The Silver Sphere
For several days longer, Sam continued his labors in the laboratory.
During that time "Alexander," the flying plant, developed remarkably.
Before we moved, it had a wing-spread of two or three feet. I have
spoken of its intelligence. It soon learned to flutter to the guns when
we were preparing to hunt. Sam talked to it incessantly, and declared
that it could understand him. He said it could even make its thoughts
known by the varying pattern of colors on its fringe of brilliant
membrane. Presently he had it trained to dry dishes and to do other
similar tasks in the galley.
Of course the thing never learned to speak. In fact, it was devoid
of vocal organs, and incapable of making a sound, though its hearing
seemed to be good enough. It appeared to communicate its emotions and
thoughts by means of changes of color in the tissue-like membrane that
I have termed a flower. And, from a strictly scientific point of view,
communication by light, or sight, is quite as logical as communication
by sound.
Sam examined the black, rod-like organs projecting from the flower on
the thing, and said that each of them bore thousands of tiny eyes, like
the compound eyes of an insect.
After we had been in the vicinity for perhaps two weeks by upper
world time, we started the Omnimobile's great motors again, and moved
northward. I had not told Xenora about my talk with Sam--our minds
were too closely attuned to require much conversation. I knew that she
understood that our maneuver would probably mean our sacrifice to the
cause of the world. She said nothing of it, but I thought I detected a
sadness in her manner.
During all the hours that Sam had been in his laboratory, alone or
with Alexander, I had spent most of the time with Xenora. We wandered
together about the meadows, or sat in the cabin to escape the almost
intolerable heat. Always I loved her more, brimming as she was with
humor and sympathy and love. And bitterly I cursed the fate that was
dragging us both to our doom!
Even at the beginning, Sam's scientific achievements had been so far
above my understanding, that I would scarcely comprehend them, and his
later speculations regarding the menace of the abyss were so abstruse
that I quite failed to follow them. His little workshop forward was
crammed with strange machinery, some of it humming incessantly. Indeed,
his apparatus was still keeping up the interference that prevented the
freezing of the earth!
Sam had been signally unsuccessful in getting any scientific
information from Xenora, for the simple reason that she had none to
impart. But, from her geographical knowledge, he attempted to draw a
map, showing the locations of Lothar, of Mutron, and of the pit of the
Lord of Flame.
[Illustration: _The Map that Sam and Xenora Drew._]
It seemed that there was a strip a score of miles in width between the
farther blue walls of the abyss and the great lake we had seen. The pit
of Xath seemed to be a great crater lying in that strip. On the brink
of the crater Xenora located her "City of the Sleepers," or Mutron. The
domain of the last city of Lothar, where she had spent her childhood,
lay along the cliffs far to the west of there.
Our boldest plan of action would have been to hurl the machine, by
means of the rocket tubes, into the abyss in a direct attack on the
Lord of Flame; but Sam, for reasons he did not divulge, doubted the
success of such a maneuver. He wished to keep up his researches, and
possibly to visit the city of Lothar. His apparatus told him that
hidden forces were again stirring in the ether.
For ten hours we moved toward the north, making a long detour to
westward to keep within a valley, and always trying to take advantage
of such cover as was offered by the purple trees. The country was,
for the most part, rolling and green, with the great flowering trees
dotting the hills and plains but sparsely. The blazing radiation of the
eternal crimson day was undiminished, but the temperature fell slightly
with increased altitude.
Xenora and I were together at the cabin control-board, driving the
machine; and Sam was in the conning-tower, with the little gun, ready
for emergencies. When we had been moving for some ten hours, we mounted
a low, bare hill, and saw in the little green valley before us a
thicker forest of the bright purple trees, offering good cover for the
machine.
We had crossed the summit, and I had increased the speed to ten miles
per hour in haste to reach the trees, in spite of Sam's fear that the
operation of the motors at anything like full capacity would create a
disturbance in the ether that our hidden enemies would pick up.
Suddenly I saw a strange thing skimming along over the bright forest
before us--in our direction! It looked like a bright silver globe,
many feet in diameter! It floated a few hundred feet above the trees,
drifting smoothly along like a bright metal balloon in a very swift
wind. There was no visible propulsive mechanism.
I shouted a warning to Sam through the speaking tube, to stand by his
little gun.
Xenora laid a light hand on my shoulder and said, in a tense voice: "It
is the Sleepers of Mutron, the slaves of the Lord of Flame! They will
fight to death--they know not fear!"
As the silver sphere drifted swiftly and silently down upon us,
as though borne by an invisible wind, twice I caught a glimpse of
a slender ray of purple flame, that darted out of it and moved
searchingly over the bare greensward below. And then a rich purple beam
fell suddenly and intensely upon the Omnimobile!
When that misty finger of purple light discovered us, I saw a strange
vortex of pale green fire spring up about the globe and reach out in
our direction. Suddenly I realized that this ship was of the same
appearance as the weird thing that had destroyed our cottage! Small
hope, I thought, if that force of atomic disintegration were to be
released again!
I heard the rapid crashing of the machine gun, as Sam began to fire,
and presently bursts of smoke appeared about the gleaming sphere.
But to hit a relatively small and rapidly moving target even a mile
away is no mean feat of marksmanship. I drove rapidly for the purple
wood, but with little hope of getting there before the terrible red
disintegration had melted us away.
Suddenly I heard the drone of some of Sam's new machinery going into
action. He had mounted his switches and dials in the conning-tower,
so he could control it from where he stood. Vivid blue electric flame
quivered and flashed over the metal parts of the machine as his new
weapons went into play!
The floating globe of silver drifted nearer, and the misty vortex of
green fire about us grew more intense. A strange red glow stole over
the vegetation around us, and a solitary purple tree ahead burst into
crimson flame. Then the sparkling fingers of purple fire reached out at
us again from the sphere. I wondered vaguely why the strange force was
not acting upon us. I did not know, until it was all over, that Sam's
vacuum tubes had set up a repulsive screen in the ether, protecting us
from the electronic vortex!
Abruptly an intensely bright, blinding tongue of white flame leapt
toward the silver thing from the great platinum electrode on the nose
of the Omnimobile! Sam had turned loose his electric arc! The flame
struck the globe, impinging upon it like a jet of fire, converting it
into a ball of supernal light!
Then it fell! It plunged toward the forest in a gleaming curve! The
green vortex of the disintegrator ray was gone, and the purple fingers
shone no longer! The incandescent shell crashed out of sight beyond the
purple trees!