"That so?" The detective's flat gaze studied him without surprise or
interest. "But the other guys did--four of them. Don't forget that."
Bryan fell silent. Mulvaney wouldn't die--but he would tell of Bryan
knocking him down, of Bryan's co-operation with strange creatures that
had taken the lives of four men. Mulvaney, however, wasn't likely to
tell exactly what he had seen. His story, too, would be something that
could be swallowed without tasting....
Then Bryan saw that he and the others were crossing one edge of an open
space. The pavilion rose in the middle of it, a pale ghostly shape
against the darkness. It would remain a symbol for him. For within
sight of it his life had begun--and ended.
* * * * *
A path swallowed him and his captors. The pavilion faded from view.
Ahead was the sprawling bulk of the city, dotted and splashed with
light.
It was against this backdrop that the sound came, rising out of
inaudibility. The flapping of great wings.
_Wings!_
A vast wind seemed to blow through Bryan. He stopped dead, staring up
into the sky.
The detective and his companion seemed to hear the sound also. They,
too, peered upward, puzzled.
Bryan thought he knew where to look. And glancing back in the direction
of the pavilion, he saw a vague dark shape against the stars. Sudden
urgency roared in him like thunder.
The pavilion! He had to go back!
He lifted his imprisoned arms and swung them in a sweeping club-like
blow. The policeman dropped before he could move his gun back into
line. The detective swore in dismay, sent a hand darting under his
coat--but Bryan was already whirling toward him. He kneed the man in
the stomach, then felled him with a chopping blow to the back of the
head.
Beyond hindrance now, Bryan ran. He ran recklessly, wildly, eagerness
driving away his exhaustion, sending an explosive power into his legs.
Behind him voices shouted, a whistle shrilled. Then the sharp blast of
a gun split the air.
He left the path and cut across a stretch of grass. A wall of shrubbery
rose before him, and he plunged into it without checking speed.
Branches lashed at him, tore at him. He fell, heaved himself erect,
fought his way clear.
More grass, and then another path, running parallel to the one he had
fled. He followed this, and presently the pavilion took form in the
gloom. Above it a dark shape circled on huge wings. The giant bird--and
it was alone. Bryan could see no other shapes accompanying it.
He was puzzling over the discovery, when a flashlight beam speared at
him out of an intersecting path. Shouts followed it, filled with a
swift excitement.
"There he is!"
"Stop, you!"
Bryan plunged on. Again a whistle shrilled. Then the running sounds of
a group of men came in pursuit.
The pavilion rose before him. He reached the open space around it,
halted, swung his bound hands in an urgent gesture at the sky.
"Here I am!" he called, not knowing if his call would be heard.
"Here--quick!"
If it did not actually hear him, the giant bird saw him. Swiftly it
descended. And as it dropped toward him, he saw it held an object in
its beak--the crystal globe. His perplexity mounted. For added to all
the other strangeness of this event, he now detected a desperation
about the bird, a consuming anxiety.
He sent his thought to meet the pulse that was reaching toward him.
"Where is Leeta? Has something happened?"
With a final sweep of its wings, the bird settled to the ground. Its
answer came, then, holding an odd deep twittering quality.
"The fire! Leeta is sending herself into the fire! Only you can stop
her. She has commanded the winged ones not to interfere--a command we
cannot disobey."
"Leeta--planning to destroy herself? But why?"
"It is because of this thing called love that you awoke in her. She
felt that without you there was no longer any reason to live." Anxiety
sharpened in the twittering thought. "Will you help to save Leeta, man
of this aspect? Will you come with me through the veil?"
"Yes," Bryan said. "Yes!" Eagerly he leaned close to the slowly pulsing
globe that the bird held out to him in its beak ... felt himself drawn
as though by immaterial hands that reached deep within him.
From an increasing distance sounds came to him, the pounding of feet,
shouts, the roar of a gun. Something struck his shoulder, but only
dimly was he aware of it. The last physical bonds were parting.
And then a pulsing darkness enclosed him.
* * * * *
Through the darkness came light, a flicker of motion and a flash of
color, like the beating wings of a butterfly. The light grew, the
darkness vanished. He floated in a gorgeous rainbow-hued brilliance
that shimmered and swirled with the throb of a supernal laboring.
Beyond the brilliance outlines were taking form. He had a sensation of
swift movement--and found himself standing at the edge of the pool in
that bizarrely beautiful other-world garden he remembered so well.
"Haste! Haste!"
"Leeta is going into the fire!"
All around him the thoughts rose, beating at him. He saw the giant
bird, then, and the smaller winged shapes that hovered beyond.
"Haste! Haste!"
The dread anxiety communicated itself to him, kindled a swift purpose.
Sensing what was required of him, he hurried toward the waiting bird,
leaped to its back. It sprang skyward, its huge wings beating. The
garden dropped away, became a mere patch of bright color against the
mottled pattern of the valley floor.
"Haste! Haste!"
Swifter and swifter the huge wings beat. Bryan clutched at the feathers
under him, rocked by the surges of giant muscles, buffeted by the
torrent of air that rushed past.
The valley wall rose ahead, and through a deep cleft in the towering
masses of rock he saw a deadly blue shimmer. The bird descended toward
the cleft--and abruptly he felt its stunned dismay.
"Leeta has gone through the portal! She has reached the fire!"
Anguish flamed in Bryan. He had done this. If Leeta died, it would be
as though he had killed her with his own hands.
"Hurry!" he pleaded. "It may not be too late."
The bird dropped to the rocky ground at the entrance to the cleft.
Sliding from its back, Bryan ran through the opening, to the brink of
that ghastly desolation he had seen once before. He glanced around in
frantic search--and then, below him, he caught sight of a slender white
figure moving through the shimmering blue radiance that blanketed the
desolate landscape.
Too late! Leeta had entered the fire. For a moment the horrible
realization held him rigid, dazed, numbed beyond thought. Then, a
bleak purpose filling him, he hurried after her down a twisting rocky
descent. He might not be able to save Leeta now--but he could die with
her.
The blue radiance rose around him, and he felt its lethal touch. Leeta
was some distance ahead of him, mistily unreal behind the shimmering
curtain. And even as he found her, he saw her stumble, fall. She did
not move again.
With an inner desolation even greater than that of the scene itself, he
made his way over to the girl across the charred, tumbled floor. Gently
he lifted her, carried her back to the cleft. His steps were leaden,
faltering. A burning sensation was spreading through his body. Outlines
were blurring before his eyes, darkening. He forced himself on.
It was not until he emerged through the cleft, not until he lowered
Leeta to the ground, that he gave his ravaged body the oblivion it had
been demanding.
Oblivion--and yet.... In some dim, remote fashion he had a picture
of the great bird, hovering over Leeta and himself on beating wings,
grasping them carefully in its claws, carrying them through the air
over the valley, and then descending with them toward the pool.
Down ... down.... And then a swirling brilliance, a sense of delicious
coolness, of returning strength. He found himself floating in the
pool. And beside him, her liquid eyes even now widening with returning
awareness, was Leeta. He felt the god-like power of the pool throbbing
through him, and he knew that he and Leeta had been cleansed of the
deadly radiation, that life and not death now lay before them. And the
knowledge was a music within him that swelled into a mighty paean of
exultation.
Then he stood with Leeta at the edge of the pool, and she was staring
at him in wild disbelief. The silvery chiming of her thought held a
vast wonder.
"Is it really you? Have you returned--through the veil? Or is this
somehow only a dream?"
He shook his head gently, smiling. "Not a dream, Leeta. I've come
back--and through the veil. Back to stay."
Joy was a sudden brimming brightness in her eyes. "Then the love of
which you told me--it was not just a trick?"
"No--and I'm going to prove it, Leeta." He drew her to him ... and
knew, in the answering pressure of her lips, that he had convinced her.
He felt a deep content. Here was the world of his own that he had
sought, and life had a meaning, a purpose it had lacked. Together he
and Leeta would create a new race, as two others long before them had
done, who had come from a place called Eden....