“Here we are!”
DICK could hardly reconcile himself to the idea that Thon should go out alone to find Don Galeen, leaving him and Midos Ken in the Ahrora. But the girl, busy bundling herself up in heavy garments, against the bitter cold of the barren mountainous region where they had landed, insisted.
“We can’t send Dad out alone!” she said. “And if I went with him to show the way, we would attract too much attention.”
“I must go!” Dick said.
She smiled at him, shaking her head. “Something might happen to you,” she said.
“I’m no baby!” he cried. “And I’m afraid something will happen to you!”
“Remember, you have been in our world but little over a year,” she told him. “There is much about it that you don’t know. You are brave enough, but you mustn’t be foolish.
“And don’t be afraid for me. I have some of Dad’s weapons. If I am attacked I can take care of myself. I will carry enough of your diamond tokens to buy protection from anyone I meet—protection, and information about poor Don Galeen.”
She held up a little black metal disk, two inches across and thin as a watch.
“This is a television instrument. I have one like it with me. Keep it near you. If I call, there will be a little humming sound. Hold it before your face, and you can see and hear me. But I shall not call unless it is necessary, for the call might be picked up and betray us.” She handed him the little instrument.
When she was ready to leave, Dick went to his stateroom, and got the weapon which she had made him. He felt the balance of it again, and slipped it in his pocket. She opened the massive door, and he stepped with her out into the chill darkness of the pirate planet.
Overhead and in the north, strange constellations were burning in a black sky. Southward, however, was a faint aurora of purple light—a flush like that of dawn on earth. It was the reflection in the sky of the lights of the inhabited regions of the planet.
The Ahrora lay in a narrow mountain gorge or canyon, as the faint southern light revealed. Dark, jutting precipices loomed on either side. Snow crunched under their feet, a pale and ghostly white in the dim radiance. The red hull of the flier, visible as little more than a dark mass, lay on a bed of snow-covered boulders. A bitterly cold wind blew down the dark ravine from the north.
“I will go with you until we are near some building,” Dick said.
“No,” Thon said, “I must go alone. A passing flier may pick me up before I have gone ten miles beyond the end of the canyon. And you must not be seen. Don’t worry about me. I’ll take care of myself!”
She gave Dick her hand. He gripped it.
Like a white shadow she was in the faint light, clad in garments that faded against the snow, and the dearest thing in the world to Dick. Almost he threw his arms about her and told her so. Then, recalling that she was going on this dangerous mission to rescue a man who probably meant much more to her than he did, he checked himself.
“Good-by!” he choked.
He thought she was going to speak, for a sudden little sound came from her, broken, inarticulate. Then she had turned, leapt away into the gloom. He felt a wild desire to run after her, but halted after a few stumbling steps.
She had dissolved like a wraith into the white wilderness of snow.
The next two days seemed the longest in Dick’s memory. Most of the time he stayed in the flier with old Midos Ken. He had nothing to do but prepare their meals, eat, and sleep. He had no appetite; and he could not sleep.
For long hours at a time he stared at the little black television disk Thon had given him. But no message came from it. He stared out through the portholes at the rugged, snow-covered landscape, with the black, star-strewn sky in the north, and the dim flush of light in the south, staring to catch a glimpse of Thon returning. But she did not come. The only motion was the slow wheeling of the strange stars above the ragged black peaks of the mountains.
Suspense and inactivity drove him nearly mad. Midos Ken, too, was anxious, though his blind face was calm and impassive. He sat sunk in thought, silent, waiting patiently.
The only relief Dick found was to don heavy garments against the bitterly cold wind, and tramp up and down in the snow outside.
On the evening of the second day (days were measured only by their chronometers, for the darkness was continual, and even the rotation of this world did not mark days, for its period was far longer than that of earth) Dick was walking up and down on the packed snow outside the door of the flier, head down and hands in his pockets, sunk in anxious despair.
Suddenly a broad beam of golden light flashed upon him. The flickering violet finger of an El Ray stabbed at a snow-covered boulder beside him, raising a hissing cloud of steam, which quickly condensed in the chill air, and fell as a little flurry of snow.
“Stand still!” came a menacing voice. “You are arrested by the imperial guard of Garo Nark, Lord of the Dark Star. And it will be well for a friend of yours, who foolishly thought she could outwit the Lord, if you will come in peace!”
CHAPTER VIII
When the Dark Star Moved
WHEN the El Ray had flashed out to strike the boulder, Dick’s hand had automatically moved to draw the pistol-like weapon Thon had condensed for him. Cursing himself for being caught outside the indestructible hull of the Ahrora, he was none the less glad of a prospect for action. The insinuation that Thon had been captured, merely confirmed his fears. He paused a moment at the threat that resistance on his part would bring ill to her.
But he could not surrender abjectly, merely because of such a threat.
As the menacing voice ceased speaking, he threw up his atomic pistol and pressed the trigger. There was no recoil; the weapon made no sound. But, the merest instant after he had fired, there was a blinding flash of reddish purple fire before him, in the direction from which the voice had come.
He was conscious of a sharp, crashing explosion. Midos Ken had warned him not to fire at anything too near. The man he had hit had literally exploded. The blast had been so terrific that Dick was hurled backward, unconscious.
The next he knew, he was lying on a soft couch, in a huge, warm room. Many people were about; he heard a buzz of conversation. Midos Ken was standing beside him, a gnarled old hand on his forehead.
Dick blinked, and sat tip with a groan. His muscles were sore. His head throbbed; he brought a bruised hand up, and felt a swollen knot on the back of it. Brilliant light bathed him; it was so bright that he could not at first take in his surroundings.
When he could see, he gasped.
He was in a great hall of magnificence beyond parallel. Floor of smooth, glistening gold. High walls of glowing emerald crystal, great panels of burning ruby set it in—ruby panels inlaid with strange designs in silver and sapphire and jet—arched and vaulted roof white, with the prismatic whiteness of fresh-fallen snow.
It was a huge hall, two hundred feet high, fully that in width, and many hundred feet long. Thousands crowded its gleaming yellow floor. But its immensity made them seem insignificant. Despite them, it seemed empty.
And it was familiar!
Dick knew he had seen it before! He racked his aching brain. He sought blindly through tangled wisps of thought. But vague mists of pain befogged his mind. A throbbing ache beat his forming thoughts to tatters. He could not remember.
Then old Midos Ken, beside him, crushed some small object in his palm, and held it under Dick’s nose. He inhaled, breathing some vapor pungent as ammonia gas. It was stimulating as a dash of cold water. His brain cleared. Recollection came.
This was the throne room of Garo Nark, Lord of the Dark Star! And he had seen it before—on his first day in this world of the future, in the television view on the wall of the room at Bardon, when Nark had appeared to demand Thon Ahrora as his queen.
Dick looked about more closely. The walls were lined with guards. Magnificent men, tall and strong. They wore black, with girdles of red. Standing beside them
were the long, thick tubes of black crystal, the El Ray projectors.
Then his roving eye found Garo Nark.
He sat on his purple throne, a hundred feet away, behind the center of the room. It was a marvelous throne. The purple crystal of which it was cut burned richly with intense inner fires.
Nark was a giant of a man, his nature wholly evil. Dick could well believe that he had murdered his father for the throne. He lounged back on black cushions. A sheer, sleeveless garment of crimson silk, dropping from left shoulder to knee, and held about his waist with a black girdle, was all he wore. His mighty body was revealed to the best advantage—bull neck—long limbs with huge, corded muscles and vast shoulders.
Dick was appalled as he looked at the face of the giant, with its broad, cruel mouth, huge jutting nose, and deep black eyes flaming with malice. Were they at his mercy?
Beside the throne stood Pelug, the thin, scrawny man, with scraggy yellow beard and glittering eyes, green and snake-like.
“Are we prisoners?” Dick asked Midos Ken, in a low tone. He could see no one near them. A couch had been placed near the center of the room. He lay upon it, the old blind man standing beside him.
“No,” Midos Ken said. “Not yet, at least. You defeated yourself in your battle by the ship, by shooting at a man so near that the force of the atomic explosion reached you. You killed three or four invisible men, however.
“The rest of our attackers wanted us to surrender. I refused. But I offered to come under a pledge of truce, to talk with Garo Nark and see if we can arrange terms. They tried to destroy you, me, and the flier. Not being able to see, I was at a disadvantage, of course. But I contrived to protect ourselves and beat off their attacks.
“Then they agreed to bring me down here, for a sort of peace conference. I have all my portable weapons with me, and Garo Nark has his fighting men ready for action, I suppose. We are going to talk things over. We have agreed not to start hostilities until we have returned to the flier.”
“Where is Thon?” Dick asked.
“I don’t know,” the old man said, “But I have been told that Garo Nark has her somewhere in his power.”
At a whisper from his master, the shriveled little man, Pelug, stepped forward from beside the purple throne, his green eyes glittering malignantly.
“Are you ready to talk with the Lord of the Dark Star?” he demanded rather uncivilly, pointedly failing to use any title in addressing Midos Ken.
“We are,” said Midos Ken. Dick was glad of the “we.” It made him feel that he had a greater share in the proceeding.
He got to his feet, feeling as good a man as ever after inhaling the stimulating vapor. He rejoiced to feel the weight of his atomic pistol in his pocket. It had been returned to him.
Taking Midos Ken’s arm, he walked forward, until they were about fifty feet from the purple throne. There the old man, with a low word, halted him.
“What is it you want of us, Garo Nark?” Midos Ken demanded boldly.
The giant on the crystal throne straightened, cold flame of evil burning in his black eyes.
“I wish Thon Ahrora to be one of my queens,” he said, in a harsh, leering tone. “An honor, that, which no reasonable woman can refuse!” He chuckled evilly. “And I demand that Don Galeen tell me the location of the Green Star! And that you help me find the catalyst of which my agents have heard you speak. And help me to use it, in order to give endless life to myself and to my friends.
“In return for this, I will give liberty to you, and to Don Galeen, and to this ape from the past.” He leered at Dick. “And if you refuse, I shall take all of you prisoners, despite the weapons you are so proud of. I shall deal with Thon as I like. I shall torture from you and Don the information that I want! And then the three of you shall die by the slowest and most painful means that the science of my empire can devise!”
“You are a fool,” Midos Ken said calmly.
Malevolent anger flamed high in the black eyes of Garo Nark.
“You mean that you refuse?” he demanded.
“I do!”
“You have spoken your doom! You shall die, if it takes every man I have to kill you!”
“Where is my daughter, Thon, and Don Galeen?” Midos Ken demanded.
Garo Nark burst into evil laughter, that somehow, to Dick, seemed forced and unnatural.
“They are in my power!” he cried, gloatingly, “where you will be soon!”
“If any harm comes to her,” the old man cried in a clear tone, level and menacing, “I will blot you out—you and your whole planet!”
“Count me in on that!” Dick challenged.
“Can’t you silence the chattering ape you caught in the jungles of the past?” Garo Nark jeered. “If you cannot control him, give him to me. I have excellent animal trainers!”
Dick could hardly hold himself still. He longed to send his fist crashing into that ugly, evil face, as he had done once before. But he kept his hands at his sides. Perhaps, he thought, Nark was merely trying to get him to make a physical attack, to break the truce.
End of Part I
[*] Since I finished this condensed narrative based upon the notes which Richard Smith sent me, covering his experiences in the world of distant futurity, a work has been published which throws new light upon the astounding force which Smith terms the K-ray—“The Dynamic Universe,” by James Mackaye (Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York).
While Mackaye’s rather startling theory has perhaps not yet gained widespread acceptance, I am inclined to credit it, because it seems in full accord with what Smith writes of the “K-ray.”
Beginning with a new interpretation of Einstein’s relativity, Mackaye postulates that all matter is only a form of radiation or vibratory energy, and that gravitation is an effect of radiation. Incidentally, Mackaye’s idea of the structure of matter is quite in agreement with Smith’s accounts of “materializing” objects from pure energy, by condensation of protons and electrons.
Mackaye believes that the much-maligned “ether,” which was invented as a hypothetical medium to explain the transmission of electromagnetic and gravitational force through empty space, is a form of radiation, having a very short wave-length, and pervading all the universe. These snort vibrations exert a pressure upon all matter which they strike—and are partly absorbed as they do so.
Thus, the mass of the sun cuts off part of these radiations coming toward the earth from that direction. Consequently, the radiation- pressure on the earth is unbalanced, and the vibrations coming in full force from the opposite direction push the earth toward the sun.
Again, the matter in the earth absorbs some of these “gravity waves,” while those coming from above are not interfered with. We are then pushed against the earth harder than we are pushed away from it—and we call the effect the “pull” of gravity.
The action, of course, is mutual, since the earth cuts off a small part of the pressure-producing radiation from the sun, and each of us shields the earth from a tiny amount of it—causing the sun to be “attracted” by the earth, and the earth to be “attracted” by each human being, approximately as Newton’s law states the case.
The revolutionary part of the theory is that gravitation is a radiation, and that it is a “push” instead of a “pull,” a pressure instead of an attraction.
I have again examined the text of Richard Smith’s notes, in the advance copies of the complete work, “A Vision of Futurity,” which have just reached me from the publishers—the volume will probably be on sale very shortly after this is printed. And the examination in the light of the new theory put forward in “The Dynamic Universe,” assures me that Smith’s “K-ray” is merely an artificial beam of this gravity-producing radiation, or of a very similar vibration.
The gigantic “K-ray” generators at the “space-ports” are merely projectors of titanic rays of this pressure-exerting force, which focus their power upon the ships, to whisk them through the universe at velocities almost inconc
eivable. Since the pressure is applied equally to every atom of matter within the ships, and since there is practically no resistance save inertia, it is easy to see that the dangerous effects of acceleration by ordinary means are eliminated.
The working of the smaller “K-ray” projectors carried on the ships themselves must be slightly different. A well-known law of physics states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Consequently, when a pressure-producing ray is projected backward from a ship in space, there will be an equal thrust forward upon the generator. And, of course, if high velocities and accelerations are to be attained, means must be found, by the use of auxiliary “K-ray” apparatus, to transmit this forward thrust evenly to every particle of matter in the ship, to avoid the crushing effect of any change of speed or direction—this, we know, was accomplished in the Ahrora.
And this artificially generated “K-ray,” or pressure-radiation, is apparently the basis of the extraordinary television communication, with which the far-flung worlds of the future world kept—or should one say “will keep”?—in touch. Given such a force, reaching instantaneously through the universe as it must—and I am sure that it is instantaneous, from Smith’s notes, if not from Mackaye’s work—and given that that force can be artificially generated and controlled, there is no apparent difficulty inherent in utilizing it for telegraphic or television communication, by the simple adaptation of means already known.
I must express deep gratitude to Mr. Mackaye for the timely appearance of his work, for it has served to strengthen the interpretation of Richard Smith’s narrative, in terms of the science of our own age, at a point at which it seemed almost to contradict the older theories which Mr. Mackaye’s magnificent hypothesis must soon supersede.
And I am confident that, with the passage of time, the slow realization of the civilization portrayed in “A Vision of Futurity” and briefly sketched in this condensed version, will win for Richard Smith’s narrative a general acceptance that cannot be hoped for it at present.—J.W.
The Stone From the Green Star Page 10
