CHAPTER XXVIII

_Thing in the Forest_

"All in good time, Lady Elza, you will know where we are."

Alone, unnoticed, they had departed from the City of Ice on a small

flying platform similar to the one they had used before. The night had

passed; day, with a new warmth to the sun, came again. Flying low, with

Tarrano in a grim, moody silence, and Elza staring downward.

The aural lights were overhead when at the last Tarrano brought the

platform to rest. A thick, luxuriant forest. Huge trees with rope-like

roots and heavy vines. Others with leaves like the ears of an elephant.

And the ground hidden by almost impenetrable underbrush.

They had landed in a tiny glade beside a dank marsh of water, where

ferns shoulder high were embanked. It was dark, the stars and the tints

of the auroral lights were barely distinguishable through the mass of

foliage overhead. Elza gazed around her fearsomely. The air was heavy,

oppressive. Redolent with the perfume of wild flowers and the smell of

mouldering, steaming soil.

"All in good time. Lady Elza," Tarrano repeated. "You will know where we

are presently; we are closer to human habitation than you would think."

Elza's heart pounded. As they were descending she had noticed a glow of

light in the sky ahead. As though by intuition now, she seemed to

realize that they were not far from the Great City. Her thoughts leaped

to me--Jac Hallen--there in Maida's palace. Tarrano's grim, sinister

purpose was as yet unknown to her. But she guessed that in it, danger

impended for me--for all of us in the Great City.

_"Jac! Danger! Jac! Danger!"_

Her thoughts instinctively reiterated the two words uppermost in her

mind. And I think that it was just about then when they awakened me.

Leaving the vehicle, Tarrano commanded Elza to follow him; and he began

picking his way through the jungle. A light was in his hand; it

penetrated but a short distance. A quivering beam of yellow light; then

Elza saw that upon occasion, as Tarrano's finger slid a lever, the beam

narrowed, intensified to a bright lavender. And now where it struck, the

vegetation withered. Blackened, sometimes burst into tiny flame, and

parted thus before them as they advanced.

The jungle was silent; yet, as Elza listened, beneath the crackle of the

burning twigs she could hear the tiny myriad voices of insect life.

Startled voices as the heat of Tarrano's beam struck them. Rustling

leaves; breaking twigs; things scurrying and sliding away, unseen in the

darkness.

Once or twice a crashing--some monster disturbed in his rest plunging

away. Again, a slithering bulk of something, undulating its path through

the thickets. All unseen. Save once. Looking upward, Elza caught a gleam

of green eyes overhead. A triangle of three baleful spots of

phosphorescent green. Her murmur of fright caused Tarrano to glance

upward. His lavender, beam, grown suddenly larger, swung there with a

hiss. Falling from above came a pink body. A bloated body, square, with

squat, twisted legs; a thing larger than a man. A grotesque naked

monstrosity almost in human form. A travesty--gruesome mockery of

mankind. A face, three-eyed...

The thing lay writhing in the underbrush, mouthing, mumbling and then

screaming--the shrill scream of death agony. And the horrible smell of

burning flesh as Tarrano's light played upon it...

"Come away, Lady Elza. I'm sorry. I had hoped to avoid an affair such as

this."

Sickened, shuddering, Elza clung close to Tarrano as he led her onward.

An hour or more; and now Elza could see in the distance the lights of

the Great City.

_"Jac! Danger! Jac! Danger!"_

The idea of thought-transference had come to her. With all the power of

her mind she was thinking her warning to me, praying that it might reach

me.

"Single-handed, Lady Elza. You shall see now how, single-handed, I make

impossible any attack upon Tarrano."

In her abstraction Elza had almost forgotten herself and Tarrano; his

voice reached her--his voice grim and with a gloating, sinister triumph

in it. He was bending to the ground. Elza saw that they had come to an

open space--an eminence rising above the forest. Underfoot was a stony

soil; in places, bare black rock with an outcropping of red, like the

cinnabar from which on Earth we melt the _Heavy-metal_.[23]

[Footnote 23: Quicksilver.]

Tarrano faced her. "Nature, my Lady Elza, is fair to my purpose. I knew

I would find some such deposit as this." He turned his face to one side

attentively, and darted his light--harmlessly yellow now--to where a

lone tree showed its great leaves beginning to waver in a night breeze.

"Nature is with us! See there, my Elza! A wind is coming--a wind from us

to--them!"

The breeze grew--a breeze blowing directly over the forest to where in

the distance the lights of the Great City showed plainly. Tarrano added:

"I had thought to create the wind." He tapped his belt. "Create the wind

to carry our onslaught. But you see, it is unnecessary. Nature is kind,

and far more efficacious than our man-made devices."

_"Jac! Danger!"_ She stood there in the breeze, watching Tarrano--his

purpose as yet no more than guessed--praying that I might receive her

warning.

Tarrano selected his spot--a tiny little cone of rock no bigger than his

thumb. He beckoned Elza.

"Stand close, and watch. You shall see how from the merest spark, a

conflagration may ensue."

The cylinder in his hand darted forth a needle-like shaft--a light of

intense purple. It touched the tiny cone of rock, and he held it there.

"A moment. Be patient, my Elza."

The point of rock seemed presently to melt. Like a tiny volcano, at

their feet, lava from it was flowing down. A little stream of melted

rock, viscous, bubbling a trifle; red at the edges, white within, and

with wisps of smoke curling up from it.

Elza stared with the fascination of horror, for now tiny tongues of

flame were licking about. Blue tongues, licking the air, vanishing into

wisps of black smoke.

Tarrano snapped off his ray. But the tongues of flame stayed alive.

Spreading slowly, soundlessly, their heat now melting the ground.

A breath of the smoke touched Elza's face. Pungent, acrid. It stopped

her breathing. She choked, coughed heavily to expel it.

"Come away, Lady Elza. Let us watch from a safer distance."

He led her from the hillock, up the wind to where at the edge of the

forest they stood gazing.

The blue fire had spread over a distance of several feet. A sluggish,

boiling, bubbling area of flame. Tongues now the height of a man. And

from them, rolling upward, a heavy black cloud--deadly fumes thick,

blacker than the night, spreading out, welling forward over the forest

toward the Great City slumbering in its falsely peaceful security.

At last Elza knew. Stood there, cold, shuddering, thinking with all the

power of her mind and being:

_"Death, Jac! Death to all the City! The black cloud of death!"_

Oblivious to Tarrano she stood until at last the rocky eminence was one

great mass of the surging blue fire. And the black cloud, compact as a

thunder-head, rolled onward.

_"You can see it coming! Death Jac! Death to all the City!"_

A sudden madness descended upon Elza. She felt abruptly that her warning

was futile, felt an overpowering desire to run. Run somewhere--anywhere,

away from the lurid sight she was facing. Or run perhaps, to the Great

City; to race with that black cloud of death; to run fast and far, and

burst into our palace to warn us.

Tarrano himself lost in triumphant contemplation of what he had done,

for the moment was heedless of Elza's presence. With white face upon

which the blue glare had settled like a mask of death, Elza turned

silently from him. Forgetful of that horrible thing they had

encountered--others of its kind which might be lurking about--she turned

silently and plunged into the black depths of the forest.