Collected Tales (Jerry eBooks)

by Leslie F Stone

  We were dropping swiftly Earthward so that it appeared that its dark shape was reaching out for us, hungrily seeking me. I knew at last that I did not want to return to it, that I wanted to go out with Moura, out beyond the furthest reaches of the Universe. Finding Moura was no longer with me I rushed to the pilot room to find him again at the controls of the ship with the rough tumbling waters of the Atlantic rushing to meet us.

  CHAPTER XIII

  Prisoner of Earth

  “I AM landing you on the American shore where your people are at play; where you will find those who will gladly become your friends, Elsie. I have some of your money here, and I understand you know how to obtain more for your needs. I shall give you some gems that should make you the envy of your country women,” Moura told me.

  “Moura,” I began, “I . . .”

  “No,” he cried, “you must not speak, you must go now. A year from today, which is your December 18th, we shall return to Earth for you. If you do not appear within a week’s time at the rendezvous you will name, that will be your answer. I shall never be too far away, but where I can always turn my eyes upon your world and know you are safe. Now . . . we must switch off our lights so your people are not startled by our apparition.

  “See, below is a road . . . ah it leads to that bright city, Palm Beach, is it not? And there is a convenient clearing. We descend!”

  As he spoke, he brought the Yodverl down upon the grass lawn of someone’s well-cared for estate. When the doorway was opened, we could hear the fronds of a palm tree playing a tattoo in the wind and frogs drummed in a nearby pond. A mocking bird was lifting its voice in a melodious song. Strange, is it not, how a numbed brain receives everlasting impressions!

  Urto had brought my jacket and a hat I put on without recalling doing so. My mind was in turmoil, I scarcely knew what I was about. Moura led me to the door, carrying one of my three suitcases, and Urto brought the others. Ubca stood at the door and he took my cold hand without a word, pressing it warmly.

  Not more than a hundred yards away ran the oil-marked surface of the road-bed of the main highway leading into Palm Beach from the northward. It was about eleven o’clock with the velvet darkness of the tropical night wrapped closely about us. On the way to the road Moura asked me. “Where are we to meet again, Elsie Rollins?”

  My answer came quickly. “In Africa, at the bungalow!”

  “Good! I shall be there.” Then he added, “there should be cars passing at this hour.”

  He seemed to have an intimate knowledge of everything pertaining to Earth. “Or, at least, one of those public conveyances. Ah, there come some lights, but wait its driver appears to be the type who does not stop for ‘pick-ups’ after dark. We will wait.”

  Two more cars passed as we waited in the shadow of some trees. Moura had a reason for hailing neither. The first he knew was filled before it came abreast, and the second was piloted by a man, whom he thought it not good to stop, since he would deal roughly with a woman he took off a night road. The third machine, luckily, was a bus, a local one plying between the little community of Jupiter and West Palm Beach. Urto was motioned out of the way as soon as the bus came into sight and using a flashlight Moura hailed it. He pressed some silver into my hand with a “this is from your uncle’s pocket.” Before the car drew alongside he had whispered, “for twelve months, Elsie,” and bending over me, his lips pressed mine. Then the car drew alongside with a grinding of its brakes and he was gone. The busman helped me with my bags.

  Automatically I climbed in while my luggage was stowed away. The fellow eyed my suspiciously, for it was strange for a passenger here at this spot with heavy pieces of baggage, but he had evidently seen the tall form of Moura leaving and he forbore to question me. There were no other passengers, and in a kindly spirit he drove me directly to a hotel in the city facing the lake and Palm Beach. I thrust the handful of silver Moura had given me into his hand after he had helped me out and a bellboy took charge of my bags. How I registered and got to my room I do not know. I must have fallen directly to sleep, for I awakened with the morning sunlight streaming down upon my face as I lay, still clothed, across the bed. Later, I learned Moura had seen to it that I fell asleep immediately, using his hypnotic powers upon me, so I could face the new morning feeling freshly reborn.

  A maid came knocking at the door and I drew some dresses from a grip to be pressed, I had some bills in my purse and my check book and enough identification to have the checks cashed. Several years earlier Uncle Ezra had had his small fortune transferred to my name, so that I would have no trouble that way at all. When I unpacked later I found that, as Moura had said there would be, there was a case filled with fine jewels set in exquisite designs of unearthly setting. There were also uncut jewels. To my unpracticed eye they appeared to be diamonds, emeralds, rubies, sapphires and opal and their construction was much the same only they were all degrees harder than Earth gems. I never wore any of them but a single string of emeralds cut in triangles, and there was an unset square diamond that I had made into a ring and wore on my engagement ring finger. It gave me great comfort in that year and I knew now that I loved Moura far more deeply than I had thought I had hated him.

  I spent only a week in Palm Beach, and throughout the entire year traveled madly about, unable to rest anywhere, unable to make friends, unable to think of anything else but the Yodverl and its captain. A month before the allotted time I went to the little home on the African veldt, there to await Moura who arrived on the night he said he would. . . .

  SO Elsie Rollins-weiti dropped the thread of her story and gave a weary smile to the little group who had been listening avidly to her words. Of the five who had been grouped about her in the garden only four remained, for at the beginning of the tale Ubca-tor had slipped away.

  “Gad, I feel as if I had been there in person,” observed Kington, first one to speak. “What an experience!”

  “It was a beautiful story, Elsie,” said Dana Gleason. Dick Dorr only puffed on his newly filled pipe while Ezra-weit pressed his mother’s hand tenderly.

  Kington looked at his watch. “Lord, it’s five o’clock . . . er Earthtime, of course, but pretty late at that. How thoughtless of us to allow you to have gone on talking all this time . . . still you have only told us the beginning.”

  “It is frightfully late,” exclaimed Dana, “and now we will retire. But you are going to tell us the rest of the story, Elsie, don’t forget that. I think we should have a historian present at that telling for it must be recorded properly for the future!”

  “By all means,” said Dorr. “It will be many years before we dare venture out of the solar system, and when that happens, it will be well for the first voyagers to have precedent before them. By the way, Elsie, how far is it exactly to Kal of Alpha Centauri?”

  “Approximately as far as can be judged 25,600,000,000,000 miles from Sol.”

  “And how long did the trip take?”

  “A fraction over eight years in going, but a little less than eight years in returning.”

  Kington nodded his head. “Then you must have traveled about half the speed of light since a light year is 5,880,000,000,000 miles, and it takes light to reach Alpha Centauri four years from Sol.”

  Elsie Rollins-weiti agreed that such was the case. “The Yodverl can accelerate faster than it did, but Moura feared to strain its motors and felt that he was traveling on a safe margin as it was.”

  “Imagine such a thing,” commented Kington.

  “Well, I think I am going to dream of what you found on the planet, Kal. What type of men did you find there?”

  “They were not men as we know them, Dana!”

  “Really, well don’t tell us any more, until we hear it all in sequence. Now I am surely going to have bad dreams. How about a bite to eat now, and then to to bed, everybody!”

  With a stretching of limbs and bodies the party rose to their feet and walked toward the single storied house beyond that was the residence of
the Ur-Kirada and his wife of Abrui on the island of Ora.

  It took longer for Elsie Rollins-weiti to tell of her adventures on the planet Kal of Alpha Centauri; in fact it was several days in the telling, and at each telling the group around the woman grew as others came to listen with unfeigned interest to her story.

  Part III—Kal of Alpha Centauri

  Author’s note: As biographer of this history, I take the liberty of presenting the following story as told by Elsie Rollins-weiti in the third person so as to omit the necessity of the many interruptions in its telling, and to keep its chronological order which was often upset as she recalled happenings and events out of order.

  CHAPTER I

  A Marriage in Space

  FOR the month that Elsie awaited Moura’s coming the time hung heavily on her hands, and impatiently she tore each day’s sheet as it passed from the calendar, crying out at the slow passage of time. She had taken into her employ three of the Kaffirs that had been in her uncle’s service, two boys and a young girl. They were happy to see her again, the only friends she had on Earth, but when the day came at last when Moura was to arrive, she dismissed them, bidding them good-bye. However, the girl whom she called Nancy, unable to pronounce her unpronounceable African name, refused to go. She was more intelligent than her fellows, and she seemed to guess that Elsie was waiting for her lover. She had seen the Yodverl when it had come less than a year ago, and though she had not understood whence it came, she knew it was a vast ship of the air, and guessed that now it was to carry Elsie away for all time, and she insisted upon accompanying her.

  “Missy need Nancee,” she said, “Nancee go with Missy. Missy be glad you take Nancee ‘long sometime’ ?”

  Thinking it over, Elsie decided that she would be glad for a woman’s presence at times, even for the presence of this ignorant savage child, but first she felt it her duty to explain to the girl where she was going. She doubted if Nancy understood after all, or that she ever fully grasped the fact that she was to leave Earth behind for all time. She had heard from her mistress and other bwanas, stories of the countries across the great ocean she had never seen, so more than likely she believed that the subsequent travels in the Yodverl were in that direction. The great star worlds she saw were but natural phenomena to her untutored mind, and she was perhaps more at home at all times than any of the others. So it happened that when the great cylinder descended not more than a hundred feet from the bungalow, she stood ready by Elsie’s side for the embarkment.

  In the past few months Elsie had attended to all her uncle’s affairs and her own. She gave orders for the disposal of this property and the home her uncle owned in America, and wrote her will, which provided that if within five years she had not returned, the whole fortune was to be paid over to several charitable organizations which she knew would do most in relieving some of the poverty so rampant on the globe. So it was that when Moura came she went to him with little worldly goods other than her trousseau and the food supplies she had gathered together to reprovision the ship of space. She had made many purchases for the future and chosen wisely so that there would be plenty of clothing for Nancy and herself, and the materials to make more when those were worn out, together with such accessories as she thought she would need for her entire life time. She had also purchased great quantities of food-stuff, raw and preserved, delicacies and necessities, and the rain tank was filled to overflowing so that the Yodverl could replenish its reservoirs.

  It is difficult to describe her emotions when she saw the long, slender, shadowy form of the space-flyer fill the sky before it dropped to a smooth landing. A single, well-shaded light glowed in the pilot room, but the white glass walls hid it so well that its light could only be seen dimly. And with beating heart she waited for the doorway to slide outward. Then Moura-weit appeared before her anxious eyes. He came forward swiftly and she ran to meet him. Theirs was a quiet meeting. Neither had a word to say; their hearts were too full. He led her indoors to the home that was to be theirs for the remainder of their lives together.

  Nancy followed slowly, fearfully, but she came, even though the sight of the silver and golden men frightened her. Ubca-tor and Urto busied themselves in bringing in the pile of luggage and the supplies, and the water tanks were filled. During the past six months Moura had been preparing the ship for its long voyage across space, apparatus had been provided for the manufacture of water when their supply should run low, and every available bit of space was used for the storing of the supplies; the heating system and the radium light-storing apparatus had been improved and enlarged, for he was determined to go on to Alpha Centauri, spurred by the thought of the other creature, a replica of his former self, whom he had seen through the telescopes of Venus. There was scarcely room for all of Elsie’s supplies in the storerooms, so that they had to be placed in the living quarters, in passageways and unused sleeping rooms.

  MOURA first led Elsie into the ante-room, through the atol and into the cof, and threw aside the curtain of the room that he had arranged for his bride. She exclaimed at the change, for what had been two small bare cells was now one large room, the partition that had separated them having been pulled down. Love had furnished the chamber. The plain walls had been colored a delicate ivory and on it were painted clusters of the tula blossom so naturally that they seemed to be growing there. A closer inspection showed that all about the room small plants had been placed in boxes and arranged so artfully that their petals blended into the walls. It was difficult to tell where the real flowers ended and the painted ones began. Against one wall was a lovely dressing table with mirrors of polished silver that glowed and shone like a thing alive. The table itself seemed a living thing and on close inspection Elsie realized that instead of being metal it was carved out of a living jewel, deep in color that glowed and sparkled with an inner fire. Moura explained that it had come from Ganymede, one of the moons of Jupiter. There they used precious gems as other men used wood or metal, and their world was practically composed of nothing but jewels of monster size. Each of the receptacles on the table for powder and perfumes was also of jewels.

  On the opposite side of the chamber was a wide couch of strange design, also carved from a single jewel, a diamond, canary yellow, without a single flaw. But there the wonders of the room did not cease. The bedcovers were of a cloth of the finest texture, so delicate and light that their weight was negligible although they were woven so closely they proved to be unusually warm. The bedspread was a thing of beauty, a delicate lace that looked like a cobweb of violet, and the cushions that were piled at the head and the foot of the couch were made of a light feathery cloth of a type Elsie had never seen before. Moura told her that the bed-fittings with the mattress of snowy down had all come from Hyperion of Saturn, and were woven from neither plant fiber nor wool, but of rock that resembles the Earthly asbestos, yet is of lighter and more workable texture. The rug on the floor was of the same material, only of more threads so that it was tough and durable. There were also two beautifully shaped chairs of ivory along with innumerable cushions. A low table was set between the chairs and it was ebon in color, a black glowing jewel.

  Many of the months that he had waited to come to claim Elsie Rollins, Moura had spent in visiting such worlds of the system as he had found friendly and collected one by one all the pieces to furnish this bower, and had himself painted and decorated the room to hold them. Violet curtains were draped across the ceiling of white glass and could be drawn back at will. All was a beautiful tribute to the woman he loved, and more than once Elsie was to scan her own plain face in her silver mirrors to discover what it was in her that had given Moura his inspiration for his painstaking care in collecting the lovely articles for her room, but that man could look deeper than other men and knew what a lovely soul her deep clear eyes mirrored.

  In the other rooms of the ship Elsie found here and there a change that was to add to her own comfort. Her heart was so full it was hard for her to find the words to voice
her appreciation, but she knew that Moura found all her answers for himself without her aid. No more did she resent the fact that he knew her every thought and reaction, and because of this fact the two lovers were to find that a deeper understanding lay between them than usually exists between a pair. They were never to have the little petty misunderstandings that are the common lot of ordinary couples, for, with his own mastery of his mind and hers, Moura was to teach Elsie how to delve into his and know what was there.

  Now that the inspection of the rooms was over Moura spoke to her. “Elsie I know well your customs of marriage. Do you wish me to seek out one of your ministers of the gospel to perform the ceremony for us?”

  “What,” she asked with heart full, “is the Taboran way of marriage?”

  “On Abrui, the two contracting parties register their names together in a record held for that purpose, then their hands are joined together by a state official who has the right to do so.”

  She did not hesitate. “Then come, let us register our names together and give ourselves into the keeping of Him who controls this immensity. Is that not more fitting?”

  Moura-weit’s eyes glowed and he nodded his head. Elsie had already proven that he had judged her well.

  “But wait,” Elsie objected, “I want the stars of the Void to be our witnesses, out where everything else appears puny, out where Uncle Ezra can know!”

  Again Moura nodded, and side by side they strolled to the pilot room. Ubca-tor was waiting for them. Everything was in readiness for the departure. The ponderous door was closed, the ship ready for its last take-off. At a word from Moura he set the controls, and gently they rose from the ground, accelerating faster and faster, taking advantage of earth’s rotation as they shot off from her at a tangent until the world lay a blot below.