THE SECRET OF THE CAR
Jack and Henry were overjoyed to see us again, for after our departure
they had fallen into a despondent mood, and began to imagine all sorts of
evil.
"Jo!" was Jack's greeting; "I never was so glad to see anybody in my
life. Edmund, don't you ever go off and leave any of us alone again."
"I'll never leave you again," responded Edmund. "You can count on that."
Then we told them the story of what we had seen, and of what had happened
in the wild Eden that we had visited. They were not so much interested in
the most wonderful thing of all--the combination of sound and color--as
they were in the conduct of Ingra. Jack laughed until he was tired over
Ingra's drunkenness, but he drew a long face when he heard of the
adventure in the car.
"Edmund," he said earnestly, "I am beginning to be of Henry's opinion;
you had better get away from here without losing a moment."
"No," said Edmund, "we'll not go yet. The time hasn't come to run away.
What difference does it make even if Ingra does suspect that the car is
moved by some mechanism instead of by pure magic? He could not understand
it if I should explain it to him."
"But you have said that he is extraordinarily intelligent."
"So he is, but his intelligence is limited by the world he lives in, and
while there are many marvelous things here, nobody has the slightest
conception of inter-atomic force. They have never heard even of
radioactivity. At the same time I don't mean that they shall go nosing
about the car. I'll take care of that."
"But," said Jack, "it grinds me to see that brute Ingra get off scot-free
after trying to murder us. And what has he got against us, anyway? But
for him we should never have had any trouble. He was against us from the
beginning."
"I don't think he was particularly _against_ us at the start," said
Edmund. "Only he was for treating us with less consideration than Ala was
disposed to show. But after the first accidental shooting, and the
drubbing that Juba gave him, naturally his prejudices were aroused, and
he could hardly be blamed for thinking us dangerous. Then, when he found
himself defeated, and his wishes disregarded, on all sides, he began to
hate us. It is easy enough to account for his feelings. Now, since our
recent astonishing triumph, being himself incredulous about our celestial
origin, he will try to undermine us by showing that our seeming miracle
is no miracle at all."
"And you gave him the chance by taking him in the car!" I could not help
exclaiming.
"Yes," said Edmund, with a smile. "I admit that I made a mistake. I
counted too much upon the influence of the sense of mystery. But it will
come out all right."
"I doubt it," I persisted. "He will never rest now until he has found out
the secret."
Nothing more was said on the subject, but Edmund was careful not to leave
the car unguarded. It was always kept afloat, though in contact with the
landing. The expenditure of energy needed to keep it thus anchored
without support was, Edmund assured us, insignificant in comparison with
the quantity stored in his mysterious batteries.
We were not long in finding, on all sides, evidence that our trip up
through the cloud dome had been a master stroke, and that the presumable
incredulity of Ingra with regard to our claims was not shared by others.
He might have his intimates, who entertained prejudices against us
resembling his own, but if so we saw nothing of them. In fact, Ingra was
much less in evidence than before, but I did not feel reassured by that;
on the contrary, it made me all the more fearful of some plot on his
part, and Jack was decidedly of my opinion.
"Hang him!" he said, "he's up to some mischief, and I know it. Much as I
detest him, I'd rather have him _in_ sight than _out_, just now. He makes
me feel like a snake in a bush; if he'd only show his ugly head, or
spring his rattle, I'd be more comfortable."
But the kindness and deference with which we were treated, and the new
wonders that were shown to us in the capital, gradually drove Ingra from
our minds. Now we were permitted to enter the temples without opposition,
our presence there according with our new character of "children of the
sun." We saw the worship that was offered before the solar images by
family parties, and attended, as favored guests, the periodical
ceremonies in the great temple. Edmund confessed that the high priest
greatly embarrassed him by staring into his eyes, and plainly assuming
that he knew things of which he was profoundly ignorant.
"The hardest thing I ever undertook," he said, "is to hold my mind in
suspense during these trying interviews, when he endeavors to read the
depths of my soul, and I to throw a veil over them which he cannot
penetrate."
In some way, Edmund discovered that the high priest and all the priests
connected with the sun worship (and they certainly bore a family
likeness) belonged to a special race, whose roots ran back into the most
remote antiquity, and about whose persons clung a sacredness that placed
them, in some respects, above the royal family itself. We frequently
visited the great library, where Edmund undertook a study of the language
of the printed rolls, though what he made of it I never clearly
understood. I do not think that he succeeded in deciphering any of it. He
also spent much time studying their mechanics and engineering, for which
he professed great admiration.
But most interesting of all to us was what Edmund himself accomplished. I
have told you of his remark about the color-sound music, viz., that he
thought it not impossible that even human senses might be enabled to
appreciate it. Well, he actually realized that wildly improbable dream!
He fitted up a laboratory of his own in which he labored sometimes for
twenty hours at a stretch, and at last he brought to us the astonishing
invention he had made.
I can make no pretense of understanding it; although Edmund declared
that, in substance, it was no more wonderful than a telephone. The
machine consisted of a little metal box. (He made three of them, and I
have mine yet, but it will not work on the earth, and it lies on my table
as I write, serving for the most wonderful paper weight that a man ever
possessed.) When this box was pressed against the ear in front of one of
the revolving disks that threw out blending colors, or in the presence of
a "singing" bird, the most divine harmonies seemed to awake _in the
brain_. I cannot make the slightest approach to a description of the
marvelous phenomenon. One felt his whole being infused with ecstatic
joy. It was the very soul of music itself, celestial, ineffable! The
wonder-box also enabled us to catch many sounds peculiar to the
atmosphere of Venus, formed of vibrations, as Edmund had explained, that
lie outside our gamut. But to these, apart from the music, I could never
listen. They were _too_ abnormal, filling one with inexplicable terror,
as if he had been snatched out of nature and compelled to listen to the
sounds of a preternatural world. The only sound that I ever heard with my
natural ear which bore the slightest resemblance to these was the awful
piercing whistle of the monster that killed Ala's man.
Yet we derived immense pleasure from the possession of those little
boxes. With their aid, we could appreciate the exquisite melodies that
were played everywhere--in great halls where thousands were assembled, in
the temples great and small, and in the homes of the people, to which we
were often admitted. In every house there was on one of the walls a
"musical rose," whose harmonies entranced the visitor. And the variety of
musical _motifs_ seemed to be absolutely without limit. One was never
tired of the entertainment because there was so little repetition.
On one ever-memorable occasion we heard the great national, or, as Edmund
preferred to call it, "racial" hymn, played in the air from the principal
tower. When we had only beheld the play of colors characterizing this
composition we had found it altogether delightful, although, as I have
said, Edmund detected, even then, some underlying tone of sadness or
despair; but when its _sounds_ broke into the brain the effect was
overwhelming. The entire thing seemed to have been "written in a minor
key," of infinite world-embracing pathos. The listener was plunged into
depths of feeling that seemed unfathomable, eternal--and unendurable.
"Heavens!" whispered Jack to me in an awed voice, dropping the box from
his ear, "I can't _stand_ it!"
I saw tears running down his face, and felt them on my own. Edmund and
Henry were equally affected, and could not continue to listen. Edmund
said nothing, but I recalled his words about the traditional belief of
this people that their world had entered upon the last stage of its
existence. Then I watched the countenances about us; they wore an
expression of solemnity, and yet there was something which spoke of an
uplifting pride, awakened by the great paean, and swelling the heart with
memories of interminable ages of past glory.
"Come," said Edmund at last, turning away, "this is not for us. The
measureless sadness we feel, but the triumphant reflection of ancestral
greatness is for them alone. Heavens! what an artist he must have been
who composed this!--if it be not like the Iliad, the work of an age
rather than of a man."
We almost forgot the passage of time in the enjoyment of our now
delightful and untroubled existence, but there came at last a rude
awakening from this life, which had become for us like a dream.
As I have said, we had ceased to worry about Ingra, whom we seldom saw,
and who, when we did see him, gave no indication of continued enmity. At
first we had kept the car under continual surveillance, but as time went
on we became careless in this respect, and at last we did not guard it at
all.
One day, during the time of repose, I happened to be, with Juba, in our
room on that stage of the great tower where the car was anchored, while
Edmund and the others were below in the palace. Juba was already asleep,
and I was lying down and courting drowsiness, when a slight noise outside
attracted my attention. I stepped softly to the door and looked out. The
door of the car was open! Supposing that Edmund was there I approached to
speak to him. By good fortune I was wearing the soft slippers worn by
everybody here, and which we had adopted, so that my footsteps made no
sound.
As I reached the car door and looked in, I nearly dropped in the
intensity of my surprise and consternation. There, at the farther end,
was Ingra, on his knees before the mechanical mouths which swallowed the
invisible elements of power from the air; and beside him was another,
also on his knees, and busy with tools, apparently trying to detach the
things. The explanation flashed over my mind; Ingra had brought a skilled
engineer to aid him in discovering the secret of the car, and, no doubt,
to rob it of its mysterious mechanism. They seemed to fear no
interruption, because Ingra had undoubtedly informed himself of the fact
that for a day or two past we had abandoned the use of our room in the
tower, and taken our repose in our apartments in the palace. It was by
mere chance that Juba and I had, on this occasion, remained so long aloft
that I had decided to take our sleep in the tower room.
Anticipating no surveillance, Ingra was not on his guard, and had no idea
that I was behind him. Instinctively I grasped for my pistol but
instantly remembered that it was with my coat in the room. I tiptoed
back, awoke Juba, making him a sign to be noiseless, got the pistol, and
returned, without a sound, to the open door of the car with Juba at my
heels. They were yet on their knees, with their heads under the shelf,
and I heard the slight grating made by the tool that Ingra's assistant
was using. The pistol was in my hand. What should I do? Shoot him down
without warning, or trust to the strength of Juba to enable us to
overcome them both and make them prisoners?
While I hesitated, and it was but a moment, Ingra suddenly rose to his
feet and confronted us. An exclamation burst from his lips, and the other
sprang up. I covered Ingra with the pistol and pulled the trigger. There
was not a sound! The sickening remembrance then burst over me that I had
not reloaded the pistol since Edmund had emptied its whole chamber in the
closing fight with the tarantula of the swamps. Ingra, followed by his
man, sprang upon me like a tiger. In a twinkling I lay on my back, and
before I could recover my feet, I saw Juba and Ingra in a deadly
struggle, while the other ran away and disappeared. Jumping up I ran to
Juba's assistance, but the fight was so furious, and the combatants
whirled so rapidly, that I could get no hold. I saw, however, that Juba
was more than a match for his opponent, and I darted into the car to get
one of the automatic rifles, thinking that I could use it as a club to
put an end to the struggle if the opportunity should offer. But the
locker was firmly closed and I could not open it. After a minute of vain
efforts I returned to the combatants and found that Juba had nearly
completed his mastery. He had Ingra doubled over his knee and was
endeavoring to pinion his hands.
At this instant, when the victory seemed complete, and our enemy in our
power, Juba uttered a faint cry and fell in a heap. Blood instantly
stained the floor around him, and Ingra, with a bound, dropping a long
knife, attained the door of a nearby chamber, and was out of sight before
I could even start to pursue him. Nevertheless, I ran after him, but
quickly became involved in a labyrinth where it was useless to continue
the search, and where I nearly lost my way.
I then returned to see how seriously Juba had been wounded. He had
crawled into the car. I bent over him--he was dead! The knife had
inflicted a fearful wound, and it seemed wonderful that he could have
made his way unassisted even over the short distance from where he was
struck down to the door of the car.
_Juba dead!_ I felt faint and sick! But the critical nature of the
emergency helped to steady my nerves by giving me something else to think
of and to do. Edmund must be called at once. There were no "elevators"
running regularly during the general hours of repose, and I did not know
the way up and down the tower by the ladder-like stairways which
connected the stages. But there were signals by which the little craft
that served as elevators could be summoned in case of necessity, and I
pulled one of the signal cords. It seemed an age before the air ship
came, and another before I could reach Edmund.
His great self-control enabled him to conceal his grief at my news, but
Jack was overcome. He had really loved Juba almost as if he had been
human and a brother. The big-hearted fellow actually sobbed as if his
heart would break. Then came the reaction, and I should never have
believed that Jack Ashton could exhibit such malevolent ferocity. His
lips all but foamed, as he fairly shouted, striking his big fists
together:
"This'll be _my_ job! Edmund! Peter! You hear me! Don't either of you
dare to lay a hand on _that devil!_ He's _mine!_ Oh! I'll--" But he could
not finish his sentence for gnashing his teeth.
We calmed him as best we could and then summoned an air ship. While we
waited, Edmund suddenly put his hand in his pocket, and withdrawing it
quickly, said, with a bitter smile:
"What a fool I have been in my carelessness. Ingra has had the key
abstracted from my pocket by some thief. That explains how he got the car
open."
The moment the ship came we hurriedly ascended to the platform. When
Edmund saw poor Juba's body lying in the car and learned how he had made
his way there to die, he was more affected than when he first heard of
his death.
"He has died for us," he said solemnly; "he has crawled here as to a
refuge, and here he shall remain until I can bury him among his people in
his old home. Would to God I had never taken him from it!"
"Then you will start at once for the dark hemisphere?" I asked.
"At the earliest possible moment; and it shall be on the way to our own
home."
But we were not to depart before even a more terrible tragedy had
darkened over us, for now the tide of fate was suddenly running at flood.