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 smallflying platform similar to the one they had used before. The night hadpassed; day, with a new warmth to the sun, came again. Flying low, withTarrano in a grim, moody silence, and Elza staring downward.
The aural lights were overhead when at the last Tarrano brought theplatform to rest. A thick, luxuriant forest. Huge trees with rope-likeroots 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, whereferns shoulder high were embanked. It was dark, the stars and the tintsof the auroral lights were barely distinguishable through the mass offoliage overhead. Elza gazed around her fearsomely. The air was heavy,oppressive. Redolent with the perfume of wild flowers and the smell ofmouldering, steaming soil.
"All in good time. Lady Elza," Tarrano repeated. "You will know where weare presently; we are closer to human habitation than you would think."
Elza's heart pounded. As they were descending she had noticed a glow oflight in the sky ahead. As though by intuition now, she seemed torealize that they were not far from the Great City. Her thoughts leapedto me--Jac Hallen--there in Maida's palace. Tarrano's grim, sinisterpurpose was as yet unknown to her. But she guessed that in it, dangerimpended for me--for all of us in the Great City.
_"Jac! Danger! Jac! Danger!"_
Her thoughts instinctively reiterated the two words uppermost in hermind. And I think that it was just about then when they awakened me.
Leaving the vehicle, Tarrano commanded Elza to follow him; and he beganpicking his way through the jungle. A light was in his hand; itpenetrated but a short distance. A quivering beam of yellow light; thenElza saw that upon occasion, as Tarrano's finger slid a lever, the beamnarrowed, intensified to a bright lavender. And now where it struck, thevegetation withered. Blackened, sometimes burst into tiny flame, andparted thus before them as they advanced.
The jungle was silent; yet, as Elza listened, beneath the crackle of theburning twigs she could hear the tiny myriad voices of insect life.Startled voices as the heat of Tarrano's beam struck them. Rustlingleaves; breaking twigs; things scurrying and sliding away, unseen in thedarkness.
Once or twice a crashing--some monster disturbed in his rest plungingaway. Again, a slithering bulk of something, undulating its path throughthe thickets. All unseen. Save once. Looking upward, Elza caught a gleamof green eyes overhead. A triangle of three baleful spots ofphosphorescent green. Her murmur of fright caused Tarrano to glanceupward. His lavender, beam, grown suddenly larger, swung there with ahiss. Falling from above came a pink body. A bloated body, square, withsquat, twisted legs; a thing larger than a man. A grotesque nakedmonstrosity almost in human form. A travesty--gruesome mockery ofmankind. A face, three-eyed...
The thing lay writhing in the underbrush, mouthing, mumbling and thenscreaming--the shrill scream of death agony. And the horrible smell ofburning flesh as Tarrano's light played upon it...
"Come away, Lady Elza. I'm sorry. I had hoped to avoid an affair such asthis."
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 ofthe Great City.
_"Jac! Danger! Jac! Danger!"_
The idea of thought-transference had come to her. With all the power ofher mind she was thinking her warning to me, praying that it might reachme.
"Single-handed, Lady Elza. You shall see now how, single-handed, I makeimpossible any attack upon Tarrano."
In her abstraction Elza had almost forgotten herself and Tarrano; hisvoice reached her--his voice grim and with a gloating, sinister triumphin it. He was bending to the ground. Elza saw that they had come to anopen space--an eminence rising above the forest. Underfoot was a stonysoil; in places, bare black rock with an outcropping of red, like thecinnabar 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 knewI would find some such deposit as this." He turned his face to one sideattentively, and darted his light--harmlessly yellow now--to where alone 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 usto--them!"
The breeze grew--a breeze blowing directly over the forest to where inthe distance the lights of the Great City showed plainly. Tarrano added:
"I had thought to create the wind." He tapped his belt. "Create the windto 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--hispurpose as yet no more than guessed--praying that I might receive herwarning.
Tarrano selected his spot--a tiny little cone of rock no bigger than histhumb. He beckoned Elza.
"Stand close, and watch. You shall see how from the merest spark, aconflagration may ensue."
The cylinder in his hand darted forth a needle-like shaft--a light ofintense 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, attheir feet, lava from it was flowing down. A little stream of meltedrock, viscous, bubbling a trifle; red at the edges, white within, andwith wisps of smoke curling up from it.
Elza stared with the fascination of horror, for now tiny tongues offlame were licking about. Blue tongues, licking the air, vanishing intowisps 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 stoppedher 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 theforest 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. Andfrom them, rolling upward, a heavy black cloud--deadly fumes thick,blacker than the night, spreading out, welling forward over the foresttoward the Great City slumbering in its falsely peaceful security.
At last Elza knew. Stood there, cold, shuddering, thinking with all thepower 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 onegreat mass of the surging blue fire. And the black cloud, compact as athunder-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 warningwas futile, felt an overpowering desire to run. Run somewhere--anywhere,away from the lurid sight she was facing. Or run perhaps, to the GreatCity; to race with that black cloud of death; to run fast and far, andburst 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 uponwhich the blue glare had settled like a mask of death, Elza turnedsilently from him. Forgetful of that horrible thing they hadencountered--others of its kind which might be lurking about--she turnedsilently and plunged into the black depths of the forest.