The Fire People

by Ray Cummings

  CHAPTER XV.

  THE MOUNTAIN CONCLAVE.

  "It is reasonable," Miela said thoughtfully. "And that our women will helpas you say--of that I am sure."

  We were gathered in the living room after the evening meal, and I hadgiven them my ideas of how we should start meeting the situation thatconfronted us. We had had no more trouble that day. After the encounter inthe king's garden Mercer and I had followed the two girls swiftly home. Wewere not molested in the streets, although the people crowded about uswherever we went.

  "Why did none of Baar's friends come to his rescue up there in thegarden?" I asked Miela. "Surely there must have been many of them about."

  "They were afraid, perhaps," she answered. "And they knew the people wereagainst them. There might have been serious trouble; for that is not theirway--to fight in the open."

  Her face became very grave. "We must be very careful, my husband, thatthey, or Tao's men do not come here to harm you while you sleep."

  "Why do you suppose they ever happened to bring me here in the firstplace?" Mercer wanted to know. "That's what I can't figure out."

  "They knew not that Alan was here," said Miela. "I think they wanted toshow you to our people as their captive--one of the earth-men."

  Mercer chuckled.

  "They didn't know what a good runner I was, or they'd never have taken achance like that."

  I told Miela then my plan for enlisting the sympathy of the women of theLight Country and for securing the active cooperation of the girls inridding us of the disturbing presence of these Tao emissaries.

  We planned that whatever we did should be in secret, so far as possible.Mercer and I talked together, while Miela consulted with Lua at length.

  I explained to Mercer that Tao might at any time send an expedition toinvade the Light Country.

  "How about that car we came from earth in?" he suggested. "He could sailover in that, couldn't he--if he should want to come over here?"

  I knew that was not feasible. In the outer realms of space the balancingattractions of the different heavenly bodies made it easy enough to headin any specified direction; but for travel over a planet's surface it wasquite impractical. Its rise and fall could be perfectly governed; but whenit was directed laterally the case was very different. Just where it wouldgo could not be determined with enough exactness.

  Miela turned back to us from her consultation with Lua.

  "In the mountains, high up and far beyond the Valley of the Sun," shesaid, "lies a secret place known only to our women. Our mother says thatshe and I and Anina can spread the news among our virgins to gather thereto-morrow at the time of sleep. Only to those we know we can trust will wespeak--and they will have no men to whom to tell our plans. To-morrow theywill gather up there in the clouds, among the crags, unseen by pryingeyes. And you and our--our friend Ollie"--she smiled as she used thenickname by which he had asked her to call him--"you two we will takethere by the method you have told us. We will arrange, up there in secret,what it is we are to do to help our world and yours."

  This, in effect, was our immediate plan of procedure. Nearly all the nextday Mercer and I stayed about the house, while the three women wentthrough the city quietly, calling forth all those they could reach to ourconclave in the mountains.

  They returned some time after midday. Miela came first, alighting with aswift, triumphant swoop upon the roof where Mercer and I were sitting.

  One glance at her face told me she had been successful.

  "They will come, my husband," she announced. "And they are ready andeager, all of them, to do what they can."

  Anina and Lua brought the same news. When we were all together againMercer and I took them to the garden behind the house and showed them whatwe had done while they were away.

  It was my plan to have the girls carry Mercer and me through the air withthem. For that purpose we had built a platform of bamboo, which now layready in the garden.

  Miela clapped her hands at sight of it. "That is perfect, my husband. Nodifficulty will there be in taking you with us now."

  The platform was six feet wide by ten long. It rested upon a frame withtwo poles of bamboo some forty feet in length running lengthwise along itsedges. These two poles thus projected in front and back of the platformfifteen feet each way. Running under them crosswise at intervals wereother, shorter bamboo lengths which projected out the sides a few feet toform handles. There were ten of them on a side at intervals of four feet.

  I found it difficult to realize the difference between night and day,since here on Mercury the light never changed. I longed now for thatdarkness of our own earth which would make it so much easier for us toconceal our movements. Miela relieved my mind on that score, however, byexplaining that at nearly the same hour almost every one in the city fellasleep. The physical desire for sleep was, I learned, much stronger withthe Mercutians than with us; and only by the drinking of a certainmedicinal beverage could they ward it off.

  It was after the evening meal, at a time which might have corresponded toan hour or so before midnight, that the selected eighteen girls began toarrive. Miela brought them into the living room with us until they wereall together.

  It was a curious gathering--this bevy of Mercutian maidens. They allseemed between the ages of sixteen and twenty-three--fragile, daintylittle wisps of femininity, yet having a strength in their highlydeveloped wing muscles that was truly surprising.

  They were dressed in the characteristic costume I have described, withonly a slight divergence of color or ornamentation. They were of only twotypes--jet black tresses, black eyes, and red-feathered wings like Miela;or the less vivid, more ethereal Anina--blue-eyed, golden-haired, withwing feathers of light blue.

  When they had all arrived we went into the garden behind the house. In amoment more Mercer and I were seated side by side on the little bambooplatform. Miela and Anina took the center positions so that they would benear us. The other girls ranged themselves along the sides, each graspingone of the handles.

  In another moment we were in the air. My first sensation was one of asudden rushing forward and upward. The frail little craft swayed under mealarmingly, but I soon grew used to that. The flapping of those many pairsof huge wings so close was very loud; the wind of our swift forward flightwhistled past my ears. Looking down over the side of the platform, betweenthe bodies of two of the girls, I could see the city silently droppingaway beneath us. Above there was nothing but the same dead gray sky, blackin front, with occasional vivid lightning flashes and the rumble ofdistant thunder.

  Underneath the storm cloud, far ahead, the jagged tops of a range ofmountains projected above the horizon. As I watched they seemed slowlycreeping up and forward as the horizon rolled back to meet them.

  For half an hour or so we sped onward through the air. We were over themountains now. Great jagged, naked peaks of shining metal towered aboveus, with that broken, utterly desolate country beneath. We sweptcontinually upward, for the mountains rose steadily in broad serratedranks before us.

  Occasionally we would speed up a narrow defile, with the broken, tumblingcliffs rising abruptly over our heads, only to come out above a levelplateau or across a canyon a thousand feet deep or more.

  The storm broke upon us. We entered a cloud that wrapped us in its wetmist and hid the mountains from our sight. The darkness of twilightsettled down, lighted by flashes of lightning darting almost over ourheads. The sharp cracks of thunder so close threatened to split myeardrums.

  The wind increased in violence. The little platform trembled and swayed. Icould see the girls struggling to hold it firm. At times we would dropabruptly straight down a hundred or two hundred feet, with a greatfluttering of wings; but all the time I knew we were rising sharply.

  Mercer and I clung tightly to the platform. We did not speak, and I thinkboth of us were frightened. Certainly we were awed by the experience.After a time--I have no idea how long--we passed through the storm andcame again into the open air with the same g
ray sky above us.

  We were several thousand feet up now, flying over what seemed to be atumbling mass of small volcanic craters. In front of us rose a sheer cliffwall, extending to the right and left to the horizon. We passed over itsrim, and I saw that it curved slightly inward, forming the circumferenceof a huge circle.

  The inner floor was hardly more than a thousand feet down, and seemedfairly level. We continued on, arriving finally over the mouth of a littlecircular pit. This formed an inner valley, half a mile across and withsheer side walls some five hundred feet high. As we swung down into it Inoticed above the horizon behind us a number of tiny black dots in thesky--other girls flying out from the city to our meeting.

  I have never beheld so wild, so completely desolate a scene. The groundhere was that same shining mass of virgin metal, tumbled about and brokenup in hopeless confusion.

  Great rugged bowlders lay strewn about; tiny caverns yawned; fissuresopened up their unknown depths; sharp-pointed crags reared their headslike spires left standing amid the ruins of some huge cathedral. Therewas, indeed, hardly a level spot of ground in sight.

  I wondered with vague alarm where we should land, for nowhere could I seesufficient space, even for our small platform. We were following closelythe line of cliff wall when suddenly we swooped sharply downward and tothe right with incredible speed. My heart leaped when, for an instant, Ithought something had gone wrong. Then the forward end of the platformtilted abruptly upward; there was a sudden, momentary fluttering of wings,a scrambling as the girls' feet touched the ground, and we settled backand came to rest with hardly more than a slight jar.

  Miela stood up, rubbing her arms, which must have ached from her efforts.

  "We are here, Alan--safely, as we planned."

  We had landed on a little rocky niche that seemed to be in front of theopening of a small cave mouth in the precipitous cliffside. I stood upunsteadily, for I was cramped and stiff, and the solid earth seemedswaying beneath me. I was standing on what was hardly more that a narrowshelf, not over fifteen feet wide and some thirty feet above the base ofthe cliff.

  Mercer was beside me, looking about him with obvious awe.

  "What a place!" he ejaculated.

  We stepped cautiously to the brink of the ledge and peered over.Underneath us, with the vertical wall of the cliff running directly downinto it, spread a small pool of some heavy, viscous fluid, inky black, andwith iridescent colors floating upon its surface. It bubbled and boiledlazily, and we could feel its heat on our faces plainly.

  Beyond the pool, not more than a hundred yards across, lay a mass ofragged bowlders piled together in inextricable confusion; beyond these achasm with steam rising from it, whose bottom I could not see--a crack asthough the ground had suddenly cooled and split apart. Across the entiresurface of this little cliff-bound circular valley it was the same, asthough here a tortured nature had undergone some terrible agony in thebirth of this world.

  The scene, which indeed had something infernal about it, would have beenextraordinary enough by itself; but what made it even more so was the factthat several hundred girls were perched among these crags, sitting idle,or standing up and flapping their wings like giant birds, and more weremomentarily swooping in from above. I had, for an instant, the feelingthat I was Dante, surveying the lower regions, and that here was a host ofangels from heaven invading them.

  During the next hour fully a thousand girls arrived. There were perhapsfifteen hundred altogether, and only a few stragglers were hastily flyingin when we decided to wait no longer.

  Miela flew out around the little valley, calling them to come closer. Theycame flying toward us and crowded upon the nearer crags just beyond thepool, clutching the precipitous sides, and scrambling for a footholdwherever they could. A hundred or more found place on the ledge with us,or above or below it wherever a slight footing could be found on the wallof the cliff.

  When they were all settled, and the scrambling and flapping of wings hadceased, Miela stood up and addressed them. A solemn, almost sinister hushlay over the valley, and her voice carried far. She spoke hardly above theordinary tone, earnestly, and occasionally with considerable emphasis, asthough to drive home some important point.

  For nearly half an hour she spoke without a break, then she called me toher side and put one of her wings caressingly about my shoulders. I didnot know what she said, but a great wave of handclapping and flapping ofwings answered her. She turned to me with glowing face.

  "I have told them about your wonderful earth, and Tao's evil plans; andjust now I said that you were my husband--and I, a wife, can still fly aswell as they. That is a very wonderful thing, Alan. No woman ever, in thisworld, has been so blessed as I. They realize that--and they respect meand love you for it."

  She did not wait for me to speak, but again addressed the assembled girls.When she paused a chorus of shouts answered her. Many of the girls intheir enthusiasm lost their uncertain footholds and fluttered about,seeking others. For a moment there was confusion.

  "I have told them briefly what we are to do," Miela explained. "First, torid the Great City of Tao's men, sending them back to the TwilightCountry; and do this in all our other cities where they are makingtrouble. Then, when our nation is free from this danger, we will plan howto deal with Tao direct, for he must not again go to your earth.

  "And when all that is done I have said you will do your best to make ourmen believe as you do, so that never again will our women marry only tolose all that makes their virginity so glorious."