CHAPTER XIX
THE SECRET OF THE CAR
Jack and Henry were overjoyed to see us again, for after our departurethey had fallen into a despondent mood, and began to imagine all sorts ofevil.
"Jo!" was Jack's greeting; "I never was so glad to see anybody in mylife. Edmund, don't you ever go off and leave any of us alone again."
"I'll never leave you again," responded Edmund. "You can count on that."
Then we told them the story of what we had seen, and of what had happenedin the wild Eden that we had visited. They were not so much interested inthe most wonderful thing of all--the combination of sound and color--asthey were in the conduct of Ingra. Jack laughed until he was tired overIngra's drunkenness, but he drew a long face when he heard of theadventure in the car.
"Edmund," he said earnestly, "I am beginning to be of Henry's opinion;you had better get away from here without losing a moment."
"No," said Edmund, "we'll not go yet. The time hasn't come to run away.What difference does it make even if Ingra does suspect that the car ismoved by some mechanism instead of by pure magic? He could not understandit if I should explain it to him."
"But you have said that he is extraordinarily intelligent."
"So he is, but his intelligence is limited by the world he lives in, andwhile there are many marvelous things here, nobody has the slightestconception of inter-atomic force. They have never heard even ofradioactivity. At the same time I don't mean that they shall go nosingabout the car. I'll take care of that."
"But," said Jack, "it grinds me to see that brute Ingra get off scot-freeafter trying to murder us. And what has he got against us, anyway? Butfor him we should never have had any trouble. He was against us from thebeginning."
"I don't think he was particularly _against_ us at the start," saidEdmund. "Only he was for treating us with less consideration than Ala wasdisposed to show. But after the first accidental shooting, and thedrubbing that Juba gave him, naturally his prejudices were aroused, andhe could hardly be blamed for thinking us dangerous. Then, when he foundhimself defeated, and his wishes disregarded, on all sides, he began tohate us. It is easy enough to account for his feelings. Now, since ourrecent astonishing triumph, being himself incredulous about our celestialorigin, he will try to undermine us by showing that our seeming miracleis no miracle at all."
"And you gave him the chance by taking him in the car!" I could not helpexclaiming.
"Yes," said Edmund, with a smile. "I admit that I made a mistake. Icounted too much upon the influence of the sense of mystery. But it willcome out all right."
"I doubt it," I persisted. "He will never rest now until he has found outthe secret."
Nothing more was said on the subject, but Edmund was careful not to leavethe car unguarded. It was always kept afloat, though in contact with thelanding. The expenditure of energy needed to keep it thus anchoredwithout support was, Edmund assured us, insignificant in comparison withthe quantity stored in his mysterious batteries.
We were not long in finding, on all sides, evidence that our trip upthrough the cloud dome had been a master stroke, and that the presumableincredulity of Ingra with regard to our claims was not shared by others.He might have his intimates, who entertained prejudices against usresembling his own, but if so we saw nothing of them. In fact, Ingra wasmuch less in evidence than before, but I did not feel reassured by that;on the contrary, it made me all the more fearful of some plot on hispart, and Jack was decidedly of my opinion.
"Hang him!" he said, "he's up to some mischief, and I know it. Much as Idetest him, I'd rather have him _in_ sight than _out_, just now. He makesme feel like a snake in a bush; if he'd only show his ugly head, orspring his rattle, I'd be more comfortable."
But the kindness and deference with which we were treated, and the newwonders that were shown to us in the capital, gradually drove Ingra fromour minds. Now we were permitted to enter the temples without opposition,our presence there according with our new character of "children of thesun." We saw the worship that was offered before the solar images byfamily parties, and attended, as favored guests, the periodicalceremonies in the great temple. Edmund confessed that the high priestgreatly embarrassed him by staring into his eyes, and plainly assumingthat he knew things of which he was profoundly ignorant.
"The hardest thing I ever undertook," he said, "is to hold my mind insuspense during these trying interviews, when he endeavors to read thedepths of my soul, and I to throw a veil over them which he cannotpenetrate."
In some way, Edmund discovered that the high priest and all the priestsconnected with the sun worship (and they certainly bore a familylikeness) belonged to a special race, whose roots ran back into the mostremote antiquity, and about whose persons clung a sacredness that placedthem, in some respects, above the royal family itself. We frequentlyvisited the great library, where Edmund undertook a study of the languageof the printed rolls, though what he made of it I never clearlyunderstood. I do not think that he succeeded in deciphering any of it. Healso spent much time studying their mechanics and engineering, for whichhe professed great admiration.
But most interesting of all to us was what Edmund himself accomplished. Ihave told you of his remark about the color-sound music, viz., that hethought it not impossible that even human senses might be enabled toappreciate it. Well, he actually realized that wildly improbable dream!He fitted up a laboratory of his own in which he labored sometimes fortwenty hours at a stretch, and at last he brought to us the astonishinginvention he had made.
I can make no pretense of understanding it; although Edmund declaredthat, in substance, it was no more wonderful than a telephone. Themachine consisted of a little metal box. (He made three of them, and Ihave mine yet, but it will not work on the earth, and it lies on my tableas I write, serving for the most wonderful paper weight that a man everpossessed.) When this box was pressed against the ear in front of one ofthe revolving disks that threw out blending colors, or in the presence ofa "singing" bird, the most divine harmonies seemed to awake _in thebrain_. I cannot make the slightest approach to a description of themarvelous phenomenon. One felt his whole being infused with ecstaticjoy. It was the very soul of music itself, celestial, ineffable! Thewonder-box also enabled us to catch many sounds peculiar to theatmosphere of Venus, formed of vibrations, as Edmund had explained, thatlie outside our gamut. But to these, apart from the music, I could neverlisten. They were _too_ abnormal, filling one with inexplicable terror,as if he had been snatched out of nature and compelled to listen to thesounds of a preternatural world. The only sound that I ever heard with mynatural ear which bore the slightest resemblance to these was the awfulpiercing whistle of the monster that killed Ala's man.
Yet we derived immense pleasure from the possession of those littleboxes. With their aid, we could appreciate the exquisite melodies thatwere played everywhere--in great halls where thousands were assembled, inthe temples great and small, and in the homes of the people, to which wewere often admitted. In every house there was on one of the walls a"musical rose," whose harmonies entranced the visitor. And the variety ofmusical _motifs_ seemed to be absolutely without limit. One was nevertired of the entertainment because there was so little repetition.
On one ever-memorable occasion we heard the great national, or, as Edmundpreferred to call it, "racial" hymn, played in the air from the principaltower. When we had only beheld the play of colors characterizing thiscomposition we had found it altogether delightful, although, as I havesaid, Edmund detected, even then, some underlying tone of sadness ordespair; but when its _sounds_ broke into the brain the effect wasoverwhelming. The entire thing seemed to have been "written in a minorkey," of infinite world-embracing pathos. The listener was plunged intodepths of feeling that seemed unfathomable, eternal--and unendurable.
"Heavens!" whispered Jack to me in an awed voice, dropping the box fromhis ear, "I can't _stand_ it!"
I saw tears running down his face, and felt them on my own. Edmund andHenry were equally a
ffected, and could not continue to listen. Edmundsaid nothing, but I recalled his words about the traditional belief ofthis people that their world had entered upon the last stage of itsexistence. Then I watched the countenances about us; they wore anexpression of solemnity, and yet there was something which spoke of anuplifting pride, awakened by the great paean, and swelling the heart withmemories of interminable ages of past glory.
"Come," said Edmund at last, turning away, "this is not for us. Themeasureless sadness we feel, but the triumphant reflection of ancestralgreatness is for them alone. Heavens! what an artist he must have beenwho composed this!--if it be not like the Iliad, the work of an agerather than of a man."
We almost forgot the passage of time in the enjoyment of our nowdelightful and untroubled existence, but there came at last a rudeawakening from this life, which had become for us like a dream.
As I have said, we had ceased to worry about Ingra, whom we seldom saw,and who, when we did see him, gave no indication of continued enmity. Atfirst we had kept the car under continual surveillance, but as time wenton we became careless in this respect, and at last we did not guard it atall.
One day, during the time of repose, I happened to be, with Juba, in ourroom on that stage of the great tower where the car was anchored, whileEdmund and the others were below in the palace. Juba was already asleep,and I was lying down and courting drowsiness, when a slight noise outsideattracted my attention. I stepped softly to the door and looked out. Thedoor of the car was open! Supposing that Edmund was there I approached tospeak to him. By good fortune I was wearing the soft slippers worn byeverybody here, and which we had adopted, so that my footsteps made nosound.
As I reached the car door and looked in, I nearly dropped in theintensity of my surprise and consternation. There, at the farther end,was Ingra, on his knees before the mechanical mouths which swallowed theinvisible elements of power from the air; and beside him was another,also on his knees, and busy with tools, apparently trying to detach thethings. The explanation flashed over my mind; Ingra had brought a skilledengineer to aid him in discovering the secret of the car, and, no doubt,to rob it of its mysterious mechanism. They seemed to fear nointerruption, because Ingra had undoubtedly informed himself of the factthat for a day or two past we had abandoned the use of our room in thetower, and taken our repose in our apartments in the palace. It was bymere chance that Juba and I had, on this occasion, remained so long aloftthat I had decided to take our sleep in the tower room.
Anticipating no surveillance, Ingra was not on his guard, and had no ideathat I was behind him. Instinctively I grasped for my pistol butinstantly remembered that it was with my coat in the room. I tiptoedback, awoke Juba, making him a sign to be noiseless, got the pistol, andreturned, without a sound, to the open door of the car with Juba at myheels. They were yet on their knees, with their heads under the shelf,and I heard the slight grating made by the tool that Ingra's assistantwas using. The pistol was in my hand. What should I do? Shoot him downwithout warning, or trust to the strength of Juba to enable us toovercome them both and make them prisoners?
While I hesitated, and it was but a moment, Ingra suddenly rose to hisfeet and confronted us. An exclamation burst from his lips, and the othersprang up. I covered Ingra with the pistol and pulled the trigger. Therewas not a sound! The sickening remembrance then burst over me that I hadnot reloaded the pistol since Edmund had emptied its whole chamber in theclosing fight with the tarantula of the swamps. Ingra, followed by hisman, sprang upon me like a tiger. In a twinkling I lay on my back, andbefore I could recover my feet, I saw Juba and Ingra in a deadlystruggle, while the other ran away and disappeared. Jumping up I ran toJuba's assistance, but the fight was so furious, and the combatantswhirled so rapidly, that I could get no hold. I saw, however, that Jubawas more than a match for his opponent, and I darted into the car to getone of the automatic rifles, thinking that I could use it as a club toput an end to the struggle if the opportunity should offer. But thelocker was firmly closed and I could not open it. After a minute of vainefforts I returned to the combatants and found that Juba had nearlycompleted his mastery. He had Ingra doubled over his knee and wasendeavoring to pinion his hands.
At this instant, when the victory seemed complete, and our enemy in ourpower, Juba uttered a faint cry and fell in a heap. Blood instantlystained the floor around him, and Ingra, with a bound, dropping a longknife, attained the door of a nearby chamber, and was out of sight beforeI could even start to pursue him. Nevertheless, I ran after him, butquickly became involved in a labyrinth where it was useless to continuethe search, and where I nearly lost my way.
I then returned to see how seriously Juba had been wounded. He hadcrawled into the car. I bent over him--he was dead! The knife hadinflicted a fearful wound, and it seemed wonderful that he could havemade his way unassisted even over the short distance from where he wasstruck down to the door of the car.
_Juba dead!_ I felt faint and sick! But the critical nature of theemergency helped to steady my nerves by giving me something else to thinkof and to do. Edmund must be called at once. There were no "elevators"running regularly during the general hours of repose, and I did not knowthe way up and down the tower by the ladder-like stairways whichconnected the stages. But there were signals by which the little craftthat served as elevators could be summoned in case of necessity, and Ipulled one of the signal cords. It seemed an age before the air shipcame, and another before I could reach Edmund.
His great self-control enabled him to conceal his grief at my news, butJack was overcome. He had really loved Juba almost as if he had beenhuman and a brother. The big-hearted fellow actually sobbed as if hisheart would break. Then came the reaction, and I should never havebelieved that Jack Ashton could exhibit such malevolent ferocity. Hislips all but foamed, as he fairly shouted, striking his big fiststogether:
"This'll be _my_ job! Edmund! Peter! You hear me! Don't either of youdare to lay a hand on _that devil!_ He's _mine!_ Oh! I'll--" But he couldnot finish his sentence for gnashing his teeth.
We calmed him as best we could and then summoned an air ship. While wewaited, Edmund suddenly put his hand in his pocket, and withdrawing itquickly, said, with a bitter smile:
"What a fool I have been in my carelessness. Ingra has had the keyabstracted from my pocket by some thief. That explains how he got the caropen."
The moment the ship came we hurriedly ascended to the platform. WhenEdmund saw poor Juba's body lying in the car and learned how he had madehis way there to die, he was more affected than when he first heard ofhis death.
"He has died for us," he said solemnly; "he has crawled here as to arefuge, and here he shall remain until I can bury him among his people inhis old home. Would to God I had never taken him from it!"
"Then you will start at once for the dark hemisphere?" I asked.
"At the earliest possible moment; and it shall be on the way to our ownhome."
But we were not to depart before even a more terrible tragedy haddarkened over us, for now the tide of fate was suddenly running at flood.