The White Invaders

by Ray Cummings

  CHAPTER VII

  _The Invisible World_

  Tako showed us how to operate the transition mechanism. The littlebanana grove on the Bermuda hilltop began fading. There was amomentary shock; a reeling of my head; a sudden sense of vibrationwithin me. And then a feeling of lightness, weightlessness; andfreedom, as though all my earthly life I had been shackled, but nowwas free.

  The thing was at first terrifying, gruesome; but in a moment thosefeelings passed and the weightless freedom brought an exuberance ofspirit.

  Don and I were sitting with Jane between us, and the figure of Takofronting us. I recall that we clung together, terrified. I closed myeyes when the first shock came, but opened them again to find myhead steadying. Surprising vista! I had vaguely fancied that Tako,Jane and Don would be sitting here dissolving into apparitions. Butmy hands on Jane's arm felt it as solid as before. I stared into herface. It was frightened, white and set, but smiling at me.

  "You all right, Bob? It's not so difficult, is it?"

  She had endured this before. She reached out her hands, one to Donand one to me.

  "We're dropping. I don't think it's far down, but be careful.Straighten your legs under you."

  We seemed unchanged; Don and Jane were the same in aspect as before,save the color of their garments seemed to have faded to a gray. Itwas the Bermuda hilltop which to our vision was changing. The grovewas melting, turning from green and brown to a shimmering silver. Wenow looked upon ghostly, shadowy trees; fading outlines of thenearby house; the nearby figures of Tako's men and the group ofcaptive girls--all shadowy apparitions. The voices were fading; asilence was falling upon us with only the hum of the mechanismsounding in my ears.

  * * * * *

  I felt with a shock of surprise that I was no longer seated on theground. I seemed, for an instant floating, suspended as thoughperhaps immersed in water. The sweep of the ground level was a vagueshadowy line of gray, but my legs had dropped beneath it. I wasdrifting down, sinking, with only Jane's hand to steady me.

  "Thrust your feet down," she murmured. "A little fall. We want toland on our feet."

  The imponderable ground of the banana grove was rising. We dropped,as though we were sinking in water. But we gathered speed; we felt aweight coming to our bodies. At last we fell; my feet struck a solidsurface with a solid impact. Don and I lost our balance, but Janesteadied us. We were standing upon a dark rock slope, steeplyinclined.

  "Off with the current!" came Tako's voice. "The belt switch--throwit back!"

  I found the little lever. The current went off. There had been amoment when the spectral shadows of my own world showed in the airabove me. But we passed their visible limits and they faded out ofsight.

  We were in the realm of the Fourth Dimension. Outdoors, in a regionof glowing, phosphorescent night....

  * * * * *

  "This way," said Tako. "It is not far. We will walk. Just a moment,you three. I would not have you escape me."

  Our revolvers were gone. Being metal, they could not, of actuality,be carried into the transition. We had no light-beam cylinders, nordid we as yet know how to use them. Tako stood before us; he reachedto the operating mechanisms under the dial-face at our belts, makingsome disconnections which we did not understand.

  His smile in the semi-darkness showed with its familiar irony. "Youmight have the urge to try some escaping transition. It would loseyou in the Unknown. That would be death! I do not want that."

  I protested, "We are not fools. I told you if you would spare us,return us safely to Bermuda when this is over--"

  "That you might be of help to me," he finished. "Well, perhaps youwill. I hope so. You will do what you can to help, willingly orotherwise; that I know." His voice was grimly menacing. And helaughed sardonically. "You are no fools, as you say. And Jane--" Hisglance went to her. "Perhaps, before we are through with this, youmay even like me, Jane."

  Whatever was in his mind, it seemed to amuse him.

  "Perhaps," said Jane.

  We three had had only a moment to talk together. There had been nopossibility of escape. It was obvious to us that Tako was the leaderof these invaders; and, whatever they were planning, our best chanceto frustrate it was to appear docile. Safety for us--the possibilityof later escaping--all of that seemed to lie in a course ofdocility. We would pretend friendliness; willingness to help.

  Tako was not deceived. We knew that. Don, in those two or threehours we were with Tako before starting upon the transition, hadsaid:

  "But suppose we do help you in your scheme, whatever it is? Theremight be some reward for us, eh? If you plan a conquest, richesperhaps--"

  Tako had laughed with genuine amusement. "So? You bargain? We are tobe real friends--fellow conquerors? And you expect me to believethat?"

  * * * * *

  Yet now he seemed half to like us. And there was Jane's safety forwhich we were scheming. Tako had been interested in Jane. We knewthat. Yet she was at first little more to him than one of the girlcaptives. He might have left her with those others. But she was withus now, to stay with us upon this journey, and it was farpreferable.

  "This way," said Tako. "We will walk. It is not far to my encampmentwhere they are preparing for the trip."

  It seemed that a vast open country was around us. A rocky, almostbarren waste; a mountainous region of steep gray defiles, gorges andbroken tumbled ravines. A void of darkness hung overhead. There wereno stars, no moon, no light from above. Yet I seemed presently tosee a great distance through the glowing deep twilight. The glow wasinherent to the rocks themselves; and to the spare, stunted,gray-blue vegetation. It was a queerly penetrating, diffused, yetvague light everywhere. One could see a considerable distance by it.Dim colors were apparent.

  We trod the rocks with a feeling of almost normal body weight. Theair was softly warm like a night in the tropics, with a faint breezeagainst our faces. It seemed a trackless waste here. We mounted anascending ramp, topped a rise with an undulating plateau ahead ofus.

  Tako stood a moment for us to get our breath. The air seemedrarefied; we were panting, with our cheeks tingling.

  "My abode is there." He gestured to the distant lowland regionbehind us. We were standing upon a gray hilltop. The ground wentdown a tumbled broken area to what seemed a lowland plain. Ten milesaway--it may have been that, or twice that--I saw the dim outline ofa great castle or a fortress. A building of gigantic size, it seemedstrangely fashioned with round-shaped domes heaped in a circlearound a tower looming in the center. A wall, or a hedge of gianttrees, I could not tell, but it seemed as gigantic as the wall ofChina, and was strung over the landscape in an irregular circle toenclose an area of several square miles, with the castle-fortress inits center. A little city was there, nestled around the fortress--ahundred or two small brown and gray mounds to mark the dwellings. Itsuggested a little feudal town of the Middle Ages of our own Earth,set here in this trackless waste.

  * * * * *

  And I saw, down on the plain, a shining ribbon of river with thickvegetation along its banks. And within the enclosing wall there, wasthe silvery sheen of a lake near the town; patches of trees, andbrownish oval areas which seemed to be fields under cultivation.

  "My domain," Tako repeated. There was a touch of pride in his voice."I rule it. You shall see it--when we are finished with New York."

  Again his gaze went to Jane, curiously contemplative. We startedwalking over the upper plateau level, seemingly with nothing inadvance of us save empty luminous darkness. A walk of an hour.Perhaps it was that long. Time here had faded with our Earthlyworld. It was difficult to gauge the passing minutes--as difficultas to guess at the miles of this luminous distance.

  As though the sight of his fortress--his tiny principality, whoseinhabitants he ruled with absolute sway--had awakened in Tako newemotions, he put Jane beside him and began talking to us withapparent complete frank
ness. It must have been an hour, during whichhe explained this world of his, of which we were destined to have sobrief a glimpse, and told us upon what diabolical errand he and hisfellows were embarked. I recall that as he talked Jane gripped me inhorror. But she managed to smile when Tako smiled at her. He wasnaively earnest as he told us of his coming conquest. And Jane, withwoman's intuition knew before Don and I realized it, that it was toherself, a beautiful girl of Earth, he was talking, seeking heradmiration for his prowess.

  Tako was what in Europe of the Middle Ages would have amounted to afeudal prince. He was one of many here in this realm; each had hislittle domain, with his retainers cultivating his land, paying feesto him so that the overlord lived in princely idleness.

  * * * * *

  Scattered at considerable distances, one from the other, theserulers of their little principalities were loosely bound into ageneral government; but at home each was a law unto himself. Theylived in princely fashion, these lords of the castle, as they werecalled. Among the retainers, monogamy was practiced. The workers hadtheir little families--husband, wife and children. But for therulers, more than one wife was the rule. Within each castle was aharem of beauties, drawn perforce from the common people. The mostbeautiful girls of each settlement were trained from childhood toanticipate the honor of being selected by the master for a life inthe castle.

  They were connoisseurs of woman's beauty, these overlords. By thesize of his harem and the beauty and talent of its inmates was anoverlord judged by his fellows.

  Out of this had grown the principal cause for war in the history ofthe realm. Beautiful girls were scarce. Raids were made by one lordupon the village and harem of another.

  Then had come to Tako the discovery of the great world of our Earth,occupying much of this same space in another state of matter.

  "I discovered it," he said with his gaze upon Jane.

  "How?" Don demanded.

  "It came," he said, "out of our scientific method of transportation,which very soon I will show you. We are a scientific people. Hah!"He laughed ironically. "The workers say that we princes areprofligate--that we think only of women and music. But that is notso. Once, many generations ago, we were a tremendous nation, andskilled in science far beyond your own world--and with a populationa hundred times what we have now. The land everywhere must have beenrich and fertile. There were big cities--the ruins of them are stillto be seen.

  * * * * *

  "And then our climate changed. There was, for us, a worldcatastrophe, the cause and the details of which no one now knowsvery clearly. It sent our cities, our great civilizations intoruins. It left us with this barren waste with only occasionallowland fertile spots which now by heredity we rulers control, eachto possess his own.

  "But that past civilization gave us a scientific knowledge. Much ofit is lost--we are going down hill. But we have some of it left, andwe profligate rulers, as the workers call us, cherish it. But whatis the use of teaching it to the common people? We do very little ofthat. And our weapons of war we keep to ourselves--except when thereis a raid and our loyal retainers go forth with us to do battle."

  "So you discovered how to get into our Earth world?" Don repeated.

  "Yes. Some years ago, and it was quite by chance. At first Iexperimented alone--and then I took with me a young girl."

  Again he smiled at Jane. "Tolla is her name. She is here in our campwhere our army is now, starting for New York. You will meet herpresently. She loves me very much, so she says. She wants some dayto lead my harem. I took her with me into the Unknown--into thatplace you call Bermuda. I have been there off and on for nearly ayear of your Earth time, making my plans for what now is at lastcoming to pass."

  "So that's how you learned our language?" I said.

  "Yes. It came easy to me and Tolla. That--and we were taught by twogirls whom a year ago I took from Bermuda and brought in here."

  "And what became of them?" Jane put in quietly.

  "Oh--why, I gave them away," he replied calmly. "A prince whosefavor I desired, wanted them and I gave them to him. Your Earthgirls are well liked by the men of my world. Their fame has alreadyspread."

  * * * * *

  He added contemplatively, "I often have thought how strange it isthat your great world and mine should lie right here together--theone invisible to the other. Two or three minutes of time--we havejust made the transition. Yet what a void!"

  "The scientists of your past civilization," I said, "strange thatthey did not learn to cross it."

  "Do you know that they did not?" he demanded. "Perhaps with secretvisitations--"

  It brought to us a new flood of ideas. We had thought, up there inSt. Georges, that this Tako was a ghost. How could one say but thatall or most manifestations of the occult were not something likethis. The history of our Earth abounds with superstition.Ghosts--things unexplained. How can one tell but that all occultismis merely unknown science? Doubtless it is. I can fancy now that inthe centuries of the past many scientists of this realm of theFourth Dimension ventured forth a little way toward our world. Andseeing them, we called them ghosts.

  What an intrepid explorer was this Tako! An enterprising scoundrel,fired with a lust for power. He told us now, chuckling with thetriumph of it, how carefully he had studied our world. Appearingthere, timidly at first, then with his growing knowledge of English,boldly living in Hamilton.

  His fame in his own world, among his fellow rulers, rapidly grew.The few Earth girls he produced were eagerly seized. The fame oftheir beauty spread. The desire, the competition for them becamekeen. And Tako gradually conceived his great plan. A hundred or moreof the overlords, each with his hundred retainers, were bandedtogether for the enterprise under Tako's leadership. An army wasorganized; weapons and equipment were assembled.

  Earth girls were to be captured in large numbers. The most desirableof them would go into the harems of the princes. The others would begiven to the workers. The desire for them was growing rapidly,incited by the talk of the overlords. The common man could have morethan one wife--two, even three perhaps--supported by the princelymaster. And Tako was dreaming of a new Empire; increased population;some of the desert reclaimed; a hundred principalities bandedtogether into a new nation, with himself as its supreme leader.

  * * * * *

  And then the attack upon Earth had begun. A few Earth girls werestolen; then more, until very quickly it was obvious that a wider areathan Bermuda was needed. Tako's mind flung to New York--greatestcenter of population within striking distance of him.[3] The forayinto Bermuda--the materialization of that little band on the Pagethilltop was more in the nature of an experiment than a real attack.Tako learned a great deal of the nature of this coming warfare, orthought he did.

  [3] The extent of the Fourth Dimensional world was never made wholly clear to us. Its rugged surface was coincident with the surface of our earth at Bermuda, at New York City, and at many points along the Atlantic seaboard of the United States. For the rest, there is no data upon which one may even guess.

  As a matter of actuality, in spite of his dominating force, thecapacity for leadership which radiated from him, there was a verynaive, fatuous quality to this strange ruler. Or at least, Don and Ithought so now. As the details of his plot against our Earth worldunfolded to us, what we could do to circumvent him ran like anundercurrent across the background of our consciousness. He knewnothing, or almost nothing of our Earth weapons. What conditionswould govern this unprecedented warfare into which he wasplunging--of all that he was totally ignorant.

  * * * * *

  But, we were speedily to learn that he was not as fatuous as he atfirst seemed. These two worlds--occupying the same space andinvisible to each other--would be plunged into war. And Takorealized that no one, however astute, of either world could predictwhat might happen. He was plunging ahead, quit
e conscious of hisignorance. And he realized that there was a vast detailed knowledgeof the Earth world which we had and he did not. He would use us asthe occasion arose to explain what might not be understandable tohim.

  I could envisage now so many things of such a character. The rangeof warships and artillery. The weapons a plane might use. Thetopography of New York City and its environs.... And the more Takoneeded us, the less we had to fear from him personally. We wouldhave the power to protect Jane from him--if we could sufficientlypersuade him he needed our good will. Ultimately we might plunge hisenterprise into disaster, and with Jane escape from him--that too Icould envisage as a possibility.

  The mind flings far afield very rapidly! But I recall that itoccurred to me also that I might be displaying many of the fatuousqualities I was crediting to Tako, by thinking such thoughts!

  I have no more than briefly summarized the many things Tako told usduring that hour while we strode across the dim rocky uplands towardhis mobilized army awaiting its departure for the scene of the mainattack. Some of his forces had already gone ahead. Several bands ofmen were making visual contact with the seacoast of the southernUnited States. It was all experimentation. They were heading for NewYork. They would wait there, and not materialize until this mainarmy had joined them.

  We saw presently, in the distance ahead of us, a dim green sheen oflight below the horizon. Then it disclosed itself to be quitenear--the reflection of green light from a bowl-like depression ofthis rocky plateau.

  We reached the rim of the bowl. The encampment of Tako's main armylay spread before us.