An exultant shout burst from him and went echoing between the walls as he leaped to the Palace door, flung himself through.
Memory of Evanie had vanished like mist. Where was 204 the Princess? In her thinking room? Then he remembered. The laboratory behind the Throne Room.
A speaker blared down the hall as he ran: "Conclave in thirty minutes."
The corridors were thronged; he jostled his way past crowds of guards, servants, officials, and austere Immortals. Curious eyes followed him, but no one moved to halt him.
Not, at least, until he reached the great arch of the Throne Room itself. The crystal doors were shut and a line of four impassive guards blocked the way. He moved to step between them, and a sharp challenge sounded.
He paused. "I want to see the Princess." he said firmly.
"None to pass," snapped the guard. "Master's orders."
"But is the Princess in there?"
"Her Highness," responded the guard, "entered here five minutes ago. She said nothing of any one to follow."
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
THE ATOMIC BOMB
RELUCTANTLY, Tom Connor fell back. This was the only way to her laboratory; of that he was certain. He leaned against the wall and clenched his fists in a frenzy of impatience.
The glass doors opened and the Master emerged, accompanied by Martin Sair, and two other tall Immortals.
"Sir," Connor begged eagerly, "tell this fellow to pass me. I want to see the Princess."
A curious, quizzical expression flickered in the eyes of the great ruler. He shook his head.
"I'm sorry, Thomas," he said mildly. "In fifteen minutes the Princess will be needed. You can wait."
"ButI think she wants to see me!"
'Then she can wait as well." His eyes flickered again. "She has waited, not too patiently, for more than seven centuries." He moved away down the corridor, leaving Connor nonplussed.
He curbed his impatience. After all, the Master was right. Time stretched before him and Margaret of Urbsyears upon years of it. But it was hard to lose these precious moments.
He thought of the vision screens. Just behind him was the vast office opposite the Throne Room. He turned in there, bursting in upon a scene of feverish activity as the records of half the world were made ready for the Immortals of the Southern Hemisphere. Glancing about, he descried a screen on a table at the far end of the room, and twisted his way down the line of desks, ignoring a thousand staring clerks.
"The Princess," he said eagerly, snapping the switch. "In her laboratory behind the Throne Room."
On the screen flashed a girl's face, but not that of Margaret of Urbs.
"I'm sorry," she said. "No calls to any at the Conclave. Master's orders." The screen clicked blank again as he growled an angry epithet.
In the hallway he saw Evanie, staring with strange intentness at the closed glass doors. He pushed his way to her side.
"Hello," he said, and was puzzled by her sudden look of fear. But she recovered herself and glanced coolly at him.
"Oh, it's you," she said briefly.
He thought wonderingly how different was this Evanie from the timid, modest little Ormon girl of so few days ago. But he hardly cared. The Flame had burned him free of Evanie.
"Waiting for the parade of the Immortals?" he asked with a quiet smile.
"Perhaps."
"I thought you hated them so that you'd prefer not even looking at them."
Her voice changed to bitterness. "I do." 206 "Well, what's the answer, then?"
She glanced at a watch on her wrist.
"You'll know in a moment or two." She gave him a curiously sardonic smile. "I'm not afraid to tell you now. I'll even tell you what was in the package I took from the amphimorph. Would you like to know?"
"Of course."
Her voice quivered excitedly. "In that package was an atomic bomb!"
"An atomic bomb?"
"Yes. And do you know where it is now?" The voice rose exultant, fanatically elated. "At the wall behind the Throne of Urbs! Behind the throne where the Master's sitting this moment!" She laughed at his horrified face. "My thanks for sponsoring my request for freedom, Tom. It helped."
"The Master isn't in there," he said tightly. "I saw him leave."
He saw her face whitenand then an appalling thought struck him.
"Oh, God! But the Princess is! The Princess is!"
He dashed toward the guarded door, disregarding Evanie's cry of warning: "Tom, it's due! It's due!"
He rushed at the impassive guards, but before their challenge was uttered a thunderous roar reverberated in the vast hall like the rumbling thunder of a collapsing mountain.
A continuous screaming bellow like the clamor in hell rose in an earblasting crescendo, and beyond the glass doors rolled billowing clouds of steam, shot through with jagged fires.
Maddened to desperation, Tom Connor plunged against the doors. They swung inward and closed behind him, and he was in the room of the blast. Far down, behind the Master's throne, an erupting geyser of destruction appalled hima mighty, roaring, billowing cloud of smokestreaked steam that shrieked louder than the tortured souls of the seventh circle of hell.
Crashing discharges of stray energy etched flames through the cloud, like lightning behind a thunderhead, and the reverberations echoed above the roar of the disrupting hydrogen. The Master's throne was hidden by the bellowing fires that grounded to it.
But even that holocaust had not yet filled the vast concave of the Throne Room. The end where Connor stood, momentarily bewildered, was as yet clouded only by shreds and streamers. He lowered his head, and charged into the inferno. Margaret was caught somewhere behind that hellish blast!
Scalding steam licked at him, swirling about his body. His bare legs and shoulders stung at the touch, his face burned, but he gained the line of thrones and paused a single moment on the shielded side. What an engine of destruction! A bomb that, instead of venting its force in a single blast, kept on exploding as successive billions of atoms shattered.
No need to look for the door. The detonation, the first blast, had blown the wall open. Instantly he made a dash over the scorching debris, where the mighty girders were fantastically twisted and bent away from the roaring center, pointed up in the misty light. He launched himself at the edge of the opening, passing close to the very threshold of the trapdoor of Tophet.
Gamma radiations excoriated his body. The shriek of dying atoms thundered against his tortured eardrums, and he was burningblistering. But an implacable thrust urged him on. He was responsible for this chaos, this holocaust, and Margaret of Urbs He had violated his oath to the Master!
Evanie had betrayed him into that! She had tricked him into sponsoring her plea for freedom, and because he had aided her this had happened! Jan Orm could have done no damage alone. Only Evanie, because of the inhuman blood in her, could have dealt with an amphimorph. Evanie, with whom he had thought himself in love!
And the Princess, whom he did love, was somewhere beyond. He raged on, his mind turbulent as the blast itself, into Martin Sair's laboratory, a flaming outer region of hell clouded to invisibility.
Suffocating, scorching, he crashed against its farther wall, slid along it, at last found the door.
The luxurious room of the Princess was in chaotic disorder, but only lazy wisps of steam drifted there, and the bellow of the blast was muffled. But even now the wall was cracking.
"Margaret!" he cried. "Margaret of Urbs!"
Her voice answered him. She was hi a corner, crouching. Injured? No, she was searching earnestly through a pile of debris that had been swept across the room by the first concussion. He rushed toward her.
"Come on!" he shouted. "We'll break a window and get out."
She glanced coolly up.
"A window? Try it. A bullet might, but nothing less."
He snatched up a chair, spun it fiercely against the pane. The chair shattered; two tiny dents showed in the crystal, and that was all. And
in the Palace, ventilated by washed air from the topmost pinnacles of the Twin Towers, no windows opened. He whirled on her.
"Then it will have to be back through the blast!" he roared. "Come on!"
She stood up, facing him. She had slipped off the goldblack robe in the steaming heat, wore now the typical revealing garb of Urbs save that the material was of black velvet instead of metallic scales.
"You can't go through in clothes like that!" he shouted.
"My Venus," she said. "It was blown somewhere here. I want it."
"You'll come now!"
"I want my ivory Venus."
The pale flash of ivory caught his eye.
"Here it is, then," he snapped, thrusting the statuette into his belt. "Now come."
Faint mockery flashed in her eyes.
"What if I don't?"
He shook a rugged fist. "You will or I'll take you."
"Why," she asked, "do you risk your life to reach me?"
"Because," he snarled in exasperation, "I was unwittingly responsible for this. I was tricked into breaking my word. Do you think I can let the Masteror yousuffer for my stupidity?"
"Oh," she said, her eyes dropping. "WellI won't go."
"By God, you will!" He sprang to seize her but she evaded him.
But only for a moment, as again he saw the gleam of mockery in her eyes.
"Very well," she said, suddenly submissive.
He snatched the flowing robe from the floor as she turned and walked steadily toward the wall that now heaved and cracked and groaned. Before he could reach her she had flung open the doorand hell roared in upon them.
Martin Sair's laboratory was a mass of smoke and steam like the crater of Erebus that flames in the eternal ice of Antarctica. Flinging the robe over the Princess like an enshrouding blanket, Connor propelled her, muffled and stumbling, toward the evil effulgence of the screaming blast.
At the break in the wall he put his weight into a mighty thrust that sent her sliding, staggering, sprawling into the room where the fiery cloud closed, billowing, about her. Then he leaped through, his flesh writhing in the torment of the stinging rays, and blistering at the touch of scalding steam.
Margaret of Urbs was clambering to her feet, stumbling in the entangling robe, in the all but unbearable shelter of the thrones. She choked as the searing air reached her lungs. "You hurt!" she cried. "Come on!"
Again the taunting gleam, even with blistering death staring them in the face. But she followed unresisting as he seized her arm and plunged through the blinding fog of steam and smoke that now filled the mighty room to the distant ceiling. Blind chance was their guide as they rushed ahead, staggering, coughing, tearyeyed. It seemed a long way. Were they circling in the gloom of the monstrous chamber?
The Princess dragged against Connor's arm. "No," she gasped. "This waythis way." He let her lead. They struggled through billowing masses that began to take fantastic shapescharging monsters; heaving mountains. She staggered, stumbled, but shook off the arm he raised to support her.
"I've never needed help," she muttered proudly. "I never will."
It seemed to him that the blast roared closer.
"Are weright?" he choked.
Then, through a momentary rift he saw something that sickened himthe row of thrones, smoking and blackened in the blaze. They had circled!
Through some vagary of draught or ventilation there was a little area of almost clear air beside the throne of the Princess. Coughing and choking, they faced each other in it. He was astounded to see a flickering, taunting smile play for a single instant on her lips. Her hair singed and plastered flat by the steamy condensation, her face sootstreaked and reddened, she was yet so incredibly lovely that he forgot even their peril as her smile turned suddenly earnest, wistful.
"Dearest," she whispered, inaudibly, but he read her lips. "I'll confess now. We were safe in my room. We must have been watched in the vision screens, and men would have come to cut through the window."
He was appalled.
"Then why"
"Listen to me, Tom. Even here I misled you, for I knew which way the door lies by the pattern on the floor. But if you will not love me, I must kill you as I promised, then both of us die! For I cannot watch you age year by yearand then perish. I cannot!"
"Flame!" he roared, his voice impassioned. "But I love you! Did you think I love you, Flame!"
Her streaming eyes widened.
"Oh, God!" she choked. "Now it's too late!" She covered her face, then abruptly glanced up again, with a dawning hope in her eyes. "Perhaps not!" she cried. "Can they see us here? Nothe steam. But men will come in moonsuits to carry away the blastifwe can liveuntil then." She coughed. "But we can't." She was swaying. "You gothat way. Kiss me, Tom, and leave me. I want to dieon the throneof Urbs. Onlya thinglike this, some accidentcan kill anImmortal!"
"Leave you?" he cried. "Not even in death!" He choked as he drew her close.
A wave of steam and fire engulfed them. "Help me to mythrone," she whispered, gasping.
Her eyes, tearbright and seagreen in the fierce lightnings, went blank. They closed, and she slipped half through his arms. Her knees gave way as she collapsed.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
INFERNO
HE HELD HER against him. Put her on the throne? Why not? Why not hold her there until the end, die with her in his arms? Or perhaps shield her with his body until men came, or until the blast burned out.
Somehow she must be saved!
Nevernot even when a thousand years ago an electric current was shot through him to kill him, had his urge for life been so great as it was now. Now, when life promised so muchthe love of himself and the Black Flame of Urbs, two beings who should have been dead centuries ago and in different ageshe must die!
Had Destiny kept them alive to meet and love for this brief moment before death? Madness! Better to die struggling for life. Raising the girl in his arms, he staggered away toward the wall that still shielded the room where he found the Princess.
Her weight was slight, but he had not taken ten steps when he went crashing to his knees. He struggled up dizzily. The line of diagonal black squares showed dim on the floor, yet he could not be sure that he had not changed his direction. He was suffocating; the roaring blast seemed to bellow in a gigantic throbbing, now in his very ears, now dim and faint and far away.
He battled on. Suddenly he realized that he was moving burdenless. Without even being aware of it he had dropped the Princess. He turned grimly back until he stumbled over her lying huddled with her cheek against the steaming floor. Swinging her across his shoulder, gripping her knees so tightly that his fingers bit into the silksoft skin, he staggered back over the lost ground.
Each step was a gamble with death. If he fell now he would never rise again. He tottered on while his lungs labored in the vitiated air and the searing steam. Then behind him the blast roared fainter. Or was it simply that his senses were dulling?
It was the sharp blow of his head against the wall that brought him back from a dreamy somnolence into which he was falling, surprised to feel the weight of the unconscious girl still on his shoulder.
The wall! Which wall? In what direction was the door that meant life? He groaned and turned at random to the right, simply because his right arm clutched the limbs of Margaret of Urbs and his left hand was free to support him against the carved masonry. But an ejaculation of triumph escaped his burned, cracked lips as his hand slid over steamclouded glass, and he saw white faces through the track it left.
He could go no further; make not one more move. The limp body of the Princess slid from his arms, and vaguely then he knew that both of them were being dragged into the safety of the corridor. He gasped in great breaths of clear air that whistled in his seared throat, and then his heart chilled as his bloodshot eyes turned on the form of the Flame.
Her face frightened him. Waxen pale, still as the image on her throne, she seemed scarcely to breathe. A grave Immortal who bent abo
ve her straightened up and said tensely:
"Get Martin Sairand quickly!" His eyes flashed to Connor. "You're not hurt," he said. "Just rest here for some time."
There was a stir in the hallway. Two men in brown allencompassing suits and crystal helmets were pulling something metal. It looked like a steamshovel scoop with two fiftyfoot handles. A grapple for the blast, to box it before it undermined the vast Palace.
Then Martin Sair was at hand, and the Master, his sorrowful eyes on the Princess.
"Clear the corridor," said the sandyhaired Immortal, and guards swept back the crowd.
Through the North Arch, Connor glimpsed thousands upon thousands of Urbans on the Palace lawn, and then they were hidden as the gates closed.
"He must go, too," said Martin Sair, nodding at Connor. "The fewer lungs here the better. The girl is asphyxiated."
"No!" Connor croaked, flinging an arm across the Flame.
"All right. Move aside, then."
But a roaring like all the tortured souls since creation burst from the opening doors. Out rushed the gnomelike men pulling their grapple, and Connor thrust his body between them and the Princess, taking the fierce rays on his own flesh.
The container glowed brilliant as the sun, and out beyond the North Arch a chain dropped from the skya Triangle to bear away the deadly thing, to drop it into the sea. And the Palace was silent now as the silence of death.
Death? Tom Connor glanced fearfully at the marble features of Margaret of Urbs. They were like death, too, and he gazed so fascinated that he was utterly surprised to look up and see Evanie and Jan Orrn being herded down the corridor by half a dozen grimfaced guards. "Trying to escape out of the South Gate," said one. The Master turned cold, burning eyes on them, and then again looked sorrowfully down on the still perfection of the features of the Black Flame.
An Immortal placed a box at Martin Sair's side. "Adrenalin!" snapped the Giver of Life, and took the tube the other handed him. "Aminohyoscine! Daturamine!"
The Black Flame Page 21
