The Space Opera Megapack

by John W. Campbell

  A breath of the smoke touched Elza’s face. Pungent, acrid. It stopped her breathing. She choked, coughed heavily to expel it.

  “Come away, Lady Elza. Let us watch from a safer distance.”

  He led her from the hillock, up the wind to where at the edge of the forest they stood gazing.

  The blue fire had spread over a distance of several feet. A sluggish, boiling, bubbling area of flame. Tongues now the height of a man. And from them, rolling upward, a heavy black cloud—deadly fumes thick, blacker than the night, spreading out, welling forward over the forest toward the Great City slumbering in its falsely peaceful security.

  At last Elza knew. Stood there, cold, shuddering, thinking with all the power of her mind and being:

  “Death, Jac! Death to all the City! The black cloud of death!”

  Oblivious to Tarrano she stood until at last the rocky eminence was one great mass of the surging blue fire. And the black cloud, compact as a thunder-head, rolled onward.

  “You can see it coming! Death Jac! Death to all the City!”

  A sudden madness descended upon Elza. She felt abruptly that her warning was futile, felt an overpowering desire to run. Run somewhere—anywhere, away from the lurid sight she was facing. Or run perhaps, to the Great City; to race with that black cloud of death; to run fast and far, and burst into our palace to warn us.

  Tarrano himself lost in triumphant contemplation of what he had done, for the moment was heedless of Elza’s presence. With white face upon which the blue glare had settled like a mask of death, Elza turned silently from him. Forgetful of that horrible thing they had encountered—others of its kind which might be lurking about—she turned silently and plunged into the black depths of the forest.

  CHAPTER XXIX

  A Woman’s Scream

  “The black Cloud of Death!”

  We stood there at the casement of the palace, gazing with a growing terror at the visible evidence of the tragedy which threatened. A black cloud off there in the distance, spreading out, rolling inexorably toward us. And then came the wind, and with it a breath of the black monster—a choking, horrible suggestion of the death rolling already over the city.

  We must have been fascinated at the casement for some considerable time. Elza’s thought messages had ceased. Abruptly I came to myself.

  “The Black Cloud of Death!” I turned to Georg and Maida. “Alarm the city! Arouse them all! Alarm—”

  Maida’s face was white: she flung off Georg’s arm which had been protectingly around her. “The siren—”

  Terrible moments, those that followed. Confusion; panic; death!

  The public siren in the tower by the lagoon entrance shrilled its warning. The danger lights blazed out. The city came to life. Lights sprang up everywhere. People—with the daze of sleep still upon them—appeared at the casements; on the roof-tops; on the canal steps they appeared, fumbling with their boats. Panic!

  A pandemonium. Aircraft, such as could so hastily be mustered, swept overhead. A glare of lights everywhere. The shrill voice of the siren stilled, to make audible the broadcast warnings—stentorian tones screaming: “The Black Cloud of Death! Escape from the city! Escape to Industriana!”

  Warning, advice, command! But over it all, the breath of the black cloud now lay heavy. The lights were dimmed by it. Everywhere—to every deepest recess of the city—to every inner room where to escape it many had fled—its deadly choking breath was penetrating.

  Within the palace was turmoil. We had an air-vehicle on a landing-stage nearby; but Georg and Maida would not leave at once. Rulers of the Central State, as a Director might stick to his crumbling Tower, they stayed now in the Great City. Encouraging the people. Maida’s voice, futilely attempting to broadcast over the uproar. Georg commanding the official air-vessels to load with refugees; himself struggling to direct the jam of boats toward the embarking stages.

  We were in the instrument room of the palace. The air was pale-blue, though I had closed every casement. Ourselves, choking already; then gasping; and with no time or thought to procure a mask. The chemical room, from whence we might have secured apparatus to purify our air, had been abandoned before we thought to seek it out. I dashed into it, my breath held. Its casements were open; its air thick-blue with the fumes; its staff long since fled. I ran back to Georg and Maida, gasping, my lungs on fire, my head roaring.

  “No use! Abandoned!”

  The department of weather control where—had we been forewarned—we might have found means to divert the wind by another of our own creation—was deserted by its staff at the first alarm.

  “No use! Georg—Maida—let us go!”

  The mirrors all about us in the instrument room were going dark; the horrible scenes of death throughout the city which they pictured were vanishing. The public lights were going out; the broadcast voices were ceasing.

  The city now was out of control. But still the lagoon outside was packed with boats—overloaded boats.… Screams of terror, choked into silence…boats with frenzied occupants leaping into the water to find a quicker, happier death…a woman with a babe in her arms on a housetop across the lagoon—the infant already dead; the crazed mother flinging it down into the water, herself following with a long, gasping scream…

  At last Georg pulled at me—no longer could we speak—pulled at me, and with Maida between us, we fled. The air outside was worse. In the dimness, our landing stage seemed belans away. The flagged area between us and the stage—a space of square-cut metal flagging, bordering the lagoon—was littered with bodies. Dead—or dying. People even now staggering from landed boats—staggering blindly, stumbling over bodies, falling and lying always where they had fallen.

  With our own senses fading, we groped our way forward. Soon we were separated. I saw Maida fall and Georg pick her up, but I was powerless to reach them.

  The landing stage seemed so far away. The dead and dying beneath my feet obstructed me as I staggered over them. A woman, reeling toward me, flung her arms about my neck with an iron grip of despair. I stared into her face, purple almost with its congested blood, her mouth gaping, her blood-shot eyes bulging; and even with the terror distorting them, I saw beneath it their look of despairing appeal…

  Her arms clinging to me desperately; but with a curse I flung her to the ground and reeled onward.

  Without knowing it, I had come to the brink of the water’s edge. The flagging seemed to drop away. I fell. Dimly I heard the splash as I struck the water; and felt a grateful cooling sense as it closed over me.

  I am a strong, instinctive swimmer. I did not breathe, and when I rose to the surface, the single swift breath I took was purer than any I had had for half an hour past. My head cleared a little; swimming instinctively, and with cautious breaths, I found that I was able to go on.

  I know now that by some vagary of chance—of fate if you will—I had struck a surface area where breathable air still remained. I swam, striving to plan, to think where I might be swimming. Yet it was all a phantasmagoria, with only the strength of my muscles and the instinct to preserve my life remaining to direct me. Swimming endlessly…swimming…taking a half-gasp of breath…swimming…trying to think…or dreaming…was it all a dream?…

  When I came to myself I was lying upon a bank of ferns in the outskirts of the city. It was still night; the black cloud of death had passed on; the air was pure. Like a man for days bereft of water, I lay and drank in the air, pure at last, as the Almighty distils it for us.

  Bodies were lying around me on the bank. A dark, silent house stood nearby; and a deserted boat. All darkness and silence—the brooding silence of death. I was still dazed. Maida—Georg; they seemed like people in a dream long faded. Industriana! They were going to theRhaal City of Industriana. I had been trying to get there. I must get there now—join them. I climbed to my feet; the edge of a forest was nearby and with wavering steps I started toward it.

  Looking back on it now I realize that I was even then half crazed. In
a daze I must have stumbled through the forest for hours. Unreasoning, with only that one idea—to get to Industriana; and in the background of my consciousness the vague belief that Elza would be there to greet me. Into the depths of the untrammeled forest with unguided steps I wandered.

  At last I found myself wondering if the dawn were coming; the tri-night hour was long since passed; the auroral lights as I could sometimes see them through the tangle of vegetation overhead, were low in the sky. Insects—and sometimes larger beings—leaped and slithered unseen before my advance. But I did not heed them. Eyes may have peered at me as I stumbled through the blackness of the undergrowth; but if they did, I did not notice them.

  And then at last I was brought abruptly to full rationality and consciousness. Stumbling through a tangle of low growth—a black thicket which tore at my garments and scratched my flesh—I was transfixed by a woman’s scream. It came through the darkness from near at hand. A crashing of the underbrush, and a woman’s scream of terror. It stopped my breath, turned me cold.

  Elza!

  CHAPTER XXX

  The Monster

  I stood frozen with horror; but as my brain cleared—awake at last to full rationality and consciousness—beneath the horror came a surging joy of the knowledge that at last Elza was near me. The scream was repeated; inactive no longer, I dashed the thicket branches apart with my arms and plunged forward through the darkness.

  Ahead of me the thickets opened into a sort of clearing. I saw the sky, the stars—paling stars with the first flush of dawn overpowering them. I stood at the edge of an open space in the dim, flat-grey illumination of morning twilight.

  Elza! She was there, standing near a huge isolated tree; Elza, pale, trembling, a hand pressed against her mouth in terror; disheveled, her garments dirty and torn with her wanderings through the forest.

  A swift glimpse as momentarily I paused; a second or two only, but the scene was impressed upon my brain as actinic light upon a photo-screen. Close by Elza, partially behind her, I saw something small, no taller than Elza’s waist. A naked thing of sleek, glistening skin. The monstrosity of a human child; a bulging head, wavering upon a neck incapable of supporting it; a thick round body; twisted, misshapen limbs. A face…human? It made my gorge rise with its gruesome suggestion of humanity. Nostrils—no nose; a mouth, lipless, but red like a curved gash with upturned corners to make the travesty of a grin; a triangle of watery eyes, goggling. Senselessly, it stood watching Elza with a dull, vacant curiosity. Not human, this thing! Yet monstrously repulsive in its hideous suggestion of an idiot child.

  Elza was not facing it; my gaze instinctively followed hers to the tree. Crowning horror! The adult of this thing upon the ground hung swaying by a thick hand and arm from a low limb; hung, then dropped. Growling, mouthing as though it would try and form human words of menace, it picked itself up and shambled toward Elza.

  I leaped for them. Elza seemed too terrified to run. The thing reached her, towered over her; seized her in its arms. She screamed—the agony of revolt and terror; but over her voice rose my own shout of rage, and abruptly the thing dropped her and turned to confront me. Snarling, glaring with its three hideous blood-shot eyes; waving its thick, bent arms.

  I had no weapons save those with which nature had endowed me. The regret of that came as a fleeting thought; and then I crashed into the thing; my fist, passing its awkward guard, struck it full in the face. I sickened. Even in the heat of combat a nausea swept me. For no solid flesh and bone met my blow, like the shell of an egg, my fist crashed into and through its face.

  Warm, sticky moisture…a stench…

  The thing had toppled backward, with me sprawling upon its bloated bulk. It struggled, writhed… Its arms gripped me, its huge fingers clutched my throat… I caught a glimpse of its smashed face…so close, I turned away…a face of yellow-white pulp…

  My fist cracked and sank into its chest. I pounded, smashed; broke the shell of its distended body…noisome…the revulsion, the nausea of it all but overcame me.

  At last the thing lay still; and from the wet, sticky foulness of it I rose and stood shuddering. Elza lay on the ground; but she had risen upon one elbow and I saw that she was unharmed save for the shock of terror through which she had passed—a mitigated shock with the knowledge now that I was with her, and that I too was uninjured.

  The infant thing had vanished. I hastened forward.

  “Elza! Elza, dear—”

  Joy lighted her face.

  “Jac!”

  I would have lifted her up; but the consciousness of my own foulness—the yellow-white slime streaked with red which smeared my arms, splattered my clothing—gave me pause. In the growing light, beyond the clearing, I caught the silver sheen of water. Without a word I ran for it; a shimmering pool the existence of which no doubt had drawn these grewsome beings of the forest into its vicinity. To the cleansing water I ran, plunged in, purged myself of that horrible foulness which human senses could not endure.

  When I returned, Elza was upon her feet. Recovered at last she flung herself into my arms. Impulsive; seeking protection as she clung to me; fear; the let-down of overwrought nerves as she stood and clung and sobbed upon my shoulder.

  It was all of that; but oh! it was more than that as well. My Elza, raising her tear-stained face and kissing me. Murmuring, “Jac, I love you!” Murmuring her love: “Jac dear, you’re safe! I’ve wanted so long to be with you again—I’ve been so frightened—so frightened—”

  Giving me back my kisses unreserved; holding me with eager arms… Tarrano? The memory of him came to me. How foolish my fears, my jealousy! That man of genius…conqueror of worlds…

  But my Elza loved me!…

  CHAPTER XXXI

  Industriana

  It must have been two days later when at last we were rescued by the Rhaal patrol and taken to Industriana. Back there in the forest I had suddenly remembered that the mate to the thing I had killed would doubtless be lurking in the vicinity. We fled. Subsisting on what food of the wilds we could find, at last we were picked up and taken to the City of Work.

  The Great City had been destroyed. Wanton capital of the Central State, we learned now that it lay dead. To outward aspect, unharmed. Fair, serene, alluring as ever it lay there on its shimmering waters; but the life within it, was dead. Refugees—a quarter perhaps of the inhabitants—had escaped; hourly the search patrols were picking them up, bringing them to Industriana. Rescue parties were searching the city, to find any who might still be alive.

  And out in the forest lay a great pile of ashes, still exhaling a thin wisp of its deadly breath—where Tarrano had created the Black Cloud; lost his captive Elza, but doubtless had escaped himself back to his City of Ice.

  We found Georg and Maida safe at Industriana. Marvelous city! Elza had never seen it before. She sat gazing breathless as from the air on the patrol vessel, we approached it.

  The land of this region was a black, rocky soil upon which vegetation would not grow. A rolling land, grimly black, metallic; with outcroppings of ore, red and white and with occasional patches of thin white sand whereon a prickly blue grass struggled for life.

  Rolling hills; and then places where nature had upheaved into a turmoil. Huge naked black crags; buttes; hills with precipitous black sides of sleek metal; narrow canyons with tumultuous water flowing through them.

  In such a place stood Industriana. The City of Work! Set in an area where nature lay scarred, twisted in convulsion, its buildings clung to every conceivable slope and in every position. Many-storied buildings—residences and factories indiscriminately intermingled. All built in sober, solid rectangles of the forbidding black stone.

  A long steep slope from an excavated quarry deep in the ground, ran straight up to a commanding hilltop—the slope set with an orderly array of buildings clinging to it in terraces. Buildings huge, or tiny huts; all anchored in the rear to the ground, and set upon metal girders in the front. Bisecting the slope was a vertical
street—a broad escalator of moving steps, one half going upward, the other down. Beside it, a series of other escalators for the traffic of moving merchandise.

  Cross streets on the hill were spider bridges, clinging with thin, stiff legs. And at the summit of the hill stood a tremendous funnel belching flame and smoke into the sky.

  To one side of the hill lay a bowl-like depression with a single squat building in its center—a low building of many funnels; and about it the black yawning mouths of shafts down into the ground—mines vomiting ore, broken chunks of the metallic rock coming up as though by the invisible magic of magnetism, hunting through the air in an arc to fall with a clatter into great bins above the smelter.

  In another place, at the bottom of a canyon roared a surging torrent of river. A harnessed river; plunging into turbines; emerging to tumble over a cascade, its every drop caught by turning buckets spilled again at the bottom. Water pursuing its surging course downward, its power used again and again. The canyon dry at one place near the lower edge of the city, the water all electrified, resolved into piped hydrogen and oxygen. Like a tremendous clock ticking, the water, momentarily dammed back, was released in a torrent to the electrolysis vats. The hissing gases, under tremendous pressure, raised up the heavy-weighted tops of two expanding tanks. Another tick of this giant clock—the gases released, were merged again to water. The tops of the tanks lowered, each in turn, one coming down as the other went up—hundreds of tons of weight—their slow downward pull geared to scores of whirling wheels—the power shifted to dynamos scattered throughout the city.

  It was the twilight of nightfall when we arrived over Industriana. A thousand funnels and chimneys belched their flame and smoke—the flame tinting the sky with a lurid yellow-green glare, the smoke hanging like a dim blue gauze through which everything seemed unreal, infernal.

  From the city rose a roar—the myriad sounds of industry mingled by the magic of distance. And as we got closer, the roar resolved into its component parts; the grinding of gears; clicking of belts and chains; whirring of dynamos and motors; shrill electrical screams; the clattering of falling ore; clanking of swiftly moving merchandise, bound in metal, magnetized to monorail cars shifting it to warehouses on the nearby hills. And over it all flashed the brilliant signal lights of the merchandise traffic directors whose stentorian electrical voices broadcasting commands sounded above the city’s noises.