THE CRIMSON RAINBOW.
“You shall interpret for me, child Nereid, if we wish to talk at a
distance.” Rhana stood before us. “And you, Jeff Grant, are you ready?
You shall see me, the great woman conqueror!”
She was garbed rather differently now. At first I did not understand
the reason. Ah, but I was soon to know! The same sheathlike body
shield; same type of cloak; same grotesque metal headdress. But on her
gray bare limbs a strip of flexible metal was fastened, hinged at the
knee to bend as she walked; a metal plate like a broad collar was on
her neck and shoulders. The chains that usually dangled from her wrists
were gone. Along her arms, as on her legs, were strips of gray metal,
wound, it seemed, with tiny white wire.
She stood regarding me with impassive face. “You are ready, Jeff Grant?”
“Yes.”
She moved away. I thought as she walked, that her arms were joined to
her body-shield by folds of black fabric.
It was late afternoon. Against the fading daylight Rhana wore
dark-lensed glasses. She offered a pair to me, but I refused them. She
adjusted a pair on Nereid. Strange woman! Impassive, expressionless
now; calmly imperturbable. Yet within her there was that obvious
vanity. I should see her triumph; she wished even Nereid to witness it.
We boarded the aëro. A crowd of Gian women stood silently in the
passage and watched us off. We lifted gently; moved forward, up and
into the afternoon twilight of the Lowlands.
We were all in the forward control room. There seemed no one aboard
save us who were here. Nereid and I, and Rhana; and two Gian women, and
two men. One of the men was Bhool. He had no glasses. He sat crouched
in a corner, shading his eyes, and did not speak. Occasionally Rhana
issued him some gruff order. He moved to obey, and stumbled in the
light.
The others all wore the glasses. The two women were at the controls;
the other man stood alert with a weapon upon Nereid and me.
The control room was about twenty feet square and ten feet high to its
curved cabin roof. It occupied the full width of the aëro, except for
the narrow deck which flanked it on both sides. There were several wide
transparent window panes.
Looking forward to where the bowsprit glowed luminous ahead of us was a
broad streamline window, V-shaped.
The controls were there on a table--a row of small switches and
domelike buttons, with an array of strange instruments of navigation on
a board over them.
To one side, in the front pane, a projector was mounted, a bowl-like
black projector with a grid of wires across its face. Its mechanism
stood separate on a table near it--a range-finder like a small
telescope swung in a universal; dials, and levers, and a coil, with
wires to a storage tank that lay along the wall.
It was a short flight--we had not far to go. My heart was unreasonably
pounding as I sat by Nereid, watching and waiting. The details of the
meeting had been carefully arranged; there could be, Nereid was sure,
no error. A lone, unarmed plane with a white banner to meet us at the
Zero-level. The foreign minister would take off from it in a small
helicopter and descend to us. He would come aboard, at Rhana’s mercy,
trusting to her honor.
The world would offer every conciliation to her; land should be hers,
for her people to live here in our world, at peace with us. There would
be, when the meeting took place, another earth plane in the far upper
distance. It would carry Dr. Plantet, Polly and a corps of observers
with a telescopic image-finder by which our world would see in the
mirrors this friendly meeting. Propaganda to insure a friendly public
spirit, so that the new race could come and settle and be welcomed.
Nereid had been very earnest. “Do you understand all that I say?”
And Rhana had said: “Yes, of course,” with impassive face and a tone
devoid of any feeling.
* * * * *
We flew away from the setting sun, upward in a long slant toward the
Zero-level. The control room was silent. Rhana sat alone to one side.
Bhool crouched in a corner. The two Gian women were intent at their
instruments. Near the center of the room Nereid and I sat together,
with our guard watching us.
The windows were broad and clear. The abyss moved past us, their gaunt,
rounded cliffs moving backward and dropping away as we mounted. To the
west, high above our level, a golden glow marked the setting sun. It
was behind us, and we faced a silver night, moonlight streaming above
the dark elevations in the murky distance.
Occasionally Nereid would whisper to me. “It will be all right, Jeff?”
A hope, a prayer. But I noticed that she was very watchful, her gaze
roving the cabin, remarking all its details.
Once Rhana turned. “Nereid, child, do you hear from them now?”
“No. But I am sure they are coming.”
At last we saw ahead of us, a thousand or two thousand feet above us,
the plane with its streaming banner. It circled like a giant bird,
with motionless outspread wings. The gold of the sun and the silver of
the rising moon mingled upon it. But the yellow faded; it soon turned
silver, ghostlike.
An added tenseness had come to all of us in the cabin. The goggled
women at the controls looked questioningly for Rhana’s orders. Our
flight slackened; we hovered, with the plane almost over us. Its banner
fluttered, a long silver streamer in the moonlight. The shadows of the
abyss gathered beneath us; the cabin, to my eyes, was dim; moonlight
came in the side windows and lay in white liquid pools on the floor; it
bathed the control table; it etched with silver lines the dark figures
of the two women sitting watchfully there.
We were evidently just beneath the Zero-level; the abyss was a dark
void some ten or twelve thousand feet down to an undulating rocky
floor. I gazed up at the cabin ceiling. Through the transparent pane
there I could see the plane with its white banner. Slowly circling,
evidently making ready to put out its helicopter.
Nereid whispered: “Did you see the newscasters’ aëro, as they call it?”
“Yes.”
I had seen it, indeed. The plane carrying Polly. It could still be
seen--a tiny dark speck up in the distant silver sky. Nereid said aloud
to Rhana:
“There is the aërocar watching us.” Her voice was earnest, tense,
vibrating with her emotion. “You see it off there? This world watching
us, great Rhana--to see your friendly greeting--to welcome you--”
Rhana moved toward us in the shadows with her soundless, catlike tread.
“So? Yes, I see it. You say they have instruments to see us clearly
from such a distance? That is very good.” Her tone was emotionless.
She moved away like a gray shadow. For a moment I did not notice her.
My attention was fixed on the ghostly outlines of the plane over us.
It bore now a small light; in the glow I saw the helicopter in its
bracket; the figure of the kindly gray-haired foreign director--I
recalled him well--showed in the helicopter seat.
My heart stopped, and then wildly plunged. Incredible, this that I was
seeing! From our cabin a light sprang upward. It glowed, narrowed to
a beam. It caught the plane up there. The fluttering white banner of
truce shriveled and burned. The plane rocked. It tilted; rocked and
swayed in the grip of the light.
Incredible! I was on my feet with Nereid clinging to me in stupefied
horror. The Gian man sprang, a gray menacing shadow in the gloom of
the cabin--sprang and crouched between me and Rhana. His weapon was
leveled upon me. Rhana was bending tense over the projector mechanism.
It hissed, snapped and hummed with its current.
The plane up there was rocking, struggling in the grip of the beam like
a wounded bird. Coming down.
It only lasted an instant. Then Rhana snapped off the light. I stared,
transfixed with horror. The silver shape of the plane swayed crazily.
It was on fire; red tongues of flame licked at it. The light sprang
again; caught it; tilted it over--left it. The plane flopped in an arc,
righted, and flopped again. At our level now. Then below us. With its
crazy swoops the red-yellow flames streamed from it.
Down--then I saw it whirl in a dive. A red-flaming torch, dropping,
spinning downward with a line of flame and smoke like a tail streaming
above it. Down--dwindling as it fell into the abyss. A tiny red spot
down in the darkness--a flaming falling torch. A soundless impact down
there, with a faint red glow where it lay.
* * * * *
In the dark tenseness of our cabin Rhana’s voice rang out. Triumphant
now. “You see, Jeff Grant, how Rhana rules this world?”
A minute. It had taken no more than a minute. Sixty seconds is
sometimes an eternity. I stood confused, my senses groping with the
shock of these whirling events.
“Oh, Jeff!” Nereid’s voice; her hand plucking to turn me. I saw through
the side window, far off to the west where the sun had been golden,
but now there was only the purple night--saw a white flare puff like a
bomb. The Gian encampment was off there.
Rhana’s voice came sharply. “What is that?”
It was no Gian light-flare. She was surprised, and she rasped: “What is
that?”
It caught little Nereid; confused with horror, she blurted: “The earth
attacking you--you have broken faith!”
And then there was a red-yellow spot like a bursting shell in the
distant darkness. It seemed, after an interval, that we could hear very
faintly in the heavy air of the abyss, the muffled explosion.
“You--have broken faith--”
Amazement swept Rhana; amazement and a dawning wild anger. “Attacking?
Your earth dares attack--me?” She stood half crouching behind the Gian
man whose weapon was still levied at Nereid and me. “Attacking?” The
moonlight caught her hawklike gray face, showed it distorted now with
fury. “So? I will show them! Why, there will be millions of them dead
in another day--”
She straightened; issued swift orders to the women at the controls.
Our aëro began rising. My thoughts whirled. Sixty seconds. It had
been enough time for that watching plane to radio Washington; and for
Washington to order its army, already assembled in the abyss, to the
attack. Another red explosion showed off there.
We were rising swiftly. I whispered: “Nereid, what is she going to do?”
“She--oh, Jeff, she’ll rush to the Highlands, find some great city,
loose the disease broadcast, pollute your great cities!”
To-night, in one flight, spread death over the world. Thoughts are
swift-flying things. The red spot in the abyss where the plane had
fallen was still almost beneath us. Nereid was whispering to me
vehemently, but my thoughts flew afield.
The observing plane with Polly and Dr. Plantet could never follow our
nearly thousand-mile-an-hour flight. A few hours in the moonlight over
the Highlands, loosing the germs of that foul disease, polluting the
air of our great cities! It would sweep our continents. What use if, in
her demoniac, unreasoning fury, Rhana was finally brought down? What
if our attacking army back there were able to annihilate the Gians?
They would drive the Gians out of the grottos in a few days, no doubt.
What of it? An uncontrollable plague would be sweeping our world,
bringing death to millions.
But what was Nereid saying? Her vehement whispers penetrated my
consciousness; her fingers were digging into my arm.
“That little coil, there at the edge of the control table--you see it?
I can get to it with a sudden leap. I know what that coil controls. If
I could tear it with my fingers--”
The confusion of my thoughts dropped away. Death? There is a calmness
comes to one who finds death at hand. It seemed that all my thoughts
were sharpening--all my senses sharp and clear to hear Nereid’s
whispered words of death.
“--tear it, rip it away. It controls the current in the side pontoons,
Jeff. If I break it, we will fall. You see? Fall the way the plane
fell--kill us all.”
Was the burning plane still almost beneath us? An eternity passed in
these few whispering seconds.
* * * * *
“I’ll jump at the table, Jeff. You leap on the guard. He’ll fire at
you--he’ll forget me. You see?”
“Nereid--death, now?”
“Yes. We’ll fall--but Jeff, those millions of people!”
Death? Why, Polly was in that distant plane--Polly! I would never see
her again.
“Death, Nereid? You are right. Those millions of people or just us.”
“Arturo--and your Polly--will remember us.”
Her fingers seemed pressing a good-by. I answered it. Polly’s face was
shining in my mind. Good-by, Polly--
“Jeff, when I start to move, you leap. Now--”
“You wait, Nereid! A second after the guard has come after me! Your
best chance then.”
The figure of Bhool had come crouching toward us. He shouted a warning:
“Rhana!”
It may have distracted the guard. A rush of confusion was in the
moonlit cabin. I leaped low at the guard’s legs; the upward desperate
sweep of my arm struck his weapon; its stab missed me. Nereid’s leap
landed her at the control table. The two women and Rhana were upon her;
but her frantic clutching hands ripped and tore at the little coil.
The cabin seemed to lurch; the shafts of moonlight swayed. Through the
windows the abyss was turning over.
We were falling, irrevocably. Every one in the cabin knew it. Death!
The strife among us ceased abruptly; the women cast Nereid away and
Bhool gave a long piercing scream of terror.
Falling.
But I saw Rhana spread her arms. Black folds of fabric hung like wings
from them to her body. The metal strips on her limbs and her metal
collar glowed green with a current in them. She flung open the door,
gripping its casement to steady herself. I heard her words clearly. “So
you wish death, you fools!”
Realization swept me. She wore a device like the pontoons of this
aëro to protect her, as a parachute once protected the old-fashioned
aviator. She was on the deck.
I recall snatching up Nereid, then leaped with her and caught Rhana
at the rail. We three went over into the uprushing void. Rhana was
struggling silently, and her arms flapped like a frantic bird. The wind
rushed up at us. An endless fall. Momentarily I was aware of a gray
shape like an arrow plunging past. A muffled, splintering crash came
from below, where the aëro lay, mangled metal upon the rocks.
Rhana fought to cast me off, but I was far stronger. My arm was crooked
about her throat, and I held Nereid with the other. The glowing metal
on Rhana burned against my flesh. We fell--a fluttering gray bird with
two enemies clinging to it, pulling it down with their weight. Rhana’s
fingers tore at me futilely. I tightened my grip about her throat. I
think I recall a crack. Rhana went limp.
A black surface of rock rushed up at us and struck us.
* * * * *
“Jeff! Come back to me.” Soft, whispered, woman’s voice; soft arms were
holding me. “Jeff, dear--please!”
I struggled back to consciousness as though from an emptiness remote.
This was Polly’s voice; these were her arms. I murmured: “Polly, dear?”
There was a dark confusion around me; but in the midst of it I lay
and knew that I was unhurt. And Polly was here, with me at last. Dr.
Plantet was examining me; he said I was unharmed. I remembered Nereid.
“Polly, where is she?”
Then Dr. Plantet’s voice: “She’s all right, Jeff. Here she is.”
And Nereid’s voice: “Is he safe? I--I was afraid it had killed him.”
All like a dream. My head was whirling with it, and my ears roared. But
I found myself sitting up, with Polly helping me. Dark rocks; heavy
air, making me gasp. Grim dark shadows, but the moonlight hung a great
silver canopy far overhead.
Other figures were here, and Dr. Plantet’s plane stood near by. Its
engine smoked; its navigators were moving about it anxiously. A red
glow a mile away showed where the other plane had fallen. And nearer,
there was a tangled mass of gray-white metal. Rhana’s aëro.
“No one left in it alive,” said some one. “We’ve been there.”
And Rhana--she lay here on the rocks, broken, crumpled. I did not go to
look at her.
“Neck broken,” said Dr. Plantet. “Broken when she struck.”
I let it pass.
A man came up. “I don’t know if we can get up out of here with that
engine. The Allen climber is the worst type for a depth like this.”
“We’ll start.” Dr. Plantet helped me up. “Good enough, Jeff--you’re
fine. You want to start now, Smithby--we’re ready.”
Nereid, unhurt and gently smiling, stood before me. My body, and
perhaps Rhana’s, had broken her fall. She murmured to Polly: “We said
good-by to you and Arturo up there. I’m so glad, Jeff, it did not have
to be good-by--not for you and Polly.”
But Arturo?
There was a distant shout. Two figures, half a mile away, were
clambering down the rocks, shouting weakly.
They came. Our men from the plane here rushed out to meet them, and
came back, carrying the two bloodstained, tattered figures, covered
with mud and slime. Their torn and bleeding feet were wrapped with
cloth into bulky bundles.
Reunion. A babble of voices. I stood confused, my ears still roaring,
my legs weak from the shock of the fall. I heard Tad’s cheery, tired
voice. I saw Arturo carried past me, and glimpsed his haggard white
face, his eyes burning with fever. The man set him down. Arturo stood;
he called; and I saw Nereid run like a child into his opened arms.
* * * * *
One scene more--an hour later, as from the cabin of the Allen climber
we gazed down into the abyss. We had come up laboring. At the
Zero-level we soared to the west. The full moon was well above the
horizon behind us. Beneath, the Lowlands were white with patches of
moonlight, black with inky shadows. Ahead some twenty miles and a few
thousand feet down, the jagged ridge of the Moon Mountains lay white
and black, sharp-etched as a lunar landscape.
The abyss was like a great deep bowl, rising everywhere to a dim high
horizon. To the south the tremendous slope rose toward the Carolines.
Our earth artillery had been sent there--a precautionary measure if the
truce should fail.
We could see now the bombardment proceeding--the Essen fire-shells
rising in a tremendous hundred-mile arc, dropping, pounding the Moon
ridge; some of them releasing their gases.
Over the ridge a covey of war-planes hung, directing the range.
Occasionally a light-flare was dropped. Bombs were dropping. We could
see them strike. The noise was like a muttering muffled thunder in the
distance.
The Gians had evidently remained inactive. Then we saw their attacking
light-beams spring up. The planes scattered--some of them were caught.
But the slow bombardment from a hundred miles away, went methodically
on. It would take days.
Smithby, at my elbow, babbled of the earth plans. And questioned me
avidly.
With my information to give our authorities, we could land planes
closer; send in an army, fighting in the grottos--or perhaps the
artillery could pound this porous ridge to pieces in a week or two.
Could the enemy retreat farther underground? We would have to stop that.
If we could get the wind right, our gas-shells would fill those
caverns--smoke the enemy out like bees. And if we could get them out
into the daylight, blinded--
Nereid’s cry silenced him. “The Middge! Look!”
From the dark northern horizon a crimson light came in a beam. Light,
or fire? A beam of something, crimson as a blood-stream. It rose from
the northern distance; like a gigantic crimson jet of fluid it arched
up and fell. An arc, huge as a rainbow--a rainbow of blood across the
void of the abyss. Its distant source we could not see; its end fell
here upon the Mountains of the Moon and drenched them with its crimson.
The planes overhead winged away; the earth bombardment stopped. We
approached within ten miles or so, with our image-finder trained upon
the scene.
Smithby could never forget his mission; our snapping sender flashed out
the image to be caught and relayed over the world. Hundreds of millions
of people everywhere sat tense at their mirrors watching the silent red
scene.
Rainbow of blood-light falling upon the dark Moon Mountain ridge. A
great round pool glowing at the end of the rainbow. The mountains were
melting; as though they were molds of black and white wax under the
heat of a pressure torch, they melted.
The rainbow end moved over, slowly traveling along the ridge, melting
it away--wax fuming, bubbling and plowing in lava streams down the
slopes. The nearer end of the ridge where first the blood-light had
struck was a depression now--a great caldron where the ridge had been;
a caldron of fused molten rock, viscous, cooling from yellow-red to red
and then to black. Along the whole length of the ridge the blood-red
rainbow sprayed its penetrating heat.
A silent, red inferno. And presently there were dim muffled sounds as
underground gases exploded; and the hiss of the licking gas flames.
We could feel the heat. The glare rose and painted all the sky with
blood.
Abruptly the crimson rainbow was gone. The Moon ridge shad vanished
into a boiling trench of lava, topped by hungry licking red-green
tongues of flame, with a huge black gas-cloud, rolling up.
The fires cooled and died. The red turned slowly black. The trench
lay naked and dead in the moonlight--fused rock cooling into shapes
fantastic. A dead, empty trench with a gray mantle of ashes sifting
down upon it, to mark where the Gians had been.