The Blind Spot, Homer Eon Flint and Austin Hall [books to read for 13 year olds txt] 📗

and design. On the deck of this the three men took their places; on the one side the Rhamda Geos, tall, sombre, immaculate; on the other, the magnificent Jan Lucar in the gorgeous crimson uniform, gold-braided and studded with jewels; on his head he wore the shako of purple down, and by his side a peculiar black weapon which he wore much in the manner of a sword.

In the centre, Watson—bareheaded, his torso bare and his arms naked. He had been given a pair of soft sandals, and a short suit, whose one redeeming feature in his eyes was a pocket into which he had thrust the automatic that he valued so much. It was more like a picture of Rome than anything else. Whatever the civilisation of the Thomahlians, their ritual in Watson's eyes smacked still of barbarism.

But he was intensely interested in all about him. The avenues were large. On either side the guards were drawn up eight deep, holding back the multitude that pressed and jostled with the insistence of curiosity. He looked into the myriad faces; about him, splendid features, of intelligent man and women.

Not one face suggested the hideous; the women were especially beautiful, and, from what he could see, finely formed and graceful. Many of them smiled; he could hear the curious buzz of conjecturing whispers. Some were indifferent, while others, from the expression of their faces, were openly hostile.

Chick was in the middle of a procession, the Rhamdas marching before and the crimson guard bringing up the rear. A special guard: the inner one, Rhamdas, the outer one of crimson surrounding them all.

The car started. There was no trace of friction; it was noiseless, automatic. Chick could only conjecture as to its mechanism. The black column of Rhamdas moved ahead rhythmically, with the swing of solemn grandeur. For some minutes they marched through the streets of the Mahovisal. There was no cheering; it was a holy, awesome occasion. Chick could sense the undercurrent of the staring thousands, the reverence and the piety. It was the Day of the Prophet. They were staring at a miracle.

The column turned a corner. For the first time Watson was staggered by sheer immensity; for the first time he felt what it might be to see with the eyes of an insect. Had he been an ant looking up at the columns of Karnak, he would still have been out of proportion. It was immense, colossal, beyond man. It was of the omnipotent—the pillared portal of the Temple of the Bell.

Such a building a genius might dream of, in a moment of unhampered, inspired imagination. It was stupendous. The pillars were hexagonal in shape, and in diameter each of about the size of an ordinary house. Dropping from an immense height, it seemed as if they had originally poured out in the form of molten metal from immense bell-like flares that fell from the vaulted architrave. Such was the design.

Chick got the impression that the top of the structure, somehow, was not supported by the foundation, but rather the reverse—the floor was suspended from the ceiling. It was the work of the Titans—so high and stupendous that at the first instant Watson felt numb with insignificance. What chance had he against men of such colossal conception.

How large the building was he could not see. The Gargantuan facade itself was enough to smother comprehension. It was laid out in the form of a triangle, one end of which was open towards the city; the two sections of the facade met under a huge, arched opening—the door itself. Watson recognised the structure as the one he had seen from the June Bug on the outskirts of the Mahovisal. The enormous plaza was packed with people, leaving only a narrow lane for the procession; and as far back as Chick could see crowds in the streets converged towards this vast space. Their numbers were incalculable.

The car stopped. The guards, both crimson and blue, formed a twenty-fold cordon. Watson could feel the suspended breath of the waiting multitude. The three men stepped out—the Geos first, then the Jan Lucar, and Watson last. Chick caught the Lucar's eye; it was confident; the man was springing with vigour, jovial in spite of the moment.

They passed between two of the huge pillars, and under the giant arch. For a few minutes they walked through what seemed, to Chick, a perfect maze of those titanic columns. And every foot was marked by the lines of crimson and blue, flanking either side.

An immense sea of people rose high into the forest of pillars as far as his eye could reach. He had never been in such a concourse of humanity.

They passed through an inner arch, a smaller and lower one, into what Chick guessed was the temple proper. And if Chick had thought the anteroom stupendous, he saw that a new word, one which went beyond all previous experience, was needed to describe what he now saw.

It was almost too immense to be grasped in its entirety. Gone was the maze of columns; instead, far, far away to the right and to the left, stood single rows of herculean pillars. There were but seven on a side, separated by great distances; and between them stretched a space so immense, so incredibly vast, that a small city could have been housed within it. And over it all was not the open sky, but a ceiling of such terrific grandeur that Chick almost halted the procession while he gazed.

For that ceiling was the under side of a cloud, a grey-black, forbidding thundercloud. And the fourteen pillars, seven on either side, were prodigious waterspouts, monster spirals of the hue of storm, with flaring sweeps at top and bottom that welded roof and floor into one terrific whole. Sheer from side to side stretched that portentous level cloud; it was a span of an epoch; and on either side it was rooted in those awful columns, seemingly alive, as though ready at any instant to suck up the earth into the infinite.

By downright will-power Watson tore his attention away and directed it upon the other features of that unprecedented interior. It was lighted, apparently, by great windows behind the fourteen pillars; windows too far to be distinguishable. And the light revealed, directly ahead something that Chick at first thought to be a cascade of black water. It leaped out of the rear wall of the temple, and at its crest it was bordered with walls of solid silver, cut across and designed with scrolls of gold and gem work; walls that swooped down and ended with two huge green columns at the base of that fantastic fall.

As they approached a swarm of tiny bronze objects, silver winged, fluttered out through the temple—tiny birds, smaller than swallows, beautiful and swift-winged, elusive. They were without number; in a moment the air of the temple was alive with flitting, darting spots of glinting colour.

Then Chick saw that there were two people sitting high on the crest of that cascade. Wondering, Chick and the rest marched on through the silent crowd; all standing with bared heads and bated breaths. The worshipping Thomahlians filled every inch of that enormous place. Only a narrow lane permitted the procession to pass towards that puzzling, silent, black waterfall.

They were almost at its base when Chick saw the vanguard of the Rhamdas unhesitatingly stride straight against the torrent, and then mount upon it. Up they marched; and Chick knew that the black water was black jade, and that the two people at its crest were seated upon a landing