CHAPTER IX

They were in a cabin at the very nose of the ship, seated on metal
chairs, their hands unshackled and free. Their scarlet guardian reclined
at ease somewhat to one side, but despite his apparent disregard his
cold eyes seldom left the faces of the two men.

Windows closed them in; windows on each side, in front, above them, and
even in the floor beneath. It was a room for observation whose
metal-latticed walls served only as a framework for the glass. And there
was much to be observed.

The golden radiance of sunlit clouds was warm above. They rose toward
it, until, high over the buildings’ tallest spires, there spread on
every hand the bewildering beauty of that forest of minarets and sloping
roofs and towers, whose many facets made glorious blendings of soft
color. Aircraft at many levels swept in uniform directions throughout
the sky. The ship they were in hung quiet for a time, then rose to a
higher level to join the current of transportation that flowed into the
south.

“We will call it south,” said Professor Sykes. “The sun-glow, you will
observe, is not directly overhead; the sun is sinking; it is past their
noon. What is the length of their day? Ah, this interesting–interesting!”
The certain fate they had foreseen was forgotten; it is not often given to
an astronomer to check at first hand his own indefinite observations.

“Look!” McGuire exclaimed. “Open country! The city is ending!”

* * * * *

Ahead and below them the buildings were smaller and scattered. Their new
master was watching with closest scrutiny the excitement of the men; he
whispered an order into a nearby tube, and the ship slowly slanted
toward the ground. He was studying these new specimens, as McGuire
observed, but the lieutenant paid little attention; his eyes were too
thoroughly occupied in resolving into recognizable units the picture
that flowed past them so quickly. He was accustomed, this pilot of the
army air service, to reading clearly the map that spreads beneath a
plane, but now he was looking at an unfamiliar chart.

“Fields,” he said, and pointed to squared areas of pale reds and blues;
“though what it is, heaven knows. And the trees!–if that’s what they
are.” The ship went downward where an area of tropical denseness made a
tangled mass of color and shadow.

“Trees!” Lieutenant McGuire had exclaimed, but these forests were of
tree-forms in weirdest shapes and hues. They grew to towering heights,
and their branches and leaves that swayed and dipped in the slow-moving
air were of delicate pastel shades.

“No sunlight,” said the Professor excitedly; “they have no direct rays
of the sun. The clouds act as a screen and filter out actinic rays.”

McGuire did not reply. He was watching the countless dots of color that
were people–people who swarmed here as they had in the city; people
working at these great groves, crouching lower in the fields as the ship
swept close; people everywhere in teeming thousands. And like the
vegetation about them, they, too, were tall and thin, attenuated of form
and with skin like blood-stained ash.

“They need the sun,” Sykes was repeating; “both vegetable and animal
life. The plants are deficient in chlorophyl–see the pale green of the
leaves!–and the people need vitamins. Yet they evidently have electric
power in abundance. I could tell them of lamps–“

* * * * *

His comments ceased as McGuire lurched heavily against him. The flyer
had taken note of the tense, attentive attitude of the one in scarlet;
the man was leaning forward, his eyes focused directly upon the
scientist’s face; he seemed absorbing both words and emotions.

How much could he comprehend? What power had he to vision the
idea-pictures in the other’s mind? McGuire could not know. But “Sorry!”
he told Sykes; “that was clumsy of me.” And he added in a whisper, “Keep
your thoughts to yourself; I think this bird is getting them.”

Buildings flashed under them, not massed solidly as in the city, yet
spaced close to one another as if every foot of ground not devoted to
their incredible agriculture were needed to house the inhabitants. The
ground about them was alive with an equally incredible humanity that
swarmed over all this world in appalling profusion.

Their horrid flesh! Their hideous features! And their number! McGuire
had a sudden, sickening thought. They were larvae, these crawling
hordes–vile worm-things that infested a beautiful world–that bred here
in millions, their numbers limited only by the space for their bodies
and the food for their stomachs. And he, McGuire, a _man_–he and this
other man with his clear-thinking scientific brain were prisoners to
this horde; captives, to be used or butchered by those vile, crawling
things!

And again it was this world of contrast that drove home the conviction
with its sickening certainty. A world of beauty, of delicate colors, of
sweeping oceans and gleaming shores and towering cities with their grace
and beauty and elfin splendor yet a world that shuddered beneath this
devouring plague of grublike men.

* * * * *

They swept past cities and towns and over many miles of open land before
their craft swung eastward toward the dark horizon. The master gave
another order into the speaking tube and their ship shot forward, faster
and yet faster, with a speed that pressed them heavily into their seats.
Behind them was the glory of the sunlit clouds; ahead the gloomy
gray-black masses that must make a stygian night sky over this lonely
world–a world cut off by that vaporous shell from all communion with
the stars.

They were over the water; before them a dark ocean reached out in
forbidding emptiness to a darker horizon. Ahead, the only broken line in
the vast level expanse was a mountain rising abruptly from the sea. It
was a volcanic cone surmounting an island; the sunlight’s glow reflected
from behind them against the sombre mass that lifted toward the clouds.
Their ship was high enough to clear it, but instead it swung, as McGuire
watched, toward the south.

The island drifted past, and again they were on their course. But to
the flyer there were significant facts that could not pass unobserved.
Their own ship had swung in a great circle to avoid this mountain. And
all through the skies were others that did the same. The air above and
about the grim sentinel peak was devoid of flying shapes.

McGuire caught the eyes of the councilor, their keeper. “What is that?”
he asked, though he knew the words were lost on the other. He nodded his
head toward the distant peak, and his question was plainly in regard to
the island. And for the first time since their coming to this wild
world, he saw, flashing across the features of one of these men, a trace
of emotion that could only be construed as fear.

The slitted cat eyes lost their look of complacent superiority. They
widened involuntarily, and the face was drained of its blotched color.
There was fear, terror unmistakable, though it showed for but an
instant. He had control of his features almost at once, but the flyer
had read their story.

Here was something that gave pause to this race of conquering vermin; a
place in the expanse of this vast sea that brought panic to their
hearts. And there came to him, as he stowed the remembrance away in his
mind, the first glow of hope. These things could fear a mountain; it
might be that they could be brought to fear a man.

* * * * *

The sky was clearing rapidly of traffic and the mountain of his
speculations was lost astern, when another island came slanting swiftly
up to meet them as their ship swept down from the heights. It was a tiny
speck in the ocean’s expanse, a speck that resolved itself into the
squared fields of colored growth, orchards whose brilliant, strange
fruits glowed crimson in the last light of day, and enormous trees,
beyond which appeared a house.

A palace, McGuire concluded, when he saw clearly the many-storied pile.
Like the buildings they had seen, this also constructed of opalescent
quartz. There were windows that glowed warmly in the dusk. A sudden wave
of loneliness, almost unbearable, swept over the man.

Windows and gleaming lights, the good sounds of Earth; home!… And his
ears, as he stepped out into the cool air, were assailed with the
strange cackle and calling of weird folk; the air brought him scents,
from the open ground beyond, of fruits and vegetation like none he had
ever known; and the earth, the homeland of his vain imaginings, was
millions of empty miles away….

The leader stopped, and McGuire looked dispiritedly at the unfamiliar
landscape under dusky lowering skies. Trees towered high in the
air–trees grotesque and weird by all Earth standards–whose limbs were
pale green shadows in the last light of day. The foliage, too, seemed
bleached and drained of color, but among the leaves were flashes of
brilliance where night-blooming flowers burst open like star-shells to
fill the air with heavy scents.

Between the men and the forest growth was a row of denser vegetation,
great ferns twenty feet and more in height, and among them at regular
intervals stood plants of another growth–each a tremendous pod held in
air on a thick stalk. Tendrils coiled themselves like giant springs
beside each pod, tendrils as thick as a man’s wrist. The great pods were
ranged in a line that extended as far as McGuire could see in the dim
light.

* * * * *

His shoulders drooped as the guard herded him and his companion toward
the building beyond. He must not be cast down–he would not! Who knew
how much of such feeling was read by these keen-eyed observers? And the
only thought with which he could fill his mind, the one forlorn ghost of
a hope that he could cling to, was that of an island, a volcanic peak
that rose from dark waters to point upward toward the heights.

The guard of four was clustered about; the figures were waiting now in
the gathering dark–waiting, while the one in scarlet listened and spoke
alternately into a jeweled instrument that hung by a slender chain about
his neck. He raised one lean hand to motion the stirring guards to
silence, listened again intently into the instrument, then pointed that
hand toward the cloud-filled sky, while he craned his thin neck to look
above him.

The men’s eyes followed the pointing hand to see only the sullen black
of unlit clouds. The last distant aircraft had vanished from the skies;
not a ship was in the air–only the enveloping blanket of high-flung
vapor that blocked out all traces of the heavens. And then!–

The cloud banks high in the skies flashed suddenly to dazzling, rolling
flame. The ground under their feet was shaken as by a distant
earthquake, while, above, the terrible fire spread, a swift, flashing
conflagration that ate up the masses of clouds.

“What in thunder–” McGuire began; then stopped as he caught, in the
light from above, the reflection of fierce exultation in the eyes of the
scarlet one. The evil, gloating message of those eyes needed no words to
explain its meaning. That this cataclysm was self-made by these beings,
McGuire knew, and he knew that in some way it meant menace to him and
his.

Yet he groped in thought for some definite meaning. No menace could this
be to himself personally, for he and Sykes stood there safe in the
company of the councilor himself. Then the threat of this flaming blast
must be directed toward the earth!

* * * * *

The fire vanished, and once more, as Professor Sykes had seen on that
night so long ago, the blanket of clouds was broken. McGuire followed
the gaze of the scientist whose keen eyes were probing in these brief
moments into the depths of star-lit space.

“There–there!” Sykes exclaimed in awe-struck tones. His hand was
pointing outward through the space where flames had cleared the sky. A
star was shining in the heavens with a glory that surpassed all others.
It outshone all neighboring stars, and it sent its light down through
the vast empty reaches of space, a silent message to two humans,
despondent and heartsick, who stared with aching eyes.

Lieutenant McGuire did not hear his friend’s whispered words. No need to
name that distant world–it was Earth! Earth!… And it was calling to
its own….

There was a flying-field–so plain before his mental eyes; men in khaki
and leather who moved and talked and spoke of familiar things … and
the thunder of motors … and roaring planes….

Some far recess within his deeper self responded strangely. What now of
threats and these brute-things that threatened?–he was one with this
picture he had visioned. He was himself; he was a man of that distant
world of men; they would show these vile things how men could meet
menace–or death…. His shoulders were back and unconsciously he stood
erect.

The scarlet figure was close beside them in the dusk, his voice vibrant
with a quality which should have struck fear to his captives’ hearts as
he ordered them on. But the look in his crafty eyes changed to one of
puzzled wonder at sight of the men.

Hands on each other’s shoulders, they stood there in the gathering dark,
where grotesque trees arched twistingly overhead. Their moment of
depression had passed; Earth had called, and they had heard it, each
after his own fashion. But to each the call had been one of clear
courage. No longer cast off and forlorn, they were one with their own
world.

“Down,” said Professor Sykes with a whimsical smile; “down, but not
out!” And the lieutenant responded in kind.

“Are we down-hearted?” he demanded loudly. And the two turned as one man
to grin at the scarlet one as they thundered. “N-o-o!”