was that she did not understand what called them forth. Did not even understand what reason lay behind Ruth’s sorrow, Ruth’s prayer.
And more and more wondering grew in her eyes as she looked from the threatening Drake to the supplicating Ruth, and from them to the still body of Ventnor.
“Tell her what I say, Goodwin. I mean it.”
I shook my head. That was not the way, I knew. I looked toward the Disk, still flanked with its sextette of spheres, still guarded by the flaming blue stars. They were motionless, calm, watching. I sensed no hostility, no anger; it was as though they were waiting for us to — to — waiting for us to do what?
It came to me — they were indifferent. That was it — as indifferent as we could be to the struggle of an ephemera; and as mildly curious.
“Norhala,” I turned to the woman, “she would not have him suffer; she would not have him die. She loves him.”
“Love?” she repeated, and all of her wonderment seemed crystallized in the word. “Love?” she asked.
“She loves him,” I said; and then, why I did not know, but I added, pointing to Drake: “and he loves her.”
There was a tiny, astonished sob from Ruth. Again Norhala brooded over her. Then with a little despairing shake of her head, she paced over and faced the great Disk.
Tensely we waited. Communication there was between them, interchange of — thought; how carried out I would not hazard even to myself.
But of a surety these two — the goddess woman, the wholly unhuman shape of metal, of jeweled fires and conscious force — understood each other.
For she turned, stood aside — and the body of Ventnor quivered, arose from the floor, stood upright and with closed eyes, head dropping upon one shoulder, glided toward the Disk like a dead man carried by those messengers never seen by man who, the Arabs believe, bear the death drugged souls before Allah for their awakening.
Ruth moaned and hid her eyes; Drake reached down, gathered her up in his arms, held her close.
Ventnor’s body stood before the Disk, then swam up along its face. The tendrils waved out, felt of it, thrust themselves down through the wide collar of the shirt. The floating form passed higher, over the edge of the Disk; lay high beside the right star point of the rayed shape to which Ruth had been passing when Ventnor’s shot brought the tragedy upon us. I saw other tentacles whip forth, examine, caress.
Then down the body swung, was borne through air, laid gently at our feet.
“He is not — dead,” it was Norhala beside me; she lifted Ruth’s face from Drake’s breast. “He will not die. It may be he will walk again. They can not help,” there was a shadow of apology in her tones. “They did not know. They thought it was the”— she hesitated as though at loss for words —“the — the Fire Play.”
“The Fire Play?” I gasped.
“Yes,” she nodded. “You shall see it. And now I will take him to my house. You are safe — now, nor need you trouble. For he has given you to me.”
“Who has given us to you — Norhala?” I asked, as calmly as I could.
“He”— she nodded to the Disk, then spoke the phrase that was both ancient Assyria’s and ancient Persia’s title for their all-conquering rulers, and that meant —“the King of Kings. The Great King, Master of Life and Death.”
She took Ruth from Drake’s arms, pointing to Ventnor.
“Bear him,” she commanded, and led the way back through the walls of light.
As we lifted the body, I slipped my hand through the shirt, felt at the heart. Faint was the pulsation and slow, but regular.
Close to the encircling vapors I cast one look behind me. The shapes stood immobile, flashing disks, gigantic radiant stars and the six great spheres beneath their geometric super-Euclidean god or shrine or machine of interwoven threads of luminous force and metal — still motionless, still watching.
We emerged into the place of pillars. There stood the hooded pony and its patience, its uncomplaining acceptance of its place as servant to man brought a lump into my throat, salved, I suppose, my human vanity, abased as it had been by the colossal indifference of those things to which we were but playthings.
Again Norhala sent forth her call. Out of the maze glided her quintette of familiars; again the four clicked into one. Upon its top we lifted, Drake ascending first, the pony; then the body of Ventnor.
I saw Norhala lead Ruth to the remaining cube; saw the girl break away from her, leap beside me, and kneeling at her brother’s head, cradle it against her soft breast. Then as I found in the medicine case the hypodermic needle and the strychnine for which I had been searching, I began my examination of Ventnor.
The cubes quivered — swept away through the forest of columns.
We crouched, the three of us, blind to anything that lay about us, heedless of whatever road of wonders we were on, striving to strengthen in Ventnor the spark of life so near extinction.
Chapter XII.
“I Will Give You Peace”
In our concentration upon Ventnor none of us had given thought to the passing of time, nor where we were going. We stripped him to the waist, and while Ruth massaged head and neck, Drake’s strong fingers kneaded chest and abdomen. I had used to the utmost my somewhat limited medical knowledge.
We had found no mark nor burn upon him, not even upon his hands over which had run the licking flame. The slightly purplish, cyanotic tinge of his skin had given way to a clear pallor; the skin was itself disquietingly cold, the blood-pressure only slightly subnormal. The pulse was more rapid, stronger; the breathing faint but regular, and with no laboring. The pupils of his eyes were contracted almost to the point of invisibility.
I could get no nervous reactions whatever. I am familiar with the effects of electric shock and know what to do in such cases, but Ventnor’s symptoms, while similar in part, presented other features unknown to me and most puzzling. There was a passive automatism, a perplexing muscular rigidity which caused arms and legs, hands and head to remain, doll-like, in any position placed.
Several times during my labors I had been aware of Norhala gazing down upon us; but she made no effort to help, nor did she speak.
Now, my strained attention relaxing, I began to receive and note impressions from without. There was a different feeling in the air, a diminution of the magnetic tension; I smelled the blessed breath of trees and water.
The light about us was clear and pearly, about the intensity of the moon at full. Looking back along the way we had been traveling, I saw a half mile away vertical, knife-sharp edges of two facing cliffs, the gap between them a mile or more wide.
Through them we must have passed, for beyond them were the radiant mists of the pit of the city, and through this precipitous gateway filtered the enveloping luminosity. On each side of us uprose gradually converging and perpendicular scarps along whose base huddled a sparse foliage.
There came a low whistle of astonishment from Drake; I turned. We were slowly gliding toward something that looked like nothing so much as a huge and shimmering bubble of mingled sapphire and turquoise, swimming up from and two-thirds above and the balance still hidden within earth. It seemed to draw to itself the light, sending it back with gleamings of the gray-blue of the star sapphire, with pellucid azures and lazulis like clouded jades, with glistening peacock iridescences and tender, milky greens of tropic shallows.
Little turrets globular and topaz, yellow and pierced with tiny hexagonal openings clustered about it like baby bubbles just nestling down to rest.
Great trees shadowed