darkness toward the island. Nothing was visible in the faint
phorphor-glow that marked the Venusian night, but they could just hear a
distant singing as of many voices lifted in chorus.
"What do you think happened to the city so suddenly?" Steve asked. Gerry
shrugged.
"I suppose some mist hid it."
"There wasn't any mist," Steve said flatly, "anyway--we could see the
low hills on shore just as clearly after the city disappeared as before.
Anyway...."
"Listen!" Gerry interrupted.
Now they could again hear the sound of bells coming across the water.
Half the time the sound was swept away by the night breeze, half the
time they could just hear it. The bells were of many blended tones and
notes, an immense carillon. They were singing some outland melody that
was full of the surge of ocean breezes and the cries of the sea birds.
It rose, and swelled, and died away again.
"The city's there, all right," Gerry said slowly. "Though I can't
imagine why we don't see any lights with the sound of the bells that
close. But we'll see in the morning."
"I tell you there is no city," Closana said, her voice troubled. "We
have often sailed ships into these waters from the Savissan coast, and
we know that none of these Outer Isles are inhabited. What you have
heard must be the ghosts of the Old Ones, ancient phantoms speeding
through the skies. There is a legend that the bells of their phantom
ships can sometimes be heard off the coast at night."
"Ghosts or no ghosts, we're going ashore there in the morning!" Gerry
said stubbornly.
* * * * *
All night the _Viking_ rode to a crude anchor that Angus had improvised
from some spare parts on board. The space-ship's designers had never
expected her to lie in water. Most of the crew were on deck as soon as
it grew light enough to see. Ahead of them, less than half a mile away,
stretched a sandy shore backed by a line of low hills. The island had a
wealth of the yellow vegetation typical of the mainland of Venus, so
that it had a more friendly appearance than the other specks of land
which dotted the Great Sea and were only bare rock, but there was no
sign of life. Certainly there was no trace of any city! There was not
even an indication of human habitation at all. As the dawn-mists cleared
away they could see that another range of hills stretched along the
horizon some miles behind. Their greenish-yellow slopes were clear and
sharp against the cloudy sky beyond, and they were located well in the
rear of where the city had appeared to be in that hasty glimpse the
night before.
"Ready the landing party!" Gerry commanded. "Full armor and equipment!"
They gently beached the space-ship on the sloping expanse of sand,
running her nose a little way up above the water level while the light
surf lapped her dripping sides. Some giant crabs scurried away across
the beach in startled surprise.
"Want to go ashore, Angus?" Gerry asked as McTavish's red bearded face
came up through an escape hatch. The big engineer shook his head.
"I'll just stay aboard here and brood over my broken helicopters,
thanks. My last trip ashore took care of all my wanderlust for the
present."
Gerry took half the vessel's crew with him, leaving the other half on
guard. Closana went with the landing party. With their armor gleaming in
the golden light, ray-guns and other weapons ready, they tramped up
across the loose sand of the beach. Beyond the shore line was firmer
ground, a field of some low plants that grew in orderly yellow rows.
"I'll swallow my ray-tube if this isn't a field cultivated by man!
Nature was never that orderly," Steve Brent muttered. Gerry shrugged.
"Lord knows! If we ever get those helicopters fixed, I'm all for a quick
return to Earth. This planet is certainly no peaceful garden of Eden,
and I've had pretty near all I want of it. Savissa was the only place I
really liked. I wonder what's happening there now!"
"We'll know if anything very exciting turns up," Steve said. "When we
started out on our search after you disappeared that night, I left Tanda
behind with a portable radio to keep us posted. Sort of figured it was
our base on Venus, and anyway there was always the chance you might
wander back there."
"Great planetoids--I just thought of something! As soon as we get back
to the ship, remind me to radio Tanda to tell Rupin-Sang that the Scaly
Ones had learned to use the old sewers, and that he must either block
them off or place a heavy guard there."
For a mile they walked inland, across those odd fields. The orderly rows
of plants stretched off to the horizon on both sides. And then they came
to a kind of level plain. The ground before them was strange looking, so
strange that Gerry called a halt while he stared down the slight slope
at it.
* * * * *
Most of the plain was of bare rock, rock that was absolutely smooth and
level without any sign of weathering at all. Along the outer edge it was
pitted at regular intervals by what looked like shallow wells a foot in
diameter. Beyond that zone were many excavations of many sizes and
shapes, all cut down into the solid rock with the sides perfectly
straight and smooth. Gerry took off his helmet and scratched his head.
"Now what do you make of that?"
"I know what it looks like to me," Steve said. "It looks just like the
foundations of a city--without the city. Those round pits are the
anchorages of the outer wall. Those square holes are the basements of
tall buildings. Only--somebody has lifted the whole city away."
"You're crazy!" Gerry growled. Steve shrugged.
"Maybe we all are! Anyway, I'm going to take a look into one of those
holes."
Steve walked quickly forward toward the nearest of the round pits.
Suddenly, just as he reached the very edge of the zone of bare rock,
there was a dull clash of steel. Something had seemed to pick Steve up
bodily and hurl him backward. He landed flat on his back on the ground,
his helmet bouncing off and rolling a few feet away.
"It hit me," he shouted.
"What did?"
"I don't know." Steve sat up and rubbed his head. "Y' know, Chief, it
really felt more as though I'd just walked squarely into a solid stone
wall."
"It has just occurred to me," Gerry said slowly, "that maybe that's
exactly what you _did_ do!"
Gerry walked forward cautiously, a foot at a time, one hand stretched
out before him. When he reached a spot on line with the place where
Steve had been stopped, his hand encountered something cool and firm and
smooth. It was like the surface of a highly polished stone wall. Or a
sheet of heavy and invisible glass. He ran both his hands over it. The
thing was continuous and solid. There was nothing visible to the eye,
and he could see far ahead of him across the strangely surfaced rocky
plain, but there was an impenetrable barrier blocking the path.
Stepping back a few feet, Gerry picked up a pebble and tossed it upward.
The stone bounced sharply back as soon as it came in line with the
invisible barrier. He threw the pebble higher and the same thing
happened. There was something mysterious and disquieting about the way
the stone would soar up into the clear air--and then sharply bounce
back from a point in space where nothing at all was visible.
"Magic!" Closana said nervously. Even the Earth-men of the landing party
had drawn together in a compact group, ray-tubes ready and eyes alert.
Gerry moved back a few feet farther, then hurled the stone forward and
upward as high as he could. This time the pebble did not bounce back. It
simply vanished in thin air. And then, from somewhere off in the
emptiness of space above them, there came the sound of a deep and
mocking laughter!
* * * * *
As though that first laugh had somehow eased the necessity for a
carefully enforced silence, there came a whole burst of unseen and eerie
merriment. There was a murmur of many voices. Then it died away again.
There was still nothing visible, and the silence was once more unbroken.
"For Lord's sake, let's get out of here!" Portok gasped. "This place is
ghost ridden!"
"There are no ghosts here, little red-faced man!" boomed a voice.
The sound had seemed to come from somewhere overhead. From the empty
void above, where there was nothing at all until the cloud canopy was
reached many thousands of feet up. One of the _Viking's_ crew bared his
teeth in a sudden panic and lifted his ray-gun to fire blindly upward.
Before he could pull the trigger there was a blinding blue flash and a
crash like summer thunder. Captive lightning! The ray-gun flew from the
man's hands and landed a few feet away, its wooden stock badly charred
and its barrel a glowing mass of fused metal.
"Let your weapons rest, for they are useless here!" commanded that same
booming voice from above. "Whence came ye, strangers in odd clothing who
have traveled in a ship like a blue whale? What do ye seek here in the
Outer Isles?"
Gerry stepped forward, a few feet ahead of the group. He shouted that
they were a scientific exploring party who had come from Earth in a
space-ship. There was a brief period of silence, as though men consulted
in whispers. Then the voice called him again.
"You there--the leader! The Council of Elders will talk with you. Go
fifty paces to your right, to where there are two white stones, and then
come forward between them. Do not be afraid. You will not be harmed."
"Are you going to take the chance, Chief?" Steve whispered. Gerry
nodded.
"I'll have to."
About fifty yards to his right Gerry saw two white stones. They were set
some twelve or fifteen feet apart, on the very edge of the invisible
barrier. Gerry walked over, turned left, and then walked squarely in
between the stones. He held one arm protectingly in front of him, but
this time his hand did not encounter any barrier. Instead--he found
himself standing under the arch-way of a gate with a mighty city spread
before him!
* * * * *
The city had simply appeared in a flash, with its mighty towers soaring
up to the sky, as soon as he stepped over the outer line of the arch.
Whatever it was that held the place invisible from outside, it had
ceased to function for him as soon as he came within the limits of the
outer surface of the walls. Glancing back, he saw that his companions
were still staring blankly at the spot he had just quitted. They were
evidently unable to see either him or any part of the city.
"It's all right, Steve!" he shouted. "Just hold everybody there till I
come back."
Doors of heavily carved glass slid noiselessly out of recesses within
the wall to close the gate through which Gerry had just entered. The
arch in which he stood was inside the thickness of the wall, faced with
white marble, inlaid with designs in gold. Ahead, he could see a broad
avenue that ran from the gateway down through the center of the city. It
was tree lined and pleasant, thronged with people. Flowers grew in
little plots in front of the gold and white houses. Small furry animals,
dogs, were evidently kept as pets. They drowsed on the doorsteps or
scampered about the neat gardens.
Half a dozen men were standing around Gerry, within the arch of the
gate. They were slight in stature though wiry, with heads a little
larger than normal and exceptionally high foreheads. Their skin bore a
tawny tinge, similar to that of the Amazons of Savissa. Two of them, who
immediately took up posts just inside the glass portals of the gate,
wore a semi-military uniform that included a gilded helmet. The others
wore white cotton tunics and high leather shoes. It suddenly struck
Gerry that this was the first place on Venus that he had visited where
the majority of the citizens did not go heavily armed at all times.
Perhaps it was a good omen.
One of the men stepped forward, a bearded and gray-haired man who bore a
gold-tipped staff.
"I am Gool, chairman of the Council of Elders of Moorn," he said in the
deep voice that Gerry had heard outside. "The Council has decided to see
you at once. You are the first outsider who has been permitted to enter
the city of Moorn--White Queen of the Outer Isles--in countless
generations. It would not have been permitted even now if you had been a
man of this planet. Come with me."
* * * * *
They went up a flight of steps and climbed into a metal car that hung
from an overhead rail supported by columns along the street. Gool
touched a button, and the car shot ahead at high speed along the
overhead mono-rail. The old man, who had settled comfortably back on one
of the upholstered seats, was faintly smiling as he watched Gerry's
face.
"You are puzzled, stranger?" he asked at last.
"Yes. There seemed to be nothing on the plain but a lot of holes bored
in the rock, and now...."
"And now you find yourself in the city of Moorn," Gool said. "A
knowledge of dimensional control is one of the reasons why we of this
city have lived in peace and safety for so many centuries while the rest
of the planet is torn by constant wars."
"Dimensional control?" Gerry said slowly. Gool nodded.
"Yes. It is hard to put it into language that will be clear to one who
has no knowledge of our science. Perhaps I can explain it by saying that
the human eye is a three-dimensional organism, and therefore capable of
perceiving only things that fall into that same category. There are a
great many things in the universe, some of the greatest importance, that
the ordinary man's senses are incapable of perceiving. We have learned
how to cast a protective screen of fourth-dimension rays about our city,
and the effect is that it becomes completely invisible to the human eye.
Do I make myself clear?"
"Not entirely," Gerry grinned. "But I do know that your screen works!
But, since your science is so far ahead of the other people of Venus,
why don't you rule the entire planet?"
"The other races are all barbarians," Gool said with a sort of
disdainful gravity. "We prefer to live here in our peaceful isolation
and not bother with them. That is an essential part of our philosophy."
The speeding mono-rail car mounted higher as it neared the center of the
city. The track seemed to end on the blank wall halfway up the tallest
of the buildings, but as the car came near a circular doorway suddenly
opened just in time to let it through. They halted in a circular chamber
where heavy springs caught and allayed the last of the car's momentum,
and a pair of gold-helmeted guards saluted Gool as they helped him to
alight.
"The Council is ready and waiting, my Lord," said one. Gool nodded over
his shoulder to Gerry.
"Follow me," he commanded.
The Council of Elders of Moorn sat at a U-shaped table in a
high-ceilinged room whose walls were hung with heavy and very ancient
tapestries. The dozen members of the council were all old men,
gray-beards who seemed dwarfed by the high-backed chairs in which they
sat. They listened with grave attention to Gerry's account of what he
had seen of conditions on Venus, but their austere faces showed no sign
of animation when he again suggested that they should intervene in the
planet's affairs.
"We are not interested," Gool said listlessly.
Suddenly the short-wave alarm in Gerry's helmet buzzed loudly. He
pressed the receiving switch.
"Listen, Chief!" Steve Brent's voice was tense and excited as it came
from the ear-phones, "I just got a message from Tanda back in Larr.
There's hell to pay back there! The Scaly Ones have in some way managed
to storm one of the barrier forts, and now they're pouring over the
borders of Savissa in great hordes. They're armed with supode rays,
too!"
Gerry switched off the radio, and leaned forward with his hands on the
carved table.
"Now is the time for you to act!" he snapped. "Lansa is a mad-man. He
plans to overrun all Venus. If you come to the aid of the Amazons at
this time, it will...."
"Our isolation of centuries is not to be broken," Gool interrupted.
Watching the emotionless faces of the Council of Elders, he felt as
though he were wading through mud. He was getting nowhere! The inertia
of these gray-beards was a leaden and tangible thing.
"But if Lansa wins he may come after you!" he urged. "Your walls are
invisible, but they're there. I could feel them with my hands. Now that
Lansa has the equipment to project the supode ray, he may bring them
down and...."
"We take no part in what goes on outside our walls," Gool repeated
firmly. "We will give you the metal to repair your own ship. If you and
some of your men wish to return quickly to the mainland in the meantime,
we will send you across in our flying cars. That is the most that we can
do."
* * * * *
Half a dozen flying cars rested on a broad platform on top of one of the
walls of the city of Moorn. Many bells were tolling the noonday chimes
as Gerry Norton led his armored men from the _Viking_ aboard the compact
little flying machines. There was room for six men in each car, the
pilot and five passengers. Only Angus and the necessary assistants had
remained behind to repair the space-ship with the materials supplied by
the men of Moorn. Gerry leaned from his car to shake hands with Gool,
who was leaning on his gold-tipped staff.
"Thanks for this much help," Gerry said. "Next time we meet I'll tell
you...."
"We shall not meet again, my friend," Gool said with a half smile. The
words seemed definitely ominous to Gerry, but before he could say
anything more the old man had bowed ceremonially and then stepped back
off the landing platform.
The flying cars of Moorn were shallow bowls of some gleaming blue metal,
oval in shape and with three comfortably upholstered seats. They had no
visible means of propulsion. Curved windshields of heavy glass protected
the passengers from the air-blast of swift motion. Gerry got in beside
the pilot of the leading car, who was a slight and taciturn Moornian
with the big head and high forehead of his race. A complicated control
board was fixed in place before him. Closana and Portok were in the seat
next behind, while two more members of the _Viking's_ crew occupied the
rear seat.
"Ready?" the pilot asked. Gerry nodded.
The pilot touched a switch on the control board before him, and three
globular dials glowed with an iridescent light. The space-car rose
easily from the landing platform, moving upward and outward at a steep
angle. There was neither noise nor vibration. The city vanished as soon
as they passed outside the zone of dimensional-control on its outer
walls. Looking back and down, Gerry saw only the pitted rock of the
foundations far below. A cart was moving toward the beach with some bars
of metal for the _Viking_.
Then the next flying car came into sight as it sped out beyond the
walls. Its nose came into sight first, then the middle section, finally
the whole car. One after another, the rest of the flotilla took off till
they were flying in a V-shaped formation like a flock of wild geese.
"What kind of power makes these cars go?" Gerry asked.
"Iso-electronic rays," the pilot replied shortly, not taking his eyes
from the indicator board.
"And can they be made invisible like the city?"
"Yes. The dimensional-control lever is here." The pilot pointed at many
of the controls, then again lapsed into silence.
It was evident that Gerry was not going to be able to have any extended
conversation with the driver of the car. That might be due to
instructions the man had received from his superiors, or simply to his
own nature. Probably a combination of both! These men of Moorn were a
cold and self-centered race. Probably they were an isolated off-shoot of
the original Old Ones who had first settled this planet, a group who had
managed to retain the scientific knowledge of their ancestors but had
lost the vigor and fire that are found in active and vital nations.
* * * * *
Below them lay the greenish yellow expanse of the Great Sea. Though
these electronic flying cars of Moorn traveled with a noiseless
smoothness that was the last word in flying comfort, their speed was
much less than that of the _Viking_ at even minimum rocket power. The
pilots were holding the flotilla down to a level of only a few hundred
feet. The sight of the vast expanse of rippling waters sliding past so
close below them was a strange experience to Gerry Norton, who had spent
his life in space-ships that always traveled at the upper levels where
everything below looks like a gigantic patch-work quilt.
Scattered islands shouldered their way upward through the sea ahead, and
then sailed past below. So utterly smooth and noiseless was the movement
of the electronic flying cars that they seemed to be standing
motionless, while a strong wind blew against their glass shields and the
surface of the planet unrolled beneath them. It was well into the
afternoon before the familiar mountain ranges bordering Savissa came
into view ahead.
Closana was leaning forward on her seat, her eyes eager and youthful in
the shadows of the steel helmet with which she had been fitted out from
the _Viking's_ stores. Then, as the coast line became clearer with every
passing mile, she suddenly pointed ahead and down to two black dots on
the surface of the sea. The pilot took one glance at them, and then his
hand moved to the dimensional control lever.
When they first entered the flying cars, Gerry had noticed that each one
bore a very realistic appearing metal bird at the end of a sort of
flag-staff that protruded upward at the bow. At the time he had thought
it was simply a form of decoration. Now he realized that the metal bird
fulfilled a much more useful purpose. It was outside the zone of
invisibility, and gave all the pilots something to indicate the
locations of the other cars and avoid collisions. When he glanced back,
all he could see was a flock of birds following them in a wide V. The
flotilla was keeping formation.
* * * * *
As they soared closer to shore, the two black dots gradually took shape
as a pair of good-sized surface craft. A black-hulled raider, manned by
a crew of the Scaly Ones, was hotly engaged with a wooden Savissan
patrol boat. Companies of Amazons crouched behind the high bulwarks of
their warship, loosing their arrows in stinging flights. Explosive
bullets crackled around them as the Scaly Ones replied with their
gas-guns. The boat was equipped with a big charging-tank, for reloading
the gas-guns, equipment too heavy to be carried by land raiders but
possible here. The tide of battle was definitely setting against the
Amazons. The bodies of many of the golden-haired feminine warriors lay
sprawled in the scuppers or scattered on the riven decks.
Closana's fists were clenched as she peered down at the battle on the
seas below. The decks of the Savissan craft were beginning to smolder,
and her arrow fire was weakening. Closana threw Gerry an agonized
glance, and he turned to the pilot beside him.
"Is there any way we can strike at that raider below?" he asked. The
Moornian pilot smiled faintly, and then handed Gerry a long metal rod
that was equipped with gun-sights and had a sort of rubber stock. A wire
trailed away from it and was attached to the car's power plant beneath
the control boar. It looked like an odd form of rifle, but the metal rod
was solid instead of hollow.
"Aim--then press the button!" the taciturn Moornian said.
Gerry brought the strange-looking weapon to his shoulder and sighted
through a line of rings set in the top. He centered the cross-hairs
amidships on the black-hulled Reptilian craft, then gently pressed the
switch button set in the stock.
There was a blinding flash of lightning. An instant later came the
crashing roar of thunder. Momentarily the flying car rocked under the
buffeting of the disturbed air masses, then it steadied down again. On
the sea below, the battle had come to an abrupt end. That single blow
was enough.
The lightning bolt struck the sea raider amidships, with a blinding
flash. The metal hull glowed red hot. Water steamed about it. The dark
shapes of Scaly warriors went spinning off into the sea. Then the tank
of gas amidships exploded, sending a sheet of blue flame high into the
air.