by Earl
That very night Caligula himself repaired to the White Chamber, and not long afterward the door opened to reveal two of his attendants carrying between them the struggling form of Bogamus the physician. The attendants stood him on his feet before the couch of the Cæsar and stepped back a pace with brawny arms folded.
Trembling in every limb, Bogamus attempted to put on a righteous front before the Emperor’s accusing eye. “Hall, august Cæsar! For what reason am I, your faithful physician, thus dragged to the—White Chamber? I told these rough fellows they had made a mistake. Will the Cæsar give me permission to leave?”
“I would talk with you, Bogamus,” Caligula said, transfixing the terror-stricken man with ominous eyes. “Some ten days ago there was brought to this villa a captive Egyptian maid. You remember?”
“Yes, Cæsar.”
Caligula said nothing for a long moment. Then: “Where is she now?” he suddenly shot out.
Bogamus, licking dry lips, answered as confidently as his shaken nerves would allow: “If you will but recall, Cæsar, she was tainted with leprosy and by your own orders exiled from this place.”
Caligula arched his heavy brows and straightened a sleeve of his tunic. “That is your story, Bogamus?”
“Y-yes, august Cæsar.”
Suddenly, at a wave of the Emperor’s hand, the two stalwarts grasped the physician by the arms, and unmindful of his sudden shriek, dragged him off his feet and carried him away from the couch. With practised familiarity they strapped him by wrists and ankles to an apparatus gleaming with much metal. Bogamus came out of a momentary faint to find himself suspended horizontally four feet off the floor. Unable to see underneath himself, his mind sickened at the thought of what devilish instrument might be there. His eyes focused then on the leering, insane face of Caligula and he cried loudly for mercy.
“Strip him!”
The mad Emperor strode to a position where he could peer into the drawn and frightened face of his erstwhile trusted physician.
“Bogamus, you have lied to me and deceived me. The fair Egyptian was not taken from this place! She has been observed in the chamber of another supposedly faithful servant of mine. Now tell me, traitor, was the girl tainted with leprosy or not?”
“No, no!” cried the now naked and trembling man. “It was but a trick. Release me, and I will tell you all! You do not have to torture me! I will tell all!”
“You will tell all now, Bogamus,” grated the Emperor, with a great anger clouding his face. “Who incited you to play this deception?”
The physician rolled his eyes fearfully, unable to see any way of not being revealed a traitor and double traitor. “Junga! Junga the Hun! He wanted the fair Egyptian. He plotted to get her. In his cunning and lust, he came to me. He cast a spell over me. I swear it, Cæsar, he played his magic on me. Never of myself would I have—it was Junga—he—not I——”
His suspicions suddenly confirmed, the boiling wrath of the mad Cæsar exploded. With a roar of violent curses, he turned from the babbling physician and his incoherent pleas for mercy and forgiveness, and jerked a finger at his minions.
Without a word one of the slaves stooped beside a large wooden wheel whose outer edge, strewn with a score of jagged-edged knives, revolved beneath the unprotected spine of the doomed man. Grasping the crank handle with which it was equipped, he slowly turned it. Its axle uncentered, the wheel’s larger arc reared from the floor and swung its freight of knives upward.
Bogamus the physician screamed in sudden pain as a knife flicked his flesh underneath, and arched his body desperately so that the next revolution of the wheel left him untouched. The attendant methodically turned the crank, and Caligula looked on in vengeful gloating, knowing that in a short time the straining man would have no further strength to arch his back and then he would sag, so that the knives——
Two hours later the mad Cæsar left the White Chamber as the last echoes of screams and groans had died away.
SITTING resplendent before a table loaded with delicious foods and rare wines in the vaulted White Chamber, Caligula Cæsar drummed his fingers on the arms of the chair. At times his cruel face lighted with a smile of anticipation.
It was apparent that he awaited someone, and at last the door swung aside and two guards ushered in Junga, the Priest of Belshewawar, sumptuously clothed in contrast to the corpse-like lineaments of his face. The attendants retreated at a signal from their master, and Junga stood a moment hesitant, surprized at the sight of food and drink in such a place.
“Come, my Junga,” cried Caligula jovially. “This night shall we dine in our citadel of sport. I have for our rites tonight a victim whose heart’s blood shall surely tell when and how Rome shall know its greatest hour. Come, a grateful Cæsar invites you to dine with him!”
Unsuspecting, the barbarian sorcerer came forward, and upon his parched and wrinkled skin a smile of satisfaction grew. To dine with a Cæsar! This honor had not yet been his.
Caligula raised a goblet of wine as Junga seated himself. “This is the choicest vintage of the Carduc Hills. Drink, my incomparable soothsayer, and the toast—to what the Holy Circle will this night reveal.”
Junga started in suspicion at this, and darted a quick glance at the Emperor. But seeing the Cæsar’s goblet already upraised, a veritable royal command to drink, he drew up his own goblet and drank deep of it. A moment later a cry escaped from his lips. His arms fell helpless to his side and the golden goblet crashed to the floor to taint with its dark red wine the snow-white purity.
The color drained from his swarthy face so that he looked like an actual corpse, a dead man sitting in a chair with living eyes—eyes that glared a confusion of emotions: hatred, rage, and above all, a horrible fear. His voice, as if from the grave, croaked: “You have poisoned me!”
“By the crown of Olympus, but the Priest of Belshewawar has again guessed the truth. What evil magic gives you this strange power?” Caligula’s voice hissed mockingly as he burst into a spasm of triumphant laughter. Then his face became stem and he shook a clenched fist in the barbarian’s face. “A rare poison that robs men of their strength, and sorcerers of their supernatural powers. Weave a spell if you can,” he taunted, “and you shall find it dying unborn in your own treacherous heart.”
Clapping his hands, Caligula arose as the two attendants came running up, and ordered them to shackle the barbarian to the gyve-posts before the Holy Circle of Belshewawar. As quickly as they had come, the slaves left, and Caligula faced the horror-stricken eyes of Junga.
“But five people knew that you have made a fool of Cæsar. Three of them are gone already: Bogamus, the Egyptian maid and one of my guards. You and I—are left!”
With deliberate eagerness, the mad Emperor drew from his girdle a sharp dagger, while Junga stared speechless and powerless, for the poison was truly an antidote against witchcraft. “Look, Junga! There before you lies the mosaic ring whose mysterious convolutions and signs reveal great secrets when the shadows of human blood creep over them. What more fitting than that your blood should now be spilled for the purpose!”
“Who are you,” croaked the voice of Junga suddenly, “that dare to threaten the life of one of Belshewawar’s priests? Beware, for the Sorceress who sent me here is jealous of her own.”
Caligula drew back in awed fear, but only for a moment. “Bah! I have no dread of her power, for I am Master of the World, all-powerful and protected of the gods of Rome. Furthermore, will the Sorceress of Belshewawar avenge the death of a priest of her cult who has proved a traitor to his gods?”
With these words Caligula came closer to the doomed man, dagger extended, gloating at the intense fear that shone from his victim’s anguished eyes. One quick motion and swing of the arm and Junga the Hun became as those others had been under his own ministrations.
Turning his back upon the man shrieking in agony, Caligula strode to his table and drained a goblet of wine. “You see, heathen and traitor, that although the poison robs you
of motion and of your black skill in magic, it does not deaden the capacity for pain. Now let us watch the shadows of blood, and see what the Holy Circle will tell.”
No longer a man, but a monster, the mad Cæsar taunted the dying man, exacting vengeance for the trickery that had lost to him a beautiful woman. Caligula might have forgiven him the act had he been a Roman, and had he been a soothsayer of years of standing. But for a wretched barbarian to steal from the Cæsar, within three weeks of being there, a desirable woman—that was unforgivable.
THE scarlet light that rebounded from the vaults above slanted gradually toward the mosaic ring from the pool of blood at Junga’s feet. In an ecstasy of pain that groaning could not alleviate, Junga fell to silence except for labored, choking breath, and stared fixedly at the shadows of blood writhing over the symbols of the Magic Circle.
“I will read the meaning of the oracle of Belshewawar,” gleefully cried the Emperor of Rome. “There, it says Junga is a thief, one who thought to rob a Cæsar. It says he has murdered innocent men, and despoiled a woman whose feet he was not worthy to kiss. And for these things, sorcerer though you are, death has been your lot. And what more does it say?” leered Caligula insanely. “It says that I, Caius Caligula Cæsar, shall know ‘Rome’s greatest hour’—with your death!”
The barbarian’s eyes flared wide suddenly. “That, Cæsar of blood, is blasphemy against my gods!”
The words rang ominously through the vaulted White Chamber, and Junga fixed his eyes intently on the mosaic ring before his mutilated body. Seeing this, and shaken by those portentous words, Caligula felt an icy finger touch his heart. Almost he wished he had not tampered with the powers of Junga’s alien gods.
His eyes turned involuntarily to the Magic Circle, wondering what could be written there. Then he saw that there was something there—shadows that should not be. . . .
Caligula whirled and in that instant knew his doom. A dozen men with drawn swords and daggers were behind his back, their faces reflecting none of the reverence that should have been there for their Emperor. With cries of “murderer” and “wanton butcher” they rushed upon him, and before he could cry out, a dozen daggers plunged into his body. He fell mortally wounded as they rushed out again.
A silence as of the grave fell upon the White Chamber. The shackled barbarian sorcerer stared with wide eyes, forgetful of his great agony, for he had witnessed the assassination of a Roman Emperor.
A groan came from the murdered man, as he stirred his hacked body in a growing pool of blood. Weakly he raised his head. His eyes encountered those of the barbarian.
Junga’s lips opened, and his voice, already vibrant with the rattle of death, came forth prophetically: “ ‘Rome’s greatest hour’—has come! For Caligula, the mad, murdering Cæsar, is no more!”
A harsh chuckle, ghostly with the tones of death, reverberated from the white marble walls as the shadows of blood slowly crept in deepening shades over a circle of strange mosaic patterns.
SET YOUR COURSE BY THE STARS
JASON GARRARD, his flaxen hair twisting in the stiff, cool breeze, pulled himself to the platform level, heaving a sigh of relief. He turned to give a hand to the diminutive Professor Ortmann, who had come up the narrow steel stairs right after him. With a little birdlike skip, the scientist leaped to the metal dais, holding fast to Jason’s strong, firm hand. Then they looked at each other.
“At last,” breathed Professor Ortmann, his naturally high-pitched voice throaty, “at last, Jason, the great moment has come!”
The younger man nodded carelessly. He was tall, with the build of a marathon runner, wide-shouldered, lean-waisted, stronger than most men. Yet, despite the well-developed muscles and firm flesh, he was not heavy; he tipped the scales at only one hundred and sixty. His face had a Roman cast, dark of skin, brown-eyed, somewhat heavily lipped. His hair—unaccountably—was a curly tangle of golden flax, fine-spun, adored by women.
“Yeah, Orty, the great moment. But, ye gods, I thought I’d never get away from the mob down there. I need a few minutes to myself before the takeoff, I do. I’m not sensitive or anything, but I kinda need a spell to collect my thoughts and—sorta prepare myself. Inside of me, I mean.”
“I know,” nodded the other. “The stupendousness of the thing has finally penetrated your reserve.”
Professor Ortmann—just “Orty” to the democratic Jason—was small and shriveled, round-shouldered from a lifetime in a laboratory; he seemed like an insignificant pygmy beside the magnificent specimen of manhood that Jason was. His skull was large, bulky, especially in the back, fringed with frosty-white hair, nakedly pink on top. Pinched nose and squinted brown eyes that never ceased to dart about eagerly, thin, bloodless lips—he was like a twittering bird somehow disguised as a human being.
Jason Garrard was the idol of the masses, a Lindbergh of 1940, the first stratosphere pilot to circle the earth around one of its great circles without a stop, from New York to New York—twenty-four thousand miles. Laconic and supremely unaffected in manner, he had become the hero of little boys, the heart throb of women, and the object of all men’s respect—and perhaps envy.
Professor Ortmann, on the other hand, had little popular appeal. The populace had barely heard of him. They were skeptical of his importance beside that of Jason Garrard’s. Yet, among more elite and intellectual circles, the name of Lemuel J. Ortmann, Ph.D., was a name of repute and genius.
STRANGE, perhaps, that these two diametrically opposite types should be together on a metal platform fifty feet in the air, gazing, the one in quiet speculation, the other in tremulous excitement, at a small, streamlined vehicle with wide wings at each side. Below, on the ground, were dozens of people, gazing upward and talking frenziedly. Outside, beyond the thirty-foot steel fence, were more humans than had ever before congregated in one spot. Cutting the hyperbolic newspaper report in half, there were still at least twenty million.
Twenty million had assembled to watch their idol, their great hero, soar from earth in a man-made contrivance, bound for the moon; for the winged vehicle was nothing more nor less than a space ship. Professor Ortmann had contributed the ship; Jason Garrard was to contribute his inimitable skill in rocket piloting, to mankind’s first concerted attempt at the annihilation of interplanetary distance.
Of course, be it understood, the scientist had not built the ship in toto. In fact, he had nothing to do directly with the building of it. The Interplanetary Society of Europe and America had done that; hundreds of top-notch engineers and mechanical geniuses having collaborated in the project.
But Professor Ortmann had put in its heart. It was his engine, an advanced type of rocket motor over those in common use for transoceanic service, that powered the craft. And, most important of all, it was his fuel, new and secret, and very powerful, that was to give life to the engine. Without this Neo-dynine—the name of the new fuel—the whole project would have been impossible. For mathematicians had long bewailed the fact that no fuel known was adequate, in all its qualities, to make interplanetary flight possible.
Neo-dynine solved the problem. It was a superfuel, capable of sending a man-powered craft to the moon, but the craft must be within certain limits of weight, and there could only be one passenger, himself not too heavy.
Jason Garrard looked at the ship in mute admiration. It was the epitome of trimness, neatness, and streamlining. It was sturdy and yet light, mainly of magnesium-aluminum alloy. From its rear outjutted thirty slender tubes, of tantalum-iridium alloy, more refractory than any other known metal. The nose was blunt, bigger than the rear, inset with a crystal-clear quartz window, inches thick, perpendicular to the ground. The wing vanes looked idiotically thin and fragile, as though a sudden tremor might shatter them to flakes. But actually they were incredibly tough, of highly-elastic beryllium-bronze, supported each by two strongly-braced backbones of supersteel, slender, but unbelievably rigid.
Compared to the giant rocket liners that belched daily across the oc
eans, the space ship was a toy, no more than ten feet long and four feet in radial diameter; the wings stretched only fifteen feet on either side. But the journey it had before it—considering distance only—was forty thousand times as great as the mere jaunt across water undertaken by a stratosphere liner. Furthermore, it would have to fight gravitation, and a dangerous degree of air friction. Its cost—a hundred million dollars; and also an unguessable amount of research and experimentation.
“My boy,” said Professor Ortmann, “need I say that the eyes of the world are upon you now? And that soon our hearts, too, will be with you as you plunge into the unconquerable void?” Jason shrugged, almost carelessly. “Just a new adventure, Orty. The first time is always the hardest—and the most glorified. Somehow, I think human beings are plain nuts about those things. Few years from now folks’ll be taking vacations on Mars and thinking nothing of it.”
“It is a great thing,” pursued the scientist, a bit crestfallen. “Mankind’s first carefully-planned conquest of space.”
“Oh, sure, Orty; pardon. I know it’s a great honor and all that, for me to get the first crack at it. That part of it I understand.”
“You’ll do your best, lad?”
For the first time Jason’s eyes became serious, determined. “I always do my best, Orty. I mayn’t look like it, but I’ve got a conscience—or something like that. I mean, that when folks look up to me to do something big, I do it the biggest way I know how.”
Professor Ortmann’s fluttery little hand sought the pilot’s, and they gripped in heartfelt mutual esteem. “You know, Orty, I think the world of you.” Jason hesitated, abashed at his unprecedented display of emotion, then went on with a rush: “Orty, you’re really a great guy. Beside you, I’m just a fool with pluck—and luck. You’ve got brains, intelligence. They”—he jerked his thumb toward the gigantic crowd outside the inclosed drome—“kinda think I’m the cake, but you are the one they should look up to.”
