The Collected Stories

by Earl

  “It’s still there,” said Dumont, standing aside so his companion could look out. “I thought maybe it had been a dream last night.”

  III.

  THE RISING SUN somewhere to the back had lighted up the region to a certain extent. But the lights of the city were still on. It was revealed by them more than by the near gloom of dawn; It was like something out of the Arabian Nights. The buildings were as fanciful as symbolic art creations and as richly adorned as Chinese pagodas.

  “Lord!” choked Milo. He breathed deeply, stunned. He could not take his eyes off the elfin city. How could it exist here, this tinsel and multihued city that looked fragile enough to shatter into a million flying crystals at the first clap of thunder? He must be dreaming. But at the same time he knew he wasn’t.

  Dumont was trying to signal Earth with the radio. “It’s dead,” he announced. “The landing must have wrecked it.” He looked up. “Well, Milo, what do you think of it?”

  “Gosh!” responded the young meteorologist. “I still can’t believe my eyes. Question is, though, just what are we going to do now?”

  Dumont opened the supply box and pulled out some sandwiches wrapped in waxed paper. “Maybe we can think better after we eat.”

  Just as they munched the last of the sandwiches, Milo started and peered more closely out of the window. He pointed to a black opening at the base of the nearest building, from which had emerged several figures. It was too far away to distinguish them. They approached rapidly.

  “A reception committee,” said Milo. “I—I hope they’re human!”

  Dumont looked at him queerly but said nothing. Both of them wondered what sort of creatures could live in a mysterious floating city eighteen miles above ground, breathing air of a density ten times less than at Earth’s surface, and existing in a uniform cold of sixty degrees below zero.

  As the group approached, the meteorologists felt a queer sense of relief, for they were undeniably human beings—six men of deeply bronzed skin and curly, straw-colored hair. They looked like Nordics who had been exposed to a tropical sun. Their clothing consisted of baggy trousers coming together at the ankles, loose jackets tight around their waists and necks, and shoes of some soft material, all brightly colored. Their hands, faces and leads were exposed to the air.

  The two watchers examined their faces as they came closer. It was quite apparent that they were of some race closely resembling the Nordics, with thin, straight noses, high foreheads and sky-blue eyes. They were tall and narrow-hipped, and walked with a jaunty step.

  Dumont looked at his companion suddenly. “By Heaven, Milo, they look like your brothers!”

  The group approached the gondola rather hesitantly, their faces puzzled. They showed no sign of fear. Yet, though they were obviously excited, not once did any of them move his lips to speak to the others. Suddenly, their gaze turned, as one, to the port out of which the two scientists were peering. For a minute the eyes of the meteorologists met those of the strange men, wonder on both sides.

  “Evidently we’re just as queer fish to them as they are to us,” commented Milo. “And now what?”

  THEY DID not have long to wait. One of them, older and more authoritative-looking than the rest, without saying a word to the others apparently, calmly strode up to the gondola. He passed out of the scientists’ sight, but a moment later they heard him knocking on the door seal.

  “Leaping lizards!” exclaimed Milo. “He wants to come in!”

  That was a dilemma. If they opened the seal, all their air would rush out. “Yet it could be done,” murmured Dumont thoughtfully. “We could let him in, close the seal again quickly, and open an air tank till the pressure builds up to normal. It shouldn’t take more than a minute and wouldn’t be any worse for us than holding our breaths under water for that long.”

  “Right, chief,” said Milo eagerly. “These people look friendly and are absolutely unarmed. They can’t have any harmful intentions. Let him in.” Dumont stationed himself beside the air tank while Milo worked at the seal plate. When he had turned the huge plate several times by means of the handles, there was a low hiss of escaping air. By the time he had unscrewed the seal entirely, all the air was gone. Milo held the plate aside and motioned frantically for the tall stranger to crawl in. Without hesitation, the bronzed man stepped in and Milo hastily screwed the seal in, with spots in front of his eyes from holding his breath.

  Dumont closed the valve when pressure was normal. Then he and Milo looked curiously at the bronzed stranger who stood before them.

  Milo grinned at the professor. “Now just what do we do?” he asked musingly. “Naturally, he doesn’t know our language and we don’t know his. About all we can do is smoke a pipe of peace—if we had a pipe.”

  The stranger smiled as though appreciating the joke. Milo looked startled. “One miracle has happened already,” he muttered. “But we can’t expect another. This chap couldn’t understand English.”

  The visitor smiled still more broadly. “On the contrary,” he said in perfect English, with a precise accent. “I do!” Dumont asked: “You are human beings then? An Earth race?”

  “Yes, of course,” replied the stranger in some surprise. “Yet we have not been on Earth’s surface for twelve thousand years! For that length of time have we lived in our sky city, isolated from the place of our origin. Our only connection with Earth’s surface has been through long-range observation. Yet that was only a one-way connection, for I’m sure no one on Earth suspects our existence?”

  “Decidedly not,” agreed Dumont. He was slightly dazed. “Twelve thousand years!” he murmured, trying to assimilate that fact. A thousand questions popped into his mind with the rapidity of a machine gun.

  Before he could ask even one of them, the visitor held up a hand. “Before we go into deeply involved explanations,” said the bronzed man, smiling at their eagerness, “let us take care of certain immediate things. I assume that you have no way of getting back to the surface at present. Am I right?”

  “Yes, we could get back,” answered Milo, dryly. “But only in the form of badly mashed corpses, by the simple process of dropping eighteen miles. We’re open to any alternative suggestions, Mr.—ah——”

  The stranger took the hint. “My name of course. It is Valdasc-Olo-Kwar.” He inclined his head in a courtly gesture when Milo introduced himself and Dumont. Then he looked closely at Milo. “You resemble our people closely. You are of the Viking race, perhaps?”

  “Well, not exactly that,” amended Milo. “I’m from Scandinavian stock, though, which traces its ancestry back to those Vikings, at least in part. Why do you ask?”

  “All in good time,” returned the stranger. “Now, if you will trust me, I want you both to take these little white pellets.” He drew a small glass vial from his belt, containing a dozen tablets. “These,” he went on to explain, “are a harmless compound which have the remarkable property of reducing the metabolism of the human body. It is a sort of self-renewing enzyme which inhibits the activity of the glands, and through thenvof the entire body processes, so that one lives at a lower tempo. It lowers the pulse, reduces blood heat, and cuts down the general katabolism of the body cells.”

  “I get it,” said Milo. “Reduced metabolism means less need for oxygen in the blood, and therefore less breathing necessary. But will we actually be able to live on one tenth the supply of air at the surface?”

  “Yes, through automatic compensation,” put in Dumont. “The human body is remarkably adaptive. Our respiration rate will probably increase, and our lungs will inflate to their full extent with each breath. These, combined with the lowered metabolism, will enable us to exist in this rarefied atmosphere. O.K., Valdasc Olo-Kwar, we’ll take those pills.”

  The sky dweller seemed pleased. “I’m glad you are so willing to put yourselves in our hands.”

  Dumont smiled whimsically. “There isn’t much else we can do, to tell the truth.”

  SOMEHOW convinced that the sky man
meant only well, the two men from Earth’s surface carried out all his suggestions. He gave them each a pill, which was tasteless, and explained that one pill’s effect lasted about a week. Then he took Milo’s wrist in his hand and felt for the pulse. In keeping with the lowering of his heartbeat, Valdasc Olo-Kwar valved air out of the gondola. Dumont had pointed out the valve to him.

  It was a strange sensation. Milo felt a vague turmoil within his body. A subtle lethargy seemed to steal into every fiber of his being. He sensed that all the cells in his body were slowly and gradually cutting down their normal activity, smoothly and efficiently. He was surprised to find himself breathing more and more deeply, without any conscious effort on his part.

  “There,” said Valdasc Olo-Kwar finally, opening the release cock wide. The last hiss of escaping gas came to their ears, then was gone. “You are now breathing normally in an atmosphere ten times as tenuous as at the surface. You will probably feel tired and enervated for a time, but that feeling will pass.”

  “Do you people have to take these pills?” asked Dumont with the scientist’s curiosity.

  “We do,” said the sky man. “Our body mechanism is attuned to surface conditions just like yours. Evolution has not been able to adapt us as a race in a paltry twelve thousand years. Come, shall we go out?”

  “Miracle No. 3,” murmured Milo.

  He watched Valdasc unscrew the seal plate and finally lower it. They stepped out into the blinding brilliance of a risen Sun.

  “No wonder these people are bronzed so deeply,” said Milo. “This has California Sunshine beat a mile.”

  “We’d better not be out in the Sun too long at first,” commented Dumont wisely, “or we’ll come down with a blistered skin.”

  The Sunlight reflected so dazzlingly from the flat metal stretching around them that they could not see for a minute, and had to wipe their watering eyes. When Milo was able to see, he blinked and closed his eyes again, wondering if he were having hallucinations. He tried again and realized the girl he saw was really there, and was not a figment of overtaxed optic nerves.

  She had evidently come from the city while Valdasc Olo-Kwar had been with them in the gondola. Milo’s eyes grew round. Tall and graceful, she might have been a Viking goddess, with her long tresses of blond hair offsetting a complexion of tawny gold. Her lips were red and full, her nose just the slightest bit upturned, and her eyes large and dreamy.

  “My daughter,” said Valdasc Olo-Kwar. “Daveena Olo-Kwarine.” He introduced the two scientists. Milo impulsively bowed from the waist, caught her half-extended hand, and kissed it with archaic ceremony.

  Dumont suddenly darted away to examine their torn gas bag, which lay in a crumpled heap fifty feet from the gondola. Milo followed and pursed his lips at the tremendous gash in the bag’s top surface. “But it’s not hopelessly beyond repair,” said Dumont. “Perhaps later we can get these people to help us fix it in some way.”

  Both the gas bag and gondola had landed at almost the very edge of the enormous metal plate which upheld the city beyond. Dumont and Milo shuddered a bit at the thought of their narrow escape. Below, over the edge of the metal, ranged the dizzying vista of bottomless depths. Cloud banks were visible miles below. Beyond that was nothing but a hazy patchwork that seemed to be the face of a planet thousands of miles away. The two men drew away from the edge and rejoined Valdasc and his party.

  VALDASC OLO-KWAR took Dumont by the arm and led the way to the city. Leaping to the opportunity, Milo fell in step with the girl Daveena. The rest of the party followed behind. Milo hardly noticed that they were traversing a smooth, unbroken surface of metal that seemed to fringe the city on all sides, disappearing in his vision behind the buildings to right and left. He could not keep his eyes off the girl.

  Milo wondered how to start a conversation, but the girl took the initiative. “You are from the surface world?” she asked, with a trace of wonder in her voice.

  At her further questioning, Milo explained how they had penetrated to nineteen miles with their balloon and then met disaster, their death plunge miraculously broken soon after.

  “We heard the noise of your landing last night,” said the girl. “It was a dull thud. We. had no idea what it was, though we thought it might be a meteor. Then this morning we looked down from the tower and saw your strange ship. We became quite excited, since it is the first time in our history that any one from the surface world has visited our city. It is quite thrilling to talk with you, knowing you to be from that great, strange world eighteen miles below us. We feel as though we are in a world of our own here.”

  “You really arc. The surface world knows nothing of your beautiful city,” said Milo gallantly. He went on daringly, “Nor does it know that one of the most beautiful women in the universe lives here!”

  He had no idea how the girl would take this. She smiled pleasantly. “I like you,” she said simply. Then she frowned a little. “Even though your people have such a bad reputation.”

  Milo had no time to ask for an explanation of this enigmatic statement. They had reached the nearest of the buildings. They passed through an archway of sparkling facets and on into a shaded corridor that was a relief from the burning Sun. The interior architecture was as bizarre as the exterior. The corridor curved smoothly and, by some wizardry of wall design, it seemed.

  to undulate up and down, though the floor was level underfoot. Softly glowing lights came from hidden niches.

  Valdasc, in the lead, stopped in the middle of the hall. Milo noticed for the first time that all the others except Daveena were gone. Suddenly the floor underfoot moved. Milo involuntarily clutched for Daveena’s hand, which she gave him smilingly. Dumont was being steadied by Valdasc. The two meteorologists vaguely realized that the ten-foot section of corridor in which they stood was rising rapidly and soundlessly, like an elevator.

  “This is what may be called a levitating corridor,” explained Valdasc. “All our buildings are equipped with them profusely. It is too complicated to explain now, but they are motivated by. an antigravitational principle. You are being taken to a room where you will sleep, as I think you are tired.”

  Milo suddenly realized he was strangely tired, though he had just had a night’s sleep in the gondola. Dumont’s face also showed a haggard weariness.

  “It is a reaction to the sudden change of metabolism,” continued Valdasc. “After a long sleep, you will feel much better. Here we are.”

  The corridor section came to a smooth halt, rotated slightly on its shorter axis and settled snugly into place. It now connected at one end to a curving hall and at the other to a door whose latch Valdasc turned. He ushered them into a large, ornate room with two couches. He stepped to a small end table between them and called attention to two switches on it. One was for artificial light. The other controlled a mechanism in the walls which, like Venetian blinds, would either shut off outside light or admit it. The walls themselves were transparent. Then he pointed out a closet door and suggested that they try the clothing it held, next morning.

  “We will leave you now to a needed rest,” Valdasc said. “When you awaken, pull the cord near the couches. Come, Daveena.”

  JUST BEFORE the door closed behind them, the girl turned to give Milo a flashing smile. Then the two men were alone. The room was unlike anything they had ever seen before. A gently curving ceiling, decorated in sylvan scenes, swept downward on all sides from a rounded apex. The floor, of some yielding composition, seemed to slope into a cup-shaped depression, though they knew it was only a trick of the lighting and their eyes. The several pieces of furniture to complete the bedroom motif were all of rounded and graceful lines.

  “Evidently these people don’t believe in straight lines,” said Dumont. “They have a completely curvilinear architecture. Well, Milo”—he turned to the younger man—“what do you think of all this?”

  “Chief, I was just thinking that to all intents and purposes we’ve died and gone to heaven!” Milo went on, half ban
teringly, “Heaven is supposed to be above Earth, and that’s just where this is. It fits in other details. It’s beautiful, spotlessly clean, and miracles happen here.”

  “Would you class Daveena as a miracle or an angel in this heaven?” asked Dumont slyly.

  Milo flushed boyishly. Then he became serious. “Chief, just what do you make of all this?”

  “I’ve found out a few things from Valdasc,” responded Dumont. He continued as they began undressing, attracted by the invitation of the downy-covered couches, “First of all, the ‘Kwar’ part of his name corresponds to a title and rank of ‘Prince.’ Not a blood prince of the ruling family, but of a princely lineage. Thus Daveena—‘Kwarine’—is a princess. They seem to have some sort of aristocracy here.

  “There are just ten thousand souls on this island in the sky, in a city of about a square mile of area. Their local means of conversation is by means of inarticulate telepathy. Speech, to them, is archaic. They are entirely self-sufficient in this sky city, and have lived here for twelve thousand years, as you have heard before. Thus their science comes from a period preceding recorded history. Their origin, if it is known at all, must be known to us only in fable.”

  Milo pondered this for a moment. “Do you mean the legend of Atlantis?” he asked breathlessly.

  “That, or any other similar legend of lost races. We’ll probably find out soon enough,” said Dumont as he crawled between the sheets with a deep sigh.

  Milo whistled. “Gosh, there’s plenty of mystery here. How were we able to walk around in a temperature of sixty below zero without freezing? I didn’t even feel the cold!”

  “That’s easier to answer,” returned Dumont. “It’s simple enough. It’s the result of two important things: lack of water vapor and the thinness of the air. Dry cold, and also dry heat, are never felt so much as cold and heat in the presence of water vapor. Then the rare atmosphere conserves heat because it is a poor conductor. With our jumpers on here, and these people with their baggy clothing, body heat is amply conserved to prevent chilling.”