_Cavern of the Cone_
The Gnomes had been bidden to take the prisoners to the Cavern of the
Cone, but to the surprise of Sarka and Jaska, they were taken back to
the Place of the Blue Light! This time the Gnomes entered the place
with them, closing and securing the door behind them.
But the Place of the Blue Light had changed!
Now it had no floor of blue, as it had had before, but only a corridor
perhaps wide enough to allow the passage of four grown men, walking
side by side, while the abyss of which the two had got but the merest
hint through the opening and closing rents filled all the center of
the place!
The Gnomes seemed impervious to the unendurable heat, and these,
moving together, one behind the other, one beside the other, one atop
the other, formed a living wall between Sarka and Jaska and the rim of
the flaming blue abyss, to protect them from the heat.
Yet through the bodies of this living wall of Gnomes, a wall which was
higher than the heads of Sarka and Jaska, the heat forced its way to
the prisoners, and burned them anew with its agony.
To what dread rendezvous were they going? Where, save for the few
guards at the house of Luar, were the people of the Gens of Dalis?
Sarka felt, somehow, that the answers to all these questions would
soon be made manifest, and a feeling of exaltation he could not
explain was possessing him as he advanced. Around the corridor, whose
one side was the wall reaching up to invisibility, whose other side
dropped off into the abyss, the Gnomes herded the prisoners.
* * * * *
The leader of the Gnomes was again the Gnome who had first leaped upon
Jaska to examine her curiously. Now, watching the lidless eyes of this
being, Sarka fancied he could detect a hint of some expression. The
Gnome was excited at some prospect, some climax which they were
approaching. What? On and on they moved. The blue flames from the
abyss, roaring in a way that neither of the prisoners had ever
experienced, reached upward in searing tongues toward the invisible
roof of this place.
Then, when they had progressed far from the door of entry, Sarka
gasped at a new manifestation. Out of the abyss, some distance ahead,
came a gleaming thing, something that had apparently evolved itself
out of the flames of the abyss. Blue of color it was, because of the
flames from the pit; but Sarka recognized it with a start which he
could not suppress nor understand.
It was one of those cubes, such as he and Jaska had seen at the lip of
the Moon-crater! As they approached, guided by the Gnomes, other cubes
appeared out of the abyss, others in numbers swiftly augmented, until
a veritable battalion of them had marshalled itself, there at the lip
of the abyss.
* * * * *
Straight toward these cubes the Gnomes led Sarka and Jaska, and when
they had reached the center of the group, they halted, forming a
circle, still a wall to mask the prisoners from the heat of the abyss.
The leader of the Gnomes stopped with his face, his lidless eyes,
close to one of the cubes.
For a moment he paused thus, and Sarka felt sure that somehow the
Gnome was holding thought converse with the cube; but, try as he
might, he could find no meaning in the weird conversation for himself.
It was oddly like listening to a conversation in a code beyond his
knowledge.
Then the Gnome turned back to Sarka and Jaska. By a pressure of tiny
feet, he tried to indicate that Sarka and Jaska should unclasp their
hands. But they only clung the tighter, and now threw their arms about
each other.
The Gnome desisted, much to the joy of the lovers, while Sarka studied
the cubes, wondering what their mission was with Jaska and himself.
Slowly, together, the cubes began to lose their bluish glow, their
cube shape--to vanish utterly.
In a trice, still locked in each other's arms, Sarka and Jaska saw the
Gnomes through what appeared to be an even bluer haze. Besides, the
heat of the abyss no longer tortured them, and their bodies were
cooling in a way that was unbelievably refreshing.
"What is it, beloved?" whispered Jaska. "What is it?"
* * * * *
Sarka stared at the Gnomes, now in retreat, capering as they had first
capered when the two had fallen into their hands, toward the door by
which all had entered. Mystified, Sarka put forth his hand. It came in
contact with something solid, and oddly warm, which stirred an
instantly responsive chord in the brain of Sarka.
This feeling was the same as he experienced when he had lifted those
cubes and hurled them into the crater--where they had dissolved in
falling, and instantly reappeared, each under its own aircar!
"Jaska!" he explained. "Jaska! The cubes have dissolved themselves,
and have reformed in the shape of a globe, as a protective covering
about us, to protect us from the heat of the abyss! Apparently we are
not to be killed at once! These cubes are slaves of the Gnomes, of
whom Luar is ruler!"
They were indeed locked inside a globe, a globe whose integral parts
were the cubes of their acquaintance; and the atmosphere of the
interior was not uncomfortable, but otherwise. Sarka and Jaska were
feeling normal for the first time since they had landed on the Moon.
But what was the meaning of this strange imprisonment?
They were soon to know!
For the globe which enclosed them, moved to the edge of the flaming
abyss, and dropped into the bluish glow! It did not drop heavily, like
a falling object on Earth, but rather floated downward, right into the
heart of the flames. At this new manifestation of the strangeness of
science on the Moon, Sarka was at once all scientist himself, striving
to find adequate answers for things which, from cause to effect, were
entirely new to him. With Jaska still clasped close against him, he
seated himself in the base of the globe and studied the area through
which they were passing.
Blue flames which seemed to be born somewhere, an infinite distance
below them; blue flames which he knew to be the element that, shot
outward from the great cone, had forced the Moon away from the Earth.
No sound of the roaring flames came through the globe, but every
movement of them was visible.
* * * * *
Sarka turned and peered through the bottom of the globe; but all he
could see below were the flames, a molten indigo lake of them. Now, as
they floated downward, the glow was giving away to lighter blue, to
white, almost pure white, like the radiance which covered Luar like a
mantle.
Sarka felt himself on the eve of vast important discoveries, and the
scientist in him made him, for the moment, almost forget the woman at
his side. Jaska, unbothered about anything, now that Sarka was at her
side, regarded his expression of deep concentration with a tolerant
smile.
Whiter now was the light, and faster fell the globe which held the
two.
The color of the globe, now fallen below the area of blue, had taken
on, chameleonlike, the color of the white flames that bathed it.
Then, apparently right in the center of a lake of white flames, though
Sarka could see no solid place on which the globe had landed, the
globe came to rest.
Now everything was plain to see, and Sarka studied his surroundings
with new interest. He felt a mounting sensation of scalp-prickling
horror.
For, scattered throughout the lake of white flames, in all directions,
as far as the eye could reach--standing alone, suffering untold
agonies, from the expressions on their faces--were people of the Gens
of Dalis!
* * * * *
No longer were they clothed in green and wearing on breast and back
the yellow stars of their Gens. Now they were nude as they had come
into the world and standing there, each was holding out hands in
horror, to hold back myriads of the Gnomes, who would have forced them
to submerge themselves in the white flames of the lake!
Was the Gens of Dalis being burned alive? What was the meaning of
this?
For a moment, filled with horror, Sarka looked away from the
spectacle. Off to his right, as he sat, he noted that the flames,
which here seemed lighter than they had in high levels, were
converging on a single spot toward the side of the lake of white
flames--as smoke converges on the base of a chimney leading outward to
the air!
He knew as he stared that he was gazing at the spot where the bluish
column of the cone was born!
Shaking his head, he turned back to the mighty spectacle of this
horrible thing that was being done to the people of the Gens of Dalis.
In his brain there suddenly crashed a thought whose source he could
only guess at, whose meaning mystified him more than anything yet
experienced. The thought might have emanated from Luar, or from Dalis.
But the more he thought of the matter, the more he thought how the
phrasing of the thought was like the telepathy of Sarka the Second,
now thousands of miles away, upon the Earth. And this was the thought:
"If they fight the flames, the flames will destroy them! If they go
into them freely, voluntarily, they will be rendered immune to heat
and to cold, to life and to death. But it is better that they die, for
Earth's sake!"
What did it mean?
* * * * *
Sarka thought of the radiant white light which perpetually bathed the
person of Luar, and thought that he had somehow been given a hint of
its source. If the Gens of Dalis were voluntarily bathed in the lake
of white flames, would they become as Luar?
Somehow, though he knew that such bathing would save their lives, the
idea filled him anew with horror. He found himself torn between two
duties. If he sent his thought out there to the Gens of Dalis, people
of Earth, his people, they would be saved, but might forever become
allies of the people of the Moon. If Sarka did not tell them, they
would die--and there were millions of them.
But his science had always been a science of Life, and it still was.
"Enter the flames!" he telepathically bade his people. "Enter the
flames!"
But they did not heed him, and for the first time the atmosphere of
the interior of the globe seemed filled with savage, abysmal menace!
Plain to Sarka was the meaning of that menace: The cubes which
composed this globe were loyal to their masters, the masters to a
mistress, Luar, and would countenance no meddling.
Likewise it was impossible, if the Gnomes willed it to the cubes, for
Sarka to transmit his thoughts to the Gens of Dalis through the
transparent walls of the globe!
They were prisoners, indeed, of Dalis and of Luar!
* * * * *
But could Sarka and Jaska turn their new-found knowledge to their own
use? Sarka was thinking back, back to one of the ancient tomes of his
people. It spoke, someplace, of a man who had got trapped in the heart
of a seething volcano, where the heat of it had cured him of his
illnesses, made him whole again, given him new youth and freshness.
But since the cubes could forestall his transmission of thought, and
perhaps could read and understand thoughts, how was he to tell Jaska?
How show her that a way of deliverance had been given into their
hands, if they only possessed the courage to use it!
Again came that thought, which Sarka recognized as the telepathy of
his father:
"Courage! You will win, and Jaska with you!"
Thoughts could come in to them then, but could not go out. Or did it
mean that the cubes, or the masters of the cubes, did not care if the
prisoners received messages from outside, because they knew themselves
capable of frustrating anything the prisoners planned? Perhaps. More
than likely that was it.
But, looking through the bottom of the globe, into the sea of white
flames below, Sarka gripped more tightly his ray director, and tried
to marshal the forces of his courage. There was surely some way of
escape. Some way out of their strange predicament.