The spy shook his sparsely-haired head. "No sign of her, Eminence. She
was not with him."
The Diktor tossed a bag of coins to Teoman, gestured the man out. He
snapped an order and went striding back and forth across the room as
the officer hurried out.
The officer came back with two red-clad attendants who wheeled a squat
engine, bulbs and gears locked inside a transparent jacket, before
them. High on the gleaming metal top of the machine stood a vox-phone.
The Diktor bent and put his lips to the vox-phone. He said irritably,
"Subject: the Car Carolan Sea and adjacent territories. Query: What, if
anything, of scientific value is reputedly found in that region?"
There was a faint hum of the gears and pistons. A soft, gentle voice
replied, "The flaming Land and the Desert of Dead White Stones border
the Car Carolan Sea to the west. To the east is the continent of Karr
Major. To the south the ice floes that are barren. To the north, the
polar regions. Beyond the Flaming Land is an inland sea fed underground
by waters from the Car Carolan. Beyond that sea lies the desert. It is
an uninhabited land. There is nothing of scientific import there aside
from the volcanic region of the Flaming Land."
The machine clicked and died. The Diktor sighed. He would have to go
and see Stasor. He did not want to do that because he had a feeling
that the members of the Elder Race did not approve of him and his
methods.
* * * * *
Even far out at sea Angus felt the heat coming toward him in surging
waves. Mists, formed from water heated to the boiling point, rose like
a white pall to shelter the Flaming Lands from his eyes. But here and
there, through a breeze-made rift, he could see huge tongues of fire,
red and sullen, rising from the ground.
Angus drove the globe-ship into the white fog. Gigantic bubbles broke
under it, flung mists and steam up over the ship. Inside the glober the
heat was fierce.
Angus was clammy with the sweat running down his cheeks and ribs. It
was sapping his energies. When the controls started to blur in his eyes
he knew he had enough. His fingers touched the warm control lever and
threw it forward.
He fled miles from the mist and slowed to a stop, riding the ocean's
swell. He muttered, "I'm through. Finished. I can't go over and I can't
go under ... or can I? Didn't Plisket say something about that?
Wait ... wait ... sure! He said this thing will submerge."
Angus got up and crossed the room. There was a small literatum inset
in the metal wall. He ran his eyes over titles, reached up and brought
down a thick book on geophysiology.
He bent, consulting pages on subterranean oceanology. His finger
pointed out a paragraph. "From the Car Carolan Sea an underground river
feeds the inland sea that lies between the Flaming Lands and the Desert
of Dead White Stones."
It took him a long time, hunting blindly in the heated water all
around him. He went deep, trundling across the jagged ocean bottom.
The oxygenerators were laboring when he found the great dark orifice
looming ahead in his sea-lights.
It was close work, maneuvering the glober through the sea-tunnel. All
around was the muted booming of volcanic fires sending up hot jets of
molten lava, flame and ashes. Water swirled, black and thickish, past
the rounded hull.
When the water lightened, he knew they were out of the tunnel. Angus
sent the glober rocketing upward. It burst through the water into clear
air. The Flaming Lands lay behind. Ahead, across the bluish expanse
that was the inland sea, lay a vast stretch of sand and rock.
Angus anchored the globe-ship. He dove overboard and swam to the
whitish sands. The sun was warm above and the hot sand bit through
his leather boots. Angus threw a big canteen across his shoulder and
fastened a small packet of food tablets around his waist.
He walked for two days and a night before he found the half-sunken road
that arched across the desert. The road ended four days later, in the
barrens. His water was gone and the leathern pocket that had held food
tablets was empty.
"I can't turn back," he thought. "I've been gone a whole week from the
inland sea."
Angus turned and stumbled on. The sun beat down on his naked shoulders,
on the remnants of the sun-worn rags about his middle. With each puff
of sand his feet kicked up, something went out of his spirit.
Angus saw a brown rock uplifting its jagged tip from the sand. He ran
awkwardly toward it, hoping that from its top he might see the spires
of a distant, nebulous city. But there was only sand and more twisted,
curving dunes, and the faint azure tint of the horizon.
He stood on the naked finger of rock and swore. He invoked the olden
gods--the fecund Ashtal, goddess of love and sex; Grom who fought
with warriors; Jethad who loved the wise. He called on them for their
attention and he cursed them, upwards and down, forward and back.
In his rage he took the empty canteen and hurled it.
Choking, he broke off in mid-curse.
_The canteen had disappeared in midair!_
* * * * *
The Hierarch made fists out of his taloned hands. The cowled man, bent
before his carven chair, trembled. The Hierarch whispered, "Are you
sure?"
"We followed his spectragraph in the screen, Excellency. We followed it
until it disappeared!"
The black orbs in the thin white face of the chief scientist burned
with fanatical ardor. Through thin lips he rasped, "He tricked me.
He had those pirates of his pick him up when he was safely out of my
hands."
"He went through the Flaming Lands," quavered the cowled man. "We saw
him do that. Would he go to all that trouble to be picked up in the
desert? He could have escaped from the Car Carolan Sea."
"Evidence of his cunning. He wanted to make sure he was a good distance
away from the power of the Diktor."
"The Diktor?"
"You fool! I'm going to the Diktor and turn Moana over to his
torturers. I'll tell him Angus planned with Moana to kill him. Hai. The
torturers will work over her a long time, I think. When Angus hears of
that...."
The Hierarch brooded. He smiled, "I might even turn that into a trap
for him. When he returns, having heard what has happened to Moana, I'll
be waiting for him."
* * * * *
Angus slid down from the rock with his heart in his mouth. _The canteen
flew out into the air_, he thought. _It went high, and as it came down
it disappeared!_
There was something just ahead of him. Perhaps a force field hidden in
the shifting and eddying mists rising from the desert lands.
If he could find the canteen and discover what made it invisible....
Angus was weak. His knees crumpled as he tried to take a forward step.
He summoned the muscles and the nerves of his big, gaunt body. He went
forward one step, then two.
At the third step he fell. He put out his hands.
They parted the grey mists in front of him but did not break his fall.
His naked knees hit rounded stone and then his palms went out and
touched the worn pavings of a city street.
"Gods!" the pirate whispered, lifting his head, blue eyes burning like
coals in his tanned face.
The gray mists shifted, fading. From their wisps, as though like the
flesh of a naked woman revealed by smoky veils, shone queerly rounded
and smoothly curved walls of amaranthine and ocher, red and jonquil
yellow. Here and there a dome of pearly champagne stood tipped with a
knob of vermilion. The houses on the edge of the city were low, seeming
to rise higher and higher toward the center where a tall, slender
building reared its spire.
Red Angus drew a deep breath, running his hands down the ridged muscles
of his thighs. He turned and stared behind him where the hot sands
ought to be. He saw only gray mists, shifting and shimmering.
Angus went down the street, past empty-windowed buildings, across bare
intersections, his foot-falls loud in the stillness of the dead city.
He walked until the entrance to the central tower was in front of him.
Crested with heraldic devices--Red Angus recognized the flame-eyed
Stallion of forgotten Shallar and the rampant Dragon of Domeer--the
wide door was a glittering mass of emeralds embedded in carvings so
delicate they seemed sheared from paper.
The doors opened at a touch, revealing red-and-yellow squares of metal
stretching forward beneath a glittering dome of translucent jade. In
the center of the hall stood a low metal rim about a bubble of grayish
green iridescence. He went toward the rim, bent over and stared down.
"One of the black pools!" whispered Angus.
Through the luminescent bubble he could see only blackness, a jet
nothingness that seemed alive.
* * * * *
A step sounded on the metal flagging behind him.
Angus whirled.
A man stood there, leaning on a bent staff, smiling gently. He was clad
in a loose woolen garment, white as falling snow. His arms and legs
were bare and brown. His face, though lined and creased, seemed almost
youthful.
"I have waited many years," he said softly, "and no one ever came.
Now--at last--there is someone who has found the city. Welcome. I bid
you welcome to the Tower of the Ancients!"
"Stasor!" cried Angus in sudden recognition.
"The Stasor you know, yes. One of my race is chosen to spend a hundred
years as Guardian of the City, to wait for any who might come to seek
its treasures. You are the first who ever found it."