Then had come the time when impatience had betrayed their secret ambitions, and they had attempted to master the arts of flight for themselves. First they had planned to conquer their own atmosphere, and then to apply their recently gained knowledge of space flight to the exploitation of longer expeditions.
When the knowledge of this plan came to the Wise Ones, they had acted at once, and had set a barrier of darkness round the planet Varang-Varang, at once keeping the inhabitants within it, and keeping the light of the sun out.
When we heard this, we asked Karinga Varga if such a thing were practicable in his scheme of philosophy—for it certainly was not possible according to Terrestrial laws of physics. The Virian replied that he could not tell; but his people had seen the blacking out of Varang-Varang, and we had seen the lifting of the curtain of blackness. It had happened—therefore it must be possible, he added, shrugging his shoulders philosophically.
We recalled, to ourselves, too, the great opaque clouds scattered throughout the galaxy, veiling no man knows what secret of the stars. Even Terrestrial astronomers had been doubtful of the nature of these great galactic clouds: so a race of beings with the advanced culture possessed by the Wise Ones may well have been in a position to apply the secret of the galactic cloud to an individual planet
And so Varang-Varang had dwelt in darkness (I racked my brains for the origin of the phrase, so fitting in this case, “In outer darkness.”) For age upon age the whole life and natural economy of the planet had evolved towards an existence independent of the light. Since learning this, I have assumed that the opaque cloud had not provided a barrier to the beneficial radiations of the sun, although we found no vegetable matter upon Varang-Varang.
The bat race had developed much as our Terrestrial bats have developed, in darkness. They had, over the years, become independent of vegetable sustenance, and had extracted nourishment from the unknown mineral granules with which they had fed us while we were underground, and from the fungoid growth. The fungus on which we were at that moment living was not, of course, vegetable matter, but rather an exceedingly low form of animal life, comparable with the Terrestrial yeasts.
It had always been an article of the bat-men’s creed that some day the light would return to their world, and they had prepared the underground honeycomb of tunnels against that time. The fortress in which the last survivors of the race were now grouped was one of many scattered over what had been the inhabited portion of their planet, and was, in fact, one of the entrance chambers to the underground galleries.
The dark ages of Varang-Varang had performed one beneficent role—they had at last subdued the cruel belligerency that had until then marked the race of the bat-creatures. In the course of adapting themselves to living in total darkness, a new system of philosophy had been developed among them, and with a few notable exceptions, they had become a peace-loving nation.
It was those few exceptions who had brought Varang-Varang to its present terrible condition as the juggernaut of the Solar System. They had, the bat-creatures’ spokesman declared, discovered “a way of putting together two certain pieces of stone so that thunder and lightning followed,” to the destruction of all their race except the eight survivors.
Arabin dropped his head in his hands and moaned: “Oh, my God! Plutonium!”
After the first experiment “the Wise Ones” had rent asunder the curtain of darkness round their world. The explosion, rather than the Wise Ones, we felt, had established the atomic reaction which had started the planet on its dizzy parabola through space.
What of the Wise Ones? we asked. What had become of them?
They had departed, was the simple answer.
In answer to our further questions, the bat-creature stolidly insisted that the Wise Ones had departed. His race knew no more than that.
But surely, we persisted, if the Wise Ones were so beneficent —and so wise—they would not have abandoned a world in this manner?
They had departed, repeated the voice in the darkness. There had been no warning, no word of condemnation: they had departed.
It was as though a terrible vengeance had been wrought on the surviving eight, a vengeance for the crime of those few of their fellows who had unlocked the secret power that had unsettled their world from its appointed place in the System. And the next information they gave us made that vengeance even more appalling.
It was a sudden fearful thought that occurred to my own mind that prompted me to put a question.
“Do you know the-destination of your world?” I asked.
There was a long pause, and then—“Yes. We know it.”
“Well—tell us,” commanded Arabin.
“Our world,” came the voice, slowly, “is to be flung into the Sun.”
It was the thought that had occurred to me. The crazy trajectory of the planet, first swooping outward, and then almost suddenly curving back on itself, would carry it sunward. How long before Varang-Varang, with us abandoned upon its bleak, stark surface, reached its dreadful target? How long?
The theme, as if it had evoked the subject of its own conjecture, brought an end to our communion with the bat-men, for the horizon suddenly became paler, as the short night drew nearer to its end.
“We will be here again when night comes,” promised Arabia. “You have more to say to us?”
“We have much more to say,” answered the toneless, unemotional voice of the unseen spokesman.
A little later, there was the distinctive muffled detonation and we knew that the last of the Beast-Men had left us.
XI
Through the short day we talked and we tried to plan. But there was no plan that would take us off that dreadful, bleak world hurtling sunwards. There was nothing we could do to divert Varang-Varang from its terrible course. There was nothing that we could do to escape from Varang-Varang.
We made little exploratory journeys, even travelling as far as the rim of a neighbouring crater, in an endeavour to survey the land from these high places. But wherever we looked we saw the jagged rims of still more craters. This particular part of the planet, we concluded, must be near one of the polar axes, although it was not necessarily at a spot that had been a a polar axis when Varang-Varang had held to its original orbit.
We had one hope: The Nagani Discs. It was Karinga Varga who buoyed us up in this last flicker of hope that the Discs would return for us. His philosophical outlook kept him confident in the. good intentions of the Nagani, who would never, he persisted, abandon us. They had left—good; it was because they had some purpose to fulfil in leaving us. But they would come back.
The rest of us were not so sure. We did, of course, try to tell each other that Karinga Varga must be right, but yet each of us lived in private terror. What if the Discs did not return? However, it was not a thought that we expressed aloud. In the meantime, there might be something yet to be learned from the bat-creatures. They might still, we comforted ourselves, hold some secret that might save us.
And so we met them again that night, and this time Arabin put to them the question we had decided upon during the day.
“There was talk of helping your race,” he said. “We offered to help—if we could—and your people told us that they might need that help. Now, tell us what help you seek.”
“The help we seek is not that which you imagine it to be,” replied the one whose voice we heard. “It is a kind of help which will be strange to your minds. But it is a very simple thing we need from you.”
“But how can we—or any of our race—help your people if we are all to be flung into the Sun?” asked Arabin.
“First you shall hear of the thing we need,” answered the bat-man. “It is a thing that is held on your world, though what it is we do not know. We have not your word for this thing, and so cannot name it. We must search for it, and even then we might never find it. But we know it is there, and we know that we must seek it. That is the last word the Wise Ones left with us. The seeking of this thing we cannot
name, and the finding of it, would at last reward us—with a prize that neither we, nor you have ever held before this time.”
“This is foolish talk,” I put in. “If you are to seek this thing in our world, how are you going to start your search? Now you are here on Varang-Varang, and Varang-Varang, you tell us, is doomed. How, then are you going to leave this doomed world of yours?”
“And how are we going to leave this world of yours?” asked Leo, hotly. “Or have you still some secret you have not yet disclosed? Have you a means of travelling from this world to another?” “We have not this secret,” the voice in the darkness replied, “but we shall leave this world.”
My head ached with the attempt to solve this riddle. The dull, toneless, mechanical voices of the bat-creatures showed no emotion, and although they spoke to us in our own tongue, it was apparent that each word was carefully selected from our language to express completely alien thought-forms. Could it be that we and they were at cross-purposes? Could it be that they had translated their own thoughts wrongly? What was this talk of leaving Varang-Varang, and yet not having the secret of leaving?
I must have missed some of the bat-creatures further talk, for I realised after a time that the conversation had got ahead of me. We were all very weary, and I may have slept for a few moments.
Then I caught the thread of the talk again, with the mention of the word “Ships.”
“. . . Ships will certainly return,” the voice was saying.
I shook myself, wondering whether I was dreaming (and how many, many times each of us had done that since we came to Varang-Varang!). And I listened again, making a vast, conscious effort to hear and to understand.
“Inshallah!” Karim was saying. “It is as God wills it!”
“How can we know that the round ships will return?” said Leo’s voice.
There was never any surprise in the bat-men’s voices, but if there had been, it would surely have been expressed now.
“We know,” the voice slowly droned, “because it is so planned. Your ship stayed only a little time before it had to go. There were other ships—were there not?—and all had a duty to perform. They are now about that duty. When it is completed, they will return.”
This was indeed a shock to us. How, we asked, did the bat-creatures know the intentions of the Nagani?
“It is foretold in our minds,” the voice said from the darkness. “We know the little creatures you call Nagani. They are ... we have not a word for it, but they are everywhere where there is life. They work everywhere, their minds are the minds that guide beings of other kinds everywhere . .
“Are they the Wise Ones?” I asked.
“No. They are not the Wise Ones, but they are . . . the Wise Ones’ hands and eyes and ears and they are . . . everywhere.”
“Basic life form of the System, perhaps,” suggested Arabin in a whisper to me, and then to the voice in the darkness: “But we still do not know, and you must tell us. You are sure that the Nagani ship will return: why are you sure?”
“That is not a thing we know how to tell, but... the ship will return.” There was an air of positive confidence about thS voice even though emotion had no place in it—that inspired us and put new heart into us.
“So,” said Leo, “let us talk more about this thing you would seek on our world.”
“There is no more to tell,” came the answer. “All we can say now is that we must go back with you to your world and find this thing. And so we ask (for it is in your power to grant this) that we may return in your ship.”
“How do we know,” I asked Arabin, hastily, “that it would be safe for these things to come with us? Can we trust these alien creatures? Remember—we spent months trying to rid ourselves of the Vulcanids.”
“So we did,” said Arabin. “And I’m almost of your mind. But there could be a way of making sure ... If the Disc does return, the Nagani may be able to give us some guidance with their telementor set-up. If it can show thought-forms of ourselves to the Nagani, and vice versa, it may be able to show us the minds of these creatures. I’d have every confidence in the Nagani’s judgment.”
“We will submit to any tests you like to put us to,” said the bat-creature. “We know that we are evil to you, and to this man here who can see our minds. And for the evil we have done in the past we have suffered ... as we are suffering now. Our world is to be destroyed . . . Our people are already destroyed ... The Wise Ones have left us .. . You cannot understand our way of life and our way of thinking. Let the little creatures, the Nagani, say whether we shall come with you. They will return soon now, before the sun has gone round twice more.”
And there was the sound of their departure.
They left us as suddenly as that.
As I turned to Karim, beside me, I found that he was sound asleep. “And a damn good idea, too,” said Leo. “It must be days since any of us slept.”
We awoke from our sleep when the sun had already risen, and we spent the whole of the rest of that day in preparing to watch for the Discs—if they should return.
We explored as much of the vicinity as we could in the few hours of daylight, but the wilderness of craters offered no vantage point from which we felt that we had a commanding view. It may have been that this Moon-like desolation was not so vast as we thought, for the near horizon—much nearer than on Earth—was extremely deceptive, but yet we dare not leave too far behind the crater containing the Beast-Men’s fortress.
We planned to ask the bat-creatures that night if they could help us to signal to the Disc, should it land on another part of the planet—which seemed most likely. But although we waited in the vaulted portico of their ancient stronghold all that night, they never came. We slept in turns but the short night ended quickly and there had been no sign of the batmen.
Next day, we quelled our previous fears, and explored the fortress as well as we could in the darkness that lingered within. We had only taken a few steps inside the great doorway when we halted in dismay. We found ourselves, when once accustomed to the darkness, looking at what was either our former prison, or a replica of it.
It was a long time before we agreed to risk entering further. The astounding manner of our escape from the underground temple had made us mistrustful of anything we could not understand, and we had no means of being sure that the doors would not close here and entrap us once more. However, explore we did, and found that, save for the open doors at one end of the great vaulted chamber, this was indeed an exact copy of the temple where we had languished for—how long? The self-same incomprehensible monuments were arranged in their alcoves, the same towering stone tables stood in the middle of the bare floor, and the same great benches were ranged around the walls. While we explored, one of us always kept a close watch on the doors, but there was no sign of their closing, and so we at last emerged from the vast dim place little wiser than when we entered it.
The sun was almost setting as we came out, and as we stood on the threshold, Karinga Varga suddenly stiffened.
He stood gazing upwards into the darkening sky, his eyes nearly closed, and then pointed. “The Discs are returning,” he said quietly.
We followed his pointing finger, but could see nothing.
However, we had come to possess such confidence in the Virian’s acute powers that we fully believed his statement. As we stared into the sky, the night came quickly over the bleak land, and the black zenith twinkled with stars in the thin air.
We slept again by watches, but no sign of the Discs did we see. Then when the morning came and after we had gathered our revolting breakfast of fungus, Karim voiced an idea.
“If I should go and shout into the bell,” he suggested, “perhaps they will hear . . . ?” He fairly gleamed with pride at his stentorian echo-rousing performance and its possibilities, and so we retreated to the remote side of the great fortress to allow his lungs full play.
Scientifically and patiently he bawled into the brazen echo-chamber, and the crags and cr
aters rang hollowly with the awful din.
We probably did not expect any response from anywhere, and so were not disappointed when his frightful solo came to a fruitless end and he walked round to us, sweating with the effort. We climbed to the highest rim of the crater and hopefully scanned the skyline in all directions, but still no sign of the Discs or their occupants came to us. In fact, darkness had nearly come again when a great black shadow swept over the crater almost too quickly for us to follow it. In half an hour or so it returned, this time less rapidly, and after swinging slowly from side to side like a gigantic falling leaf, the Disc grounded gently on a level slope.
We ran towards it, and were grouped near the exit port before the crew had time to open it. Then it slid aside, and down from the curved rim dropped Krill Hvensor.
There would have been an affecting greeting, I have no doubt, but the Virians’ leader urged us, with short words, aboard the Disc, calling hurriedly for the flexible ladder to be dropped. We scrambled up and into the open port and the door clanged to behind us. Then in a few seconds we felt the sudden pressure of gravity as the Disc rose swiftly and vertically into the night, leaving beneath it the stony, almost lifeless ball that was Varang-Varang.
XII
As I write this, the Nagani Disc is nearing Earth again. The last few chapters, short as they are, seem to cover years in our lives—slow, painful, frightful years. It is easy to feel confident now, but our time on Varang-Varang was the severest trial imaginable for all four of us. We find that we were there only four weeks, but I swear that it seemed like as many years.
It is only during the last few hours that we have been able to learn just how long our awful experience lasted, for Krill Hvensor is the only human aboard this Disc, beside ourselves, and he has been occupied constantly in control work with the Nagani crew.
Now, however, we are speeding Earthward,- and Krill Hvensor has had time to explain much to us.
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