CHAPTER VIII

Miles underneath the great ship, from which Lieutenant McGuire and

Professor Sykes were now watching through a floor-window of thick glass,

was a glittering expanse of water--a great ocean. The flickering gold

expanse that reflected back the color of the sunlit clouds passed to one

side as the ship took its station above the island, a continent in size,

that had shown by its shape like a sharply formed "L" an identifying

mark to the astronomer.

They were high in the air; the thick clouds that surrounded this new

world were miles from its surface, and the things of the world that

awaited were tiny and blurred.

Airships passed and repassed far below. Large, some of them--as bulky

as the transport they were on; others were small flashing cylinders, but

all went swiftly on their way.

It must have come--some ethereal vibration to warn others from the

path--for layer after layer of craft were cleared for the descent. A

brilliant light flashed into view, a dazzling pin-point on the shore

below, and the great ship fell suddenly beneath them. Swiftly it dropped

down the pathway of light; on even keel it fell down and still down,

till McGuire, despite his experience in the air, was sick and giddy.

The light blinked out at their approach. It was some minutes before the

watching eyes recovered from the brilliance to see what mysteries might

await, and then the surface was close and the range of vision small.

A vast open space--a great court paved with blocks of black and white--a

landing field, perhaps, for about it in regular spacing other huge

cylinders were moored. Directly beneath in a clear space was a giant

cradle of curved arms; it was a mammoth structure, and the men knew at a

glance that this was the bed where their great ship would lie.

* * * * *

The smooth pavement seemed slowly rising to meet them as their ship

settled close. Now the cradle was below, its arms curved and waiting.

The ship entered their grasp, and the arms widened, then closed to draw

the monster to its rest. Their motion ceased. They were finally, beyond

the last faint doubt, at anchor on a distant world.

A shrill cackle of sound recalled them from the thrill of this

adventure, and the attenuated and lanky figure, with its ashen,

blotchy face that glared at them from the doorway, reminded them that

this excursion into space was none of their desire. They were

prisoners--captives from a foreign land.

A long hand moved its sinuous fingers to motion them to follow, and

McGuire regarded his companion with a hopeless look and a despondent

shrug of his shoulders.

"No use putting up a fight," he said; "I guess we'd better be good."

He followed where the figure was stepping through a doorway into a

corridor beyond. They moved, silent and depressed, along the dimly

lighted way; the touch of cold metal walls was as chilling to their

spirits as to their flesh.

But the mood could not last: the first ray of light from the outside

world sent shivers of anticipation along their spines. They were

landing, in very fact, upon a new world; their feet were to walk where

never man had stood; their eyes would see what mortal eyes had never

visioned.

Fears were forgotten, and the men clung to each other not for the human

touch but because of an ecstasy of intoxicating, soul-filling joy in the

sheer thrill of adventure.

They were gripping each other's hand, round-eyed as a couple of

children, as they stepped forward into the light.

* * * * *

Before them was a scene whose blazing beauty of color struck them to

frozen silence; their exclamations of wonder died unspoken on their

lips. They were in a city of the stars, and to their eyes it seemed as

if all the brilliance of the heavens had been gathered for its

building.

The spacious, open court itself stood high in the air among the masses

of masonry, and beyond were countless structures. Some towered skyward;

others were lower; and all were topped with bulbous towers and graceful

minarets that made a forest of gleaming opal light. Opalescence

everywhere!--it flashed in red and gold and delicate blues from every

wall and cornice and roof.

"Quartz?" marveled Sykes after one long drawn breath. "Quartz or

glass?--what are they made of? It is fairyland!"

A jewelled city! Garish, it might have been, and tawdry, in the full

light of the sun. But on these weirdly unreal structures the sun's rays

never shone; they were illumined only by the soft golden glow that

diffused across this world from the cloud masses far above.

McGuire looked up at that uniform, glowing, golden mass that paled

toward the horizon and faded to the gray of banked clouds. His eyes came

slowly back to the ramp that led downward to the checkered black and

white of the court. Beyond an open portion the pavement was solidly

massed with people.

"People!--we might as well call them that," McGuire had told Sykes;

"they are people of a sort, I suppose. We'll have to give them credit

for brains: they've beaten us a hundred years in their inventions."

He was trying to see everything, understand everything, at once. There

was not time to single out the new impressions that were crowding upon

him. The air--it was warm to the point of discomfort; it explained the

loose, light garments of the people; it came to the two men laden with

strange scents and stranger sounds.

McGuire's eyes held with hungry curiosity upon the dwellers in this

other world; he stared at the gaping throng from which came a bedlam of

shrill cries. Lean colorless hands gesticulated wildly and pointed with

long fingers at the two men.

* * * * *

The din ceased abruptly at a sharp, whistled order from their captor. He

stood aside with a guard that had followed from the ship, and he

motioned the two before him down the gangway. It was the same scarlet

one who had faced them before, the one whom McGuire had attacked in a

frenzy of furious fighting, only to go down to blackness and defeat

before the slim cylinder of steel and its hissing gas. And the slanting

eyes stared wickedly in cold triumph as he ordered them to go before

him in his march of victory.

McGuire passed down toward the masses of color that were the ones who

waited. There were many in the dull red of the ship's crew; others in

sky-blue, in gold and pink and combinations of brilliance that blended

their loose garments to kaleidoscopic hues. But the figures were similar

in one unvarying respect: they were repulsive and ghastly, and their

faces showed bright blotches of blood vessels and blue markings of veins

through their parchment-gray skins.

The crowd parted to a narrow, living lane, and lean fingers clutched

writhingly to touch them as they passed between the solid ranks.

McGuire had only a vague impression of a great building beyond, of lower

stories decorated in barbaric colors, of towers above in strange forms

of the crystal, colorful beauty they had seen. He walked toward it

unseeing; his thoughts were only of the creatures round about.

"What damned beasts!" he said. Then, like his companion, he set his

teeth to restrain all show of feeling as they made their way through the

lane of incredible living things.

* * * * *

They followed their captor through a doorway into an empty room--empty

save for one blue-clad individual who stood beside an instrument board

let into the wall. Beyond was a long wall, where circular openings

yawned huge and black.

The one at the instrument panel received a curt order: the weird voice

of the man in red repeated a word that stood out above his curious,

wordless tone. "Torg," he said, and again McGuire heard him repeat the

syllable.

The operator touched here and there among his instruments, and tiny

lights flashed; he threw a switch, and from one of the black openings

like a deep cave came a rushing roar of sound. It dropped to silence as

the end of a cylindrical car protruded into the room. A door in the

metal car opened, and their guard hustled them roughly inside. The one

in red followed while behind him the door clanged shut.

Inside the car was light, a diffused radiance from no apparent source,

the whole air was glowing about them. And beneath their feet the car

moved slowly but with a constant acceleration that built up to

tremendous speed. Then that slackened, and Sykes and McGuire clung to

each other for support while the car that had been shot like a

projectile came to rest.

"Whew!" breathed the lieutenant; "that was quick delivery." Sykes made

no reply, and McGuire, too, fell silent to study the tremendous room

into which they were led. Here, seemingly, was the stage for their next

experience.

A vast open hall with a floor of glass that was like obsidion, empty but

for carved benches about the walls; there was room here for a mighty

concourse of people. The walls, like those they had seen, were decorated

crudely in glaring colors, and embellished with grotesque designs that

proclaimed loudly the inexpert touch of the draughtsman. Yet, above

them, the ceiling sprang lightly into vaulted, sweeping curves.

McGuire's training had held little of architecture, yet even he felt the

beauty of line and airy gracefulness of treatment in the structure

itself.

* * * * *

The contrast between the flaunting colors and the finished artistry that

lay beneath must have struck a discordant note to the scientist. He

leaned closer to whisper.

"It is all wrong some way--the whole world! Beauty and refinement--then

crude vulgarity, as incongruous as the people themselves--they do not

belong here."

"Neither do we," was McGuire's reply; "it looks like a tough spot that

we're in."

He was watching toward a high, arched entrance across the room. A

platform before it was raised some six feet above the floor, and on

this were seats--ornate chairs, done in sweeping scrolls of scarlet and

gold. A massive seat in the center was like the fantastic throne of a

child's fairy tale. From the corridor beyond that entrance came a stir

and rustling that rivetted the man's attention.

A trumpet peal, vibrant and peculiar, blared forth from the ceiling

overhead, and the red figures of the guards stood at rigid attention

with lean arms held stiffly before them. The one in scarlet took the

same attitude, then dropped his hands to motion the two men to give the

same salute.

"You go to hell," said Lieutenant McGuire in his gentlest tones. And the

scarlet figure's thin lips were snarling as he turned to whip his arms

up to their position. The first of a procession of figures was entering

through the arch.

Sykes, the scientist, was paying little attention. "It isn't true," he

was muttering aloud; "it can't be true. Venus! Twenty-six million miles

at inferior conjunction!"

He seemed lost in silent communion with his own thoughts; then: "But

I said there was every probability of life; I pointed out the

similarities--"

"Hush!" warned McGuire. The eyes of the scarlet man were sending wicked

looks in their direction. Tall forms were advancing through the arch.

They, too, were robed in scarlet, and behind them others followed.

* * * * *

The trumpet peal from the dome above held now on a long-drawn, single

note, while the scarlet men strode in silence across the dais and parted

to form two lines. An inverted "V" that faced the entrance--they were an

assembly of rigid, blazing statues whose arms were extended like those

on the floor below.

The vibrant tone from on high changed to a crashing blare that shrieked

discordantly to send quivering protest through every nerve of the

waiting men. Those about them were shouting, and again the name of Torg

was heard, as, in the high arch, another character appeared to play his