The Fire People, Ray Cummings [best thriller books to read .txt] 📗

Miela would prefer no one else did. You understand, Bob?" [Pg 63]

I did understand; and of course I had to be satisfied with that.

"It seems to me," I said when, later in the day, we were discussing affairs in Wyoming, "that with things in Mercury as we now know they are, it would help the situation tremendously if Tao and these Twilight People with him were prevented from ever returning."

"That's my idea exactly," Professor Newland agreed.

I could see by the look on his face he was holding on to this thought as a possibility that might make Alan's plan unnecessary.

"I've thought about it constantly," the professor said, "ever since these facts first came to us through Miela. It would be important. With his expedition here a total failure, I think we might assume that nothing more would be done up there in attempting to conquer the earth. I've tried to make Alan see that we should give the authorities all the information we have. It might help—something might be accomplished—"

"Nothing would, father," Alan interrupted. "There wouldn't be time. And even if this expedition of Tao's were destroyed, I don't see why that's any guarantee another attempt would not be made. Miela doesn't, either, and she ought to know.

"Besides, don't you see, Bob"—he turned to me earnestly—"I can't have the eyes of the world turned on Miela and her affairs? Why, think of it—this little woman sent to Washington, questioned, photographed, written about, made sport of, perhaps, in the newspapers! And all for nothing. It is unthinkable."

"You may be right, my boy," said the professor sadly. "I am giving in to you, but I still—"

"The thing has come to me," said Alan. "A duty—a responsibility put squarely up to me. I've accepted it. I'll do my best all the way."

A week after Alan and Miela were married the report came that the Mercutians had suddenly departed, abandoning, after partly destroying, their apparatus. The world for a few days was in trepidation, fearing a report that they had landed somewhere else, but no such report came.

[Pg 64]

Three days later Alan and Miela followed them into space.

Professor Newland, Beth and I went up the bayou with them that morning they left. We were a solemn little party, none of us seemingly wishing to voice the thoughts that possessed us all.

Professor Newland never spoke once during the trip. When the moment of final parting came he kissed Miela quietly, and, pressing Alan's hand, said simply: "Good luck, my boy. We appreciate what you are doing for us. Come back, some day, if you can."

Then he faced about abruptly and trudged back to the launch alone, as pathetic a figure as I have ever seen. We all exchanged our last good‑bys, little Beth in tears clinging to Alan, and then kissing Miela and making her promise some day to come back with Alan when he had accomplished his mission.

Then they entered the vehicle. Its heavy door closed. A moment later it rose silently—slowly at first, then with increasing velocity until we could see it only as a little speck in the air above us. And then it was gone.

CHAPTER XII.
THE LANDING ON MERCURY. (Narrative continued by Alan Newland.)

With hardly more than a perceptible tremor our strange vehicle came to rest upon the surface of Mercury. For a moment Miela and I stood regarding each other silently. Then she left her station at the levers of the mechanism and placed her hands gently on my shoulders. "You are welcome, my husband, here to my world."

I kissed her glowing, earnest face. We had reached our journey's end. My work was about to begin—upon my own efforts now depended the salvation of that great world I had left behind. What difficulties, what dangers, would I have to face, here among the people of this strange planet? I thrilled with awe at the thought of it; and I prayed God then to hold me firm and steadfast to my purpose.

[Pg 65]

Miela must have divined my thoughts, for she said simply: "You will have great power here, Alan; and it is in my heart that you will succeed."

We slid back one of the heavy metallic curtains and looked out through the thick glass of the window. It was daylight—a diffused daylight like that of a cloudy midday on my own earth. An utterly barren waste met my gaze. We seemed to have landed in a narrow valley. Huge cliffs rose on both sides to a height of a thousand feet or more.

These cliffs, as well as the floor of the valley itself, shone with a brilliant glare, even in the half light of the sunless day. They were not covered with soil, but seemed rather to be almost entirely metallic, copper in color. The whole visible landscape was devoid of any sign of vegetation, nor was there a single living thing in sight.

I shuddered at the inhospitable bleakness of it.

"Where are we, Miela?"

She smiled at my tone. It was my first sight of Mercury except vague, distant glimpses of its surface through the mist coming down.

"You do not like my world?"

She was standing close beside me, and at her smiling words raised one of her glorious red wings and spread it behind me as though for protection. Then, becoming serious once more, she answered my question.

"We are fortunate, Alan. It is the Valley of the Sun, in the Light Country. I know it well. We are very close to the Great City."

I breathed a sigh of relief.

"I'll leave it all to you, little wife. Shall we start at once?"

Her hand pressed mine.

"I shall lead you now," she said. "But afterward—you it will be who leads me—who leads us all."

[Pg 66]

She crossed to the door fastenings. As she loosed them I remember I heard a slight hissing sound. Before I could reach her she slid back the door. A great wave of air rushed in upon us, sweeping us back against the wall. I clutched at something for support, but the sweep of wind stopped almost at once.

I had stumbled to my knees. "Miela!" I cried in terror.

She was beside me in an instant, wide‑eyed with fear, which even then I could see was fear only for me.

I struggled to my feet. My head was roaring. All the blood in my body seemed rushing to my face.

After a moment I felt better. Miela pulled me to a seat.

"I did not think, Alan. The pressure of the air is different here from your world. It was so wrong of me, for I knew. It was so when I landed there on your earth."

I had never thought to ask her that, nor had she ever spoken of it to me. She went on now to tell me how, when first she had opened the door on that little Florida island, all the air about her seemed rushing away. She had felt then as one feels transported quickly to the rarified atmosphere of a great height.

Here the reverse had occurred. We had brought with us, and maintained, an air density such as that near sea level on earth. But here on Mercury the air was far denser, and its pressure had rushed in upon us instantly the door was opened. Miela had been affected to a much less extent than I, and in consequence recovered far more quickly.

The feeling, after the first nausea, the pressure and pain in my ears and the roaring in my head, had passed away. A sense of heaviness, an inability to breathe with accustomed freedom, remained with me for days.

We sat quiet for some minutes, and then left the vehicle. Miela was dressed now as I had first seen her on the Florida bayou. As we stepped upon the ground she suddenly tore the veil from her breast, spread her wings, and, with a laugh of sheer delight, flew rapidly up into the air. I stood watching her, my heart beating fast. Up—up she went into the gray haze of the sky. Then I could see her spread her great wings, motionless, a giant bird soaring over the valley.

[Pg 67]

A few moments more, and she was again beside me, alighting on the tip of one toe with perfect poise and grace almost within reach of my hand.

I do not quite know what feelings possessed me at that moment. Perhaps it was a sense of loss as I saw this woman I loved fly away into the air while I remained chained to the ground. I cannot tell. But when she came back, dropping gently down beside me, ethereal and beautiful as an angel from heaven itself, a sudden rush of love swept over me.

I crushed her to me, glorying in the strength of my arms and the frailness of her tender little body.

When I released her she looked up into my eyes archly.

"You do not like me to fly? Your wife is free—and, oh, Alan, it is so good—so good to be back here again where I can fly."

She laughed at my expression.

"You are a man, too—like all the men of my world. That is the feeling you came here to conquer, Alan—so that the women here may all keep their wings—and be free."

I think I was just a little ashamed of myself for a moment. But I knew my feeling had been only human. I did want her to fly, to keep those beautiful wings. And in that moment they came to represent not only her freedom, but my trust in her, my very love itself.

I stroked their sleek red feathers gently with my hand.

"I shall never feel that way again, Miela," I said earnestly.

She laughed once more and kissed me, and the look in her eyes told me she understood.

The landscape, from this wider viewpoint, seemed even more bleak and desolate than before. The valley was perhaps half a mile broad, and wound away upward into a bald range of mountains in the distance.

The ground under my feet was like a richly metallic ore. In places it was wholly metal, smooth and shining like burnished copper. Below us the valley broadened slightly, falling into what I judged must be open country where lay the city of our destination.

[Pg 68]

For some minutes I stood appalled at the scene. I had often been in the deserts of America, but never have I felt so great a sense of desolation. Always before it had been the lack of water that made the land so arid; and always the scene seemed to hold promise of latent fertility, as though only moisture were needed to make it spring into fruition.

Nothing of the kind was evident here. There was, indeed, no lack of water. I could see a storm cloud gathering in the distance. The air I was breathing seemed unwarrantably moist; and all about me on the ground little pools remained from the last rainfall. But here there was no soil, not so much even as a grain of sand seemed to exist. The air was warm, as warm as a midsummer's day in my own land, a peculiarly oppressive, moist heat.

I had been prepared for this by Miela. I was bareheaded, since there never was to be direct sunlight. My feet were clad in low shoes with rubber soles. I wore socks. For the rest, I had on simply one of my old pairs of short, white running pants and a sleeveless running shirt. With the exception of the shoes it was exactly the costume I had worn in the races at college.

I had been standing motionless, hardly more than a step from the car in which we had landed. Suddenly, in the midst of my meditations on the strange scene about me, Miela said: "Go there, Alan."

She was smiling and pointing to a little rise of ground near by. I looked at her blankly.

"Jump, Alan," she added.

The spot to which she pointed was perhaps forty feet away. I knew what she meant, and, stepping