was still clamped to it! The body bore, fastened to the back with those cruel metal clamps, a six-sided bar of blue metal! It was six inches in diameter and two feet long!
"This must be the thing Xenora calls a 'fire-crystal,'" Sam said, "though I don't see any fire about it. It's damned queer!"
"Do you suppose there is machinery in the bar, that generates forces or currents that move the man about like a puppet?"
"Might be. I don't know. The metal thing may be a receiver for the occult force set up in the ether by the Lord of Flame—hypnotism by radio, perhaps, or something of the kind."
"Anyhow, as you said, it's damned queer, like everything else we've found here—excepting Xenora."
"Suppose we take the thing along, and open it up when we have time?"
He produced a pair of pliers, and we twisted the odd blue bar out of its frame, and carried it to the machine. It was oddly light to be metal, though it must have been an irksome burden to the one on which it was fastened. We got aboard again, and moved for the cover of the purple wood, for we did not know how soon relief would come for the fallen ship. But Xenora assured us that the Lunaks, as she called the flying things, quite frequently destroyed the ships of Mutron, and that the fate of this one would be laid to them.
CHAPTER XXIV
The Blue Prism
For perhaps thirty miles we drove the great machine through the brilliant forest, southward down a broad valley. At last we stopped in a little grove of tall flowering trees, close by the cool crystal stream. Beyond the grove was a little patch of green clearing with the great purple trees closing in all about it. It was a peaceful spot, weirdly beautiful, and it seemed secure enough. The unceasing wind was not so hot beneath the great trees, and they shielded us from the burning, crimson glare of the sky.
The Omnimobile seemed safely hidden beneath the masses of purple bloom; and whenever we were tired, or thought ourselves in danger, we could retire to the quiet security of its cool interior, behind the thick metal walls. Frankly, I hoped that our stay there would be a long one. I tried to forget the menace that hung over the earth.
Our life there was simple, and, for my part, I was supremely happy. Or not quite supremely, for I could not quite still my conscience. I was pretty well resigned to fate, however. With such a girl as Xenora, a man might be supremely happy anywhere. We tramped together about the grove, gathered the tiny, bright-red flowers in the green meadows, and bathed in the cool dark pools, where the river flowed beneath the purple trees. Sometimes she sang to me the folk-songs of her people, monuments of the high estate that Lothar had once enjoyed.
What would it matter to me if the eternal death came again and forever to the upper earth? What would it matter if the earth did freeze? I forgot in the idyllic happiness of Xenora's companionship—or tried to forget. If the roof of water were changed to ice it would only be more secure! The maiden and I could live out our lives in this strange land, without regard to the fate of the world. One of her matchless smiles, or a note of her golden laughter, was worth more than all the earth!
Meanwhile, Sam was immersed in his laboratory work, in the examination of the prism of blue metal, and in his curious pet. The plant creature still grew with remarkable speed, and always showed most remarkable intelligence. It was always with Sam, flapping along above him on broad green wings, or walking awkwardly upon its thickening red tentacles. Sam gazed at the flickering colors of the membranes about the head, with the light of strange understanding in his eyes, making strange gestures with his hands. Just to what extent they could communicate, I never knew.
It always went with him, when he went to hunt for its meat. It was a voracious eater, requiring a kill a day. The great sloth-like animals were plentiful and sluggish; it was not difficult to stalk them. As soon as it was strong enough, the plant creature learned to carry Sam's rifle. Its extraordinary intelligence, or imitative instinct, is shown by the fact that one day it fired the gun itself, when it was flying with the weapon, and saw one of the sloths on the run.
It showed a very real affection for Sam. Once, when they were out together, it saved his life. One of the tuskers had suddenly charged him from behind, and the creature flew at it and attacked it madly with its undeveloped claws. At the cost of considerable minor injury to itself, it held the beast off until Sam could get in a shot. It always showed an odd delight at his caresses, and seemed to take a peculiar joy in the music of his old phonograph.
As I have said, it grew very quickly. At the time we stopped in the wood, it was somewhat smaller than a hawk. Perhaps two months later (time was rather meaningless to us during that one happy period of our adventures in that world of unending day) the creature had grown so large that once, in an apparently playful mood, it was able to lift Sam and fly with him on a circuit of a hundred yards, bringing him back to the machine and setting him down very softly. Then its armored brown body was as large as a man, and the green wings were like sails.
That was near the end.
During all that period, Sam devoted much time to the examination of that bar of strangely light, bright blue metal. He felt that in it he might find a solution to the mystery of the Lord of Flame. I assisted him as much as I could. The metal was evidently an alloy. Analysis showed that it consisted largely of aluminum. There was a trace of a heavy metal that we could not identify. And the bar was slightly, very slightly, radioactive—perhaps, Sam thought, merely because it had been exposed to intense radium emanations.
The density of the bar was only half that of aluminum. For some time we could not understand that. Careful examination showed no break in the surface; and presently we sawed it in two, and then in many pieces, searching for the machinery that we half-expected to find. But, as far as we could determine, the bar was absolutely homogeneous.
Then Sam thought of examining it under the microscope. He found that it was full of microscopic bubbles—hollow places! By later experiment, we found that the metal was just a sponge of the strange alloy, filled with tiny bubbles of helium gas, under considerable pressure. Sam presently formulated the theory that the alloy, when formed, had contained considerable amounts of radium compounds; and that the alpha particles, or charged helium atoms, thrown off by the disintegration of the radium, while the metal was in a semi-plastic state, had been imprisoned in it.
But it was not until later—much later—that we got the true meaning of it—that we understood the insidious force that acted in the metal, to make human beings slaves to it!
So the days went by—happy, carefree days for me. I knew real joy for the first time in my life. Since youth I had known the Green Girl in my fancy. I had longed to find her, with a restless, hopeless longing that had left me discontented and unhappy, whatever my surroundings. Now, at last, she was really mine. I loved her with a singleness and intensity of affection that turned all my emotion in one direction, so I felt little fear or care for anything else.
One day, when we sat like children together on a cool, moss-covered rock beneath a great fragrant purple tree, with a crystal pool before us, gleaming like molten ruby in the light of the scarlet sky, I told her quite simply that I loved her—that I had known her always, and loved her as long.
"The white chieftain of my dreams," she whispered, "for what long years I have wished for you to come and tell me that!"
There was no need for further words between us. It was a long, long time before we returned to the machine, and then I am afraid we both flushed a little before the smile of tender understanding on Sam's lean face.
CHAPTER XXV
The Tragedy in the Purple Wood
Our woodland life was happy. We were quite unconscious of the events that were shaping themselves to bring sudden catastrophe. We saw in our simple lives no foreshadowing of the supreme moments of the stupendous drama in which we were involved. The crisis came with little enough warning.
On the last day of our joyous existence there (we had fallen into the habit of making an arbitrary division of our time into days and nights), Sam arose and fixed our breakfast. I remember that we had pancakes, with maple sirup. Then, since "Alexander" was fluttering about, eager for the day's hunt, and flickering messages to him with its petal-like membrane, he got his rifle and they departed.
As the old scientist walked off through the purple trees, puffing steadily on the old pipe in his mouth, fondly watching the huge, winged beast that flew along above him with his gun, little did I dream of the tragedy that was in store! I could not have believed that Sam stood in any great danger. The winged creature that attended him was two-thirds grown; it would have been more than a match for a couple of lions! Certainly it was no feeble bodyguard!
An hour after he had gone, Xenora and I took one of my old romances of science, and walked a quarter of a mile up the limpid stream to a favorite resort of ours. We laughed and talked much by the way, and gathered a great bunch of the little red blooms. I was teaching her to read—at least that was our nominal business, though it was usually forgotten.
The living, wonderful mystery of her, her sheer perfection, the life and love that sparkled in her eyes, all enchanted me, carried my thoughts away from the page!
We sat together on our mossy stone seat, reading a little, and laughing and talking much, until we forgot all except each other. When I looked at my watch, I found that we had been there many hours. We got up and started back to the machine, speculating light-heartedly on what Sam would have ready for dinner.
We shouted carefree greetings as we approached the machine, and received no reply. We got to the deck, and descended to the cabin in vague alarm, but saw no sign of the old scientist. We hoped that he had only been delayed. I blew the siren several times, and listened to hear a signal from his gun. But when the echoes of the blast had died away from the silent purple wood, all was still again. We heard no answering shot.
I climbed out on the deck to listen. Not a sound disturbed the stillness, save the faint rustle of the unceasing wind in the purple trees above, and the crystal tinkle of the little stream. Green meadows and bright trees lay steaming beneath the hot red sky—quiet as death. The stillness was ominous. It bore the portent of doom!
Presently Xenora crept up by me and ran her strong cool arm through mine. Her violet eyes were solemn, now; and her fair face was clouded with anxiety. She had come to share my love for Sam.
"I am afraid for him," she whispered. "Many things might have happened. The beasts he hunted may have charged and killed him. Or a ship of Mutron may have found him—the ships of the Lord of Flame travel even to the waters of the lower sea to do battle with the Lunaks. And there is another danger of the wood—that is never seen. The hunters of Lothar never venture far from the city."
Her words were not particularly encouraging, and I made ready to go to look for Sam at once. I carried a heavy rifle, my pistol, and an emergency medicine kit. Xenora insisted on going along, and I could do nothing but assent. I did not wish to leave her alone, and she herself was no mean woodsman. In fact, when it came to the matter of following the trail over the low green plants, she proved far more expert than myself.
We left at once. The trail led us east for a mile, parallel to the stream, in the cover of the purple trees. Then it turned north across an open meadow; and there Xenora picked up the spoor of one of the great sloths, which Sam had stalked. It led on to a group of three giant purple trees, and there we found two fired cartridges from Sam's rifle. Three hundred yards farther on, in an open meadow, we found the kill.
Alexander had evidently had his fill from it; and near by were the dying embers of a fire, and the charred green stick on which Sam had cooked a steak for himself. The ground around the fire was somewhat torn up. The green plants had been uprooted and crushed. And there on the ground I found another cartridge from the rifle.
Presently Xenora picked up a trail leading toward a clump of the flowering trees to the north. We followed it hastily, silent with fearful anticipations. Twice we saw on the ground great splashes of green liquid, of the life-fluid of the plant creatures. Had Sam's pet been fighting for him in the air as he fled?
Then we came to the pitiful end of the trail. The ground was frightfully torn up, as if great bodies had struggled there. There were great splotches of the green fluid, and a fateful stain—evidently of human blood. Sam's battered pith helmet we found on the ground there, and six fired shells—silent tokens of the battle!
From the spot no trail led away. There was no evidence to show whether the battle had ended in death or in capture, nor anything to show what manner of being the unknown assailant had been. For a long time we stood there, gazing at the spot in lifeless grief and despair, apathetically fingering the helmet and shells, vainly trying to picture the contest, and looking about for other signs.
"It is no use to go farther," Xenora said at last. "It is the unknown menace of the purple wood. Many a man of Lothar has been taken by it—it is a silent, winged death!"
CHAPTER XXVI
The Last City of Lothar
Presently we turned and trudged wearily back to the Omnimobile. There was nothing else to do. I was sick with an aching heart. It was incredible that Sam, kind and true friend that he had always been, should be no more. A choking lump rose in my throat, and I confess that a few tears rolled down my cheek.
But I still had Xenora. As we walked, I put my arms around her, protectingly, in the grim determination that this strange world should not rob me also of the dream girl for whom I had searched two worlds. My love of her kept me from utter despair, but even then I knew that our ideal life could not go on.
I would have to find what it was that had taken Sam—to identify the thing that Xenora called so vaguely "the menace of the purple wood." Might it be the wild plant monsters, or was it something even more alien and terrible? And I thought more seriously of the danger to the earth, that I had been trying so vainly to forget. Sam's responsibility had fallen on my shoulders. I must see what I could do.
With the wonderful intuitive knowledge of one another's thoughts that Xenora and I have always had, she understood what was passing in my mind before I said anything. Softly, she took my fingers in her hand, and looked at me with deep sympathy in her eyes.
"I know, Melvin, what you think. And it is right. It is hard, so soon after you have come here to find me—but it must be. I can guide you to the city of my people. I can even show you to the brink of the pit of Xath, if you would go there!"
"You are very brave and true, my princess!"
"I come from Lothar! If you feel that your duty bids you risk the violet death in Xath, I would not dissuade you. But the Lord of Flame is mighty—no man can fight him! He has power over all!"
"Except our love," I said. I stopped, and took her in my arms, and pressed her red warm lips against my own. In the whole world, she was all that was mine. She clung to me fiercely, as if the terrible power of the pit of flames was trying to tear her away.
At last we went on, and presently we reached the Omnimobile, hidden in the purple grove. In Sam's absence, it looked very cheerless and lonely. We got aboard and made ready for departure. I tuned up the motors, and examined the electric weapons, and cleaned and loaded the little cannon again. As I worked, Xenora went in the galley and fixed a lunch. We ate quickly, under the silent pall of bitter tragedy, thinking of the smiling old man that should have been with us.
Then we climbed into the conning-tower, and I switched on the engines. The humming of the generators rose again, and the great machine lumbered clumsily out of the little wood, where it had been hidden for so many happy days. For many hours we held a north-westward course over the green plateaus and through the purple woodlands, with the light of the crimson day shining through the ports.
Xenora stood by me and chose the route. For the last few miles we crept along just east of a high, bare ridge of rocks. At last she bade me stop the machine in a clump of trees at the foot of the hill. The last city of Lothar, she said, lay but a mile beyond.
I took my binoculars and a rifle, and we left the machine and clambered up a half mile to the top of the ridge. The girl led the way, slipping cautiously through the rocks. At last she threw herself down behind a fringe of the low green plants, and motioned me to crawl up beside her.
"Look," she whispered, "and see all that is left of Lothar, the proud kingdom of my fathers, under the curse of the Lord of Flame!"
Indeed it was a scene of ruined grandeur that met my eyes. A little valley, perhaps two miles wide, lay beyond the ridge on which we were concealed. On the low hill beyond, standing out against the crimson sky, was a massive ruined wall. Back of it rose the crumbling desolate ruins of great towers and palaces of stone, covered with the moss of centuries of decay—merely the bare bleached skull of a dead civilization!
"It was in those fallen palaces of my fathers," Xenora whispered again, "that I found the strange machine that brought me the first dream of you."
I put up the glasses and made out the actual city outside the wall. Certainly Lothar had fallen since its days of radio. There was a mere straggling village of rude stone huts spread out on the valley floor, below the colossal ruined metropolis. The few hundred buildings were surrounded by a little cleared space, with the purple forest creeping up to reclaim it forever. I made out a few children playing about the trees, and a dozen ill-clad men working in the clearings. A few wreaths of smoke curled up from the dwellings; the people had not yet lost the art of fire!
And hanging silent and menacing in the air above the village was the visible symbol of the alien power that had wrecked that ancient civilization! A great, gleaming silver ball—a ship like the one we had fought—hung motionless above the huts, with a quick purple beam from it flickering frequently over them!
For a long time we lay there watching that desolate, pitiful scene, and then Xenora touched my arms, and we slipped back down the ridge. She was silent, with grief and despair in her eyes.
"See!" she whispered at last. "See! Lothar is dead! The Lord of Flame has killed it! The men are poor struggling wretches; they could do nothing even if the flame were gone! My father was the last king of Lothar. His was a troubled reign, and he has been dead many hundred sleeps!"
"Don't grieve so, my princess," I said. "There are still vast cities above the waters, where men are powerful and wise, and where the sky is blue and a white sun shines, and where there is a domain many times larger than all this abyss!"
"Can we go there—ever?" she questioned eagerly.
"No. We can never leave this land, even if the Lord of Flame is killed. The machine cannot break through the roof of water from below. And the power of the Lord of Flame is coming to earth. Even now it may be a dead and frozen world."
And drooping in the silence of dull despair, we reached the machine, and drove quickly for the protection of the deeper wood.
CHAPTER XXVII
Mutron of the Sleepers
For half a dozen hours we lumbered eastward through the forest. We wallowed through swamps, and rolled over broad green meadows alight with the crimson day, and broke through jungles bright with purple bloom. At last we emerged on a narrow upland, with the great lake below it. The black sheet of water, tinged with the red light of the sky, stretched away for many miles to the eastward. Along its northern shore we could see the low cliffs that divided it from the pit of Xath.
We stopped the machine, and looked for a long time across the black lake to the north, and over the low cliffs to the ruby mist beyond, alive with the dancing violet lights.
Then I turned to the rare girl beside me, who was watching me with tears brimming in her violet eyes. The utter grief, the black despair on her face half broke my resolution. I felt doubtful, weak, utterly miserable, with pain stabbing at my heart like a thin steel blade.
"It is right. You must go," she whispered bravely.
I took her in my arms again. How wonderful and true she was! Struggling so bravely to hold back her tears! More precious than ever in the final parting! A single hour of the heaven of that embrace—embittered by the knowledge that it would soon be ended!
Then, quickly, lest my resolution fail, I made ready for departure! I stretched up a tent in a little grove above the lake, and stocked it with a liberal assortment of supplies from our store-room. I gave Xenora an automatic and a case of ammunition, and showed her how to use the weapon. Here she was to stay, in the vain hope that I might return a victor from the mad attack on the Lord of Flame.